We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Friday, May 24, 2013

Worshipping the One and Only "Profit"

Click here if you wish to access source of this 4:19m video posting by Don Quijones from Raging Bull-Shit.


The scene features a great monologue by the CEO of UBS broadcasting laying out in the boldest terms the real role of the media in a globalized corporate-owned world that worships one thing only: profit!
I would take issue with the above description of this scene from the classic film Network (1976) . The major message conveyed here was the coming advanced stage of capitalism known today as globalization. Corporations and business has always been about profits. However, the corporations that have grown up in the bellies of societies have like a cancer largely consumed the host societies. As the protagonist in the film states: "there is no America, there is no democracy. There is only IBM, AT&T, Dupont, Union Carbide, Exxon, [etc]". 

Global elites no longer think of themselves as Americans, Russians, Englishmen, etc. Their country is the globe. They have homes in places like New York, London, Davos, Palm Beach, Aspen, Toronto, on the Riviera, etc. And they travel to and fro by private jet to their various homes and to meet their fellow elites at conferences all over the world. At such annual meetings as the Bohemian Grove, they form friendships and bonds with global capitalist elites. 

Nations nowadays only exist to control the movement of workers for the benefit of these corporations. Increasingly we are seeing supra-national laws such as NAFTA and governing bodies run by unelected elites such as the European Commission, and banking cartels such as the Federal Reserve and European Central Bank that control the supply of credit and money. Now the global One Percents are in the process of establishing the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) to include a much larger areas of the globe. These, like NAFTA, are corporate treaties where major corporations write their own international trade rules that supersede national laws. 

Eventually, these networks of capitalists will merge and/or consume each other until there is only one corporate entity, World Inc, with global enforcers ruling over a nightmarish police state in a world of climate extremes, polluted rivers, ocean, and air:  This will happen if we just all sit back, watch the boob tube, and mind our own business.