Giordano Bruno: The New American: A Rebirth Of The Old Guard

The New American: A Rebirth Of The Old Guard

by Giordano Bruno article link

July 26, 2010 | Neithercorp Press

People no longer believe in the existence of heroes. By heroes, I do not mean synthetic pop culture icons and sports stars, or mass media generated two faced chimera politicians. I do not mean those fraudulent public figures and false idols which are thrust into the establishment limelight and into our collective faces everyday. By heroes, I mean those ordinary men and women throughout the ages who stood firm against extraordinary corruption and overwhelming social evil. I mean those who had the will to risk everything for truth and an honorable tomorrow, often receiving no recognition for their sacrifice. Today, such heroes are considered a distant memory, a mythology from days long since drowned in the tides of history. How we yearn for those tides to turn...

In our modern era, the shadow of elitism appears to have cast across the whole of the world and permeated every facet of this culture. Many Americans have become so overwhelmed in the face of such unrelenting and widespread government and corporate criminality that they have collapsed in on themselves, hiding behind cynicism, narcissism, and nihilism. They see the horrors of modern life as some disturbed comedy designed for their entertainment. They escape into fantasy worlds and chemical dependency in order to numb the shame they feel, the crushing inadequacy of being unable or unwilling to determine their own destiny. They feel like ghosts, hovering through life as insignificant wisps of vapor. Deep down, they know they have failed themselves, but still, they blame everyone else.

However, for every negative force that exists in nature, in physics, and in the psychology of the human mind, there always arises a positive and opposing strength. It is an undeniable law of the universe. I believe it has taken so long for men to rally against the evils of elitism because the elites have taken special care in making sure they could not be easily defined. They have hidden behind organizations, political parties, and money, for decades if not centuries. Good people cannot fight back against an enemy they cannot clearly see, and heroes cannot rise to occasion against an opponent that has no face and no name. Thanks to the efforts of the Liberty Movement, though, the obscurity of elitists and globalists has come to an end, and we now know who the true enemy is.

The next step requires the reformation of the defenders of old. The reinstitution of legitimate American stewardship, founded by the Constitutionalists and free thinkers at the birth of this country. Though there is much to fear in the path our society has recently taken, even now I see a return to clarity and principle. Even now, I can see the rebirth of the Old American Guard.

In this article, we will examine just some of the qualities that distinguish these men and women...

Fighting For Truth In An Age Of Lies

When men first hear the truth of a thing, the unfiltered unfettered truth, their most common and predictable reaction is invariably one of disbelief. A wise man, or even a moderately intelligent one, would expect that new truths will arise from the ashes of dead notions. They would expect that there are vast reaches of knowledge in this world we have yet to tap, and that every once in a while, our previous assumptions on life will be dashed against the rocky shores of reality. However, most people in today’s culture of mental and philosophical "leisure" are not intuitively wise, and in some cases their ability to rationally observe any situation is highly questionable. The truth, for them, is less like an inspirational moment of empowerment, and more like a blood curdling shark attack. For those with a narrow and manipulated world view, the truth is a terrifying threat.

Often, human beings tend to classify truth through "repetition", instead of through objective observation and evidence. What this means is, we tend to assume that the viewpoint we hear the most everyday must be the correct view, regardless of whether or not it is supported by tangible fact. When new information, correct information based on solid data, breaks into the light of day, those who base their entire world view on repetition will be left in the dust, wondering how everything could change right under their noses. Sometimes, these people cling to their once widely accepted presumptions for the rest of their lives. For them, the Earth is flat forever.

What we have seen in the past decade or so, though, is a great movement towards embracing the truth despite the wailing of the now dying mainstream. Millions of Americans are turning off their televisions and actively seeking out information for themselves through alternative sources outside the influence of corporate globalists. In the "New America" (which is really just the return of the old America), the proliferation of disinformation is UNACCEPTABLE, and will no longer be tolerated. Guardians today are those people who have chosen to stand against our cultural misconceptions and propaganda, facing ridicule, censorship, and even physical harm. They tear into the great lie like attack dogs locking their jaws and never letting go, they are shaken about and beaten and yet they still hold on, until finally, the lie exhausts itself, and fades away. The New American has rediscovered the perseverance of his forebears, and the will to endure.

If this is to continue, the ideal of transparency in government must be instituted as strict social policy, and the pursuit of the truth must be ingrained into our national consciousness. A respect for self awareness, individuality, and personal honesty, must become the foundation of our civilization. The current system, which makes paths for the dishonest, cradles the vicious, coddles the weak spirited, and rewards those who lack conscience, must be cut away. It is up to the New American to do this.

True Patriots vs Fake Nationalists

Patriotism is a highly abused and misappropriated term. The exploitation of the methodology is evident in the propaganda of the Neo-Conservative movement (an elitist construct), especially during George W. Bush’s two terms in office. Interestingly, it has been real conservatives, as opposed to neo-cons, which have now sought to rebalance and reintroduce the concept of patriotism once again. The internal conflict of the Republican Party at this time, between the rising Liberty Movement and the falling Neo-Cons, illustrates the true nature of patriotism well.

In the past, we have been wrongly instructed to treat patriotism as a political weapon, a tool for shaming those who question the status quo. We have been taught that to be patriotic, one must become blindly nationalistic. This is not what the founders intended. A country is nothing without principles. A government that does not represent the root standards and principles of the country they are meant to lead is not a government that we the people are meant to follow. A nationalist ignorantly places government on a pedestal as the symbol of a people; a patriot places the solid founding principles of his nation above all else and dismantles any government that does not. A patriot demands that government adhere to the will of the people. A nationalist demands that people adhere to the will of government.

The New Americans, taking the torch from the old guard, are putting the manipulation of patriotism to an end. We are no longer allowing the establishment to define our beliefs for us, and are forcing them to either adopt the Constitutionalist methods which originated this country, or to relinquish their power. No longer will we be fooled into associating the twisted philosophies of a corrupt government with our own national identity.

No Fear, No Regrets

The New American answers to no one but his own conscience. All other directives are secondary. Because of this way of life, he rarely has any reason to regret any decision he has ever made.

He does not pander at his workplace. He is never a yes-man or a leech. Nowhere is he a servant. He is a person that demands to be treated with the same respect he gives, and openly gives respect where it is deserved. In his daily life, he absolutely refuses to follow the herd. The cesspool of groupthink is abhorrent to him, and fake people hiding behind two dimensional personas make him physically ill. Bullies and people with an outrageous sense of entitlement need a good punch in the mouth, not a turn of the cheek, and the New American looks forward to the day when it is once again socially acceptable to hand thugs and weasels their own derriere in a paper sack.

The New American has abandoned the false left / right paradigm in U.S. politics. He understands that the leadership of both major parties, Democrat and Republican, have the exact same goals and support nearly identical legislation. Their purpose is to give us the illusion of choice, and to consolidate and centralize power and dissolve the sovereignty of the U.S. Their openly stated objective is to force Americans to accept a global economy and global governance, virtually erasing our Constitutional freedoms and any ability we may have left to participate in the political process. The New American has set out to overtake and reclaim the Republican Party from globalists, and to use it as a tool in support of limited government and individual liberty once again.

For the New American, authority is derived from experience and earned respect. Petty authority derived from corruption is to be either laughed at or scorned. For instance, a policeman or politician that does not follow or understand Constitutional Law is a liability to society, not an authority, and as such, does not deserve respect. The New American is not impressed by uniforms, titles, expensive Ivy League degrees, old money, celebrities, or pop culture fluff. To him, the people who ARE impressed with these things are rather repulsive. To get his attention, you need to have an honorable reputation, legitimate intelligence, and, for heaven’s sake, a backbone.

Gullibility in others is only endured to a point. Knowledge, self knowledge and an understanding of ones surroundings, is paramount. The New American has seen too many catastrophes transpire because of the complicity of morons. The ignorant have a tendency to threaten not just themselves but also those around them. Their stupidity makes them malleable and easily influenced by those who seek power. They become unwitting accomplices in tyranny. The willfully uneducated are the second most dangerous people on Earth.

The primary threat, not just to the New American but to every living person, is Elitism. There is nothing more vile than an elitist: they demand fealty from the masses even though they hate and despise the common man. They are fully aware of their conscience, but see it as a hindrance to their pursuit of dominance and so ignore it. They fancy themselves as "godlike" and imagine themselves to be intellectually superior to the rest of us, even though they have proven on numerous occasions to be rather foolish. Their ego-mania is so immense that they are virtually incapable of recognizing the fallibility of their philosophies. And, they are willing to sacrifice anything and anyone accept themselves to get what they want, meaning they are the worst kind of cowards exacting the worst kind of oppression.

As horrifying as elites are, the New American is unphased. He knows that an uncompromising sense of despotism can only be met with an uncompromising sense of liberty. He knows that because he is confident in his values and refuses to negotiate them away, elitists fear him. They recognize that men who are defending their home, who are wise, who hold the moral high ground, and who are unafraid, are difficult if nearly impossible to defeat. More than anything else, the elites quake at the thought of the New American Guard.

The Return Of Freedom’s Protectors

It is in the worst of times that the best of men make their presence known. Some of them have felt for most of their lives that they were meant to make a difference, to sway the flow of events towards a greater purpose, a better future. Some have yet to realize their latent potential. Many of these men play unassuming roles in their normal lives. Carpenters and clerks, factory workers and investors, farmers and soldiers, it is always the seemingly inconspicuous that surprise us when the nightmare falls. The counterfeit champions, those the public once invested all of their faith in, quickly turn and run, while the true defenders stand unyielding against the coming tempest. They are the old men of the mountain, weathered by the storm, but unshakable in their resolve. Not simply warriors, but also scholars and social healers. They are modern-day Paladins in the most brutal of epochs.

There are two kinds of people in this world; history makers, and spectators. Spectators allow the throes of events to propel them wherever they may. They wait for the crosswinds of fate to determine their final home, their final occupation, their final resting place. During great upheaval, these are the people who fall by the wayside of time, whose children despair in the wake of their parent’s failure. These are the people upon which the elite feed.

History makers are defined by a beautifully simple decision; the decision to participate in the making of their own providence. The decision to actually live, instead of playing at life. True history makers are often not chronicled in books. Their tales are often not told for posterity. But none of this matters. What matters, is the contribution they make to the good in all of us, the tremors they send through the underlying foundations of humanity. Their presence is felt, even if their names are not known. By this measure, the New Americans will definitely make history.

The responsibility that lay ahead of us is daunting. While a global awakening is certainly taking place, the epicenter is right here in our own backyard. All eyes will be watching us and waiting. The world is relying on us to make a stand, to prove that the fight is far from over. If we do not, then everything is lost, not just for ourselves, but for every generation after we are gone. No matter what obstacles the elites unleash, be it nuclear disaster, economic collapse, or yet another war, we must not falter. The world is waiting. They are waiting for heroes. They are waiting for the old guard to return.

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Giordano Bruno: The New American: A Rebirth Of The Old Guard

Joel S. Hirschhorn: Beware of America's Rich Political Saviors

Billionaires Run for the US Congress: Beware of America's Rich Political Saviors

by Joel S. Hirschhorn article link

July 28, 2010 | Global Research

Consumer confidence is terrible; citizen confidence is worse: Only 11 percent of Americans have confidence in Congress. No surprise there is record-setting anti-incumbency anger rampant among Americans. But the sad truth is damned if you do and damned if you don’t vote for incumbents.

The problem is that the reformers, populist outsiders, tea party candidates, surprise primary winners and others expecting to oust incumbents in the coming mid-term elections for members of Congress and state governors and other officials mostly suck. Why? They are nutty, ignorant, dishonest or racist.

Pathetic US Senate candidates like Alvin Greene on the left in South Carolina and Sharron Angle on the right in Nevada , for example, are intellectual nits and an insult to a once envied political system. And in Memphis , Tennessee Willie Herenton, who is African-American, sells black racism to oust two-term incumbent Congressman Steve Cohen in a primary, telling blacks to not vote for his white opponent.

Many ambitious candidates drained the economy to become super-rich. Is this any time to trust people who have taken advantage of our corrupt corporate system to run the government and serve those they have previously taken advantage of for personal gain? Will anger about the corrupt, dysfunctional government system be sufficient for voters to turn the government over to people who have nothing in common with most Americans?

Consider California. Meg Whitman, a Republican candidate for governor wants to beat the familiar, incumbent-like Democrat Jerry Brown, now attorney general, and was previously the chief executive of eBay. She has outspent all other self-financed candidates across the country by using $91 million of her own money to knock out Steve Poizner, who spent $24 million of his own money, in the Republican primary. California is big, but $91 million and likely even more!! She will greatly outspend Brown. And Carly Fiorina, a Republican who is challenging Democrat Senator Barbara Boxer in California, has the audacity to claim on her website that she will “fight for every job” if elected even though, as chief executive of Hewlett-Packard in 2003 she cut about 18,000 jobs and did little good for the company. She has already spent $5 million. Are these people worthy of public support?

Consider Florida Republican Rick Scott, the former head of Columbia/HCA Healthcare — an awful large hospital chain that paid $1.7 billion in fines for fraudulently billing government programs like Medicare — has become the front-runner for Florida governor. He supposedly is worth about $200 million. He was ousted by his own board of directors in 1997 amid the nation's biggest health care fraud scandal. He loaned his campaign $22.9 million during the period from April 9 through July 16 and spent $22.65 million of it. In contrast, he received only $415,126 in contributions. Bill McCollum, his Republican opponent, raised a little over $1 million during the reporting period and spent about $1.7 million. He has raised $5.7 million since he announced his campaign last year. He has less than $500,000 left. Democrat candidate Alex Sink, with no primary opponent, raised $1.1 million for the reporting period and has raised $7.3 million so far. Is Scott better qualified because of his wealth and ability to advertise more?

Also in Florida is Jeff Greene who wants to be US Senator, a Democrat who had been a Republican with a strange gang of friends like Mike Tyson and Heidi Fleiss. Incredibly, most of his fortune, estimated at $1.4 billion, came from derivatives that let him profit from the collapse of subprime mortgages which helped tank the US economy. He lives in an oceanfront mansion when he is not on one of his yachts or his plane with gold seat-belt buckles. He recently reported taking a paltry $3,036 in outside contributions, while lending himself — and spending — $5.9 million in the second quarter. Recent polls found Greene roughly even in the primary with Democrat Representative Kendrick B. Meek, who had been the party favorite and took 18 months to raise a similar amount. Incumbent-like candidate Governor Charlie Crist still leads as an independent in a three-way general election. Greene boasts that now is the moment for self-financed candidates. “If 2008 was the year of change, 2010 is the year of frustration,” he said. But does frustration justify voting for these characters?

And then there is Linda E. McMahon, a Connecticut Republican who made her fortune in professional wrestling before her Senate run. She has stated a willingness to spend $50 million of her own money to win the election, a lot of money for such a small state, and has already spent $21.5 million. A television ad declares “politicians have had their chance, and blown it” while her jobs plan “is backed by experience.” She became president of the WWF as a legal maneuver to save the company in 1993, because her husband was indicted for distributing steroids to his wrestlers. Cleverly, she blew the whistle and told regulators something few in the industry would admit: wrestling matches were scripted shows and not athletic competitions that required the kind of oversight that, say, boxing required. The financial benefit was that her wrestling business operates in 29 states without supervision by state athletic boards or commissions, saving the company licensing fees. She served only a few months on the state Board of Education and then became a candidate. She supports policies that favor the rich and advocates offshore oil drilling. She faces Democrat incumbent-like Richard Blumenthal, now attorney general of Connecticut . Is her wrestling business experience really the basis for being a great senator?

Voters should remember this: None of these characters are legitimate populists, progressives or reformers with a political record to show their true capabilities or positions. Why trust them? Would they perform better than incumbents? I don’t think so. More likely, they would serve elites and corporate interests. In the past very few rich candidates have won office (just 11 percent), but considering the anti-incumbency sentiment this year, big money may prevail.

Is the evil you don’t know really better than the evil you do know because of failed government experience? Are some incumbents worth support? Or will many Americans admit that voting no longer can fix and reform our battered democracy and stay home? I think I will. There are just too many fools and idiots voting that offset the votes of informed and intelligent citizens. Maybe if voter turnout was totally abysmal, say 20 percent, maybe then we would get the reforms or revolution we need by de-legitimizing our delusional democracy.

Joel S. Hirschhorn is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Contact Joel S. Hirschhorn through delusionaldemocracy.com.

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Paul Craig Roberts: The Obama Regime Has Made War the Business of America

The US Treasury Running on Fumes:

The Obama regime has made War the Business of America

Down to the last trillion in red ink

by Paul Craig Roberts article link

July 28, 2010 | Global Research

The White House is screaming like a stuck pig. WikiLeaks’ release of the Afghan War Documents “puts the lives of our soldiers and our coalition partners at risk.”

What nonsense. Obama’s war puts the lives of American soldiers at risk, and the craven puppet state behavior of “our partners” in serving as US mercenaries is what puts their troops at risk.

Keep in mind that it was someone in the US military that leaked the documents to WikiLeaks. This means that there is a spark of rebellion within the Empire itself.

And rightly so. The leaked documents show that the US has committed numerous war crimes and that the US government and military have lied through their teeth in order to cover up the failure of their policies. These are the revelations that Washington wants to keep secret.

If Obama cared about the lives of our soldiers, he would not have sent them to a war, the purpose of which he cannot identify. Earlier in his regime, Obama admitted that he did not know what the mission was in Afghanistan. He vowed to find out what the mission was and to tell us, but he never did. After being read the riot act by the military/security complex, which recycles war profits into political campaign contributions, Obama simply declared the war to be “necessary.” No one has ever explained why the war is necessary.

The government cannot explain why the war is necessary, because it is not necessary to the American people. Any necessary reason for the war has to do with the enrichment of narrow private interests and with undeclared agendas. If the agendas were declared and the private interests being served identified, even the American sheeple might revolt.

The Obama regime has made war the business of America. Escalation in Afghanistan has gone hand in hand with drone attacks on Pakistan and the use of proxy forces to conduct wars in Pakistan and North Africa. Currently, the US is conducting provocative naval exercises off the coasts of China and North Korea and instigating war between Columbia and Venezuela in South America. Former CIA director Michael Hayden declared on July 25 that an attack on Iran seems unavoidable.

With the print and TV media captive, why doesn’t Washington simply tell us that the country is at war without going to the trouble of war? That way the munitions industry can lay off its workers and put the military appropriations directly into profits. We could avoid the war crimes and wasted lives of our soldiers.

The US economy and the well-being of Americans are being sacrificed to the regime’s wars. The states are broke and laying off teachers.

Even “rich” California, formerly touted as “the seventh largest economy in the world,” is reduced to issuing script and cutting its state workers’ pay to the minimum wage.

Supplemental war appropriations have become routine affairs, but the budget deficit is invoked to block any aid to Americans--but not to Israel. On July 25 the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, reported that the US and Israel had signed a multi-billion dollar deal for Boeing to provide Israel with a missile system.

Americans can get no help out of Washington, but the US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, declared that Washington’s commitment to Israel’s security is “not negotiable.” Washington’s commitment to California and to the security of the rest of us is negotiable. War spending has run up the budget deficit, and the deficit precludes any help for Americans.

With the US bankrupting itself in wars, America’s largest creditor, China, has taken issue with America’s credit rating. The head of China’s largest credit rating agency declared: “The US is insolvent and faces bankruptcy as a pure debtor nation.”

On July 12, Niall Ferguson, an historian of empire, warned that the American empire could collapse suddenly from weakness brought on by its massive debts and that such a collapse could be closer than we think.

Deaf, dumb, and blind, Washington policymakers prattle on about “thirty more years of war.”

Paul Craig Roberts is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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Could Wikileaks Offer A Way Out of War?

by Katrina vanden Heuvel article link article link

July 28, 2010 | The Washington Post | CommonDreams

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WikiLeaks’ Afghan War Diary

by Amy Goodman article link article link

July 28, 2010 | Democracy NOW!| TruthDig | CommonDreams

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Paul Craig Roberts: The Obama Regime Has Made War the Business of America

Paul Craig Roberts: The Year America Dissolved

When Globalism Runs Its Course ...

The Year America Dissolved

by Paul Craig Roberts article link article link

July 27, 2010 | CounterPunch | Global Research

It was 2017. Clans were governing America.

The first clans organized around local police forces. The conservatives’ war on crime during the late 20th century and the Bush/Obama war on terror during the first decade of the 21st century had resulted in the police becoming militarized and unaccountable.

As society broke down, the police became warlords. The state police broke apart, and the officers were subsumed into the local forces of their communities. The newly formed tribes expanded to encompass the relatives and friends of the police.

The dollar had collapsed as world reserve currency in 2012 when the worsening economic depression made it clear to Washington’s creditors that the federal budget deficit was too large to be financed except by the printing of money.

With the dollar’s demise, import prices skyrocketed. As Americans were unable to afford foreign-made goods, the transnational corporations that were producing offshore for US markets were bankrupted, further eroding the government’s revenue base.

The government was forced to print money in order to pay its bills, causing domestic prices to rise rapidly. Faced with hyperinflation, Washington took recourse in terminating Social Security and Medicare and followed up by confiscating the remnants of private pensions. This provided a one-year respite, but with no more resources to confiscate, money creation and hyperinflation resumed.

Organized food deliveries broke down when the government fought hyperinflation with fixed prices and the mandate that all purchases and sales had to be in US paper currency. Unwilling to trade appreciating goods for depreciating paper, goods disappeared from stores.

Washington responded as Lenin had done during the “war communism” period of Soviet history. The government sent troops to confiscate goods for distribution in kind to the population. This was a temporary stop-gap until existing stocks were depleted, as future production was discouraged. Much of the confiscated stocks became the property of the troops who seized the goods.

Goods reappeared in markets under the protection of local warlords. Transactions were conducted in barter and in gold, silver, and copper coins.

Other clans organized around families and individuals who possessed stocks of food, bullion, guns and ammunition. Uneasy alliances formed to balance differences in clan strengths. Betrayals quickly made loyalty a necessary trait for survival.

Large scale food and other production broke down as local militias taxed distribution as goods moved across local territories. Washington seized domestic oil production and refineries, but much of the government’s gasoline was paid for safe passage across clan territories.

Most of the troops in Washington’s overseas bases were abandoned. As their resource stocks were drawn down, the abandoned soldiers were forced into alliances with those with whom they had been fighting.

Washington found it increasingly difficult to maintain itself. As it lost control over the country, Washington was less able to secure supplies from abroad as tribute from those Washington threatened with nuclear attack. Gradually other nuclear powers realized that the only target in America was Washington. The more astute saw the writing on the wall and slipped away from the former capital city.

When Rome began her empire, Rome’s currency consisted of gold and silver coinage. Rome was well organized with efficient institutions and the ability to supply troops in the field so that campaigns could continue indefinitely, a monopoly in the world of Rome’s time.

When hubris sent America in pursuit of overseas empire, the venture coincided with the offshoring of American manufacturing, industrial, and professional service jobs and the corresponding erosion of the government’s tax base, with the advent of massive budget and trade deficits, with the erosion of the fiat paper currency’s value, and with America’s dependence on foreign creditors and puppet rulers.

The Roman Empire lasted for centuries. The American one collapsed overnight.

Rome’s corruption became the strength of her enemies, and the Western Empire was overrun.

America’s collapse occurred when government ceased to represent the people and became the instrument of a private oligarchy. Decisions were made in behalf of short-term profits for the few at the expense of unmanageable liabilities for the many. Overwhelmed by liabilities, the government collapsed.

Globalism had run its course. Life reformed on a local basis.

Paul Craig Roberts was an editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

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Surviving Economic Collapse: Tips, Tactics, And Gear

by Giordano Bruno article link

01/26/2010 | Neithercorp Press

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Paul Craig Roberts: The Year America Dissolved

Gareth Porter: The Afghan War Springs a Leak

Fatal Contradictions

The Afghan War Springs a Leak

By Gareth Porter article link

July 27, 2010 | CounterPunch

The 92,000 reports on the war in Afghanistan made public by the whistleblower organisation WikiLeaks, and reported Monday by The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel, offer no major revelations that are entirely new, as did the Pentagon Papers to which they are inevitably being compared.

But they increase the political pressure on a war policy that has already suffered a precipitous loss of credibility this year by highlighting contradictions between the official assumptions of the strategy and the realities shown in the documents - especially in regard to Pakistan's role in the war.

Unlike the Pentagon Papers, which chronicle the policymaking process leading up to and during the Vietnam War, the WikiLeaks documents chronicle thousands of local incidents and situations encountered by U.S. and other NATO troops that illustrate chronic problems for the U.S.-NATO effort.

Among the themes that are documented, sometimes dramatically but often through bland military reports, are the seemingly casual killing of civilians away from combat situations, night raids by special forces that are often based on bad intelligence, the absence of legal constraints on the abuses of Afghan police, and the deeply rooted character of corruption among Afghan officials.

The most politically salient issue highlighted by the new documents, however, is Pakistan's political and material support for the Taliban insurgency, despite its ostensible support for U.S. policy in Afghanistan.

The documents include many intelligence reports about Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul, the director of the ISI, Pakistan's military intelligence agency, in the late 1980s, continuing to work with the Taliban commanders loyal to Mullah Omar as well as the Jalaluddin Haaqani and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar insurgent networks.

Some of the reports obviously reflect the anti-Pakistan bias of the Afghan intelligence service when it was under former Northern Alliance intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh. Nevertheless, the overall impression they convey of Pakistani support for the Taliban is credible to the news media, because they confirm numerous press reports over the past few years.

The New York Times led its coverage of the documents with its report on the Pakistani-Taliban issue. The story said the documents reflect "deep suspicions among American officials that Pakistan's military spy service has for years guided the Afghan insurgency with a hidden hand, even as Pakistan receives more than 1 billion dollars a year from Washington for its help combating the militants."

The issue of Pakistani "double-dealing" on Afghanistan is one of the Barack Obama administration's greatest political vulnerabilities, because it is bears on a point of particular political sensitivity among the political and national security elite who are worried about whether there is any hope for success for the war strategy, even with Gen. David Petraeus in command.

One Democratic opponent of the war policy was quick to take advantage of the leaked documents' focus on Pakistan's support for the Taliban. In a statement issued Monday, Sen. Russ Feingold, Democratic member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said the documents "highlight a fundamental strategic problem, which is that elements of the Pakistani security services have been complicit in the insurgency".

In combination with "competing agendas within the Afghan security forces", Feingold argued, that problem precludes any "military solution in Afghanistan".

Afghan President Hamid Karzai took advantage of the new story generated by the documents to release a statement pointing to Pakistani sanctuaries across the border as the primary problem faced by his government. "Our efforts against terrorism will have no effect as long as these sanctuaries and sources remain intact," said Karzai.

Last February, then Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair said what administration officials had privately conceded. Disrupting the "safe havens" enjoyed by the Taliban on the Pakistani side of the border, he said, "won't be sufficient by itself to defeat the insurgency in Afghanistan", but it is a "necessary condition" for making "progress" in Afghanistan.

Implicitly admitting its political vulnerability on the issue, on Sunday, the White House issued a compilation of statements by senior administration officials over the last 18 months aimed at showing that they have been tough with Pakistan on Afghanistan.

But none of the statements quoted in the compilation admitted the reality that Pakistan's policy of supporting the Taliban insurgency has long been firmly fixed and is not going to change.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, agreed in April 2009 that "elements" of the ISI were "connected to those militant organisations". But he suggested that Pakistani chief of staff Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, with whom Mullen had developed a close personal relationship, was in the process of changing the intelligence agency.

Mullen essentially pleaded for time, saying that change "isn't going to happen overnight" and that "it takes a fairly significant time to change an organisation."

Admitting that Pakistan's fundamental interests in Afghanistan conflict with U.S. war strategy would be a serious – and possibly, fatal – blow to the credibility of the Obama administration's strategy of using force to "reverse the momentum" of the Taliban.

To the extent that this contradiction and others are highlighted in the coming weeks as the news media comb through the mountains of new documents, it could accelerate the process by which political support for the Afghanistan War among the foreign policy and political elite continues to diminish.

The loss of political support for the war among the political and national security elite has accelerated in recent months and is already far advanced. More prominent figures in the national security elite, both Republican and Democratic, have signaled a developing consensus in those circles that the war strategy cannot succeed, paralleling the process that occurred in Washington in 2006 in regard to the Iraq War.

Just this past week, Robert Blackwill, former deputy national security adviser for George W. Bush, and Richard Haass, former Bill Clinton administration official and president of the Council on Foreign Relations, joined the chorus of doubters and called for ceding southern Afghanistan to the Taliban and withdrawing to the north.

Haas penned an article in Newsweek under the title, "We're Not Winning. It's Not Worth It."

Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist with Inter-Press Service specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006.

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The Peace Movement Should Stand With Military Whistleblower Bradley Manning

By Kevin Zeese article link

July 22, 2010 | Information Clearing House

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Afghanistan war logs:

Massive leak of secret files exposes truth of occupation

By Nick Davies and David Leigh article link article link

July 25, 2010 | The Guardian | ICH

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The WikiLeaks Afghanistan leak

BY Glenn Greenwald article link article link

July 25, 2010 | Salon | CommonDreams

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Wikileaks: Time to Celebrate, Time to Mourn

by Jeff Cohen article link

July 27, 2010 | CommonDreams

State of Denial: After the Big Leak, Spinning for War

by Norman Solomon article link

July 27, 2010 | CommonDreams

With Wikileaks, They Want To Shoot The Messenger

By Mary Shaw article link

July 27, 2010 | OpEdNews

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Imperial Overkill and the Death of US Empire

by Francis Shor article link article link

July 27, 2010 | Foreign Policy in Focus | CommonDreams

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WikiLeaks Bombshell Docs Paint Afghan War as Utter Disaster

Will We Finally Stop Throwing Money and Lives at This Catastrophe?

There's clear proof the war in Afghanistan is a complete failure -- we must demand an immediate exit.

By Ray McGovern article link

July 26, 2010 | AlterNet | Consortium News

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Robert Reich: The Great Decoupling of Corporate Profits from Jobs

The Great Decoupling of Corporate Profits from Jobs

by Robert Reich article link article link

July 27, 2010 | Robert Reich | CommonDreams

Second-quarter earnings reports are coming in, and they're making Wall Street smile. Corporate profits are up. And big American companies are sitting on a gigantic pile of money. The 500 largest non-financial firms held almost a trillion dollars in the second quarter, and that money pile is growing larger this quarter. Profits that plummeted in the recession have bounced back. Big businesses have recovered almost 90 percent of what they lost.

So with all this money and profit, they'll start hiring again, right? Wrong - for three reasons.

First, lots of their profits are coming from their overseas operations. So that's where they're investing and expanding production.

GM now sells more cars in China than it does in the US, but makes most of them there. The company now employs 32,000 hourly workers in China. But only 52,000 GM hourly workers remain in the United States - down from 468,000 in 1970.

GM isn't just hiring low-tech assembly workers in China. Last week the firm broke ground there on a $250 million advanced technology center to develop batteries and other alternative energy sources.

You and I and other American taxpayers still own over 60 percent of GM. We bought GM to save GM jobs, remember?

GM officials say no American taxpayer money is being used to expand in China. But money is fungible. Because of our generosity, GM can now use the dollars it doesn't have to spend in the United States meeting its American payrolls and repaying its creditors, for new investments in China.

Second, big U.S. businesses are investing their cash in labor-saving technologies. This boosts their productivity, but not their payrolls.

Last Friday, for example, Ford reported a $2.6 billion second-quarter profit. The firm is already more than two-thirds the way to equaling its record 1999 profits. But due to labor-saving technologies, Ford now has half as many employees as it did a decade ago.

Wall Street analysts are happy with Ford's "commitment to keeping capacity in check," according to the Wall Street Journal. Ford shares rose 5.2 percent Friday. "Keeping capacity in check" is the Street's way of saying "no new hiring." In fact, the Street is advising investors to sell the stocks of companies that talk openly of expanding capacity.

Finally, corporations are using their pile of money to pay dividends to their shareholders and buy back their own stock - thereby pushing up share prices.

Last Friday, GE announced it would raise its dividend by 20 percent and reinstate its share-buyback plan. It's GE's first dividend increase since the company cut its dividend in early 2009. As a result, GE shares are up more than 5% in the past few days.

Bottom line: Higher corporate profits no longer lead to higher employment. We're witnessing a great decoupling of company profits from jobs.

The next supply-side economist who tells you companies need more incentive (i.e. lower taxes) before they'll hire is living on another planet.

The reality is this: Big American companies may never rehire large numbers of workers. And they won't even begin to think about hiring until they know American consumers will buy their products. The problem is, American consumers won't start buying against until they know they have reliable paychecks.

© 2010 robertreich.org

Robert Reich is Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written twelve books, including The Work of Nations, Locked in the Cabinet, and his most recent book, Supercapitalism. His "Marketplace" commentaries can be found on publicradio.com and iTunes.

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The Daily Bell: The Impossibility of Modern Capitalism

The Impossibility of Modern Capitalism

by Staff Report article link

July 26, 2010 | The Daily Bell

Europe's dark secret ...They might not like to admit it, but Europeans don't mind a bit of capitalism ... When history comes to write the tale of the euro-zone crisis, the chief villains, if Europe's leaders have any say, will be not dissembling Greeks or dithering Germans, but the financial markets. Traders subjected Greece to "psychological terror", declared George Papandreou, its prime minister. ... Nowhere is contempt for free enterprise, and its linked evils of wealth and profits, more intense than in France. Nicolas Sarkozy has declared laissez-faire capitalism "finished". Almost alone in Europe, France imposes a yearly "fortune" tax on most biggish assets. In literature and philosophy, from Molière and Balzac to Sartre, the French have denounced the corrupting power of money, and ridiculed the grasping nouveau riche. Today's bosses, always cigar-chomping, are subject to satire, scorn and even "boss-napping". Communists, Trotskyites and the New Anti-Capitalist Party are treated not as curiosities, but serious talk-show guests. – Economist

Dominant Social Theme: Let us spring to defense of free-markets.

Free-Market Analysis: The Economist magazine is once more mounting a defense of capitalism in its dry and witty way. This is a venerable old magazine that was founded in the mid-1800s in part to track the rise of railroads in Britain and the money they were making. Railroads have long departed as viable profit-making schemes (victims of the auto and ensuing government nationalizations), but the idea remains somehow that the West is still operating under "capitalism." Not only that, but the Economist wants us to know that the proper term is "laissez-faire capitalism."

Of course from our point of view the Economist is one of the mouthpieces for the British elite. As dashing and amusing as Punch magazine, as erudite as another mainstream mouthpiece, the Financial Times, the Economist profiles the goings-on of the world every week. For young people just starting to read it, the magazine offers a potpourri of delights. There are its clever profiles of little-known countries and its dry send-ups of the silly doings of powerful people. What a world! The Economist tells us. What are we to do but read and smile along with its talented, anonymous writers and its foolishness?

Well, how about a little "truth in labeling?" The West, in our view, is laboring under nothing nearly like laissez-faire capitalism. The Western model of economics currently is central-banking corporatism. Or to put it another way, power-elite mercantilism. A handful of impossibly wealthy Western families, led by the biggest banking family of all, has patiently seeded central banking in all parts of the world until the cancer has fully metastasized and there is no place beyond its reach.

Central banking is price-fixing pure and simple. And when you have got the price of money wrong, everything that flows from it is wrong as well. But nonetheless, this is the profile of the world today. One can argue as Ellen Brown does, for instance, that there is a difference between state-run central banks and private public central banks such as those operated by the US and perhaps Britain. But in practice we don't see it, or not at the level that the benefits are manifest.

Is there really such a difference between the Chinese central bank and the American central bank? Is the Chinese miracle really due to the state's control over that bank, or has the same thing happened to China under a central banking regime that has happened to the US and Europe – a destructive boom that will inevitably be followed by a bust. We see all the foreboding signs in China that we have seen elsewhere: an out-of-control real estate boom, myriad skyscrapers in numerous cities that languish unoccupied, a full city in Mongolia that lies fallow and unpopulated, etc.

And still the party continues. Hedge funds flock to China. Commentators tell us that the concern is overblown. Others patiently explain that it is "different this time" and that the Chinese will escape the fate of other fiat-money economies because the Chinese wealth is new wealth, because the Chinese are honorable and hard-workers, because the Chinese save while the West spends. Well, we shall see.

In Europe, the bust is already here. The one-size-fits-all currency does not after all fit everywhere and in every manner. In fact the EU and its euro experiment stand revealed as what people already knew it was, an export-scheme for the Germans and a way for the French elite to continually exercise the delightfully deranged notion that little France is able to swing far above its playing weight simply because the French are, well ... French. It is French perspicuity and French good-taste that gives France this peculiar ability. Except it does not. The euro is unraveling and we shall see if the French are able to sustain the Great Game in the face of the realities of the REAL market.

In the US, there is little pretense anymore that anything like a free-market exists. What was once a legitimate free-market society, admittedly with a statist core, especially after the advent of the Federal Reserve in 1913, has degenerated into a kind of "me, too" European socialism. Social Security, the Great Society programs and now Barack Obama's socializing of one-sixth of the American economy, are effectively transforming the US. There are "markets" in the US, but only the biggest players can afford to leverage them.

All over the West, the economic parameters are similar. Central banks print money to swell economies that then collapse and are jolted back to life via reflation like cardiac patients. This creates high inflation rates that rob the collapsing middle class of the paltry savings they have been able to amass. High taxes tend to strip more wealth from the middle class while regulatory excesses make it difficult for entrepreneurialism to take root or hold sway over the long term. Statist justice and, in America, a military industrialist complex and a prison-industrial complex make things even worse, adding an overlay of Big Government control to a Big Economy deflation and stagflation.

In truth, at this point, the West has nothing like free-markets. Money is created and controlled by mercantilist state processes. All forms of wealth are taxed aggressively and even mercilessly; entrepreneurial activity is regulated in such extreme detail as to exceed even the imagination of the most expert Swiftian satirists: The EU's recent mandate forbidding the sale of eggs in a twelve-pack must stand as one preeminent example.

What the West has is corporatism. There is a kind of free-market that exists, but one must belong to a large interest group to use it. If one is skilled enough with numbers or willing to become a lawyer, then one may join a large corporation and derive the benefits of such. Alternatively one may become a teacher and seek shelter in Teachers' Unions. One may become a military person or a police officer or fire officer or health-care worker and find protection in public unionism. One may work directly for the government. In all such cases, one is subordinate to a larger entity within the predetermined parameters, organized by a political priesthood at the beck and call of a power elite that stands invisibly behind these ever-vaster compilations of state-control.

Still, it is fashionable to maintain, as the Economist does, that the West is in a fervor of full-blooded capitalism of the laissez-faire variety. How on earth the Economist and its writers can maintain this fiction is beyond us. But they wish to, and so they do. It is part of the Hegelian dialectic, we suppose. If one part of the elite machinery claims that what we have got is capitalism-in-the-raw, then another mainstream element can continually claim that such naked and merciless enterprises need to be ameliorated by the rationalizing hand of government. Lord knows where it ends, though, as the cognitive dissonance grows continually more extreme.

Conclusion: One visualizes the USSR, eventually, and the Economist magazine, as dry and witty as ever, droning on about the competitive difficulties of aligning five-year plans and observing cheerfully that the West's Leviathan will have to grow bigger still in the name of democracy and fairness and to ensure that free-markets do not get out of hand. Eventually it all implodes. And the Economist magazine ("newspaper" as they like to call it) will lose whatever credibility it still retains. Pity it can't happen sooner.

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Robert Higgs: A Splendid Essay on the Two Great Classes in Contemporary America

A Splendid Essay on the Two Great Classes in Contemporary America

By Robert Higgs article link

Jul 23, 2010 | Independent Institute

Angelo M. Codevilla, professor emeritus of international relations at Boston University, has written an extraordinary essay for the July/August issue of The American Spectator. It’s called “America’s Ruling Class – And the Perils of Revolution,” but it deals much more extensively with the anatomy and functioning of the class system in the United States today than with the prospect of revolution.

Codevilla cuts immediately to the core: the United States today is divided into (a) a ruling class, which dominates the government at every level, the schools and universities, the mainstream media, Hollywood, and a great deal else, and (b) all of the rest of us, a heterogeneous agglomeration that Codevilla dubs the country class. The ruling class holds the lion’s share of the institutional power, but the country class encompasses perhaps two-thirds of the people.

Members of the two classes do not like one another. In particular, the ruling class views the rest of the population as composed of ignoramuses who are vicious, violent, racist, religious, irrational, unscientific, backward, generally ill-behaved, and incapable of living well without constant, detailed direction by our betters; and it views itself as perfectly qualified and entitled to pound us into better shape by the generous application of laws, taxes, subsidies, regulations, and unceasing declarations of its dedication to bringing the country—and indeed the entire world—out of its present darkness and into the light of the Brave New World it is busily engineering.

This class divide has little to do with rich versus poor or Democrat versus Republican. At its core, it has to do with the division between, on the one hand, those whose attitudes are attuned to the views endorsed by the ruling class (especially “political correctness”) and whose fortunes are linked directly or indirectly with government programs and, on the other hand, those whose outlooks and interests derive from and focus on private affairs, especially the traditional family, religion, and genuine private enterprise. Above all, as Codevilla makes plain, “for our ruling class, identity always trumps.” These people know they are superior in every way, and they are not shy about letting us know that they are. Arrogance might as well be their middle name.

The ruling class, not surprisingly, is also the statist party:

[O]ur ruling class’s standard approach to any and all matters, its solution to any and all problems, is to increase the power of the government – meaning of those who run it, meaning themselves, to profit those who pay with political support for privileged jobs, contracts, etc.

Despite the rulers’ chronic complaints about people’s exercising “discrimination” of one kind or another, they have no intention of treating everybody equally. Hence, “[l]aws and regulations nowadays are longer than ever because length is needed to specify how people will be treated unequally.” As the recent health-care and financial-reform statutes illustrate perfectly, however, much of the inequality is achieved not directly, but by the statutes’ delegation of authority to countless regulatory and administrative bodies, which will use their ample discretion to do the desired dirty work.

Codevilla’s description of the ruling class and its modus operandi is longer and more detailed than his account of the country class, which is probably inevitable in view of the latter’s extreme heterogeneity. And the force of his argument wanes a bit toward the end of the essay, when he muses about how a country party might turn the tide against the domination and contempt it presently suffers at the hands of its officious rulers. Nevertheless, I heartily recommend this magnificent essay, which is one of the most intelligent, forthright discussions of America’s current socio-political condition I have ever read. If we serfs are ever to escape the grip of our overbearing, self-appointed nobility, the first requirements will be to recognize correctly our current condition, to denounce openly its injustice and idiocy, and to deride every claim of legitimacy or entitlement our rulers have the temerity to make or presume.

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Bob Chapman: The Fed Participates In The Destruction Of The Economy

The Fed Participates In The Destruction Of The Economy

by Bob Chapman article link article link

07.23.10 | International Forecaster | Silver Bear Cafe

The miscreants in Congress have just passed their version of so-called financial reform, which they euphemistically call financial regulation legislation, which when signed by our peerless leader, will set up the Federal Reserve as a totalitarian monstrosity with absolute control over our financial system as a reward for the Fed's intentional destruction of our economy.

Now mind you, the Federal Reserve, which Congress has now put in charge of our entire financial system, is the privately owned, and largely foreign owned, central bank of the US which has always operated, and which continues to operate, in total secrecy, and with zero accountability. So, after the Fed destroyed our economy with malice aforethought, it certainly must have made perfect sense to the apparent morons and village idiots in Congress to put the Fed completely in charge. That way, we won't have the slightest clue about what is being done to our financial system, which the Fed will regulate in total secrecy, with the usual zero accountability, and with input from the Fed's foreign owners who will have a say over our economy and our financial system from behind the scenes. Who could possibly argue with such logic? You just can't make this stuff up! Obviously, our Congress are not idiots, as they know exactly what they are doing. After all, what would you expect from a bunch of corrupt Illuminist marionettes who are either on the take, who are compromised by the skeletons in their closet, or both.

To summarize what has just happened in more colorful terms, our Congress Critters, in their utterly profound wisdom (corruption), under the guise of financial reform (the creation of a financial monopoly), have set the Fed up at the top of the financial food chain, like a great white shark looking over a large school of tasty fish (other banks, and also many other financial institutions like investment banks, insurance companies, hedge funds, pension funds, brokerage firms, commodity firms, etc., aka "non-bank financial companies," aka the competition). The proposed Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), which is little more than a bunch of Illuminist marionettes like our Congress, will make all the new rules and regulations for the Fed to lord it over all the other financial institutions in our economy. In reality, the Fed will write all the rules and hand them to the FSOC for rubber-stamping.

Then we have the proposed Office of Financial Research, which will be set up as the new financial Gestapo, gathering information about all the problems being experienced by banks and non-bank financial companies alike so that this information can be used against them in order to eliminate them from competition, to liquidate them among the larger institutions for pennies on the dollar, and to provide juicy tidbits of insider trading information for the fun and profitability of Fed cronies. Picture pieces of meat being fed to a school of hungry piranhas if you would like an appropriate metaphor.

Did you ever wonder why the Fed keeps doling out loans to their crony legacy banks that are parked at favorable rates of interest with the Fed instead of being loaned out into the general economy to help fuel the recovery, so-called. Is it to shore up the financial reports of the zombie banks? Nothing could shore up their financial reports except blatant lies about their assets by using mark-to-model fantasy values instead of mark-to-model reality values. This is just the token excuse given for this free ride gift from the Fed to the Illuminist legacy banks. The real reasons for this storehouse of sterilized money are quite different, and are multi-faceted.

First, this is one of the chief methods that the Illuminists are using to impoverish pensioners and savers while enriching the Illuminist banks at taxpayer expense by giving them a spread (return on the money they borrow from the Fed, at near zero interest, and then park with the Fed, at 3%, no-risk interest), thereby keeping their zero interest loan money out of the general economy, which they intend to destroy to pave the way for a one-world government, while simultaneously keeping inflation in check because the money is not circulating in the general economy via loans (the money is thereby said to be "sterilized").

Second, it will be used as a token injection of cash to keep our economy from sinking, thus stretching out the inevitable death of our economy to the farthest possible point. Yes, that's right, to keep their salaries and bonuses going as long as possible, the Illuminist banks will throw us some bones once all the too-big-to-fail bailout money, stimulus packages and currency swaps are exhausted and can no longer be politically maintained.

But the chief reason for this cash is to fund the feeding frenzy that will occur as most of the weaker financial institutions are gobbled up and liquidated pursuant to the provisions of the new financial regulation bill which will put the FDIC in charge of the liquidations. The FDIC's liquidations will be funded in advance by the US Treasury, which means that the Fed will print or digitally credit the money to the US Treasury at interest out of thin air, (the verbiage in the proposed legislation removes all mention of the Fed's involvement through clever wording which mentions only the US Treasury, since they think that the Congress Critters and US citizens are too stupid to know that the US Treasury in turn cannot float any loans to the FDIC without the Fed's explicit involvement, but never mind that) based on the "fair value" of the various assets held by the institutions that are being liquidated by the FDIC. The Fed will front the money to the FDIC via the US Treasury so the FDIC can pay the amounts demanded by the various claimants, with the assets to be sold later, ostensibly to avoid fire sales. The loans from the US Treasury funded with the Fed's funny money (at interest no less) will be paid back out of the sales proceeds of the assets, which ostensibly could then be liquidated under more favorable terms.

So here we have this liquidation system based on "fair value," whatever that means, which will of course vary under different circumstances to enhance the interests and profits of Illuminist cronies. When a bank or non-bank financial company under liquidation is under Illuminist control, or has Illuminist creditors/claimants, the fair value will be a mark-to-model fantasy value, so the Illuminist financial entity, or Illuminist creditors, as the case may be, will get maximum value, while the assets are later sold at substantially lower mark-to-market values, resulting in a loss to the US Treasury, and by extension, to US taxpayers. When a non-Illuminist legacy bank or non-bank financial company has no substantial Illuminist owners or creditors, its assets will be given the much lower mark-to-market values, first to force them into liquidation, and then to assure that their assets are sold off at pennies on the dollar to Illuminist banks and financial institutions. And where will the Illuminist banks and financial institutions get the money to buy these assets at pennies on the dollar? Why from the money they have parked with the Fed at 3% interest of course. The Illuminist banks will either use that money directly, or loan it to other Illuminist financial institutions at favorable rates, to fund the fire-sale purchases. Whoa, look at those piranhas go!!!

That looks to be a pretty nice racket, don't you think? And that is what this financial reform bill is all about - eating up the competition and surreptitiously screwing the taxpayer. Heads we win, tails you lose. We get the gold mine, you get the shaft. This is Illuminist thinking at its most diabolical level.

We would also point out that the lax accounting rules allowed by regulators to hide the destruction of our financial system are in no way changed in any significant way by the financial regulation bill just passed by Congress. So regulators will continue to allow banks to state their assets at mark-to-model fantasy values. And they will continue to allow banks to park their losses off balance sheet just before the end of a quarterly reporting period, and then put them back on after the quarter has ended (think Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers). Regulators will also continue to allow all the other smoke and mirror accounting frauds currently utilized by banks to hide their walking dead status. That is because the so-called "Fin Reg" bill has nothing to do with reform and has everything to do with perpetuating the corrupt system, allowing the too-big-to-fail bankster-gangsters to continue foisting their fraudulent toxic waste bonds and derivatives on unsuspecting sucker-dupe clients, while creating a financial monopoly in the Frankenstein Fed which will use its newfound complete and unfettered power to cull out the competition and set up the Illuminist legacy banks as the only financial game in town. That is where we are headed.

But that's not all folks. The G-20 is now talking in terms of using special drawing rights (SDR's) as an international reserve currency for the world's international banking cabal, which is composed of privately owned and/or government controlled central banks from around the world which operate in coordination with each other surreptitiously, although we note that internecine spats do occur from time to time. We also note in passing that even those spats are often staged to gain political advantage or to grandstand a point of view for political consumption only (i.e. saying things that are popular but that you have no intention of supporting, or that have no possible chance of being passed - think Sarkozy, think ECB calls for austerity as they create a trillion dollar bailout package for the PIIGS).

In any case, while the G-20 set up their SDR's, based on a basket of fiat currencies, everyone else (that would be the bourgeoisie proletariat of common serfs) will get to keep their usual currencies, after they have been devalued against other currencies around the world, thereby destroying the value and buying power of the "unlucky" losers in the currency devaluation game. US citizens and the dollar are going to be on the losing end along with most of the other developed countries and their currencies due to their totally abysmal fiscal condition which has of course been brought about through the many Illuminist machinations which we have discussed ad infinitum in issue after issue of the IF. The "lucky" winners in the currency devaluation game will get to deal with massive trade deficits instead of lost buying power because their exported goods and services will become astronomically expensive overseas. So either way, the masses will have their devaluation problems, while the bankers sit on their SDR's.

But if the SDR's are nothing but a basket of fiat currencies, then how would the bankers be better off than the serfs? We're glad you asked. Now here comes the kicker.

First, you can rest assured that the Illuminists will never allow SDR's, or any international reserve currency, to be anything but a fiat currency. They will never succumb to the discipline of gold. We repeat: Never, ever, ever, will they voluntarily back SDR's with gold!!! That is why gold suppression is JOB ONE at the Fed and at central banks around the world. Do you think that after the Illuminists had FDR take us off the gold standard domestically in 1933, and then had Nixon take us off the gold standard internationally in 1971, that they are even thinking of going back to any kind of a gold standard? If you see the Illuminists go back to the gold standard where gold becomes a reserve currency for SDR's or for any other world reserve currency, then that would be one of the happiest days of our lives, because it would mean the Illuminati's plans for world government have totally failed and that they have to start from scratch. We would love nothing better, and it could happen, but we doubt they will capitulate that easily. A pitched battle lies ahead.

And that brings us to our reference at the beginning of this dissertation to the effect that all but one piece of the US legislative tapestry is in place in order for the Illuminists to move forward with their plan to achieve world financial domination. And what piece of legislation is that? Why, it's the totally bogus scam called the "Cap and Trade" bill, of course, which will be based on the world class fraud that manmade greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide are the cause of global warming, which, oops, has now reversed and become global cooling (but never mind that).

Why is Cap and Trade so important? Because the Cap and Trade bill calls for the creation of what are called "carbon credits." So why is that significant? Well, that is because carbon credits will be used to back the new world reserve currency called SDR's. Carbon credits will be used in lieu of gold, oil or any other tangible physical asset. After all, carbon credits are the ultimate when it comes to creating a new fiat valued asset or commodity. The Illuminists can make these carbon credits appear out of thin air just as they do with our Federal Reserve Notes based on totally subjective and politically controlled standards that will be used to bring profits and financial benefits to Illuminist cronies (that would include Obama, Maurice Strong and Goldman Sachs, to name but a few of the partners in, and potential beneficiaries of, the Cap and Trade scam). At the same time these carbon credits will be used to destroy Illuminist enemies and to control their serfs (that would be you, Joe Public) by moving the wealth of the non-Illuminist serfs and the non-Illuminist businesses of the developed world into the international banking cabal's SDR's and also into third world nations in a move calculated to level the playing field in preparation for implementation of world government.

Recently the Jackasses have been pushing a partial Cap and Trade bill into their pending climate change and energy legislation which would only apply to certain utilities. This is not acceptable in any way, shape or form. This is just a "foot in the door" move by Illuminist miscreants in Congress to get the carbon credits and the carbon credit exchanges up and running so they can have their SDR's backed by carbon credits on albeit a reduced basis. This will then be extended to cover greater areas of the economy by making it look like the system is working with the usual false statistics we can expect from our "beloved" government, or by sneaking in extensions of the original "utility only" Cap and Trade bill to cover greater areas of our economy into some monstrously long piece of legislation that no one will read in full and that will have nothing to do with cap and trade or carbon credits. It will just suddenly appear on everyone's radar screen as the people are impoverished not knowing what has even hit them. We don't care by what name the Illuminist boot-lickers in Congress call it, any legislation that will have any elements of Cap and Trade or carbon credits, or greenhouse gas credits, or whatever they wish to call the elements of this rip-off system, the whole scheme is based on the false premise that manmade greenhouse gasses are the cause of global warming, and therefore any such legislation is a totally bogus scam no matter how small the sector of our economy might be that it would impact. Pound your Congressmen until they ask for mercy. Do not allow any element of the Cap and Trade system to appear in any legislation whatsoever, no matter what they call it, or how they sugarcoat it, or how they try to hide it through obtuse language or by sneaking it into some other bill that is totally unrelated to environmental issues. NO, NO, NO should be your only answer to anything involving this scam. If they get any kind of carbon credits going, it is all over but the crying, unless we can break the gold suppression, boot out all the incumbents and undo all the damage these miscreants have done to our country.

But if carbon credits are nothing more than paper credits, how does that benefit the banking cabal? Another good question, and this is where that diabolical Illuminist thinking kicks in again.

First, we start by noting that the use of paper contracts created out of thin air certainly seems to work in the banking cabal's favor at the COMEX and LBME, where all they ever do is use naked short paper contracts to manipulate the prices of commodities around the world.

But the system of carbon credits goes much further than merely making fraudulent paper manipulations in this or that market. This will be fraud, thievery and criminality on a worldwide scale. The Illuminists will use this system of carbon credits to suck out the real, hard-earned wealth generated by the productivity of the developed countries, which will then be used to secure the international banking cabal's SDR's, while the old currencies of the serf bourgeoisie proletariat remain backed by absolutely nothing but thin air. Remember, people are going to have to take real money out of their profits to fund and purchase these credits, which will be traded on a carbon exchange run by the wicked cabal of international bankster-gansters in the same manner as they run the COMEX and LBME. On top of all that, the Illuminists plan to institute a new global carbon tax to be assessed against the people of developed nations around the world, which will then be used to fund the apparatus they intend to use to establish world government through organizations like the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the World Bank (WB), the floundering World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the United Nations (UN) as well as various non-governmental organizations (NGO's) and other Illuminist-sponsored concerns. The cabal will also use their new influx of wealth from the Cap and Trade scam in the form of carbon credits and a carbon tax to fund loans to the third world nations ostensibly to help them increase their productivity and standard of living, but the money will come with strings attached that will enslave these underdeveloped countries to the international banking cabal. This is exactly what the IMF and World Bank have done to third world nations for decades, but now they will be on steroids. It will be business as usual on a much larger scale.

The Cap and Trade bill is, in reality, the newest iteration of the income tax, but on a global scale. Cap and Trade is simply another way of sucking money out of the masses to pay for government overspending which in the US is currently funded by the Federal Reserve which makes loans to the US Treasury at interest to fund ongoing government corruption and profligacy. Virtually every country on the planet operates in this fashion. The Illuminati intend for the carbon exchange to become the new Federal Reserve, where carbon credits will be created out of thin air instead of Federal Reserve Notes, and where the world reserve currency will become global in nature instead of being limited to the currency of one nation.

This scheme to replace the dollar with SDR's backed by carbon credits will cause the predominance of the US in world trade to fade away, and the power of the US will be reduced to that of a third world country as US citizens are impoverished down to levels that will give them continual nightmares for decades to come. And we can assure you that the same people who have ownership interests in the Federal Reserve will also own interests in the new carbon exchange, or should we say exchanges, because every Illuminist region will want to have one for fun and profits. That is the plan, unless you stop them, and we mean NOW!!!

By use of the new Cap and Trade system of carbon credits, the Illuminists will be able to charge utilities and corporations, in a totally subjective and political manner, for their greenhouse gas emissions, thus greatly increasing the cost of producing energy, as well as the cost of producing virtually every other product and service on the planet (talk about inflation). Most of these increased costs will be passed on to the consumer in the form of higher utility bills and higher prices for virtually all goods and services. This will reduce the competitiveness of companies in developed countries and will force many of them to move their operations overseas where carbon credits will either not be charged or will be assigned at much lower levels. This process of forcing companies overseas is just more of the same financial destruction reeked by free trade, globalization, off-shoring and outsourcing, as well as by both legal and illegal immigration. It's just the same old, same old in a different package. Yes, we are starting to hear that "large sucking sound" again as US jobs disappear at an ever-increasing rate. And mind you that we now have nearly one out of every four Americans out of work already.

Why do you think we have this BP oil spill that has destroyed the economy of the Bible Belt and put pressure on the production of oil, to make it more scarce, for the fun and profits of the Illuminati who own all the big oil concerns. The main thrust of this event, which is a multi-purpose false flag event, is to get the Cap and Trade bill passed, so the international banking cabal can back their new SDR's with carbon credits. They have caused the Jackasses and their peerless leader much political fallout because of their desperation to have this abomination passed by their marionettes in Congress. If you want to picture one of the Illuminati now, drooling at the prospect of SDR's backed by carbon credits, think about the movie "Alien," and picture the horrible creature opening its jaws, drooling acid, as it prepares to inject a hapless victim (that would be you) with an alien fetus that will eat you from the inside out. What a perfect metaphor.

These people in your "beloved" government are out to destroy you unless you stop them this November.

Now let's put the whole Illuminist plan together for you, in the event the Cap and Trade bill goes through. It will be like a combined epiphany of understanding, shock and horror once you get the big picture.

So, we assume now that Cap and Trade is passed like Obamacare and Fin Reg through unconstitutional and illegal legislation via criminal skullduggery, bribes and threats mixed with pork orgies and bogus, convoluted legislative procedures where form over substance reigns supreme.

Next comes devaluation of all currencies while SDR's backed by carbon credits are established by the G-20 nations. This devaluation will bring home the risk inherent in all the faltering, debt-ridden economies of the world, and their fiat currencies, including the US, the UK, Europe, Canada, Japan, the Middle East, many Asian countries and even the BRIC nations. This will result in higher interest rates no matter how low the Fed funds rate and the various other interbank rates are kept. Investors will want a return, or they will not invest, especially in areas where currencies have been devalued raising the specter of run away inflation by virtue of the escalating costs of imported goods as well as the astronomical costs of goods and services caused by the Cap and Trade bill. If interest rates are not raised, there will be another credit crunch. This new credit crunch will be like the first one, only on massive steroids. Whether interest rates rise, or credit stops, or both, economies around the world will falter and fail as the cost of higher interest, and/or the lack of credit, as the case may be, does its dirty work.

This devaluation will destroy the old system as the stock markets crash, while the bond markets, especially the municipal bond markets, nosedive. The buck will be broken on all money-market funds. The real estate market will become non-existent both in terms of purchases and refinances. Commercial and residential real estate values, and the mortgages, bonds and derivatives associated with them, will be heavily devalued, with the worst of them being reduced to pennies on the dollar. This will destroy many banks, but also investment banks, insurance companies, brokerage houses, hedge funds, pension plans, loan companies and other "non-bank financial companies." The FSOC, under the Fed's direction, will gather information through the Office of Financial Research to see which banks and non-bank financial companies are in trouble, and will direct the FDIC to liquidate them as previously described, with one set of rules being applied to Illuminist banks and financial concerns, and another standard being applied to all others. Then out comes the money parked at the Fed as it is invested and loaned out to the large Illuminist legacy banks and other Illuminist financial concerns so they can have their feeding frenzy at pennies on the dollar, or dupe the taxpayers out of their hard-earned money, as the case may be, all as described above in detail.

Meanwhile, back at the G-20 ranch, the large Illuminist central banks and their many crony institutions will continue to hide their losses with fantasy accounting methods, with their books being cooked until they are "well done," or in some cases, burnt to a crisp. As for the rest of the banks and financial institutions that got sucked into the Illuminist web of deceit in toxic loans, mortgages, bonds and derivatives of various kinds, they will be all gobbled up. Some of the larger Illuminist banks will be sacrificed to lend credibility to the proposition that everyone is being treated fairly and that this is not just an Illuminist mop-up operation even though it really will be. Once the feeding frenzy is over, the few Illuminist institutions left standing will finally reveal their desperate financial situation as the Quadrillion Dollar Derivative Death Star goes supernova, and once again they will play the too-big-to-fail card, especially since, at that point, most of the economies and financial institutions around the world will have already been destroyed and liquidated. But this time the bailouts will be accomplished by using SDR's backed by carbon credits instead of using US dollars and currency swaps. The entire world will be looted via carbon taxes and credits in order to bailout the few remaining Illuminist banks and financial institutions which will threaten to send the world into an everlasting depression if they are not bailed out. The losses will be so enormous that it will take several generations of world citizenry to pay it all back via the carbon taxes and credits, thus enslaving them to the international banking cabal forever. Then the few remaining institutions in the world will be organized first into regions economically, politically and socially.

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Tim Murray: Wilful Ignorance Is The Bedrock of Denialism

Wilful Ignorance Is The Bedrock of Denialism

By Tim Murray article link article link

28 March, 2010 | Candobetter | CounterCurrents

Albert Bartlett once spoke about Mark Twain’s “silent lie”. It refers to the habit of lying by not revealing the truth. If I know that someone has planted a bomb in the local subway, but I choose not to share that information with the authorities, by Twain’s definition, I am a liar. But when the information that I withhold is of critical importance to our lives or the lives of innocents, then I am more than a liar. I am criminally negligent. Such is the case with many politicians and environmental leaders. They know that we are facing economic collapse from dwindling oil supplies and ecological Armageddon from over-population, soil degradation, overtaxed aquifers and species loss, but they choose to shield the public from the brutal truth.

Several reasons have been advanced to account for their silence. One is ideological. The syncretistic blend of New Left thinking, feminism, cultural relativism, xenophilia and political correctness, sometimes bundled under the rubric of “cultural Marxism” has been a proven reality filter. The stark fact that there is not “enough to go around”, that we are already in overshoot, cannot be acknowledged by ideologues who view the present through the prism of an antique social justice agenda. Their focus is not on stopping growth, but managing and deflecting it. It is not on acknowledging limits, but ‘growing’ them with more efficient use of resources by land use strategies, pie-in-the-sky technologies and Spartan living habits. And it is not about family planning to cap population growth, but granting women reproductive choices even if they those choices result in unsustainable growth. For the growth management syndicate there is never a “longage” of people but a shortage of food. A shortage that can be cured by perpetual foreign aid, political reform or fair and efficient distribution. The notion that modern agriculture will collapse with the demise of fossil fuels or that organic farming or “re-localization” cannot sustain 7 billion people is beyond their comprehension.

There is another more mercenary reason for population myopia and green silence, however. Simply put, political parties and mainstream environmental NGOs, for the most part, are paid “not to understand”. Organizations like the Sierra Club, Conservation International, Nature Conservancy and the David Suzuki Foundation, accept corporate money. Some even permit corporate representatives to hold directorships. This comes at a price. What are corporations, and particularly financial institutions all about? Growth and Debt, which go together like a horse and carriage. An apt simile for the post-carbon future that looms around the corner. So we shall have growth, but it shall be painted green. Voila. “Smart” growth. A first class ticket on a doomed ship.

But most importantly, corporations crave the certification of social responsibility that environmental organizations can give them. In the 1990s big business felt the winds of change. Environmentalism had gone mainstream. It became evident that opposing the public mood was not a wise business strategy. So rather than war with environmental organizations, it proved commercially advantageous to jump on their bandwagon. If they could gain the environmental seal of approval in exchange for acquiescence to growth, they could proceed with business-as-usual. And just as the Pope sold indulgences to the wealthy benefactors of the Middle Ages, the “Pope” of the Sierra Club, among others, sold ecological dispensation to corporate benefactors. As anointed Green Citizens, “progressive” corporations can count the profits and bask in self-righteous glory as the population grows relentlessly.

But this fact raises a more fundamental issue. Proof of this corporate infiltration is available by the mere perusal of their financial reports. So why aren’t the members of environmental NGOs doing their homework? Why do people who would conduct a title search or home inspection when they buy a house, or scrutinize the financial report of their union or strata council, or make the purchase of a car subject to a mechanical inspection not care to apply the same rigor and due diligence to the environmental organizations they support? Why don’t they care to know who is paying the piper? And why do they rely upon the filtered , spoon-fed news that these green organizations dispense rather than do their own research? Why do they delegate their thinking to these kept women of corporate duplicity, their chosen gatekeepers of knowledge?

Are people lax, indolent and ignorant? At times, most are. Despite numerous opportunities, I have chosen to be ignorant about the workings of my car, or how to trouble-shoot my computer problems, or even how to fill in my own income tax form. But like other people, I address many areas of my life with earnest curiosity. Many of us effect great interest in proper nutrition, effective exercise, better gardening, shrewd shopping and a host of hobbies and interests. But we are deliberately oblivious to those societal issues which threaten our collective survival. Many adopt the posture of “positive thinking” ---the wilful ignorance of the blatantly obvious. Like those who persisted in playing cards while the Titanic listed, they whistle past the graveyard of a civilization that edges closer to the cliff. The writing is on the wall, but they choose not to read it.

While the media collaborates with their self-imposed stupefaction, it only panders to their appetite for escape. There is an insatiable market for denial and self-indulgence. Even news must be entertaining. We are transfixed by stock market quotations, economic indices, sporting events and movie star divorces, but bored with the end of the world as we know it. Of those who read, it is murder mysteries, horror stories, romance novels, tales of the supernatural and pop psychology that seem to command interest. We are literally amusing ourselves to death. Even those nations with democratic levers are captive of an ecologically illiterate electorate. Everywhere we are oppressed by the coalition of the uniformed, who consist of, in the words of Tasmania’s Peter Bright, “People who don’t think, and who don’t want to think; people who don’t know—and who don’t want to know; and those who don’t care, and don’t want to care.”

We are fatally flawed. Unfit and undeserving of a better fate than that which awaits us like a black-hooded executioner beside his chopping block, axe in hand. Poetic justice for the architects of the Sixth Extinction, a species that despite its vaunted intelligence, continues to undercut its own life support system like a cannibal feeding off his own limbs. The fossil record is full of failed models like ours. A Greek tragedy in the making.

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Tim Murray: Wilful Ignorance Is The Bedrock of Denialism