In a Struggle Between Oligarchy and Democracy, Something Must Give by Michael Hudson

99% over 1%

Image by Todd Blaisdell via Flickr

by Michael Hudson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
February 27, 2020

The Democrats’ Quandary

To hear the candidates debate, you would think that their fight was over who could best beat Trump. But when Trump’s billionaire twin Mike Bloomberg throws a quarter-billion dollars into an ad campaign to bypass the candidates actually running for votes in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, it’s obvious that what really is at issue is the future of the Democrat Party. Bloomberg is banking on a brokered convention held by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in which money votes. (If “corporations are people,” so is money in today’s political world.)

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Bloomberg’s Game by Jim Kavanagh

Democrats and Republicans

Image by Matt Katzenberger via Flickr

by Jim Kavanagh
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Polemicist
February 26, 2020

There are two things I feel compelled to say about Mike Bloomberg and his candidacy.

Thing One: Thank you, Mike!

In a few weeks, Mike Bloomberg—along with the Democratic Party and its allied media—has demonstrated the reality of class rule more clearly than reams of Marxist analysis could.

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With Bloomberg Entering Race, U.S. Oligarchy Takes The Stage by Finian Cunningham + Bloomberg’s Stop and Frisk Past Comes Back to Haunt Him

With Bloomberg Entering Race, U.S. Oligarchy Takes The Stage by Finian Cunningham

Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
Watch the video below

by Finian Cunningham
Writer, Dandelion Salad
East Africa
Crossposted from Strategic Culture Foundation
February 21, 2020

The American two-party system has always been an electoral front to conceal the reality of how big money buys U.S. politics. Now with media tycoon Mike Bloomberg entering the presidential race, U.S. “democracy” can be seen for what it is: it’s all about big money duking it out. Political parties are now manifestly irrelevant.

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Ralph Nader: Obama is a Dictator! + Nader, Ron Paul, Kucinich Speak to Occupy Wall Street

Dandelion Salad

Updated: Oct. 12, 2011 added another video

With Ralph Nader

MOXNEWSd0tCOM on Oct 7, 2011

October 07, 2011 News Corp

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The kleptocratic mayor of New York by Danny Lucia

https://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/

by Danny Lucia
SocialistWorker.org
July 14, 2010

IN THE past year, the mayor of New York City has become $2 billion richer while his city has grown $1 billion poorer.

When this type of thing happens in a country in Africa or Central Asia, we call it a “failed state.” Their failure, apparently, is a lack of subtlety. Looting your country’s grain reserves to build the world’s largest tetherball arena makes you a kleptocratic dictator. But if you get stinking rich selling information technology to the banks that have looted your treasury through bailouts, well, you’re just Mayor Mike.

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Is Michael Bloomberg pondering White House bid? (video)

Dandelion Salad

AlJazeeraEnglish

With no clear favorite emerging from either party it appears New York City’s billionaire mayor may be ready to throw his hat into the ring.
Michael Bloomberg has repeatedly said he is not running. But his aides have been conducting extensive research in what looks to be a plan to campaign as an independent.
From New York, Kristen Saloomey has more.

Added: January 14, 2008

Mayor Bloomberg launches ‘research effort’ for White House run by David Edwards & Ron Brynaert

Dandelion Salad

by David Edwards and Ron Brynaert
Raw Story
Thursday January 10, 2008

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has quietly been polling and conducting a highly sophisticated voter analysis in all 50 states as he decides whether to launch an independent presidential bid, associates said Wednesday.

A source has told CNN’s John King, that “Mayor Mike Bloomberg has asked his pollsters and other political advisors to assemble a vast database of information. Voter registration, who might vote for an independent, voter trends, what they call micro targeting of the polling places… They want all of this data together to analyze his potential chances.” King is told that the analysis of that information has not yet begun. King also says that a final decision on a 2008 run is due the first week of March.

However, King reports that Bloomberg is less likely to run if “a unifying figure like Barack Obama” wins the Democratic nomination.

continued… plus video

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Premeditated Merger: North American Union ‘a couple years away’

Dandelion Salad

Global Research, November 22, 2007

WorldNetDaily.com – 2007-11-19

Bilderberg author who 1st exposed plot in 1996 sees EU replication as imminent

WASHINGTON – The next giant step toward world government will be integration of the U.S., Canada and Mexico in European Union-style merger in the next few years, says the author of a best-selling book on the power of shadowy international organizations promoting the move.

“I would say [it’s just] a couple of years away,” reports Daniel Estulin, author of “The True Story of the Bilderberg Group.”

Estulin, a Canadian now living in Europe, says the original plans for a North American Union involved the U.S. and Canada as the prime participants. It was motivated primarily by the desire to harvest Canada‘s abundant natural resources.

In his new book, Estulin reveals the first efforts in this plan date back to 1996 when the elite Bilderberg Group first discussed plans for the dismantlement of Canada as an independent nation and proposed its merger – minus Quebec – with the United States into a Greater North America.

“Actually, the North American Union, or rather a Canada-U.S. merger, was initially discussed shortly after the Reagan-Bush candidacy won the White House,” he says in an interview with WND. “Upon taking over the reins of the country, George Bush and Ronald Reagan called in the presidents of the key trans-national companies and asked them for the real picture. The money people told them that if the United States were a corporation it would have to be shut down immediately. It was bankrupt.”

The solution proposed then, according to Estulin, was merger between the U.S. and Canada.

 

“Canada is virgin country with a multitude of natural resources, water, mines, oil, gas, etc.,” he explains. “They decided that it was going to take 14 or 15 years to put the whole project together. In the interval, the economies, social programs and laws of the two countries would be quietly harmonized as much as possible.” Back then, part of that harmonization plan involved the separation of Quebec as an independent state, he says. “Actually, when all is said and done, it all comes down to money,” Estulin says. “Money makes its own rules. If your goal is to make the most money possible using Canada’s natural resources, what would you ask for? Number one, give me control over the sun. Number two, give me control over the air. Number three, give me control over water. Now, we know we cannot control the sun, nor can we control the air. But we can control water. Water, after all, is the most important element that can be controlled.”

But the plot for a North American Union, as exposed in detail in Jerome Corsi’s new bestselling book, “The Late Great USA,” is but a prelude, Estulin says, to the ultimate merger – one-world government.

“Everything is in place,” he says. “Europe is now one country, one currency and one constitution. North America is about to become one. The African Union has had its working model going for over a decade. Asia is openly discussing the near-future Asian Union, being sold to us as an economic inevitability beneficial to all its citizens.”

Estulin sees the current focus in the U.S. on the presidential election of 2008 as something of a farce in light of this trend.

“Does it really matter who wins?” he asks. “As I make very clear in ‘The True Story of the Bilderberg Group,’ every politician of note and promise belongs to the Bilderbergers, CFR (Council on Foreign Relations) or the Trilateral Commission. Unless you are one of them, you can hardly hope to win the presidency. If we vote for the lesser evil, forced upon us by the secret oligarchies and the powerful men behind the curtain, we end up playing the game imposed upon us by them. Democracy, I guess what I really want to say, is a fallacy, an unattainable dream, a useless label trotted out and dusted off by the rulers every four years for the benefit of the great unwashed – us. There are two sides in this equation – the powerful elite who control the world’s wealth and the rest of humanity.”

Estulin “guarantees” today’s Republican front-runner Rudy Giuliani will not get the nomination of his party. With less certitude, he speculates the current mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, could still be positioned to head the GOP ticket.

“Bloomberg, according to my sources within Bilderberg, will emerge as a credible candidate of consensus for the discredited American political establishment, your virtual “People’s Choice” candidate,” he says.

What is the agenda behind these groups, which Estulin says are comprised of “self-interested elitists protecting their wealth and the investments of multinational banks and corporations in the growing world economy at the expense of developing nations and Third World countries”?

“The policies they develop,” he writes, “benefit them as well as move us towards a one-world government.”

Those questioning Estulin’s conclusion as mere speculation need only recall organizational financer David Rockefeller‘s own words as recorded in his “Memoirs.”

“Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – one world, if you will,” he wrote. “If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”

Estulin’s book, first written in 2005 in Spain, has been translated into 24 languages, most recently this English edition. He has covered the Bilderberg Group as a journalist for more than 15 years.

Why does he singularly devote so much attention to exposing their activities?

“They cannot survive the light, and they know it,” he says. “This is why the powerful people have long insulated themselves from that possibility. You see, the greatest form of control is when you think you are free while you are being manipulated and dictated to. People have been disarmed through the greatest hypnotist the world has ever known – the oblong box almost everyone has in the corner of their living rooms known as the television. By persuading ordinary people that what they can see with their eyes is what is there to see, the men behind the curtain have ensured their own survival, because people will laugh in your face when you explain to them that there is a bigger picture they are not seeing.”

What is his personal prescription for fighting back? He offers a five-point program:

1. Understanding that governments do not represent the people nor have their best interests at heart. 2. Understanding that corporate media’s main job is to hide the transgressions of the most powerful people in the world not shine the light of truth on it.

3. Understanding that the corporate media forms part of the world’s elite societies such as the Bilderbergers, the CFR and the Trilateral Commission.

4. Understanding how money works and how through intelligent use of money we can destroy the Bilderbergers of this world.

5. Getting out of debt now.

see

Bloomberg Crams On Foreign Policy: Proof That He’s Planning ’08 Bid? by Sam Stein

Unmasking the wannabe masters of the universe By Bev Conover

Who Runs The World And Why You Need To Know Immediately By Carolyn Baker (updated)

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For media inquiries: crgeditor@yahoo.com
© Copyright , WorldNetDaily.com, 2007
The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7409

Bloomberg Crams On Foreign Policy: Proof That He’s Planning ’08 Bid? by Sam Stein

Dandelion Salad

by Sam Stein
Huffington Post
November 21, 2007 05:16 PM

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been receiving foreign policy briefing sessions on a wide variety of topics, providing the strongest indication yet that he is considering a run for the White House, the Huffington Post has learned.

The sessions, which were confirmed by multiple sources, have been conducted with Nancy Soderberg, a former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and a Clinton Administration foreign policy adviser. One source described her as “Bloomberg’s Condi.”

Continued…

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How about Bloomberg for president? by Eric Margolis

Dandelion Salad

By ERIC MARGOLIS
Toronto Sun
Sun, August 12, 2007

In New York, New York, neither Hillary nor Rudy is universally adored

NEW YORK — It’s boiling hot, humid enough to float the Staten Island ferry, and a tornado that hit Brooklyn and midtown is filled with seriously overweight tourists from Paducah and Oshkosh who should not be wearing short pants.

The city’s great and good long ago decamped to the Hamptons, where if you don’t have a $35 million “beach cottage” you are considered needy.

But I love New York any time of year. When I was growing up here, a worldly friend of my mother advised me, “there are only three civilized cities in North America: New York, San Francisco, and Montreal. All the rest is darkness!”

Half a century later, I still can’t say he was wrong.

For the first time in my memory, two New York state residents are running for president, former mayor Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton.

Those who liked Bush, will love Rudy.

This week, he blasted Democrats as “ready to embrace defeat” in Iraq.

Giuliani modestly claimed he alone can save America by: a) “continuing the offensive against Islamism,” and b) stopping Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. He left unclear which of these scourges was worse.

Voters here are ambivalent about Giuliani. Many New Yorkers are Jewish or Catholic liberal Democrats.

Some of them look at Bush, the southern holy rollers and NASCAR fans who form his core support, and the rest of the Republican Party’s hard right, as religious bigots.

The other day, a bookstore owner exclaimed to me, quite out of the blue,

“Bush makes me ashamed to be an American.” Her feeling is shared by many here in America’s least American, most cosmopolitan city. They can’t wait to see the backs of Bush and Cheney, but are unhappy about the choices to replace them.

Giuliani was a fine mayor and an honest politician in a city notorious for political sleaze and payoffs. He ran a tight ship, restored city finances wrecked by the inept, corrupt Democratic party machine, cleaned up city streets, and sharply reduced crime by allowing police to do their job.

The Big Apple roared back to life under Giuliani.

NATIONAL PROMINENCE

But Giuliani’s real claim to fame was 9/11, which brought him to national prominence by projecting take-charge competence that contrasted sharply with President Bush’s dazed, lacklustre initial response. Giuliani emerged the hero of 9/11, and has been living off this moment ever since.

But many New Yorkers don’t like their former hero-mayor. He is seen as arrogant, impatient, and notoriously ill-tempered. His Catholic faith and personal life, fraught with divorces and angry children — an estranged daughter briefly claimed this week she supported Barack Obama — won’t appeal to Bible Belt voters.

After eight years of Bush, the last thing most New Yorkers want is more blundering machismo and stupid wars. Giuliani is much smarter than Bush, but he shares many of the president’s perceived faults. Many think him unstable.

Besides, who can trust an Italian who finds it painful to smile? Italians were put on this earth to make life more enjoyable for all of us, not to wage jihad against Islam.

If New Yorker’s are not crazy about Rudy, their feelings for Hillary Clinton are hardly warmer. New Yorkers don’t like or trust many southerners, a feeling many southerners and westerners heartily reciprocate. Hillary has shape-shifted into a New York resident, but she is having trouble escaping her dark roots in smelly Arkansas politics.

BILL’S THE GORILLA

Bill Clinton, the 800-pound gorilla behind Hillary, was not liked either in New York. But after eight years of Bush, he seems almost saintly. Still, people here don’t trust the Clintons, are turned off by their naked power lust, and see Hillary as an unprincipled opportunist who is all make-up and no substance.

The presidential candidate I suspect most New Yorkers would really like to see is their current capable mayor and self-made billionaire, native son Michael Bloomberg. He’s cool, intelligent, and gets things done in a New York minute.

FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. This material is distributed without profit.

Police Seize Cameras, Arrest Photographers and Solicit Information on Other Media at Anti-War Protest by Aaron Dykes + Fairport protest (video)

I find this most disturbing as a photographer and as a citizen. ~ Lo

Dandelion Salad

by Aaron Dykes
JonesReport.com
August 7, 2007

Fairport, NY – Police arrested three anti-war demonstrators for allegedly trespassing at the privately-owned district office of Congressman Randy Kuhl (R – NY), apparently on the orders of Welker Property Management, the landlords. Two of the three arrested were carrying signs related to “9/11 Truth,” including Wendy Painting, one of those arrested, who is a member of “Rochester 9/11 Truth” and an Indymedia reporter.

Painting says all of those arrested were press members. She says that police confiscated her camera and later used its conditional return as incentive to provide information about other cameramen at the event.

“I was told that if I identified the other people taking pictures, I would be allowed to keep my camera.”

Because she refused to identify others, she was told she won’t be able to get her camera back until December. She was released with a citation and her camera remains under police custody.

Wendy Painting said police had also threatened her with jail when she initially refused to show ID and also acted suspiciously towards a tattoo on her arm depicting a “smoking pistol” that Painting says is a personal memento that should obviously be irrelevant to police concerns.

Continued…

CONTACT:

Fairport Police:
585 223-1740
fpd (at) village.fairport.ny.us

Congressman Kuhl’s Fairport District Office:
220 Packett’s Landing
Fairport, New York 14450
585 223-4760 (phone)
585 223-2328 (fax)

Kuhl’s Washington Office:
1505 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
202 225-3161 (phone)
202 226-6599 (fax)

Welker Property Management, Inc
(585) 223-1500
FAX: (585)-223-7517
wpm@welkerproperty.com

Wendy Painting can be contacted at illbirdgirl (at) yahoo.com

h/t: Matt

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***

Fairport protest

August 06, 2007
messengerpost

h/t: Matt