We should never use the terms “corporation” and “business” interchangeably. Corporations are considered legal entities, which means they are considered “persons” with legal rights over and against actual biological persons. They may withhold vital information from the public and call it “free speech.” Corporations have what is called “limited liability” which, when decoded, means they can expect that public money will be used to protect them from the consequences of their own disastrous actions. They are owned by shareholders, which means their CEO is usually bound by law to make as much money as possible for the shareholders regardless of the consequences for anyone else.
It should come as no surprise when corporations become unaccountable spectres haunting everything we do. It is in the interest of every small business and every actual person to remove the title of “personhood” from corporations, and to make them accountable for everything they do.
This coming election will make a huge difference for many of us who live in the United States, but the wretched of the earth will have a hard telling whether it is a liberal or conservative president who stands upon on their throats.
When did Democrats stop protecting whistle blowers? During the Nixon and Bush years, the Democrats were champions of transparency in government. Daniel Ellsberg, who illegally leaked the Pentagon Papers, was hailed as a hero. When Obama was running for president he praised reported incidents of whistle blowing as, “acts of courage and patriotism”, which “should be encouraged rather than stifled as they have been during the Bush administration”.
Now fast forward. In this article Glenn Greenwald paints a different picture.
“More remarkable is that a Democratic presidential candidate is sticking his chest out and proudly touting that he has tried to imprison more whistle blowers on espionage charges than all previous presidents in history combined: more than the secrecy-loving Bush/Cheney White House, more than the paranoid, leak-hating Nixon administration, more than anyone in American history.” -Glenn Greenwald
When we focus too much on the heroes and villains of our national political scene, we can miss the big picture. The United States is now a vast military empire that must destroy any serious threat to its hegemony. To keep our current level of consumption we must turn other parts of the world into a living hell. That is an ugly truth few Americans want to face. So whether it be the dirty military secrets revealed by Bradley Manning, or the corrupt financial ties released by Wiki leaks, we Americans have chosen to shoot the messenger rather than face the message.
Whichever candidate we choose in November will still have a job description that demands lying to us about what we are doing in other parts of the world, and in crushing any who would tell us the truth. What we have become as a nation is the most classified secret of them all.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/05/obama-campaign-brags-about-whistleblower-persecutions
Bobby Jindal has been a tireless advocate for small government. He has been the poster child for deregulation of almost anything that had to do with businesses. But Bobby Jindal is also governor of Louisiana. When the gulf oil spill happened, it became obvious that British Petroleum wanted to do as little as possible to remedy the situation. So Gov. Jindal watched hopelessly as the small government of Louisianna tried to protect its citizens from a corporate giant. Eventually, Jindal began to ask for larger government intervention. Leonard Pitts saw the irony and offers us the following article.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/06/02/95139/commentary-oil-spill-has-small.html
When I do posts about gun control, I am always amazed at how reasonable most of the gun owners are, as opposed to the actual positions of the NRA. This article in Truthout was one of those moments where I almost slapped myself in the head and said, “why didn’t I see that all along?”
The NRA is not simply a collection of gun nuts, instead it is many well meaning people who have fallen into an illusion. Unfettered captitalism corrupts everything about our lives and gun lovers are no exception. While the NRA presents itself as representing hunters and those who want to defend themselves, the NRA also represents gun makers. According to this article, the money it takes in from dues isn’t as much as the money it gets from lobbying for gunmakers. I was embarrassed I had know realized this before. As in everything else in a nation living in the false consciousness of capitalism, if you want to know why good people are acting badly, follow the money. If you were a gunmaker, would you rather sell a inexpensive 22 rifle, or a military grade weapon that will make you many times more?
“Annual membership fees at $35 a pop pale in comparison to the millions from industry players who helped finance the NRA’s $136 million worth of influence-pushing in 2010, when the group spent around that amount on legal services, professional fundraising, advertising and promotion, conferences, member communications, program services and legislative action. The institution appears to be more of a lobby for gunmakers than an organization that stands up for gun owners.”
http://truth-out.org/news/item/11360-the-nra-lobbies-for-gunmakers-not-gun-owners
The recent, first ever audit of the Federal Reserve gave us a small glimpse into the the monstrous deceit cloaking our predatory capitalist economy. Some of the same people calling for austerity for the masses, have been funneling unthinkable amounts of money into their own pockets. Some of the “bail out” money supposed to stimulate the US economy actually went to foreign banks and businesses. There is not reason to trust any politician of either party who will not call for full transparency, and then actually deliver it when they get in office.
“The first top-to-bottom audit of the Federal Reserve uncovered eye-popping new details about how the U.S. provided a whopping $16 trillion in secret loans to bail out American and foreign banks and businesses during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. An amendment by Sen. Bernie Sanders to the Wall Street reform law passed one year ago this week directed the Government Accountability Office to conduct the study. “As a result of this audit, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world,” said Sanders. “This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you’re-on-your-own individualism for everyone else.””
(Thanks to Yvette Shelton for finding the quote above.)
About a year ago the spacecraft Dawn began sending unprecidented information about the asteroids by streaming information on the the asteroid Vesta. This report from the BBC tells us about a new phase of the mission
“The spacecraft’s ion engine is now pushing it on to an even bigger target in the belt of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter – the dwarf planet Ceres.”
I believe we will have to wait until 2015, but that sounds exciting as well.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19495444
Chris Hedges has written a chilling essay about the necessity, and the difficulties, of saving our planet.
“Resistance is a moral imperative. We cannot use the word “hope” if we do not fight back. But the corporations will employ deadly force to protect their drive to extract the last bit of profit from life.”
“We can expect only mounting hostility from the corporate state. Its internal and external security apparatus, as the heedless exploitation and its fatal consequences become more apparent, will seek to silence and crush all dissidents. Corporations care nothing for democracy, the rule of law, human rights or the sanctity of life. They are determined to be the last predator standing. And then they too will be snuffed out. Unrestrained hubris always leads to self-immolation.”
Thanks to Alan Cormack for sending.
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/11331-chris-hedges-life-is-sacred
Interesting question: Would the the Nazi’s have been convicted if they were tried by the standard the US now uses for it’s own actions? I’m not suggesting we’ve done the same concentrated evil as they, but since we left the Geneva Conventions and international accountablility long ago, are our standards now so low that we have essentially defined “war crimes” as something done by someone other than ourselves?
When I see the Vietnam Memorial, it makes me sad that 87,000 loyal and trusting Americans were sent to fight a war for what appears to have been false reasons. It makes me sad that perhaps millions of Vietnamese may have been killed for economic and geopolitical advantage rather than the reasons given at the time. It makes me even sadder that the ones who may have manufactured those false reasons, as well as those who profitted off the war were never identitied so we were doomed to repeat the same mistakes.
When President Obama took office he said that to investigate the prior administration for war crimes would dwelling on the past, and that he wanted to look to the future. But, by that standard, no crime would ever be punished because, by definition it has already happened. The problem is, if we don’t do those investigations, we will continue to act on the same false information, and some of those responsible for the deception will still be in place to create more mischief.
The point in a war crimes investigation is not punishment of past wrongs but prevention of future ones. When a police officer takes a life there is an investigation. Why are we holding Presidents, who may be responsible for a hundreds of thousand deaths, to a lower standard?
I’m not sure we could try sitting Presidents because the other side would always want to make charges. But if every President knew at the end of his or her term that all of papers would used as evidence in an investigation of any acts of war, I suspect we might see much more caution when it comes to killing people from other nations.
The article explores Bishop Tutu’s efforts to find out the real causes for the Iraq war and to make sure that if it was fought for a lie, as it appears to have been, that we will not repeat the same mistake.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/03/tony-blair-the-hague-iraq-war