The reality is much worse

Page 66 of Powers and Prospects (Reflections on Human Nature and thhe Social Order) by Noam Chomsky:
Not only are properly educated people immune from the bare factsm but they have even succeeded in shifting the responsibility to the victims. Vietnam was the guilty party according to the standard version, though admittedly , there is a [...]

Posted at 2pm on 7/11/08 | no comments; | Filed Under: Uncategorized | read on

Nation-State

Personally, I no longer assume to fully comprehend nationalism. After all, the world is round.
Having said that, a lot of people feel the need to identify themselves with something familiar. This could literally be family. It may as well be a group of people who resemble the individual by some other means. Language (including particular [...]


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27. On “Intellectual Property” rights and pharmaceutical prices, see for example,
“Intellectual property . . . is theft,” Economist (London), January 22, 1994, p. 72. An
excerpt:
“Process” patents are still the rule in many developing countries — particularly when
they relate to life-saving medicines in the developing world. In Brazil and Argentina
drugs which are deemed life-sustaining cannot be patented at all. . . . If drug firms
enjoy monopoly rights through the patent system, pharmaceutical prices are likely to
go up — so much so, say opponents, that local people will be denied the treatment
they need. Critics in India, which imposes strict controls on the price of drugs, point
to the experience of Pakistan, where products are granted patents and prices are up
to ten times higher.
See also, Linda Diebel, “How U.S. drug lobby put new patent law atop Canada’s
agenda,” Toronto Star, December 6, 1992, p. A1

Today we are glad if we’re beginning to reach some of the milleniumgoals for 2015, and that’s not even framed in it’s context on mass media. How difficult can this be to explain to people? If you don’t do this. They will all migrate North. Everybody, everywhere. The use of force will have to be administered to those born in poorer regions. Well, the region is rich, it carries grand natural resources, but the people are poor. The majority that is, not important if you have a strong, authoritarian hand, who will crush any resistance. The West has often been very proficient at expediating that sort of people to rise and even stay in power. I’m not talking about the national or the regional media or policy making elites accountable to formal democratic institutions. I’m talking about private intrests, who -by law- are required to make profit. In Belgium, this would be the vennootschap as supposed to the vereniging, the latter is designed to unionise (though profit remains a very good way of securing long term stability, but it’s not a goal).

I’ll stick with the english use of the term. cor·po·ra·tion       (kôr’pə-rā’shən)  Pronunciation Key
n.  

  1. A body that is granted a charter recognizing it as a separate legal entity having its own rights, privileges, and liabilities distinct from those of its members.
  2. Such a body created for purposes of government. Also called body corporate.
  3. A group of people combined into or acting as one body.

This group of people has more rights today if it has enough money (and contacts, in say, China). But Humang Beings, are at best defined as consumers and citizens. Comrades in the second world, where Bolshevism rampaged the agrarian scene and hurried it into the industrial revolution. Now, past the Second World War, we realise we have enough to destroy the world several times over. So the international polemy may no longer work. It’ll have to be the city or the corporation to retake this power vacuum and turn it into something everybody wants: Jobs! WE LOVE OUR JOBS! THEY ARE ALL GREAT!

The lesson becomes: Lower your standards, or else we will wagelabor cheaper tools in our machines of production. The Manufacturer by definition gets nothing but a “steady” rate of monetary funds with which to fullfill his dreams and creativity.

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