We have a potent weapon: our dollars in tax money and for purchases of personal products and services. Don't patronize those you don't agree with and tell them why you aren't patronizing them. Tell the ones you do agree with that they are doing a good job and do business with them. Don't support representatives that take money from big corporations and then represent them if you disagree with their agenda and complain to your representatives about them getting tax dollars to trade with our government! Don't buy foreign when the goods are clearly dumped on our market and are produced by "slave labor". This clearly works!
Be consistent, rational, and fair in your activism using logic and common sense and refuse to be manipulated by hate mongering and emotional divisive bogus arguments. Don't blindly support "isms", especially don't accept one because the name sounds like something you identify with. It makes no sense to follow every aspect of an ideology. No ideology is perfect and complete. They are all devised by men and men make mistakes and cannot anticipate every contingency. Be open to any change that has wide moral currency and makes sense socially and economically!
alanib
Monday, November 23, 2009
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Please read John Perkins, EHM, newest book: Hoodwinked
Here is a synopsis by the author in a newsletter on his website:
http://www.johnperkins.org/?page_id=23
November 10th – Newsletter
Dear friends,
Random House asked me to write HOODWINKED, a book that delves into the deep-seated causes of the current economic meltdown — and also provides workable solutions.
HOODWINKED is available TODAY in bookstores everywhere.
It is by far the most important book I have written.
I am so grateful for your continued support of my work. You can purchase HOODWINKED at your favorite bookstore, online vendor, and we even have a purchase link you can use that benefits DreamChange – http://www.dreamchange.org , the non-profit I founded and continue to work with.
Also: Please forward this e-newsletter out to friends and please join me on Twitter @economic_hitman.
HOODWINKED provides the facts – and many personal stories from economic hit men, jackals, business execs, politicians, and educators – behind the following Eight Key points:
1. The US – in fact the world – has been stolen by the very wealthy and powerful, the corporatocracy.
2. This has created a failed system – unsustainable, unjust, unstable, dangerous.
3. The cause is a mutant, viral form of capitalism – what I call “Predatory Capitalism” that began with President Reagan and the philosophy that a) the only goal of business is to make profits, b) corporations should not be regulated, and c) every major economic sector should be privatized. This virus has spread with each subsequent administration.
4. 9/11 was a shock used by the Bush administration to boost this mutant form of capitalism to unprecedented new levels: privatize the military (and introduce privatized Homeland Security); further deregulate financial institutions; radically increase military budgets; and encourage shopping and excessive materialism.
5. The 9/11 shock distracted us from the crises we really need to fear: climate change, resources diminishing at accelerating rates, increasing prices for fuel, foods, and other essentials, violence that results from exploited people living desperate, starving lives, overpopulation, general environmental and social degradation. For the first time in history, every human being – every life form – is confronted by these same crises.
6. Countries and presidents have lost power. Corporations gained the power. World geopolitics may be represented by huge clouds (the multinational companies) drifting around the planet; they know no borders and obey no specific sets of laws.
7. The good news: we control corporations. The market place is democratic. The way out is for us the people to support companies that are committed to a sustainable, just, peaceful world; to institute regulations that codify this; to recognize as heroes men and women who are dedicated to creating a world our children and their brothers and sisters around the planet will want to inherit — in essence to rid ourselves of the mutant virus and create a new type of capitalism.
8. We are all in this together and we are all communicating with each other. The Internet and cell phones offer opportunities to unite us like never before in the human experience.
I am encouraged by grassroots movements across this planet (described in HOODWINKED) and by the commitment of students on campuses in the US and throughout the world. Please read HOODWINKED, share it with your friends, and let’s together create a sustainable, just, and peaceful world.
I hope too that I will see you at one of the upcoming book signings – please see the link for schedule on this website.
John Perkins
http://www.johnperkins.org/?page_id=23
November 10th – Newsletter
Dear friends,
Random House asked me to write HOODWINKED, a book that delves into the deep-seated causes of the current economic meltdown — and also provides workable solutions.
HOODWINKED is available TODAY in bookstores everywhere.
It is by far the most important book I have written.
I am so grateful for your continued support of my work. You can purchase HOODWINKED at your favorite bookstore, online vendor, and we even have a purchase link you can use that benefits DreamChange – http://www.dreamchange.org , the non-profit I founded and continue to work with.
Also: Please forward this e-newsletter out to friends and please join me on Twitter @economic_hitman.
HOODWINKED provides the facts – and many personal stories from economic hit men, jackals, business execs, politicians, and educators – behind the following Eight Key points:
1. The US – in fact the world – has been stolen by the very wealthy and powerful, the corporatocracy.
2. This has created a failed system – unsustainable, unjust, unstable, dangerous.
3. The cause is a mutant, viral form of capitalism – what I call “Predatory Capitalism” that began with President Reagan and the philosophy that a) the only goal of business is to make profits, b) corporations should not be regulated, and c) every major economic sector should be privatized. This virus has spread with each subsequent administration.
4. 9/11 was a shock used by the Bush administration to boost this mutant form of capitalism to unprecedented new levels: privatize the military (and introduce privatized Homeland Security); further deregulate financial institutions; radically increase military budgets; and encourage shopping and excessive materialism.
5. The 9/11 shock distracted us from the crises we really need to fear: climate change, resources diminishing at accelerating rates, increasing prices for fuel, foods, and other essentials, violence that results from exploited people living desperate, starving lives, overpopulation, general environmental and social degradation. For the first time in history, every human being – every life form – is confronted by these same crises.
6. Countries and presidents have lost power. Corporations gained the power. World geopolitics may be represented by huge clouds (the multinational companies) drifting around the planet; they know no borders and obey no specific sets of laws.
7. The good news: we control corporations. The market place is democratic. The way out is for us the people to support companies that are committed to a sustainable, just, peaceful world; to institute regulations that codify this; to recognize as heroes men and women who are dedicated to creating a world our children and their brothers and sisters around the planet will want to inherit — in essence to rid ourselves of the mutant virus and create a new type of capitalism.
8. We are all in this together and we are all communicating with each other. The Internet and cell phones offer opportunities to unite us like never before in the human experience.
I am encouraged by grassroots movements across this planet (described in HOODWINKED) and by the commitment of students on campuses in the US and throughout the world. Please read HOODWINKED, share it with your friends, and let’s together create a sustainable, just, and peaceful world.
I hope too that I will see you at one of the upcoming book signings – please see the link for schedule on this website.
John Perkins
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Is Simple Cost Benefit Analysis Too Difficult for Our Government?
Does anyone in Washington, DC understand the concept of using cost benefit analysis to determine what the best use of our tax money is?
For example is spending trillions to fight wars supposedly aimed at neutralizing maybe a few hundred fanatical terrorist criminals with no actual country affiliation, who once killed 3,000 Americans in a terrorist attack who might be able to repeat such an attack someday, a higher priority than spending the same money on providing health care and other vital social services to those in true need thereby saving hundreds of thousands of lives and improving the lot of millions more suffering illness as a result of being uninsured or under insured?
Looking at the numbers the answer is rather obvious but Washington doesn't get from point A to point B in a straight line. It zig zags all over the place so many special interested parties with too much influence over politics can make more money and gain more power. They do this by creating a bunch of irrelevant arguments between our emotional citizenry aided by their vociferous pundits playing on our fears and prejudices based on inflexible ideologies to distract the citizenry from the simple solutions.
This country is rich but we piss money away stupidly by the hundreds of billions every year on maintaining troops over seas in places like Japan and Germany etc and on offensive and defensive weaponry that will never escape the warehouse, We continue to do this while our infrastructure rots and social problems right here go unattended! So citizenry, keep arguing over political, religious and social ideological differences like the special interest minions want you to do while they rob us of all our money and say about issues and in about ten years look back and see how much worse the situation has become except for the few corporate giants who have gained more wealth and power over the rest of us poor slobs!
We need serious campaign financing election reforms and restrictions on lobbyocracy influence before this government can reform anything in a rational manner and before it can function in the best interest of our citizenry in any way that resembles what the framers of our unbelievably farsighted and wisely conceived constitution intended.
JMHO
For example is spending trillions to fight wars supposedly aimed at neutralizing maybe a few hundred fanatical terrorist criminals with no actual country affiliation, who once killed 3,000 Americans in a terrorist attack who might be able to repeat such an attack someday, a higher priority than spending the same money on providing health care and other vital social services to those in true need thereby saving hundreds of thousands of lives and improving the lot of millions more suffering illness as a result of being uninsured or under insured?
Looking at the numbers the answer is rather obvious but Washington doesn't get from point A to point B in a straight line. It zig zags all over the place so many special interested parties with too much influence over politics can make more money and gain more power. They do this by creating a bunch of irrelevant arguments between our emotional citizenry aided by their vociferous pundits playing on our fears and prejudices based on inflexible ideologies to distract the citizenry from the simple solutions.
This country is rich but we piss money away stupidly by the hundreds of billions every year on maintaining troops over seas in places like Japan and Germany etc and on offensive and defensive weaponry that will never escape the warehouse, We continue to do this while our infrastructure rots and social problems right here go unattended! So citizenry, keep arguing over political, religious and social ideological differences like the special interest minions want you to do while they rob us of all our money and say about issues and in about ten years look back and see how much worse the situation has become except for the few corporate giants who have gained more wealth and power over the rest of us poor slobs!
We need serious campaign financing election reforms and restrictions on lobbyocracy influence before this government can reform anything in a rational manner and before it can function in the best interest of our citizenry in any way that resembles what the framers of our unbelievably farsighted and wisely conceived constitution intended.
JMHO
Monday, November 2, 2009
The Cancer Industry Lobby
I have an elderly neighbor who is close to dying of metastatic lung cancer. He is still a very bright guy with a desire to live for his large loved and loving family of children and grandchildren.
Robert has been through the traditional cancer treatment route but has now chosen to die in dignity through hospice care. He discontinued chemo and radiation because he knew they would only make him feel sicker while wasting money. He knew they would offer a minute chance of even prolonging his life. Many of us will find ourselves in this predicament and have to make this difficult choice for ourselves or with and for our loved ones.
Despite the high tech expensive approved medical treatments and cooked statictics cancer cure rates have not improved over the years. Some early detection advances will improve the odds if you catch some cancers before they spread but most are not caught in time. Once they spread little can be done to effect a true cure.
The FDA medically approved treatments are surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. They all hinge upon rooting out and killing all cancer cells, billions of them that could be hiding throughout the body, and most therapies require poisoniong the entire body to accomplish this. This leaves the patient with poisoning, secondary illnesses from resulting immunosuppression, disfigurement, other cancers secondary to the cancerous drugs used, but with no reliable cure which is defined as 5 years without evidence of recurrence. Therfore, for statistical purposes, removing a local minor basal skin cancer is considered a cure as is a patient living for 5 years after treatment, even if they die of their cancer at 5 years and one day. This is what props up the multi-billion dollar cancer treatment industry of oncology doctors, pharmaceutical makers of everything from chemo to anti-nausea medicines, high tech equipment makers and suppliers, treatment facilities, etc..
There are currently many alternative, many using natural non-toxic treatments under review and use by respected medical scientists that will never see the US market under the current political-medical paradigm because they are too natural to be patented. Therefore they won't have the big money applied to research them for official FDA approval. Of course they threaten the profitable status quo. Our government through the FDA actively stands in the way of their use in this country to protect the medical industry for whom they invariably carry water. People are suffering and dying and going broke paying for ineffective treatments that have never worked but are accepted by the FDA because of the system and to protect an entrnched medical industry while many promising, more natural, proven less toxic treatments are offically suppressed.
Obviously we need to put and end to this for our own well being. The government which is supposed to be working on ways to save money on healthcare, rather than suppressing these promising therapies, could fund the research on these promising new approaches so that they could approve them. Industry will not invest in anything it can't patent no matter how effective it is! They only gain by suppressing such therapies and the FDA is their accomplice.
If we are successful perhaps my neighbor, Robert, and thousands of neighbors, friends and family across our nation who have cancer or may one day soon face cancer might soon have accessible affordable cancer therapies that are less invasive, less toxic, and more effective while saving individuals and our nation billions on expensive useless therapies that are today's norm.
This is one more reason why we have to organize at the grass roots level to effect a big change in the way our government does business. Please follow this blog, comment, join and support ELON! Just my honest opinion!- alan
Robert has been through the traditional cancer treatment route but has now chosen to die in dignity through hospice care. He discontinued chemo and radiation because he knew they would only make him feel sicker while wasting money. He knew they would offer a minute chance of even prolonging his life. Many of us will find ourselves in this predicament and have to make this difficult choice for ourselves or with and for our loved ones.
Despite the high tech expensive approved medical treatments and cooked statictics cancer cure rates have not improved over the years. Some early detection advances will improve the odds if you catch some cancers before they spread but most are not caught in time. Once they spread little can be done to effect a true cure.
The FDA medically approved treatments are surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. They all hinge upon rooting out and killing all cancer cells, billions of them that could be hiding throughout the body, and most therapies require poisoniong the entire body to accomplish this. This leaves the patient with poisoning, secondary illnesses from resulting immunosuppression, disfigurement, other cancers secondary to the cancerous drugs used, but with no reliable cure which is defined as 5 years without evidence of recurrence. Therfore, for statistical purposes, removing a local minor basal skin cancer is considered a cure as is a patient living for 5 years after treatment, even if they die of their cancer at 5 years and one day. This is what props up the multi-billion dollar cancer treatment industry of oncology doctors, pharmaceutical makers of everything from chemo to anti-nausea medicines, high tech equipment makers and suppliers, treatment facilities, etc..
There are currently many alternative, many using natural non-toxic treatments under review and use by respected medical scientists that will never see the US market under the current political-medical paradigm because they are too natural to be patented. Therefore they won't have the big money applied to research them for official FDA approval. Of course they threaten the profitable status quo. Our government through the FDA actively stands in the way of their use in this country to protect the medical industry for whom they invariably carry water. People are suffering and dying and going broke paying for ineffective treatments that have never worked but are accepted by the FDA because of the system and to protect an entrnched medical industry while many promising, more natural, proven less toxic treatments are offically suppressed.
Obviously we need to put and end to this for our own well being. The government which is supposed to be working on ways to save money on healthcare, rather than suppressing these promising therapies, could fund the research on these promising new approaches so that they could approve them. Industry will not invest in anything it can't patent no matter how effective it is! They only gain by suppressing such therapies and the FDA is their accomplice.
If we are successful perhaps my neighbor, Robert, and thousands of neighbors, friends and family across our nation who have cancer or may one day soon face cancer might soon have accessible affordable cancer therapies that are less invasive, less toxic, and more effective while saving individuals and our nation billions on expensive useless therapies that are today's norm.
This is one more reason why we have to organize at the grass roots level to effect a big change in the way our government does business. Please follow this blog, comment, join and support ELON! Just my honest opinion!- alan
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