Bob! Thank Heaven you are all right. I've honestly missed your
snarky remarks.
Comrade Carl
******
Certainly this is a complicated pattern of human behavior.
And there are many, many causes. But our trust of one another is not
encouraged by any form of government that is structured like a
pyramid. The few on top must have enough control over the layers
below them in order to maintain their authority.
Capitalism is currently the "controller of choice". But I don't see
it as the root problem. In fact, we are seeing the transition from
Capitalism, to Corporate Capitalism. As I've pointed out in the past,
Mega International Corporations are muscling in and taking control
over nations. But we could as easily be taken over by the Military
Model. Any of these will enable the Ruling Class to control the
Masses. Again, this has been my major concern regarding religion. We
are controlled by a small group of "Priests" who are the spokesmen for
the Authority.
But all of that is just a corner of the problem. We have been
conditioned from the very beginning to protect our own. Whether it is
to protect our extended family, or those who look similar, or those
who agree with us, we go about establishing borders which we can
defend, and stand guard. It's called, "Survival of the Species."
Those who desire to control us are quick to use our own defense
mechanisms to their advantage. Divide and conquer. They turn us
against one another. And, since no Ruling Class ever desired to be
all things to all people, there exist many flaws in their ability to
control. So the Ruling Class uses deflection as a method of control,
blaming the System's short comings on "them!" "It's the fault of our
porous southern borders",our Leader exclaims. "Those Illegals want to
sneak in and take your Land away, take your jobs, rape your
womenfolk."
Survival of the Human Species depends upon the ability of the People
to think. To exercise our brains. This is another place where the
Ruling Class has taken control. They own the Media. They set the
curriculum in our schools. They own our entertainment, teaching us to
love violence, teaching us to thrill over gambling, teaching us to
disrespect those whom we defeat. Words such as Love and Compassion
are sneered at, and we are told they make us "girly".
Our super huge TV screens portray a muscle bound Rancher, cigarette
between his lips, a "Bud" in hand, astride his Ford 150, headed across
the range, or cruising past a bevy of skimpily clothed "Cow Girls".
Sound cool? Well, as old P.T. Barnum was fond of saying, "There's a
sucker born every minute".
Cordially,
Carl Jarvis
*********
> This sweep of Xenophobia, affecting the US and western Europe, this is not
> all based on Capitalism, is it? This is fear of the other. You could find
> it
> back when the people in one cave were afraid of those in another.
>
> Denmark Imposes New Restrictions on Immigrants
>
> Nyhavn, a waterfront district and popular tourist destination in
> Copenhagen,
> Denmark. (Lars Plougmann / Flickr Creative Commons)
>
>
> Denmark is requiring residents in 25 majority-immigrant enclaves to send
> their children to mandatory Christian and Danish values classes or risk
> losing their welfare benefits. It's the latest in a series of
> immigrant-restricting proposals not only from the Danish government, but
> from far-right politicians across Europe who are revising government
> policies regarding immigrants.
>
> In June, Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban implemented the "Stop Soros"
> law (named after Hungarian philanthropist George Soros), which bans
> individuals and organizations from providing aid to undocumented
> immigrants.
> As Vox explains, " [The law] is so broadly worded, that, in theory, the
> government could arrest someone who provides food to an undocumented
> migrant
> on the street."
>
> Also in June, Italy's Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini proposed a
> census
> of the country's Roma population, drawing parallels, as CNN observes, "with
> race laws approved during the regime of Benito Mussolini." It's not yet a
> law, but as Al-Jazeera reported Sunday, local authorities cleared a Roma
> camp of approximately 450 people shortly after Salvini called for the
> census.
>
> Denmark's laws, however, are particularly striking, both in terms of how
> they target specific areas based on immigrant population, and in the
> severity of punishments for noncompliance, which in some cases can result
> in
> jail time or loss of the country's extensive welfare benefits.
>
> Advertisement
>
>
>
> The Danish government, The New York Times reports, is "introducing a new
> set
> of laws to regulate life in 25 low-income and heavily Muslim enclaves,
> saying that if families there do not willingly merge into the country's
> mainstream, they should be compelled."
>
> The series of laws, also known as "the ghetto package," includes proposals
> to double jail time for certain crimes committed in the neighborhoods and
> to
> punish parents for sending their children on long trips to their country of
> origin. One proposal that was rejected for being too radical would have
> banned certain immigrant children from the 25 enclaves from being outside
> their homes after 8 p.m.
>
> The proposal requiring mandatory Danish and Christian values education,
> however, was passed by the Danish parliament last month.
>
> From the time children are 1 year old, the Times explains, they "must be
> separated from their families for at least 25 hours a week, not including
> nap time, for mandatory instruction in 'Danish values,' including the
> traditions of Christmas and Easter, and Danish language. Noncompliance
> could
> result in a stoppage of welfare payments. Other Danish citizens are free to
> choose whether to enroll children in preschool up to the age of six."
>
> Danish Minister of Education Merete Riisager explained the reasoning behind
> the law to The Copenhagen Post, saying, "There are a number of parents who
> come from the Middle East who have a totally different understanding of
> pedagogy, childhood and school than their Scandinavian counterparts."
>
> In addition to Danish and Christian education for preschoolers, Time
> magazine reports that 5- and 6-year-old students in 24 Danish schools will
> be " 'guinea pigs' for a new policy aimed at integrating non-Western
> immigrants into Danish society. From 2019, it will become law for schools
> that take more than 30 percent of their students from "ghetto" areas to
> force their students to take language tests."
>
> Denmark has long struggled with how to balance its generous welfare state,
> intended to serve a small, mostly white, Christian population, with an
> influx of immigrants, many of them Muslim. The white Danes the Times quoted
> were as supportive of these new laws as they were disparaging of
> immigrants.
>
> Anette Jacobsen, a retired pharmacist's assistant, praised the welfare
> benefits that gave her and her four children free education and health
> care,
> saying that "she felt a surge of gratitude every time she paid her taxes,"
> but maintaining that she and other white Danes are deserving of Denmark's
> benefits, unlike immigrants, who Jacobsen believes abuse the system. As she
> explained, "There is always a cat door for someone to sneak in," and, she
> continued, "their culture doesn't fit here."
>
> Never mind that, as Rokhaia Naassan, a daughter of Lebanese refugees and a
> resident of an affected neighborhood told the Times, not only does she
> speak
> fluent Danish, she talks to her children in Danish, so much so that her
> children's grandparents complain that they can't talk to their
> grandchildren
> in Arabic. In addition, Naassan and her sisters said, they'd move out of
> their neighborhood if they could afford to.
>
> When they were growing up, the sisters said they rarely encountered
> Islamophobia. Now, Rokhaia's sister Sara wonders, "Maybe this is what they
> always thought, and now it's out in the open." She added, "Danish politics
> is just about Muslims now. They want us to get more assimilated or get out.
> I don't know when they will be satisfied with us."
> Ilana Novick
>
>
On 7/3/18, Bob <buildyourownwealth@gmail.com> wrote:
> I preferred your first two attempts. They were more enlioghtening
> than the third attempt.
>
> Bob
>
> On 7/2/18, Carl Jarvis via acb-chat <acb-chat@acblists.org> wrote:
>> Hi Roanna,
>> Thanks for the comment. Chris Hedges is hard to take at times, but he
>> is a keen mind, and I consider him to be a modern prophet. Whether we
>> agree or disagree with him, his articles are thought challenging.
>> Chris Hedges can also be heard on YouTube. Sometimes I catch him on
>> RT TV. If you have DISH, it's channel 280.
>>
>> Carl Jarvis
>>
>>
>> On 7/2/18, Roanna Bacchus via acb-chat <acb-chat@acblists.org> wrote:
>>> Thanks for sharing this. It was interesting and informative.
>>>
>>> On Jul 2, 2018 10:43 AM, Carl Jarvis via acb-chat
>>> <acb-chat@acblists.org>
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> They say that the third times the charm...
>>>> We'll see. Carl Jarvis
>>>> ****
>>>>
>>>> America the Failed State
>>>>
>>>> Mr. Fish / Truthdig
>>>>
>>>> TORONTO—Our "corporate coup d'état in slow motion," as the writer John
>>>> Ralston Saul calls it, has opened a Pandora's box of evils that is
>>>> transforming America into a failed state. The "unholy trinity of
>>>> corruption,
>>>> impunity and violence," he said, can no longer be checked. The ruling
>>>> elites
>>>> abjectly serve corporate power to exploit and impoverish the citizenry.
>>>> Democratic institutions, including the courts, are mechanisms of
>>>> corporate
>>>>
>>>> repression. Financial fraud and corporate crime are carried out with
>>>> impunity. The decay is exacerbated by the state's indiscriminate use of
>>>> violence abroad and at home, where rogue law enforcement agencies
>>>> harass
>>>> and
>>>> arrest citizens and the undocumented and often kill the unarmed. A
>>>> depressed
>>>> and enraged population, trapped by chronic unemployment and
>>>> underemployment,
>>>> is overdosing on opioids and beset by rising suicide rates. It engages
>>>> in
>>>>
>>>> acts of nihilistic violence, including mass shootings. Hate groups
>>>> proliferate. The savagery, mayhem and grotesque distortions familiar to
>>>> those on the outer reaches of empire increasingly characterize American
>>>> existence. And presiding over it all is the American version of Ubu
>>>> Roi,
>>>> playwright Alfred Jarry's gluttonous, idiotic, vulgar, narcissistic and
>>>> infantile king, who turned politics into burlesque.
>>>>
>>>> "Congress works through corruption," Saul, the author of books such as
>>>> "Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West" and "The
>>>> Collapse of Globalism and the Reinvention of the World," said when we
>>>> spoke
>>>> in Toronto. "I look at Congress and I see the British Parliament in the
>>>> late
>>>> 18th century, the rotten boroughs. Did they have elections? Yes. Were
>>>> the
>>>>
>>>> elections exciting? Yes. They were extremely exciting."
>>>>
>>>> Rotten boroughs were the 19th-century version of gerrymandering. The
>>>> British
>>>> oligarchs created electoral maps through which depopulated boroughs—50
>>>> of
>>>>
>>>> them had fewer than 50 voters—were easily dominated by the rich to
>>>> maintain
>>>> control of the House of Commons. In the United States, our ruling class
>>>> has
>>>> done much the same, creating districts where incumbents, who often run
>>>> unchallenged, return to Congress election after election. Only about 40
>>>> of
>>>>
>>>> the 435 seats in the House of Representatives are actually contested.
>>>> And
>>>>
>>>> given the composition of the Supreme Court, especially with Donald
>>>> Trump
>>>> poised to install another justice, it will get worse.
>>>>
>>>> The corruption of the British system was amended in what Saul called "a
>>>> wave
>>>> upwards." The 1832 Reform Act abolished a practice in which oligarchs,
>>>> such
>>>> as Charles Howard, the 11th Duke of Norfolk, controlled the election
>>>> results
>>>> in 11 boroughs. The opening up of the British parliamentary system took
>>>> nearly a century. In the United States, Saul said, the destruction of
>>>> democracy is part of "a wave downwards."
>>>> The two political parties are one party—the corporate party. They do
>>>> not
>>>> debate substantive issues. They each support the expansion of imperial
>>>> wars,
>>>> the bloated military budget, the dictates of global capitalism, the
>>>> bailing
>>>> out of Wall Street, punishing austerity measures, assaulting basic
>>>> civil
>>>> liberties through wholesale government surveillance and the abolition
>>>> of
>>>> due
>>>> process, and an electoral process that has cemented into place a system
>>>> of
>>>>
>>>> legalized bribery. They battle over cultural tropes such as abortion,
>>>> gay
>>>>
>>>> rights and prayer in schools. We elect politicians based on how we are
>>>> made
>>>> to feel about them by the public relations industry. Politics is
>>>> anti-politics.
>>>>
>>>> The Republican Party built its political base in these culture wars
>>>> around
>>>>
>>>> Christian fascists, nativists and white supremacists. The Democratic
>>>> Party
>>>>
>>>> built its base around those who supported workers' rights,
>>>> multiculturalism,
>>>> diversity and gender equality. The base of each party was used and
>>>> manipulated by elites. The Republican Party elites had no intention of
>>>> banning abortion or turning America into a "Christian nation." The
>>>> Democratic Party elites had no intention of protecting workers from
>>>> predatory corporatism. Everyone was sold out. The ascendancy of a
>>>> populist
>>>>
>>>> right, dominated by racists and bigots, is the inevitable product of
>>>> the
>>>> corporate coup d'état, Saul said. He warned we should not be complacent
>>>> because of President Trump's imbecility. Trump is immensely dangerous.
>>>> "The
>>>> insipid," Thomas Mann wrote in "The Magic Mountain," "is not synonymous
>>>> with
>>>> the harmless."
>>>>
>>>> "How could a civilization devoted to structure, expertise and answers
>>>> evolve
>>>> into other than a coalition of professional groups?" Saul asked in
>>>> "Voltaire's Bastards." "How, then, could the individual citizen not be
>>>> seen
>>>> as a serious impediment to getting on with business? This has been
>>>> obscured
>>>> by the proposition of painfully simplified abstract notions which are
>>>> divorced from any social reality and presented as values."
>>>>
>>>> "The rational elites, obsessed by structure, have become increasingly
>>>> authoritarian in a modern, administrative way," he wrote in another
>>>> section
>>>> of the book. "The citizens feel insulted and isolated. They look for
>>>> someone
>>>> to throw stones on their behalf. Any old stone will do. The cruder the
>>>> better to crush the self-assurance of the obscure men and their obscure
>>>> methods. The New Right, with its parody of democratic values, has been
>>>> a
>>>> crude but devastating stone with which to punish the modern elites."
>>>>
>>>> All despotic regimes, Saul said, carry out their final battle for
>>>> control
>>>> by
>>>> contending against public officials and government bureaucrats, the
>>>> so-called deep state, which views the rise to power of demagogues and
>>>> their
>>>> sleazy enablers with alarm. These traditional courtiers, often cynical,
>>>> ambitious, amoral and subservient to corporate power, nevertheless
>>>> engage
>>>> in
>>>> the decorum and language of democracy. A few with a conscience win
>>>> minor
>>>> skirmishes to slow the rise of tyranny. Despots see these courtiers and
>>>> democratic institutions, no matter how anemic, as a threat. This
>>>> explains
>>>>
>>>> the assaults on the State Department, the Justice Department, the
>>>> Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Education and the
>>>> courts.
>>>> Despots use their appointees to undermine and destroy these
>>>> institutions,
>>>>
>>>> mocking their existence and questioning the loyalty of the
>>>> professionals
>>>> who
>>>> staff them. The reviled and neutered public employee surrenders or
>>>> walks
>>>> away in despair. Last year, the entire senior level of management
>>>> officials
>>>> resigned at the State Department. Resignations continue to bleed the
>>>> diplomatic core, as they do at other agencies and departments, and last
>>>> week
>>>> included James D. Melville Jr., the U.S. ambassador to Estonia, and
>>>> Susan
>>>>
>>>> Thornton, the nominee to be assistant secretary for East Asian affairs.
>>>>
>>>> "For the President to say the EU was 'set up to take advantage of the
>>>> United
>>>> States, to attack our piggy bank,' or that 'NATO is as bad as NAFTA' is
>>>> not
>>>> only factually wrong, but proves to me that it's time to go," Melville
>>>> said
>>>> in the post that announced his resignation.
>>>>
>>>> Once a process of deconstruction is complete, the system calcifies into
>>>> tyranny. There remain no internal mechanisms, even in name, to carry
>>>> out
>>>> reform. This corrosive process is being played out daily in Trump's
>>>> Twitter
>>>> rages, lies, smears and the barrage of insults he levels against public
>>>> servants, including some of his own appointees, such as Attorney
>>>> General
>>>> Jeff Sessions, as well as institutions such as the FBI.
>>>>
>>>> Witnessing this, Saul berates the American press too, which he said
>>>> willingly plays its part in the charade for ratings and advertising
>>>> dollars.
>>>>
>>>> "Trump gives these astonishingly Mussolini-ish press conferences," he
>>>> said.
>>>> "He says to the press, 'Shut up. Stop!' The press screams at him like a
>>>> mob,
>>>> a bunch of cattle. How can they be taken seriously? It is like the end
>>>> of
>>>>
>>>> the Roman Republic. Important political leaders from the Senate, along
>>>> with
>>>> their rivals, would move around Rome with 50 people to protect them.
>>>> Scenes,
>>>> exactly like Trump's interactions with the press, defined the end of
>>>> the
>>>> Roman Republic. Nobody knew what was going on. There was no dignity.
>>>> You
>>>> can't have a democracy without a level of respect and dignity. You only
>>>> have
>>>> chaos. This chaos eventually leads to a call for autocratic order.
>>>> Trump
>>>> benefits from the confusion, even though he resembles a cartoonish
>>>> figure
>>>>
>>>> out of a funny novel, a character from Jean Genet's 'The Balcony,'
>>>> although
>>>> without the self-awareness."
>>>>
>>>> Trump's decision to launch a trade war—Canada will impose punitive
>>>> measures
>>>> on $12.63 billion worth of imported American goods in response—is an
>>>> example
>>>> of the damage a despot who has little understanding of the economy,
>>>> politics, international relations or law can do. These self-inflicted
>>>> wounds, Saul warned, see despots intensify attacks on the demonized and
>>>> the
>>>> vulnerable, such as Muslims and the undocumented. Despots frantically
>>>> scapegoat others for their mess, often inciting violence among their
>>>> supporters to placate an inchoate rage.
>>>>
>>>> "I've always opposed trade deals not because I oppose trade," Saul
>>>> said,
>>>> "or
>>>> because I thought they were about getting a fair balance in the trade,
>>>> but
>>>>
>>>> because the trade deals were about something else. They were about
>>>> deregulation. They were about handing power to corporations and banks.
>>>> They
>>>> weren't about trade. Trump has again and again attacked the Canadian
>>>> dairy
>>>>
>>>> system. Nobody has stopped to ask him, 'Why are you opposing this
>>>> instead
>>>> of
>>>> adopting it for yourself?' A lot of American dairy farmers would like
>>>> to
>>>> have the Canadian system."
>>>>
>>>> "The free market approach to agriculture produces a surplus that drives
>>>> prices down and destroys the income of farmers," Saul said. "There are
>>>> two
>>>>
>>>> ways of responding to this. One of them is subsidizing. Europe,
>>>> following
>>>>
>>>> the old social democratic approach, subsidizes their agricultural
>>>> sector.
>>>>
>>>> This drives down the income of farmers, so [the governments] subsidize
>>>> [agriculture] more. They have enormous surpluses. Periodically, they're
>>>> throwing millions of tomatoes on the streets."
>>>>
>>>> "The United States claims it embraces the free market, but it does the
>>>> same
>>>> thing as the Europeans," Saul said. "It too heavily subsidizes the
>>>> agricultural industry. This leads to American dairy farmers producing
>>>> too
>>>>
>>>> much milk. This economic argument says the way to win is to
>>>> mass-produce
>>>> cheap goods. This is the Walmart argument. You're not selling your milk
>>>> or
>>>>
>>>> cheese for enough to make a living. The end result is, even though you
>>>> subsidize them, the farmers go bankrupt. They commit suicide. You have
>>>> terrible unhappiness in the [U.S.] dairy community."
>>>>
>>>> "We have a very efficient management system in Canada that keeps the
>>>> prices
>>>> up, not so high that working-class people can't buy milk and cheese,
>>>> but
>>>> it
>>>> keeps the prices up high enough that farmers can make a proper living,"
>>>> Saul
>>>> said. "Because farmers can make a proper living they're not committing
>>>> suicide. What Trump is saying to Canadians is that they should give up
>>>> a
>>>> system that works so Canadian farmers can commit suicide with American
>>>> farmers."
>>>>
>>>> "The problem with the Western world is surplus production," Saul said.
>>>> "We're in surplus production in almost every area. But there is a
>>>> terrible
>>>>
>>>> distribution system where people around the globe suffer and die from
>>>> starvation. This is a distribution problem, not a production problem."
>>>>
>>>> Saul said the imposition of tariffs and the crude insults Trump uses
>>>> against
>>>> American allies—he called Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
>>>> "dishonest
>>>> and weak"—are rapidly destroying America's clout and standing in the
>>>> global
>>>> hierarchy. This behavior is having very negative political, economic
>>>> and
>>>> social consequences for the United States.
>>>>
>>>> "The whole world, the Western world in particular, invested enormously
>>>> in
>>>>
>>>> the idea that the United States is the leader," Saul said. "The idea
>>>> that
>>>>
>>>> the United States is to be admired. What's sad about it is Americans
>>>> take
>>>> it
>>>> for granted that the world loves them. They've never analyzed the
>>>> responsibilities that come with being the leader. It's what you expect
>>>> from
>>>> a good parent. You act in a certain way. People want to identify with
>>>> the
>>>>
>>>> United States. It's been that way since the Second World War. All this
>>>> is
>>>>
>>>> being thrown away. Like or dislike Obama, he rebuilt a great part of
>>>> the
>>>> world's admiration for the United States. I know what his failures
>>>> were.
>>>> But
>>>> I also know his strengths. He was a president who was capable of acting
>>>> and
>>>> talking like the intelligent, civilized American that everyone wants to
>>>> admire."
>>>>
>>>> "But there's always a shadow to the bright tower," Saul went on.
>>>> "Trump's
>>>>
>>>> feeding that shadow. 'Americans are stupid. Americans are corrupt.
>>>> Americans
>>>> are not educated. Americans can't be trusted.' The whole list. The
>>>> longer
>>>>
>>>> the chaos goes on, the worse it gets."
>>>>
>>>> The collapse of the legislative and executive branches of government
>>>> has
>>>> now
>>>> been accompanied by the collapse of the judiciary. The loss of an
>>>> independent judiciary, Saul warned, is especially ominous.
>>>>
>>>> "The biggest problem in the United States is a very powerful and deeply
>>>> corrupted Supreme Court," Saul said. "This will set patterns for
>>>> decades.
>>>> It
>>>> will be hard to undo the evil being put into place."
>>>>
>>>> Saul despaired, at the same time, over the Trump administration's
>>>> attack
>>>> on
>>>> public education, which he called "the most fundamental service of
>>>> government when it comes to a democracy."
>>>>
>>>> "What holds democracy up?" Saul asked. "What makes democracy work?
>>>> Public
>>>>
>>>> education is number one. A well-educated citizen. [Secretary of
>>>> Education]
>>>>
>>>> Betsy DeVos is undoing that. There is a special place for her in hell."
>>>>
>>>> U.S. trading partners and allies such as Canada and European states
>>>> will,
>>>> he
>>>> said, reduce their dependence on the American market. The traditional
>>>> strategic and political ties to Washington will be steadily weakened.
>>>> And
>>>>
>>>> when the next financial crash comes, and Saul expects one to come, the
>>>> United States will be bereft of partners when it needs them most.
>>>>
>>>> "If you treat your closest allies as a threat, who is going to stand
>>>> with
>>>>
>>>> you?" he asked.
>>>> Chris Hedges
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> acb-chat mailing list
>>>> acb-chat@acblists.org
>>>> http://www.acblists.org/mailman/listinfo/acb-chat
>>>>
>>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
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