The decline and eventual fall of the USA as world superpower?

[narveen]

I gave up soda after seeing pantera in 2001. Got a big mt dew after the show and omg the syrupeyness did nothing for my extreme.thirst, rather the opposite. But I couldn't leave to get a water during the show since we snuck into the pit area to begin with. Interesting on the kd stones...

 

sounds like you are a compulsive obsessive health freak, joe.

do you know what can destroy flesh?

the sun.

[narveen]

This one cracks me up. Don't know if it's real or not, but I wouldn't be surprised.

I have few regrets this life, but one is that I drank that shit for my entire youth up to about 30.

If I could go back and give myself some advice it would be, drop the soda and the dairy dude.

 

talk about ingrates.

if you have dropped the soda, you would have kidney stones.

[narveen]

free market is every bit the fantasy democracy is. Every bit the fantasy the republic was. When the string pullers purposefully break the price discovery mechanism there is no way you can have anything resembling a true free market.

 

let me wise you up. there is the ideal for suckers (99%) and the reality for the rest of men.

 

free market ideal: farmers' market where snotty people bring their kids on weekends.

free market reality: no holds barred, dog-eat-dog, winner takes all financial markets where even communists participate.

 

It's not about net worth, its about constitutional abuse. It's just that the money silences most. I sed to want to defend the ideals, I still do...but when you realize how far away from the ideals and the trajectory is only carrying the lot further away from them...why say anything that could be construed as preserving the status quo?

 

it's about net worth, pal.

money talks.

you don't really believe that we are living in a republic where all men are born equal, do you?

reality check: 1% of the citizens owns half the net worth of the usa.

7 trillion dollars in the pockets of america's best and brightest.

 

you can sit at the poker table because you are a citizen.

but you can't play if you have no money, you can only watch.

and if you have a billion dollars or more, then you are a player.

 

you don't like the set up because it sucks?

then blow the whistle, occupy it all.

then you will have a worse set up: china

where 0.1% owns all the net worth of the nation.

and everybody is equal.

Edited July 10, 2013 by narveen

[narveen]

Do you want the grass-fed piedmont burger meal, or just the burger? the meal comes with onion rings or chicken nuggets on the side.

 

i don't really care as long as it - including the goddam cow - is made in the middle kingdom: america.

[joeblast]

Not sure what the heck point you're trying to make. The problem.isn't that there's rich.people, or.that if you're.broke your options are necessarily limited. The problem.is that civil.servants whore their.positions for personal gain. Aka corruption.

 

If the government performed.the function it was designed for without the majority of civil servants.being on the take, at the expense of the integrity of the government itself...

 

Who was it,.death threat, that wrote "social.decay, because we're ruled.by liars..."

[narveen]

Not sure what the heck point you're trying to make. The problem.isn't that there's rich.people, or.that if you're.broke your options are necessarily limited. The problem.is that civil.servants whore their.positions for personal gain. Aka corruption. If the government performed.the function it was designed for without the majority of civil servants.being on the take, at the expense of the integrity of the government itself... Who was it,.death threat, that wrote "social.decay, because we're ruled.by liars..."

 

the point i am trying to make is that when the sheep is leading the herd, it's disaster.

arab spring, occupy wall street, whistle blower

you guys think you can fix it.

fact is you can't, and never can.

dog eat dog.

 

it's an ugly world, joe.

grow up.

[voidisyinyang]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,190947,00.html

 

Greenpeace: McDonald's Fueling Rainforest Destruction

http://reporterbrasil.org.br/documentos/amazonsoya.pdf

 

Eating the Amazon report pdf link

 

 

 

[voidisyinyang]

Friday, December 31, 2010

Cargill: Our Taxes, Global Destruction!


MAR. 2, 2000 – EDITORIAL/OPINIONS
————————————————� �————————————————� ��—————— Cargill: Our taxes, global destruction

Minnetonka-based Cargill is often noted as the world’s largest private corporation, with reported annual sales of over $50 billion and operations at any given time in an average of 70 countries. The “Lake Office” of Cargill is a 63-room replica of a French chateau; the chairman’s office is part of what was once the chateau’s master-bedroom suite.

A family empire, the Cargills and the MacMillans control about 85 percent of the stock. Not only the largest grain trader in the world, with over 20 percent of the market, Cargill dominates another 12 sectors, including destructive speculative finance, according to “Invisible Giant: Cargill and its Transnational Strategies,” by Brewster Kneen.

Taking advantage of the capitalist speculative collapse of 1873, Cargill quickly bought up grain elevators. After vast cooperation with the state-sponsored railroad robber barons, central grain terminals averaged extremely high annual returns on investments of 30 to 40 percent between 1883 and 1889. Cargill hired a Chase Bank vice president to secretly help the corporation through the Depression, writes Dan Morgan in “Merchants of Grain.”

“There are only a few processing firms,” and “these firms receive a disproportionate share of the economic benefits from the food system,” states William D. Heffernan, professor of rural sociology at the University of Missouri. Details of Cargill’s price manipulations at the expense of farmers worldwide was documented in the classic study, “Food First: Beyond the Myth of Scarcity” by Frances Moore Lappe and Joseph Collins. They report that Cargill has had a history of receiving elite government price information that should be told to U.S. farmers.

That secrecy, along with tax-subsidized market control, enables Cargill to buy from U.S. farmers at extremely low prices and then sell abroad to nations pressured under the same destructive elite corporate control. See the Institute for Food and Development Policy’s Web Site at www.foodfirst.org (http://www.foodfirst.org)....

Between 1985 and 1992, the legal entity called Cargill received $800.4 million in tax subsidies via the Export Enhancement Program, a continuation of the infamous “Food for Peace” policy, writes Kneen. Promoted by Hubert H. Humphrey and instituted as PL 480, food became a Cold War tool, i.e. “for Peace.” If we can induce people to “become dependent on us for food,” then “what is a more powerful weapon than food and fiber?” Humphrey declared, according to “Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies” by Noam Chomsky.

Actually, most of the nation recipients of tax-subsidized Cargill food dumping were, and are, net exporters of food already — policies imposed by colonial trading patterns. The food (for Peace) has been bought cheaply by neocolonial regimes, and then sold at a huge discount on the local market — in Somalia, for example, at one-sixth of the local prices. Many examples of these misguided policies can be found in “Betraying the National Interest: How US Foreign AID Threatens Global Security by Undermining the Political and Economic Stability of the Third World,” by Frances Moore Lappe, et al.

Cargill’s undercutting wipes out the local farmers’ self-reliance, while the revenues (going to the elite) are tied to required purchases of U.S. weapons, writes Chomsky, citing “The Soft War” by Tom Barry, 1988. But the main beneficiary of “Food for Peace” has been Cargill. Keen writes, “From 1954 to 1963, just for storing and transporting P.L. 480 commodities, the heavily subsidized giant Cargill made $1 billion.”

Indian lawyer N.J. Nanjundaswamy reports that a Cargill motto is, “One who controls the seed, controls the farmer, and one who controls the food trade, controls the nation.” Yudof’s recently stated support of federal foreign policy Title XII is another public promotion of the University of Minnesota-Cargill partnership’s raiding of sustainable agricultural cultures.

Cargill is such a damaging threat that in Dec. 1992, 500,000 peasants marched against corporate-controlled trade, and the irate farmers ransacked Cargill’s operations. Fifty people were arrested at the partially completed — and subsequently destroyed — seed-processing plant in Bellary, India. In 1996, 1,000 Indian farmers gathered at Cargill’s office and destroyed Cargill’s records. For more, see www.endgame.org (http://www.endgame.org)...

Cargill has been doing bio-piracy, stealing traditional products. For instance, it used Basmati, a rice from India, as its trade name, and the company continues to be one of the main promoters of corporate-driven intellectual property rights. The U.S. Trade Act, Special 301 Clause, allows the United States to take unilateral action against any country that does not open its market to U.S. corporations.

The United States, for example, has threatened to use trade sanctions against Thailand for its attempt to protect biodiversity. A bill that has been before parliament in India and promoted by Cargill, “takes away all the farmers’ rights, which they have enjoyed for generations — they will no longer be able to produce new varieties of seed or trade seed amongst themselves,” writes Nanjundaswamy.

The research center, Rural Advancement Foundation International, found that “fifteen African states, among them some of the poorest countries in the world, are under pressure to sign away the right of more than 20 million small-holder farmers to save and exchange crop seed. The decision to abandon Africa’s 12,000-year tradition of seed-saving will be finalized at a meeting in the Central African Republic. The 15 governments have been told to adopt draconian intellectual property legislation for plant varieties in order to conform to a provision in the World Trade Organization.”

Cargill, with extensive funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development, is also destroying the world’s largest wetland — the Pantanal, in South America — in order to dredge a channel that’s designed for convoys of up to 16 soybean- and soymeal-carrying barges, according to the Institute on Food and Development Policy.

Cargill has been on the Council of Economic Priorities’ list of worst environmental offenders. Mother Jones magazine and Earth Island Journal report that Cargill is responsible for 2,000 OSHA violations, a 40,000-gallon spill of phosphoric solution into Florida’s Alafia River, poor air pollution compliance and record-high releases of toxic waste.

With help from the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy, located at www.poclad.org (http://www.poclad.org)..., states have recently begun to respond to citizen pressure and revoke corporate charters. The assets of Cargill should be revoked, allowing the citizens of the United States to give farmers the benefits of fair trade instead of Cargill’s secretive policy of tax-subsidized global destruction.

by drew hempel, anti-copyright

[joeblast]

the point i am trying to make is that when the sheep is leading the herd, it's disaster.

arab spring, occupy wall street, whistle blower

you guys think you can fix it.

fact is you can't, and never can.

dog eat dog.

 

it's an ugly world, joe.

grow up.

the point I am trying to make is that it is a wolf in shepherd's clothing leading the herd. If you're ok with just accepting rot as is,well, whatever, that is your prerogative. Don't know what you are telling me to grow up for outside of your own argumentativeness.

[voidisyinyang]

 

Stop Cargill's destruction of the Amazon

By Drew Hempel, Special to the Daily Planet

http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/news/2006/06/29/stop-cargills-destruction-amazon

 

[joeblast]

Friday, December 31, 2010Cargill: Our Taxes, Global Destruction!

MAR. 2, 2000 – EDITORIAL/OPINIONS

————————————————� �————————————————� ��—————— Cargill: Our taxes, global destruction

Minnetonka-based Cargill is often noted as the world’s largest private corporation, with reported annual sales of over $50 billion and operations at any given time in an average of 70 countries. The “Lake Office” of Cargill is a 63-room replica of a French chateau; the chairman’s office is part of what was once the chateau’s master-bedroom suite.

A family empire, the Cargills and the MacMillans control about 85 percent of the stock. Not only the largest grain trader in the world, with over 20 percent of the market, Cargill dominates another 12 sectors, including destructive speculative finance, according to “Invisible Giant: Cargill and its Transnational Strategies,” by Brewster Kneen.

Taking advantage of the capitalist speculative collapse of 1873, Cargill quickly bought up grain elevators. After vast cooperation with the state-sponsored railroad robber barons, central grain terminals averaged extremely high annual returns on investments of 30 to 40 percent between 1883 and 1889. Cargill hired a Chase Bank vice president to secretly help the corporation through the Depression, writes Dan Morgan in “Merchants of Grain.”

“There are only a few processing firms,” and “these firms receive a disproportionate share of the economic benefits from the food system,” states William D. Heffernan, professor of rural sociology at the University of Missouri. Details of Cargill’s price manipulations at the expense of farmers worldwide was documented in the classic study, “Food First: Beyond the Myth of Scarcity” by Frances Moore Lappe and Joseph Collins. They report that Cargill has had a history of receiving elite government price information that should be told to U.S. farmers.

That secrecy, along with tax-subsidized market control, enables Cargill to buy from U.S. farmers at extremely low prices and then sell abroad to nations pressured under the same destructive elite corporate control. See the Institute for Food and Development Policy’s Web Site at www.foodfirst.org (http://www.foodfirst.org''>http://www.foodfirst.org'>http://www.foodfirst.org)....

Between 1985 and 1992, the legal entity called Cargill received $800.4 million in tax subsidies via the Export Enhancement Program, a continuation of the infamous “Food for Peace” policy, writes Kneen. Promoted by Hubert H. Humphrey and instituted as PL 480, food became a Cold War tool, i.e. “for Peace.” If we can induce people to “become dependent on us for food,” then “what is a more powerful weapon than food and fiber?” Humphrey declared, according to “Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies” by Noam Chomsky.

Actually, most of the nation recipients of tax-subsidized Cargill food dumping were, and are, net exporters of food already — policies imposed by colonial trading patterns. The food (for Peace) has been bought cheaply by neocolonial regimes, and then sold at a huge discount on the local market — in Somalia, for example, at one-sixth of the local prices. Many examples of these misguided policies can be found in “Betraying the National Interest: How US Foreign AID Threatens Global Security by Undermining the Political and Economic Stability of the Third World,” by Frances Moore Lappe, et al.

Cargill’s undercutting wipes out the local farmers’ self-reliance, while the revenues (going to the elite) are tied to required purchases of U.S. weapons, writes Chomsky, citing “The Soft War” by Tom Barry, 1988. But the main beneficiary of “Food for Peace” has been Cargill. Keen writes, “From 1954 to 1963, just for storing and transporting P.L. 480 commodities, the heavily subsidized giant Cargill made $1 billion.”

Indian lawyer N.J. Nanjundaswamy reports that a Cargill motto is, “One who controls the seed, controls the farmer, and one who controls the food trade, controls the nation.” Yudof’s recently stated support of federal foreign policy Title XII is another public promotion of the University of Minnesota-Cargill partnership’s raiding of sustainable agricultural cultures.

Cargill is such a damaging threat that in Dec. 1992, 500,000 peasants marched against corporate-controlled trade, and the irate farmers ransacked Cargill’s operations. Fifty people were arrested at the partially completed — and subsequently destroyed — seed-processing plant in Bellary, India. In 1996, 1,000 Indian farmers gathered at Cargill’s office and destroyed Cargill’s records. For more, see www.endgame.org (http://www.endgame.org''>http://www.endgame.org'>http://www.endgame.org)...

Cargill has been doing bio-piracy, stealing traditional products. For instance, it used Basmati, a rice from India, as its trade name, and the company continues to be one of the main promoters of corporate-driven intellectual property rights. The U.S. Trade Act, Special 301 Clause, allows the United States to take unilateral action against any country that does not open its market to U.S. corporations.

The United States, for example, has threatened to use trade sanctions against Thailand for its attempt to protect biodiversity. A bill that has been before parliament in India and promoted by Cargill, “takes away all the farmers’ rights, which they have enjoyed for generations — they will no longer be able to produce new varieties of seed or trade seed amongst themselves,” writes Nanjundaswamy.

The research center, Rural Advancement Foundation International, found that “fifteen African states, among them some of the poorest countries in the world, are under pressure to sign away the right of more than 20 million small-holder farmers to save and exchange crop seed. The decision to abandon Africa’s 12,000-year tradition of seed-saving will be finalized at a meeting in the Central African Republic. The 15 governments have been told to adopt draconian intellectual property legislation for plant varieties in order to conform to a provision in the World Trade Organization.”

Cargill, with extensive funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development, is also destroying the world’s largest wetland — the Pantanal, in South America — in order to dredge a channel that’s designed for convoys of up to 16 soybean- and soymeal-carrying barges, according to the Institute on Food and Development Policy.

Cargill has been on the Council of Economic Priorities’ list of worst environmental offenders. Mother Jones magazine and Earth Island Journal report that Cargill is responsible for 2,000 OSHA violations, a 40,000-gallon spill of phosphoric solution into Florida’s Alafia River, poor air pollution compliance and record-high releases of toxic waste.

With help from the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy, located at www.poclad.org (http://www.poclad.org''>http://www.poclad.org'>http://www.poclad.org)..., states have recently begun to respond to citizen pressure and revoke corporate charters. The assets of Cargill should be revoked, allowing the citizens of the United States to give farmers the benefits of fair trade instead of Cargill’s secretive policy of tax-subsidized global destruction.

by drew hempel, anti-copyright

yeah, then you see Goldman and jpm acting as bank, port authority, uranium.miner, aluminum hoarding...what happened to banks only being allowed to be a bank?

[voidisyinyang]

[voidisyinyang]

yeah, then you see Goldman and jpm acting as bank, port authority, uranium.miner, aluminum hoarding...what happened to banks only being allowed to be a bank?

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ralph-nader/told-you-so_b_3423181.html

 

The actions of Wall Street brought us the financial collapse, the global recession, and the emergence of "Too Big to Fail" and "Too Big to Jail." Much of this is due to the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999. Repealing Glass-Steagall freed Wall Street from its regulatory restraints. Breaking down the wall between investment banks and commercial banking placed our country on the path to unfettered casino capitalism, gambling away other peoples' money such as pension plans and mutual funds. Soon after the repeal of Glass-Steagall, I approached then-Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers during a chance encounter on a flight to Boston. "Do you think the big banks have too much power?" I asked him.

 

"Not yet," was his reply.

[narveen]

the nsa is doing a great job tightening up security by watching everything including the fly on the wall.

only people with something to hide would have issues with that

drop the hypocrisy

be transparent as you would want your government to be transparent

then everything will be fine.

[idiot_stimpy]

the nsa is doing a great job tightening up security by watching everything including the fly on the wall.

only people with something to hide would have issues with that

drop the hypocrisy

be transparent as you would want your government to be transparent

then everything will be fine.

 

 

That only works if governments are not corrupt.

[narveen]

the point I am trying to make is that it is a wolf in shepherd's clothing leading the herd. If you're ok with just accepting rot as is,well, whatever, that is your prerogative. Don't know what you are telling me to grow up for outside of your own argumentativeness.

 

i am not ok with being conned

so i have no illusions about the shepherd.

i don't live with it, i deal with it.

not by formenting hatred for the shepherd

not by instigating the herd

 

grown ups don't curse the darkness

grown ups switch on the damn light.

[narveen]

 

Stop Cargill's destruction of the Amazon

By Drew Hempel, Special to the Daily Planet

http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/news/2006/06/29/stop-cargills-destruction-amazon

 

cargill is doing what cargill does best.

you are living in the forest.

if you are the prey, watch out for predators.

antelopes don't whine, they run

be realistic like other animals

they deal with the situation

you should too.

Edited July 11, 2013 by narveen

[narveen]

 

why didn't congress hear tice out if indeed there had been violations of the rights of american people?

in other words, why didn't the american people pay any heed to tice?

[narveen]

Greenpeace: McDonald's Fueling Rainforest Destruction

 

McDonald's feeding the poor.

 

Eating the Amazon report pdf link

 

if the allegation is sane

then it's the poor eating the Amazon

[voidisyinyang]

[voidisyinyang]

McDonald's feeding the poor.

 

 

if the allegation is sane

then it's the poor eating the Amazon

 

http://www.uspirg.org/news/usp/house-narrowly-rejects-modest-bipartisan-measure-limit-subsidies-largest-agribusinesses

 

At a time when America faces an obesity epidemic, billions in subsidies underwrite the production of junk food additives. Between 1995 and 2011, U.S. PIRG research found that $18.2 billion subsidized four common junk food additives, including high-fructose corn syrup. That’s enough to buy every kid under 18 in the U.S. eight 2-liter bottles of soda every year. By contrast, the subsidies for apples — the only fruit or vegetable that gets significant subsidies — would pay for less than half of an apple for each taxpayer every year.

 

House Narrowly Rejects Modest Bipartisan Measure to Limit Subsidies for Largest Agribusinesses

 

 

McDonald’s eked out a higher profit for its first quarter, the company reported Friday, even though its aggressively promoted Dollar Menu did not lift sales.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/20/business/mcdonalds-profit-rises-but-year-over-year-sales-fall.html

 

 

The McDonald’s Corporation is the largest owner of retail property in the world. Indeed, the company earns the majority of its profits not from selling food but from collecting rent.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/schlosser-fast.html

 

 

 

One reason is federal subsidies for food production. Take a look at these numbers:

• Meat/Dairy — 73.8 percent
• Grains — 13.2 percent
• Sugar/Oil/Starch/Alcohol — 10.7 percent
• Nuts/Legumes — 1.9 percent
• Vegetables/Fruits — 0.4 percent

 

Want to know why a McDonalds burger is often cheaper than a healthy salad? Look no further than government subsidies to Wall Street.

http://iflizwerequeen.com/2010/05/04/want-to-know-why-a-mcdonalds-burger-is-often-cheaper-than-a-healthy-salad-look-no-further-than-government-subsidies-to-wall-street_q_5245.html

 

 

Every year the American taxpayers fork over $19 billion in farm subsidies. $18.6 billion of these farm subsidies go to large Wall Street agribusinesses and rich “gentlemen” farmers like Nelson Rockefeller. Only $350 million of these subsidies are paid to the small American farmers who still live on the the land that they farm.

 

So these agribusiness subsidies to fastfood are creating mass starvation around the world and obesity in the U.S. and other Western corporate-state fascist empires.

 

 

The reason we have the problem of displaced persons from Mexico who are working in our nation is largely due to taxpayer funded corporate welfare combined with NAFTA which removed protective tariffs from the Mexican corn farmer who could not compete with the heavily subsidized corn commodities from US agribusinesses like Archer Daniel Midland and others. Until NAFTA, the illegal Mexican population had been stable for years at under 2 million.

Today, 16 years after the passage of NAFTA, we have an estimated 12 million displaced persons from Mexico in our nation.

 

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2011-10-03/national/35276732_1_direct-subsidy-payments-commodity-crops-myplate

 

 

USDA subsidies aren’t about food security, because they do little to lower the price of most of what people put in their mouths, said Ben Lilliston of the Minneapolis-based Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, a group that opposes subsidies on the grounds that they promote the production of unhealthful food by big business.

Edited July 11, 2013 by pythagoreanfulllotus

[voidisyinyang]

Philip Knight, CEO of Nike is the sixth richest man in America.He is worth $12 billion and profits immensely from sweatshop labor.

 

http://injusticefacts.wordpress.com/

 

[narveen]

That only works if governments are not corrupt.

 

governments are run by people

governments are corrupt because people are corrupt

we are the corrupt people.

 

would you prefer us corrupt people to be governed by a computer?

[narveen]

 

does mr gerald celente expect me to believe

that if we chucked out all the politicians in the white house and congress

and make him us president to run the country with absolute power

the american people will be better off?

 

get outa here.

[voidisyinyang]

governments are run by people

governments are corrupt because people are corrupt

we are the corrupt people.

 

would you prefer us corrupt people to be governed by a computer?

 

 

 

http://www.poclad.org/

 

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d113:hjres29:

 

 

H.J.RES.29

Latest Title: Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States providing that the rights extended by the Constitution are the rights of natural persons only.

Sponsor: Rep Nolan, Richard M. [MN-8] (introduced 2/14/2013) Cosponsors (1)

Related Bills: H.J.RES.21

Latest Major Action: 2/28/2013 Referred to House subcommittee. Status: Referred to the Subcommittee on the Constitution And Civil Justice.

 

May 2013 Poclad Article DEMOCRACY IS COMING… TO THE USA

http://www.poclad.org/BWA/2013/BWA_2013_May.html

 

 

 

Judge O’Dell-Seneca observed that the Pennsylvania state constitution says men and women come into this world with ‘certain inherent and indefeasible rights’ and continued that,

 

“There are no men or women defendants in the instant case; they are various business entities…legal fictions, existing not by natural birth but by operations of state statutes…Such business entities cannot have been ‘born equally free and independent,’ because they were not born at all. Indeed, the framers of our constitution could not have intended for them to be ‘free and independent,’ because, as the creations of the law, they are always subservient to it.

The various states…allow for business entities to exist but are not required to establish them. In the absence of state law, business entities are nothing. Once created, they become property of the men and women who own them, and, therefore, the constitutional rights that business entities may assert are not coterminous or homogeneous with the rights of human beings. Were they so, the chattel would become the co-equal to its owners, the servant on par with its masters, the agent the peer of its principals, and the legal fabrication superior to the law that created and sustains it.”