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"who names a company 'AB In Bev' ? ... just go ahead and call it 'Satan' "

read that somewhere... 👍

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TT - "The DEI & CEI “public/private partnerships” are an incestuous lemniscate between business and government (fascism). At this advanced stage it is difficult, if not impossible, to find where one ends and the other begins." Cogent Mr. Mulder

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And the good news is that United Airlines' DEI Pilot Training program has graduated a vision impaired quadriplegic black trans woman. She qualified on a 737 Max.

Happy Flying! ✈️ 🤡

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founding

This is an attack on capitalism by someone with little knowledge of the financial system. Without lending there is no business. A company that sits on a lot of cash is s doing no one any good.

The cash is loaned to another company that starts another business and round and round it goes.

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I knew all of this generally and many, but not all of the details you provide. Too few care. I would like to add that digital surveillance is increasing at a frightening pace. Not universal, but we have QR Code only restrooms in Japan. To use the restrooms in that shopping center, you must first make a qualifying purchase from a qualified merchant. We had QR Code restricted events at the city park during the panic. Cash registers that accept cash are becoming fewer and fewer. Recently I tried to eat at a Subway in Tokyo only to find that they are all cashless.

The hour is indeed later than we think.

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On a Delta flight now. Zero “white Americans in all the seatback ads.

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Did 6 flights on them this week and don’t recall any on the safety briefing video either.

The female pilot at the end maybe.

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Haha, You noticed that too? I told my wife, “wait we paid the upgrade to have the veteran pilot named Steve!”

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founding

NWO same as the Old World Order. I do wish good analyses weren't so often infused with a wee drop of hysterical phrasing. It doesn't matter what you call things; the things are fundamentally part of human nature and human societies. Kings sometimes went to war because their debt burden was so intolerable to stability of the realm that they needed some conquests to help pay them off. Same dumb thinking as you describe above.

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Not even close. Yes the motivations are the same as they ever were, but the technology and participation is currently far beyond what tyrants of old could even dream of.

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founding

Scale doesn't make something new.

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The observation that perpetual, continous and cyclical crises are a feature, not a bug, was one of the core objections early marxists (even before they were called that) made against the corporate capitalist system.

Well, not just marxists, really. Catholics, protestants, secular humanists and above all democratic nationalists all made that observation during the 19th century, since when every crisis came about, never did the rich get poorer or starved. Recall Chesterton's remarks in "The man who was Thursday" about why the rich have no loyalty or stake in any nation, or any people.

But the common man, the working class and shopkeeper and the craftsman, they all did. They were the ones neing made into debt-slaves and had it not been for the workers' rights movements throughout all western nations, debt would still be inherited.

It's just capitalism working as intended, really. The rich spend the working class' lives as an asset to crash and rebuild, utilising the state as an enforcer so that tax money can be funneled to the capitalists via various projects and deals, be they bailouts or tax breaks.

What do we do?

We fight state over-reach because it has no right we haven't explicitly given it, morally speaking. We fight corporate control by voting with our feet and our money, withdrawing business and stake in their corporate state. And we protest, build alternatives, and learn how to work around the system or even to profit from it, starving the beast in the process.

Which by the by was the strategy proposed by the original french anarchists.

One of the corner-stones to reclaim is family. From family stems kinship, and from that belonging to the same people, and from there the same nation.

Look at what DEI and the rest of it always attacks in its rethorics: family, traditions, culture and morals. Why?

"Nothing above the state; nothing beyond the state", as that italian communist said.

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Yet, those who escaped communist China say that what we are seeing in the US is a Chinese communist style cultural revolution. If that’s what you want, you are free to go to China but do not wish that evil upon others.

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We used to say that to communists here back in the day: "If Kambodja is so great a society, why don't you move there?"

Some did (w-a-y before my time). A few hundred families moved from Norrbotten (area in northern Sweden) to Stalin's Soviet Union before WW2. They had all their belongings stolen by commissars and party officials, and were then dumped in camps. The few who made it back to Sweden were shunned, mobbed, bullied and ostracised by the communist party who to this day denies it ever happened.

One thing though: political -isms, just a religions, are expressed via culture (and in turn affect how culture expresses itself). Socialism in DDR was not the same as in Russia, or Jugoslavia or albania, or DPRK or... The culture trying to implement the -isms master plan for Utopia will affect how the plan is implemented and what that Utopia looks like.

As an example, in Sweden, even the Socialist Party balked at the height of their power from nationalising banks and corporations. Instead, they sought to buy them via the part-controlled unions. The reason for this was not due to lack of power or support - thanks to the near starvation for many during the 1920s and the rationing of the 1940s (which only affected the working class, not the rich - they could effectively buy exemptions from rationing) banks and some corporations were seen as greedy villanious war-rpfoiteers by many.

And some of the banks and corporations were in so deep with nazi-Germany they had to pay reparations (in reality: the governement paid the reparations using tax money, to protect the rich banking clans.)

Where was I?

Oh, right, cultural exression of -isms! Confiscation was out - but people buying shares in corporations is simply capitalism, right? So let's organise the buyers via unions to take control of the corporations that way. All neat and legal and in accordance with capitalism.

This made the banks and corporations yell bloody murder, in the 1970s and early 1980s. Workers owning shares of their employer's corporation? Inconceivable! They should be thankful they were given jobs at all! Was the gist of the response - full-on old-school noble vs serfs- attitude on full display. The mask feel, so to speak.

It all ended with a wet fart. The money collected by the unions from their members were instead appropriated by the state when the Socialist Party had been replaced with the Moderate Party (neoliberal globalists), and then transferred to various semi-private foundations (to get around laws re: public works and documents), and now that money - tens of billions of dollars worth - is all gone.

The moral of the story is: when it's done by the people, or by unions or the "wrong" political party? It's WrongBadEvil. But when the rich people's party does it, it's good and necessary.

As if the only alternatives were full-on infant mortality of 300/1000 capitalism or go straight to Gulag.

How about a little ethics, I ask people of all political flavours. And they get angry. Weird.

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There is no perfect. There is no utopia. As a friend used to say, sadly someone decide to put his theory to the test; open the US and see which way people run. When the Berlin Wall fell, which way did people run? Which way are people running through the open US border?

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founding

Entirely and absolutely.

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Feb 9·edited Feb 9

It's also how they captured the Non Profit sector so we now have organizations like ACLU fighting for censorship and discrimination.

Oh, and the air traffic controller Googling 'how to land' is priceless. And I was feeling (slightly) sorry for calling some jerk a fucking idiot for holding a woman's car hostage while he googled 'how to remove a jumper cable' (while he yelled that we would be responsible for damage to his vehicle if something went wrong...like if you didn't know how to jump a car why would you do it?). Incompetence all around, eh?

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No one knows anything other than how to asks someone else, Google, how to do something.

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Gen Y or Z. Dumber than a box of rocks. Totally and utterly useless, unless you need someone to stand around looking ugly and calling you names.

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Still reading, still thinking. To paraphrase Pogo...'We is in a world of hurt"

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founding

We always wuz.

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Much much more so now.

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founding

Only seems so because we didn't live through previous times. Always a shock when history comes back again.

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Really? With the exception of a few comparatively small countries, there has never been the ability to mass surveil everyone. Nor control them. Nor make them spend money on things they may not need or want.

Not universal, yet, but we have QR Code Only restrooms in Japan. To use the toilet in that shopping center, you must first have an idiot phone, I do not, then make a qualifying purchase from a qualified merchant. After the transaction, you are shown a QR Code that you scan with your idiot phone. Then you can take your idiot phone to the QR Code controlled locked door to the restrooms to unlock sane lock and pump bilges or land marines :).

During the panic, what few events were allowed, mid 2022 and onwards if memory serves, were mainly outdoors. To participate in the summer park program, you needed a city provided QR code that was rationed by lottery. Prior to this, you just showed up at the park, come one come all. If lucky enough to get win the lottery, you down loaded the QR code to your idiot phone which was then scanned at the manned gate in to the park. Upon leaving, it was #canned again. Wife has an idiot phone. Many events for children that our kids enjoyed every year were missed because we could not get a ration ticket via QR code to attend. The tech is here and in use. Once the 5G network is complete, this will be used everywhere: bank, ATM, gas station, grocery store, hospital and doctor’s office for a few important examples.

The ESG, DEI, SDG social credit score which is already in use for corporations will be applied to all individuals and paired with the QR Code controlled access to the above. Didn’t buy all the recommend books? Not enough points to enter one or more of the places you need to. Posted something other than high praise about our ruling class, you do not have enough points to get out of your house. Have you not seen the videos of this in use in China?

Know anything about the Internet of Things (IoT)? You need to. That is another of these intrusive surveillance systems that require 5G. This is the real reason we should fear 5G.

I have all transactions through my banks here in Japan where I have lived almost all of my adult life and now, almost half of my life, reported to the U.S. due the America’s FATCA law, as do most Americans living over seas do, though most are blissfully unaware of this. My children, born of a Japanese mother in Japan and who have never set foot in the U.S. and are Japanese citizens also have their account information shared with the U.S. because one of their parents, me, is/was a U.S. citizenship at the time of their birth.

If I sell something, anything, to anyone and they pay by any means other than cash from hand to hand, the buyers financial data is shared with the U.S. regardless of their nationally, residence or travel history.

Nope, things are different this time.

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founding

The principle is the same as it always was.

Japan was never any sort of free and open society before the American occupation. Every aspect of life--one's clothing, hairstyle, mode of speaking etc. etc. etc. marked out your status and what you were allowed to do and not do.

The horrors of mass surveillance were pretty bad in the Soviet years, and all they needed was neighbors tattling on neighbors.

If you look only at the fancy new tools and not at the immutable human nature that drives the lust for power and control, you are looking at the wrong enemy.

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You missed my earlier statement. Yes, the motives are the same. But what they can accomplish is far greater now. Yes, the Soviet era was bad, it is worse now. There was a black market. IoT will do away with that. You do not need your neighbor turning you in, your own appliance will. Hell, they already are. The level, detail and omnipresence of the electronic surveillance state that is being built now allows for capabilities that have ne er even been remotely possible.

FATCA/FBAR/CBT are American laws that trap Americans and US persons wherever they reside. The fact that the U.S. farms out enforcement to locals does not make it a local problem.

Cashless society is big time bad and far beyond anything seen before. Makes the overnight outlawing of old currency and forcing people to use the new bills look like child’s play.

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