Glad to hear that. I thought they were forcing it through. Rich pickings for some hedge fund.

They still haven’t managed to privatise water here. There were massive, continuous protests which put paid to their plans, and water in Ireland is still a public utility.

Nick – I hear what you are saying and I totally empathize. I come from a working class background in Detroit. I’ve watched most of my childhood friends die early deaths related to the poverty, depression and drugs that came as our factories closed down and they lost their jobs. I have no illusions that the working class in the West is living any cushy life of luxury.

But along with that reality are other realities. One of them sadly is that the reason you can afford inexpensive clothes for your kids, and I can afford inexpensive clothes for my grandkids is intimately tied to our Western nations continuing to plunder the rest of the world not only for cheap resources, but for cheap labor. Labor that in many cases falls just short of slavery conditions in it’s brutality and working conditions and reimbursement. From that cheap clothing, to the chocolate we eat, to the rare earth minerals in our phones or the computers you and I are both writing on, we common folk in the West live easier lives everyday in no small part because of the suffering and the brutal exploitation of much of the world’s poor. You don’t want it, I don’t want it, and I dare say most citizens of the West would be ashamed and appalled if they actually knew the true extent that the material life we enjoy, no matter how modest, is paid for with the suffering of those in the former colonial nations, now essentially just neocolonial outposts of daily Western neoliberal capitalist plunder.

No one is saying any of us want this state of affairs Nick. Yet I don’t know anyone who considers themselves working class in the West who would willingly change places with our counterparts in Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. The only comparable poverty to what I’ve witnessed in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Colombia and Brazil would be our homeless peoples here in the U.S. While we in the West are afraid to risk our “jobs” by standing up to our corrupt governments, our brothers and sisters in much of the rest of the world risk their very lives often simply by joining a union.

When I made my last visit to Colombia in about 2000, as a human rights observer, already some 10,000 union members and organizers had been murdered by U.S. funded death squads and the Colombian military. Here in the U.S. union organizers risk getting fired. In much of Latin America they risk being tortured and murdered. That is the kind of difference in “reality” that Vltchek is speaking about when we in the West try to understand the suffering we are connected to in the rest of the world. My own tax dollars have literally paid for the U.S. military to arm and train those death squad in Latin America. That is an ethical and moral connection that I can not deny.

My point in countering the psychological resistance many seem to have to the rather obvious reality of what Mr. Vltchek points out, is simply to acknowledge a basic aspect of that reality, which is that all of us are complicit in the actions of our governments and in their immoral deeds whether we want to be or not. I’m retired now, and so no longer pay much if any taxes to the American war machine, but how do I know that my pension funds invested in some former employer’s stock market portfolio run by some faceless management company may not be profiting from war and mayhem without me ever knowing it? That is the true evil of our system. Even those of us who know enough to oppose and resist the murderous policies of our governments have no real idea how we might effectively change those policies or engage in some truly meaningful resistance. I personally think a general strike would be a very useful action and might grab the attention of Western oligarchy in a way few things would – I quite simply, literally, don’t know one other single person here who would join me.

I often find myself wondering Nick what it is that led people to rise up to oppose and end chattel slavery in Britain and in the rest of Europe. What were those people thinking? How did they see themselves as part of the moral equation of living in a society where the exploitation of others created general societal wealth? What did it take for the civil rights movement in the U.S. finally explode in the 1960’s and to finally challenge centuries of racial oppression in America? What did it take for Gandhi to become a lightning rod to help rally people and stand against imperialist oppression? What will it take for us today to stop Western war-mongering and mayhem before we incinerate the entire planet in our madness?

I’m not sure what it takes for people to change their perspective in large numbers and to become a force to bring about important social change, but I suspect it doesn’t happen by telling ourselves we aren’t “involved” in the “problems” and that we are “powerless” to change things. If your children and my grandchildren are going to have a future, a future shared with all the innocent children across the planet, perhaps it is time we adults find a way to start telling ourselves some new stories Nick. The first step may be to simply “imagine” what those stories would be.

I have to disagree here. It is not the common citizen of the west that benefits from the evil deeds our governments do. Sure, we live like royalty compared to most of the world but still it isnt us that benefits from this evil, it is the bankers, the brokers, the politicians, the investors, the millionaires and billionaires. I’m quite certain if our governments simply minded their own business and operated with honesty and integrity toward the world, the average citizen would be just as comfortable. The difference would be the absence of these super wealthy oligarchs. So as much as I DO emphasize with the rest of the world., I am nowhere near the wealth or status of those who do benefit from the horrible actions of our “leaders”. I am also in no position to do much about it other than seek truth, expose people to it insomuch as I can and vote according to the truth as I see it. It isnt easy though, even considering myself “redpilled” I still find myself always second guessing what the truth is. Am I reading a situation wrong? Am I being duped? There is sooooo much hyperbole, rhetoric, lies, misinformation, propaganda to soft through its exhausting and time consuming. Meanwhile, I work 7days a week driving a 17 year old truck to work to earn a living enough to put clothes on my kids backs and food in their mouths and dare I say maybe have a drink now and then.

Indeed this world is madness! The flat screens, everywhere, in the streets, busses, trains, airplanes, corridors, some as big as the limit of the skyscrapers, etc.. are there, nobody seems to be aware, that they signify a permanent hold-up of our brains. We, the majority, we did not ask their messages and nobody seemed disturbed by it. Is this not madness? The real makers of the contents, are absent from the eyes. This is outright, because we did not ask for it, also an invasion of our brains and, much more, the diversion of our precious lifetime (Should lifetime not be precious?) and the screen let us deflect our thoughts, most of the time, from the real necessary tasks. Is this the accepted reality? But in fact, who’s reality, imposed by who and what? If we accept such a world, is this not pure madness? To make it worse, a soft voice, from the “speakers” let us know that we will see the “…true story…”. If we accept this, is it not totally insane? This is only a little part, of our insanity, indeed, the messages are they not clearly totalitarian? Yes, then, from which side do they come? Which side, is the side of reality? There are few messagers and billion recipients? This is only a tiny part of what we now permanently live…

The EU ordered Ireland to privatise water. There was zero support for this in the country, but they were told to shut up and do it.