I watched the news today, oh boy...

[BO]

Interesting news day today. Here's a summary:

1. The US plans to shoot down a [supposedly] dying satellite before it spins out of orbit and kills millions. The real news: The US wants to test a new anti-ballistic missile. I'm sure the Russians and Chinese are thrilled.

2. Another college shooting. Hardly news-worthy anymore now that they've become so common. Question is: Has it become too risky to send your kid off to college?

3. The housing market is still fucked. And getting fucked-ter. People walking away from their homes in droves. Prices expected to come down another 25%.

4. The fed was all over the teevee today telling people the economy wasn't doing so well and bond insurers might start to default soon. The real news: Depression on the way. Fasten your seat belts, folks. Oh wait, I forgot about the rebate. Yeah right, that'll save us.

5. And my favorite: All misplaced Katrina folk have to move out of their FEMA trailers due to formaldehyde poisoning--all 35,000 of 'em. How ironic. Gee, I wonder what effect this might have on the mobil home/RV industry? And of course, the lawyers are all over it.

Did I miss anything?

[Mark]

Sorry, BO. They were here first. We illegally invaded and annexed large parts of Mexico. Then we added it to the territory we had gained by genocidally exterminating Native Americans. If anyone should go back to the fucked up countries from which we came, it's us.

We've been in the business of overthrowing democratically elected leaders and installing right-wing dictators favorable to Rockefeller business interests in Central and South America for decades, just as we're doing now in Honduras.

We send in our military whenever a country tries to protect its forests, minerals, and land from foreign exploitation, and then we cry about global warming.

There may be a few countries in the world as fucked up as the United States, a few tiny dictatorships that don't allow their citizens to have health care unless they're rich, but they're not the world's sole stupidpower--we are.

I know you feel that you're under siege by immigrants, just as Israel feels it is under siege by Arabs. The reality is somewhat different. The worse off are not oppressing the better off, quite the opposite.

We pushed through NAFTA so Monsanto could dump corn in Mexico below cost and turn a corn-producing country into a corn-importing country, and in the process millions of Mexican farmers were forced off their lands. Where did we want them to go? They know who forced them off their lands in pursuit of private profits. We sent our death squads to El Salvador to prevent them from having a democratically elected leftist leader--where did we expect people terrorized by U.S. death squads to go? Small farmers, people who lived peacefully, were invaded by U.S.-sponsored death squads pretending to look for "Communists" (anyone who wanted to retain their own land instead of letting Rockefeller have it, was a Communist) who killed them in the most horrible ways possible, and we taught them what Americans are like and how to be like us, so they came here and are merely trying to assimilate.

To assimilate into a genocidal nation that uses death squads and wars of aggression so that David Rockefeller can exploit most of the earth for profit through his shell corporations and his puppet governments.

They may achieve some success, eventually, but so far they are nowhere near as violent and greedy as we are. Not even close.

[BO]

At some point in time, we need to get beyond the past and take a look at what is...now. Besides, Spain certainly has its own sins to account for.

What matters now is the pace at which 'the globalists' are destroying US sovereignty and eliminating our once-vibrant middle-class. Illegal immigration is one of the tools they've employed to achieve that goal. Its all about cheap labor and replacing an aging population. And sticking the few remaining working people in this country with the bill.

Neofeudalism: an entrenched, fabulously wealthy elite, held in place by low taxes on capital and no taxes on estates; and a large and growing class of uneducated, unskilled labor brought in by unchecked immigration (both legal and illegal), and kept in check by high levels of personal debt, and high taxes on earned income (payroll, income, sales, property, etc.)

Globalism: You won't like it! But then again, I guess some do.

[Mark]

I don't think U.S. sovereignty is a good thing, BO.

Capitalists always have a need for cheap labor. The globalists (not just the Spanish, but also the English, Dutch, and many others) filled that need here with prisoners, indentured servants, imported slaves, immigrants, and debtors prisons, as they constantly fought to conquer new territories that they could exploit.

When you have smallholdings, people do their own labor and don't need to exploit others.

I'm still reading Rushkoff's book, Life, Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How To Take It Back, and I hadn't known until this morning that people were better off materially in the so-called Dark Ages than today:

"Sometimes called the 'first Renaissance,' the late Middle Ages offered an enviable quality of life for ordinary people. The working class enjoyed four meals a day, usually of three or four courses. They worked six hours a day, and just four or five days a week--unless they were celebrating one of about one hundred fifty annual holidays. Medievalists from François Icher to D. Damaschke almost unanimously agree that between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, the quality of life of Europeans was better than at any other period in history, including today. In addition to metrics such as demographic expansion and urban development, measures of health and well-being also surpass our own. Women were taller during these centuries than in any other period. Over the past half century, men have finally surpassed their eleventh-century ancestors--and this only since the advent of meat and milk hormones, which offer us our size as a side-effect, not a feature.
[...]

Historians like to blame the plague for Europe's subsequent loss of half its people and all its prosperity. But it would be far more accurate to blame the shift in monetary policy for both the poverty and pestilence that followed. By the time the plague hit, a dramatic decline in the standard of living and population numbers was already under way. Unable to earn a living on their farms or in town, people migrated to cities for jobs as unskilled day laborers in dirty and dangerous workshops. With less money to spare, towns made fewer investments in basic sanitation. The increase in forced loyalty to central patriarchal authorities and their particularly Christian traditions led to the repression of pagan practices, folk remedies, and women's access to work. As a result, people's access to health care diminished as well."

Rushkoff blames the decline on the way that kings, in order to preserve the monopolies of their chartered corporations, banned local currencies and mandated central currencies. Central currencies do not allow wealth to remain where it is produced, but centralize profits.

The problem with moving along and not looking back is, of course, that we keep making the same mistakes. By the time that we realize that the enemy is us, not "them," it is usually too late because we've already destroyed what we perceived to be the enemy. When the chickens come home to roost, they are our chickens. They don't hate us for our freedoms, they hate us for taking away their freedoms.

Globalism didn't begin with Jimmy Carter, George Bush, or King George, and that definition of neofeudalism displays an ignorance of what feudalism was. The feudal estates didn't bring in serfs, they enslaved their own peasants. Only when they set off to conquer other territories and had to exterminate natives who wouldn't submit, did they have to import cheap labor the way this country's founders did.

[Mark]

Military pull activist into unmarked car at G20 protests


More of the story at greenisthenewred.com

Ya think those guys in military fatigues are undocumented immigrants, BO? They look pretty violent to me. But I don't think they could have driven through police lines without proper ID and authorization. Not in this police state.

It isn't immigrants, Jews, environmentalists, Communists, homosexuals, or any other scapegoat. The problem is fascists--same problem it has always been.

[BO]

Well, seeing as they're arresting protestors at a G20 event, I'd say they were functioning more as agents for the globalists...which is what I referred to in my previous post.

I think we can agree on who/what the problem is. It's treating the symptoms that seems to be at issue.

[Mark]

On the contrary, BO, I think we can agree on what the symptoms are, but not yet on what the problem is. ;)

[Cal]

The 'problem' must be quite deeply rooted in most of us ... whether genetically coded or socially encoded I'm not sure. Mark is spot on with his ideological views. But here sit people like Bo & I who understand and embrace those ideologies, but don't want other people mucking with our stuff and wish they would go back to where they came from. I have some difficulty short of a complete manic episode imagining how I would go about applying that belief in an ideology to my day to day existence here. I always found christians a strange breed - I though surely if they believed the story of jesus they would be passionately driven to pursue the same kind of life he did ... but they didn't. I am thinking I am not much different - agreeing with Mark's take on things and yet really not wanting to open my gates to the hordes outside waiting to help themselves. Is opening one's gates actually the only honest thing to do?

[BO]

Cal, could be the last one you help on board the life raft is the one that sinks it.

I'd be happy if we would simply remember that we are a country of laws. We have laws to protect ourselves from illegal immigration. That's why it's called illegal.

If the American people want to dismantle their borders it ought to be up to the American people. But as is happening throughout this country, the corrupting force of the oligarchs has destroyed our legal system. The American people have no recourse for the criminality that has taken root here. We have truly become a lawless land.

My own personal naiveté is in believing that the American people may yet wake up one day and demand their country back. But alas, it seems as though only the right wing is making moves in that direction. The left it seems, is quite happy with the theft of their country.

[Mark]

BO, there is no political left in this country, other than small groups. The two major parties are both right-wing, both pro-war, both pro-bailout, both pro-corporate, both anti-socialist, and both anti-left. Nobody on the left would have appointed Bernanke, Geithner, or Summers. Nobody on the left would wage wars of aggression. Nobody on the left would have approved the bailouts.

The Democrats and Republicans have cooperated to help the corporations steal this country. It isn't big government that stole the country--our government operates on behalf of corporations.

Waging wars of aggression is illegal, but both Democrats and Republicans voted for it. Torture is illegal, but both Democrats and Republicans voted for it. Immigration is the last of your problems--but that's what the wealthy elites want you to focus on so that you won't see how they stole your country.

When the U.S. establishes 800 military bases all over the world, it says it is defending or protecting U.S. business interests abroad.

There are no U.S. business interests. None. We are not a Communist or socialist country and we have no nationalized businesses.

We're a capitalist country. There is no U.S. corporation owned by the American people where the profits are divided equally among the American people.

What there are, are privately owned corporations where the profits go to the biggest shareholders. Most of them don't pay any taxes here at all, and the biggest ones are multinational rather than U.S. companies.
'
If the U.S. wants to defend Rockefeller's business interests, or some other individual's private business interests, the American taxpayer shouldn't have to foot the bill. We derive no benefit from those corporations They don't provide jobs here, they sell us crap, and we don't even get a discount on the crap in return for the taxes we pay to keep them in business.

When the United States government becomes a government of the people, and forms a worker-owned collective that is operated by the people, where the profits are distributed to the people and used for the people, then it will be able to say it is defending U.S. business interests abroad. Until then, it is defending private business interests. The war for Exxon-Mobil in Afghanistan and Iraq is not in defense of American interests, it is in defense of Rockefeller's privately owned oil interests.

Americans were fooled for a long time. Ask anyone in Detroit these days if what's good for General Motors is good for the country. I've used the analogy many times but it is like people who root for their home team all their lives, only to find out that it isn't their home team because the private owner moves it to a different city.

We need to take our governments back from the corporations. We need to take the world back from the corporations. Because if we don't, we will be the hordes. Corporations are cancers--they are predicated on limitless growth. When they run out of prey in one place, they ravage another. Sooner or later they will do unto us as we've enabled them to do unto others. They're already doing it. It may be too late. But it is always a big mistake to identify with the predators instead of with the prey.

We are not naturally predators. We are naturally cooperative. It takes constant brainwashing and social control to force us to act like predators. We're not wired that way. We're wired for empathy. None of the predator theories ever test out in the lab.

The left is socialist or communist, BO. You see any socialists or Communists in Congress or the White House? As the Democrats have moved farther and farther to the right, the Republicans have moved farther and farther to the extreme right. But neither of them were ever on the left. For much of my lifetime it was illegal to even be a member of the Communist Party in this country, and the Democrats are doing as much as the Republicans, if a bit less noisily, to protect private profits from the subversive concept of socialized medicine.

Every other developed country in the world has socialized medicine. Somehow, when we weren't looking, the whole world became socialist. Even our allies like England and Canada have socialized medicine. They even have a political left, weak and corrupted as it may be. They have Labor parties. Where's our Labor Party? That would be a party of the left, if there was one here.

Some of the biggest crimes were committed by the Bush administration, not that the Clinton administration didn't push through GATT and NAFTA and commit war crimes. Did the right oppose those crimes? Bush increased government tremendously. Did the right oppose it? Bush ran up a whopping deficit. Did the right oppose it? Or were they quite happy with the theft of their country?

Your personal naiveté is in believing that we have a right and a left here. We don't. We have a right and a far right. The American people will never be able to wake up and demand our country back if we don't know who stole it and how. It wasn't stolen by either political party, it was stolen by private corporate interests to which both political parties are beholden and obedient.

Do you know what bum fights are, BO? That's when some folks with money pay some poor people to fight each other. It is amusing and entertaining for the rich to see poor people fighting each other. Sometimes they do it without direct payments and on a larger scale through propaganda or false flag operations.

I don't know if you're rich, if you identify with the rich, or you're just a gullible "bum" who will happily blame your neighbors for what the rich have done to this country and to the world. But no illegal immigrant ever outsourced a single American job, no less hundreds of thousands of American jobs. No illegal immigrant forced Bush to call the Constitution a goddamned piece of paper and wipe his ass with it. No illegal immigrant made torture official U.S. policy. No illegal immigrant pushed through the Free Trade treaties that caused millions of Mexicans to lose their little farms. No illegal immigrant forced the Supreme Court to stop the vote count, nullify the election, and install the "president" of their choice in 2000. No illegal immigrant banned Americans from voting directly for President and Vice-President--it was our Constitution, written by land and slave holders who wanted to ensure that those who own the country, ruled the country, that denied us a voice in government. No illegal immigrant privatized elections so that 80% of our votes are counted secretly inside privately owned computers and can never be verified.

You can't take your country back if you don't know who stole it, BO.

I've used this analogy frequently:

A wealthy, important CEO outsourced 20,000 of his corporation's jobs to India one day. The company was in a large town and most of the people there worked for the company, so they were outraged. The citizens marched on the CEO's mansion. The CEO met them at the gate and said, "My fellow citizens, please don't take your anger out on me. I didn't take your jobs. You see that Mexican guy in rags with dirt on his face working in my garden? He's here illegally. He took your jobs, not me."

And the corporate CEO was so well-dressed, so respectable, and so convincing, that the crowd fell on the poor gardener and lynched him.

They never touched the CEO, because what he had done was totally legal. In fact, not only was it legal, but it was mandatory. As CEO he had a fiduciary duty to his stockholders to maximize profits by outsourcing American jobs to India. You can't attack a native-born American for just doing his job, can you?

Wake up, BO. You're being played.

[Mark]

I guess Jesus was a renunciate, Cal, but we're neither gods nor saints. And if the only honest thing to do is to really put ourselves in the place of the hordes, and treat them the way we'd want them to treat us if our places were reversed, we're not particularly honest either.

For me, being radical is a start. I do try to learn the roots and causes of social problems, and if I can't make things better, at least I can try not to make things worse. That's a cop out also, because I don't try very hard, but it beats not trying at all.

What I'd have expected of ordinary South Africans who were opposed to the Apartheid regime, wasn't to sacrifice their lives, as many did, but at a minimum, not to vote for it. And it turns out that's exactly what happened. Some tell me it didn't make much difference, but I know it made a difference to those who refused to support that which they opposed. Simply by not helping to legitimize Apartheid, they demonstrated to the world that Apartheid lacked the consent of the governed. Similarly, in Haiti there was a recent election boycott where only 3% of the population voted. It didn't change anything, but it proved that the Haitian regime was illegitimate and lacked the consent of the governed. That makes it harder for the U.S., which usually installs and props up corrupt dictatorships, to claim it is supporting legitimate governments. Now if Americans would just stop legitimizing our own government, it would have more difficulty installing and propping up corrupt governments and using death squads and military invasions to help Rockefeller's multinational corporations destroy the world and increase global poverty and desperation.

I like Mussolini's definition of fascism, the merger of business and government, because it pinpoints the problem. Governments should operate on behalf of people, not against people and for private profits.

If I can help eliminate the roots and causes of poverty and desperation, the hordes won't be trying to break down my door.

I have to ask myself if I have something of theirs. And the answer is yes. Almost everything I have is theirs and was stolen from them--taken from them by force. The computer I'm using contains coltan taken from the Congo. My government and other governments, on behalf of big corporations that need raw materials, funds warlords committing genocide in the Congo. Almost every material thing that I have was stolen by force from desperately poor people someplace else. If they break down my door, they're just coming to take back what is rightfully theirs. Only a very few things I enjoy, like coffee, are obtained in fair trade where the people who produce it get a fair price for what they produce. I pay anywhere from two to five times as much for fair trade goods and it is a bargain because what I'm really buying, hopefully, is my personal security. If I don't steal, I don't have to worry about people trying to get their stuff back.

If my country's policies make it impossible for small farmers to farm, I'm not going to blame those people for looking for ways to survive any where they can and any way they can. That's what I'd do in their place. When the U.S. government takes American taxpayer money and uses it to reward corporations for outsourcing U.S. jobs and importing cheap labor, I'm not going to blame the victims.

If hordes of poor and desperate people are knocking down my door, I want to know why they didn't stay wherever they came from. They don't have empires and multinational corporations, they don't have armies and bombs, they didn't just one day decide to invade my home because they thought it would enhance their shareholder profits. My country, on behalf of Rockefeller, invaded their homes, forced them off their land, and wants me to blame the victims.

I paid $12.00 for a report by Global Exchange entitled, The Right To Stay Home: Alternatives to Mass Displacement and Forced Migration in North America. The chapters in the book are:

A North America That Works For All Its People

The Right To Stay: Reactivate Agriculture, Retain the Population

Equality and Human Rights Instead of Displacement and Criminalization

To Regenerate What Is Ours

NAFTA and Immigration: Toward a Workable and Humane Integration

Contemplating Solutions to Migration Challenges

Migration and Development: Moving Beyond NAFTA

Reinventing the Traditions of the Lower Triqui Region

Against the Current: Looking for Altrnatives to Migration in the Mexican Countryside

A Mexican Labor Perspective on the Issues Facing Mexican Workers in the U.S.

The Unexpected Consequences of Deepening Integration: NAFTA and Immigration
-----------------------------------

While it is true that there are some immigrants who come here just for the money, they are usually the ones who are well to do to begin with. They are educated, well-traveled, and have become accustomed to a bloated lifestyle so they aren't satisfied with their own countries.

The poor immigrants, and particularly the undocumented, only come here because our government has forced them to. What they wanted was the right to stay home and what they want now is the right to return home. But now their land belongs to Monsanto, or Chiquita, or Dole, or Rockefeller, and their government is partnered with the U.S. on behalf of big corporations and against poor people. They didn't want our jobs, we wanted their land and we got it. If we can't get it by bribing their government, we get it by sending in death squads and taking it by force. The Mexican government cooperates with the U.S. The Honduran government didn't, and we just sponsored a coup to replace their democratically elected President.

Yes, if we continue to steal their stuff and force them off their lands, they will come here and try to knock down our doors. South Africa should have redistributed land and resources. It should have nationalized all the big corporations and used the proceeds to house, educate, and fund worker-owned collectives for the poor. South Africa abolished Apartheid the way that the U.S. abolished slavery: it didn't.

As Doug Rushkoff says (I can't find the quote at the moment but this is close), "A revolution is when people storm the palace gates and cut off the heads of those who have been exploiting them." When the exploiters remain in place and just get a more telegenic spokesperson, it isn't a revolution. There can be relatively peaceful revolutions as in Cuba and Venezuela, but they have to be constantly defended against the violent corporations that think they own everything they stole. How the hell can Venezuela "nationalize" a foreign oil company? That company may have been stealing Venezuela's oil for decades, and may have made billions of dollars in profits from that theft, but it was still theft. And Hugo Chavez actually paid some companies to leave. Paid them to stop stealing--instead of forcing them to give back what they'd stolen. And the U.S. calls him names for taking back for Venezuela what rightfully belongs to Venezuela?

Take a good look at most of the Cuban and Venezuelan immigrants in the U.S. The majority were rich and came here because they were afraid that they wouldn't be allowed to continue to be rich. They've not taking anybody's jobs--they never worked in their lives and they've not about to. The maids and gardeners and sweatshop and meat packing and fruit picking immigrants don't come from leftist countries--they come from fascist countries. They don't want our jobs, our stuff, or our lifestyles, they want to send money home to their families and to go home someday themselves if it ever becomes safe for them. If our Pinochets and Michilettis are ever ousted and if we ever allow democratically elected leaders who will put the interests of their own people before Rockefeller's business interests.

A poor person who has enough land to grow enough food to feed their family, doesn't usually wake up one day and say, "I think I'll abandon my family, become an undocumented immigrant in a country I don't know, and try to get rich through crime and violence." But when our death squads or our "Plan Mexico" funded troops burn down their village, ostensibly looking for Communists or drugs, those who survive come here and they aren't happy campers.

It doesn't matter if the theft was five minutes ago or five thousand years ago. It doesn't matter if I stole something personally or I just bought it cheap when I should have realized that anything that cheap had to be hot. There is no security in building thicker gates or killing the people we stole from or their descendants. The only possible security is to give back what was stolen, along with everything that was gained from that theft, and not do it again.

I'm living like a king or maharajah compared to the hordes. If I was them, I'd have broken down my door a long time ago. Maybe they are the gods or saints or just incredibly honest. But I want my government to stop stealing from them because maybe they're just human and they too have a breaking point.

[waldopaper]

Cal- I think you are way ahead of us Amerikkkaners in S. Afrika in the growth of conflict between the haves/nots whether they are refugees or IPs. not a particularly pleasant place to be... but you DO have more experience,

Where I am, "Christianity" is useless as tits on an iron frog... big-box "churches" used for "networking" and business purposes... very little philosophy and understanding... more rigamaroll and ritual. will do them precious little good if the lights go out and the toilets won't flush. i'm hearing lots of crappola from the whitebreads these days about "survival of the fittest" which (as Goering said) makes me want to "reach for my revolver."

In the US we have polarized into two groups who deeply despise each other ("liberals" and "conservatives") ... which has shit to do with what either of those words MEAN. we could use a healthy dose of "reconciliation" a-la S. Afrika... but I fear we are just waiting on an easier way to identify each other... so the killing can begin. Like the Hutus and Tutsis.

I am definitely part of the minority here in Dominionist Krakkkerland.

[waldopaper]

i guess i am lucky that galoots and cholos aren't a problem in my neighborhood yet. i expect if i have any problems with the indigenous personnel, it will be the tweekers... but it could also be with the sinking whitebread suburbanites... like the twit who threatened to shoot our puppy. i basically told him if i even SAW anything that looked like a firearm in range of our compound-- it best be made out of chocolate.

i make little distinction between immigrants and refugees. the former merely had a chance to escape with more papers and possessions. i care not a flatulent fart about why anybody is where they are. we gotta get along or get it on. i gotta do the best i can to make sure it's the former because i am not as good at the latter as i used to be, i gotta dig deep for inspiration this weekend as i am simply fried flat for the spiders as of this week... and they range from future saviors of civilization to galoots who should be on a chain gang... and everything in between. i choose to concentrate on the guiding lights... and will slap leather on the galoots who get in their way.

am now hobbled by a missing computer... using my boy's machine now... and the machines at the Unis must be used to keep up with the job-justifying "technology" that is increasingly bandwidth-sucking un-intuitive and stoopid. it fucks the spiders stuck out in the hinterland with naught but dial-up as the "distance education technology" only works on campus... and only part-time... for "security" reasons. too much to do and not enough time to encourage the spiders to migrate to the socialgo site... where i have told them they have "guardian angels" to tweak their text... and more importantly... feed their minds with links and life-experience. sorry if it seems a false alarm. they may yet come around. keep an eye out if ye could.

The bell-curve once again is doing its thing... about 10% of the wee spiders would make you weep as you would in the presence of Agnes of God... and for 10% I see no solution but a captive-bolt pistol. The remaining 80% are adrift... and to me-- the saddest quandary of all. Limbo. I am thinking of putting more teaching responsibility on the peer-generated Agnes of God folk.

What do YOU think?