Wakeful Video Weekend 2019-11-03 (23 videos)

It’s really cool that more and more women are coming out of their traditional closet to speak up and stand up against the corruption and rot of our system – or are finally paid attention to. And, finally this time, the so often forgotten elderly and their terrible sufferings are revealed. And guess which candidate cares about them?

Stars & Channels: Abby Martin (Empire Files), The Real News Network, The Zero Hour, Bernie, John Spritzler, TeleSUR, JRE Clips, Michael Brooks, Hard Lens Media, Ralph Nader, Jimmy Dore, A Current Affair, PBS NewsHour, VICE News, AJ+, Nina Turner…

Topics:

1. Companies Rule the World
2. Neoliberal Fearmongering to Divide Us
3. The Old Age Misery in America
4. Temp Work Used as a Picket Line against Workers
5. Corporate America: Profits over People’s Lives
6. How the Rule of Money Miserably Shapes Society
7. The Path from Police Brutality to State Terrorism
8. Edward Snowden on Mobile Phones Surveillance
9. World News: Overlooked Uprisings World-Wide
10. All the People(s) are Beginning to Rise Up
11. Candidates: Biden, Warren, Trump, Bearnie, $Hillary, Tulsi
12. Bernie: End Corporate Greed Press Conference
13. Whistleblowers are Heroes, Not Spies | None-of-the-Above Voting
14. Despotic Government Bullying True Journalists
15. Another Funny Fox Failure: Reaganite to the Left! Panel SCREAMS!

 

1. Companies Rule the World

… and 80% of TV news stories are manufactured in public relation firms working for governments and the corporations (i.e. the nebulous rich rulers behind these scenes):

Giants: Who Really Rules The World?
Empire Files

One man’s wish: Let the people be free!

At the end of this short piece, I share a video that’ been gathering dust in my archives.

It may be rather long and rambling, but the great point Jamarl’s speech ultimately comes down to is: What kind of life do we want to live? He mentions nobody wanting to be a cog in a wheel which is what people end up being in our current human world. So, ask yourself what kind of life do you want to live?  

A Personal UBI Appeal: The Downside of Life-by-Jobs

I think that, in order to arrive at a better civilization, we must rid ourselves of the slave-mentality that is structurally built into our economic system of job-slaves and job-masters. We must do so because it makes us subservient to the ruling class which grossly abuses its power. We must also rid ourselves of this slave mentality because it ruins our individual lives by creating a desperate willingness to accept jobs that aren’t good matches. This willingness often has us even try very hard to convince employers that bad job matches are GOOD matches, simply because we don’t want to starve and go homeless. The threat of poverty has become what the chains and whips were during the days of plantation slavery. The modern form is wage slavery. And it comes with fears, coercions, and unhealthy conditions that ruin our individual lives and our entire societies. 

The Nature of our Duopoly Voters: Rep “Values” & Dem Blindness

Yesterday, I came across an interesting article which attempts to explain why many Republican voters seem to consistently vote against their own interests, thereby supporting a political party which works exclusively for the rich and throws everybody else under the bus, including these voters. For an example the article points at Trump’s war on our healthcare coupled with continuing loyalty to him.

It’s Trust, Not Trump, Baby!

In a recent article, Umair Haque explained pretty well why the spreading attitude of me-me-me and to hell with society and the related phenomenon of splintering into tribes are so damaging for all of us, including for those who live this attitude. You may know people who need this explained to them. I sure do. Hence this article.

Salient Quotes:

“What’s a place where there’s no trust? A jungle. Maybe a prison. … Without trust, a society can’t be a society. It becomes something else entirely: a place where predators rule. … There must be some level of trust that binds people together, or else a society will almost inevitably decay into demagoguery, collapse, and ruin.”

“Americans can’t have what the rest of the rich world takes for granted: public healthcare, education, finance. They live profoundly crippled lives: precarious, anxious, afraid. They will never retire, can’t afford to educate their kids, and their incomes have been stagnant for decades. No wonder there is widespread rage.”

“First, trust is lost. Then, society loses the ability to function. Then, public goods are lost. Without public goods, people’s lives shatter. The rage that results from broken dreams produces demagoguery. Today’s gilded demagogue, then, isn’t the issue: the loss of trust is.”

Here is the link to the full article: The Five Letter Word That Spells the End of Societies

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Chris Hedges Interview Video: The American Empire Is Over

Another worthwhile Chris Hedges clip about how we got to our current state of affairs:

(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Chris Hedges Brace Yourself! The American Empire Is Over”)

For a list of key points, 

The Competition Curse

Our society = a pyramid scheme!

Quote: “Our competition and internal strife weaken us and prevent us from facing the universe’s tough challenges like disease; the ravages of aging and a short life-span; as well as natural disasters like earthquakes; tsunamis; pandemics; global climate change, with its ever increasing hurricanes; and giant meteorite impacts, such as the one that killed off the dinosaurs…”

Read the full article…

 

How Things Are in Other Countries

Example: France, so very different from the U.S. … Not all is perfect there. They make mistakes. Yet, a 35 hour work week, long paid vacations, and the best healthcare in the world (at half the price of U.S. healthcare)… in THIS universe??? An entirely different way is apparently possible. Watch and be amazed.

Conclusion: All these things are easily possible when we don’t shunt the lion’s share of our mutually generated wealth to the 1%. It’s the robbery by the 1% which is preventing us from having a good life.

(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Does Socialism Work In France?”)

Please comment below.

In other words: participate! 😉

A Must-See Video

I am shocked! Someone, and a young one, apparently… made this amazing 8+ minute video which summarizes much of what I keep wanting to write a book about, much of what life has taught me. You have to watch this!  (in case the link is deleted again, the title to search for is: “The Lie We Live“)

Do People Lie on Online Dating Services?

Webb’s takeaway: you can’t blame the algorithms. But people do lie when they answer questions put to them by online dating services.