The Deep State and the Power of Billionaires - David Cay Johnston on Reality Asserts Itself

If you are a regular reader of my blog posts, then you will know how I love to talk about how people around the world has a false notion of democracy & think that voting is democracy. Here, in the first part of this interview, the investigative reporter, Mr. David Johnston, talks about how instead of "one-man, one-vote" concept of a true democracy, the whole governmental system is rigged in such a way that the concept of democracy actually becomes "more wealth, more votes."

The naive, or perhaps, ignorant, public thinks that their vote matters. Before every election, the public is cajoled by the media to get out & vote because "your vote matters." Heck, I also vote in every federal & provincial elections in Canada, but I also keep in mind that my vote won't have much of an effect on the final outcome because the system has already decided who will be the next "puppet" or public "face" of the government. Most importantly, the policies of the government never change, or at least, not materially enough, to help make life any better for the poor & stricken public. The rich keep getting richer regardless of who comes in the powerhouse.

Another interesting thing to think, coming out from the interview, is how our education system churns out people who cannot think critically about their surroundings. They only care about their next paycheque. They don't care, or perhaps, trained to think about their own lives only. They are put into such a financial position that they are running from one errand to next, without ever having enough time to sit down calmly & think critically about their situation & the world around them. That's what the governments around the world want their citizenry to be & do; be a compliant little worker, who works like a machine, devoid of any critical thoughts.

One other thing Mr. Johnston briefly touched upon is that the people around the world equate wealth with virtue. Somehow, we still think that if someone is wealthy, then they must be pious & virtuous. Even most Muslims around the world incorrectly assume that if their fellow Muslim is wealthy, then he/she must be a pious person. Why? How so? Most wealthy people nowadays become wealthy by wrong means; be it morally wrong or legally wrong. They try to influence the economic & political policies of the government in their favour. They think that their wealth let them wield more power & votes over the government & the poor masses. Although, those poor masses are the ones who made them that wealth. Consequently, the poor masses stay poor, wealthy keep politicians in their pockets, & the political establishment keeps a facade of democracy on the actual face of oligarchy.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0byZ1Rl8-8

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: What does that do to your vision of America?

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON, PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER: Well, it's very troubling, largely because it's not seen by most people and it's not held to any kind of account. And one of the flaws in our notion that we live in a democracy is that a very narrow group of people select who we get to vote for. Someone like Dennis Kucinich might have a lot of popular appeal, but he will never be a serious candidate for president, because those people who have a lot of money in this country are going to use the system to make sure he isn't there.

JAY: And the media.

JOHNSTON: That's right. President Obama--look at how closely he's identified with Wall Street. I chuckle every time somebody says he hates white people. Almost everybody on the staff is white in the White House--overwhelmingly white. He's an enemy of Wall Street. Really? Really? Zero prosecutions of the big bankers for what are well-documented frauds, including by the Federal Crisis Inquiry Commission, whose report Congress paid for and then threw in the round file 'cause they didn't want to look at it?

JAY: Yeah, African Americans may have voted for him, but he is the Wall Street candidate.

JOHNSTON: He absolutely is. And everybody who gets to run is the Wall Street candidate.

And so the fundamental problem we have is, look, most people want to live their lives, and if they can have a reasonably decent place to live and a car that'll start in the morning and a job with a reliable income and they can have a dog if they want one, they're pretty much happy. Part of that is because our education system is designed to make sure that we produce nice, compliant factory and office workers. You can have a better conversation about politics, sociology, wealth, culture with the average waiter in rural Ontario or rural Hungary or rural France than with the average MBA in a suit sitting in the first-class section of an American airplane. Trust me, I've tested this. Alright? And so we live in a society where we just put blinders on to these things we don't want to see.

I mean, think for a moment about this use of drones to take out people who I have no doubt are serious enemies of the United States, but which also have taken out wedding parties and children. Just imagine (and this, I think, can happen with the technology): somebody puts a drone up and they want to take out me because I'm seen as a horrible person, and in the process they take out a whole bunch of children who happen to be standing nearby. Do you think that we would react to that by saying, oh, well, that's just casualty of war? So we aren't thinking very carefully and deeply about the long run.

And, Paul, the biggest observation that all this has made me come to is if you look at our policies in America today, whether they're economic policies, political or diplomatic policies, if you believe, as James Watt, Ronald Reagan's interior secretary, said, that we'd better use up all the resources quickly, because Jesus is coming back and he'll be really ticked off, all of our policies make sense. But if you believe human beings are going to be here for way beyond any period of time they've already been here, our policies don't make any sense at all. We need to be thinking about the fact that we're just stewards for the time that we're here, and we should be thinking about the great-great-great-great grandchildren none of us alive today will ever see.
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JOHNSTON: And we also have this ideology that if you're wealthy, somehow that's virtuous.
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JOHNSTON: ... So within this sphere there are fractious elements, different elements, people who have different and contending interests, people who have no interest in this but care a lot about that.

But nonetheless, yes, there is a power elite, as C. Wright Mills called it. It operates on its own interests and behalf. And it certainly doesn't like people like journalists.

So what do you see has been going on now since the beginning of the age of Reagan? Bumper stickers: "I don't trust liberal media". Really? You're going to trust Fox News, where I can document to you beyond question they just make things up, and they don't correct when they're wrong, and they knowingly mislead? I mean, I've made mistakes. Journalists make mistakes. When journalist make mistakes, we not only run corrections, but the Jayson Blair episode at The New York Times, where this sociopath got loose in the newsroom, 90 percent of what he did was inconsequential stuff, didn't cause any damage--lying, but inconsequential--Times ran a 14,000 word Sunday front page self-exposé. When The Philadelphia Inquirer found out its star political reporter was the mistress of the Democratic political boss of South Philly, they ran--I think it was 32,000 words exposing how they had missed this and not seen it. You ever seen that on Fox News? And yet they tell lies all the time.

And so you understand that an important element of the wealthiest class in America maintaining its position is making sure that most Americans do not think critically about these things, that we have two-income families who are having trouble getting by, so that they are devoted entirely to trying to hold their family together and they don't have the ability to be involved in political activities, to then make it hard to vote, to reduce the number of voting machines, to challenge people's right to vote, to make these robo calls, if you go to the polls and you don't have your ID, you'll be arrested sort of stuff that is nonsense, but people who don't know better are afraid. And it's very, very troubling. And, by the way, many of the very, very wealthy people that I know in this country--and I know lots of them--they are as troubled as you and I are about this. They're just not going to assault it frontally.
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Chris Hedges Interviews Noam Chomsky (Part 2 of 3)

Another interesting interview of Noam Chomsky by Chris Hedges. This one discusses how people around the world, & in the US, have been fed the idea that they are living in the most democratic country in the world. That the world should follow the lead of United States of America when it comes to democracy, liberty, & free speech. However, the reality is very very different.

As Chris Hedges says in the first paragraph that "we are the most monitored, watched, photographed, eavesdropped population in human history." The general public has been given the idea that if you don't concede to government's constant monitoring, then evil people will get you & ruin your life. Fear and hysteria is used to control the masses, & the ignorant masses follow along like a flock of sheep.

Continuing onwards, Chris Hedges puts out another question to Chomsky where he says that how our "liberal" political & legislative institutions have been actually "enslaved" within the power & money paradigm of modern politics. Power & money controls every aspect of modern politics. Those few at the top of social hierarchy who have amassed power & money, usually through illegal or immoral means, wield their significant influences to control the so-called "elected" officials to get what they want from the country.

As Chomsky says that "take a look at the literature, about 70% of the population, what they believe has no effect on policy at all. ... When you get to the top, which is probably, like, a tenth of one percent, they basically write the legislation." How is that even close to democracy? Does it really matter who the masses elect because at the end of the day, the masses will still get the same result, regardless of who is in the office. But, the ignorant & naive public of the West & around the world (US, Canada, Western Europe, Japan, India, Australia, Singapore etc.) still believe that democracy exists in developed countries & developing countries are not developed because of a lack of democracy & liberty. Do they even have an idea what democracy actually is because frankly, voting is not democracy. Voting also happens in Egypt & Zimbabwe, for instance, but the public masses won't recognize them as democratic countries.

Through fear & propaganda of false information, the West has made it seem to the world that it is democratic & the rest of the world must follow its lead. Powerful elites has redefined democracy, knowing fully well that the ignorant masses will accept the propaganda without giving it a second thought. How can the masses fight back & bring true democracy back when they are sound asleep? That's why, political activism is dead nowadays & the public is easily controlled & manipulated by a small minority of the powerful elites in North America & around the world.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFyFzTq1Wws

CHRIS HEDGES, INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST: But that system, of course, is constant. But what's changed is that we don't produce anything anymore. So what we define as our working class is a service sector class working in places like Walmart. And the effective forms of resistance--the sitdown strikes, going back even further in the middle of the 19th century with the women in Lowell--the Wobblies were behind those textile strikes. What are the mechanisms now? And I know you have written, as many anarchists have done, about the importance of the working class controlling the means of production, taking control, and you have a great quote about how Lenin and the Bolsheviks are right-wing deviants, which is, of course, exactly right, because it was centralized control, destroying the Soviets. Given the fact that production has moved to places like Bangladesh or southern China, what is going to be the paradigm now? And given, as you point out, the powerful forces of propaganda--and you touched upon now the security and surveillance state. We are the most monitored, watched, photographed, eavesdropped population in human history. And you cannot even use the world liberty when you eviscerate privacy. That's what totalitarian is. What is the road we take now, given the paradigm that we have, which is somewhat different from what this country was, certainly, in the first half of the 20th century?

NOAM CHOMSKY, LINGUIST AND POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think it's pretty much the same, frankly. The idea still should be that of the Knights of Labor: those who work in the mills should own them. And there's plenty of manufacturing going on in the country, and probably there will be more, for unpleasant reasons. One thing that's happening right now which is quite interesting is that energy prices are going down in the United States because of the massive exploitation of fossil fuels, which is going to destroy our grandchildren, but under the capitalist morality, the calculus is that profits tomorrow outweigh the existence of your grandchildren. It's institutionally-based, so, yes, we're getting lower energy prices. And if you look at the business press, they're very enthusiastic about the fact that we can undercut manufacturing in Europe because we'll have lower energy prices, and therefore manufacturing will come back here, and we can even undermine European efforts at developing sustainable energy because we'll have this advantage.

Britain is saying the same thing. I was just in England recently. As I left the airport, I read The Daily Telegraph newspaper. Big headline: England is going to begin fracking all of the country, even fracking under people's homes without their permission. And that'll allow us to destroy the environment even more quickly and will bring manufacturing back here.

The same is true with Asia. Manufacturing is moving back, to an extent, to Mexico, and even here, as wages increase in China, partly because of labor struggles. There's massive labor struggles in China, huge, all over the place, and since we're integrated with them, we can be supportive of them.

But manufacturing is coming back here. And both manufacturing and the service industries can move towards having those who do the work take over the management and ownership and control. In fact, it's happening. In the old Rust Belt-- Indiana, Ohio, and so on--there's a significant--not huge, but significant growth of worker-owned enterprises. They're not huge, but they're substantial around Cleveland and other places.

The background is interesting. In 1977, U.S. Steel, the multinational, decided to close down their mills in Youngstown, Ohio. Youngstown is a steel town, sort of built by the steelworkers, one of the main steel-producing areas. Well, the union tried to buy the plants from U.S. Steel. They objected--in my view, mostly on class lines. They might have even profited from it. But the idea of worker-owned industry doesn't have much appeal to corporate leaders, which means bankers and so on. It went to the courts. Finally, the union lost in the courts. But with enough popular support, they could have won.

Well, the working class and the community did not give up. They couldn't get the steel mills, but they began to develop small worker-owned enterprises. They've now spread throughout the region. They're substantial. And it can happen more and more.

And the same thing happened in Walmarts. I mean, there's massive efforts right now, significant ones, to organize the service workers--what they call associates--in the service industries. And these industries, remember, depend very heavily on taxpayer largess in all kinds of ways. I mean, for example, let's take, say, Walmarts. They import goods produced in China, which are brought here on container ships which were designed and developed by the U.S. Navy. And point after point where you look, you find that the way the system--the system that we now have is one which is radically anticapitalist, radically so.

I mean, I mentioned one thing, the powerful effort to try to undermine markets for consumers, but there's something much more striking. I mean, in a capitalist system, the basic principle is that, say, if you invest in something and, say, it's a risky investment, so you put money into it for a long time, maybe decades, and finally after a long time something comes out that's marketable for a profit, it's supposed to go back to you. That's not the way it works here. Take, say, computers, internet, lasers, microelectronics, containers, GPS, in fact the whole IT revolution. There was taxpayer investment in that for decades, literally decades, doing all the hard, creative, risky work. Does the taxpayer get any of the profit? None, because that's not the way our system works. It's radically anti-capitalist, just as it's radically anti-democratic, opposed to markets, in favor of concentrating wealth and power.
But that doesn't have to be accepted by the population. These are--all kinds of forms of resistance to this can be developed if people become aware of it.

HEDGES: Well, you could argue that in the election of 2008, Obama wasn't accepted by the population. But what we see repeatedly is that once elected officials achieve power through, of course, corporate financing, the consent of the governed is a kind of cruel joke. It doesn't, poll after poll. I mean, I sued Obama over the National Defense Authorization Act, in which you were coplaintiff, and the polling was 97% against this section of the NDAA. And yet the courts, which have become wholly owned subsidiaries of the corporate state, the elected officials, the executive branch, and the press, which largely ignored it--the only organ that responsibly covered the case was, ironically, The New York Times. We don't have--it doesn't matter what we want. It doesn't--I mean, and I think that's the question: how do we effect change when we have reached a point where we can no longer appeal to the traditional liberal institutions that, as Karl Popper said once, made incremental or piecemeal reform possible, to adjust the system--of course, to save capitalism? But now it can't even adjust the system. We see cutting welfare.

CHOMSKY: Yeah. I mean, it's perfectly true that the population is mostly disenfranchised. In fact, that's a leading theme even of academic political science. You take a look at the mainstream political science, so, for example, a recent paper that was just published out of Princeton by Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page, two of the leading analysts of these topics, what they point out is they went through a couple of thousand policy decisions and found what has long been known, that there was almost no--that the public attitudes had almost no effect. Public organizations that are--nonprofit organizations that are publicly based, no effect. The outcomes were determined by concentrated private power.

There's a long record of that going way back. Thomas Ferguson, a political scientist near here, has shown very convincingly that something as simple as campaign spending is a very good predictor of policy. That goes back into the late 19th century, right through the New Deal, right up till the present. And that's only one element of it. And you take a look at the literature, about 70% of the population, what they believe has no effect on policy at all. You get a little more influence as you go up. When you get to the top, which is probably, like, a tenth of one percent, they basically write the legislation.

I mean, you see this all over. I mean, take these huge so-called trade agreements that are being negotiated, Trans-Pacific and Transatlantic--enormous agreements, kind of NAFTA-style agreements. They're secret--almost. They're not secret from the hundreds of corporate lawyers and lobbyists who are writing them. They know about it, which means that their bosses know about it.

And the Obama administration and the press says, look, this has to be secret, otherwise we can't defend our interests. Yeah, our interests means the interests of the corporate lawyers and lobbyists who are writing the legislation. Take the few pieces that have been leaked and you see that's exactly what it is. Same with the others.

But it doesn't mean you have to accept it. And there have been changes. So take, say--in the 1920s, the labor movement had been practically destroyed. There's a famous book. One of the leading labor historians, David Montgomery, has a major book called something like The Fall of the House of Labor. He's talking about the 1920s. It was done. There had been a very militant labor movement, very effective, farmers movement as well. Crushed in the 1920s. Almost nothing left. Well, in the 1930s it changed, and it changed because of popular activism.

HEDGES: But it also changed because of the breakdown of capitalism.

CHOMSKY: There was a circumstance that led to the opportunity to do something, but we're living with that constantly. I mean, take the last 30 years. For the majority of the population it's been stagnation or worse. That's--it's not exactly the deep Depression, but it's kind of a permanent semi-depression for most of the population. That's--there's plenty of kindling out there which can be lighted.

And what happened in the '30s is primarily CIO organizing, the militant actions like sit-down strikes. A sit-down strike's very frightening. It's a step before taking over the institution and saying, we don't need the bosses. And that--there was a cooperative administration, Roosevelt administration, so there was some interaction. And significant legislation was passed--not radical, but significant, underestimated. And it happened again in the '60s. It can happen again today. So I don't think that one should abandon hope in chipping away at the more oppressive aspects of the society within the electoral system. But it's only going to happen if there's massive popular organization, which doesn't have to stop at that. It can also be building the institutions of the future within the present society.

HEDGES: Would you say that the--you spoke about propaganda earlier and the Creel Commission and the rise of the public relations industry. The capacity to disseminate propaganda is something that now you virtually can't escape it. I mean, it's there in some electronic form, even in a hand-held device. Does that make that propaganda more effective?

CHOMSKY: Well, and it's kind of an interesting question. Like a lot of people, I've written a lot about media and intellectual propaganda, but there's another question which isn't studied much: how effective is it? And that's--when you brought up the polls, it's a striking illustration. The propaganda is--you can see from the poll results that the propaganda has only limited effectiveness. I mean, it can drive a population into terror and fear and war hysteria, like before the Iraq invasion or 1917 and so on, but over time, public attitudes remain quite different. In fact, studies even of what's called the right-wing, people who say, get the government off my back, that kind of sector, they turn out to be kind of social democratic. They want more spending on health, more spending on education, more spending on, say, women with dependent children, but not welfare, no spending on welfare, because Reagan, who was an extreme racist, succeeded in demonizing the notion of welfare. So in people's minds welfare means a rich black woman driving in her limousine to the welfare office to steal your money. Well, nobody wants that. But they want what welfare does.

Foreign aid is an interesting case. There's an enormous propaganda against foreign aid, 'cause we're giving everything to the undeserving people out there. You take a look at public attitudes. A lot of opposition to foreign aid. Very high. On the other hand, when you ask people, how much do we give in foreign aid? Way beyond what we give. When you ask what we should give in foreign aid, far above what we give.

And this runs across the board. Take, say taxes. There've been studies of attitudes towards taxes for 40 years. Overwhelmingly the population says taxes are much too low for the rich and the corporate sector. You've got to raise it. What happens? Well, the opposite.

Opinion on Canadian federal election result

Saw a few posts from people on my TL that today was a great day for Canada because of the new PM's swearing-in ceremony etc.
 
Really? The only reason I vote is that when I criticize a government, no one can say that since, you didn't vote, you lost your right to criticize. Although, I'm not a fan of Conservatives, deep in my heart, I already know NOTHING will change for the small guy.
 
Let me emphasize that point again (for slow people), NOTHING will change for the general public.

 
If Stephen Harper was such a bad guy that the whole country took a sigh of relief with the Liberals win, then why did people elect him back in 2011? And he had been the PM of Canada 5 years before that, too. So, the public already had a little taste of what Harper was all about. Did Harper hypnotized the public somehow in 2011? Heck, he isn't even a "hottie" like JT.
 
I remember seeing this same enthusiasm which I see for Justin Trudeau now, back in 2008, with the election win of Barack Obama. Heck, people all over the world were mesmerized with his win & there were so many hopes attached to his win. Well, we can see how much he actually achieved in his past 7 years of presidency. Except, the Affordable Healthcare Act, he has failed to achieve everything, from closing Guantanamo to controlling emissions to improving checks & balances on Wall Street.
 
Only reason Liberals won in Canada because the general public around the world only wants to keep changing political parties. Let's take a quick look at the tennis match of politics played in some countries around the world:

US: 8 years of Democratic rule (Clinton) is followed by 8 years of Republican (Bush Jr.) & then back to Democrats (Obama) & then back to Republicans (Bush Jr. II in 2016) & so on so forth.

Canada: Conservatives (Mulroney) followed by Liberals (Chretien / Paul) & then back to Conservatives (Harper) & now back with Liberals (Trudeau).

UK: They are little bit unpredictable. 18 years of Conservatives were followed by 13 years of Labour & then back to Conservatives (coming up to 6 years now).
 
Pakistan: PML-N & PPP play the match.

Muslim groups accuse UK government of criminalizing Islam

If we replace Britain, in this news story, with Canada, we will still get the same story that government is trying to pander for votes by criminalizing Islam. Since, Canadian government also has nothing to show on improving economy & jobs, passing security bills like Bill C-51 & Muslim women's veils have been made the focal point of this year's election.

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More than 60 imams & leaders of Muslim organisations have signed an open letter to the government accusing it of criminalising Islam.

 

They said that the "terror threat" was being exploited for political capital ahead of the general election.

 

Signatories include journalist Yvonne Ridley, former Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg & members of the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir.

 

The 61 signatories criticised the "demonisation of Muslims in Britain.... despite their disavowal of violence & never having supported terrorist acts".

 

The letter accused the government of trying to deflect attention from crises in the economy & health service, while trying to silence criticism of foreign policy.

 

It condemned the exploitation of the "terror threat" for political capital as "the big parties inevitably try to outdo each other in their nastiness", in the run up to May's election by playing on public fears about security & immigration.

 

The letter cited the targeting of Muslims through anti-terror legislation: "The latest Act of Parliament, the Counter-Terrorism & Security Act, threatens to create a 'McCarthyite' witch-hunt against Muslims, with nursery workers, schoolteachers & Universities expected to look out for signs of increased Islamic practice as signs of 'radicalisation'".

 

"Such a narrative will only further damage social cohesion as it incites suspicion & ill feeling in the broader community.

 

"The use of undefined & politically charged words like 'radicalisation' & 'extremism' is unacceptable as it criminalises legitimate political discourse & criticism of successive governments," the letter said.

 

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-31834549

Promised Land

When stakes are big for companies or gov'ts, they let the people think that they are in control through their votes but ultimately, they (companies, gov'ts) themselves are controlling the outcome, by any means necessary.

 

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