November 6, 2012

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35 Shocking Facts That Prove That College Education Has Become A Giant Money Making Scam

December 15, 2011 By Leave a Comment

College education in America is a bad joke. Instead of preparing the next generation of leaders for the jobs of tomorrow, the college education “industry” has become a giant money making scam. We constantly preach to our high school students that they “need” to go to college and we tell them to not even worry about how much it is going to cost because a college education is “always” worth the money. Then we lend them outrageous amounts of money so that they can pay the gigantic bills for the “education” that they are receiving.

But the truth is that the quality of education at America’s colleges and universities is absolutely abysmal these days. I spent 8 years at U.S. universities, and most of the courses that I took could have been passed by the family dog. Sadly, once our young people graduate they quickly discover that there are way too many college graduates and not nearly enough good jobs.

Today, we have millions upon millions of young Americans that are enslaved to student loan debt for the rest of their lives. They were promised a bright future, but instead most of them are discovering that they are going to be working really hard to pay off financial predators for decades to come. Unfortunately, for most college graduates a diploma is simply a ticket to a crappy job and a lifetime of debt slavery.

The following are 35 shocking facts that prove that college education in America has become a giant money making scam:

The Student Loan Debt Bubble

#1 After adjusting for inflation, U.S. college students are borrowing about twice as much money as they did a decade ago.

#2 According to the College Board, college tuition is absolutely soaring. The following comes from a recent CBS News article….

Average tuition and fees at public colleges rose 8.3 percent this year and, with room and board, now exceed $17,000 a year, according to the College Board.

#3 Average yearly tuition at private universities in the United States is now upto $27,293. That figure has increased by 29% in just the past five years.

#4 In America today, approximately two-thirds of all college students graduate with student loan debt.

#5 In 2010, the average college graduate had accumulated approximately $25,000 in student loan debt by graduation day.

#6 According to the Student Loan Debt Clock, total student loan debt in the United States will surpass the 1 trillion dollar mark in early 2012.

#7 The total amount of student loan debt in the United States now exceeds the total amount of credit card debt in the United States.

#8 Over the past 25 years, the cost of college tuition has increased at an average rate that is approximately 6% higher than the general rate of inflation.

#9 Back in 1952, a full year of tuition at Harvard was only $600. Today, it is$35,568.

#10 The cost of college textbooks has tripled over the past decade.

#11 One survey found that 23 percent of all college students actually use credit cards to pay for tuition or fees.

#12 According to recent Pew Research Center polling, 75% of all Americansbelieve that college is too expensive for most Americans to afford.

#13 College has become so expensive that it is causing many college students to do desperate things in order to pay for it. For example, an increasing number of young college women are actively advertising on the Internet for “sugar daddies” who will help them pay their college bills.

#14 The student loan default rate has nearly doubled since 2005.

#15 Approximately 14 percent of all students that graduate with student loan debt end up defaulting within 3 years of making their first student loan payment.

The Quality Of College Education In America Stinks

#16 The typical U.S. college student spends less than 30 hours a week on academics.

#17 According to very extensive research detailed in a new book entitled “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses”, 45 percent of all U.S. college students exhibit “no significant gains in learning” after two years in college.

#18 Today, college students spend approximately 50% less time studying than U.S. college students did just a few decades ago.

#19 35% of U.S. college students spend 5 hours or less studying per week.

#20 50% of U.S. college students have never taken a class where they had to write more than 20 pages.

#21 32% of U.S. college students have never taken a class where they had to read more than 40 pages in a week.

#22 U.S. college students spend 24% of their time sleeping, 51% of their time socializing and 7% of their time studying.

#23 Federal statistics reveal that only 36 percent of the full-time students who began college in 2001 received a bachelor’s degree within four years.

Not Enough Jobs For College Graduates

#24 Only 55.3% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 were employed last year. That was the lowest level that we have seen since World War II.

#25 According to the Economic Policy Institute, the “official” unemployment rate for college graduates younger than 25 years old was 9.3 percent in 2010.

#26 One-third of all college graduates end up taking jobs that don’t even require college degrees.

#27 In the United States today, there are more than 100,000 janitors that have college degrees.

#28 In the United States today, 317,000 waiters and waitresses have college degrees.

#29 In the United States today, approximately 365,000 cashiers have college degrees.

#30 In the United States today, 24.5 percent of all retail salespeople have a college degree.

#31 The percentage of mail carriers with a college degree is now 4 times higher than it was back in 1970.

#32 Right now, there are 5.9 million Americans between the ages of 25 and 34 that are living with their parents.

#33 According to one recent survey, only 14 percent of all Americans that are 28 or 29 years old are optimistic about their financial futures.

#34 Record numbers of Americans are going to college, but incomes for young American adults just keep falling. Since the year 2000, incomes for U.S. households led by someone between the ages of 25 and 34 have fallen by about 12 percent after you adjust for inflation.

#35 Once they get out into the “real world”, 70% of all college graduateswish that they had spent more time preparing for the “real world” while they were still in school.

So is going to college always a bad idea?

Of course not.

But it is a huge gamble.

There is no guarantee that all of the time, money and effort that you put into getting a college education is going to pay off with a promising career.

If you want to go to college, my advice would be to get someone else to pay for it. Failing that, try to get the best quality education that you can at the lowest price possible.

And try to go into as little debt as you possibly can in the process.

Today, there are millions of college students that wish that they had done things differently.

For example, the following student loan horror story comes from a recent Business Insider article….

“I am the first in my family to go to college. Without family support, I self-financed three college degrees (BA, MA and PhD) at state colleges between 1988 and 2005 using Pell Grants, multiple jobs, scholarships and $90,000 in subsidized and unsubsidized student loans.

My loans have been bought and sold so many times it is impossible to keep track of changes in rates, balances and terms of service since I have never had to resign any promissory notes. Eventually, I was able to consolidate the loans with Sallie Mae at a 7% interest rate. My loan payments have ranged from $400-600/mo. depending on the loan provider and lowest possible payment option available.

…I am currently a public school teacher with an income of $50,000, barely enough income to pay the interest-only payments. I have never missed a payment in over ten years … and my loan balance stands at $105,000. To date, I have paid over $40,000 in loan payments and because my income restricts me to interest-only payments, and the 7% daily capitalized interest rate, I now owe $15,000 more than I borrowed….

My student loan situation has nothing to do with a lack of financial responsibility.

I have never missed a student loan payment and I have paid off $20,000 in credit card debt and a $10,000 car loan since graduation. I have no mortgage or any other outstanding debt, just my student loans. I have a credit score of 820. However, because of the usurious interest rates, capitalization of interest and the sole option of interest-only payments, I will never be able to pay off my student loan.

It’s just not possible, unless I win the lottery.“

Please learn a lesson from those that have gone before you.

Student loan debt is very cruel and it can ruin your life.

 

Source: https://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/35-shocking-facts-that-prove-that-college-education-has-become-a-giant-money-making-scam?mid=551

Filed Under: Corruption, Debt, USA

Nike Sweatshops - Try Not To Cry

December 15, 2011 By Leave a Comment

A video about globalization and Nike sweatshops all over the world

Filed Under: Corporations, Corruption Tagged With: , ,

China ‘Incredibly Aggressive’ in Cyber Theft: Ex-CIA Chief

December 15, 2011 By Leave a Comment

By: Shihan Fang

China is stealing online information from the United States and feeding the data to homegrown companies for commercial benefit, Michael Hayden, Former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency said at the Black Hat Technical Security Conference in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday.

He pointed out that as an intelligence officer, he was “impressed” with the sophistication of Chinese cyber espionage, although spying in cyber space is an activity that all states, including the United States, take part in.

According to Hayden, “We steal secrets, you bet. But we steal secrets that are essential for American security and safety. We don’t steal secrets for American commerce, for American profit. There are many other countries in the world that do not so self limit.”

Despite the difficulty in tracing the origins of cyber attacks, Hayden believes China is the culprit behind various incidents of data theft.

“The body of evidence makes me quite comfortable and confident in saying that there’s an incredibly large amount of this cyber activity coming from China,” he told CNBC on the sidelines of the conference.

The retired general, who also served as the Director of the National Security Agency, added that, “I have come to the conclusion that the Chinese, the Chinese state and others in China are incredibly aggressive in the cyber domain, when it comes to the theft of property: state on state or against commercial targets.”

Jeff Moss, Chief Security Officer at the California-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and founder of the 14-year-old Black Hat conference series, told CNBC that China probably has cyber espionage capabilities on par with the United States though due to the lack of information, much of China’s cyber weaponry remains in the realm of speculation.

He added that China should not be singled out as the main culprit in the cyber espionage world because they are not the only ones engaging in this kind of activity.

“Sometimes I feel that China is sort of the bogeyman. It’s being held out as the bad guy. And I don’t think that’s intellectually honest. They’re behaving pretty much like everybody else is behaving. And they have internal problems with organized crime just like the United States, Europe and Russia have,” Moss said.

Hayden, however, believes that China is not an enemy of the United States and that a “non-conflictual” relationship between the two countries would emerge in the future.

According to Hayden, “Theft of intellectual property is not a long term good bet for Chinese economic growth. In fact if you steal enough intellectual property, there won’t be enough left to steal because people will stop investing in intellectual development. So over the long term I think you’ll probably perceive that ours and China’s interests are far more coincident than we might view them to be today.”

 

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/id/45677967

Filed Under: China, Corruption, Politicians, USA

Bank of America 2012: The Worst Is Yet To Come?

December 15, 2011 By Leave a Comment

By: Dan Freed

Bank of America may have had a dismal 2011, but you haven’t seen nothing yet.

The thinking on Bank of America has long been that valuations are so low, the stock can’t get any lower — and then lower it goes. The problem, by and large, has been mortgage risk. Bank of America can’t ever seem to get a handle on how much exposure it has. The number just keeps growing and growing.

But that won’t be the problem in 2012. As the famous saying goes, you don’t know who isn’t wearing swimming trunks until the tide goes out. In this case, however, we do know: it’s Bank of America. And things have been so bad for the bank — not only in 2011 but ever since the crisis — that we tend to forget that the tide hasn’t even gone out yet. We’ve had a serious crisis in Europe, massive political instability in the Middle East and Russia, and a recession in the U.S. and the S&P 500 is only down 2.53 percent.

Some may see this as a sign of the market’s resilience, but that would be a mistake. Investors are still counting on the European crisis resolving itself. They are betting that European governments believe they have too much to lose by not eventually creating euro bonds.

But as Financial Times managing editor Gillian Tett explained on Charlie Rose last week, look how hard it was for former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson to get the “bazooka” he needed from Congress to restore investor confidence in U.S. markets.

“I mean if you get, have problems getting one person for a bazooka, try to think about 17 people for a bazooka [that will shoot] in a straight line.”

The 17 people, of course, are the 17 countries that use the euro. If you think getting the U.S. Congress to agree on anything is tough, you haven’t seen a thing.

What that means is that, even if we don’t see Greece move back to the drachma, leading to a military coup, as was postulated in The New York Times on Tuesday, we are likely to come far closer than we have so far. That means a sharp market selloff at the very least, by which I mean a 5 percent-plus drop in the S&P 500 in a single day and volatility reminiscent of what we saw in 2008. If you think that means good things for Bank of America stock, you are sadly mistaken.

Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan tried to assuage investor concern over this issue in a speech to investors earlier this month.

“With the uncertainty around some of the economies in the world, what’s going [on] in Europe on a given day, what could happen in the U.S., we continue to position ourselves and make sure that we are in good shape to last through anything we see ahead,” he said.

Looking at the combined Bank of America Merrill Lynch balance sheets from the third quarter of 2008, Moynihan said loans were at $1 trillion, and are 17 percent lower today. The loans are of better quality, he says, funding is less short-term than it used to be, he says.

And yet, you still have analysts like Deutsche Bank’s Matt O’Connor predicting the bank will have to issue $15 billion worth of stock next year.

It doesn’t take a Bank of America-related disaster to send the stock lower. Wednesday’s action was a good indicator of this fact, as Bank of Americas shares were down 1.69% about 75 minutes before the close as Europe-related tumult continued to roil the stock market. Shares of JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo, meanwhile, were in positive territory.

Will Bank of America survive the coming market disaster?

Probably, but let’s get real, folks: this is not a canoe you want to be sitting in when the storm comes across the Atlantic.

 

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/id/45673978

Filed Under: Banks, Corporations, Corruption, Financial Crisis, Money, USA Tagged With:

How the Council on Foreign Relations Controls the Media

December 15, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Filed Under: Corruption, Media Tagged With:

The US Had Offered Saif Al-Islam A Coup Against His Father Gaddafi

December 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

By flipthepyramid.com

Saif al-Islam has exposed remarkable facts during his first interrogation.

He said that leaders of the White House contacted him six days after the occupation of Benghazi and suggested that he should stage a coup against his father, and to take his place in power.

“After the coup, I should soon begin to impose profound reforms and the petroleum regulatory policies,” said Seif al-Islam.

After I did not agree with this proposal, they broke off contact with me.

Regarding the U.S. relations with his father he said that the last contact of the U.S. with Muammar al-Gaddafi took place shortly before his death.

Saif al-Islam said: “The United States have assured my father that his security was not threatened during his concealment in Sirte and that they will help him to leave the bombings of Libya without persecution.”

 

Source: https://flipthepyramid.com/index.php/entry/the-us-had-offered-saif-al-islam-a-coup-against-his-father-gaddafi

Filed Under: Corruption, Libya, USA Tagged With:

US In Iraq: Soldiers Out; Blackwater In?

December 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

By rt.com

“The biggest thing in my mind is ‘Will the press, will members of Congress and others continue to say it’s just a name change?” Tim Wright asks CNN. “Will they accept this as real change now?’”

Probably not. After all, it is hard for most people to shrug off the massacre of droves of innocent civilians.

Wright has recently come on board as CEO of Academi, a new name that the former execs at Blackwater have applied to the security squad in hopes of rebranding their organization after a decade of bad press and poor results. The controversial military contract company has raised eyebrows since the US government first installed its men and women overseas to reinforce America’s military presence, which instead resulted in a series of brutal killings of civilians gone largely without reprimand. In 2009, they changed the name from Blackwater to Xe Services LLC, and with their latest announcement, are rebranding once again in order to save face.

Easier said than done.

“Our focus is on training and security services. We’re continuing that,” CEO Wright tells Wired.com’s Danger Room.“We’re not backing away from security services. The lion’s share of our business today is providing training for security services and [providing] security services.” Such security patrol has been the bulk of Blackwater (under whichever guise it chooses to go by that month) since the start of the company in 1997, but has come as a challenge for the security forces.

“As we make changes and they take root and we convince everyone they’re real,” Wright adds to Danger Room, “then the real proof in the pudding is convincing the government of Iraq and the U.S. government to let us do business in Iraq.”

With President Obama formally discussing the withdrawal of American troops the same afternoon as Wright reveals the name-change, that business might be easier said than done. After a decade of a war that a reporter asked Obama today if he thought it was “dumb,” Iraq is surely to be hesitant in allowing security forces back into the country, even with a cute name change. As per Obama’s promise, American troops will empty out of Iraq by the month’s end. Will Academi pick up the slack?

“We have had a year of extraordinary changes that have resulted in a new, better company,” Write says in an official statement on the company’s website. Among those changes are bringing Patriot Act purveyor and former-US Attorney General John Ashcroft on board at Academi. The result, says Wright, will allow for Academi to “develop a culture of operational excellence, governance, accountability and strategic growth.”

Even if they contractors aren’t allowed back in Iraq, they will still have a presence on America’s other long-standing battlefield; currently, Academi has a 10-acre operating base in Kabul, Afghanistan.

 

Filed Under: Corporations, Corruption, Iraq, USA Tagged With: ,

The Real Victims of Jon Corzine & MF Global’s Bankruptcy

December 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

By Jeff Macke

If you’re obsessed with headlines from Europe, fixated the Federal Reserve’s final policy meeting of 2011, and generally ready to tune out for the rest of the year, that’s just the way Jon Corzine wants it.

The embattled former Senator, Governor, head of Goldman Sachs (GS), and CEO of MF Global will testify again today, this time in front of his pals and former peers in the U.S. Senate. Presumably Corzine will be sternly grilled regarding how MF Global came lose $1.2 billion in client funds. Cynics and those who saw Corzine’s first Congressional testimony last week would logically expect the disgraced ex-Senator to dole out blame to others while congratulating himself for not taking the Fifth.

The gist of Corzine’s defense is that he simply couldn’t understand where the money went. It’s been a performance somewhere between a drug-addled teen trying to track down his keys and Michael Corleone’s testimony in The Godfather II. Corzine totally doesn’t know where the money is and if anyone working for MF Global did anything untoward the titular leader of the firm at the time had no way of knowing about it.

An eviscerating article in Sunday’s NY Times called into question just how hands-off Mr. Corzine was. Citing inside sources, the Times says “Mr. Corzine compulsively traded for the firm on his Blackberry during meetings, sometimes dashing out to check on the markets.”

A presumption of innocence aside, Corzine’s having been an actively trading CEO yet claiming ignorance as to the clearing and processing activities of his firm falls somewhere between implausible and the lie of a financial sociopath.

Former a market strategist for MF Global Rich Ilczyszyn (rhymes with “magician”) has firsthand experience with the firm and the impact its bankruptcy has had. Now the founder of iitrader.com, Ilczyszyn doesn’t claim to know how Mr. Corzine’s legal battle is going to turnout, but he’s willing to hazard a guess as to the reaction of his former co-workers regarding Corzine’s claim regarding the missing $1.2billion.

“I think I can speak for a lot of clients from MF and investors that used the firm, ‘you’ve got to be kidding me!’” he says.

Ilczyszyn clearly has moved on personally and professionally from MF, as have many of those employed by the firm on the trading floors. It’s the other 3,000 or so former MF employees for whom Ilczyszyn reserves his concern.

There are jobs “in this industry if you’re specifically in futures or commodities, but outside my heart goes out to all the back-office support,” he says. “All the people who helped the organization run on a daily basis; there’s a lot of folks I’m in contract with who are still seeking employment.”

Ilczyszyn is sincere in his concern, which means he outranks Corzine as a man if not in terms of their respective titles at MF Global.

The back office people are the real victims of MF Global’s collapse. They’re also the group who Corzine is putting on the hook for what is either his ineptitude or his malfeasance. When Corzine claims he never “intended” to mix client and firm funds or notes that he can’t retrace the numbers because he doesn’t have the paperwork, he’s blaming the everyday people working at a firm he lead into full-on liquidation.

Corzine’s rounds of testimony are the final insult on his way out the door from business leader to full-time defendant. The show starts at 10am; get ready to lose the remote and pass the popcorn.

 

Source: https://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/breakout/real-victims-jon-corzine-mf-global-bankruptcy-131108203.html

Filed Under: Corporations, Corruption, Debt, Financial Crisis, Money, USA Tagged With:

Britain’s Press Are Fighting A Class War, Defending The Elite They Belong To

December 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

By

It’s not just Rupert Murdoch and his crooks. All the corporate barons who corrupted our political system must be unmasked. Have we ever been so badly served by the press? We face multiple crises – economic, environmental, democratic – but most newspapers represent them neither clearly nor fairly. The industry that should reveal and expose instead tries to contain and baffle, to foil questions and shut down dissent.

The men who own the corporate press are fighting a class war, seeking, even now, to defend the 1% to which they belong against its challengers. But because they control much of the conversation, we seldom see it in these terms. Our press re-frames major issues so effectively, it often recruits its readers to mobilise against their own interests.

Crime and antisocial behaviour are represented as the predations of the poor on each other, or on the middle and upper classes. “Blonde millionaire’s wife raped in luxury home by asylum-seeking benefits cheat” is the transcendental form of a thousand tabloid headlines, alongside “Pippa Middleton’s bottom gets £1m makeover from top designer”. Though benefit fraud deprives the exchequer of £1.1bn a year while tax avoidance and evasion deprive it of between £40bn and £120bn, the tabloids relentlessly pursue the petty crooks, while leaving the capos alone.

On Monday the rightwing papers applauded government plans to cut benefits for people in social housing who have more rooms than they need. The “growing scandal of under-occupation”, the Mail observed, contributes to the housing crisis, depriving larger families of the homes they need. The Express told us that “it is only right that decisions such as this must be taken”. But what about the private sector, where there’s a much higher rate of under-occupation, especially among the wealthy? When this column suggested that these under-used homes should be taxed, the corporate press went berserk. Only the poorest should carry the cost of resolving our housing crisis.

Not a day passes in which rightwing papers fail to call for stiffer regulation of protesters, problem families, petty criminals or antisocial teenagers. And every day they call for laxer regulation of business: cutting the “red tape” that prevents companies and banks from using the planet as their dustbin, killing workers or tanking the economy.

The newspapers’ own criminal behaviour, more of which is being exposed before the Leveson inquiry as I write, looks to me like the almost inevitable result of a culture that appears to believe that the law, like taxes and regulation, is for little people. While portraying the underclass as a threat to “our” way of life, the corporate papers ask us to celebrate the lives of the economic elite. Saturday’s Telegraph devoted most of a page to a puff piece flogging the charming jumpers being sold by a Santa Sebag-Montefiore (nee Palmer-Tomkinson) from her “white stucco Kensington House”. She works – if that’s the right word for it – with someone she met at Klosters, where she and her family “ski with the Prince of Wales and Princes William and Harry”. So far they have managed to sell 40 of these jumpers, which somehow justifies an enormous photo and 1,400 breathless words.

I mention this sycophantic drivel not because it is exceptional but because it is typical. A friend who used to work as a freelance photographer for the Telegraph stopped when he discovered that most of those he was sent to photograph were the well-heeled friends and relatives of people on the paper. Journalism is embedded in the world it should be challenging and confronting.

These papers recognise the existence of an oppressive elite, but they frame it purely in political terms. The political elite becomes oppressive when it tries to curb the powers and freedoms of the economic elite. Take this revealing conjunction in the Daily Mail’s leading article on Saturday: “David Cameron yesterday finally said no to the European elite – vetoing plans for a treaty that included an EU-wide tax on financial transactions.” In other words, Cameron said yes to the British elite. But it cannot be explained in those terms without exposing where power really lies, which is the antithesis of what the rightwing papers seek to achieve.

As the theologian Walter Wink shows, challenging a dominant system requires a three-part process: naming the powers, unmasking the powers, engaging the powers. Their white noise of distraction and obfuscation is the means by which the newspapers prevent this process from beginning. They mislead us about the sources of our oppression, misrepresent our democratic choices, demonise those who try to challenge the 1%.

Compare the Daily Mail’s treatment of the Occupy London protesters, confronting the banks, to its coverage of the camp set up by people of the charming village of Meriden, confronting some gypsies. “Desecration, defecation and class A drugs” was the headline on the Mail’s feature article about Occupy London. Published on the day on which the City of London began its attempts to evict the protesters, it deployed every conceivable means of vilifying them and justifying their expulsion.

The Mail’s Meriden story, on the other hand, was headlined: “Adding insult to injury: now villagers who have protested against an illegal travellers’ camp for 586 days are told: YOU are facing eviction.” The story emphasised the villagers’ calm fortitude and the justice of their cause. Presumably they don’t defecate either.

Press barons have been waging this class war for almost a century, and it has hobbled progressive politics throughout that time. But the closed circle of embedded journalism is now so tight that it has almost created an alternative reality.

Ten days ago, for example, the Spectator ran a cover story that could not have been crazier had it been headlined: “Yes, Father Christmas does exist, but he’s been kidnapped by lizards”. A serial promoter of mumbo-jumbo called Nils-Axel Morner, who claims he has paranormal dowsing abilities and that an iron-age cemetery in Sweden is in fact the Hong Kong of the ancient Greeks, was given 1,800 words to show that sea levels are not rising. Citing “evidence” that was anecdotal, irrelevant or simply wrong, explaining that it was all a massive conspiracy, Morner ignored or dismissed a vast wealth of solid data from satellites and tide gauges.

The Spectator kindly gave me space to write a response last week, but it strikes me that a story like this could not have been published five years ago. It first required a long process of normalisation, in which evident falsehoods are repeated until they are widely believed to be true. The climate talks in Durban were slotted by the papers into the same narrative, in which climate scientists and the BBC conspire to shut down the economy and send us back to the stone age. (And they have the blazing cheek to call us scaremongers.)

It’s not just Murdoch and his network of sleazy crooks: our political system has been corrupted by the entire corporate media. Defending ourselves from the economic elite means naming and unmasking the power of the press.

 

Source: https://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/12/britain-press-fighting-class-war

Filed Under: Corruption, Media, Propaganda, United Kingdom

The Spirit of Revolution

December 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment

17-year-old Andrew Barrows invokes the spirit of the Founding Fathers to question America’s current direction.

I want to start with some quotes from past presidents of the United States Of America, as well as important activists who discussed freedom and oppression.

Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves. - Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object. - Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made. - Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945)

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)

The law will never make men free, it is men that have to make the law free. - Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter. - George Washington (1732-1799)

In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility — I welcome it. - John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)

I think to myself, all these people — historical leaders who will be talked about for as long as American history exists, had such wonderful views on freedom, and great ideas about how the country should be run. In fact, they are so wonderful we still talk about them hundreds of years later.

Now I think to myself, all these people — historical leaders who will be talked about for as long as American history exists, had such wonderful views on freedom, and great ideas about how the country should be run. In fact, they are so wonderful we still talk about them hundreds of years later.

I think about the American Revolution, and how many people have fought and died to make America, and what the American Revolution was all about. I constantly ponder the thought of, “I really wonder how past presidents would react to the way America is now.” I can imagine Abraham Lincoln or George Washington being brought back to life to experience modern America for just a day. But I can’t begin to imagine his facial expression when I would tell him:

Yeah, since all of your wonderful truth speaking, caring about the people, and doing what is right and fair to give people extraordinary documents dedicated to freedom…America has really gone down hill…and I mean…really down hill.

Being a president today actually means who’s the best liar on the stage. It is like a highschool talent show. Each person goes on stage and tries to convince the audience to like them, and whoever lies the most wins. They are just puppets who can’t really do anything. Congressional approval is 8% and WE the people don’t actually get a say in what happens. The mega rich call the shots and huge companies actually control what the government does while the middle class and poor get robbed blind.

After I would study his confusion…I would continue…

The Patriot Act

(After explaining what a phone and the Internet is). Gives the government the power to read my emails, my text messages, track my phone, follow me, tap my phone calls, install a tracking device under my car to know my exact location. In short…violate my privacy completely.

Then I would discuss the SOPA/PROTECT IP ACT.

A bill that has been introduced in the Senate and the House and is moving quickly through Congress. It gives the government and corporations the ability to censor the Net, in the name of protecting “creativity”. The law would let the government or corporations censor entire sites — they just have to convince a judge that the site is “dedicated to copyright infringement.”

Next of course, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

The bill grants power to the military to arrest U.S. citizens on American soil and detain them in military prisons forever without offering them the right to legal counsel or even a trial. This isn’t a totally new thing: “dirty bomb” plotter Jose Padilla spent three-and-a-half years as an “enemy combatant” until he was finally charged. But Padilla’s detention was unusual and sparked a huge outcry; the new provisions would standardize his treatment and enable us all to become Jose Padillas.

Than I would probably make him watch this video on YouTube: “A Time-Lapse Map of Every Nuclear Explosion Since 1945″ by Isao Hashimoto

 

 

Than I would explain having a gun, missing fingers, or 7 days of food at your house = YOU ARE A TERRORIST

You know, at this point he would probably be on his knees with a huge headache.

I’m sure eventually he would say something like “Why are the people allowing this to happen? And what happened to people fighting for what is right?”

Than I would explain the Anonymous Internet group and the Occupy movement and protests. I think he would be pretty happy and would get up off his knees.

BUT than I would show him videos of what is happening when people are trying to protest and spread truth. I would start probably with this video:

or this video:

 

It’s really hard to choose which video of police attacking innocent protesters expressing their Constitutional rights I would show because, honestly, YouTube is filled with them. So I would probably just let him browse around for a while.

Now at this point I would imagine he would pretty much scream or yell that everything that past Americans had fought for to create has been literally bashed by the people who are supposed to enforce it, and has been turned around and used against the people instead of protecting them.

Than I would get Paul Revere out of my time machine/life regeneration thing and Paul Revere would jump on his horse and ride through the city streets of Boston yelling “The British aren’t coming; they are already here!

“Would our Founding Fathers be disgraced at what America has become? Is everything they fought for now becoming useless?

Would they call for a revolution?

 

Source: https://www.activistpost.com/2011/12/spirit-of-revolution.html#more

Filed Under: Censorship, Corporations, Corruption, Crime, Financial Crisis, Imperialism, Military, Military Industrial Complex, Money, Nuclear, Occupy, Politicians, Protests, Radiation, Revolution, Rights, Science, Social Unrest, Surveillance, Technology, USA, War Tagged With:
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