caucus99percent

free-range politics, organic community

When a man with a gun steals from a bank, he's called a bank robber, and he's looking at hard time.
When a CEO steals from a bank, it's called fraud, maybe, and he has to pay a fine.
When a man with a truck bomb blows up a wedding, or a school, or a hospital, he's called a terrorist.
When a man with a Reaper drone blows up a wedding, or a school, or a hospital, it's called collateral damage.

Financialization is a term used to describe the development of financial capitalism during the period from 1980 to present, in which debt-to-equity ratios increased and financial services accounted for an increasing share of national income relative to other sectors.

In other words, we quit making things except currency (and weapons to enforce global USD use). We sent our industrial economy to China and the third world, hollowing out labor and the middle class in the process. Profits became god, people pawns...and the rich became obscenely rich and completed the purchase of the government lock, stock, and barrel.

(I am writing a book. It is called Salamander. It is about burning in a fire. And a journal of the plague year(s). It will be longer than The Anatomy Of Melancholy. This here is a small sliver: 21,682 words. Lie back. Smoke some opium. See if it does anything, for you. & if it seems like, in this part, I’m dancing around the fire, not really burning, not being there, in the thing itself: have you never read Slaughterhouse-Five? Catch-22? “There, there. There, there.” And. “So it goes.”)

February 2 is the day the Americans everywhere pause in their labors to await word from an oracular rodent who comes up from out of the ground to deliver climate wisdoms.

“Zoomancy,” that is the fancy word for such: humans scrutinizing the parts, patterns, particulars, of non-human creatures, for clues as to past, present, future.

About once a year, when I can find the strength, I do a news search to see what Blackwater-founder Erik Prince has been up to, and he never disappoints. He's always doing things that are immoral, unethical, and often illegal. Keep in mind that this is only a sampling from just this past year.
Let's start with the immoral.

Power in a union

“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”
Pablo Picasso

A copy of The Imperial Cruise by author James Bradley was gifted to me last year by an 80+ year old Marine who lived close enough by to be considered a neighbor. Never met an ex-marine or a retired marine, the ones I a have met, at any age, consider themselves a Marine. We had many discussions over the years on our beliefs regarding politics, foreign interventions and military service. This was the book that convinced him to discourage his Grandson from following the family tradition of military service. I just found out he has passed, it seems appropriate to recognize the evolution of peoples beliefs and values as they become aware of greater scope of information.

The last question from the audience in the video below is regarding how the American public was kept uninformed of the foreign policy implications of the voyage.

The question is you know back in 1905 what was the coverage? In 1905 this was front page news, the President's daughter was off to Asia. But the reporters new very little about Asia. When this Imperial Cruise landed in China there were huge demonstrations. There were anti-American posters all over the walls. There were posters mocking Alice Roosevelt. The New York Times wrote there were disgusting placards. They never filled the American public in. So all they wrote about were sumo matches, successful trips and lunches. They detailed about what Alice Roosevelt wore, how many trunks of clothes she had, she changed at 3 pm for this reception, she put on a dress and blah, blah blah.

Then they replayed Taft's speeches. You know the Manila Chamber of Commerce told Taft it is on the brink of economic collapse. Taft got up and made a speech about how we are going to build railroads in the Philippines. The Philippines are a nation of 7,000 islands. The press just portrayed the administrations line. Which was how the press worked in 1905, was not exactly investigative journalism.