Local news
On My 9 news tonight the local news were presented in the following order of importance:
- 10 min on a dog, a specific one named Bob
- 5 min on a local school that organized a cooking competition (the price was a trip to Italy)
- 5 min on the next Hannah Montana movie
- 5 min on how ‘going green’ means to make school children feel guilty about the paper they use
- 15 min on the weather, including an in depth analysis on the fact that a season called spring is coming.
I believe that the order of importance was quite good. I have recently been told that I am talking too much about politics and I should focus more on the weather, which is considered to be a far more normal and important topic of conversation. As a consequence I believe that to talk about it for 15 min is quite fair...I am joking, of course.
In Italy the same thing is going on. In July there will be a referendum on a very crucial issue, to make of Italy a two-party country like the USA and concentrating all the resources in the hand of the few rich people, and what politicians and TVs talk about is the cost of it and not its content.
This is called ‘game frame’: everything is a game, all what is said on TV is stupid and futile in order to avoid discussing real issues that could make people think, becoming aware of what is really going on and thus cause problems to the ruling class.
I have heard there is a movie called ‘State of play’ which has been released recently. I don’t know why but I suspect it is about the present situation. Another poor director who is trying to make people wake up from the Matrix.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Some politics-fiction
Yesterday a friend of mine went to see a play called 'Out of order' by Ray Cooney. It was about something that was obvioulsy out of order and it had to do with a politician of the British parliament sleeping with the secretary of a member of the opposition. That is obvious, you would say. Nothing wrong about it. Nothing wrong with the fact that in England there is a business party and the opposition is a party that defends the interests of a class that does not exist anymore, aristocracy. And that they obviously sleep together.
If you think that this is normal...well you happen to be another victim of what George Orwell called Newspeak: they make you forget the real meaning of words such as democracy so you don't fight for it.
He also talked about Doublethink: to believe that something and its contrary are both true. For example you are not a business man, so you vote for the party of aristocracy, but you work in a hospital. So you are a nurse and at the same time a duke.
Ok, after destroying England it is France's turn. There this doublethink concept is still developing. So the rich people had to come up with different ideas. Were the rich people of France that took inspiration from the rich people of the USA in finding out how to make a party lose, or vice versa? I think this time the Frech had the best idea first. The formula of having a dumb woman running agaist the man you've chosen seems to work very well. And when she is running for office together with an old man...then it is smashing. It cannot but work.
I bet they came up with this idea during one of their 'dinner des cons', like in the famous movie, when they invite common people to have dinner with them, in their houses by the Tour Eiffel, in order to make fun of them.
But USA, UK, France are all rich countries, they've had colonies, they can afford to have a big gap between rich and poor without the poor noticing too much. Italy tried to have colonies but we clearly chose the wrong countries...no oil, no diamonds...But still there is hope for rich people to become richer. Hoping that by the time poor people will realize the gap they have become so dumb by watching TV not to notice it.
I have an idea for when Berlusconi manages to convince Italian people to vote in favour of a two-party system in July.
And if he goes on moaning all the time that a small party that is part of his coalition and has neo-nazi views does not want this law I think he can make it...
Hey see...Orwell's doublethink again: if you are against neo-nazis you vote in favour of a law that will destroy their party together with all the other small parties and you make of your country a totalitarian country. So you are an anti neo-nazi and a nazi at the same time.
Yes...when he manages to have a two-party system I'd suggest that the rich people of Italy that are his friends push to put at the head of the opposition party, that they also give money to, a dumb woman. Well...there are so many good candidates in the Italian parliament...But to make it funnier they could pretend that the ex-show girl, Mara Carfagna, whom Berlusconi seduced on TV, saying in front of the whole country that if he had not been married he would have married her, and that after a few months became minister in his government, decided to go to the opposition because of an unspecified reason. Jelousy...so that the Italian housewives could support her.
They could make her become the head of the oppostion so that the very dumb people could vote for her, and the not so dumb could vote for Berlusconi. Berlusconi would win and they could go on sleeping together. Happy couple.
Then he could privatize schools, and hospitals...and make the dream come true.
I should write him a letter to suggest this brilliant idea I have come up with...and only after a couple of months that I have been studying politics...imagine with what ideas I could come up with if I could make money out of politics!
If you think that this is normal...well you happen to be another victim of what George Orwell called Newspeak: they make you forget the real meaning of words such as democracy so you don't fight for it.
He also talked about Doublethink: to believe that something and its contrary are both true. For example you are not a business man, so you vote for the party of aristocracy, but you work in a hospital. So you are a nurse and at the same time a duke.
Ok, after destroying England it is France's turn. There this doublethink concept is still developing. So the rich people had to come up with different ideas. Were the rich people of France that took inspiration from the rich people of the USA in finding out how to make a party lose, or vice versa? I think this time the Frech had the best idea first. The formula of having a dumb woman running agaist the man you've chosen seems to work very well. And when she is running for office together with an old man...then it is smashing. It cannot but work.
I bet they came up with this idea during one of their 'dinner des cons', like in the famous movie, when they invite common people to have dinner with them, in their houses by the Tour Eiffel, in order to make fun of them.
But USA, UK, France are all rich countries, they've had colonies, they can afford to have a big gap between rich and poor without the poor noticing too much. Italy tried to have colonies but we clearly chose the wrong countries...no oil, no diamonds...But still there is hope for rich people to become richer. Hoping that by the time poor people will realize the gap they have become so dumb by watching TV not to notice it.
I have an idea for when Berlusconi manages to convince Italian people to vote in favour of a two-party system in July.
And if he goes on moaning all the time that a small party that is part of his coalition and has neo-nazi views does not want this law I think he can make it...
Hey see...Orwell's doublethink again: if you are against neo-nazis you vote in favour of a law that will destroy their party together with all the other small parties and you make of your country a totalitarian country. So you are an anti neo-nazi and a nazi at the same time.
Yes...when he manages to have a two-party system I'd suggest that the rich people of Italy that are his friends push to put at the head of the opposition party, that they also give money to, a dumb woman. Well...there are so many good candidates in the Italian parliament...But to make it funnier they could pretend that the ex-show girl, Mara Carfagna, whom Berlusconi seduced on TV, saying in front of the whole country that if he had not been married he would have married her, and that after a few months became minister in his government, decided to go to the opposition because of an unspecified reason. Jelousy...so that the Italian housewives could support her.
They could make her become the head of the oppostion so that the very dumb people could vote for her, and the not so dumb could vote for Berlusconi. Berlusconi would win and they could go on sleeping together. Happy couple.
Then he could privatize schools, and hospitals...and make the dream come true.
I should write him a letter to suggest this brilliant idea I have come up with...and only after a couple of months that I have been studying politics...imagine with what ideas I could come up with if I could make money out of politics!
On taxes
On the blog called Huffington Post I read a post called "Sharing tea bags with Right-wing exptremists" by Bob Cesca. It was about people protesting because of the introduction of some form of taxation in the USA. The author clearly opposed this form of protest, being in favour of Democrats.
Everyone in the world knows that taxes are needed to avoid wealth concentration and preventing that 80 per cent of the resources are in the hands of 67 people.
Why then the less wealthy Americans are, the more they are against it?
Simply because they are manipulated by TV and made go against their own interests. They don't realize that if they pay a little money in taxes the rich will have to pay a huge amount of money and with that money put together universities will be free, hospitals will be free, and so on...In Europe everybidy knows it...here it sounds like an heresy!
But I must acknowlwdge that here in the USA it is not as easy as that, because nobody in the goverment defends the interests of the people. When you see that the only difference between the two major parties is that one uses the money of taxpayers to bail out big business and the other to build weapons, so they can sell them to other nations, or to send people to war so that they can control the world and make money out of it, this becomes clearer and clearer.
But what can they do? Obama had his campain founded by rich people. They even paid money to send him to Europe before he was elected (as if he was already the president) so he could see the Tour Eiffel, the Big Ben, the Parthenon...How can you betray the people who have given you so much money and even paid for your holidays and do things in favour of all the rest of the American people, who don't care, who are not your friends, who just want things from you and are not giving you anything...A president's dilemma. That is very easily solved.
Everyone in the world knows that taxes are needed to avoid wealth concentration and preventing that 80 per cent of the resources are in the hands of 67 people.
Why then the less wealthy Americans are, the more they are against it?
Simply because they are manipulated by TV and made go against their own interests. They don't realize that if they pay a little money in taxes the rich will have to pay a huge amount of money and with that money put together universities will be free, hospitals will be free, and so on...In Europe everybidy knows it...here it sounds like an heresy!
But I must acknowlwdge that here in the USA it is not as easy as that, because nobody in the goverment defends the interests of the people. When you see that the only difference between the two major parties is that one uses the money of taxpayers to bail out big business and the other to build weapons, so they can sell them to other nations, or to send people to war so that they can control the world and make money out of it, this becomes clearer and clearer.
But what can they do? Obama had his campain founded by rich people. They even paid money to send him to Europe before he was elected (as if he was already the president) so he could see the Tour Eiffel, the Big Ben, the Parthenon...How can you betray the people who have given you so much money and even paid for your holidays and do things in favour of all the rest of the American people, who don't care, who are not your friends, who just want things from you and are not giving you anything...A president's dilemma. That is very easily solved.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
America is not a democracy
Help! In Italy they will soon ask people to vote in a referendum to create a two-parties system like in the USA. This means that nobody will defend the interests of the people in Parliament and even on the public TV there won't be journalists allowed to speak for the people because there will be nobody representing the people in the Parliament that will control the public TV. Just like in the USA. This is a vicious circle with no return that will be very difficult to break and that will up in a dictatorship. And in Italy we are poor and we cannot afford it like in the USA...so far. Because if it goes on like this people of the USA will become poorer and poorer while the rich people will become fewer and fewer.
It is a law of nature that everybody speaks for their own interest while pretending to make the interests of the listener in order to be listened to. And with TV this bad feature of the human being has been amplified so much!
Only the voice of the rich speaking for their purposes and pretending to speak for the people's purpose can be heard nowadays. And people are free to speak to defend their interests...but nobody can listen to them. Or they have just become so dumb not to understand their interests anymore.
You watch too much Tv and you think you are Napoleon and vote for the restauration of the empire. This is what happened in France when they had a referendum with universal suffrage for the first time. No joking...And they managed to do it without TV, only by sending people to talk to the peasants....
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
On communism and capitalism
This afternoon I have been to a panel were American students discussed Communism. With my Chinese flatmate.
What I realised it that the word communism had a different meaning for all of us.
For American people it means having public schools and healthcare and a system where wealth is distributed by paying taxes each one proportionally to their wealth.
For me this is what is normal in Italy and we are not considered a communist country at all. However this things are ideal anyway because rich people don't pay taxes because they find tricks to fool the system.
Now if the guy who called himself a revolutionary and advocated revolution during the panel came to Italy and expressed these same ideas people would laugh at him.
I think it could be a good idea for the USA to become a normal country.
So people living in Italy would not be fooled by Berlusconi who managed to make us believe that there is a logic connection between being rich as the USA and having its system. The biggest deceit ever. Italy with the USA system is nothing but a dictatorship. We should have the same resources and sell more weapons and control other countries and taking their resources, or we should have had slavery or an empire like the British in the past: this is the key of being a rich country.
To put 80 per cent of the wealth in the hands of the rich people like it happens here without having too much wealth is just a dictatorship like any other. It is not the American dream. But if the world goes on without being aware of this deceit there will be very bad consequences. People getting poorer and poorer everywhere with just a handful of rich people around.
And another big deceit linked to the so called American dream is the idea of free market as a way to become a rich country. No way. At the beginning the USA adopted a very protectionistic system, as this article written by a Cambridge scholar says. Even the Civil war was fought not for abolition of slavery (????) but because the North wanted protectionism. And after years of protectionism (and the new slavery called immigration), when the economy was strong enough, it could become free. But imposing free market to poor countries now means just making their economy fall pray of the more powerful economies. A big deceit.
Talking about deceits. China. Well they are called communists but this means in reality that they have a totalitarian society where the rich people in power have ended up adopting a system which is even more capitalistic than anywhere else...almost as much capitalistic as slavery.
Communism should ideally mean that the interests that are put before anything else are the interests of the majority of the people. And this sound quite a lot like real democracy should be (did you know that democracy has never existed in the world because the rich people have always had the power and done their own interests preteding to be elected by the people?)
However I don't completely agree with the idea of Communism. It is still very selfish. Each one doing their own interests. This sounds quite similar to capitalism on a large scale. If we all the people in the world had the standard of living of rich Americans that would mean the end for everyone. Extintion.
The only interests human beings should be really pursuing are the interests of the children. Expecially those who are not born and cannot speak for themselves. This includes a fairer society were wealth is not so concentrated, but also a sustainable society, where happiness does not mean having money to buy useless things but living responsibly, trying not to do too much harm to other people and the planet.
What I realised it that the word communism had a different meaning for all of us.
For American people it means having public schools and healthcare and a system where wealth is distributed by paying taxes each one proportionally to their wealth.
For me this is what is normal in Italy and we are not considered a communist country at all. However this things are ideal anyway because rich people don't pay taxes because they find tricks to fool the system.
Now if the guy who called himself a revolutionary and advocated revolution during the panel came to Italy and expressed these same ideas people would laugh at him.
I think it could be a good idea for the USA to become a normal country.
So people living in Italy would not be fooled by Berlusconi who managed to make us believe that there is a logic connection between being rich as the USA and having its system. The biggest deceit ever. Italy with the USA system is nothing but a dictatorship. We should have the same resources and sell more weapons and control other countries and taking their resources, or we should have had slavery or an empire like the British in the past: this is the key of being a rich country.
To put 80 per cent of the wealth in the hands of the rich people like it happens here without having too much wealth is just a dictatorship like any other. It is not the American dream. But if the world goes on without being aware of this deceit there will be very bad consequences. People getting poorer and poorer everywhere with just a handful of rich people around.
And another big deceit linked to the so called American dream is the idea of free market as a way to become a rich country. No way. At the beginning the USA adopted a very protectionistic system, as this article written by a Cambridge scholar says. Even the Civil war was fought not for abolition of slavery (????) but because the North wanted protectionism. And after years of protectionism (and the new slavery called immigration), when the economy was strong enough, it could become free. But imposing free market to poor countries now means just making their economy fall pray of the more powerful economies. A big deceit.
Talking about deceits. China. Well they are called communists but this means in reality that they have a totalitarian society where the rich people in power have ended up adopting a system which is even more capitalistic than anywhere else...almost as much capitalistic as slavery.
Communism should ideally mean that the interests that are put before anything else are the interests of the majority of the people. And this sound quite a lot like real democracy should be (did you know that democracy has never existed in the world because the rich people have always had the power and done their own interests preteding to be elected by the people?)
However I don't completely agree with the idea of Communism. It is still very selfish. Each one doing their own interests. This sounds quite similar to capitalism on a large scale. If we all the people in the world had the standard of living of rich Americans that would mean the end for everyone. Extintion.
The only interests human beings should be really pursuing are the interests of the children. Expecially those who are not born and cannot speak for themselves. This includes a fairer society were wealth is not so concentrated, but also a sustainable society, where happiness does not mean having money to buy useless things but living responsibly, trying not to do too much harm to other people and the planet.
There is still hope in Italy
There is still hope in Italy. Recently the Prime Minister got very very angry because in a satirical show called Anno Zero, that is still being broadcast on the public television, they discussed the fact that 200 people died during the earthquake because the building constructors wanted to make money and save on the material. It is very important that they talk about it. Even hospitals fell down, killing people. Maybe people will understand and things will improve.
And it is great luck that our political situation is very transparent. We don't have a puppet president that look very good and delude people about the real situation of the country. In Italy the richest man is prime minister. Everyone knows and nobody is deceived. And maybe one day we'll understand that he cannot represent the people's interests. And this program on TV will help us. And it will also help us understand how the idea that making money comes before anything else, even people's lives, is very bad and does not make people's interests because we can just end up dying during an earthquake because of that.
And it is great luck that our political situation is very transparent. We don't have a puppet president that look very good and delude people about the real situation of the country. In Italy the richest man is prime minister. Everyone knows and nobody is deceived. And maybe one day we'll understand that he cannot represent the people's interests. And this program on TV will help us. And it will also help us understand how the idea that making money comes before anything else, even people's lives, is very bad and does not make people's interests because we can just end up dying during an earthquake because of that.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Don't speak, act now
Do you believe this is not cool at all? Do you find very cool, instead, the idea that we live in the best world ever thanks to progress. Or that freedom of doing whatever you want without worrying about the consequences is the best thing ever? Well, you are not alone. All of us do. And the reason why is just because the people in suit you saw in the video also own the televisions and they tell us and show us what is convenient for them.
For them it is convenient to pollute the environment because they make money out of it. Is it convenient for us? For our children?
If we listen to them night and day we end up believing in what they say. We believe that we share the same interests with them. Is it true? I personally don't earn anything from them putting toxic waste in my garden because they are so mean that they don't want to pay to dispose it properly or to avoid producing it at all. They don't give a damn about my health, of me getting a cancer and I don't give a damn about them not being able to earn even more than what they already earn. Which is a lot, believe me.
Or should I be compassionate...yes... feel sorry for them... "Yes, you can put toxic waste in my garden...How much you need to pay to dispose it? Ah, it's a lot. You need more money to buy that nice island in the middle of the ocean, with palms, and clear water...? Ok. What about my children... what can it do to them? Nothing you say...right...if you say so than it must be true. Go ahead."
Anytime I have an idea in my mind that I find very appealing I always ask myself: where did this come from? Does it serve the interests of someone else (expecially the rich people who own tv)? Could its consequences be bad for me or the human race in general and the future of the children?
If they don't talk about it on TV or even tell us that there is nothing to be worried about nobody worries about it and people don't protest, don't ask for new solutions. And not just for words...for real facts. And if things go on like this we might end up noticing that the temperature of the planet has risen before we hear about it in the news.
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