Monday, February 3, 2025

DEMOCRACY DOESN'T EXIST...

Democracy doesn’t exist in the United States
Chris Hedges | UpFront
(Al Jazeera English on YouTube)
January 31, 2025

"As Donald Trump returns to the White House, many are raising concerns about the possible decline of liberal democracy.

What then would a second Trump term mean for the next four years for the United States? And what impact will the president's foreign policy have on the Middle East?

This week on UpFront, Marc Lamont Hill discusses these issues with Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and former war correspondent Chris Hedges."

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It all adds up:

Fundamentalists + Nationalists = Fascists

If you're concerned about a War on Christmas try being a pacifist atheist in the USA. Secular humanist are some of the smartest, peace loving people I know. True believers often let magical thinking and a poor education lead them to dangerous places and they want everyone to follow them.

 The Bible is a book not a history lesson or legal document, and it certainly isn't a license to kill. God fearing folk are creating a Hell on Earth and guys like me have nowhere else to go because we don't believe in Heaven.


INCONCEIVABLE!

THE GRAND NAGUS
(The Katie Halper Show on YouTube)

"The inimitable Wallace Shawn discusses how Israel's genocide in Palestine is 'demonically evil' and 'worse than what the Nazis did.' Listen to the full episode for an amazing conversation where Katie and Wallace discuss growing up in NYC, radicalization, privilege, and pacifism with the renowned actor, playwright, essayist, and screenwriter. "

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My dinner with holocaust.
 
ADDENDUM:
 I first saw My Dinner with André' when it was released on VHS tape back in the 80s.
It's about time I watched it again.
A Conversation Ahead of Its Time
(Ian Michael Simon on YouTube)
January 11, 2025

"A powerful conversation from the 1981 film 'My Dinner with André' that feels strikingly relevant in 2025. Full credit to the original creators."

Sunday, February 2, 2025

Saturday, February 1, 2025

THE WORKERS STRIKE BACK

Kshama Sawant: It's Time to Declare War on the Rich
(On Strike! on YouTube)
January 31, 2025

"On Strike provides news & analysis from a working-class perspective, putting forward a strategy to take on the billionaires and their political servants, and win...

On Strike is a production of Workers Strike Back, which was launched by Kshama Sawant and other working people in 2023 to spread the lessons of her decade as a socialist City Councilmember in Seattle, where she led movements to win historic victories like the first major $15 minimum wage, the Amazon Tax for affordable housing, and landmark renters’ rights like the first-in-the-nation ban on winter evictions. Workers Strike Back is building a movement across the country to fight for things like a $25/hour minimum wage, free healthcare and quality affordable housing for all, an end U.S. military aid to the Israeli war machine, and an end the genocide and occupation in Gaza. We’re organizing to build Jill Stein’s independent, pro-worker, antiwar Presidential campaign & to begin laying the foundation for a new party for working people."

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A shockingly small and seemingly insignificant percentage of people are actively destroying the world and making life difficult for everyone else. The majority of people are too busy trying to live a decent life to ruin it for others. Screw the Empire, let Workers Strike Back.
 

LYING LIKE A RUG MADE OF THUGS

The CIA ALWAYS KNEW Covid Came from a Wuhan Lab!
(The Jimmy Dore Show on YouTube)
January 29, 2025

"Remember when you were called a conspiracy theorist, a racist and a radical right-winger if you espoused the so-called “lab leak” theory about the origin of the COVID-19 virus? Well, good news, you’re not any of those things anymore, seeing as how the CIA has officially thrown its institutional support behind the lab leak theory — and acknowledged that the Biden administration agreed all along but without releasing the information to the public."

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I have more faith in Jesus than our representatives and I'm an atheist.


Friday, January 31, 2025

NEW YOINK TIMES

US Media Promotes Military Intervention In Venezuela
(Francisco Dominguez & Roger D. Harris at Popular Resistance.org)
January 26, 2025

"The New York Times, the so-called US “newspaper of record,” carried an opinion piece by one of its columnists promoting “military intervention” to promote “democracy” by overturning the democratically elected government of Venezuela.

The central tenet of the NYT piece is that the moral basis for deposing the current president is clear because it claims that he stole the election, terrorizes his opponents, and brutalizes his people with no sign of letting up, much less letting go. Every other option for political change, it contends, has been attempted. Not only that, but Venezuela maintains friendly relations with “our enemies” such as China, Russia, and Iran.

We deconstruct this appeal for illegal regime change. For us solidarity activists, Venezuela is an independent country, totally entitled to find its own way of development to benefit its people. The US may be the hemispheric hegemon, but it does not have the legal and even less the moral right to determine who should rule another country..."

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Democracy is anathema to The American Empire, especially in those rare occasions when it appears to be working. The notion that the swamp creatures dwelling in D.C. are interested in anything other than stealing the natural resources of Venezuela is beyond laughable.

Boycott The New Yoink Times, the newspaper of wrecktards.

Wednesday, January 29, 2025

DEMOCRACY @ WORK

"Most People Have No Idea What's About To Happen"
Richard Wolff's Last WARNING
(FREENVESTING on YouTube)
January 16, 2025

"Richard D. Wolff is an American economist and professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is known for his critiques of economic inequality and his advocacy for worker cooperatives as a way to empower individuals and address systemic issues within the economy. Through his books, lectures, and public appearances, Wolff explores topics such as economic democracy and alternative economic models."

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In the above video, Dr. Wolff provides an easy to digest digest of our history. If this is news to you you are welcome but his analysis is only an overview, the rest of the story is much much worse.

Most of us are aware that filthy rich megalomaniacs call the shots around the world and many of them love to extol the virtues of Capitalism and Democracy. Corporations really run things but they allow stooges to be elected as long as they serve their interests. That's why when leaders get elected that they don't like they get rid of them, via smear campaigns, electoral shenanigans, espionage, military intervention, and/or assassinations.

U.S. leaders are billionaires who have no interest in sharing their wealth.

The ruling class desires all the money generated by natural resources to go into their pockets. Not only has that always been the case in the U.S.A., you can probably name several robber barons without thinking hard, it's why it's been at war for virtually its entire existence. War is a cynical tool used to rape and pillage everywhere on Earth with the consent of a people completely brainwashed by lies and propaganda.

Please read this:

WAR IS A RACKET (PDF)
BY SMEDLEY D. BUTLER
"This short anti-war pamphlet was written by a Major General in the Marines
who was an American military hero, but became disillusioned with the profiteering,
propaganda, and injustice of the military-industrial and intelligence-foreign policy
establishments, and came to oppose American involvement in foreign wars
designed to benefit financial and industrial interests."

Corporations rule and their primary purpose is to accumulate and control assets, typically by exploiting the planet's resources by exploiting people, including their own employees, their consumers, or anyone they can use to their advantage. And they rarely clean up their toxic messes, that's always someone else's problem.

Corporations are as democratic as the military.

How many corporations ask their employees their opinion about what the company does and how they do it? Do indigenous populations get to vote against an oil company that extracts billions and billions of dollars of wealth from under them, leaving their land poisoned and desolate after they finish?

Democracy is not a characteristic of corporations and nothing screams CAPITALISM like a big corporation.

The Western elites often decry the idiocy and failures of socialist governments, claiming it's a system that cannot work. So why are they afraid of them. Rather than spending many trillions of dollars and killing many millions of people, why didn't they save all that money and all those lives by letting alternatives to capitalism fail on their own.

My personal opinion is the oligarchs are terrified that a socialist country might prosper if left in peace. A country that nationalizes it's resources for instance and uses that revenue to provide services to its citizens, is a very bad example for Americans to see.

If I were to consider a logical way to live with the best interests of the environment and everything that lives within it, handing over power to cabals of selfish freaks wouldn't be on my list.

Capitalism is not a survival strategy.

Get over it or get ready for it to be over.

When asked, "What's your solution, smart guy?" I simply reply, "Let everyone decide."