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| Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2005 1:36 pm Post subject: So you want to be free? | |
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Check out the following 'must read' articles by Wanda Marie Pasz (MfD contributor):
So you Want to Be Free. and... So you Want to Be Free? P.02. |
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Joined: 04 Jul 2003
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| Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2005 4:10 pm Post subject: | |
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I really enjoyed the last bit of part 2. Good article. Bit of an eye opener, I should think, for the subservient hordes of lemings that are us today. A dose of this once a week and, who knows, the sheeple might awaken... eventually. Well done, Wanda.
Let there be part 3, part4... 
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Joined: 06 Jul 2003
Posts: 7077
Location: Central CA
| Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2005 7:15 pm Post subject: | |
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I've saved it and will read it a leisure this afternoon but the quick scan tells me it's something I can get my teeth into.
Puts into words even I can understand so many of the things I try to apply to our own situation on the employee board. K's perfectly right. We're nothing but sheep. In this country Wall Street is the shepherd and the corporations are their dogs. We're the lowly sheep, one step away from being mutton. We live where they tell us to live and we buy what they tell us to buy. We work our asses off producing food and fiber and goods to be sold on a global market and make some Wall Street bacteria fabulously rich while we can't afford to buy the few things we still produce here. We have to make do for bare necessities with cheapjack goods imported from China, who by the way is kicking the crap out of us simply by virtue of them being better horse traders than the people we have looking out for our interests. We spend our ineffective little lives producing fat profits for people who play no part in the production of wealth in this country but only regulate it's distribution. Our buying power goes down year by year and for the last few years our actual income has has remained fairly static or even gotten smaller here at the bottom. Of course this has been offset by INCREASES in income at the higher levels so the median stays static or even rises a buck or two. Then the politicians point to a "better economy" as proof the policies are working. Sixty Million Americans made less than $25 thousand the last year for which figures are available, many of them far less. Ask yourself what you can buy with $25k or even less today. Is that a "living wage" where you live? How many people in your household? How many of them have to be making that $25k for you to be living any meaningful part of the "American Dream"? When we're too old or otherwise enfeebled to produce a profit, we're shoved into a warehouse somewhere and encouraged to die quickly so we won't eat up Social Security bucks that could be making even more profit for Wall Street under the guise of "fixing" Social Security.. We're told to shut up and not question (The If You Don't Like It Leave syndrome applied at every level and facet of our lives) so we shut up and burrow into the mud down here at the bottom and shake like a dog crapping peach pits, afraid to ask for a little meat lest they snatch the bone away.. We live on the crumbs and droppings and the scary part is that most of us just snuffle along being grateful for those few scraps. Remember when the trolls were asking, "Would you rather keep your job and make half as much as you have been, or would you rather have no job at all?" That attitude and that implied threat governs how we live today. Mention getting together and trying for your fair share of the pie these guys have hoarded for themselves... you know, the obscene "O" word, organizing... and all you do is bring down a ton of scare posts and Neocon propaganda about union abuses from decades ago. Remember all the cute little "Hoffa Wannabe" accusations? And should you actually persevere, you get the store or DC you work at closed and your job eliminated from under your feet ala WalMart and the government looks the other way because WalMart is more powerful (and collectively smarter) than it is. The implied threat being reinforced by setting an example. Mention a "living wage" or even a 15 cent raise in the minimum wage and you get the media full of corporate wailing and breastbeating about the plight of the small businesses and how they'd be forced out of business because they couldn't make a profit. At the same time, the breastbeaters are running over each other trying to "merge with and/or acquire" any of those same small businesses who might already be making the profit and the employees are either kicked to the curb or wind up making less than they did before. Go figure. I dunno guys. If working class people are willing to be third or fourth class citizens in their own country I guess it's their business. I'm just one of the old farts, waiting to die and sucking down a fabulous $800 bucks a month that they desperately need on Wall Street. Ever feel resented for simply being alive? 
Like I always say, I don't have any pat answers. But then I don't need answers to recognize questions. |
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Joined: 24 Feb 2005
Posts: 474
| Posted: Sat Mar 05, 2005 6:18 pm Post subject: | |
| very good article. thought provoking. May I have another please. good food. | |
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Joined: 01 Jul 2003
Posts: 121
Location: B.C. Canada
| Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2005 1:59 am Post subject: | |||
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Scoop is good food.
The 21st Century Workplace: R_evolution
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Joined: 24 Feb 2005
Posts: 474
| Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2005 6:20 am Post subject: | |
| thank you ziggy. this can keep me reading and thinking for days. I needed a new direction to read and explore. | |
Joined: 04 Jul 2003
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Location: roaming...
| Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2005 1:21 pm Post subject: | |
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I am no longer surprised by the levels to which the retail working masses will sink every day in favour of there being a paycheck in their account next friday. The abuse that they take would not be tolerated by any other segment of the employment world. As a group, the retail force is the largest segment of the working force in any first world country, especially the United States. No other segment of the work force would willingly accept the kind of degrading treatment by their employers as the retail field accepts, not even for a day. Yet they do not have the power to shut down the country. Believe it or not, retail does.
If all of the autoworkers in the country suddenly walked out, would the country shut down? No, of course not, there are millions of cars on the road already and millions more already manufactured and yet to be sold. The country could survive on what it already had for at least a few decades. If the medical system shut down, would it cripple the country? Sure it would. Fatally? Not very likely. The most serious cases would undoubtedly go the way of nature, but for the every day malaises people would quickly learn the ways of old, the magic of nature, the herbal cures that could be found in every other patch of green. If the entire teaching enterprise were to decide to stay home, would the country collapse? Absolutely not. Parents would just have to tutor their children, friends would teach friends, etc. Oh, wait, what about the books, where would they get those? Retail you say? If the entire retail work force decided to walk out and do a little walkabout in the parking lots, with a sign or two, would that shut down the country? You better believe it. Where would they all go to buy their papers, their pens, their notebooks, notepads, their PCs? Where would they go to buy the bicycles for their kids, the fishing gear for themselves, the cheap Walmart socks, the classy evening gowns and pumps? From the poor guy receiving a meagre Soicial Security check to the Billionaire who never sets foot in a shop himself, but has tuxedo clad lackeys do it all for him, all need and depend on retail every day. So my question is this: If retail is the most depended on work force in the country, why is it the only work force that has not yet revolted, en masse, against the mental rape that it has been subjected to by their employers for decades?! The Sheeple syndrome has been cured for many before. This is not the first time, nor the last, but it is retail employees' turn in the lineup for the treatment of this debilitating affliction. At least that is my view. |
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| Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2005 3:51 pm Post subject: | |||
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Location: Central CA
| Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2005 7:44 pm Post subject: | |||
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Any industry, including retail, whose walkout threatened to even slow the flow of money into Wall Street pockets would bring the full force of government against those participating. Government is far more beholden to Wall Street than it is to its citizenry. This intervention on behalf of monied interests has, in the past even included deadly force against innocent citizens. There have been numerous examples. I'll cite one I'm most familiar with.
http://archaeology.about.com/cs/military/bb/ludlow.htm
There's more to the story but that's the basic gist of it. The militia did not confront the striking miners en masse but were ordered to attack and remove the flimsy little tent city itself along with the women and children that were forced to live there in squalid conditions, a major factor behind the strike in the first place. Some accounts say that Rockefeller's primary goal was to remove, "by whatever means necessary", the squatters who were camping on his property because their working conditions didn't permit anything else. According to some published accounts of the time, he considered them a "source of adverse publicity" during the times when the existing news media were beginning to champion the working man. In any event, the camp itself was the primary target. Think about that. A duly formed and heavily armed STATE MILITIA sent to MAKE WAR on women and children with MACHINE GUNS solely to insure obscene profits for a Rockefeller. These people were not threats to national security or terrorists or even rioters. Fully half of those killed were children. Definitely NOT the alleged rioters, not even striking miners, but kids, like yours and mine. They weren't struck down in the heat of any kind of battle. They were targets. Their "removal" was intended to break the back of any organized opposition from the miners who wanted relief from the conditions that forced their families to live in such conditions in the first place. There are some who would call Rockefeller a murderer but they aren't the ones that count. Major corporate and political entities have treated the Rockefellers as honored members of our society since then, heaping accolades and cushy appointments on them and buying carpet bag governorships of entire states and even vice presidencies for his descendants based simply on the fact that they became and remained fabulously wealthy. That's all it takes to be fawned upon by the powers that be here. Just be rich. Doesn't matter that they got that way by employing the same tactics as organized crime bosses, plantation slave owners, or any despised drug kingpin or cartel you can point a finger at. One main difference is that their goons were government supplied goons and their actions sanctioned by the government that supposedly represents all of us and protects our rights to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". They are therefore not to be questioned. Of course, another difference is that they only killed a bunch of poor Greeks, Slavs, Italians and Mexicans. If your victims are "insignificant" enough, yeah, you can get away with even mass murder. This isn't the only ocurrence of actions of this nature but it is perhaps the most blatant and horrible in terms not necessarily of the numbers of dead and injured but the fact that they mainly included the families of alleged "miscreants". These families had been deliberately targeted as a part of following the order to destroy the tent city itself. Today, we'd chalk them up as "collateral damage", worth a paragraph or two and then forgotten. Though the confrontations have become less deadly and violent in more recent times, the entire weight of the federal government can still be called down upon by any major corporation upon any industry group that threatens Wall Street's bottom line. I doubt seriously that you could get a National Guard soldier to fire on his/her neighbors these days for daring to demand better working and living conditions or refusing to work under unsafe conditions, but there are other, more subtle ways to destroy a movement in this country today and our government will not hesitate to use them if Wall Street feels threatened. |
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| Posted: Mon Mar 07, 2005 1:23 am Post subject: | |
| One day a fly went looking for a job. "Come work in my web", said the spider to the fly. And the fly happily went in, thinking there is no harm. :/ | |
Joined: 04 Jul 2003
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| Posted: Mon Mar 07, 2005 7:59 am Post subject: | |
Interesting history lesson, Nofs. I sure didn't learn about that in school. 
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Joined: 06 Jul 2003
Posts: 7077
Location: Central CA
| Posted: Mon Mar 07, 2005 8:30 am Post subject: | |
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These are the things you DON'T learn in schools. I've always been a history buff and tend to look beyond what's in the school books. This area was still kind of "wild west" country pretty well into the 20th century and there's a lot of things went on around here that make fascinating and informative reading.
We had had a similar situation on a smaller scale in my own little local area back in the late 1800s only that time the "bad guy" was the Southern Pacific Railroad and the "goons" were local law enforcement personnel rather than military but the aim and the outcome were similar. Yet another incident right here in my county involved an attempt to organize farm laborers and took place in the late 1930s. Only a couple of people shot this time so an even smaller scale, but once again private interests were able to enlist government agency personnel to whip the dissidents back in line. A couple of the large farmers got arrested this time but the case eventually just kind of faded away and nobody ever went to jail. I learned about the Ludlow case on a road trip through Colorado and New Mexico when I saw a historical marker for the "Ludlow Massacre". I went to the site and read the plaques and saw the site itself. And when I got home I started studying up on it and on other similar subjects. It was, other than the bloodshed and notoriety, pretty typical of the way the government looked at demands, not so much for higher pay or benefits, but simply for decent and safe working and living conditions for the workers and their families if those demands threatened profit margins for the large corporations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. |
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