without comment ...

Here are just links to videos, essays etc I like to post as I run in to them during the day. I don't like to comment about them. You will find more and other ones I like to point out in the comment section. I just don't want to talk myself. Please do with them whatever you like. Thank You.
[video:https://youtu.be/l9f5ZNVIIHs]

Brand posits that the only way the nation will move forward from its current crises is by empowering its people through systemic changes that redistribute power in a more democratic way than it currently exists.

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mimi's picture

[video:https://youtu.be/HVNYWJsGmzk]

There's this big power gap then between what people think and know with what is happening with information there and what the companies can do with it. Worse than that, they're keeping this information forever. So we can't know what they're going to be doing in the future and what they can piece together from the information in five, ten years, as their computer power increases, as your analytical power increases. This means that the situation is fundamentally different from most of the kind of relationships we have if we're buying a cup of coffee from a shop or these simple kind of capitalist relationships there, because we have that massive power imbalance because people can't make a kind of rational, informed choice about this.

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Lookout's picture

that we had become an inverted shadow. Trump certainly puts our dark side first.

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

mimi's picture

@Lookout

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Meteor Man's picture

How does America return "Power To The People" without massive political upheaval?

As I see it, systemic change requires socialism and anti-trust break up of Capitalist monopolies. The only way to give power to the people is to take power back from America's Capitalist/Political usurpers.

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"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn

mimi's picture

@Meteor Man

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@Meteor Man
He was speaking the truth, but he was talking about it in such a way that it understated the monumental task at hand.

I like how he said that the problem was bigger than just changing political parties.

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mimi's picture

@gjohnsit

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mimi's picture

The Danger of President Pence

Trump and Pence are misaligned politically, too. Trump campaigned as an unorthodox outsider, but Pence is a doctrinaire ideologue. Kellyanne Conway, the White House counsellor, who became a pollster for Pence in 2009, describes him as “a full-spectrum conservative” on social, moral, economic, and defense issues. Pence leans so far to the right that he has occasionally echoed A.C.L.U. arguments against government overreach; he has, for instance, supported a federal shield law that would protect journalists from having to identify whistle-blowers. According to Bannon, Pence is “the outreach guy, the connective tissue” between the Trump Administration and the most conservative wing of the Republican establishment. “Trump’s got the populist nationalists,” Bannon said. “But Pence is the base. Without Pence, you don’t win.”

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mimi's picture

@mimi
As Hopes for Trump Impeachment Persist, New Warnings of a President Pence

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Meteor Man's picture

If the Senate version -- which allows for $1.5 trillion in tax cuts and over $5 trillion in spending cuts -- is approved later this week, the path will be paved for Republicans to "fast-track" their tax legislation without needing any Democratic support.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/42271-robin-hood-in-reverse-sanders-b...

Here it comes. Will Corporate Dems help, stall or block Trump's tax cuts? Stay tuned.

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"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn

Alligator Ed's picture

@Meteor Man

Will Corporate Dems help, stall or block Trump's tax cuts? Stay tuned.

Do I start laughing now or do I wait?

One, two, three....

I've waited long enough.

ROFL ROFL ROFL ROFL ROFL

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snoopydawg's picture

@Alligator Ed

Will Corporate Dems help, stall or block Trump's tax cuts? Stay tuned.

Republicans refused to work with Clinton, but when Bush elected, democrats went along with his agenda even though they ran on rolling back his 'abuses'.

Republicans then said they wanted to make Barry a one term president. They 'didn't' let him pass his legislation.
Schumer has said that he is willing to work with Trump on tax reform. DiFi has said she is willing to give Trump a chance.

Clinton almost privatized social security, passed nafta, repealed glass steagal.....
Obama played around with it, created the cat food commission, opened up even more areas for drilling, expanded the war on terror much more than Bush did and was willing to pass the TPP and......

Now democrats are once again saying that if they regain control of congress, they will reverse Trump's damage and the DemBots are excited about their chances of accomplishing this. Again.

I already know the answer to your question which I'm sure you asked it as a rhetorical one.

I've wondered how to get people to see the truth about the military.
I'm also wondering how to get people to see the truth about congress and our government.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Big Al's picture

Heard that one before somewhere.

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mimi's picture

@Big Al

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mimi's picture

How Netanyahu Pulls Trump’s Strings - Special Report: It turns out that Hillary Clinton was partly correct: President Trump is a “puppet,” but his puppet master isn’t Russian President Putin but Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, reports Robert Parry.

Opposed to Putin

So, Trump is now on the path to wars with both North Korea and Iran, neither of which Russian President Putin favors. Putin, who played a key role in helping President Obama achieve the Iran-nuclear agreement, now sides with the Europeans in opposition to Trump’s decertification.

Putin also favors a prompt end to the Syrian conflict with the defeat of Al Qaeda and its allies, and he wants peaceful negotiations with North Korea over its desire for security against threatened American aggression. Trump is on the opposite side of all these Putin priorities.

In other words, not only does the Russia-gate hysteria have core evidentiary problems – both on the issues of “hacking” Democratic emails and claims about suspected “Russia-linked” entities paying for an infinitesimal number of ads on social media (including some about puppies and another promoting a critical documentary about Donald Trump’s golf course in Scotland) – but Trump is behaving in ways that are directly contrary to Putin’s desires and interests.

If indeed Clinton were right that Trump was Putin’s “puppet,” then he would have agreed to negotiations to address the North Korean crisis; would have accepted constructive diplomacy toward Iran; and would have ended all U.S. support for the Syrian militants and encouraged a quick end to the bloodletting.

Instead, Trump is moving in opposite directions, lining up with Netanyahu and the neocons, whom some European allies refer to as “America’s Israeli agents.” Although dressing up his capitulation to Netanyahu in tough-guy phrasing, Trump is doing what most U.S. politicians do – they grovel before Bibi Netanyahu.

And, if you have any doubts about that reality, you can watch how often both Republicans and Democrats jump to their feet when Netanyahu addresses a joint session of Congress, an honor that he has received three times, tying him with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

Those moments of American humiliation – as almost all 535 members of Congress act like puppets on invisible strings – represent the actual subservience of the U.S. government to a foreign power. And that power is not Russia.

President Trump is just the latest American politician to have his strings yanked by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.

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Deja's picture

@mimi

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thanatokephaloides's picture

@mimi

Puppets and Puppeteers ... How Netanyahu Pulls Trump’s Strings - Special Report: It turns out that Hillary Clinton was partly correct: President Trump is a “puppet,” but his puppet master isn’t Russian President Putin but Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, reports Robert Parry.

As if Hillary Clinton would be any more immune to Netanyahu than Donald Trump!

A classic Tweedledum vs. Tweedledee comparison!

We, the People of the United States of America (remember them, folks?) won't have our rightful sovereignty over our own country back until we put Israel back where it should be. Right now Israel dictates our foreign policy; if anything, we should be dictating theirs.

We pay for most of it, after all. And we could make life much better and more peaceful if we'd use our influence rather than let it use us, which is how it is right now.

Diablo

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

@mimi

...If indeed Clinton were right that Trump was Putin’s “puppet,” then he would have agreed to negotiations to address the North Korean crisis; would have accepted constructive diplomacy toward Iran; and would have ended all U.S. support for the Syrian militants and encouraged a quick end to the bloodletting. ...

Well, that 'Putin-puppet' course would be what any sane person would do.

Trust Clinton to make the sane course of action 'politically inexpedient' so that millions more people can be dispossessed/maimed/killed for corporate/billionaire/investor profit both from private profit from the arms and services sold to be used to create their suffering and death and from the theft of their resources. And trust Her in no other area... but we all know this.

Too bad everyone doesn't, thanks to propaganda and censorship in 'The World's Greatest Democracy', as has been 'protested too much' by propagandists and the propagandized alike.

Not that I'm hearing this claim made any more, now that the very concept of democracy is being more publicly rejected by corporate politicians busily social-engineering people to their paymaster's Orwellian ideologies of pathological personal greed.

As I've been saying for some time, this is the looting phase before TPTB finish the planet off, in the belief that they don't need it and that anything anyone else has was somehow stolen from them.

And we're apparently just going to sit here and wait for what comes, while some of us kvetch that one senator couldn't do it on his own, (with perhaps a little biting sarcasm in a burst of unthinking defiance, shutting down all ability to thereafter communicate with the general public or work toward any hope of any public good) and who said frequently that change must come from the people en masse.

TPTB must be stopped and neutralized - but I don't know what to do either...

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

Alligator Ed's picture

@Ellen North

As I've been saying for some time, this is the looting phase before TPTB finish the planet off, in the belief that they don't need it and that anything anyone else has was somehow stolen from them.

And we're apparently just going to sit here and wait for what comes, while some of us kvetch that one senator couldn't do it on his own, (with perhaps a little biting sarcasm in a burst of unthinking defiance, shutting down all ability to thereafter communicate with the general public or work toward any hope of any public good) and who said frequently that change must come from the people en masse.

Now I have two theories on this:

1. The same people who think the Evil Queen is just wonderful AND are billionaires, think every thing will be hunky-dory after each looted society collapses (which will be all of them). But a destroyed society doesn't make airplane's, or produce much food even. Where would the food come from? Where would the power generation come from? Were would the foot servants, handmaids, and lowly serfs come from?

2. Elon Musk has secretly developed a fully sustainable colony, fully automated, on the moon. His new Space-X rockets are so designed that they can easily travers 250,000 miles and land just before dinner.

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mimi's picture

White Supremacists Flustered by Viking Discovery

You think Mr. Orange Drumpyhead has some Iranian genes in him?

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Alligator Ed's picture

@mimi Mr. Drumpf is full of internal contradictions, so that it is his Iranian genes battling with his Saxon/Bavarian genes driving him nuts. (Or do we really need an excuse for his erratic behavior?)

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@Alligator Ed

Damn, and here I thought it was his bowel contents trying to fit in his already-overloaded skull causing the imbalance...

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

TheOtherMaven's picture

@mimi

who hasn't spent their formative years in a newsproof bunker. The Norse went everywhere their ships could reach - and since they had the best-built ships for their time, that covered a lot of sea and coastline. And where they didn't raid (and sometimes when/after they did), they traded and settled.

Incidentally, Iranians are Indo-Europeans - just like the Norse, and the Greeks, and the ruling caste in Northern India. They are not Arabs and will be very offended at being misidentified as such (conversion to Islam was at sword-point and not entirely successful to this day).

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

@TheOtherMaven

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