You are hereBlogs / BillyClub's blog / Book Talk with David Swanson
Book Talk with David Swanson
On Wednesday evening, November 23, 2011, author David Swanson read from and discussed his latest tome: "When the World Outlawed War." The event was held at Busboys & Poets in Washington, D.C. (42 minutes, 44 seconds).
- BillyClub's blog
- Login to post comments
-
- Email this page
- Printer-friendly version
where's the Q&A? The video clip ends after David finishes his talk and Q&A just begins, but only at the very end of the clip. David's talk or presentation is very good, but why cut off the Q&A? I prefer that it be included.
War on Iran? Completely criminal.
Background noise :
There seems to be a crowd speaking in the far background in this recording, as if people in the far back are talking, a lot, and this seems strange to me; expecting everyone present to listen to David. Maybe the bg noise that I hear isn't people speaking though. I'm not sure what the noise is. It seems like people talking though. Talking a little is one thing and understandable, but I'm hearing a steady stream of this; f.e., around 27-28 minutes into this video.
Directions :
We're definitely moving in a dangerous direction and this has been evident for many years, already. As US citizen, from birth and childhood, up to age 16, then leaving the country to try to gain some sanity and education, etc., returning in 1994, it was clear to me by 1997 or so that the US was heading in the wrong direction. Today, the situation is very bad. In the 1990s, I didn't know exactly what'ld happen, but knew the country was not on a good path and that worse was ahead for the economy.
Heck, even my father, who had only an 8th grade education, said it many times in the 1960s; having recognized that the way the economy operated wasn't healthy. Many American workers were hardly ever satisfied for long when winning strike negotiations. He worked for the Medfield State Hospital of Mass. for 25 years at very lowball wages, but wanted steady income even if it was lowball. It was quasi-slave wages, and Massachusettans apparently loved treating their state employees this way; never satifisfied for trying to make themselves richer while causing inflation for everyone, and always satisfied that state employees were paid poverty wages. It definitely is symptomatic of a sick society and economy, and we didn't need high educational achievement to be able to realize this.
Oh, the country's been on a path of misdirection in practically every respect possible for a very long time. And I worked as an IT or computer professional when having returned for actually 5 years in the 1990s, unaware of the H-1B racket. I quickly learned about that racket going on nationwide and which many non-IT Americans hardly knew anything about, but supported whenever they'ld hear or read any American IT workers complain about this by saying it was due to racism, which wasn't the case. The problem wasn't about racism. It was economic racket. And few Americans besides ourselves opposed this racket scheme. Most fellow Americans were against us and the unjustifiably imported workers used to replace us so that recruiting firms could piggishly work on getting rich quick while causing some of us eventual and total bankruptcy.
Of course I was able to see that the country was misdirected, economically. And the war on Kosovo made it all the more undeniable that the country was being misdirected, criminally, racketeeringly, etc.
Humility vs capitalism :
Several years ago, maybe even a decade ago, a black American was recruited to play for some NBA team. He was a star player. They offered him a 6-yr contract for $96m, so $16m per year. He refused it, this amount, that is, saying he had absolutely no need of such extreme amounts of money. They told him that he better accept, or else he'ld be guaranteed to never be able to play in the NBA again. I don't know what happened after that point, but believe that he must've accepted the money and then probably helped organizations for the poor, f.e. Whatever he chose to do, we can clearly see that this was like gangsterism; not what he did, but what the "bosses" did. The guy wasn't allowed to accept less than offered and, therefore, wasn't allowed to live according to his conscience.
High-paying serfdom of a guy who doesn't want to do this, but is left with two options: Obey and be rich, or be poor.
Welcome to the sick/misdirected USA.
Closing:
Excellent talk, David! I certainly can't criticize anything you said. Trying to find something to disagree with in anything I've heard and read you say, over years, is like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
Does anyone have a large magnet, by any chance? Hopefully, these impossible-to-find needles contain iron, anyway. :)
Oh, well, good luck trying to find any of these needles.
If any readers of my prior post are unaware of this racket initiated, legislatively, that is, by Bush Sr, and triply worsened by Clinton, while recruiting firms and AILA, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, tried to pressure him to totally remove the cap on the number of H-1B visas or permits that could be allowed per year, all while the cap was never respected anyway, around 15,000 to 20,000 more per year being granted than were legally supposed to be allowed, then just search the Web for articles by and about "Norman Matloff" and "H-1B", using those for search terms. He's a Dr. of computer science and professor at UCDavis.edu, where he has important articles about this racket; but, he's also written about at other websites and gave some interviews on this topic.
Afaik, he's the very best spokesperson we've had for contesting this racket scheme of Washington, recruiting firms, AILA, and globalist corporations, such as MS, Lucent and AT&T, Intel, and many others.
Many "lefties" wouldn't like what I say about this racket, even the mere fact of calling it a racket, but the sad truth is that that is what the H-1B program mostly is. It's racket and piracy. Like Prof. Matloff argued from the start, beginning before the program was put into legislation, we could justify around 15,000 H-1Bs per year, but only for jobs requiring that the hired persons have either a master's degree or PhD, only. We had plenty of people available for all other jobs in IT, and both Dr Matloff and either the US Dept of Commerce or the Dept of Labor both said that we had around 152,000 new graduates every year in either computer science, or relevant fields of study, which'ld surely be like maths, physics, business, and, I suppose, some others. Whichever of the two government departments lashed out against the creation of this program spoke out, the department totally opposed this. Prof. Matloff differed only in saying that there was indeed a shortage of IT professionals possessing a master's degree or PhD.
He had a more complete understanding of what the USA lacked and didn't lack, for filling IT jobs.
There are other sources of information about this, but some of these sources contain comments from affected Americans who treated the situation, a crisis for IT pros of US citizenship and full resident status, so immigrants, I guess; well, many treated this as a racial problem. That's something that'ld turn away many people, understandably so, and the H-1B program isn't about racism at all. It's about exploitation. Even as recently as 2003 or so, Paul Craig Roberts wrote some articles that included this topic and offshoring of jobs; possibly also phantom GDP, if that's the phrase that he used. If it wasn't the phrase, then it nevertheless was about GDP being miscalculated, or certainly misrepresented, misreported.
Anyway, one of his pieces said that there were some websites of recruiting firms for IT job-placement posting, in their publicly accessible websites, that if a person was an H-1B or was Canadian or a Canadian resident, then their applications were welcome; while adding that if we were US citizens, then we needn't bother applying. Why? Well, they'ld trash or shred our applications, for employment in our own country. It was illegal for them to do that, yet they did it anyway; and they surely got away with it. After all, Washington hardly ever does anything that's properly directed.
It was illegal to employ imported foreign temp. workers in place of US citizens and non-citizen residents when there was enough available for filling the jobs, and there were always enough. But many demanded high billing rates and the job-placement recruiters wanted to "get rich quick", as fast and as much as they could; real McCoy racketeers! Treachorous parasites of the USA.
AILA lawyers profited, "handsomly". An example is from the story of an H-1B who was, I believe, from India. The majority of H-1Bs were from India. He wanted to sue for retroactive compensation and used a lawyer for this. It was an easy matter for winning the compensation, and the H-1B got $40,000, while the lawyer, who had hardly any serious work to do for this, got $170,000. Easy as baking pie; just taking a little more time.
It was surely something a person could undertake alone, only needing to know what was needed for proof in court, and then work on obtaining this proof. The worker already had half of the proof in hand, from his/her payroll records, so the person would only need to have the state and federal income tax offices provide an official letter stating what the average income was for people with similar employment, experience (number of years), and education. That basically is all that's needed. But, there was a case of five H-1Bs in Massachusetts filing for retroactive compensation. They didn't have to do anything, because the government of Mass. said it'ld take care of this for them and then did.
US citizens and non-citizen residents who were unequitably treated, lowballed, could also sue, but we have to first know that such laws are in place, first. I didn't know until well after the statute of limitations was expired. I remain owed plenty of chucks, each weighing $10,000, and can never collect, due to the statute of limitations. We have to file I think within 6 months after the inequitable employment ends, though some states might possibly allow up to a year. That's the maximum we'll find though and I don't know of any states that allow more than 6 months.
If I rob you of $40,000, then should you be prohibited from being able to successfully sue me, or to even just try to sue me, because the theft happened more than 6 months ago? I don't think you'ld want to agree that it's now my money and that you're to be deprived of being duly compensated for the damage caused.
If it wasn't for the statute, then, in theory, Bank of Boston, which has been bought by Fidelity and then BoA, owes me minimally $30,000, anywhere between $30,000 and $40,000, and a recruiting firm in Florida, though I don't think that that's where the firm's HQs are located, would owe me $25 per hour for 7 months work, 40 hours per week. Shoot, I could start a food crop farm with all of that retroactive compensation, or could use it to pay for doing another bach. degree in IT without incurring any debt. But Mr Statute of Limitations dictates that I'm to remain robbed.
Misdirections? The government is misdirected in myriad ways. It'ld be quicker to count the number of ways in which the government isn't misdirected, because it'ld be a very, very low count.
Anyway, I'm not among the goofball US IT pros who ever thought that the H-1B program was about racism. It's racketeering, not racism.
And I thought there was a law prohibiting racketeering. Shows how little I know about the country.