freshwest

freshwest's Journal

January 3, 2014

I doubt if he's any more a Nazi than the Duck Dynasty is real. They're a bunch of yuppies faking it:

January 3, 2014

You're welcome! Stay warm! And that cat is my way of saying enough is enough:

January 3, 2014

Thanks. These guys are likely Libertarians. Looks like the kind of stuff they post, very media heavy

and aggressive as can be. There's no good reason for this. A lot of bad ones, though.

I refer you to this OP from a few days back:

Why I fled libertarianism — and became a liberal

I was a Ron Paul delegate back in 2008 -- now I'm a Democrat. Here's my personal tale of disgust and self-discovery

http://www.salon.com/2013/12/28/why_i_fled_libertarianism_and_became_a_liberal/

to Don Viego:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1251345186

Very much like Libertarian Republican and their posts since Obama was elected. The main guy flamed out and went Beck shit crazy when Obama was re-elected, said he was leaving the country.

Also bragged about how he made a point of yelling at the cashiers about food stamp reciepients in grocery stores, and stuff like that. I saved it but he took it down and revised history, and he didn't move away.

Still hates Obama like all of them do.

.

January 2, 2014

Too Late:

January 2, 2014

Refreshing honesty in this piece:

...But the pollution belongs to all of those whose lives have been transformed over the last 250 years by cheap energy. Instead, the value of the work is that it has produced a power list, in every sense.

It is now clearer than ever before that a just few dozen companies and cartels have presided over the mass pollution of our planet, unknowingly for many years but no longer. Energy fuels the world economy and the list shows just how that power has been concentrated in astonishingly few hands. There are few more terrifying threats a government faces than the lights going out or the petrol pumps running dry.*

Energy companies are the biggest corporations the world has ever seen and this concentration of immense power makes them the biggest vested interests ever to do battle with the public good.

So, while the past is a foreign country where they did things differently, to paraphrase L P Hartley's opening to his novel of lost innocence, the power list points to a more hopeful future. That is because the list shows that the levers of power that must be shifted to avoid climate meltdown are held by relatively few hands...

*This is why governments call energy interests matters of 'national security.' Even if it means going to war for them.

Our own nation, even if there were no bad actors, has given in to the energy companies to maintain government. Many see the value of government with its protection of individual rights as more important than anything.

We will have to give up things in order to live in a sustainable way. It means we will adapt or fall apart and not save ourselves or the environment.

Corporations do not exist to protect us or the environment. They are, as an advocate told me about using some legal associations to get things done for people, like swining a snake in your hands to hit the enemy.

They will curl back and bite you in the end, they are valuable tools for the knowledge they specialize in, but they are often not true allies. They serve a purpose, and they have fulfilled that in history and we are going to have to figure out to put them down gently.

They see no reason, like the military, to stand down when they think they have done something important. Some of what they do will always be important. It appears mankind is in a race to get this settled and move onto to another way of living. It will be good for all of us but perhaps many will live better. And if unburdened with wrongdoing, they will understand true freedom.

January 2, 2014

Curious. Would it be like what happened between WW1 and WW2? I think the permanent military stance

of the USA was due to a justified fear in that era of time, which created an international infrastructure that was so talented and organized, that it took on a life of its own. As if caught in a 'Skynet Becomes Self-Aware' universe some refuse to leave that is ultimately unsustainable for human life.

The MIC and our technocracy looks at everything in the same war prism and uses the same solutions. Everything is turned into fuel to save the homeland, but instead, it destroys it to save the infrastructure instead.

Wonder if the most die hard hawks, other than those who make tons of money off of it, are eternally paranoid. Some of the fear is logical, war breeds more war, hate more hate, fear more fear, etc. The results of what we have done, just as what other countries have done to each other, such as the English and the Irish, the peoples of Russia and the Ukraine, has extended past the lifetimes of most who lived through their worst events.

Within the USA itself, is a history that breeds deep conflicts we have not be able to overcome yet. There are signs we may do so, true, but not yet.

And yes, if we did nothing, we would get the blame by someone, if we were able to survive it. After all, a joining together of other nations might come looking for us, right or wrong.*

Looking back at the kind of weaponry developed during and since WW2, not for the love of knowledge, but for the purpose of defense and offense, we have let the genie out of the bottle that may never be put back in. The CWC that Kerry and Obama used to resolve Syria without traditional methods, is a big improvement. But we are not in the age of peace of love across the planet.

Some of what appear to be the worst things of our day, trade agreements and corporate rule, were once thought to be engines of equality and peace. They have not been successful, no more than religion. The reduction of all the world's cultures to one dominant one was thought to be a good idea to end warfare. We have that in capitalism, but the collateral damage to humans and the environment, and the spirit or freedom that we must have to be happy is not being met, it never was.

We're going into a different era, more inclusive, and more social changes than ever imagined. Many Americans are ready to embrace this, others are running away. I don't think there is going to be any escape for them, and they show their fear by buying big guns and lots of ammo and talking all kinds of trash. It won't last, though, but damn if they aren't gonna try. Fear does that, everyone wants to survive.

I dread what will happen as more people are under the authority of fewer elements. At this time, most of the wealth of the world is owned by corporations, not nations and they are making the rules by their hierarchical mindset. It does not bode well for social mobility that our government has nurtured, nor individual freedom to change large organizations. It is a structure that is never transparent, with power to make decisions (example would be corporate head choppers and getting fired - like getting killed - we see that mentality afflicting society now) and creating social stratification. Very bad for those not near the top, they are forced to exist as little more than robots, which in terms of humans or animals or any other living thing, is a tortured existence.

*Speaking of the Axis powers. They were not going to leave anyone alone, so we could not stand behind idealism and expect to still make it unmolested.

I think the essay assignment that the judge gave the religious group who trespassed on the nuclear facility - he asked the best questions ever - will be very instructive on how the idealistic views of religion and morality met up with the reality that spawned nukes.

January 1, 2014