Jon Stossel provides an excellent interview with Ron Paul which never made it to the public.
Category Archives: Globalization
This is SOPA
Please urge the Senate to veto this unconstitutional legislation: http://sopastrike.com/
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The Story of Stuff Critique (3 of 4)
Part 1: http://twentiesfreedom.wordpress.com/2012/01/13/the-story-of-stuff-critique-1-of-4/
Part 2: http://twentiesfreedom.wordpress.com/2012/01/13/the-story-of-stuff-critique-2-of-4/
The Story of Stuff Critique (2 of 4)
The Story of Stuff Critique (1 of 4)
A very interested look at The Story of Stuff (which went viral and has been shown in public classrooms).
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The problems with Oil
Oil runs the world. It’s a scarce resource with limited availability. This is a problem.
America is shooting itself in the foot via foreign policy. The trillions spent on our military conquests actually act to subsidize the price of oil and assure its availability at a slightly lower price. This proves detrimental to the long term health of America. If the natural market was allowed to allocate prices and our government didn’t continually intervene in the oil markets, a viable alternative might finally be seen. Right now, the false prices act to neglect the free market and stifle alternative growth. A truly free market is the only hope for future energy independence, and as of now, it does not exist.
“China Will Not Hesitate To Protect Iran Even With A Third World War”
From Zero Hedge:
Fast forward to 2:08: “It is puzzling to some that Major General Zhang Zhaozhong, a professor from the Chinese National Defense University, said China will not hesitate to protect Iran even with a third World War… Professor Xia Ming: “Zhang Zhaozhong said that not hesitating to fight a third world war would be entirely for domestic political needs….”
If the nukes start flying, America might be the last man standing. I don’t see that as a likely scenario. Instead it would likely be a long trade war, a scramble to maintain the world’s necessary resources (oil?) with some unfortunate casualities. If that happens, China holds the upper hand with control over many American supply chains. America has grown hugely dependent on foreign energy and resources through the global trade web; a global trade shutdown would trigger hyperinflation of the dollar and force a long painful transition period. America, with its European support, does not have the manpower or leverage over critical global resources to win a conventional war against Pakistan, Russia, Iran, and China (The PRICs if you will).
Pray for peace, vote for Ron Paul.
Who runs the government?
“The real difficulty is with the vast wealth and power in the hands of the few….It is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people no longer. It is a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations.”
-Rutherford B. Hayes
Class Warfare?
One of the corporate establishment’s favorite tricks for countering dissent is fake populism — dismissing as “class warfare” any critique of genuine privilege while misdirecting the working class’s resentment toward the underclass.
It’s sometimes called “producerism”: An attempt to manufacture a sense of class solidarity between wage workers and their alleged fellow “producers” in the plutocracy, against the parasitic lower orders. See, the banksters, billionaires and cowboy CEOs aren’t to blame for the average person’s economic pain. They’re “producers,” just like us! The culprits are the 47% who “don’t pay any taxes,” an unholy alliance of ACORN, SEIU and single moms on food stamps.
The latest example of this astroturf right-wing populism is the so-called “53%” movement, created by RedState.org founder Erick Erickson, with the help of Josh Trevino of the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Their website, the53.tumblr.com, features photos of contributors holding up handwritten statements on the general pattern of Mr. Erickson’s own inaugural post: “I work 3 jobs. I have a house I can’t sell. My family insurance costs are outrageous. But I don’t blame Wall Street. Suck it up, you whiners.”
One contributor, a Marine veteran, writes: “I don’t blame Wall Street because it doesn’t matter what Wall Street or anyone else does. I am responsible for my own destiny. I will succeed or fail because of me and me ALONE.”
This sort of sycophancy is just painful to read. Here are people with multiple jobs and underwater mortgages, struggling to survive while falling all over themselves trying to outdo each other in absolving the Mr. Moneypennys and Daddy Warbuckses of any responsibility for their plight. It’s like watching a dog that keeps crawling back on its belly to lick the boot of the man who’s kicking it.
The worst part of this pathetic movement is that, intellectually speaking, it’s completely incoherent. It’s not derived from any consistent principle that bears looking into. Its participants can’t claim, as a matter of principle, that it’s wrong to resent other people or to blame them for their problems. After all, their very name suggests it’s entirely appropriate to condemn parasitism — namely, that of which the 47% is allegedly guilty. And most of its contributors are the same people who’ve been loudly cheering on the likes of Joe the Plumber who complained the country was going to hell in a handbasket. So it’s OK to blame your problems on THEM — just so long as THEM is the Kenyan Marxist and not the billionaires.
“Know when to bark and when to lick,” as the saying goes. Resentment and moral outrage are entirely righteous when directed downward, but shameful and impious when directed upward against one’s betters. It’s perfectly OK to express resentment against economic injustice — just so long as you blame the poor instead of the rich. It’s like a slave blaming his troubles, not on the master, but on another slave picking cotton too slowly. Utterly contemptible.
You folks in the 53% movement are being played.
You don’t like parasitism? The billionaire banksters and corporate welfare queens who fund your astroturf movement are the biggest parasites in human history. They loot wealth from the genuine producers with a front end loader, while you worry about people scraping up welfare with a teaspoon.
You say you don’t like big government? The corporations are the government. Count the number of people from Goldman-Sachs in the Treasury, from Cargill in the USDA, and from Pfizer in the FDA. Now count the number of welfare moms. Yeah, that’s some “Marxist” in the White House, all right. Schmuck.
The statism involved in food stamps and TANF is barely a rounding error on the statism involved in the privilege of the super-rich. The central function of the state is to enforce the artificial property rights, artificial scarcities, entry barriers, regulatory cartels, and other monopolies from which the privileged rich extract rents. Welfare is just a way of giving back a miniscule fraction of this stolen loot to the poorest of the poor, to prevent politically destabilizing levels of starvation and homelessness. Ever hear the phrase “straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel?”
So here’s a message for those of you out there who pride yourselves on licking the spittle of the rich and powerful while you kick those who are down. You think you’ll get a gold star or a pat on the head if you suck up to them enough? If you work hard enough building their pyramids, maybe they’ll make you Pharaoh someday? You really think the folks on Wall Street whose apples you’re polishing admire you as fellow “producers?”
They’re laughing at you.
-Kevin Carson
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The Scarcity of Resources
Countries across the globe are in a race and finishing first is of the utmost importance. America is losing; I’m not even sure we’re competing. We continue to spend massive amounts of money on policing the world, continuous warmongering, and bank bailouts while China and other Asian countries pursue renewable energy and domestic growth.
