This Top 10 list is about the movies that I find to be guilty pleasures. The type of movies that aren't that good but I still find myself watching.
Sunday, April 4, 2021
Friday, April 2, 2021
No, Actually, This Is What a Fascist Looks Like
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| https://truthout.org/articles/no-actually-this-is-what-a-fascist-looks-like/ |
Whole Foods CEO, John Mackey, doesn’t know what a fascist is.
Speaking with NPR this week, multimillionaire Mackey tried to express how much he hates Obamacare. Back in 2009, he hated Obamacare so much that he called it “socialism.” But now, in 2013, Mackey thinks Obamacare is “fascism.”
“Technically speaking, [Obamacare] is more like fascism,” he said. “Socialism is where the government owns the means of production. In fascism, the government doesn’t own the means of production, but they do control it, and that’s what’s happening with our healthcare programs and these reforms.”
Mackey has since walked back this description saying he “regrets using that word now” because there’s “so much baggage attached to it.”
But, whether Mackey meant to or not, it’s about time someone injected the word fascism back into our political debate. Especially now that corporations wield more power today than they have in America since the Robber Baron Era.
First, let’s take on Mackey’s definitions of socialism and fascism, which he likely procured from the Google machine after typing in, “What are the differences between socialism and fascism?”
Yes, socialism encourages more democratic control of the economy. Or, if Mackey insists, more government ownership of the economy – in particular, ownership of the commons and natural resources.
Fascism, on the other hand, is something completely different. Reporter Sy Mukherjee, who blogged about this story over at ThinkProgress.org notes, “Although fascist nations do often control their ‘means of production,’ Mackey seems to have forgotten that they usually utilize warfare, forced mass mobilization of the public, and politically-motivated violence against their own peoples to achieve their ends.”
The 1983 American Heritage Dictionary defined fascism as: “A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism.”
Fascism originated in Italy, and Mussolini claims to have invented the word itself. It was actually his ghostwriter, Giovanni Gentile, who invented it and defined it in the Encyclopedia Italiana in this way: “Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”
In other words, fascism is corporate government – a Libertarian’s wet dream. It’s a government in which the Atlas’s of industry are given free rein to control the economy, just how they’re regulated, how much they pay in taxes, how much they pay their workers. It should be noted here that, ironically, John Mackey describes himself as a Libertarian.
In 1938, Mussolini finally got his chance to bring fascism to fruition. He dissolved Parliament and replaced it with the “Camera dei Fasci e delle Corporazioni” – the Chamber of the Fascist Corporations. Members of the Chamber were not selected to represent particular regional constituencies, but instead to represent various aspects of Italian industry and trade. They were the corporate leaders of Italy.
Imagine if the House of Representatives was dissolved and replaced by a Council of America’s most powerful CEOs – the Kochs, the Waltons, the Blankfeins, the Dimons, the Mackeys, you get the picture.
Actually, that’s not too difficult to imagine, huh? But, that’d be similar to what Mussolini defined as fascism.
As we know, fascism was eventually defeated in World War 2. But just before the end of the war, with the fascists on the ropes, the Vice President of the United States at the time, Henry Wallace, penned an op-ed for the New York Times warning Americans about the creeping dangers of fascism – or corporate government.
He defined a fascist as, “those who, paying lip service to democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion.”
Under that definition we can throw those CEOs who’ve decided to evade Obamacare’s mandate to provide health insurance to their employees, like New York City Applebee’s franchise owner Zane Terkel, Papa John’s CEO John Schnatter, and executives at Darden Restaurants.
Or, perhaps, Wallace is referring to the banksters at Goldman Sachs who knowingly evaded laws and sold investors “shitty deals” or scammed entire cities into bankruptcy or illegally foreclosed on thousands of Americans through fraudulently robo-signing all in the name of short term profits and all in the name of preserving their monopolistic, too-big-to-fail status.
Either way, evading laws meant to protect the public in order to pad your own pockets has become the name of the game in Corporate America today.
Wallace goes on to write, “The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact. Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism.”
Can anyone say Fox News, or the rest of the Conservative media complex? Or, those on the Right who divide working people and turn them against each other: makers versus takes, public sector workers versus private sector workers, and white people versus brown people.
“They use every opportunity to impugn democracy,” wrote Wallace. Does that sound familiar after months of Republican efforts to disenfranchise large swaths of the electorate with voter suppression ID laws, as well as restrictions on early voting and voter registration in largely Democratic areas?
Or what about what Republicans in Pennsylvania are doing right now to rig the next Presidential election by changing how Electoral votes are counted in the state?
Wallace continues, “They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.”
We often hear of free enterprise from the likes of Wall Street, Big Oil, and the defense industry. Yet these are the same corporations that also lobby to keep generous taxpayer subsidies, bailouts, and no-bid contracts in place that allow them to reign supreme over the markets and crush their smaller, more independent competition.
And the common man suffers as a result. Wages as a percentage of GDP are lower than they’ve ever been. Unionization rates are lower than they’ve ever been in more than a half-century. And yet, corporate profits as a percent of GDP are higher than they’ve ever been in American history.
At the time Wallace was writing this op-ed, he was confident that the fascists had been adequately held in check in America by the Roosevelt Administration. As he wrote, “Happily, it can be said that as yet fascism has not captured a predominant place in the outlook of any American section, class or religion.”
But, he went on to warn that in the future, “[Fascism] may be encountered in Wall Street, Main Street or Tobacco Road. Some even suspect that they can detect incipient traces of it along the Potomac.”
Sure enough, the bastions of fascism can be found on Wall Street. Main Street, which used to be lined with local independent businesses, is now lined with predatory, transnational giants. And along the Potomac, we find politicians who are more than happy to do the bidding of their corporate overlords.
Today in America, we are dangerously close to seeing Wallace’s fascistic, dystopic America come into fruition. We see the traces of it everywhere.
Unfortunately, too many Americans just didn’t have a word to define what’s happening. But, thanks to John Mackey, and thanks to the foresight of Vice President Henry Wallace, we do have the right word now: Fascism.
Conversations with History: Norman Cousins
In this 1984, distinguished writer and editor Norman Cousins joins Conversations host Harry Kreisler for a discussion of the dangers of the nuclear arms race and his role in mediating communications between Kennedy and Khruschev at the height of the Cold War.
Wednesday, March 31, 2021
Monday, March 29, 2021
Final Fantasy VII Review | TheXboxHub
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| https://www.thexboxhub.com/final-fantasy-vii-review/ |
Much like that Sex Pistols gig that every man and his dog has claimed to be at during some point or other, it is likely that every man and his dog claims to have played Final Fantasy VII. The reality being though that they’ve just seen that bit involving Aeris/Aerith and Sephiroth in ‘X Most Shocking Videogame Moments’ and reckon that’s the whole plot right there.
Well, I am here to tell you it isn’t, and if you are basing your opinion or experience of this JRPG classic on that one moment then stop what you are doing right now and pick up this classic. The version on the Xbox One may not be the best but it is easily the most accessible, and probably the cheapest way to play too.
Final Fantasy VII for the Xbox One is the re-release of the 1997 JRPG classic that first released on the original PlayStation. It has a few new features – and the odd frustrating bug – but this is largely the same game, just now available on Xbox for the very first time.
Despite Final Fantasy VII being perhaps the seminal JRPG, its gameplay is rooted in tradition. Random battles occur frequently, and levelling up is fairly standard – done by gaining EXP. Even the battle system is the same run-of-the-mill Active Time Battle (ATB) that has been in the Final Fantasy series since its infancy. But it isn’t just the gameplay that has had players coming back to the game time and time again, even 20+ years since its release.
VII starts with you controlling Cloud – a former Shinra SOLDIER and now helping eco-terrorist organisation AVALANCHE – as he heads towards a Mako reactor to destroy it. Shinra are the overpowering conglomerate who are depleting the world of its very lifestream using these reactors. AVALANCHE see this as a problem, and task themselves with destroying them one by one.
During the destruction of the second reactor, Cloud falls from the top of Midgar and meets Aeris/Aerith – the name is dependant on which location you are playing – who Shinra believe holds the key to unlocking the ‘Promised Land’, where even more lifestream is available to be gathered.
Of course, being a Final Fantasy game there needs to be a story for the 25+ hours it will take to complete the game, and for VII this is no exception. The basic plot outlined above merely covers the first few hours, whereafter there are many twists and turns involving iconic characters such as Barrett, Vincent Valentine and – of course – the legendary antagonist, Sephiroth.
Sephiroth epitomises Final Fantasy baddies. In fact, most fans can’t say his name without thinking of his musical theme – One-Winged Angel – but playing through this again it has perhaps only occurred to me now why he is so well ingrained in Final Fantasy folklore.
Off the top of my head, only perhaps Sephiroth, Kefka from Final Fantasy VI and Sin (without giving away spoilers) from Final Fantasy X are mentioned throughout their respective games. Some Final Fantasy games have a habit of only revealing the game’s primary antagonist in the latter part of proceedings – Senator Dysley from Final Fantasy XIII for example. But with VII we are introduced to Sephiroth almost straight away: we do not know his intentions from the very beginning of the game, only that he too was a SOLDIER and Cloud even fought alongside him years prior to the game itself.
This foreshadowing helps make Sephiroth stand out as one of the greatest antagonists in all of gaming.
In terms of new features included in Final Fantasy VII and the character sprites have been touched up in HD, which really helps them stand out against the pre-rendered backgrounds. These have not had any graphical update to them, but they are a lot clearer than the ones available in the Final Fantasy IX port and as such still look pretty good.
There are also a few cheats accessible by pushing in the thumbsticks. Clicking in the left one speeds the game up three times as fast, whilst the right one enables ‘God mode’ where health and MP are constantly replenished and Limit Gauges – which triggers a character’s special attack – are full at all times. Clicking both in will completely disable random encounters, and it is this which will allow you to enjoy the story of Final Fantasy VII without any distractions. Of course, this is completely optional.
As with any Final Fantasy, the soundtrack is phenomenal. Composer Nobuo Uematsu has created a timeless soundtrack – some of which, including Aerith’s Theme and One-Winged Angel, rightly sit in Classic FM’s Hall of Fame – with some instantly recognisable pieces of music. Many would argue that Final Fantasy VII is the pinnacle of Uematsu-san’s work, and when playing through again it is difficult to argue otherwise.
However, the annoying bug featured in Final Fantasy IX – where the music restarts from the beginning after every encounter – makes an unwelcome return here. It is not so much an issue during the early hours of the game but is a major inconvenience when you first step on the world map: the Main Theme of Final Fantasy VII is a gorgeous 6-minute epic that as a result will only be heard if you don’t move around the map.
Final Fantasy VII comes with 31 achievements to unlock and compared with some of the other recent Final Fantasy releases, this list is a lot easier to obtain. Only four achievements on the list are missable, with the rest all able to be unlocked through playing the game. Some – such as the ones for defeating the Diamond, Emerald and Ruby weapons – will require a lot of grinding as you will need to have a party strong enough to defeat them. But if that isn’t your cup of tea, you will be pleased to know that the cheats do not disable the achievements.
Everyone with even a passing interest in gaming knows that Final Fantasy VII is simply one of the greatest games of all time. And for the most part, this port stands the test of time, perhaps better than that of Final Fantasy IX does, mainly due to the pre-rendered backgrounds looking better here than they did in IX. It still has the annoying musical bug that will frustrate returning players, but for those that have yet to try Final Fantasy VII, you no longer have an excuse.
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