Global Revolution!

[Birch]

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/sociopol_globalupraising26.htm

 

I should add that this video neither carried my assent nor my dissent.

Edited October 25, 2011 by -K-

[ralis]

[TzuJanLi]

Greetings..

 

(Some minor edits to a major declaration)

 

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for a governed people to dissolve the political bonds which have abused the trust and powers granted by the governed, and to assume among the powers of the earth the sacred right to choose their destiny and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's Creation entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the dissolve the political bonds which have abused the trust and power so granted.

 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are created equal; that they are endowed by the Forces of Nature with inherent and inalienable Rights; that among these, are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness; that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among people, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

 

Further, accounting for the injustices imposed upon the governed, as allowed by the abandonment of the Government's obligation to prevent, such reasonable adjustment shall be enforced as to sustain the ethical and economic health of the Nation and the welfare of those subjected to the disposition of injustices beyond their control and consent.

 

For the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of the divine providence of the collective whole, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

 

Be well..

Edited October 30, 2011 by TzuJanLi

[Jetsun]

Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman talks at Occupy Wall street

 

[ralis]

What is most disturbing in regards to predatory capitalism is the ideology that free unregulated markets are for the greater good. U.S. corporations move to China for what purpose? The greater good of greed and profit! U.S. manufacturing creating horrific pollution in Chinese manufacturing areas. Cheap junk being exported back to the U.S.! All at what cost? What is the utility of such corporate philosophy when millions in the U.S. have no work because of such shortsightedness!

 

If the Tea Baggers, Libertarians and Republican have their say in gutting the EPA and other so called predatory regulations that allegedly hamper business, then what will the U.S. become? A feudalistic state?

 

 

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x5042762

 

The above contains the link to the LA Times story.

 

 

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/feb/23/china-carbon-emissions

 

Edited October 30, 2011 by ralis

[TzuJanLi]

Greetings..

 

What is most disturbing in regards to predatory capitalism is the ideology that free unregulated markets are for the greater good. U.S. corporations move to China for what purpose? The greater good of greed and profit! U.S. manufacturing creating horrific pollution in Chinese manufacturing areas. Cheap junk being exported back to the U.S.! All at what cost? What is the utility of such corporate philosophy when millions in the U.S. have no work because of such shortsightedness!

 

If the Tea Baggers, Libertarians and Republican have their say in gutting the EPA and other so called predatory regulations that allegedly hamper business, then what will the U.S. become? A feudalistic state?

 

 

 

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-china-air-quality-20111030,0,4899208.story

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/feb/23/china-carbon-emissions

 

Thank you for your vision as a citizen of the planet, first.. and as an American in that awareness..

 

Be well..

[ralis]

Rogers Waters speaks out against the ruling class!!

 

 

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xtaZI7grys&feature=player_embedded

[Aaron]

What is most disturbing in regards to predatory capitalism is the ideology that free unregulated markets are for the greater good. U.S. corporations move to China for what purpose? The greater good of greed and profit! U.S. manufacturing creating horrific pollution in Chinese manufacturing areas. Cheap junk being exported back to the U.S.! All at what cost? What is the utility of such corporate philosophy when millions in the U.S. have no work because of such shortsightedness!

 

If the Tea Baggers, Libertarians and Republican have their say in gutting the EPA and other so called predatory regulations that allegedly hamper business, then what will the U.S. become? A feudalistic state?

 

 

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x5042762

 

The above contains the link to the LA Times story.

 

 

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/feb/23/china-carbon-emissions

 

 

 

I have to say, even though I might not agree that occupy wall street will have any lasting impact and that I also feel many don't understand what's actually going on, this is perhaps the best summation of the actual costs of corporate greed that I have seen yet in this thread. Good job Ralis.

 

Aaron

Edited November 6, 2011 by Twinner

[gendao]

Edited November 7, 2011 by vortex

[Nanashi]

[Encephalon]

NAILED IT!!

[sifusufi]

YOU CAN'T TRUST THE SYSTEM!

 

 

 

'

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy birthday to the ground

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

.

[lazy cloud]

"or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

 

Or Not?

Shouldn't the Police be required to take an oath

to protect the citizens of the United States?

Should the Police be required to take an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States?

Edited November 13, 2011 by lazy cloud

[Birch]

Well you CAN trust the system IMO/IME - to behave like one that is:-) The comparison is mistrusting sharks. Anyway, I don't mean to sound simplistic but if you're dealing with a thing you are actually part of, what's in it for you if the thing falls? I think there has to be a viable alternative on offer rather than a definiton that is just "everything the current system is not". The latter has "shadow" writ large all over it. IMO the point is to understand systems (like we study sharks) and design them properly so that they benefit people rather than suck the life out of them.

Unfortunately, this is currently underway (system redesign) but the dolts at the top still don't understand systems. Of course I'd love to be wrong :-) Any dolts reading this, no offence meant:-)

[joeblast]

"or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

 

Or Not?

Shouldn't the Police be required to take an oath

to protect the citizens of the United States?

Should the Police be required to take an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States?

Whether or not the police should, Congress has, and they're "the real 1%." Ever seen what happens to the net worth of somebody that goes to congress for any amount of time?

 

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57323221/congress-insiders-above-the-law/

 

(CBS News)

 

Martha Stewart went to jail for it. Hedge fund honcho Raj Rajaratnam was fined $92 million and will go to jail for years for it. But members of Congress can do the same thing -use non-public information to make stock trades -- and there's no law against it. Steve Kroft reports on how America's lawmakers can legally make tidy profits on information only they know, simply because they won't pass a law against themselves. The report will be broadcast on Sunday, Nov. 13 at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

 

Among the revelations in Kroft's report:

 

* Members of Congress have bought stock in companies while laws that could affect those companies were being debated in the House or Senate.

 

* At least one representative made significant stock purchases the day after he and other members of Congress attended a secret meeting in September 2008, where the Fed chair and the treasury secretary informed them of the imminent global economic meltdown. The meeting was so confidential that cell phones and other digital devices were confiscated before it began.

 

If senators and representatives are using non-public information to win in the market, it's all legal says Peter Schweizer, who works for the Hoover Institute, a conservative think tank. He has been examining these issues for some time and has written about them in a book, "Throw them All Out." "[insider trading laws] apply to corporate executives, to Americans...If you are a member of Congress, those laws are deemed not to apply," he tells Kroft. "It's really the way the rules have been defined...[lawmakers]have conveniently written them in such a way as they don't apply to themselves," says Schweizer.

 

Efforts to make such insider trading off limits to Washington's lawmakers have never been able to get traction.

 

Former Rep. Brian Baird says he spent half of his 12 years in Congress trying to get co-sponsors for a bill that would ban insider trading in Congress and also set some rules up to govern conflicts of interest. In 2004, he and Rep. Louise Slaughter introduced the "Stock Act" to stop the insider trading. How far did they get? "We didn't get anywhere. Just flat died," he tells Kroft. He managed to get just six co-sponsors from a membership of over 400 representatives. "It doesn't sound like a lot," says Kroft. "It's not Steve. You could have Cherry Pie Week and get 100 co-sponsors," says Baird.

-------

(mjperry) Update 1: A 2011 research article in the journal Business and Politics ("Abnormal Returns From the Common Stock Investments of Members of the U.S. House of Representatives") found that the stock portfolios of House of Representative members outperformed the overall stock market by 55 basis points per month, or 6.6% on an annual basis between 1985 and 2001, suggesting that lawmakers have a "substantial informational advantage" over the general public and even over corporate insiders.

 

Update 2: The chart below illustrates how an additional return of 6.6% per year for House Members would have affected an investment in the stock market between 1985 and 2001. A $1,000 investment in the S&P500 at the beginning of 1985 would have grown to $6,043 by the end of 2001, earning an annual return of 11.16%. In contrast, adding a 6.6% premium for lawmakers due to their informational advantage would have generated an annual return of 17.76%, and a $1,000 investment in 1985 would have grown to $16,172, or roughly 2.7 times as much as an investment in the S&P500. Not bad. Insider trading has its advantages.

Edited November 14, 2011 by joeblast

[Nanashi]

[Nanashi]

http://www.livestream.com/globalrevolution

 

the main park has been raided and is now empty, all possessions taken. Stand off in the streets right now.

[Encephalon]

When you have conservative Republican stalwarts like Jim DeMint(R-SC) and Ron Paul(R-TX) as well as self identified Democratic socialists like Bernie Sanders all fighting against the Federal Reserve, you know that it is no longer an issue of Right versus Left.

 

Exactly. There have been several cultural fault lines that divide this country between left and right, many of them simply construed by the politic process of vote-getting, but the dirty little secret is that the real divide is between class. It's been that way since the 1890s at least.

 

Thanks for posting this. I imagine some will read this and argue that the Occupiers still don't have a legitimate reason to be so upset.

Edited November 15, 2011 by Encephalon

[gendao]

[Aaron]

Thanks for posting this. I imagine some will read this and argue that the Occupiers still don't have a legitimate reason to be so upset.

 

I would say they have every right to be upset. I'm not even opposed to the sentiment, but rather my fears are that it will do little to change anything. The fact is that they are the 99%, but less than .0001% are actually doing anything to try and change it (i.e. protesting peacefully.) I've been a strong advocate that the best way to bring change is through passive resistance, but that doesn't necessarily mean that there aren't other ways to bring about temporary change, but again, I think it will only be temporary.

 

Until a system is set in place that says every man has a right to the bounty of the world, then nothing will change. The real evil here is capitalism, yet so many people fail to see that. You say something like that and people label you a socialist, but the fact of the matter is that the society is set up so that the 1% can maintain their wealth and the 99% basically will only be able to sustain their own existence.

 

I was talking to my brother about this today, the fact of the matter is that the poor people that do end up succeeding and breaking the bonds of poverty are very rare. The majority will continue to live a life of poverty despite what people might say, because there is no incentive for them to change, simply put they are in a situation that appears hopeless, so they do not have the hope that they can escape it.

 

Crime, addiction, and so many other ills are all a result of capitalism, this notion that we are taught as children, to consume and earn, yet not to understand exactly what we are consuming and why, or that our needless consumption leaves others to suffer in our place. The land of the free? What about the world of the free? That's the question I would ask. If current statistics are correct and the rate of poverty in the united states is at 20%, then I believe it is only a matter of decades before the majority of the people living in the United States will be living at the poverty level or at the very bottom of the middle class, where one bad misfortune sends them to the ranks of poverty as well.

 

The trick for many of us will be learning to appreciate when we have the things we need and also learning to give up the materialistic things we have come to depend on, it is only then that we can truly win over capitalism. So long as we demand what the corporations give us, then their hold over us will never end. I keep thinking of that image someone posted of the protesters and all the things that they were using that were part of the corporate machine and the only answer that I keep coming up with is simply that we need to stop supporting the corporations and begin to learn to live without paying tribute to them.

 

In other words, so long as we accept the food and charity of the slave masters, then we will continue to be slaves, it is only when we throw it aside and decide to provide for ourselves that we will be able to overcome this. Ironically if people did try to do this, form communities where they could support themselves by making their own clothes and food, the government would descend on them with a hand of vengeance.

 

We have dug ourselves into a hole and no amount of digging will get us out, the only way to get out is to climb, and that can only be done if each and every one of us decides to let someone stand on our back to get out.

 

As an aside I'm putting serious thought into joining the protest, if only so I can say later on that I wasn't one of the people that watched and turned my head, while others stood up and risked their own freedom in my place.

 

 

Aaron

Edited November 18, 2011 by Twinner

[joeblast]

I would say they have every right to be upset. I'm not even opposed to the sentiment, but rather my fears are that it will do little to change anything. The fact is that they are the 99%, but less than .0001% are actually doing anything to try and change it (i.e. protesting peacefully.) I've been a strong advocate that the best way to bring change is through passive resistance, but that doesn't necessarily mean that there aren't other ways to bring about temporary change, but again, I think it will only be temporary.

 

Until a system is set in place that says every man has a right to the bounty of the world, then nothing will change. The real evil here is capitalism, yet so many people fail to see that. You say something like that and people label you a socialist, but the fact of the matter is that the society is set up so that the 1% can maintain their wealth and the 99% basically will only be able to sustain their own existence.

 

I was talking to my brother about this today, the fact of the matter is that the poor people that do end up succeeding and breaking the bonds of poverty are very rare. The majority will continue to live a life of poverty despite what people might say, because there is no incentive for them to change, simply put they are in a situation that appears hopeless, so they do not have the hope that they can escape it.

 

Crime, addiction, and so many other ills are all a result of capitalism, this notion that we are taught as children, to consume and earn, yet not to understand exactly what we are consuming and why, or that our needless consumption leaves others to suffer in our place. The land of the free? What about the world of the free? That's the question I would ask. If current statistics are correct and the rate of poverty in the united states is at 20%, then I believe it is only a matter of decades before the majority of the people living in the United States will be living at the poverty level or at the very bottom of the middle class, where one bad misfortune sends them to the ranks of poverty as well.

 

The trick for many of us will be learning to appreciate when we have the things we need and also learning to give up the materialistic things we have come to depend on, it is only then that we can truly win over capitalism. So long as we demand what the corporations give us, then their hold over us will never end. I keep thinking of that image someone posted of the protesters and all the things that they were using that were part of the corporate machine and the only answer that I keep coming up with is simply that we need to stop supporting the corporations and begin to learn to live without paying tribute to them.

 

In other words, so long as we accept the food and charity of the slave masters, then we will continue to be slaves, it is only when we throw it aside and decide to provide for ourselves that we will be able to overcome this. Ironically if people did try to do this, form communities where they could support themselves by making their own clothes and food, the government would descend on them with a hand of vengeance.

 

We have dug ourselves into a hole and no amount of digging will get us out, the only way to get out is to climb, and that can only be done if each and every one of us decides to let someone stand on our back to get out.

 

As an aside I'm putting serious thought into joining the protest, if only so I can say later on that I wasn't one of the people that watched and turned my head, while others stood up and risked their own freedom in my place.

 

 

Aaron

Most rational people call that indoctrinated groupthink. Seriously, crime and addiction came into existence because of capitalism? That is downright laughable.

 

I'd have to spend too much time tearing this post apart, and I have better things to do, especially this evening. Amazing that people tell you these things and you believe them. Nothing personal, but there's some severe fallacy and purposeful misinterpretation at the root of most of that.

[Aaron]

Most rational people call that indoctrinated groupthink. Seriously, crime and addiction came into existence because of capitalism? That is downright laughable.

 

I'd have to spend too much time tearing this post apart, and I have better things to do, especially this evening. Amazing that people tell you these things and you believe them. Nothing personal, but there's some severe fallacy and purposeful misinterpretation at the root of most of that.

 

Hello Joeblast,

 

Thank you for not replying, because I'm sure whatever you have to say regarding this will be a result of what you have been taught is right according to your unbiased education and of course all of the unbiased information you've learned from FOX News.

 

I learned in school as a boy that America was the greatest country in the world, that capitalism was the only right economic system, because it was a free economy, and that we fought against communism to keep the world free, but what I've learned since then is not what I've been told or taught, but what I've come to realize by seeing the suffering that capitalism causes, the inequality it festers, and the immense greed and power mongering that are a result. There is no such thing as a free economy, if that economy does not allow everyone to share equally what the world has to offer. There is no such thing as a free democracy so long as it dictates what people should do and most of all, caters to the whims of the corporations. The world governments are nothing more than corporate prostitutes. They do what the corporations want, regardless of how demeaning and harmful the acts are, in order to sustain a way of life they've been taught is needed.

 

When people understand the differences between needs and wants, when they are ready to abandon their preconceptions and return to a natural way of living, one that doesn't require mindless consumption, but an awareness of our actions and the consequences of these actions. When we stop living our lives blindly and open our eyes to see the suffering that is all around us and realize the root cause is our own greed, then we can begin to walk the path that we are meant to be on, but until then there will only continue to be suffering in this world.

 

The way to win the world is not through war, but through compassion, understanding the need to ensure that every man, woman, and child has the opportunity to live a healthy and peaceful life. When the world is more concerned with helping their fellow man than ensuring they make it to the top, when the world sees the top as being every bit as bad as the bottom, then there will be change and no force on the face of the earth will be able to stop it.

 

Aaron

[joeblast]

Like I said, indoctrinated groupthink. Only an asshat teacher with a chip on his shoulder is going to teach his students that capitalism is all about grubbing as much as one possibly can for himself and screw the rest of the world

 

...Because anyone who understands capitalism understands that unbridled anything is not a good thing, measures of restraint and regulation are there for good reason, and when the system gets abused and people do favors and distort the information that each entity has to work with, it hurts and detracts from the system as a whole.

 

As opposed to what, a top down all powerful entity telling everyone what they may or may not do, what they may or may not invest in, attempting to conduct and drive the entire pace of the superstructure down to the minutiae? It seems that some people dont realize that such a paradigm sits like a weight upon the populace, for such a large amount of resources are required from each individual.

 

You dont seem to grasp the difference between relatively equal opportunity and relatively guaranteed outcome.

 

Not to mention, life lessons that people must learn and cannot simply be told or forced to believe. You are free to share equally - but if you are forced to share, what is free about that?

 

The suffering you see comes from powers that be and participants distorting the true nature of it - the distortions do not come from the paradigm itself. Raise taxes on people, yet GE makes 14bn profit and loopholes their way out of tax liability. Congressmen discuss a compromise to get rid of tax deductions for those making....oh, right, they set the bar just above the median Congressional salary But damn, those evil corporations!

 

You're hating the player and the game, when you're entirely overlooking the son of a bitch who keeps changing the rules mid game.

Edited November 19, 2011 by joeblast

[Encephalon]

[joeblast]

So when one speaks of first principles of something, they are necessarily harkening back to a better time with rose tinted glasses? People are using some terms all too interchangeably here and that's where the majority of the disagreement comes from. We all are agreeing on a lot more than we're disagreeing, if you're seeing beneath the surface here.

 

It is an absolute fallacy that capitalism simply redistributes money upward - that view is predicated upon looking at the money supply as a static quantity, and considering overall percentages thereof - so in reality parroting that remark is showing a misunderstanding of the entire concept of wealth creation. Did Steve Jobs somehow "suck money out of people?" No, he propagated ideas, made products that enriched people's lives (which is a subjective thing,) employed tens of thousands in doing so, and was himself handsomely rewarded in the process. He's one of the epitomes of the American dream, pretty much. Was the money he made "upward wealth redistribution?" Not in the least. Did a lot of the money he made find its way into many other people's pockets because of his ideas, by proxy? Absolutely. If you consider wealth to be something that either you or I have, like the childhood math equation of if I have 5 bucks and I give you two, then I necessarily have three bucks left, then that's where you get the mischaracterization of "upward wealth redistribution" because the concept is being applied out of context.

 

 

If you can consider anything "upward wealth redistribution" it is things like tax loopholes and other "incentives" that are at root but government distortions - treating one company or industry more favorably than another has a perturbative effect on "the market" as a whole. That perturbative effect manifests as the business not having the best information on which to act; something that should be considered more heavily may not be, some things that are of little consideration may be assigned great resource. It is like a pathogen winding its way through the body. When a pathogen invades the entire community...bubble bubble toil and trouble.

 

It is the very reason why I say we are overregulated. Consider Dodd-Frank, a post-hoc fix for a situation that likely will not manifest in the same manner again, but "they plugged that one hole in the dam" - and in the process weakened the structure as a whole because it entrenched the whole concept of too big to fail. When I speak of the need to simplify tax codes, regulations, limit tort cases, in effect limiting government...I am promoting ideas of fairness, treating everyone with the same measuring stick (that's not absolute, not saying poor people should be coughing up 50% of their paycheck for taxes etc, its more regarding business climate)...those are ideas that lead to a freer market.

 

Make no mistake, a lot of "things that make a market less free" are the very things that prevent you or I from starting up our own business and going after our own seedling of a business. I purposefully do not say slice of the pie, because pies dont grow and have the potential to become exponentially more than sugar and berries wrapped in crust. You can look at a good idea implemented well and growing in the context of the sermon on the mount, where the loaves of bread just kept on coming though they plainly did not have enough for everyone at the start.

 

 

Captalism also is not the socioeconomic expression - sure, it can be considered a manifestation of such, but that also has common denominator - human nature. Animal nature, even. Bottom line is, you will have that manifestation no matter which form of government you choose for your country.

 

 

Hatred, greed, delusion will always be there - even a compassionate, generous action, not performed in the most wise manner, will be called hatred and greed by another.

 

Thinking entirely with your heart and ignoring your head can have results every bit as disastrous as thinking entirely with your head and ignoring your heart. Courage tempered by wisdom.

 

 

 

So - what's the best way to fix these ills? Elect a totalitarian government that believes it can direct everyone to harmony, or give the people the benevolent freedom that this country was built upon, for better or worse?

 

 

"Govern a great nation as you would cook a small fish. Do not overdo it."

 

"A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves."

 

"By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try. The world is beyond the winning."

 

"The more laws and order are made prominent, the more thieves and robbers there will be."

 

"The people are hungry: It is because those in authority eat up too much in taxes."

 

 

 

and finally,

 

The words of truth are always paradoxical.

 

Lao Tzu