Town Hall Meeting

‘Nuff said. Thanks Topy for the picture!

This is a great story about giving a much needed water buffalo to a poor family in China. The amazing part is how this can be done so cheaply for the typical American yet it is so life changing for this family. Its an inspiring story. Check out the video by clicking the link below, it is only about 7 minutes.

http://www.thompsonjazz.com/movies/waterbuffalo/

Thanks Quinn for the link!

A song about a merger between MBNA and Bank of America. Wow, you have to see it to believe it. I hope you enjoy this try at heartfelt, touching capitalism…bank conglomerate-style!

This clock is from a cool site called zFacts.com. According to the about page, the site is done by a PhD in Economics who asks good questions and tries to look only at the facts. What a novel idea!!! This clock I think tells a lot. I thought about just displaying the debt clock, but I think comparing it to the social security clock puts the social security issue in greater context.

The anniversary of the invasion of Iraq is coming up again. There will be mass protests all around. Demonstrate your disgust for militarism, greed, nepotism, cronyism, or just go out and meet a bunch of fellow peaceful citizens. Try a google search to find a protest near you, or any of the following links:

www.internationalanswer.org
www.unitedforpeace.org
www.campusantiwar.net
www.warresisters.org

If you haven’t heard about this model before, read about it here. It is so important to understand that the people who wrote this plan are in charge of the American government right now. After reading that, go to their website www.newamericancentury.org to see the sunshine version. Check out their statement of principles and who signed it at the bottom, such as Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush.

Whether you read it straight from their website, or anywhere else, PNAC is about global dominance by America through military means. September 11 was an opportunity for the military part of PNAC’s strategy to really be fulfilled. In their definitive 2000 white paper “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century,” they explain that America’s military spending should be, at a minimum, 3.8% of GDP. By 2004, it was 3.9%, up from 3.0% in 2001 (check my references here and here).

I just watched the documentary called The Persuaders at the PBS website. It exposes the advertising industry for what they are: corporations willing to do anything to get consumers to buy stuff. Advertising is an integral part of political campaigns. Today, politicians are just trying to “out-market” each other. One day, I hope, a politician will come along who wants to be the one with the best policies. As long as advertising rules all, it won’t happen. I have written this quote before from Naomi Klein, “The only thing that can defeat expert marketing is authenticity. Then the marketing candidate will be exposed for all their lies and his campaign will fall apart.”

Advertising is also the main reason for the pathetic news media in America. This great documentary explains all of this with interesting and intelligent analysis. The Persuaders will also help you save money since it will teach you the game of consumerism.

Isn’t he? In Iraq, he took a desperate war torn country and took all the state owned industries and privatized them. Now they are controlled by foreign companies (Halliburton, Bechtel, et al). Just what the World Bank is good at: taking resources from a nation’s citizens and giving them to corporations on a silver platter. This cover story from The Nation is titled “The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.” The idea is to take a country that is desperate, by a natural disaster such as Aceh after the Tsunami or by imperial means such as Iraq or Yugoslavia, and open the nation 100% to foreign business-a clean slate. Maybe the title of the article should be “Unrestrained Capitalism is the Disaster.”

The DVD for the flim The Corporation is now available in the U.S. If you haven’t seen this movie, check it out. It was by far my favorite film of 2004. You can watch a preview here.

Listen to this speech given in 1988 (about 3 minutes) by a Democrat who won the state of Michigan by 55% to 28% in that years primary. Democratic leaders today should listen and know that this is what popular Democrats used to stand for. The speech is taken from the documentary by Pacifica called A Passel Of Pomp & A Circus Of Circumstance.

Stan Goff is a Special Forces veteran following in a long tradition of US soldiers who have seen the inside of US capitalism’s violence and rejected its moral and intellectual presuppositions through a comprehensive and active critique (see Smedley Butler for more on this tradition). Goff has produced several books (his latest focus on gender and misogyny in the US culture and the military will appear this year), many articles (read his vision of a new hegemony), and a new blog and focuses his activism on organizing for peace and radical politics within the US military. In his recent article on “Debating a Neocon” , this past master of combat arms exposes the sham of rightist ideology with a flick of the wrist and notes: “it is truly remarkable how easily KO’ed these neocons are once you step outside the tight little ring of the Republicrats. They’ve got maybe three combinations, and they are slow as a cow. Everything inside has been ritual combat, so they do very badly when someone actually intends to hit them.” HIT THIS RIGHTIST SCUM, HARD!!! Advising intelligent and vigorous resistance, “this burned-out commie vet” suggests that we “keep battering away because these people are weaker than they seem, even if they DO have state power. (I’m ready for my IRS audit, sir.) And quit accepting their premises, or you’ll never end up with anything except their conclusions.” Goff, who lived the frontlines of US imperialism, reminds us all that capitalism is inseparable from militarism and violence at the world scale, regardless of the nation-state.