Michel Montecrossa’s latest video examines the desperation behind the rioting in Great Britain. His direct and heartfelt approach works to cut through all the recent bullshit about the rioters being simple thugs with nothing more on their minds than robbery and destruction. Riots are open wounds that erupt after enormous damage has already been done to a population. The seething pressure is always there for a long time before exploding in everyone’s faces. By definition, riots involve damage and robbery. What else would there be to do at a riot? Riots are anger and desperate hopelessness that cannot be controlled. Yes, of course one must punish people who burn down buildings. But one must also have the intellect and social responsibility to seriously look at why children and adults would feel so awful that the only thing they can think of doing is burning down a city. That is serious rebellion and it is going to spread. The world is under incredible economic pressure and the people who suffer understand that governments tied to extreme wealth and corporate interests are responsible. Populations are going off like bombs. The uprisings in the Middle East are directly connected to the uprisings London because both groups of people have become aware that the same corporations control what happens in both places. The dictators and authoritarian regimes in the Middle East are kept there because they provide certain corporations with efficiency in the region. Assad is exterminating people in Syria because it is convenient for Western companies and politicians that he do so. The Western governments have wanted globalization and now they’ve got it. Globalization of uprisings and riots. One must remember that the riots in Great Britain were started by a policeman who killed a young man. A policeman who chose, just like the policemen in Syria, to point his gun and fire a bullet into the body of a human being. A violent reaction to such an act should be expected in most cases.
Category Archives: Politics
British Riots Indicate Global Revolt Against Corporate Control of Governments
Below is a BBC news video of a man named Darcus Howe trying to explain what he has observed as being the cause of the violent rioting that is burning down parts of London and other cities across Great Britain. The news woman should probably be dismissed as quickly as possible because she is incompetent and obviously has a problem with the answers she’s getting.
Mr. Howe’s honest attempt to communicate his ideas about what has led to these riots should be listened to carefully. It is common knowledge that Great Britain has descended in the past ten years into the western world’s most closely observed police state. Everyone is watched on every street corner everywhere every day. Police routinely suppress free expression and demonstrations. According to Mr. Howe, they are also searching non-whites for no reason. Under such conditions, with the addition of worldwide financial panic and ‘austerity measures’ being put into place that strip services from the poor and middle classes, all it takes is a single flashpoint to ignite massive riots.
In case you had not gotten the picture yet, we are seeing a global explosion of rebellion, demonstration and riot. I firmly believe that all the rioting and revolt in the Middle East is directly connected to the rioting and revolt going on in Europe. People are finally seeing a broad general picture of a world and its governments, whether they be democratic or authoritarian, being controlled and dominated by a handful of powerful global corporations. Under such control, governments lean their decisions in favor of these corporate entities and the very wealthy people behind them.
The UK riots have broken out very shortly after the expanding news story of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporations committing crimes in partnership with the police as part of what they represent as ‘journalism.’ That is basically a tip of the iceberg example of corporate control of a nation.
To call the riots simple acts of vandalism by thugs is a gross simplification of the situation. All riots start from some cause which comes at the end of a long resentment and building desperation. When the riots actually break out they include all sorts of people, many of whom are simple thugs and criminals. But those thugs don’t normally break into riots that burn cities down. They are normally robbing convenience stores and shooting each other. Something much larger than them brings them out into open battle on the streets.
Widespread unemployment, idleness and the easy access to video information from all over the world builds anger and resentment toward governments that seem locked into corporate bonds. People begin to realize that it doesn’t matter who they elect. All the candidates are run by the corporations. The defining signal to the world, much to everyone’s surprise, was the election of Barack Obama. He won his office by seeming to promise something new – something independent and free. But as soon as he took office the world saw that he was just another corporate middle man. The ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are simply at the behest of the corporations that insist upon such a course which includes the very profitable activity of ‘nation building.’ That Obama signal – that horrific disappointment – has led directly to this global explosion of rage. Obama, by not being who he should have been, lit the fuse. The bomb is now going off.
Here’s a man explaining the riots to a journalist in London:
The ongoing worldwide explosion of violence is the beginning of a global war against corporate control of nations.
We are watching the beginnings of a worldwide effort to break government away from this corporate control. It mirrors the efforts of prior centuries to break away from the control of the Church.
It’s going to get worse and it’s going to spread virulently. The fact that London has exploded should indicate to everyone that it is leaping past all predictability.
Thank you to Dangerous Minds for the videos.
America, One Quarter of Your Children Are In Poverty
Look at these kids. Look at how bright and good they are. Sixty Minutes went and found some of the millions of recently homeless families living in cheap motel rooms around this country as they try to maintain some semblance of normalcy in a rapidly collapsing world of foreclosures and endless joblessness.
An entire generation of kids is going to grow up with a very different attitude about life and country than we baby boomers have had. These kids are the shock to the American system. They experience an America of grinding poverty and large corporations that heartlessly protect only the top earners in their structures. But these kids have a sharp awareness and a reflective quality that bodes ill for the status quo.
Republican policies would strip poor families of affordable access to health care and birth control services. Republican policies favor the very wealthy and corporate profits at the expense of everyone else. This is very strange since many supporters of Republican policies are themselves poor. Democrats are not much better. They tend to have a more realistic view of poverty and its causes, but they do not show the strength required to stand up and be great in the face of despair. Obama is a decent and dull failure. I am pessimistic about his chances at a second term because he has not behaved as if he did not want or need a second term. All presidential mediocrities temper their politics toward winning a second election. A great president only wants a single term in office.
America finds itself in strange waters during a time when it is supposed to be commanding a bright future. It bogs itself down in budget busting wars that are meant to spread democracy in countries that do not value democracy. America spills its blood and money into the earth, but will end up with nothing. The people it fights for will not build free societies. They will wallow in filth and slip back into the hands of despots or religious tyrants. Some people on earth have no possibilities. It is that simple. One must eventually leave those people to their own particular demise. To believe otherwise is to engage a fantasy.
But not these people in this video. These are sharp and strong Americans who will recognize what’s been done wrong in this country and they will stand up and decide to fix things when they are just a little bit older.
I found this via Richard Metzger at Dangerous Minds.
Propaganda Mussolini: A Film by Massimo Balloi
Italian filmmaker Massimo Balloi has made an abstract film that attempts to explain the descent of Italy into modern fascism. The rapid turn of Western democracies toward a virulent corporate fascism does in fact resemble the ideas put forth by Mussolini in the 1930s and 40s. But his effort was to mimic the efficiencies of the corporation in government. The new effort currently underway is to replace government control with corporate control. The danger is real and it is extreme. Even in the United States we see a Supreme Court allying itself with corporations. In Italy, you have a very basic corporate buffoon running the country as if it were a criminal enterprise. In the U.S. you have completely false liberals maneuvering a corporate front man into the Presidency so that every decision is made with a seemingly logical inclination toward the interests of the large corporations. We are now fighting entire wars based solely on decisions by corporations.
The twenty first century will not be the century of war against terrorists. It will be a century of war against corporations. They will gain an upper hand initially, but this will be short-lived. I say this because once you get inside these corporate structures you can observe how shockingly weak they are. BP is your perfect example. A single broken valve can weaken the entire stack of cards. These corporate entities can only flourish while people are asleep.
TED Film From Arrested Chinese Artist
This is a film presented at the TED conference from the famous Chinese artist who was recently kidnapped by Chinese authorities. He has completely vanished along with thousands of other artists, journalists, writers, intellectuals and human rights workers who have been taken in the past several months. This artist speaks very simply and clearly about the situation in his country where his government watches him all day long and sees nothing wrong with bulldozing his studio to the ground because he expresses some criticism of what he sees around him.
What I do not respect about this video is the simpering nitwit from TED who introduces the film by stating that the TED conference takes no position on China. He then goes on to bend over for China and mentions how many people have been lifted from poverty in China. How far up China’s ass can this guy fit his head, I wonder? How can any organization not take a position on China? I’m sure if Hitler were around today and rambling across the land on an extermination campaign, this bunch from TED would take no position on that.
Look at this little notice on TED’s YouTube page where the film is hosted:
TED is a non-partisan, nonpolitical organization and we understand the Chinese authorities concern at anything which might provoke social unrest. But for anyone who believes in the power of ideas, of human imagination, it is heartbreaking to see one of the world’s great artists shackled in this way. We will be tracking developments carefully. Here is the film.
TED ‘understands the Chinese authorities concern at anything which might provoke social unrest!’
Oh my god! Yes indeed. They understand this concern of a totalitarian murdering government that is more than happy to make people vanish into prison because they want to complain about being beaten by a policeman.
Hey TED, here I come with my ticket! Gosh, I wouldn’t want you to be concerned that I might boo one of your presentations. Wouldn’t want that, would we?
Lifting people out of poverty in China is not what we need to be doing. We need to be shutting these people out entirely. We need companies that do not fill their computers with Chinese parts. We need toys that do not come painted with Chinese lead poison. We need to treat this totalitarian country the way it deserves to be treated. A rich China doing business with every company on the planet is not going to advance freedom for anyone. China needs to be pushed into abject and brutal poverty. Only then will the conditions exist for a revolution.
I opened up my Dell computer the other day to blow some dust out. The first things I saw were multiple ‘Made in China’ stickers on various components. Screw Dell. Screw every Western company that buys a single circuit board from China. Screw China.
Michael Moore Labor Union Speech in Madison, Wisconsin
Let me say that again. 400 obscenely rich people, most of whom benefited in some way from the multi-trillion dollar taxpayer “bailout” of 2008, now have as much loot, stock and property as the assets of 155 million Americans combined. If you can’t bring yourself to call that a financial coup d’état, then you are simply not being honest about what you know in your heart to be true.
Those are the words of Michael Moore and they are very true. If you want to become a bad national joke, you do what Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has done and push through a bill that destroys the right of working Americans to organize and form labor unions.
The revolt against this criminal stupidity in Wisconsin is incredible to watch. It has national importance for the future of labor and the rights of working people everywhere.
They control the message. By owning most of the media they have expertly convinced many Americans of few means to buy their version of the American Dream and to vote for their politicians. Their version of the Dream says that you, too, might be rich some day — this is America, where anything can happen if you just apply yourself! They have conveniently provided you with believable examples to show you how a poor boy can become a rich man, how the child of a single mother in Hawaii can become president, how a guy with a high school education can become a successful filmmaker. They will play these stories for you over and over again all day long so that the last thing you will want to do is upset the apple cart — because you — yes, you, too! — might be rich/president/an Oscar-winner some day! The message is clear: keep you head down, your nose to the grindstone, don’t rock the boat and be sure to vote for the party that protects the rich man that you might be some day.