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Date: Wed, 04 Aug 1999 16:13:24 +0000
From: frank scott <•••@••.•••>
To: •••@••.•••
Subject: Re: cj#971> Thomas Kocherry: GLOBALISATION NEEDS A DEEPER
UNDERSTANDING
There needs to be a combined, democratic force that comes from both the
west and the rest. An either one or the other type resistance won't
work. I try to include mention of the global situation in every column I
write, also including the need for real democracy. A sample follows....
COASTAL POST
(415)868 1600 FAX (415) 868 0502
P.O. Box 31
Bolinas CA 94924
http://www.coastalpost.com
email: •••@••.•••
August.1999
Summer of Scam
Our warming planetary atmosphere is matched by over-heated rhetoric
from our consciousness controllers. Hot weather drains energy, and
brains as well. Mind managers distract us from summer discomfort
with tales of success and prosperity, occasionally breaking for media
orgies in celebration of celebrity death.
According to these sources, we have recently enjoyed, humanitarian
victory over a powerless eastern European nation. Further, trillions
of dollars of funny-money have been discovered by economic witch
doctors . And we approach the millennium with two richly financed
heirs fighting over the narrow political center in their race to the
white house, with indications that the issue is decided, though we
won't vote until next year.
Immorality and stupidity are a lethal combination. Nothing proves this
more than the slaughter of innocents in Europe, which has created a
human and environmental crisis still not fully understood. And the
forecasts of continued government surplus are worth as much as any
market prediction; It goes up, and then it goes down. The notion of
eternal economic bonanza involves zealous belief far more than sound
bookkeeping.
Even with a budget surplus, the national debt still tops 5 trillion
dollars and soaks tax payers for more than 229 billion a year in
interest payments , most of that going to an investor class which
somehow got money we printed and loaned it back to us.
Still, more people are employed and less are on welfare. But there
isn't much of welfare left, and the working population is putting in
more hours in order to achieve less comfort . Many who have left the
welfare rolls for employment are actually doing no better, having lost
health benefits in the move. And more than 14 million Americans are
still living below the poverty line.
Of the vast working middle, most are in debt, and that debt keeps
growing. In fact, it is responsible for the excessive life styles
enjoyed by the affluent minority. Those investors reap a fortune in
stock market profits created by the debtor class as it carries the
burden of consumption and buys everything it cannot afford.
A system that demands analysis and for which none is supplied , is
creating even more global poverty. The world has added 200 million
people to its roster of poor, with the total number of impoverished
humans now 1.5 billion. Meanwhile, market hucksters forecast bountiful
futures for all if we simply embrace the internet, drive SUVs and
worship old, failed economics given a new , trendy name.
The current economic picture began to develop in the late 19th
century, when capitalism made its first acknowledged appearance on the
global stage. It has not changed in essence, but simply moved from a
form of mechanical imperialism to one of electronic globalization. The
early ravaging of industrial workers and colonial subjects has not
ended; it has merely entered a new phase. Now those people are free
to operate as employee pawns on a global chessboard. The company store
has been replaced by the corporate bank; the plantation owner by the
foreign investor. The physical chains of slavery and serfdom have been
converted to financial bondage that still means peasantry, poverty and
debt for most.
The U.S. debtor class now owes as much privately, through consumer
borrowing, as it does publicly : more than 5 trillion dollars on each
side of the ledger. But government can print new money when it runs low;
individuals cannot. And the surplus discovered by our book-jugglers is
a direct result of cutbacks in government spending which have placed
new burdens on those already over-worked debtors.
Services once public have been turned back to private sources, with
attendant propaganda teaching that individualism is good and government
is bad. Government has been an anti-democratic enemy of the people,
because it has done the bidding of the minority which runs it, at the
expense of the majority which pays for it. But government haters want to
make it even less, not more democratic.
And now that government wallets are allegedly filled with more
dollars, will they be invested to upgrade public services for that
majority? And in communities where poverty , unemployment and lack of
education insure destitution?
After seven years in office, the CEO of America discovered that poor
people were humans, and not just welfare chiselers. On a photo-op
tour of ghettos, he called for private investment to create jobs and the
good life. But the communities deformed by the casino economy need
an infrastructure of social stability before they can truly gain from
private investment.
Schools, housing and health care need to be created , so people can
become something more than low wage workers who simply fill the tills
of capital , while being emptied of personal values beyond buying more
and living less.
Over heated market rhetoric matches a dangerously over heating planet,
with environmental problems increasing. Summer weather has become
hotter over the decades, and the intensifying heat waves seem to have
affected not only the earthly balance of nature, but the unearthly
balance of political power. Not to worry. Corporate science tells us
that hot weather is natural, as is the noxious gas pouring out of
cars, factories and politicians during this season of scams.
The Republicans have introduced terms like kinder, gentler and
compassionate into their lexicon, joining the Democrats in honoring the
word at the expense of the deed. Both wings of the corporate party have
always been especially kind, gentle and compassionate to their minority
financiers of the investor class. But it is the majority debtor class
who desperately need representation, before they and the earth
itself become too hot for any result but combustion.
Copyright (c) 1999 by Frank Scott. All rights reserved.
This text may be used and shared in accordance with the
fair-use provisions of U.S. copyright law, and it may be archived and
redistributed in electronic form, provided that the author is notified
and no fee is charged for access. Archiving, redistribution, or
republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the
consent of the author .
frank scott
http://www.marin.cc.ca.us/~frank/columns
email: •••@••.•••
225 laurel place, san rafael ca. 94901
(415)457 2415 fax(415)457 4791
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