Fighting the Financial Cartel

In the wake of the colossal betrayal of Americans by the Obama Administration, Cyrano's examines the move toward state-owned banks as a means of fighting the financial cartel on Wall Street.

Marketplace of Ideas

Pimping ethnic diversity or democracy, like pimping poverty or the environment, isn’t anything new. Remember the we are the world Coca-Cola ads?

Nowadays, though, with the advent of unmediated online communication threatening corporate control of public discussion, the marketplace of ideas has been invaded by corporate messaging in the guise of grassroots media. Witness the numerous alternative news sites and blogs funded by neoliberal philanthropies like Ford, Soros, et al.

In fact, if you look at the funders of any well-heeled progressive new media, you’ll find they have ties to the neoliberal philanthropic network. Taking corporate ad money is bad enough; feigning integrity and independence when beholden to thieves who launder blood money via foundation grants is particularly loathsome.

A Racial Framework

International conventions and domestic legal prohibitions against discrimination based on perceived racial difference are arguably useful tools in promoting equality, even if academia and the moral theatrics industry sometimes mischaracterize social conflict within a racial framework. The danger comes when this mischaracterization leads policy makers and activists to believe that oppressive relationships like those between Indigenous nations and corporate states can be resolved by equal opportunity within a capitalist system.

While not all states employ race as a criteria in exercising oppression, many utilize the colonial model developed by racially-biased European powers, and have adapted to the assimilationist structures for denying human rights to Indigenous peoples, regardless of skin color. In the end, it is this authentic distinction between ways of life that is most crucial to the survival of humankind, rather than superficial constructs like race.

Okay to be Gay

Thanks to Dead Horse for this article about America's charming illiteracy.

Quelling Legitimate Dissent

According to The Dominion, RCMP and BC Provincial Police are already threatening social justice activists in order to prevent them from protesting at the Vancouver Olympics. Soldiers and SWAT teams numbering in the thousands are already on the scene to quell legitimate dissent through police violence.