by John Wilcock

“The rich, says French writer Hervé Kempf, are quite literally destroying the earth. With their investments in oil and mining, the new global oligarchs are making the planet uninhabitable (and) using their clout to block the changes desperately needed to tackle climate change.”
— the New Internationalist

THE FERAL RICH is the current cover story of the New Internationalist and the reference is to those rapacious, selfish, greedy capitalists who think the world was created for them — and fuck everybody else. In the past year alone, the 400 richest Americans have seen their wealth grow by $200bn (about what it would cost to give every student in the country a free education). The 1,000 richest Britons now share $667bn, a 5% increase on the year, India’s ultra-rich increased by 30%. It’s a global phenomenon. Meanwhile, the progress on reducing world hunger has stalled, leaving one in seven people without enough to eat. “How did we get here?” asks Vanessa Baird. “How did members of this new plutocracy manage to peel themselves off from the rest of humanity, to feed off the crisis?”

The political response to the 2008 crisis, she writes — first to bail out banks, then to cut public spending — has produced the crowning irony of our times: those who made the mess have come out virtually unscathed while the rest of us are being punished. “The corporate rich, especially those linked to finance, have governments in their pockets. To compound the problem, many in government are themselves millionaires and have close links to the industry.

“Their predominant sources of income are land, natural resources, and government contracts or licenses. Rather than create something new, they use contacts and cronyism to get a bigger slice of the pre-existing pie.” And, of course, their greed is never satisfied; they always want more, especially if it means others get less.

“The coming year will see more austerity measures, as governments try to convince the people that the national deficit is their fault and they must pay for it with their jobs and their public services and their pension and their savings. They may encounter more resistance than they expect. Remember the political class, like the rich, are in the minority… They detach themselves from the rest of humanity at their peril.”

WHEN THE POPE DIES the biggest story in the world stays on the front pages for at least 15 days until 135 cardinals assemble to choose his successor. Who will it be? The choice has immense implications, and not just for the world’s 950 million Catholics. [click here to read more from my book Popes and Anti-Popes]

FREE CANDY DISPENSERS are among the ways that the management of Mars Inc. keeps their workers happy. And some unnamed employees at the plant in Hackettstown, NJ, are reported to eat 1½ pounds of M&Ms a day. (Every eight hours, 192 million M&Ms, in 25 colors, are produced here, as well as Snickers and Twix). “A pretty sweet gig,” is how Fortune describes it as, for the first time, it enrolls America’s third-largest private company (behind Cargill and Koch Industries) into its annual roster of the 100 Best Companies to Work For. “Employees thrive” the

mag exclaims. “Once they get a job they stay. Turnover in the US is a low 5%…some families can claim three generations of employees.” The company is still family-owned — three elderly multi-billionaire sons of Forrest Mars Sr. who took over from his father in 1934. After a spell working in the Swiss chocolate factories of Nestle and Tobler, he developed the Mars bar (still available in England), came across the idea of chocolate pellets in candy shells — the basis of M&Ms — and devised a form of pet food which, today, in its Pedigree and Whiskas brands, is Mars’ biggest money-maker. Planned for later this year is a new $250m facility at Topeka, KS, which will provide 200 new jobs.

WELL-BRED PEOPLE love well-bred dogs. They’re a comely addition to their immaculate apartments, ridiculously expensive high fashion, superfine cars, and all the other proofs of the good life to impress the neighbors. Of course, not all owners of pure-bred dogs are rich but all of them are adamant that the dogs must be pedigreed. No mutts or mongrels, (horrors!) of course; how could a beast like that impress anybody with one’s character and worthiness? The great and good were all in attendance at their annual exhibition last week, the Westminster Dog Show where the greatest and goodest was James Moses who’s been breeding and judging dogs for half a century, a conflict of interest that, as it happens, is raising some questions. But Moses doesn’t mind because he’ll soon be back at his favorite pastime: killing things. “Hunting is my true passion,” he says.

GRASS ROOTS DEMOCRACY is bidding for attention in New Hampshire where what the Nation calls “rebel towns” are passing resolutions that defy higher authorities. The activities are centered around a non-profit group called The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund which trains communities how to advocate for “rights-based ordinances” such as the installation of transmission lines, sewage dumps, or the building of dams which the community rejects. What CELFD’s Thomas Linzey is battling, of course, is nothing less than the Constitution which has oft been declared “the supreme law of the land” together with an 1868 ruling local governments subservient to state legislatures which “breathes into them the breath of life without which they cannot exist. Linzey, a 43-year-old environmental lawyer and co-author (with Anneke Campbell) of a new book, Be The Change: How to Get What You Want in Your Community, claims that the only recourse is open defiance of the law, an organizing tactic that he predicts will trigger a backlash to the status quo.

REEFER MADNESS BEGAN with the almost forgotten scoundrel Harry Ainslinger, who for three decades directed the Federal Bureau of Narcotics from its beginning in 1930, all the time using marijuana as his means for gaining malevolent power. His major ally was William Randolph Hearst, the megalomaniac publisher who saw an irresistible opportunity to smear the immigrants he deemed responsible for spreading use of the evil, lecherous weed. “To gain public support for his crusade, Ainslinger depicted marijuana as a sinister substance that made Mexican and African men lust after white women,” writes Martin A. Lee in a new book, Smoke Signals.

THE WILCOCK WEB: To avoid having to share digs with the new pope in the Vatican, Benedict XVI might consider becoming a humble parish priest to make amends for his evil reign as a facilitator of sexual abuse…..Men who actively oppose abortion should be legally obliged to adopt the children they save….Melbourne police report that Mexico’s drug cartels have invaded Australia with Sinaloa gangs discovered working with local biker gangs to smuggle drugs into the city…….And Brazil’s only the most recent example of prison inmates directing outside gangs who supposedly can’t be stopped because so many of them possess cell phones and laptops. But these reasons are bogus — as they are here — because it’s not difficult to install devices that block electronic communication…. When Poland joined the EU Britain’s Labor government predicted 13,000 Poles would enter Britain but the figure has been more than 400,000, so authorities are anxious about a similar influx when Romania and Bulgaria are admitted next year…. A shortage of organists has led to the installation of karaoke machines in some English churches….With the millions he made from plastics and polyester, Wisconsin’s Ronald Johnson, 57. bought himself a senate seat from which he opposes abortion, calls global warming theories “lunacy” and says talking about gun control is “a waste of time”….“If a person has no delicacy,” warned William Hazlitt, “he has you in his power”…. Instead of selling his half-century-old North Dakota supermarkets, Lueken’s Village Foods, retiring owner Joe Lueken, 70, is transferring the stock to his 400 employees….“People who choose traditional names for their children also tend to value traditional values such as good behavior,” writes Frances Childs, “while people who want their children to stand out and have little respect and who have little respect for standard spelling, often don’t”…… Following successful experiments by Cardiff University, York Minster and other UK heritage sites have been coated with a thick layer of colorless olive oil which is said to bind with calcium in the limestone and resist acid rain…Anticipate a “great comeback” for Lance Armstrong if he manages to appease the authorities, predicts a columnist in the Observer…Scientists at Oak Ridge, TN, are assembling a “radioactive library” which they hope will enable them to deduct the source of any nuclear device that an enemy country secretly releases to terrorists…. Argentina’s vp Amado Boudou says that when the inhabitants of the adjacent Falkland Islands vote next month on whether or not they want to stay British, it’s “a referendum in which the colonists that will take part (are) the descendants of those who evicted the true inhabitants”….…..Adding titanium oxide to laundry detergent will reduce pollution by minimizing the atmosphere’s nitrogen oxide when garments are washed with it…. ….Post-run showers, food, and a beer garden await the thousands of runners taking part in California’s Irvine Lake Mud Run…Ah, if only Japan and China could agree to jointly share and run those contested islands, what a giant step towards a new kind of international relations that would be, a world of tomorrow….“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will,” explained Frederick Douglas who died 118 years ago this week….“In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.” — George Orwell(1903-50)