Throw Out the Money Changers

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FOCUS: Five Facts That Put America to Shame

The NDAA's Coup d'Etat Foiled

FOCUS: The Commencement Address That Won't Be Given

A Victory for All of Us

Excerpt: "The two most destructive forces of human nature - greed and envy - drive the financiers, the bankers, the corporate mandarins and the leaders of our two major political parties, all of whom profit from this system."

Chris Hedges, journalist and former war correspondent for the New York Times, 04/14/11. (photo: file)

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+6 # Uranus 2011-04-18 18:30

"The priests in these corporate temples, in the name of profit..." and etc: A very nice speech.

Why do we have all these things no reasonable person could support?

The problem has been endemic throughout society, business and politics for decades: http://www.stopcp.com/

That's right, funded, ruthless psychopaths have worked methodically to destroy America and establish one world currency and government. I wish the news were better.

Observers are beginning to give CP attributation. Are they correct? I fear they are.

+7 # J R Raper 2011-04-18 22:51

If corporations are people, as the Supreme Court recently proclaimed, then hold them responsible for destroying lives and property the way people would be. Their imprisonment should be an appropriate number of years in the cell of receivership. Who will enforce this punishment if the law-makers are their hired henchmen? A penalty of a few hundred million (or a few billions now) means little to corporations. Nor does the imprisonment of a few sacrificial CEOs. Receivership might.

+2 # giraffee2012 2011-04-19 09:11

The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.

Thomas Jefferson.....

Thanks to the Stupremes we now have "the best govt money can buy."

+2 # josephhill 2011-04-19 10:08

Quoting

If corporations are people, as the Supreme Court recently proclaimed, then hold them responsible for destroying lives and property the way people would be. Their imprisonment should be an appropriate number of years in the cell of receivership. Who will enforce this punishment if the law-makers are their hired henchmen? A penalty of a few hundred million (or a few billions now) means little to corporations. Nor does the imprisonment of a few sacrificial CEOs. Receivership might.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

If corporations were REALLY 'people' we should call them what they are:

SOCIOPATHS

Quoting

If corporations are people, as the Supreme Court recently proclaimed, then hold them responsible for destroying lives and property the way people would be. Their imprisonment should be an appropriate number of years in the cell of receivership. Who will enforce this punishment if the law-makers are their hired henchmen? A penalty of a few hundred million (or a few billions now) means little to corporations. Nor does the imprisonment of a few sacrificial CEOs. Receivership might.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

If corporations were REALLY "people" we ought to call them what they are:

SOCIOPATHS

http://www.thecorporation.com/index.cfm

+14 # Dave W. 2011-04-18 23:01

Hedges moving piece can either be the light at the beginning of an arduous journey, guiding the steps of those willing to undertake it for humanity's sake or an "epitaph in progress" prepared for some possible future race, relating the price paid for the greed and folly "civilized man" has feasted on for millennium. Self-aggrandizement has become the false idol and the "profit" is he/she who speaks of a life devoid of spiritual and terrestrial obligations to both the flora and fauna of the world they live upon. This country leads the world in the incarceration of fellow human beings, the spending of coin to deliver death and hardship around the world through perpetual war and the exportation of weapons designed to "assist" others in following our debauched path. We are decimating our planet in pursuit of transitory riches and will leave our most precious gift, the earth itself, in a condition unrecognizable to those who saw it before the "captains of industry" set the "wheels of progress" in motion. We are lost souls, adrift on a sea of avarice and those at the tiller of the ship of state are oblivious to the whirlpool of "consumption", its yawning maw awaiting the final sacrifice made to its voracious appetite. 'Tis the entrance to a new "dark ages" and we cling with uncomprehending fingers to the edge of the pit of amaranthine death, golden shovels throwing dirt in our faces.

+4 # BobbyBitman 2011-04-19 13:17

Then again, we could just change a couple laws to end private cartel fractional-reserve-banking, stop kowtowing to the absurd legal fraud of 'corporate personhood', try to suppress mirth or laughter at those who don't (still so 20th century-2nd millenium), and perhaps even enjoy ourselves in the process.

Some folks in philosophy call this "rational-choice ('the human calculator') vs. functional-determinism." I call it Past vs. Future.

+6 # hms 2011-04-18 23:24

WOW! NO, SUPER-WOW!

+8 # Marion Hubbard 2011-04-19 01:28

Human nature is in fact a social nature... compassionate and peaceful. The destructive forces of greed and envy are in fact symptoms of emotional disorder which result from arrested human development. This is why we need universal education for complete human development i.e. education for the person/child as a whole or 'holistic education'.

+6 # futhark 2011-04-19 02:20

Yep, stop supporting and/or voting for the candidates that obviously have plutocratic oligarchical backing: the ones who get continual free publicity in newspapers, magazines, TV, etc. Start supporting the candidates that the Mainstream Media ignores, marginalizes, denigrates, and/or labels "extremist", "not serious", or "wacko".

Every "serious candidate" has already made a Faustian bargain with the Plutocrats, committing to faithfully serve then in exchange for the opportunity to be elected or appointed to a position of political leadership. Identify the ties between corporate boards of directors and appointive political office...secretaries and undersecretarie s of this or that department. You will find that Condaleeza Rice was more the rule than the exception. And they're all in it to secure the hegemony of the ultra-rich!

0 # rf 2011-04-19 04:03

I just heard yesterday that while being our president, Mr. Obama earned $1.5 million dollars...if you were wondering why we will see no real legislation aimed at the wealthy.

+8 # Steve Newcomb 2011-04-19 04:25

Chris: Let's promote a taxonomy of human beings that's different from Raskolnikov's bipolar (ordinary/extraordinary) one. Let's promote a tripolar view of humanity: sheep/shepherds/predators. Shepherding is the highest calling. Predators are the enemies of sheep and therefore of shepherds, too. Sheep who seek to emulate predators, rather than shepherds, are volunteering to be prey; they place themselves pathetically beyond the help of shepherds. How can real shepherds be recognized? It's easy: shepherds invest their resources in one or more future generations of human beings. Shepherds are the adults in the room.

+5 # fredboy 2011-04-19 07:03

The eternal tragedy continues, as I was reminded last weekend. A couple, married only one year, decided to forego saving and plunge into a mortgage--and buy a boat. All on "credit." Which means likely eternal debt.

We have to remember, in our gluttonus society, that the money changers OWN the fools among us. And there are many more of them than those I call The Savers.

A wise friend told me long ago that the cunning prey on idiocy.

0 # A. Zide 2011-04-19 08:41

Pharisees? Money-changers? You need to be reminded that MOST of the big banks, Wall St. firms etc. are in the hands of people with names like Chase, Rockefeller, Whitney, Hearst, Astor, Carnegie, Scalia? et al and they kept out people with names like Goldman et al from being part of their robber baron corporations/outfits for decades... .
WHOEVER they all are now, from the evil Ken Lay to the equally evil Bernie Madoff, please bear that in mind, before you -not-so-subtly-- cast the usual (Easter time?) aspersions... .

+2 # tomo 2011-04-19 10:20

The religious terminology Hedges uses throughout is altogether relevant. I do not say this as one who wishes to see an end to religion. Hedges though is right in seeing America today very much obsessed with a worship of riches. At the inception of the American experience, the arrogance of the Puritans made them vulnerable to a false sense of mission. We white Americans began our effort to control North America from "sea to shining sea" with an altogether exceptional and dangerous sense of entitlement. It has taken us about four centuries to travel from intending to become "a city on a hill" to our present state of wallowing in pits of greed and envy--but a consistent logic has guided us, and here we are.

0 # A. Zide 2011-04-19 10:44

The issue is not any 'end to religion', but the typical knee-jerk overtones of age-old prejudices supposedly liberal 'Christians' bring to some of these discussions. Easy to blame one ethnic group or another, not your own?
We white Americans? blacks seem to happily engage in this as well, and the Indian massacres after the Civil War attest to this, and should not, in honesty be swept under the rug.
Also, in parts of the US even today, Jews, Italians et al are still not really considered 'white.'

0 # BobbyBitman 2011-04-19 13:24

Why not just do what is right, sans reference to the (supposed) supernatural thing?

Cultivate the strength of your heart.

0 # wherefore 2011-04-19 17:14

Very moving, yes, but not especially helpful. If the only explanation we have for the motives of the wealthy consists of the vices greed and envy, and the only solution we can offer is courage, a virtue, then we are reduced to a moral argument and we miss the underlying mechanism. In fact, the problem is fear, a basic survival instinct which is not one of the seven deadly sins.

0 # reiverpacific 2011-04-20 07:31

This is a good example of the question; "Why is it that the just and passionately truth-to-power words of Hedges, Amy Goodman, Naomi Klein, Chomsky and so many other progressive journalists and "thinkers" (Gawd, I hate that pseudo-elitist expression!) are not shouted from the rooftops and on everybody's tongues"? Well, "Duh" -guess who owns the massive information and content-lite (Sp' deliberate) media conglomerates which ignore and even suppress such declarations and broadsides at their invested interests. They live by the same media-bludgeoning tactics and idiotic commercialism which persuades the many-headed who gulp heavily at their infomercial fountains, to drink Coors lite, eat Micky-Dee slops and debit themselves into penury to buy "toys" and materiel they don't need, a.k.a., the dominant culture of "Want" producing "Need", which is America's main export to the rest of the world, along with destructive armaments. This is the same culture which posits over and over ad nauseum, the totally phony theorem that capitalism equates to freedom! I mean, any thinking person who values liberty has to go to the likes of RSN, Alternative and Community Radio -or overseas media, to get any kind of analytical and truly fact-based news or information in depth.

-3 # Unicorn144 2011-04-20 18:44

I fully agree with every word written: except for one thing: Barack Obama.

He is no corporate lackey: in fact according to Unification Church theology now restored along with the return of it's terminolgy as well we could say that Barack Hussein Obama represents the Messiah for the Black Race at the National Level; just as at the end every nation has it's Moses; it's Messiah and so on; as Mandela in South Africa showed or Vaclv Havel in Yugoslavia or Lech Walesa in Poland: every nation at the end rises to it's destiny.

Barack Obama may look like the rest:
he is not.
He might soulnd like the rest: but he ain't: ask Joe Biden; the one cat who happens to be a Righteous Man in all this.
At the End we have a phenomenon appear that few will countenance; not that they have a choice: for you I call it "the 12 Apostles of the Lamb". But the earth will call them something else: the Jury

The Lamb my husband happens to be the Judge: the King of Judgment-Day: and I? I am just the secretary; the one who writes down the Sentence: but in his Book my name is written Salvation Rose; and the Lamb's Book is the Book of Life.

0 # judgment 2011-04-23 21:23

A very good article, written with a factual style and interesting use of words and sentences with well known supporting story to sustain their use. Such as The Money Changers. It allow one to accept the facts given even if some may not agree with the conclusion. However when he arrives at his suggestions for change it is a different person that reveals itself. The words "self sacrifice" moved from the self destructive world of the money changers and formulates his suggestions as Self Sacrifice". But to live in a world based on justice and good will does not require self sacrifice, it is in our interest to act in a way that re-asserts cherished values and social system. To see that as sacrifice does not differ from the basic issue of the money changer, only the choice differs, the premise is the same. The problem here is playing with good and evil as dictated by religion. We need a social system based on justice, fairness and good will to all for the good of fall, and that wold be a rational and functioning system where the scientific observation that "a species that destroys hits habitat destroys himself"

0 # Unicorn144 2011-04-24 14:44

As it says in the Revelation at the Time of the Dead: "to destroy those who destroy the earth"; thus the ecologic edge is preeminent; a man once said that "self-interest blinds some men: but helps others see the light"; thus it is not that "God helps those who help themselves",,but "God helps those ( nations ) who help others"; enlightened self-interest thus tells us that they who help others truly then "help themselves" and they who help only themselves thus finding self-preservation as their dominant virtue lose their REAL selves: that is; their true humanity..

..Thus the Lamb called himself not "the Son of God" but "the Son of Man"; because his Divinity was in his Humanity: and if we would find in ourselves this humanity for others we will not be surprised to find that it is where our own divinity begins: for it was planted there for this reason.

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