Porn Owns You: Problems with Online Pornography
By Robert Jensen

(Remarks to the 2010 “Heroes and Healthy Families Conference,” New Bern , NC .]

Mention “problems with online pornography” and many men will agree that it's frustrating when porn videos take a long time to load on the computer.

So, I assume that many of you are asking, “What's the problem with pornography?” After all, it's just sex, and people have been having sex for a long time. It's just a movie, and you don't need to take it so seriously. Nobody forces the women to make porn, and they're getting paid. And besides, I have right to look at what I want to look at. I mean, it's not like porn causes rape.

What's the big deal? 

My task in the next half hour is to explain that porn is a big deal and that we should be concerned about men's use of pornography.

America's Brutal Culture Of Unseen Oppression

By Robert Chesshyre

Travelling in Costa Rica, I met an ex-pat, all-American American - a craggy, Lee Marvin lookalike, with a black Stetson, cowboy boots and a wide leather belt sporting a death's- head buckle. My immediate reaction was that here was the archetypal red neck, who had probably left the United States to live in central America because he found the US soft on "commies" and wanted a home where a man could be a "man".

We fell into conversation, and I asked why he had left home. To my surprise, he cited American penal policy. He didn't feel comfortable and couldn't sleep nights in a country that locked up so many of its citizens; kept thousands (mainly poor and black) incarcerated for years on death rows; and had mandatory "life means life" sentences handed down to impoverished inner city young men who fell foul of the law three times.

The Self-Attribution Fallacy

Intelligence? Talent? No, the ultra-rich got to where they are through luck and brutality.

If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire. The claims that the ultra-rich 1% make for themselves – that they are possessed of unique intelligence or creativity or drive – are examples of the self-attribution fallacy. This means crediting yourself with outcomes for which you weren’t responsible. Many of those who are rich today got there because they were able to capture certain jobs. This capture owes less to talent and intelligence than to a combination of the ruthless exploitation of others and accidents of birth, as such jobs are taken disproportionately by people born in certain places and into certain classes.

The Yes Men

General Electric likes their tax rate low, according to CEO Jeffrey Immelt. Very low. Despite $5 billion in profit last year the company paid no income tax and received a $3.2 billion tax benefit, according to The New York Times. Which is less than low: It's taxpayer funded, again.

Then Immelt was tapped to be an outside economic adviser to the Obama administration, which has been decrying low tax rates for companies and the rich.

Very embarrassing.

So last week, when USA Today reported the company will give back the tax benefit due to public outcry, it seemed credible. The paper wrote: "Facing criticism over the amount of taxes it pays, General Electric announced it will repay its entire $3.2 billion tax refund to the U.S. Treasury on April 18.... The company earned $11 billion in 2010 on revenue of $150 billion. The company, based in Fairfield, Connecticut, plans to phase out the tax havens over five years and said it will create one job in the US for each new job it creates overseas."

Only it wasn't GE that said it was giving the money back, phasing out tax havens and recommitting to creating jobs in the U.S. No, a real GE spokesperson came out and announced that that was ridiculous nonsense -- a hoax. Nor was GE going to "adopt a host of new policies that secure its position as a leader in corporate social responsibility" or give its $3.2 billion tax benefit back to the Treasury. "GE did not receive a refund," said spokeswoman Deirdre Latour.

Goldman Sachs Rules the World (Again)

"The governments don't rule the world, Goldman Sachs rules the world." investment banker and trader Alessio Rastani warned, and the EEC is poised to crash. "Anyone believing anything else is foolish".

"This is not a time right now for wishful thinking that governments are going to sort things out," Rastani said in a recent interview with BBC "The governments don't rule the world, Goldman Sachs rules the world."

The statement came towards the end of an almost three and a half minute interview in which Rastani warned viewers to "get prepared" for the inevitable: "The savings of millions of people are going to vanish" in less than a year, he said.

Who is Supporting the Rich - Not the Rich!

The Massive Rewards for Corporate Tax Dodging Posted on August 31, 2011 in Inequality news Corporations don’t dodge taxes. People do. The people who run corporations. And these people — America’s CEOs — are reaping awesomely lavish rewards for the tax dodging they have their corporations do. The latest annual executive compensation report from the Institute for Policy Studies, released today, tells an old story — with a stunning new twist. The old story: The pay gap between what CEOs and workers in the United States take home continues to widen. Last year, S&P 500 CEOs walked off with 325 times more pay than average American workers, up considerably from the 263-times gap in 2009. The new twist: Many of America’s major corporations are now actually paying their CEOs more in compensation than they pay in federal taxes. “Ample evidence suggests,” notes the new IPS report, Executive Excess 2011, “that CEOs and their corporations are expending considerably more energy on avoiding taxes than perhaps ever before — at a time when the federal government desperately needs more revenue to maintain basic services for the American people.” Among the report’s other key findings: Of last year’s 100 top-paid corporate CEO, 25 took home more in pay than their company paid in 2010 federal income taxes. • Of last year’s 100 highest-paid corporate chief executives in the United States, 25 took home more in CEO pay than their company paid in 2010 federal income taxes. • These 25 CEOs averaged $16.7 million, well above last year’s $10.8 million average for S&P 500 CEOs. • The 25 firms that paid their CEOs more than Uncle Sam last year reported average global profits of $1.9 billion. Only one of the firms reported negative global returns. Eighteen of the 25 firms last year operated subsidiaries in offshore tax haven jurisdictions. The firms, all combined, had 556 tax haven subsidiaries. • The most profitable of the 25 firms: General Electric. GE last year ranked 14th among U.S. firms in global profitability. GE received a $3.3 billion tax refund, despite reporting a whopping $5.1 billion in U.S. pre-tax income. • Of the 25 companies that paid their CEO more than Uncle Sam, 20 also spent more on lobbying lawmakers than they paid in corporate taxes. Eighteen gave more to the political campaigns of their favorite candidates than they paid to the IRS in taxes.

Raising Consciousness

There is a clear indication on the planet that the world is on a perilous collision course -- from ozone depletion to climate change, rainforest destruction, and environmental pollution. The global ecological crisis is compounded by the recent devastating social, economic, and spiritual challenges, which prove equally daunting.

But it seems there is a countervailing set of indicators that shows that we humans may be waking up to our predicament, we are beginning to consciously organize ourselves to respond to the challenges we are facing.