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Empire, Oligarchy and Democracy
The twin swelling heads of Empire and Oligarchy are driving our country into an ever-deepening corporate state, wholly incompatible with democracy and the rule of law.
Once again the New York Times offers its readers the evidence. In its February 25, 2010 issue, two page-one stories confirm this relentless deterioration at the expense of so many innocent people.
The lead story illustrates that the type of massive speculation—casino capitalism, Business Week once called it—in complex derivatives is still going strong and exploiting the weak and powerless who pay the ultimate bill.
Titled "Banks Bet Greece Defaults on Debt They Helped Hide," the article shocks even readers hardened to tales of greed and abuse of power. Here are the opening paragraphs: "Bets by some of the same banks that helped Greece shroud its mounting debts may actually now be pushing the nation closer to the brink of financial ruin."
"Echoing the kind of trades that nearly toppled the American Insurance International Group /AIG/, the increasingly popular insurance against the risk of a Greek default is making it harder for Athens to raise the money it needs to pay its bills, according to traders and money managers."
"These contracts, known as credit-default swaps, effectively let banks and hedge funds wager on the financial equivalent of a four-alarm fire: a default by a company, or in the case of Greece, an entire country. If Greece reneges on its debts, traders who own these swaps stand to profit."
"It's like buying fire insurance on your neighbor's house-you create an incentive to burn down the house," said Philip Gisdakis, head of credit strategy at UniCredit in Munich.
These credit-default swaps increase the dreaded "systemic risk" that proliferates until it lands on the backs of taxpayers, workers and savers who pay the price. And if Greece goes, Spain or Portugal or Italy may be next and globalization will eventually bring the rapacious effects of mindless speculation to our shores.
Greece got into financial trouble for a variety of reasons, but it was widely reported that Goldman Sachs and other big banks showed them, for generous fees, how to hide the country's true financial condition. Avarice at work.
Note two points. These derivatives are contracts involving hundreds of billions of dollars and are essentially unregulated. These transactions are also essentially untaxed, unlike Europe's value added tax on manufacturing, wholesale and retail purchases. The absence of government restraints produces unlimited predation.
As astute investors in the real economy have said, when money for speculation replaces money for investment, the real economy suffers and so do real people. Remember the Wall Street collapse of 2008 and who is paying for the huge Washington bailout.
The other story shows that the Presidency has become a self-driven Empire outside the law and unaccountable to its citizens. The Times reports "how far the C.I.A. has extended its extraordinary secret war beyond the mountainous tribal belt and deep into Pakistan's sprawling cities." Working with Pakistan's counterpart agency, the C.I.A. has had some cover to do what it wants in carrying out "dozens of raids throughout Pakistan over the past year," according to the Times.
"Secret War" has been a phrase applied numerous times throughout the C.I.A's history, even though the agency was initially created by Congress right after World War II to gather intelligence, not engage in lethal operations worldwide.
Unrestrained by either Congress or the federal courts, Presidents say they can and do order their subordinates to go anywhere in the world, penetrate into any country, if they alone say it is necessary to seize and destroy for what they believe is the national security. American citizens abroad are not excluded. Above the law and beyond the law spells the kind of lawlessness that the framers of our constitution abhorred in King George and limited in our country's separation of powers.
Because our founders would not tolerate the President being prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner, they placed the war-declaration and appropriations authorities in the Congress.
Both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama believe they have unbridled discretion to engage in almost any overt or covert acts. That is a definition of Empire that flouts international law and more than one treaty which the United States helped shape and sign.
Equipped with remote and deadly technologies like drones flying over Pakistan and Afghanistan by operators in Nevada, many civilians have been slain, including those in wedding parties and homes. Still, it is taking 15,000 soldiers (U.S. and Afghan) with the most modern armaments to deal with three hundred Taliban fighters in Marja who with many other Afghans, for various motivations, want us out of their country. Former Marine Combat Captain Matthew Hoh described these reasons in his detailed resignation letter last fall.
Mr. Obama's national security advisor, Ret. General James Jones estimated that there are about 100 Al Qaeda in Afghanistan with the rest migrating to other countries. And one might add, those whose migrate are increasing their numbers because they cast themselves as fighting to expel the foreign invaders.
So many capable observers have made this point: occupation by our military fuels insurgencies and creates the conditions for more recruits and more mayhem. Even Bush's military and national security people have made this point.
The American people must realize that their reckless government and corporate contractors are banking lots of revenge among the occupied regions that may come back to haunt. We have much more to lose by flouting international law than the suicidal terrorists reacting to what they believe is the West's state terrorism against their people and the West's historical backing of dictatorships which oppress their own population.
America was not designed for Kings and their runaway military pursuits. How tragic that we have now come to this entrenched imperium so loathed by the founding fathers and so forewarned by George Washington's enduring farewell address.
Where are "We the People"?
- Posted in
75 Comments so far
Show AllWhere are "We the People"?
Good question. The USA was always a nation of lost souls ever since it was founded on and credited with violence and hostile takeovers. Even the Founding Fathers have had their flaws on this matter. Our ancestors may have escaped the King and Queen tyranny only to run into confusion as a newborn democracy and then let the Founding Fathers create a government for and against us. It started out as a compromise. Some of the Founding Fathers such as Thomas Jefferson were earlier progressive populists while some elitists such as Alexander Hamilton silently supported the British status quo and then showed their true Federalist colors when they gave their plans of dealing with the Articles of Confederation chaos.
Ever heard of "Manifest Destiny" after that? That's what happened at the expense of dividing and annihilating the Natives. Over the years, as immigrants have poured in, more of them came for their own selfish reasons at the expense of other nations outnumbering those who came to actually improve the country for its own good without sacrificing other nations. The selfish and self centered ones make up at least half of the immigrants today and they are brainwashed and misled into this "American Dream" garbage. I think that they are giving us a taste of our ancestor's medicine, possibly as an act of karma. If more people are selfish and self centered, this raises the possibility of turning a nation into a militarized one. I can't speak for Rome but until this nation finds its true soul, militarism will cash in on its weakness as a lost soul nation.
Think about it. We went from Thomas Jefferson's endorsement of hemp for health and living to Nazi supporting Randolph Hearst's opposition to the plant. It's no coincidence that we fight resource wars for oil while banning good ideas such as hemp here at home. It's also no coincidence that metal gets wasted on weaponry when it could be put to more constructive uses.
If polls are credible, Obama's current approval rating above 50% (even higher among young Americans) is very scary.
The pied piper is leading us over a cliff.
You can check the Gallup daily polls, including Barak's current job approval rating here: http://tinyurl.com/yl8cfdn Right now that number is at 50%, 83% among Democrats,
45% among Independents, and 16% among Republicans. Ages 18-29 59%, 30-49 52% 50-64 48%, and 65 and older 41%.
Gary
“Opinion polls measure the public's satisfaction with it's ignorance”
-- Art Hill
The very powerful people of this world, are they continually jostling among themselves in various ways and for different reasons and aren't we seeing results of this on the world stage? It's called history being made?
For example, if A has been slighted by B, the Greeks pay the price of A's anger. Or whatever.
And are these people constantly spying on each other and working to ascertain if others in The Group are spying on them?
"The American people must realize..."
That... obesity kills?
That... Earth is melting?
That... they (Big Bankster and their Big Corporate Partners) own the place (the American government)?
That... We The People are the easiest, fattest, laziest, dumbest, most ignorant and most passive marks even a moron con-man could hope for?
We American's were never much good at realizn' stuff...
Spying is of a rodentcy in the naturing.
I can envision these human rodents (they should be dressed in costume) crawling through Islamabad's sewers, slithering through holes in walls, peering from rafters as they carry out their lethal operations.
Well, they'd have to be shrunk to size.
Hopefully the days of empire and oligarchy will soon be over. The gambling casino economy makes nothing but trouble-ditto the empire's army. Our speculation-based economy is taking a dive and, as a result, we won't be able to afford the empire--it happens all the time--Spain,the Dutch,Britain...They all survived 2nd tierdom and I think we will too--unless climate change does us all in.
Cheers.
"American was not designed for Kings and their runaway military pursuits."
But it was designed for and by (in large part) slave-owners, who required legions of forced labor in order to subdue the continent's inhabitants & provide the goodies for the rulers & their managers.
When we ran out of continent, we paused for a little, before realizing that we had to dispatch the imperial troops worldwide to continu8e the mission. Forty five years ago, there was a popular revulsion to this project, which stalled it for a brief interval, before it was enthusiastically resumed in the '90s.
We need to stop the fairy tales about our noble intentions and ideals if we're to deal with the imperialism which is the heart of US identity.
AGREED.
You describe approximately what Vladimir Lenin called "the highest stage of capitalism" but with a glaring error because today it is not only the "rulers and their managers" but also the huge middle classes of the Western World that demand "the goodies" thereby feeding the perpetuation of imperialist capitalism and keeping our armed forces all over the globe.
Lenin himself enthusiastically made the wrong prediction that the revolutionary uprising of the colonial people would bring capitalism to an end. With very few exceptions (Cuba may be one example) colonial revolutions have produced their own "rulers, managers, and usually small middle classes" that demand their pieces of the capitalist pies, a.k.a. "the goodies" especially in Africa and Asia. There is absolutely no reason to be sympathetic with the ruthless rulers of most of these countries merely because "we" once treated their countries as colonies. They are nothing but "home grown" colonialists themselves.
Imperialist capitalism will not come to an end by actions in the Western World. Its demise, if and when it comes, will indeed start in the former colonial countries when their enslaved people will rise against their rulers with their foreign paymasters. We can help the process by demanding that Western armed forces and all financial support be completely withdrawn from these countries because they support the "home grown rulers, managers, and middle classes".
One more comment. I think that several posters on this topic have demeaned the US Labor Movement of the late 19th and of the 20th century up to the end of WW2. Our "rulers and managers" were sufficiently scared by Eugene Debs that they helped spawn Senator Eugene McCarthy's crusade against labor (McCarthy's war against "communism" was in reality a successful war against all forms of leftist politics and organizations. McCarthy himself was merely the "drummer", albeit a deranged one, for the powers behind him).
'Dealing with the imperialism at the heart of US identity' means first of all unhooking ourselves, and then others, from the slogans that uphold the myth, thinks like "restoring our democracy" or "upholding our Constitution". These are our versions of a royal family, with the advantage that they can't really be executed in a popular revolt. In the '60s and early '70s, the left effectively repudiated them, but revolutionary forces then were dispersed by the injection of drugs into the embryonic revolutionary communities, and devolved into mere counter-culture, which was pure self-indulgence & self-expression.
The earlier labor movement did indeed scare the rulers & managers, quite a bit, because they fought the police forces & were much more radical than their successors, for a variety of reasons.
The main thing is to set the compass true, and to avoid the notion that third parties & hard work will enable the good people to get control of the machinery & run it "constitutionally".
Gee Ralph, isnt it you - in your new book, who are saying that the power elite are so well entrenched that we need a bunch of super-rich people to defect from their class and jump-start-fund The Revolution?
You outline the strategy very well in your book. Now the question is, is it just fictional political imagination, or are the Warren Buffets and George Clooney's going to get up off their asses and put their wealth behind the project of saving this country?
And Ralph, please educate yourself more deeply on the issues of Peak Everything - oil, water, arable land and etc. - and climate change because we dont have the kind of time your book seems to imply, and alt.energy systems will not be able to sustain the same level of consumption, so people need to start facing the fact - on an over-populated planet of people who are over-consuming - that the standard of living is going to go down and times are going to be hard, from now on.
In other words, the goal now is to redirect the macroeconomic wealth of industrial civilization and use it to create a Controlled Descent instead of a Crash. But industrial civilization as we have known it is over, and "Descent" literally means the dismantling and unravelling of industrial civilization, not some liberal-green fantasy that we will be able to afford reform, health care for all, automobile culture (the idea of all of us driving electric cars is a dangerous fantasy) and a middle class standard of living for all the people.
It aint gonna happen, and the rich and the super-rich need to stop their obscenely immoral consumption NOW, and start putting there money into what we might call "emergency triage" or saving what we can and lessening as much as possible the tremendous suffering that is just down the road.
Post script:
In anticipation of some possible questions about the last phrase, "the tremendous suffering that is just down the road", let me add two things.
For billions on this planet, life already IS tremendous suffering (just ask the people of Iraq, Af-pak, Gaza, Africa, etc.) and that if people in this country think they and this country are suffering tremendously now, they aint seen nothing yet compared to what will happen if we dont radically change course... like yesterday.
ralph: there is no "we the people" in the u.s.a. we are just a disparate bunch of economic competitors bent on making sure that "my children have it better than i do". the power structure expects the masses to unify around a war or foreign threat, but little else. the power structure has defeated both the single payer and the modest public option approach to healthcare by playing on the people's fears of socialism, which is to say the elite don't want the hoi polloi to feel their strength unless it is directed toward a foreign or domestic enemy. privitization and capital are a cult, the shrine at which the masses worship. we have no unifying domestic theme other than everyone's wanting to get rich. and, because we're still the same folks who amassed at the oklahoma border at noon of april 22,1889, waiting to hear the gunshots that would begin the race to the last parcels of our great frontier, we will never be able to pull together and achieve anything domestically. this country is in perpetual adolescence. it is doomed to fail. we are already sliding low on the downside, and i predict a huge outbreak of class warfare, sometime in 2071 or 2072.
Right on! But collapse and class warfare are coming long before 2071.
- our founders...placed the war-declaration and appropriations authorities in the Congress. -
On 9/14/01, Congress declared war against enemies to be named later by a President, any President. Don't assume because you want to that any President will pass up the chance to use such awesome power.
"Just days after 9/11, Congress authorized the use of force against al Qaeda and those who harbored them -- an authorization that continues to this day."
Mr. Obama, 12/01/09.
I suggest once again that we take this authorization away from the President before the President takes everything away from us.
I suggest that we repeal Public Law 107-40, just as America repealed Prohibition when it obviously failed.
I suggest yet again that we show America that this war to prevent future terrorism is DAFT.
Every country deals with future terrorism but only America declared war against it.
I suggest that we end this DAFT war by ending the DAFT law before it ends us.
I also suggest that a multi-partisan and peaceful coalition against the system's flaw of a law could focus the anger that is being co-opted by the Radical Right into violence.
"Just days after 9/11, Congress authorized the use of force against al Qaeda and those who harbored them -- an authorization that continues to this day."
Mr. Obama, 12/01/09. Does the problem lie with the President or Congress? Had the Congress not declared war after 911, would we be calling for their heads? Yes, the intelligent response to 911 was police action not a war. Mr. Nader suggests that the "police action" i.e. the CIA infiltrations and selective violence is still the wrong response. What course of action should be taken when we are set upon by hostile forces?
Perhaps the phrase "and those who harbored them" should be removed from the authorization.
Ralph has provided a rare criticism of the CIA and global spying agencies that we don't hear even among our most progressive politicians. These agencies are at constant (undeclared) war all over the world violating the human rights and privacy of billions of people. This includes reading our email, listening to our phone calls, torture, special rendition (kidnapping), indefinite detention, solitary confinement, assassination, etc. It is a big racket, with 80% of the US spy budget in contractor hands. The US sets the standard, but let us be mindful that this is a global problem. What is to stop the Chinese from kidnapping me in the US (for supporting Tibet) and transferring me to secret prisons in Burma for torture? We need more citizens and political leaders calling for the abolition of the spy war business.
You wonder, what is to prevent the Chinese from kidnapping you because you like Tibet to be independent?
As long as you show this kind of fear the machine will exploit it even more.
The war machine will not waver because of Fear, it is their life's blood.
Be brave, it is all we have left.
American's need to be brave, it is fear that has dominated us.
"Mr. Obama's national security advisor, Ret. General James Jones estimated that there are about 100 Al Qaeda in Afghanistan with the rest migrating to other countries."
What a fairy tale. I can barely stomach the news lately. It's all made up, to cover up the course of empire. Nader has a slightly different take on what John Perkins said in his newsletter that I received today, that our president has no real power. Corporations have power. Governments do their bidding. Of course, Nader separates defense and intelligence from the corporatocracy. It's all one big monster.
The monster is real. The fairy tales propagandize the monster.
"Americans use too much health care" is the fairy tale I'm getting really sick of hearing lately. I'd rather listen to "Snow White" which at least has interesting characters.
When I first started agitating for democracy back in 1964 I used the term 'we the people' freely. Then a fellow programmer one day told me "That's the problem -- there's no 'we' anymore."
He was right. But there's no mystery, either. The cult of the individual has long been used against us at the most fundamental level, hindering our ability to meet the first requirement of political effectiveness, to organize.
He was also wrong, in that there never was a 'we' if that means solidarity across group boundaries, with visible working coalitions of various interests in the population at large. It has always been pretty easy to divide and conquer us.
So the answer to Ralph's query is that 'we' have been atomized, and now strongly resemble Kipling's banderlog, monkeys chattering away in the trees to no import whatever, as we blather into our ubiquitous electronic toys about mere trivia. Never before have so many talked so much about so little. With nothing to say, we won't shut up, but nobody in human history has ever learned anything while speaking.
There once was a lecture circuit in this country; now we're reduced to America's Least Talented.
"...there's no 'we' anymore."
I have read (Google abstract art CIA financing) that the gov't has in fact made a concerted effort to embed the 'individualist/cowboy' deep inside our individual and collective psyche and to inoculate us from any notions of solidarity.
It isn't the government that is embedding individualism in our national character. It has been part and parcel of the American psyche since the seventeenth century. Immigrants left Europe to get away from undemocratic governments that were always making demands on them--to fight wars, dictate religion, pay excessive taxes, build roads... They came here already programmed to hate governments (in my opinion they were not totally wrong, though government is the only entity that could control lawless corporations). So the CIA is guiltless when it comes implanting the cowboy stereotype--it doesn't need to.
I read the material -- some of which is dubious in content BTW -- and saw NOTHING about any effort to "embed the 'individualist/cowboy' deep inside our individual and collective psyche," unless I missed something the CIA sponsored cultural programs in a "war" with Soviet Russia to gain the edge in ART! Since Russia favored "revolutionary" art over modern, the CIA program proved successful; but who is to say the results would not have been the same without CIA involvement.
Your remarks make no sense unless you think that abstract art=atomization of the psyche? And that is truly nonsense.
Gary
“There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.”
-- Pablo Picasso
Another Sunstein comment.
You make asinine statements about the CIA gaining an edge in art and then try to attribute them to me. You then turn around and say that we cannot know what the results would have been without CIA involvement. Which is it? Are they involved or not? If they are involved why is the CIA influencing public art? You think the CIA is now suddenly for the people and not the elite as they always have been?
" Then a fellow programmer one day told me "That's the problem -- there's no 'we' anymore."
"We the people" was replaced by "I the media-viewer" and "I the commuter."
Ralph Nader, a true progressive hero, entirely misconstrues the concept "empire." Writes Nader, ". . . the Presidency has become a self-driven Empire outside the law and unaccountable to its citizens. . . . Both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama believe they have unbridled discretion to engage in almost any overt or covert acts. That is a definition of Empire that flouts international law and more than one treaty which the United States helped shape and sign . . . ."
No reputable scholar would second Nader's claim that unconstitutional rule (his "unbridled discretion to engage in almost any overt or covert acts") defines Empire. What ever since Vietnam has been appropriately termed "the imperial Presidency" is indeed an outgrowth of empire, as is the entire National Security State. But imperialism itself is a socioeconomic phenomenon, a system whereby one nation or people--especially one class of which--dominates and exploits another nation or people (all classes of which, but especially the lesser classes).
This is not a mere technicality. Nader's misconstruction promotes the false, reformist notion that empire is simply a matter of policy, usually of the Executive branch. Therefore, goes the misreasoning, elect a different executive and empire will go away. This has never been the case, pacifistic campaign promises notwithstanding. The Obama-Bush policies are imperialistic because the class allegiance of Obama-Bush is to the corporate capitalist/imperialist elite, who preside over the American empire, lucratively. Politics, once again, is the vehicle of economics. Getting rid of the imperialist system implies an entirely different sort of politics--revolutionary politics, to be precise--a world apart from the politics advocated by Nader all of his long career, namely, reformist politics.
Nader got imperialism wrong, but we should be grateful that the topic apparently dissuaded him from his farewell fantasy. I.e., today's article ends with, "Where are 'We the People'?" and not with, Where Are The Super-Rich Who Alone Can Save Us? (The last clause paraphrases the title of Nader's last book.)
I reread the article and I did not see the part where Nader said or implied a 'reformist notion' that by electing a different President, empire would or might go away.
I believe that Nader has enough command of history to know that the country has for all intents and purposes always been an empire from day one. It is just that since "W" the executive has gained power and the legislative has ceded power by not challenging the "unitary (read imperial) presidency which from what I have read is in fact unconstitutional. Don't forget Congress's long ago gift of empowering a President/King with the right to attack anyone at anytime without the immediate permission of Congress.
I could be wrong but I believe the Constitution goes so far as to literally forbid Congress from giving away its right to declare war.
Our country's leadership has long since sold the reins of power and we are now occupied by the universal enemy known as Corporatism/Fascism.
aremagen says, "I reread the article and I did not see the part where Nader said or implied a 'reformist notion' that by electing a different President, empire would or might go away." Read it again, especially the excerpt that I quoted, where Nader says that the Presidency "defines" empire. The obvious implication: Change the Presidency and you can get rid of empire. Hadn't you noticed that Ralph Nader on multiple occasions ran for the Presidency? Or do you think that a President Nader would continue to "define" empire?
Your last sentence is historically preposterous. No reputable scholar "knows" that "we" are now ruled by "Corporatism/Fascism," whatever that is supposed to mean. (And please don't retail the bogus Mussolini/Gentile "quotation," long since exposed as textually baseless.) If you think that the Obama administration is "fascist," I suggest you read a bit of history for the proper usage of the term. William Shirer would be a good place to start.
I'll give you a hint of what study would reveal to you: If we were living under fascism in the proper historical usage of the term, we would not be having this little dialogue. There would be no progressive media.
Would you prefer "inverted totalitarianism" to "coproratism/fascism"? Does that satisfy your sniveling, pedantic little thread-hijacking ass? Why don't you give us a little critique of Sheldon Wolin's 'Democracy Inc.' while you're at it, since I'm sure the fact that you haven't read it won't stop you from more pompous pontificating.
right on fake_french.
Don't put up with the do nothing liberal intellectual pontificating asses whom make up the majority who write comments here. They are full of themselves and not much more than ego gratification.
We need people to speak the unpleasant truths to the average Joe S. about living in a fascist state. No more sugar coating. The empire is not backing down. It is only becoming more embolden and will not retreat until it collapses on itself with a few hundred million people around the planet helping it collapse.
Power to the people. Let us overthrow the cyborgs.
PS Let's follow Andy Rooney's advise too on the U.S. Census. "No Democracy. No Census." "None of your fuking business."
Imagine 20-50 million people not filling out this piece of big brother survellience shit. How would they keep track of people and how many slaves they have and where?
fake_french, clearcut-climate: "Dogs bark at what they don't know." --Heraclitus of Ephesus
That book is on my list. He has a lot to teach after 50 years of teaching all forms of gov't. One thing he won't be able to teach me that I already know is that Mussolini was a fascist, he believed that a combination of wealth and the ability to pass laws was a very powerful concept when it comes to forms of gov't and that Ralph Nader knows more about gov'ts and the way they work than anyone commenting on his article.
If you read Common Dreams, which I'm beginning to wonder about, it is nearly unanimous that the corporations have too much power.
Whether you accept it or not most people accept the word fascism as meaning the cooperation of money people and elected people for the benefit of money people through the co-opting of elected officials. Hardly a new concept but for some odd reason a concept you want to argue with.
Do you comment only to throw dust into the air to cloud what is clear to everyone else who writes and reads these articles?
I believe the frame of the article is as follows:
1. Greece speculation= imperial empire at work
2. Oligarchy= American govt./ CIA machinations
3. Democracy= in absentia
Will the corporate cheaters always find another rort that will provides their feed?
All they require is a list of victims and suckers for another artificial thneed,
following Dr Suess. And continue to profit as the people bleed.
Gravely holding books of law, and the keys to the bank vaults.
While selling out and throwing into prison the victims of debt default.
Senators talk heaps of drivel about security in government debate.
And will always pass legislation when it increases their corporate pay rate.
Jobless cannot pay medical insurance nor the mortage inflation.
A nation losing income cannot continue to grip on every other nation,
and keep paying for more soldiers always increasing roles
and concrete citadels are just energy black holes.
Its all a giant scam, a flimsy termite hill built by a capitalist market.
A flow of paper money, claiming ownership of the entire planet.
When will people throw off there yokes of dependency,
And realize that this only leads to degeneracy.
Our planet is not ours to own and for our consumption to murder.
What we do to it and others, will be done to us, in short order
THE USA Banking and Financial and Economic System should be declared by all Nations as CRIMINAL
and the greatest Weapon of Mass Destruction ever conceived.
When the Chinese could not lift the cargo of the ground to push a sattelite into orbit, It was Slick Willie (Bill) Clinton himself who gave them the secret. The Clintons recieved a lot of money from the Red Chinese. In other words we are for sale.How many Clintons will it take to give the Asians the secret to those Flying bombs that are bombing people in Pakistan? Unmaned Aircraft they call it. What is to stop those people from doing the same to us? The outsourcing of our industrial base to China has yet to be told to the American public. How many people know that corporate Profits from ovesease do not pay income tax? The forsale sign is still hanging on the White house, re Nuclear Power and the health care bill that will force us to buy from Insurance Companies.
Nader is to far ahead of most people. He has to change his verbiage to the Joe Six Pack language.
Hello Freddie Kilowatt !
Knowledge does not belong to only whites and Americans, and god did not give only to Americans the ability to think and creat; as a matter of fact let me inform you that long before white Europeans took away Red Indian lands in the Americas, the Chinese, Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Indians, the Persians, the TURKS and manay more other great civilizations and Empires had preceded the Empire of the USA.
It is understandable that your ignorance has prompted you to show outrage at this crucial time in history, when the USA has crashed with such spectacular failure. Clinton was a good President and that is your matter and not ours, and the tremendous scientific knowledge and innovation that China has demonstrated these past 30 years need not surprise anyone who has even a grade school education; China had been in the fore-front of great discoveries in science, and technology for more than 10,000 years. On the other hand the USA has earned praise for their contributions since post war 2, a mere 60 years and are now even as we speak IS IN TERMINABLE DECLINE ! My friend Kilowatt ! Clinton did not and neither did knowledge that China has displayed ORIGINATE FROM THE USA ! Knowledge is out there like air that we breath, and inventions are innovations that we apply our knowledge to create to produce "INVENTIONS".
It is now reported that the most innovative and productive of scientific research IN THE WORLD IS IRAN; did Iran get their knowledge from Clinton as well ? LOOK AROUND YOU IN THE USA ! WHO ARE YOUR SCIENTISTS ? DO YOU NOT SEE THE CHINESE, INDIANS, JEWS, PAKISTANIS, AND OTHER NON WHITE INMMIGRANTS ? ARE THEY ALL WHITE AMERICANS ?
excellent points! yapchongyee.
a very old anecdote from the days of the British Empire is instructive , not just about history of civilizations, but also for the future...and even as they are already showing, in the PRESENT:
The story goes like this:
there was an Official of the British Empire traveling in Asia - india, china, southeast asia, indonesia..etc....
sort of - to gather for himself an experience of the conquered colonies and see the greatness of the Western British Empire at its heights....
one day - he met an Indian commoner...on whom the British "citizen of British Empire" supposedly made some comments about how "backward" the Eastern civilization was...and how right it was that the British , western colonists were to order things around and "bring civilization".....
the Indian old man responded with simplicity:
"WE WERE HERE -- LONG BEFORE
you were even TRIBES in the West....
we shall still be here ...long after your empires are no more".
The British EMPIRE is GONE..reduced to its original LITTLE ISLAND in the sea north of Europe.......and in the end was forced to GIVE UP Hongkong as The ANOTHER western empire of Portugal was forced to give up MACAU.....
as the USA will one day be forced to give up TAIWAN.....
as The FRENCH EMPIRE was forced to give up VIETNAM....just as its "inheritor" and current wanna be world conqueror and conqueror of ASIA , the USA Empire was forced to give up vietnam, kicked in EMBARRASSMENT out of the country....and now in DEEP Shyte DEBT to the ASIAN COUNTRIES ......and threatening to IMPLODE from its own profligacy....where, IF china was in a more advanced stage of its economic resurgence AND reintegration with the rest of the ASIAN neighbors - china would CERTAINLY be able to EASILY afford to
THROW AWAY its dollar holdings -- as "cost of doing business, a necessary sacrifice, a TOLERABLE loss"
and cause , with the FLICK of a computer button to order the UNLOADING of the US dollar
the TOTAL COLLAPSe of the USA financial and even MILITARY empire that depends on its DOLLAR!
in EITHER case --
those western EMPIRES -- germany, france, Portugal, Spain and the Netherlands...did their STUFF in teh EAST ...didn't they?
WHERE are their empires NOW?
how OLD exactly are THESE civilizations? these were just BARBARIAN TRIBES 2,000 years ago - and HARDLY any kind of "nations" or even real cultures until 1,000 years MORE -- and NOT without LOTS of borrowings FROM the EAST such as in mathematics, algebra, computations, explosives...etc...
and where exactly are these EMPIRES NOW?
they are REDUCED to LITTLE COUNTRIES in europe -- just as they once WERE!
and where IS china?
it is STILL about the SAME geographic and cultural entity that it ALREADY WAS ---
4,500 years AGO!
and mind you...trading healthily with
South America, the rest of Asia, the Middle East, Europe..and even America
without having fired a SINGLE SHOT!!!
in order to 'trade'.....
roflmao!
a very old eastern saying goes:
the WEST thinks in decades and hundreds of years........the EAST thinks in THOUSANDS of years and millenia...
There is no such saying in the East.
Not only that, neither the West nor the East thinks.
Individual human beings do.
To save money in the short term the newspapers made their print smaller and harder to read as their readers grew older and need more powerful reading classes.
Now that is thinking in terms of hours not decades.
On my computer I can make the print any size that i like and instantly read views from around the world and get the facts from almost any source.
WHILE much of technological advances that pass for "civilization" are indeed - in the last 200 years - created or designed in the western world.....
if people who hew to that sense of "superiority" really wanted to go along that line of thinking - it would also, in all honesty REQUIRE that while, for instance, China, or other eastern cultures did NOT arrive at the kind of technological or material advances as the west ,
NONE, absolutely NONE of the same technological , scientific, material advances led from the west in its ADAPTATIONS of knowledge would EVER even EXIST -- had not a SINGLE concept been discovered or created
IN THE EAST.
and that is INDIA ...where the concept of ZERO began at least 2 thousand years ago...transfered to the concept of algebra in the Middle East - and from THERE transfered to the WESTERN world...from which
the ENTIRE technological civilization of ours today STANDS.
a simple , single, elegant concept that ALLOWED ALL the engineering, scientific, mathematical calculations that would be the foundation of all these SUPPOSEDLY "great" western technologies....
the CONCEPT OF ZERO
created and discovered in the EAST!
Ralph Nader...An American who tells the truth
"Empire, Oligarchy and Democracy - ... wholly incompatible"
Nader's good at putting words on it. Too bad he's no good at changing the problems (any longer - but hefty respect to him for the changes he occasioned with "Unsafe at any speed").
Action speaks louder than words.
I'm getting tired of this website reinforcing the impression that nothing can be done. The message seems to be: "By all means make change, only don't use violence against violent repression, and don't even be impolite to tyranny - bow to the PC "politeness tyranny" - or we'll delete your comments and maybe soon yourself. Only impotence is allowed in the fight against the near omnipotent."
As general short-term memory decreases, aided by the internet which now has overtaken newsprint as news source, cyberspace constantly revises history to fit the current oligarchic needs. The only way out is to trust our own personal memory and see the patterns of exploitation, maybe backed up by info and sentiments of refusal in old physical books still on our shelves, and DO EVERYTHING ABOUT IT.
DIY living - like going back to first principles deep inside our selves. E.g. "balanced reciprocity" (expressed in saying we're "created equal", from which springs "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness") - which also means ACCEPT NO SH*T. Dare conflict. See that consensus-reality doesn't serve our biological reality. The difference between consensus and biological needs has grown into opposition, then further into conflict - and now into a mind-tearing gap. Go along into suicide, go crazy or go rebel - those are the remaining choices. Even for the oligarchs, but they'll be the last to see that. The comfortable isn't available any longer. Sorry to say - that's just how it is.
No one can change the rules by following them. That's the catch. To "play nice" is catch-22. Double-binds tying up every needed change. Watch 1984 used for playbook.
Action speaks louder than rules.
The Joes Stack up. Get off the PC. Go do something controversial to heal.
The Joes Stack up alright - to a molehill of pointless death.
If you need to resort to violence, you've already lost. Assuming you're not just another agents provocateur mole heading for a fast banning --likely exactly what you are-- you ought to wise up and listen to someone like Chris Hedges who has spent decades in war zones. He makes it clear that the sh*t floats to the top in any violent revolution. America was founded in a violent revolution and take a good look where that has led. Nowhere but more tyranny.
Violence is a dead-end. Let the smart-ass thugs in government enjoy their monopoly on murder. Watch closely as these transient mayflies choke to death on the bad karma and spiritual death they bring boomeranging right back at themselves and their families. They are already gasping for air as they run around the world frantically assassinating everyone in sight.
Hey 'Faker':
I think you're the "agent provocateur", with the foul language and unfounded accusations you let fly in this thread, and your wimpy "Violence is a dead-end". - Violence sure isn't a dead-end for all the ones profiting from it, including most surely yourself. (As well as me, for living well in the US empire affording us e.g. internet-access.)
The simplistic sloganeering "If you need to resort to violence, you've already lost" isn't true for the many causes that has won through by many kinds of forceful protest not shrinking from violence - from the storm of the Bastille July 14th, 1789 to the 1960'ies Civil Rights movement plus many events later. That slogan is a way of gagging and handcuffing protest before the outset. It's certainly not true in contexts where there's need to "resort to violence" in self-defence against violence.
Go pray you never have to defend yourself from any kind of violence. Because with such a lame attitude, prayer is your only defence. Or maybe you're paying or influencing others to do your fighting for you? - That would be the typical middle-class way of solving others' problems we sympatize with, "call the police against police brutality".
You apparently haven't noticed, but "a molehill of pointless death" piles up 24,000 kids high EVERY DAY (UNESCO numbers, Oct. 2009), directly attributable to economic exploitation in the world. Applied non-violent strategies over 40-odd years have done little to stop that. But some strategies including will to violence in direct confrontation, like in South-Africa 20 years ago, have eased the numbers a little.
"The Battle of Seattle" 1999 also worked well, pushing back the oligarchs.
Where are "We the People" now? - Quite possibly silenced by demands that any protest be completely "non-violent".
B. Smarter
"...from the storm of the Bastille July 14th, 1789 to the 1960'ies Civil Rights movement plus many events later."
Sorry, but these are your examples of successful violent revolutions?
MLK led the Civil Rights movement through non-violent protest.
The storming of the Bastille didn't work out too well for the French, paving the way for the rise of Napolean Bonaparte. What did he accomplish? From historian Victor Davis Hanson: "After all, the military record is unquestioned—17 years of wars, perhaps six million Europeans dead, France bankrupt, her overseas colonies lost."
"The Battle of Seattle" brought world attention to Globalization, but as far as "pushing back the oligarchs"?...oh, please! I see them as stronger than ever!
Would I use violence in self-defense? Fight or flight. Naturally. But violence as a revolutionary tactic just leads to more pain and suffering for all.