Tag: Facebook

SHOULD YOU BELIEVE WHAT THEY TELL YOU OR WHAT YOU SEE?

Sometimes I wish I could just passively accept what my government monarchs and their mainstream media mouthpieces feed me on a daily basis. Why do I have to question everything I’m told? Life would be much simpler and I could concentrate on more important things like the size of Kim Kardashian’s ass, why the Honey Boo Boo show was canceled, the Victoria Secret Fashion Show, whether I’ll get a better deal on Chinese slave labor produced crap on Black Thanksgiving, Black Friday, or Cyber Monday, fantasy football league standings, the latest NFL player to knockout their woman and get reinstated, Obama’s latest racial healing plan, which Clinton or Bush will be our next figurehead president, or the latest fake rape story from Rolling Stone. The willfully ignorant masses, dumbed down by government education, lured into obesity by corporate toxic packaged sludge disguised as food products, manipulated, controlled and molded by an unseen governing class of rich men, and kept docile through never ending corporate media propaganda, are nothing but pawns to the arrogant sociopathic pricks pulling the wires in this corporate fascist empire of debt.

I’m sure my blood pressure would be lower and my mood better if I just accepted everything I was told by my wise, sagacious, Ivy League educated, obscenely wealthy rulers as the unequivocal truth. Why should I doubt these noble, well intentioned, champions of the common folk? They’ve never misled us before. They would never attempt to use two highly publicized deaths as a lever to keep black people and white people fighting each other and not realizing all races are now living in a militarized police surveillance state supported by the one Party. They would never use their complete control over the financial, political, judicial, and media organisms to convince the masses that voting for one of their hand selected red or blue options will ever actually change anything. They would never engineer the overthrow of a democratically elected government, cover up the shooting down of an airliner, and attempt to blame their crimes on the leader of a nuclear power in their efforts to retain a teetering global empire. They would never overthrow or wage economic warfare on countries that don’t toe the line regarding the continued dominance of the petrodollar in global commerce.

Sadly, I’m cursed with a mind that questions everything and trusts no one in authority or associated with the status quo. It’s the reason I don’t read newspapers or watch mainstream media television entertainment propaganda, disguised as news. It’s the reason I will never vote in a national election again. The lesser of two evils is still evil. I’m skeptical of every piece of data fed to the sheep by the government apparatchiks working for the state. The faux journalists being paid millions by one of the six corporations controlling the media and dependent upon the government, Wall Street bankers, and mega-corporations for their advertising revenues regurgitate whatever they are told by those pulling the purse strings. The mainstream media are nothing but propaganda peddlers for the Deep State and truth telling is prohibited in their world of deception, debt, and denial. Their job is to sustain, enhance, and further enrich the status quo by engineering consent through what they report and what they do not report. The true ruling powers who operate in the shadows behind the scenes are men of power, wealth, status and education who truly believe they are better equipped to consciously manage and manipulate the public mind to achieve their ends. They are disciples of the Edward Bernays School of deception, manipulation and propaganda.

“If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it? The recent practice of propaganda has proved that it is possible, at least up to a certain point and within certain limits.” – Edward Bernays

The Nazis were pikers compared to the technologically savvy Madison Avenue maggots and Silicon Valley snakes who mold the opinions, tastes, and beliefs of the iGadget addicted, vapid, unintelligent, unquestioning, zombie-like masses who beseech to be led, told what to do and what to believe. A vast swath of the population don’t read books or even know how to read above a grade school level. They couldn’t write a coherent paragraph if their life depended upon it. But they can twitter, text, Instagram, and facebook at the speed of light. Try walking down any street in an American city without some iGadget distracted oblivious moron bumping into you. The addicting nature of today’s technology is being used by the ruling elite to monitor, control, and make you respond the way they choose.

Facebook, corporate media organizations, quasi-government organizations, and the NSA are creating a corporate totalitarian state where the slaves willingly sacrifice their privacy, liberty and freedom for mindless entertainment and distractions. The 21st Century totalitarian state captures your political beliefs, daily activities, habits, interests, spending behaviors, organizational associations, love life, pictures, psychological makeup, and fears from your own postings on the internet. With the right algorithms they can uncannily predict how you will react to different situations and messaging. They can also uncover threats to the status quo. Under the guise of keeping you safe from terrorists they are actually ferreting out subversives and radicals who refuse to conform to their idea of a good citizen slave. We will all be subject to our own Room 101.

Dan Kaplan in his recent article about Facebook as a tool for totalitarianism lays out the extreme threat to our future:

Today’s totalitarian demands a more subtle way to influence cultural and political sentiment. But if you got your hands on an algorithmically filtered newsfeed? One that could control the stories people see every day and influence their emotions across geographic, political and economic lines? You’d be in business.

But then there was the mood-influence study that scandalized us for a couple of weeks this year. Facebook changed the tone of content showing up in people’s feeds to test the impact it could have on their moods. The results, not too surprisingly, suggested that Facebook has the power to manipulate sentiment at scale.

Given how easy it is to scare people about the scary-seeming-but-actually-low-risk Ebola, and how dumb we all get when we are afraid, it is not crazy to think that under the wrong circumstances — like one or two more mass-scale terrorist attacks on major cities — modern democracy gives way to something akin to 1984.

If Big Brother were to seize the reins of power, sure, he’d use the cable news the way it’s being used today. But Facebook’s data maw, targeting power and sentiment-manipulation capabilities would be far more insidious. Whether this is what we become or not comes down to the future we choose to build.

The saddest part of this episode of mass delusion, mass confusion, and mass media collusion is that even though we are moving towards Orwell’s totalitarian vision of society, thus far, technology, triviality and an unending array of distractions have lured the masses into passive preoccupation with egotistical pleasures. We’ve been persuaded to love our servitude while drowning in a sea of irrelevance, diversions, and trifles. We continue to amuse ourselves to death while forging our own chains of debt and yielding to the direction of an all-powerful welfare warfare surveillance state that promises to protect us from phantom threats while actually abolishing our rights, freedoms, and liberties. No coercion necessary. We have been trained to love our servitude.

“A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.” – Aldous Huxley – Brave New World

Arrogance, Desperation, Lies & Truth

 “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” – Aldous Huxley

The level of data massaging by the government and their co-conspirators on Wall Street and in the corporate media is a futile attempt at a happy ending that will never come to fruition. The intensity and relentlessness with which the state and its quasi-state minions attempt to paint a false picture of economic recovery is equal parts arrogance and desperation. The arrogance is a function of successfully pulling off the greatest heist in world history from 2003 through 2008 with no adverse consequences, no criminal charges, no penalties for their crimes, and more power and wealth than they had prior to 2003. The only way to stop sociopaths is to throw them in jail or kill them. In our dystopian paradise of greed, they were rewarded with trillions in rescue packages by their cohorts in crime at the Federal Reserve and in Congress. They’ve paid themselves billions in bonuses for gorging at the Federal Reserve trough of QE and ZIRP. The desperation is borne from the fact that after $7.5 trillion of debt added by the Federal government and $3.5 trillion of debt created by the Federal Reserve since 2009, the Greater Depression for average Americans deepens by the day.

The men pulling the strings behind the scenes are drunk with power and their hubris allows them to believe their own infallibility and blinds them to the dire consequences for our country when their debt Ponzi scheme fails. But, as we grow ever closer to the day of reckoning, they will use every means at their disposal to paint a positive picture, regardless of the facts and reality for the average person. The examples of twisting, distorting and outright lying about the economic reality of our times are endless. These are some of the major false storylines peddled by our benevolent corporate fascist leaders:

The BLS reported 321,000 jobs added in November and the unemployment rate at 5.8%. Jobs are plentiful, based upon these statistics.

A skeptical critical thinking individual might ask a few questions or point out a few inconvenient facts the government purveyors of propaganda might not want us to ponder:

  • The non-manipulated, non-seasonally adjusted number of jobs in November FELL by 270,000. The BLS added 600,000 jobs as an adjustment to achieve the headline grabbing result.
  • If the jobs market is so good, why is the labor participation rate at a 30 year low of 62.8%?
  • Since 2007 the number of working age Americans has risen by 17 million, while the number of employed has risen by less than 1 million, but the unemployment rate is about the same.
  • Why would almost 14 million working age Americans leave the labor force since 2007 if the economy is booming and jobs plentiful, with 1.2 million leaving in the last 12 months?
  • Why would payroll tax receipts be flat with last year if millions of new jobs have been created?
  • If the country has really added 8 million jobs since 2010, how could real median household income FALL by 2.3%?

According to the government reported figures, the economy hasn’t been this strong since 2007. GDP has supposedly grown at greater than 4% over the last two quarters.

Anyone who is sentient knows consumer spending accounts for 68% of GDP. Capital investments that lead to long term prosperity continue to decline as a percentage of GDP from 20% in 2000 to 16% today. We’ve chosen consumption and financialization over savings and investment. This fact leads to some observations:

  • If GDP has actually grown by 20% since 2008 how does this correlate with a 6.9% decline in real median household income?
  • GDP has been goosed by a $69 billion increase in government spending, with the majority going to the military industrial complex. ISIS has been a godsend for our GDP and arms dealer profits.
  • GDP was increased retroactively by $500 billion last year based on a new way the government accounts for intangibles.
  • The surge in consumer expenditures over the last two quarters has been in the purchase of services. The higher costs for Obamacare are a boon for GDP. Are they a boon for your bank account?
  • The trade deficit has fallen as exports of petroleum products have temporarily provided a boost to GDP. The collapse in oil prices will reverse that trend rapidly.

According to the quasi-governmental mouthpieces at the Conference Board, consumer confidence is near a 5 year high, reflecting what should be robust spending.

So we are told by the representatives of corporatism that we are confident about the economy and the future. How does that measure up to the facts on the ground:

  • Black Friday weekend sales collapsed by 11% versus the previous year. As the pundits tried to blame it on on-line sales (10% of total retail sales), Cyber Monday also proved to be a dud.
  • If the average person is confident about the future and happy with their economic circumstances, why did they just vote to throw out the bums in November?
  • If consumers are confident, why have real retail sales, excluding subprime debt goosed auto sales, been flat for the last three months and up only 1% in the last year?
  • If consumers are so confident, why are credit card balances still $138 billion BELOW where they were in 2008? If all these new jobs are being created why is credit card debt lower than it was in mid-2010? Maybe consumers are so desperate they are using credit cards to pay utility and tax bills and not using them for frivolous Chinese crap at big box retailers.
  • The increased spending at grocery stores and restaurants is driven by food inflation, not foot traffic. Discretionary spending at furniture, electronics, and sporting goods stores is flat.
  • Department store sales continue to fall. Sears and JC Penney teeter on the verge of bankruptcy. Delia’s is liquidating and Radio Shack isn’t far behind. The major chains have completely stopped building new stores. The great bricks and mortar unwind relentlessly plods forward. In addition, online growth is stalling as states implement sales taxes.

According to the government, the deficit was ONLY $483 billion in 2014.

This is a real doozy. Obama has been touting how he has cut the deficit through his wise management of the budget. This is where government accounting is used by apparatchiks to mislead the public and obscure the truth. A few pertinent facts are always left out by the politicians touting deficit reduction:

  • Because of the budget impasse in 2013, the Federal government stopped updating the national debt on a daily basis, but we know from when they started counting again, the debt went up by $2.3 billion per day. Therefore, the national debt on October 1, 2013 was approximately $17.038 trillion. On October 1, 2014 the national debt was $17.875. Therefore, the national debt went up by $837 billion in 2014. Just a smidge higher than the reported deficit of $483 billion.
  • Interest is not paid on reported deficits. It’s paid on the national debt, so the massaged, manipulated and made over deficit is meaningless. The national debt was always slightly higher than reported deficits, but in the last few years the deviation has grown to a Grand Canyon size.
  • The deficit number has been artificially lowered by nothing other than accounting entry hocus pocus. The Federal Reserve increasing its balance sheet to $4 trillion out of thin air creates approximately $80 billion of phantom interest profits that are paid to the Treasury. Why don’t they increase their balance sheet to $40 trillion and eliminate deficits all together?
  • The biggest accounting scam is Fannie and Freddie. Just as the Wall Street banks have created fake profits through accounting entries regarding future losses, Fannie and Freddie have gone the extra mile in helping fake deficit reduction. These bloated insolvent government run pigs required a $187 billion taxpayer bailout in 2009. Amazingly, when you allow criminals to value their assets at whatever they choose, phantom profits flow like honey.
  • These two horribly run institutions of fraud “generated profits” of $129 billion in 2014 which were “paid back” to the Treasury. That is four times more than Apple or Exxon’s profits during a non-existent housing recovery. Why are their stocks trading at just over $2 per share if they are generating vastly more profits than they were in 2007 when their stocks were north of $70 per share? It’s because the profits are fake. Everyone knows it, but the Federal Deficit is reported $129 billion lower because these insolvent entities pretended to pay the taxpayer back. Accounting entries do not reduce deficits. Spending less than you generate in revenues reduces deficits.

According to the government, we’ve experienced a strong housing recovery since 2010.

The supposed housing recovery storyline continues to be beaten like a dead horse by the Wall Street media (CNBC) and the shills at the NAR. Anyone with a functioning brain (eliminates CNBC bimbos, hacks, and Ivy League economists) can see there has been no real housing recovery:

  • The 24% rise in home prices (Case Shiller Index) since the 2012 low has been nothing more than a Wall Street hedge fund/Federal Reserve scheme to elevate prices and make Wall Street bank balance sheets less insolvent. Wall Street banks withholding foreclosures from the market while Wall Street hedge funds (Blackstone) use free money from the Fed to buy up housing and rent it out to former homeowners has enriched the .1% while destroying the dream of home ownership for millions.
  • The percent of first time home buyers remains near record lows, while speculators, flippers, hedge fund managers, and rich Chinese businessmen make up a record number of purchasers. The fact this is a fake housing recovery is proven by mortgage applications to purchase a home sitting at 1995 levels and 30% below 2009 recession lows. Maybe the fact real median household income is also at 1995 levels, real wages keep declining, and labor force participation is at 1978 levels has something to do with real people not being able to purchase a home.

  • Even with the artificial hedge fund demand, existing home sales are lower than 2013 and languishing at 1999 levels. They are still 25% below 2005 levels, despite the lowest mortgage rates in history. New home sales are a disaster, with no appreciable increase in two years. Apartment construction has far outpaced single family housing construction. After a five year housing recovery, new home sales languish at levels seen at the bottom of our last six recessions. New home sales are 65% below the 2005 peak and at levels seen in the early 1960’s when there were 130 million less people living in the country.

According to the corporate media, the auto market is hitting on all cylinders with annual sales of 16.4 million, the highest since 2006.

Pretending to sell automobiles to people without the means to pay you for the automobile is always a good business idea. Of course, when you have Ally Financial and the rest of the Wall Street banking cabal doling out 7 year 0% loans and subprime auto loans like candy, it’s easy to move inventory. The temporary boost to GDP by issuing more bad debt always works out in the long run. Right?

  • If the auto business is booming why have GM profits fallen from $9.2 billion in 2011 to $5.4 billion in 2013, and on course to fall to $4 billion in 2014? Record levels of channel stuffing produces sales gains, but no profits. Why is their stock 25% below its 52 week high and lower than it was in 2010 when it was IPO’d after being rescued by Obama?
  • If the auto business is booming why are Ford’s profits falling by 35% versus last year and lower than they were in 2010? Why is their stock price 16% below its 52 week high and still 20% below its 2010 price?
  • Auto loan debt is at an all-time high of $950 billion, up 33% since 2010 when the Fed, Wall Street, and the political class in the fetid D.C. swamp decided they needed new debt bubbles in auto loans and student loans to jump start our moribund economy.
  • There are 65 million auto loans outstanding, and the average debt now stands at $17,352. Over 30% of auto “sales” are actually leases. The rest are financed over an average of 65 months. Virtually all new car sales are nothing more than 3 to 7 year rentals. It’s amazing what easy money from the Fed can produce.
  • Over 31% of all new auto loans this year were to subprime borrowers. They now account for 36.5% of all outstanding auto loans. You become a subprime borrower by defaulting on previous debt obligations. In a shocking development, auto loan delinquencies surged by 13% in the last quarter, with subprime loan delinquencies skyrocketing by 18%. When has issuing billions of debt to subprime borrowers ever caused problems before?
  • Only a University of Phoenix African Studies major is more of a subprime risk than the millions of ecstatic Escalade drivers cruising around our urban ghetto paradises. The average student loan debt is now $33,000. Until the Obama administration went Keynesian, student loan debt was primarily in the private sector. When Obama entered the White House total student loan debt was $620 billion and delinquencies totaled $50 billion. There are now $1.3 trillion of student loans outstanding, with the Federal government accounting for $830 billion and guaranteeing a large portion of the rest. Delinquencies have skyrocketed to $125 billion, as another taxpayer bailout beckons.

According to the corporate mainstream media pundits, the plunge in oil prices from $100 per barrel to $61 per barrel is unequivocally good for the economy. The shale oil boom has worked its magic and happy times are here again.

Sometimes you have to wonder whether the highly educated spokesmodels on the corporate mainstream media are really as vacuous and clueless as they appear or whether they are just paid to look pretty and mouth the corporate line. They seem incapable of comprehending the unintended consequences of various events. The collapse in oil prices is one of those events.

  • There is no doubt that lower oil prices will lower the price of gas for the average American. Estimates say they will save $368 per year, which can be spent elsewhere. The highly paid shill economists who declare this will boost spending seem to be math challenged. Retail sales figures include gas stations. What isn’t spent there will be spent in another category, most likely healthcare or groceries as prices in both areas continue to escalate. It’s a zero sum game. No new spending will occur.
  • The worldwide supply of oil has only increased marginally over the last few years. The U.S. shale boom has been offset by declines elsewhere (Libya, Iran, Mexico). The reason for the collapse is the same reason for the 2009 collapse – worldwide demand is contracting. Europe is in a depression. Japan is in a depression. Russia’s economy is contracting. China is decelerating rapidly. The U.S. demand is flat. The implications of another global recession after five years of central banks printing trillions of fiat currency are alarming to say the least.
  • The cost to extract shale oil and transport it to a refinery capable of processing it is high. Honest analysts will tell you that a price of $70 to $80 is required to breakeven. Most companies don’t build breakeven into their plans. Bakken shale oil sells at a discount of about $14 per barrel due to the difficulty of extraction, transport, and processing. It is now selling for $47 per barrel. The number of permits for new rigs fell by 40% in November when oil was still selling for $75 per barrel. Do you think permits for new wells will fall at a price of $61 per barrel? Capital spending by the energy industry accounted for 33% of all capital spending in the last few years. I’m sure some other industry will pick up the slack. Right?
  • It seems the shale oil boom has resulted in a few jobs being created since the 2010 recession trough. In fact the states where fracking is prevalent have accounted for all the job growth in the nation. I wonder if a shale oil bust will have any employment implications. There are 9.3 million jobs related to the energy industry across the country. The plunge in oil prices created by Saudi Arabia in the 1980s created a depression in Texas which contributed to the S&L crisis. This plunge will reveal who has been swimming naked in the high yield bond market and derivatives market.

These are just a few examples among a multitude of lies. Others include: stocks aren’t overvalued, gold isn’t money, inflation is good for you, and ISIS terrorists are an imminent threat to your way of life. Every feel good story fed to the masses by the oligarchs running this shitshow we call America is no different than the propaganda doled out by other infamous totalitarian regimes throughout history. We believe things because we’ve been conditioned to believe them. The crony capitalist oligarchs are intelligent enough to invent theories to explain how the world should work, but not intelligent enough to interpret their models correctly. When they act on their theories (Keynesianism), their actions appear to be those of a lunatic. Despite all evidence refuting their theories, their arrogance and hubris lead them to destruction. The collective insanity of this world is almost too much for a rational thinking person to grasp. The extremely wealthy men operating in the shadows will use every means at their disposal to retain power, enhance their wealth, and crush dissent.

“Being a card carrying member of the privileged class means never having to say I’m sorry, much less ‘not guilty.’  Power is doing what you want when you want, and consequences are for everyone else. Or perhaps these titans of modern industry and the halls of power are at heart just good natured bumblers, who in a genuine belief destroy lives and crash economies, while pursuing insane ideological assumption put forward by vested interests, all the while stuffing their pockets, and crushing all dissent with the political skills of a Machiavelli and the ruthlessness of Al Capone.” – Jesse

The two party system is nothing but a ruse designed to keep the people believing they have a say in how things are run in this country. Both parties support the military industrial complex. Both parties support the militarization of police forces around the country. Both parties support the mass surveillance of its citizens. Both parties do the bidding of their rich corporate and special interest benefactors. Both parties favor deficit spending for eternity. Both parties believe the government should expand its role in our everyday lives. Both parties do the bidding for and protect the Wall Street interests who really run this country. No more proof is needed than what has occurred over the last five years, as criminal Wall Street bankers were rewarded for their malfeasance with trillions of dollars from taxpayers and their puppets at the Federal Reserve. While we were allowing ourselves to be distracted, amused, entertained, and indebted, the oligarchs were busy conducting a silent coup.

“Let’s be clear about this, the oligarchs are flush with victory, and feel that they are firmly in control, able to subvert and direct any popular movement to the support of their own fascist ends and unslakable will to power.

This is the contempt in which they hold the majority of American people and the political process: the common people are easily led fools, and everyone else who is smart enough to know better has their price. And they would beggar every middle class voter in the US before they will voluntarily give up one dime of their ill-gotten gains.

But my model says that the oligarchs will continue to press their advantages, being flushed with victory, until they provoke a strong reaction that frightens everyone, like a wake-up call, and the tide then turns to genuine reform.” – Simon Johnson

The oligarchs have had a good run. The system cannot be reformed from within. The corruption runs too deep. The system is broken and can’t be fixed. There is no doubt in my mind that a collapse approaches which will make 2008/2009 look like a walk in the park. The anger, blame and retribution will sweep away the existing social order and replace it with something new. It will be up to the people to decide what happens next. We were warned two centuries ago by a wise man. Hopefully, we’ll get a 2nd chance.

“However political parties may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.” – George Washington

 

BREAD, CIRCUSES & BOMBS – DECLINE OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE – PART TWO

In Part One of this article I discussed the similarities between the Roman Empire and the American Empire at a high level. In this article I’ll delve into some specific similarities and rhymes between the fall of the Roman Empire and our modern day empire of debt, decay and decline. I’ll address our expansive level of bread and circuses and how defects in our human nature lead to people willingly sacrificing their liberty for promises of safety and security. All empires decline due to the same human failings and ours is no exception. If anything, ours will be far more spectacular and rapid due to our extreme level of hubris, arrogance, willful ignorance and warlike preference for dealing with foreign powers.

It seems there were a few visionary thinkers in the late 1950s who foresaw the dire course our former Republic was setting. Their writings were a prophecy and a warning. There was still time to change course and avoid the pitfalls that led to the Roman Empire collapse. In Brave New World Revisited, Aldous Huxley warned against allowing a few amoral men using propaganda, scientific advancements, technology, brainwashing, and economics to control and manipulate a willfully ignorant populace into a dystopian dictatorship. The Soviet and Chinese dictatorships of the late 1950s are long gone, but Huxley foresaw how modern propaganda techniques would be used by the state to drown the masses in a sea of triviality, irrelevance, and consumerism.

“In their propaganda today’s dictators rely for the most part on repetition, suppression and rationaliza­tion — the repetition of catchwords which they wish to be accepted as true, the suppression of facts which they wish to be ignored, the arousal and rationaliza­tion of passions which may be used in the interests of the Party or the State. As the art and science of manip­ulation come to be better understood, the dictators of the future will doubtless learn to combine these tech­niques with the non-stop distractions which, in the West, are now threatening to drown in a sea of irrele­vance the rational propaganda essential to the mainten­ance of individual liberty and the survival of demo­cratic institutions.”

Another man of vision was President Dwight D. Eisenhower. As someone who understood the military industrial complex and the world of politics and power, he knew the danger of allowing the arms industry to dictate the foreign policy of the country. Maintaining a military empire bankrupted Rome and it is bankrupting the American empire. Eisenhower’s warning was unheeded.

“We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations. This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.”

When I was researching the similarities between the fall of the Roman Empire and our American Empire fall in progress, I stumbled across an essay written in 1956 by Ben Moreell called Of Bread and Circuses.    

Toxic Bread, iGadgets, Circuses, & Zoloft

“The evil was not in bread and circuses, per se, but in the willingness of the people to sell their rights as free men for full bellies and the excitement of the games which would serve to distract them from the other human hungers which bread and circuses can never appease. The moral decay of the people was not caused by the doles and the games. These merely provided a measure of their degradation. Things that were originally good had become perverted and, as Shakespeare reminds us, ‘Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.'” – Ben Moreell – 1956 – Of Bread and Circuses

There is nothing inherently evil about food, iPhones, professional sports, television, computers, music or medicine. Human beings need food to sustain them, entertainment to provide relaxation and diversion from their daily labors, and medicine to alleviate illness and prolong their lives. Only when the people allow themselves to be lured into servitude by malevolent purveyors of bread and circuses does the perversion of seemingly harmless things begin to fester and overwhelm a nation with the fetid stench of decay and decadence. The moral degeneration of the American populace, like the Roman people before them, happened slowly over time as they sold their liberty, freedom, and self-respect for full bellies, an endless array of modern day distractions, and promises from their highly educated rulers they would be taken care of and protected from all threats to their well-being, whether foreign, domestic, physical, mental, or social.

It did not happen all at once. It happened gradually over time. We allowed the weaker facets of our human nature to succumb to the pleasurable promises of a minority of power seeking manipulative men who always attempt to control and influence the majority because they believe they are wiser and deserving of riches, glory and supremacy. The greediest, most arrogant, ambitious and well educated amongst us tend to rise to the top in all societies. As Ben Franklin stated, only a virtuous people can keep sociopaths from gaining control of our political, economic and financial systems and perverting a republic built upon a foundation of free markets, liberty, and self-sufficiency.

“Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”– Benjamin Franklin

Historian Tacitus noted, as Rome became more and more corrupt, the number of laws grew rapidly. The Roman aristocracy, through corruption and thievery achieved lofty status in Roman society. Senators and wealthy knights engaged in extensive practices of conspicuous consumption, creating palatial town houses and monumental “art villas” to demonstrate their high rank in society. The peasants sank into poverty, while being satiated with bread and circuses. And it was all done legally, just as it is being done legally today by our beloved aristocracy and their minions.

“The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.” – Tacitus – The Annals of Imperial Rome

Has the proliferation of laws, rules, and regulations over the last century made us freer, safer and less corrupt?

The virtue of the American people has dissipated rapidly over the last century through their willful ignorance, laziness, apathy, vanity, greed and covetousness, while the true ruling power has consciously and intelligently manipulated the masses without them being aware they were being molded, controlled, dominated and influenced by Ivy League educated men of no conscious, empathy, or sense of decency. The paragraph below, written in 1928 by Edward Bernays, reveals the true nature of our “democracy” and our real masters:

“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

Bernays and his disciples believed the American citizenry nothing more than a herd of irrational animals that needed to be led by enlightened despots like him and other highly educated wealthy men who knew what was best in a democratic society. The term propaganda developed negative connotations after some Germans used it so effectively during the 1930s, so modern American despots changed the term to public relations. It’s all about the message. As media tools have become more technologically advanced and the study of human psychology perfected, the members of the invisible government have achieved their goal of governing, molding, and pulling the wires that control the public mind in a way that enriches them and their benefactors while satisfying the base needs of the masses and keeping them distracted with trivialities, technological wonders, and a myriad of bogeyman threats. These men have contempt for the common man. They have contempt for the U.S. Constitution. They have contempt for free markets. And they have control of our country.

Needs, Wants & Desires

The concept of bread and circuses ties closely to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs theory. The ruling class realizes the masses must be kept fed, clothed and housed or revolution would ensue. The human needs documented by Maslow were satisfied or not satisfied by humans prior to the 20th century. Once the ruling class gained control of the monetary system through their jurisdiction over the Federal Reserve and the fiscal system through their manipulation of taxes and spending, they were able to bribe the masses with their own money. The rise of the welfare state has not reduced poverty or boosted the standard of living of the poor. It has enslaved tens of millions at the basic human needs level. Once those in power had successfully bribed the masses with bread (SNAP), shelter (subsidized housing), subsistence (unemployment compensation & welfare), security (Social Security) and safety (Medicare, Medicaid), it was only necessary to keep them distracted with circuses to efficiently teach them to love their servitude.

“A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.” – Aldous Huxley – Brave New World

abraham-maslows-hierarchy-of-needs1.preview.jpg

The invisible governing authorities don’t want the masses to actually satisfy their psychological and self-fulfillment needs. The last thing they want is an educated, aware, critical thinking, independent, courageous, self-reliant, civic minded populace questioning the motivations of their keepers. This is where the corporate fascists who control the mass media propaganda machine and the sickcare industrial complex have combined forces to create a painless concentration camp of prisoners enjoying their servitude and happy to sacrifice their liberty for perceived safety. An uneducated, obese, sickly, depressed, overly-medicated populace is not a threat to the ruling class. They have been conditioned and pharmacologically sedated to such an extent the governing class feels indestructible, displaying arrogance and hubris in dangerous doses.

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

The concept of voluntary servitude has been a constant theme across the ages as most people want to be led, told what to do, and will not question or contest those in authority. Liberty and freedom require effort, sacrifice, honor and a people with a strong moral character. The Roman people succumbed to tyranny by abandoning their liberty to despots for a full belly and grand spectacles. The American people have succumbed to modern day banker, billionaire and politician oligarchs for a belly full of toxic corporate processed food, cable HDTV with 600 stations, iGadgets, a never ending supply of cheap Chinese produced crap at big box retail stores, Facebook, Twitter, 24 hour drive thru Dunkin Donuts joints, and an endless array of professional sporting events, all paid for with an infinite supply of cheap consumer debt from the Wall Street fraud machine. We live in a warfare/welfare surveillance state built on a foundation of debt, consumerism, and delusion, with no tears. We’ve learned to love our servitude.

French philosopher Etienne de La Boetie captured the degradation of the once noble Roman people five centuries ago, and his words ring true today as the American people have foolishly relinquished their liberty to a corporate aristocracy that has bankrupted the nation, debased the currency, pillaged the middle class and set in motion an irreversible decline of the empire.

“Plays, farces, spectacles, gladiators, strange beasts, medals, pictures, and other such opiates, these were for ancient peoples the bait toward slavery, the price of their liberty, the instruments of tyranny. By these practices and enticements the ancient dictators so successfully lulled their subjects under the yoke, that the stupefied peoples, fascinated by the pastimes and vain pleasures flashed before their eyes, learned subservience as naively, but not so creditably, as little children learn to read by looking at bright picture books. Roman tyrants invented a further refinement. They often provided the city wards with feasts to cajole the rabble, always more readily tempted by the pleasure of eating than by anything else.

The most intelligent and understanding amongst them would not have quit his soup bowl to recover the liberty of the Republic of Plato. Tyrants would distribute largess, a bushel of wheat, a gallon of wine, and a sesterce: and then everybody would shamelessly cry, ‘Long live the King!’ The fools did not realize that they were merely recovering a portion of their own property, and that their ruler could not have given them what they were receiving without having first taken it from them.” – Etienne de La Boétie – Discourse on Voluntary Servitude – 1548

We are fools to not realize the governing authorities who benevolently distribute bread and entitlements to the masses have already taken the money at gunpoint from the people, while syphoning off their cut, favoring their courtesans and taking away our liberties and freedoms. H.L. Mencken, who could match de La Boetie in contempt for the ignorant masses and corrupt politicians, understood our democracy was destined for the trash heap of history.

“Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.” – H.L. Mencken – Notes on Democracy

In Part Three of this article I will address how the creation of the Federal Reserve has led to a century of currency debasement, mindless consumption and endless warfare, while impoverishing the masses and setting in motion the dynamics of empire collapse.

DHS WANTS TO FRIEND YOU

I’m sure everyone’s favorite 30 something billionaire Marky Z. will stand up to the Feds when they want access to your personal info. Don’t worry. He’s a standup guy. Just ask his friends from Harvard.

The Feds want to facebook friend you because they think you’re cool. Know your enemy.

 

According to Facebook’s latest transparency report, government requests for the company’s user data increased 24% in the first half of 2014. Governments around the world made 34,946 requests for user information between January and June, up from 28,147 in the second half of 2013.

Once again, U.S. authorities were particularly keen on Facebook’s data, accounting for 44% of all requests. Interestingly, the percentage of requests where at least some data was produced was very high for U.S. government requests. Facebook produced data in more than 80% of the cases, compared to 51% for second-ranked India and just 34% for Germany, which made the third most requests.

In the press release, Facebook emphasized that each request would be carefully scrutinized before any data is produced and that the company would push back whenever deficiencies are found or requests are excessively broad.

Infographic: U.S. Authorities Like Facebook's User Data | Statista

You will find more statistics at Statista

I’LL HAVE A DOUBLE IRISH LOOPHOLE

I’m still looking for the double something loophole that allows me to not pay taxes. I guess my highly paid lobbyists and tax lawyers aren’t as good as Google’s, Facebook’s, Microsoft’s, and LinkedIn’s. What we have in this country are 50% of the people paying nothing in income taxes and the richest people and biggest corporations creating loopholes through their capture of the politicians to pay little or no income taxes. The tax burden falls squarely on the working middle class and small businesses. This is a major reason why our economy is stagnant at best.

For all you stock market bulls out there depending upon increasing corporate profits to propel the stock market to new heights, I’ve got some bad news.

  • All the mega-tech companies using this double Irish loophole will be paying higher taxes and having less profit.
  • The surge in the USD against world currencies will make it harder for US mega-corps to compete in foreign markets. The translation of their foreign profits back into U.S. dollars will take a negative hit.
  • The elimination of QE is already hurting the profits of mega-banks and mega-corps around the world.
  • The Too Big To Trust Wall Street banks have no loan loss reserves left to reverse with accounting entries in order to create fake profits.
  • The housing market is in decline again. Home builder stocks hit 12 month lows this week.
  • Auto dealer stocks also hit 12 month lows this week, even though the MSM says we are experiencing an auto boom. The subprime bad debt is coming due.
  • The ebola fear is going to dramatically reduce airline profits and dramatically increase healthcare costs for the healthcare industrial complex.

But besides those small issues, everything is peachy. Buy the fucking dip. Grandma Yellen has your back. Right?

Time to do some Irish Yoga.

Via Marketwatch

Ireland to close ‘Double Irish’ tax loophole

Published: Oct 14, 2014 3:54 p.m. ET

Change comes amid tax crackdown

The Irish government moved on Tuesday to close one of the world’s best-known corporate-tax loopholes, in a step that could boost overseas income tax for a wide range of U.S. companies, particularly in the technology sector.

Ireland will change its tax code to require that all Irish-registered companies be tax residents in Ireland within the next six years, slowly ending a tax-optimization structure known as the “Double Irish,” Irish Finance Minister Michael Noonan said in a parliamentary address to introduce the 2015 budget.

Ireland’s decision to close the loophole follows heavy pressure from other governments and the European Union amid a broader effort to update tax rules written before the Internet era. Countries want to make it more difficult for companies such as Google Inc. GOOGL, +0.72%  and Facebook Inc. FB, +0.82%  to funnel billions in non-U.S. profits to offshore tax havens such as Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.

The Double Irish uses a twist in Irish law to funnel royalty payments for intellectual property from one Irish-registered subsidiary to another that resides for tax purposes in a country with no corporate income taxes. While the total number of companies that use the structure isn’t publicly disclosed, hundreds of companies funnel tens of billions of dollars a year in profit to tax havens via Ireland, including many practitioners in the tech and pharmaceutical sectors, tax experts say.

The structure or variants are used by companies including Facebook, LinkedIn Corp. LNKD, +1.50% Microsoft Corp. MSFT, +0.18%  and VMware Inc. VMW, -1.16%  , according to corporate filings. Google alone used the structure to send €8.8 billion ($11.2 billion) in royalties in 2012 to a Bermuda-based company registered in Ireland.

Facebook, LinkedIn, Microsoft and VMware all declined to comment on the Double Irish in recent days.

Ireland’s move comes amid increasing tension between European governments and a cadre of largely U.S. tech superpowers over a range of issues from taxes to privacy. The EU is probing Amazon.com Inc.’s AMZN, +0.61%  tax arrangements with Luxembourg, and alleged that tax deals between Apple Inc. AAPL, -1.06%  and Ireland amount to illegal state aid. Google has seen an antitrust settlement it struck in Brussels crumble. It also faces privacy probes in multiple EU countries and is fighting a French tax bill that could top €1 billion ($1.28 billion).

An expanded version of this report appears at WSJ.com.

Social Media and the ‘Spiral of Silence’

Groupthink is alive and well. Social media is a trap. Social media allows the oligarchs to control, monitor and mislead the sheep. Bah.

Via Pew Research

 

By , , , , and

Summary of Findings

A major insight into human behavior from pre-internet era studies of communication is the tendency of people not to speak up about policy issues in public—or among their family, friends, and work colleagues—when they believe their own point of view is not widely shared. This tendency is called the “spiral of silence.”1

Some social media creators and supporters have hoped that social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter might produce different enough discussion venues that those with minority views might feel freer to express their opinions, thus broadening public discourse and adding new perspectives to everyday discussion of political issues.

We set out to study this by conducting a survey of 1,801 adults.Americans were divided over whether the NSA contractor’s leaks about surveillance were justified and whether the surveillance policy itself was a good or bad idea. For instance, Pew Research found in one survey that 44% say the release of classified information harms the public interest while 49% said it serves the public interest.

The survey reported in this report sought people’s opinions about the Snowden leaks, their willingness to talk about the revelations in various in-person and online settings, and their perceptions of the views of those around them in a variety of online and off-line contexts.

This survey’s findings produced several major insights:

Overall, the findings indicate that in the Snowden case, social media did not provide new forums for those who might otherwise remain silent to express their opinions and debate issues. Further, if people thought their friends and followers in social media disagreed with them, they were less likely to say they would state their views on the Snowden-NSA story online and in other contexts, such as gatherings of friends, neighbors, or co-workers. This suggests a spiral of silence might spill over from online contexts to in-person contexts, though our data cannot definitively demonstrate this causation. It also might mean that the broad awareness social media users have of their networks might make them more hesitant to speak up because they are especially tuned into the opinions of those around them.

A rundown of the key survey findings:

People reported being less willing to discuss the Snowden-NSA story in social media than they were in person—and social media did not provide an alternative outlet for those reluctant to discuss the issues in person.

Fully 86% of Americans reported in the Pew Research survey they were “very” or “somewhat” willing to have a conversation about the government’s surveillance program in at least one of the physical settings we queried —at a public meeting, at a family dinner, at a restaurant with friends, or at work. Yet, only 42% of those who use Facebook or Twitter were willing to discuss these same issues through social media.

If the topic of the government surveillance programs came up in these settings, how willing would you be to join in the conversation?

Of the 14% of Americans who were not willing to discuss this issue in person, almost none (0.3%) said they were willing to have a conversation about this issue through social media. This challenges the notion that social media spaces might be considered useful venues for people sharing views they would not otherwise express when they are in the physical presence of others.

Not only were social media sites not an alternative forum for discussion, social media users were less willing to share their opinions in face-to-face settings.

We also did statistical modeling allowing us to more fully understand the findings by controlling for such things as gender, age, education levels, race, and marital status—all of which are related to whether people use social media and how they use it. That modeling allowed us to calculate how likely people were to be willing to express their views in these differing settings holding other things constant.3

The results of our analyses show that, even holding other factors such as age constant, social media users are less likely than others to say they would join a discussion about the Snowden-NSA revelations.

In both offline and online settings, people said they were more willing to share their views on the Snowden-NSA revelations if they thought their audience agreed with them.

Previous research has shown that when people decide whether to speak out about an issue, they rely on reference groups—friendships and community ties—to weigh their opinion relative to their peers. In the survey, we asked respondents about their sense of whether different groups of people in their lives agreed or disagreed with their positions on the Snowden leaks. There was some notable variance between those who feel they know the views of their peers and those who do not know what others think. Generally, the more socially close people were—e.g. spouses or family members—the more likely it was that the respondents felt their views matched.

To what extent do you think others agree with your views about the Snowden-NSA revelations?

We again calculated how likely it was that someone would be willing to share their views in different settings, depending on their sense of whether their audience agreed with them. We found that, in the case of Snowden’s revelations about the NSA, it was clear that if people felt their audience supported them, they were more likely to say they would join a conversation:

Those who do not feel that their Facebook friends or Twitter followers agree with their opinion are more likely to self-censor their views on the Snowden-NSA story in many circumstances—in social media and in face-to-face encounters.

In this survey on the Snowden-NSA matter, we found that when social media users felt their opinions were not supported online, they were less likely to say they would speak their minds . This was true not only in social media spaces, but also in the physical presence of others.

  • The average Facebook user (someone who uses the site a few times per day) was half as likely as other people to say they would be willing to voice their opinion with friends at a restaurant. If they felt that their online Facebook network agreed with their views on this issue, their willingness to speak out in a face-to-face discussion with friends was higher, although they were still only 0.74 times as likely to voice their opinion.
  • The typical Twitter user (who uses the site a few times per day) is 0.24 times as likely to share their opinions with colleagues at work as an internet user who does not use Twitter. However, Twitter users who felt that their online Twitter followers shared their opinion were less reserved: They were only 0.66 times less likely to speak up than other internet users.

The survey did not directly explore why people might remain silent if they felt that their opinions were in the minority. The traditional view of the spiral of silence is that people choose not to speak out for fear of isolation. Other Pew Research studies have found that it is common for social media users to be mistaken about their friends’ beliefs and to be surprised once they discover their friends’ actual views via social media. Thus, it might be the case that people do not want to disclose their minority views for fear of disappointing their friends, getting into fruitless arguments, or losing them entirely. Some people may prefer not to share their views on social media because their posts persist and can be found later—perhaps by prospective employers or others with high status. As to why the absence of agreement on social media platforms spills over into a spiral of silence in physical settings, we speculate that social media users may have witnessed those with minority opinions experiencing ostracism, ridicule or bullying online, and that this might increase the perceived risk of opinion sharing in other settings.

People also say they would speak up, or stay silent, under specific conditions.

In addition to exploring the impact of agreement/disagreement on whether people were willing to discuss the Snowden-NSA revelations, we asked about other factors that might shape whether people would speak out, even if they suspected they held minority views. This survey shows how the social and political climate in which people share opinions depends on several other things:

People’s use of social media did little to increase their access to information about the Snowden-NSA revelations.

We asked respondents where they were getting information about the debates swirling around the Snowden revelations, and found that social media was not a common source of news for most Americans. Traditional broadcast news sources were by far the most common sources. In contrast, social media sources like Facebook and Twitter were the least commonly identified sources for news on this issue.

There are limits to what this snapshot can tell us about how social media use is related to the ways Americans discuss important political issues. This study focuses on one specific public affairs issue that was of interest to most Americans: the Snowden-NSA revelations. It is not an exhaustive review of all public policy issues and the way they are discussed in social media.

The context of the Snowden-NSA story may also have made it somewhat different from other kinds of public debates. At the time of this study, the material leaked by Edward Snowden related to NSA monitoring of communications dealt specifically with “meta-data” collected on people’s phone and internet communications. For a phone call, the meta-data collected by the NSA was described as including the duration of the call, when it happened, the numbers the call was between, but not a recording of the call. For email, meta-data would have included the sender and recipient’s email addresses and when it was sent, but not the subject or text of the email.

Additional information leaked by Snowden after our study was completed suggests that Western intelligence agencies monitored and manipulated the content of online discussions and the NSA recorded the content of foreign phone calls. In reaction to these additional revelations, people may have adjusted their use of social media and their willingness to discuss a range of topics, including public issues such as government surveillance. However, given the limited extent of the information leaked by Snowden at the time the survey was fielded, it seems unlikely that the average American had extensively altered their willingness to discuss political issues. Future research may provide insight into whether Americans have become more or less willing to discuss specific issues on-and offline as a result of government surveillance programs.  While this study focused on the Snowden-NSA revelations, we suspect that Americans use social media in similar ways to discuss and get news about other political issues.

About this Report

An informed citizenry depends on people’s exposure to information on important political issues and on their willingness to discuss these issues with those around them. The rise of social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, has introduced new spaces where political discussion and debate can take place. This report explores the degree to which social media affects a long-established human attribute—that those who think they hold minority opinions often self-censor, failing to speak out for fear of ostracism or ridicule. It is called the “spiral of silence.”

This report is a collaborative effort based on the input and analysis of the following individuals:5

Keith N. Hampton, Associate Professor, Rutgers University
Lee Rainie, Director, Internet Project
Weixu Lu, PhD student, Rutgers University
Maria Dwyer, PhD student, Rutgers University
Inyoung Shin, PhD student, Rutgers University
Kristen Purcell, Associate Director for Research, Internet Project

Other major reports from the Pew Research Center Internet Project on the social and political impact of social networking sites on social and political activity can be found at:

http://www.pewinternet.org/2012/10/19/social-media-and-political-engagement/
http://www.pewinternet.org/2012/09/04/politics-on-social-networking-sites/
http://www.pewinternet.org/2013/04/25/civic-engagement-in-the-digital-age/
http://www.pewinternet.org/2012/02/03/why-most-facebook-users-get-more-than-they-give/
http://www.pewinternet.org/2011/06/16/social-networking-sites-and-our-lives/
http://www.pewinternet.org/2004/10/27/the-internet-and-democratic-debate/

About this survey

This report contains findings from a nationally representative survey of 1,801 American adults (ages 18+) conducted by the Pew Research Center and fielded August 7-September 16, 2013 by Princeton Research Associates International. It was conducted in English and Spanish on landline (N=901) and cell phones (N=900). The margin of error for the full sample is plus or minus 2.6 percentage points. Some 1,076 respondents are users of social networking sites and the margin of error for that subgroup is plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.

OUR TOTALITARIAN FUTURE – PART TWO

In Part One, I asked questions your keepers don’t want to answer truthfully, while providing the contextual setting for how our over-populated world is progressing relentlessly towards a future of war and totalitarianism.

Totalitarianism Now

“Where the republican or limited monarchical tradition is weak, the best of constitutions will not prevent ambi­tious politicians from succumbing with glee and gusto to the temptations of power. And in any country where numbers have begun to press heavily upon avail­able resources, these temptations cannot fail to arise. Over-population leads to economic insecurity and so­cial unrest. Unrest and insecurity lead to more con­trol by central governments and an increase of their power. In the absence of a constitutional tradition, this increased power will probably be exercised in a dictatorial fashion.” – Aldous Huxley – Brave New World Revisited – 1958

         

Huxley wrote his dystopian masterpiece in 1931 before the rise of Stalin, Hitler and Mao and their murderous totalitarian empires, sustained by torture, mass murder, surveillance, and fear. Orwell wrote 1984 in 1948, after living through the nightmare of World War II and witnessing the malevolent systematic terrorism inflicted upon innocent populations by psychopathic tyrants like Hitler and Stalin. World War II killed 65 million people. Stalin’s purges killed 20 million Russians, and Mao murdered 45 million of his own people. It appeared that Orwell’s gruesome vision of a future of brutality, surveillance, and fear would come true.

Instead, Huxley’s vision gained ground in the post war world of cheap oil, mass production, consumerism, and TV advertising. It was found that government through terror works on the whole less well than government through the non-violent manip­ulation of the environment and of the thoughts and feelings of individual men, women and children. Propaganda, amusements, materialism, easily accessible debt, and relentless media messaging convinced the masses to love their enslavement and never dream of revolution. It worked as long as energy and debt remained cheap and plentiful.

The 4.4 billion increase (157%) in the world’s population since Huxley’s warning in 1958 is attributable to vast supplies of cheap easily accessible oil, natural gas and coal, which have allowed technological and agricultural advancements that have vastly expanded food production, water purification, global transportation, and medical advancements. With the peak in traditional worldwide oil production reached around 2005, and modest subsequent production increases obtained only by mining tar sands, fracking shale and drilling in deep water at much higher production costs, the era of cheap plentiful energy has come to an end.

Propaganda and storylines about vast reserves and energy independence fail to acknowledge the concept of Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROEI). Once it requires investing more than one barrel of oil in energy to extract one barrel of oil, the game is over. We are approaching the limits of growth because our remaining energy resources will require much more capital investment and higher prices for companies to make that investment. Oil prices were $25 per barrel when George Bush and the neo-cons launched their Iraq Freedom campaign in 2003. Eleven years later, with U.S. oil production at 44 year highs and consumption at 2000 levels, a barrel of oil is over $100 per barrel. The combination of increased demand from developing countries, vastly higher production costs, and global unrest in the areas of the world storing “our” oil under their sand will put a floor on prices, with spikes upward as resource wars flare up around the globe.

It is not a coincidence that the world economic system collapsed in 2008 after oil prices topped $140 per barrel. World food prices also spiked to all-time highs in 2008. The surge in food prices in 2011 to new highs was the impetus for the Arab Spring and social unrest across the Middle East and Africa. The FAO World Food Index spiked to levels only exceeded in 2011 earlier this year. Oil prices have surged as high as $106 and have averaged over $100 in 2014. Do you think it is just a coincidence that social unrest across the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Europe has surged in the last few months? Rising prices and the increasing scarcity of food, water and energy resources push the desperately poor towards revolution.

 

Societal strife, economic decline, poverty, lawlessness, and resource deprivation in third world countries result in dependency upon a central authority to sustain the masses. In the poorest countries without a long history of democracy, the people turn to a strong leader to save them. Before long too much power is accumulated in too few hands and totalitarian regimes are born. The world is awash in the blood spilled by dictators (North Korea, Egypt, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe, Iran, Tunisia, Syria, Sudan) and presidents in name only (China, Vietnam, Nigeria, Turkey, Ukraine, Venezuela, Russia, Argentina).

Dreadfully poor people with no hope for a better future turn to radical religion, extremist ideas, and psychotic leaders. A full belly trumps freedoms and liberties. It is not surprising that despots proliferate in the poorest countries with the highest population growth rates. The so called developed world in the U.S. and Europe had been able to sidestep and even take advantage of these developing countries until the 2008 financial collapse. The oligarchs have treated the third world as slave plantations to be reaped, plundered and pillaged. Their banker solution to a crisis caused by the fraudulent issuance of debt products has been to redouble their looting and pillaging campaign through the issuance of even more debt in order to further enrich themselves at the expense of the many.

Huxley saw it beginning to happen even during the late 1950’s:

“Meanwhile impersonal forces over which we have almost no control seem to be pushing us all in the direction of the Brave New Worldian nightmare; and this impersonal pushing is being consciously acceler­ated by representatives of commercial and political organizations who have developed a number of new tech­niques for manipulating, in the interest of some minor­ity, the thoughts and feelings of the masses.” – Aldous Huxley – Brave New World Revisited – 1958

I think Huxley underestimated the lengths to which a minority of criminal wealthy bankers, their crony capitalist corporate co-conspirators, and feckless bought off politicians would go in their sociopathic manipulation of the masses to gorge themselves upon the world’s resources and wealth. In 1958 the manipulators only had TV in its infancy and independent newspapers published by journalists who attempted to report the truth. They’ve come a long way baby.

The Deep State, Silent Government, Oligarchs, TPTB, or whatever term you want to employ to our Brave New World Controllers have mastered the art of propaganda, manipulation, distraction, and social engineering to such an extent the majority of Americans have come to love their techno-narcissistic, debt saturated, welfare/warfare, surveillance state. When a minority of evil minded men gain control of a nation’s currency, own and control the few remaining propaganda news outlets, run the mega-corporations selling toxic poison processed food and iGadgets to the masses on debt issued by Wall Street banks, pay-off the politicians writing legislation and tax codes, and brainwash the youth through government controlled education, your Brave New World nightmare has arrived.

Huxley believed that over-population was not an immediate threat to the personal freedoms of Americans and Europeans due to their long history under democratic constitutions. Of course our national debt of $276 billion in 1958 was only 57% of our annual GDP of $482 billion. The population of 175 million could easily be sustained, with ample supplies of energy, food and jobs. The standard of living for families rose consistently and an economy based upon savings, capital investment, and producing things flowed wealth across all classes – raising all boats. Banks accumulated deposits from citizens and leant money to small businesses. There were no stock options, derivatives, stock buybacks, or trading profits. People borrowed sparingly and saved for the things they wanted.

Huxley predicted trouble by the beginning of the twenty first century if the population of the U.S. continued to outpace the available resources to support that population. He was right again. The party ended in 2000.The National Debt has soared to $17.6 trillion, or 104% of GDP in 2014. Why did the debt go up by a factor of 64 while GDP only advanced by a factor of 35? In 1958, prior to the blossoming of the welfare/warfare state, there were little to no unfunded liabilities. Today the total exceeds $200 trillion. A country adding debt at this astronomical rate is a country consuming far more than it is producing. Depletion of resources, overconsumption, and economic decline lead to debt expansion and centralized government control. When 20% of all households depend upon food stamps to survive, your country has too many mouths to feed and a failing economic system designed to serve the oligarchs and impoverish the peasants.

Consumer debt outstanding in 1958 totaled $48 billion, all non-revolving debt mainly for auto purchases. The credit card did not exist. Consumer debt outstanding today totals $3.2 trillion. Has this 6,667% increase in consumer debt benefitted the average person or Jamie Dimon and his ilk? Is it a rational choice of consumers in a free capitalist market or is it a result of coordinated actions by the banking cabal and their captured government benefactors to enslave the masses in debt while keeping them dumbed down and distracted by electronic gadgets produced in slave labor camps overseas under the guise of globalization? Huxley didn’t anticipate Federal Reserve bankers and cowardly captured politicians purposefully inflating away 88% of the U.S. dollar’s purchasing power as they expanded the welfare/warfare state through monetary manipulation, abandonment of gold backed currency and unfettered debt expansion. The result is real wages haven’t advanced in the last 40 years, while corporate profits reach record heights and a small cadre of oligarchs reap the rewards of debt enslavement of the many.

 

The Ponzi scheme system created by the invisible “leaders” of the supposedly free developed world required never ending growth to support the never ending issuance of debt in order to keep the fleecing of the masses operation running smoothly. This is where increasing population and resource depletion have thrown a monkey wrench into their printing press operation. The autocrats harvested energy and minerals resources from third world countries, while utilizing the catch phrase of globalization, as a cover for their wage arbitrage mechanism to continue their worldwide pillaging scheme. The Ivy League educated moguls are extremely smart when it comes to figuring out new and creative ways to screw the common folk, but their unparalleled hubris and arrogant disregard for humanity blind them to the ultimate consequences of their malevolent machinations. There will be blood and they will not escape unscathed. War is coming, but not the war they anticipate.

The definition of totalitarianism is a political system in which the state holds total authority over the society and seeks to control all aspects of public and private life wherever possible. Our two party farce of a political system is aligned to control our lives through laws, regulations, rules, bylaws, procedures, tax codes, taxation, inflation, and debt, enforced by government apparatchiks, bureaucrats, politicians, bankers, police state thugs, and when all else fails – the military. While the masses were distracted by facebooking, texting, twittering, instagramming, taking selfies, playing Words with Friends, engaging make believe enemies on their PS3 or Xbox, watching the Kardashians on one of their 700 cable TV stations, or shopping for Chinese produced crap at one of our 1.5 million cookie cutter chain retail boxes, those in control of this country covertly turned the nation into a surveillance state while militarizing local police forces. They know the endless growth story is over. Our oppressors fear the repercussions when the masses realize it’s all been a big lie and they are left impoverished and hungry. They are attempting to instigate foreign wars, while preparing for the coming civil war.

The confusion, chaos, mayhem and war currently shaking the foundations of our planet are a direct result of too many people jammed into too small of a space with too few resources and too few opportunities for economic advancement. Poor, deprived, hungry people with nothing to lose begin to lose it. Revolution, civil unrest, radicalism, the rise of extremists and despots, and totalitarian regimes are the result. The invasion of Iraq was about oil. The overthrow of Gaddafi was about oil. The ongoing attempt to overthrow Assad is about a natural gas pipeline to Europe in order to isolate the Russians. The Ukrainian coup is about Russian natural gas and oil. The sanctions and saber rattling over Iran’s nuclear program is really about their oil. The United States is utilizing their military industrial complex and CIA assets to instigate turmoil and war around the world in an effort to gain control over the dwindling energy resources in the Middle East and Africa. Russia and China are blocking U.S. efforts at every turn, as the world inches ever closer to a major resource war.

Huxley’s Brave New World dystopian America had a good run from 1950 until 2000. Our keepers kept us fat, dumb, distracted, and in debt up to our eyeballs. Since 2000 Orwell’s 1984 dystopian Surveillance States of America seems to be taking shape, under the watchful eye of our very own Big Brother, the NSA. Fear, punishment, slogans (See Something Say Something) and appeals to non-thinking patriotism have replaced freedom, liberty, individual rights, the Constitution, personal responsibility for our own lives and questioning authority. The propagandists created the War on Terror as a way to keep the ignorant masses fearful and cowering behind the skirts of Big Brother. The 2008 financial collapse was another crisis that couldn’t go to waste. The Federal Government has expanded the spending of your tax dollars by 40% since 2007. The DHS concentrates on the internal enemy – you. The military industrial complex creates new foreign enemy threats every day – Hussein, Gaddafi, Ahmadinejad, Assad, and now Putin.

The monetary and fiscal policies of the country have remained in permanent crisis mode because the Ponzi scheme can’t be maintained without a constant debt fix. As our permanent state of crisis devolves into war, our remaining liberties will be stripped away in the name of safety, security and unquestioned support of the state. Huxley knew that we would consume, obey and submit until dictatorship became almost inevitable. Will you sit idly by while a small cabal of power hungry men destroys our country? Will you send your sons off to wars manufactured by tyrants as cannon fodder to further enrich the military industrial complex? Will you make a stand when they begin to round up subversives, dissenters, and malcontents under the guise of protecting you from domestic terrorists? Will you choose liberty and freedom over repression and descent into captivity and totalitarianism? The choice is yours.

“But liberty, as we all know, cannot flour­ish in a country that is permanently on a war footing, or even a near-war footing. Permanent crisis justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by the agencies of the central government. And permanent crisis is what we have to expect in a world in which over-population is producing a state of things, in which dictatorship becomes almost inevitable.” – Aldous Huxley – Brave New World Revisited – 1958

 

Are you a believer?

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

Or a truth seeker?

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

FACEBOOK IS MANIPULATING & CONDITIONING YOU

Welcome to the Brave New World where you are conditioned, manipulated, and entertained by unseen men seeking control, power and wealth. You’ve been conditioned to love your servitude. Bernays and Huxley had you pegged 80 years ago. Facebook will tell you how you should feel today.

 
2014-06-28 12:18 by Karl Denninger

What You Signed Up For

I bet you thought Facebook tweaked your feed to provide you with “relevant” information you might find useful.

What if you found out that instead they “tweaked” it in an attempt to determine whether they could manipulate your emotional state?

Scientists at Facebook have published a paper showing that they manipulated the content seen by more than 600,000 users in an attempt to determine whether this would affect their emotional state. The paper, “Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks,” was published inThe Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences. It shows how Facebook data scientists tweaked the algorithm that determines which posts appear on users’ news feeds—specifically, researchers skewed the number of positive or negative terms seen by randomly selected users. Facebook then analyzed the future postings of those users over the course of a week to see if people responded with increased positivity or negativity of their own, thus answering the question of whether emotional states can be transmitted across a social network. Result: They can!

There seems to be this idea that you can get “something for nothing”, or the “something” you “pay” is in some way beneficial.  But what if it’s not?  What if it’s intended to manipulate how you think and respond to events around you?  What if that manipulation doesn’t end with an advertising message trying to get you to buy one product over another?

A rather liberal reading of Facebook’s terms would probably lead you to conclude that you agreed to this when you signed up for an account.  But this much is certain — you weren’t told about it in advance, and you didn’t explicitly consent.

This particular instance came to light because it led to a published research paper.  How much of this is going on in other venues entirely in secret, covered by the same sort of “policy agreement”, without your consent?

My best guess: A whole lot of it.

RETAIL DEATH RATTLE GROWS LOUDER

The definition of death rattle is a sound often produced by someone who is near death when fluids such as saliva and bronchial secretions accumulate in the throat and upper chest. The person can’t swallow and emits a deepening wheezing sound as they gasp for breath. This can go on for two or three days before death relieves them of their misery. The American retail industry is emitting an unmistakable wheezing sound as a long slow painful death approaches.

It was exactly four months ago when I wrote THE RETAIL DEATH RATTLE. Here are a few terse anecdotes from that article:

The absolute collapse in retail visitor counts is the warning siren that this country is about to collide with the reality Americans have run out of time, money, jobs, and illusions. The exponential growth model, built upon a never ending flow of consumer credit and an endless supply of cheap fuel, has reached its limit of growth. The titans of Wall Street and their puppets in Washington D.C. have wrung every drop of faux wealth from the dying middle class. There are nothing left but withering carcasses and bleached bones.

Once the Wall Street created fraud collapsed and the waves of delusion subsided, retailers have been revealed to be swimming naked. Their relentless expansion, based on exponential growth, cannibalized itself, new store construction ground to a halt, sales and profits have declined, and the inevitable closing of thousands of stores has begun.

The implications of this long and winding road to ruin are far reaching. Store closings so far have only been a ripple compared to the tsunami coming to right size the industry for a future of declining spending. Over the next five to ten years, tens of thousands of stores will be shuttered. Companies like JC Penney, Sears and Radio Shack will go bankrupt and become historical footnotes. Considering retail employment is lower today than it was in 2002 before the massive retail expansion, the future will see in excess of 1 million retail workers lose their jobs. Bernanke and the Feds have allowed real estate mall owners to roll over non-performing loans and pretend they are generating enough rental income to cover their loan obligations. As more stores go dark, this little game of extend and pretend will come to an end.

Retail store results for the 1st quarter of 2014 have been rolling in over the last week. It seems the hideous government reported retail sales results over the last six months are being confirmed by the dying bricks and mortar mega-chains. In case you missed the corporate mainstream media not reporting the facts and doing their usual positive spin, here are the absolutely dreadful headlines:

Wal-Mart Profit Plunges By $220 Million as US Store Traffic Declines by 1.4%

Target Profit Plunges by $80 Million, 16% Lower Than 2013, as Store Traffic Declines by 2.3%

Sears Loses $358 Million in First Quarter as Comparable Store Sales at Sears Plunge by 7.8% and Sales at Kmart Plunge by 5.1%

JC Penney Thrilled With Loss of Only $358 Million For the Quarter

Kohl’s Operating Income Plunges by 17% as Comparable Sales Decline by 3.4%

Costco Profit Declines by $84 Million as Comp Store Sales Only Increase by 2%

Staples Profit Plunges by 44% as Sales Collapse and Closing Hundreds of Stores

Gap Income Drops 22% as Same Store Sales Fall

Ann Taylor Profit Crashes by 75% as Same Store Sales Fall

American Eagle Profits Tumble 86%, Will Close 150 Stores

Aeropostale Losses $77 Million as Sales Collapse by 12%

Big Lots Profit Tumbles by 90% as Sales Flat & Exiting Canadian Market

Best Buy Sales Decline by $300 Million as Margins Decline and Comparable Store Sales Decline by 1.3%

Macy’s Profit Flat as Comparable Store Sales decline by 1.4%

Dollar General Profit Plummets by 40% as Comp Store Sales Decline by 3.8%

Urban Outfitters Earnings Collapse by 20% as Sales Stagnate

McDonalds Earnings Fall by $66 Million as US Comp Sales Fall by 1.7%

Darden Profit Collapses by 30% as Same Restaurant Sales Plunge by 5.6% and Company Selling Red Lobster

TJX Misses Earnings Expectations as Sales & Earnings Flat

Dick’s Misses Earnings Expectations as Golf Store Sales Plummet

Home Depot Misses Earnings Expectations as Customer Traffic Only Rises by 2.2%

Lowes Misses Earnings Expectations as Customer Traffic was Flat

Of course, those headlines were never reported. I went to each earnings report and gathered the info that should have been reported by the CNBC bimbos and hacks. Anything you heard surely had a Wall Street spin attached, like the standard BETTER THAN EXPECTED. I love that one. At the start of the quarter the Wall Street shysters post earnings expectations. As the quarter progresses, the company whispers the bad news to Wall Street and the earnings expectations are lowered. Then the company beats the lowered earnings expectation by a penny and the Wall Street scum hail it as a great achievement.  The muppets must be sacrificed to sustain the Wall Street bonus pool. Wall Street investment bank geniuses rated JC Penney a buy from $85 per share in 2007 all the way down to $5 a share in 2013. No more needs to be said about Wall Street “analysis”.

It seems even the lowered expectation scam hasn’t worked this time. U.S. retailer profits have missed lowered expectations by the most in 13 years. They generally “beat” expectations by 3% when the game is being played properly. They’ve missed expectations in the 1st quarter by 3.2%, the worst miss since the fourth quarter of 2000. If my memory serves me right, I believe the economy entered recession shortly thereafter. The brilliant Ivy League trained Wall Street MBAs, earning high six digit salaries on Wall Street, predicted a 13% increase in retailer profits for the first quarter. A monkey with a magic 8 ball could do a better job than these Wall Street big swinging dicks.

The highly compensated flunkies who sit in the corner CEO office of the mega-retail chains trotted out the usual drivel about cold and snowy winter weather and looking forward to tremendous success over the remainder of the year. How do these excuse machine CEO’s explain the success of many high end retailers during the first quarter? Doesn’t weather impact stores that cater to the .01%? The continued unrelenting decline in profits of retailers, dependent upon the working class, couldn’t have anything to do with this chart? It seems only the oligarchs have made much progress over the last four decades.

Screen-Shot-2014-03-29-at-9.23.25-PM.png

Retail CEO gurus all think they have a master plan to revive sales. I’ll let you in on a secret. They don’t really have a plan. They have no idea why they experienced tremendous success from 2000 through 2007, and why their businesses have not revived since the 2008 financial collapse. Retail CEOs are not the sharpest tools in the shed. They were born on third base and thought they hit a triple. Now they are stranded there, with no hope of getting home. They should be figuring out how to position themselves for the multi-year contraction in sales, but their egos and hubris will keep them from taking the actions necessary to keep their companies afloat in the next decade. Bankruptcy awaits. The front line workers will be shit canned and the CEO will get a golden parachute. It’s the American way.

The secret to retail success before 2007 was: create or copy a successful concept; get Wall Street financing and go public ASAP; source all your inventory from Far East slave labor factories; hire thousands of minimum wage level workers to process transactions; build hundreds of new stores every year to cover up the fact the existing stores had deteriorating performance; convince millions of gullible dupes to buy cheap Chinese shit they didn’t need with money they didn’t have; and pretend this didn’t solely rely upon cheap easy debt pumped into the veins of American consumers by the Federal Reserve and their Wall Street bank owners. The financial crisis in 2008 revealed everyone was swimming naked, when the tide of easy credit subsided.

The pundits, politicians and delusional retail CEOs continue to await the revival of retail sales as if reality doesn’t exist. The 1 million retail stores, 109,000 shopping centers, and nearly 15 billion square feet of retail space for an aging, increasingly impoverished, and savings poor populace might be a tad too much and will require a slight downsizing – say 3 or 4 billion square feet. Considering the debt fueled frenzy from 2000 through 2008 added 2.7 billion square feet to our suburban sprawl concrete landscape, a divestiture of that foolish investment will be the floor. If you think there are a lot of SPACE AVAILABLE signs dotting the countryside, you ain’t seen nothing yet. The mega-chains have already halted all expansion. That was the first step. The weaker players like Radio Shack, Sears, Family Dollar, Coldwater Creek, Staples, Barnes & Noble, Blockbuster and dozens of others are already closing stores by the hundreds. Thousands more will follow.

This isn’t some doom and gloom prediction based on nothing but my opinion. This is the inevitable result of demographic certainties, unequivocal data, and the consequences of a retailer herd mentality and lemming like behavior of consumers. The open and shut case for further shuttering of 3 to 4 billion square feet of retail is as follows:

  • There is 47 square feet of retail space per person in America. This is 8 times as much as any other country on earth. This is up from 38 square feet in 2005; 30 square feet in 2000; 19 square feet in 1990; and 4 square feet in 1960. If we just revert to 2005 levels, 3 billion square feet would need to go dark. Does that sound outrageous?

  • Annual consumer expenditures by those over 65 years old drop by 40% from their highest spending years from 45 to 54 years old. The number of Americans turning 65 will increase by 10,000 per day for the next 16 years. There were 35 million Americans over 65 in 2000, accounting for 12% of the total population. By 2030 there will be 70 million Americans over 65, accounting for 20% of the total population. Do you think that bodes well for retailers?

  • Half of Americans between the ages of 50 and 64 have no retirement savings. The other half has accumulated $52,000 or less. It seems the debt financed consumer product orgy of the last two decades has left most people nearly penniless. More than 50% of workers aged 25 to 44 report they have less than $10,000 of total savings.

  • The lack of retirement and general savings is reflected in the historically low personal savings rate of a miniscule 3.8%. Before the materialistic frenzy of the last couple decades, rational Americans used to save 10% or more of their personal income. With virtually no savings as they approach their retirement years and an already extremely low savings rate, do retail CEOs really see a spending revival on the horizon?

  • If you thought the savings rate was so low because consumers are flush with cash and so optimistic about their job prospects they are unconcerned about the need to save for a rainy day, you would be wrong. It has been raining for the last 14 years. Real median household income is 7.5% lower today than it was in 2001. Retailers added 2.7 billion square feet of retail space as real household income fell. Sounds rational.

  • This decline in household income may have something to do with the labor participation rate plummeting to the lowest level since 1978. There are 247.4 million working age Americans and only 145.7 million of them employed (19 million part-time; 9 million self-employed; 20 million employed by the government). There are 92 million Americans, who according to the government have willingly left the workforce, up by 13.3 million since 2007 when over 146 million Americans were employed. You’d have to be a brainless twit to believe the unemployment rate is really 6.3% today. Retail sales would be booming if the unemployment rate was really that low.

  • With a 16.5% increase in working age Americans since 2000 and only a 6.5% increase in employed Americans, along with declining real household income, an inquisitive person might wonder how retail sales were able to grow from $3.3 trillion in 2000 to $5.1 trillion in 2013 – a 55% increase. You need to look no further than your friendly Too Big To Trust Wall Street banks for the answer. In the olden days of the 1970s and early 1980s Americans put 10% to 20% down to buy a house and then systematically built up equity by making their monthly payments. The Ivy League financial engineers created “exotic” (toxic) mortgage products requiring no money down, no principal payments, and no proof you could make a payment, in their control fraud scheme to fleece the American sheeple. Their propaganda machine convinced millions more to use their homes as an ATM, because home prices never drop. Just ask Ben Bernanke. Even after the Bernanke/Blackrock fake housing recovery (actual mortgage originations now at 1978 levels) household real estate percent equity is barely above 50%, well below the 70% levels before the Wall Street induced debt debacle. With the housing market about to head south again, the home equity ATM will have an Out of Order sign on it.

  • We hear the endless drivel from disingenuous Keynesian nitwits about government and consumer austerity being the cause of our stagnating economy. My definition of austerity would be an actual reduction in spending and debt accumulation. It seems during this time of austerity total credit market debt has RISEN from $53.5 trillion in 2009 to $59 trillion today. Not exactly austere, as the Federal government adds $2.2 billion PER DAY to the national debt, saddling future generations with the bill for our inability to confront reality. The American consumer has not retrenched, as the CNBC bimbos and bozos would have you believe. Consumer credit reached an all-time high of $3.14 trillion in March, up from $2.52 trillion in 2010. That doesn’t sound too austere to me. Of course, this increase is solely due to Obamanomics and Bernanke’s $3 trillion gift to his Wall Street owners. The doling out of $645 billion to subprime college “students” and subprime auto “buyers” since 2010 accounts for more than 100% of the increase. The losses on these asinine loans will be epic. Credit card debt has actually fallen as people realize it is their last lifeline. They are using credit cards to pay income taxes, real estate taxes, higher energy costs, higher food costs, and the other necessities of life.

The entire engineered “recovery” since 2009 has been nothing but a Federal Reserve/U.S. Treasury conceived, debt manufactured scam. These highly educated lackeys for the establishment have been tasked with keeping the U.S. Titanic afloat until the oligarchs can safely depart on the lifeboats with all the ship’s jewels safely stowed in their pockets. There has been no housing recovery. There has been no jobs recovery. There has been no auto sales recovery. Giving a vehicle to someone with a 580 credit score with a 0% seven year loan is not a sale. It’s a repossession in waiting. The government supplied student loans are going to functional illiterates who are majoring in texting, facebooking and twittering. Do you think these indebted University of Phoenix dropouts living in their parents’ basements are going to spur a housing and retail sales recovery? This Keynesian “solution” was designed to produce the appearance of recovery, convince the masses to resume their debt based consumption, and add more treasure into the vaults of the Wall Street banks.

The master plan has failed miserably in reviving the economy. Savings, capital investment, and debt reduction are the necessary ingredients for a sustained healthy economic system. Debt based personal consumption of cheap foreign produced baubles & gadgets, $1 trillion government deficits to sustain the warfare/welfare state, along with a corrupt political and rigged financial system are the explosive concoction which will blow our economic system sky high. Facts can be ignored. Media propaganda can convince the willfully ignorant to remain so. The Federal Reserve can buy every Treasury bond issued to fund an out of control government. But eventually reality will shatter the delusions of millions as the debt based Ponzi scheme will run out of dupes and collapse in a flaming heap.

The inevitable shuttering of at least 3 billion square feet of retail space is a certainty. The aging demographics of the U.S. population, dire economic situation of both young and old, and sheer lunacy of the retail expansion since 2000, guarantee a future of ghost malls, decaying weed infested empty parking lots, retailer bankruptcies, real estate developer bankruptcies, massive loan losses for the banking industry, and the loss of millions of retail jobs. Since I always look for a silver lining in a black cloud, I predict a bright future for the SPACE AVAILABLE and GOING OUT OF BUSINESS sign making companies.

SMOKING GUN FROM THE FEDERAL RESERVE MURDER OF THE MIDDLE CLASS

“Although low inflation is generally good, inflation that is too low can pose risks to the economy – especially when the economy is struggling.” – Ben Bernanke

“The true measure of a career is to be able to be content, even proud, that you succeeded through your own endeavors without leaving a trail of casualties in your wake.” – Alan Greenspan

There you have it – the wisdom of two Ivy League educated economists who are primarily liable for the death of the American middle class. They now receive $250,000 per speaking engagement from the crooked financial parties their monetary policies benefited; write books to try and whitewash their legacies of failure, fraud, and hubris; and bask in the glow of the corporate mainstream media propaganda storyline of them saving the world from financial Armageddon. Never have two men done so much damage to so many people, so quickly, and are not in a prison cell or swinging from a lamppost. Their crimes make Madoff look like a two bit marijuana dealer.

The self-proclaimed Great Depression “expert” Ben Bernanke peddles pabulum about inflation being too low and posing dire risk to the economy, but is blasé that swelling the Federal Reserve balance sheet debt from $900 billion in 2008 to $4.4 trillion today with his digital printing press poses any systematic risk to the country and its citizens. Either his years in academia have blinded him to the reality of his actions upon the lives of real people living in the real world, or his real constituents have not been the American people, but the Wall Street bankers that pulled his puppet strings over the last eight years.

Now that he has passed the Control-P button to Yellen, he is reaping the rewards of bailing out Wall Street and further enriching them with QEfinity. Ben earned a whopping $200,000 per year as Federal Reserve chairman. He now rakes in $250,000 per speech from the very financial interests who benefited from his traitorous monetary machinations. I don’t think he will be invited to speak at any little league banquets by formerly middle class parents whose standard of living has been declining since the 1980s. Is it a requirement that every Federal Reserve chairperson lie, obfuscate, misinform, hide the truth, and do the exact opposite of what they say they will do?

“It is not the responsibility of the Federal Reserve – nor would it be appropriate – to protect lenders and investors from the consequences of their financial decisions.” – Ben Bernanke – October 2007

Greenspan, Bernanke and Yellen have always been worried about deflation, while even the government suppressed CPI calculation reveals that inflation has risen by 108% since the day Greenspan assumed office in August 1987. The dollar has lost 52% of its purchasing power in the last 27 years of Fed induced bubbles and busts. And these scholarly academic bozos have been worried about deflation the entire time. Since Nixon closed the gold window in 1971 and unleashed the two headed inflation loving gargoyle of debt issuing bankers and feckless self-serving politicians upon the American people, the dollar has lost 83% of its purchasing power (even using the bastardized BLS figures).

Any critical thinking person with their eyes open knows the official inflation figures have been systematically understated since the 1980’s by at least 3% per year. Should the average American be more worried about deflation or inflation, based upon what has occurred during the 100 years of the Federal Reserve controlling our currency?

I’m sure Greenspan is content and proud, as he succeeded through his own endeavors in rewarding, encouraging and propagating excessive risk taking by the Wall Street cabal during his 19 year reign of error. He exited stage left as the biggest bubble in history, created by his excessively low interest rate policy, blew up and destroyed the 401ks and home values of the middle class. This was the second bubble under his monetary guidance to burst. The third bubble created by these Keynesian acolytes of easy money will burst in the near future, further impoverishing what remains of the middle class and hopefully igniting a long overdue revolution.

Greenspan’s pathetic excuse for a career has benefitted those who owned him, while leaving a trail of casualties that circles the globe. His inflationary dogma, Wall Street enriching doctrine and Keynesian motivated schemes have drained the savings and confiscated the wealth of the middle class through persistent and devastating inflation. And it was done by a man who knew exactly what he was doing.

“Under the gold standard, a free banking system stands as the protector of an economy’s stability and balanced growth… The abandonment of the gold standard made it possible for the welfare statists to use the banking system as a means to an unlimited expansion of credit… In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation” – Alan Greenspan – 1966

The abandonment of the gold standard in 1971 set in motion four decades of consumer debt accumulation on an epic scale, currency debauchment, and real wage stagnation. The consumer debt accumulation was a consequence of the American middle class being lured into debt by the Too Big To Trust Wall Street banks and their corporate media propaganda machine, as a fallacious response to stagnating real wages when their jobs were shipped to China by mega-corporations using wage arbitrage to boost quarterly profits, their stock prices, and executive bonuses.

The bottom four quintiles have made no progress over the last four decades on an inflation adjusted basis. The middle quintile, representing the middle class, has seen their real household income grow by less than 20% over the last 43 years. And this is using the understated CPI. In reality, even with two spouses working today versus one in 1971, real household income is lower today than it was in 1971.

Click to View

The more recent data, during the Greenspan/Bernanke inflationary era, is even more disconcerting and destructive. Real median household income has grown at an annualized rate of less than 0.5% over the last thirty years. During the bubblicious years from 2000 through 2014, while Wall Street used control fraud and virtually free money provided by the Fed to siphon off hundreds of billions of ill-gotten profits from the economy, the average middle class family saw their income drop and their debt load soar. This is crony capitalism success at its finest.

The oligarchs count on the fact math challenged, iGadget distracted, Facebook focused, public school educated morons will never understand the impact of inflation on their daily lives. The pliant co-conspirators in the dying legacy media regurgitate nominal government reported income figures which show median household income growing by 30% over the last fourteen years. In reality, the real median household income has FALLEN by 7% since 2000 and 7.5% since its 2008 peak. Again, using a true inflation figure would yield declines exceeding 15%.

Greenspan and Bernanke’s monetary policies loaded the gun; Wall Street bankers cocked the trigger with their no doc negative amortization mortgages, $0 down – 0% interest – 7 year subprime auto loans, introducing the home equity line ATM, and $20,000 lines on dozens of credit cards; the media mouthpieces parroted the stocks for the long run and home prices never fall bullshit storyline, encouraging Americans to pull the trigger; government apparatchiks and bought off politicians and their deficit expanding fiscal policies, pointed the gun; and the American people pulled the trigger by believing this nonsense, blowing their brains all over the fine Corinthian leather interior of their leased BMWs sitting in the driveway in front of their underwater McMansions.

Median household income in the United States peaked in 1999. The internet boom, housing boom and now QE boom have done nothing beneficial for middle class Americans. They have been left with lower real income, less home equity, no savings, and no hope for a better tomorrow. Most states saw their median household income peak over a decade ago, with more than half the states experiencing double digit declines and ten states experiencing declines of 19% or higher. It’s clear who has benefitted from the fiscal policies of spendthrift politicians and the spineless inhabitants of the Mariner Eccles Building in the squalid swamplands of Washington D.C. – the pond scum inhabiting that town. The median household income in D.C. stands at an all-time high. Winning!!!!

A former inhabitant of Washington D.C. spoke the truth about inflation and the men who benefit from it in the 1870’s. He was later assassinated.

“Who so ever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce and when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate.” – James Garfield

The Federal Reserve, a private bank representing the interests of its Wall Street owners, has been in existence for 100 years. It has managed to diminish the purchasing power of the dollar by 95%, while causing depressions, enabling never ending warfare, allowing politicians to expand the welfare state to immense unsustainable proportions, and enriched its true constituents on Wall Street beyond the comprehension of average Americans. In 2002 Ben Bernanke made his famous helicopter speech where he promised to drop dollars from helicopters to fight off the ever dangerous deflation. After the Fed created 2008 worldwide financial collapse he fired up his helicopters, but dropped trillions of dollars on only one street in America – Wall Street. He dropped turkeys on Main Street, and we all know from Les Nesman what happens when you drop turkeys from helicopters.

Les Nesman: Oh, they’re crashing to the earth right in front of our eyes! One just went through the windshield of a parked car! This is terrible! Everyone’s running around pushing each other. Oh my goodness! Oh, the humanity! People are running about. The turkeys are hitting the ground like sacks of wet cement! Folks, I don’t know how much longer… The crowd is running for their lives.

Arthur Carlson: As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.

The intellectual turkeys running this treacherous institution create a new and larger crisis with each successively desperate gambit to keep their Ponzi scheme alive. Even though Greenspan, Bernanke and Yellen are highly educated, they are incapable or unwilling to focus on the practical long-term implications of their short-term measures to keep this perverted financial scheme from imploding. Denigrating savings and capital investment, while urging debt financed spending on foreign produced trinkets and gadgets passes for economic wisdom in the waning days of our empire. Courageous and truthful leaders are nowhere to be found as the country circles the drain. Farewell middle class. It was nice knowing you.

“There are men regarded today as brilliant economists, who deprecate saving and recommend squandering on a national scale as the way of economic salvation; and when anyone points to what the consequences of these policies will be in the long run, they reply flippantly, as might the prodigal son of a warning father: “In the long run we are all dead.” And such shallow wisecracks pass as devastating epigrams and the ripest wisdom.” – Henry Hazlitt – Economics in One Lesson

 

DO NO EVIL GOOGLE – CENSOR & SNITCH FOR THE STATE

“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

I find the quote above by Edward Bernays to be a perfect synopsis for everything that has come to pass over the last century. The world has become increasingly controlled by an invisible government of greedy Wall Street bankers, shadowy billionaires, immoral big business, crooked politicians, and the military industrial complex, with mammoth media conglomerates, purposefully using propaganda to manipulate and mold the minds of the masses in order to exert power and control over our lives. He wrote those words in 1928, when the only available forms of manipulation were newspapers and radio. Bernays would be ecstatic and delighted with the implements available today used by our corporate fascist state controllers as they deliver the electronic messaging guiding the public mind.

He never dreamed of television, the internet, social media, and the ability of corporations like Google, in full cooperation with the government, to censor the truth, while feeding misinformation and state sanctioned propaganda to the masses in such an efficient and effective mode. Compelling the masses to worship at the altar of technology, while idolizing the evil men running our largest banks and corporations, has been a prodigious success for the shadowy ruling power and their mass media propaganda agents. Mike Lofgren, former congressional insider and author of The Party Is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless and the Middle Class Got Shafted, describes these mysterious perfidious men as the Deep State:

Yes, there is another government concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose leaders we choose.

My analysis of this phenomenon is not an exposé of a secret, conspiratorial cabal; the state within a state is hiding mostly in plain sight, and its operators mainly act in the light of day. Nor can this other government be accurately termed an “establishment.”

 All complex societies have an establishment, a social network committed to its own enrichment and perpetuation. In terms of its scope, financial resources and sheer global reach, the American hybrid state, the Deep State, is in a class by itself. That said, it is neither omniscient nor invincible. The institution is not so much sinister (although it has highly sinister aspects) as it is relentlessly well entrenched.

Far from being invincible, its failures, such as those in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, are routine enough that it is only the Deep State’s protectiveness towards its higher-ranking personnel that allows them to escape the consequences of their frequent ineptitude. – Mike Lofgren, Anatomy of the Deep State

The techno-narcissistic American public has been manipulated into falsely believing their iGadgets, Facebook, Twitter, and thousands of Apps have made them smarter, freer and safer. As Goethe proclaimed, the majority of willfully ignorant Americans are hopelessly enslaved, while falsely believing they are free. Our controllers, through relentless propaganda and misinformation pounded into our brains by the government controlled education system and unrelenting messaging by their mass media co-conspirators, have molded the minds and opinions of the vast majority into believing government and mega-corporations are beneficial and indispensable to their well-being.

The overwhelming majority have been conditioned like rats to believe anything their keepers feed them. In order to keep society running smoothly, with little dissent, thought, opposition or questioning, the Deep State utilizes all the tools at its disposal to manipulate, influence, coerce, bully and bribe the populace into passive submission. They’ve trained us to love our servitude. The Inner Party sees this as essential to their continued control, power and enrichment, while keeping the Proles impoverished, ignorant, fearful and distracted with bread and circuses.

http://www.netcharles.com/orwell/pics/1984/1984-social-classes.gif

The key weapon in their arsenal of obedience is technology and the mega-corporations that control the flow of information disseminated to the hypnotized mindless masses. The United States has devolved into a society where a few powerful unelected unaccountable men, controlling the levers of government, education, finance, and media are able to formulate the opinions, tastes, beliefs, and fears of the masses through the effective and subtle use of technology. They have tenaciously and unflinchingly fashioned a technology addiction among the masses in order to keep them distracted, entertained and uninterested in thinking, gaining knowledge, or comprehending their roles and responsibilities as citizens in a purportedly democratic republic.

The mass media, along with their corporate compatriots – Microsoft, Apple, Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, Yahoo, Facebook and Google, gather vast amounts of data, emails, phone calls, texts, internet searches, spending habits, credit information, passwords, videos and private personal information from an agreeable, gullible and trusting populace. Americans have a seemingly infinite capacity for blindly counting on the government and the corporatocracy to use this data in an honorable and ethical manner. But, as Edward Snowden has revealed, the corporate fascist state is collecting every shred of data on every American in a systematic and thorough way. We have voluntarily surrendered our privacy, liberties, and freedoms to mega-corporations like Google and their techno-brethren, who then willingly collaborate with Big Brother NSA and allow unfettered access to this private information.

The U.S. Constitution along with the First and Fourth Amendments are meaningless to these deceitful entities. Our freedoms have dissipated at the same rate we have adopted the technological “innovations” of Facebook, Twitter, and Google. We are being monitored, scrutinized, tracked and controlled by the technology we have exuberantly purchased from the mega-corporations stripping us of our freedom. Technological “progress” has actually resulted in a colossal regression in freedom, liberty, independence, choice, and intelligent questioning of authority. We having willingly submitted to the google shackles of tyranny in exchange for being entertained and amused by Angry Birds, Words with Friends, facebooking, texting, tweeting, posting selfies and statuses, and linking in.       

“Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.” – Aldous Huxley – Ends and Means

  google big brother-2

                 

David versus the Nameless, Faceless Goliath Robot

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” – Upton Sinclair – I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked

 

My enlightening encounter with the nameless, faceless $52 billion “non-evil doing” behemoth entity known as Google, over the last month, has clarified my understanding of how the invisible governing body of the Deep State uses the power of the all-mighty dollar to suppress dissent and obscure the truth. My inconsequential libertarian minded blog that attracts 15,000 visitors per day has been up and running for the last five years. I started my own blog because I didn’t want to deal with ongoing censorship of my articles by Wall Street sellout blogs such as Seeking Alpha, Minyanville, and Financial Sense.

Their salary/living depended upon them not publishing articles critical of Wall Street and the government. My intention has never been to make a living from my blog. Any donations or incidental advertising revenue allowed me to upgrade my server capacity to handle more visitors. I’m certainly not averse to making money, but the sole purpose of my blog has been to try and open people’s eyes to Wall Street criminality, political corruption, media propaganda, and the perilous financial state of our country. Therefore, I was pleasantly surprised when Google approved my website for ads in December.

I will admit my site has been essentially an un-moderated free for all going back to the very beginning in 2009. I do not believe in censorship or false civility. I attempt to induce anger and outrage with every article and post. These are desperate times and anger is the appropriate reaction. The country is on a burning platform of unsustainable policies and practices which threaten the future of our society. I’m pissed off and I want others to be just as pissed off. The regular commenters are intelligent, critical, opinionated, and not afraid to unload with both barrels on fellow regulars or newbies. The language is often strong and the posting of pictures and images adds to the frat house like atmosphere. Regular contributors include doctors, farmers, engineers, business owners, accountants, teachers, waitresses, students, homemakers, soldiers, spies, and retirees. The wild-west nature of the site is not a secret to anyone who has ventured a peek. I assume Google did a review of the site before approving it for their Adsense program.

I started running Google ads on my site in early December. My site operated as it always had. The $30 per day in ad revenue was welcome, as it helped defray my server and security expenses. I experience a surge in visitors whenever I publish an article that gets picked up by fellow truth telling alternative media websites like Zero Hedge, 321 Gold, Washington’s Blog, Jesse’s Cafe Americain, Steve Quayle, Monty Pelerin, Doug Ross, Market Oracle, Dollar Collapse, TF Metals and several others. I published an article called The Retail Death Rattle on January 20 which obliterated the false government and mainstream media recovery storyline and skewered the delusional incompetent CEOs of mega-retailers. It struck a nerve as it generated the highest visitor count in history for my site. It was even picked up by Wall Street Journal owned Marketwatch. My articles are highly critical of Wall Street, the Federal Reserve, corrupt Washington politicians and the feckless captured legacy media, but they usually fly under the radar of the ruling class. On January 22 Google disabled my ads for “policy violations”. This is the vague non-specific description provided by the non-human policing bot:

Scraped content

It’s important for a site displaying AdSense to offer significant value to the user by providing unique and relevant content, and not to place ads on auto-generated pages or pages with little to no original content. This may include, but is not limited to:

·        copying portions of text content from other sources

·        websites dedicated to embedded videos from other hosts

·        websites with gibberish content that makes no sense or seems auto-generated

·        templated or pre-generated websites that provide duplicate content to users.

Sexual content

Google ads may not be placed on pages with adult or mature content. This includes, but is not limited to, pages with images or videos containing:

·        Strategically covered nudity

·        Sheer or see-through clothing

·        Lewd or provocative poses

·        Close-ups of breasts, buttocks, or crotches

Over the last five years I have received exactly ZERO complaints from other websites or authors about re-posting their articles, with full attribution and links, on my website. No one can accuse my site of not having unique and relevant content. I have permission to post articles from Zero Hedge, Charles Hugh Smith, Michael Snyder, Jim Kunstler, David Stockman, John Mauldin, Doug Casey, Paul Rosenberg, Fred Reed and dozens of other brilliant truthful journalists detailing our societal decay. Was there some Kate Upton bikini Gifs and provocative Salma Hayak pictures scattered within the 200,000 comments made on the site in the last five years? Guilty as charged. It seems Google reviewers can’t see the hypocrisy of running ads to meet young bikini clad Asian girls, while disabling ads because there are a few bikini pictures on the website. I suspected my article had drawn the Eye of Sauron in my direction and this was the response.

http://tolkiengateway.net/w/images/f/fc/The_Lord_of_the_Rings_Online_Shadows_of_Angmar_-_Eye_of_Sauron.png

 

Speaking truth to power during these perilous times has repercussions. But I decided to make a good faith effort to follow their rules.

I had made almost 15,000 posts over the last five years. Over the next week I scanned the site and archived posts that included articles from mainstream media websites, along with a hundred or so bikini pictures. You never deal with a human being when attempting to satisfy the Google Gestapo. Identical canned appeal denial responses are issued from Google Central with no clarification or effort to help you understand their reasoning.

Hello,

Thank you for providing us with additional information about your site. However, after thoroughly reviewing theburningplatform.com and taking your feedback into consideration, we’re unable to re-enable ad serving to your site at this time, as your site appears to still be in violation.

When making changes, please note that the URL mentioned in your policy notification may be just one example and that the same violations may exist on other pages of your website. Appropriate changes must be made across your entire website before ad serving can be enabled on your site again.

If you’d like to have your site reconsidered for participation in the AdSense program, please review our program policies and make any necessary changes to your webpages.

We appreciate your cooperation.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team         

There must have been some miscommunication within the Google Gestapo, as the ads were re-enabled after one week and my third appeal. A newbie, who didn’t get the memo, must have mistakenly activated my ads. Regular commenters and contributors were confused by what they could and couldn’t post on the site, as was I. The iron fist of the Google Stasi came down once again within a week, with the identical policy violation notice. I made the assumption that since the site was declared in compliance as of January 29, I only had to address anything posted since that date.

I had purged the site of any and all risqué pictures, so I knew that wasn’t a real issue. I thoroughly reviewed every post made since January 29 and archived or edited them to leave no doubt I was meeting Google’s vague guidelines. I continued to have my appeals rejected. I then went back a year and archived hundreds of other posts. By the fourth appeal rejection, I realized I would never meet their standard because it wasn’t really about violating Google content policies. It was my libertarian, anti-government, anti-Wall Street, anti-Mega-Corporation, anti-Surveillance State views that were the real issue. They were attempting to make me “not understand” or write about the creeping corporate fascist paradigm overtaking the country by making my Google salary dependent on “not understanding”.

Once I understood this truth, I was set free to provoke and prod the nameless, faceless Google entity and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt their true purpose. Their appeal form allows 1,000 characters for your response. Along with the actions I had taken, I began to question the integrity of the Google apparatchik “reviewer”, as it was clear the site was not in violation. I had archived over a thousand posts and tens of thousands of comments. I challenged the man behind the Google curtain to provide me with proof the site was still in violation. I must have struck a nerve, as out of the blue I received a new violation notice.

 Violent or disturbing content

AdSense publishers are not permitted to place Google ads on pages with violent or disturbing content, including sites with gory text or images.

Now this was funny. My site focuses on the financial, political, and social decay of our country. It in no way advocates or promotes violence. It has no graphic images or gory videos. If Google is attempting to suppress videos of revolutions occurring in Venezuela, Ukraine, and Syria from being seen by citizens of the world, their credibility is zero. If Google is attempting to suppress videos of police brutality against citizens or the police state locking down an entire city while violating the Fourth Amendment, they prove themselves to be nothing more than a fascist propaganda tool of the State. This violation notice was laughable, but I decided to call their bluff one last time. I spent three days and archived 14,000 out of the 15,000 posts ever made on my site. All that remained were my main articles, published on dozens of other sites with Google ads active, and original content produced by myself or other approved contributors. There was no violent content, scraped content, or sexual content on my website.

My ninth and final appeal was denied. I then proceeded to write an FU Google post on my website and inform my readers and contributors they were unshackled from the Google Evil Empire of Censorship. I’m in the process of restoring all of the posts I had archived. Some might argue that Google is just exercising their rights under our free market capitalism system. I would argue free market capitalism does not exist today. The unholy alliance of big banks, big corporations, big military and big media has created a state run by the few for the benefit of the few. They use their control of the purse strings to manipulate minds, crush dissent, and censor through bullying and bribery.

Once I mentally liberated myself from their financial control, I was able to see their game. They essentially wanted me to purge the site of every anti-establishment example of free speech and First Amendment rights I had ever written, in order to kneel before the altar of $$$ in the Church of Google. Google would be perfectly fine if I converted my website into a chat-fest where I discussed the details of the upcoming Kim and Kanye wedding, pondered deep issues regarding the benefits of gay marriage, conducted polls on who The Bachelor will choose to be his betrothed this season,  mused about what Hollywood stars will wear at the Academy Awards, and debated who will win the fourteenth season of American Idol. The Google money would flow freely as I contributed to the dumbing down and sedation of the masses. I have chosen not be a Judas that sells out my readers and the American public for 30 pieces of fiat to the Google Pharisees and the American corporate fascist surveillance empire.

This was not the first time the Deep State attempted to silence my anarchistic viewpoint. On June 5 Edward Snowden, American hero and patriot, released the first of thousands of documents detailing the traitorous actions of the NSA, Obama, Congress, the Judicial branch, and the corporate media. Snowden revealed the government, in cooperation with Google, Verizon, Facebook and a myriad of other technology/media companies, was collecting metadata and conducting mass surveillance of every American in violation of the Fourth Amendment, a clearly illegal form of search and seizure.

On June 19 I penned an article titled Who Are the Real Traitors? In the article I declared Obama, James Clapper, Dick Cheney, Diane Feinstein, Peter King and a plethora of other politicians, faux journalists, and talking media heads as the real traitors of the American people. The article achieved wide distribution through my usual channels and must have again drawn attention in Mordor on the Potomac. Two days later anyone with McAfee or Norton security were receiving false warnings about a malicious virus on my site. Long time readers in the military informed me the site was now blocked by the Department of Defense as a dangerous website. Other long-time readers informed me their corporations were now blocking access to the site. The site was inundated by denial of service attacks. It slowed to a crawl and was virtually inaccessible. I’m sure it was just a coincidence.  

I was forced to switch server companies and hire an anti-hacking company to protect the site, thereby increasing my cost to run the site by a factor of 10. Even though the companies I hired confirmed there were no malicious viruses on the site, Norton continued to scare Internet Explorer users from reading my site for the next eight months. How the $8 billion Symantec (owns Norton) entity could rationalize this false warning on only $80 billion Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, seems suspicious to me. The warning would not appear if you accessed the site with Mozilla Firefox, even if you employed Norton security. Norton makes it virtually impossible to appeal their false danger rating. I’m sure thousands of people were scared away from my website by these unaccountable corporate entities, working on behalf of the all-powerful state. Lofgren’s Deep State or Bernays’ Invisible Government hate the truth. They despise anyone who attempts to open the eyes of the public to their deception, criminality, and propaganda.             

Google has become a tool and partner of the Deep State. Enrichment of the state within the state is their sole purpose. Google’s Don’t Be Evil motto, originated when they were a fledgling company in 2000, has become a farce as they have descended into the netherworld as the information police for the ruling despots. They are now a humungous corporation with near monopoly control over the flow of information, searches, emails, and internet advertising. They know more about you and your habits than you do. They attempt to control freedom of speech at the point of a wire transfer. Fall into line or no advertising blood money for you. Not only do they suppress viewpoints through advertising revenue bullying, they manipulate their search engine results to hide the truth from the masses.  Google search engines filter, block and bury blog posts that contain content or information it deems incompatible with the message of its corporate fascist co-conspirators. Its oppressive corporate practices on behalf of its evil partners are an abridgment of the freedom of speech, perversion of the truth, and active attempt to mold the minds of the masses.

One of the most intelligent and cleverest contributors to my website, Nick (aka Stucky), summed up the evil entity known as Google in this pointed comment on my website:

There is an Entity out there who knows every search you ever made.

The Entity knows all about your emails, the content and address.

The Entity knows what you buy online and how often.

The Entity is developing software to predict what you will buy next.

The Entity can now even watch you, and know where you are, and what you are doing.

The Entity even knows your habits.

The Entity has enormous resources and stacks of cash.

The Entity shares your information with Lesser Entities … and also The Big Evil Entity that rules us all.

The Entity makes the NSA, CIA, FBI, DHS, and their ilk look like Lightweight Chumps.

The Entity hates you. You are just a means to an end.

The Entity is building a Profile all about you.

The Entity will soon know you better than you know yourself.

Welcome to Google, the most evil Entity on the planet.

As a society we have fallen asleep at the wheel. We’ve allowed ourselves to be lulled into complacency, distracted by minutia, mesmerized by technology, turned into consumers by corporations, pacified by financial gurus and Ivy League economists, and fearful of our own shadows. Surveillance, censorship and propaganda are the tools of the oppressive state. Free speech and truthful revelations about the Deep State are a danger in the eyes of our oppressors. Words retain power and can change the hearts and minds of a tyrannized citizenry willing to listen. V’s speech to London in the movie V for Vendetta, with slight modification, captures the essence of how Google fits into the evil matrix we inhabit today.  

Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn’t there?

Cruelty and injustice…intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance, coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who’s to blame? Well certainly there are those who are more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable. But again, truth be told…if you’re looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror.

I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn’t be? War. Terror. Disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you and in your panic you turned to the government and their banking/corporate patrons. They promised you order. They promised you peace. And all they demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent.

I choose not to silently and obediently consent to the will of the Deep State. Google will not silence me. We are in the midst of a Fourth Turning and I will try to do my small part in sweeping away the existing social order and trying to replace it with a system that honors and follows the U.S. Constitution. In Part 2 of this expose of evil, I’ll provide further proof of Google’s hypocrisy, censorship, and willing participation in spying on the American people. I’m beginning to understand the major conflict which will drive this Fourth Turning – The People vs The Corporate Fascist State.

WARNING: The National Security Agency is recording and storing this communication as part of its unlawful spying program on all Americans … and people worldwide. The people who created the NSA spying program say this communication – and any responses – can and will be used against the American people at any time in the future should unelected bureaucrats within the government decide to persecute us for political reasons. Private information in digital communications is being shared between Google, Facebook, Verizon and the government. It will be used against you when it suits their purposes.

GOOGLE, CHINA, THE NSA AND THE FOURTH TURNING

“Even if you’re not doing anything wrong, you’re being watched and recorded. …it’s getting to the point where you don’t have to have done anything wrong, you simply have to eventually fall under suspicion from somebody, even by a wrong call, and then they can use this system to go back in time and scrutinize every decision you’ve ever made, every friend you’ve ever discussed something with, and attack you on that basis, to sort of derive suspicion from an innocent life.” – Edward Snowden

google big brother

In my previous article Do No Evil Google – Censor & Snitch for the StateI addressed my experience with censorship through direct and indirect means by Google, other media related corporations and the Deep State they choose to protect, promote and perpetuate through propaganda. I found it interesting that websites heavily dependent on Google Adsense revenue who normally publish my articles either didn’t publish it or released it at a time when the least amount of visitors would see it. The almighty dollar usually wins out over truth in our one dimensional degenerate capitalism society, driven by greed, consumerism, gluttony and debt.

In this article I’ll examine how Google, Microsoft, Facebook Verizon and the rest of the internet based mega-corporations have consciously cooperated with the NSA and the rest of the surveillance state to violate the Fourth Amendment rights of every American. Our Founding Fathers had plenty of experience with authoritarian overlords who had no hesitation in kicking in the doors of private citizens to search and seize whatever they desired. The men who formulated the Constitution and Bill of Rights were clear and concise in their language. They laid out the right of all citizens to privacy in one perfectly succinct sentence. The putrid den of vipers in Congress today would use 10,000 sentences to insure this right would be null and void.     

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Media mouthpieces for the Deep State use their platform to lie, misinform and obscure the truth about a basic right owed to all Americans. They claim we have a living Constitution, while they methodically and systematically murder it. The only rights that matter are the rights of the invisible government of rich powerful men who pull the strings in this corporate fascist surveillance state. Justice Potter Stewart illuminated the Fourth Amendment in the 1967 Katz case. He concluded the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places.

A “search” occurs for purposes of the Fourth Amendment when the government violates a person’s “reasonable expectation of privacy.” Katz’s reasonable expectation of privacy thus provided the basis to rule the government’s intrusion, though electronic means rather than physical entry, was a search covered by the Fourth Amendment, and thus necessitated a warrant. Today, our Big Brother government controllers use the Constitution and Fourth Amendment to wipe their asses, while goliath media corporations cooperate to keep the profits flowing.     

“Even though we don’t know which companies the NSA has compromised – or by what means – knowing that they could have compromised any of them is enough to make us mistrustful of all of them. This is going to make it hard for large companies like Google and Microsoft to get back the trust they lost. Even if they succeed in limiting government surveillance. Even if they succeed in improving their own internal security. The best they’ll be able to say is: “We have secured ourselves from the NSA, except for the parts that we either don’t know about or can’t talk about.” – Bruce Schneier

The profane alliance between big banks, big corporations, and big government has created the Big Brother surveillance society we are living under today. And 95% of the populace is either willfully ignorant or perfectly happy with a boot stomping on their face forever. We have willingly become hopelessly enslaved while believing we are free. We think we are free to buy whatever clothes, iGadgets, baubles and trinkets we desire, while becoming imprisoned in the chains of credit card debt hawked by Wall Street bankers. We think we are free to pursue higher education, while being saddled with government peddled non-dischargeable student loan debt and few job opportunities. We think we are free to buy/lease whatever new vehicle we choose every three years, while falling into the trap of lifetime monthly payments to the financial elite. We imagine ourselves free to live in a 4,500 sq foot McMansion, 50 feet from another McMansion, while Wall Street creatively lures you into the shackles of an epoch of debt. We believe we live in a country admired for its morality and freedom, while in actuality the world despises us for our hubris, meddling, murdering and hypocrisy.

We assumed we were free to communicate with other citizens, utilizing the amazing technological advances of the past twenty five years, in accordance with the freedoms guaranteed under the Fourth Amendment. American patriot Edward Snowden has revealed how wrong this assumption has proven to be. The puppeteers who control the politicians and government apparatchiks have no interest in allowing citizens privacy, freedom, liberty or free speech. They have a four pronged approach to controlling the masses.

1.    Use media propaganda and modern day bread and circuses (toxic processed food, reality TV, sports, movies) to amuse and confuse the government educated, eyes wide shut, populace.

2.    Use wars on poverty, drugs, and terror to keep the willfully ignorant masses cowering in fear, begging for more government programs, and pleading for more laws, regulations and statutes, which strip our freedoms, liberties and rights.

3.    Highly compensate the intellectuals, media pundits, economists, and thought leaders to promote the agenda of the ruling class. Truth is of no concern. Propaganda, misinformation, outright lies, and spinning a storyline are the techniques of choice to keep the masses bemused, confused and defused.

4.    As the Brave New World techniques begin to fail and more people are awakened to the increasing tyranny of an unelected invisible government, Orwellian techniques are instituted. The metadata collection by the NSA, with the cooperation of corporate America, is being done to intimidate those who might voice discontent and provide the controllers with the means to eliminate opposition and freedom of speech.

A population unable or unwilling to think critically doesn’t comprehend the extreme danger to our civil liberties from the unwarranted intrusion into our private lives by a surveillance police state bent on bribing, coercing and silencing dissent, truth and First Amendment rights. Civil libertarian, John Whitehead, captures the essence of our plight.

“Intrinsically, privacy is precious to the extent that it is a component of a liberty. Part of citizenship in a free society is the expectation that one’s personal affairs and physical person are inviolable so long as one remains within the law. A robust concept of freedom includes the freedom from constant and intrusive government surveillance of one’s life. From this perspective, Fourth Amendment violations are objectionable for the simple fact that the government is doing something it has no license to do–that is, invading the privacy of a law-abiding citizen by monitoring their daily activities and laying hands on their person without any evidence of wrongdoing.

Privacy is also instrumental in nature. This aspect of the right highlights the pernicious effects, rather than the inherent illegitimacy, of intrusive, suspicionless surveillance. For example, encroachments on individual privacy undermine democratic institutions by chilling free speech. When citizens–especially those espousing unpopular viewpoints–are aware that the intimate details of their personal lives are pervasively monitored by government, or even that they could be singled out for discriminatory treatment by government officials as a result of their First Amendment expressive activities, they are less likely to freely express their dissident views.” – John W. Whitehead – A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State

Do No Evil, Unless it is Profitable

“I can’t in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they’re secretly building.” – Edward Snowden

 

 

It’s amazing how corporate principles, codes of conduct, ethics, and morality can be cast aside by men when their wealth and power is dependent upon casting them aside. Google’s Do No Evil slogan is now a bad joke as they have consistently ignored their own motto by doing business with evil governments, bowing down to the demands of authoritarian surveillance states, and willingly handing over the private information of people to the government. They have done this in order to boost their profits and enrich their executives. The 120 million internet users in China are too big of a market, with vast profit potential, for Google to pass up over a little torture, murder, and repression by the Chinese government. Google bowed to the Chinese government and produced a censored, state-approved version of its search portal, enabling filters that block search terms such as Tibet, Taiwanese independence, Tiananmen Square protests, Falun Gong movement, freedom, democracy, political protest and prevent the engine from finding certain websites banned by the state. It also does not offer its blog or e-mail services in China in order to comply with government restrictions denying free speech. I guess evil is in the eye of the shareholder.

Human rights groups are the only ones who have called out Google for their hypocrisy, censorship of free speech and worshiping at the altar of the almighty yuan. Google is not alone in kowtowing to the authoritarian regime in China, as Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook and any other internet provider must agree to censorship and turning over private information to the authorities. Microsoft shut down the U.S. hosted, pseudonymous blog of a Chinese journalist, and Yahoo turned over to the Chinese government personal e-mail files of an online dissident who was subsequently sentenced to ten years in prison. These corporate tools of the state care not that China is still one of the most repressive countries on Earth, with tens of thousands jailed dissidents and political prisoners, as well as being a serial abuser of copyright laws.

The Communist Party’s propaganda department has ramped up operations at Office 1106, an organization which trawls cyberspace for subversion. All websites, bloggers and bulletin-board operators must register with the government and Beijing has a special internet police force responsible for shutting down “unacceptable” sites, blocking foreign news sites and jailing people for online postings. The press freedom group Reporters Without Borders described Google’s acquiescence to authoritarianism as “a black day for freedom of expression in China”. They realized this was the first step on a downward path to loss of freedom around the world:

“But they continue to justify themselves by saying their presence has a long-term benefit. Yet the internet in China is becoming more and more isolated from the outside world and freedom of expression there is shrinking.”

The Free Tibet Campaign describes Google’s surrender as an endorsement of censorship and repression. “With this move, Google’s motto ‘do no evil’ is in smithereens,” said the campaign’s spokeswoman Alison Reynolds. “This also further contradicts those political leaders who attempt to convince us that foreign business can change China for the better.” Google Earth does not recognize the word Tibet. These corporations use the predictable spin that it will notify users when access had been restricted and argues that it could play a more useful role in China by participating than by boycotting it. Tell that to the thousands of freedom fighters languishing in gulags. We know Google willingly censors on behalf of governments. Based on the revelations from Edward Snowden, you can be sure Google provides the identities of Chinese citizens who voice dissenting opinions about the Chinese government directly to the Chinese secret police. We are all enemies of the state and subject to surveillance, censorship and ultimately imprisonment. We are living in a modern technological dystopian nightmare, with no hope of awakening.

“The world is not sliding, but galloping into a new transnational dystopia. This development has not been properly recognized outside of national security circles. It has been hidden by secrecy, complexity and scale. The internet, our greatest tool of emancipation, has been transformed into the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen. The internet is a threat to human civilization.

These transformations have come about silently, because those who know what is going on work in the global surveillance industry and have no incentives to speak out. Left to its own trajectory, within a few years, global civilization will be a postmodern surveillance dystopia, from which escape for all but the most skilled individuals will be impossible. In fact, we may already be there.

While many writers have considered what the internet means for global civilization, they are wrong. They are wrong because they do not have the sense of perspective that direct experience brings. They are wrong because they have never met the enemy.” – Julian Assange – Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet

Big Google and the Surveillance State

“Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order and the like.” – William O. Douglas – Points of Rebellion, 1969

Found it on Reddit

“We have seen segments of our Government, in their attitudes and action, adopt tactics unworthy of a democracy, and occasionally reminiscent of totalitarian regimes. We have seen a consistent pattern in which programs initiated with limited goals, such as preventing criminal violence or identifying foreign spies, were expanded to what witnesses characterized as “vacuum cleaners”, sweeping in information about lawful activities of American citizens. The tendency of intelligence activities to expand beyond their initial scope is a theme which runs through every aspect of our investigative findings. Intelligence collection programs naturally generate ever-increasing demands for new data. And once intelligence has been collected, there are strong pressures to use it against the target.”  ― Church Committee -1975

William O. Douglas and Frank Church foresaw the overreach of the surveillance state decades before Edward Snowden nobly sacrificed his future and risked his life to reveal the vast illegal collection of private phone calls, texts, emails, downloads, and every electronic communication of every person in America by a secret government agency operating in the shadows. The Chinese experience was a prelude to how Google, Yahoo, Verizon and the rest of the corporate internet/telecommunication complex would do whatever was demanded by the all-powerful NSA in order to expand their profits and avoid the ire of the Deep State.

Edward Snowden threw a monkey wrench into the well- oiled gears of the cooperative efforts of the NSA, the British NSA – GCHQ, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, Verizon, etc. to conduct the greatest mass spying program in world history. The denials, finger pointing, obfuscation, and outright lies by government bureaucrats, politicians and corporate executives came fast and furious after Snowden’s revelations. They were caught red handed committing illegal acts, in violation of the Fourth Amendment.

Denial press releases regarding knowledge of this mass spying scheme from Google and Facebook appeared to be written by the same maggot public relations firm, as they were virtually identical.

The reactions of Google and Yahoo were reminiscent of Captain Renault declaring “I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!” in Casablanca.

“We are outraged at the lengths to which the government seems to have gone to intercept data from our private fiber networks, and it underscores the need for urgent reform.” – Google

“We have strict controls in place to protect the security of our data centers, and we have not given access to our data centers to the NSA or to any other government agency.” – Yahoo

These faux expressions of outrage and surprise have been revealed by Snowden to be disingenuous and insincere.  Glenn Greenwald and the Guardian verified the authenticity of a 41-slide NSA PowerPoint presentation, classified as top secret, used to train intelligence operatives on the capabilities of the PRISM program. The presentation claims “collection directly from the servers” of nine major US service providers, including Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, and Apple. The presentation also claims the program is run with the assistance of these companies.

Once they were caught in a lie, Google and the rest of the co-conspirators in this crime tried to backtrack and say they were just obeying their masters at the NSA.  In a statement, Google said: “Google cares deeply about the security of our users’ data. We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege that we have created a government ‘back door’ into our systems, but Google does not have a back door for the government to access private user data.”

Google is supposed to be the most highly advanced cutting edge tech company on the planet, but somehow their entire system is unencrypted and available to anyone with the means to access it. That sure seems convenient. They have plausible deniability, while allowing the NSA to syphon every piece of electronic communication on its networks. No wonder this NSA diagram had a big smiley face on it.

Detail of an internal “NSA presentation slide” published by the Washington Post. The sketch shows where the public Internet meets the private cloud maintained by Google, and points out — with a smiley face — that the data within the cloud is unencrypted.

The documents released by Snowden forced Google to admit to willingly providing data, names and communications directly to the NSA. Google has a special server drop-box for the NSA where requested and approved files are placed to be taken by the NSA via secure FTP. Some printed records are delivered by hand. How much data passes through this hand-off process isn’t known because the company has refused to reveal that information.

With all the brainpower at Google HQ it is beyond laughable to believe they had no idea the NSA was collecting metadata on such a vast scale. They allowed this to happen with a wink and a nod in order to keep profits flowing. Google, Yahoo and the rest of the captured high tech industry sold out the American people for profits. They were willing participants in the largest crime in U.S. history, and there are no repercussions or prosecutions because their co-conspirators are the very government who would have to prosecute them.

The supposedly legal aspect of this spying program allows the NSA to gather huge amounts of Internet communications by legally compelling U.S. tech companies, including Google, to cooperate with officials and turn over all data that matches secret court approved search queries. This is authorized under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act. PRISM operations are overseen by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). None of this was known prior to Edward Snowden nobly deciding he could not let this go on in good conscience. Neither the government, Google nor the other communications companies would have ever revealed this program. Of course, the non-legal vacuuming of metadata is far worse and has no support whatsoever under the U.S. Constitution.

To give you some perspective on the scale of this criminal enterprise, NSA analysts processed more than 180 million records within a time span of 30 days from Google’s metadata system. The NSA gained access to who sent the message, who received the message, what the message contained and all audio and video sent on this system. The NSA secretly tapped into the private fiber-optic networks that connect Google’s and Yahoo’s worldwide data centers, allowing the spy agency to suck up “at will” bulk metadata and content belonging to users of the companies’ services.

Under a program called MUSCULAR, a joint project with British NSA counterpart the GCHQ, the NSA takes advantage of overseas taps to intercept data flowing within Google’s and Yahoo’s geographically distributed data “clouds,” where multiple copies of user data are stored unencrypted. Google “PREF” cookies, which can help identify a user’s web browser and serve up personalized ads allows NSA to single out an individual’s communications among the sea of Internet data in order to send out software that can hack that person’s computer.

The question is why is our government doing this? Are they doing it for our protection or for our subjugation? The War on Terror is really a cover for corporate fascists to further enrich themselves and gain a stranglehold on the government and financial system. There is little or no threat from terrorists in this country. The few psychopaths out there cannot impact this country in a major way. But, fear can be used by those in power to solidify their control over the masses. Before 9/11 it would have seemed unthinkable for our country to descend into a dystopian society, surrendering privacy, anonymity and individualism.

This bulk collection of private communications is their ace in the hole. Anyone who dares to question authority, resist the establishment or voice a dissenting opinion can be discredited and destroyed with personal information gathered by the NSA. One method for undermining those deemed “radicalizers” by the NSA is to document their online porn habits. The documents released by Snowden reveal NSA plans to blackmail non-conformists, as explained by Glenn Greenwald.

“Among the vulnerabilities listed by the NSA that can be effectively exploited are ‘viewing sexually explicit material online’ and ‘using sexually explicit persuasive language when communicating with inexperienced young girls.’ “

If the Deep State cannot bribe you with cash, they will invade your privacy and use personal communications to bribe you. Censorship can be exercised through many channels. The saddest part thus far is the lack of outrage by the American people. The majority of mouth breathing techno-narcissists in this country have never heard of Edward Snowden. They don’t realize he is the Paul Revere of the next American Revolution. They don’t understand the implications of not standing and fighting during this Fourth Turning. Unless enough people stand up and say NO, we will end up with turnkey tyranny.

“The great fear that I have regarding the outcome for America of these disclosures is that nothing will change. People won’t be willing to take the risks necessary to stand up and fight to change things… And in the months ahead, the years ahead, it’s only going to get worse. The NSA will say that… because of the crisis, the dangers that we face in the world, some new and unpredicted threat, we need more authority, we need more power, and there will be nothing the people can do at that point to oppose it. And it will be turnkey tyranny.” – Edward Snowden

In the final segment of this three part article – Fourth Turning: The People vs Big Brother – I’ll discuss how I think this all fits into the Fourth Turning Crisis we are currently experiencing.



Busted! – U.S. Tech Giants Knew Of NSA Spying Says Agency’s Senior Lawyer

Submitted by Michael Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

This is why I’ve been so confused and frustrated by the repeated reports of the behavior of the US government. When our engineers work tirelessly to improve security, we imagine we’re protecting you against criminals, not our own government.

The US government should be the champion for the internet, not a threat. They need to be much more transparent about what they’re doing, or otherwise people will believe the worst.

I’ve called President Obama to express my frustration over the damage the government is creating for all of our future. Unfortunately, it seems like it will take a very long time for true full reform.

So it’s up to us — all of us — to build the internet we want. Together, we can build a space that is greater and a more important part of the world than anything we have today, but is also safe and secure. I‘m committed to seeing this happen, and you can count on Facebook to do our part.

– Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg in a post last week

Last week, Mark Zuckerberg made headlines by posting about how he called President Barack Obama to express outrage and shock about the government’s spying activities. Of course, anyone familiar with Facebook and what is going on generally between private tech behemoths and U.S. intelligence agencies knew right away that his statement was one gigantic heap of stinking bullshit. Well now we have the proof.

Earlier today, the senior lawyer for the NSA made it completely clear that U.S. tech companies were fully aware of all the spying going on, including the PRISM program (on that note read my recent post: The Most Evil and Disturbing NSA Spy Practices To-Date Have Just Been Revealed).

So stop the acting all of you Silicon Valley CEOs. We know you are fully on board with extraordinary violations of your fellow citizens’ civil liberties. We know full well that you have been too cowardly to stand up for the values this country was founded on. We know you and your companies are compromised. Stop pretending, stop bullshitting. You’ve done enough harm.

From The Guardian:

The senior lawyer for the National Security Agency stated unequivocally on Wednesday that US technology companies were fully aware of the surveillance agency’s widespread collection of data, contradicting month of angry denials from the firms.

 

Rajesh De, the NSA general counsel, said all communications content and associated metadata harvested by the NSA under a 2008 surveillance law occurred with the knowledge of the companies – both for the internet collection program known as Prism and for the so-called “upstream” collection of communications moving across the internet.

 

Asked during at a Wednesday hearing of the US government’s institutional privacy watchdog if collection under the law, known as Section 702 or the Fisa Amendments Act, occurred with the “full knowledge and assistance of any company from which information is obtained,” De replied: “Yes.”

 

When the Guardian and the Washington Post broke the Prism story in June, thanks to documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden, nearly all the companies listed as participating in the program – Yahoo, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook and AOL –claimed they did not know about a surveillance practice described as giving NSA vast access to their customers’ data. Some, like Apple, said they had “never heard” the term Prism.

 

The disclosure of Prism resulted in a cataclysm in technology circles, with tech giants launching extensive PR campaigns to reassure their customers of data security and successfully pressing the Obama administration to allow them greater leeway to disclose the volume and type of data requests served to them by the government.

 

The NSA’s Wednesday comments contradicting the tech companies about the firms’ knowledge of Prism risk entrenching tensions with the firms NSA relies on for an effort that Robert Litt, general counsel for the director of national intelligence, told the board was “one of the most valuable collection tools that we have.”

Move along serfs, move along.

Full article here.

THE BROKEN LIMB & BURST PIPE FALLACIES

“Economics is haunted by more fallacies than any other study known to man. This is no accident. While certain public policies would in the long run benefit everybody, other policies would benefit one group only at the expense of all other groups. The group that would benefit by such policies, having such a direct interest in them, will argue for them plausibly and persistently. It will hire the best buyable minds to devote their whole time to presenting its case. And it will finally either convince the general public that its case is sound, or so befuddle it that clear thinking on the subject becomes next to impossible.

In addition to these endless pleadings of self-interest, there is a second main factor that spawns new economic fallacies every day. This is the persistent tendency of man to see only the immediate effects of a given policy, or its effects only on a special group, and to neglect to inquire what the long-run effects of that policy will be not only on that special group but on all groups. It is the fallacy of overlooking secondary consequences.” – Henry Hazlitt – Economics in One Lesson

 

Saturday was the first day since a double shot of snow and ice storms hit the Philadelphia metro area on Monday and Wednesday I had a chance to drive around Montgomery County and witness the devastation firsthand. Over 750,000 homes lost power at the height of the ice storm on Wednesday and over 100,000 remained without power this past weekend. The mainstream media has become such a farce and propaganda machine for vested interests, it is essential to verify with your own eyes everything they report as fact. Their purpose is to entertain the consciously ignorant, exaggerate threats to keep the low IQ multitudes fearful, and function as mouthpieces for the ruling class. Deceitful corporate executives, mendacious government apparatchiks, and oblivious teleprompter reading media talking heads have been utilizing cold weather as an excuse for every poor earnings announcement, horrific employment report, and dreadful decline in retail sales. It certainly has nothing to do with decades of stagnant household income, awful monetary and fiscal policies, or the consequences of Obamacare.  

We have become a delusional state dependent upon fallacies to convince ourselves our foolhardy beliefs, ludicrous economic policies, corrupt captured political system, and preposterously fraudulent financial system are actually based on sound logic and reason.  Some fallacies have been perpetrated intentionally by the ruling class to manipulate, sway and deceive the populace, while others have been willfully employed by millions of techno-narcissistic iGadget addicted zombies as a substitute for thinking, reasoning and taking responsibility for the course of our nation.

You have men who constitute the unseen true ruling power of the country making a conscious and intentional effort to peddle fallacies to the masses in order to manipulate, mold, and corral them in a manner beneficial to the ruling power, financially, politically, and socially. The ruling class has been hugely successful in their capture of the public mind, creating a vast majority of the willfully ignorant who desperately grasp at fallacious concepts, beliefs, and storylines in order to avoid dealing with reality and being accountable for their actions and the actions of their leaders.   

The fallacy being flogged by government drones and the legacy media about companies not hiring new employees because it has been cold and snowy during the winter is beyond absurd, except to someone who lives in the cocoon of Washington D.C. or regurgitates words processed on a teleprompter by paid minions of the ruling class. If you live in the real world, run a business, or manage employees, you understand weather has absolutely nothing to do with your decision to hire an employee. An organization takes weeks or months to hire employees. They don’t stop hiring because it snowed on Wednesday or the temperature was below normal. The contention that hiring has been weak for the last two months due to weather is outlandish and based upon flawed logic and warped reasoning. It is so illogical, only an Ivy League economist could believe it.

The other fallacy being pontificated by retail executives in denial, cheerleaders on CNBC and the rest of the propaganda press is weather is to blame for terrible retail sales over the last quarter. Again, this argument is specious in its conception. The retail executives use weather as an excuse for their failure in execution, hubris in over-expanding, and arrogance in pursuit of quarterly earnings per share and bonuses. CNBC and the rest of the Wall Street media pawns must provide lame fallacies for the corporate fascists regarding our downward economic path or the masses my wake up to reality. Protecting and expanding the wealth of the parasitic oligarch class is the one and only purpose of the corporate media.

Think about whether cold and snow in the winter will really stop purchases by individuals. If you need a new shirt for work or a pair of sneakers and it snows on Wednesday, you will wait until Saturday to make the purchase. Groceries will be consumed and replenished whether it is cold and snowy, or not. If an appliance or car breaks down, weather will be a non-factor in the new purchase decision. The proliferation of on-line retailing allows everyone to shop from the warmth of their homes. If anything, bad winter weather often spurs stocking up of groceries and the purchase of items needed to contend with winter weather (salt, shovels, coats, hats, gloves). Only an asinine spokes-model bimbo on CNBC could non-questioningly report the press release excuses of retailers. Critical thinking skills and journalistic integrity are non-essential traits among the propaganda mainstream press today.

Revealing the truth about pitiful employment growth and dreadful retail sales would destroy the fallacy of economic recovery stimulated by the monetary policies of the Federal Reserve and fiscal policies of the Federal government. The ruling class must perpetuate the myth that central bankers pumping $3.2 trillion of debt into the veins Wall Street banks and Obama dumping $6.7 trillion of debt onto the shoulders of future generations in order to cure a cancerous disease created by debt, has revived our economy and cured the disease. The unseen governing class cannot admit their traitorous actions have impoverished the working middle class, destroyed small businesses, depleted senior citizens of their savings, and warped our economic system to such an extent that recovery in now impossible. If the ignorant masses were to become sentient, the ruling class would become lamppost decorations.

After discovering water pipes at my rental property had burst due to the extreme cold weather and witnessing the widespread damage caused by the mid-week ice storm, I immediately thought how overjoyed my favorite Keynesian, Ivy League, Nobel Prize winning, New York Times scribbler, Paul (destruction is good) Krugman must be. All this destruction and devastation will be a tremendous boost to the economy according to Krugman and his ilk. This intellectually deceitful, morally bankrupt, despicable excuse for a human being spoke these words of wisdom three days after the 9/11 attacks:   

“Ghastly as it may seem to say this, the terror attack – like the original day of infamy, which brought an end to the Great Depression – could even do some economic good.  So the direct economic impact of the attacks will probably not be that bad. And there will, potentially, be two favorable effects. First, the driving force behind the economic slowdown has been a plunge in business investment. Now, all of a sudden, we need some new office buildings. As I’ve already indicated, the destruction isn’t big compared with the economy, but rebuilding will generate at least some increase in business spending.”

He had expanded his broken window beliefs to broken buildings, broken nations, and a broken people. You can’t keep a cunning Keynesian down when they need to propagate discredited fallacies in order to feed their own ego and promote foolish debt fueled spending by government, consumers and corporations as a solution to all economic ills. It makes no difference to a statist like Krugman that Frederic Bastiat had obliterated the preposterous notion that destruction and the money spent to repair the destruction was a net benefit to society, 164 years ago in his essay – That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen. Bastiat’s logic is unassailable. Only the most highly educated Princeton economists don’t get it.    

Have you ever witnessed the anger of the good shopkeeper, James B., when his careless son has happened to break a pane of glass? If you have been present at such a scene, you will most assuredly bear witness to the fact that every one of the spectators, were there even thirty of them, by common consent apparently, offered the unfortunate owner this invariable consolation – “It is an ill wind that blows nobody good. Everybody must live, and what would become of the glaziers if panes of glass were never broken?”

Now, this form of condolence contains an entire theory, which it will be well to show up in this simple case, seeing that it is precisely the same as that which, unhappily, regulates the greater part of our economical institutions.

Suppose it cost six francs to repair the damage, and you say that the accident brings six francs to the glazier’s trade – that it encourages that trade to the amount of six francs – I grant it; I have not a word to say against it; you reason justly. The glazier comes, performs his task, receives his six francs, rubs his hands, and, in his heart, blesses the careless child. All this is that which is seen.

But if, on the other hand, you come to the conclusion, as is too often the case, that it is a good thing to break windows, that it causes money to circulate, and that the encouragement of industry in general will be the result of it, you will oblige me to call out, “Stop there! Your theory is confined to that which is seen; it takes no account of that which is not seen.”

It is not seen that as our shopkeeper has spent six francs upon one thing, he cannot spend them upon another. It is not seen that if he had not had a window to replace, he would, perhaps, have replaced his old shoes, or added another book to his library. In short, he would have employed his six francs in some way, which this accident has prevented.

I wonder whether the myopic focus on only immediate impacts and inability of ideologues to understand unintended consequences is premeditated or just erroneous reasoning. The broken window fallacy can now be extended to broken limbs and burst pipes across the Northeast. Huge trees have been toppled, limbs and branches are strewn on the properties of homeowners across the region, homes and businesses have been physically damaged, and power outages wrecked profits at small businesses. Society has gained no benefit whatsoever from the mass destruction wrought by these storms. Thi

s weather induced ruin exposes GDP calculations as useless and misleading regarding the true economic health of the nation. The hundreds of millions in destruction will not be factored into the GDP calculation, but the spending by homeowners and businesses to remove downed trees, fix broken roofs, replace burst pipes and clean-up debris will be factored positively in the GDP calculation. The inevitable politician response will be increased government spending to repair damage to infrastructure. This will also be additive to GDP. Krugman will get a tingle up his leg.

CNBC’s Cramer & Liesman will rave about the unexpectedly strong GDP in the first quarter as proof the economy is doing great. The fallacy that GDP growth and stock market gains are beneficial to the average American will be flogged by the propaganda press at the behest of the ruling class until the last vestiges of national wealth are confiscated by the oligarchs. In the real world, the destruction caused by the harsh winter weather will not benefit society one iota. GDP will reflect the immediate short-term seen impact of the cleanup and repair of property damage. GDP will ignore the unseen opportunity costs which were lost and the long-term consequences of expenditures made to put property back in the condition in which it started. Destruction does not create profit, except in the Keynesian world of Krugman and his Ivy League educated sycophant cronies.

There are 2.5 million households in the Philadelphia metro area. There are hundreds of thousands with trees down, pipes frozen, gutters smashed, roofs leaking and electrical infrastructure damaged. An individual homeowner with a couple of large trees down will need to pay $500 to $1,000 for a tree service to remove the debris from their property. Considering the median household income in Montgomery County, PA is $75,000, that is not an insubstantial sum.

The homeowner did not anticipate this expenditure and will react by not dining out, taking a shorter vacation, not buying that new couch, or not investing in their small business. A landlord who has to repair busted pipes will incur added expense, resulting in less profit. Less profit means less taxes paid to the state and federal government, exacerbating their budget deficits. The landlord will defer replacing that old air conditioner for at least another year. Multiply these scenarios across the entire Northeastern United States and you have the long-term negative financial implications outweighing the short-term boost to GDP.

The Keynesian fallacy of increased economic activity being beneficial is annihilated by the fact homeowners and business owners are left in the same condition as they were prior to the storms, while the money spent to achieve the same property condition was not spent on other goods and services that would have truly expanded the economy. The fallacious government engineered GDP calculation will portray destruction as an economic boost. Keynesian worshiping economists and government bureaucrats observe this tragedy as only between two parties, the consumer who is forced to repair their property and is denied the pleasure of spending their money on something more enjoyable and the tree service company who experiences a positive impact to their business. They exclude the appliance store, restaurant, or hotel that did not receive the money spent on repairing the property. It is this third unseen party who is left out of the equation. It is this third party that shows the absurdity of believing destruction leads to profit and economic advancement. The national economic output is not increased, but highly educated government drones and Wall Street captured economists will point to GDP and disseminate the fallacy.

This leads us to government in general and the fallacy that government spending, government borrowing, and government programs are beneficial to society and the economy. Legalized plunder of the populace through income taxes, real estate taxes, sales taxes, gasoline taxes, cigarette taxes, license fees, sewer fees, tolls, and a myriad of other ass raping techniques is used to subsidize crony capitalist special interests, the military industrial complex, faux wars on poverty, drugs and terror, a failed public education system, vote buying entitlement programs, and a tax code written to benefit those who pay the biggest bribes to the corrupt politicians slithering around the halls of congress.

Government is a criminal enterprise designed to take from the weak and powerless while benefitting the connected and powerful. The government extracts the earnings of citizens and businesses at the point of a gun and redistributes those funds to special interests; funding boondoggles, wars of choice, foreign dictators, and the corporate and banking interests who control the puppet strings of Washington politicians. State organized and legal plunder designed to enrich everyone at the expense of everyone else is the delusional fallacy permeating our cultural mindset today.

President Obama declared my region a disaster area, allowing for government funds to supposedly help in the cleanup efforts. Again, the fallacy of government intervention benefiting society is unquestioned by the ignorant masses. Local and State governments are required by law to balance their budgets. The never ending progression of storms and record cold temperatures has already blown the winter storm budgets of transportation departments across the region. Gaping potholes are swallowing vehicles and will need to be repaired.

Government spokespersons and politicians tell the public not to worry. The government will come to the rescue, even when the funds officially run out. They won’t react the way a family would react to a budget overage, by cutting spending in another area. We have had mild winters in the recent past when the winter road budgets were far under. Did the government set aside this surplus for winters like the one we are currently experiencing? Of course not – they spent it on some other boondoggle program or useless shovel ready bridge to nowhere. Government politicians and their lackeys do not look beyond their 2 year election cycle.

The government budget overages due to winter storms will show up in the GDP calculation as a positive impact. A snowplow pushing snow to the side of the road and a crew filing a pothole has put the roadway back into the condition it was prior to the bad weather. The roadway is exactly the same. The money spent could have been used to pay down debt, fund the government pension shortfalls which will overwhelm taxpayers in the foreseeable future, or be given back to citizens to spend as they choose. There has been no net benefit to society.

No government spending provides a net benefit to society. Every government program, law, regulation, subsidy, tax or fee gives rise to a series of effects. The immediate seen effect may be favorable in the eyes of myopic politicians and an ignorant populace, but most government intervention in our lives proves to be fatal and unsustainable in the long-term. Whatever short-term benefits might accrue is far outweighed by the long-term negative implications on future generations. All government expenditures are foisted upon the public either through increased taxation or state created surreptitious inflation.         

We have a country built on a Himalayan mountain of fallacies. We are a short-term oriented people who only care about our present situation, giving no thought about long-term consequences of our policies, programs, laws or actions. Critical thinking skills, reasoning abilities, and a basic understanding of mathematical concepts appear to be beyond our grasp. We’d rather believe falsehoods than deal with the harsh lessons of reality. We choose to experience the severe penalties of burying our heads in the sand over using our God given ability to think and foresee the future consequences of our irrational choices. We suffer from the ultimately fatal disease of ignorance, as described by Bastiat.

This explains the fatally grievous condition of mankind. Ignorance surrounds its cradle: then its actions are determined by their first consequences, the only ones which, in its first stage, it can see. It is only in the long run that it learns to take account of the others. It has to learn this lesson from two very different masters – experience and foresight. Experience teaches effectually, but brutally. It makes us acquainted with all the effects of an action, by causing us to feel them; and we cannot fail to finish by knowing that fire burns, if we have burned ourselves. For this rough teacher, I should like, if possible, to substitute a more gentle one. I mean Foresight.

It’s a big country and one fallacy doesn’t fit all. Some fallacies are committed purposefully by evil men with evil intent. The Wall Street financial elite, big corporations, big media and their politician puppets fall into this category. Other fallacies are executed by people whose salary depends upon the fallacies being believed by the masses. Middle level bankers, managers, journalists, and bureaucrats fall into this category. And lastly you have the willfully ignorant masses who would rather believe fallacies than look up from their iGadgets, Facebook, and Twitter and think. The thing about fallacies is they eventually are buried under an avalanche of reality. If you listen closely you can hear the rumble of snow beginning to give way on the mountaintop. Fallacies are about to be crushed and swept away by the real world of consequences.

“Wall Street had been doing business with pieces of paper; and now someone asked for a dollar, and it was discovered that the dollar had been mislaid.  It was an experience for which the captains of industry were not entirely prepared; they had forgotten the public.  It was like some great convulsion of nature, which made mockery of all the powers of men, and left the beholder dazed and terrified.   In Wall Street men stood as if in a valley, and saw far above them the starting of an avalanche; they stood fascinated with horror, and watched it gathering headway; saw the clouds of dust rising up, and heard the roar of it swelling, and realized it was only a matter of time before it swept them to their destruction…

But it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon him not understanding it.”

Upton Sinclair – The Moneychangers

 

Colorado High School Cafeteria Self-Immolation

With family, school and work I don’t have much time to post on here like I would but, I thought this story might have slipped through the cracks of the MSM and TBPers might have missed it.  When will we actually have an open honest discussion about our YOUTH, the education system, pharmacology, medicine, endemic gratuitous violence in the media and personal responsibility and accountability?  Instead we sell labels as explanations and causes to much more complex and interconnected factors.  We have been brainwashed by the 20-minute sitcom plot resolution and conditioned to look for the quickest and easiest response or answer to much more dire and severe influencing factors.  I will not speculate as to whether or not this kid’s parents had him on any anti-depressants; but I must admit, the thought did cross my mind.  Many of school shooters were taking prescription medications like anti-depressants…Like many TBPers have mentioned before, this is rarely discussed on the MSM.  Hopefully Nett, pulls through and recovers!  Maybe then he might find a voice and tell us what would push a 16-year old boy to that point.

Godspeed on your recovery  and God Bless!

 

Teen who torched himself in Colorado school burned over 80% of his body

The 16-year-old boy who set himself ablaze inside a packed cafeteria at a Colorado high school in an apparent suicide bid was being treated for burns over 80% of his body, officials said.

Vince Nett remained in critical condition Tuesday, a day after he drank a water bottle filled with bleach and doused himself with a gallon of fuel before he lit himself on fire inside Standley Lake High School in Westminster, just north of Denver, KUSA-TV reported.

Nett reportedly left a suicide note on Facebook, saying his death was “not someone’s fault. I had this planned for years.” He also apologized for the way the school would smell after he roasted himself in his bid to publicly kill himself.

“If anyone says that they know why I did this…nobody knows and nobody will,” he wrote, the TV station reported.

 

…..

FACEBOOK IS AN INFECTIOUS DISEASE

Facebook will lose 80% of its 1.2 billion users by 2017. That’s what 2 Princeton PhD students have determined.

The study, by two Princeton Ph.D. candidates Joshua Spechler and John Cannarella, has created a stir by comparing Facebook to an infectious disease that spreads rapidly and then dies out.

In the study, “Epidemiological modelling of online social networks dynamics,” the Princeton students argue that Facebook is already “beginning to show the onset of an abandonment phase.”

“In this paper, we analyse the adoption and abandonment dynamics of online social networks by drawing analogy to the dynamics that govern the spread of infectious disease,” Spechler and Cannarella write.

Facebook, they suggest, is an idea, a fad that, like an illness, can spread – and then eventually fade away. They cited the rise and fall of MySpace.

“Ideas, like diseases, have been shown to spread infectiously between people before eventually dying out,” they write.

This may come as a surprise to the idiot investors that have driven the price of the stock to $55 per share, at a 140 PE ratio. They are counting on Facebook to grow at a rapid pace over the next ten years. You can bet the ranch that Wall Street is wrong again. They never tire of being wrong or fleecing muppets.

Facebook is already dying. My teenagers use it less and less. It’s mostly being used by middle aged women who want the world to know what they had for dinner and what they are watching on TV. Facebook is part of the techno-narcissistic disease that has consumed this country over the last decade. The reality of our financial situation will be the cure for this disease. Shallowness and self worship will be replaced by the need to survive.

Make sure you post this to Facebook. I need likes. Then I can Twitter about the number of likes and tell my connected friends on Linkedin.

We deserve what we get, good and hard.