Why have we heard nothing about this incredibly important development in Iceland? News black-out?!?

[Peace Patriot]

55. To those who say "Iceland" can't happen here, two words: New. Deal.

The "New Deal" here, in the 1930s, with the election of FDR, was precisely about some of these same issues: public, democratic control of the banksters, for instance (which, among other things, were bankrupting small farms, small businesses and other small property owners). Unemployment of course, and draconian "austerity" for the poor (while the rich get richer), and the insane notion that "the market" will somehow regulate itself for the benefit of all.

The size of the population isn't all that relevant, if you have strong democratic institutions--such as vote counting in the PUBLIC VENUE--not the privatized crapola we have now for a voting system in the USA, with 80% of the voting systems in our country controlled by one, private, far rightwing-connected corporation--ES&S, which bought out Diebold--using 'TRADE SECRET' code to 'count' all our votes, with virtually no audit/recount controls. A real voting system makes it POSSIBLE to elect leaders who act in the interest of the majority. We really don't have that power any more. We had it, though, in the 1930s, when it was POSSIBLE to elect a reform government in response to vast crime and profiteering in the financial sector.

After that, we had government by Corporate Press propaganda and the post WW II "military industrial complex" for three decades or so, culminating in the Reagan-Bush juntas, wherein we totally lost control of, first, the tax system, then the war machine, with an interregnum of "neo-liberalism" under Clinton, wherein we lost Glass-Steagall, among other things (the New Deal law regulating banks and financial institutions). Finally, under Bush II (2002 to 2004), we lost our very voting system. Real reform--a "New Deal"--has been rendered impossible here. That's the progression of loss of democracy that has occurred here. The motive for controlling us--supplied by the war profiteers--combined with the corporate propaganda machine not only to loot us blind but also to HIDE the fascist revolution that has occurred, via the 'TRADE SECRET' code. The Corporate Press, in collusion with our political establishment (including our own party leadership) has black-holed the most important news story of the last decade--loss of PUBLIC vote counting in the U.S.

The MIC is an important difference between us and Iceland--much more important than population size. The U.S. war machine that should have been demobilized after WW II has, instead, grown into a monster, and has been turned against us, with military values--not democratic values--prevailing, now, throughout our government, and controlling society with police state tactics and mentality.

THAT does, indeed, make reform far more difficult here than in Iceland--not the number of people in the country but rather the entrenchment of undemocratic--and, indeed, anti-democratic--powers that collude with, and are in some ways equivalent with, transglobal corporations that have loyalty to no country or people. The MIC helps forge "markets" for these transglobal corporations, and provides them with resources like oil and slave labor pools, with outright violence or threatened violence.

Colombia is an interesting example of how far this phenomenon has gone. A sector of the MIC--the U.S. "war on drugs"--has been used to kill thousands of TRADE UNIONISTS and other advocates of the poor in Colombia, preparatory to U.S. "free for the rich" in Colombia (the new U.S./Colombia "free trade" agreement).

Iceland doesn't have this kind of problem--war profiteers running things, covertly and overtly, in collusion with transglobal corporations.

Which leads me to Latin America. Iceland initially got attention from the Corporate Press but was dropped "off the radar" when it didn't go the way they had hoped--when the people of Iceland successfully countered the corporate storyline. They just sort of "forgot" about Iceland. The lies, distortions, disinformation and black-holing of the truth about Latin America has been even more marked.

Latin America suffered the kind of corporate/bankster ruination that the Bush Junta unleashed on the "first world" a decade before anyone else. But they, too, like Iceland, did not have a MIC to throw off, in order to re-democratize. They did have a "mini-MIC"--the U.S. "war on drugs"--and it had its entrenched local fascists supported by billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars but this U.S. "war" sat uneasily on Latin American society and once the Left began challenging it, and the great leftist democracy movement got under way in South America, U.S. forces began to be kicked out of countries--and today, ALL of Latin America (including the new, though still rightwing, leadership of Colombia) is calling for AN END TO THE "WAR ON DRUGS" (i.e., legalization!).

The SUCCESS of the leftist democracy movement in South America has specifically been the result of the REJECTION of World Bank/IMF banksterism, REJECTION of "austerity" (the rich get richer, the poor get looted), REJECTION of "Wall Street"'s insane and self-serving "advice," REJECTION of U.S. "free trade for the rich" and transglobal corporate rule, REJECTION of the U.S. "war on drugs," and the embrace of social justice, local control of resources, government spending and strong government regulation of the rich and the corporate. This democratic revolution started in Venezuela and Argentina and spread to the entire continent and into Central America and it has been hugely successful at turning ruined economies around into prosperous economies with the wealth spread among the population.

This successful and peaceful revolution has also been marked by critical alliances--the first between Venezuela and Argentina (in dealing with IMF/World Bank ruination of Argentina), and, soon afterward, Venezuela and Brazil--powerhouses that cooperated in helping, say, Bolivia, in throwing off a U.S.-designed fascist coup--alliances that have led to new continent- and region-wide cooperation and new institutions, such as the Bank of the South, ALBA (leftist trade group), UNASUR and CELAC (alternatives to the U.S. dominated OAS).

The Corporate Press (a transglobal entity with "groupthink&quot has tried various tactics to prevent us--in the U.S. and Europe--from understanding this democracy revolution in Latin America. They reviled the pioneers (Venezuela, Argentina), then, when the movement nevertheless spread, tried "divide and conquer" (for instance, lauding the more corporate-friendly Brazil, while continuing to revile the others). But the basic fact of this movement is that the countries with Leftist governments have PROSPERED--have turned things around, dramatically--with the wealth spread around (huge reductions in poverty), with often sizzling economic growth and with "surprising" recoveries from the Bush Junta-induced worldwide depression--while the countries that are still U.S. dominated, such as Colombia and most of Central America, continue to have huge, unrelieved poverty and injustice, struggling economies and other grave problems, such as the rightwing death squads in Colombia and Honduras, and the U.S. "war on drugs"-induced violence and corruption in Colombia, Honduras and Mexico.

The Corporate Press now ignores Iceland, where democracy is working. They have reviled--demonized, slandered--the pioneers of real democracy in Latin America and have ignored the most dramatic development of all--the alliance of Leftist leaders in Latin America, who are pursuing democratization and social justice together--an historic development of very great importance.

The Corporate Press is anti-democratic because their masters, the transglobal corporations and war profiteers whom they shill for, hate and fear democracy more than anything. They hate and fear it here probably most of all--because our people, if we ever get up off our hind ends, are a potential leader of democracy revolutions worldwide that will throw off Corporate Rule. Our country is the vortex of Corporate Rule. They have taken very special measures to disempower us--the 'TRADE SECRET' code voting machines being the latest and most devastating--and to propagandize and dis-inform us on many fronts, including about Latin America, about Iceland and, currently, about Greece where democracy is starting to work.

Oh my Lord, do they fear that! It's almost amusing--'news' stories that refer to the Greek Left as "shrill" and "radical." In truth, the Greek Left is conservative in the best sense of the word--they want a stable society in which everyone has bread on the table and a chance in life and feels part of society. It is the Corporate Rulers who are radical--very radical. They want police states in which the people are slave laborers and cannon fodder with no rights. And they want to loot these police state countries and their peoples until there is nothing left to loot. Then what? The billionaires go off to their islands? Or, lacking islands in a globally warmed earth, off to Mars, is it? I don't know. The societies that they create are unlivable. And that, in the context of the post WW II world, which has tried so hard to become a progressive world, is very radical, indeed. Didn't we overthrow fascism in 1945?