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Destructive Global Dependencies

#1

Destructive Global Dependencies

Ralph Nader

Do you have your savings in a mutual fund? Does your pension fund invest in stocks, just as mutual funds do? If so, you may want to know this has been a bad week for U.S. stock markets. The Dow and Nasdaq indices have plummeted big time, but not because of the U.S. economy which is showing signs of revival. It is, as the Wall Street Journal reports, mostly because of the woes in China plus the shakiness of the depressed Greek economy and weaknesses of the economies in other larger emerging nations such as Brazil and Turkey.

#2

Thanks Ralph, as always you lay it out clearly and easily understood but the insanity of it all is overwhelming and hard to believe for most people if they were paying attention. Unfortunately, they are watching reality tv or getting their no new from mainstreet media non news. They could be running from fires, tornadoes or flooding rivers, snow storms and not paying attention but wondering why?

#3

Ralph Nader, like an Angel on our shoulders, always looking out for our best interests-
I will always been angry at the American voters for not electing this genuine and fine Man as our President- He is the only American out there that I can think of that DESERVES that title-
From poster “ThomasJefferson”'s excellent “Truth Tellers Hall of Fame”:

Truth-Tellers Hall of Fame

Ralph Nader:
A tireless Consumer Watchdog and Defender of Citizen’s Rights, Ralph Nader is a political activist, as well as an author, lecturer, and attorney. Nader fought his entire life for consumer protection, humanitarianism, environmentalism, and democratic government.
He came to prominence in 1965 with the publication of his book “Unsafe at Any Speed”, a critique of the safety record of American automobile manufacturers in general, and most famously the Chevrolet Corvair. In 1999, a New York University panel of journalists ranked Unsafe at Any Speed 38th among the top 100 pieces of journalism of the 20th century.
Nader is a five-time candidate for President of the United States, having run as a write-in candidate in the 1992 New Hampshire Democratic primary, as the Green Party nominee in 1996 and 2000, and as an independent candidate in 2004 and 2008.
Non-profit organizations
Throughout his career, Nader has started or inspired a variety of nonprofit organizations,with most of which he has maintained close associations :
Citizen Advocacy Center
Citizens Utility Boards
Congress Accountability Project
Consumer Task Force For Automotive Issues
Corporate Accountability Research Project
Disability Rights Center
Equal Justice Foundation
Foundation for Taxpayers and Consumer Rights
Georgia Legal Watch
National Citizens’ Coalition for Nursing Home Reform
National Coalition for Universities in the Public Interest
Pension Rights Center
PROD (truck safety)
Retired Professionals Action Group
The Shafeek Nader Trust for the Community Interest
1969: Center for the Study of Responsive Law
1970s: Public Interest Research Groups
1970: Center for Auto Safety
1970: Connecticut Citizen Action Group
1971: Aviation Consumer Action Project
1972: Clean Water Action Project
1972: Center for Women’s Policy Studies
1973: Capitol Hill News Service
1980: Multinational Monitor (magazine covering multinational corporations)
1982: Trial Lawyers for Public Justice
1982: Essential Information (encourage citizen activism and do investigative journalism)
1983: Telecommunications Research and Action Center
1983: National Coalition for Universities in the Public Interest
1988: Taxpayer Assets Project, WFHW-LP
1989: Princeton Project 55 (alumni public service)
1993: Appleseed Foundation (local change)
1994: Resource Consumption Alliance (conserve trees)
1995: Center for Insurance Research
1995: Consumer Project on Technology
1997: Government Purchasing Project (encourage purchase of safe products)
1998: Center for Justice & Democracy
1998: Organization for Competitive Markets
1998: American Antitrust Institute (ensure fair competition)
1998: Commercial Alert (protect family, community, and democracy from corporations)
1999: Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest
2000: Congressional Accountability Project (fight corruption in Congress)
2001: Citizen Works (promote NGO cooperation, build grassroots support, and start new groups)
2001: Democracy Rising (hold rallies to educate and empower citizens)
Nader was instrumental in passing at least 8 Consumer Protection Acts, including the Safe Drinking Water Act, The Environmental Protection Act (EPA) The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and The Consumer Product Safety Administration.
In 1980, Nader resigned as director of Public Citizen to work on other projects, lecturing on the growing “imperialism” of multinational corporations and of a dangerous convergence of corporate and government power.
Hundreds of young activists, inspired by Nader’s work, came to DC to help him with other projects. They came to be known as “Nader’s Raiders” and, under Nader, investigated government corruption, publishing dozens of books with their results:
Nader’s Raiders (Federal Trade Commission)
Vanishing Air (National Air Pollution Control Administration)
The Chemical Feast (Food and Drug Administration)
The Interstate Commerce Omission (Interstate Commerce Commission)
Old Age (nursing homes)
The Water Lords (water pollution)
Who Runs Congress? (Congress)
Whistle Blowing (punishment of whistle blowers)
The Big Boys (corporate executives)
Collision Course (Federal Aviation Administration)
No Contest (corporate lawyers)
Destroy the Forest (Destruction of ecosystems worldwide)
In 1971, Nader co-founded the nongovernmental organization (NGO) Public Citizen with fellow public interest lawyer Alan Morrison as an umbrella organization for these projects. Today, Public Citizen has over 225,000 members and investigates congressional, health, environmental, economic and other issues. Nader wrote, “The consumer must be protected at times from his own indiscretion and vanity.”
During the Watergate affair Nader challenged the dismissal by Robert Bork of Nixon’s special prosecutor Cox in the aftermath of the Saturday Night Massacre.
In the 1970s and 1980s Nader was a key leader in the antinuclear power movement. “By 1976, consumer advocate Ralph Nader, who later became allied with the environmental movement, ‘stood as the titular head of opposition to nuclear energy’.” The Critical Mass Energy Project was formed by Nader in 1974 as a national anti-nuclear umbrella group. It was probably the largest national anti-nuclear group in the United States, with several hundred local affiliates and an estimated 200,000 supporters. The organization’s main efforts were directed at lobbying activities and providing local groups with scientific and other resources to campaign against nuclear power. Nader advocates the complete elimination of nuclear energy in favor of solar, tidal, wind and geothermal, citing environmental, worker safety, migrant labor, national security, disaster preparedness, foreign policy, government accountability and democratic governance issues to bolster his position.
http://thehalloffame.wikidot.com/

Ralph Nader sacrificed A Lucrative career as A Corporate (sellout) Attorney to Organize and fight these profit over people Corporations that were literally killing American consumers, from Automobile Safety to Pharmaceuticals, to workers health and safety, to the very food we eat and water we drink, Ralph was there, fighting for us-
This Great Man never once gave up the fight and is STILL there fighting for us-
What Politician out there has such A tireless, stellar and selfless Legacy for the American People- NOT ONE! Not one even close


#4

People aren’t paying attention and wondering why because the truth about now won’t set you free, it will only illuminate the bars of the cells. It leads only to a dispirited discouragement and a let’s not rock the boat lest it capsize sooner than it might otherwise.

Increasing awareness that leads to more correct consumption choices can’t change thing for the better in the amount of time there probably is left.

Thanks to websites like this one, Counterpunch, TruthDig, and In These Times, the facts of the currently ongoing economic and ecological high speed deterioration have been outed and nearly everyone who can bear to know already does. The exposes are sure to keep coming as long as the power grid continues to function.

But no one on The Left has anything like a plan for mobilizing the masses to buy into, participate in, and work towards a total reorganization of the industo-economic systems beyond presenting lists of things that “should” be gotten rid of – institutionalized bribery as the operating system of politics, carbon and nuclear fueled electricity generation, the gestapoization of policing, the use of edge of war narratives (how many are at the brink right now including the varsity teams of U.S., Russia, China with Israel and The Koreas trying to nose their way in to the Bomb Squad Big Leagues.

All these national leader factions are all up in war’s face because there they can act like In-Charge Commanders In Chief, striking heroic soldier poses to keep from having to face up to and appear to be dealing with problems which are the ones taking us to the eve of destruction.

We don’t need realpolitik eponym threat mongers, we need social engineers who can design a working nĂ©e society who can explain what’s being done and how getting in on it could possibly help bring it bout,

The muckrakers have done a good job aren’t telling us – probably because they have no real clue what 's to done with and about all the toxic muck they’ve raked.

What do do with it? What do we do now?’

#5

Ill add Rob Shetterly’s portrait - from Americans Who Tell the Truth

ralph_nader_.jpg337x400

#6

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#7

Actually, I was going to suggest to TJ that maybe Rob Shetterly should be added to The Truth Tellers Hall of Fame-
Thanks Old Goat-

#8

I understand what you mean when you say, “We’re exporting millions of jobs,” as you are referring to the country in general, but it is my rulers who are exporting all those millions of jobs, and then they blame and condemn the unemployed poor for the plight that those upstanding corporate owners have created. They love an apparently bottomless supply of cheap labor; which brings me to the next topic, ecological overshoot. There is no such animal as that. The masses can always be mobilized for war.

#9

Sounds like what Trump has been saying. Some progressives may be secretly wishing he wins.

#10

If there is an answer, isn’t it maybe what we do not do?
We ALL consume far too much. That feeds the machine that is killing us.
If we stopped that the machine would struggle to function.
The problem is no one thinks that way. No one seems to realise that they are actually perpetuating the problem
not doing nothing. Doing nothing would be useful if only everyone did (did not) it.

#12

True. And one needs no more proof than this: when a honest statesman, like Mr. Nader with integrity, runs for POTUS and loses to a fascist war criminal; a buffoon and dimwitted, political moron with absolutely no morals, scruples, or integrity
one has to realize what you post is the truth.

#13

Bernie Sanders platform is a good place to begin the re-engineering.

#14

Why support the Green Party and lose when we can support Bernie and win?

#15

One can only marvel at Mr. Nader’s indomitable spirit. If he, who worked tirelessly to rope in the ravages of global corporations (many, at the time, national not international in scope) can STILL put up the good fight when the legal foundations he labored to set into place are being eroded–not by the sands of time but rather by rapacious global corporations that utilize legal shenanigans melded into binding international trade treaties–then it rallies the spirits of others to fight the global corporate takeover of this planet and its myriad treasures: legacy of the great Earth Mother and intended to support the lives of ALL her children
 not just the insatiable (for profits and power) 1%.

#16

Your post qualifies as: The mandatory BLAME citizens-voters for usurpation of legal processes, purchase of congress persons, capture of mass media through which to tell lies often, and other assaults.

What is happening is not reserved to American voters who you and your PALS demonize as sheeple. It’s the corporate global mission creep and it IS being fought by everyday people from those who kayak out to stop Shell Oil to those who try to stop fracking, from those who fight to retain public schools before the privatizers cannibalize the last of The Commons, to those who fight for a living wage.

This NEED to always turn the frame into a fault upon citizens rather than those who are DOING the trespassing is pathetic. It’s like a guard whipping a prisoner
 because the symptoms that are corrupting so many nations are not the work of citizens. Rather they are direct outgrowths attributable to those with power.

Almost every poster is pushing either a blame voters for not voting for Nader-as if the establishment powers would have allowed for or honored such an outcome (thwarting him as THEY did, at every turn), to blaming the individual consumer (“We” use too much. This is the pro-business argument that insists that if nobody bought the widgets, the same corporations FORCING their unlabeled products ON us would not make them), to once again falling back on this idea that people don’t care and are clueless.

That is like putting the cause for slavery ONTO the slaves.

It is the #1 talking point (propped up through a number of messaging devices) featured in these threads.

Corporations are bypassing human Democratic consensuses–look at Greece’s economy, the TPP, Detroit, etc. But STILL the chorus repeats its tired hymnal lines.

Oh, and before the tag team insists that I am insisting that individuals have NO responsibility, as if it’s a level playing field and Democratic apparatuses are still operating
 I will again for the HUNDREDTH time remind that few truths are found through either-or, bifurcated analyses.

The issue boils down to relative access to power, media, influence, and financial resources.

For centuries during the reign of monarchies, a few controlled the many. During much of the 20th century–between the horrors of wars that is–life improved for perhaps the majority and a Middle Class formed.

Currently, the corporations, assuming the role of modern royalty, are using their embarrassments of riches to own politicians, lawmakers, media–to control messaging, and militias for the muscle needed to implement THEIR version of societal rules. And attempts to revert back to Feudalism–with all citizens the subjects who answer to royal corporate persons–are well underway.

If you want to blame someone
 blame the dummies in uniform who always provide the aggressive force needed to keep citizens “in their places.”

#17

i’ve been saying, and trying to practice, throughout my life:

Buy nothing that you do not need.

Sometimes i’ve written the NOTHING in all caps, or added a “truly” before “need,” but really it needs no extra emphasis. Just buy nothing that you do not need.

#18

Stops shit happening - stops you going on a downer when it is broken, used up, stolen etc. - reduces money problems - clears the mind to focus on what really matters
 what’s not to like about it?

#19

Agreed. To realise that WE are all involved in some way is not to deny what you state about the particular horrors of corporates and their evil tentacles. Not everyone is arguing with you in the way you maybe imagine.

#20

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#22

Brought to you by our stolen elections & Illegitimately elected congress working hand & hand with a bloodthirsty communist dictatorship in China. Thanks Presidents & Congress for making us a debtor nation to idealogical enemies . Nafta destroyed US labor TTP is even a bigger sellout. Wake up people !! Fascism is alive & well in the USA!!