Friday, May 1, 2015

Mayday? Mayday? Mayday!*


Perhaps on this historic May Day, we could profit from mourning these words of Thomas Jefferson:
I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government in a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country. (Thomas Jefferson ~ 18161)
Have we not observed how the noose of hypocrisy has tightened as we have “globalized”?—
▪ how wages & benefits have plummeted as “profits” (and CEO compensations) rise;
▪ how loyalty to the corp has no reciprocation by the corp;
▪ how international sister corps protect each other’s profit turf, despite “free-trade” and law;2
▪ how big corps are into control, tyranny, bullying, spellbinding, etc., etc., despite human rights and freedoms (speech, association, a free press, religion, etc.) (Read a recent manifestation of control as Netflix, HBO, and their content providers try to control the viewing options of “foreign” paying subscribers. (Yes, PAYING, but masking their “foreignness”3);
▪ how the pursuit of big profits is poisoning our climate, deforming our weather, killing competing innovations, suppressing unprofitable truths, corrupting and/or homogenizing diverse cultures, damaging our food (& well-being), etc., etc. (Just read the Déjà Vu ~ Times posts labelled “corporatism”4 to get a broader notion of how prescient Mr. Jefferson and others were); and
▪ how the list goes on and on.
So what is the remedy to this call of distress? Since the majority of governments seem to have taken a luxury berth on the doomed ship Babylon,5 it seems we shall have to look elsewhere for help. Could it be—at ourselves?—at “We the People”? OR maybe even God?!! Could much of this be but déjà vu?—a semblance of nigh 240 years ago in America? (Have we forgotten already, the Brits and their globe-trotting tea partner?!6)

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* Maydayx3: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayday
† May Day: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_Day

1. This is a verifiable quote. See the transcribed copy of Jefferson’s letter to George Logan, Nov. 12, 1816 (p. 68-69) at Hathi Trust Digital Library: http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc2.ark:/13960/t3pv6bn68;view=1up;seq=92 . The original letter is at The Library of Congress, The Thomas Jefferson Papers Series 1. General Correspondence. 1651-1827, and their digital copy of the original is at http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=mtj1&fileName=mtj1page049.db&recNum=641 (Digital Images 641 and 642: see the second page—image 642—for the quote.)
2. http://www.dejavu-times.blogspot.ca/2014/04/has-anyone-noticed.html
3. Cross-border “watching”: http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/netflix-and-hbo-border-hopping-is-anyone-getting-caught-1.3050460?cmp=rss&cid=news-digests-canada-and-world-morning
4. http://www.dejavu-times.blogspot.ca/search/label/Corporatism
5. “They seek not the Lord to establish his righteousness, but every man walketh in his own way, and after the image of his own god, whose image is in the likeness of the world, and whose substance is that of an idol, which waxeth old and shall perish in Babylon, even Babylon the great, which shall fall.” (Doctrine and Covenants | Section 1:16)
6. Then & Now; Tea Party 1 & Tea Party 2: http://www.dejavu-times.blogspot.ca/2011/04/econ-010-then-now.html

 
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