ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS THE TRUTH

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Posted on 3rd December 2012 by Administrator in Economy |Politics |Social Issues

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“Eyes blinded by the fog of things
cannot see truth.
Ears deafened by the din of things
cannot hear truth.
Brains bewildered by the whirl of things
cannot think truth.
Hearts deadened by the weight of things
cannot feel truth.
Throats choked by the dust of things
cannot speak truth.”
Harald Bell Wright – The Uncrowned King

I consider myself a seeker of truth. It isn’t easy finding it in todays’ world. In an alternate version of the famous scene from A Few Good Men, I picture myself telling Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner that I want the truth and his angry truthful response:

“Son, we live in a world that has Wall Street banks, and those banks have to be guarded by puppet politicians in Washington D.C. with lobbyist written laws and Madison Avenue PR maggots with media propaganda. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Representative Paul? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for the average middle class American family, and you curse the ruling oligarchs. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That the death of the American middle class, while tragic, probably saved the bonuses of thousands of Wall Street bankers. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, increases the wealth of these same bankers who destroyed the worldwide economic system in 2008. You don’t want the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about in the food bank line, you want me on Wall Street, you need me on Wall Street. We use words like derivative, fiscal stimulus, quantitative easing. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent syphoning off the wealth of the nation. You use them as a punch line. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very debt that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up 1000 shares of Apple, and hope our high frequency trading supercomputers can ramp the market for a while longer. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you are entitled to.”

I find myself more amazed than ever at the ability of those in power to lie, misinform and obfuscate the truth, while millions of Americans willfully choose to be ignorant of the truth and yearn to be misled. It’s a match made in heaven. Acknowledging the truth of our society’s descent from a country of hard working, self-reliant, charitable, civic minded citizens into the abyss of entitled, dependent, greedy, materialistic consumers is unacceptable to the slave owners and the slaves. We can’t handle the truth because that would require critical thought, hard choices, sacrifice, and dealing with the reality of an unsustainable economic and societal model. It’s much easier to believe the big lies that allow us to sleep at night. The concept of lying to the masses and using propaganda techniques to manipulate and form public opinion really took hold in the 1920s and have been perfected by the powerful ruling elite that control the reins of finance, government and mass media.

Peddlers of Propaganda

“Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.” Aldous Huxley – Brave New World

 File:Edward Bernays.jpg   

Adolf Hitler understood the power of the big lie over the ignorant masses who want to believe:

“All this was inspired by the principle–which is quite true within itself–that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.” – Adolf Hitler – Mein Kampf

We are all liars. We lie to friends, family and co-workers. We convince ourselves they are only small lies and just protect others from being hurt. We would rather be lied to than face the blunt truth about our deficiencies, shortcomings and failures. Willfully believing mistruths allows a person to become dependent upon those promulgating the mistruths. It relieves them of their responsibility to act upon the knowledge that something is wrong and must be fixed. It is a cowardly path to ultimate servitude and destruction. The German people chose this path in the 1930s and the American people have chosen a similar and ultimately destructive path today. The United States Office of Strategic Services prepared a psychological profile report during the war describing Adolf Hitler’s method for controlling the minds of the German masses:

“His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.”

America’s corruptible politicians, greedy corporate chieftains, criminal banking overlords, and despicable media manipulators all learned the sordid lessons of mass propaganda from the masters. Our willingness to lie and be lied to set us up to be manipulated by those who understood the mass psychology of a nation. Goebbels and Hitler were heavily influenced by the father of propaganda – Edward Bernays. He and his disciples are professional poisoners of the public mind, exploiters of public foolishness and ignorance, and never allow truth to interfere with a good story. What master manipulators realized is that it is easier to change the attitude of millions than the attitude of one man. By analyzing and understanding the process and motives of how the group mind works, the invisible government has been able to manipulate and regulate the masses according to their will without the masses knowing they are being managed. Bernays described this elitist view of the world in 1928:

“Those who manipulate the unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. In almost every act of our lives whether in the sphere of politics or business in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind.” – Edward Bernays – Propaganda

The super-rich elite believe they are more intelligent, more capable of managing the affairs of state, masters of the financial world, and chosen to decide what is best for the masses. In reality, they are egocentric, psychotic, power hungry, myopic, self-serving ravenous vultures, feasting upon the carcass of a once great nation. Truth is inconsequential and irritating to their plans for world domination and control. Therefore, no truth will be forthcoming from any organization or person that is associated with the existing political, economic, financial or social order. Every bit of information that is permitted into the public realm has been vetted, manipulated and spun for public consumption. The public does not like bad news. They do not like hard facts. They do not like to think or do math. They want to be spoon fed mindless sound bites and happy talk. The oligarchs need to keep the masses sedated and subservient while they continue to plunder and pillage, so all data is massaged to provide a happy ending.

This is where I deviate from the ideologue one-trick ponies that refuse to see both sides of the issue. The ruling oligarchs are wealthy, influential, psychotic, amoral, and few. The masses are relatively poor, easily influenced, willfully ignorant, and many. The ruling oligarchs are most certainly evil, but the masses are not the hard working, stoic, downtrodden portrayed by liberal ideologues. One just needs to walk down the street in one of our urban enclaves, saunter through a suburban mall, or click on People of Wal-Mart to witness the tattooed, pierced, butt crack showing, slovenly, obese, and ignorant, attached to their electronic iGadgets, to understand how far our society has deteriorated.  Every individual born into this world has the capability to become educated, think critically, not follow the herd, live beneath their means, and not be influenced by propaganda. Aldous Huxley understood in 1931 that those in power could use material goods to invoke passivity and egotism among the populace. He feared that truth would be obscured by an avalanche of irrelevance (500 Reality TV shows), cultural trivialities (Lady Gaga, Lindsey Lohan), distractions (Professional sports), and pharmaceutical enhanced escape (Prozac). He saw the possibility that we would grow to love our servitude as the pleasures of life provided by our controllers overwhelmed any desire to think or question authority.

“There will be in the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them but will rather enjoy it.”  ― Aldous Huxley

By 1962 when Huxley wrote his last book, he was certain that his worst dystopian nightmares had been unleashed. His description of Western society fifty years ago could have been written today and accurately reflected our current economic paradigm. War, debt and consumption still make our world go round, but the end is nigh.

“Armaments, universal debt, and planned obsolescence – those are the three pillars of Western prosperity. If war, waste, and moneylenders were abolished, you’d collapse. And while you people are over-consuming the rest of the world sinks more and more deeply into chronic disaster.”Aldous Huxley – Island

The pillars are crumbling. The $1.4 trillion wasted on two worthless wars of choice in the Middle East, the trillions wasted and liberties sacrificed for the never ending unwinnable War on Terror, the Keynesian spending frenzy that has driven the National Debt from $9 trillion to $16.3 trillion in the last five years, the looting of the American taxpayer by Wall Street and their co-conspirators at the Federal Reserve and in Congress, and the belief that ramping up the debt driven consumption that drives 71% of our GDP is our path to prosperity is absolutely freaking nuts. The pillars will not be abolished willingly. The ruling class depends upon their continued existence and expansion. There is the rub. The math doesn’t work. We’ve reached the point where continued expansion of debt and money printing no longer works. With a national debt to GDP ratio of 102% and a total credit market debt to GDP ratio of 350%, we have passed the Rogoff & Reinhart point of no return. This time is not different. A country cannot run trillion dollar deficits indefinitely and expect to not suffer the consequences. This is why those in power are increasingly resorting to propaganda, data manipulation, and outright lies to convince the masses of their omnipotence and brilliance in managing the fiscal affairs of the state.

 “One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.” Aldous Huxley – Brave New World

Through decades of mass media messaging the masses have been conditioned to believe whatever those in power want them to believe. To our invisible government rulers we are nothing but rats to be manipulated through food pellets and shock therapy. Pleasure and fear of pain are the drivers of our warped society. The ruling oligarchs truly think they know what is best for the masses and believe any means is worthwhile as long as the ends support their agenda. This is blatantly obvious to anyone with their eyes open and their brain functioning. Sadly, the government run educational system produces mostly drones that are barely able to tie their own shoes, spell Cat, or make change from a one dollar bill. Only 20% of all high school seniors score high enough on the SAT test to get a B minus in college and most of these kids come from private and parochial schools. This is exactly what those in power prefer. They want non-critical thinking, mindless consumers, who don’t understand the criminal nature of Federal Reserve created inflation or their enslavement in the chains of debt at the hands of their Wall Street slave owners. They certainly don’t want the masses to understand that real median household net worth is lower today than it was in 1969. Luckily for the oligarchs, 95% of the public couldn’t define the terms: real, median or net worth. Math is hard.

The average person is inundated on a 24/7 basis with pabulum from liberal network media talking heads, CNBC Wall Street shills regurgitating whatever their sponsors desire, Fox News blonde bimbos and neo-con war mongers programmed to spew Rupert Murdoch talking points, MSNBC tingling leg faux journalists, NYT intellectually corrupt Nobel prize winners, NAR nitwits repeating “best time to buy” on a daily basis for the last 12 years, and government agencies whose sole purpose is to manipulate data in a way that supports the agenda of those in power. The intellectually lazy and willfully ignorant masses are no match for those who control the message and the media. How else can you explain their ability to convince millions of drones to line up for hours in front of a store and stampede like crazed hyenas to grab a $5 crockpot, the Chinese produced gadget of the moment or a designer top made by slave labor in safety conscious Bangladesh factories? How else can you explain a population willing to be molested by government TSA dregs in the name of security from phantom terrorists, the passive acceptance of military exercises in US cities, unquestioning submissiveness as Presidential Executive Orders allow the government dictatorial powers based on their judgment, the monitoring of internet and voice correspondence of all citizens, and believing that FBI agents luring clueless teenage Muslim dupes into fake terrorist plots, providing the fake explosives, and then announcing with great fanfare how they saved us from another 9/11?

But, the prize for boldest, most outrageous, blatant use of propaganda and misinformation to cover-up their criminal looting of America goes to Ben Bernanke, his cronies at the Federal Reserve, and the Wall Street banks that own and control our Central Bank. Having the gall to portray themselves as the stabilizer of our economic system over the last 100 years is a putrid joke on the dying and broke middle class. Their mandate has been stable prices, full employment, and avoiding financial crisis. It is a tribute to Bernays and the rest of the public relations swine that the average American actually believes inflation is a good thing and it is under control despite the FACT that 96.2% of their purchasing power has disappeared since 1900, with the most rapid decline occurring since Nixon closed the gold window in 1971.

inflation-currency

The average American actually believes Ben Bernanke saved us from a Great Depression when in actuality he saved the owners of the Federal Reserve from accepting the losses they generated through the greatest financial fraud in history. His “solutions” have zombified our economic system, just as the Japanese Central Bank did 20 years ago. He has destroyed the concept of saving, while rewarding the indebted and profligate with his QE to Infinity money printing policies. And the ignorant masses have been convinced by the corporate media and their corrupt government lackeys that Ben did this for them. Kyle Bass knows otherwise. He knows how the Fed and their backers have preyed upon the masses through their understanding of human psychology:

“Humans are optimistic by nature. People’s lives are driven by hopes and dreams which are all second derivatives of their innate optimism. Humans also suffer from optimistic biases driven by the first inalienable right of human nature which is self-preservation. It is this reflex mechanism in our cognitive pathways that makes difficult situations hard to reflect and opine on. These biases are extended to economic choices and events. The primary difficulty with this train of thought is the bias that most investors have for the baseline facts: they tend to believe that the central bankers, politicians, and other governmental agencies are omnipotent due to their success in averting a financial meltdown in 2009.

Central banks have become the great enablers of fiscal profligacy. The overarching belief is that there will always be someone or something there to act as the safety net. The safety nets worked so well recently that investors now trust they will be underneath them ad-infinitum. Markets and economists alike now believe that quantitative easing (“QE”) will always “work” by flooding the market with relatively costless capital. Unlimited QE and the zero lower bound (“ZLB”) are likely to bankrupt pension funds whose expected returns happen to be a good 600 basis points (or more) higher than the 10?year “risk-free” rate. The ZLB has many unintended consequences that are impossible to ignore.

Our belief is that markets will eventually take these matters out of the hands of the central bankers. These events will happen with such rapidity that policy makers won’t be able to react fast enough. The fallacy of the belief that countries that print their own currency are immune to sovereign crisis will be disproven in the coming months and years. Trillions of dollars of debts will be restructured and millions of financially prudent savers will lose large percentages of their real purchasing power at exactly the wrong time in their lives. Again, the world will not end, but the social fabric of the profligate nations will be stretched and in some cases torn. Sadly, looking back through economic history, all too often war is the manifestation of simple economic entropy played to its logical conclusion. We believe that war is an inevitable consequence of the current global economic situation.” Kyle Bass

What’s Normal in a Profoundly Abnormal Society?

“The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does.” They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted.” Aldous Huxley – Brave New World Revisited

No sane person could honestly say that what has happened to our society over the last forty years, and particularly in the last five years, is normal. But somehow those in power have convinced the masses that $1.2 trillion deficits, 0% interest rates, declining real wages, the highest average gas prices in history, pre-emptive wars, policing the world and buying rubber dog shit produced in China with a credit card is normal and beneficial to our economy. It seems that I and a few million other people in this country are the abnormal ones. We choose not to be led to slaughter by our masters. The seekers of truth have turned to the alternative media and are able to connect with like-minded critical thinking individuals on websites like Zero Hedge, Jesse’s Americain Café, Of Two Minds, Mish, Financial Sense, among many other truth seeking blogs. This is dangerous to the powers that be and they are using their political clout and extreme wealth to try and lock down and control free speech on the internet. If this is accomplished all hope at disseminating truth will be lost.

Abraham Lincoln once said that he believed in the people and that if you told them the truth and gave them the cold hard facts they would meet any crisis. That may have been true in 1860, but not today. The cold hard facts are available for all to see:

  • A $16.3 trillion National Debt
  • 47 million people on food stamps
  • Over $222 trillion of unfunded Federal entitlement liabilities
  • Over $5 trillion of unfunded State entitlement liabilities
  • True unemployment above 20%.
  • True inflation above 5%.
  • A stock market at the same level as 1999, with a 10 year expected annual return of less than 4% – Stocks for the really, really long run. 10 year bond returns of 0% will be a miracle.
  • A savings rate of 3.7% and with Bernanke’s ZIRP, no incentive to save. Real hourly earnings continue to fall.

  • Baby Boomers within 10 years of retirement have saved an average of only $78,000, and more than a third of them have less than $25,000. More than half of U.S. workers have no retirement plan at all.
  • A crumbling, decaying infrastructure, with 150,000 structurally deficient bridges, bursting water mains, and an overstressed electrical grid.
  • Horrific government public education producing millions of low functioning morons.
  • Rotting social fabric, with 40% of children born out of wedlock (72% of black children) and a 50% divorce rate.
  • An energy policy based upon unicorns farting rainbows and press releases about green energy and the miracle of shale fracking, as average gas prices in 2012 and 2011 were the highest in U.S. history.

As the pitiful excuses for statesmen in Washington D.C. pander and posture about the dreaded fiscal cliff which was purposely created by the oligarchs as a show for the masses, none of the true issues above are being addressed. The dramatic compromise that will ultimately be reached between the equally corrupt parties will be hailed by the corporate media and Wall Street shysters and an HFT supercomputer engineered stock market rally will ensue. The cowardice of these politicians is revolting. As Huxley knew in 1958, politicians and propagandists prefer nonsense and storylines to truth, knowledge and honesty.

“Human beings act in a great variety of irrational ways, but all of them seem to be capable, if given a fair chance, of making a reasonable choice in the light of available evidence. Democratic institutions can be made to work only if all concerned do their best to impart knowledge and to encourage rationality. But today, in the world’s most powerful democracy, the politicians and the propagandists prefer to make nonsense of democratic procedures by appealing almost exclusively to the ignorance and irrationality of the electors.”Aldous Huxley – Brave New World Revisited

We want to be lied to because the truth is too painful. Hope and denial with a dash of delusion is the recipe the mindless masses prefer. The average person doesn’t want to understand the chart below. They want to believe the U.S. will dominate economically and lead the world for decades to come. We are still the bright shining beacon of democracy on the mountaintop. Even though the facts unequivocally reveal a declining empire, the masses desperately grasp at straws in the wind. The United States share of world GDP will be vastly lower in 2021, as the hubris of declining empires never allows them to take the necessary steps to reverse the decline (Rome, Great Britain).  

It is fitting that during this magical Christmas season of fantasy, delusion, debt fueled material over-consumption and fairy tales, we look at the biggest fairy tale of all – the great jobs recovery. I know from the two thousand Obama campaign commercials I was forced to watch in the last few months and 500 robo-calls at dinner every night that we’ve added 4 million jobs due to Obama’s wise economic policies. The magical journey from a 10.3% unemployment rate to a 7.9% rate is a humdinger. I stumbled across a myriad of charts on those truth-telling websites that I had previously mentioned.

 “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you mad.” Aldous Huxley

The first chart that grabbed my attention shows the historical relationship between the U3 unemployment rate reported to the masses versus the U6 truer picture of unemployment, along with the percentage of people unemployed for longer than 15 weeks. A funny thing happened shortly after the election of Barack Obama. From 1994 through 2008 the gap between the U3 and U6 rates consistently ranged between 3% and 4%. Suddenly, the gap surged to 7% and currently sits at almost 8%. The figure reported to the masses of 7.9% is so much easier to digest than the 15% to 17% that captures the truer level of unemployment. If the gap between these two figures had remained at the levels of the previous 14 years, the unemployment that should be reported to the masses would be 11%. That is unacceptable to those in power, so the data is massaged and the propaganda machine spins the storyline necessary to confuse and mislead the masses.

 

The next two charts from Mike Shedlock again reveal truths the existing social order doesn’t want you to know. Even though the working age population has grown by 10 million people since 2008, the BLS expects critical thinking people to believe the labor force has only grown by 1.3 million people. You see, the unemployment rate is calculated using the labor force. If your economic policies don’t create jobs, just adjust the labor force dramatically lower based on nothing. In desperate economic times, people do not voluntarily leave the workforce. Only a non-thinking drone would believe that 8.7 million Americans voluntarily left the workforce since 2008, when only 4 million left the workforce from 2003 through 2007. It is not a coincidence that student loan debt, which was taken over by the Obama administration in 2009 rose by $300 billion. Those in power have doled out these billions with no concern for credit risk or academic credentials in order to reduce the number of people in the labor force. Unemployed union Twinkie workers seeking a new career in lesbian studies can get a $20,000 loan from the American taxpayer to sit in their basement along with the 500,000 other University of Phoenix enrollees. The future $300 billion taxpayer bailout was worth it to keep the unemployment rate low enough to insure Obama’s re-election.      

The Obama PR machine never fails to expound upon the fact that the economy added 4.9 million jobs since January 2009. In the same timeframe, uncovered employment rose by 6.6 million. Inquiring minds might want to know what an “uncovered” job entails. Selling your accumulated Chinese crap on Ebay is an uncovered job. Calling yourself a consultant while sleeping until noon is an uncovered job. Day trading Facebook and Apple stock is an uncovered job. Trash picking is an uncovered job. The truth is that real jobs are 1.7 million lower than they were at the depths of the recession, while bullshit jobs paying virtually nothing and offering no benefits have surged by 6.6 million. These facts don’t make a great campaign commercial. The number of employed Americans is at the same level as mid-2005, even though the working age population has grown by 18 million. Since 2008 there are 3 million less full-time jobs and 3 more part-time jobs. This trend is accelerating as small businesses react rationally to the oncoming Obamacare train, resulting in aggregate work hours declining and wage growth stagnating.

Zero Hedge reveals more truth about our glorious jobs recovery with the following two charts. They obliterate the false narrative spun by liberal ideologues that the reason for the increase of those not in the labor force is due to Baby Boomers retiring. The truth is that while those in the 55-69 age brackets have gained nearly 4 million jobs under President Obama, everyone else has lost just over 2.5 million jobs. Is this a positive development or a sign of extreme desperation among older Americans who have seen their interest income vaporized by Ben Bernanke and there food, energy, and healthcare expenses skyrocket?

Those in their prime earning years of 25 to 54 still have a net cumulative loss of 2.2 million jobs since 2009. Recent college graduates, with their billions of student loan debt, have nabbed 400,000 TGI Fridays jobs, singing happy birthday to 3 year olds, with their newly minted college degrees. This is the “normal” healthy jobs market sold to the American public by the propagandists and politicians.

The final jobs chart that portrays the truth of what has been a decades’ long spiral downward paints a picture of a country that once created wealth through producing goods from the 1940s through 1970. Since 1970 we’ve degenerated into a debt creating country that consumes foreign produced goods and makes entitlement promises it can never keep. Selling houses to each other, peddling crap on Ebay, and eating out three times a week has shockingly failed to propel our economy. The jobs picture has deteriorated rapidly since 2008 and is not improving, despite the best propaganda money can buy. There is absolutely no chance of any substantive improvement over the next four years based on the policies in place and refusal to acknowledge the economic realities that we face.

The accumulation of material possessions through the use of consumer debt, peddled by bankers and reinforced through relentless corporate marketing propaganda has left the country’s citizens weary, miserable, greedy, indebted and sick. Our obsession with technology has merely provided another means of distracting ourselves from confronting the dire challenges that must be addressed. We can ignore the facts but that doesn’t mean they do not exist. The abnormality that grips this nation is breathtaking to behold, as the status quo cheer on and encourage consumers to buy more things with money they don’t have in order to support an economic recovery that is dependent upon zero interest rates for Wall Street banks, QE to infinity, and the delusional desire for a miraculous return to the good old days when getting something for nothing was possible. We can no longer deny reality. If we want to add 30 million people to Medicaid, it must be paid for. If we want to wage never ending wars and police the world, it must be paid for. If we want a Federal government to spend $3.8 trillion per year, it must be paid for. Nothing is free in this world, but more than 50% of Americans seem to believe that to be true.

“Our economy is based on spending billions to persuade people that happiness is buying things, and then insisting that the only way to have a viable economy is to make things for people to buy so they’ll have jobs and get enough money to buy things.” Philip Elliot Slater

We are seen by those in control as nothing more than common house flies caught in their web of lies. Your owners don’t care about you. They only care about their own wealth and power. They want to control and manipulate you. They want to keep you enslaved in debt and running on the treadmill of consumption. They want passive, non-critical thinking drones to do the menial service jobs that remain in this country, while they use their control of our financial, political, tax, and legal systems to ransack and pillage the wealth of the dwindling middle class. The truth is the continuation of our current economic system is mathematically impossible. Your owners know this. This is why the use of propaganda, misinformation, fake data, and false storylines has taken on astronomical proportions. The time for passivity and accepting the deceitfulness of our leaders is coming to an end. While you’re waiting in line this Christmas season at Wal-Mart to purchase a fabulously priced shirt that only required the deaths of 112 Bangladesh slave laborers, try to figure out how we got here. Your owners think they have you by the balls.

“They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else. But I’ll tell you what they don’t want—they don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interest. You know something, they don’t want people that are smart enough to sit around their kitchen table and figure out how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. Because the owners of this country know the truth, it’s called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.” George Carlin

How many Americans are awake enough to handle the truth?

All I want for Christmas is the truth.

HOW’S OUR DEMOCRATIC MIDDLE EAST ALLY DOING?

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Posted on 3rd July 2012 by Administrator in Economy |Politics |Social Issues

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Don’t you love when Fox News parades some neo-con with the last name of Cheney or Wolfowitz on its propaganda network and they declare Iraq a huge success? I guess 30% unemployment, power outages for 20 hours per day when the temperatures are 120, bombs blowing up every day killing hundreds, and a paralyzed government constitutes success in the eyes of a neo-con. The truth is that Iraq is a failed state. George W’s invasion has proven to be disastrous for the United States – 4,500 men killed, 40,000 wounded, $1 trillion pissed own the toilet, oil moving from $23 per barrel in 2002 to $87 per barrel today, and more terrorists in Iraq today than ever existed under Hussein.

Could you imagine the panic and fear in our paradise of democracy if 234 people in the U.S. had been killed by terrorist bombs in one month? We piss our pants every time the CIA & FBI create a fake terrorist plot that they foil after luring some dimwitted dupe into their plot. What does the American public do when told about the 234 deaths of innocent Iraqis? They yawn and think – “just a bunch of ragheaded Muslims. What time is America’s Got Talent on?”

Iraq is imploding and it is our fault. The sanctions Obama and Congress have put on Iranian oil exports are reducing their income. When volume drops, you need prices to rise. How do you think Iran will achieve that needed price increase? They will threaten the Strait of Hormuz and they will send their people into Iraq and blow up a few oil installations. Book it Shaziz.

National grid grinds to a halt in Iraq

 Azzaman, June 22, 2012

Lack of fuel forced a shutdown of Iraq’s national grid, plunging the country into total darkness.

The shutdown continued for nearly a day hours before Iraqi technicians could bring the grid back to life.

The Ministry of Electricity said the whole grid stopped functioning because there were no more fuel supplies available

Major power stations in the country had to be shut down for many hours before power production was resumed, said the ministry’s spokesman Musaib al-Mudarisi.

But technicians privately say the failure of the national grid was caused by an unexpected hike in demand amid rising temperatures that have surged beyond 40 degrees centigrade.

Nearly 10 years after the U.S. invasion of the country and spending of billions of dollars, Iraqis still suffer outages that may last up to 20 hours a day.

Electricity represents the real story of failure in a failed country and points to massive waste of resources.

Electricity officials keep talking of new contracts worth billions of dollars and completion of new plants but supplies are still worse than the days of former President Saddam Hussein.

Iraq’s power needs are estimated at 14,000 megawatts but the countr’sy total capacity hardly provides half the domestic demand.

Iraq imports electricity mainly from Iran at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

 

Iraq Violence Surge Spurs New Fears

By LARA JAKES and KAY JOHNSON 06/30/12 04:06 PM ET AP

 

Iraq

In this Wednesday, June 20, 2012, file photo, a body of a victim lies on the ground as firefighters try to extinguish flames after a car bomb attack in Kirkuk, Iraq. (AP Photo/Emad Matti, File)

BAGHDAD — A half year after the U.S. military left Iraq, dire predictions seem to be coming true: The country is mired in violence and the government is on the verge of collapsing. With no relief in sight, there’s growing talk of Iraq as a failed state as al-Qaida’s local wing staged near daily attacks that killed at least 234 people in June.

Iraq no longer suffers widespread retaliatory killings between Sunni and Shiite extremists that brought the country to the brink of civil war. But the spike in violence heightens fears that Iraq could limp along for years as an unstable and dangerous country.

June was the second-deadliest month since U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq in mid-December as insurgents exploited the political struggles between the country’s ethnic and sectarian factions. More significant than the numbers was the fact that insurgents appeared able to sustain the level of violence over a longer period than usual. There was a major deadly bombing or shooting rampage almost every three days, many targeting Shiite pilgrims.

The violence has brought the weakness of Iraq’s security apparatus into sharp focus even as deepening political divisions dim the prospects that the country will emerge as a stable democracy after decades of war and dictatorship.

“The state is almost paralyzed and dysfunctional due to political feuds. In such circumstances, the security forces also will be paralyzed and the insurgents groups are making use of this chaos,” Haider al-Saadi, the Shiite owner of internet cafe in eastern Baghdad, said Saturday. “I do not think that al-Qaida is getting any stronger – it is the state that is getting weaker.”

The situation deteriorated shortly after American troops left Iraq on Dec. 18, following failed negotiations to stay beyond a year-end withdrawal deadline that was cemented in a 2008 security agreement.

The next day Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government issued terror charges against Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, one of Iraq’s highest-ranking Sunnis, who fled Baghdad and remains on the lam. Sunni lawmakers briefly boycotted parliament and al-Maliki’s cabinet in protest. By spring, leaders of the self-ruled Kurdish northern region joined the Sunni-dominated Iraqiya political coalition against al-Maliki, whom they accused of refusing to share power.

And last week, in the first major defection by an influential Shiite leader, anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr said he would direct his followers to join efforts to oust al-Maliki if a power-sharing agreement is not reached.

Al-Maliki, who won a second term in 2010, followed with a threat to call for early elections that would dissolve parliament if government infighting does not stop.

In calling for an early election, al-Maliki is betting he would win with enough widespread support to gain undisputed power. His political coalition fell short of winning the most seats in parliament in 2010 elections and back-room dealing among political parties delayed a new government from taking over for nine months.

Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh agreed Saturday that the political crisis has fueled June’s violent surge.

“The insurgents are making use of the political differences in the country, and the recent attacks are the result of this political strife,” al-Dabbagh said.

Violence has been steady across Iraq so far this year, but the levels of attacks in June soared beyond the occasional, if spectacular, wave of bombings that is al- Qaida’s usual pattern. Victims mostly have been Shiite pilgrims, government officials and security forces – three of al-Qaida’s favorite targets.

Al-Qaida front group the Islamic State of Iraq claimed responsibility for a June 13 wave of nearly two dozen bombings nationwide that killed 72 Iraqis. The coordination, sophistication and targets of several other attacks also bore the hallmarks of the terror network.

Iraqi and U.S. intelligence officials long have said that al-Qaida’s resources in Iraq – including money, weapons and a stable of suicide bombers – have dwindled to the point where the insurgent group can only carry off a few attacks each month.

Many experts believe the turmoil in neighboring Syria is stoking the violence, saying the success of the Sunni-led opposition against President Bashar Assad’s regime is emboldening Iraqi Sunnis to attack government targets.

“As the edifice in Syria weakens, the more space for violence is going spill over to the Sunni areas in Iraq,” said Kamran Bokhari, a Canadian-based expert on Mideast issues for the global intelligence company Statfor.

Some analysts believe Iraq is turning into a failed state. This month, the U.S.-based Fund for Peace ranked Iraq No. 9 on its annual Top Ten list of failed states worldwide. The nonpartisan research group ranked 178 nations and blamed the persistent security problems in Iraq on the inability to overcome long-standing ethnic and sectarian tensions.

Despite the continued bombings and other attacks, Iraqis have not returned to the sectarian warfare that killed tens of thousands of people as violence peaked in 2006-2007. Shiite militias have shown restraint even as a spate of bombings targeted Shiite pilgrims, shrines and government leaders.

And as al-Sadr, an anti-U.S. cleric whose militias were responsible for some of the bloodiest attacks of the war, seeks to secure his status as a major political player in Iraq, it’s doubtful he will unleash his followers in widespread violence that would undermine his credibility across the mostly-Sunni Arab world.

Even al-Maliki’s opponents speak only of ousting him in a parliamentary vote, not by force.

“People now know that violence will breed violence and sectarian killings will lead to more counter-sectarian killings,” said Omar al-Jubouri, a Sunni lawmaker from the Iraqiya bloc.

Underscoring the continued dangers, however, the month ended with a pair of bombings Saturday in the northern, Sunni-dominated Nivevah province, killing two soldiers on separate security patrols, local officials said.

Many Iraqis lament the withdrawal of U.S. forces, saying it was premature.

“The U.S. pullout was a mistake because the country is still in need for their intelligence and military capabilities,” said Mohammed Salam, a Sunni government employee in Baghdad. “The Iraqi government should have kept some several thousands of U.S. troops in order to help Iraq forces maintain a reasonable level of security.”

The international community spent billions of dollars to stabilize Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein. Nearly 4,500 U.S. troops were killed during the war.

But the U.S. currently has limited influence in Baghdad: A June 14 statement by the top national security adviser to Vice President Joe Biden that urged Iraqi officials to “alleviate current tensions in order to refocus energy on critical state-building challenges” produced few, if any, signs of progress.

Nor do most Iraqis expect any.

“I think Iraq will see worse days in the future if the politicians continue their destructive feuds and keep following their personal ambitions,” Salam said.

RAND PAUL – JUST ANOTHER SLIMY POLITICIAN

74 comments

Posted on 9th June 2012 by Administrator in Economy |Politics |Social Issues

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Rand Paul has proven to be just another establishment politician that cares more about his own career in politics than about truth, liberty and freedom. Not only did he endorse Obama-Lite last night, but he did it on Faux News. To top it off, he went on that despicable, neo-con, warmongering, liberty hating, Wall Street loving, Ron Paul trashing, Sean Hannity’s worthless piece of shit excuse for a news show to announce his love for Mittens. It was a sad day for people who believe in freedom, free markets, sound money and non-interventionism. There isn’t a 5% difference between Romney and Obama on the issues important to this country’s future.

For those who think Rand will have more of a say in policy issues or now be in line for VP, stop smoking that weed. Once you get into bed with the establishment, you catch their disease. It should be clear to anyone with a critical thinking brain cell in their body that this country CANNOT be changed from within the system. The system is a rotting, corrupt, oligarchy that must be destroyed before there is any chance at fixing this country. Rand Paul and the rest of the supposed “Tea Party” insurrectionists are being lured into the establishment by promises of power and influence. It’s a sad day for liberty. 

REMEMBER IRAQ?

18 comments

Posted on 21st March 2012 by Administrator in Economy |Politics |Social Issues

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I know Americans have the attention spans of a gnat. Remember Iraq? Fox News, Dick Cheney and the rest of the Neo-Con Army continue to crow about this tremendous success story. We created a democracy in the Middle East and it only cost $3 trillion and 5,000 dead Americans. The collateral damage included a few hundred thousand dead Iraqis, but that’s alright. They were Muslims. We rid the world of an evil dictator who didn’t have WMD.

The MSM seems to have forgotten Iraq. We succeeded and now our troops are out. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!!!!

There were no terrorists in Iraq in 2002. Hussein hated Bin Laden. Al Queda is now blowing the shit out of the country. The story below will be lucky to make it onto page 50 of your newspaper. Think about that for a second. I know American Idol is down to the final 10 contestants and that takes precedence over thinking, but try for just a second.

What would be your reaction if car bombs went off all over the U.S. and killed 52 people while wounding 250 others? This fucking country would go apeshit. Fear and panic would sweep the nation. The ignorant masses would demand the government DO SOMETHING!!!!

But since these dead people are just Muslims in a country we liberated, we don’t give a flying fuck.

Only Ron Paul gets it. This is why there is blowback. The U.S. created the Iraq that exists today. It’s a hell hole. It could explode into a religious civil war at any second. It has the 4th largest oil reserve in the world. But don’t worry your minds about what the Neo-cons have wrought. It’s time to teach Iran a lesson. Let’s mindlessly do the same thing over and over. It’s what we do best.

Don’t forget to tune into American Idol tonight.

Dozens of bombs kill at least 52 across Iraq

 Iraqi security forces inspect the site of a bomb attack in Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, March 20, 2012. REUTERS-Ako Rasheed

Iraqi security forces inspect the site of a bomb attack in Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, March 20, 2012. REUTERS-Ako Rasheed

Iraqi security forces inspect the site of a bomb attack in Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, March 20, 2012. REUTERS-Ako Rasheed

Iraqi security forces inspect the site of a bomb attack in Hilla, 100 km (60 miles) south of Baghdad, March 20, 2012. REUTERS-Habib

Iraqi security forces inspect the site of a bomb attack in Hilla, 100 km (60 miles) south of Baghdad, March 20, 2012. REUTERS-Habib

By Kareem Raheem and Aseel Kami

BAGHDAD | Tue Mar 20, 2012 2:23pm EDT

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – More than 30 bombs struck cities and towns across Iraq on Tuesday, killing at least 52 people and wounding about 250, despite a massive security clampdown ahead of next week’s Arab League summit in Baghdad.

It was Iraq’s bloodiest day in nearly a month, and the scale of the coordinated explosions in more than a dozen cities showed an apparent determination by insurgents to prove that the government cannot keep the country safe ahead of the summit.

Iraq is due to host the meeting for the first time in 20 years and the government is anxious to show it can maintain security following the withdrawal of U.S. troops in December.

“The goal of today’s attacks was to present a negative image of the security situation in Iraq,” government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told Reuters.

“Security efforts will be escalated to counteract terrorist groups’ attacks and to fill loopholes used by them to infiltrate security, whether in Baghdad or other provinces.”

Tuesday’s deadliest incident occurred in the southern Shi’ite Muslim holy city of Kerbala, where twin explosions killed 13 people and wounded 48 during the morning rush hour, according to Jamal Mahdi, a Kerbala health department spokesman.

“The second explosion caused the biggest destruction. I saw body parts, fingers, hands thrown on the road,” 23-year-old shop owner Murtadha Ali Kadhim told Reuters.

“The security forces are stupid because they always gather at the site of an explosion and then a second explosion occurs. They become a target.”

Blasts also struck in the capital, in Baiji, Baquba, Daquq, Dibis, Dhuluiya, Kirkuk, Mosul, Samarra, Tuz Khurmato, Khalis and Dujail to the north, in Falluja and Ramadi to the west, and Hilla, Latifiya, Mahmudiya and Mussayab to the south. Police defused bombs in Baquba, Falluja and Mosul.

Most of the blasts targeted police checkpoints and patrols.

“This latest spate of attacks is very likely to have been co-ordinated by a large and well-organized group. It is likely an attempt to show the authorities that their security measures are insignificant,” said John Drake, a senior risk consultant at AKE Group, which studies security in Iraq for corporate clients.

Army and police forces are frequently targeted in Iraq, where bombings and shootings still occur almost daily.

Al Qaeda’s Iraq wing and allied Sunni Muslim insurgent groups say that despite the withdrawal of U.S. forces they will not lay down arms and will continue to battle the Shi’ite-led government.

They have claimed responsibility for nearly all the major attacks so far this year, mounting days of coordinated bombings across the country about once a month since the Americans left.

Although overall violence has declined since the height of sectarian fighting in 2006 and 2007, Iraqis fear their government lacks the wherewithal to impose security nine years after the U.S.-led invasion that overthrew Saddam Hussein.

Tuesday’s attacks were the biggest since February 23 when dozens of explosions across the country killed at least 60 people.

A White House spokesman called the attacks “reprehensible acts”.

“Despite these efforts by extremists, violence in Iraq remains at near historic lows,” he said.

“Iraqi forces have demonstrated their capacity to deal with the security challenges that exist in that country again and again in recent years, and we do have faith in their ability.”

EXTRA SECURITY

The Arab League summit on March 27-29 will be the first held in Baghdad since Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s government considers it the most important diplomatic event yet for post-Saddam Iraq.

Tuesday was also the day after the ninth anniversary of the start of the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam.

Security has been ratcheted up across Baghdad in the run-up to the summit. Since Monday, intensive searches at checkpoints have ground the city of 7 million people to a halt.

In the northern city of Kirkuk, two car bombs exploded near a police headquarters, killing nine people and wounding 42, police and health sources said. In Baghdad, two bombs killed nine people and wounded 28.

Police in the northeastern city of Baquba said they had found and defused nine bombs, including one in a booby-trapped car which was parked on the road with a decapitated body in the driver’s seat and the man’s head in his lap.

Five other bombs exploded in the town, the capital of Diyala province north of Baghdad, which also saw a smaller string of deadly explosions on Monday night.

By evening, Reuters had recorded 32 separate explosions on Tuesday. The toll of the blasts, as provided by police and medical sources, was at least 52 killed and 249 wounded.

The government says it will be deploying up to 100,000 additional troops and police in Baghdad to impose extra security measures for the summit and will close Baghdad’s airport. Hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent on preparations, including renovating hotels, planting trees and paving roads.

NEO-CON PROPAGANDA – THE ISRAEL LINK

16 comments

Posted on 15th March 2012 by Administrator in Economy |Politics |Social Issues

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Connect the Dots