[ExI] a good day for liberty

[Darren Greer]

John wrote:

>the problem is that our symbolic insurgency has been hijacked
by powerful corporate interests that with massive soft money slush
funds and insider lobbyists, make sure those elected do their bidding,
and to hell with the masses!

That alone wouldn't so successfully counter change if those same interests
hadn't manage to keep people divided and at at each other's throats by
decorating each party platform in its own brightly colored brand of moral
wall paper. Vote one way you're voting left and vote another way you're
voting right. When in fact, no matter which way you vote -- left or right --
the real agenda had little to do with social or moral reforms. Those are
just colored bubbles, to keep us all angry and emotional and feeling as if
we're actually accomplishing something when we elect a new government or
support the old one.

When it comes to turning a democracy into a plutocracy, neither the
democrats or republicans, or liberals and conservatives in my country, can
claim to be doing anything different. Glass-Steagel was repealed under
Clinton. Obama has made more Wall Street appointments than Bush.  Openly
right wing Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has on a number
of occasions rebuffed China on the grounds that they are human rights
abusers. Yet it doesn't take a genius to see that from a western corporate
stand-point Canada and its precious supply of oil and other
natural resources, which China needs and was negotiating with the
former elected government to acquire, must be kept as far away from them as
possible, and so hiding behind the guise of human rights in order
to alienate them is as corporate-minded, and as slimy, as it gets.

The problem is, you can't get at this stuff by listening to what you're told
on the evening news. You've got to do you're own digging and thinking. And
most people are just too busy, too tired,  too angry or  too trusting to do
it. I blame journalists a lot. I went to a good journalism school here in
Canada, and I know these guys aren't dumb. They see it. They talk about it
over drinks. But they rarely write about it. Just dumping information alone
is not enough, like Wikileaks did.  People need and want information to be
interpreted for them, and right now we have few media outlets doing that who
haven't been hi-jacked by corporate interests themselves. Those that are
free to say what they want are so concerned
with journalistic neutrality that they forget that those wishing to
manipulate them have no such principles.

I wish we had more journalists like Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi, who with
one no-holds-barred article kicked Goldman Sachs in the b***s and forced
them into the public eye. They've been scrambling to undo the public
relations damage ever since, but have not been able to successfully counter
one single accusation made in that piece.

Darren

On Sat, Dec 18, 2010 at 11:31 PM, John Grigg <possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com>wrote:

> Spike wrote:
> They must actually fight and win the war before there is any new
> constitution.  Since Americans vote, we now have a symbolic insurgency
> every
> two years.  It may be far more difficult to gain sufficient support for a
> revolution when we have that important symbolic rebellion in which we take
> part periodically.
> >>>
>
> Everyone seems to be forgetting the classic quote, "the winners write
> the history books!"
>
> Spike, the problem is that our symbolic insurgency has been hijacked
> by powerful corporate interests that with massive soft money slush
> funds and insider lobbyists, make sure those elected do their bidding,
> and to hell with the masses!  The recent bailouts of Wall Street,
> despite middle class outrage against it, proves my point.
>
> John
>
>
> On 12/18/10, Jebadiah Moore <jebdm at jebdm.net> wrote:
> > On Sat, Dec 18, 2010 at 6:19 PM, Damien Broderick
> > <thespike at satx.rr.com>wrote:
> >
> >> On 12/18/2010 4:02 PM, spike wrote:
> >>
> >>> taxation without representation is tyranny, and must be opposed.
> >>>
> >>
> >> Curiously enough, I have been in that situation for the last seven
> years.
> >> I
> >> pay US taxes on my earnings, but can't vote.
> >
> >
> > Residents of Washington, D.C. are in the same situation.  They have no
> > voting representatives in Congress.  Their license plates humorously
> reflect
> > this:
> >
> http://daviding.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/20071009_dc_license_plate.jpg
> >
> > --
> > Jebadiah Moore
> > http://blog.jebdm.net
> >
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-- 
*"Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines."
*
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