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The rise of Bitcoin: and the challenge to the global domination of big money
Posted in alternative, analysis, banks, capitalism, class, collapse, corporate fascism, corporate rule, corporations, corporatism, corporatocracy, crash, currency, debt, deficit, dollar crisis, economic collapse, economics, economy, Financial coup, geopolitics, globalism, globalization, money, neo-feudalism, political economy, politics, sociology, sovereignty, tipping point with tags alternative, bank, Bernanke, Bitcoin, collapse, crash, currency, debt, depression, drug, economy, Fed, fiat, finance, French Revolution, inflation, laundering, money, paper, savings, Silk Road, Wall Street, Weimar Republic on December 11, 2013 by jtoddring
The following article was written on October 25. I wanted to read it over once more before publishing it, then got busy with other things and forgot about it. In the roughly six weeks that have passed since the writing of this article, the Bitcoin prices have gone from roughly $200 to over $700. There have been fluctuations, as there are with all currencies, and particularly so since this is a new currency, but the overall trend is up, and in fact, Bitcoin is skyrocketing, as we predicted. People will say, well, it is fluctuating, as if that means that it is not stable. That is a foolish view, since all currencies fluctuate, and more importantly, because the overall trend has been to astronomical growth. What other currency do you know that increased its value twenty fold in just over a year, and then increased another 400% in less than two months? That's right, none. If you had bought Bitcoins in November of 2012, they would have cost you $10 each, and they would now be worth almost $800 each. Can you think of any other investment or currency that performs remotely as well? This is extraordinarily rare. Those who are ahead of the curve tend to catch the best opportunities, and Bitcoin is no exception. Sociology and political-economic implications aside, which are very large and possibly quite profound, Bitcoin is giant in terms of investment and savings opportunities. From what I have seen, the analysis below still holds, and in fact is re-affirmed by the accuracy of its predictions as to the continued rise of Bitcoin, which we have seen in its nearly 400% jump in six weeks. Bitcoin has great potential, in a number of important ways, and we would be wise to look more into it.
I first came across Bitcoin from the website of Max Keiser. Since Max seems to be the single most lucid person on the planet when it comes to global finance, I thought, this must be something worth looking into. Then last night my brother-in-law started talking to me excitedly about Bitcoin, and he is a pretty smart guy, so I thought, it is definitely time to look into this. And it turns out, it is a phenomenon that is exploding. Even the habitually staid and blinkered investment community is taking notice.
(Courtesy of Getty Images)
"Bitcoins are a virtual currency that can be used to pay for goods and services around the world. To participate in the bitcoin market, one needs a digital wallet, which can be filled either by purchasing bitcoins for goods, services or currency, or by acquiring them through a complex process known as "mining." (Better termed, "minting".) The bitcoins can then be used to purchase goods or services, or sold on an exchange. While virtual currencies have traditionally been used to purchase illicit substances, like guns and drugs, they are now accepted by numerous legitimate businesses for everything from gift cards to jets and yachts."
– Forbes
Until recently, Bitcoin was an obscure alternative currency that seems to have been used primarily for online trading, purchases and sales, among the few businesses and individuals who have decided to make use of it – anything from illegal drugs bought and sold on Silk Road, which the FBI just took down, to wine and muffins, as one Forbes columnist described it.
But now, Bitcoin is being accepted by pubs in Berlin as a form of payment. A Federal US judge in Texas has ruled that Bitcoins are a form of money – a bit slow on the uptake, but better late than never. And the giant internet company in China which is the peer of Google, has started to accept payment in Bitcoins. So the threshold has been reached. Bitcoin seems to have definitely arrived.
Businesses like Bitcoins because it saves them money. Using Visa or Amex as a means of financial exchange costs businesses 2-3% per transaction. That may not sound like much, but for a small business, and even for many large businesses, that can add up to large, painful costs. By comparison, businesses can accept Bitcoin as a method of payment, and it only costs them 1%. That is very attractive to business owners.
Bitcoin came under some negative press due to the Silk Road trade in illegal drugs using Bitcoin, and the price or exchange rate of Bitcoin compared to other currencies dropped for a time, but it has since risen. Business owners and investors seem to feel better now that Silk Road is gone and the currency is not associated with drug trade.
But really, that would be an insane reaction on the part of the public to shy away from Bitcoin because a few of the people who use it, use it to buy or sell drugs. The main currency used for the global drug trade was US dollars until recently, and it is still one of the two main currencies used for the trillion dollar a year illicit drug trade and the money laundering that goes with it, the Euro now being reportedly more popular among big time drug traffickers.
All of the big banks are involved with laundering drug money – hundreds of billions of dollars of it a year – and they handle drug money mainly in US dollars and Euros. But nobody says, I cannot use US dollars or Euros, because that is drug trade money. The irrationality comes out of ignorance and denial. Bitcoin, as far as I can see, is every bit as legitimate as US dollars, Euros or Yen, and probably more stable.
In fact, after the FBI raided Silk Road, they confiscated millions of dollars in Bitcoins. So the US government, and specifically the FBI, is now one of the biggest investors in Bitcoin, holding roughly five percent of the global currency. Strange bedfellows indeed.
But governments and the big banks do not tend to like Bitcoin (despite the fact that the FBI is holding billions of dollars in Bitcoins) because it threatens their control of the global financial system. So the backlash is on. However, if government and the big banks are attacking Bitcoin, then we can reasonably guess that it is because it threatens their power, and for that reason, Bitcoin may really have the potential to liberate the people from the money masters who now rule the world, or at least help in that endeavour.
"Bitcoin, an enticingly anonymous "cryptocurrency" designed to wrest the international currency system from the hands of central bankers…must face a force far larger and immensely more powerful than mere lobbyists. The status quo that cryptocurrencies threaten is the international monetary system. Its opponents are therefore the current custodians of that system — namely the governments of the world. Bitcoin was never subtle about the challenge it posed. The very first sentence of the abstract in Nakamoto's 2008 paper promised to "allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution." The paper then described a way to originate — that is to "mine," or perhaps more accurately to "mint" — Bitcoins. Yet history teaches that sovereigns of all stripes guard two prerogatives with particular zeal: the right to wage war and the right to mint currency. Bitcoin thus explicitly threatened one of the two fundamental, defining powers of government."
– Bruce Abramson, Forbes
What Abramson failed to mention, in his otherwise excellent article, was that the Federal Reserve is not part of the US government. It is a private bank, controlled by the Wall Street and London banking elite. In fact, the majority of central banks in the world are private. That means that the banking elite control the printing of money, and not the people, through a publicly owned central bank, run and overseen by a democratically elected government.
The founding fathers of the United States felt so strongly about keeping control of the printing of money in the hands of the people, and not private banking elites, that they wrote it into the Constitution that no one shall have the power to print money other than Congress.
The banking elite tried to get the central bank of the US privatized early on. Thomas Jefferson fought them and defeated them. Abraham Lincoln fought them and defeated them, and some have felt that he was assassinated for that reason. Andrew Jackson fought them and defeated them, and also took a bullet for it, but lived. He even had it written on his tombstone: "I killed the bank."
Then, as the History Channel and others have recounted the story, The Money Masters, the most powerful business elites in the US, met together on Jeckyl Island, and hatched the plan to finally succeed in gaining control over the money supply. Woodrow Wilson was duped into going along with it, and in 1917 signed into law the Federal Reserve Act, which created the private central bank which became known as the Federal Reserve. Woodrow Wilson later came to profoundly regret his error, and said that he had effectively destroyed his country without knowing it.
Now the control of the money supply and the right to print money is in the hands of the banking elite – and whoever controls the money, effectively controls the nation – or, by now, the world.
It used to be the case that "He who holds the gold makes the rules." But after the US unilaterally abolished the gold standard, things have changed. Now the fact of the matter is this: he who controls the printing of money rules the world. And that makes the banks very happy. It should make the rest of us shudder.
As US President James Garfield said, "He who controls the money supply controls the nation."
Or as one of the members of the leading banking elite family dynasties in the world, Mayer Amschel Rothschild said, "Give me control of a nations money and I care not who makes the laws."
Or as the former Prime Minister of Canada, William Lyon Mackenzie King said, "Once a nation parts with the control of its currency and credit, it matters not who makes that nation's laws. Usury, once in control, will wreck any nation. Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as its most conspicuous and sacred responsibility, all talk of the sovereignty of Parliament and of democracy is idle and futile."
Reclaiming control over the money we use to buy and sell and trade, is therefore of supreme importance. Bitcoin may indeed become a part of the answer to that central and critical task.
The more central task is for the people to reclaim their governments and their democracy, and having done that, to restore the power to print money to the hands of the people, through a public central bank, owned and governed by the people through their elected representatives in Congress or Parliament. All talk of social change, justice, democracy or freedom is both idle and futile until and unless this is recognized and acted upon.
But let's have some more history and information on Bitcoin before we consider such monumental changes to our world, and the potential liberation of human beings from the banking elite who now dominate the planet and effectively rule the earth. (See the Swiss systems analysis study, which I have written about earlier, and which confirmed that a handful of corporations, mainly banks, effectively dominate the entire world economy, if there is any doubt as to the accuracy of such a statement.)
The alternative currency known as Bitcoin has seen its price rise from $10 per Bitcoin in November 2012, to over $200 in less than a year. While other currencies are highly unstable for a number of reasons – including the US dollar, the Euro, the British Pound, and also the Canadian dollar, which is foolishly tied far too closely to the US dollar and the US economy – Bitcoin may prove to be much more stable. It does not compare to gold or silver for stability, but it may prove to be a safer bet than the paper money which the global economy now floats on, which is a bubble that is about to soon burst.
(see my previous articles on the rise and fall of the petrodollar, the global economic crisis, and one that I think was titled, Stock broker shocks BBC reporter, saying, The collapse is coming, and Goldman Sachs rules the world.)
I have only begun to look into Bitcoin, but it certainly seems to show some promise, and definitely warrants further investigation, for anyone who does not want to see their bank account or their money go up in puff of smoke when the paper currencies fall, as they most assuredly will.
(See Max Keiser and Gerald Cenente for more on this.)
What we definitely need is an alternative currency which is stable and can be used for savings, purchases, sales and trade at the local level, nationally and also internationally. The presently ruling paper currencies are simply unstable and unreliable, as anyone knows who has looked into the subject in any depth. Gold and silver are stable and hold their value well, but it would be far more convenient to trade in an electronic currency than in gold or silver coins. Bitcoin just might provide a much needed, and in fact, an urgently needed solution.
Until and unless national governments, or local communities, create stable currencies which are not pure fiction, and which have more value than the paper they are not printed on, we need an alternative currency. And probably even after governments get their financial acts together, alternative currencies will remain important, as a safeguard. Do not put all your eggs in one basket.
The US dollar is definitely going to crash, and when it does, it will bring down virtually all other currencies in a cascading collapse, because all of the central banks of the world are chocked to the gills with US dollars as reserves. The shell game of moving money from one currency to another will not save us, nor will it last much longer.
This all seems inconceivable to most people, and cryptic as well as unbelievable. But it is easily understood. A fourth grader can understand it, if it is explained in simple terms and the official jargon and doublespeak is stripped away.
Look at what happened in the Weimar Republic. The German government was in debt, and started printing money at an accelerating pace to pay the debt, until finally, the value of the currency collapsed, and you literally had to take a wheelbarrow of money to the store to buy a loaf of bread. That is what is coming. Your money will soon be worthless.
The over-printing of money always devalues and ultimately destroys a currency. And that is exactly what the US Federal Reserve and the other major central banks are doing. As Max Keiser said, the paper money apocalypse is coming. And as Gerald Celente has said, it will mean a greater depression than the Great Depression.
To give the Fed some credit, they simply have no choice, or so they believe, but to continue to dump billions of dollars a month into the economy – namely, by flying a helicopter over Wall Street and shoveling money out the door: dumping billions of dollars a day into the biggest banks to keep them afloat, and in the process, keeping afloat the deceitful and dishonest ideology of trickle-down economics. (Trickle-down should really be called trickle-on: the money goes to the rich, and the poor and middle class never see it – they just get yellow rain.)
The Fed seems to believe they have no choice but to do what they are doing, because if they stopped dumping money into the economy, the economy would collapse. And they are right. They could give billions a day to home-owners and citizens, and stimulate the economy that way, but they choose to give it to themselves – the banking elite. But one way or another, they have to keep pumping money into the economy to keep it from collapsing.
But – and here is the catch – by pumping money into the economy, they have to first have money from somewhere to put into it, and as they lack that – or at least, they are unwilling to use their own multi-trillion dollar private assets which sit in offshore accounts – they have to resort to printing money out of thin air. And when you print money out of thin air, you devalue the currency. So the Fed is printing money like there is no tomorrow, in order to prop up the economy and keep it from collapsing, but in doing so, they are devaluing the currency, which is guaranteeing that the currency will collapse. By trying to stave off a major market readjustment, meaning, an economic collapse and a depression, they are guaranteeing that when the collapse does come, it will be utterly severe and simply catastrophic in its impact.
They know this perfectly well. They know full well that their wild printing of money is going to cause the dollar, sooner or later, to be devalued, and to collapse, as holders of US dollars and Treasury Bonds lose confidence in the currency, for obvious reasons, and begin to divest themselves of this worthless paper.
The sell off which will ensue as the world flees the sinking US dollar will mean the dollar will become worth only one or two percent of its present value. This is exactly what happened in the Wiemar Republic, when precisely the same pattern of over-printing money brought on radical devaluation of the currency, and the German Mark became worth only one one-thousandth of its former value, and hyper-inflation set in.
Of course, when a depression hits, the financial and business elite have an orgy of looting and a feeding frenzy, buying up real estate, businesses, factories, farms, homes and other assets at fire sale prices, so they are perfectly happy with this result.
The banking elite love disaster – they feed off of it. So do not think the Fed or the rest of the banking elite are going to protect you from an economic collapse. They are the ones bringing it on, and they are the ones who are going to benefit astronomically from it when it comes.
Ben Bernanke said of the last Great Depression, and the role of the Fed and the private banking elite who control it, in that Depression, "We did it." The banking elite who control the Federal Reserve and the money supply created a credit bubble by flooding the country with cheap money and credit, then they pulled the plug and burst the bubble, by contracting credit and cutting off the money supply. The result was the Great Depression. Massive human suffering was created across the Western world, but the super-rich got even richer, so they won, while everyone else lost.
We should take a lesson from history, and not allow the money masters, or "the monied aristocracy", as Thomas Jefferson called the banking elite, to do this again. But I am afraid that the people are not yet sufficiently awake, or awake in sizable enough numbers, to reclaim their power before the manufactured disaster is upon them; therefore, I would say that the collapse will not likely be avoided, and that it is a virtual fact, due to the passivity of the people themselves.
The paper money we rely on is going to fail us. You can be sure of that. We had better start thinking about what we would do if our paper money becomes worthless, because it is going to.
Gold and silver are the smartest places to put your money, next to land you can garden on, and mortgage-free, rent-free accommodation. But Bitcoin may well be the next best place to diversify savings, and not have them disappear.
There are other alternative currencies, such as LETS, Ithaca Dollars, Toronto Dollars, etc, and they definitely merit attention as well. Most of them are strictly local currencies however, and they probably will need a secondary currency of some form for inter-community, national and international trade, even if they ever do become the main currency in use in a given town, city, county or region. Again, Bitcoin may bridge that gap.
But again, I am new to the phenomenon, so while the need for a stable alternative currency is real and great, even urgent, whether or not Bitcoin fits the bill is something I am not yet sure of. Do your own research, would be my recommendation. It is my recommendation for every topic, in any case.
In sum, the importance of Bitcoin, if it really does prove to be a stable currency, is that it is stable, while all others – with the exception of gold and silver – are not. That means that it may prove to be a safe haven, and a way that we can continue to buy and sell and trade goods and services – to get paid for our labour and to buy things we need – after the paper money collapses.
It is definitely strongly advisable to shift money from paper money to land, tools, solar panels, wind power, seeds and garden tools, and secondarily, into gold and silver. It may be very smart to look more into Bitcoin as well, and I would say it would be wise to invest in Bitcoins as well.
Two new phenomena may end up transforming the world of banking, money and finance, and they are crowd-sourced funding and Bitcoin. The former is a definite strong contender as a catalyst for serious, major social change. Bitcoin my turn out to be the sister element to a whole new global economy, but again, I would have to look into it much more to say that with any confidence. Right now, it seems to be just a possibility – one scenario among many that could unfold in the near future.
As Forbes said, "Smart money always bets on government in the short term and technology in the long term." The government seems too big to fail, but we know from history that governments can and do fail, and their currencies and economies as well. Look at France in the late 18th century: the government was in serious debt, and the Treasury finally went bust – that was the trigger which brought on the French Revolution. In Germany under the Wiemar Republic, the government failed utterly, the currency collapsed, and instead of a popular revolution, the German people and the world got fascism and the Nazis. So things can go either way when governments, currencies or economies collapse – a liberating revolution may ensue, or we may end up with tyranny and fascism, depending on how the people react. But what is certain, however it unfolds and whatever follows, is that collapse can and does happen. And it is coming.
Whatever you do, take your money out of banks, put it in credit unions and co-op banks, or better, in a safe – and divest yourself completely of your paper money, keeping only as much as you need for liquidity, and daily or monthly purchases, and putting the rest into something safe: like land, tools, silver and gold, and maybe Bitcoins as a minor element as well.
What is the significance of Bitcoin?
Security, Investment, and Revolution
Bitcoin seems to me to have three major points of significance as a social phenomenon. First, it offers people increased material security. The paper currencies which now dominate the global economy and which people rely on to buy their daily bread and whatever else they may want or need and can afford, if they can afford it, are simply unstable. In fact, with the currency wars that are being waged now, currencies are being systematically devalued, which means the purchasing power of paper money, or fiat currency, as it is properly called, is shrinking, prices are rising in relation to purchasing power, which is called inflation, of course; and worst of all, with the fiat money paper currencies being systematically devalued, they are guaranteed to collapse, and soon. Bitcoins are not subject to such radical devaluation or collapse, because they are in limited supply, unlike the paper money which is being printed in the trillions of dollars. So Bitcoins can be used as a safe place to store money when virtually all other forms of investment and all paper monies are extremely unstable and heading for collapse. That is the first significance of Bitcoin – it provides increased financial and material, economic security for people who are smart enough, or have enough foresight, to make use of it.
Secondly, Bitcoin offers investment opportunity. Bitcoin's value has risen 200% over the past year. The New York Stock Exchange is at an all-time low in relation to Bitcoin. While the paper money of fiat currencies approach collapse, and the global economy approaches collapse, meaning most investments and also savings will be wiped out, Bitcoin remains strong and continues to rise in value, along with gold and silver. Bitcoins were trading at a price of just over $10 in November of 2012. As of this October they are selling for over $200. [As noted, this figure is as of October 25, 2013, when this article was written. When the article was reviewed by the author on December 10, 2013, the value of Bitcoins had risen to nearly $800.] With a limited supply of Bitcoins and falling values of paper money currencies, the price of Bitcoins is likely to rise to over $1,000.
Remember that I advised people to invest in gold and silver in 2006, when I warned that an economic collapse was coming – predicting the global financial crisis of 2007-2008, while virtually everyone was saying that things are just rosy. Silver and gold have doubled and tripled their value since then, respectively, and of course, the severe global economic crisis that I predicted did hit, and hit severely. So when I say, buy Bitcoins, and buy gold and silver, there is a proven track record of accurate predictions to back that up. This is not coming out of thin air.
Thirdly, Bitcoin may prove to be truly revolutionary. That word is wildy over-used, and used to puff and promote and hype everything from toothpaste to toilet paper, but in this case, it just may apply. We will see. Bitcoin certainly has the potential to challenge the global dominance of the banking elite in their world hegemony over the global economy and monetary system. If enough people start to use Bitcoin, then it could empower the people, while reducing the excessive powers of the global financial elite; and this, in combination with other grassroots political and economic actions, could actually bring about a much-needed revolution. Bitcoin could be one more powerful tool which the people have, with which to reclaim their power, and to dethrone the bankers and other business elites who have essentially taken over the global economy as well as the political parties, governments, media and nations of the world.
Can Bitcoin be stopped? The banking and corporate elite, and their henchmen in government certainly would like to stop it, since it threatens their power, their global dominance and their astronomically high profits, but I don't see how it can be stopped. Bitcoin, like the internet, has no single focal point, but rather it is distributed and decentralized. The internet was built by the Pentagon's Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, to be a fail-safe that could not be destroyed, by reason that if one node goes down, data would flow through another route, as Max Keiser has also described. Being based on the internet and being decentralized, Bitcoin is the same. The only way Bitcoin could be stopped, Max said, would be to shut down the entire internet – but even then, Bitcoin could work offline, on thumb drives. So Bitcoin appears to be unstoppable. And it is exploding in growth, with people using it every day all around the world.
Whether or not Bitcoin helps to spark a revolution, it certainly tips the scales back in favour of the people, and away from the global business elite, and that is most definitely a good thing. It is one more way that the people can empower themselves.
And in the process, it can also give people more economic security and improved material well-being, and in these uncertain and difficult times, that is also a very good thing.
J. Todd Ring,
Forbes has some interesting articles on Bitcoin here:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/10/23/five-possible-reasons-for-bitcoins-most-recent-surge/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidthier/2013/10/24/why-this-entrepeneur-thinks-bitcoins-are-here-to-stay/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/10/08/the-bitcoin-backlash-is-underlay-by-a-quivering-status-quo/
But don't take Forbes word as gospel, of course. Far better, listen to what Max Keiser has to say about Bitcoin – the man who has the most-watched financial analysis TV show on the planet, the most widely trusted financial analyst in the world, the insider's insider who wrote the software for the New York Stock Exchange, and probably the person who understands the global financial system better than anyone alive.
Max Keiser on Bitcoin Currency | Interview with Max Keiser
Is Bitcoin money? – Max Keiser
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-keiser/is-bitcoin-money_b_2849031.html
US government shutdown, and other fairy tales and examples of political theatre
Posted in American politics, analysis, banks, Barack Obama, Canada, Canadian politics, Chomsky, collapse, consciousness, corporate fascism, corporate rule, corporations, corporatism, corporatocracy, crash, crisis of democracy, debt, deficit, democracy, democratic deficit, Democratic Party, economics, economy, elite, empire, empowerment, far right, fascism, fascist, fiscal conservative, freedom, geopolitics, health care, imperialism, money, neo-feudalism, neocon, neoconservatism, neoliberalism, Obama, police state, policy, political economy, politics, propaganda, psychology, Republican, Republican Party, right, right wing, sociology, the right, truth, U.S., war, war on democracy, wellness with tags analysis, context, corporatism, debt, deficit, democracy, economy, government shutdown, health care, military-industrial complex, Obama, Obamacare, peace, perspective, political economy, political theater on October 1, 2013 by jtoddring
I'm not sure what to make of the hoopla going on in the US right now. I'm inclined to think it's all just political theatre, as Gerald Celente calls it, designed to distract the people from the real issues – the central one being, who controls the government and the nation? Wall Street, the big banks and largest corporations, or the people? After all, both of the major parties are controlled by the same six big banks, the private banking cartel which is the Fed, the military-industrial-security complex, Wall Street and the biggest 500 corporations on the planet, so what is this charade really about? As Celente said, it's WWF – the World Wrestling Federation: it's all scripted; it's all political theatre. They all work for the same people.
Some Americans, mainly on the right, and mainly the rich, want to shrink government and abolish social programs that help and protect the poor, as well as the middle class – and half of Americans are now living below, at, or just above the poverty line, so that means 50% of the American people would get badly shafted, and far more would be badly hurt.
Some Americans – the overwhelming majority, well over 70% – favour public, universal health care, such as Canada, Britain, Europe and most of the civilized world has. But Obamacare is nothing of the sort. Obamacare is Romneycare – Obama simply took Romney's package and made it his own. Obamacare, like Obama's entire presidency, is designed to appease and sooth the masses and post-pone real political action, popular uprising or social unrest, while continuing the facilitation of the rape and pillage of the nation and the world by the largest corporations and the wealthiest 0.01%. What is amazing is that more people do not yet recognize these facts, although a great many, and a growing number do. The Obamacare package averts public, universal health care, which the people want, props up a crumbling private, massively subsidized for-profit health care system, and will put even more money into private, for-profit health insurance and health industry corporations, with dubious benefit to the people, if any. So the entire debate is dishonest to begin with, and radically out of joint with reality.
Furthermore, for those who want to cut government debt and spending, it should be noted, and made clear, that one of the best ways to do that, along with ending war and de-funding the massive military-industrial-security complex, the imperial storm troopers, the goon squads and the surveillance state, is to switch to a public health care system. (See Chomsky for a clear-headed and honest analysis of these points.)
The for-profit private health care system of the US has been shown repeatedly to cost far more than the public, not-for-profit health care systems of Canada, Britain and Europe. So once again, the debate is a farce; is filled with deceit; and again, radically out of sync with reality.
In the face of all of this, I don't know whether to laugh or cry. I tend to worry greatly for the American people, as I do for human beings and all life on earth generally; but I trust they will resolve these problems. In the meantime, I pray, and will do all I can to seek out and share the best information and ideas I can find – from the left, right, centre, and anywhere I can find them.
Will the government shut down? Hardly likely, it seems to me. If it does, it will be disastrous for millions of people – even though the US government is the biggest criminal syndicate on the planet, next to the billionaire oligarchs who control it, along with virtually every other nation and government on earth. But a shutdown of the US government probably would not last long in any case, and the big bureaucratic machine of the state will restart again, if for no other reason, than because the people who control it – the super-rich, the corporate and banking elite, rely on it as a cash cow, a welfare state for the rich, a constant source of dizzying subsidies, bail-outs and forced wealth transfers from the people to the ruling plutocrats (they call it a "stimulus" package); and as a protective hired thug which can be, and is being used to keep an increasingly unruly rabble and frustrated populace subdued and under control, so that the great global looting spree can continue unabated.
The US government has handed the biggest banks and the global banking elite $14 trillion since the economic crisis of 2007-2008 erupted – enough to pay off the mortgages of every American, and every student debt and credit card debt, and all personal debts in the US, with approximately $13 trillion left to spare: which is enough to eliminate global poverty many times over, or, enough to eliminate global poverty, and create the global infrastructure for a truly sustainable society. Other corporate sectors are receiving smaller sums, in the range of a mere few tens or hundreds of billions of dollars a year, in regular subsidies, bail-outs and props. The six biggest banks now control a huge swath of the US economy, yet they are now fully dependent on on-going government subsidies just to survive. Their profits now are roughly equal to what they are receiving in regular government "stimulus" moneys, meaning, they would be forced out of business if they had to go without massive public funding from the government. This is to say nothing of the giant military-industrial-security and surveillance complex and its over $1 trillion annual cash flood coming from Washington and the Federal budget. Do we really believe that the same people who fund and control both of the two major parties want this gravy train to end? Think again. Not on your life.
No, the true rulers, the global business elite, need the US government, and will not let it be shutdown for long, if at all. So again, I am inclined to view all of this melodrama and hyperbole as so much theatre: bread and circuses, my friends, bread and circuses.
Keep the people divided – divide and conquer being rule number one for any good power-monger; and feed them bread and circuses to keep them distracted while their pockets are picked, and to keep their eyes diverted from the shackles and chains around their necks, wrists and legs. And sometimes, soap operas, sit-coms, "reality tv," sports and celebrity gossip are not enough – political theatre is also needed; and so, it is provided.
The reality is, there are far too many pigs that are neck deep with their heads in the trough for the government to shut down for long. The ruling oligarchs simply won't allow it, so let's be real here, and keep such facts in mind while the hysteria mounts.
If the US government, or either of the major parties was truly interested in reducing the debt and deficit, then the on-going wars of empire would be ceased immediately and sworn off, all foreign US military bases would be closed, the military-industrial-security complex would be radically de-funded and the global surveillance and police state apparatus shut down, with savings of close to $1 trillion a year – which would mean that were is no more fiscal crisis.
If, in addition to this, universally accessible, publicly funded not-for-profit health care was brought in, further enormous cost savings would be made, and there would be a windfall of money available for real economic recovery, job creation, infrastructure and urgently needed environmental programs.
But none of this is on the agenda, none of this is even open to discussion, for the simple reason that the ruling class of plutocrats and corporate tsars and robber barons don't want this, because that wouldn't benefit them.
This is the real story; the rest, a mere charade.
Reclaiming democracy for the common good – and for the survival and future of our children: the political economy of environmental sanity and democratic renewal
Posted in activism, alternative, alternatives, analysis, books, capitalism, collapse, consciousness, conservation, corporations, corporatism, corporatocracy, crash, debt, deficit, disaster, ecological crisis, ecology, elite, environment, Kropotkin, must-read, policy, political economy, political philosophy, political theory, politics, renewable, resources, social theory, sociology, sustainability, tipping point with tags activism, alternatives, analysis, authors, common good, commons, context, corporatism, Daly and Cobb, earth overshoot, ecological footprint, ecological overshoot, economic theory, economics, environment, environmental economics, environmental footprint, environmental theory, For the Common Good, Global Footprint, obershoot, perspective, philosophy, policy, political economy, political philosophy, political theory, politics, world news on September 28, 2011 by jtoddring
Yesterday, September 27, the Global Footprint Network declared as Earth Overshoot Day: the day that humans have used up all renewable resources available for the year. Not good. This obviously cannot continue. Limitless growth in material consumption and "production" clearly cannot be sustained on a finite planet. (We can have limitless growth in culture, the arts, science, the mind, spirituality and quality of life, but not in material production and consumption.) We are depleting our collective inheritance: which should rightfully be shared equitably, through democratic popular control of the commons to which we all share usafructory rights – despite our present unjust and unwise socio-economic, legal and cultural norms – as well as used wisely and compassionately, and not squandered. We are rapidly draining nature's capital, to put it in crass economic terms, which are the only terms most politicians and pundits and corporate elites seem to understand.
We are racing towards ecological bankruptcy at an ever-accelerating rate, and will see our children live as beggars in an ocean of toxic waste if we don't change our course, and fast. Of course, most people – aside from the business and political elite – understand this by now. But awareness is not enough. It is high time for much more serious action.
Addressing the present and rapidly escalating environmental crisis which humanity undeniably faces will require more of us than a simple act of recycling or "buying green." It will require, above all, a restoration and a renewal of democracy – a reclaiming of democracy from the ruling and highly pathological corporate elite.
You don't have to be anti-business to be opposed to corporate rule, by the way: to be opposed to rule by corporate elites is simply to favour democracy; and frankly, to call it as it is: to oppose fascism. Corporatism, as Mussolini himself defined, is the merger of business with the state. Anyone who values freedom or democracy must therefore oppose corporatism: which is the unchecked power of business elites, and an empire of corporate dominance over all aspects of society, including the economy, politics, culture and the media. To be anti-corporatist is not to be anti-business: it is simply to understand that any form of unchecked power invariably leads to tyranny and the destruction of freedom; and therefore, to be opposed to such unchecked powers by any kind of elite.
You don't have to be anti-business to oppose the take-over of democratic government by business elites – you simply have to be sane. You can be pro-business and anti-corporatist: and anyone who truly values democracy must, of logical and practical necessity, be anti-corporatist, regardless of their views on business. I am belabouring the point because the corporate-owned and dominated media repeatedly portray any kind of critique of unchecked corporate powers as leftist lunacy. Here is breaking news for anyone who still buys into this red-scare propaganda that lingers from the McCarthy era, like a can of rotting tuna stinking up the entire house and driving the people to nausea and revulsion: people on the right and the left and in the centre politically are, by an overwhelming majority, in favour of constitutional democracy, and opposed to any kind of dominance over the democratic political process by any kind of elite, including the now globally dominant business elite.
Where once we had to wrest power from the church and the aristocracy who were overstepping their bounds, in order to secure democracy, human rights and freedom, we now must wrest power from an unwieldy and overbearing, frankly tyrannical and self-serving business elite – and everybody who is in the least way sane and rational, and who hasn't been living under a rock for the past fifty years, knows it.
Support for constitutional democracy and checks on corporate power, and the resultant or concomitant opposition to corporate rule, now cuts across the political spectrum. The people are no longer fooled by the red-scare tactics, nor by the broader corporate spin which seeks to mask the obvious: the emperor has no clothes, and everybody knows it – corporations have usurped democratic political powers, and are far over-stepping their proper bounds. Conservatives, liberals and progressives alike now understand this, and know this quite viscerally – and are rightly concerned and rapidly running out of patience in the face of an intolerable situation of corporate oligarchy that seeks limitless powers for itself, while undermining every human value and endangering our very survival on this earth.
The reality, which virtually everyone knows, is that the democratic governments of the world are now in hoc, in debt, in dependency and in servitude to a globally dominant international business elite; and virtually all of the major political parties are now the servile lackeys to the ruling corporate empire. Meanwhile, the people increasingly see through this whole pathetic charade, and are becoming quite fed up with it.
You don't have to lean toward the left politically to be opposed to corporate rule: and at the level of the grassroots, people from the right and the left, conservatives, liberals and progressives, are now beyond wary of unchecked corporate powers – and wish to see democracy reclaimed by the people. What is needed now is a coalition of all those who favour democracy over corporate empire and corporate rule. This is beginning to emerge, and none too soon.
The suicidal kleptocracy of our presently reigning global order of neo-feudal corporatism must end – and now, before we extinguish ourselves from this small and beautiful, fragile, little blue planet. Democracy must be restored: and with power returned to the people, where it rightfully belongs, the commons can once again be protected and shared, wisely and judiciously, for the benefit of all.
If we wish for survival, for a future worth living, or for any future for our children and the children of the earth, then it is absolutely necessary that democracy be reclaimed by the people. This is the most urgent necessity of the time. If Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington or Voltaire were alive today, they most assuredly would be urging it. We should heed their call, the call of their distant but ever-near voices of reason and common sense, and reclaim our power. Restore democracy now. Bring the power back to the people, and let us begin again.
Let it begin. The great turning is here. A new renaissance is being born. Let us work together to bring about a better future and a better world for all. The power is in our hands. We must simply own it, and acknowledge that it is ours.
We have run out of time for idle chit-chat, partisan zealotry and pleasant euphemisms, for polite evasiveness and meek avoidance of the realities that we face. Let us now renew and reclaim our democracy: and we shall in the process, and by this means only, renew and reclaim the commons, for the common good of all. It is this, or it is a dark age ahead – make no mistake. Make your choice wisely. Our future, and our children's future, depend upon the choices we make now.
Be bold I say, and let us reclaim our future, and the future of humanity – if not for ourselves, then most certainly and assuredly, for the sake of the children of this earth. Their lives and their future cannot be written off, even if we are willing to write off our own. Act now.
"The other superpower" is beginning to stir: humanity is beginning to awake. And nothing, no reactionary force, can stop the rising tide of an awakened humanity. The future is in our hands. I urge all of us now to embrace that power, and to act together to reclaim our future and our world, by first reclaiming our democracy and our power.
Unite now, and let us restore democracy to its proper place – in the hands of the people. Our future and our children's future hangs in the balance. Let us not hesitate now – we cannot afford to do so. Let us begin, or begin again with renewed energy and a deepened commitment: for we shall succeed, and humanity shall have a new day.
I would like to end this conversation, which I hope will be only the beginning of an ongoing conversation, and more importantly, the basis of strong, bold and dedicated collective action, with one of my favourite quotations, which seems ever-fitting – and especially so now:
"There is more day yet to dawn.
The sun is but a morning star."
And a second, which is equally powerful, equally apt, and equally appropriate to our time:
"It is within our power now to begin the world anew."
– Thomas Paine
And one last quote: one that is oft-used, and yet profoundly underappreciated – and also extremely relevant to our time and to the task at hand:
"We must all hang together, or assuredly, we shall all hang separately….
United we stand, divided we fall."
– Benjamin Franklin
As Arundhati Roy so eloquently and beautifully put it, another world is not only possible: she is already being born. Go now – reflect, read, ponder and discuss: then let us act together to bring in a new day and a new dawn for humanity and this earth. I urge you, act now. It is not too late, and what we do or fail to do now, will decide our future, and the future of humanity.
Above all, unite the people to reclaim their democracy. This is the most pivotal and most urgent of tasks at hand. Unite now, and let democracy reign!
The people will reclaim their power. It has already begun. The writing is on the wall. The corporate empire – the last of a series of empires that have risen and fallen through the past five thousand years of history, the clay feet that David spoke of – is teetering and about to fall. It is a wounded and dying, and still yet a dangerous beast, to be sure, but this latest of empires is now crumbling – even while it flails madly in its death throes to preserve its life and maintain its power, and flaunts its power with brazen disregard and sheer contempt for humanity, democracy and life on earth. Its legitimacy is destroyed, by its own acts of malfeasance and abuse of power; and it is only a matter of time before its final demise. The people should see and clearly recognize the opportunity, and reclaim their power and their democracy now.
Rise now and unite. It is time for the full flowering of democracy, and the healing of this fair earth and all our communities. Unite! And let us take back our democracy, for the benefit of all, and for the future of all life on earth, including our own children, and our children's children. Act now. The time has come for a new dawn.
JTR,
(My apologies for the Surf-Canyon highlighted link on the word "clothes" – a shopping link, no doubt, and I certainly did not put that in there: another example – a mildly annoying one this time, unlike the subject of the survival of humanity – of corporate overshoot, and the over-stepping of proper bounds. Time to whack them on the nose with a rolled up newspaper, and push them back. Enough is enough – in so many regards.)
See Daly and Cobb, For the Common Good, as a prime example of economics that are not insane.
The Corporation – Joel Bakan (Canadian constitutional lawyer)
Power To the People (In Suits) – Paul Bigioni on Z Net
A Brief History of Progress – Ronald Wright
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed – Jared Diamond
The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies – Richard Heinberg
Power Down – Richard Heinberg
Mutual Aid – Peter Kropotkin
The Ecology of Freedom – Murray Bookchin
World As Lover, World As Self – Joanna Macy
The Poverty of Affluence – Paul Watchel
Small Is Beautiful- E. F. Schumacher
Year 501 – Noam Chomsky
Necessary Illusions – Noam Chomsky
Shock Doctrine – Naomi Klein
The End of America – Naomi Wolf
Escape From Freedom – Erich Fromm
The Power Elite – C. Wright Mills
Global Showdown – Maude Barlow
On Civil Disobedience – Henry David Thoreau
The Discourse on Voluntary Servitude – Etienne De La Boittee
The Great Turning – David C. Korten
Power to the People (In Suits) How a whole new kind of business lobby is a threat to democracy by Paul Bigioni
Fears of a corporate police state – David Sirota – Salon.com
Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail? | Rolling Stone Politics
Three Things That Must Happen for Us to Rise Up and Defeat the Corporatocracy | Truthout
Big Ideas That Changed The World : Democracy–Tony Benn …
Talk – David Korten – The Great Turning – YouTube
Joanna Macy on The Great Turning – YouTube
The Corporation (complete, chapters 1 to 23) – YouTube
Life and Debt [HQ Full Movie] – YouTube
The Yes Men – Trailer – YouTube
The Secret Government: The Constitution In Crisis (1 of 9) – YouTube
The Shock Doctrine (2009) — Naomi Klein – YouTube – full length film
"The End of America" Full Length HQ Film – YouTube
Jared Diamond – Collapse! part 1 – YouTube
Amazon.com: The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (9780743247443): Joel Bakan: Books
The Corporation Film: About the Book
Orwell Rolls in his Grave (Full 3HR Documentary) – YouTube
Manufacturing Consent – Noam Chomsky and the Mass Media – 1/17 – YouTube
Confronting the Empire, by Noam Chomsky (Talk delivered at the III World Social Forum)
The Take – Trailer – YouTube
The Take (La Toma) English subtitles (1/9) – YouTube
The Project Gutenberg eBook – On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, by Henry David Thoreau
#Science Earth's Annual Resources Used Up Today, Group Says bit.ly/n8flsq
Amazon.com: For The Common Good: Redirecting the Economy toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future (9780807047057): Herman E. Daly, John B. Cobb Jr.: Books
Why isn't Wall St. in jail? And come to think of it, why isn't Obama?
Posted in American politics, analysis, Barack Obama, capitalism, class, collapse, corporate fascism, corporate rule, corporations, corporatism, corporatocracy, crash, debt, economic collapse, economics, economy, elite, empire, must-read, political economy, politics, Uncategorized with tags banks, campaign contributor, corporatocracy, goldman sachs, gut instincts, jp morgan chase, matt taibbi, Obama, Wall St. on August 27, 2011 by jtoddring
If we want to understand better what is wrong with the economy and politics, this sheds more than a little light, and confirms the gut instincts of the great majority of people today. Yes, we live in a corporatocracy, and yes, the judges and attorney generals and SEC and the president are steadfastly if not gleefully supportive of their and our rulers. I don't usually repost other people's writings, but this article is too hard-hitting and important to pass up.
Why isn't Wall St. in jail?
Excerpts from an excellent article by Matt Taibbi, from Rolling Stone:
Financial crooks brought down the world's economy — but the feds are doing more to protect them than to prosecute them
As for President Obama, what is there to be said? Goldman Sachs was his number-one private campaign contributor. He put a Citigroup executive in charge of his economic transition team, and he just named an executive of JP Morgan Chase, the proud owner of $7.7 million in Chase stock, his new chief of staff. "The betrayal that this represents by Obama to everybody is just — we're not ready to believe it," says Budde, a classmate of the president from their Columbia days. "He's really fucking us over like that? Really? That's really a JP Morgan guy, really?"
Which is not to say that the Obama era has meant an end to law enforcement. On the contrary: In the past few years, the administration has allocated massive amounts of federal resources to catching wrongdoers — of a certain type. Last year, the government deported 393,000 people, at a cost of $5 billion. Since 2007, felony immigration prosecutions along the Mexican border have surged 77 percent; nonfelony prosecutions by 259 percent. In Ohio last month, a single mother was caught lying about where she lived to put her kids into a better school district; the judge in the case tried to sentence her to 10 days in jail for fraud, declaring that letting her go free would "demean the seriousness" of the offenses.
So there you have it. Illegal immigrants: 393,000. Lying moms: one. Bankers: zero. The math makes sense only because the politics are so obvious. You want to win elections, you bang on the jailable class. You build prisons and fill them with people for selling dime bags and stealing CD players. But for stealing a billion dollars? For fraud that puts a million people into foreclosure? Pass. It's not a crime. Prison is too harsh. Get them to say they're sorry, and move on. Oh, wait — let's not even make them say they're sorry. That's too mean; let's just give them a piece of paper with a government stamp on it, officially clearing them of the need to apologize, and make them pay a fine instead. But don't make them pay it out of their own pockets, and don't ask them to give back the money they stole. In fact, let them profit from their collective crimes, to the tune of a record $135 billion in pay and benefits last year. What's next? Taxpayer-funded massages for every Wall Street executive guilty of fraud?
The mental stumbling block, for most Americans, is that financial crimes don't feel real; you don't see the culprits waving guns in liquor stores or dragging coeds into bushes. But these frauds are worse than common robberies. They're crimes of intellectual choice, made by people who are already rich and who have every conceivable social advantage, acting on a simple, cynical calculation: Let's steal whatever we can, then dare the victims to find the juice to reclaim their money through a captive bureaucracy. They're attacking the very definition of property — which, after all, depends in part on a legal system that defends everyone's claims of ownership equally. When that definition becomes tenuous or conditional — when the state simply gives up on the notion of justice — this whole American Dream thing recedes even further from reality.
Obama Goes All Out For Dirty Banker Deal
Global Geopolitics: 2008 Update
Posted in 2008, 9/11, American politics, analysis, Brzezinski, Canada, Canadian politics, civil liberties, class, collapse, constitution, corporate fascism, corporate rule, corporations, corporatism, corporatocracy, coup, crash, crisis of democracy, crisis of legitimacy, currency, debt, deep integration, democracy, dollar crisis, economic collapse, economics, economy, elite, empire, empowerment, end-game, fascism, freedom, geopolitics, Global War on Terrorism, globalism, globalization, Gulf of Tonkin, human rights, imperialism, Iran, Martial Law, Middle East, money, NACC, NAU, North American Union, nuclear war, nuclear weapons, oil, Operation Northwoods, peak oil, Pearl Harbor, pentagon, police state, political economy, politics, politics of oil, propaganda, Reichstag, Security and Prosperity Partnership, Sinking of the Maine, sovereignty, SPP, the world's other superpower, tipping point, Trilateral Commission, truth, U.S., Uncategorized, war, war crimes, war on democracy, War on Terror, WEF, World Economic Forum with tags analysis, geopolitics, political economy, politics, world news on February 22, 2008 by jtoddring
"The future holds ominous portent, and signs of great hope. Which result ensues depends largely upon what we make of the opportunities." – Noam Chomsky
A number of long-term trends are coming to a head in 2008, particularly within the United States, but also more broadly, affecting North America, the Western nations and the world as a whole. Among them are, to name a few of the most pivotal, in brief: a global crisis of legitimacy, stemming primarily from broad and deep popular opposition to the emerging framework of world order, which is most accurately described as global corporatism, or more starkly but appropriately, global feudal fascism; the unfolding and escalating war on democracy and attempted consolidation of domestic and global dominance by Western elites; rapidly deepening economic crisis; peak oil repercussions; escalating ecological fallout; escalating geopolitical maneuvers for maintaining imperial hegemony; the stealth coup of continental corporatism under the Security and Prosperity Partnership; and pretexts for fortification of existing powers in the heartland of the Western empire, with rapid and highly conscious movement from corporate dominated liberal democracy to full corporatist fascism, under an orchestrated state of emergency. These trends continue to unfold with increasing speed, while at the same time, there are also signs of great hope, as "the other superpower" – the people of the world – begin to awake.
While China, India, Russia and other powers rise rapidly as economic giants, and these BRIC alliance economies in particular, the global hegemony of the Western business elite is threatened, both from these rising external powers, along with rising popular opposition to neocolonial dominance abroad, and from within, by a growing and deep crisis of legitimacy, very much as former right hand man to French President Jacques Chirac, Jacques Attalie had predicted in his candid analysis, Millennium. Western elites believe the barbarians are at the gates, and worse, are in their midst – the masses becoming restless. In response, they grow increasingly desperate. A wounded predator is in its death throws, but as Chomsky has noted, a wounded predator is a dangerous animal. The following is an extremely concise overview of where we stand in light of global geopolitics, as of early 2008.
The Western political and business elite – particularly and most imminently with regard to the United States – face a severe and highly volatile crisis of legitimacy which is set to explode; in response, the elites want to lock-down their power while they have it. (See World Economic Forum global poll, 2002.) As international financier George Soros said recently, "We have to make major compromises now, or we will lose everything." Clearly, the business elite do not wish to compromise, nor do they want to "lose everything". The only alternative to these two options, therefore, is a power-grab: lock-down and consolidate while it is still possible. This is end-game. As Maude Barlow put it, it has come to a "global showdown" between the corporate elite and their empire of greed, and the people of the earth and democracy. The business elite may see a temporary victory, even though power lies ultimately with the vast majority, who in reality can only be ruled so long as we concede power and submit. In the not too distant future, the cooperation of the many with this unfolding corporate-fascist order will fall to critical levels, and the order will collapse. In the short term, a heightened and very ugly struggle between the forces of empire and those of democracy is likely – and is in fact, unfolding now at escalating speed.
Internal documents as well as public statements by the Western business and political elite show (corroborated by historical evidence of their actions, patterns, motives and methods) that a) they want global dominance secured in their hands; b) that this will require control over world oil supplies – primarily in the Middle-East and Canada; c) that imperial war, particularly for control over oil, will be necessary; d) that "catalyzing events" – aka false flag operations, such as the Gulf of Tonkin incident and others, as the Pentagon's Operation Northwoods set out – will be necessary in order to provide a pretext for the imperial wars; e) that maintaining control over the homeland and heart of the empire during the present time of propaganda failure will require resort to force – ie: fascism; and f) that these considerations have been well thought out, and have been found acceptable to these same elites.
Western business elites seek control of world oil reserves as means of securing global dominance; are escalating and broadening the military and paramilitary operations across the oil rich Middle East for this purpose, along with others; are preparing for an attack on Iran sometime in the very near future; need, as Brzezinski also pointed out, another "Pearl Harbor type event" to provide cover for such operations; and will likely launch a "catalyzing event" to provide the justification and cover for their planned action – another 9/11.
The next 9/11 will provide a pretext for a) the attack on Iran to secure mid-east oil reserves, and b) the lock-down on power in the homeland, the heart of the empire – North America and Europe – via martial law and the full emergence of a police state.
The U.S.-led NATO forces that have been deployed to the Persian Gulf and eastern Mediterranean since late August 2006 indicate a military build-up of a scale that can only mean two things: war is planned for the near future; the scale of the planned war is much greater than Iran alone. It could be said that the size of the build up is a precaution, due to the foreknowledge that this is an extremely dangerous gambit: China and Russia are almost certain adversaries if the U.S. and NATO attack Iran. In either case, the time-frame is clear: such a massive deployment of military force – on the part of the U.S., with the involvement of French, German and British forces – is for a clear and imminent purpose. Military build-up as well as the usual preliminary saber rattling, statements by political officials, spin and PR deluge indicates a Western attack on Iran is not far off.
With Western elites set to attack Iran, the question is whether another false flag operation will be conducted to provide cover for the operation: ie: the "war on terrorism" propaganda stepped up by the artificial creation of another terrorist attack on "the Homeland" in order to squeak through one more imperial war before the lock-down on power is complete. And the indications are, yes. It is highly unlikely that the U.S. and Western powers would dare launch an extremely unpopular attack on Iran when the population of the world, including in Europe and the U.S., are deeply opposed to such an act, unless they first create a very strong pretext and justification for invasion. This is the need for another 9/11.
The next "terrorist attack" will destroy the constitutions of the Western world, and democracy, once and for all – or so it is hoped by the business and political elite who wish to rule unencumbered by "the masses." As General Tommy Franks declared, the next attack will be the end of democracy. (It is hoped.) As 2008 unfolds, the war on democracy and the move toward fascism is becoming increasingly undeniable, particularly within the United States. What was unthinkable only a short time ago is now rapidly becoming a reality. It is furthermore becoming obvious that the attack on democracy is highly conscious. This is a power grab, a stealth coup. Another major terrorist attack would provide the rationalization for the full implementation of emergency powers and the suspension of all remaining civil liberties and democracy.
With the Western elites preparing for imminent attack on Iran, a pretext needed, and the "war on terror" fears needing to be stirred up to fever-pitch to allow for such an arrogant and extraordinarily dangerous, reckless and brazen move, the next "Pearl Harbor-type event" will likely be soon; and that event will usher in the fascist state: for all of the "North American Homeland" – as the Pentagon has declared the continent, echoing Nazi terminology – commencing with the United States, and soon after, for as much of the world as the Western elite can control, including, of course, Europe.
Also planned for 2007-2008 is the completion and implementation by stealth of the "regulatory framework" for the SPP/NAU: that is, the new government of North America is to be in place and fully functioning as a shadow government by 2007-2008. This is the unfolding of the "Security and Prosperity Partnership", whereby Canada, the U.S. and Mexico are merged into one continental body, with one continent-wide corporatist regime, in what is being called the North American Union. That government is called the NACC: the North American Council on Competitiveness; and it is composed of 10 representatives from each of the three nations. This council of 30 which is the NACC, the new North American government, is already appointed – appointed by the business elite of North America; and it is composed of representatives from the biggest corporations in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. (We already know their names, and which corporations they come from.) 30 CEO's will govern the entire continent. "The Homeland" becomes a full-fledged corporate-fascist state.
At the same time, also to be expected from an attack on Iran – in fact, a guaranteed result, which is why the attack was likely delayed for some time until the financial elite had prepared their positions securely – is a huge spike in global oil prices. The effects on the destabilization of the U.S. and also the global economy will be very great.
Also at the same time, the U.S. dollar is already falling. Central banks the world over are pulling out. A run is about to commence. Capital flight will bring down the dollar, and the U.S. economy with it. Already the head of China's central bank has said "We have enough [U.S. currency and Treasury Bonds]." The U.S. relies on $2.8 billion a day in foreign money coming into the U.S. system via the purchase of U.S. currency and Treasury Bonds, in order to off-set its $70 billion per month trade deficit. The main prop holding up the U.S. economy and U.S. dollar is the enormous inflow of money from China. Now China has said "We have enough." The U.S. dollar is about to sink, and with it, the U.S. economy. In January of 2008 the S&P index of stocks of the 500 biggest corporations traded on Wall Street showed a 14.5% drop in value over the previous three months, showing a deepening of these trends.
When the U.S. dollar crashes, not only the U.S. economy follows with a crash, but the global economy as well. 66% of world currency reserves held by the central banks of the world's nations are in U.S. dollars. With the crash of the U.S. dollar comes a global economic depression, if not system collapse. This is expected anytime over the near future by anyone who is paying attention.
As if all of that were not already enough crisis and turmoil for one very short period of time, to this we can add the reality of peak oil. In the fall of 2006 I predicted that, according to the best evidence available, and some of the best analysts on the subject, peak oil would hit between 2006 and 2008. When it does, oil prices will spike dramatically, and will continue to climb, likely quadrupling or more. As of February 2008, at the time of this writing, it is now being admited, not only that peak oil is a geolocial and economic reality, but that it occurred in 2007: peak oil is here. Oil prices did rise dramatically, going from US$50/barrel to US$100 a barrel in just over a year, following a slightly longer trend from $20 a barrel in 2004 to $100 a barrel at present, and rising – a five-fold increase in three years. As oil prices skyrocket, the cost of all shipping and transport becomes far more expensive. Virtually all consumer goods rise dramatically in price, including basics such as food. Costs for all businesses relying on transport or inputs or goods over long distances – most businesses now – go through the roof, and widespread bankruptcies, layoffs and unemployment ensues. In short, peak oil means global economic depression, and mass unemployment, poverty, homelessness and hunger. And this is hitting at approximately the same time as we are dealing with the new unfolding of a North American corporate-fascist state under the SPP and NAU/NACC, led by the business elite and their lobby groups, such as the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, the Business Round Table and the Council on Foreign Relations.
To add further complexity, the U.S. government under Bush has snuck through a law that makes mandatory the holding of a "REAL ID" national identity card for all Americans by May 2008. Since by May 2008 Canada, the U.S. and Mexico will have ceased to exist as nations in any meaningful sense – having been stripped of both sovereignty and democracy, the NAU/SPP being in place in operation if not public announcement, and "regulatory harmonization" under the NACC also having been quietly implemented by accommodating executive branches and high level bureaucrats – the "smart card" micro-chip-based REAL ID will become continent-wide. "Papers please." The stage is then set for the introduction of electronic currency, via the universal smart card, which will be offered as a solution to both security issues and currency crashes. No card, no food. And since all personal data is stored on central databanks, accessed by a swipe of the card, being dubbed an "enemy combatant" without notice or trial can mean having all means of sustenance cut, with a few strokes on a remote keyboard, or one mouse-click, somewhere in the netherworld of the surveillance state. Any who hold the wrong opinions – that is, opinions that do not correspond to those the corporate rulers want us to have – can be silenced without even having to dispose of them to the detention centres (which are also under construction).
All of this is within the context of the greatest challenge humanity has faced in recorded history: the ecological crisis which we have set in motion, and which is now bearing fruit in the form of increasing and compounding disasters, leading towards systems breakdown and collapse, as Jared Diamond, David Suzuki, Ronald Wright and many others have warned.
It would seem that it is critical for anyone who does not wish to become a slave, or simply to be submerged in the deepening and interwoven crises of the time, to start to come together, and quickly, to build alternative means of sustaining ourselves and one another during the present time of rapidly unfolding troubles. Most will be swept into poverty by the global depression, compounded by the effects of energy shortage and growing ecological disaster. The middle class will be essentially vaporized across the Western world. Government services will be gutted – far beyond the mere cut-backs of the past twenty years – as corporate rule takes hold in full. Hunger and homelessness will be widespread and epidemic as poverty becomes the norm, as Jacques Attalie and others predicted some time ago. Meanwhile, those who can buy or sell in the new economy will be able to do so only insofar as they are willing to be silent and obedient slaves: dissidents will be shut down electronically, via the symbiosis of the electronic currency system, the universal smart card/ID, and the global surveillance state which serves corporate rule.
To be free in the new economy will mean being economically independent – and that does not mean being an employee, or relying on the monetary system. It means we need to establish parallel economies, whereby human needs and human freedom come first, not service to giant corporate feudal lords. We will need to establish sustainable cooperative local economies based in creative problem solving and mutual aid and common sense, and which operate parallel to and largely outside of the new economy: an economy which will leave only poverty under fascism for the majority, and slavery with perks for the "lucky" few.
There is not much time to prepare for such an unthinkable, but unfortunately real unfolding of events. The time to act is now, both to resist, to prepare to survive this ordeal, and to build alternatives for this ugly feudal fascist system's inevitable demise.
The popular opposition to global corporatism has already reached great breadth and depth – as the World Economic Forum's 2002 global poll showed, as well as the collapse of the WTO talks, as further noted by Canadian philosopher and former Governor General John Ralston Saul – and continues to grow, despite the unsuprising lack of coverage of this phenomenon in the corporate dominated network media. It is precisely because of this crisis of legitimacy and failure of the propaganda system that the Western elite are now seeking to consolidate power while they still can: through the resort to increasing use of fear as a means of public control, and more directly, through the use of force and state terror. But the crisis of legitimacy indicates the end of their reign approaches, just as it did for the regime of the former Soviet Union, less than twenty years ago.
Along with opposition to the present corporatist form of globalization, popular movements have for decades been busy experimenting with and developing working models of alternatives, in everything from green energy and transportation, organic farming and fair trade, to tools and models for authentic democracy and sustainable, just and peaceful communities. Everything we need to build a better world is here. We need only to act. And the time is ripe. Furthermore, there is no time to lose.
"In the long run, global politics are bound to become increasingly uncongenial to the concentration of hegemonic power in the hands of a single state. Hence, America is not only the first, as well as the only, truly global superpower, but it is also likely to be the very last."
– U.S. long-term strategic planner and Trilateral Commission founder Zbigniew Brzezinksi,
The Grand Chessboard
Not only will the U.S. be the last nation state superpower, the last of the nation state empires: the end of empires more broadly – including the present trans-national corporatist empire – is about to be witnessed by a thankful and newly empowered humanity. Sadly, it seems we must first live through a period of darkness before the age of empires can be closed.
Do not forget that the sun also rises. Let us work together now for a better world for all. A new dawn is already on the horizon. I can see it clearly. It's birth may be painful, but its splendour will be magnificent.
February, 22, 2008
Links and references:
The death of democracy in America: Time for a re-awakening
Smedley Butler and the Business Plot
Powder Keg USA: US heading toward fascism and civil war
HR 1955: The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act
Fast-Track to Fascism: The SPP in a Nutshell
HEY YOU! Lefties, liberals and progressives – Listen up
My Buddy Obama
Money, Banks and Democracy
America: A Fork In the Road
On Libertarianism: Right & Left
Earth 101: Essential Reading
Preparations for an Attack on Iran:
The Next War: Public in the Dark about Government's Plans for War in Iran – Daniel Ellsberg
* "Cold War Shivers": War Preparations in the Middle East and Central Asia
Debating World Domination: Bilderberg Meets in Canada's Capital
ZNet |Foreign Policy | We Had a Democracy Once, But You Crushed It
False Flag: A "Pearl Harbor Type Event"
Bush Directive for a "Catastrophic Emergency" in America: Building a Justification for Waging War on Iran?
Brzezinski warns of Pearl Harbor type event, a pretext for war on Iran
Ron Paul – Gulf of Tonkin
9/11: The "Perfect Opportunity" for North American Integration
Ex-Italian Prime Minister – '9/11 Carried Out By CIA and Mossad' // Current
Former German Minister Says Building 7 Used To Run 9/11 Attack
9-11 Research: Insider Trading
911 Proof
911 Aftermath: Unanswered Question from 9/11 (pt.1) – video
911 Aftermath: Unanswered Questions from 9/11 (pt.2) – video
THE TRUTH & LIES OF 9/11 – Michael Ruppert – video
War and Globalization – The Truth Behind September 11 – Google Video
American Scholars Symposium
** Senior Military, Intelligence, and Government Officials Question 9/11 Commission Report
9/11 Statement Signed by Prominent Americans
Scholars for 9/11 Truth
ONE IN 3 AMERICANS SAY U.S. AIDED 9/11 By THOMAS HARGROVE and GUIDO H. STEMPEL III – New York Post Online Edition: News
* Scientific Poll: 84% Reject Official 9/11 Story
* Radio Poll: 85% Of Canadians Believe 9/11 Inside Job
* Over 80% supported the stance of Charlie Sheen
9/11: Why the Official Theory Has Collapsed (opinion)
* Alex Jones warns about attacks before 911
ABC News: U.S. Military Wanted to Provoke War With Cuba
National Security Archive – Pentagon Proposed Pretexts for Cuba Invasion in 1962
Venezuela's Chavez says Bush planned 9/11 attacks – video
Reichstag Fire, Hitlers 9/11 Fake terror to grab control! : SF Indymedia – video
TerrorStorm Delxue High Quality (Alex Jones) – Google Video
The Pentagon's "Second 911"
Dynasty of Death: Historical perspective on the Bush family
***Amazon.com: 9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out: Books: David Ray Griffin,Peter Dale Scott
book – Day Of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor: Books: Robert Stinnett
9/11: Press for Truth – DVD Documentary
Celcius 9/11 – World Takeover and the War of Terror – CRG
9/11 Key Articles – Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG)
The emergence of fascism in the West:
*** Habeas Corpus Your words are lies Sir – YouTube – olbermann 10-18-06
***Bush Moves Toward Martial Law
Habeas Corpus, R.I.P. (12/15 – 2006)
Demolishing Democracy At Home and Abroad – Noam Chomsky video
The Return of Total Information Awareness – Bush Asserts Dictatorial "Inherent" Powers
Examples of the president's signing statements – The Boston Globe
***The Secret Government – PBS – Google Video
Eisenhower warns us of the military industrial complex. – Video: 1961 Farewell Address
Power of Nightmares – BBC Documentary
Mind Control: America's Secret War – History Channel Documentary
***Commission Finds President George W. Bush and His Administration Guilty of War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity
Bush's 9/11 Reichstag Fire
9/11 – the American Reichstag Fire and the Fourth Reich
The Pentagon Declares War on America
The limits of liberty: We're all suspects now
Are YOU the Enemy?
Maher Arar: The Horrors of 'Extraordinary Rendition'
*** Torture Inc. – America's Brutal Prisons – BBC Documentary
* National Yawn as Our Rights Evaporate | bushcommission.org
* A Constitutional Shredding — Rounding Up U.S. Citizens | bushcommission.org
The End of Habeas Corpus and the Belligerent Despot-in-Chief – Ralph Nader
Ambassador to Death Squads – Who is John Negroponte?
On the Rise of Fascism – "The Great Transformation" Revisited
LIBERTY V.S. SECURITY
Harsh law set to live on, unexplained
*CRG – Canada's Anti-Terrorism Laws – Rocco Galati
FSTV video – Noble lies and perpetual war: Leo Strauss, the neocons, and Iraq
Amazon.com: Blowback: America's Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War: Books: Christopher Simpson
Amazon.com: The CIA's Greatest Hits (The Real Story Series): Books: Mark Zepezauer
Amazon.com: Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press: Books: Alexander Cockburn, Jeffrey St. Clair
Amazon.com: Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion: Books: Gary Webb
Amazon.com: Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency: Books: James Bamford
* Amazon.com: Police State America: US Military 'Civil Disturbance' Planning: Books: Tom Burghardt, Tom (ed) Burghardt
Necessary Illusions; Thought Control in Democratic Societies – Chomsky, online text
Year 501: The Conquest Continues – Chomsky, online text
Amazon.com: Open Society and Its Enemies (Volume 1): Books: Karl Raimund Popper
Noam Chomsky on the Trilateral Commission – from The Carter Administration: Myth and Reality
Amazon.com: Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management: Books: Holly Sklar
Amazon.com: Trilaterals Over America: Books: Antony C. Sutton
TC's own manifesto – Amazon.com: The Crisis of Democracy: Report on the Governability of Democracies to the Trilateral Commission: Books: Michel Crozier,Samuel P. Huntington,Joji Watanuki
Amazon.com: Tragedy & Hope: A History of the World in Our Time: Explore similar items
Skull and Bones K.O.'d – video
Zbigniew Brzezinski – The Grand Chessboard
***American Prison Camps Are on the Way
Rex 84: FEMA's Blueprint for Martial Law in America
Homeland Security Contracts for Vast New Detention Camps
10-Year U.S. Strategic Plan For Detention Camps Revives Proposals From Oliver North
Fatal Vision: The Deeper Evil Behind the Detainee Bill
Top 10 Signs of the Impending U.S. Police State
Notes on the Progress of the Counterrevolution
America: The Fourth Reich
How the Nazis Won the War – Chomsky Nazis Odonian
The Nazi Parallel – NSS & Fascism – NSS Churches US Fascism Herman
Trading with the Enemy The Nazi – American Money Plot 1933-1949
General Tommy Franks calls for Repeal of US Constitution
Air Force chief : Test weapons on testy US mobs – Sep 12 …
Noam Chomsky on Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest For Global Dominance – audio
War on Terrorism Watch: CAUT Resource Website – Home Page
The State of Democracy – counterSpin final edition
* Demolishing Democracy At Home and Abroad – Noam Chomsky, Freespeech TV
A Marxist Threat to Cola Sales?
Who are the Global Terrorists, by Noam Chomsky
On the Long and Bloody History of U.S.-Sponsored Terrorism – Chomsky – audio
Amazon.com: Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II-Updated Through 2003: Books: William Blum
America's "War on Terrorism" – Chossudovsky
Amazon.com: The COINTELPRO Papers : Documents from the FBI's Secret …
Ten Minutes to Midnight: The Emerging Police State – Z Store
Fascism watch
SPP/NAU/NACC: The new corporate fascist government of North America, 2007
* Secret Banff Meeting of CEOs and the Defense Establishment : Militarization and the Deconstruction of North America
CBC – Top secret: Banff security meeting attracted U.S., Mexico officials
* CNN Video: Lou Dobbs Slams CFR & North American Union
*** De Facto North American Government in the Making: "Canadians must take back Canada"
Deep Integration – The Council of Canadians
**CFR Task Force Report – Building a North American Community
* CRG – Continental Integration of Military Command Structures: A Threat to Canada's Sovereignty
* Documenting the rush to globalism – The August Review
* North American Union/Testimony, Publications and Reports – SourceWatch
*** Paul Martin's Big Texas Adventure
Politics of Oil:
Video – Robert Newman History of oil – Google Video
The Oil Factor: Behind the War on Terror – Google Video
"It's the Crude, Dude" Linda McQuaig book launch
Peak Oil:
AlterNet: Will the End of Oil Be the End Of Food?
AlterNet: WireTap: Has the Long Peak – Oil Emergency Begun?
BBC NEWS | Business | 'Peak oil' enters mainstream debate
CNN – We Were Warned: Tomorrow's Oil Crisis
Peak Oil alert – Houston Business Journal:
Peak Oil: The Energy Crisis of Oil Supply Depletion – full video
Re-Energizing America: Rescuing America from its Costly Fossil Fuel Addiction – Google Video
Mike Ruppert on Peak Oil – video
www.oilempire.us
The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century: Books: James Howard Kunstler
U.S. Faces "Economic Armageddon":
* The Dollar's Full-System Meltdown
Economic " Armageddon " Predicted
Dollar Catching Asian Flu – Asia Times
Arab central banks sell dollar
As Dollar Plunges, Watch for US Government Bonds Sell -off – DEBKAfile –
The War To Save The U.S. Dollar – Trinicenter.com –
Fears for dollar as central banks sell US assets
BBC NEWS | Business | Is the global economy set for trouble?
Collapse of the Petrodollar Looming
Iranian Oil Bourse Opens for Business: A Final Step Toward US Dollar Collapse & Preemptive Nuclear Strike
An empire at twilight:
Superpower's global dominance in question
50 Years After Suez, US Hegemony Ebbing Fast
"The United States is Terrified" – Noam Chomsky on Latin America's Move Towards "Independence and Integration"
The Crumbling Empire: Latin America and Asia Breaking Free of Washington's Grip – Noam Chomsky
The crisis of legitimacy:
Global corporate rule is now fragile
Confronting the Empire – Chomsky at the World Social Forum
The Global Crisis of Legitimacy of Liberal Democracy – Social and Economic Policy – Global Policy Forum
REAL ID: Universal ID Cards
US National ID Cards by May 2008
National nightmare – ACLU of Southern California Campaign: Stop The Abuse of Power
Globalization and the rise of corporate power:
The Corporation – video
Iraq for Sale
On Globalization – Noam Chomsky
On the New World Order – Chomsky
Rollback – Chomsky
* Thirdworldization of America
Chomsky: Global Economy – excerpts from The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many
Profit Over People – excerpts – Noam Chomsky
Emerging Framework of World Power – Chomsky – audio/video
Institutions vs. People: Will the Species Self-Destruct? – Chomsky – MIT video
150 CEOs rule Canada: Time to tame corporate power – Murray Dobbin
No Nonsense Guide to Globalization – book
Book Review – All You Can Eat: Greed, Lust, and the New Capitalism by Linda McQuaig – Alternative News Media on Democracy, Politics, Trade, Environment, Military and Money in Canada
The Globalization of Poverty – Chossudovsky
Alternatives:
Global Showdown: How the new activists are fighting global corporate rule – video
Confronting the Empire – Chomsky
Confronting the Empire – Chomsky – audio
Chomsky – Dismantling Empire, Building Democracy – audio – Chomsky
Taking Control of Our Lives: Freedom, Sovereignty, and Other Endangered Species, Noam Chomsky, 2/26/00
Another World: Alternative Ways to Globalization – audio/video
Noam Chomsky speaks at Binghamton University 3/4/06 – "Imminent Crises: Paths Toward Solutions" – on WSKG Radio
Dismantling empire – chomsky
Rise Up Against the Empire – Chavez speach to UN
International Project for a Participatory Society – Z net
Strategy/Vision – Z net
Peak Oil Primer/What Can Be Done? | EnergyBulletin.net | Peak Oil News Clearinghouse
The Relocalization Network
The Community Solution to Peak Oil
The Local Future Network
The Community Solution: The Solution to Peak Oil
Ruralisation: Integrating settlements and agriculture to provide sustainability – Dept. of Systems Ecology, Stockholm University
Cohousing Association of the United States
Global Ecovillage Network
Intentional Communities Web Site: Home Page
The Earth Charter
The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil – order video
Making Sweden an OIL-FREE Society
Nordic Countries Design Sustainable Communities: The Natural Step for Eco-Villages
How to pass a peak oil resolution | EnergyBulletin.net | Peak Oil News Clearinghouse
LETSystems home page – http–www.gmlets.u-net.com-
LETS Groups around the world – LETS-Linkup International LETS Directory
Hometown Money Starter Kit & Video
Toronto Dollars
Transaction Net – How Currency Systems Work (a Money Map)
Reinventing Money.com
ZNet Parecon – Life After Capitalism – And Now Too
Parecon – ZNet
Amazon.com: Roads to Freedom: Books: B. Russell
Powers and Prospects – Chomsky
Mutual Aid A Factor of Evolution – Kropotkin – libcom.org library
Civil Disobedience – Henry David Thoreau – full text
The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy: Books: Murray Bookchin
The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future: Books: Riane Eisler
Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh: Books: Helena Norberg-Hodge
Good News for a Change: How Everyday People are Helping the Planet: Books: David T. Suzuki,Holly Dressel
Insurrection: Citizen Challenges to Corporate Power
* Amazon.com: The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community (BK Currents): Books: David C. Korten
Amazon.ca: Another World Is Possible: Globalization and Anti-Capitalism: Books: David McNally
South End Press | Earth Democracy – Vandana Shiva
Looking Forward – Albert and Hahnel
No Nonsense Guide to Fair Trade – book
Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World: Books: Richard Heinberg
Amazon.ca: One Big Party: Books: Paul Hellyer
* Amazon.co.uk: Shambhala : The Sacred Path of the Warrior ( Shambhala …
Scientific American Mind: The Samaritan Paradox
Amazon.com: World as Lover , World as Self : Books: Joanna Macy
Money, Banks and Democracy: The reality beneath the ideological fantasies and spin
Posted in banks, currency, debt, democracy, economics, economy, money, political economy, Rockefeller, Ron Paul on February 4, 2008 by jtoddring
"Power follows property."
The Golden Rule, as cynically applied by the financial elite: "He who holds the gold makes the rules."
Of course, if you can dispense with the need for gold, and still make the rules, that's even better.
I think the evidence is enormously strong that democratically elected governments need to have greater control over their national currencies, not less. The "independence" of a privately owned central bank means economic policies which benefit the private bank's shareholders, rather than the people of the nation.
There is simply overwhelming evidence to support this view. Without democratic control of national currency, via democratically elected bodies such as Congress, sovereignty becomes an impossibility. We need to be dealing with reality here, not ideology.
Central banks that are privately owned – that is, controlled by large corporations or small groups of financial elites – tend to damage national economies while benefiting the financial elite, and more critically, undermine all ability of democratic governments to hold real power on behalf of the people, giving power to the bankers and corporations, and removing effective power from parliament or Congress.
Allowing private empires, such as those who control the FED, to "manage" the nation's money is pretty much letting the wolves guard the hen house. Democratically elected governments have the right, the mandate and the power to print and control the nation's currency.
To forgo this right and pass this power to highly concentrated financial dynasties, is both unwise and highly dangerous. Jefferson, Jackson and Lincoln knew this, and fought to prevent the handing over of control of the nation's currency to a private bank. They were far more prescient than most people or politicians today. Their advice on keeping the central bank public and democratically controlled should have been heeded. Having failed to heed their warnings, we must today correct our mistake. The issue of control over national currency is absolutely central. All talk of freedom or democracy is meaningless and hollow if this is not addressed.
William Lyon Mackenzie King
Once a nation parts with the control of its currency and credit, it matters not who makes the nations laws. Usury, once in control, will wreck any nation. Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as its most sacred responsibility, all talk of the sovereignty of parliament and of democracy is idle and futile.
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them (around the banks), will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.
"I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world – no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men."
-President Woodrow Wilson
The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.
History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling the money and its issuance.
Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes the laws.
When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation, since the hand that gives is above the hand that takes. Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain.
The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson.
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murder is less to fear.
David Rockefeller writes on pages 404 and 405 of his memoirs:
"The anti-Rockefeller focus of these otherwise incompatible
political positions [across the political spectrum] owes
much to Populism. 'Populists' believe in conspiracies, and
one of the most enduring is that a secret group of
international bankers and capitalists, and their minions,
control the world's economy. Because of my name and
prominence as the head of the Chase for many years, I have
earned the distinction of 'conspirator in chief' from some
of these people…Some even believe we are part of a secret
cabal working against the best interests of the United States,
characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of
conspiring with others around the world to build a more
integrated global political and economic structure - one
world, if you will. If that is the charge, I stand guilty,
and I am proud of it."
If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up any natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right to freedom being the gift of Almighty God, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave.
Charles A. Lindbergh
This Act (the Federal Reserve Act, Dec. 23rd 1913) establishes the most gigantic trust on earth. When the President (Woodrow Wilson) signs the Bill, the invisible government of the Monetary Power will be legalised… The worst legislative crime of the ages is perpetrated by this banking and currency Bill.
H. L. Birum, Sr.
The Federal Reserve Bank is nothing but a banking fraud and an unlawful crime against civilization. Why? Because they "create" the money made out of nothing, and our Uncle Sap Government issues their "Federal Reserve Notes" and stamps our Government approval with NO obligation whatever from these Federal Reserve Banks, Individual Banks or National Banks, etc.
Grace Commission
100% of what is collected is absorbed solely by interest on the Federal Debt … all individual income tax revenues are gone before one nickel is spent on the services taxpayers expect from government.
It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.
Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.
Everything secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.
How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!
Yes, we did produce a near-perfect republic. But will they keep it? Or will they, in the enjoyment of plenty, lose the memory of freedom? Material abundance without character is the path of destruction.
Believe nothing merely because you have been told it. Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the teacher. But whatsoever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be kind, conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings — that doctrine believe and cling to, and take it as your guide.
Be not intimidated… nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery and cowardice.
The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men.
"The ultimate authority … resides in the people alone." – James Madison
"It is more honorable to repair a wrong than to persist in it." – Thomas Jefferson
John F. Hylan
The real menace of our Republic is the invisible government which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy legs over our cities states and nation. At the head is a small group of banking houses generally referred to as 'international bankers.' This little coterie… run our government for their own selfish ends. It operates under cover of a self-created screen…[and] seizes…our executive officers… legislative bodies… schools… courts… newspapers and every agency created for the public protection.
Justice Felix Frankfurter
The real rulers in Washington are invisible and exercise power from behind the scenes.
Charles-Louis De Secondat
There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.
Major L. L. B. Angus
The modern Banking system manufactures money out of nothing. The process is perhaps the most astounding piece of sleight of hand that was ever invented. Banks can in fact inflate, mint and unmint the modern ledger-entry currency.
"Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the Field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere — so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive — that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it." – Woodrow Wilson
Carroll Quigley
The powers of financial capitalism had (a) far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank…sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world.
"They must find it difficult…those who have taken authority as the truth, rather than truth as the authority." – Gerald Massey
"Where is the knowledge that is lost in information?
Where is the wisdom that is lost in knowledge?"
– T.S. Elliot
"Put fear behind and save the country." – Simon Bolivar
"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."
– Eleanor Roosevelt.
"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending
too much liberty than to those attending too small
a degree of it." – Thomas Jefferson
"If there is anything which it is the duty of the whole people to never entrust to any hands but their own — that thing is the preservation of their own liberties and institutions." – Abraham Lincoln
"The people of the United States are the rightful masters of both Congress and the Courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution." – Abraham Lincoln
A diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty. – James Madison
"I have the Confederacy before me, and the bankers behind me, and for my country I fear the bankers most." – Abraham Lincoln.
Enlighten the people, generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like spirits at the dawn of day. – Thomas Jefferson
For a tutorial on the nature of money and banking, see the excellent film: Money As Debt. You can find it on Google Video.
Money As Debt
For a critical look at Friedmanite economics, see Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine. (2007 book, film, interviews on Democracy Now!)
The Shock Doctrine: Naomi Klein on the Rise of Disaster Capitalism – Democracy Now!
John Perkins on "The Secret History of the American Empire: Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and the Truth about Global Corruption" – Democracy Now!
Self-Described Economic Hit Man John Perkins: "We Have Created the World's First Truly Global Empire" – Democracy Now!
Free Market Fantasies, by Noam Chomsky 1/5
Monopoly Men (Federal Reserve Fraud)
Ron Paul on Federal Reserve, banking and economy
Ron Paul Challenges the Federal Reserve
Ron Paul of Texas – The End of Dollar Hegemony
Noam Chomsky – Emerging Framework of World Power
The Secret History of the CIA – John Stockwell
Former CIA agent Philip Agee on Permanent War
Life and Debt – Globalization and Jamaica
Noam Chomsky – Class War (Part 1)
America : Freedom to Fascism – Director's Authorized Version
The Power of Nightmares: BBC Dissects War on Terror – Part 1: Baby it's Cold Outside
*****"The End of America": Naomi Wolf Warns U.S. in Slow Descent into Fascism – Democracy Now! |
"Liberal Democracy is moving toward a form of corporate dictatorship" – John Pilger on Propaganda, the Press, Censorship and Resisting the American Empire
Big Ideas That Changed The World : Democracy-Tony Benn
The Right Kind of Confusion: Conservative Divisions and the Collapse of the Right
Posted in American politics, Bush, Canada, Canadian politics, capitalism, Clinton, conservative, Conservative Party, conservatives, corporate rule, corporatism, debt, deficit, Democratic Party, election, FDR, fiscal conservative, Global War on Terrorism, Harper, Hilary, Hobbes, Keynesian economics, liberal, libertarian, Martin, Mulroney, neoconservatism, neoliberalism, New Deal, Obama, politics, Reagan, Republican Party, right, social conservative, Thatcher, Trudeau, U.S., Uncategorized, war on democracy, War on Terror on May 16, 2007 by jtoddring
The Conservative Party seems to be a strange mixture of competing and conflicting ideologies, as Devin Johnston pointed out in Countdown Until the Conservative Party Disbands Again. His post sparked reflections on the state of conservative parties and alliances in Canada and the U.S. Here are a few thoughts. To begin with, I think it's helpful to distinguish some of the ideological or philosophical currents that are lumped together under the label of "the right" or "conservative". The first that comes to mind for many is crass servility to corporate power, however, there is of course, much more complexity to the right than that.
One element within that loose category called "conservative" or "the right" is the current which comprises social conservativism. As Devin again, nicely summarized: "Social conservatism is the premise that there is one "right" way of living in a community and one "right" set of values, beliefs and ideals. Social conservatives advocate the suppression of the rights and freedoms of minorities through the state imposition of white male Christian heteronormative values. [In Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia, it would be Arab male Islamic heteronormative values; and in both cases, class prejudice and class warfare are more than a little present – they are in fact central.] Classical liberals precisely reject any attempt by the state to dictate beliefs and values to citizens." Well put. You could say it is Thomas Hobbes versus Thomas Paine.
Another current is populist, with strong values of grassroots democracy. Closely related but more emphatic in its wariness of centralized power is the libertarian current. Populists may be social conservatives, although there is an uneasy tension in this inherent contradiction; but any genuine libertarian will disavow state interference in the lives of citizens, including same sex marriage, de-criminalization of marijuana and other hot-button issues for social conservatives.
Classical liberalism places a high value on freedom, and distrusts what libertarians call the "nanny state." Libertarians therefore have an uneasy alliance with the right, as the right is uncomfortably full of social conservatives who want to regulate everything from who you sleep with to how you brush your teeth. Libertarians can for these reasons be found forming alliances with the left when conditions are right. (No pun intended.) It is not necessarily that they are fickle, but more that they are looking for political representation within a system and political climate that is far more statist, centralist, elitist and authoritarian than they would like to see. Depending upon the policies – or promises – of the right or left, they may go either way, and this can at times be an informed and intelligent choice.
Thus, libertarians have more in common with classical liberals – or even left libertarians, who are in truth their estranged cousins – than with social conservatives. It is the espoused values of limited government, freedom, populism, and fiscal conservatism of the right that has attracted the support of libertarians, but if we look to the actual record of the right in Canada and the U.S. we can see that these values were only for public consumption, not for actual practice. Libertarians, populists, fiscal conservatives and advocates of freedom have been sold a bill of goods. More directly, they have been lied to.
The U.S. became the world's biggest debtor under Reagan, who ballooned the debt to record levels with his tax cuts for the rich and corporations, combined with massive military spending, which is piped through the Pentagon system to form what amounts to corporate welfare for the military-industrial complex – all the while praising the free market, fiscal prudence and shrinking big government. Orwell would nod to Reagan's handlers. Bush I carried on the tradition, and Bush II has pushed the debt up to $8 trillion – to the point where the dollar, the U.S. economy, and likely the U.S. government will soon collapse, as leading economists have noted with urgency.
All the while, throughout this spending spree by the right in the U.S., government got bigger and bigger, encroachment on personal lives and liberty grew, and erosion of civil rights and freedom is now at crisis point: the constitution itself is at question. It is not clear that democracy will survive in America. The merger of the state and corporate world has been taken to near complete lengths. Eisenhower's warning has become stark reality.
Both of these trends – wildly indulgent corporate welfare, bringing the nation to the brink of bankruptcy, and grossly inflated powers of government encroaching on civil liberties and freedom – disgust and revolt the libertarians who have in the past supported the Republican and Conservative Parties.
In Canada, Mulroney took the conservatives into the realm of Thatcher, Reagan and neoconservatism – a flat betrayal of the history and traditions of the party. It was under Mulroney that the deficit and debt ballooned, while Trudeau is wrongly blamed. Trudeau and the Liberals faced recession and the OPEC crisis, Mulroney simply sold out the country to the corporate barons. I am no fan of the Liberal Party, but the truth must be told. It was not spending on social programs that drove up the debt, as the right wing media and "think tanks" (read corporate propaganda tools) convinced many to believe.
It was a combination of deliberate slashing of government revenues under Mulroney and successors (including Martin) by way of lavish corporate tax cuts, combined with the strong arm tactics of the international financial community which held our national debt and demanded increasing returns on "investment" by way of interest payments, which created the inflated deficits and growing debt. In the U.S. and Canada, as well as Britain and other Western nations, Keynesian economics and New Deal policies was blamed for fiscal imbalance, cynically and dishonestly, while the real culprit was welfare-state capitalism: hand-outs and tax breaks for the rich and the business elite – with a roll-back for ordinary people of all the gains made over decades and generations, with wages falling and social programs slashed.
This is the true story of the `80's and `90's in Canada: cut social spending by claiming a debt crisis – a debt crisis that was created consciously by slashing corporate taxes. It is a win-win situation for the corporate sector: greatly reduced taxes, and a disintegrating social safety net which means people are increasingly desperate and will work for less and less pay. Wonderful for corporate Canada. A tragic betrayal for the people of the country. And this scheme was authored and orchestrated by both Liberals and Conservatives from Mulroney on, all the while speaking of fiscal responsibility and loyalty to the people of Canada. Sickening deceit is what it is.
What we have in the Liberal and Democratic Parties, is a divide between traditional liberals and neoliberalism. Traditional liberals value freedom, democracy, and at least some measure of equality. Neoliberalism surrenders all values to one: compliance with the corporate masters. In the Republican and Conservative Parties, we have a similar division: between traditional conservatives and neoconservatives. Neoconservatives, like neoliberals – being two sides of the same boot-licking serve-the-man philosophy – have surrendered all values to the one over-riding principle: don't bite, but fervently serve the hand that feeds you – that is, corporate America, or in Canada, Bay Street.
The conflict between social conservatives and libertarians within the broad realm of the right makes political alliances on the right tenuous at best. When you add in the split between genuine fiscal conservatives on the one hand, and on the other hand, neoliberals/neoconservatives (two sides of the same coin) who dominate the party leadership of the right in both the U.S. and Canada (along with all of the major parties), and who speak of fiscal responsibility while engaging in patronage, pork-barreling and corporate welfare to obscene degrees and in grossly hypocritical if not Machiavellian fashion, you have a potential rift that can quickly turn explosive. Witness the present meltdown of the American Republican Party. These divisions are tearing the party to pieces, and not even the most shrill and Orwellian fear-mongering or GWOT rhetoric can keep this machine from flying apart.
Social conservatives are fleeing the Republican Party, as are fiscal conservatives. Libertarians are simply appalled, and feel they have been lied to and betrayed. Republicans under the neocons have alienated the Christian right, the traditional conservatives and the libertarians. All that is left is a few scared suburbanites and the handful of super-rich who are the real constituency of the neconservatives. The party is disintegrating. The game is now open. The political landscape in the U.S. is shifting rapidly.
A maverick like Ron Paul could potentially seize on this disruption in the Republican Party, and capture support that would normally go to someone like Bush or Giuliani. With the Democrats making themselves the party of spineless non-opposition to the horrors and corruption of the neocons (Hilary and Obama being two cases in point), the dark horses like Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich actually stand a chance.
Not that I place much hope or even interest in electoral politics in the present or immediate future, believing that they are largely irrelevant by virtue of a general vacuity of both vision and courage, and viewing grassroots movements as the real source of social change, both historically and in the foreseeable future; but some basic sanity and human decency in the realm of parliamentary politics would be a refreshing change.
Getting back to Canadian politics, if the rhetoric versus reality chasm is exposed more thoroughly in the case of the Conservative Party, and the already existing internal divisions made clear, so that a healthy debate among conservatives can occur, the results will likely be the splintering of "the party" but also the resurrection of democracy among the right. That would not be a bad thing.
Basically, the Conservative Party in Canada, as well as the Republican Party of the United States, are parties of, by and for big business and the corporate lobby, but they have to get elected by voters, and not simply gather "donations" from the business elite to get elected; thus they have to lure social and fiscal conservatives, populists and libertarians into thinking that these parties actually have some substantial allegiance to something other than the pursuit of money and power through service to the corporate elite. This is the primary flaw and fatal internal division within the parties of the right: they are built upon a lie.
Of these five elements that we have identified within the right – social conservatism, fiscal conservatism, populism, libertarianism, and service to corporate power – it is almost without exception the one single principle of service to the corporate elite which consistently wins out; all other values are for rhetorical purposes only – they can, will be and have been dispensed with whenever they conflict with the over-riding principle: serve the masters.
Show the people the lie, and the façade falls apart. Then you have a party exposed for what it is: neoconservative, not genuinely conservative – which is a party of class warfare: serve the moneyed aristocracy, as Jefferson decried, and fool the people into serving themselves up on the altar of mammon.
Devin Johnston hits the nail on the head when he says, "At any rate, it is clear to me that the Conservative Party is a pathetic attempt to unite people who are in fact completely at odds with one another in order to destroy a common enemy: godless socialism." (At least that was the case up until the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the official enemy.) It can be added however that polls in Canada as well as the U.S. show consistent and overwhelming popular support for socialist-leaning policies and views. There is in Canada and the U.S. overwhelming popular support for universal public health care. Overwhelming support for universally accessible education. Overwhelming support for a guaranteed social safety net to protect the poor, ill, injured, disabled and elderly from the ravages of an unfettered monopoly capitalism. An overwhelming majority – generally approaching 80% – believe that the economic system is inherently unfair, the gap between rich and poor is widening, and that the rich get richer while the poor get…..something other. (This latter point by the way is not socialist, but simply a matter of the intelligent or merely common sense observation of the undeniable facts.)
In a nation-wide poll of American citizens the core socialist dictum of "From each according to his ability; to each according to his need" was felt to be such a matter of common sense and common human decency, that over 70% of Americans believed it must have come from the U.S. Constitution. It was, of course, a statement made by none other than Karl Marx. This is why the New Deal policies of FDR in the U.S. Democratic Party and Trudeau in Canada, were so immensely popular: they approximated the ideals of fairness, justice, equality and compassion, even though they were watered down by virtue of existing within an fundamentally unchallenged economic framework of monopoly capitalism. The populace leans left, as it has for generations, while the economic system maintains power in the hands of the few, with the results that political parties have done more to serve the interests of the powerful than those of the people.
If the rhetoric is cut through, the popular support vanishes; and all that is left of the parties of the right in Canada and the U.S. is a servile allegiance to corporate America and Bay Street. Poke the balloon. The time is right to burst this bubble of delusion.
The only other prop holding up this rape and pillage party apparatus of the right is the scare tactics of the Global War on Terror; and that too, is failing. A whole other discussion would be necessary to dissect this campaign of state terrorism which is in effect, and by design, a war, not on terror, but on democracy. For the time being, let it suffice to say that this is not a war that the power elite – being the corporate elite and their political servlings – can win.
When it comes to dismantling the basic structures of democracy, disemboweling the safeguards of basic human rights and freedom, and nullifying a two-hundred year old tradition of constitutional democracy, they will fail. The values of democracy, freedom and human rights have been too deeply imbued in the people of the Western world for these to be given up without a fight – in fact, without a powerful resistance movement.
600,000 or more dead in Iraq to "fight terrorism" and "sow democracy" – in truth, as most now admit, to fight imperial wars for control of world energy supplies – this is terrorism at its finest; or most brutal. The anti-terrorist legislation of post-9/11 paranoia and propaganda, most notoriously the U.S. Patriot Act and Military Commissions Act: this is not the safeguarding of "our way of life" – this is not the "defense of liberty and freedom." This is the destruction of constitutional democracy and civil rights. This is the criminalization of dissent. This is a Machiavellian lie of the greatest proportions. And this is becoming evident even to the staunchest defenders of the "war on terror."
The propaganda war that upholds corporate power now, after the red scare days have passed – the tactics no longer effective with the absence of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the Eastern Bloc – the only rhetoric that upholds this fragile and crumbling edifice of corporate power, short of brute force itself, is the lie of the war on terror. Frighten the people, and they will support "strong leaders" and repressive measures at home, as well as imperial warfare abroad, disguised as self-defense. But the propaganda war is failing. Either there will be another terrorist incident, which will bolster the effectiveness of the propaganda, and again rally the people into supporting their own slavery, the surrender of their rights and freedoms, and the wars of empire around the globe, or the propaganda campaign will collapse, and with it, the power elite that serves, and is in power to serve, the power of the rich and the corporate world. The latter is not likely to be allowed to happen, so watch out for the former.
In the short term, a renewed campaign of what the political elite and agencies like the CIA call "political warfare" and "psychological warfare" – what used to be called propaganda when there existed a bit more honesty in the political arena – is likely to be invoked; and in the short term, there may yet be temporary, Pyrrhic victories for the corporate elite and their servants who present themselves as popular leaders of the right (or the center or left, a la Clinton, Martin, Blair). This is, or should be, a cause for concern. In the not too distant future however, and in fact, in the very near future, such Machiavellian machinations as are won by acts of great deception are unsustainable, and will collapse. They are indeed collapsing as we speak. We need to hasten the demise of these dangerous delusions – at least, that is, if we are at all alive to our human hearts and minds, and care not to see unnecessary suffering, madness or destruction on this small and beautiful, fragile planet. We need to break open these bonds of confusion, examine them, and tear them asunder. They will collapse upon examination. All that is required is the light of day.
J. Todd Ring
Posted by: jtoddring, in New Deal, Trudeau, Keynesian economics, debt, FDR, Democratic Party, social conservative, fiscal conservative, Liberal, deficit, Reagan, Mulroney, Martin, Harper, Hilary, Obama, Thatcher, Bush, Clinton, libertarian, Global War on Terrorism, conservatives, Canada, Canadian politics, capitalism, corporate rule, Hobbes, war on democracy, corporatism, election, Conservative Party, Republican Party, neoconservatism, war on terror, American politics, U.S., neoliberalism, right, conservative, politics
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