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tv   Documentary  RT  February 2, 2020 11:30am-12:01pm EST

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to the fall of a that they turned a blind eye to who was fighting against him and so they have in the end said anybody who's against it is better than a lot of double standards but it's also turning a blind eye to these groups who have after all spawned threats to western europe because some of the supporters have carried out radical terrorist attacks in western europe too. well before we go let's quickly recap our breaking news story that's coming from south london the metropolitan police say armed officers have shot dead a man suspected of carrying out a knife attack on stratton high road or thought to say 2 people have been stabbed in the assault there's no watch on that condition at the moment the scene has been secured the london metropolitan police say they're treating incident as terror related when we have more information one of those. that's all from me for today you know neal will be here in 30 minutes so stick around to tide you
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over until then it's our documentary drug them for the american dream. let's talk about 20th century socialism this is when governments made mal investments and then they bailed out those mal investments and so the economy went bankrupt verses 21st century capitalism this is when banks make malinvestment they when they go bad they bail out the malinvestment and that cycle continues until the economy goes bust and that's where our thing.
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there is one organized force which traditionally plenty of fluids but with all its flaws it's been in the forefront of the. efforts to improve the lives of the general population that's we're going to slavery so also a barrier to corporate tyranny so it's the one barrier to this vicious cycle going on which goes lead to corporate tyranny. a major reason for the concentrated on a fanatic attack on unions on organized labor is they are a democratizing force. the proto barrier that defends the workers' rights but also popular it's generally.
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that it interferes with the perogue it is narrower with those who own and manage is so good. i should say that anti union sentiment in the united. to money lead to is so strong. that the fundamental couper of labor rights in the basic principle in the international labor organization is the rate of free association which would mean the right to form unions u.s. has never ratified. but i think the us may be alone among major societies in their respect. it's considered so far out of the spectrum of american politics it literally has never been considered. or that the us has a long very violent labor history as. a society. but the labor movement had been very strong about the 1920 s.
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in a period not unlike today it was virtually crushed robert reich. by the mincer is beginning to reconstruct. franklin delano roosevelt he himself was rather sympathetic to chris if legislation that would be an invention of the general population but he had to somehow get it passed so he informed labor leaders and others forced me to do it. what he meant is you go out and demonstrate we're going to protest develop the labor movement.
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when the packer pressures fission and be able to get through the legislation you know i am not for a were. killed last definition number 11 a i now which many as a freebie blow well being gradually read. and it into the senate probably feel. i prefer that broad definition. so there was a kind of a combination of a sympathetic government and by the mid thirty's very substantial activism. there were industrial actions there were sit down strikes which were very frightening to. ownership. have to recognize a sit down strike is just one step before saying we don't need bush that we can run this by yourselves.
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and business was told to read the business press say in the late thirty's they were talking about to the hazard facing industrialists in the rising political power of the masses which has to be repressed things were on hold during the 2nd world war but immediately after the 2nd world war the business offensive began in force and test partly yack. yack. to restart any quality in labor management relation. to mccarthyism was used for a massive corporate propaganda offensives to attack union. increased sharply during the reagan years and reagan pretty much told the business world if you want to illegally break urbanizing efforts and strikes go ahead they are in violation of the law and if they do not report for work within 48 hours they have forfeited their jobs and will be terminated to continue to the ninety's and of course with
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george w. bush went through the roof and now less than 7 percent of private sector workers have unions. the. effect is that the usual counter force to an offensive or highly class conscious business class is dissolved. if you're in a position of power you want to maintain class consciousness for yourself but a limited everywhere else here back to the 19th century in the early days of the industrial revolution in the united states working people were very conscious of this they in fact overwhelmingly regarded that of wage labor as not very different from slavery for the different only in that it was temporary
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effect of such a popular idea that was a slogan of the republican party. well that was a very sharp class consciousness in the interests of power and privilege it's good to drive those ideas out of people's heads you don't want them to know that they're an oppressed class so this is one of the few societies magicks don't talk about class in fact the national class is very simple who gives the orders who follows and that basically defines class it's more nuanced and complex but that's basically it. the public relations industry the advertising industry which is dedicated to creating consumers it's a phenomenon developed in the freest countries in britain and the united states and
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the reason is pretty clear it became clear by a say a century ago that it was not going to be so easy to control the population by force too much freedom and one. labor going to use in parliamentary labor parties in many countries women started to get the french as and so on she had to have other means of controlling people and it was understood and expressed they have to control them by control of. beliefs and attitudes well one of the best ways to control people in terms of attitudes is what the great political economists they're stunned blind called fabricating consumers. if you can fabricate want to. make obtaining things that are just about within your reach the essence of life they're going to be trapped into becoming
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a consumer's. and you read the business press say 920 s. it talks about the need to direct people to the superficial things of life like fashionable consumption and that will keep them out of our hair. you find this doctrine all through progressive intellectual thought but water lipman the major progress of intellectual of the 20th century. he wrote famous progressive essays on democracy in which his view was exactly that the public must be put in their place so that the responsible men can make decisions without interference from the be willed and heard. there to be spectators not participants then you get a properly functioning democracy straight back to madison on to the polls memory and so on and the advertising industry just exploded. with with this as its
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goal fabricating consumers. and it's done with great sophistication. many whilst down. as one of the last known while very singular. whom are aware of the kind. of the ideal is what you actually see need to did. we're let's see teenage girls they have a free set area afternoon we'll go walking in a shopping mall. the library or somewhere else. the idea is to try to control everyone to turn the whole society into the perfect system. perfect system would be a society based on a diet of pair the pair is you and your television set or maybe now who in the
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internet. in which that presents you with would. the proper life would be with trying to gauge and you spend your time and effort to gaining those things which you don't need you don't want maybe to throw away. but that's the measure of a decent life. what we see is in say advertising on television if you've ever taken an economics course you know that markets are supposed to be based on informed consumers making rational choices well if we had a system like that a market system in a television ad would consist of say general motors putting up information saying here's what we have for sale a samba an ad for a car is an ad for occurs in football hero you know an actress in the car doing some crazy thing like going up a mountain or something the point is to create uninformed consumers who will make
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irrational choices that's what advertising is all about. and when the same institutions p.r. . system runs elections they do it the same way. they want to create an uninformed electorate which will make irrational truisms go often against their own interests and we see it every time one of these extravaganzas take place. right after the election. president obama won an award from the advertising industry for the best marketing campaign and was reported here if you go to the international business press executives were euphoric you know they said we've been selling candidates marketing candidates like you know toothpaste ever since reagan and this is the greatest achievement we have
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i don't usually agree with therapy. but when she mocks the much she calls the hopi changey stuff she's right 1st of all obama didn't really promise anything that's mostly illusion you go back to the campaign rhetoric and take a look at this very little discussion of policy issues and for very good reason because public opinion on policy is sharply disconnected from what the 2 party leadership and their financial backers want. more and more it is focused on the private interests that fund the campaigns. it was a public being marginalized.
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i actually don't think monopolies per se are the problem it's monopolistic access to credit or to politicians and public but with the crony financial ism crony capitalism that's the big problem. though they. deny. it. and they think. it's not. going to. know what i did on the. moon discover what i'm listening to.
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and that's. how does it is a. rough. crowd. to be leading political scientists martin guillen's came out the list study of the relation in public attitudes and that would mostly what he shows is that about 70
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percent of the population has no way of influencing. but they might as well be and some other country. and the population knows. what it's led to is a population that angry frustrated and hate institutions. and it's not acting constructively to try to respond to this. is popular mobilization and activism but in very self destructive direction. taking the form of unfocused bangar attacks on one another and on vulnerable targets that's what happens in cases like this. it is corrosive of social relations but that's the point the point is to make people to hate and fear each other and look at only for themselves and don't do anything for anyone else.
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place you see it strikingly is on april 15th. april 15th is going to measure the day of prayer taxes of how democratic a society is a different league if a society is really democratic april 15th would be a day of celebration it's a day when the population gets together decides to fund the programs and activities that they have formulated agreed upon which could be better than that so they should celebrate it another way it is needed state it's a day of mourning it's a day in which some alien power you know has nothing do with you is coming down to steal your hard earned money and you do everything you can they keep from doing it . and that is a kind of a measure of the extent to which at least in popular consciousness democracy is actually functioning. not her attractive picture.
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be tendencies that we've been describing within american society unless they're reverse it's going to be an extremely ugly society i'm a society that's based on adam smith's final maxim you know all for myself nothing for anyone else. aside in which normal human instincts an emotion of sympathy so they're e.b. to a sport in which they're kind of like driven out. that society so ugly i don't even know who'd want to live in it i wouldn't want my children to.
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get the society is based on. controlled by private wealth it will reflect the values that in fact does reflect. a value that is green and the desire to maximize personal gain at the expense of others and any society has made a small society based on that principle is ugly but it can survive a global society based on that principle is headed for massive destruction. and i don't think we're smart enough to design in any detail what a perfectly just and free society would be like i think we can give some guidelines and more significant we can ask how we can progress in that direction. john dewey the leading social philosopher in the late 20th century he argued that
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until all institutions production commerce. media unless they're all under participatory democratic control we will not have a functioning democratic society. as he put it policy will be the shadow cast by business over a society. that's centrally true. where there are structures of authority domination and hire somebody gives the orders somebody takes them as they are not self-justifying who they have to justify themselves and their burden to prove to me.
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will if you take a close look usually find they can't justify themselves. if they can't we're going to be dismantling. trying to expand the domain of freedom and justice but dismantling that form of illegitimate authority and in fact progress over the years we'll thankfully recognize as progress has been just that the way things change is because lots of people are working all the time and you know they're working in their communities in their workplace or wherever they happen to be and they're building up the basis for popular movements which are going to make changes and that's the way everything has ever happened in history. takes a freedom of speech. one of the real achievements of american society it's 1st world in that it's not the bill of rights it's time that the constitution and freedom of speech issues began to come to the supreme court in the early 20th century. the major contributions came in the 1960 s.
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one of the leading ones was a case involving the civil rights movement well but then you had a mass popular movement which was demanding rights. refusing to back down and in that context the supreme court did establish a pretty high standard freedom of speech or it takes a women's right women also began identifying oppressive structures refusing to accept them or he go their people to join with them well that's her right to return . to true to the extent of also spent a lot of my life in activism some of that doesn't show up publicly but no question i'm terribly good at it and not the greatest organizer i think that we can see quite clearly some very very serious defects was an error that error. which you're going to have to be corrected by operating out of. it is commonly accepted i
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think we're going to have to find new ways. but the activists are people who have created the rights that we enjoy. in the army carrying out cosies based on information that they're receiving but also contributing to the understanding remembers or separate process. that you have agreed to try to do things you learn you learn but with the world it's like that feeds back to the understanding of how to go on. and there's huge opportunities it is a very free society still the freest world. government is very limited capacity to coerce corporate business may try to coerce but there are mechanisms. so there's a lot can be done if people organise struggle for the right susan have done it best and you can win many victories. i am.
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a. close friend for many years later cowards in. to put it in his words that what matters is the countless small deeds of unknown people who lay the basis for the significant events that enter history. there's a ones who have done things in the past the angelus do it future. the
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eggs. are greener. the seats in. the the. cooler grigs. cool rugs the exit.
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door with.
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her. in. the room. we have. very.
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presidential candidates the future of the u.s. and the world. every week. money. both of us. leak.
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a piece triggers violence donald trump's accused of taking song in the middle east palestinian authorities cut ties with washington and israel protests in the west bank also ahead. of. the u.k. set sail from the e.u. all the post breaks it voyage but after 47 years of cooperation there are fears of economic storms on mutiny in scotland more than our. fears grow globally over the virus outbreak there's a report in spike in the nation against chinese people.

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