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The old world capitalists monopolized the sale of needed things and
used thugs to police their turf. This made their largest concerns
analytically indistinguishable from the forms of conventional
organized crime (watch The Gangs of New York) prevalent at the time,
and ushered in the age of the robber barons. The new world order
capitalists recognize the inefficiency for capital of limiting itself
to serving established needs with low (but still higher than would
result from real commercial competition) price commodities meeting
real needs and has shifted to creating one novel need after another
for which pre-organized monopolies exist, prepared to meet this new,
manufactured need at premium prices. Thus are the poor, the weak and
the uninformed dispossessed.
The multinational pharmaceutical industry is the poster child for
this new approach to business. These new capitalist formations draw
their inspiration from traditional forms of organized crime
(protection rackets) and are totally integrated with organized crime
syndicates through the magic of an unregulated international
financial system and a tightly controlled system of interlocking
multinational corporate directorates. Students of objective reality
might consider looking at Narcodollars for Dummies by Fitts to
learn about the role of organized crime in the economy.
Power over life and death is the apex of power, and can readily be
turned into vast treasure through extortion. Through the agency of
international finance, health care in the US (as I monotonously
repeat) has, by strict definition, become an arm of international
crime syndicates. Of course this would not be possible were the
consequences of this take over easy for folks to see.
But this sort
of really, really big confidence game cannot work without a thorough
cover-up which, largely because of its unimaginable scale, is
paradoxically easy to do. When crimes are too big to understand, the
giant institutions that author them come to be deemed "too big to
fail," and therefore too big to punish — and we, the public, have to
suffer the indignity of financing our own ruin with our tax dollars.
The "march of freedom" is not, as our highly-paid professional liars
tell us, the imposition of "democracy" by force on unwilling people,
but rather the growing realization by the common person that they can
never place their trust in a government that they do not control.
When people are put on medicines that they don't need and can't
afford, and are led to the belief (often shared by the doctor who is
similarly acting in a fog of lies and propaganda) that these
medicines are life-saving, when people are forced into bankruptcy due to
medical bills (more than half of all bankruptcies), that is just
extortion. Highly organized, gigantic scale, greatly hidden
extortion, but simple extortion nonetheless.
It is a question of,
"Your money or your life." It might be considered armed robbery if
you were willing to accept, as I do, that the highly technical and
inaccessible professional medical knowledge is, in fact, a lethal
weapon when used in this way. The lethality of the for-profit
medical system is unknown to the general public. It has to be that
way for the crime wave to continue.
On a related note, here in Missoula from where I
write, just this week executives of W. R. Grace Co. (Mr. Grace having been a
crucial supporter of Reagan, the founder of the concept of robber
presidents) have been acquitted of the charge of knowingly selling to the public
vermiculite (a light-weight mineral used extensively for insulation
until recently) contaminated with asbestos, resulting in
more than a thousand recorded deaths in the town of Libby, Montana, where the mine
was, and an untold number of deaths from exposure of the general
public (which continues from construction prior to 1990 or so), and
even more cases of ruined health and despair.
So, let me get this
straight — a murky story of "terrorists" killing three thousand people
in New York results in a war of revenge on Iraq (which was never a
realistic source of the crime) and Afghanistan that has killed over a
million, mostly women, children and the elderly, destroyed
So, let me get this straight — a murky story of "terrorists" killing three thousand people in New York results in a war of revenge on Iraq (which was never a realistic source of the crime) and Afghanistan that has killed over a million, mostly women, children and the elderly, destroyed these countries with "weapons of mass destruction" including spreading uranium all over the place, which will continue to claim victims in perpetuity.
Whereas, a well documented case of mass murder by the executives of W. R. Grace is legitimized in Federal court.
these
countries with "weapons of mass destruction" including spreading
uranium all over the place, which will continue to claim victims in
perpetuity. Whereas, a well documented case of mass murder by the
executives of W. R. Grace is legitimized in Federal court.
Really
folks, who is kidding who? How long are we going to put up with
being slaughtered for profit and being made enemy of the
world due to our government being used for an even greater mass
slaughter of innocents abroad? Are we ready to realistically experience
the fact that what goes around comes around?
Hammurabi was a ruler in ancient Mesopotamia, famous for his Code of
Hammurabi, written in 1760 BCE, nearly four thousand years ago. He is quoted as saying that the
main challenge of ruling was to prevent the strong from "smiting the
weak." Now that government has been at the job of protecting the
weak from the strong for four thousand years with no apparent
significant success, perhaps it is time to reconsider this role for
government as a non-starter. What has been proven beyond a doubt, in
my not so humble opinion, is that the weak must take up the task of
protecting themselves.
The "march of freedom" is not, as our highly-paid professional liars
tell us, the imposition of "democracy" by force on unwilling people,
but rather the growing realization by the common person that they can
never place their trust in a government that they do not control.
The people cannot control this current world-wide orgy of crime by
seeking to reform and improve the institution of government. Even
when this strategy seems to work, as in Cuba for example, it works
only to make the people who have replaced sociopathic government the
enemies of the world system of control by sociopathic elements.
Being smart all by yourself brings a world of hurt.
So the challenge is actually simple, if seemingly insurmountable: We,
the common people of the world, have to identify with each others'
plight, recognize that an injustice to one is truly an injustice to
all, and come together as a whole, undifferentiated world population
to assert our
human rights and remove the criminally insane from
power by destroying the power itself.
We are all Frodo. We all have
to understand that the ring of power must be destroyed, not used in
some fantasy of power for the good.
The challenge is not as great as
it seems, because without us the centralized institutions of
oppression cannot survive. All centralized, monolithic institutions
need to be destroyed, and replaced by local institutions working
cooperatively and in the firm control of ordinary people. When just
a few take this route, failure is assured, but the day when enough people
understand this and decide to move, without following some inevitably
phony vanguard political ideology, just stop taking it any more and
go out on a world-wide general strike, will be the beginning of a new
era for our species.
Or lacking that we can just continue to slide
into guaranteed mutual destruction. It actually is a choice.
The people spontaneously united will never be defeated.
#5/15/2009:
Wow! Concise, articulate and passionate.
"Don't feel bad, most species of large mammal die off ... it's just our turn."
Like the URL says, this website is about unknown news. Once weekly we shout "stop the presses" and post a page of news that merits more attention, all from mainstream, professional journalists, or (rarely) other sources we trust entirely.
Why only once a week? Because the 24-hour news cycle moves far too fast for most of us to keep up with. In the media's flood of coverage of some celebrity's death or drunken arrest, important news might be mentioned once and then forgotten, so we try to stop the presses and pause for a moment to ponder the news that's not known, or not known enough.
What we believe
We believe in liberty and justice for all, so of course, we oppose many US government policies. This doesn't mean we're anti-American, redneck scum, pinko commies, militia members, or terrorist-sympathizers. It means we believe in freedom, as more than merely a cliché.
We believe you have the right to live your own life as you choose, and others have the equal right to live their lives as they choose. It's not complicated.
We believe freedom leads to peace, progress, and prosperity, while its opposite — oppression — leads to war, terrorism, poverty, and misery.
We believe it's preposterously stupid to hate people because of their appearance, their race or nationality, their religion or lack of religion, how they have sex with other consenting adults, etc. There are far more apropos reasons to hate most people.
We believe in questioning ourselves, our assumptions, each other — and we especially believe in questioning authority (the more authority, the more questions). We believe obedience is a fine quality in dogs and young children, but not in adults.
Like America's right-wingers, we believe in
individual responsibility,
hard work to get ahead,
and stern punishment for serious crimes.
We believe big government should not be blindly trusted.
But unlike most right-wing leaders, we mean it.
Like America's left-wingers, we believe in
equal treatment under law,
war as a last (not first) resort,
and sensible stewardship of natural resources.
We believe big business should not be blindly trusted.
But unlike most left-wing leaders, we mean it.
Like libertarians, we believe it's wrong and reprehensible to arrest people for what they think, believe, look like, wear, eat, smoke, drink, inhale, inject, or otherwise do to themselves.
But unlike many libertarians, we're not obsessed with the gold standard, we don't believe incorporation is humanity's highest achievement, and we don't believe everything in life comes down to dollars and cents. We've read and enjoyed Ayn Rand's novels, but we understand that they're works of fiction.
We're skeptical, and we're sick of so-called 'journalists' who aren't skeptical at all.
A reader asks, what are our solutions?
We propose no solutions except common sense, which is never common. We like the principles of democracy, and the ideals broadly described as 'American'. The US Constitution is a fine and workable framework for solutions, when it's actually read and thoughtfully understood by intelligent statesmen and women. So, no manifestos from us. We don't dream that big, and if there's one thing the world doesn't need it's yet another manifesto.
Our suggestion is: think.
A fact-based instead of faith-based approach leads to solutions for most of the recurring issues of our time, from abortion to global climate change, pollution to universal health care, careful but real regulation of industry and economy, hunger, war, terror, human rights for humans not for corporations, science not religious doctrine in public schools, equal protection and prosecution under law, etc. Approach problems without glorifying stupidity, without demonizing intelligence, and answers usually come into focus.
These pages are published by Harry and Helen Highwater, happily married low-income nom de plumes and rabble-rousers from Madison, Wisconsin (with a few friends scattered around the world helping out).
We try to spotlight news that hasn't gotten enough (or appropriate) attention in American media, along with our opinions and yours.
We bang our keyboards against the wall, because it doesn't hurt as much as banging our heads.
