"Media organizations have several proven strategies to push our buttons: voyeurism, outrage, greed, fear, prurience and envious aspiration are at the top."
Goes way beyond that...
First, our brains are much worse at reality and thinking than thought.
"I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil intersts in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested."[p. 10]
"War is a racket. ...It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives." [p. 23]
"The general public shoulders the bill [for war]. This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations." [p. 24]
General Butler is especially trenchant when he looks at post-war casualties. He writes with great emotion about the thousands of tramautized soldiers, many of who lose their minds and are penned like animals until they die, and he notes that in his time, returning veterans are three times more likely to die prematurely than those who stayed home.
"Anyway, his theory on capital accumulation is based on a completely flawed framework, and completely useless for understand what's happening today."
Sorry but you've never read marx if you're saying that. Also check what a former national security advisor has to say on the matter.
"capitalistic accumulation itself... constantly produces, and produces in the direct ratio of its own energy and extent, a relatively redundant population of workers"
On the spying...
The (mass surveillance) by the NSA/others and abuse by law enforcement is just more part and parcel of state suppression of dissent against corporate interests. They're worried that the more people are going to wake up and corporate centers like the US and canada may be among those who also awaken. See this vid with Zbigniew Brzezinski, former United States National Security Advisor.
It seems insane to me that we could allow private corporations to buy and sell data that our government would require a warrant or court order to obtain.
You're not seeing what is going on behind the scenes... they are all in cahoots the money is just a bonus.
You're not seeing what's going down behind the scenes - the spying is for us.
On the NSA/spying...
The (mass surveillance) by the NSA and abuse by law enforcement is just more part and parcel of state suppression of dissent against corporate interests. They're worried that the more people are going to wake up and corporate centers like the US and canada may be among those who also awaken. See this vid with Zbigniew Brzezinski, former United States National Security Advisor.
"Enormous multi-national corporations should not function as an extension of our Government"
You've demonstrated you're completely historically illiterate. It has always been thus, you're just becoming aware of it.
From war is a racket:
"I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil intersts in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested."[p. 10]
"War is a racket. ...It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives." [p. 23]
"The general public shoulders the bill [for war]. This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations." [p. 24]
General Butler is especially trenchant when he looks at post-war casualties. He writes with great emotion about the thousands of tramautized soldiers, many of who lose their minds and are penned like animals until they die, and he notes that in his time, returning veterans are three times more likely to die prematurely than those who stayed home.
I'm not sure how you came to conclude that I wasn't aware of the long history of corporate and government collusion. My point is very clear, it shouldn't be legal.
The problem you're not seeing is that no law will ever be passed that goes against it because the rich people that have been ruling you for the past 200+ years don't want it.
You don't seem to be historically literate at all. I suggest chomsky. And the book by the trilateral commission.
Human reasoning doesn't work on logic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ
So you shouldn't, the vast majority of the public is stupid, uneducated and illiterate.
Lastly capitalist societies are not set up to defend themselves vs the rich... see here, the spying is for dissidents not terrorists.
Important:
http://williamblum.org/aer/read/137