Administrator

A LESSON IN DEMOCRACY & OUR MOST EXCELLENT ADVENTURE IN NYC

POSTED ONE YEAR AGO AFTER MY VISIT TO OWS. I DON’T NEED ANYONE TO TELL ME WHAT I OBSERVED.

First I’d like to start off saying that Saturday was one of the most invigorating and inspiring days of my life. I came back from NYC with hope that the young people of this country, with the help of some members of the older generations that care about the future of this country, have the will and the fortitude to sweep away the existing corrupt corporate fascist state that exists in this country today. It was such a whirlwind day that my narrative is unlikely to have much structure. I’ll just unleash everything I can remember.

The Quinn clan piled into our minivan at 7:40 am and headed to the Big Apple. We hopped onto the PA Turnpike and headed east to the NJ Turnpike north. One thing you realize as you travel this route is that the entire storyline about needing hundreds of billions for infrastructure jobs is a crock of shit. The entire length of both Turnpikes is under construction, with lane widening, new bridges, new overpasses, and road paving. They are even working on the weekends. Any new money designated for infrastructure jobs wouldn’t be spent for three years. You know you are getting close to NYC when you see the refineries spewing whatever from their smokestacks and the smell of rotten eggs permeates the atmosphere. It was a beautiful sunny day, but winds of 30 to 40 mph were expected in the afternoon. It was going to be a bad hair day for Avalon. We reached the Lincoln Tunnel in about 90 minutes.

My mind is constantly thinking about crazy stuff. As we sped through the EZ Pass lane (only $9.50 for the privelage of entering NYC – $12.00 without EZ Pass) and entered the tunnel, you realize how susceptible it is to a terrorist. If there truly are dangerous terrorist cells roaming our countrysides, they must realize the damage they could inflict by filling a van or vans full of explosives and stopping in the Lincoln Tunnel and detonating them. The economic damage caused by shutting down one or more access points to NYC would be devastating. And there is nothing in place from the NYPD to keep that from happening. But they can shoot down a plane.

We parked in the first parking lot we could find at 35th and 8th Ave. You too can park in NYC for the low low price of only $44. At least it was valet parking. I was confident no one would want to steal anything from our twelve year old minivan unless they wanted old water bottles, candy wrappers and what I like to call debris. We sauntered over to 7th Avenue and hailed a cab. It was a non-minivan variety, so I had to sit up front with the angry cab driver. Are there any non-Muslim cab drivers in NYC? I told him to head to the World Trade Center. I can’t help it, I just love cab rides in NYC. It’s like being on a thrill ride at an amusement park. Our silent, angry Muslim cab driver proceeded to try and reach the World Trade Center in record time by cutting off any car that dared cross his path. He veered from right to left, ignoring those pesky red lights and pedestrians. I did find myself applying the invisible brake on my side and let out an occassional gasp as he worked his magic. He pulled off the 30 block trip in 10 minutes for under $10. I was truly impressed.

As we headed off in the direction of the WTC site, my first impression of the atmosphere was one of stifling, overwhelming, intimidating police presence. A convoy of at least 10 NYPD vans sped past us. There were cop cars parked everywhere. There were groups of policemen on every corner. And this was a few blocks from the protest site. I saw multiple NYPD buses and joked to Avalon that they were to transport us to the jails when the protest really got going.

It wasn’t hard to find the new World Trade Center. It is soaring above all the surrounding buildings already. It is already magnificant and will truly be a wonder of the world when it is finished.I tip my hat to the construction workers doing the fantastic work on this majestic building. I wanted to see the memorial fountains and park, but you need tickets well in advance so they can herd you like sheep through the plaza. Why they block off view of the plaza with tarps is beyond me. We were just gawking at the new tower and walking along when we stumbled upon Zuccotti Park. It was 10:00 am and from a distance it looked like a very small boy scout camp site. Your first reaction is – Wow! This is really small. This can’t be the spear point of a revolution. I was ready to wade into the fray, but Avalon needed a coffee and had to go pee pee. There is a really nice Burger King on the same block. I got in line with the boys to get the coffee and a couple sausage biscuits while Avalon went upstairs to the ladies room. One problem. The Burger King had been overrun by protestors using their bathrooms. They had put the men’s room out of order, so there was a line of men and women for the one bathroom. Only people with a receipt were allowed to go pee pee. My phone was in my pocket and with the general noise level in NYC being set on loud, I didn’t hear it as she tried to get me to bring up our receipt. Somehow she was able to charm her way into the bathroom, and all was well. Below is the view from the Burger King. Note the funny looking white hand made paper thing shaped like a bullhorn. The NPD has a law against bullhorns in NYC (shocking!!!). The protestors built their own bullhorn to amplify their speeches.

Man Made Bullhorn

Now it was time to find out for ourselves what this was all about. The second thing you notice after the smallness of the park is the overwhelming police presence. The street to the left is occupied by at least 25 NYPD vehicles. There are literally hundreds of uniformed policemen surrounding the park. There are metal police crowd control barriers encircling the site, so all who enter or leave must go through a narrow space.

Avalon had her camera charged and ready to document the truth so we could put it on TBP. I had printed up five copies of my favorite Ron Paul quote to hold up in support of the movement.

“TRUTH IS TREASON IN AN EMPIRE OF LIES” – Ron Paul

We entered the park and I wanted Avalon to take a picture of me and the two boys holding up our signs. As she was taking the picture a middle aged lady and young guy saw the signs and loved the quote. They wanted pictures too. I gave them both copies of the sign. It was a good start to our OWS experience.

The site is dotted with tents, tarp and tables. There were sleeping bags with only feet sticking out. There were rubbermaid containers and trash bags. There was one tent with a sign saying it was his living room and please don’t take pictures. The site was NOT dirty, smelly or unsanitary. The vibe coming from this park was not hostile. It was welcoming. All points of view were allowed to be shared. I had my twelve and fourteen year old sons with me and never once felt threatened or unsafe. This is truly a peaceful demonstration of free speech. The descriptions of the people Occupying Wall Street by the MSM are blatantly false. It has absolutely nothing to do with the two establishment political parties. It is not a Democratic Tea Party. It isn’t the Republican neo-con version of the Tea Party either. But it does have the feel of the original Boston Tea Party, telling the authorities to stick it up their asses.

There are many different views being shared, but the prevailing message is that a few powerful men have corrupted our system and have looted the wealth of the hard working middle class. I saw no one representing the Free Shit Army looking for more handouts. From a demographic viewpoint, this protest is clearly being led by the Millenial Generation. There are no Boomers pulling the strings behind the scenes and calling the shots. George Soros and Jesse Jackson haven’t hijacked the agenda. I would estimate that 60% of the crowd were Millenials, with 20% Gen-X and 20% Baby Boomers. I would estimate that 75% of the crowd was white, with 15% hispanic and 10% black. The stereotypes being portrayed by the MSM get blown out of the water when you see for yourself. A young black guy with a NOBAMA shirt on marched by us holding an End the Fed sign. That was the last thing I thought I would see. Later in the day I was handed a Bernanke buck by a young black man as he described the evils of inflation and the Federal Reserve. Does that sound like what you are hearing on Fox News?

We slowly meandered through the park soaking in everything. There was a positive feeling as you walked among the protestors. It was invigorating to see democracy and free speech happening in the public square. These people in a few short weeks had created a community. They don’t all agree on the issues, but they are open to different points of view, while understanding who the enemy really is – the Wall Street bankers, Federal Reserve, politicians and mega-corporations. These people are here for the long haul. They have set up there own dining area and supporters from around the country are sending food.

The owner of the property and the City were ready to move the protestors so they could clean the park. The protestors jumped into action with their own Sanitation department and cleaned the park themselves.

We passed a Medical “center” were registered nurses provided any medical treatment needed by the protestors or visitors. This “revolution” which has spread across the country and around the globe is being turbo charged by social media, alternative media, and the internet. The mainstream media continues to misrepresent the movement because it is a threat to their corporate owners. There is no electricity or running water in the park. I saw a recharging station set up where a gas powered generator was being used to power multiple power strips. There were cell phones and computers plugged into the power strips to recharge so the protestors could continue to get the message and pictures out to the world.

There were areas where anyone could make their own sign. An older gentleman was manning a little contraption and making protest buttons at a pace of one every 10 seconds. Jimmy and Michael both got buttons and proudly displayed them on their shirts. The whole park had the feel of a festival. As you walked around you were anticipating seeing something new and unusual. To those who think it is just a disorganized mass of left wing hippies, you are badly mistaken. They have the week plotted out on a black board. They have working groups and protest activities planned.

We had been on-site for about an hour when we saw a group gathering to march somewhere. They had flags and began to circle the park chanting anti-bank slogans. They were headed for the banks. I learned later that some of these people were arrested as they occupied a Citibank branch and refused to yield. There was talk of a march on Times Square at 5:00 pm, but we figured it wouldn’t amount to much. The protestors seemed too few to cause much problem in Times Square.

As it approached 11:30 we needed to skeedadle. Avalon had booked ferry tickets to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island at noon. I was kind of bummed to leave so soon. I wasn’t sure if we’d make our way back to the park before heading to Times Square. We headed for Battery Park to catch our ferry. Along the way we passed the iconic Bull.

Even the damn bull is surrounded by police barriers. Are they worried someone is going to do some bull tipping? As you walk along the streets of Lower Manhattan you are struck by the hordes of Chinese and Japanese and Europeans in groups. They may be eating our lunch economically, but they sure love the glitz and glamour of NYC. Thank God Avalon booked the tickets in advance. It was a two hour wait if you didn’t reserve. We made it up to the processing center in 15 minutes. The winds had picked up to at least 30 mph and the NY Harbor was filled with white caps. Avalon has an irrational fear of water and drowning. The boys and I seize upon this fear to describe the potential capsizing of our ferry. And there is always – “The sea was angry that day Jerry, like an old man sending back soup at a deli.”

Eventually we were led into a huge white tent. Welcome to government drone overkill. We are tourists going to gawk at the Statue of Liberty and try to learn something about our heritage. They did the whole TSA routine on every tourist. Belts off, jewelry off, cell phones, wallets, keys all in a bin. Everyone through a metal detector. Agents questioning you. What a joke. What exactly is a terrorist going to do to the Statue of Liberty? If they aren’t going to pick an easy target like the Lincoln Tunnel, why would they try anything to a statue. This is just another example of government acting like they are protecting us from something, when there is nothing to be protected from. A couple terrorists could walk into Battery Park with a machine guns and take out a thousand people in five minutes.

In a few more minutes we were on our way. The ferry didn’t capsize. There is no more inspirational view than seeing the Statue of Liberty up close and personal.

We had visited the Statue of Liberty before, so we stayed onboard to Ellis Island. We walked through the museum exhibits and watched a movie describing the bravery and sacrifice that immigrants made to come to this country. The conditions that immigrants lived in at the turn of the century were beneath squalor. These immigrants built this country. They built the skyscrapers that dot the NYC skyline. They fought and died in WWI and WWII. They did the blue collar jobs that grew the GDP of this country. Many of the ancestors of these immigrants are the protestors occupying Zuccotti Park. The American Dream that sustained the new immigrants to this country has been destroyed by the greed and corruption of the bankers and CEOs living in the buildings built by those immigrants. It just so happened they were having an Alcatraz exhibit and we walked through. Alcatraz was shut down in 1963. In 1969 young Native Americans seized the island and occupied it for nineteen months, bringing publicity to the plight of American Indians. They accomplished their goal through peaceful protest and willingness to stick it out for almost two years. I thought it was an interesting lesson on a day when young occupiers on Wall Street are starting their second month of occupation. After doing an on-line search for my grandfather’s arrival at Ellis Island we headed back to NYC. The view heading back was even more spectacular.

Back on dry land we headed to the bastion of revolutionaries everywhere – T.G.I. Fridays. After a quick lunch (How about $19 for a cheeseburger? – No inflation my fat ass) we decided to go back to Zuccotti Park. We couldn’t get enough of this lesson in democracy. When we arrived it was bustling with activity. It was twice as crowded as it was at 10:00 am. We were drawn to a circle where a few guys were playing drums and bongos while three other guys were break dancing. They were extremely entertaining and got the crowd to chant ECONOMIC FREEDOM while they performed. I looked at the crowd. Young, old and in between all had smiles on their faces. The vibe of this park was about positive change, not the negativity you see from politicians and MSM pundits.

We again waded into the chaos to see what was happening. There were film crews and people being interviewed. There were many more signs and banners. The park is now a stop on the double decker tourist bus tours that criss cross the city. A double decker bus was stopped and the 95 Asian and 5 American tourists were snapping away with their cameras. The perception among many people, put there by the MSM, is that the young people in this park are dumb and lazy. Nothing could be further from the truth. Many understand the true cause of our economic troubles and the never ending and accelerating debasement of our currency. The MSM wants the ignorant masses to think the people in this park hate capitalism and the rich. This is another false storyline fed to the sheeple. The people in this park KNOW we don’t have capitalism. We have a corporate/banking kleptocracy. I chatted with these two young guys. They would fit in perfectly on TBP.

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The MSM want these protestors to fit into their preconceived ideological holes. Again, they are wrong. Is this guy a left winger? Is he a right winger? He’s neither. He understands both wings are corrupt. He knows the whole system is a sham. He knows who is responsible.

These people heard Romney say that corporations are people too. They get it. They know our politicians from both parties are captured by the mega-corporations and do their bidding. They know why the Federal Tax code is 60,000 pages. They know who contributes to Obama, Romney and the rest of the bought off hacks running this country. They know Perry and the rest of the fundamentalists are hypocrites. They know the system can’t be changed incrementally by electing the same people who put the system in place.

As we walked through the winding path in the park, I was handed materials from various occupants. One leaflet was titled “ARE YOU AN ANARCHIST?” After reading it, I’d have to say yes. I liked the quote at the end of the leaflet – “If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.” – Emma Goldman. There were some Chinese people protesting AGAINST the communist oppression in their country. We came upon an older gentleman named Harry Braun. He was giving a speech to anyone who would listen about convening a Constitutional Convention and implementing Article V of the Constitution to bypass Congress and the 35,000 lobbyists that control the agenda in Washington DC. All points of view were being broadcast in this town square.

We then met up with the youngest protestor of the day.

I explained to my sons that this entire protest was really about their futures. The past and current generations in control had saddled their generation with unpayable debts and a system that will eventually collapse under the weight of military expenditures and entitlement promises that can never be honored. Young people have done what they were told to do by their parents and are left holding the bag, as the jobless recovery enters its third year. Meanwhile the Wall Street bankers are paying themselves billions in bonuses because somehow bank profits are “soaring”.

Some of the older generation get it. They realize that they are possibly the last generation to live a better life than their parents generation. This movement isn’t young versus old or poor versus rich. It is about middle class Americans having a chance at a better life. The current system makes that an impossiblity. It is built upon lies and unsustainable debt creation. This lady gets it.

When the system is utterly corrupt and unfixable, it is our right to revolt. Thomas Jefferson made that clear over two hundred years ago:

“God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.
The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is
wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts
they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions,
it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. …
And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not
warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of
resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as
to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost
in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from
time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
It is its natural manure.”

The young people leading this protest in a tiny park, surrounded by hoardes of armed police, amongst the skyscrapers built by their fathers and grandfathers, are sparking a revolution that is spreading across the globe. Technology is being used like never before to spread truth and ideas. This makes those in control very nervous. And they should be nervous. Their corrupt crony capitalist system is begining to crumble. This little town square sparked protests across the world on Saturday.

The rebirth of democracy is inspiring to those willing to enter the fray. If you stand on the sidelines and scorn and ridicule those willing to fight for justice, then you are part of the problem. Your world will change anyway, but you won’t be part of the change.

The occupiers were completely peaceful while we were there. The police who surrounded the site wore scowls on their faces as if they were looking for a fight. As we walked along the outside of the park Avalon was snapping pictures and the policewoman yelled at her for blocking the sidewalk. I thought I said shut up under my breath as we passed the cranky policewoman, but Avalon heard me, so maybe it wasn’t under my breath. I want to stress that the police presence is absolutely overwhelming. If they are given the order, they could clear that park in five minutes with their manpower. A peaceful example of democracy and free speech could turn into something completely different if someone does something stupid.

This guy said he was a veteran. He was yelling at the cops, declaring this isn’t the same country he fought for.

Here is a miscellaneous collection of signs we saw around Zuccotti Park. Do these people fit the description you are hearing from the MSM? Are these people communists? Are these people socialists? Are these people stupid? Are these people lazy bums?

NO. These people are YOU.

We finally decided it was time to head up to Times Square. Avalon’s ulterior motive for this entire trip was to get a bowl of won ton soup at Ruby Foos at 49th and Broadway. It was around 5:30 pm. We thought the protest portion of our trip was complete. Time for some NYC fun. We started walking away from the protest and in a few minutes we were next to the Brooklyn Bridge where a week or so ago 700 protestors had been arrested after the NYPD misled them into believing they were allowed to march on the bridge. Then we approached the City Hall area. I assume Bloomberg lives in one of these grand buildings fit for a billionaire. As we approached a street corner, Avalon spotted one of the thousands of security cameras keeping a Big Brother eye on the citizens of NYC. 60 Minutes had detailed the scary 1984 like ability of the NYPD to see everyone and everything in NYC. We took a picture of them taking pictures of us. I’m sure we went into some special database. Only anarchists and troublemakers would take a picture of a security camera.

We eventually stopped on a corner to hail a cab for our return to Times Square. The goal was to be picked up by Ben Bailey in the Cash Cab, so we could show how smart we are. Michael declared that he would handle all the history questions since he has a 105 average so far in Social Studies. He is studying the American Revolution. We have been discussing the similarities and differences between that revolution and what is happening today in our country. As we waited for a cab, what appeared on the opposite corner was classic NYC.

A man with a pink dress and a cowboy hat was coming our way. We told ourselves he had to be going to a costume party, but it was only October 15. The people he was with were not dressed in costumes. Maybe it was a breast cancer awareness month statement. Or, maybe he just thought he looked good in pink.

We eventually hailed down a cab. The driver asked where we were going. When I told him Times Square he let out a sigh. I wondered why, since that would be a decent fare for him. He grunted to get in. Shockingly, he was a muslim. My guess was Pakastani. I expected another silent ride of terror, but he struck up a conversation with Avalon. We told him we were coming from the Occupy Wall Street site and he looked at me and said I looked like a Wall Street guy. He’s lucky I was in a good mood. His cell phone rang and he began to jabber in an absolutely indecipherable language. I think I heard the word infidel, but I’m not sure. The only scarier thing than a cab ride in NYC is a cab ride while the driver is talking on his cell phone. I swear we almost hit at least five other vehicles during the trip. I let out a few visible gasps during the ride. As we approached 34th street it was complete gridlock. I told the driver to let us out and we’d walk to Times Square. It was pushing 6:00 pm as we approached Times Square. It sure looked extra crowded. Then we realized that Occupy Wall Street had marched to Times Square. It was a sea of people for as far as the eye could see.

My first thought was that the whole spectacle was awesome. There were at least 20 times as many people in this protest as there were at Zuccotti Park. The atmosphere was electric. We were at 42nd street and there was some sort of platform where anyone could get up to speak to the crowd. Since bullhorns were not allowed, the speaker would say three or four words and those around them would shout the word simultaneously, becoming a human bullhorn. I loved it. The crowd would begin chanting things like:

Banks got bailed out, we got sold out.

The people united will never be defeated.

I didn’t think I’d get to use my protest sign again, but I was wrong. I unfolded it and held it up for the crowd to see.

Again the police presence was stifling. They use the metal barriers to funnel the protestors where they want them. As Avalon waded deep into the crowd to take videos and pictures, I observed the crowd and the police. The four police men and women near us looked like they were 21 years old. I looked at their faces and their eyes. They looked confused. They looked worried. They weren’t scared, because the crowd was not scary. It was citizens utilizing their right to free speech. I wondered what was going through the minds of these young policemen. They must realize they are part of the 99%. These protestors are representing their interests. If and when the order comes to inflict pain on the citizens protesting, I wonder how they will react.

For those who think these crowds are nothing but young hoodlums and troublemakers, one protestor said it all with his sign.

The crowd was made up of normal people. It was made up of young, middle aged and old people. It was made up of men and women. It was made up of white people, black people, asian people, and hispanic people. It was made up of Republicans and Democrats. It was made up of you and me.

The crowd even had a few sheeple and guys wearing barrels.

After spending about an hour watching the speeches and joining in on the chants, the girl announced that the police were arresting protestors at 47th street. This spurred the loudest chant yet:

THIS IS A PEACEFUL PROTEST!!!

We needed to get to 49th Street for Avalon’s won ton soup. I felt like the Blues Brothers on a mission from God. We would not be deterred. We fought our way through the crowd to 45th street and we were about to go down to 6th Avenue and try to circle the protest. Then right in front of us a protestor starts to shimmy up the stop light to get on top.

When he reached the top, the crowd let out a roar of approval. He began to lead a chant that resonated for blocks:

WHOSE SQUARE? OUR SQUARE!!!!

I was expecting the cops to come rushing down the sidewalk and pull him down. But they didn’t move. The chant went on for minutes. The whole scene got surreal as a police helicopter hovered over the crowd in Times Square. Again, intimidation tactics and the threat of overwhelming force are ever present. With two teenage boys, we decided it was time to exit stage left.

As we walked down 45th towards 6th Avenue we could finally breath. Then directly in front of me was this dude with his sign. You constantly go from the surreal to the comic in NYC.

I told Avalon to take his picture. She took the picture and the guy then asked her if he could smell her ass. She thought he was joking, so she said sure. He then bent down trying to smell her ass and she had to run away from him. We laughed hysterically as we made our way to 6th Avenue. What a day. We made our way to 49th street and our quest was almost complete. We entered the Holy Grail of Ruby Foos and sat down at a table. There was a young woman with her seven year old or so daughter eating at the table next to us. The woman had noticed the protest buttons the boys were wearing and asked if we were coming from the protest. We told her we were from Philly and had come up to see for ourselves. It just so happens that she was one of the 1st 100 people who slept at Zuccotti Park on the 1st day of the protests. She said they were terrified as the police, in full riot gear, surrounded them for the entire night. She works on the Occupy Wall Street Journal and she gave me her contact information. I hope she will join the dialogue on TBP.

Finally, we had reached our destination. The goal was within reach. And before long, there it was. A gigantic bowl of Ruby Foos won ton soup. Avalon was heard to say, “Life is like a bowl of Ruby Foos won ton soup, you never know what you’re going to get.”

We departed Ruby Foos at 9:00 pm and headed for our minivan at 35th street. We passed the police on horses that had earlier disbursed the crowd through their threats of bodily harm. I left NYC with a renewed hope for our country. A new spirit has ignited in a tiny public square in lower Manhattan. Our forefathers would be proud of these young people. It is time to get involved. It is time to send the oligarchy a message. Their time is short. The people are going to take this country back.

And so ended our lesson in democracy and most excellent adventure in NYC.

A DYING REGIME & THE REVOLUTION THAT WILL TOPPLE IT

Why the Occupy Movement Frightens the Corporate Elite

By: Chris Hedges

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In Robert E. Gamer’s book “The Developing Nations” is a chapter called “Why Men Do Not Revolt.” In it Gamer notes that although the oppressed often do revolt, the object of their hostility is misplaced. They vent their fury on a political puppet, someone who masks colonial power, a despised racial or ethnic group or an apostate within their own political class. The useless battles serve as an effective mask for what Gamer calls the “patron-client” networks that are responsible for the continuity of colonial oppression. The squabbles among the oppressed, the political campaigns between candidates who each are servants of colonial power, Gamer writes, absolve the actual centers of power from addressing the conditions that cause the frustrations of the people. Inequities, political disenfranchisement and injustices are never seriously addressed. “The government merely does the minimum necessary to prevent those few who are prone toward political action from organizing into politically effective groups,” he writes.

Gamer and many others who study the nature of colonial rule offer the best insights into the functioning of our corporate state. We have been, like nations on the periphery of empire, colonized. We are controlled by tiny corporate entities that have no loyalty to the nation and indeed in the language of traditional patriotism are traitors. They strip us of our resources, keep us politically passive and enrich themselves at our expense. The mechanisms of control are familiar to those whom the Martinique-born French psychiatrist and writer Frantz Fanon called “the wretched of the earth,” including African-Americans. The colonized are denied job security. Incomes are reduced to subsistence level. The poor are plunged into desperation. Mass movements, such as labor unions, are dismantled. The school system is degraded so only the elites have access to a superior education. Laws are written to legalize corporate plunder and abuse, as well as criminalize dissent. And the ensuing fear and instability—keenly felt this past weekend by the more than 200,000 Americans who lost their unemployment benefits—ensure political passivity by diverting all personal energy toward survival. It is an old, old game.

A change of power does not require the election of a Mitt Romney or a Barack Obama or a Democratic majority in Congress, or an attempt to reform the system or electing progressive candidates, but rather a destruction of corporate domination of the political process—Gamer’s “patron-client” networks. It requires the establishment of new mechanisms of governance to distribute wealth and protect resources, to curtail corporate power, to cope with the destruction of the ecosystem and to foster the common good. But we must first recognize ourselves as colonial subjects. We must accept that we have no effective voice in the way we are governed. We must accept the hollowness of electoral politics, the futility of our political theater, and we must destroy the corporate structure itself.

The danger the corporate state faces does not come from the poor. The poor, those Karl Marx dismissed as the Lumpenproletariat, do not mount revolutions, although they join them and often become cannon fodder. The real danger to the elite comes from déclassé intellectuals, those educated middle-class men and women who are barred by a calcified system from advancement. Artists without studios or theaters, teachers without classrooms, lawyers without clients, doctors without patients and journalists without newspapers descend economically. They become, as they mingle with the underclass, a bridge between the worlds of the elite and the oppressed. And they are the dynamite that triggers revolt.

This is why the Occupy movement frightens the corporate elite. What fosters revolution is not misery, but the gap between what people expect from their lives and what is offered. This is especially acute among the educated and the talented. They feel, with much justification, that they have been denied what they deserve. They set out to rectify this injustice. And the longer the injustice festers, the more radical they become.

The response of a dying regime—and our corporate regime is dying—is to employ increasing levels of force, and to foolishly refuse to ameliorate the chronic joblessness, foreclosures, mounting student debt, lack of medical insurance and exclusion from the centers of power. Revolutions are fueled by an inept and distant ruling class that perpetuates political paralysis. This ensures its eventual death.

In every revolutionary movement I covered in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East, the leadership emerged from déclassé intellectuals. The leaders were usually young or middle-aged, educated and always unable to meet their professional and personal aspirations. They were never part of the power elite, although often their parents had been. They were conversant in the language of power as well as the language of oppression. It is the presence of large numbers of déclassé intellectuals that makes the uprisings in Spain, Egypt, Greece and finally the United States threatening to the overlords at Goldman Sachs, ExxonMobil and JPMorgan Chase. They must face down opponents who understand, in a way the uneducated often do not, the lies disseminated on behalf of corporations by the public relations industry. These déclassé intellectuals, because they are conversant in economics and political theory, grasp that those who hold power, real power, are not the elected mandarins in Washington but the criminal class on Wall Street.

This is what made Malcolm X so threatening to the white power structure. He refused to countenance Martin Luther King’s fiction that white power and white liberals would ever lift black people out of economic squalor. King belatedly came to share Malcolm’s view. Malcolm X named the enemy. He exposed the lies. And until we see the corporate state, and the games it is playing with us, with the same kind of clarity, we will be nothing more than useful idiots.

“This is an era of hypocrisy,” Malcolm X said. “When white folks pretend that they want Negroes to be free, and Negroes pretend to white folks that they really believe that white folks want ’em to be free, it’s an era of hypocrisy, brother. You fool me and I fool you. You pretend that you’re my brother and I pretend that I really believe you believe you’re my brother.”

Those within a demoralized ruling elite, like characters in a Chekhov play, increasingly understand that the system that enriches and empowers them is corrupt and decayed. They become cynical. They do not govern effectively. They retreat into hedonism. They no longer believe their own rhetoric. They devote their energies to stealing and exploiting as much, as fast, as possible. They pillage their own institutions, as we have seen with the newly disclosed loss of $2 billion within JPMorgan Chase, the meltdown of Chesapeake Energy Corp. or the collapse of Enron and Lehman Brothers. The elites become cannibals. They consume each other. This is what happens in the latter stages of all dying regimes. Louis XIV pillaged his own nobility by revoking patents of nobility and reselling them. It is what most corporations do to their shareholders. A dying ruling class, in short, no longer acts to preserve its own longevity. It becomes fashionable, even in the rarefied circles of the elite, to ridicule and laugh at the political puppets that are the public face of the corporate state.

“Ideas that have outlived their day may hobble about the world for years,” Alexander Herzen wrote, “but it is hard for them ever to lead and dominate life. Such ideas never gain complete possession of a man, or they gain possession only of incomplete people.”

This loss of faith means that when it comes time to use force, the elites employ it haphazardly and inefficiently, in large part because they are unsure of the loyalty of the foot soldiers on the streets charged with carrying out repression.

Revolutions take time. The American Revolution began with protests against the Stamp Act of 1765 but did not erupt until a decade later. The 1917 revolution in Russia started with a dress rehearsal in 1905. The most effective revolutions, including the Russian Revolution, have been largely nonviolent. There are always violent radicals who carry out bombings and assassinations, but they hinder, especially in the early stages, more than help revolutions. The anarchist Peter Kropotkin during the Russian Revolution condemned the radical terrorists, asserting that they only demoralized and frightened away the movement’s followers and discredited authentic anarchism.

Radical violent groups cling like parasites to popular protests. The Black Panthers, the American Indian Movement, the Weather Underground, the Red Brigades and the Symbionese Liberation Army arose in the ferment of the 1960s. Violent radicals are used by the state to justify harsh repression. They scare the mainstream from the movement. They thwart the goal of all revolutions, which is to turn the majority against an isolated and discredited ruling class. These violent fringe groups are seductive to those who yearn for personal empowerment through hyper-masculinity and violence, but they do little to advance the cause. The primary role of radical extremists, such as Maximilien Robespierre and Vladimir Lenin, is to hijack successful revolutions. They unleash a reign of terror, primarily against fellow revolutionaries, which often outdoes the repression of the old regime. They often do not play much of a role in building a revolution.

The power of the Occupy movement is that it expresses the widespread disgust with the elites, and the deep desire for justice and fairness that is essential to all successful revolutionary movements. The Occupy movement will change and mutate, but it will not go away. It may appear to make little headway, but this is less because of the movement’s ineffectiveness and more because decayed systems of power have an amazing ability to perpetuate themselves through habit, routine and inertia. The press and organs of communication, along with the anointed experts and academics, tied by money and ideology to the elites, are useless in dissecting what is happening within these movements. They view reality through the lens of their corporate sponsors. They have no idea what is happening.

Dying regimes are chipped away slowly and imperceptibly. The assumptions and daily formalities of the old system are difficult for citizens to abandon, even when the old system is increasingly hostile to their dignity, well-being and survival. Supplanting an old faith with a new one is the silent, unseen battle of all revolutionary movements. And during the slow transition it is almost impossible to measure progress.

“Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong,” Fanon wrote in “Black Skin, White Masks.” “When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn’t fit in with the core belief.”

The end of these regimes comes when old beliefs die and the organs of security, especially the police and military, abandon the elites and join the revolutionaries. This is true in every successful revolution. It does not matter how sophisticated the repressive apparatus. Once those who handle the tools of repression become demoralized, the security and surveillance state is impotent. Regimes, when they die, are like a great ocean liner sinking in minutes on the horizon. And no one, including the purported leaders of the opposition, can predict the moment of death. Revolutions have an innate, mysterious life force that defies comprehension. They are living entities.

The defection of the security apparatus is often done with little or no violence, as I witnessed in Eastern Europe in 1989 and as was also true in 1979 in Iran and in 1917 in Russia. At other times, when it has enough residual force to fight back, the dying regime triggers a violent clash as it did in the American Revolution when soldiers and officers in the British army, including George Washington, rebelled to raise the Continental Army. Violence also characterized the 1949 Chinese revolution led by Mao Zedong. But even revolutions that turn violent succeed, as Mao conceded, because they enjoy popular support and can mount widespread protests, strikes, agitation, revolutionary propaganda and acts of civil disobedience. The object is to try to get there without violence. Armed revolutions, despite what the history books often tell us, are tragic, ugly, frightening and sordid affairs. Those who storm Bastilles, as the Polish dissident Adam Michnik wrote, “unwittingly build new ones.” And once revolutions turn violent it becomes hard to speak of victors and losers.

A revolution has been unleashed across the globe. This revolution, a popular repudiation of the old order, is where we should direct all our energy and commitment. If we do not topple the corporate elites the ecosystem will be destroyed and massive numbers of human beings along with it. The struggle will be long. There will be times when it will seem we are going nowhere. Victory is not inevitable. But this is our best and only hope. The response of the corporate state will ultimately determine the parameters and composition of rebellion. I pray we replicate the 1989 nonviolent revolutions that overthrew the communist regimes in Eastern Europe. But this is not in my hands or yours. Go ahead and vote this November. But don’t waste any more time or energy on the presidential election than it takes to get to your polling station and pull a lever for a third-party candidate—just enough to register your obstruction and defiance—and then get back out onto the street. That is where the question of real power is being decided.

TONIGHT’S DEBATE: PEPPERONI OR SAUSAGE?

The opinion piece below contends that Pizza Hut’s offer of pizza for life to anyone who asks the candidates whether they prefer pepperoni or sausage cheapens the electoral process. I didn’t think that was possible. Our owners are shelling out $2 billion in marketing expenditures to convince us that one pizza is better than the other pizza. The truth is that they are both baked in the same oven, with the same ingredients. They just have a different topping, to give the appearance of choice. I think a marketing gimmick is a perfect analogy for our electoral process. The two pizzas were chosen for us by the people who run the country. They have us fill out questionaires, pretending to care what we think about their products, but they are thrown into the trash. They don’t care what we think. They will tell us what we like. And they will sell us the product.

You will learn more from reading a Pizza Hut box than you will from watching tonight’s presidential debate. You will be treated to marketing slogans that have been approved by focus groups. Sound bites and promises that can’t be fulfilled will be the order of the day. Enjoy the pizzas tonight because you are going to pay the price tomorrow.

Opinion: Pizza Hut debate offer cheapens election process

SOME 67 MILLION people tuned into the first presidential debate on Oct. 3, and that’s the kind of number that makes marketers stand up and salute.

That number is certainly why Pizza Hut wants to give a lifetime of free pizza — or a check for $15,600 — to anyone who asks a really inappropriate question of either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney during their live town hall debate on Tuesday.

Relax. It’s nothing obscene, in the get-you-tape-delayed-on-TV sense.

Pizza Hut just wants to know whether the candidates prefer sausage or pepperoni on their pies.

NOW, SOME of you may remember when MTV got a teenybopper to ask Bill Clinton whether he wore boxers or briefs in 1992. It was a groaner at the time, but most people shrugged it off because it was on MTV, after all, and mostly harmless — aside from making everyone think about Bill Clinton’s underwear.

This issue with Pizza Hut is different. Much different.

This time, we have one of the mega-corporations that already enjoy an inordinate amount of influence on U.S. policy inserting itself into an arena that should remain free from opportunistic profit grasping.

Say what you want about the Clinton question — at least it wasn’t instigated by Fruit of the Loom.

We’re not marketing a consumer product this year.

We’re tryingto elect a president of the United States of America.

And we need relevant information to make good choices amid political campaigns that frequently lie and distort; campaigns run by operatives openly hostile to the notion of truth and fact-checking; post-truth campaigns that rely on a media mostly content to echo the lies and the let the voters sort it out.

One of the reasons people had a problem with the moderation of the Oct. 3 debate is that Jim Lehrer never forced an ‘are you for real?’ follow-up to the statements from either candidate.

It seems unlikely that the “sausage or pepperoni” question will make it through the debate moderation.

WE SUPPOSE Pizza Hut will achieve its goal, to some extent, even if it doesn’t. We suppose we’re helping just by bringing it up.

But it was worth it just to point out the obvious: National political campaigns have already achieved a regrettably sufficient degree of farce and cynicism.

We don’t need naked profiteering piled on top, like so much mozzerella.

— Chambersburg Public Opinion

PAID INTERNET TROLLS

I came across this post yesterday. I believe it is the absolute truth. My experience on the Seeking Alpha website always made me suspicious. I was one of their top three authors when they started. But, as they sold out to the Wall Street crowd they no longer liked my critical of Wall Street and the government articles. Commentors started appearing to try and refute my articles. They were the same three people (Econdoc, bbro, and Tack) who showed up on every article. They pretended to be successful doctors, investment gurus and businessmen, but they spent the entire day making positive comments about the economy, banks, the stock market and the government on every article posted on Seeking Alpha. The same three showed up yesterday on a Jim Miller rosy palm article. I always had a feeling they were paid shills, and this post below confirms my suspicion.

I would obliterate them in the comment thread and they would then report me to the editors of Seeking Alpha. Eventually, Seeking Alpha stopped publishing my articles and banned me from commenting.

Trust no one. Believe no one. Verify everything you see or hear. Think critically. Don’t be one of the sheep.

I Was a Paid Internet Shill, page 1

I am writing here to come out of the closet as a paid shill. For a little over six months, I was paid to spread disinformation and argue political points on the Internet. This site, ATS, was NOT one that I was[..]igned to post on, although other people in the same organization were paid to be here, and I[..]ume they still walk among you. But more on this later.

I quit this job in the latter part of 2011, because I became disgusted with it, and with myself. I realized I couldn’t look myself in the mirror anymore. If this confession triggers some kind of retribution against me, so be it. Part of being a real man in this world is having real values that you stand up for, no matter what the consequences.

My story begins in early 2011. I had been out of work for almost a year after losing my last job in tech support. Increasingly desperate and despondent, I jumped at the chance when a former co-worker called me up and said she had a possible lead for me. “It is an unusual job, and one that requires secrecy. But the pay is good. And I know you are a good writer, so its something you are suited for.” (Writing has always been a hobby for me). She gave me only a phone-number and an address, in one of the seedier parts of San Francisco, where I live. intrigued, I asked her for the company’s URL and some more info. She laughed. “They don’t have a website. Or even a name. You’ll see. Just tell them I referred you.” Yes, it sounded suspicious, but long-term joblessness breeds desperation, and desperation has a funny way of overlooking the suspicious when it comes to putting food on the table.

The next day, I arrived at the address – the third floor in a crumbling building. The appearance of the place did not inspire confidence. After walking down a long, filthy linoleum-covered corridor lit by dimly-flickering halogen, I came to the entrance of the office itself: a crudely battered metal door with a sign that said “United Amalgamated Industries, Inc.” I later learned that this “company” changed its name almost monthly, always using bland names like that which gave no strong impression of what the company actually does. Not too hopeful, I went inside. The interior was equally shabby. There were a few long tables with folding chairs, at which about a dozen people were tapping away on old, beat-up computers. There were no decorations or ornaments of any type: not even the standard-issue office fica trees or plastic ferns. What a dump. Well, beggars can’t be choosers.

The manager, a balding man in his late forties, rose from the only stand-alone desk in the room and came forward with an easy smile. “You must be Chris. Yvette [my ex-co-worker] told me you’d be coming.” [Not our real names]. “Welcome. Let me tell you a little about what we do.” No interview, nothing. I later learned they took people based solely on referral, and that the people making the referrals, like my ex-colleague Yvette, were trained to pick out candidates based on several factors including ability to keep one’s mouth shut, basic writing skills, and desperation for work.

We sat down at his desk and he began by asking me a few questions about myself and my background, including my political views (which were basically non-existent). Then he began to explain the job. “We work on influencing people’s opinions here,” is how he described it. The company’s clients paid them to post on Internet message boards and popular chartrooms, as well as in gaming forums and social networks like Facebook and MySpace. Who were these clients? “Oh, various people,” he said vaguely. “Sometimes private companies, sometimes political groups.” Satisfied that my political views were not strong, he said I would be[..]igned to political work. “The best people for this type of job are people like you, without strong views,” he said with a laugh. “It might seem counterintuitive, but actually we’ve found that to be the case.” Well, OK. Fine. As long as it comes with a steady paycheck, I’d believe whatever they wanted me to believe, as the guy in Ghostbusters said.

After discussing pay (which was much better than I’d hoped) and a few other details, he then went over the need for absolute privacy and secrecy. “You can’t tell anyone what we do here. Not your wife, not your dog.” (I have neither, as it happens.) “We’ll give you a cover story and even a phone number and a fake website you can use. You will have to tell people you are a consultant. Since your background is in tech support, that will be your cover job. Is this going to be a problem for you?” I[..]ured him it would not. “Well, OK. Shall we get started?”

“Right now?” I asked, a bit taken aback.

“No time like the present!” he said with a hearty laugh.

The rest of the day was taken up with training. Another staff member, a no-nonsense woman in her thirties, was to be my trainer, and training would only last two days. “You seem like a bright guy, you’ll get the hang of it pretty fast, I think,” she said. And indeed, the job was easier than I’d imagined. My task was simple: I would be[..]igned to four different websites, with the goal of entering certain discussions and promoting a certain view. I learned later that some of the personnel were[..]igned to internet message boards (like me), while others worked on Facebook or chatrooms. It seems these three types of media each have different strategy for shilling, and each shill concentrates on one of the three in particular.

My task? “To support Israel and counter anti-Israeli, anti-Semitic posters.” Fine with me. I had no opinions one way or another about Israel, and who likes anti-Semites and Nazis? Not me, anyway. But I didn’t know too much about the topic. “That’s OK,” she said. “You’ll pick it up as you go along. For the most part, at first, you will be doing what we call “meme-patrol.” This is pretty easy. Later if you show promise, we’ll train you for more complex arguments, where more in-depth knowledge is necessary.”

She handed me two binders with sheets enclosed in limp plastic. The first was labeled simply “Israel” in magic-marker on the cover, and it had two sections .The first section contained basic background info on the topic. I would have to read and memorize some of this, as time went on. It had internet links for further reading, essays and talking points, and excerpts from some history books. The second, and larger, section was called “Strat” (short for “strategy”) with long lists of “dialogue pairs.” These were specific responses to specific postings. If a poster wrote something close to “X,” we were supposed to respond with something close to “Y.” “You have to mix it up a bit, though,” said my trainer. “Otherwise it gets too obvious. Learn to use a thesaurus.” This section also contained a number of hints for de-railing conversations that went too far away from what we were attempting. These strategies included various forms of personal attacks, complaining to the forum moderators, smearing the characters of our opponents, using images and icons effectively, and even dragging the tone of the conversation down with secksual innuendo, links to [..]ography, or other such things. “Sometimes we have to fight dirty,” or trainer told us. “Our opponents don’t hesitate to, so we can’t either.”

The second binder was smaller, and it contained information specific to the web sites I would be[..]igned to. The sites I would work were: Godlike Productions, Lunatic Outpost, CNN news, Yahoo News, and a handful of smaller sites that rotated depending on need. As stated, I was NOT[..]igned to work ATS (although others in my group were), which is part of the reason I am posting this here, rather than elsewhere. I wanted to post this on Godlike Productions at first, but they have banned me from even viewing that site for some reason (perhaps they are onto me?). But if somebody connected with this site can get the message to them, I think they should know about it, because that was the site I spent a good 70% of my time working on.

The site-specific info in the second binder included a brief history each site, including recent flame-wars, as well as info on what to avoid on each site so as not to get banned. It also had quite detailed info on the moderators and the most popular regged posters on each site: location (if known), personality type, topics of interest, background sketch, and even some notes on how to “push the psychological buttons” of different posters. Although I didn’t work for ATS, I did see they had a lot of info on your so-called “WATS” posters here (the ones with gold borders around their edges). “Focus on the popular posters,” my trainer told me. “These are the influential ones. Each of these is worth 50 to 100 of the lesser known names.” Each popular poster was classified as “hostile,” “friendly,” or “indifferent” to my goal. We were supposed to cultivate friendship with the friendly posters as well as the mods (basically, by brownnosing and sucking up), and there were even notes on strategies for dealing with specific hostile posters. The info was pretty detailed, but not perfect in every case. “If you can convert one of the hostile posters from the enemy side to our side, you get a nice bonus. But this doesn’t happen too often, sadly. So mostly you’ll be attacking them and trying to smear them.”

At first, like I said, my job was “meme-patrol.” This was pretty simple and repetitive; it involved countering memes and introducing new memes, and didn’t demand much in-depth knowledge of the subject. Mostly just repetitive posting based on the dialogue pairs in the “Strat” section of the first binder. A lot of my job was de-railing and spamming threads that didn’t go our way, or making accusations of racism and anti-Semitism. Sometimes I had to simply lie and claim a poster said something or did something “in another thread” they really hadn’t said or done I felt bad about this…but in the end I felt worse about the possibility of losing the first job I’d been able to get since losing my “real” job.

The funny thing was, although I started the job with no strong opinions or political views, after a few weeks of this I became very emotionally wedded to the pro-Israel ideas I was pushing. There must be some psychological factor at work…a good salesman learns to honestly love the products he’s selling, I guess. It wasn’t long before my responses became fiery and passionate, and I began to learn more about the topic on my own. “This is a good sign,” my trainer told me. “It means you are ready for the next step: complex debate.”

The “complex debate” part of the job involved a fair amount of additional training, including memorizing more specific information about the specific posters (friendly and hostile) I’d be sparring with. Here, too, there were scripts and suggested lines of argument, but we were given more freedom. There were a lot of details to this more advanced stage of the job – everything from how to select the right avatar to how to use “demotivationals” (humorous images with black borders that one finds floating around the web). Even the proper use of images of cats was discussed. Sometimes we used faked or photo-shopped images or doctored news reports (something else that bothered me).

I was also given the job of tying to find new recruits, people “like me” who had the personality type, ability to keep a secret, basic writing/thinking skills, and desperation necessary to sign on a shill. I was less successful at this part of the job, though, and I couldn’t find another in the time I was there.

After a while of doing this, I started to feel bad. Not because of the views I was pushing (as I said, I was first apolitical, then pro-Israel), but because of the dishonesty involved. If my arguments were so correct, I wondered, why did we have to do this in the first place? Shouldn’t truth propagate itself naturally, rather than through, well…propaganda? And who was behind this whole operation, anyway? Who was signing my paychecks? The stress of lying to my parents and friends about being a “consultant” was also getting to me. Finally, I said enough was enough. I quit in September 2011. Since then I’ve been working a series of unglamorous temp office jobs for lower pay. But at least I’m not making my living lying and heckling people who come online to express their views and exercise freedom of speech.

A few days ago I happened to be in the same neighborhood and on a whim thought I’d check out the old office. It turns out the operation is gone, having moved on. This, too, I understood, is part of their strategy: Don’t stay in the same place for too long, don’t keep the same name too long, move on after half a year or so. Keeping a low profile, finding new employees through word of mouth: All this is part of the shill way of life. But it is a deceptive way of life, and no matter how noble the goals (I remain pro-Israel, by the way), these sleazy means cannot be justified by the end.

This is my confession. I haven’t made up my mind yet about whether I want to talk more about this, so if I don’t respond to this thread, don’t be angry. But I think you should know: Shills exist. They are real. They walk among you, and they pay special attention to your popular gold-bordered WATS posters. You should be aware of this. What you choose to do with this awareness is up to you.

Yours,

ExShill

YOU DON’T OWN WHAT YOU THINK YOU OWN

If you own stocks or bonds or any investment through a broker, you don’t really own those investments. They are pooled and if the broker goes under, you’re shit out of luck. Not only don’t you own the investments you bought with your own money, but your broker has pledged those assets many times over. The Casey Report has a jaw dropping interview with hedge fund manager David Webb, who reveals the truth about our financial system. The conclusion is that your owners don’t give a fuck about you. They have your money and they want more. And they will get it. Here are a few choice quotes from the interview:

“It took me some years to uncover the basis for how this has changed. It all arises from a revision of the Uniform Commercial Code, Article 8, in 1994. This article governs securities “ownership.” When they did this revision in 1994, they created a completely new legal concept called a “security entitlement,” which means that a security is now a contractual claim rather than property. That’s the key, and it’s hugely important because a contractual claim in a bankruptcy proceeding has very little standing. So even though there are records that a particular security is your property, it’s really not. If your broker goes bankrupt, those securities, by law, become part of the bankruptcy estate. As a client, you cannot revindicate those securities in a bankruptcy. Of course, secured creditors have a higher priority to the assets of the bankruptcy estate than you do. So you’re left with an inferior claim to what you thought was your own property.”

“But it gets worse. All of the securities are pooled – there is no specific identification of who owns what. By law, in a bankruptcy, the losses must be shared pro rata across the client pool. So even if a client somehow manages to get a legal assurance that their securities are not being hypothecated, they are still in a pool where other clients have margin accounts and their securities are being hypothecated. Hypothecation is when a firm pledges a clients’ assets as collateral to another party. The securities firm is allowed to use the client assets as collateral for its own proprietary trading. In my book, that’s fraud. But it is perfectly legal. So the securities firm borrows the security on the assumption that it will return like securities to the pool. But, of course, when an insolvency occurs, the music stops and those securities are not returned. The firm that received those securities as collateral is a secured creditor, and if there is a bankruptcy, they take those assets – the assets you thought you owned – and immediately sell them. They are gone. And you’re left as an unsecured creditor, which means you get what’s left over at the end, if anything. Further, in 2005, the Bush administration rewrote the bankruptcy law. There used to be a concept of “fraudulent conveyance,” which meant that if a firm transferred assets to a secured creditor within six months before its bankruptcy filing, the receiver was required by law to give those assets back. It’s called a clawback. But this revision of the bankruptcy law changed that. The law now specifically says that the receiver is not to claw back the assets. So what was considered a fraudulent conveyance prior to 2005 is now legal. This is very similar to what happened with MF Global and their transfer of client assets to JPMorgan. But it was not considered fraud. Everything was done according to the law.”

“One set of assets can be used as collateral multiple times, which is called rehypothecation. So a securities firm gives client assets to a secured creditor as collateral for proprietary trading. The secured creditor can then turn around and use those same assets as collateral for their own proprietary trading. So those assets are passed on to another firm as collateral, and so on. This is the chain of hypothecation and rehypothecation; the same assets are used as collateral over and over again. I can’t stress this next part enough – it’s very, very important. There are about $700 trillion of derivatives worldwide in a $70 trillion economy. It’s pretty easy to see that there cannot possibly be enough collateral backing. The entire financial asset base of the public is being used as collateral. This is a huge risk that everyone bears, whether they know it or not. If we have a major failure anywhere in that collateral chain, the collateral is pulled out and cannot be returned to the pool.”

When the collapse ensues, they will take your money. Laws won’t matter. Justice won’t matter. Fairness won’t matter. You won’t matter. They want it all.

HUBRIS IS NOT A STRATEGY

Maybe it is meant to be. Mitt Romney is a Prophet (Boomer) leader. He is sure of himself. He’s a pompous ass. He promises to balance the budget, while cutting taxes, and massively increasing war spending. Americans are drawn to people who know how to tell really big lies. Fourth Turnings have always had a Prophet leader or leaders at the helm. Fourth Turnings always have a major war. Romney can’t wait to gain control over our military machine. He’s going to make the rest of the world understand who’s boss. We’ll know in three weeks.

Hubris Is Not a Strategy, Either

by Gene Healy

Gene Healy is a vice president at the Cato Institute and author of Cult of the Presidency.

Added to cato.org on October 9, 2012

This article appeared in The DC Examiner on October 9, 2012.

It’s telling that the most quotable line from Mitt Romney’s foreign policy speech Monday is a reheated zinger from Rudy Giuliani’s 2008 Republican National Convention speech: “Hope is not a strategy.”

In the 2008 GOP race, the hawkish New York mayor served as a foil for peace candidate Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas. Paul consistently outpolled Giuliani, but it’s Rudy’s rhetoric that lives on in today’s Romney campaign. As The Examiner’s Philip Klein cracked Monday, “that Romney speech was not aimed at Ron Paul voters.”

In his speech at the Virginia Military Institute, Romney called for a new approach to the Middle East, based on “these bedrock principles: America must have confidence in our cause, clarity in our purpose and resolve in our might.” Those are attitudes, not principles. And if jut-jawed self-assurance that we know what we’re doing in the Middle East was the key to victory, we’d have a little more to show from the last 11 years of war. Hope is not a strategy, but hubris isn’t either.

At VMI, Romney criticized President Obama’s “pivot to Asia” as a sign we’re neglecting our allies elsewhere. Romney’s not against pivoting toward Asia per se, since “China’s recent assertiveness is sending chills through the region.” But also he wants us to refocus on Europe, brush back Putin, arm the Syrian rebels and get tougher with Iran. A Romney administration will pivot like a dervish, directing American force and authority everywhere at once. At a press conference the morning of the speech, his top foreign policy aides even refused to rule out boots on the ground in Libya.

“It is the responsibility of our president to use America’s great power to shape history,” Romney told the VMI cadets. Actually, the president’s responsibility, per his oath of office in Article II, Section 1, is to “preserve, protect, and defend” the U.S. Constitution.

That document says nothing about using the U.S. military to bend the arc of history. When it comes to foreign policy, the Constitution has humbler goals. As the Preamble explains, the federal government was established to “provide for the common defence” of the United States and “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”

Today, as my colleague Ben Friedman points out, “The United States does not have a defense budget. The adjective is wrong.” Our bloated military budget and our overextended force posture have “little to do with the requirements of protecting Americans.”

In last week’s debate, Romney argued that “the amount of debt we’re adding, at a trillion a year, is simply not moral.” Yesterday he insisted that we must show the world that “we have the will and the wisdom to … roll back our unsustainable debt [and] to reverse the catastrophic cuts now threatening our national defense.” But when the governor complains about debt and — in the same sentence — declares 20 percent of the federal budget off limits, you have to wonder how morally serious he is.

In a speech last year, departing Defense Secretary Robert Gates worried about indiscriminate cuts to the Pentagon’s budget, then approaching some $700 billion a year. “A smaller military,” he warned, “will be able to go fewer places and be able to do fewer things.” One can be forgiven the heretical thought that the last decade would have gone better with a U.S. military that went “fewer places” and did “fewer things.”

Some of Mitt Romney’s supporters argue that he’s too smart to believe his own bellicose rhetoric. They hope that if elected, he’ll shake the Etch a Sketch again and pivot toward realism and restraint. So who says hope isn’t a strategy?

POLICE UNION FUNDRAISER FOR THE THUG COP THAT DECKED WOMAN IN PHILLY

You gotta love cops and you gotta love government unions. Our police commentors tell us that 99.9% of cops are just like us. They are good people looking out for the best interests of the citizens. The story below tells you everything you need to know about cops. They don’t think a cop who slams a defenseless woman in the face for no reason is a bad cop. Not only don’t they think he deserves to be fired, they are going to throw a nice big party for the thug. This is the mindset of police unions and their members. They don’t give a fuck about the public. They want their gold plated pension, retirement at 50, lifetime healthcare, and freedom to kick the shit out of the public without consequences.

All government unions need to be crushed and discarded. This prick needs to be scorned and ridiculed. Fundraiser my fat ass.

Union to fete Philly officer who hit parade-goer

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Members of the city’s police union are planning a fundraiser for a lieutenant who is being fired for punching a woman at a parade, an encounter caught on video.

Earlier this month, the city’s police commissioner announced that Lt. Jonathan Josey was suspended for 30 days with the intent to dismiss.

Mayor Michael Nutter apologized to the woman, saying he was “appalled,” ”sickened” and “ashamed” by the video. It shows 39-year-old Aida Guzman being struck in the face and falling to the ground, her face bloodied, and then being led away in handcuffs during a street festival associated with the city’s annual Puerto Rican Day parade.

The Philadelphia Daily News reported (http://bit.ly/WZImtO ) that union members are supporting Josey and holding a five-hour, $30-a-person fundraiser for him on Oct. 28. Fraternal Order of Police President John McNesby said the proceeds will go toward Josey’s living expenses.

“It was inappropriate for the city to apologize to this woman and drop the charges until the investigation was complete,” McNesby said. “And we still don’t believe it’s a fireable offense.”

The fundraiser isn’t an official union event, McNesby said. But the newspaper reports it’s being advertised on union letterhead and on the union website.

City Councilwoman Maria Quinones-Sanchez said she was disappointed because the fundraiser makes it appear that officers condone Josey’s actions.

“While I understand that the FOP has to defend one of its own, I am extremely disappointed because this will appear that they are condoning the very visible actions of Josey, which hurts the image of their good officers,” said Sanchez, who represents the district where the encounter occurred.

Guzman’s attorney said he had no strong objection to the benefit.

“We don’t think he should be reinstated, that’s for sure,” attorney Enrique Latoison said. “But as a defense attorney, I understand that his people are going to defend him and look out for him.”

A disorderly conduct charge against Guzman has been withdrawn.

http://youtu.be/iykkFzEZtRg

OVERDRAFT

I bet you were wondering what Admin does in his spare time for fun.

After spending my weekend writing a depressing article about the decline and fall of the American Empire, I got up at 5:15 am, got in my itsy bitsy Hybrid and dodged 18 wheelers on my hour drive into the killing fields of West Philly. I put in a full day at work and then for fun I walked over to the Annenberg Center at 5:00 pm to watch a documentary about the impending collapse of our country because of our debt and a panel discussion with four Wharton professors. The conclusion – we’re fucked.

The documentary was extremely well done. It was similar to David Walker’s I.O.U.S.A. which came out in August 2008, just before the financial collapse. Here’s the problem. David Walker’s documentary showed the perils of our national debt and the impending disaster if we didn’t address our unfunded liabilities related to Medicare, Social Security and future deficits. The National debt in August 2008 was $9.6 trillion. Today it is $16.2 trillion. I don’t think Walker’s recommendation was to increase the Debt by 69% over the next four years. Obamacare was passed, adding millions of people into Medicare and digging us deeper into debt. When you’re in a hole, you’re supposed to stop digging. We dug faster.

They can make documentaries until they are blue in the face, but Americans will yawn and flip the channel to Dancing With the Stars to see Bristol Palin self destruct. If this documentary comes on your local PBS station (until Romney pulls the plug) I recommend you watch it. They are going to 20 different colleges to promote this film. It is the Millenials who get fucked the worst, so they should get angry. We’ve left them a shit sandwich with a side of shit.

We have no leaders willing to level with the American people. We have an American people who want to be lied to. Nothing will be fixed until the entire system implodes. Sad but true. The panelists seemed to hold out hope that after the election the Simpson/Bowles plan would be resurrected and enacted. I doubt it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqW628w_z4w&feature=share&list=PL681B1D0A84320023

PBS documentary ‘Overdraft’ explores U.S. debt situation

After the screening, Wharton professor Michael Useem moderated a discussion

By Fiona Glisson · October 9, 2012, 12:32 am

In last week’s presidential debates, Governor Mitt Romney said that he would cut funding for PBS as part of his plan to balance the budget and decrease the national debt.

Last night in the Zellerbach Theatre, The Wharton School and the Penn Institute for Urban Research hosted a screening of Overdraft — a PBS documentary — which discusses the causes and dire consequences of the United States’ soaring national debt.

After the screening, management professor Michael Useem — who is also the director of the Center for Leadership and Change Management — moderated a panel discussion.

The documentary, which can also be found on YouTube, was commissioned and funded by the Travelers Institute, a think tank founded by Travelers Insurance Company. It applies the company’s management, experts and knowledge to issues of public policy.

“We wanted to raise awareness about the importance of public policy decision-making and things that our experts can help with,” said Joan Woodward, the president of the Travelers Institute and executive vice president of public policy for Travelers.

Though the Traveler’s Institute funded and contributed information to the documentary, they had little say in its editorial content. WTVI-TV — Charlotte, North Carolina’s PBS affiliate — produced the film in partnership with Susie Films.

The documentary outlined how the housing crisis, the resulting economic downturn and unbridled government spending contributed to the burgeoning national debt.

It then showed various perspectives concerning how portions of the government’s budget such as health care, defense and social security were not solvent.

Heather Huang, a junior exchange student in Wharton, found pharmacy owner Tom Miller’s story particularly effective. His pharmacy in Marion, Illinois, went under because the state government could not afford to reimburse him for patients’ Medicare and Medicaid prescriptions. She liked that the film interviewed “common people and related [national debt] to their lives.”

While it did not provide specific solutions, the film stressed that something must be done.

Introducing the film, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Travelers Companies Inc., 1974 Wharton bachelor’s and MBA graduate Jay Fishman stressed that we are on an “unsustainable path to $2 trillion [yearly] deficits if we don’t do something about it.”

Echoing a quotation from Revolutionary-era financier Robert Morris, University President Amy Gutmann commented while introducing the film, “Our own interest and the public good still go hand and hand.”

Wharton is the first stop on a nationwide tour of a growing list of business schools that include the Institute for Economic Policy Research at Stanford University and MIT’s Sloan School of Management.

Producer and Susie Films founder Scott Galloway hopes the film will serve to educate students and encourage them to be involved in public policy. “My hope is that they get a better understanding of the issues,” he said. “I do hope that they recognize that a lot of these issues are solvable.”

Students who attended the event echoed Galloway’s thoughts, discussing the film’s education value. Dan Clay, a Wharton MBA student said the film was “really helpful in explaining why the debt matters.”

Second-year Wharton MBA student William Wang said the film stressed that “fiscal responsibility goes a long way.”

Katie Willis, a graduate student in the School of Social Policy and Practice studying non-profit leadership, appreciated that the film motivates viewers to take action. “The urgency of the speakers within the film felt like a call to arms, which I enjoyed because this is such a pressing problem.”

MONKEYS BEHAVE

Your comments are getting more viewership as TBP demolished our one day visitor record by 15%. We broke the 30,000 visitor barrier for the 1st time. When I started this blog in 2009 we would get 30,000 visitors in a month and 10,000 of the visits were by Smokey and Stuck. Let’s hope the newbies have a sense of humor, thick skin, and aren’t put off by foul language, disgusting pictures, or vitriolic attacks. If not, fuckem.

Day	Number of visits	Pages	Hits	Bandwidth
01 Oct 2012	12,781	57,100	281,504	3.14 GB
02 Oct 2012	14,592	56,842	336,607	3.26 GB
03 Oct 2012	13,854	61,423	310,757	3.61 GB
04 Oct 2012	14,530	57,146	332,346	3.16 GB
05 Oct 2012	13,315	54,753	296,220	2.86 GB
06 Oct 2012	10,228	39,501	203,957	2.18 GB
07 Oct 2012	11,050	42,780	224,351	2.45 GB
08 Oct 2012	30,914	99,788	868,694	9.90 GB
09 Oct 2012	3,373	10,430	77,055	825.16 MB

Countries		Pages	Hits	Bandwidth
United States	us	364,093	2,261,077	23.91 GB
Canada	ca	19,331	133,929	1.10 GB
Great Britain	gb	13,621	96,029	839.81 MB
Netherlands	nl	8,280	19,673	206.75 MB
Australia	au	6,318	46,357	337.02 MB
Germany	de	5,944	30,374	511.32 MB
China	cn	5,804	7,773	782.75 MB
France	fr	5,447	30,212	472.31 MB
Russian Federation	ru	5,324	14,496	460.79 MB
India	in	3,002	21,285	170.49 MB
Ukraine	ua	2,595	4,290	235.55 MB
Romania	ro	2,576	6,727	84.49 MB
Sweden	se	2,244	11,708	110.90 MB
New Zealand	nz	1,866	9,681	66.46 MB
Poland	pl	1,795	6,152	161.75 MB
Singapore	sg	1,674	6,481	56.52 MB
Ireland	ie	1,575	7,563	88.31 MB
Switzerland	ch	1,467	6,795	64.84 MB
Philippines	ph	1,364	9,676	74.29 MB
Brazil	br	1,238	8,122	80.33 MB
Mexico	mx	1,074	8,667	71.45 MB
Hong Kong	hk	1,058	4,749	68.40 MB
Japan	jp	1,028	4,996	57.19 MB
Thailand	th	944	6,390	47.69 MB
Italy	it	925	7,891	62.05 MB
Others		19176	160398	1.36 GB

Links from an external page (other web sites except search engines) – Full list

– http://www.stevequayle.com	4,853	4,884
– http://www.thedailycrux.com/Post/41480/Controversial-post–Hyper…	2,874	2,934
– http://www.thedailycrux.com/Post/41457/-Chilling–report-reveals…	2,816	2,848
– http://stevequayle.com	2,811	2,875
– http://www.stevequayle.com/index.php	2,800	2,800
– http://www.tfmetalsreport.com/blog/4246/corner-copperfield-and-b…	2,037	2,037
– http://www.zerohedge.com	1,876	1,876
– http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-10-08/guest-post-decline-deca…	1,704	1,704
– http://dollarcollapse.com	1,270	1,302
– http://whatreallyhappened.com	493	524
– http://www.facebook.com/l.php	311	311
– http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com	255	255
– http://td5howard.livejournal.com/201061.html	229	229
– http://www.valueforum.com/forums/show.mpl	215	215
– http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com	209	209
– http://www.facebook.com	196	204
– http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article36916.html	184	184
– http://sgtreport.com	177	177
– http://36ohk6dgmcd1n-c.c.yom.mail.yahoo.net/om/api/1.0/openmail….	134	155
– http://m.facebook.com/l.php	118	118
– https://www.facebook.com	111	111
– http://sbynews.blogspot.com	107	107
– http://stevequayle.com/index.php	100	100
– http://www.thedailycrux.com/Post/41322/Several-frightening-signs…	96	96
– http://www.blacklistednews.com/Guest_Post%3A_DECLINE%2C_DECAY%2C…	96	96
– Others	5,494	7,305

DECLINE, DECAY, DENIAL, DELUSION, & DESPAIR

The majority of Americans seem OK with just waddling through life, accepting the lies and misinformation blasted from the boob tube and their various iGadgets by their owners, gorging themselves to death on Twinkies and Cheetos, paying 15% interest on their $10,000 rolling credit card balance, and growing ever more dependent on the welfare/warfare state to provide and protect them from accepting personal responsibility for their lives. A minority of critical thinking people have chosen to question everything they see and hear being spewed at us by the propagandist mainstream media, the corporate fascist government, and the powerful banking cabal that has an iron grip upon our throats as they choke the life out of the global economy in their never ending desire for more riches and more power.

The decline of the Great American Empire cannot be attributed to one factor or one bogeyman. There are a multitude of factors, villains, and choices made by the American people that have led to our moral, civil, social, and economic decline. The kabuki theater that passes for our electoral process is little more than a diversion from our imminent fate. Neither candidate for President has any intention of changing the course of the U.S. Titanic. Our rendezvous with destiny has been charted, and there aren’t nearly enough lifeboats. Those who built the ship and recklessly navigated it into a sea of icebergs will be the 1^st into the few lifeboats. The leaders we’ve chosen, the choices we’ve made, and our unwillingness to deal with facts and reality have set in motion a disaster that cannot be averted. It’s a shame the majority of Americans have the math aptitude of a 6^th grader, because the unsustainability of our empire can be calculated quite easily. Math is hard for Americans, but denial and delusion are easy.

Oddly, a couple of late September days in Wildwood NJ were able to crystalize many of the aspects of our cultural and economic decline in my mind. I should have just enjoyed the 72 degree temperatures, a few beers, and the freedom to read a book on my deck. I wish I was just oblivious to my surroundings, but my weekend in Wildwood NJ was an eye opener. Everywhere I turned I saw something that made me laugh, shake my head in disgust, or wonder how our government could have become so inane, incompetent and out of control. We all generalize based upon our preconceived beliefs, but sometimes what you see is what you get. The weekend started normally with a morning bike ride on the boardwalk with my wife and son to the Hereford lighthouse in North Wildwood. Along the way we passed the usual suspects on the boardwalk: the obese, the tattooed, the pierced, and the blue haired. I wish I was exaggerating, but I saw a dozen hoveround and rascal scooters carrying extremely obese Americans on par with this person:

If I wanted to be politically correct, I’d call the fat asses cruising on their “free” rascal scooters, the weight challenged disabled on their powered mobility enhancement vehicles. You know a trend has become a massive scam, when South Park dedicates an entire show to the shame of obesity and the scooter brigade. The majority of the scooter squad jamming up the boardwalk was less than 50 years old. They weren’t disabled. They were just too obese and lazy to wobble down the boardwalk to the next junk food joint. They were certainly in the right place. The Wildwood boardwalk is home to pizza topped with cheese fries, chocolate covered bacon, fried Oreos, funnel cake topped with powdered sugar, and 64 ounce sugar laced lemonade. The place would make Nanny Bloomberg’s head explode.

We’ve all seen the commercials for the Scooter store urging anyone on Medicare to rush in and get a power scooter or wheelchair “at little or no cost to you”. The entitlement “free shit” mentality permeates our culture. There is a cost and it is over $800 million per year, paid for by the 53% who pay Federal taxes. Records from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services show that the cost of motorized scooters and wheelchairs to the government health service for senior citizens rose 179% between 1999 and 2009, the last year for which full records are available. This data is fascinating as the number of Americans over the age of 65 only increased by 18% over this same time frame. The bill in 1999 was $259 million; in 2009 it was $723 million – and is surely over $1 billion today. This is another billion dollar scam being funded by your tax dollars, but there are no spending cuts possible according to our beloved Congressmen.

A recent report by Medicare’s inspector general also showed that 61% of the motorized wheelchairs provided to Medicare recipients in the first half of 2007 went to people who didn’t qualify for them. (Only people who cannot get around without one are supposed to be eligible.) The inspector general found that Medicare is billed an average of $4,018 for a motorized wheelchair that normally sells for $1,048. As a taxpayer, you will be shocked to find out that people are selling their “no cost” Rascal 600 B mobility scooters on eBay. I’m sure the keen eyed government drones working in the Health & Human Services agency are policing the resale of taxpayer paid for scooters. I find it amusing that scooters have various naming classes, just like BMW and Mercedes. The vast majority of people I see tooling around on their “mobility scooters” are just plain fat. They aren’t over 65 years old. On my Sunday bike ride I was flabbergasted and amused by the sight of a 350 pound woman on a Rascal with the pedal to the metal pulling a 275 pound man in a wheelchair attached by rope. The plague of slow metabolism is sweeping the countryside.

While I was relaxing on my deck reading and trying to blot out the nightmare visions of obese boomers in Rascal formation like German panzers invading Poland, a brand new SUV pulled into the parking lot across the street. After five minutes, the driver’s side door opened and out sidled a four foot five, two hundred and fifty pound female senior citizen in all her girth. She waddled to the back of the SUV and opened the hatch to extract her walker with wheels. She began berating the three hundred pound dude that got out of the passenger side to come and get his walker. Then she motored off towards Laura’s Fudge, while her hubby conserved his energy waiting by the SUV. Minutes later she scooted her way back hauling a sack of fudge. They then trundled off towards the boardwalk, most likely headed for Kohrs Bros for a double dipped fudge ice cream cone or some Boardwalk fries smothered in cheese.

Based upon my unscientific assessment of the people walking on the Wildwood boardwalk, I would conclude that 35% of the people are obese, 40% are overweight by 20 or 30 pounds (myself included), and 25% are in relatively good shape. After checking the government statistics, my assessment appears to be accurate. Who is to blame? The easy answer is to just blame the individual for their lack of self-restraint and inability to contain their impulses. But when you consider that 160 million out of 232 million adults in this country are either overweight or obese, along with 11 million adolescents, there must be something more sinister behind the phenomenon. There is no doubt that a major portion of the blame must be laid at the fat feet of those who could have exercised restraint over their cravings, but the words of master propagandist Edward Bernays provides another factor in the equation:

“If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without them knowing it.” – Edward Bernays

Bernays reveals a truth that is self-evident to those with critical thinking skills. Sadly, few Americans exhibit any thinking skills whatsoever. Our society has bifurcated into those who control and those who are controlled. The overlord Double Plus Alphas in our society consist of the Wall Street banker cabal, the executives of our mega-corporations, Federal Reserve governors, Washington DC politicians, Federal government apparatchiks, the propaganda experts in the mainstream corporate media, and the secretive billionaire set that manipulate and maneuver behind the scenes. The first step in controlling the Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons, as Aldous Huxley knew in 1931, was to indoctrinate them with propaganda in our government run schools. This mission has been accomplished. The vast majority of school children graduate from the government school system with no ability to think critically or question what has been spoon fed to them as facts. The fascist alliance of corporations and the state begin in the public schools, with product advertisements by corporations now subsidizing school budgets. The road to obesity is paved with chicken nuggets, fries and pizza dispensed by the government schools on a daily basis.

Just as in Huxley’s Brave New World, America has been built upon the principles of Henry Ford’s assembly line—mass production, homogeneity, predictability, and consumption of disposable consumer goods. In the dystopian novel, members of every class, from birth, are indoctrinated by recorded voices repeating slogans while they sleep. Huxley didn’t imagine the power of TV and other mass media outlets to do the same while we are awake. We are bombarded day and night by propaganda from mega-corporations to buy their products. Mass consumption of processed food sold by the likes of multi-billion dollar corporations Kraft, Pepsico, Coca Cola, General Mills, Nestle, and Unilever is the chief cause of the obesity epidemic in America. The few know how to manipulate the many through messaging, repetition and persistently molding the opinions of the feeble minded non-thinking masses. The billions spent by corporations on advertising to convince the masses that eating a Wendy’s Baconator, KFC extra crispy bucket, or Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese, washed down with a two liter Mountain Dew or Cherry Coke, is a tribute to the invisible government running the show. Huxley and Bernays had it all figured out eighty years ago:

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this 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 daily 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 which control the public mind.” – Edward Bernays, Propaganda, 1928

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the masses by the invisible government Alphas has transmuted citizens into overweight, non-thinking, debt dependent, egocentric consumers. This was not a mistake. The powerful interests used their control over the banking system, media outlets, and political system to lure the willfully ignorant into a debt financed lifestyle through the Federal Reserve created inflation, Wall Street peddled credit cards, auto loans and “creative” mortgages. The manipulators convinced the manipulated that borrowing today to buy houses, cars, bling, tech gadgets, clothing, and fast food was preferable to what previous generations of Americans had done – save to buy things they wanted or needed. This behavior seems to be completely irrational as a people that once saved 12% of their income and carried a moderate amount of debt chose to reduce their savings to 0% and not worry about tomorrow.

It is easier to understand when you realize who benefitted from this purposeful shift in societal norms. The low debt, high savings, production era from 1950 through 1980 benefitted the working middle class, allowing millions to improve their standard of living. The rising debt, low savings, consumption era, from 1980 through today, benefits the 1% Alphas while impoverishing the middle class and sentencing the lower class to a lifetime of dependent servitude to the state. Who benefitted from debt fueled conspicuous consumption and continues to benefit today? The peddlers of consumer debt on Wall Street and the mega-corporations that convinced Americans they couldn’t live without that 5,500 square foot McMansion, BMW X5, stainless steel appliances, 84 inch 3D HDTV, iPhone 5, diamond encrusted Coach handbag, and thousands of other Chinese made trinkets that pile up in underwater homes across the land, benefitted tremendously. The proliferation of debt resulted in obscene profits for the financial sector, record profits for the mega-corporations that shipped production to Asia in order to take advantage of the slave labor, and three decades of wage stagnation and increasing debt for the average working middle class American.

The financialization of America was a conscious decision by the oligarchs. They controlled the issuance of credit. They controlled the currency and level of inflation inflicted upon the masses. They controlled the corporations selling consumer goods on credit. They controlled the Congress, courts, and government agencies with their deep pocket lobbying and buying of influence. Lastly, they controlled the media messages and molded the opinions and tastes of the masses through their Bernaysian propaganda techniques perfected over the decades. In one of the boldest and most blatant acts of audacity in world history, the Wall Street/K Street oligarchs wrecked the world economy in their insatiable thirst for profits, shifted their worthless debt onto the backs of taxpayers and unborn generations, threw senior citizens and savers under the bus by stealing $400 billion per year of interest from them, and enriched themselves with bubble level profits and bonus payouts. Meanwhile, median household income continues to fall, real GDP is stagnant, true unemployment exceeds 22%, and 47 million people are living on food stamps.

The propaganda being flogged by the oligarchs since 2009 is the supposed deleveraging by the American consumer and trying to convince the ignorant masses to resume borrowing and spending. It’s working. Consumer credit outstanding is at an all-time high of $2.73 trillion as the Federal government has dished out billions in student loans to 50,000 University of Phoenix MBA aspirants sitting in their basements quivering with anticipation of on-line graduation and future six figure job with Goldman Sachs. The Feds have also added the impetus to the “strong” auto sales through their 85% TARP ownership of Ally Financial by doling out 7 year 0% auto loans to subprime borrowers in urban enclaves around the country. The oligarchs aren’t worried about these loans being paid back, because they are reaping the profits today. The future losses will just be foisted onto the taxpayer, as always. Total credit market debt of $55 trillion now exceeds 350% of GDP. The National Debt of $16.2 trillion will exceed $20 trillion in 2015 no matter who wins the Presidency in November. The oligarchs adapt and control whoever occupies the White House. It is essential for our owners to keep debt growing at an exponential rate or the Ponzi scheme collapses.

Narrow minded ideologues want a simple answer to a complex interaction of generational, cultural, economic, political, and criminal factors that have conspired to put the country into a predicament that, at this point, will inevitably lead to economic collapse. The truth is the American people have learned to love their servitude. They have willfully chosen ignorance over truth. They’ve chosen to believe what their keepers have instructed them. They’ve chosen to trust the storylines generated by the corporate media rather than think critically and question everything. They’ve chosen obesity and sickness over health. They’ve chosen debt financed faux wealth over savings based real wealth. They’ve chosen safety and security over liberty. They’ve chosen dependency over self-reliance. These choices were aided, abetted and promoted by the Alphas through their ability to manipulate and control the unthinking masses. Huxley understood the power of propaganda and brainwashing decades before it was perfected by our owners.

“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, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.” – Aldous Huxley

The saddest part of this episode of the Decline & Fall of the American Empire reality show is the continued delusion of the majority of the populace, as their desire for material goods and fair share of the entitlement pie outweighs their sense of obligation to their children and grandchildren. Their chosen ignorance is fulfilled through their attachment to their personal digital ignorance gadgets and supported by what passes for government education. The truth is obscured and hidden under waves of triviality, reality TV, and data manipulation by our government masters. The dystopian nightmare that engulfs our country has thus far resembled Huxley’s vision of a shallow populace easily distracted by consumerism, pleasure seeking, cultural trivialities, and a never ending ability to be distracted by meaningless minutia. Orwell’s darker vision of surveillance, captivity, information control, authoritarianism and pain will become the norm once the existing social order falls.

“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that our desire will ruin us.” – Neil Postman – Amusing Ourselves to Death

I despair for my country that has chosen to eat, amuse and borrow itself to death. But my despair is deepest for my children and their future. The greed, corruption, myopia, selfishness, and disregard for the well-being of future generations by current and past generations has left a barren and bleak landscape for my children. The Huxley vision of America consuming and amusing itself to death is coming to a painful conclusion, as the limits of a fiat currency and debt based lifestyle become evident. Those in power are preparing the masses for a more Orwellian vision of America when they are forced to pull the plug on the existing paradigm. The Patriot Act, NDAA, military exercises in our cities, militarization of local police forces, warrantless surveillance of our communications, searches and seizures in our airports and train stations, purchase of millions of rounds of ammo by government agencies, implementation of drone technology, camera surveillance, attempts to control the internet, manipulation of economic data, and executive orders allowing the President to take over all commerce while imprisoning citizens indefinitely without charges, are the next step in our descent into a dictatorship of tears.

The question is whether we will stand idly by, fiddling with our gadgets, tweeting about Honey Boo Boo, or will we regain our sense of duty to the future generations of this country. The manipulators are powerful, rich, connected and FEW. Those being manipulated, controlled, and abused are MANY. There will be a revolution in this country whether you like it or not. The existing social order will dissolve during the next fifteen years. What replaces it is up to us. George Carlin described what our owners want.

“Politicians are put there to give you that idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land, they own and control the corporations, and they’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the State Houses, and the City Halls. They’ve got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies so they control just about all the news and information you get to hear.

They’ve got 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.”

What do “We the People” want?

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