Comments on: Beyond The Soaring Rhetoric of Obama’s Cairo Speech: A Toxic Innocence At Home

By: bozh

bozh — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 21:20:57 +0000

don,
i’d be much surprised if the US ruling class didn’t know what you have said about finiteness of resources and leaving for future generation a scorched earth.

so i’ll go on with my observations with knoweledge that they are aware that we can’t go on like this for much longer.
So what’s up with world plutos? Well, for one thing billionaires comprise just 000001% of world pop. And they know that when people begin to gasp for air and die from heat/winds/floods, plutos can find a heaven in novaya zemya, alaska, or siberia, and elsewhere.
that means that save 10-50mn people in novaya zemya and elsewhere, all others wld perish.

that solves global warming, warfare, energy needs, etc.
or am i mistaken? Have they not thought of that? Give me some feed back, please! tnx bozhidar balkas vancouver
as an aside, am i scared about giving my real name and city i live in? not much for me but i am concerned for my wife!
and i do not condemn people who do not use real names. They have the right to be wary.

By: Don Hawkins

Don Hawkins — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 12:41:18 +0000

This not a game people and to watch the so called leaders here in the States it seems so. Cap and trade the Bill is an illusion and we hear the best we can do right now. Why is it the best we can do? Could it have anything to do with special interests? Can we take coal and make gasoline yes we sure can and we can also leave our kids a ruined Earth. Can we get oil out of a rock yes we sure can and we can also leave our kids a ruined Earth. Can we keep consuming like there is no tomorrow yes we sure can and we can also leave our kids a ruined Earth. Needing another Earth to keep this present system moving forward that’s a business term is not a joke. The speed we have used up and polluted our planet is breathtaking and so far the plan is full speed ahead. Just to see one plan that makes sense, reason would be a fresh of breath air. So far not a one just more illusion. Shocking isn’t it.

By: Don Hawkins

Don Hawkins — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 12:03:54 +0000

Advertising is legalized lying. H. G. Wells

You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements. Douglas

If advertising had a little more respect for the public, the public would have a lot more respect for advertising. Adams

Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless Lewis

The man who stops advertising to save money is like the man who stops the clock to save time. Thomas Jefferson

Living in an age of advertisement, we are perpetually disillusioned. The perfect life is spread before us every day, but it changes and withers at a touch. Joseph Priestley

If you read adds from the 1920’s or 30’s, 60’s and then the adds of today any changes? Much more respect for the public is it still legalized lying are the goods being advertised kind of worthless call call now. Can you still tell the ideas of a nation by its advertisements? Here’s one you don’t hear to often. “Ladies and gentleman people of Earth are you ready for peak oil and climate change”? “Come join us in Iceland where property is now at rock bottom prices”. “You only have until about 2018 but act now call now don’t wait this is a limited time offer”. “Come on get off that lost superhighway to clowntown, USA and come join us the time is now just fill out the easy form and see if you qualify call, call now”.

Two million to start Capital calm at peace one voice. There is still time but not on the lost superhighway to clowntown, USA trust me on this one.

By: Mulga Mumblebrain

Mulga Mumblebrain — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 02:53:22 +0000

Not for nothing did Gore Vidal call it the ‘United States of Amnesia’. Of course Gore pines for a mythical lost American Republic, but really, the American project has been a plutocratic, elitist drive for world empire since 1776. ‘The people who own this country are going to run this country’, was, I believe, a favourite saying of John Jay, first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and the architects of the Declaration of Independence were the colonies’ rich, who fashioned a state to suit their interests.
Alfred McCoy has outlined just how far back the roots of Yankee torture practices seen at Abu Ghraib,go. But he does not discuss the even deeper historical roots in techniques like water-boarding used both in the Philippines and against native Americans, and the breadth of torture, which has been used both within US prisons and police forces.
I think the Yankee pathology has a number of roots. Central is the worship of violence, itself a manifestation of American death-obsession. The Yanks seem to have a big problem with death, and appear to attempt to master it through primitive religious beliefs, fervently held, extreme materialism as if to thwart the enemy by piling up possessions as some sort of defence against the void and by the ruthless exercise of death-dealing violence against the defenceless, as if this ruthless manipulation of death somehow protects the wielder of ultimate power from death’s relentless presence. I wonder how one explains the casual insouciance of a Madeleine Albright in the face of 500,000 Iraqi child deaths, which calamity she was intimately complicit with, with her infamous observation that these deaths were a price that was ‘worth it’.
The US psyche has also been perverted by centuries of unrelenting influence by market capitalism. As Marx observed, capitalism shapes societies and psyches as ruthlessly as it does economies. Capitalism advantages the greedy and ruthless, the unscrupulous and the egomaniacal, while hindering the morally scrupulous, the empathic and those who see a sufficiency of wealth as more desirable than unbounded avarice. The elites in our sham democracies are almost entirely hereditary. Those who come along amongst these groups, who find that their class greed and indifference to the welfare of others is pernicious, are expelled, or remove themselves from, the business of ruling society. Thus the tendencies to ruthless self-interest and indifference to or hatred of others, are reinforced, by a process of ‘unnatural’ selection. Occasionally new recruits rise from the rabble, if they have proved themselves sufficiently psychopathic. The system thus reinforces itself, and by now is so intractable that the elites are openly looting the US, through financial crime and by the generosity of a political caste entirely bought and sold, to an unprecedented degree.
Abroad US violence is reaching unprecedented levels. Trillions have been entirely wasted, in a world of hunger and destitution, to erect an archipelago of hundreds of bases, fortress embassies and client regimes, from which the US interferes or seeks to interfere in the affairs of every other society on earth. The egotism is beyond words, and the duplicity unmatched, as the sole criterion for ‘democracy’ becomes total, slavish, obeisance to the US.
The most amazing symptom of end-stage Yankee pathology, in my opinion,is the dominance of Israel over the US. That one tiny tribe, or, one should say, the worst, the most openly racist and murderous elements therein, aided by the unprecedented money power of Jews within the US and the West, should completely control the US political process, through vilification, intimidation, money support in the notoriously corrupt US political system and media dominance, is breath-taking. That this dominance is used for ill, for the perpetual imprisonment of a people in their millions, their brutalisation and their incessant denigration and demonisation in the media, is vile enough, but that it hysterically demands unflinching praise as a force for absolute good, is clearly morally insane.
I’m afraid we are just living through a ghastly climax to centuries of social pathology throughout the world, primarily as the result of the dominance of market capitalism, a socially poisonous and ecologically devastating ethical and spiritual disease, and its leading state, the USA. For as long as the US dominates the planet, our civilization threatening crises can only worsen, and the time left to reverse the decline is short.

By: Don Hawkins

Don Hawkins — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 00:08:02 +0000

HR I watch TV news and stuff and I know I shouldn’t but it makes me feel so smart and HR I don’t think you are crazy now the people for the most part I see on TV crazy is the wrong word. Insane is a much better word. In this out of control system that only needs another Earth to keep going most I see just want to keep doing the same thing over again and everything will be fine that’s insane. Tomorrow tomorrow it’s only a day away.

By: HR

HR — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 23:52:33 +0000

Boz, your observations concerning Germany in the 1930s are very applicable to what has been going on here for at least the last 40 years, in deadly earnest with the bonding of the right with the Christofascists and the complete blurring of the lines that once provided at least a modicum of separation between the factions of the single ruling corporatist party. It has been so obvious, for so long, but people will call you crazy, or a traitor, or worse, if you try to point it out. I see very little hope for the future these days and have concluded that the people of the world will be better off without unthinking automatons like us.

By: Don Hawkins

Don Hawkins — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 23:28:25 +0000

In other words, more americans than any other people know so much that isn’t so and keep heading down the road for little more than the rigged, roadside attractions of the corporate carnival; hence, traffic is heavy on this lost highway, all lanes are jammed on the superhighway to Clowntown, U.S.A. As they head down the lost superhighway to clowntown, USA not really knowing that the system is out of control in more way’s than one and the so called leaders are in firm control of the out of control system and the illusion of knowledge that kept us all together has now turned into the greatest show on Earth in clowntown, USA at least for a little while longer. I guess we could use the knowledge the real thing and reason work together to save our you know what calm at peace while using those cool minds light not shadow science not superstition not fear but knowledge. It’s probably to simple?

By: Mike G

Mike G — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 23:23:08 +0000

Phil makes some very ggod points in his rant.

I wonder why he is so fearful of privately held firearms, does he believe that the government held firearms will be used only against America’s enemies and not inward against it’s own citizens to maintain the corporate and political hold of a desperate elite class.

Is he trying to make the point that Americans depend too much on the second amendment to resolve the upcoming unconstitutional fascist state. I

f so there, I’d agree, when push comes to shove, too many Americans will Kowtow and turn them all in and line up for the cattle cars. Americans should be more concerned about political solutions than killing solutions

Phil if you are listening, do not fear defending yourself against criminals and a criminal state that you clearly understand, you don’t want to be a patsy for the criminal state. Find somewhat that will take you to a gun range, I assume you live in city by your rant, firearms are not snakes, they are tools, you know how to use a hammer right.

Maybe you should start with a hammer.

By: bozh

bozh — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 21:40:42 +0000

in other words, more americans than any other people know so much that isn’t so.
this has happened to most germans in the 30s. This is happnening to most ‘jews’; perhaps jews are even more led astray than any other people with a cult or without a cult.
it had happened to japanese.
so, deluding people had been going on for millennia. Deceivers know that a lie is as strong as the truth.
they also know that a child wld accept a god readily if the authority [for them, parents are even gods let alone authority] tells a child that there is a god who is watching over it.

tell a child how great america is: just, fair, allknowing; with best constitution, etecetc., we can see that if amers are told that there are people who want to destroy this greatness, amers wld be so hateful towards these ‘terrorists’ that even the torture wld be much of mild thing to do to them.

innately amers are not evil. Neither were germans in the 30s. They were mistaught, misdirected, and disinformed. Germany, italy, and japan in 39-45 period prove beyond any doubt that lies are efficient and as strong as the truth.

but please don’t try to affirm this by lying to your wife or kids. Btw, i lied to my wife a lot; that was the only way i cld get her. tnx bozhidar balkas vancouver

By: HR

HR — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 19:40:54 +0000

As Chomsky has asserted for years, USans prefer to live in a state of SELF-IMPOSED ignorance. “The truth is out there” and very easily accessed these days, but we’d rather listen to and read lies and misinformation that tend to confirm our inflated, and inaccurate, self-image of ourselves. We’ll keep on making pledges to the flag, standing in awe of our screeching, war-loving abomination of an anthem, worshiping our military as it bankrupts us, and telling ourselves the imaginary man in the sky blesses us right up to the day the last of our kind passes from existence.