A Reminder “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.”

With all the recent news over the Comcast / Time warner merger, along with much of the crony capitalism that’s been going around the past decade, Bank Bail outs, Companies handing over our data in breach of the 4th, the continued march against free speech, etc.

I felt it was important to mention a little 1976 film called network, that I recently re-watched, its funny that the Concepts we fight today, are the same that we have always been fighting.

In this clip, we have Ned Betty the Character of Arthur Jensen explaining to the main character the way the world really works. As the Main Character Howard Beale had gone off the rails a bit when he found out he was going to be fired due to a corporate merger, that Profit was going to effect free speech and his lively hood.

"You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it! Is that clear? You think you've merely stopped a business deal.

That is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance! You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples.

There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars.

Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today!

And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU... WILL... ATONE! Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon.

Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale.

The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime.

And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that... perfect world... in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangel."

In response the beleaguered reporter Howard goes on air with the following which many maybe familiar with.

I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it.

We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy.

It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone.

I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street.

All I know is that first you've got to get mad. You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, God damn it! My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!' I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!

I just find it so funny that a movie almost 40 years old, is just a relevant today as it was back then, and we have not come further in this fight but have managed to lose ground…

Are we so quick to forget that the tragedy of divide in conquer has been used to profit for some time in America.

In the 70’s, we had massive debt, we had massive unemployment, we relied on oil and the dollar as principle manipulators on the world stage.
All under the same current leadership, Democrat, and Republican.
INSTEAD of progress we have seen decline,
WE still face the same problems from the 70’s and not only are they the same, they have managed to slip even further.

We have NDAA, PRISIM, SPECTRUM, SOPA, PIPA, GITMO, EXTRADONARY RENDITION, and ENHANCHED INTERIGATION.
We have allowed that which makes us different to be used against us, to divide us, to tear us apart.

THE Two parties got us here, they will not get us out.

Laws are passed, Representatives voted for, Presidents ignore the constitution, each diminishing and hurting the people.

Yet no anger.

“I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.”

Needs to be the new mantra of every American who feels this has gone on long enough.

40 years from the above movie, and we are worse.

Yet not enough outcry to change a thing...

reply to post by benrl


Second best speech ever.

The first is our silent comedian Mr. Chaplin himself.

Just glanced at the front page and on it we have,

The coming drone attack on America...rocking the Fourth.
A bit from the article.

People often ask me, in terms of my argument about "ten steps" that mark the descent to a police state or closed society, at what stage we are. I am sorry to say that with the importation of what will be tens of thousands of drones, by both US military and by commercial interests, into US airspace, with a specific mandate to engage in surveillance and with the capacity for weaponization – which is due to begin in earnest at the start of the new year – it means that the police state is now officially here.

Next up on ATS,

White House: No more information about drone killings will be released to public
A bit from the article in that thread

“This is not an open-ended process. This is a specific and unique accommodation in this circumstance. The fact is, when it comes to public disclosure, we have been — not with the kind of attention that’s been given it this week — but we have been publicly discussing these matters at the highest levels of government for the very reason that I’ve given, which is the President understands that these are core issues about how we conduct ourselves in war, how the President of the United States — any President — balances his constitutional obligation to protect America and American citizens, and his obligation to do so in a manner that is lawful under the Constitution and reflects our values.

Never mind, we are skipping over the Constitutionallity of killing a citizen sans trial...

Oh next up we have a personal fav of dictators and secret police every where, the censor...

Goverment Researchers To Be Placed in U.S. Newsrooms.

The FCC has cooked up a plan to place "researchers" in U.S. newsrooms, supposedly to learn all about how editorial decisions are made. Any questions as to why the U.S. is falling in the free press rankings?

As if illegal seizures of Associated Press phone records and the shadowy tailing of the mother of a Fox News reporter weren't menacing enough, the Obama administration is going out of its way to institute a new intrusive surveillance of the press, as if the press wasn't supine enough.
.

So Again, I ask, Where is the outcry?

Its almost as if government monitoring your every move might serve to censor public dissent ...

reply to post by iRoyalty


Another great clip, amazing how accurate Satire can be to cut to the very soul of matter.

We should all be afraid the day Satire aimed at NAZI Germany and Hitler, rings so exceptionally true in the modern situation we find ourselves.

Fourty years ago...

We were proud to be Americans.

Our President still had honor.

Not all of the Congress was bought off buy Corporate America.

You could have a smoke without being molested.

The Dollar still bought you something.

We still had some Pride.

I remember this Flick....It was Phropetic.

reply to post by benrl


I feel they are problems that will not get solved until we reach a tipping point and it may be too late by then... In fact, I worry that it is too late even now.

I really do need to watch that movie, I keep meaning to and I pretty much know all the main speeches in it!

iRoyalty
reply to post by benrl

 

I feel they are problems that will not get solved until we reach a tipping point and it may be too late by then... In fact, I worry that it is too late even now.

I really do need to watch that movie, I keep meaning to and I pretty much know all the main speeches in it!

There seems to be no tipping point, if I didn't know better Id say they where drugging the populace.

reply to post by whyamIhere


Forty years on and only backwards momentum.

And yet people continue to do the same thing over and over again.

Vote their team and nothing else.

It'd be like if foot ball only had two teams and each year they both never made it to the superbowl.

Both failing miserably to deliver on the one thing they are supposed to do.

And than both fan bases, shrug and continue the same charade next season.

I want off this f-ed up marry-go-round.

Just simply awesome. Love the rant from Network.

S&F

reply to post by benrl


the things we are experiencing now in America is a culmination of 100 years of effort by the PTB.

The creation of the federal reserve, the creation of Israel, the widespread use of fractional reserve banking, the creation of the social security system, the exit from gold backed currency, the war on drugs and on and on.

great post benrl

reply to post by iRoyalty


that's the first time iv'e heard that speech,it blew my mind
i'm a 39 year old man that just sat through that video crying
now i could do with a pint lol

reply to post by UxoriousMagnus


I fully believe that it need be no more than the natural sequence of events of a republic, the populace allows the corruption to take over.

No matter how you cut it, the end result is people took advantage of our apathy and ignorance.

Now I am not saying that it is not manufactured Apathy and Ignorance, just that the ultimate responsibility in solving this lies with the people, not the Government.

We must vote smarter,

We must hold our Reps accountable,

WE must be united as Citizens, and not Divide by ____ (fill in what ever niche group you would like)

We allowed this to happen, and so it must be "we the people" who solve it.

We voted these idiot two parties in time and time again, its time to stop the madness and start thinking about what world we want to have our children grow up in.

Right now it looks far too Orwellian for my taste.

darknewt
reply to post by iRoyalty

 

that's the first time iv'e heard that speech,it blew my mind
i'm a 39 year old man that just sat through that video crying

now i could do with a pint lol

edit on 20-2-2014 by darknewt because: didnt put the n in now

Words are more powerful than weapons, it is why the first thing a conquer or dictator does is limit them.

Words can inspire, Its why we see things like Spectrum, Prism, to those who fear the loss of power, Words are more dangerous than an armed populace.

Gandhi shamed and defeated Britain, not with his fist, but with his words.

The very act of government monitoring, is a de-facto form of censorship, the fact it takes place in modern america should send a chill down every free thinking person in this nation.

In the 90's there was outrage when the FBI started monitoring library records, as it could limit free speech from fear.

Yet we stand with every word you and I type, being logged and stored...

reply to post by darknewt


I'm glad me and benrl have given you this gift of words then! Fantastic men and fantasticly written... I guess the videos are OK too

reply to post by benrl


i found it very fitting for the way i kind of look at the world
and how it's run
also didn't mean to sidetrack the thread in any way the video
sidetracked me lol thank you both

whyamIhere
Fourty years ago...

We were proud to be Americans.

Our President still had honor.

Not all of the Congress was bought off buy Corporate America.

You could have a smoke without being molested.

The Dollar still bought you something.

We still had some Pride.

I remember this Flick....It was Phropetic.

Nixon was a President of honor??? You did hear about the little thing called Watergate right? Kennedy was the last good President this country had.

reply to post by buster2010


What people don't seem to understand, is this is a direct result of the high jacking of the reconstruction of the worlds economy after the war.

The goal after the war was for this "inter-connectivity" of world economies, to make a system where war is to costly to be waged, that was the goal, but you see it in the first speech where this "highjacking" has allowed for the new mentality to take place, all that brave new world BS talk, new world socialist order to take care of all.

The road to hell and all that.

It was suposed to give us peace, instead this is what we got.

An Economy and system high jacked by corporate oligarchs to the determent of all.

I think your right, Kennedy was the last to try.

But remember, the mechanisms where in place well before, Kennedy just bumped up against them too often, and we saw how that went.

We were warned what would come from the Military Industrial Complex, we just ignored it.

buster2010
Kennedy was the last good President this country had.

Kennedy was the last TRUE President this country had*

I love these clips.

Ever consider it from the other side? That a bunch of people just got up from their chairs and did what the main stream media wanted them to do with the exact same dialogue?