A rounded view of the whole

It's been a little while but I have many good excuses. I married the most beautiful women in the world in July and we are now in the process of buying our first home. I'm deep into my novel and softball is just entering playoffs, but alas, the world still sucks and the system of global-political capitalism has only grown more corrupt.

On August 12th, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that 2/3 of U.S. corporations from 1998 to 2005 paid no federal income taxes, despite recording over $2.5 trillion in sales during that time. I also read recently in Playboy that in 1990 72% of large U.S. corporations were audited by the IRS, while in 2007 only 26% of the same class of corporations received a similar treatment. Fannie Mae reported a $2.1 billion loss in 2007 yet CEO Daniel Mudd earned over $13 million in compensation, including roughly $10 million in company stock and option grants. And our government is in a record deficit fighting imperialistic wars driven by a number of lie ridden propagandized hoaxes while our economy continues to falter, while those who have administered this chaotic reality continue to go unpunished. This is class warfare people not international politics or wars of terror, and we are all players in their game, they being predator capitalists.

So what? Why bring this up? Why hem and haw over something the divided masses have no control over? (divided by the individuality and competition this predatory capitalism has brought about). And not that I'm against individuality, the opposite couldn't be truer, it's the self important individuality this twisted system of predatory capitalism has produced, or better said, has allowed the wealthy to facilitate in order to produce a dependent stream of consumers. And while many conceive individuality and freedom within this system, the opposite is in fact true. The free are the ones who do not have to labor for a living, who pay others to labor for them, who possess the fortune to be independently wealthy. Those are the free; the ones who can drive a company into the ground and earn absurd amounts of compensation all the while. Freedom isn't working to pay off material debt, that's indebtedness.

Let me continue further. predatory capitalism exists in the the very real world of the Playstation 2 (PS2). Coltan is a metallic ore used in a myriad of modern technological applications, most notably in the PS2. After processing, coltan is turned in a powder called tantalum which the PS2 uses in it's design. It uses so much of it that with the release of the Playstation 2, world prices of tantalum surged from $49/pound to $275/pound, leaving a wake of untold blood in it's path. You see, colton is plentiful in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where capitalism is completely unregulated. Children work in unsafe conditions amounting equivocally to slave labor, who, were they on a different continent a bit further westward, would be looked upon completely differently. In the words of Ex-British Parliament Member Oona King, "Kids in Congo were being sent down mines to die so that kids in Europe and America could kill imaginary aliens in their living rooms." And while Sony now claims that all their current Playstation components are built with Conga free coltan there is simply no way to assure this. Like any other material good there is a black market, and an ore demanding those types of returns will find a way into the marketplace. Colton has actually been named in a United Nations report, cited for inciting the Second Conga War, the world's greatest war since World War II, resulting in roughly 5 1/2 million deaths, which began in 1998. Sony released the PS2 in 1999. And it's not that simple to blame the Conganese.

Colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, it's all the same thing; the use of force/wealth to accrue more wealth which buys greater force. European and French colonialism completely destabilized this region of the world, creating dependence upon a system there was never a need for, while exploiting not only natural resources but human resources as well. How much wealth driving our country today from the confederate south was earned off the blood of this very slave trade years ago? People this is the reality of capitalism and as long as we continue to allow the super elite to accumulated disproportionate fortunes, this cycle of servitude will not only continue unfettered but lead to far greater crimes against humanity. This isn't about preaching doom and gloom, it's about calling awareness to what has become of the global economy and the connection that the American lifestyle has in preserving this unsustainable cycle. There is a connection between the Enron's of the world and the Haliburton's. There is a connection between excessive CEO payoffs and the wars of the Conganese. There is a connection between the IRS laxing on the elite and two-thirds of U.S. corporations avoiding taxation. Though the wealthy won't let it be heard. Why should they? It's they who own the media.