File-sharing is for the educated.

Israel, and their hard core supporters in the US, are responsible for most of the current messes through the Middle East. Their state sponsored terrorism against poor innocent people so as to steal their land, their labor and their soul has helped create a mass of alienated individuals and societies that now go far beyond the Arab/Islamic world. Outside of the US with its carefully controlled media most of the world recognizes the corruptness of the Jewish state and the racist underpinnings of Zionism.

Moving towards the current financial collapse that has surrounded the world it is hard not to notice the almost complete domination of the most deeply involved firms by executives who are not only Jewish but quite often members of the ultra rich and nationalistic power groups in the US. The CEOs, past and present of Goldman Sachs have embedded themselves into both private finance along with government positions of monetary authority so as to insure that real reform that would hinder the actions of these firms in their incessant greed to control ever larger sums of money simply will not take place. Paul Ruben, Jon Paulson, are just a few of the names from this infestation of a firm.

Where this comes together with the current economic failures is the uncomfortable, for a PC type person anyway, reality that people and their cultures/societies are not inherently equal. The reason why foreign born Asians attain success in the US within several generation while foreign born Mexicans do not lies within how each group views things like education, family size, and planning for the future. Some cultures highly stress particular areas while others completely ignore them. This is reality. Also reality is that the Jewish culture puts a strong emphasis on education, the acquisition of money, and the unfortunate attitude of arrogance towards others. So much of the failures in the financial realm go straight to core beliefs of the dominant players: obscene amounts of money solely to show off and rub it in the faces of others and then, when things go wrong, adamant denial of their own responsibility.

One more paragraph and I’m gone. We all know the history of file sharing and how the media providers had repeated opportunities to, if not take control, at least to direct a viable stream of revenue towards themselves. And yet they have refused time and time again preferring to somehow maintain a business model that clearly no longer works. So what gives here that some very smart CEOs, CFOs, and the like cannot see the reality? Take a look at the overwhelming majority of these people in terms of their cultural/religious background. You find the same deep vein of greed and arrogance which refuses to accept change, or in a broader sense as applies to places like the Middle East, and attempts to lock people into a restricted area of movement while sucking out everything possible from them.

If this all sounds totally crazy just remember the next time you are relaxing on a Carnival Line Cruise ship that its founder retired a billionaire to his adopted country, Israel where he then built a palatial estate upon the land that was arranged to be stolen from some Palestinian families whom had lived there for generations. Those people now become embittered refugees ready to embrace extremist ideologies that have broadened their battle grounds to include Europe and the US for terrorist attacks. Also remember that the incredible riches this man made are being funneled into Jewish controlled banks, hedge funds, and other mechanisms to become ever larger in quantity. And when some of this money is lent to places like Greece, which cannot and never could replay the loans, instead of the financial institutions taking the hit for their poor judgement, the sick corrupt super 1% elite gets together with their counterparts in government to, once again, pass the losses on to the public. And the masses begin to see why their life styles are declining and want to know who is responsible.

I don’t know about Rick, but it happens to me on a regular basis.

The problem isn’t democracy but the problem that democracy as it’s practiced today isn’t representative.

I went to school for a year in germany when i was 9-10. One of the things which struck me was that german public school at that time actually taught the lessons learend by the second world war. An entire generation grew up with the knowledge of what, exactly, happens when you fail to make your leaders accountable, and when you fail to shoulder your own burden as a citizen to both defend tolerance of dissenting views or to go to elections with a critical mind.

Today the Pirate Party polls 10% in Germany across the board, from a platform of open government, freedom of information, personal integrity and education. Many of those voters aren’t “young”. They’re the generation which learned about how democracy fails at basic school in early years, while looking soberly at their next-door neighbor, the DDR.

By and large the screaming bile-spewing trolls, both on the internet and irl are a decided minority. Most of the rest of the public is capable of making proper decisions when they are given the proper tools to understand what they are deciding about.

Our main problem today is that it is in the interest of very few parties to actually teach people to think for themselves. And so across the board, almost every nations now skips out on teaching children what a democracy is and how it can fail at an age where those teachings could set.

We ought to borrow the teachings of Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits. Teach people when they are young and they will forever look at the world with the eyes they were given then.

“Would it bankrupt the US? I don’t think so. Would it be expensive? Only to those that don’t want these changes.”

Actually, if the US hadn’t handed out vast amounts of cash in bailouts, bakruptcy might very well have occurred. Still, I’d compare that to a cancer patient suffering from his chemotherapy – a vital step necessary to ensure survival.

Point is, given an enforced back-to-basics approach of smaller government, better fiscal responsibility and an open market, the US could and would rise again.

The main issue is that the US (and the Eurozone) simply refuses to take it’s medicine as they see a 20-year hiatus from world power status with a shot credit rating completely unacceptable. And the solution seems to be to compensate for a flawed system by taking heavy painkillers in form of government stimulus instead. Which doesn’t fix any of the problems causing the mess.

It’s something of an embarrassment to have to acknowledge that the Chinese “communists” are far better at practical market economy than we ostensibly “capitalist” countries are.

The original US government was set up in such a way, implementing “checks and balances” ensuring a distribution of power where each set of stakeholders would ideally have a different motivation in how he/she voted.

Meaning that the body politic could accomodate all sorts of vested interests without such interests being able to unduly influence future legislation.

The problem, of course, is that any stakeholder with an interest in an issue then creates a network in order to be able to influence all levels of the body politic simultaneously, and that opens the door for disproportionate influence by the lobby.

Which then generates a strong need for obfuscation visavi the public as those ungrateful voters might actually feel offended at having their elected representatives being cat’s paws for Big Tobacco, Big Oil, Christian fundamentalists and the MPAA/RIAA/Ifpi umbrella corporations.

At least in a brilliant burst of foresight the US also implemented a constitutional court capable of overturning ill-conceived legislation in violation of the basic principles on which the nation was founded.
If there’s anything we truly need in europe, it’s constitutional courts in each country manned by ultraconservative judges whose main motivation for the last thirty years has been to fervently defend the national constitution, irrespective of what the political flavor of the month happens to be.

My local politician is a devout member of his Party.
That Party makes policy via their manifesto promises in the hope enough people vote for those promises.

My local politician and his Party claims to represent me in parliament because I’m a constituent in the area he stood for election.

Does my elected politician serve me, his Party or his manifesto promises?
The nature of modern democracy is at risk due to a failure of proper representation given that we now have far more access to ACCURATE information and knowledge than ever before.

Is it not the case then, that the Party-system of politics is itself undermining democracy in the 21st Century?

I think it is – do you?

“…the expected and continuing failures of un-regulated Capitalism…”

The problem isn’t so much “unregulated” capitalism. The problem is that we’re running a hybrid model of badly regulated capitalism with socialistic bailouts.

In an unregulated economy a bank, if it mismanages it’s money, will fail. If it’s big enough this will cause a recession. When a number of companies mismanage the public trust, the public cease to trust such institutes and look for other alternatives.

However, what we’ve done is to send the message loud and clear – “Let the market run as it will and for any actor big enough, the taxpayers will be there to bail you out if your incompetence causes you to crash and burn”.

I.e. we are running a combination of the worst aspects of capitalism and socialism both. That’s why we are where we are right now. The only “cure” is to abolish each and every help package to private organizations. A bank which gambles away it’s customer’s money should expect only a fraud charge, not assistance. And people need to learn not to invest the way their local banker tells them blindly.