Anarcho-communism suburban family style. Watch the video.

Because they’re hungry. See this very good analysis from Richard Spencer.

As David Hacket Fischer demonstrated in his monumental work The Great Wave (1996), commodity-price spikes—and related governmental interventions—regularly coincide with political violence and “regime change.” The 18^th century, for instance, was an era of higher prices and political revolutions, most prominently in America (1776), France (1789), Switzerland (1792), Belgium (1794), the Netherlands (1794), Poland (1794), and Ireland (1798). In the French example, the Bastille Day riot (14 July, 1789) coincided almost exactly with a cyclical peak in grain prices. In turn, Robespierre fell from power when a public riot ensued after he had instituted wage controls. The whole era of instability in France was inaugurated by John Law’s infamous “Mississippi Bubble” inflation of 1719-20, which led to the destruction of the market for royal billets d’état and a near total economic collapse.

by Sheldon Richman

http://www.fff.org/comment/com1101o.asp

What is American politics coming to? I just watched a joint interview with Ralph Nader and Rep. Ron Paul — and they were mostly on the same side! Nader has spent his life promoting government intervention in the economy. Paul has spent his life promoting the free market and minimal government. For the two of them to discuss making common cause is something extraordinary.

And yet it makes total sense. What’s so exciting is that their common cause shines the spotlight right where it’s needed: on corporatism — the constellation of government policies that primarily benefit wealthy and well-connected business and banking interests at the expense of the rest of us. While much of the Right Wing sees the danger of the Obama administration in Marxism and state socialism, Paul and Nader realize that that makes no sense. Bill Daley, Tim Geithner, Larry Summers, Paul Volcker, and Jeff Immelt are not the men a Marxist would pick as advisors. But they are the picks of a president who believes that economic stability can exist only if government and major businesses manage the economy together. Corporatism is the opposite of free markets, competition, and full individual liberty.

Paul and Nader are also united in their opposition to America’s imperialist policies and perpetual overt and covert wars, which, in truth, is also part of the corporate state. Foreign wars and world policing may not be solely motivated by economic interests, but they play a big role. Writer Nick Turse documents that the military-industrial complex is more pervasive than ever. The “defense” budget is a gigantic trough at which American companies can feast at taxpayer expense. Why take risks on new and better products for consumers, when the government will pay top tax dollar to pay for you make bombs, rockets, and Humvees?

Along with the imperial state come domestic surveillance and other destruction of civil liberties — all of which Paul and Nader despise. The horrendous USA PATRIOT Act is a prime target for both men.

Paul and Nader have many differences, of course, especially relating to welfare-state and regulatory programs. But they agree that spending hundreds of billions of dollars on military adventures, bailouts, and other forms of subsidies is contrary to the interest of most Americans.

Paul and Nader also don’t like the Federal Reserve, America’s central bank. While they have different ultimate wishes for the Fed — Paul would abolish it; Nader would make it an “accountable” cabinet department — both object to its having the autocratic power to bail out banks and other corporate interests. Moreover, both understand that fighting imperial wars would be impossible if the government couldn’t manipulate the currency through the Fed. Besides the killing abroad and regimentation at home, we also get a destruction of our purchasing power through inflation.

That Paul and Nader understand all this and are talking about it in joint appearances is exciting. Who knows where it could go from here? Yes, Progressives and libertarians have serious differences, just as they both have with conservatives. But all people of good faith who oppose America’s corporate welfare-warfare state — whether Progressives, conservatives, or libertarians — have an interest in moving America in a different direction.

Analysis by civil liberties attorney John Whitehead.

Most Americans have been lulled into thinking that the pressing issues are voting in the next election or repealing health care. This is largely due to the media hoopla over the Tea Party, the recent elections and the health care law, and the continuous noise from television news’ talking heads. But the real issue is simply this – the freedoms in the Bill of Rights are being eviscerated, and if they are not restored and soon, freedom as we have known it in America will be lost. Thus, Congress should not renew the USA Patriot Act, nor should President Obama sign it into law. If he does so, he might just be putting the final nail in our coffin.

Unfortunately, even many of those civil libertarians who took Bush to task and vocally criticized his civil liberties abuses have been virtually silent in face of President Obama’s continuation of Bush programs that undermine the Bill of Rights. For example, The Public Record, a nonprofit news organization based in California, asked prominent civil and human rights leaders “to explain their relatively passive position on the renewal of the Patriot Act. Most did not respond. One who did requested that his name not be used because he is still hoping to energize some of the silent voices.” Here’s what he had to say:

Many of my colleagues have just given up on the Patriot Act, either expressly or implicitly (in terms of the mindshare, energy, and resources dedicated to the issue). They don’t seem to understand or recall just how foundational this supposedly ‘emergency’ law was in setting the stage for the infringements that came later.

Sheer exhaustion plays a role, but the fact that it’s been nearly a decade means that generational change is even starting to have an impact, as have all the other irons in the fire – so many other traumatizing events have come up to distract and rightfully demand attention (torture, even broader surveillance, illegal war, assassinations), and a corrosive new so-called realism (cynicism, actually) about the politics of terrorism and the complicity of our fear-driven media and political class, combined of course with a reluctance to undermine our first black president and whatever incremental progressive achievements he can make.

So the situation’s pretty bleak out there, and will only turn around, in my view, if there is much greater bottom-up, local, and peer-to-peer, community-to-community activism.

It’s time to wake up, America.