‘Much of foreign policy..is an exercise in mass projection, in which a tiny self-interested elite conflates its needs and desires with those of the entire world.’

DON'T FORGET HOW

-Naomi Klein, from the Shock Doctrine and referring to Stephen Kinzer’s 2006 book Overthrow

This is actually what foreign policy is in practice. Everything else is just spin.

Klein is in my opinion a premiere journalist of the highest caliber, and her work is beyond compelling and extremely difficult to argue against. Only fantastic and contradictory rhetoric – aka lies and bullshit out of political/corporate mouthpieces via their corporate media outlets – have effectively battled the obvious truths Klein has exposed.

But one can hope that Klein, Kinzer, and other truth seekers will continue the uphill battle against the bullshit, because this fight needs them badly. Theirs is often a thankless and glory-free pursuit, and we are the underdogs who need all the help we can get.

Nobody wants to talk about it. Nobody wants to think about it. And nobody is talking or thinking about it.

NOWHERE NEAR ENOUGH

This is not an attack on new mothers, or couples wanting to start a family, or families of all sizes already happily living.

This is a plea to acknowledge the fact that this planet can’t hold an infinite amount of heads!

I’m not really sure who  to tell this or who is even listening, (not the politicians) but what. the. fuck? We have artificial insemination, life support, stem cells, cryogenics…well nix that last one for now, but you know what I mean. This species has figured out how to breed.

Why do we rape the globe for coal, gas, oil, water, food, and any other resource we can think of? Why is it an issue? Why is everything all fucked up? Why are billions – not millions – starving?

Is it because we don’t yet have enough people on the planet? That is undoubtedly the reason, and I am certain the mainstream corporate press will back me up on that.

There is no problem(s). Just keep steady. Don’t worry if you can’t afford it, or if the school is closed, or the water doesn’t flow. Don’t worry about antibiotic-tainted food supplies. Watch TV, forget about all that shit. It doesn’t exist, never did and never will.

Things are bound to be much, much better once we can just find a way to breed faster and get more people packed onto this sphere.

That is the answer to all the questions. More, and faster. And remember we don’t only need them to scrub the floors and pay off future bonds – we need them to use as many resources as possible while generating as much waste as possible. That’s the beauty of a population explosion!

NICE PHOTO OP LIAR

We know people are getting laid off left and right, and a lot of these people are in public positions. Here’s a clip of some great work by Juan Gonzales showing where some of the money is, and how muni crooks pay their friends with tax dollars,  while they fire existing employees under the pretense of having no cash.

‘Oh, yeah. Well, the city just laid off 500 public school aides who make $18,000 a year, while they’re paying all these people that are making $400,000 and $500,000 a year for a failed system.’

This is a short one-page piece I urge you to read:

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/3/26/juan_gonzalez_ny_pays_230_consultants

AN OVERSTATEMENT

Anyone with any brains out there knows we are all idiots.

We are all way too busy to realize just what idiots we actually are. The only sober way to properly observe the idiocy would be to stop doing it, which is a lot like stopping global warming. Everybody continues to talk about reducing emissions – in fact that represents the bulk of the talk on this subject – but it would literally and scientifically be a miracle if we could merely level off emissions.

Yet this is almost never discussed. Why? Because we are too busy being idiots and prefer to discuss impossible miracles that have virtually no chance of occurring, instead of focusing on realistic concepts. Marketing, distractions, and alas, idiocy – totally unobservable, obfuscated idiocy.

OK, now on to free markets. Many writers and thinkers and publishers and producers have devoted craploads of time and money into just one of these concepts, but here I lay out the vitals in a couple of paragraphs for readers to heartily ingest.

‘Free’ markets are free just exactly as long as they have the guns to say so. The ‘free’ market is more accurately termed the ‘enforced’ market.

‘Free’ and ‘freedom’ are grossly overused terms whose abstract definitions are rarely understood in context. But in the same way sex and provocative images are effective in marketing, so are the words ‘free’ and ‘freedom’ in politics.

For instance, in America the implication is, if you want to be free, all you have to do is shut the fuck up, and you are then free to remain free to do whatever you are told.

Enjoy this freedom and don’t fuck it up by questioning it, either.

Questions are for idiots.

TELL ME MORE

The instances of President Obama going against his pledge for transparency are numerous – indeed almost infinite and rising – and to a near equal degree his credibility disintegrates. This, of course, assuming there existed credibility in the first place.

In spite of the exaggerated term ‘infinite,’ we will make an attempt to display a succinct group of facts:

‘Barack Obama had big promises about transparency when he first took office. He campaigned on it. But according to a recent L.A. Times article, the Obama administration has denied FOIA requests 70,779 times in its first year (the Bush White House denied only 47,395 requests in the same amount of time).’

FOIA is the Freedom of Information Act, or was.

All hail the king, based on….still trying to figure that out.

http://www.alternet.org/world/146162/izzy_award_winner_jeremy_scahill%3A_%22we%27re_at_a_ground_zero_moment_to_save_real_journalism%22

Recent scientific efforts to discover the last period in which a politician is known to have told the truth got a big boost with a new discovery.

THIS COULD BE IT

Deep in what is known as the  Greenstone Belt in the Canadian Shield, a team of researchers has labored in vein for almost two decades in search of the ever-elusive political truth.

But the hard work may well have paid off with the discovery Wednesday of a new fossil form initially believed to be 2250 Ma (million years) old, give or take about a billion years.

The discovery marks a major step in what has become the pre-eminent dating prize among  field researchers and top historic geologists.

“While it has been proven that no politician has spoken a true word in the Cambrian Period, dating back to about 542 million years ago, big questions have remained as to when in the Pre-Cambrian era this instance may have occurred,” said Dr. Jamison Gilfried, a prominent member of the GSA.

“The discovery of this fossil may just be the missing link we have been looking for,” he added.

Geologists use a technique, known as ‘truth dating,’ incorporating an organic bacteria in a serum applied to the fossil to determine its truth value.

Geologists have named the fossil ‘Phineas 22′ after the celebrated 19th century vaudevillian PT Barnum.

It’s a good thing we’ve got the FDA to make sure the foods our kids eat are healthy.

JUST LIKE ON TV

Whoops. Except for the small problem that the FDA doesn’t give a flying shit about the kids in the USA, because it is on the take from cheap-ass junk food profits, which is exactly correct in the business world. Because if health means smaller profits, than health is out, out, out of the picture.

Doesn’t that make you proud of your government?

In fact, not only does the FDA not give a shit about regulating anything, it specifically relegates this task to the advertisers. The following clip from Jill Richardson:

‘To see how well self-regulation was working, the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity examined children’s breakfast cereals, as the majority of major cereal companies are part of the self-regulation initiative. They found that breakfast cereals marketed to children are, on average, the least healthy cereals available. Specifically, they contain 85 percent more sugar, 65 percent less fiber and 60 percent more sodium than adult cereals. The cereals marketed to children are so unhealthy, in fact, that the United Kingdom would not allow any of them to advertise to children on television.’

Recent research shows that the US is obese, but the UK is even a little fatter, and as usual the UK is ahead of the US in figuring out what the fuck is really going on.

So we’ve talked about obesity and advertising. We’ve studied it. We have acknowledged its existence. Michelle Obama has planted a garden, or at least the White House has issued a press release which champions an organic garden.

And that’s how the US and the FDA deal with this shit. Money in the – I was going to say bank, but… Money in the pocket.

http://www.alternet.org/food/146093/behind_the_shady_world_of_marketing_junk_food_to_children?page=2

Yet another gargantuan embarrassment for human rights, democracy, and truth in government and media has been thrust upon us.

UNITED STATES OF

Yes, it has been named the health care bill. Most of the lies and corporate propaganda has been efficiently disseminated via the mainstream press, so the Exploited Times will attempt to do its part to share only the ugly stuff – that is, the facts.

The only question we have left is: What drugs do these despicable liars and insurance shills (politicians) take? It must be some good stuff that enables them to show their hideous, spineless and greedy faces in public, time after time, with no apparent shame or guilt. These drugs are indeed the good shit, and just one of many perks in doing business with Big Pharma.

Some real news:

-Insurance companies can unilaterally raise prices without ceilings or caps and monopolize local markets to shut out competitors.

-Health care stocks and bonuses for the heads of these corporations are shooting upward.

-Fourteen thousand Americans a day are now losing their health coverage.

-Private insurance bureaucracy and paperwork consume 31 cents of every health care dollar.

-The bill is about increasing corporate profit at taxpayer expense. It lavishes hundreds of billions in government subsidies on insurance and drug companies.

-President Barack Obama’s director of health care policy, who will not discuss single payer as an option, has served on the boards of several health care corporations.

- (Corporations have handily) discredited and silenced voices that represent at least half of the population.

-Dennis Kucinich, who ultimately voted for it anyway: “You’re giving insurance companies an even more powerful monopoly status in our economy.”

Above stats taken from Chris Hedges

What a glorious victory and achievement, for….the insurance industry, whose profits – coincidentally – are up close to 500% in the last ten years. This is of some interest since the majority of wages – and real estate prices and most other prices – are the same now as they were 10 years ago.

So it is certainly no mystery where the money is. Insurance and finance, which have been one and the same for awhile now, along with weapons and war, are what pays the bills.

But don’t let’s forget that it’s your sick and poor neighbors who are providing this revenue stream.

Give me some of those pills and the remote control, so I can pretend I don’t know any of this shit!

What is American Culture?

MARCHING IN LOCKSTEP

Of course it is not any one thing. It is easy to say that there is none at all – for it is nothing more than a devoid landscape of homogenized commercialism.

But guess what? That is the culture!

Nothing shapes it more than the television advertisement. Let’s take a look at this ubiquitous phenomenon which plagues the so-called #1 superpower.

Why can’t they stop watching TV?

Although many would agree that TV contains and disseminates mostly garbage, this acknowledgment does not deter them from watching almost continuously. Similarly, a lawyer recently told me she had been reviewing telecom contracts and discovered illegalities; however, when asked,  she admitted to contracting with the same company in spite of this knowledge.

Both cases reveal insight into a deep rooted, multi-generational evolution of cultural denial.  All our endless searches for distraction from whatever our reality we need to be distracted – foster, indeed necessitate – profound denial and hypocrisy. It is in this bubble we have forced ourselves, and the cyber-sphere of TV and webland allows us to passively and permanently remain in a state of hyper- denial and hypocrisy.

This – like it or not and with all its pros and cons – is what 21st century culture in the world’s #1 superpower has evolved into.

Realists are snubbed as fanatical doomsayers. The suggestion that anyone might pay for something with actual money is ridiculed as passe’. Science is politicized and discarded. The issue is not whether people believe everything they see on TV – they do not necessarily, but nor do they care. The point is people are living in a continuous state of hypocrisy and denial, so they don’t want to know if what they are seeing is real or not. They simply react to what is administered to them.  If it is pleasant and easy to digest, then it will be considered good because the viewer wants to believe it, and this helps perpetuate the distraction. If something less palatable is administered, this will be passively rejected and registered by the viewer as bad.

It is in this manner the collective psyches of a nation are formed and manipulated. It is the biggest cultural icon by far, a mostly digitally edited array of logos and images, subliminal video and audio all perfectly and seamlessly packaged and streamed into the rapidly multiplying public conscience. This mostly garbage content is administered via a dizzying assortment of devices far more exotic than flatscreen monitors, from the igroup to the most simple attempt at web navigation.

The phenomenon now exhibited, wherein “we want to believe it,” indicates the desire to deceive oneself, which should be of some concern. Why do we want to deceive ourselves? The answer may be too discomforting to address, and by all accounts it is much easier to just watch some TV, no matter how crappy it is. Another upside is, look at how many clones can work in TV and earn high salaries, without ever generating a speck of worthwhile original content. Original content would be viewed as possibly different, rejected on this basis, and subsequently expelled outside of the homogenized interior of commercialism.

Of course, the generators of this homogenized garbage are deceiving themselves as well. They tend not to watch the garbage so much, since they are too busy creating it instead.

It’s the old adage, “Don’t get high on your own supply.” How true it is.

JUST A GAME

The massive bailouts, stimulus packages, giveaways and short-term debt, along with imperial wars we can no longer afford, will leave the United States struggling to finance nearly $5 trillion in debt this year. This will require Washington to auction off about $96 billion in debt a week. Once China and the oil-rich states walk away from our debt, which one day has to happen, the Federal Reserve will become the buyer of last resort. The Fed has printed perhaps as much as two trillion new dollars in the last two years, and buying this much new debt will see it, in effect, print trillions more. This is when inflation, and most likely hyperinflation, will turn the dollar into junk. And at that point the entire system breaks down.

A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial,” Orwell wrote. “That is when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud.” Our elites have used fraud. Force is all they have left.

In his book The Great Transformation (1944), Karl Polanyi laid out the devastating consequences…a financial system always devolves, without heavy government control, into a Mafia capitalism – and a Mafia political system – which is a good description of our financial and political structure. A self-regulating market, Polanyi wrote, turns human beings and the natural environment into commodities, a situation that ensures the destruction of both society and the natural environment. The free market’s assumption that nature and human beings are objects whose worth is determined by the market allows each to be exploited for profit until exhaustion or collapse. A society that no longer recognizes that nature and human life have a sacred dimension, an intrinsic value beyond monetary value, commits collective suicide. Such societies cannibalize themselves until they die. This is what we are undergoing.

Obama, now a global celebrity, is a brand. He had almost no experience besides two years in the senate, lacked any moral core and was sold as all things to all people. The Obama campaign was named Advertising Age’s marketer of the year for 2008 and edged out runners-up Apple and Zappos.com. Take it from the professionals. Brand Obama is a marketer’s dream.

-taken from Chris Hedges via Alternet

http://www.alternet.org/media/146005/we_stand_on_the_cusp_of_one_of_humanity%27s_most_dangerous_moments