Rise up or die
Chris Hedges, from truthdig
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/rise_up_or_die_20130519/
. . .
A handful of corporate oligarchs around the globe have everythingwealth, power and privilegeand the rest of us struggle as part of a vast underclass, increasingly impoverished and ruthlessly repressed. There is one set of laws and regulations for us; there is another set of laws and regulations for a power elite that functions as a global mafia.
We stand helpless before the corporate onslaught. There is no way to vote against corporate power. Citizens have no way to bring about the prosecution of Wall Street bankers and financiers for fraud, military and intelligence officials for torture and war crimes, or security and surveillance officers for human rights abuses. The Federal Reserve is reduced to printing money for banks and financiers and lending it to them at almost zero percent interest; corporate officers then lend it to us at usurious rates as high as 30 percent. I do not know what to call this system. It is certainly not capitalism. Extortion might be a better word. The fossil fuel industry, meanwhile, relentlessly trashes the ecosystem for profit. The melting of 40 percent of the summer Arctic sea ice is, to corporations, a business opportunity. Companies rush to the Arctic and extract the last vestiges of oil, natural gas, minerals and fish stocks, indifferent to the death pangs of the planet. The same corporate forces that give us endless soap operas that pass for news, from the latest court proceedings surrounding O.J. Simpson to the tawdry details of the Jodi Arias murder trial, also give us atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide that surpass 400 parts per million. They entrance us with their electronic hallucinations as we waiver, as paralyzed with fear as Odysseus sailors, between Scylla and Charybdis.
. . .
clarice
(5,504 posts)xtraxritical
(3,576 posts)yurbud
(39,405 posts)xtraxritical
(3,576 posts)yurbud
(39,405 posts)clarice
(5,504 posts)4dsc
(5,787 posts)Don't expect anyone any where to rise up from the chains that bind them. Just won't happen.