We must all hang together

[MannyGoldstein]

As I write, Greece's economic future is uncertain and China's stock market has fallen almost 30% in a few weeks.

The world economy is in flux. And it is the 99% that's getting @#$&ed, of course. Even in the US, for all we know, all of our FDIC insurance money that backs savings bank deposits could get evaporated by these foreign events, now that Jamie Dimon and our President successfully lobbied Congress to let the big banks use these deposits as collateral for risky bets.

Most people are told that World War II was caused by madmen in several countries that hypnotized their countrymen into performing unspeakable acts on a grand scale. That was part of it, but what's rarely told is what led up to, and enabled the madmen to do the persuading: savage economic war against the 99%.

I'm most familiar with the German story, having studied it a bit, and here's my understanding: the German 99% had been @#$&ed over by their 1% for years. Several groups sprung up to tap the 99%'s anger. The Communists wanted to end the 1%'s aggression. The Nazi's were basically the angry, dumb, thuggish nationalist party, who blamed stuff on Jews and other "undesirables", lack of sufficient patriotism, and other such nuttiness.

The 1% backed the Nazis to surpress the Communists. And the rest, well, we all pretty much know what happened.

Economic predation leads to bad outcomes.

As bad as WWII was (one million killed per month), today we can do much worse: we have weapons that can kill millions in just hours. And we even have technologies that can destroy the planet without war, just because some rich people and some stupid people want to keep energy production the way it is.

Economic predation leads to bad outcomes, and those bad outcomes can lead to obliteration.

Economic predation has always been morally wrong, it has always led to trouble, but the next round of trouble could be the last one that humankind will have the privilege to witness.

We cannot let this happen.

We must all hang together to fix this one last time, to fix it for good. No more economic predation. It must end.

We must learn to love one-another, all of us, and to not cheat one-another. We have no choice.

Do or die.

[NaturalHigh]

1. In the end, all wars are about money (in some form) or religion.

Some of them that were supposedly about religion were actually about money.

[MannyGoldstein]

3. I suspect that the religious craziness in the Middle East

would settle down if oil were removed from the equation.

[marble falls]

4. and if the European powers hadn't created artificial countries with artificial "royal" families.

[MannyGoldstein]

6. Another recipe for disaster. nt

[NaturalHigh]

5. Well, American interest would certainly evaporate overnight.

If the Middle East's main export was onions instead of oil, our government would have told them all to f*** themselves a long time ago.

[Uncle Joe]

2. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, MannyGoldstein.

[Aerows]

7. Greece said "No"

That scares the shit out of the oligarchy (which includes the Troika of the EC, ECB and IMF).

Oh my, if Greece can say no, then a bunch of others can tell the creditors to fuck themselves. They were trying to foreclose on a country like they foreclose on a house.

It's way past time for people to realize that it is not necessary to go to what amounts to debtor's prison because "the bank said so".

Look at our youth in permanent debt for college loans that cannot even be absolved by bankruptcy (unless they incorporate, and instill the college debt as part of the incorporated liabilities, then dissolve the corporation - oh shit, corporations are people too!).

Much of this is just normal people doing normal people things, and the most prosperous not paying the bills. Hey, if you own a trucking company and use the highway, you are supposed to pay for upkeep of the highway and the bridges. When you evade those taxes you become a robber baron, which is why we are where we are now.

[moondust]

8. Fun fact:

Alexis Tsipras was a "student communist."


Incidentally, I just finished watching "V for Vendetta" (again) on cable. I don't know if it was carefully scheduled to coincide with today's news or not but the timing was almost spooky.

[BrotherIvan]

9. A very interesting hypothesis

We are witnessing a backlash. TPTB can either slow it down a bit by taking a haircut or they can take it to the wall. Americans have been fooled and propagandized that the rich are "better" and "smarter" but one of these days, someone is going to point and yell, "Hey, let's take HIS stuff." Then all bets are off.

[nashville_brook]

10. economic predation...that's a powerful phrase

i can't think of a more fitting frame for our current socio-political moment.

we're beset by economic predation, trying not to become victims ourselves...that really sums it up.

[Cleita]

11. Funny enough, the German story is the one I also am most familiar with and I immediately get shut

up with Godwin's law when I try to make comparisons. But Germany isn't the only example. There are many. South America is full of stories like this and one of the reasons we don't know much about what happens there is because the USA has been a very bad player there backing up American industrial interests.

[merrily]

13. Why would you let that shut you up?

The first time Godwin explained it, he said he wanted to see how fast it would spread. Not exactly something that should end discussion.

Later, he gave some deeper explanations, but I couldn't buy them.

In either case, it's something one person made up. And, almost always, shutting someone up by referring to Godwin's law works in favor of RW views.

BTW, this is the so-called "law."

"As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1"[2][3]—​ that is, if an online discussion (regardless of topic or scope) goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will compare someone or something to Hitler or Nazism."

To which my reply is, "Even assuming that is absolutely true, so what? Either a comparison is valid or it is not."

Godwin's alleged law does not change that. Also, you can allude to things like Nazi-like brutality, even if what you are talking about does not involve gassing 12 million people. Nothing before or since has involved that. Does that mean we can never mention a Nazi like mentality? Who would benefit most if we never mention Nazis? Yep. The people who act like Nazis.

In respect for the victims, I would not be frivolous about the comparison--though Jerry Seinfeld certainly was, with the Soup Nazi. However, if I see Nazi like behavior or hear Nazi like statements, I'm going to label it for what it is.

[Cleita]

15. Actually, it doesn't. I still blather on. I probably should have said there are attempts to

shut me up. Also, my comparisons are for the situations that led up to a Nazi takeover such as we were witnessing during the Bush administration. But it turns out the same things were happening a hundred years ago before the crash of 1929. Upton Sinclair outlined it very well in his novels of that era. It seems nothing has changed.

[merrily]

17. Well, good for you then. Attempts to use Godwin's Law to shut someone up need to end, IMO.

I bet people using it do not even know what the law actually is. It's more of a prediction than anything else. Again, so what?

[murielm99]

18. Read "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man."

That will tell you much about what happened in South America.

This Truthout interview with the author gives you his views on Greece. His thinks Greece is being hit the same way many South American countries have been.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/26112-an-economic-hit-man-speaks-out-john-perkins-on-how-greece-has-fallen-victim-to-economic-hit-men

Of course, there are many criticisms of this book. They come from the places and people one would expect.

[Cleita]

19. I've read excerpts. I need to read the whole thing. eom

[raouldukelives]

21. Yeah, one of those eye openers, for sure. nt

[starroute]

12. The Nazis had all the bankers and industrial magnates behind them

They weren't just dumb thugs. There was plenty of money cheering them on. And most of their agenda, from banning the trade unions to convincing people that the nation was an organic whole in which all true Germans shared the same interests, we to the benefit of the 1%.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

14. From the title of your OP I thought this was going to be a "boxers vs briefs" debate.

[Curtis]

16. And the Tea Party

are the ignorant thugs backed by the 1 percent in our new reality.

[HereSince1628]

20. manny, you know the nanny government pushes political veganism...

Predation isn't a 'bad' thing. It eliminates the weak, leaving the strong... and it's 'good business' or so the Romney's of the world tell us.

Thereby a strong government requires it's markets to promote meat consumption, if you deny the predators distant peoples in far off lands they'll turn on their own poor, if you deny them our own poor, they just eat the middle-class.

Social justice is often counter-intuitive, it requires promoting more and better neo-cannabalism. We must market the tender, delicious, lusciousness of the never over-worked tenderloins of the 1% to the 1%.



Sarcasm works best when it reveals the obvious while being humorous I suspect this isn't humorous so I suspect using the following is technically incorrect

[Capt. Obvious]

22. I'm curious if people know Ben Franklin's addition to the idiom?

"We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."

[WillyT]

23. Huge K & R !!! - Thank You !!!