A Simple Fact

[voidisyinyang]

WoW! You've got it bad. Better find some medicine to cure that sickness.

 

I worked on a farm picking veggies when I was a kid. It is hard work with little pay. I know what I'm talking about.

 

I won't argue the down-side of Corporate America. I argue you position but not nearly as heated because I know that I can do nothing about it. If the youth of America want change it is they who must make the changes or cause the changes to happen.

 

But don't be messing with what is mine. I worked very hard for what I have.

 

Yeah but Mother Nature gave it all to you!!

 

 

“A child born in the United States will create thirteen times as much ecological damage over the course of his or her lifetime than a child born in Brazil,” reports the Sierra Club’s Dave Tilford, adding that the average American will drain as many resources as 35 natives of India and consume 53 times more goods and services than someone from China.

 

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=american-consumption-habits

[Marblehead]

Yeah but Mother Nature gave it all to you!!

One could look at it like that but I can assure you, it didn't come running at me crying "Catch me, Catch me." I had to work for it. And yes, I can say without fear of falsehood that I did honest work for everything I have. Well, that is except for when my mom passed on and we kids divided what was left of her wealth, and that wasn't all that much.

 

And BTW, I am ecology minded. I recycle, I use solar power, I catch rain for the gardens and the fish ponds. Even my second vehicle, a 1984 Honda is solar assist total electric.

Edited May 28, 2013 by Marblehead

[Flolfolil]

I can assure you, it didn't come running at me crying "Catch me, Catch me."

 

this is actually how my life is, things just sort of fall into my lap

[voidisyinyang]

One could look at it like that but I can assure you, it didn't come running at me crying "Catch me, Catch me." I had to work for it. And yes, I can say without fear of falsehood that I did honest work for everything I have. Well, that is except for when my mom passed on and we kids divided what was left of her wealth, and that wasn't all that much.

 

yeah it's like when people complain -- so you don't want to use a car? Or a computer?

 

The U.S. is based on force-feeding the massive infrastructure that depletes natural resources.

 

For example Apple Computer was not a self-made corporation -- it relied on government funded public research and yet Apple doesn't pay billions in its owed U.S. taxes.

 

 

The Internet, the Web, the microprocessor, GPS, batteries, the electric grid—if you’ve built a thriving company that depends on any of these things, you didn’t get there on your own. Or, as the president once said: You didn’t build that.

 

 

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/07/who_invented_the_internet_the_outrageous_conservative_claim_that_every_tech_innovation_came_from_private_enterprise_.html

[Marblehead]

For example Apple Computer was not a self-made corporation -- it relied on government funded public research and yet Apple doesn't pay billions in its owed U.S. taxes.

And to add a little fuel to that flame, our government, we, the tax payer, still subsidize the most profitable industry in the world, the oil companies.

 

I'm waiting for more info on Apple though. Not enough for me to form an opinion. But I wouldn't doubt it.

[voidisyinyang]

And to add a little fuel to that flame, our government, we, the tax payer, still subsidize the most profitable industry in the world, the oil companies.

 

I'm waiting for more info on Apple though. Not enough for me to form an opinion. But I wouldn't doubt it.

 

 

Why are you waiting? just google it. It was in the NY Times, etc.

 

You should watch the netflix doc -- oh if you have netflix - We're Not Broke - on how corporations dodging U.S. taxes is the biggest reason for government cuts of social funding like schools, fire departments, etc.

[Marblehead]

Why are you waiting? just google it. It was in the NY Times, etc.

 

You should watch the netflix doc -- oh if you have netflix - We're Not Broke - on how corporations dodging U.S. taxes is the biggest reason for government cuts of social funding like schools, fire departments, etc.

No, I'm not broke. Yes, I have netflix. I watched a nature program on it last night. What I am waiting for is "proof", not hearsay.

 

Just like all the charges against Sheriff Joe in Arizona. One charge has finally been substaniated. He and his people racially profile. Duh! He is, afterall, seeking out illegals from Mexico, Central and South America. Would he or his people stop and question a blonde haired, blue eyed person or even a person of African ancestory? Of course not.

 

Anyhow, back to your interests, I really don't watch too much of that stuff because I don't want to become depressed. Like I said, I am an old man, I have paid my dues, did my time, and now it is time for me to relax and enjoy the fruits of my labors. It is up to the youth of America to make the changes they wish to see.

[Thunder_Gooch]

The only way change is possible is voting with your feet, too many sheep in this country, can't make any meaningful change if the majority of the flock is ok with being slaughtered.

[voidisyinyang]

The only way change is possible is voting with your feet, too many sheep in this country, can't make any meaningful change if the majority of the flock is ok with being slaughtered.

 

Great documentary by @Greg_Palast on the assassination of Hugo Chavez go get yours now, Totally FREE - http://bit.ly/ZrE4AL

[Maddie]

Great documentary by @Greg_Palast on the assassination of Hugo Chavez go get yours now, Totally FREE - http://bit.ly/ZrE4AL

He was assassinated?

[Thunder_Gooch]

[Thunder_Gooch]

http://www.nationalmemo.com/weekend-reader-what-then-must-we-do-straight-talk-about-the-next-american-revolution/

 

 

The United States now ranks lowest or close to lowest among advanced “affluent” nations in connection with inequality (21st out of 21), poverty (21st out of 21), life expectancy (21st out of 21), infant mortality (21st out of 21), mental health (18th out of 20), obesity (18th out of 18), public spending on social programs as a percentage of GDP (19th out of 21), maternity leave (21st out of 21), paid annual leave (20th out of 20), the “material well-being of children” (19th out of 21), and overall environmental performance (21st out of 21).

 

Add in low scores for student performance in math (17th out of 21), one of the highest school dropout rates (14th out of 16), the second-highest per capita carbon dioxide emissions (2nd out of 21), and the third-highest ecological footprint (3rd out of 20).

 

Also for the record: We have the worst score on the UN’s gender inequality index (21st out of 21), one of the highest rates of failing to ratify international agreements, the highest military spending as a portion of GDP (1st out of 21), and among the lowest spending on international development and humanitarian assistance as a percentage of GDP.

Edited June 2, 2013 by More_Pie_Guy

[silent thunder]

Boy that creates a bit of cognitive dissonance with the America we were 'taught about' in 'school'. Oy!

I love that dissonance! I didn't always, but as so many revelations have come out of those dissonant moments, I've come to treasure it/them.

[Marblehead]

Yeah, we need hold to the "bad" truths as well as the "good" truths.

 

Obviously we can do better. The only question is, do we (the majority) want to? So far it looks like the answer is, No.

 

Actions follow intentions.

[Thunder_Gooch]

http://piersmorgan.blogs.cnn.com/2013/06/06/glenn-greenwald-on-the-nsa-and-prism-its-well-past-time-that-we-have-a-debate-about-whether-thats-the-kind-of-country-and-world-in-which-we-want-to-live/

[Thunder_Gooch]

[Marblehead]

http://piersmorgan.blogs.cnn.com/2013/06/06/glenn-greenwald-on-the-nsa-and-prism-its-well-past-time-that-we-have-a-debate-about-whether-thats-the-kind-of-country-and-world-in-which-we-want-to-live/

I have been saying that for a number of years now but noone believes me. They say, No, they don't do that. It's against the law. Just goes to show.

[Thunder_Gooch]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVgAebxMmcM

[Thunder_Gooch]

I have been saying that for a number of years now but noone believes me. They say, No, they don't do that. It's against the law. Just goes to show.

It's worse than you could ever imagine, you have absolutely no rights or freedoms any more.

 

You can be killed or tortured for any reason, your private property can be seized without warrant or due process or compensation, you have no privacy of any sort, you are force medicated with chemicals to make you docile and lower intelligence.

 

It's been this way since 2001, and continues to get worse.

 

Both republicans and democrats support these policies and programs.

 

We are no longer a free people.

Edited June 8, 2013 by More_Pie_Guy

[Thunder_Gooch]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/07/us-government-special-privilege-scrutiny-data

 

 

US government invokes special privilege to stop scrutiny of data mining

 

Officials use little-known 'military and state secrets privilege' as civil liberties lawyers try to hold administration to account

[Marblehead]

We are no longer a free people.

The Patriot Act did most of that to us. Thanks a lot Bush.

[Marblehead]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/07/us-government-special-privilege-scrutiny-data

 

 

US government invokes special privilege to stop scrutiny of data mining

 

Officials use little-known 'military and state secrets privilege' as civil liberties lawyers try to hold administration to account

Executive Privilege sucks!

[Thunder_Gooch]

 

Watch this.

[Marblehead]

Well, first of all, I want to commend the man for stepping forward and letting the American people know what the government has been doing in secret without informing the people. This is a breach of our freedom and privacy.

 

I think it is sad that he decided he needed to leave his homeland after making the information public. But I am sure the government could create all kinds of laws he violated by doing what he did in order to depict him as a "bad" guy.

 

No, nothing will change. Everyone in the chain from the president on down was aware of what was going on and it was sanctioned by all who had authority.

 

This is what we got for backing Bush and all his lies after 9/11. Nothing has changed since then except as was noted in the interview the domestic spying has increased dramatically, and yes, even with Obama allowing it all to happen.

 

The government now has the American people living in fear. Mission accomplished.

[Thunder_Gooch]

They Thought They Were Free

The Germans, 1933-45

Milton Mayer

 

But Then It Was Too Late

 

"What no one seemed to notice," said a colleague of mine, a philologist, "was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know, it doesn’t make people close to their government to be told that this is a people’s government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing, to do with knowing one is governing.

 

"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.

 

"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.

 

"You will understand me when I say that my Middle High German was my life. It was all I cared about. I was a scholar, a specialist. Then, suddenly, I was plunged into all the new activity, as the university was drawn into the new situation; meetings, conferences, interviews, ceremonies, and, above all, papers to be filled out, reports, bibliographies, lists, questionnaires. And on top of that were the demands in the community, the things in which one had to, was ‘expected to’ participate that had not been there or had not been important before. It was all rigmarole, of course, but it consumed all one’s energies, coming on top of the work one really wanted to do. You can see how easy it was, then, not to think about fundamental things. One had no time."

 

"Those," I said, "are the words of my friend the baker. ‘One had no time to think. There was so much going on.’"

 

"Your friend the baker was right," said my colleague. "The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway. I do not speak of your ‘little men,’ your baker and so on; I speak of my colleagues and myself, learned men, mind you. Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to. Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about—we were decent people—and kept us so busy with continuous changes and ‘crises’ and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the ‘national enemies,’ without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think?

 

"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic German’ could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.

 

"How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men? Frankly, I do not know. I do not see, even now. Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice—‘Resist the beginnings’ and ‘Consider the end.’ But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certainly and how is this to be done, by ordinary men or even by extraordinary men? Things might have. And everyone counts on that might.

 

"Your ‘little men,’ your Nazi friends, were not against National Socialism in principle. Men like me, who were, are the greater offenders, not because we knew better (that would be too much to say) but because we sensed better. Pastor Niemöller spoke for the thousands and thousands of men like me when he spoke (too modestly of himself) and said that, when the Nazis attacked the Communists, he was a little uneasy, but, after all, he was not a Communist, and so he did nothing; and then they attacked the Socialists, and he was a little uneasier, but, still, he was not a Socialist, and he did nothing; and then the schools, the press, the Jews, and so on, and he was always uneasier, but still he did nothing. And then they attacked the Church, and he was a Churchman, and he did something—but then it was too late."

 

"Yes," I said.

 

"You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.

 

"Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, ‘everyone’ is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there would be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, ‘It’s not so bad’ or ‘You’re seeing things’ or ‘You’re an alarmist.’

 

"And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.

 

"But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.

 

"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

 

"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.

 

"You have gone almost all the way yourself. Life is a continuing process, a flow, not a succession of acts and events at all. It has flowed to a new level, carrying you with it, without any effort on your part. On this new level you live, you have been living more comfortably every day, with new morals, new principles. You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany, could not have imagined.

 

"Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early meetings of your department in the university when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.

 

"What then? You must then shoot yourself. A few did. Or ‘adjust’ your principles. Many tried, and some, I suppose, succeeded; not I, however. Or learn to live the rest of your life with your shame. This last is the nearest there is, under the circumstances, to heroism: shame. Many Germans became this poor kind of hero, many more, I think, than the world knows or cares to know."

 

I said nothing. I thought of nothing to say.

 

"I can tell you," my colleague went on, "of a man in Leipzig, a judge. He was not a Nazi, except nominally, but he certainly wasn’t an anti-Nazi. He was just—a judge. In ’42 or ’43, early ’43, I think it was, a Jew was tried before him in a case involving, but only incidentally, relations with an ‘Aryan’ woman. This was ‘race injury,’ something the Party was especially anxious to punish. In the case at bar, however, the judge had the power to convict the man of a ‘nonracial’ offense and send him to an ordinary prison for a very long term, thus saving him from Party ‘processing’ which would have meant concentration camp or, more probably, deportation and death. But the man was innocent of the ‘nonracial’ charge, in the judge’s opinion, and so, as an honorable judge, he acquitted him. Of course, the Party seized the Jew as soon as he left the courtroom."

 

"And the judge?"

 

"Yes, the judge. He could not get the case off his conscience—a case, mind you, in which he had acquitted an innocent man. He thought that he should have convicted him and saved him from the Party, but how could he have convicted an innocent man? The thing preyed on him more and more, and he had to talk about it, first to his family, then to his friends, and then to acquaintances. (That’s how I heard about it.) After the ’44 Putsch they arrested him. After that, I don’t know."

 

I said nothing.

 

"Once the war began," my colleague continued, "resistance, protest, criticism, complaint, all carried with them a multiplied likelihood of the greatest punishment. Mere lack of enthusiasm, or failure to show it in public, was ‘defeatism.’ You assumed that there were lists of those who would be ‘dealt with’ later, after the victory. Goebbels was very clever here, too. He continually promised a ‘victory orgy’ to ‘take care of’ those who thought that their ‘treasonable attitude’ had escaped notice. And he meant it; that was not just propaganda. And that was enough to put an end to all uncertainty.

 

"Once the war began, the government could do anything ‘necessary’ to win it; so it was with the ‘final solution of the Jewish problem,’ which the Nazis always talked about but never dared undertake, not even the Nazis, until war and its ‘necessities’ gave them the knowledge that they could get away with it. The people abroad who thought that war against Hitler would help the Jews were wrong. And the people in Germany who, once the war had begun, still thought of complaining, protesting, resisting, were betting on Germany’s losing the war. It was a long bet. Not many made it."