Vanishing of the Bees (2009)

Bart Ehrman "How the Bible Explains Suffering"

John Dominic Crossan "The Historical Jesus"

Happy Holidays 
from The Boston Pine Flag!

Henry Giroux "On 'Zombie' Politics" (Moyers and Company)

Bill George "The Role of Your Faith in Global Capitalism: Does It Have a Place?"

Thom Hartmann "The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America and What We Can Do to Stop It." (Democracy Now!)

The NSA is Coming to Town (ACLU)

This is a video produced by the ACLU to protest the invasive spying currently done by NSA and other US Government agencies. The American people are the most monitored and photographed population in the history of the world. The Global War on Terror has transformed our Republic into a totalitarian police state. Anything that the Stazi did in East Germany, the KGB in the Soviet Union, or the Gestapo in Nazi Germany has been surpassed by the CIA, FBI, NSA, and fellow acronyms. The United States is no longer a free country with free people; it is a violent and implacable fascist tyranny drunk off of the blood of its own people and the rest of the world. With a military expenditures equal to the rest of the world combined, militarized police forces, and six times the number of people incarcerated than were imprisoned in Stalin's Gulags to call the United States even a nice country to live in is delusional. I do not see how private individuals can turn back the clock and enjoy the blessings that have been so recently stolen, but we do not have to pretend that this transformation has not occurred, nor do we have to like it. 

Jonathan Haidt "The Rationalists Delusion in Moral Psychology."

Jonathan Haidt "Explaining Our Contentious Culture." (Moyers and Company)

Francesca Stavrakopoulou "The Bible's Buried Secrets: Episode 3 The Real Garden of Eden." (BBC)

Francesca Stavrakopoulou "The Bible's Buried Secrets: Episode 2 Did God have a Wife?" (BBC)

Francesca Stavrakopoulou "The Bible's Buried Secrets: Episode 1 Did King David's Empire Exist?" (BBC)

Nelson Mandela Dies.

One of the great liberal voices of the 20th Century has vanished from the earth with the passing of Nelson Mandela, Former President of the Republic of South Africa. Few people can be credited with successfully combating racism as much as Mandela did. Yet, far from waging a war with bullets and bombs he followed the examples of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. fighting a successful campaign with pacifistic non-cooperation. From the ANC's non-violent protests against Apartheid , which Mandela lead for 27 years behind the formidable walls of Pollsmoor Prison, to his calls for Truth and Reconciliation, he ensured that his fight was a fight of ideas and ideologies and not of blood. The Guardian's obituary for Nelson Mandela can be found here.

Chris Hedges "Beware the Tea Party Dominionists." (State of Belief)

Chris Hedges "What Does the Christian Right Want?"

Joan Bokaer "The Rise of Dominionism." (Theocracy Watch)

This video was produced by Theocracy Watch, an organization dedicated to raising awareness of the inroads that the Religious Right has made into the halls of power in the United States. One might assume that the underlying premise of the Religious Right or any movement in the US having the ability or desire to give American Government theocratic overtones is a bit paranoid. It goes without saying that I view the Religious Right as being a fascist movement that has had only negative effects upon the US, but I will not presume to judge whether or not they are trying to turn the US into a Theocracy. I will, however, cite an observation Noan Chomsky once made. There are currently Religious Fundamentalists (in the broadest sense of the term) make up a much larger percentage of the population of the United States than of the Iranian population.

Juan Enriquez "The Next Species of Human." (TED)

Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial. (Nova)

Whole Big Think Interview with Stephen Fry

Yesterday we posted a portion of this interview. On second thought I became convinced that posting the whole would have been better. So here it is.

Stephen Fry "The Importance of Unbelief" (Big Think)

"500 People Will Control American Democracy" If Supreme Court Overturns Campaign Finance Law (Democracy Now!)

Stephen Resnick "The Business Cycle Explained by Marxian Economics" (From UMass Econ 305 Lecture 17)

For Parts II and III click link below.

Masters of Money: Karl Marx (BBC)

Masters of Money: Friedrich Hayek (BBC)

Masters of Money: John Maynard Keynes (BBC)

Philip Zimbardo "The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil."

Battle for Syria (Journeyman Pictures)

Chaos and Order: A Review

A few months ago, I ran across the blog Chaos and Order (formerly called Philosophy and Madness), and I have been quite impressed with its content. It is produced by a guy by the name of Doug Dobbins and he seems to be a very astute philosopher. As one might assume from the title, its focus is completely different from this blog. An issue frequently arises in Dobbins' posts is the dissonance between the ubiquitous adversarial nature of the world and the need for harmony in society. This is the crux of the human paradox. I would advise anyone to take a look at this blog; it is well worth it.

Gwenyth Todd "Untold Truth: War on Iran." (Press TV)

Richard Heinberg and Tina Clarke "Adapting to the 'New Normal' in the Post Growth Era"

A Farm For The Future (BBC)

Matt Taibbi and Chrystia Freeland "The One Percent's Power and Privileges." (Moyers and Company)

The Great Euro Crisis (BBC)

Chris Hedges "Third World America."

Thomas Lippman "Saudi Arabia on the Edge: An Uncertain Future of an American Ally."

Richard Wolff "Detroit a a 'Spectacular Failure' of System that Redistributes Pay From Bottom to Top." (Democracy Now!)

Richard Wolff "A Cure for Capitalism."

Richard Wolff "Capitalism Run Wild" (Moyers and Company)

Elizabeth Warren "The Two Income Trap: Why Middle Class Mothers and Fathers are Going Broke."

Elizabeth Warren "The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class."

Robert Reich "How Unequal Can America Get?"

The One Percent

The American Fairytale: What is Hidden Beneath American Propaganda.

By Gene Ogorodov 

You notice how in winter floods the trees
which bend before the storm preserve their twigs.
The ones who stand against it are destroyed,
root and branch. In the same way, those sailors
who keep their sails stretched tight, never easing off,
make their ship capsize—and from that point on
sail with their rowing benches all submerged. 
 --Sophocles

There is iconic photograph by Margaret Bourke-White of people waiting in a bread line during the Great Depression under a billboard with the caption: “World's Highest Standard of Living. There is no way like the American Way!” Beneath giant smiles bedraggled and downtrodden victims plod toward a handout suited only to keep body and soul together. In each and every face the unspoken narrative is impossible to ignore – the spirit has died, hope has fled, those who had little have nothing and those who had nothing have even less.

End of the American Dream

Third World America

Parts 2 through 5 of this series are attached below.

Vignettes of Poverty in Mississippi

A couple of days ago we posted a short documentary on poverty in the Mississippi Delta. If hearing that the most fertile planes in the United States have been reduced to abject levels of poverty which compete with Haiti and Cambodia isn't dramatic enough, this series of shorts showing individual cases of poverty in Mississippi certainly is. These videos were uploaded to Youtube.com by yourstory08 for the poverty initiative Gathering of Hearts.

Micah Chapter 3

By Gene Ogorodov

The Boston Pine Flag is not a religious blog. However, Upton Sinclair wasn't the only person in the world that thought that human exploitation is a poor way to run a society. In the last twenty years or more public policy has been bedecked with religious overtone, and we have decided to throw our hats into the religious ring, as well, under the hopes that the Bible takes a slightly different opinion on exploitation than the Fox News. 

Both the Religious Right and the Left have presented their pet issues as being anointed with the favor of the Hebrew and Christian God. If one were to only listen to media pundits and politicians, one might get the impression that Crony Capitalism, rather than Cleanliness, is next to Godliness. 

Mississippi Delta Poverty

Some Thoughts on Evangelicalism

By Gene Ogorodov

Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism are hardly monolithic blocs. In conversing with passionate Fundamentalists or Evangelicals the first thing that they will convey is that they are "born again"; the second is that they are not "that" type of Evangelical and/or Fundamentalist. 

These are two terms that are poorly defined and amorphous in usage. Both a badges of honor and marks of shame, these terms are thrown about in American religious circles with little care for consistency. In a practical sense these terms mean little more than "us" and "them."

Jeff Sharlet "C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy." (EI Speaker Series)

Democracy Now! -- Owner of Snowden's Email Service on Why He Closed Lavabit Rather Than Comply With Gov't

The Finer Arts of Diplomacy in the Post-9/11 World

 By Gene Ogorodov

In the years since 9/11 the United States has trapped itself in the endless cycle of fighting the chimera of Terrorism. Fueled by rabid anti-Semitism against Arabs and Muslims and horror of popular self-determination the American Empire has replaced the worthy adversary of Communism with an enemy so clearly imaginary that the Republic must send its armies to the antipodes to illegally violate the sovereignty foreign nations openly trampling over international law just to find partisans willing to engage in half-hearted attempts to attack it.

High-handedness, dishonesty, and ball-faced treachery now characterized every single political action undertaken by the United States. It has become unthinkable for the US to honor its treaty obligations and behave in a manner that attempted to achieve its will without coercion. The finer arts of diplomacy have been surrendered in favor of drones and cluster-bombs.

Michael Chossudovsky "The Toronto Hearings on 9/11: Uncovering Ten Years of Deception."

In spite of the title this is NOT a 9/11 conspiracy theory flick. (So, if our reader is looking for planned demolition, nano-thermite, cruse missiles, etc. I apologize. However, I comforted by the fact that there are many blogs out there that will satisfy that desire.) Michael Chossudovsky is renowned economist and political theorist. His speech at the Toronto Hearing on 9/11 conference is a synthesis of conclusions drawn from demonstrable facts. It goes without saying I do not agree with everything he says, but his analysis of geopolitics puts an interesting interpretation on the Global War on Terror that is, at least, worth hearing. Enjoy.

Georgian Lessons for NATO

By Gene Ogorodov

Several years ago shortly after the South Ossetian War I read a monograph from the Strategic Studies Institute on this conflict focusing on the Lessons Learned for the Russian Military. Although it was a short war that didn't settle much more than forcing Georgia to remain a clandestine partner of NATO rather than opening joining the Western Powers, it was quite telling about the balance of military power in the world.

The troubles the Russian Military faced were predictable given the chaos of the 1990s but, nonetheless, forced a re-evaluation of Russia's military strength. There were a significant number of units the Russian High Command deemed incapable of engaging in combat after Putin's reforms and years of COIN in Chechnya which forced Moscow to hobble together a strike force from all over the country. Furthermore, the Russian Air Force lost fighters to a country that had no air force. "The question," said the Russian Defense Minister, "is not whether Russia can penetrate the NATO air defense system, but an air defense system [sic]."

RT: Act of War: 5 Years After the South Ossetian Conflict

Laurie Santos "How Monkeys Mirror Human Irrationality." (TED)

Frans de Waal and Jeff Schloss "Morals Without God?"

Randall Balmer "True Origins of the Religious Right."

Freeman Dyson "Heretical Thoughts About Science and Society."

Quotation

"Political institutions are a superstructure resting on an economic foundation."

V.I. Lenin  
The Three Sources and Three Constituent Parts of Marxism, 1913.

Ben Ginsberg "The Fall of the Faculty: Governing Universities in the 21st Century"

Ben Ginsberg is a Professor at John's Hopkins whose book The Fall of the Faculty (published in 2011 by OUP) details the corporatization of the American University system and the subsequent disenfranchisement of professional scholars. In the not to distant past the faculty of a College was the College. That era is over. Now professors are paid employees that provide students with a feel good service that gives the "right image" that administrators want. No longer is education about teaching; it has become an overpriced overly bureaucratic playground that manufactures credentials and perpetuates a culture of administration for administration. He shows how skyrocketing costs, fewer tenure positions, and even the fiscal irresponsibility of current paradigms on education can trace their roots to the growth of a paradisaical administrative class that is threatening to  consume the whole system. This is a must read for anyone interested in education. This  book can be found at Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

An Open Letter to Sec. of State John Kerry

Dear Sec. Kerry:

American warmongering is becoming quite tiresome. Between the illegal wars, covert wars, rumors of wars, acts of war, and penchant for provoking the rest of the world your credibility is somewhat tarnished. This is not to say that your justification for going to war is a ball-faced lie; it is just a little bit strange that you can justify going to war with a different country every six months. Should the people of the world really feel sorry for the Obama Administration in not being allowed to enjoy the blessings of peace by malevolent parties, or should we just assume that certain paranoid psychopathy that hijacked US foreign policy during the Bush years has continued unabated. 

Nonetheless, American bombardment of Syria is possibly the worst imaginable response to the recent chemical attack in Damascus. To be frank, I don't believe you that your intelligence has confirmed that the Assad regime was responsible. However, logically there are only three possible culprits--you (through your common friends with Al-Qaeda, the Syrian Rebles), Assad, or none of the above. I will ignore "none of the above" because the potential wider ramifications of that are literally infinite.

Noam Chomsky (July, 2013) "The Corporatization of the University"

Seamus Heaney Dies.

The Irish Poet Seamus Heaney has passed away at 74 on August 29, 2013 in a Dublin hospital after a short illness. He was arguably the greatest contemporary Irish writer and English language poet. During his long career his work earned him countless awards and honors, including the Nobel Prize for Literature. Yet, he never lost sight of his muse--to express in poetry the full gamut of human emotion from heroic struggle to the monotony of day to day life. He made good poetry for everyone. His metric translation of the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf re-invigorated the first piece of English literature and introduced it to a new generation. Heaney will be sorely missed. The link to Seamus Heaney's Obituary in The Guardian can be found here.

Dmitry Orlov "Seizing the Mid-Collapse Moment"

RT -- "The War on Iran Begins...in Syria."

By Gene Ogorodov

Earlier this week RT published at op-ed by Eric Draister on the immanent US et al. direct military intervention in Syria entitled "The War on Iran Begins...in Syria." Justifiably pessimistic, Draister exposes what will inevitably be called "humanitarian intervention" as imperialistic warmongering.  I hope that this does not turn into a much broader conflict, but I believe as Draister does that a US military strike in Syria could lead down a similar path with dire consequences. 

It is notable that what might be the most significant political action in the 21st Century has gone virtually unnoticed, obfuscated by a lack of coverage and impenetrable propaganda. The Pax Americana is over, and there is nothing that bullying Syria, Iran, or China will do to preserve it. Washington needs to recognize that fact and not waist the blood and treasure of the United States fighting for the impossible. Furthermore, the US has chronic and sever internal problems that need to be addressed. 

Matthew Simmons "The 51st State: Peak Oil Denial"

MLK's Dream 50 Years On

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is one of the most misunderstood public figures of the 20th Century. No one will deny that he was both a great man and a good man. He inspired an entire generations of Americans to re-examine the social contract and strive to make a better world for all people, and American propaganda tells us that he succeeded in laying the foundations of that better world that we now live in. 

I will not insult the memory of Dr. King by pretending that the United States has buried the specter of institutionalized racism. This country has turned Dr. King's dream into a nightmare. As for all Americans, life is worse for African-Americans today than it was in the 1970s. Token political enfranchisement and Affirmative Action favoring middle and upper class African-Americans matters very little in the face of abject poverty and permanent economic disenfranchisement for the vast majority of African-Americans. 

Pres. Obama does not epitomize the new found freedom of the African-American community; rather, he exemplifies the new spirit of the age where political leaders sell-out the constituents for cold hard cash. (Cf. A Liberal Voice on Pres. Obama.) Dr. King was for people not profit. When we see an America that cares more about people than the bottom line, then the United States will have begun to walk towards Dr. King's Dream.

Mark Leibovich "America's Guilded Capital." (Moyers and Company)

Richard Heinberg "The End of Growth." (Festival of Dangerous Ideas 2012)

The Vanguard of the Proletariat

By Gene Ogorodov

In the past few years the United States has been playing a dangerous game. Drunk with optimism and hubris Washington has convinced itself that everything is fine. Analysts predict the continuation of the American Century well into the 22nd Century and reinvigorated prosperity at home. They imagine that the current era is just a blip on an otherwise perfect screen. But far from being fine Washington is playing a game of Russian Roulette with the sentiments and feelings of the American people.

Since the founding of the Republic the political life of the nation has remained firmly tied to the interests of the middle classes. Although 19th Century America proved to be fertile ground for the accumulation of enormous fortunes, the politicians felt themselves obliged to pander to the interests and concerns of the smaller manufactures and merchants and the professional classes.

Homeless Intelligentsia in Boston

This story has been verified by the Huffington Post. In watching this film it is important to remember that one of the key attributes of a precarious labor market is the randomness of economic misfortune. Workers are not rewarded because of skills and degrees but the caprices of the market, which changes a whole lot faster than education and experience is acquired. It is beneficial to employers to have a precarious work force because for every person with a certain skill level and education that is homeless and starving the marginal wage for a position that would require those skills drops dramatically. To put it in human terms, because there are people like Maurice Johnson employers can pay in real wages new Electrical Engineers a fraction of what they did in the 1980s and 1990s with fewer benefits and less job security. This video was posted by 60Days60Nights on Youtube.com.

Introducing PFB Edition of A Great Love by Alexandra Kollontai

By Gene Ogorodov

Alexandra Kollontai is an interesting figure that emerged out of Russian Revolutionary politics. A child of a Finish peasant and a Russian General, reared in luxury, she was an early member of the Russian Social Democratic Party that opposed both Martov and Lenin in the Bolshevik/Menshevik split who, like Trotsky, joined Lenin's Bolshevik's in the eleventh hour rising to prominence in the early Soviet Union. She shattered the glass ceiling as a Peoples' Commissar (Soviet equivalent of a Cabinet Secretary) in 1917 and Ambassador in 1923 half a century before Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, or Golda Meir became Prime Ministers in there respective countries.

How Cuba Survived Peak Oil

Matthew Simmons "Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Oil Shock"

Some Thoughts on Abiotic Oil.

By Gene Ogorodov

Opponents of the Peak Oil Theory invariably turn to Thomas Gold's Abiotic Oil Theory which proposes that oil (and all other hydorcarbons) are not by products of bio-matterial. Rather, the theory suggests, oil is a naturally occurring carbon byproduct of the earth's mantle. Other than a chemical experiment at Carnegie Mellon that produced natural gas under conditions that mirrored the earth's mantle, I have no idea what to make of the theory. Gold might be right, but the conventional explanation might also be correct. Eventually scientific experimentation will show the world a likely answer. 

However, the ambiguity of the origin of oil should not give one hope that the Hydrocarbon Age will last forever. The crisis of Peak Oil is not that there will be no more oil in the future, but that current rates of consumption are unsustainable. Considering that since the early 1980's the world has consumed more barrels of oil per year than it discovered necessitates that the fears of over consumption are true. 

Matthew Simmons "Oil and Gas - The Next Meltdown?"

Whitey Bulger Convicted

Infamous Boston mob boss Whitey Bulger was convicted on 30 counts including 11 counts of murder on Monday afternoon. It has been twenty-five years since the Boston Globe first broke the story about the Boston FBI scandal where government corruption facilitated racketeering, murder and gun-running for the IRA. Now the central figure behind it is facing life in prison. Although Bulger plans to appeal, solid proof coupled with the shear number of counts make it impossible to imagine that he will ever be free again.

Jeff Rubin "Oil and the End of Globalization" (Signature Lecture)

The Numbers You Don't Hear

By Gene Ogorodov

The numbers one will almost never hear in the press in the United States are 1 in 2, 1 in 4, 1 in 5, and 3 in 100. Even the far left refuses to acknowledge these numbers. The same old Government lies. It is a well known fact that the Bureau of Labor criteria for poverty is perfectly capricious, but still their official number of 1 in 6 is considered gospel truth. Even though the facts are before the eyes of opposition journalists in the US, and ostensibly it is in their interest to crunch the numbers; it is impossible to find headlines that give these numbers their appropriate exposure.

According to EU and OECD guidelines households that have a combined income of less than 60% of the national median household income are considered to be in poverty. For 2011 the IRS reported that 50% of US households reported income of less than $34K. Since $37K was 60% of the median household income in the US in 2011 it is fair to say that according to OECD standards more than 1 in 2 people in the US are in poverty.

US Goverment Debt Greater than Global GDP

RT reported last Tuesday that a report by James Hamilton out of the University of California San Diego has estimated that the Federal Government has accumulated $70 Trillion in unofficial debt. The World Bank calculations for Global GDP for 2012 is $71 Trillion. In short unofficial US debt is virtually equal to Global GDP.  It might be feasible for the US the clear its unofficial debt by subsuming the entire planet, but considering that the official debt is $12 Trillion and rapidly rising that option would solve the US's fiscal problems. To pay its debt off the US will need send explorers like Cpts. Kirk and Picard into the nether reaches of the Galaxy to rape and pillage as of yet unknown planets or devalue the dollar to such an extent that the ratio isn't ludicrous. The RT article can be found here.

Jeff Rubin "End of Growth: How to Achieve a Truly Sustainable Future."

Introducing PLI Edition of G W F Hegel's Phenomenology of the Spirit

By Gene Ogorodov

Hegel's Phenomenology of the Spirit ranks as one of the most influential philosophical works. His mark upon the evolution of human thought was the rise and prominence of Historicism. From Aristotle to Kant philosophy depended primarily (if not at times exclusively) upon a priori conclusions, Hegel gave a posteriori arguments an equal footing in philosophical debate. The mind ceased to be an all encompassing perfectly independent organ examining itself as it was for Descartes and Kant but an evolving creature maturing with human history, and thus human history became applicable in philosophical debate.

Yet, ironically Hegel's legacy was not in an expansion of the Geist but a withering away. The Young Hegelians, viz Feuerbach and Marx, took Hegel's train of thought to its rational conclusion and united Body and Spirit as one indivisible entity in a strict Materialist world. Thus Hegel is to late 19th Century philosophy what Kant is to Hegel.

Robert Hirsch "Peak Oil: Exploring the Risk Factors"

Introducing Pine Flag Books Edition of Theories of Surplus-Value by Karl Marx

By Gene Ogorodov

Nothing shows the hard work and impressive genius of Karl Marx as well as Theories of Surplus-Value. Every academic worthy of being called an academic is intimately familiar with the work and major hypotheses of their contemporaries and most influential predecessors, and economics is a field of study no less professional than any other academic field, but few economists have gone through the Sisyphean task of describing and deconstructing every idea in the field. That is what Marx does in Theories of Surplus-Value. Only Marx, Schumpeter, and Wolff and Resnick have presented what may be truly called detailed comparisons of economic theories and theorists. However, Theories of Surplus-Value also gives an excellently detailed picture of the underlying logic behind Marxian Economics. Alongside Capital and the Grundrisse, Theories of Surplus-Value ranks as one of the most essential economic works of Karl Marx and the Marxian Tradition.

Pine Flag Books has published this seminal work in ebook format for Kindle and Nook. This edition is based on the edition published by Progress Publishers in the 1970's and edited by Gene Ogorodov.

A High-Risk Barrel (2005)

Back in the USSR

This is for Edward Snowden. Late last week he sets foot outside of Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport for the first time since his arrival back in June. 

Al Jezera: Fault Lines "A Tale of Two Bankruptcies"

Two American Families (Frontline)

This week PBS's Frontline released its ground breaking documentary following two blue collar families from Milwaukee over the past 22 years--"Two American Families." From the halcyon days of well paid industrial labor through the leaner years of the creation of Alan Greenspan's precariate to the economic non-existence of the Lesser Depression, Bill Moyers and Frontline trace the hardships and struggles of the once mighty American Middle Class.

They provide a front row seat to see first-hand the atomization of American culture through the eyes of "ordinary people" drawing a correlation between the macro level power-plays and politics and the micro level bills that are unmet, gutted communities, and hopelessness of the forsaken. Marx once said that the history of a family is the history of a nation. "Two American Families" is the story of the United States as the American Dream began to evaporate in the twilight of Empire.

Check it out on the PBS website, here, or tune into your local PBS station.

Thoughts on the NSA

By Gene Ogorodov

On the 4th of July, a day where we ostensibly celebrate our freedoms and liberties as Americans, it seems reasonable to share a few thoughts on the negation of American privacy by the NSA and the National Security State that has arisen in the last few years.  So:  

NSA et, ut dicitur, homo non est. Sunt inferiora naturae quam in lege est simia. Nunc ergo veni, ut eas transferre in linguam Anglicam.

PERM Fake Job Ads Defraud Americans

If one doubts the validity of this flick, NPR did a story on this phenomena, here. The US is a country that fosters perverse incentives to harm Americans. We need schools and hospitals, not foreign wars and H-1B visas. 

The (Un-)Affordable Care Act and The Commonwealth of Massachusetts

By Gene Ogorodov

In the beginning of May Gov. Deval Patrick signed legislation that would bring Mass Care into accordance with the Federal Government's Affordable Care Act. This will fundamentally change Mass Care making insurance more expensive for residents of Massachusetts and increasing the tax burden required to fund the plan. With a vote and the stroke of a pen the Governor and the General Court have set in motion the forces that will transfer hundreds of thousands of recipients of subsidized health care into the outstretched arms of insurance companies along with our public coffers too.

The math that demonstrates the fiscal irresponsibility of subsidizing insurance companies rather than patients should be obvious to anyone that has ever opened an economics book. The movement of money to commodity to money (M—C—M') requires the second amount of money to be greater than the first, viz. (M'>M). If M'≯M there is no intrinsic motivation for the movement of goods or services, which in this case is Health Care. The magic little number (M'-M) which is the catalyst for transferring health care from health care providers to patients via insurance companies is called profit.

The American Empire 2.0

By Gene Ogorodov

On the Saturday, June 1, 2013 the New York Times published a book review by Julian Assange of The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations, and Business by Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen. Assange correctly denounces this technocratic manifesto as a sketch of an Orwellian dystopia that the American People and the World would be well advised to avoid. 

Far from bringing about unimaginable freedoms and more direct communication with government, a world where every scrap of data from every person is stored in some giant cloud sitting in Google's headquarters in Silicon Valley or being run through countless programs at the NSA can only lead one to "imagine Washington-backed Google Glasses strapped onto vacant human faces — forever."

Tragedy

Our hearts and prayers go out to the victims and the families of the victims of the bombing on at the Boston Marathon today. This type of atrocity shouldn't happen anywhere in the world, but it always stings more when it is ones own friends and neighbors.

Patrick Nee's A Criminal and an Irishman: A Review

by Matthew Smith

Patrick's Nee's memoir A Criminal and an Irishman: The Inside Story of the Boston Mob-IRA Connection has been in print for a couple of years, but even so it remains a must read for anyone who enjoys a good crime story. This books gives a very personalized glimpse into Boston Irish Mob when James “Whitey” Bulger dominated the underworld.

A Criminal and an Irishman has the virtues and vices of a true memoir. It should not be taken as a history, but neither is it fiction. Congruent time-lines and supporting research are not on Nee agenda. Broader socio-cultural events remain untouched except in the ways in which they personally influence Nee and for the most part remain unexamined.

God and Country Inc.

By Gene Ogorodov

[This is a critique of a SCOTUS case, Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC, that I wrote a few months back. It first appeared in the Portland Occupier January 28, 2012.]

The Supreme Court made a ruling on the second landmark First Amendment case in three years—Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC. On 11 January 2012, the Court’s unanimous decision on this case has further secured the rights of corporations hitherto enjoyed only by individual American citizens.

The ruling comes on the heels of the of the controversial judgement in the 21 January 2010 case Citizens United v. FEC, which undermined one hundred years of the legal distinctions between the rights of individuals and the rights of corporations in influencing elections.

Colin Woodard's American Nations: A Review

by Sean O'Rourke

American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, is a critically acclaimed book, by the award winning journalist Colin Woodard, analyzing the influence that regional cultures of North American have had upon the continent. Since its release late in 2011 it has gone from triumph to triumph even wining the 2012 Maine Literary Award for Non-Fiction.

American Nations is hardly the first book comparing regional cultures in the United States. Since David Hackett Fischer's seminal work Albion's Seed, published in 1989, a popular genre of work critiquing American regionalism has arisen with books aimed at a variety of readers. This book sits firmly on the better end of the scale and is a book well worth reading.

RT Op-Ed: Pain in the Brass

In an Op-Ed presented on RT several months ago, “Pain in the Brass: Petraeus Joins Sullied Trinity of Fallen Generals”, William Echols has written an exceptional analysis of Gen. Petraeus' fall from grace. He brings various pieces of puzzle together from break with tradition that was the Petraeus doctrine and ultimate failure to the willingness of the Obama doctrine to ride rough-shod over the American Brass.

With three four-star generals disgraced in as many years and the tale-tale signs that two more (Generals Allen and Ward) will have joined them on the chopping block in as many weeks, Echols' Op-Ed for RT lays bare questions that should be in the forefront of responsible journalism.

A Liberal Voice on President Obama's Re-Election

by Gene Ogorodov

We have heard from members of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party that Obama's victory has given him a mandate from the people to pursue progressive policies. Whether the American people want progressive policies or not, it is a bit incredulous of the liberal Democrats to suggest that Obama will reform the United States.

Only in America could President Obama pass for a liberal. It is incredible that he is almost universally described on both the left and the right as an extremely progressive politician. Other than his waving the talismans of LGBT rights and universal health-care, one must use the same electron microscope to see his liberal policies that Noam Chomsky once suggested one needed to see Obama's contributions to world peace.

Hello World

The Pine Tree Flag of New England

If you have happened to stumble upon The Boston Pine Flag, you are probably wondering what this blog is all about, and why anyone would choose such a name.

The Boston Pine Flag is a forum for several liberally minded freelance writers to express opinions slightly out of the ordinary. Far too much dialogue is lost in public debate through simply looking at the world through the same artificial lenses. The Boston Pine Flag hopes to present our readers with articles that ask the questions that nobody asks.