Whether by rapture, nature, or computer there have been countless predictions of the end of the world over the past three millennia. These harbingers of doom have had many sources, from scripture to soothsayers, but all have been shown to be nothing but conjecture as the world has continued to revolve, the sun to shine and man to (de)evolve. Unless you've been living under a rock, don't get out to see movies nor have a Facebook wall to tell you, you probably heard something about the Maya calendar ending on December 21, 2012 augering the end of the world. Meanwhile, after a temporary break to obsess about the fact that they like to own a lot of guns so they can kill each other and anyone else they feel like, America's propaganda machine will go back to heralding the financial end of the world, the fiscal cliff. Like all good myths, both harbingers of doom freely mix fact and fiction to produce a potent brew believable enough to intoxicate the masses while ensuring the real moral of the story and a chunk of change will be lost in the panic to the propagandists.
Many Romans believed 634 BCE would bring the end based on a story in which twelve eagles, each representing ten years, revealed the lifespan of Rome to Romulus. Most religions have their own eschatological doctrines but it's the crazy Christians who have the longest list of false prophets. Harold Camping was simply the latest in a long line Christards to predict the end such as Paul the Apostle, Hilary of Poitiers and Martin of Tours. Perhaps tired of just killing infidel Muslims in the Crusades, even Pope Innocent III got into the act by adding 666 to the year Islam was founded to determine the world would end in 1284. Theology and astronomy have always been a toxic mix, but when Johannes Stoeffler used them to predict a worldwide flood he convinced many to move to higher ground and invest in boats before February 1, 1524. As many as 100,000 'Millerites' were moved enough by William Miller's preaching of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ between March 21, 1843 and March 21, 1844 to sell all their belongings. Like Camping, when the world woke up the next day to normality, Miller just moved his date back; his followers were so fervent they went on to form the Seventh-day Adventist movement.
Sowing panic in the markets has always been an easy way to make a mint for some and to steer economic policy for others. Stories of the so-called fiscal cliff are another textbook example. Nathan Mayer Rothschild’s riders and messengers were able to get news of Wellington's defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo a full day in advance of the government’s own news carriers. As the story goes, Nathan convinced the rubes he had knowledge of Napoleon's victory by selling heavily on the English stock market. When panic ensued, Rothschild had his agents snap up stocks for pennies on the pound, entrenching the family banking dynasty. Many claim the Panic of 1907, the United States' first modern financial crisis, was engineered by JP Morgan to implement certain financial regulations and ultimately the creation of the Federal Reserve System in 1913. Newspaper reports of the days ahead of the panic seem almost comical in their propagandizing prose describing the health of the financial market only to be proven completely wrong when the crash led to a drop of 21% in commodity prices, a 47% spike in bankruptcies and a rise in unemployment from 2.8 to 8%. Lucky these things could never happen today!
A simple connection can be made between today's supposed harbingers of apocalypse, the end of the Maya Calendar and the US fiscal cliff: both are completely made up and being used for gain by the mythology makers of our day. The Maya understand 17 different calendars, some of them accurately charting time over more than ten million years. The one causing all the hub-bub is the Long Count which is an astronomical calendar based on the cycle of Pleiades used to track longer periods of time. Just as with other calendars, the end of the old signals the start of the next. Americans on the other hand created the fictitious fiscal cliff just last summer when the federal debt level was about to hit the imaginary debt ceiling. Imaginary in that a limit that can be extended is not a limit but a gimick which in this case proved a useful opportunity for fearmongers. As a deal couldn't be struck, an agreement was reached for automatic spending cuts to kick in come the end of 2012 thus the name fiscal cliff was coined to scare the people into believing cuts need to be made to avert financial disaster in the new year. However, just as we can go out and buy a new calendar, the US government has the power to simply go out and 'buy' more dollars whenever they need to.
The reason it's so important for the elite to sow fear among the infotariat is that both imaginary apocalypse makers are in fact opportunities to reshape the world we live in. The current Long Count cycle finished December 21st when it reached the end of the 13th b'ak'tun which themselves are made up of 20 k'atun cycles composed of 20 tun each of which last for 18 winal cycles that are about a year long. The end of the Long Count has nothing to do with death but everything to do with rebirth. The true meaning is transformation not conflagration. According to the correlation between the Long Count and Western calendars accepted by the great majority of Maya researchers, the starting-point of the just ended Long Count cycle is equivalent to August 11, 3114 BCE. This date marks the creation of the world of human beings according to the Maya, the last great transition.
Coincidentally, we are told by textbooks that civilization began around 3,000 BCE in Mesopotamia as the Sumerians simultaneously developed all the traits of high civilization: the wheel, metallurgy, astrology, astronomy, calendars, taxation, bookkeeping, an organized priesthood and of course written texts. Ancient Egypt as we know it came
into being with the union of Upper and Lower Egypt and the start of the
First Dynasty under Menes somewhere around 3100 B.C. Should we go on about the significance of that time? Stonehenge has been dated to around 3000 B.C. It was also around 3100 B.C that stone circle building and other types of megalithic
structures were being built throughout Britain, Scotland, and Ireland.
Newgrange, the large passage-grave in Ireland, is generally dated to
about 3200 B.C. More? Civilization is said to have begun in China around 3000 B.C. with the emergence of the Yang-Shao culture. All very important, but not as big as what it all brought about. Yep, the whole system of modern slavery. Debt.
Even before there was money, there was debt. The arrival of civilization, agriculture and all its benefits also brought the plague of credit. The ancients learned to control it through systems such as the Jubilee, but in modern times we have forgotten the lessons of the past and let it become the system for the powerful to control wealth and therefore society. Nowhere has done a better job than America where the debt figures boggle the mind. Credit card debt has lagged since the financial crisis and sits a bit under a trillion but student loan debt has more than made up for the slack, powering past the trillion mark last year helping push consumer debt to $2.7 trillion. Total household debt is over $13 trillion, just a couple of trillion shy of total yearly economic output. But we better be sure not to mix these figures with the 'real' problem facing America, the federal debt.
Yes, like the rogue planet Nibiru predicted by the Mayans, serious people are warning us the federal debt will obliterate us all. Wait? What's that? The Mayans never said anything about Nibiru? It was just dreamed up in 1976 by Zecharia Sitchin in his book "The Twelfth Planet" using his own unique translation of Sumerian cuneiform to identify a planet, Nibiru, orbiting the sun every 3,600 years?Then several years later, Nancy Lieder, a self-described psychic, announced that the aliens she claimed to channel had warned her this planet would collide with Earth in 2003? After a collision-free year, the date was moved back to 2012, where it was linked to the close of the Mayan long-count period? So, it's just a mixture of science fiction and psychics? Wait. Science fiction and psychics sounds suspiciously close to the definition of economics to me.
Even though they agree on about 99% of things, Democrats and Republicans still manage to come to loggerheads often enough to make for good kabuki theater. Last year's debt ceiling fiasco not only cost the US it's AAA credit rating but also set the cuts and tax increases to go off around the end of the year. The name 'fiscal cliff' is an inapt metaphor for many reasons, but the $500 billion in tax increases and $200 billion in spending cuts represent about 4% of the US economy and would probably push the US into recession. It's a hodgepodge of policy decisions that Congress has made, or better said, not made, over the past two years, piled onto a single deadline. It's not a cliff but self-induced austerity crisis, theater designed to pressure policy makers into a deal such as the grand bargain whose ultimate goal is to dismantle social security and medicare while continuing at least a portion of the tax cuts for the rich. Despite the many other problems that exist, the added bonus of this approaching apocalypse has been that it has completely paralyzed the lame duck Congress and the status quo usually benefits one group, the plutocrats.
The simplest option is to do nothing and go over the 'cliff' but this is unlikely to happen as not only does it harm everyone but it hits the rich, the military and corporations disproportionately. While it would cut defense spending and allow taxes on the rich to return to Clinton era levels, it also would see benefits cut and taxes for all others rise as well. Additionally, with the debt ceiling fast approaching again, some kind of deal will avert the next crisis. However, the tax hikes and spending cuts are spread over two years so there isn't really any urgency. Another possible scenario is to just kick the can further down the road by simply extending the deadline by a year or two. This is what policy makers usually do from climate change to war related troop draw-downs, so don't be surprised. Finally, some kind of deal may be reached, ranging from some kind of small deal in which some tax cuts are allowed to expire along with some spending cuts to the plutocrat preferred 'grand bargain'. The media is undoubtedly pushing this as their overlords will be better able to disguise the savage cuts to the social safety net among all the other hoopla of a deal within the framework of the Simpson-Bowles plan, or the Domenici-Rivlin plan.
A healthy democracy would use this moment to its advantage by diagnosing the disease and taking its medicine. A rotten one will use it to make things worse for most while benefiting the few. Sequestration will see a range of spending cuts across the board (ie. defense and non-defense) in discretionary spending as mandated by the debt ceiling compromise, the Budget Control Act of 2011. Cutting doctors pay and unemployment insurance at a time of record low employment don't sound too bright but slicing a portion of the $300 million a day to fight an unwinnable war in Afghanistan sounds pretty good, but unfortunatelywar costs are exempt. Speaking of the unemployed, maybe increasing taxes on the 'job-creators' isn't such a bad idea. The secret is the rich aren't creating jobs at all but stealing them. Only 3.6% of the top 0.1% income earners are entrepreneurs, the majority rely on extracting rents from the rest of us. Their tax rates have fallen while the working class are paying more via payroll taxes. The other supposed engine of job creation, corporations, have done a pretty good job of avoiding paying their fair share as well. Just as the top 1% of breathing people have taken 93% of income growth since 2008, corporate non-breathing people saw their profits quickly rebound following the downturn to the point where their profits are at a record level when compared to the whole economy. Charts? You want graphs? Well, here's a few:
The Real Cliff - Employment has fallen and can't get up!
Surprisingly, cutting top marginal tax rates increases the income share of the rich!
The slow shift in tax burden from non-breathing 'people' to working class people
You might say the crisis was pretty good for corporations
The term 'fiscal cliff' was coined by none other than Ben Bernanke. You may remember him from such heists as the 2008 bank bailouts (TARP) when he helped Hank Paulsen bully Congress into handing over $700 billion to the banksters. That $700 billion sure is a familiar sounding number, isn't it? Well it should be seeing as it the amount of 'forced' austerity being brought about by bailing out banks, something that research shows predictably happens. An IMF paper showed bailouts lead to austerity. That IMF paper examined 42 banking crises between 1970 and 2007 but there's evidence all around us today from the UK to Spain and Greece.It's all so sickeningly predictable. Whatever you want to call them, the elite, oligarchs, plutocrats, Bilderbergs, they behave just like the borg from Star Trek TNG, methodically extracting all the wealth they can before moving on to the next source. The last forty-odd years were spent laying the groundwork for the biggest transfer of wealth from the bottom up the world has ever seen; the tax burden has been shifted away from the rich and corporations onto the backs of the working class, 'think tanks', 'research centers' and Faux News were created to tell the people this is normal, unions were devastated, consumerism as self-actualization became the mantra, corporations were turned into people andrewarded for shipping jobs overseas to the lowest wage countries they could find. Uh, I could go on but I already have.
Sadly, much like the end of the Long Count Mayan cycle, the fiscal cliff is being sold as disaster instead of an opportunity. The cult leaders aren't named Jones, Hubbard, Koresh, or Jouret nor were they dressed in flowing robes but garbed instead in suits and named Rand, Greenspan, Friedman and Hayek. Worse, their preachings aren't responsible for the deaths of tens or hundreds but thousands, millions and possibly eventually billions. We get to see their converts every day in our classrooms, on the streets and most often, on the TV where a parade of hucksters trying to convince us the debt was caused by Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and needs fixing before anything else. The propaganda becomes transparent when you consider a group such as Fix the Debt, which is the loudest of the fearmongers, is composed of CEOs with ties to 43 companies with over $43 billion in defense contracts. They're strangely silent about the fact that the debt is largely due to the recession, the two Bush tax cuts while paying for two wars which have caused defense spending to double since 2001 putting US military spending equivalent to the next 26 nations combined.
It's telling that as the 21st of December neared more effort was expended dispelling the Mayan apocalypse myths than extolling the possibilities that a new era of peace and unity could bring. Bolivian president Evo Morales marked the winter solstace and auspicious calendar date by extending an open invitation to the world to celebrate "the end of the Macha and the beginning of the Pacha, the end of selfishness and the beginning of brotherhood, it is the end of individualism and the beginning of collectivism." Similarly, as we near the so-called fiscal cliff, more energy is being expended to convince us the end is near if we don't make fixes which will exacerbate the problems rather than solve them. Every challenge we've faced this millennium has been made worse: 9/11 led us into a never ending global war on terror, climate change has brought an endless parade of broken promises and conferences, financial crisis a perpetual bailout for the perpetrators and sellout of the people. No, just as December 21st wasn't the end of the world, the fiscal cliff won't bring about the apocalypse but the majority of us would be better off if we turn off the current disastrous path.
Update Jan.22 -
"Tunis is the force that pushed Egypt, but what Egypt did will be the force that will push the world"
- Walid Rachid, member of the Egyptian April 6 Youth Movement
Reading the headlines and commentary from the mainstream media one would think the revolutions in Tunis and Egypt have succeeded. The corrupt, authoritarian regimes have been toppled and a future of freedom guaranteed with the only question being who will be next, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain or Iran. However, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, the people's uprising in Egypt and Mubarak's forced departure constitute the end of the beginning of their revolution. Mubarak's second choice to succeed, Omar Suleiman, AKA Snidely Whiplash is still calling the shots in a country where the army is in charge, the constitution has been suspended and the parliament dissolved. Worse, nothing has happened that will change the fact that 40% of Egyptians will now return to living on less than $2 a day in an economy set up by Hosni's first choice, his son Gamel, for the exclusive benefit of the oligarchs. However, I'm going to don my Panglossian cap and imagine that we are in fact living in the best of all possible worlds and imagine how the chaotic scenes in Cairo and Tunis could be an inspiration to spur action against repression around the world. Perhaps we've been given a wake up call and a template on how to break free of the bonds holding us hostage on an accelerating crash course for disaster woven by all of the threads that make up the tapestry of global control which we're watching fray in front of our eyes.
While the 24 hour news cycle will have us wondering if the Muslim Brotherhood will hijack the Egyptian revolution like the theocracy did in Iran over 30 years ago, I'm hopeful it will stir us to focus on what we can do to break the corpocracy which has taken a stranglehold on our democracy. Nobody wants to be told that their life is based on a lie. From the cuckolded husband (orcuckqueaned wife)to the fundamentalist fanatic the job of the propagandist is facilitated by the fact that it's much easier to continue to accept the deception than to question one's very beliefs. After sleepwalking through the aftermath of the financial crisis many people are now waking up to the reality of its consequences - draconian austerity measures are being taken by governments around the world to combat ballooning deficits fueled largely by bailouts given to large corporations combined with falling tax revenues that were the result of the greed and hubris of those very same institutions. We're told there is no other way, that we must pay. In a time of permanent war, exploding poverty, threats to civil liberties and ecological devastation, humanity faces the challenge and opportunity to choose powerful and creative nonviolent alternatives. We can continue to opt for the devastating spiral of violence and injustice, or we can build civil societies where the dignity of all is respected and the needs of all are met.
We knew the cuts would be brutal and of course regressive in the UK with the incoming Tory government last year. Yet there were hopes by some (including me, sorry guys) that their junior coalition partners, Nick Clegg's Liberal Democrats could moderate some of the cuts and would ensure that the rich would pay as well as the poor for the devastation caused by the banking collapse. Instead, Clegg, Prime Minister Cameron and his Eton cohort George Osborne cut a deal with Vodafone to forgive £4.8 billion in unpaid taxes while tripling tuition fees and making social cuts so deep there won't be enough libraries, housing or services to provide jobs or any hope for the future, let alone support Cameron's creepily Orwellian sounding Big Society. Seems the river Styx has been crossed and like Cerebrus this three-headed monster will ensure there's no escape from Hades once every public service is thrown open to outside providers, be they private companies, charities or voluntary organizations.
In a rerun of 1981, it's hoped that the public will be pacified by the pomp and circumstance of another royal wedding while the fabric of society is cut to pieces to knit a jumper for those who caused the crisis. If you live in the UK, where the economy shrunk again last quarter, and are afraid of the future being imposed on you, take a look at UK Uncut. They are calling for a Bail-In to replace the Bail-Outs of the banks to be funded by tax evaders, both corporate and personal, such as Sir Philip Green who gets to advise the government on cuts while avoiding paying taxes. They are focusing their efforts on raising awareness of how big business manages to escape corporate taxes and receive government largesse while the majority of the population is forced to pay for their losses. It is an open platform for self-organizing direct action, in other words, it's a revolution engine. Anyone anywhere can list an action anytime. Last weekend featured day cares and libraries in many Barclay's branches while next weekend will focus on RBS. Sign up to take part in one of their events near you, the biggest coming Saturday March 26th in London.
While the UK is ConDem'd by a coalition trying to channel Margaret Thatcher, across the pond there's a Democratic president doing his best Ronald Reagan imitation to please an opposition guided more by biblical scripture than scientific or economic principles. The task of waking the public from its slumber won't be easy where much of the population was so easily duped by a pair of billionaires into creating a movement that blamed the government for the economic meltdown. Conspiracy theorists no longer need rumors of the proceeding of the likes of the Bilderbergers when we've got the real life Koch brothers manipulating public policy in the open. Helped in part by last year's Supreme Court Citizens United decision, they managed to put Tea Partiers into Congress to work directly for corporations. New levels of absurdity were reached in a political process already too subservient to lobbyists by deciding that election spending is speech and that since corporations are people (really), that spending on elections by corporations can't be restricted as neither can people's speech. If you don't think it's right you can join Common Cause who are leading the fight to bring to light the conflict of interest the Supreme Court justices, particularly Clarence Thomas, who made the ruling have managed to keep hidden until now.
You may also have noticed the $1.1 trillion in cuts over 10 years announced by Obama the other day didn't take enough heating oil from the poor to placate the Republicans while bankers' bonuses have returned to eight-figure levels and corporations made record profits last quarter. Yeah, you guessed it, the cuts will ensure the poor and middle class pay for the banks and corporations screwing up the economy. You hear a lot of wingnuts complaining about the onerous 35% corporate income tax rate yet it's rarely mentioned that 115 of the S&P 500 companies actually pay less than 20% while 39 of them paid less than 10%. Oh, and that doesn't include the 37 companies like Citigroup and AIG that received more in tax credits than they paid. There's also Exxon who made $37.3 billion in profits but didn't pay a penny to Uncle Sam and most egregious of all Bank of America who made $4.4 billion pre-tax in 2009 and received $1.9 billion tax benefit and GE whose $10.3 billion in pretax income was supplemented by a tax benefit of $1.1 billion. Hoping to highlight this injustice, thanks to the 10-step guide provided by the Nation, a fledgling US Uncut movement was born. Sign up and join in the fun of the February 26th Day of Action.
On the heels of extending the Bush tax cuts which cost the government $2.48 trillion over the last 10 years (PDF comparing that to health care costs), Obama's budget cuts need to cut off grandma's heating oil. Only religious fundamentalism can explain cutting off funding for a program that saves $4 for every dollar spent (PDF) as that's exactly what the House just did by passing a resolution to end funding for Planned Parenthood. Oh, and increase military spending by $22 billion while the media repeats the duckspeak lie of cutting $78 billion. Strange, if they really wanted to cut $100 billion out of the budget, all they needed to do was end the killing of brown people in a far away land that no one seems to care about anymore. If you care, why don't you check out Russ Feingold's new movement Progressives United. You might remember him as the only good senator besides Bernie Sanders until the Tea Party money came along to unseat him; now he's got some time on his hands and a corpocracy to expose and depose. Speaking of Feingold, you might have heard there's been some action in his home state of Wisconsin.
Madison, Wisconsin has become the epicenter of the fight against the Shock Doctrine and turned it once again into what Teddy Roosevelt called America's "laboratory of democracy". The state capital might not be Tahrir Square but Feingold's home state has become the site of the most important fight in America today. New Governor Hosni Mubarek, er Colonel Gaddafi (it was Republican Representative Paul Ryan who said "It’s like Cairo has moved to Madison") no, Scott Walker has decided not to let a crisis go to waste by taking a complex problem, making it worse and using it to push through his ideological agenda. Yep, a crisis caused by rampant inequality which led to a financial crash is being paid for by public employees instead of those who got rich by fleecing the system. Should we be surprised that the Koch Industries PAC was Walker's second biggest campaign contributor?
Class warfare anyone? How is it that people making $50,000 a year are the ones who caused the crisis when John Paulson can make $5 billion and pay only 15% taxes? Ever get paid overtime? You like having weekends off? Safe workplace, health care? Remember the middle class? All courtesy of unions, a dying institution in America; coincidentally(?) the middle class is going extinct as well. Hate child-labor laws and prefer kids working in sweatshops to going to school? Well, get ready, that's what they're trying to bring back in Missouri (seriously, look). Walker wants Wisconsin wants to join Virginia, Texas, Georgia and North and South Carolina in banning collective bargaining for its teachers; those states rank 44th, 47th, 48th, 49th and 50th respectively in ACT/SAT scores nationwide while Wisconsin is currently 2nd. The oligarchs are still in control of the message, stirring up a culture war in which we blame everyone else except those who actually blew up the economy. Wake up and smell the irony, it was superwealthy players, not the general public, who pushed for financial deregulation and thereby set the stage for the economic crisis of 2008-9, a crisis whose aftermath is the main reason for the current budget crunch. And now the political right is trying to exploit that very crisis, using it to remove one of the few remaining checks on oligarchic influence.
It can be argued that many unions are in desperate need of reform but they represent the only protection we have against corporations and government. Wisconsin, considered a cradle of US labor rights and progressive social policies, was the first state to give its public workers the right to bargain collectively, a right that Scott Walker is now proposing to take away. Yep, one could understand asking workers to take pay cuts as well as contribute more to their health and pension plans but this animus goes too far and that's why people are fighting back. It's great to see Democrats finally show some spine and the people finally snap out the their trance; legislators on the lam (thank them here) and protesters on the streets. Want more crazy? Walker channeled his inner Gaddafi and ordered the National Guard to get ready to respond to a strike or any resistance to his plan. I suppose he doesn't know the last time Wisconsin called in the National Guard was way back in 1886, when they shot on a rally of Milwaukee workers advocating an eight-hour work day - five unarmed workers were killed in the massacre. We shouldn't be surprised, it was such freedom loving patriots as Limbaugh, Beck and Santorum who denounced the uprising in Egypt and insist that President Obama should have helped the Mubarak regime suppress it.
Even crazier? You betcha! The deficit that needs to be addressed by the cuts was manufactured by Walker and his cohorts. January 31st, the state had a $121.4 million surplus which was wiped out when Walker and his allies pushed through $140 million in new spending for special-interest groups. Crazier? No, can't be. Yep, the proposed bill would allow for the selling of state-owned heating/cooling/power plants without bids and without concern for the legally-defined public interest. Best yet, Walker is only proposing to strip the bargaining power of the unions who didn't support his election campaign. Coincidentally, it is the firefighters and police officers whose unions were spared that will be his last line of defense if the protests turn violent. Maybe you oughta send MiniMubarek an email to govgeneral@wisconsin.gov to let him know what you think. It might be an exaggeration to compare Cairo to Madison but what we're seeing shock resistance to the exploitation of a manufactured crisis by constricting the democratic space through the reduction of the ability of the workers to participate in the formation of their economic future. Contrary to what Faux News et al will tell you, public-sector workers in Wisconsin and elsewhere are paid somewhat less than private-sector workers with comparable qualifications (PDF). This isn't about being fiscally responsible so much as it is about power - taking it away from the people and handing it to the oligarchs. Who better than Naomi Klein herself to explain the importance of shock resistance and then why not join the Wisconsin Wave?
Exploding inequality and grinding poverty were the match that sparked the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions when struck by new and old media technologies provided by Twitter, Facebook and Al-Jazeera. Taking a more practical path and serving as a reminder that inequality in the US is greater than in Egypt Tunisia or Yemeni is the Progressive Strategy Handbook(PDF) from Cognitive Policy Works. Their proposal is set out in four parts from setting the landscape to the strategic need to set the agenda as well as the psychological nuances involved in preparing to engage the public along with the technological power of social media for driving cultural and political change and finally and perhaps most importantly, the need to be an innovator in the ultimate goal of changing how politics is done.
Perhaps you're not stirred to action watching $4 billion being given away to oil companies while cutting $1.6 billion from the EPA. There's a chance you don't care that in Arizona, cuts to the Medicare system have already killed two people and 98 more are waiting to die as the state won't pay for transplants but can give tax cuts to corporations which will cost the state $538 million by 2018. But maybe you've caught the doublespeak coming out of your telescreens and are starting to wonder why no one else has noticed the hypocrisy. How does Hillary's head not explode from the cognitive dissonance as she urges countries to embrace internet freedoms while the US is moving in the opposite direction. The House just voted to extend three controversial domestic spy provisions of the Patriot Act, customs officials seized 18 more internet domains without giving the pirate website owners a chance to challenge the forfeiture and the administration is trying to expand the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, which already requires telecoms and internet access providers to have wiretapping capabilities. The FBI wants Congress to demand that same requirement for encrypted e-mail services like Blackberry and also wants it for social networks and peer-to-peer messaging networks like Skype. Oh, and the Justice Department is in federal court trying to get Twitter to cough up records related to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and others, including an Icelandic parliamentarian.
Fancy a little vigilante justice? Think you know your way around the intertubes? Then you might want to think about joining the gang over at Anonymous. Love 'em or hate 'em, in addition to adding another computer word to the lexicon, their brand of hacktivism has gotten the attention of the powers that be. All you need is to get the Low Orbit Ion Canon (LOIC), log onto Twitter, find the latest Anonoymous tweets (if an op is in progress) and join in the revolution, but remember, you'll be up against powerful enemies with friends in high places. The first target of their information warfare was the Church of Scientology in 2007 followed by the Australian government for introducing internet censorship laws. By far their most publicized attacks however have come in defense of Wikileaks and its supporters. Operation Payback saw them take on/out Mastercard, Amazon and Paypal for behaving like the US government's lapdogs. While Assange's persecution has been well-documented, the forgotten hero may be Private Bradley Manning who may have supplied Wikileaks with the bulk of their stash of illicit trash. Based on the testimony of one extremely untrustworthy source Manning has been locked up in solitary confinement in a military brig for nine months and the torture is having the desired effect. Did we mention he's a UK citizen? No trial, indefinite detention, torture, sound familiar? Guess this is what happens to a society once they condone torture. We should all Stand With Brad, or help all soldiers who have the Courage to Resist when their conscience tells them.
Anonymous' most recent actions have revealed the most sinister face of corporatism. One moment HBGary, a private cyber-security firm, thought they had unmasked Anonymous, the next the self-styled, new-age Robin Hoods had implicated the corpocracy in a smear campaign. Among 50,000 hacked emails was a report the firm had prepared with several other online security firms on how to destroy Wikilieaks for Bank of America in their defense against yet to be released cables expected to reveal corruption and fraud at the bank. It's too complicated for my little brain, so here's the story in the words of one of the targets, Glenn Greenwald:
The Chamber of Commerce, that once upstanding organization that used to help small business, has become a corporate tool to hammer home the conservative agenda. While Citizens United allows unlimited election contributions, not many corporations want their names attached to the spending and therefore funnel most of the money through groups such as the Chamber, hiding their influence and actions from the public and shareholders alike. Ironically, they sued the Yes Men a couple years ago for deceiving the press and public yet engage in that very same behavior when it comes to sullying the reputations of those who would oppose them. Not to mention their disinformation campaign in opposing healthcarereform, employee free choice and other labor legislation, veterans' rights, banking regulations and, of course, transparency. An honest person in the media is dangerous, just knock off a couple of the honest journalists and activists who are left, then there's nobody left to defend the truth. Bring on the Lindsey Lohan stories!
The Yes Men have been trying to fight irrationality with the ludicrous for over 15 years, managing to pull off some audacious stunts whose ridiculousness is only matched by the inanity of those being mocked. They've recently launched their Yes Men Lab in an effort to help grow their movement by sharing their experiences of the past decade and a half. Networking with social justice organizations to spread their ideas for activism. Though their victims such as the Chamber of Commerce seldom seem to get it, their brand of consciousness awareness can be hilarious as well as contagious, so join the fun!
It's hard not to see the election of Ronald Reagan as the last inflection point, one of his first acts as President was to break the air traffic controllers union. It was the beginning of the class war waged by America's corporate oligarchy to transfer wealth from the working and middle classes to the rich and to deregulate the economy in order to increase the wealth and power of the corporate and financial elite. Since then, the share of wealth held by the top 0.1% (the richest one in a thousand households) has grown from 2.7% to 12.3%, a fourfold increase. The same time frame has seen an identical growth in incarceration rates and costs thanks to a war on the poor cleverly disguised as the war on drugs; 1 in 100 American adults are now behind bars. We've managed to trade in a cold war for a warmer war on terror as an excuse to ship off just enough of our youth to keep the official unemployment rate under 10%. California came close but we still need to organize if we want to legalize and end the war at home so sign up with NORML.
The women's liberation movement helped the other half of the population into the workforce just in time for middle class families to keep their head above water for awhile and when that wasn't enough, we worked more hours but still couldn't offset stagnating wages. Finally, the promise of never falling real estate prices meant people could use their homes as cash machines which worked great until the curtain was lifted on the wizards of Wall Street. Now, everyone is being decimated by a mortgage system that became so complex no one knew who owed or owned what leading to foreclosures on families who have never missed a payment and people who have never even had a mortgage. Whether you're facing foreclosure, have an underwater mortgage, or are just a concerned homeowner, it’s important that you contact your bank and demand to see the original note on your mortgage. Better yet, turn the system to your advantage and foreclose on the bank.
The right screaming about government taking over the private sector and the left about the reverse has distracted us from the reality of landing somewhere in the middle where a government by and for corporations control one another. Just look at any industry and corresponding government department, financial, military, agriculture, energy it doesn't matter which, the pattern is the same. A revolving door of an elite class with occasional holidays in the world of academia. Yesterday's institutions were built to narcotize us into sleep and while we dozed, they purloined our future, looted our societies, trampled nature, eviscerated our communities, ransacked our values, and body-slammed our very sense of self-worth. There are many positive signs that people are waking up to the nihilism of the present system where industry provides the regulators to write the rules so they can later be rewarded with executive positions in the board rooms of the very firms they once regulated. Perhaps this new 'Nile-ism' is a sign that enough people see what's happening around them and realize the system is broken, desperately in need of being torn down and built again. We're told we have a choice, after all, this is democracy, when in fact we can choose between a wolf and a wolf in sheep's clothing. It's a false choice, just like the austerity packages being introduced from Madison to London which tell us that we need to pay for the excesses of the past by punishing the poor and middle class.
The stock market has completely disconnected from the economy and is little more than a place for speculators and algorithms to compete over who can trade his way to the most money. The casino's high rollers room is roped off to the masses while the VIPs engage in flash trading and front running stocks in a computer power arms race rendering the idea of stocks representing value obsolete. Any attempt at regulation will be stymied by Tim Geithner, the Treasury Secretary who believes what we need is a financial deepening. Crisis is good for his buddies, as the more Americans there are on food stamps, the more money JP Morgan Chase makes; thanks to food speculation opened up by deregulation, business is sure to be good. It's not surprising in a country where the government spends more on military bands than it does on public broadcasters. Oh, yeah, forgot the old saw: Funding NASCAR is freedom while funding NPR is tyranny.
The unnatural coalition of wealthy corporate capitalists and poor social conservatives who drive right wing ideology is exemplified by a couple of US congressmen. Chairman Darrell Issa of the House Oversight Committee is at the service of his corporate overlords. Add in a little John Shimkus who will chair the Subcommittee on Environment and Economy and there's no end to the destruction they can wreak. Some may think it's not a good idea to put a guy who quotes biblical scripture to explain why climate change isn't occurring in charge of anything to do with the environment but god still sells in the bible belt. For those who don't think Yahweh will save us from ourselves or don't think it's fair that mining companies are allowed to blow the tops off mountains to extract the minerals, you can arrange a sleepover in your governor's offices. That's what they did in Kentucky where they decided to push back against a corrupt government which has joined in a lawsuit against the EPA for trying to block some of the more harmful aspects of the practice. Never mind that these companies get the profits while the commons of the people are destroyed, the very earth, rivers, streams and air.
Don't let them convince you that the small stuff doesn't add up. Get out of your car, buy locally produced produce, turn off your TV - it all counts. Join 350.org, take part in Earth Hour March 26th at 8:30 pm, hell, plant a tree. If you're in Italy you can join the call for Silvio Berlusconi to resign for any of a myriad of offenses (he's defending himself in four separate trials). Bunga-Bunga is the most titillating and you probably think it's not right your prime minister pays for sex with an underage girl and later uses his influence to have her released from prison by claiming she was a relative of, you guessed it, Hosni Mubarak. Move your money out of the big banks, buy silver to help crash JP Morgan, join the Common Good Bank or flamenco dancers in Spanish banks. In Greece, why not turn transparency detective to expose the rich who camouflage their swimming pools from satellite pictures in an effort to evade taxes. French? Maybe you should question who sold the fighters being used to bomb civilians in Libya. Irish? Probably a good time to vote for a government who won't sell your future to the banks. If you think funding for the future is a better idea than buying bombs when 50% of the schools in Detroit have been ordered to close, sign a petition here or rally for education in Texas here. With media consolidation picking up speed, there's no wonder so many don't even realize there's still a war going on, but you can help bring an end to the longest war in American history (now in it's 10th year!) by helping Rethink Afghanistan. Tell Congress to protect the open internet. End the next war, the one on women, before they win too many battles. If you still believe in the American Dream, heed the MoveOn.org call to action this weekend. Finally, don't forget to join US Uncut or UK Uncut for their next big action February 26th, find a creative way to highlight why we need a bail in as they make us pay for the bail out.
It's now or never, something needs to be done soon as those in control of the economic and political levers are the same ones making the rules of their use. The plutocrats know the limits of growth have been reached economically and environmentally and have doubled down to get as much out as quickly as they can before the game's up. The North and South Poles are melting, Brazilian rain forests and the Russian tundra are burning, the Australian outback and Indus river basin are drowning. Crying orange men who used to hand out tobacco company bribes on the floor of the House are dictating a penny-wise and pound-foolish policy guaranteed to destroy his nation. Turn Facebook into a weapon to spread knowledge and form alliances instead of a tool to dull the senses. Question why Google exhorts us to do no evil while doing just that by dodging taxes through income shifting schemes known as the "Double Irish" and the "Dutch Sandwich". I'd call reducing their overseas tax rate to 2.4% a Dutch oven for the rest of us. Join a movement, spread the word, read an article longer than this post to learn about a subject instead of simply feeding off the informational tit of the corporate controlled mainstream media. They have an interest in propagating the system as their ownership is that system and in places like Canada now have a license to lie.
The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it comes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
Remember getting your first ice-cream headache? Or the last hot summer day when that icy, syrupy 7/11 slurpee froze your brain? Now, imagine walking around with that pain all the time, 24/7. If you've never experienced the torture associated with greedily guzzling some frozen treat on a hot summer's day, it's one of those things that's hard to explain - it's a sudden, excruciating, headache that renders you nearly paralyzed. Now, imagine this happening to you every time you learned or heard something that conflicted with your belief system, sort of a mini brain explosion. If it weren't for our complex brains, most of us would be experiencing that kind of paralytic pain most of our waking lives. Thank Dog for our ability to deal with cognitive dissonance or the western capitalist democracies might have to actually face up to the failures of the system and tackle our problems.
And Britney! Hits galore!
Cognitive dissonance comes from holding conflicting ideas simultaneously. Our brains, knowing this would incapacitate us, reacts by changing our reality without us even knowing it by altering our attitudes, beliefs or actions with the help of justifying, blaming or denying. In 1984, Orwell showed a dystopian universe where government had succeeded in overcoming this conflict with what he termed doublethink. Ever since The End of History 'we' (as in we in the western capitalist democracies from here on) have been living in a world where everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. Here, freedom is ensured by democracy and its accompanying freedoms of speech, press and religion and prosperity through capitalism with it's free markets to propel economic growth and progress. It is information and the control of its flow that determines whether we accept this Panglossian view of the world, become Candide's Martin or have to wipe the splatter of gray matter off the walls. How successfully our brains rid us of the dissonance caused by events such as the Wikileaks cable release, the Fifa World Cup draw and the US Federal Reserves revelations on its lending actions during the crisis will go a long way in determining if the present world order will survive.
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." -Benjamin Franklin
Imagine the dissonance I feel having links to Amazon on my blog. I justify this by convincing myself the possibility you will buy and learn from a book I've linked to compensates for having a company aiding Joe Lieberman emulate Chinese dictators in hunting and persecuting Wikileaks and Julian Assange. Imagine Amazon's for kicking Wikileaks off their server while still profiting from the controversy by selling Kindle versions of the cables and Wikileaks' Freedom T-shirts. For someone like Hillary Clinton, her brain must convince her, and the American public, that security trumps freedom of speech. Of course, this is made easier by the fact that killing people in far away lands or capturing and shipping them around the world to have them tortured and imprisoned is all already ok in the name of security. We had Nazis and Japanese generals executed for similar crimes after WWII yet just throw the terrorist word around and get a free pass for everything including the hypocrisy of lecturing China and Egypt at the beginning of the year for their internet censorship while condemning Wikileaks. Clinton quoted her president while flogging the Free Flow of Information doctrine saying "access to information helps citizens hold their own governments accountable".
Joe sixpack has the media to help avoid the brain pain. Still seen as the guardians of free speech, the fact is the Fourth Estate has become nothing but a tool to ensure that this freedom only takes place within acceptable limits. CNN's Wolf Blitzer's brain almost exploded on TV trying to convince himself and his viewers that the US government is somehow to blame for not stopping the Wikileakers from doing his job of informing the public. Just as the US government used the hammer of the media to turn non-existent weapons of mass destruction into justification for war in Iraq the press keeps pounding into the public the danger that Assange has put us all in dutifully reporting that the leaks are everything from “terrorism” according to Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York to “an attack against the international community” courtesy of Hillary. Sarah Palin called for him to be hunted as an “anti-American operative with blood on his hands” and Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, Republican presidential candidate and minister, said that whoever leaked the cables should be executed. Faux News has branded Wikileaks a terrorist organization while Congressmen join in the call for the leaker to be executed. Ah, yes, American Exceptionalism.
We're left with Anonymous supporters of free speech engaging in protest (Freedom of speech, priceless. For everything else there's Mastercard) who will be hunted while those who targeted and forced Wikileaks offline (now hosted at wikileaks.ch) won't face any legal retribution. Wikileaks and Assange are vilified instead of being glorified like Watergate and the Pentagon Papers (whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg has compared Assange's targeting to his back then and even written an open letter to Amazon) thanks to the transformation of the press from government watchdog to lapdog (sometime around September 8th, 2002). Hunting Assange and Wikileaks while giving a free pass to the five newspapers who have published the same information may seem like mind meltdown material but is simply part of the deal struck wherein the press agrees to reflect what the government thinks. Uncovering information about centrifuge tubes based on anonymous sources that later proves to be false is good as long as it serves the government's war agenda but revealing information that works against the military/industrial/financial/media complex isn't, for them truth is scarier than fiction. Predictably, the American public has been convinced that transparency is bad as 60% view the latest Wikileaks as harmful. Almost makes me wish their cognitive dissonance mechanism would fail so their brains would explode.
In case we're still not convinced that shooting the messenger is the thing to do, the media and their authoritarian guardians are here to lay down more cover fire for our brains. Never mind the coincidental timing of the on/off/on again Swedish 'sex by surprise' saga, it even includes an accuser with ties to anti-Castro activities to help those who aren't JFK assassination conspiracist to surmise that something may be rotten in Denmark. Much in the way we are turning our bodies into mush with the junk we're stuffing them with and playing McVictims marching to medically expensive premature graves, we've wiped out our attention span feeding our brains an overwhelming diet of sugar-like information and become junkies jonesing for our next punditry fix. Whole industries of content production and distribution have grown up with the proliferation of technology to feed our habit while at the same time hiding their source as opinions disguised as fact ricochet around the intertubes. Jonah Goldberg, contributor to the National Review, asks in his syndicated column, "Why wasn't Assange garroted in his hotel room years ago?" Sarah Palin confusedly tweets about charging an Australian based in Sweden for treason while promoting her book mix with stories of Gaddafi's buxom Ukrainian nurse, Sarkozy's temper and Merkel's uncreativity to protect a few hillbillies interested enough in the story from concentrating on more important revelations to date such as the aggressive stance of Iran's neighbours towards her.
Saudi Arabia, one of America's main allies in the war on terror is also one of the main funders of our enemy in the war on terror's, Al-Qaida, yet brains somehow aren't exploding. "Cut off the head of the snake," the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Adel al-Jubeir, quotes King Abdullah as saying during a meeting with U.S. General David Petraeus in April 2008 while Egyptian president Hosni Mubarek told John Kerry that Iran's support of terrorists is "well known but I cannot say it publicly. It would create a dangerous situation." Terrorism isn't dangerous? Seems all the Gulf leaders wish the States would start another war to help pump up the demand for more of their oil while publicly demonizing the US for their warmongering. In Iran of course, because they are bad, not somewhere like Yemen, which is still good, proved by the fact their president Salah thinks it's prudent to hide the fact that there are US missiles raining down on terrorists and other bad guy types (and all too often not-so-bad types) in his country.
Look at our...guns?
What can an American think of living a lifestyle that necessitates sending the region money for oil that allows them to buy weapons from the States, like the $60 billion F-16 deal, with a little left over to fund terrorist groups that America (f#ck yeah!) must then send their military over to fight, which costs a lot of money in fuel. No wonder there have been very few years in which US military spending hasn't increased whether fighting an active war against a well-armed enemy or not, with Democrats or Republicans running government. One time expectations of a peace dividend have evaporated leaving a country that spends more on the military than the nations with the next 15 largest military budgets combined. Yeah, brain exploding cognitive dissonance when you throw in the cost in human life. Eisenhower's warning that the influence of the military-industrial complex was "economic, political, even spiritual" goes unheeded as our reality is altered by the cheerleaders of war, pumping up an NFL football viewer's pride that his armed forces are in Iraq, Afghanistan and 175 other countries ensuring our freedom to pray to the gridiron gods every Monday, most Thursdays and three times on Sunday. All those truck commercials are buying enemy bullets, every bit as lethal as the friendly fire which killed Pat Tillman, lucky for the Viagra and Cialis ads to reload the grease filled arousal system to give us something else to think about. All the while we feed a Saudi elite who have even more left over to party like the American devils that their government demonizes to help their people channel their rage.
Meanwhile, in football for the rest of the world, anyone surprised by last week's announcement that FIFA had chosen Russia and Qatar as hosts for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup has already adapted their views to compensate for the dissonance of enjoying the game while knowing it's corrupt. A quick exercise. Simply rank the finalists in order of the number of new stadiums to be built. For 2018 we had Belgium/Holland, Spain/Portugal, England and Russia. For 2022 the list comprised Australia, Japan, South Korea, the US and Qatar. Qatar has vowed to spend $50 billion on infrastructure before the event in addition to the $4 billion for nine new stadiums. Russia needs 13 new stadiums it says will cost $3.8 billion. Combine this with the knowledge that this construction spending is the perfect conduit to pay off Fifa executive voters, two of whom were suspended just before they were set to vote joining the six other former members already sacked for offering to sell votes and that it's generally accepted that at least three others who voted recently have received bribes for past votes. What are the chances the other 19 haven't been grabbing all they can of the $100 million (at least) bribery pie? It isn't a surprise that they combined both years' announcements in order to streamline the bribery process, two for one deals making it harder to get caught. Oh, and remember the world is run on petrodollars and that Russia's main cash cow is oil while for Qatar it's natural gas.
Qatar's bid had dissonance busting arguments to add to the cash. Temperatures can soar to 50°C in Doha, no problem, they'll build stadiums where they'll use air-conditioning systems that haven't been invented yet to cool them. It's a Muslim country where alcohol is nearly prohibited, no worries they say, the beer crazed heathens can drink in hotels or specially created fan-zones that will also benefit from the new cooling technology. Bubbles of beer and cool. Qatar tops the global charts in both per capita income and carbon footprint so the whole thing will be solar powered. Oh, and the stadiums will mostly be modular meaning they'll be partially dismantled and donated to poorer football hungry nations without the means to build their own. The population has doubled since 2004, with only 200,000 of the 1.7 million residents being Qatari; the rest are migrant workers who all too often have been tricked into becoming virtual slaves making Qatar one of the 16 countries given the lowest rating by the US State Department for its human trafficking propensity. The better to build the new stuff they'll need.
It might seem strange automatically qualifying the 113th ranked team in the world to join the 31 best but no worries, despite not recognizing Israel, if the Israeli national team makes it, Qatar says they'll make an exception and let the team in. Thanks to the Wikileaks cables, this benevalence isn't surprising as we learned their Emir, Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, said it is understandable that Israeli leaders distrust Arab leaders and 'we can't blame them' because the Israelis have been 'under threat' for a long time.' Homosexual activity is punishable by up to five years in prison but at least it's not Saudi Arabia, besides, everyone knows there aren't any gay footballers. The country ranks 121st of 178 in the Press Freedom Index and 144th out of 167 in the Economist's Democracy Index classifying it as an authoritarian regime. Well, Fifa requires carte blanche to set up it's own legal protection in matters such as sponsorship and copyright laws, a big reason the US or many others weren't chosen. All of this may have contributed to Fifa assigning the Qatari bid with the highest risk rating in it's own report, a fact that should have us wondering why the closer you get to the voting process, the more opaque it becomes.
Instead of seeing the Qatari and Russian selection for what they were, cognitive dissonance allows many to even blame information. It was the BBC's fault for exposing the corruption within Fifa days before the announcement that England wasn't selected. The blame game is so much easier than the difficult work that would need to be done to clean up a corrupt selection process even though it would most likely result in more money flowing to where it belongs and ultimately improve the game. Sure, the Wikileaks again confirmed what we already knew, describing Russia as a corrupt "mafia state" and kleptocracy where Putin plays Batman to Medvedev's Robin. Yet not only can we convince ourselves that dealing with such a place doesn't mean we'll follow its lead and become a place where journalists and human rights activists are routinely murdered, beaten and intimidated, but we also blame our own leaders for their naivete as the British Prime Minister, their second to the throne and football royalty grovelled before the selection committee while Putin stayed home, secure in the knowledge that Russia's selection was sewn up.
The Russians seem to be relishing the opportunity to rub salt in the wounds of what were once westerners' freedoms, suggesting Julian Assange be considered for the Nobel Peace Prize. After all, this year's winner Liu Xiaobo thinks it's a shame China wasn't colonized for at least 300 years by a western power, the US wars in Vietnam and Korea enhanced Washington's "moral credibility", Dubya was right to go to war in Iraq while John Kerry's criticisms were "slander-mongering" and, surprise, just like the previous year's winner, thinks killing brown people in Afghanistan is a good thing. Putin referred to a Russian proverb that roughly translates to the pot calling the kettle black saying, "You know, out in the countryside, we have a saying, someone else’s cow may moo, but yours should keep quiet." The fact is we have become the blackest kettle in the pantry as evidenced by the laughing response of the CBC hosts to former Canadian Prime Minister Harper adviser Tom Flanagan calling on Obama to assassinate Assange:
With all the hoopla surrounding the Wikileaks cable dump, here's betting you missed the US Federal Reserve's version. (Yes, sometimes you need two good sized post-Thanksgiving dumps). You'd think we should be at least mildly interested in how they spent $3.3 trillion considering all the hand-wringing that accompanied the $700 billion spent by the Treasury Department in the Wall Street bailout and the billions more for the auto industry, Freddie and Fanny. Conveniently releasing the information on it's lending activities at the same time as the Wikileaks story really was genius as the best way to avoid head explosions is making sure such news is missed. It's no coincidence that the man most responsible for forcing the Feds hand in shedding a ray of light on its books is also one of the only American politicians applauding Wikileaks for exposing the United States' "delusional foreign policy". While Ron Paul may be a bit of a wingnut whose son is even more so, you've gotta admire his consistency and determination to not give into the cognitive dissonance cleansing temptation to alter his beliefs as most do when moving to a position of power. The new chairman of the House subcommittee on domestic monetary policy is doubling down, calling for a Wikileaks of the US Federal Reserve. Lucky most just thinks he's crazy or maybe more people would pay attention to his nine questions raised after seeing the US government's reaction to the Wikileaks release. In which case we'd probably care that not only is an unelected body creating money out of thin air to give to banks, it's also throwing it at major corporations that form the links holding the global corpocracy together. McDonald's, Harley-Davidson and Caterpillar were a few of the recipients of the more than $3.3 trillion in loans to financial institutions, companies and foreign central banks during the crisis to make sure there were enough dollars circulating. Without them, we could have lost faith in the world's global reserve currency and we might be tempted to buy gold or silver if that ever happened.
The Fed was set up to help the real economy when the banks periodically destroyed themselves but it has become so captured and corrupted by the financial industry that it's been turned on it's head, the Fed is now there to support the speculators while letting the rest of the economy go to hell. While the corporate world has rebounded to post record profits of late they will continue to hoard cash for fear of a repeat of the scenario two years ago when they were cut off from commercial paper financing by the crisis while many people are forced to sell their grandma's golden wedding ring to Glenn Beck. This is because if the rest of us run into cash flow problems and fall behind on mortgages, those same Fed supported banks can come and take our homes away. Hell, they'll even do it if they don't have the paperwork to prove it, which would be a good thing in cases where they take homes from those who've never even had a mortgage. With so blame to spread around for the disastrous economic path we've chosen, few take the time to consider how sustainable it is except a handful of unelected board members, executive committees or diplomats who are the only ones in a position to understand there's only so much time to get in while the getting's good and bend and shape the rules for themselves and their rich friends. Is it really such a surprise when we choose to believe oil companies over scientists in a world where we can't reach a deal on tuna sustainability? A world where so few are left, that a single full-grown bluefin can bring $100,000 in Tokyo’s Tsukiji fish market.
Ending temporary tax breaks became known as raising taxes thanks to a media that whips up the anger of the numerically challenged who can't figure out who are the only beneficiaries. Estate taxes that had been around since Teddy Roosevelt become death taxes to justify getting rid of them completely for a year and makes temporarily reinstating them at a lower rate somehow considered a liberal victory. The knowledge everyone except those making more than $675,000 was exempt a decade ago and will be $5,000,000 come 2011 as part of a Republican "concession" should cause mass brain trauma in those aware of exploding income inequality. The cost of this transfer of wealth to future generations of rich people to be paid for by everyone is impossible to precisely quantify into the future. Yeah, it's good to cleanse dissonance with the sponge of fuzziness. Or you try to explain that Obama and Boehner haven't really screwed us all like this?!? Capital gains and dividends will continue to be taxed at 15%, far less than the sweat of firefighters and nurses. The concentration of wealth will be transmitted and amplified in the face of the warnings of Adam Smith, creating a rentier economy. The tax applies only to the top 0.3% allowing the likes of the Walmart Waltons to transfer $20 billion on as a reward for supporting the Chinese economy. Egyptians made pyramids, we make pyramid schemes. Romans had Pans et Circenses, we eat Big Macs and watch football. A new poll shows that 69% of Americans support the Obaman/Republican tax scam/deal. Under state capitalism, you hear a lot of talk about "wealth creation." So you're supposed to interpret wealth as something like an industrial product, a thing made and assembled, something which, provided the proper material inputs, we can consistently fabricate more of. But wealth isn't created. It's extracted. We aren't an assembly line. We're a mineshaft.
Maybe governments, corporations and organizations of the world don't really need to fear transparency. Judging by my students' or the rest of the world's reaction to these events - the old, 'well, it's always been this way so there's nothing we can do about it' - the rich and powerful that control them will be allowed to suck as much out of the system as they possible can before it collapses - environmentally, financially and ethically drained. Blackmail is sanctioned so long as it has the cover of a democratic process. Republicans felt it was so important to extend Dubya's tax cut for the rich that they held up START, DADT and were even prepared to take away little Timmy's new bike, refusing to extend unemployment benefits right before Christmas. Having made the deficit the biggest issue in their November election wave where they convinced voters that Obama was a Nigerian Socialist Muslim intent on driving the country to bankruptcy the Republicans held the country hostage in order to add over $5 trillion to the deficit. That's the ten year cost because in two years, it's all up for renewal and permanency is practically guaranteed now that the Obama administration "owns" it. Seeing as government deficits are determined by how much more a nation spends than take in with taxes, cerebrum eruptions should occur in people who support lowering tax rates for the rich and cutting the deficit. Lucky right wing think tanks have produced wonderfully humorous antidotes such as the Laffer curve to act as the wingnut to hold heads together as they ignore the evidence of the past decade. Plus, the deal has the added bonus of blame, as progressives give up on Obama, who yells at them for expecting too much while Republican prepare for the fights to come such as the permanent repeal of the estate tax, or, er, sorry, death tax, and social security. To support this deal, one must somehow justify spending on unemployment benefits by giving more to the rich. Hell, we can always print more money.
The question is when will we wake up to the fact that decisions are being made for us by an increasingly exclusive and secretive clique which is only intent on furthering their interests. Elected governments are almost entirely composed of wealthy individuals (US Senator's median income - $2.38 million) answerable to wealthy campaign contributors and lobbyists, the diplomatic corps of recycled politicians, Fifa is made up of a group of snake oil salesmen with a guaranteed distraction cure while the Fed is run by an appointed group of former bankers. These people decide who we go to war with, where we hold the circenses to enjoy with our panem and create new money and credit out of thin air, in secrecy, without oversight or supervision to propel inflation which facilitates deficits, needless wars and excessive risk taking. Most will simply glance at most of the revelations which, in themselves, do not actually reveal anything scandalously new. But there is a huge difference between some website saying Nigeria is corrupt and reading actual cables sent by the former vice president of Shell claiming they have people in every level of government. This is what Wikileaks has done for us.
The battle with cognitive dissonance is won to save our brains for zombie feeding if we trick ourselves into believing that knowing that this empire has done, is doing and will continue to do awful things to maintain itself makes the Wikileaks confirmations less meaningful; nothing more than an endless and fascinating post-Thanksgiving/pre-Christmas document dump. That Internet transparency advocates should be attacked for advocating openness and believing that good things will happen to good people and bad to bad while people are exposing themselves in airports across America. All this at a time when Transparency International Global Corruption Barometer tells us what we already know, that the world is getting more corrupt. Students and employees are warned not to read the Wikileaks to help them ignore what they know is going on. We already knew Iranians deliver suitcases of cash to President Karzai's palace so don't need to be told his vice-president carried $52 million in cash on a trip to Dubai. From New Delhi to Washington and Moscow to Rome we are bearing witness to a manipulation of reality using the power of crony capitalism and inadequate oversight to transform systemic failure into fear of the next disaster to hinder reforms that could curb the domination of a small, exclusive and tightly connected elite. Their control over the traditional media who will lie to protect the system that made them the gateway of information combined with the fact there's only one Bernie Sanders makes Wikileaks our only hope to shed a little sunlight on the workings of a world that should belong to all of us. Hopefully the paroxysm caused by transparency won't lead to an epidemic of encephalon detonation.
Part-time recluse, part-time rockstar,full-time ranter. Paying the bills teaching English in the wild west of capitalism.
Hope you like what you read, or that you learned something new. Don't forget to leave a comment if you agree, disagree or just want to discuss further! Oh yeah, subscribe above or burn the feed down below to make sure you don't miss anything else!
and turned it once again into what Teddy Roosevelt called America's "
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