Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
freshwest
freshwest's Journal
freshwest's Journal
January 3, 2014
If by countries you mean the governments, if they are not composed of, intimidated by or joined at the hip with the corporations, it's not them. I suggest these agreements and conflicts are made between the native oligarchical class and corporations, not the government that repesents the many.
Corporations are merely the modern, more mobile form of oligarchical organizations. Most countries, including ours, was built by slaves employed by the most vicious form of corporation, the plantation system. Most of the Americas and much of the world, even non-Eurocentric or European colonies are set up in a variety of these forms.
It has to do with who has possession of the land and its resources, and who has been dispossessed by them. This system being so unjust, but implacable, and impossible to eliminate, caused Thomas Paine to propose a fixed income for all the dispossessed paid for by government from taxes taken from the oligarchical class. It is the philosophical basis of the Social Security system, and it is in their archives.
Every nation in which we see conflicts like the one described, as well as our own, has a major portion of the population who is either working for or benefiting from this same ancient social structure. FDR knew this and argued for a wide social safety net, since the old ways of making a living, on one's own land, and the demands of society in competition with other nations and within itself to industrialize, caused dislocation of families and traditional ways of supporting persons through the trials of life, accidents, illnesses and the like.
Someone who has lived and done business in Cambodia posted an original piece here at DU, that, IIRC, said some of the conflict in Cambodia is due to a social clash that is of one set of people, in the northeast, and the rest. The culture of the northeast is liberal, has a social safety net, socialist, etc.
The rest of the country is more on the old model. The leader of Cambodia falls in with the former group, the corporate, land owning group is seeking to overthrow the government and many citizens are going along with them because they see the more liberal or socialist part of the country which has a lot of modernity, education, etc., as oppressing them and thus financing their easier lives.
It's like our rural GOP vs. urban liberals. They think they are the real workers, and we are parasites on their labor, making meat, grain, extracting minerals and all of that, which the urbanites consume as they move forward in education and wealth. They see the laws we think of as wonderful as robbing them.
All revolutions are not liberal, often they are reactionary in nature. That is the root of the hostility, IMHO.
Governments should require corporations to pay enough for people to live or what good are they?
Getting back to the workers. A government in a nation has to have some unity with the majority of people to enforce such equality. We've seen in our own nation, that the reactionary, oligarchical forces, the owners of land and resources and those who work for them, see the world as a zero sum game and do NOT believe in uniting with others. Thus our own millions who are anti-union today.
The contrast was shown clearly during the auto bailout. The workers that would get the most benefit, and the communities that would be saved, were not part of the same region, and those in the southern states did not see any reason to support the workers up north. In fact, they disdained them and called them lazy and greedy. All the while, they were competing for their wealth by working for foreign firms who negotiated with the powerful owners in their red states who saw more profit coming their way by destroying the domestically OWNED auto business. They didn't care about that as part of being American.
They just wanted to keep their non-union jobs at less pay with less benefits as a sure thing. Remember, they were part of the Confederacy. They have a benchmark for work, and that benchmark is room and board, slavery. What they get better than that, is just fine. Their contention was that the auto workers up north were just as the other group sees the liberal northeastern part of Cambodia.
I may be drifting off your point, but am trying to provide context. There are a few implacable foes to what we as liberals and believers in worker rights believe. Those I am talking about are just a few rungs above the slaves before the Civil War. They have an entire culture based around a sort of aristocratic notion of how the world really, really operates, as a natural law ordained by God. Anyone who speaks against that is to them, godless and communist. There is a reason they vote and act the way they do. I suspect something like it in Cambodia.
I see labor relations as one of the main reasons for so much turmoil world wide. From sugar cane workers in South America to oil rig workers in Africa that have to become pirates in order to get paid. It's corporations doing this.
I see that, but I think there is something that was there before the corporations, that led to it in all the countries involved. A corporation, with few exceptions, does not literally invade a country. They make alliances with the most powerful there who are usually oligarches, and are not always involved with the government.
These groups were there long before, and will exist, like the churches, long after government rise and fall. To them, the governments that people set up to act as arbiters between common people seeing as all equal, are temporary interlopers in an ancient plan. It is always just below the surface, festering and ready to seize any weakness to take control.
Our system of public education that once gave information on how to figure out such things and give people the legal tools to use their power in government, is falling apart because of the people brainwashed by these oligarchs and churches. The real power exists in the other conspirator, the corporations. But I see no difference in the DNA of a corporation and an oligarchy.
That's why we cannot afford to let them be elected to do this. But in calling government at fault, we are denying our own responsibility to use it for us. None of the private entites are transparent nor are they accountable to the majority of people who MIGHT resist them. That is how these things happen.
Oh, well, just a few thoughts. Perhaps not at all helpful.
Let's see how to settle this with the words and concepts you use here:
How can countries allow corporations to start wars in their countries?If by countries you mean the governments, if they are not composed of, intimidated by or joined at the hip with the corporations, it's not them. I suggest these agreements and conflicts are made between the native oligarchical class and corporations, not the government that repesents the many.
Corporations are merely the modern, more mobile form of oligarchical organizations. Most countries, including ours, was built by slaves employed by the most vicious form of corporation, the plantation system. Most of the Americas and much of the world, even non-Eurocentric or European colonies are set up in a variety of these forms.
It has to do with who has possession of the land and its resources, and who has been dispossessed by them. This system being so unjust, but implacable, and impossible to eliminate, caused Thomas Paine to propose a fixed income for all the dispossessed paid for by government from taxes taken from the oligarchical class. It is the philosophical basis of the Social Security system, and it is in their archives.
Every nation in which we see conflicts like the one described, as well as our own, has a major portion of the population who is either working for or benefiting from this same ancient social structure. FDR knew this and argued for a wide social safety net, since the old ways of making a living, on one's own land, and the demands of society in competition with other nations and within itself to industrialize, caused dislocation of families and traditional ways of supporting persons through the trials of life, accidents, illnesses and the like.
Someone who has lived and done business in Cambodia posted an original piece here at DU, that, IIRC, said some of the conflict in Cambodia is due to a social clash that is of one set of people, in the northeast, and the rest. The culture of the northeast is liberal, has a social safety net, socialist, etc.
The rest of the country is more on the old model. The leader of Cambodia falls in with the former group, the corporate, land owning group is seeking to overthrow the government and many citizens are going along with them because they see the more liberal or socialist part of the country which has a lot of modernity, education, etc., as oppressing them and thus financing their easier lives.
It's like our rural GOP vs. urban liberals. They think they are the real workers, and we are parasites on their labor, making meat, grain, extracting minerals and all of that, which the urbanites consume as they move forward in education and wealth. They see the laws we think of as wonderful as robbing them.
All revolutions are not liberal, often they are reactionary in nature. That is the root of the hostility, IMHO.
Governments should require corporations to pay enough for people to live or what good are they?
Getting back to the workers. A government in a nation has to have some unity with the majority of people to enforce such equality. We've seen in our own nation, that the reactionary, oligarchical forces, the owners of land and resources and those who work for them, see the world as a zero sum game and do NOT believe in uniting with others. Thus our own millions who are anti-union today.
The contrast was shown clearly during the auto bailout. The workers that would get the most benefit, and the communities that would be saved, were not part of the same region, and those in the southern states did not see any reason to support the workers up north. In fact, they disdained them and called them lazy and greedy. All the while, they were competing for their wealth by working for foreign firms who negotiated with the powerful owners in their red states who saw more profit coming their way by destroying the domestically OWNED auto business. They didn't care about that as part of being American.
They just wanted to keep their non-union jobs at less pay with less benefits as a sure thing. Remember, they were part of the Confederacy. They have a benchmark for work, and that benchmark is room and board, slavery. What they get better than that, is just fine. Their contention was that the auto workers up north were just as the other group sees the liberal northeastern part of Cambodia.
I may be drifting off your point, but am trying to provide context. There are a few implacable foes to what we as liberals and believers in worker rights believe. Those I am talking about are just a few rungs above the slaves before the Civil War. They have an entire culture based around a sort of aristocratic notion of how the world really, really operates, as a natural law ordained by God. Anyone who speaks against that is to them, godless and communist. There is a reason they vote and act the way they do. I suspect something like it in Cambodia.
I see labor relations as one of the main reasons for so much turmoil world wide. From sugar cane workers in South America to oil rig workers in Africa that have to become pirates in order to get paid. It's corporations doing this.
I see that, but I think there is something that was there before the corporations, that led to it in all the countries involved. A corporation, with few exceptions, does not literally invade a country. They make alliances with the most powerful there who are usually oligarches, and are not always involved with the government.
These groups were there long before, and will exist, like the churches, long after government rise and fall. To them, the governments that people set up to act as arbiters between common people seeing as all equal, are temporary interlopers in an ancient plan. It is always just below the surface, festering and ready to seize any weakness to take control.
Our system of public education that once gave information on how to figure out such things and give people the legal tools to use their power in government, is falling apart because of the people brainwashed by these oligarchs and churches. The real power exists in the other conspirator, the corporations. But I see no difference in the DNA of a corporation and an oligarchy.
That's why we cannot afford to let them be elected to do this. But in calling government at fault, we are denying our own responsibility to use it for us. None of the private entites are transparent nor are they accountable to the majority of people who MIGHT resist them. That is how these things happen.
Oh, well, just a few thoughts. Perhaps not at all helpful.
January 3, 2014
I doubt if he's any more a Nazi than the Duck Dynasty is real. They're a bunch of yuppies faking it:
January 3, 2014
I refer you to this OP from a few days back:
Why I fled libertarianism — and became a liberal
I was a Ron Paul delegate back in 2008 -- now I'm a Democrat. Here's my personal tale of disgust and self-discovery
http://www.salon.com/2013/12/28/why_i_fled_libertarianism_and_became_a_liberal/
to Don Viego:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1251345186
Very much like Libertarian Republican and their posts since Obama was elected. The main guy flamed out and went Beck shit crazy when Obama was re-elected, said he was leaving the country.
Also bragged about how he made a point of yelling at the cashiers about food stamp reciepients in grocery stores, and stuff like that. I saved it but he took it down and revised history, and he didn't move away.
Still hates Obama like all of them do.
.
Thanks. These guys are likely Libertarians. Looks like the kind of stuff they post, very media heavy
and aggressive as can be. There's no good reason for this. A lot of bad ones, though.I refer you to this OP from a few days back:
Why I fled libertarianism — and became a liberal
I was a Ron Paul delegate back in 2008 -- now I'm a Democrat. Here's my personal tale of disgust and self-discovery
http://www.salon.com/2013/12/28/why_i_fled_libertarianism_and_became_a_liberal/
to Don Viego:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1251345186
Very much like Libertarian Republican and their posts since Obama was elected. The main guy flamed out and went Beck shit crazy when Obama was re-elected, said he was leaving the country.
Also bragged about how he made a point of yelling at the cashiers about food stamp reciepients in grocery stores, and stuff like that. I saved it but he took it down and revised history, and he didn't move away.
Still hates Obama like all of them do.
.
January 2, 2014
It is now clearer than ever before that a just few dozen companies and cartels have presided over the mass pollution of our planet, unknowingly for many years but no longer. Energy fuels the world economy and the list shows just how that power has been concentrated in astonishingly few hands. There are few more terrifying threats a government faces than the lights going out or the petrol pumps running dry.*
Energy companies are the biggest corporations the world has ever seen and this concentration of immense power makes them the biggest vested interests ever to do battle with the public good.
So, while the past is a foreign country where they did things differently, to paraphrase L P Hartley's opening to his novel of lost innocence, the power list points to a more hopeful future. That is because the list shows that the levers of power that must be shifted to avoid climate meltdown are held by relatively few hands...
*This is why governments call energy interests matters of 'national security.' Even if it means going to war for them.
Our own nation, even if there were no bad actors, has given in to the energy companies to maintain government. Many see the value of government with its protection of individual rights as more important than anything.
We will have to give up things in order to live in a sustainable way. It means we will adapt or fall apart and not save ourselves or the environment.
Corporations do not exist to protect us or the environment. They are, as an advocate told me about using some legal associations to get things done for people, like swining a snake in your hands to hit the enemy.
They will curl back and bite you in the end, they are valuable tools for the knowledge they specialize in, but they are often not true allies. They serve a purpose, and they have fulfilled that in history and we are going to have to figure out to put them down gently.
They see no reason, like the military, to stand down when they think they have done something important. Some of what they do will always be important. It appears mankind is in a race to get this settled and move onto to another way of living. It will be good for all of us but perhaps many will live better. And if unburdened with wrongdoing, they will understand true freedom.
Refreshing honesty in this piece:
...But the pollution belongs to all of those whose lives have been transformed over the last 250 years by cheap energy. Instead, the value of the work is that it has produced a power list, in every sense.It is now clearer than ever before that a just few dozen companies and cartels have presided over the mass pollution of our planet, unknowingly for many years but no longer. Energy fuels the world economy and the list shows just how that power has been concentrated in astonishingly few hands. There are few more terrifying threats a government faces than the lights going out or the petrol pumps running dry.*
Energy companies are the biggest corporations the world has ever seen and this concentration of immense power makes them the biggest vested interests ever to do battle with the public good.
So, while the past is a foreign country where they did things differently, to paraphrase L P Hartley's opening to his novel of lost innocence, the power list points to a more hopeful future. That is because the list shows that the levers of power that must be shifted to avoid climate meltdown are held by relatively few hands...
*This is why governments call energy interests matters of 'national security.' Even if it means going to war for them.
Our own nation, even if there were no bad actors, has given in to the energy companies to maintain government. Many see the value of government with its protection of individual rights as more important than anything.
We will have to give up things in order to live in a sustainable way. It means we will adapt or fall apart and not save ourselves or the environment.
Corporations do not exist to protect us or the environment. They are, as an advocate told me about using some legal associations to get things done for people, like swining a snake in your hands to hit the enemy.
They will curl back and bite you in the end, they are valuable tools for the knowledge they specialize in, but they are often not true allies. They serve a purpose, and they have fulfilled that in history and we are going to have to figure out to put them down gently.
They see no reason, like the military, to stand down when they think they have done something important. Some of what they do will always be important. It appears mankind is in a race to get this settled and move onto to another way of living. It will be good for all of us but perhaps many will live better. And if unburdened with wrongdoing, they will understand true freedom.
January 2, 2014
The MIC and our technocracy looks at everything in the same war prism and uses the same solutions. Everything is turned into fuel to save the homeland, but instead, it destroys it to save the infrastructure instead.
Wonder if the most die hard hawks, other than those who make tons of money off of it, are eternally paranoid. Some of the fear is logical, war breeds more war, hate more hate, fear more fear, etc. The results of what we have done, just as what other countries have done to each other, such as the English and the Irish, the peoples of Russia and the Ukraine, has extended past the lifetimes of most who lived through their worst events.
Within the USA itself, is a history that breeds deep conflicts we have not be able to overcome yet. There are signs we may do so, true, but not yet.
And yes, if we did nothing, we would get the blame by someone, if we were able to survive it. After all, a joining together of other nations might come looking for us, right or wrong.*
Looking back at the kind of weaponry developed during and since WW2, not for the love of knowledge, but for the purpose of defense and offense, we have let the genie out of the bottle that may never be put back in. The CWC that Kerry and Obama used to resolve Syria without traditional methods, is a big improvement. But we are not in the age of peace of love across the planet.
Some of what appear to be the worst things of our day, trade agreements and corporate rule, were once thought to be engines of equality and peace. They have not been successful, no more than religion. The reduction of all the world's cultures to one dominant one was thought to be a good idea to end warfare. We have that in capitalism, but the collateral damage to humans and the environment, and the spirit or freedom that we must have to be happy is not being met, it never was.
We're going into a different era, more inclusive, and more social changes than ever imagined. Many Americans are ready to embrace this, others are running away. I don't think there is going to be any escape for them, and they show their fear by buying big guns and lots of ammo and talking all kinds of trash. It won't last, though, but damn if they aren't gonna try. Fear does that, everyone wants to survive.
I dread what will happen as more people are under the authority of fewer elements. At this time, most of the wealth of the world is owned by corporations, not nations and they are making the rules by their hierarchical mindset. It does not bode well for social mobility that our government has nurtured, nor individual freedom to change large organizations. It is a structure that is never transparent, with power to make decisions (example would be corporate head choppers and getting fired - like getting killed - we see that mentality afflicting society now) and creating social stratification. Very bad for those not near the top, they are forced to exist as little more than robots, which in terms of humans or animals or any other living thing, is a tortured existence.
*Speaking of the Axis powers. They were not going to leave anyone alone, so we could not stand behind idealism and expect to still make it unmolested.
I think the essay assignment that the judge gave the religious group who trespassed on the nuclear facility - he asked the best questions ever - will be very instructive on how the idealistic views of religion and morality met up with the reality that spawned nukes.
Curious. Would it be like what happened between WW1 and WW2? I think the *permanent* military stance
of the USA was due to a justified fear in that era of time, which created an international infrastructure that was so talented and organized, that it took on a life of its own. As if caught in a 'Skynet Becomes Self-Aware' universe some refuse to leave that is ultimately unsustainable for human life.The MIC and our technocracy looks at everything in the same war prism and uses the same solutions. Everything is turned into fuel to save the homeland, but instead, it destroys it to save the infrastructure instead.
Wonder if the most die hard hawks, other than those who make tons of money off of it, are eternally paranoid. Some of the fear is logical, war breeds more war, hate more hate, fear more fear, etc. The results of what we have done, just as what other countries have done to each other, such as the English and the Irish, the peoples of Russia and the Ukraine, has extended past the lifetimes of most who lived through their worst events.
Within the USA itself, is a history that breeds deep conflicts we have not be able to overcome yet. There are signs we may do so, true, but not yet.
And yes, if we did nothing, we would get the blame by someone, if we were able to survive it. After all, a joining together of other nations might come looking for us, right or wrong.*
Looking back at the kind of weaponry developed during and since WW2, not for the love of knowledge, but for the purpose of defense and offense, we have let the genie out of the bottle that may never be put back in. The CWC that Kerry and Obama used to resolve Syria without traditional methods, is a big improvement. But we are not in the age of peace of love across the planet.
Some of what appear to be the worst things of our day, trade agreements and corporate rule, were once thought to be engines of equality and peace. They have not been successful, no more than religion. The reduction of all the world's cultures to one dominant one was thought to be a good idea to end warfare. We have that in capitalism, but the collateral damage to humans and the environment, and the spirit or freedom that we must have to be happy is not being met, it never was.
We're going into a different era, more inclusive, and more social changes than ever imagined. Many Americans are ready to embrace this, others are running away. I don't think there is going to be any escape for them, and they show their fear by buying big guns and lots of ammo and talking all kinds of trash. It won't last, though, but damn if they aren't gonna try. Fear does that, everyone wants to survive.
I dread what will happen as more people are under the authority of fewer elements. At this time, most of the wealth of the world is owned by corporations, not nations and they are making the rules by their hierarchical mindset. It does not bode well for social mobility that our government has nurtured, nor individual freedom to change large organizations. It is a structure that is never transparent, with power to make decisions (example would be corporate head choppers and getting fired - like getting killed - we see that mentality afflicting society now) and creating social stratification. Very bad for those not near the top, they are forced to exist as little more than robots, which in terms of humans or animals or any other living thing, is a tortured existence.
*Speaking of the Axis powers. They were not going to leave anyone alone, so we could not stand behind idealism and expect to still make it unmolested.
I think the essay assignment that the judge gave the religious group who trespassed on the nuclear facility - he asked the best questions ever - will be very instructive on how the idealistic views of religion and morality met up with the reality that spawned nukes.
Profile Information
Member since: Fri Dec 10, 2010, 11:36 PMNumber of posts: 53,661
