Liberty Takes a Beating From Freedom

Glenn Greenwald in Salon on the torture tapes, Libby's pardon, illegal surveillance of citizens, and many other instances in which those in power show contempt for the rule of law:

And thus we have a perfect oligarchical system in which, literally, our most powerful and well-connected elite are free to break the law with impunity, exempt from any consequences. While exempting themselves, these same figures impose increasingly Draconian "law and order" solutions on the masses to ensure that even small infractions of the law prompt vigorous prosecution and inflexible, lengthy prison terms.

On another note, did you realize that Milton Friedman was a key advisor to Pinochet? Freedom and Liberty (Capitalism and Democracy) are still married, but now sleep in separate beds.  Liberty doesn't talk about it, but her bruises suggest more than that she is constantly walking into doors.   

Comments

[Hager if Hager was My Girl]

Hoping to please Mr. Garry, I re-post this comment from another thread. It has nothing to do with what I personally believe in and there is nothing whatsoever to buy, so Mr. Garry should be very very happy.

To Mr. Antoine, I say, you seem to watch a lot of movies. Too many, perhaps? Are you diff-abled? Diff-lexic? Agora-phobic?

You remind me of a dumb boxer who will not spit the dental guard from his mouth. The trainer must smack his skull three times - pi-tooooo! HAHAHAHA

[Hager if Hager was My Girl]

Mr Antoine's hundreth movie suggestion,, hahahah

PBS' Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy

can be viewed in its entirety online now (until recently only DVD.)

Low Bandwidth
(w/choice of media players)

Rich-Media
(requires Quicktime plug-in and a bit more hardware horsepower to play smoothly)

From Episode One: The Battle of Ideas

A global economy, energized by technological change and unprecedented flows of people and money, collapses in the wake of a terrorist attack .... The year is 1914.

Worldwide war results, exhausting the resources of the great powers and convincing many that the economic system itself is to blame. From the ashes of the catastrophe, an intellectual and political struggle ignites between the powers of government and the forces of the marketplace, each determined to reinvent the world's economic order.

Two individuals emerge whose ideas, shaped by very different experiences, will inform this debate and carry it forward. One is a brilliant, unconventional Englishman named John Maynard Keynes. The other is an outspoken émigré from ravaged Austria, Friedrich von Hayek.

But a worldwide depression holds the capitalist nations in its grip. In opposition to both Keynes and Hayek stand not only Hitler's Third Reich but Stalin's Soviet Union, schooled in the communist ideologies of Marx and Lenin and bent on obliterating the capitalist system altogether.

For more than half a century the battle of ideas will rage. From the totalitarian socialist systems to the fascist states, from the independent nations of the developing world to the mixed economies of Europe, and the regulated capitalism of the United States, government planning will gradually take over the commanding heights.

But in the 1970s, with Keynesian theory at its height and communism fully entrenched, economic stagnation sets in on all sides. When a British grocer's daughter and a former Hollywood actor become heads of state, they join forces around the ideas of Hayek, and new political and economic policies begin to transform the world.

Hayek and Friedman begin dating pretty early on...

[Phil]

Trace political liberties along with economic freedom for corporations through the same countries and you see a mixed tale. China, Russia, Argentina, Bolivia, the US is looking more and more like them as we adopt at home what the CIA on behalf of corporate interests has been pressing abroad. When you see how our market is growing in strength and how our political liberties are being diminished, think Pinochet, or Tiananmen Square, or Yeltsin's coup, or Putin's, and ask if we are being set up for a little structural adjustment of our own.

[JJ Commoner]

The shock-doctrine's long-term remedial therapy ?

[Phil]

Yes, The New Deal must be repealed, even if it means throwing the US into bankruptcy with tax cuts then to pay the bills, auctioning off the public parks, the highway system, the military contracts, the human genome, the airwaves, privatizing social security, and sending millions into well-deserved misery, all so that Candy and her Oligarchs may ride high. What makes us so complaisant and so docile? Pleasure and Fear. Wealth Bondage plays to both.

[Gerry]

Given what we know publicly about the destruction of these tapes, is there any rational case against starting an impeachment inquiry? At what point does the Washington bubble burst, and mainstream media start calling for such inquiries? Have the questions a competent press would ask been answered? The roll of the press is the ask the questions so that the public may know when officials cover things up, and the roll of Congress is to provide oversight of the executive and judicial branches.

Aren't any of them embarrassed about their failure?

[Gerry]

In other words, the Emperor has no clothes, and many are saying so, and yet many who claim to be awake and competent to fulfill important rolls necessary for an ordered society, won't even examine the evidence.

They can't all really be so blind? Schmookler talks about it being like a trance, I think he may be right.

[Phil]

More like a business rather than a profession affected with the public trust.