EPTOn June 05 2018 06:24 a_flayer wrote:
Your country is a joke.
User was temp banned for this post.
Your country is a joke.
User was temp banned for this post.
Banning me for 30 days for that is like fining a corporate banker $30 million for cheating their way into $500 million.
It is not an effective deterrent.
So, I heard The Bronx won a recent battle against Wallstreet is now marching on Washington DC. Proposing to send the 28 year old Socialist Ocasio-Cortez to Congress. Nice to know my buddies still got their shit together, even though I lost touch with them years ago. Since Ocasio-Cortez was nominated, I decided to spend my usual daily forum time on writing the following rather than just trolling reddit with general hate on neoliberalism. I'm focused on 'neoliberalism' and not 'neoconservativism' solely because liberalism is supposed to be the at the core of Western society.
I think the tweet and video in the spoiler below sum up pretty well why the millionaires paid by billionaires on the centralized corporate TV media broadcasting nonsense into people's home are in fact, as Donald Trump in his own selfishly distorted way suggests, an enemy of The People:
+ Show Spoiler +
https://twitter.com/jimmy_dore/status/1012036046534557696
You just need to watch the first 3 minutes of the second video to understand the basics, but I'll sum it up: through the current media atmosphere, corporate media manufactures consent for neoliberal & neocon warmongering, jingoism, corporate abuse and consumerist crap that people don't really want. This causes people to basically stay out of "political touch" with their own extended neighborhoods, effectively preventing them from unifying politically. Personally, I think a concept such as a digital democracy could resolve this, but that's another story for another time.
From my political perspective, there's three ideologies that are necessary in just about equal numbers to form a cohesive government representative of "The People": socialism (about collective means), liberalism (about personal freedom), and conservatism (about tradition & order). You can add authoritarianism and dictatorships to any of these in varying measures to create a police state, but nobody should want that aside from the 0.1% people that are fascists and should be in jail. Right now, in the United States, there's basically only neoliberal representation and neoconservative representation, while it appears that socialism is suppressed through both the police state and in the media. But it's not just the idea of socialism that suffers because of it, it's people across the world -- in varying degrees.
Please note that, while the biggest problem by far is the corporate TV media such as Fox/MSNBC/CNN/ABC/etc, even the New York Times didn't dedicate any articles or opinion pieces specifically to Ocasio-Cortez -- nor has much attention been paid to their like-minded peers. They reported on Crowleys absence in the debates, though, and vilified him for that. Good on them for at least noting that. Still, as Nathan J. Robinson pointed out in Current Affairs in his article on Ocasio-Cortez and Ben Jealous:
Ironically, a few days ago, the New York Times ran a story suggesting that the Bernie Sanders left was failing to show its electoral viability, warning that “the midterm elections could represent a significant missed opportunity if Mr. Sanders fails to usher any allies into high office.” Leaving aside the wrongheaded idea that Sanders is “ushering” allies into office (the whole point of the left is that it’s not about kingmakers but ordinary people, a form of politics that the Times is unfamiliar with), the resounding defeat (57-42) of one of the most influential men in New York should show that the left is, indeed, on the march.
Emphasis mine. That right there is a great way to encapsulate the attitude of the same people that consistently encourage everybody (the public and politicians alike) to send young people to all sorts of wars.
In that light, I really liked Ocasio-Cortez' message of a peace economy:
A Peace Economy
Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the United States has entangled itself in war and occupation throughout the Middle East and North Africa. As of 2018, we are currently involved in military action in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia. Hundreds of thousands of civilians in these countries have been killed either as collateral damage from American strikes or from the instability caused by U.S. interventions. Millions more have fled their broken countries, contributing to the global refugee crisis.
This continued action damages America’s legitimacy as a force for good, creates new generations of potential terrorists, and erodes American prosperity. In times when we’re told that there’s not enough money, Republicans and corporate Democrats seem to find the cash to fund a $1.1 trillion fighter jet program or a $1.7 trillion-dollar nuclear weapon “modernization” program. The costs are extreme: the Pentagon’s budget for 2018 is $700 billion dollars: to continue fighting an endless War on Terror and refighting the Cold War with a new arms race that nobody can win.
According to the Constitution, the right to declare war belongs to the legislative body, and yet many of these global acts of aggression have never once been voted on by Congress. In some cases, we've even acted unilaterally, without the backing of the United Nations.
America should not be in the business of destabilizing countries. While we may see ourselves as liberators, the world increasingly views us as occupiers and aggressors. Alexandria believes that we must end the "forever war" by bringing our troops home, and ending the air strikes that perpetuate the cycle of terrorism throughout the world.
By bringing our troops home, we can begin to heal the wounds we're opening by continuing military engagement. We can begin to repair our image. We can reunite military families, separated by repeated deployments. We can become stronger by building stronger diplomatic and economic ties, and by saving our armed forces only for when they're truly needed.
Certainly a refreshing read and contrast compared to all the identical "I respect Israels right to defend itself, we must defend our interests and fight terrorism abroad" statements I saw on the websites of about 20-30 other candidates that I investigated over the past 6 months. But the point is: You can't afford socialism in health care, education and sustainability if you waste your collective production on building a war economy. If you waste your collective production on making weaponry and maintaining a military as you do, people end up dying in one way or another. Look at what's happened since the CIA poured weapons into Afghanistan. People are still killing each other and getting blown up by both terrorists AND their own government AND the US government -- all due to that same war economy that just never stops artifically creating a demand for weaponry.Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the United States has entangled itself in war and occupation throughout the Middle East and North Africa. As of 2018, we are currently involved in military action in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia. Hundreds of thousands of civilians in these countries have been killed either as collateral damage from American strikes or from the instability caused by U.S. interventions. Millions more have fled their broken countries, contributing to the global refugee crisis.
This continued action damages America’s legitimacy as a force for good, creates new generations of potential terrorists, and erodes American prosperity. In times when we’re told that there’s not enough money, Republicans and corporate Democrats seem to find the cash to fund a $1.1 trillion fighter jet program or a $1.7 trillion-dollar nuclear weapon “modernization” program. The costs are extreme: the Pentagon’s budget for 2018 is $700 billion dollars: to continue fighting an endless War on Terror and refighting the Cold War with a new arms race that nobody can win.
According to the Constitution, the right to declare war belongs to the legislative body, and yet many of these global acts of aggression have never once been voted on by Congress. In some cases, we've even acted unilaterally, without the backing of the United Nations.
America should not be in the business of destabilizing countries. While we may see ourselves as liberators, the world increasingly views us as occupiers and aggressors. Alexandria believes that we must end the "forever war" by bringing our troops home, and ending the air strikes that perpetuate the cycle of terrorism throughout the world.
By bringing our troops home, we can begin to heal the wounds we're opening by continuing military engagement. We can begin to repair our image. We can reunite military families, separated by repeated deployments. We can become stronger by building stronger diplomatic and economic ties, and by saving our armed forces only for when they're truly needed.
All these authoritarian laws that have been introduced everywhere across the world since 9/11 are shit. From intrusive searches at every airport. All the Internet surveillance. The very foundation of ICE, and far worse such as the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq as passed in law. Things like the Hague Invasion Act. It is all based on 9/11 xenophobia – a crisis that your government effectively manufactured for you in their effort to “end” the Cold War.
I've hated all this authoritarian jingoistic warmongering crap from the start. This is not liberalism at all. It's a stupid joke. Liberal representation across the whole of the West is false. It's just neoliberals and neocons who want this. All the laws mentioned above need to be removed/reversed. It's all lies. Lies like how we heard 17 years ago that bombing/invading Afghanistan and Iraq was going to stop terrorism -- just look at where we are today. Or the American lies about how European socialism is supposed to cause economic turmoil -- economic troubles in Europe aren't any different from American ones. It's all corporate neoliberal and religious neocon bullshit from the wealthy who probably genuinely believe the crap they're spewing.
And it’s all related to the steeped-in-creepy-history transatlantic relationship between the United States and Europe. And not to mention NATO in modern times. Here’s what I think of NATO in the language of the intelligentsia which might appease your "he's a Russian propagandist!" sensibilities:
SEOUL, South Korea—A top adviser to South Korea’s president says he would eventually like to see the U.S.–South Korea alliance end. In language that sounded almost Trump-like, Chung In Moon, a special adviser to President Moon Jae In for foreign affairs and national security, said in an interview that alliances in general are a “very unnatural state of international relations” and said that, “for me, the best thing is to really get rid of alliance.”
There you go. "Alliances in general are a very unnatural state of international relations." Isn't that the fucking truth of it.So, I say, bring an end to it. Bring those young men and women home from Europe and Asia, send them off your military bases at home to work to help the poor in your own country. For gods sake, your taxes are paying for people to move rocks back and forth as "training" when there's people without functioning sewage systems in Alabama. Have those military guys dig some holes and lay some pipe instead. Stop listening to militaristic jingoisms that echo endlessly throughout your nation.
You know how Sessions and those ICE guys were saying they were just following the law as they tore children away from their parents? This phrase comes back a lot whenever you're looking to create some significant change in political systems through activism. Let's take a look at the Poor People's Campaign. In my opinion it’s best described as a campaign for socialism.
Here's a video from the perspective of people who were protesting poverty in DC:
+ Show Spoiler +
In the video above, the protester/organizer -- who was at Occupy Wallstreet -- says that officials/cops were saying things like "you can't have signs, you have to leave now", leading up to "we're just following the laws" after they arrested them. This is how the cops serve the oligarchs in your country. This servitude to the oligarchs is especially obvious because at the same time while these people protesting poverty in the United States were arrested in Washington DC, you had Nikki Haley (probably a millionaire with a family trust fund?) saying the following:
‘It is patently ridiculous for the United Nations to examine poverty in America’
-Nikki Haley
-Nikki Haley
I've been checking the MSNBC YouTube page occasionally as I followed the Poor People's Campaign on alternative media such as Democracy Now, but there appears not to be a single mention of the campaign on the MSNBC Youtube page. It's all Russia this (it's just not gonna go anywhere when it comes to Trump himself, stop lying to yourselves), Stormy that, Michael Avenneti so and so, North Korea is making nukes, Trump tweets and so, "oh look how he shames us abroad" (you sound like right-wingers who are scared of the decline of the American Empire when you do that), who are we bombing next, and of course the -- effectively also manufactured by the US government -- outrage about the kids at the border. The outrage is valid enough, but it never needed to go that far to be unacceptable to fair-minded people and apparently, on the whole of it, was more or less a political ploy to push certain legislation through.
Meanwhile, I saw this excellent coverage on the Poor People's Campaign from RT America, where Americans in America covering American news are apparently quite literally labeled as Russian Foreign Agents:
+ Show Spoiler +
There's got to be Soviet jokes about this kind of thing. Government law enforcement arresting people for protesting poverty, while government representatives are lying to the media about poverty and at the same time government intelligence agencies even accusing people who report on poverty of being foreign agents?
I’ve also noticed that a lot of the same people who show up on places like Democracy Now and Jimmy Dore (like I linked at the start) are literally the same people that show up as guests on RT America. Basically just socialist anti-empire activists that don't see the light of day on corporate media. Jimmy's been on RT, too. And that lady who was at Occupy. They're all part of the same circle of people fighting to get the socialist anti-empire message out, and now they're probably all tainted with the label "associate of Russian Foreign Agent" in some NSA/FBI database. It’s just a cruel joke.
Honestly, the only thing find wrong with RT America is the fact that apparently no American billionaires will help those American people broadcast their message so that they can be free of "Russian influence". For the pro-socialist anti-war anti-police state activists it's simply “different aims, different means, but common ground in between”.
But I still think all of this is best summed up as "Your country is a fucking joke."
