OffG Recommends…Network
A deep and biting satire, with far more important things to say than its most famous quote.
Kit Knightly
Usually the OffG recommends articles* take the form of a review, but Network doesn’t need another review, and nor does it require our endorsement. Firmly ensconced as it is as a classic of both its genre and Western cinema in general.
However, it has reached that point where it exists in the public mind as a kind of meta reference rather than a work. It is a title, a quote, and a distilled meaning more than a film.
Such is the fate of “the classics”, in all fields. They are seen more than they are watched. Everyone has heard of them, nobody listens to them.
To somewhat address this imbalance, this “recommends” takes the form of a sharp focus on one key speech.
No, not that speech. We’re all mad as hell, obviously, but we’re not screaming out the windows today.
Rather, it is a scene later in the film.
Peter Finch plays Howard Beale, a veteran reporter who – at the beginning of the film – has an on-air nervous breakdown, resulting in an angry rant on the state of the country and the threat of suicide live on air.
Initially, his boss intends to fire Beale, before it is discovered that his outburst resulted in a surprising bump in ratings. Immediately the studio seizes the opportunity and Beale is given his own show and branded “the mad prophet of the airwaves”.
However, after going too far and calling out corporate corruption on air, Beale is summoned to the boardroom of the company that owns the media conglomerate he works for, to be confronted by the CEO Arthur Jensen (Ned Beaty).
Jensen launches into a monologue and proceeds to lecture Beale about the true nature of the world in which he lives, and how Jensen has chosen him to preach his “evangel” to the masses.
It’s a wonderful speech, poetically written and wonderfully performed by Beatty, whose performance is blackly hilarious as it jolts from Shakespearean declaration to informal chat and back again.
…and he predicts the future we’re all living today.
You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West.
There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels.
It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU WILL ATONE! Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale?
You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon.
Those are the nations of the world today.
OK, maybe not “predicts”. Perhaps at the time it was intended to be satire through exaggeration, or maybe – even then – it was already obvious where we were heading.
Hell, maybe we were already there.
It’s certainly out of character for a Hollywood movie – or any movie – to draw parallels between the elites of the USA and USSR at a time when the Wall was still up. To reduce all apparent ideologies to business plans.
But the part that stuck with me – and may stick with you – is his vision of the future, recounted with a tone of reverent awe.
[O]ur children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that… perfect world… in which there’s no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused.
The supreme irony being whichever side you come from – capitalist or communist – the nature of power structures is to grow into a tyrannical centralised collective, devoid of freedom or choice. A company or a state. Either way.
Prediction or not, satire or not, the writer – Paddy Chayefsky – nailed the mindset of the people we’re dealing with now.
That’s what they want.
I wouldn’t usually recommend a movie on one speech alone, but in this case, the one speech – much more than the oft-quoted “mad as hell” rant – is the spirit of the movie. A satire that picks on the nature of a television-centric world.
Howard Beale’s fleeting moment of sincerity is immediately exploited to make money, carefully redirected when it treads on the wrong toes, co-opted to spread the elite agenda…and finally dumped as soon as it was no longer useful.
There are no nations, only money. And there is no truth, only stories. Reality is fed through a mill to produce content. Everything is only as real as it’s convenient to allow, they don’t care what you believe as long as you’re paying attention.
Watch Network. It’s just as good as when it was first released, and might be more relevant than ever.
But, man, you’re never going to get any truth from us. We’ll tell you anything you want to hear; we lie like hell […] We deal in illusions, man! None of it is true! But you people sit there, day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds… We’re all you know. You’re beginning to believe the illusions we’re spinning here. You’re beginning to think that the tube is reality, and that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you! You dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube, you even *think* like the tube! This is mass madness, you maniacs! In God’s name, you people are the real thing! WE are the illusion! So turn off your television sets.
Howard Beale
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From ‘Coma’:
Dr. George A. Harris: Our society faces momentous decisions. Decisions about the right to die. About abortion. About terminal illness, prolonged coma, transplantation. Decisions about life and death. But society isn’t deciding. Congress isn’t deciding. The courts aren’t deciding. Religion isn’t deciding. Why? Because society is leaving it up to us, the experts. The doctors.
Dr. Susan Wheeler: You’re crazy.
Dr. George A. Harris: Americans spend $125 billion a year on health. More than defense. Because Americans believe in medical care. These great hospital complexes are the cathedrals of our age. Billions of dollars, thousands of beds. A whole nation of sick people turning to us for help.
Dr. Susan Wheeler: You, you ought to see somebody.
Dr. George A. Harris: They’re children, Sue. They trust us. We can’t tell them everything. Our job is to make things easier for them. I’m sure you agree.
Dr. Susan Wheeler: You’re killing people.
Dr. George A. Harris: We must always take the long view. Not of the individual, but of society as a whole. Because medicine is now a great social force. The individual is too small.
Technocracy…. god complex…. communitarianism…. director/writer Michael Crichton seemed to know a thing or two. Crichton later turned against the agenda (especially the climate hoax in ‘State of Fear’ and promptly got one of those fast-acting cancers.
A lesser known film that also seems to have had some knowledge about where things were going is a mid-1980s Canadian thriller called ‘Terminal Choice’. It has hospital staff betting on patients’ recovery in a way that seems to anticipate the human futures’ market.
I’m mad as hell.
Do more of theses Kit.
I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop and someone to profile the play by Jules Romains “Knock ou la triomphe de la Médecine” , an understatedly hilarious anticipation of the pandemic panic. (This was about a century ago so probably it was not an NWO trial balloon. Regrettably, there is nothing on Youtube with an English translation)
And yet the writer of ‘Network’, Paddy Chayefsky belittled Vanessa Redgrave for condemning the Israeli apartheid system and the destruction of Palestine and murder of Palestinians…all those years ago…and things have only got steadily worse since.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeV3GpUY1B4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAcOsK9gRLk
Ironically, he was doing exactly what he criticised Vanessa Redgrave for doing…using the awards to make a political statement. But I’m sure he didn’ see it that way. Anyway, kind of put me off the guy.
Did any notice how Sat Night Live had this great(?) skit with JENNA ORTEGA last weekend ( i did not watch ) — it was about her — ready — enacting a dance she did – from a a netflix series— based on a character from a tv from 50 YEARS AGO. I’m shocked all the major studios got almost no oscars.
a great movie, as so many great movies and sounds, which If open to them, can be a most effective reflection to assist in revealing this fossilized order of things .
I was once travelling in a car with a guy I knew, he was talking politics whilst rambling on with affirmations to his favored troupe, drumming the wheel to the rhythmic tunes of his CD player – “Have you heard the news that’s goin’ ’round here?
….many still haven’t, any wonder ?
10 years late to the party even by this new alt media standard off illogical thinking.
How fucking Shockingly sickening at times hilarious.
Your watch this, then go and watch GBnews(shilbe news) or Brian Gerrish and back in the day Alex Jones or today heroes Cia fox news 666 Carlson..
The fucking Irony.
So Carlson is the Devil? Please switch yourself off.
Switch your self on. You got a lot to learn if you haven’t figured out why fox was called fox and why carlson is placed there.
I’ve been plugged in and switched on for at least 45 of my 69 years. I’ll deal with Fox, when and if it becomes necessary. All MSM are owned by 1% and I am under no illusions about Fox. As for Tucker, I listen to him and mostly agree with what he says, however, I read widely and know when to disagree with him.
O’ gorman your not awake as anyone awake wouldn’t need to watch a known shill.
Your 45 of 65 needs upgrading serious as in that 45 years youve ended up listening to carslon. your ve digressed not plugged in unless plugged (being butt fudged) means watching someone as idiotic as Carlson.
wake the fuck up boy..
so funny .
Emmy-award-winning broadcast journalist, graduate of Harvard College & Yale Law School. Frequent visitor to the Aspen Inst.
Fully vaccinated. She/Hers
https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson
😂
Boy? Butt Fudged? Man you are a disgusting creep and if you were in my neigbourhood, I would teach you some fucking manners. I live In South Africa where we buy round – not fuck around. I’m quite will to give you my address; but I doubt you will take up the challenge.
Hi Switched, welcome to OG.
Here you’ll find that a wide range of comments are tolerated and welcomed. Even from rude, foul-mouth newbies that often seem to be trolls.
Hope you’re with us for the long run and that you find the atmosphere congenial. And most of all that you can contribute something useful.
Cheers!
If you are referring to me, have the ball to address my directly!
Speaking of films, dating myself I know — did you know that M*A*S*H and Patton were released the same year by the same studio? (Twentieth Century Fox, I believe.)
How far we have fallen. And I notice no one in Hollywood is in any great rush to do the remake of The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming.
Started following the discussions on OffG some months back. Thought provoking comments here.
Took a month or so off and now back, reading and commenting. But really… EVERY comment I make is off to the ‘pending’ corral. No matter what the content.
Very unnecessary.
Not a problem for me …
70s conspiracy thrillers were great – personal fave is “The Parallax View”.
Also “Three Days of the Condor”.
I see someone has already mentioned this one below.
Turner Classic Movies runs Network every once in a while. I have been avoiding it. Just watched the trailer. Forgot how dark it was and now realize why my subconscious kept steering me away. Kind of like Off-Guardian every week. The truth will lock you up.
Network and Broadcast News (both won an Oscar for Best Picture) came out when neoliberalism (fascist privatization) began and the consolidation of all businesses when into high force. They won’t stop until all governments are hollowed out and erased (save the military arm), all citizenship is obsolete, all public anything is gone, all accountability structures removed. A world of Owners and Others. People who hate government got their wish.
“In a libertarian society, there is no commons or public space. There are property lines, not borders. When it comes to real property and physical movement across such real property, there are owners, guests, licensees, business invitees, and trespassers — not legal and illegal immigrants.”
~ Jeff Deist, president of the Mises Institute
“We find ourselves in the midst of a global war on a scale even greater than that of the Second World War. But the nature of war has changed, and as a result many cannot conceive of what is happening. They think that it is a struggle between nations over power, when in fact it is an effort of the superrich to destroy most of humanity.”
“Whose family had staged a revolution in medicine in the early 20th century, ultimately forcing a pharmaceutical paradigm down the throats of billions of people?
Who extended the germ theory of disease to the point at which populations would be hypnotized by it?
Who knew that medical tyranny and dictatorship were the roads to travel, in order to gain control of nations and bring in a new world order?
DAVID ROCKEFELLER.
His beloved Chinese system of slavery comes to America.
Its goal? A collectivist world, run as a corporate entity. What better excuse for its necessity than a global “pandemic?” Top-down governance of the planet, in order to detect the earliest signs of disease outbreaks anywhere…”
So very close to the literal definition of Fascism (as the original coiner-of-the-term Mussolini defined it).
Why do you think Nixon and Kissinger put so much work into opening up China?
It is the future they worked so hard to craft.
Not certain that “Tricky Dickie” actually knew what the real plan was. Kissinger is still very much around and part of the WEF and NWO.
Yes, the 1976 film ‘Network’ has many scenes that are relevant to the events of the past 25 years in relation to the New World Order. The speeches by Ned Beaty are right on the money regarding the fallacy of nation states and the real control of the Power Elite.
The Stafford-based post-punk band ‘The Genocide House’ make excellent use of the Network dialogue in their track ‘Mind Virus’ on their 2022 album ‘Futures and Pasts’, an album that addresses the post-2020 narrative through the lens of past events that correlate with today’s world. Check out the ‘Mind Virus’ track and the track ‘The Fire Next Time’ which incorporates President Nixon’s ironic resignation speech from 1974.
https://thegenocidehouse.bandcamp.com/
You could add the ending of Three Days of the Condor
https://www.smays.com/2004/11/three-days-condor/
“Higgins: It’s simple economics, Turner… There’s no argument. Oil now, 10 or 15 years it’ll be food, or plutonium. Maybe sooner than that. What do you think the people will want us to do then?
Turner: Ask them!
Higgins: Now? (shakes head) Huh-uh. Ask them when they’re running out. When it’s cold at home and the engines stop and people who aren’t used to hunger… go hungry! They won’t want us to ask… (quiet savagery:) They’ll want us to GET it for them.”
But they would not print it.
But if they did print it. People would ignore it.
People don’t care if they want to start a war.
People can be convinced it is required with what ever lie works.
They will even support the war
They will be convinced they will win.
Those who fund the think tanks will be the only winners.
But from War comes Progress
The Third Man
“Don’t be so gloomy. After all it’s not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love – they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long Holly.”
My thoughts exactly when reading Kit’s article. “Three Days of the Condor”. The last scene – the last line. Precious and prescient.
Of course then come’s to mind other movies – Parallax View, Executive Decision, Michael Clayton. And many old series. And so many fiction books that tell it like it is but, I suppose are only seen as entertainment.
Which, of course, is how I viewed “Network” in my young twenties.
I feel impelled, I’m afraid, to play devil’s advocate again – though I do it very reluctantly in the case of any piece by Kit Knightly, whom I usually hold up as an example of the way OffGuardian should be going every time I comment on a piece (and this, unfortunately, has been happening almost daily recently) which takes it where it shouldn’t.
This is, I’ll admit, an intelligent and informative piece. Since it’s by Kit it could hardly not be. I haven’t watched Network in forty years and I’ve felt less and less inclined to do so the more frequently it’s come to be cited along with other Hollywood movies in which people get angry about “the way things are” (Falling Down, American History X) as “our movie” without any attention being paid to the system-affirming framework in which the anger displayed is contained. But Kit makes, with his usual subtlety, the sound point that it’s mainly the disproportionate looming, a least in memory, of the “I’m mad as hell:..” speech that makes people like me dismissive of Network. Frankly, I had no memory, after all these years, of the Ned Beatty scene even occurring in the movie. (A remarkable departure from “type-casting”, I have to say, since the fat little loser guy best remembered for being made to crawl around in the Everglades mud in his underwear and “squeal like a little piggy” before being repeatedly anally raped by two snaggle-toothed rednecks is not exactly a “natural” for the part of Dark God-Emperor of the New World Order”).
That said, though, happy (re-)discovery though it is, Beatty’s speech is something of a “curate’s egg”. It is indeed surprisingly “good in parts”. As Kit points out, the political vision expressed in it stands out quite starkly from the overwhelming mass of what counted as “political protest and critique” in the 1970s in that the ideas it puts into the mouth of “the corporation guy” aren’t just a load of warmed-over International Workers of the World caricatures along the lines of “money is all that matters; we need to crush the commies before they take away our money” etc. There are at least the rudiments, in what the Beatty character says, of an understanding of power whereby power is not immediately reduced to a “means to the end” of making more money – that is to say, an understanding of power that goes beyond the tired old “it’s all about the Benjamins” refrain that, as anyone who’s listened to a Corbynite or a left-wing Democrat for five minutes, has long since become a tool of the system, not a weapon against it. Beatty even comes across – in the passage of his speech that Kit, with his usual acuity, identifies as the really notable part – as more of a socialist than a capitalist, presenting as his ultimate goal not a restoration of hierarchy but a “hive mind” egalitarianism in which “all men will hold a share of stock”.
For me, though – to come to the devil’s advocate part – Beatty’s message has been at this point already far too heavily slathered over with the far from novel language of “dollars” and “currency” and “profit” and “corporations” for the potentially novel and useful things that it says – I mean things useful to us in our situation – to be audible in it except to those who know these things already and didn’t much need to hear them. Just look at the “commentariat” that this (in principle) fine piece has assembled around it. It’s pretty much the same bunch of “Eat the Rich” / “Yankee Go Home” mental and moral mediocrities that the six or seven shallow, misguided, Chomsky-ish articles you’ve published this week assembled around themselves. No one has really picked up on anything here that isn’t grist to the mill of the old 19th-century ressentiment – long since co-opted into the system and made a part of the ruling dogma to which everyone who “belongs” must do obeisance – against “the corporations” and “the banksters”Amazing how this is a more advanced understanding of where we are today than the “understanding” which many of today’s “activists” betray, still hanging on to illusions such as nations. The speech even misleads one especially obtuse or indoctrinated commenter to see in Network a good “international socialist” critique of any form of political resistance that is articulated around the notion of a “nation”:
“Amazing how this is a more advanced understanding of where we are today than the “understanding” which many of today’s “activists” betray, still hanging on to illusions such as nations.”
So sorry, Kit, but the little knowledge that Network, and especially this scene in Network, imparts to us – and I’m not denying that it does impart some knowledge – proves in the end to be a dangerous thing.
There is absolutely nothing more important to the struggle for the survival of our species in which we are currently engaged than to weed out from amongst us all those who believe, or pretend to believe, that the present-day struggle against globalism is just a stage in, or form assumed by, an ongoing struggle against capitalism going back to the days of the Communist Manifesto. Even the most vague and ambiguous notion or impression that it might be “all about the Benjamins” – i.e. that those who want power want it as a means to more “petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels” – needs to be eradicated. That’s not what it’s about any more, if it ever was – and to repeat after Bernie Sanders, and Jeremy Corbyn, and Noam Chomsky, and yes, sadly, after at least a good three quarters of Paddy Chayefsky – that it is is just to slip into one’s role of telling one’s own apportioned part of the Big Lie.
The “power is all about dollars” lie is all the bigger a one because we have had, in fact, for almost a hundred years now at least the lineaments of the understanding of power that we need if we are going to prosecute this war effectively. 1984, of course, is even more of a “meme work” than Network but my admiration for it has grown in such leaps and bounds over the past few years that I’m now pretty much at the point of believing that Orwell was somehow privy to an insight that was more than human. One of the final conversations between Winston Smith and O’Brien is the entirely adequate antidote to all this lingering, and deeply deleterious, Marxist guff about power’s being ultmately a means to the enrichment of the powerful, about “the one per cent” doing what they are doing to us for “the dollars” etc. and even against a certain ex- or para-Marxist variant on this whereby power is socialist idealism gone wrong:
“I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks
power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others ; we
are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness:
only power, pure power.:.We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish
the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture
is torture. The object of power is power.”
The danger of embracing a piece of writing like Paddy Chayefsky’s in this scene from Network is that it half-sees and half-speaks this terrible truth but slathers it over, as I say – ingenuously or perhaps disingenuously; Chayefsky was a leftist Zionist Jew who, had he been a little older, would doubtless have been very rightly scrutinized by McCarthy – with a lot of implied or openly asserted “reasons why power is sought in the first place”.
I think you miss something important. Namely, that to fight, one must have something concrete to fight – a hook, as it were, to hang the ideas one is actually attempting to fight.
It’s never worked before and it won’t start working now to attack ideas directly. Ideas are every bit as Protean as air. We can take on polluted air, or some such; but not air itself.
Of course the real culprit is power itself, not its various iterations. But just try mounting an attack against power. You won’t even scuff your fists because power in its purest form has no physical attributes. It can only work through some medium; and it can only be fought piecemeal through one after another tedious medium.
Were we gods, perhaps we could take on power in and of itself (though it’s doubtful even gods could manage it). As humans, we have no choice but to attack power where it happens to reside at the moment.
A very thoughtful comment, thanks, and I wish my English weren’t as square as a 1973-Lada but rich and fluid enough to comment on it in full.
I’ll just say that 19th century socialist thought weren’t entirely resentment; there was also a lot of understanding and I’m sure you know that the “understanding” mindset goes beyond the “for” and “against” mindsets. It is a very tricky situation when we realise that humanity is living one tenth of one percent (to just give it a quantity) of its potentialities, being the shadow of itself, and at the same time realise that there is no way to shorten this hell, that certain stages have to be gone through. So are we against corporations? Yes, but we also are for corporations in the sense that their existence and evolution is the means of their exhaustion and disappearance. It is not the resentment, for me at least, of the stone thrower or the fire setter; not in any event as the true means of getting what we humans (and this “we” includes every human being,) from the deepest of our hearts and minds, long for: living without needless violence and suffering – to avoid the mention of a well known -ism.
Also what you said of Marxists (won’t put any quotes around the word) believing the ultimate goal of power is money, etc, however true for Marxists is not the thought of Marx that one learns reading Marx; but as they say, he is the most talked/written about and the least read.
Regarding power, I’d venture – as far as I’ve been able to learn – that Marx understanding of power is that it comes from the exclusive ownership of that which is not needed – an aberration from nature’s, that is the rational, perspective. “Exclusive ownership” and “absolutely unneeded” are two terms so antithetical that when tied together in the same mind sickens it; and the sickness manifests itself in our description of it as something we can’t quite digest, something irrational, sickly, when we say power for power. The aberration of power for power comes from the sickness that comes from the ownership of that which is not needed. How did humanity not deliver itself from it from so many millennia (there is evidence it started from the Neolithic)? We may ascribe it to inertia, positive feedback; well just like any addiction.
“Satire” implies critique. A film made by a corporate studio costing millions of dollars isn’t going to be a real critique of corporations. It’s more revelation of the method and mocking people for accepting it. As others have pointed out, look at who the film omits (the banksters) and look at what it implies is the solution (read a newspaper, get mad). It has to be realised they want people to “get mad” to drive one half of the destruction/construction dialectic.
A few things about Paddy Chayefsky:
1) He and his father had military backgrounds.
2) He married a Sackler (of Purdue Pharma infamy).
3) He became a raving Zionist and wrote ads (uncredited) for the ADL.
4) His final film ‘Altered States’ is a thinly-veiled homage to MKUltra doctor John C. Lilly and his sensory deprivation experiments. Hollywood loved Lilly so much they’d already made one film about him (‘Day of the Dolphin’ – it was scouting for that film that gave Roman Polanski his convenient alibi for the so-called Manson murders.
Wrong Sackler
https://www.geni.com/people/Susan-Chayefsky/6000000072728597659
https://www.geni.com/people/Harry-Sackler/6000000072728907827
I think there’s a good deal of truth in that, they’re just so arrogant they tell us what they’re doing, and then laugh at how we’re too fucking stupid to do anything about it – some of say ‘wow, great insightful movie!!!’ (or book or whatever), and then the next day go back to our ratrace slave jobs with disengaged brains as if we’d been told nothing useful. I’ve been trying to wake people up for 20-30 years now, with zero interest, most recently in my Democracy Study Guide – https://www.rudemacedon.ca/DSG/0000-summary.html . We fear ol’ TS had it figured 70 years ago – this is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper. Such a tragedy – but Darwinism in action I guess, if we’re collectively too fucking stupid or ball-less to drive the evil empire back – they win. If some good guys ever win long long ago and far far away, this is not going to be looked back on as a proud or happy moment for the species.
OBVIOUSLY a Zionist, if you remember his bad-mouthing Vanessa Redgrave for speaking up on behalf of Palestinians at the Oscars long long ago.—but what does your last sentence mean?scouting for Day of the Dolphin gave Polanki a “convenient alibi” for the so-called Manson murders.
As an oldie, I am going to pull rank on you. In the year 2000 an American intellectual one, Morris Berman, wrote a short book ‘The Twilight of American Culture’ which encapsulated the spirit of the age for us. Here are some excerpts. Firstly the collapse of Roman civilization.
”Sallust’s description of Rome in 80 BC – A Government controlled by wealth, a ruling class numb to the repetitions of political scandal, a public diverted by chariot races and gladatorial shows – stands as a fair summary as of our own circumstances …
Lewis Lapham – Waiting for the Barbarians.
A good intro, but now Berman gets into his stride:
”Finally we come to the phenomenon of post-modernism and deconstruction, a philosophical viewpoint that seems to have taken over much of the academy, and which has come part of the air which we breathe: the notion that nothing is absolute, but one value is as good as any other, that there is no difference between knowledge and opinion, and that any text of ideas is merely a mask of someone’s agenda. This lends itself to the brave new world of micro-technology, in as much as it promotes a valueless universe; it is also a great way to hide from the real social and economic problems discussed above. A philosophy of despair masquerading as radical chic, post-modernism, is in fact, the ideological counterpart to the civilizational collapse that is going on around us; or as the cultural critic Frederic Jameson has written ”the cultural logic of late capitalism” in which the entire world is transformed into a shopping mall.”
Berman thus lays out his austere delineation of the modern social-cultural decay of actually existing capitalism. He does so by evoking those dreadful ”cultural marxists”, Horkheimer and Adorno, and their school of thought that nobody seems to understand but which doesn’t stop the above-named gentlemen being pilloried by the hoi-polloi who think they do. But the age of philosophising say the Frankfurt writers has come to and end. and underneath it all is the unconscious neurotic fantasy, the dream of absolute power over everything.
Berman writes:
”in our own time this means that cans of Coca-Cola must penetrate into the most remote villages in Africa, along with satellite TV and Nike running shoes … there is not a square inch of American (or Americanized) life that is not bombarded by commercial messages.”
That about sums our age up. Two cheers for the Frankfurt school however.
– you left out one very important bit – the whole thing has been on steroids the last few years with ‘smart phones’ penetrating pretty much everywhere with their hivemind agenda – by far the greatest and most dangerous propaganda tool ever, in the hands of unscrupulous rulers and dumbed down citizens …
Philip K Dick’s A Scanner Darkly was a perfect summation of a schizophrenic society in which the rulers are secretly funding the very crime they are employing the minions to investigate. The central character is hired to spy on himself!
The “cost of living crisis” is going to be the killer. I have found from recent attempted purchases that many sellers are just cancelling and refunding, and I reckon it’s because the increase in postal charges makes the whole endeavour pointless. And when I find an item that looks as if it will indeed arrive, the charge for the item itself is extortionate, the postal charge ditto, and – as if it’s some kind of sick joke – the date given for the item to arrive is way later than I would have thought (leading me to wonder why the postage charge has gone up. What exactly am I paying for?)
Also, ponder how the internet has gradually caused businesses everywhere to transfer their activity to mail order. The businesses have been snared and are now being culled.
“The press was to serve the governed not the govern{ment}. ”
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black in New York Times Co. v. United States (1971).
“We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost 40 years……It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supernational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries.”
David Rockefeller.
And he meant it, and he considered it the best alternative for humanity.
The reasons for the above and proving their falsity, not the plans perse, is IMO what matters discussing.
Let’s prove Central Government is not the best way humans can live together under; that better ways to live with each other are possible; disseminate this knowledge; agitate for it; give it time (we’re talking decades here) to be discussed hashed and rehashed in the public arena. If its truthfulness convinces everyone, that’s it.
“intellectual elite” 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 He means a deranged minority.
The corporations are following the European monarchs’ playbook: they’re making themselves irrelevant.
When the monarchs stopped governing and started ruling, they were no longer needed – they outlived their usefulness.
Now that corporations have substituted trading for producing, now that the premier feature of their very existence is derivatives, they are no longer needed and have outlived their usefulness.
Same with banksters. They no longer deal in money but in surveillance. Soon they too will become obsolete.
And yet they sit there still…
Some of the monarchs still sit on their thrones. But only as objects of ridicule.
Can’t wait.
Howard: Beale be thy name or not, permit me to tweak your comment.
Peak Oil Business is a very pre-mediated illusion & abstract of any reality, including Banker’s, who would be rendered helpless without Energy & Technology: Incapable of communicating any Bitcoin Commodity of Blockchain Distributed Ledger transactions, let alone transporting
large volumes of Gold & Silver…
B.P. is and always was , an Energy & Technological Control Concern, primarily. All the rest, oil & gaslighting wars etc., including Purina Mills for your pet, were always just downstream bi-products and tools for controlling concerns… ENERGY RULERS OK !?
Bankers bite bullets and dump them,
to protect themselves, in der Schweiz, Just one example:
where Technology & Energy rules, unequivocally, with diplomatic immunity !
The bank of international settlements and their Big Fat Controller Carstens-Carstens,
would be a Holy Desination Fuk’d, like the Vatican, without Energy, see ?
WHO the Boss ? Ask [email protected]. ! Bankers second fiddle …
on the H.A.A.R.P. and the Chicago Gangster Mercantile Exchange of Derivatives.
Same as it ever was, technologically… Energy the Key,
domain of controlling ** Any ” Force Multipliers ” ! **
Apropos of my comment is this article by Ellen Brown in today’s globalresearch.ca. It’s about the massive derivative market and how it could sink the entire economy.
As I implied, the banksters are making themselves as obsolete as the Dodo Bird.
The Looming Quadrillion Dollar Derivatives Tsunami – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization
In the meantime, just for TITelation…. (keeps ’em on thur’ toes, backfooting…)
Time To reflect, for Türkiye’s first responders, quaking in their boots 👢still no F-16s. 😂 Money in NYC & paid for, promoting NATO’s Guile, invested in WPP Big 4 Fairy Tales.
https://www.novinite.com/articles/219351/Weather+in+Bulgaria%3A+Yellow+Code+for+Dangerous+Rain+Showers+in+8+Regions
WPP Styled messaging: Rain is DANGEROUS, so be afraid…
Earthquakes ‘happen’ too: and if necessary a chartered surveyor
In Silicon Valley could not fail to cause chaos…
Let alone in their banking on Technological Foundations on d’Fault-lines,
Such as the San Andrea’s d’Faultline… on funding Derivatives of structuring Liability.
Accountability: evidence destruction & Plausible Deniability,
Being built in… a master stroke / quake of fortunes, that will resonate
like WTC7 did…Better call Saul to represent SVB & Enron +
Now back to the Ukrainian Weather,
High Pressure Zone, to justify purpose
Of Bad Weather… or good, potentially !
Asian people, having been visibly forced & subjected,,. To “Force Multipliers”.
Long ago and often since the Ho Chi Minh trail & tales of OPIUM WARS…
And yet: Asians Have surprisingly much to bring to the table of Debt &
Palpable Human Forgiveness,
Despite never forgetting…
Never bite the hand that feeds,
Iron Rice 🥣 Bowls…
and farmyard Lamas.
Monarch’s to slaughter,
Like False idols…
Within all nations.
Мир & Sovereignty,
Greetings
Balky
I’m an optimist, so for me the good news is that we don’t even need to live in the corporate world.
The inner world of our imagination is more real than what the corporate trash call “the world”.
They could own every grain of sand in the Sahara, or every star system discovered by the Hubble telescope, but they would still have no idea what on earth they are doing.
And what they are doing could never be described as ‘real’ by a mature adult.
Yes, it looks as if the devil will have his day of mechanizing everything that can be mechanized – but so what?
‘They’ cannot own a creative spirit , within Topographic Oceans,
https://youtu.be/ja02s4hGgCo
Of cultural approval.
Within Inner Worlds,
Of common dignity,
War simply subsides . . .
Back to oneself.
Great speech indeed. I’ll watch it again, now that I believe it. Should have mentioned the elephant in the room though – the banksters.
He kind of did by naming currencies, especially the sheckle.
That speech is the WEF’s view. Wrong and they (and we) will find out soon enough.
Check out Harry Vox. He’ll show you who they are.
Benny Mussolini is claimed to have once said “Corporatism by any other name is still Fascism.”
Or was it, “Properly speaking, Fascism is really Corporatism” ?
Ralph Nader writes about how ‘Some (fictitious) people are more equal than (real) people’:
https://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/the-progenitor-of-inequalities-corporate-personhood-vs-human-beings-by-ralph-nader/
‘Corporatism will kill us all’ claims another:
https://www.nexusnewsfeed.com/article/geopolitics/corporatism-will-kill-us-all
https://www.nexusnewsfeed.com/#!/1
Two other classics that helped to shape my thinking about the media were Neil Postman’s ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death’ and Jerry Mander’s ‘Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Arguments_for_the_Elimination_of_Television
Both still relevant and should be in every high school library.
Ned Beatty’s speech reveals the truth of ruling elites, their organized crime network of capital whose only loyalty is accumulation, regardless of nationalities and ideologies. His words are necessary to bring Howard Beale back into line as gatekeeper and channel of public discontent when he strays from ritual protest (“I’m mad as hell!…”, etc.) to expose investors of mass media propaganda. Unfortunately still, Beale’s words – “In God’s name you people are the real thing, we are the illusion!” – remain the ironic truth for us proles, imprisoned in a network of surrogate reality we call living, especially now in the digital (c)age, while the world beyond us is turned into a prison planet.
Ned Beatty had played anal rape a few years earlier in ‘Deliverance’ – one of their public humiliation rituals.
‘Squeal like a pig’ – I recall his character as standard projection by Hollywood producers of US southern rednecks, another stereotype from which the ritually humiliated hoi polloi need deliverance.
‘How Suburbia Imprisons Us (and other related thoughts about our society)’: https://joeanderson.substack.com/p/how-suburbia-imprisons-us
“Black Mirror” Fifteen Million Merits captured it, they commodified his rebellion. And yes, where attention goes energy flows. You need to finally get bored of all they offer and leave the circus tent.
BM’s Nosedive episode is also spot on re a social credit system world. Ron Howard’s daughter did an amazing job as Lacie.
‘Perhaps at the time it was intended to be satire through exaggeration, or maybe – even then – it was already obvious where we were heading.’
Chayefsky got one thing wrong, though — even if he did seem to be pulling his punches. (And it was a satire on the media.)
‘How many of you read newspapers?’ Beale berated his (ignorant) studio audience.
Even then, they were turning to shit.
Newspapers are part of the centralised propaganda system.
They always were. Upon analysis of the murder of The Balibo 5 and Roger East’s destiny,
(A six pack of murdered journalists in East Timor), prior to the release of ‘Network’, you had to have been wildly distracted by Murdoch’s page 3 girls to ignore the ‘signs o’ the
Times’ … if in doubt, think USS LIBERTY ! Or Golan Heights of human deception !
A MockingbirdMedia in full song & dancing upon Graves,
Not Moral conviction.
I just recently rewatched this classic and was blown away by its relevance. I have since watched a bunch of other films that also seem applicable to our times, Invasion of the Body Snatchers being a recent one.
There have always been a handful of people (writers) who have known what the elites were brewing…
The movie Brazil by Terry Gilliam is another masterpiece of this kind of ‘satire’ for the critical thinkers and movie lovers, or “chosen ones” if you want;-)
The netflix series “Colony” is another signpost for where we are heading, as is the more famous “Hunger Games.”
Actually an individual is two People you don’t see when you do the Person is three. Blink and you miss it.
Therefore the event is put in print the image is irrelevant as Newsworhy. Film shown is entertaining familiar on the date it was released as Cinematography on that viewing Public.
There are only 2 classes of people. Those that see(k) (to transform and elevate themselves to become what ultimately has always been possible) and those that do not see(k) that.
ObiOne Kenobi
There are only 2 types of people.
Those that see(k) (to elevate themselves to become the ultimate that has always been attainable) and those that do not see(k) and in their ignorance adhere to religious, scientific or other belief systems and rediculize those that do see(k) the ultimate becoming.
“There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon.”
They ‘are’ only as long as we believe in this. In reality there are the planet with us on it, and it was made for us, not for them. Stop believing they are mighty. Ther only reign over worthless paper or data, and they call it money or legislation, but it never was. It is worthless without your belief.
So leave them alone. But take the universal soldier with you.
Back to the dreamtime.
Dreamtime is the digital world. An analog creature has no need for artifical mediators to reality. It began with anonymous companies without responsibility. They were first step in artificial world, and manmade unjust laws depends on violence, not data or paper.
I do agree that the more their neoliberal world order/Great Reset vision continues to melt like a Salvador Dali painting, the more they want to escape into a virtual world where all their theories remain true.
Have you got a bank account?
In the world that is breaking up, that seemed important. In the future, it will be about real values. Bank accounts are not real, but only self-made illusion. A doctrine of faith that replaced that of the churches. That will soon be replaced by Social Credit, and everyone decides whether he wants to continue to be a slave to harder illusions and conditions than ever or to begin to live with truth.
“And there is no truth, only stories.”
If that is what you really believe, then methinks you’re definitely part of the problem, not the solution.
IMHO ‘truth’ is the first think we need to become conscious humans, instead of thinking animals.
Great movie btw, it really shocked my adolescent and naïve views of the world when i saw it back in the nineties. I’ve been an ‘anoying critical thinker’ ever since, LMAO
Truth is hard to define as there are many levels.Todd is pointing out the media truth-only stories.Every one has his personal truth determined by his own area of awareness and knowledge.
You’ve been a fat pain in the arse to everyone else as well, congratulations.
“January 6” put me off goint to fancy dress parties, forever…
I mean, you attend to have some fun, end up in prison for years
becuse the current occupants were frightened by your costume !!
https://twitter.com/redvoicenews/status/1633996405391118336
This is Trump’s statement to “go home in peace”.
https://twitter.com/ProducerJMAN/status/1517726755842256898
It wasn’t on twitter for very long, but I remember seeing it before it was removed.
Was that edited ? I counted 19 ‘jumps’ – is that usual ?
I played it three times… The short bursts (editing ?) made Trump
sound like a programed robot…Was/is that his usual delivery style ?
It’s how I remember it, but I didn’t notice the edits at the time. I think it’s a legally precise statement and that’s why it sounds odd. The following was my post from the day after – linking to a youtube version which didn’t last long.
—
Lost in a dark wood (Jan 8, 2021 12:04 AM)
The “storming” event was staged for the purpose of removing POTUS. Hence, it was insurrection. Under the Insurrection Act, Trump has to first issue a proclamation; and so the questions are:
a) Does his statement on the 6th qualify as proclamation?
b) Have the insurrectionists dispersed?
c) Is there enough space at Gitmo?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurrection_Act_of_1807
Before invoking the powers under the Act, 10 U.S.C. § 254 requires the President to first publish a proclamation ordering the insurgents to disperse.
Trump: “Go home in peace.”
Jan 6, 2021
Oh yes he had!
—
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/insurrection-act-trump
Did Trump Invoke Insurrection Act?
Parler posts alleged Trump had invoked a law to use military force against political opponents.
Published: Jan 11, 2021
Claim: Following the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots, Trump invoked the Insurrection Act, deploying military forces to suppress civil unrest in Washington, D.C.
Rating: Mostly False
What’s True: Thousands of National Guard members were reportedly dispatched to Washington, D.C. following the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol attack, as of this report.
What’s False: Trump did not invoke the Insurrection Act, which means all efforts by law-enforcement or military forces in U.S. cities were unrelated to the 214-year-old law.
Q and the Trumper turnips and idiots Ytbers etc hyped it up big time for several weeks previous to it..
The fact they choose January 6 ‘ Lord of Misrule’ at the ‘Feast of Fools’, the last day of Saturnalia at Epiphany- shows it was a mega ritual and people needed to be sacrificed.
All apart of the plan. Hence why you must be a complete fucking fool for trusting it and following them.
Thursday last, March 9, was a special day in the history of the continuing saga of WTF Has Happened To The Left? At opposite ends of America we were given a glimpse into the New Progressive World Order by our self-described betters. In Washington D.C. and just south of San Francisco at Stanford Law School, the planets apparently were in perfect alignment for what we were about to witness: the crystalized essence of the pathology of the New Progressive World Order on display like never before. From Never Go Full Democrat
#4955: It had to be done this way.
—
FTA:
Another example has been their reporting on the Ukraine War. Although most people from both political parties support the disfigurement of the news to hide the truth of the war, we can be certain that if it was Trump instead of Biden leading the American response, at least some of the media would be honest to one degree or another just to stick it to the Republicans. Most of them would still lie like they do now, but the more independent left leaning new outlets would see a chance to prove their independence and tell the truth, i.e., that neocons provoked the war with Russia and Ukraine never stood a chance. Which of course is the exact opposite of what most of the mainstream media has been reporting, likely because they have been told by their bosses, or their government and corporate friends that they need to lie in order for Ukraine to be able to keep recruiting cannon fodder. If they were all honest about the war from the start, that would make it much harder to get people to fight for Ukraine, e.g., mercenaries would be too afraid. And harder to get public support for the shoveling of hundreds of billions of their tax dollars to a losing cause.
—
The system (money, legal, business) seems invented by bandits to seduce and force honest people to use it, with the ultimate goal of buying and owning the earth. The story of Joseph in Egypt in the Bible already shows how buying up all the grain by one party can enslave all other people. See: Genesis 41 and Genesis 47:13-27
in which all men will hold a share of stock
Thanks, Kit, i now have the text of the “Arthur Jensen” speech. Beatty deserved an Oscar for delivering that so masterfully, but he was competing with the rest of the cast. Amazing how this is a more advanced understanding of where we are today than the “understanding” which many of today’s “activists” betray, still hanging on to illusions such as nations.
Wasn’t that common hippie wisdom, way back when? Didn’t we all know that?
What the hell happened to our brains during the last 50 years?
We aged!
“We aged:” & consumed too much ‘ Laurel Canyon Medicine ‘,
From Narco dealers & Pied Pipers of Corporate Control.
https://markrae.bandcamp.com/track/medicine-kraak-smaak-remix
Saul Goodman delivered, what folk wanted, even behind Walls.
Consider, 80’s Bulgaria, Peter: Pipers picked a peck of pickled pepper,
Like Lili Ivanova ( Shirley Bassey replica) and Jazzed it up 👆 a bit, every Sunday…
Get the picture in Communist times ? ” Losing my Religion ” rapid eye movement,
Timed to ‘perfection’ before reconstruction works… it’s all good, man !
Kids loved it, with good reason: most wanna’ party 🎉 or a fight,
Within confined arenas … nothing too complex for Corporate Control !
Glasnost in deed.
https://youtu.be/7g7SGm8V9S4
Humans grow up from 5yrs age state. Repressive measures you may feel or subjected to thats your flaut no-one else’s.
If you choose to live inside catalog systems obilious you’ll be seen as a metrically static., yourself has consistently adapted to given circumstance is a self stated admission.
Only some grow up from 5 years old, mainly our politicians!
https://austrianpeter.substack.com/p/gmo-bombshell-hancockgate-cia-pipe?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=762792&post_id=107778639&isFreemail=false&utm_medium=email
The Boomers are a classic example of a mind controlled people who do as their told (partly due to their absolute complete devotion to the MSM) and do not dare to question authority. Same goes for the rave generation. Even in spite of all that music, all that so called rebellious and freedom loving nature, the vast majority ended up being government worshippers with barely an independent thought between them. There is no excuse for this, other than the fact that they really did sell their souls to the Devil.
The Boomers had to try to keep the American Dream alive during capital flight, consolidation, job slashing (remember Chainsaw Al?) and wage stagnation. Single income families were forced to become double income families. People aren’t so much programmed, braindead sheep as they just want to keep the lights on and food on the table. If anyone became more easily programmed, it was the young who had TV as their babysitter. It’s hectic raising a family. Social protesting is for the youth mostly and anyone else that has the time to do the research and bring people the real news.
Bolloks!
We ridiculed authority.
How could Reagan and Thatcher avoid to be burned at the stake? Again: what happend?
Forgive him good fella – I guess he never lived through the 60s as a teenager! At least we lived in relative peace for 70 years thanks to Woodstock! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXspsfoPX50
Legislation: A FICTION of Law.
Fiction: not true, not real, make-believe.
AT&T is defined as a Person within Legislation, so too are you….a dead thing.
NZ legislation;
Person includes a corporation sole, a body corporate, and an unincorporated body.
Which one of those most closely resembles you?
Definition of “Appearance” NZ high Court rules;
Appearance means a document that states a person’s address for service, (LOL)
Summoned to appear!
Summoned to appear as something you are not!- a person as defined.
A person is of the state. You are deemed to be that person.
What are you of?
A face before the law.
Legislation requires a face to proceed, the fictional person is that face.
“God made for you one face and you make for yourself another” W S.
The person is that other face.
Yours is the face of God.
What does the scripture have to say of the person?;
“If ye fulfil the royal law according to the scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, ye do well:
9 But if ye have respect to persons, ye commit sin, and are convinced of the law as transgressors.
10 For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.” James.
No small thing it would seem. Yet we are too busy playing make-believe to notice.
The sin of origin- who are you of?
God can see the face of his own creation, legislation the face of its creation. Neither can see the face of the other.
Fact is, we all obey our God, the only question is- which one?
One cannot serve two masters….
Let the dead bury the dead and come out from under the house of bondage…
Redeem yourself….
You are talking Common Law – there are questions as to whether this is true – but it feels right and that’s enough for me:
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/why-magna-carta-remains-a-foundation-of-our-common-law-inheritance
You’ll have to translate that for US Gobshites first.
Find something in Swiss Deuch Spider Web for them to chew on.
LOL – unfortunately I don’t speak transatlantic Clive; I assumed they only chew tobacco?
Lawyer fucking Shit! Piss OFF!
Maybe the title of the film has a double meaning. Harvard trained Professor Carrol Quigley, taught for years at Georgetown, who’s seminal book Tragedy and Hope was initially published in 1966. Quigley’s book described a secret society, a cabal that had taken over US foreign policy, controlled the media, started wars, overthrew governments, created ideologies, created Narratives… The group’s ultimate goal was the destruction of sovereignty (thru control of the monetary system among other things). He called this group the Network.
As the group has been a multi-generational project from the beginning, we have every reason to assume they still exist and have only increased their power and control. The last 3 years seem a direct manifestation of Network’s mentality.
They have indeed: https://cdn.getmidnight.com/6908ab1f9a9ecdaba4ee2509cb3451aa/files/2023/01/Silent-Weapons-for-Quiet-Wars-An-Introduction-Programming-Manual-Operations-Rese.pdf
Excellent point.
The last 100 odd pages of Tragedy and Hope are pretty eye opening. It gets quite frank.
Have you considered certain family ties ? Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud’s nephew, revolutionized the field of public relations in the 1920s and ’30s by using his uncle’s ideas. He was born in Vienna to a Jewish family, with his mother Anna being Sigmund’’s sister and his father Eli (1860–1921) being the brother of Sigmund’s wife Martha Bernays. His grandfather Isaac was the chief rabbi of Hamburg and a relative of Heinrich Heine . . .
https://en.mercopress.com/2022/11/30/pervasive-heinous-gaslighting-the-word-of-the-year-for-merriam-webs
Merriam – Web-star still playing ‘catchup’, apparently.
Golden Brown Ringtones and sociological stranglers.
Over a century of Chemical Warfare & Gaslighting,
Adrenalin & Dopamine… it’Saul Chemical.
Just ask Sigmund. Pass the Smak . . .
Indeed Bernays was Sigmund Freud’s nephew, but it is my understanding from research on both is that Freud was not very happy with his nephew for how he used the things he learned from him. A worthwhile documentary on Bernays here:
https://www.corbettreport.com/meet-edward-bernays-master-of-propaganda/
“The nation-state as a fundamental unit of man’s organized life has ceased to be the principal creative force: International banks and multinational corporations are acting and planning in terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation-state.”
~ Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era, 1970
Global Coup d’État: Mapping the Corporate Takeover of Global Governance
“Corporations have stepped beyond lobbying governments. They are integrating in policy-making at the national and international levels…decisions historically made by governments are increasingly made by secretive unaccountable bodies run by corporations.”
Ya think? How long have you believed Banks are not Corporations, and they are there only to serve You.
NEWSNET, fuck me,..you really are bloody stupid.
They are YOU ya dumb cunt, of course you know that already. Hence the Reason for the Article.
Perhaps we should all join Amway.
What’s its religious denomination?
I was introduced to this movie by a former girlfriend that used to think I was wrongly pessimistic. The irony is that she saw Howard Beale and the story as fiction.
I saw it and realized that I was not a pessimist but a realist.
These days I’m feeling optimistic because finally the illusion is falling apart.
The Kissinger clean up crews are rolling back the plan that the morons messed up.
It’s no coincidence that Nixon was the last progressive president as Rob Schneider says, and his advisor was Kissinger. Nixon passed the EPA among many reforms…
Those guys know that you gotta give something to people to keep them compliant.
Not this crap since Reagan , where they just kept taking away things.
Nixon, with his Trilateral buddy Kissinger, made economies scream and oversaw coups in Chile and elsewhere, extended massive bombing and crime against humanity in SE Asia, set the stage for neoliberalism (and Reagan) with dissolution of Bretton Woods and delinking gold and the dollar, opened China to technocratic colonization, launched (following Goldwater’s lead) wars on drugs and crime to build a federalized police state and prison industrial complex (particularly targeting militant movements of popular democracy from the 60s). Calling him a ‘progressive’ president only proves the PR (dis)value of that term.
Since their inception, regulatory agencies like the EPA have served to deflect public awareness and anger from private capital to reformist fronts of government which keep cons of the corporate state (foxes guarding henhouses) running on illusion of government as a neutral arbiter settling conflicts of interest, as if on a level playing field. It’s long, long ago these regulatory fronts weren’t so overrun by revolving door relations between corporate capital and the state, as with the EPA and Monsanto. I’m sure not waiting now on the EPA to tell any truth about East Palestine, or ‘regulate’ – along with the FDA, et al. – mRNA rollout.
Whether our masters are giving us a little in order to keep a lot (as with the welfare system which Nixon helped destroy), or subjecting us to harsher methods of austerity, the goal remains, as you say, compliance, and any means necessary is useful as long as it helps rulers rule. That’s the crap.
What illusions are falling apart?
It was Ralph Nader who was a major thorn in the side of big business during the ’60’s. If it wasn’t for him (and Silent Spring author Rachel Carson), environmental concern would not have been so urgent during that time. Nader’s consumer safety concern also catapulted him to rockstar status as a civil hero.
Excerpt from the Powell Memo:
“Perhaps the single most effective antagonist of American business is Ralph Nader who – thanks largely to the media – has become a legend in his own time and an idol of millions of Americans. A recent article in Fortune speaks of Nader as follows:
”The passion that rules in him – and he is a passionate man – is aimed at smashing utterly
the target of his hatred, which is corporate power. He thinks and says quite bluntly, that a great many corporate executives belong in prison – for defrauding the consumer with shoddy merchandise, poisoning the food supply with chemical additives, and willfully manufacturing unsafe products that will maim or kill the buyer. He emphasizes that he is not talking just about ‘fly-by-night hucksters’ but the top management of blue-chip business.”
Nixon was forced by public demand to pass the last environmental legislation the nation has seen, and paid a dear price of humiliation for it by being impeached and driven out of office to set an example.
Supreme Court judge Neil Gorsuch is on a maternal jihad to avenge his mother Anne’s public defamation when she was forced to step down as EPA head during the Reagan administration for her dirty dealings.