1345 True News 37 - Mainstream Anarchism!
A statement on a mainstream news show makes me drop my Cheerios... :o
May 4, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
09:13
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| Time | Text |
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| So I'm watching 60 minutes last night and watching 60 minutes is just one of these things that a philosopher does to get what's called the AA. | |
| It's an AA meeting really. | |
| It's It's the anarchist aneurysm, you know, where stuff is just trotted out as self-evident and you just try and, you know, hold your head so that it doesn't pull the scanners on you and mess up your living room. | |
| So I was watching last night and up comes a normal bit of big industry oil company socialist bashing and I'll read a few points from it. | |
| But they said something in the middle. | |
| Oh, My friends, it's probably quite odd to get turned on by 60 minutes, but let me tell you, I was sporting a rocket when this came up, and I will play that very, very short clip for you in just a moment. | |
| I literally dropped my Cheerios, and that's not a matter for anything. | |
| I was actually just eating some Cheerios. | |
| And I'll tell you what it is and you can tell me if I'm nuts or kinky or what. | |
| So the story basically is that I'll just read a little bit from the transcript. | |
| Chevron is America's third largest company behind ExxonMobil and Walmart. | |
| One way it became that big was by buying Taxico in 2001. | |
| Now that purchase of Taxico has pulled Chevron into a titanic struggle in the Amazon. | |
| The people who live in a remote region of Ecuador are suing Chevron, saying reckless oil exploration poison the most important rainforest on Earth. | |
| Soon a judge in a tiny Ecuadorian courtroom will decide whether the oil company must pay as much as $27. | |
| Billion dollars in damages that would make it the largest environmental lawsuit in history. | |
| Blah blah blah blah blah. So beginning in the 1960s, Texaco came to northeastern Ecuador to tap into one of the largest oil reserves in the Americas outside of my hair as a teenager. | |
| Texaco was a partner with Ecuador's natural oil company Petro Ecuador. | |
| And for over 23 years, Texaco pumped out 1.5 billion barrels of oil. | |
| Hundreds of wells were drilled, and at each well site, pits were dug to hold toxic oil waste that comes up during drilling. | |
| Generally, two or three pits were carved out near the well site. | |
| Trouble is, when Texaco finished its drilling, the waste pits were abandoned by the hundreds and for decades. | |
| And Chevron says it can't be sued because of a 1990s agreement Texaco struck with the Ecuadorian government to clean up some of the contaminated sites, sites that have been abandoned for years. | |
| Texaco spent $40 million cleaning up some of those sites in return for what the Ecuadorian government... | |
| Sorry, in turn for that, the Ecuadorian government signed off and said, You are released of liability. | |
| How can you have a lawsuit now? | |
| So-and-so asked this guy who's suing. | |
| And I'll get to his reply in just a sec. | |
| So up to now, we have your standard corporate bashing. | |
| And I'm no big defender of status, semi-fascist corporations, but... | |
| When they sort of point out that Texaco built and ran every single one of these 900 plus drill sites, and yet it was only a 40% owner of the consortium, the second being the state-run Ecuadorian Fascist corporation Petroecuadora. | |
| And so, of course, it's complete nonsense, right? | |
| Why would any sane human being go in for only a 40% stake when they're doing all the work, right? | |
| Well, for the same reason that restauranteurs pay off the mafia, right? | |
| Because it's just a bloody overhead you have to pay as the price of doing business in a very corrupt part of the world, which is really all land masses. | |
| So this is just your standard, like they won't go into any of that because that's too much like things are in the United States and other Western countries where you just pay off the government in order to do your business through various taxes and frankly bribes to congressmen. | |
| So that's fairly, fairly standard, right? | |
| But then, oh, hallelujah, it's just incredible. | |
| Like a jihad has been declared unreasoned. | |
| So what they're doing is the guy replied, because the question comes up and says, the guy interviewing the lawyer for the plaintiffs, they say, well, how could you possibly sue because TaxiCo signed an agreement with the Ecuadorian government. | |
| If they spend this money cleaning up these sites, they are now released from future liability. | |
| Corporation signs or anyone signs contract with government. | |
| And then they say, well, how can we have a lawsuit since the government has released TaxiCo from any liability? | |
| Now, lean forward. | |
| Relax. Smoke them if you got them. | |
| And just listen to this reply. | |
| Texaco spent $40 million cleaning up some of these sites. | |
| In return for that, the Ecuadoran government signed off and said, you're released of liability. | |
| How can you have a lawsuit now? | |
| Well, our clients never released Texaco, and that's the critical distinction. | |
| That was an agreement between the government and Texaco. | |
| We were not part of that agreement and we're not bound by that agreement. | |
| Let's listen to it again. | |
| Well, our clients never released Texaco and that's the critical distinction. | |
| That was an agreement between the government and Texaco. | |
| We were not part of that agreement and we're not bound by that agreement. | |
| Okay. | |
| Slow motion. Well, our clients never released Texaco and that's the critical distinction. | |
| That was an agreement between the government and Texaco. | |
| We were not part of that agreement and we're not bound by that agreement. | |
| Okay, sped up just a little bit. | |
| Well, our clients never released Texaco and that's the critical distinction. | |
| That was an agreement between the government and Texaco. | |
| We were not part of that agreement and we're not bound by that agreement. | |
| Do you see? Do you see what an incredible thing has just been said? | |
| How do we even speak? | |
| How do we even speak? Not one person in a hundred thousand will truly understand it, but here we have a basic statement of philosophical reality and anarchistic clarity from pants up to your nipples, short suspenders, hey kids get off my lawn, 60 minutes of all people. | |
| Of all people. | |
| We have a statement where the guy says, well, our clients never released Texaco. | |
| And that's a critical distinction. | |
| That was an agreement between the government and Texaco. | |
| We were not part of that agreement. | |
| We're not bound by that agreement. | |
| Lysander Spooner, come back from the grave. | |
| Do your work. Do you see? | |
| The citizens were not part of the agreement and therefore they are not bound by the agreement that the government made. | |
| The citizens did not voluntarily sign, approve of, individually participate in the agreement and therefore the agreement the government made is not Hey, you want to know some other things that citizens didn't actually voluntarily agree to? | |
| The Constitution, income taxes, corporate taxes, sales taxes, tariffs, the North American Free Trade Agreement, The EU! The American dollar! | |
| All other fiat bullshit currencies spread around like dandruff by governments. | |
| People have not... Oh, public schools. | |
| Yes, no, me, my parents, no, we didn't actually agree to that voluntarily. | |
| That was just something that the government signed. | |
| Drugs being illegal, did you ever agree to that? | |
| I don't think you ever did, so you see what an incredible thing has been said here, and not many people will see it, but dear God, one little dove of truth has been shot like a cannonball out into the sky for those to see, with the eyes to see, to see the fireworks, this amazing thing that has been said on mainstream television, that if you do not participate in the contracts signed by those in government, you are not Bound by those contracts. | |
| That is the fundamental position of a free, rational, stateless society. | |
| Because remember, when it comes to government contracts, the contracts that people in the government sign, it's actually quite easy to remember. | |
| I'll give you an image, I apologize, but I still think it will be helpful. | |
| Like a roll of toilet paper being passed under a stall. |
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