Guest Post: Analysis of the Global Insurrection Against Neo-Liberal Economic Domination and the Coming American Rebellion

Submitted by David DeGraw from Amped Status

Guest Post: Analysis of the Global Insurrection Against Neo-Liberal Economic Domination and the Coming American Rebellion – We Are Egypt [Revolution Roundup #3]

If you think what’s happening in Egypt won’t happen within
the United States, you’ve been watching too much TV. The statistics
speak for themselves.

In previous Revolution Roundups,
before we were knocked offline, we featured mass protests by the people
of Ireland, Italy, Britain, Austria, Greece, France and Portugal, as
the Global Insurrection contagion spread throughout Europe. And now, as
we have seen over the past month, North African and Middle Eastern
nations have joined the movement as the people of Egypt, Tunisia,
Jordan, Morocco, Gabon, Mauritania, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya, Palestine,
Iraq, Sudan and Algeria have taken to the streets en masse.

The connection between this latest round of uprisings and the prior
protests throughout Europe is one the mainstream media is not making. We
are witnessing a decentralized global rebellion against Neo-Liberal
economic imperialism. While each national uprising has its own internal
characteristics, each one, at its core, is about the rising costs of
living and lack of financial opportunity and security. Throughout the
world the situation is the same: increasing levels of unemployment and
poverty, as price inflation on food and basic necessities is soaring.

Whether national populations realize it or not, these uprisings are
against systemic global economic policies that are strategically
designed to exploit the working class, reduce living standards, increase
personal debt and create severe inequalities of wealth. These global
uprising, which have only just begun, are the first wave of the
inevitable reaction to the implementation of a centralized worldwide
Neo-Feudal economic order.

The global banking cartel, centered at the IMF, World Bank and
Federal Reserve, have paid off politicians and dictators the world over —
from Washington to Greece to Egypt. In country after country, they have
looted national economies at the expense of local populations,
consolidating wealth in unprecedented fashion – the top economic one-tenth of one percent
is currently holding over $40 trillion in investible wealth, not
counting an equally significant amount of wealth hidden in offshore
accounts.

IMF imperial operations designed to extract wealth and suppress
populations have been ongoing for decades. As anyone researching
economic imperialism will know, a centrally planned Neo-Liberal
aristocracy controls the global economy.

I: Centrally Planned Economic Repression

The IMF has a well-worn strategy that they use to conquer national
economies. As I warned four months ago, we have now progressed into Step
3.5: World Wide IMF Riots. Back in October, in a TV interview with Max Keiser, we discussed leaked World Bank documents that revealed the IMF’s strategy. I stated the following:

“They have a four-step strategy for destroying national
economies…. We are about to enter what they would call Step Three.
Step Three is when you’ve looted the economy and now food and basic
necessities all of a sudden become more expensive, harder to get to. And
then, Step 3.5 is when you get the riots. We are fastly approaching
that….

We are headed to, as the IMF said, and as they plan, Step 3.5: IMF Riots. That’s what’s coming…”

Fast-forward four months to today, and now we see country after
country rebelling against high food prices. Since our October interview,
food prices have spiked 15%. According to new World Bank data, since
June 2010, “Rising food have pushed about 44 million people into poverty in developing countries.”

As Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke announced another round of
Quantitative Easing (QE2), those of us paying attention knew that the
trigger had been pulled and Step Three had been executed. It was a
declaration of economic war, an economic death sentence for tens of
millions of people – deliberately devaluing the dollar and sparking
inflation in commodities/basic necessities. It was a vicious policy that
would impact people from Boston to Cairo.

When QE2 was announced, I warned: “Food and Gas Prices Will Skyrocket, The Federal Reserve Just Dropped An Economic Nuclear Bomb On Us.” I also wrote:
“The Federal Reserve is deliberately devaluing the dollar to enrich a
small group of a global bankers, which will cause significant harm to
the people of the United States and severe ramifications throughout the
world…. The Federal Reserve’s actions are already causing the price of
food and gas to increase and will cause hyperinflation on most basic
necessities.”

To be clear, there are several significant factors contributing to
rising food prices, such as extreme weather conditions, biofuel
production and Wall Street speculation;
but the Federal Reserve’s policies deliberately threw gasoline all
over those brush fires. QE2 was another economic napalm bomb from the
global banking cartel.

In a recent McClathy news article entitled, “Egypt’s unrest may have roots in food prices, US Fed policy,” Kevin Hall reports:

“‘The truth of the matter is that when the Federal
Reserve moved on the quantitative easing, it did export inflation to a
lot of these emerging markets…. There’s no doubt that one of the side
effects of the weak dollar and quantitative easing has been rising
commodity prices. It helped create this bullish environment for
commodities. This is a very delicate balancing act.’

It’s a view shared by Ed Yardeni, a veteran financial market analyst,
who reached a similar conclusion in a research note to investors…. He
joked that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke should be added to a list of
revolutionaries, since his quantitative easing policy, unveiled last
year in Wyoming, has provoked unrest and change in the developing world.

‘Since he first indicated his support for such a revolutionary
monetary change… the prices of corn, soybeans and wheat have risen 53
percent, 37 percent and 24.4 percent through Friday’s close,’ Yardeni
noted. ‘The price of crude oil rose 19.8 percent over this period from
$75.17 to $90.09 this (Monday) morning. Soaring food and fuel prices are
compounding anger attributable to widespread unemployment in the
countries currently experiencing riots.’”

The people throughout the Middle East and Northern Africa, on the
fringe of the Neo-Liberal economic empire and most vulnerable to the
Fed’s inflationary policies, are the first to rebel.

Before analyzing the situation within the US, let’s take a closer
look at the global Neo-Liberal economic policies that led to the
Egyptian and Tunisian revolts.

II :: Economic Imperialism: IMF Plunder of Egypt and Tunisia

In
the Middle East and North Africa populations are rising against their
local dictators. However, these “dictators” take orders from the IMF.

A report from the Center for Research on Globalization revealed some background and historical context:

“The Alliance between Global Capitalism and Arab Dictators

It is paramount to understand that the Arab dictators and tyrants
serve the interests of organized capital. This is their primary
function. They are elements of the global system formed by organized
capital.

Looking back, protests and riots started in 1977 against the regime
of Mohammed Anwar Al-Sadat, Mubarak’s predecessor. The causes of these
protests were the neo-liberal policies that the I.M.F. had handed down
to Sadat. The I.M.F. policies ended government subsidies on basic daily
commodities of life. Food prices jumped and Egyptians became hard-hit….

The Arab people grasp the fact that their ruling class and
governments are not only corrupt regimes, but also comprador elites,
namely the local representatives of foreign corporations, governments,
and interests…. In Egypt, Gamal Mubarak (who was being groomed by his
father for the presidency) worked for Bank of America.

In Tunisia, Zine Al-Abidine Ben Ali was a military officer trained in
French and American military schools who, once in power, served U.S.
and French economic interests. In Lebanon, Fouad Siniora was a former
Citibank official before he became prime minister…. Within the corrupt
Palestinian Authority, Salam Fayyad worked for one of the banks forming
the U.S. Federal Reserve and the World Bank….

Moreover, almost all Arab finance ministers are affiliated to the
major global banking institutions. All of them also strictly adhere to
the Washington Consensus of the International Monetary Fund (I.M.F.) and
the World Bank…”

Samer Shehata, professor of Arab politics at Georgetown University, summed up the situation in Egypt and Tunisia:

“Beginning in 2004… Egypt began implementing economic
reforms called for by the IMF—or really forced on them by the IMF and
the World Bank… a new government was appointed, new ministers were
appointed, who believed wholeheartedly in the ideas of the IMF and the
World Bank. And they quite vigorously pursued these policies. And there
was at one level, at the level of macroeconomic indicators, statistics,
GDP growth rates, foreign direct investment and so on—Egypt seemed to be
a miracle. And this, of course, was the case with the Tunisian model
earlier. You’ll remember that Jacques Chirac called it the ‘economic
miracle,’ and it was the darling of the IMF and the World Bank, because
it implemented these types of reforms earlier. Well, of course, we saw
what happened in Tunisia. In Egypt, from 2004 until the present, the
government and its reforms were applauded in Washington by World Bank,
IMF and US officials…. Egypt received the top reformer award from the
IMF and the World Bank…”

Former Goldman Sachs executive Nomi Prins reveals more details:

The Egyptian Uprising Is a Direct Response to Ruthless Global Capitalism

“The revolution in Egypt is as much a rebellion against the painful
deterioration of economic conditions as it is about opposing a
dictator…. When people are facing a dim future, in a country hijacked by
a corrupt regime that destabilized its economy through what the CIA
termed, ‘aggressively pursuing economic reforms to attract foreign
investment’ (in other words, the privatization and sale of its country’s
financial system to international sharks), waiting doesn’t cut it….

Tunisia’s dismal economic environment was a direct result of its
increasingly ‘liberal’ policy toward foreign speculators. Of the five
countries covered by the World Bank’s, Investment Across Sectors
Indicator, Tunisia had the fewest limits on foreign investment…. Egypt
adopted a similar come-and-get-it policy, on steroids…. But, as we
learned in the U.S., what goes up with artificial helium plummets under
real gravity…. Not surprisingly, those foreign speculation strategies
didn’t bring less poverty or more jobs either. Indeed, the insatiable
hunt for great deals, whether by banks, hedge funds, or private equity
funds, as it inevitably does, had the opposite effect….

Ironically, the [Egyptian Ministry of Investment] brochure touted the
large college graduate population entering the job market each year —
325,000. The same graduates are the core of the current revolution. They
failed to find adequate jobs and are faced with an official
unemployment rate of just below 10 percent (though, similar to the U.S.,
that figure doesn’t account for underemployment, poor job quality or
long-term prospects)…. Meanwhile, 20 percent of Egypt lives in poverty…
For in the United States, economic statistics are no better. By certain
measures, like income inequality, they are worse than in Egypt.”

III :: US-Egypt Economic Parallels, Inequality & Poverty

Comparable economic statistics between the US and Egypt are facts that US mainstream media propagandists are not reporting.

Inequality of Wealth

Income inequality has reached a record level within Egypt, as Pat Garofalo explained:

“One of the driving factors behind the protests is the…
growing sense of inequality. ‘They’re all protesting about growing
inequalities…. The top of the pyramid was getting richer and richer,’
said Emile Hokayem of the International Institute for Strategic Studies
in the Middle East.

As Yasser El-Shimy, former diplomatic attaché at the Egyptian
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, wrote in Foreign Policy, ‘income inequality
has reached levels not before seen in Egypt’s modern history.’”

As
the US mainstream media references the “oppressive” and “corrupt”
inequality of wealth throughout Egypt, the hypocrisy is shameful. The
inequality of wealth in the United States is currently the most severe
it has ever been. Gini coefficient ratings are a measure of a nation’s
inequality – the higher a nation scores, the more unequal the society
is. The US has a Gini coefficient rating of 45, compared to Egypt’s
34.4, Yemen’s 37 and Tunisia’s 40, making the US the most unequal,
“oppressive” and “corrupt” of the four.

As John Dewey once said, “There is no such thing as the liberty or
effective power of an individual, group, or class, except in relation to
the liberties, the effective powers, of other individuals, groups or
classes.”

Poverty

When well-paid “experts” in expensive suits sitting behind desks in
state of the art studios discuss the hardships of the Egyptian people,
something tells me that these pundits haven’t spent much time
interacting with tens of millions of people living in inner city America
– just because the mainstream media doesn’t cover them, doesn’t mean
they don’t exist. They exist in larger numbers in the US than they do
in most rebelling countries.

The rising price of food has played a pivotal role in sparking the
uprisings, food prices have a larger impact in countries like Egypt and
Tunisia, as they represent a more significant percentage of total
income. However, the overall costs of living in the US are significantly
higher. When these costs are factored in — medical expenses, housing,
transportation, education, etc. – the US poverty level of $22k per year,
for a family of four, is comparable to the poverty rate measure in
Egypt.

According to the CIA, the poverty rate
in Egypt is 20%. With a population size of 83 million people, this
would put 16.6 million Egyptians living in poverty. In the US, the
current poverty rate is 16.8%, with a population of 309 million, this puts 52 million Americans living below the poverty line.

When
you consider that the US has 52 million people currently living in
poverty, you realize, as shocking as it may sound, that we have a larger
number of desperate people in the US than rebelling populations in
countries throughout the Middle East and Europe. Overall, in comparison
to Egypt, the US population is obviously more geographically spread out,
but if you breakdown the demographics, many large US cities have a
poverty rate higher than the 20 percent rate in Egypt.

Consider that, according to low-ball government statistics, nine major US cities have a poverty rate over 25%.

IV :: Debt Slavery: Unemployed, Underemployed, Underpaid, In Debt

The unemployment rate in Egypt mirrors the unemployment rate in the
US, currently fluctuating between nine and ten percent, according to
government sources. The unemployment rate among recent graduates
attempting to enter the workforce also mirrors the crisis in the US. The
young unemployed and underemployed demographic has played a pivotal
role in leading the rebellion. Reporting for the Financial Times in an
article entitled, “At hand, an Arab awakening,” Roula Khalaf sums it up this way:

“In Egypt, as in Tunisia, the young people who initiated
the street campaigns were educated, internet-savvy activists with no
political affiliation. [Sound familiar?] After watching the fervour
unleashed in the past month, young Syrians, Bahrainis, Algerians and
even the quiescent Libyans are turning to Facebook and Twitter to call
for their own ‘day of rage’.

As Mr Khashoggi puts it: ‘The 25-year-old unemployed today has become the strong man.’”

A report from Business Week entitled, “The Youth Unemployment Bomb,” provides more detail:

“In Tunisia, the young people who helped bring down a
dictator are called hittistes—French-Arabic slang for those who lean
against the wall. Their counterparts in Egypt… are the shabab atileen,
unemployed youths… In Britain, they are NEETs – ‘not in education,
employment, or training.’ In Japan, they are freeters: an amalgam of the
English word freelance and the German word Arbeiter, or worker.
Spaniards call them mileuristas, meaning they earn no more than 1,000
euros a month. In the U.S., they’re ‘boomerang’ kids who move back home
after college because they can’t find work. Even fast-growing China… has
its ‘ant tribe’ – recent college graduates who crowd together in cheap
flats on the fringes of big cities because they can’t find well-paying
work.

In each of these nations, an economy that can’t generate enough jobs
to absorb its young people has created a lost generation of the
disaffected, unemployed, or underemployed—including growing numbers of
recent college graduates for whom the post-crash economy has little to
offer….

More common is the quiet desperation of a generation in ‘waithood,’
suspended short of fully employed adulthood. At 26, Sandy Brown of
Brooklyn, N.Y., is a college graduate and a mother of two who hasn’t
worked in seven months. ‘I used to be a manager at a Duane Reade in
Manhattan, but they laid me off. I’ve looked for work everywhere and I
can’t find anything,’ she says. ‘It’s like I got my diploma for
nothing.’”

The collapsing job market, declining wages, loss of benefits and
skyrocketing cost of education has created a “lost generation” of young
college graduates with little options and massive debt. When millions
of American students took out tens of thousands of dollars in student
loans to pay for an education which they assumed would give them the
skills needed to make a good living, they never imagined that they would
be either unemployed, working part-time, or making significantly less
than people in their chosen profession have traditionally made. The
majority of young workers in their twenties and early thirties have debt
that they will spend most of their life trying to pay back. They’ve
been sentenced to a life of…

Debt Slavery

Mike Whitney recently interviewed Alan Nasser on CounterPunch for a piece entitled, “The Student Loan Swindle.” Here’s an excerpt:

“MW: Is it possible to ‘walk away’ from a student loan and declare bankruptcy?

Alan Nasser: No, it’s not possible for student debtors to escape
financial devastation by declaring bankruptcy. This most fundamental of
consumer protections would have been available to student debtors were
it not for legislation explicitly designed to withhold a whole range of
basic protections from student borrowers. I’m not talking only about
bankruptcy protection, but also truth in lending requirements, statutes
of limitations, refinancing rights and even state usury laws – Congress
has rendered all these protections inapplicable to federally guaranteed
student loans. The same legislation also gave collection agencies
hitherto unimaginable powers, for example to garnish wages, tax returns,
Social Security benefits and – believe it or not – Disability income.

Twisting the knife, legislators made the suspension of state-issued
professional licenses, termination of public employment and denial of
security clearances legitimate measures to enable collection companies
to wring financial blood from bankrupt student-loan borrowers. Student
loan debt is the most punishable of all forms of debt – most of those
draconian measures are unavailable to credit card companies….

MW: Is it fair to say that the student loan industry is a scam
that targets borrowers who will never be able to repay their debts? Are
these students like the people who were seduced into taking out subprime
loans? How much money is involved and how much of that money is either
presently in default or headed for default?

Alan Nasser: It’s as fair as fair can be. First, the student loan
industry is huge – a large majority of students from every type of
school are in debt. Debt is held by 62 percent of students enrolled at
public colleges and universities, 72 percent at private non-profit
schools and 96 percent at private, for-profit (‘proprietary’) schools.
It was announced last summer that total student loan debt, at $830
billion, now exceeds total US credit card debt, which is itself bloated
to the bubble level of $827 billion. And student loan debt is growing at
the rate of $90 billion a year.”

These
students weren’t expecting an economic crisis to occur, and, unlike the
banks that lent them the money, they’re not getting a bailout. Also
factor in that the overwhelming majority of new jobs, the few that are
being added, are either part-time, temporary or in low paying fields
without health or retirement benefits. Mix all of this together, and
you have a vicious cycle with devastating consequences.

Given the size of this segment of the population, carrying this much
debt, at such a young age, with limited prospects, you can feel the
winds of revolution blowing.

Contrary to all the propaganda you hear from the mainstream media and
politicians, the economy is still shedding jobs at a staggering pace.
ZeroHedge recently featured a report entitled, “Just How Ugly Is The Truth Of America’s Unemployment” by economist David Rosenberg:

“It is laughable that everyone believes the labor market
in the U.S.A. is improving.… The data from the Household survey are
truly insane. The labor force has plunged an epic 764k in the past two
months. The level of unemployment has collapsed 1.2 million, which has
never happened before. People not counted in the labor force soared 753k
in the past two months.

These numbers are simply off the charts and likely reflect the
throngs of unemployed people starting to lose their extended benefits
and no longer continuing their job search (for the two-thirds of them
not finding a new job). These folks either go on welfare or they rely on
their spouse or other family members or friends for support….

Of all the analysis we saw over the weekend, the only one that made any sense was the editorial by Bob Herbert:

‘The policy makers don’t tell us that most of the new
jobs being created in such meager numbers are, in fact, poor ones, with
lousy pay and few or no benefits. What we hear is what the data zealots
pump out week after week, that the market is up, retail sales are
strong, Wall Street salaries and bonuses are streaking, as always, to
the moon, and that businesses are sitting on mountains of cash. So all
must be right with the world.

Jobs? Well, the less said the better.

What’s really happening, of course, is the same thing that’s been
happening in this country for the longest time — the folks at the top
are doing fabulously well and they are not interested in the least in
spreading the wealth around.

The people running the country — the ones with the real clout,
whether Democrats or Republicans — are all part of this power elite.
Ordinary people may be struggling, but both the Obama administration and
the Republican Party leadership are down on their knees, slavishly
kissing the rings of the financial and corporate kingpins.’

… the civilian population rose 1.872 million last year. At the same
time, the labor force fell 167k. Those not in the labor force soared
2.094 million. Just in January, we saw 319,000 people drop out of the
work force. These numbers are incredible. This is a highly dysfunctional
labor market. People are falling through the cracks at an alarming rate
as they come off their extended jobless benefits….”

In the US, we have over six million people who have now been
unemployed for over six months, the highest total we have ever had.
Factoring long-term unemployed and part-time workers looking for
full-time work in to the total unemployment count, we now have over 30
million Americans in need of employment.

V :: The American Dream Foreclosed Upon

The foreclosure crisis in the United States, which has already
affected over seven million people since the crisis began, is not
slowing down, it’s accelerating. Economist Joseph Stiglitz recently
predicated another two million foreclosures in 2011. David Walsh sums up the growing crisis:

Nearly 30 percent of US homeowners now ‘underwater’

“Year over year, home values were down 5.9 percent nationally, and
have fallen 27 percent since their peak in June 2006. The total value
of US single-family homes fell a staggering $798 billion in 2010’s
fourth quarter, and for the entire year, more than $2 trillion….

The number of US homeowners ‘underwater,’ i.e., owing more than their
homes were worth, at the end of 2010, jumped to 27 percent, up from
23.2 percent in the third quarter…. ‘The rate of homes selling for a
loss reached a new peak in December, with more than one-third (34.1
percent) selling for a loss. The rate of homes sold for a loss has
increased steadily for the past six months.’ Some 15.7 million
homeowners had negative equity at the end of the fourth quarter, in
households home to more than 40 million people.

The massive number of those underwater will ‘surely lead to higher
foreclosure rates soon,’ notes CNNMoney…. Economist Joseph Stiglitz,
speaking at a conference in Mauritius February 9, predicted that another
2 million foreclosures would take place in the US in 2011, adding to
the 7 million already recorded since the financial meltdown of 2008.

Banks repossessed 1 million homes in 2010, and this year is expected
to be bleaker. Approximately 5 million borrowers are at least two months
behind in their mortgage payments.”

VI :: A Recipe For Revolution: Tax Breaks for the Rich, Budget Cuts for the Poor

Let’s recap the statistics: we have 59 million people without
healthcare, 52 million in poverty, 44 million on food stamps, 30 million
in need of work, seven million foreclosed upon and five million homes
over two months late in their mortgage payments. Meanwhile, all new
political policies and proposals on the table, on the state and federal
level, are committed to major cuts in social services. In a sign of
what’s to come, Obama’s first disclosed spending cut targets the poor.
As Salon recently reported:

New Obama strategy: Beat up poor people

“To prove it is ‘serious’ about the deficit, the White House proposes
cutting a program that helps pay heating bills. The Obama
administration… will propose big cuts to a program that provides energy
assistance to poor people when it unveils its suggested 2012 budget.
‘The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP… would see
funding drop by about $2.5 billion from an authorized 2009 total of $5.1
billion.’

The news is generating a lot of outrage… in large part because of a
paragraph that suggests that the White House wants to gain political
advantage from being seen as tough on the most vulnerable Americans —
people who can’t afford heating oil during cold winters…. If the White
House wants to convince Americans that it is serious about budget
discipline, it should do so by ‘going after powerful vested interests
rather than those least able to defend themselves within the political
arena.’ The White House could redouble its efforts to cut oil company
subsidies or repeal tax cuts for the rich, for example.”

As The Independent reported,
“Obama to set out painful budget plans for austerity in America.
Americans are about to get a first glimpse of what tight-fisted federal
government looks like with President Barack Obama releasing an
austerity-tinged draft budget.”

In a report we featured on the AmpedStatus Hot List with the headline, “US Democracy Crushed By Economic Elite,” Bob Herbert sums it up:

“One state after another is reporting that it cannot pay
its bills. Public employees across the country are walking the plank by
the tens of thousands. Camden, N.J., a stricken city with a serious
crime problem, laid off nearly half of its police force. Medicaid, the
program that provides health benefits to the poor, is under savage
assault from nearly all quarters.

The poor, who are suffering from an all-out depression, are never
heard from. In terms of their clout, they might as well not exist. The
Obama forces reportedly want to raise a billion dollars or more for the
president’s re-election bid. Politicians in search of that kind of cash
won’t be talking much about the wants and needs of the poor. They’ll be
genuflecting before the very rich.”

Austerity measures and draconian cuts to the social safety net are
occurring just after passing hundreds of billions of dollars in tax
breaks to multi-millionaires and billionaires. On the state level, the
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities released a report
revealing, “Thirty-one states have released their initial budget
proposals for fiscal year 2012 (which begins July 1 in most states),
and, for the fourth year in a row, these budgets propose deep cuts in
education, health care, and other important public services…”

After committing trillions of dollars to bailing out the big banks,
the Federal Reserve and government officials have now made it clear that
the states will not receive the same treatment. In fact, the bailed
out players on Wall Street, who have taken our tax dollars and given
themselves all-time record-breaking bonuses, are looking to cash in on
the suffering of states across the country. As Lynn Parramore recently put it:

Crank Up the Casino! Hedge Funds to Short American States and Cities

“The looming possibility of municipal defaults, which some say could
total hundreds of billions of dollars, is causing grave concern. Hedge
funds are also deeply concerned about America’s municipal debt crisis.
They worry about how to best profit from it.

The Wizards of Wall Street have looked over the catastrophe of
cash-strapped America and found it good for business. In their corporate
laboratories, they are working furiously to whip up wondrous new
financial products that will allow them to reap millions from misery.
You might think that after plunging the country into said Recession with
their fancy financial products, these Wizards might feel a little
indelicate about gearing up for a game of shorting a community near you.
Clearly you don’t know Wall Street. The Financial Times reports that
once-boring muni bonds are suddenly sexy.”

Speaking of reaping millions from misery, the food stamp racket pays
off just as well as the war racket. The economic parasites profit off of food stamps:

Food Stamps: JPMorgan & Banking Industry Profit From Misery

“JPMorgan’s division that makes food stamp debit cards made $5.47
billion in net revenue in 2010. As the head of this division,
Christopher Paton, says, ‘This business is a very important business to
JPMorgan in terms of its size and scale.’ According to the company’s
most recent quarterly filing with the SEC, the Treasury & Securities
Services segment, which is the division that includes the food stamp
business, was up 2% in the last three months of last quarter and brought
in $5.47 billion in net revenue for most of 2010.”

Republicans and Democrats, along with their Wall Street masters, are
so arrogant, deluded with wealth, completely lacking perspective,
shortsighted and, quite frankly, ignorant.

As the economic top one-tenth of one percent has more wealth than
they have ever had, the middle class is quickly disappearing and poverty
is soaring. As politicians ignore the needs of the suffering masses in
favor of a Kleptocratic Oligarchy, which operates above the law, it is
only a matter of time before an uprising takes hold.

After analyzing societal and economic indicators within the US, in
comparison to rebelling countries, it is not a matter of whether people
will revolt or not, it’s a matter of when.

There are two significant differences between the United States and other rebelling nations:

1) The US has a much more powerful, sophisticated and
omnipresent propaganda media system to keep the populace suppressed –
isolated and confused.

2) The US keeps 52 million people temporarily pacified in anti-poverty programs by giving them food stamps, unemployment benefits or other forms of life-sustaining government assistance.

Both of these differences are temporary, and not in any way
sustainable. The safety nets here are unraveling and cuts in vital
social services will be implemented just as millions more will need
them. At the same time, food stamps and other forms of limited
government assistance will be worth less and less as food and gas prices
continue to rise.

Rising commodity prices will push the 239 million
Americans currently living paycheck to paycheck over the edge. Also
factor in healthcare costs, which have been skyrocketing even faster.
On a personal level, my health insurance provider just notified me that
my family has to pay 45% more for coverage – and we already had the
world’s most expensive healthcare system. For my wife, one child and
myself, we will now have to pay over $1100 per month for a basic health
insurance plan.

There are currently 59 million Americans who don’t even have healthcare insurance. The health system has become vintage Grapes of Wrath, as have most aspects of the centrally planned system of economic despotism that we live under.

Add all of these factors together and you have a recipe for
revolution. The mainstream propaganda news outlets and “Reality” TV soma
will only keep people at bay for so long. The propaganda system
collapses when people can’t afford to eat. Americans may be late to the
party, but once one city revolts, the dominos will fall and a wave of
protest will sweep through the country like a tsunami.

The only questions are: when will it happen, and how it will begin?

VII :: “Hungry People Don’t Stay Hungry For Long”

Food
prices have been a leading indicator for rebellion thus far. Given the
Federal Reserve’s commitment to driving food prices higher, as a matter
of policy, and the government’s commitment to cutting assistance
programs, people lining up at Wal-Mart on the last day of the month,
waiting for the clock to strike midnight so they can buy their family
milk and bread on their food stamp debit card, seem to be the most
likely to rebel first.

As food prices increase, food stamps are obviously going to buy you
less food. On top of that, as food prices escalate, millions more will
need food assistance, right at the point when the current safety net can
least afford it.

Let’s analyze the most recent food stamp data to see how America’s inevitable revolution may begin.

With 43.6 million Americans currently relying on food stamps, there
are 13 states with over a million people already on food stamps:

· Texas 3,925,119 (number of people on food stamps) — 15.6% (of state population)
· California 3,521,881 — 9.5%
· Florida 2,994,413 — 15.9%
· New York 2,934,493 — 15.1%
· Michigan 1,920,330 – 19.4%
· Ohio 1,772,608 — 15.4%
· Georgia 1,732,865 — 17.9%
· Illinois 1,732,169 — 13.5%
· Pennsylvania 1,673,714 — 13.2%
· North Carolina 1,531,255 — 16.1%
· Tennessee 1,264,407 — 19.9%
· Arizona 1,050,181 — 16.4%
· Washington 1,019,791 — 15.2%

States with over 18% of the population on food stamps:

· Mississippi 612,889 — 20.7%
· Tennessee 1,264,407 — 19.9%
· Oregon 749,498 — 19.6%
· Michigan 1,920,330 — 19.4%
· New Mexico 399,454 — 19.4%
· Louisiana 866,905 — 19.1%
· West Virginia 345,683 — 18.7%
· Kentucky 813,041 — 18.7%
· Maine 241,117 — 18.2%
· South Carolina 839,109 — 18.1%
· Alabama 863,606 — 18.1%

In our nation’s capital, the District of Columbia, there are 131,611
people on food stamps, which is a stunning 21.9% of the population.

As mentioned before, cities with a poverty rate over 25% – Detroit
36%, Cleveland 35%, Buffalo 29%, Milwaukee 28%, St. Louis 27%, Miami
27%, Memphis 26%, Cincinnati 26% and Philadelphia 25% – are also highly
vulnerable to revolt.

VIII :: The Empire State Rebellion

Given all the data, due to New York’s geographical lay out,
population size and proximity to power, it is a prime candidate for
insurrection. There are currently 2.9 million people living in New York
that are on food stamps, which is equivalent to the entire population
of Manhattan. Just imagine three million people flooding into lower
Manhattan. Imagine if three million people decided to take a 15-30
minute subway ride down to the Financial District and camped out from
Wall Street to the NY Fed, spilling over to the corporate offices of JP
Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley and Bank
of America.

Perhaps
the one million people on food stamps from New Jersey and Connecticut
will make a short trip into lower Manhattan as well, four million strong
shutting down lower Manhattan, the economic capital of the world.

How would that play out in the global media?

One million people gathering in Cairo, Egypt sent shock waves
throughout the world, and rightfully so, but just wait until millions of
Americans begin flooding the streets. The revolution contagion will
spread throughout the world like a category five hurricane.

“The civilization may still seem brilliant because it possesses an outward front,
the work of a long past, but is in reality an edifice crumbling to ruin
and destined to fall in at the first storm.”
– Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind

IX :: The Battle in Madison: A Sign of Things to Come

While bloated federal and state spending has grown to staggering
levels of debt, and demands immediate attention, any cut in spending or
attempts to reduce the deficit must first come at the expense of the
organized criminal class that has looted the national economy. Any cuts
that happen before that need to be understood as an escalation and
extension of the attacks on the American people.

While continuing their attacks on American small businesses and
private-sector workers, the global financial elite are now stepping up
their attacks on public workers. In this context, the Wisconsin state
government attacks against the state teachers’ union doesn’t have
anything to do with the old Democrat Vs. Republican divide and conquer
debates of the past. This is about people fighting back against their
economic oppressors. In Egypt, Mubarak was the Neo-Liberal
Aristocracy’s local enforcer. In Wisconsin, Scott Walker is the
Neo-Liberal Aristocracy’s local enforcer.

This battle in Madison, Wisconsin, between the American people and
the global financial elite, represents the opening salvo, the awakening
of an American resistance movement and a sign of what’s to come.

In a report entitled, “Wisconsin governor threatens to call National
Guard on state workers,” Andre Damon explains the situation:

“Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin, announced an
assault against state…. Walker’s proposal, which he said would quickly
pass in the state legislature, drastically limits collective bargaining,
removing the right of unions to negotiate pensions, retirement and
benefits….

When asked by a reporter what will happen if workers resist, Walker
replied that he would call out the National Guard. He said that the
National Guard is ‘prepared … for whatever the governor, their
commander-in-chief, might call for … I am fully prepared for whatever
may happen.’

Walker’s proposal allows state authorities to arbitrarily fire
workers who ‘participate in an organized action to stop or slow work,’
or who ‘are absent for three days without approval of the employer,’
according to the governor’s press release.”

Democracy Now pointed out:

“… the governor’s actions could have national
ramifications: ‘If Governor Walker pulls this off… if he takes down one
of the strongest and most effective teachers’ unions, WEAC, in the
country, then we really are going to see this sweep across the United
States.’”

As a recent Washington Post report summed it up:

Workers toppled a dictator in Egypt, but might be silenced in Wisconsin

“In Egypt, workers are having a revolutionary February. In the United
States, by contrast, February is shaping up as the cruelest month
workers have known in decades.

The
coup de grace that toppled Hosni Mubarak came after tens of thousands
of Egyptian workers went on strike beginning last Tuesday. By Friday,
when Egypt’s military leaders apparently decided that unrest had reached
the point where Mubarak had to go, the Egyptians who operate the Suez
Canal and their fellow workers in steel, textile and bottling factories;
in hospitals, museums and schools; and those who drive buses and trains
had left their jobs to protest their conditions of employment and
governance. As Jim Hoagland noted in The Post, Egypt was barreling down
the path that Poland, East Germany and the Philippines had taken, the
path where workers join student protesters in the streets and jointly
sweep away an authoritarian regime.

But even as workers were helping topple the regime in Cairo, one
state government in particular was moving to topple workers’
organizations here in the United States…. Scott Walker, Wisconsin’s new
Republican governor, proposed taking away most collective bargaining
rights of public employees. Under his legislation… the unions
representing teachers, sanitation workers, doctors and nurses at public
hospitals, and a host of other public employees, would lose the right to
bargain over health coverage, pensions and other benefits. (To make his
proposal more politically palatable, the governor exempted from his hit
list the unions representing firefighters and police.)….

[Those who] often profess admiration for foreign workers’ bravery in
protesting and undermining authoritarian regimes. Letting workers
exercise their rights at home, however, threatens to undermine some of
our own regimes, and shouldn’t be permitted. Now that Wisconsin’s
governor has given the Guard its marching orders, we can discern a new
pattern of global repressive solidarity emerging – from the chastened
pharaoh of the Middle East to the cheesehead pharaoh of the Middle
West.”

Part Two :: The Most Repressive Regime: US Police State

X :: Torture: Made in the USA

It is extremely hypocritical when well-paid mainstream “news” people
talk about how repressive and barbaric the Mubarak regime is in Egypt.
Once again, I doubt they’ve been to inner city America recently.

If you want to report on Egypt participating in torture, it is vital
to point out where they were getting their weapons, training and funding
from. Who paid them to commit horrific crimes against humanity? Look
in the mirror US taxpayers; you may not like what you see.

WikiLeaks revealed information on a US-Egyptian torture program:

WikiLeaks Docs: Torture-Linked Egyptian Police Trained in U.S.

“Newly released classified U.S. diplomatic cables from WikiLeaks have
shed more light on the key U.S. support for human rights abuses under
Mubarak’s regime in Egypt. The cables show Egyptian secret police
received training at the FBI’s facility in Quantico, Virginia, even as
U.S. diplomats in Egypt sent dispatches alleging extensive abuse under
their watch.

Coincidentally, Quantico also hosts the military base where alleged
WikiLeaks whistleblower U.S. Army Private Bradley Manning is being held
in solitary confinement.

A cable from October 2009 cites allegations from ‘credible’ sources
that some prisoners were tortured ‘with electric shocks and sleep
deprivation to reduce them to a ‘zombie state.’ One cable from November
2007 shows then-FBI deputy director John Pistole praised the head of
Egypt’s secret police for ‘excellent and strong’ cooperation between the
two agencies. Pistole currently heads the Transportation Security
Administration in the United States.”

America the beautiful… The Transportation Security Administration,
from electric shocks, sleep deprivation and zombie states in Egypt, to
cancer causing, civil liberty-destroying Naked Scanners at an airport
near you.

XI :: American Gulag: World’s Largest Prison Complex

If you want to report on Egypt putting their citizens in prison,
again, the hypocrisy is astonishing. The US, by far, has more of its
citizens in prison than any other nation on earth. China, with a billion
citizens, doesn’t imprison as many people as the US, with only 309
million American citizens. The US per capita statistics are 700 per 100,000
citizens. In comparison, China has 110 per 100,000. In the Middle East,
the repressive regime in Saudi Arabia imprisons 45 per 100,000. US per
capita levels are equivalent to the darkest days of the Soviet Gulag.

The majority of prisoners are locked up for non-violent crimes, with
tens of thousands in Supermax cells. In addition to the heinous torture
programs that the US government has carried out in Abu Ghraib, Bagram
and Gitmo, we have our own solitary confinement torture programs for
Americans in Supermax Units throughout the country. As Jim Ridgeway
from Solitary Watch explains:

“Solitary confinement has grown dramatically in the past
two decades. Today, at least 25,000 prisoners are being held in
long-term lockdown in the nation’s ‘supermax’ facilities; some 50,000 to
80,000 more are held in isolation in ‘administrative segregation’ or
‘special housing’ units at other facilities. In other words, on any
given day, as many as 100,000 people are living in solitary confinement
in America’s prisons. This widespread practice has received scant media
attention, and has yet to find a place in the public discourse or on
political platforms.”

The US prison industry is thriving and expecting major growth over
the next few years. A report from the Hartford Advocate titled “Incarceration Nation”
revealed, “A new prison opens every week somewhere in America.” If you
want to report on the brutal suppression of citizens, consider that
somewhere in America, every week, a new prison is being built to
literally “house the poor.”

A Boston Globe article by James Carroll shined a light on our repressive regime:

“… as federal corrections budgets increased by $19
billion, money for housing was cut by $17 billion, ‘effectively making
the construction of prisons the nation’s main housing program for the
poor.’ State budgets took their cues from Washington in a new but
unspoken national consensus: poverty itself was criminalized. Although
‘law and order’ was taken to be a Republican mantra, this phenomenon was
fully bipartisan.”

Again, just because you don’t hear this reported on TV, doesn’t mean it’s not happening.

XII :: Loss of Civil Liberties

In addition to the record-breaking imprisonment of the American
population, since 9/11 our civil liberties have been violated in
unprecedented fashion. Tom Burghardt, in an article entitled, “American
Police State: FBI Abuses Reveals Contempt for Political Rights, Civil
Liberties,” summed up a new report
from the Electronic Frontier Foundation “documenting the lawless,
constitutional-free zone under construction in America for nearly a
decade:”

“As mass revolt spreads across Egypt and the Middle East
and citizens there demand jobs, civil liberties and an end to police
state abuses from repressive, U.S.-backed torture regimes, the Obama
administration and their congressional allies aim to expand one right
here at home.

Last week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) released an
explosive new report documenting the lawless, constitutional-free zone
under construction in America for nearly a decade. That report,
‘Patterns of Misconduct: FBI Intelligence Violations from 2001-2008,’
reveals that the domestic political intelligence apparat spearheaded by
the Federal Bureau of Investigation, continues to systematically violate
the rights of American citizens and legal residents….

According to EFF, more than 2,500 documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act revealed that:

* From 2001 to 2008, the FBI reported to the IOB approximately 800
violations of laws, Executive Orders, or other regulations governing
intelligence investigations, although this number likely significantly
under-represents the number of violations that actually occurred.

* From 2001 to 2008, the FBI investigated, at minimum, 7000 potential
violations of laws, Executive Orders, or other regulations governing
intelligence investigations.

* Based on the proportion of violations reported to the IOB and the
FBI’s own statements regarding the number of NSL [National Security
Letter] violations that occurred, the actual number of violations that
may have occurred from 2001 to 2008 could approach 40,000 possible
violations of law, Executive Order, or other regulations governing
intelligence investigations.

But FBI lawbreaking didn’t stop there. Citing internal documents, EFF
revealed that the Bureau also ‘engaged in a number of flagrant legal
violations’ that included, ‘submitting false or inaccurate declarations
to courts,’ ‘using improper evidence to obtain federal grand jury
subpoenas’ and ‘accessing password protected documents without a
warrant.’

In other words, in order to illegally spy on Americans and haul
political dissidents before Star Chamber-style grand juries, the FBI
routinely committed perjury and did so with absolute impunity.

Reviewing the more than 2,500 documents EFF analysts averred that
they had ‘uncovered alarming trends in the Bureau’s intelligence
investigation practices’ and that the ‘documents suggest the FBI’s
intelligence investigations have compromised the civil liberties of
American citizens far more frequently, and to a greater extent, than was
previously assumed.’”

XIII :: Internet Crackdown

When the Egyptian regime shut down the Internet, they did so by using
American made technology. Having been knocked offline here at
AmpedStatus.com, we have firsthand experience in what it feels like to
have your ability to communicate and First Amendment rights stripped
away. We still don’t know who was behind the attacks on our website,
but the situation in Egypt was an interesting case study. As it turned
out, Obama’s new Chief of Staff, Bill Daley’s company provided the
technology used to shut down the Internet in Egypt. No, I’m not
referring to JP Morgan, it was the other company Bill Daley was a board
member of up until last month, Boeing.

As media reform organization Free Press revealed:

“The Mubarak regime shut down Internet and cell phone
communications before launching a violent crackdown against political
protesters.

Free Press has discovered that an American company — Boeing-owned
Narus of Sunnyvale, CA — had sold Egypt [Telecom Egypt, the state-run
Internet service provider] ‘Deep Packet Inspection’ (DPI) equipment that
can be used to help the regime track, target and crush political
dissent over the Internet and mobile phones. Narus is selling this
spying technology to other regimes with deplorable human rights records.

The power to control the Internet and the resulting harm to democracy
are so disturbing that the threshold for using DPI must be very high.
That’s why, before DPI becomes more widely used around the world and at
home, the U.S. government must establish clear and legitimate criteria
for preventing the use of such surveillance and control technology.”

It is probably just be an odd coincidence, but it was soon after we published the following report that we were knocked offline:

Obama Renews Commitment to Complete Destruction of the Middle Class – Meet the New Economic Death Squad

“….
Boeing certainly does love Wall Street. For those of you out of the
loop, you may not recall that the most powerful and destructive WMD that
Boeing executives ever helped develop was the CDO, that’s a
Collateralized Debt (Damage) Obligation. Do you remember Edward Liddy?
Liddy and Bill Daley were both Boeing board members, before Liddy
temporarily moved to Goldman Sachs where he oversaw their Audit
Committee. Liddy was the person who had the most knowledge of Goldman’s
CDO exposure insured through, what was that company’s name?… Oh, AIG.
Yeah, that was it. Then, Hank ‘Pentagon-Watergate-Goldman’ Paulson
unilaterally made Liddy the CEO of AIG, before teaming up with Tim
‘Kissinger-Rubin-Summers-IMF’ Geithner to flush $183 billion tax dollars
down the ‘too big to fail’ drain. And then… after the government was
finished pumping our tax dollars to financial terrorists through the AIG
SPV, Liddy scurried back to the board of Boeing where he could have
cocktails with his ole pal Billy-Boy Daley. Yep, Goldman, JP Morgan,
Boeing and the destruction of the US economy, birds of a feather…”

Within an hour of publishing that report, our site was knocked offline.

Something that has become very clear to me: when you accurately
criticize the most powerful people, most people will ignore you, except
the people who have the most power. They notice right away, and they
let you know about it.

As I said, this is all probably just a coincidence.

However, this tangled web of interests between the Pentagon, Wall
Street and the White House is fully exposed, yet again, with Obama’s
special envoy to Egypt, Frank Wisner Jr.

Wisner has just as many conflicts of interest as Bill Daley and
Edward Liddy. Some reports have mentioned that Wisner was biased
toward supporting the Mubarak regime because he is a longtime friend of
Mubarak, and worked for a law firm that represented the regime, Patton
Boggs. But that’s only part of the story. Wisner, like Bill Daley, is a
Council on Foreign Relations member. He is the son of legendary CIA propaganda expert Frank Wisner Sr., who created and ran Operation Mockingbird.
For those of you who haven’t heard of Frank Wisner Sr., he used to
report on “his ‘mighty Wurlitzer,’ on which he could play any propaganda
tune.”

Frank Jr. was also a board member of Enron, up until its collapse, and like Edward Liddy, he also worked for AIG, from 1997 until 2009.
Wisner oversaw two of the greatest corporate catastrophes in American
history, back to back. Given his track record, Barack “mighty
Wurlitzer” Obama must have thought he was the perfect guy for a
collapsing corporate puppet regime in Egypt. Wisner is a disaster
capitalism expert, right up there with Edward Liddy and Chief of Staff
Bill Daley. Birds of a feather…

XIV :: Silencing Dissent

The recent internal emails from cyber-security firm HB Gary, released
by WikiLeaks, exposing online campaigns to crackdown on critical
journalists, reveals some of the other common methods used by the
financial elite, like the Chamber of Commerce and Bank of America, to
target and silence political adversaries.

As one of the targets of the revealed campaign, Brad Friedman reported:

US Chamber of Commerce Thugs Used ‘Terror Tools’ for
Disinfo Scheme Targeting Me, My Family, Other Progressive U.S. Citizens,
Groups

“The US Chamber of Commerce, the most powerful Rightwing lobbying
group in the country, was revealed to have been working with their law
firm and a number of private cyber security and intelligence firms to
target progressive organizations, journalists and citizens who they felt
were in opposition to their political activism, tactics and points of
view.”

Glenn Greenwald, a journalist who was a constitutional law and civil
rights litigator, was also a target of these planned attacks. In a report on the campaign to smear and discredit him, he focused on how common these illegal attacks are:

The leaked campaign to attack WikiLeaks and its supporters

“The real issue highlighted by this episode is just how lawless and
unrestrained the unified axis of government and corporate power is. As
creepy and odious as this is, there’s nothing unusual about these kinds
of smear campaigns. The only unusual aspect here is that we happened to
learn about it this time because of Anonymous’ hacking. That a similar
scheme was quickly discovered by ThinkProgress demonstrates how common
this behavior is. The very idea of trying to threaten the careers of
journalists and activists to punish and deter their advocacy is
self-evidently pernicious; that it’s being so freely and casually
proposed to groups as powerful as the Bank of America, the Chamber of
Commerce, and the DOJ-recommended Hunton & Williams demonstrates how
common this is. “

Greenwald later added:

“Given the players involved and the facts that continue
to emerge — this story is far too significant to allow to die due to
lack of attention…. As the episode… demonstrates, simply relying on the
voluntary statements of the corporations involved ensures that the
actual facts will remain concealed if not actively distorted…. Entities
of this type routinely engage in conduct like this with impunity, and
the serendipity that led to their exposure in this case should be seized
to impose some accountability… that these firms felt so free to propose
these schemes in writing and, at least from what is known, not a single
person raised any objection at all — underscores how common this
behavior is.”

Dylan Ratigan recently interviewed Glenn Greenwald and they summed up the situation, here’s a brief excerpt:

DYLAN: Am I correct in understanding that substantial,
legitimate, serious, powerful private security firms were pitching Bank
of America and the Chamber of Commerce a campaign for which they would
be paid money, in which they would assassinate the reputations and
intimidate and threaten the well-being of targeted private individuals.
Is that true?

GLENN: Yes, the journalists, activists, political groups, and the like.

DYLAN: Whoever it may be. And that the law firm that brought these
private security firms in was recommended by the U.S. Department of
Justice. So it’s on a recommendation from the DOJ that private and
substantial security firms are being brought in to pitch smear and
intimidation campaigns against those who support transparency in
information. Fair?

GLENN: Yes, exactly….

DYLAN: … they were saying, ‘You pay me money and those who are
validating the efforts of WikiLeaks or the efforts of transparency,
period, in the modern information world, we will threaten their careers
such that they’ll give up the cause, if you pay us.’

GLENN: Right. ‘We’ll investigate them. We’ll find out dirt on them.
We will destroy their reputation using all kinds of schemes and
techniques.’

DYLAN: And this came out through another leak which is the ironic twist…

GLENN: Well, one ironic twist is that it came out through a leak and
the other ironic twist is that these are internet security firms that
held their expertise in providing internet security and yet their e-mail
system was hacked.

XV :: Protected By Anonymous

Propaganda doesn’t work as well when you have the Internet, a
cyberspace Underground Railroad, a form of mass communication that
allows citizens to interact without corporate gatekeepers effectively
censoring critical thought. All of these attacks show the desperation
of the ruling class, in attempting to maintain an obsolete propaganda
system. Just look at how common and accepted unlawful practices have
become in pursuit of their goals.

It
is a strategic imperative that we protect Internet freedom from the
forces of media concentration and censorship. Organizations such as
WikiLeaks and Anonymous are playing a critical role in exposing
information and protecting those who are critical of the most powerful
and corrupt elements within society.

Part 3: Bring the Tyrants Down

Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience:

“All people recognize the right of revolution; that is,
the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when
its tyranny or its inefficiency is great and unendurable. And oppression
and robbery are organized, I say; let us not have such a machine any
longer. I think that it is not too soon for honest people to rebel and
revolutionize.”

XVI :: The Denial of Wealth

As I wrote in The Economic Elite Vs. The People:

“When you take the time to research and analyze the
wealth that has gone to the economic top one percent, you begin to
realize just how much we have been robbed. Trillions upon trillions of
dollars that could make the lives of all hard-working Americans much
easier have been strategically funneled into the coffers of the Economic
Elite. The denial of wealth is the key to the Economic Elite’s power.
An entire generation of massive wealth creation has been strategically
withheld from 99% of the US population.”

In a new report entitled, “Nine Pictures of the Extreme Income/Wealth Gap,” Dave Johnson helps make the point:

“Many people don’t understand our country’s problem of
concentration of income and wealth because they don’t see it. People
just don’t understand how much wealth there is at the top now. The
wealth at the top is so extreme that it is beyond most people’s ability
to comprehend. If people understood just how concentrated wealth has
become in our country and the effect it has on our politics, our
democracy and our people, they would demand our politicians do something
about it….

Top 1% owns more than 90% of us combined….

400 people have as much wealth as half of our population.”

XVII :: Economic Death Squad

A report entitled, “Grapes of Wrath – 2011,” presents a challenge to us:

“The American people have a choice…. The current path,
forged by a minority of privileged wealthy elite, will lead to the
destruction of this country and misery on an unprecedented scale…. Are
you prepared to incur the wrath of the vested interests and meet their
lies and propaganda with the fury of your own wrath in search for the
truth? These men are sure you don’t have the courage, fortitude and
wrath to defeat them.”

In an article and video entitled, “The Wall Street Economic Death Squad,” as I reported back in October, 2009:

“We need to focus our strategy on the small group of men
who carried out the financial coup. These 13 men played leading roles in
first crashing the economy, and then stealing trillions in taxpayer
funds. Some of them are now calling the shots and running the government
to insure that their obscene profits keep pouring into their coffers.

Know Our Enemies, EHMs – Meet The Wall Street Economic Death Squad:

Hank Paulson, Tim Geithner, Ben Bernanke, Robert Rubin, Larry
Summers, Alan Greenspan, Lloyd Blankfein, Jamie Dimon, John Mack, Vikram
Pandit, John Thain, Hank Greenberg, Ken Lewis.

These men ‘presided over the largest transfer of wealth in history,
from the working class to the flamboyant super rich.’ What these men
have done is obscene. After crashing the economy, trillions, literally
trillions of dollars have been funneled into the pockets of a select
few, in secrecy, while billions of people suffer in poverty, billions
suffer to survive. This small tight-knit Wall Street cadre has committed
a crime against humanity.”

Ralph J. Dolan, writing on Dissident Voice, declares, “Bring the Tyrants Down!”

“… while we’re observing these historic events in Egypt
we might take a lesson in justice. We might come to our senses and
freeze the assets of Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, Vikram Pandit of
Citigroup, Brian Moynihan of Bank of America, Jamie Dimon of J.P.
Morgan Chase and John Strumpf of Wells Fargo – for starters. Then we
could go after the other major players in orchestrating the financial
meltdown – Timothy Geithner, Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke, Lawrence
Summers, Robert Rubin, Alan Greenspan, etc.

These guys who waltz away with billions in profits while they create
misery and dislocation for many millions of struggling working people
are beneath contempt….

We seem ready to kneel at the feet and kiss the hands of those who would rob us blind.

Enough! Let us bring these tyrants down!”

If Egyptians can seize the assets of a dictator like Mubarak, why can’t we seize the assets of Jamie Dimon and Llyod Blankfein?

A new report from Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone harshly sums up Banana Republic USA:

“A former Senate investigator laughed as he polished off
his beer. ‘Everything’s fucked up, and nobody goes to jail,’ he said.
‘That’s your whole story right there. Hell, you don’t even have to write
the rest of it. Just write that.’ I put down my notebook. ‘Just that?’
‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Everything’s fucked up, and nobody goes to
jail. You can end the piece right there.’

Not a single executive who ran the companies that cooked up and
cashed in on the phony financial boom — an industrywide scam that
involved the mass sale of mismarked, fraudulent mortgage-backed
securities — has ever been convicted. Their names by now are familiar to
even the most casual Middle American news consumer: companies like AIG,
Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and
Morgan Stanley. Most of these firms were directly involved in elaborate
fraud and theft.”

Once again, veteran financial journalist Paul B. Farrell hits the
nail on the head. Writing for Market Watch, Farrell doesn’t pull any
punches in summing up what needs to be done, and it can’t be said enough:

Fed Dictator Bernanke Needs To Be Toppled

“Fed
boss Ben Bernanke is the most dangerous human on earth, far more
dangerous than Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s 30-year dictator, ever was.
Bernanke rules a monetary dictatorship… But this reign of economic
terror will end. Just as Mubarak was blind to the economic needs of the
masses and democratic reforms, Bernanke is blind to the easy-money
legacy that’s set the stage for revolution, turning the rich into super
rich while the middle class stagnates and peanuts trickle down to the
poor.”

You can’t sentence the overwhelming majority of the population to
slow death through economic policy and expect to get away with it.

While one-tenth of one percent of the population rolls
around in obscene wealth, they may want to take a look outside of their
groupthink short-sighted delusional perspective and notice the outside
world. You cannot ignore the suffering of the masses. They will show up
at your doorstep next.

I hear footsteps…

XVIII :: 99.9% Vs. 0.1%

Egypt exposed the power that the people have. One million Egyptians
proved that you can shut down a powerful regime through a mass
demonstration of non-violent force. Here in the US, according to public
opinion polls, 75-80% of the population believes the government doesn’t
have the consent of the governed.

The mainstream media leaves Americans feeling isolated and powerless
to create change, but in reality, average Americans have all the power
that they need to end the economic suffering and injustices that they
endure. The overwhelming majority of people feel powerless to create
change, if they would just realize that they are the overwhelming
majority, we would have the change we so desperately need.

As I’ve written in the past:

“To those Americans who feel powerless to change things, I
say that your feelings are only a result of your induced delusion. You
have become so propagandized that you do not even understand the
significant position that you are in…. We are still a mass of people who
have the power to change the course of history…. we are 99.9% of the US
population, and they are only 0.1%.

If we fight, we win!”

The people of Tunisia and Egypt has shown us the way. People are
rising up throughout the world against the exact same people who looted
America. The economic central planners that have launched an economic
war on Americans, are also plundering the rest of the global economy
with devastating consequences for 99.9 percent of the global population.

As John Pilger points out:

The Egyptian Revolt Is Coming Home

“The uprising in Egypt is our theatre of the possible. It is what
people across the world have struggled for and their thought controllers
have feared…. Across the world, public awareness is rising and
bypassing them. In Washington and London, the regimes are fragile and
barely democratic. Having long burned down societies abroad, they are
now doing something similar at home, with lies and without a mandate. To
their victims, the resistance in Cairo’s Liberation Square must seem an
inspiration.”

We are, as fate has it, the most power group of people on the planet.
The sooner a critical mass can understand this, and the urgency of the
moment, the better chance we have of solving this crisis through
non-violent means. When the aware but passive realize that they too will
face increasingly harsh consequences, that’s when we will have a chance
to fix things. Until then, the hole gets deeper by the day.

As nations continue to fall to internal revolt, the more covert and
militaristic elements of power will move to the fore. In a world of
collapsing economies, limited resources and extreme weather, it appears
we are on a road to worldwide war.
As the people of Egypt have demonstrated, the non-violent movement has
to assert itself before the situation gets so dire that outbreaks of
violence will be commonplace, thus insuring a further, much harsher
crackdown, police state and Neo-Feudal economic order.

As Chris Hedges makes clear:

“The longer we believe in the fiction that we are
included in the corporate power structure, the more easily corporations
pillage the country without the threat of rebellion….

No system of total control, including corporate control, exhibits its
extreme forms at the beginning. These forms expand as they fail to
encounter resistance….

All centralized power, once restraints and regulations are abolished,
once it is no longer accountable to citizens, knows no limit to
internal and external plunder. The corporate state, which has
emasculated our government, is creating a new form of feudalism, a world
of masters and serfs.”

If we do not stand and rebel now, devastating consequences are sure
to drastically lower our living standards within the near future. If we
rise, people across the globe will continue to rise.

“We must conclude that a changeover is imminent and
ineluctable in the co-opted cast who serve the interests of domination,
and above all manage the protection of that domination. In such an
affair, innovation will surely not be displayed [in the mainstream
media]. It appears instead like lightening, which we only know when it
strikes.”
– Guy DeBord

When revolution returns to America, the point won’t be to take down a
figure head puppet politician like Mubarak or Obama, mere public
relations moves will not suffice. We will take down the system behind
them. We will take down the global banks, break them up, end the
campaign finance racket, end closed-door lobbying, end the system of
political bribery, end the two-party oligarchy, remove puppet judges who
voted for unlimited spending by private economic elites, end corporate
welfare and the various financial rackets which loot national wealth at
the expense of the people.

“All countries are basically social arrangements,
accommodations to changing circumstances. No matter how permanent and
even sacred they may seem at any one time,
in fact they are all artificial and temporary.”
– Strobe Talbott

We must enact common sense polices to deter organized corruption.
The devil is always in the details, so rain RICO laws down upon them.

They shall reap what they sow.

Their day of reckoning is fast approaching.

Thomas Jefferson was correct when he said, “I believe that banking
institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.”

As Jefferson rightfully declared, “Every generation needs a new revolution.”

Great ready… here it comes.

As a wise man once said,

“Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number
Shake your chains
to earth like dew
Which in sleep
had fallen on you
Ye are many
they are few”

Comments

[Bob]

We've been hearing this lunacy since Reagan.  Give it up--it's dead.  No amount of inspired obfuscation can bring it back. 

[Caviar Emptor]

Call it what you want, global economic domination isn't usually what one would call "liberal". The modern state of Saudi Arabia was set up by extreme right wing elements that included British and American intelligence bankrolled by the offspring of Standard Oil and Texaco. Much help was given to the rise of fascism in Germany and in return global distribution rights were promised for a post-war world controlled by Germany. 

[Oh regional Indian]

Caviar, do you have any good links that tell the story as you describe it?

Always interested in a look behind the scenes. Thanks.

ORI

[falak pema]

Remember the historic hand shake between FDR and King Saoud on FDR's passage through Egypt after Yalta, 1945. That started off the honey-moon. Having found oil in mind boggling amounts, Standard oil then became lead spear carrier of Aramco, based on a profit split between Saoud family clan and big oil. The Saoud's were Wahhabites, rabid fundamentalists, unlike the Hashemites in Jordan who were descendants of the original Ommeyads, founders of liberal al-Andalus, greatest muslim civilisation that introduced the notion of 'Convivencia' in Spain, then in Europe, like in Sicily, based on religious tolerance. The spanish feudals never contested the Ommeyads in Spain as they were older in their claims to local lands taken from the Visigoths, a Teutonic nomadic tribe having invaded roman empire, then become Arian converts, not true christians. The Castillan Reconquista from 1080 AD contested subsequent Moslem Berber invasions of  the Almoravids. Not the original moslem 'taifas' or minor sheikhdoms, who were their allies.

[Mr. Poon]

Agree with a number of peole above me, this article is highly suspect.  It has some valid points, but I can see the direction it is headed (think:  HuffingtonPost, DailyKos, NakedCapitalism, etc.)

I understand the criticism of neo-liberalism - it certainly has its problems.  But is what we have really neo-liberalism?  The issue I have is that the people calling for "neo-liberalism" to go want it to leave the door open for socialism (or European social democracy, for those who think that term is too loaded) to come in.  They don't want less government or less taxation, they want more.

[Sad Sufi]

Maybe those darned people asking for neo-liberalism to go want decentralized economies (local) and an end to the bankster-government corporate welfare connection.  I agree though that the "right" versus "left" conversation that the ones in power promote leaves little room for solutions.

[dexter_morgan]

Bingo!

[cocoablini]

I hate the term neo- liberalism. That just sets the dingbat progressives into a corner and they become reactionary.
This is a euro,british model of holographic socialism. But the real term is:
oligarchy.
In europe, which Obama can't wait to replicate, there is a high strata of landowner class. The regular people struggle, pay high taxes but basically have a safety net called welfare.
The alpha rich have nothing to do with this- they are in the hunt like American Bankers amassing wealth, hoarding it in Zurich and Antigua. Like the US, its a 2 level legal system. Like europe, the distance is growing between the classes.
But, it's THEIR system, their rules and their ballgame. Hence why they succeed. Western capitalism is nothing but legalized stealing now.
We have to play by their rules or they will take it ALL. They will destroy our savings via fiat currency, ruin social programs, hoard gold- you know the rest.
Its great to watch the middle east go tits up. It shows the american polical class and the corporate class that they are 2 steps away from a similar outcome.
Buy silver, the money of the people.

[Oh regional Indian]

Well said all around Cocoablini. In a nut-shell, could nto have been said better.

Their system. Everyone needs to understand fully how deep the control goes and how pervasive the system is. If it is a visible hydra, imagine what lies below. 

A return to the wild west as some see it is extremely unlikely.

More likely, gunners will be dealt with excessive force first.

Live by the sword...

ORI

http://aadivaahan.wordpress.com/2011/02/25/wisdom-for-warriors-7/

[JW n FL]

This aint India, Pussy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31vm3-BQRJU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYXJYQZ3FX0&feature=related <--- Grandma gets busy in the U S of A!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8DehAUimRA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZNXtUFMMd8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_ClWi27olA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nTjMeA7cEE&feature=related

[ft65]

Quoting: JW n FL / GLP ^TrInItY^ This aint India, Pussy!

Please take the guns shit back to your own forum (www.godlikeproductions.com) where it belongs. We know how the HB Gary / MacDill / Eglin software works. We really don't need it tested here too!

[Bob]

Look around.  TPTB made ZH a major cyber-battle ground long ago. 

[serotonindumptruck]

Manufacturing consensus? On ZH? Say it ain't so, Bob!

Critical thinking skills seem to be in low supply within the majority of US society. Thankfully, that's not the case at ZH.

[Oh regional Indian]

+ 0

ORI

[Bob]

Home sweet home.

[holdbuysell]

So what now? Are people in the US organizing on Facebook, as they did in Egypt and Saudi?

[StychoKiller]

Careful with that ax, Eugene:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/02/black-ops-how-hbgary-wro...

The bad guys might just steer you over a cliff and into a jail cell.

[Psquared]

Wow ... this is a book. I need to read this carefully, but as I hit the highlights I daresay I am going to agree. I'm glad the connection was made to Wisconsin. No one would believe there is anything in common between Madison and Tripoli, but the truth is that underlying all these demonstrations is a common theme. People have been robbed of their wealth and their fighting back. Either the government takes steps to recoup the losses and jail the bad guys or this will get worse before it gets better.

[philgramm]

Yes you are soooo right.  The public mafia union workers in Wisconsin have been robbed of the wealth they have earned at the barrel of a gun from private sector taxpayers.  Thanks for clearing it up.  

[dexter_morgan]

Thanks Phil, I too have to check the URL sometimes because I often think I have wandered in to the DNC or AFL-CIO website somehow. For a bunch of investor types, many folks here are some of the most anti-business folks I've encountered. Anti-bankster I fully understand and agree with, but much of the other talking-points crap I just don't get.

[Bob]

Perhaps it's time for "investor types" to examine their biases and the real basis of their own "investment" in this system. 

[Calmyourself]

Perhaps it is time for you to examine how you earn a living and whether people have a chocie to do business with you or not.  Government made it impossible for me to not do business with the big banks, GS etc.  Do not make it impossible for me not to do business with you, it makes me plan to do without you.

[Bob]

Sounds fair to me.  Good luck.  You might have to stay off my roads, but I'm perfectly cool with that.

[StychoKiller]

Our work, or their guns:  They can no longer have both!

[Hillbillyfreak]

Psquared - Grew up in Wisconsin, right?

[Milton Waddams]

Government aside (which has been facilitating the trend seen in the chart through corporate welfare), it all comes down to which line determines your economic fate. The orange line is corporate profits after tax adjusted for CPI. The green line is average hour earnings-total private industry adjusted for CPI.

“There’s class warfare, all right,” Mr. [Warren] Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

The rank and file worker is earning the same wages he or she was in the mid 1970s while corporate profits are a sliver from record highs.

What I am unfamilar with is what caused the reversal in avg hourly earnings in the middle to late 1990s. Is that reflecting a pick up in construction jobs ahead of the real estate bubble? IT/dotcom jobs?

[OldPhart]

"What I am unfamilar with is what caused the reversal in avg hourly earnings in the middle to late 1990s. Is that reflecting a pick up in construction jobs ahead of the real estate bubble? IT/dotcom jobs?"

NAFTA and the rise of other free trade agreements.

Ross Perot was right.  There was "a giant sucking sound" as jobs left the US.  Now it just sucks.

[Hacksaw]

It's called 20+ million illegal workers who were used by the same corporatist who are out sourcing everything now to artificially suppress wages. Wake up folks, if you work for a living the banksters and corporatist have declared war on you. Don't let the shills divide you against other workers. Keep your focus on the real fraudsters and extortionist.

[Bob]

Well over a million people demonstrated in State Capitals yesterday on behalf of labor.  This thing is just beginning to roll. 

[SilverFiend]

What is that, .309 % of the population?

[Bob]

Take a look at the FIRE economy,  Milton.  Ordinary people were becoming "mortgage bankers."  In addition to construction and related (think granite counter tops) industries.

[Dr. Porkchop]

We may not all agree on certain things, but what we must all agree upon is that these wanking fucking bankers have had their day in the sun, and now it is time to stop fighting each other and unite to drive these vermin back into the gutter where they belong.

[Sad Sufi]

Yes!

[philgramm]

The bankers can't do shit w/o the force of gov't.  Did the banker come to your house and take your wealth.  No. Your gov't gave your wealth to bankers, foreign gov'ts, dictators, piblic sector unions.  The list goes on and on.  There will always be greedy motherfuckers in the world.  But without the help of the government they can't do anything to you.  

[Sad Sufi]

Yes, it is a criminal collusion, the mariage of government and business.

[DiverCity]

Wouldn't they at least cohabitate under Sharia?

[bluebare]

Dateline Today. Over the next two-and-a-half years, states face an estimated $175 billion more in budget gaps that they have no choice but to fill. The hole is caused partly because an initial infusion of cash from President Barack Obama's economic stimulus law, as well as extensions of that money, will dry up in June. States received $103 billion in Medicaid money and $48 billion in education dollars to soften the recession's blow.

full article: http://www.cnbc.com/id/41799704

obligatory musical metaphor: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvBCl3CBMXA

obligatory picture worth 10,000 words: http://www.onekirk.org/images/tip-iceberg.jpg

obligatory babe: http://www.hottubessentials.com/images/Ducks/babe_ruth.jpg

etc. etc. etc. bitchez

[reader2010]

that's their call for QE_n+1.

[OldPhart]

You REALLY need to get babe advice from Money McBags.

[OldTrooper]

+1

[JR]

Centralized American education has become a tool by the elites to put every man on leading strings, to think of himself not as an individual with individual rights but as a member of the people at large, of a collective.

The use of education as a tool for human engineering is described in a 1904 report issued by the General Education Board, one of the first foundations established by John D. Rockefeller, Sr. Writes G. Edward Griffin in The Creature from Jekyll Island:.

“The purpose of the foundation was to use the power of money, not to raise the level of education in America, as was widely believed at the time, but to influence the direction of that education.  Specifically, it was to promote the ideology of collectivism and internationalism.  The object was to use the classroom to teach attitudes that encourage people to be passive and submissive to their rulers.”

Have you looked at any school textbooks lately?

[AnAnonymous]

The object was to use the classroom to teach attitudes that encourage people to be passive and submissive to their rulers.”

Reads like the type of education US citizens were giving to their slaves.

So what's wrong in that? US citizens performed it by their own volition before.

[prophet_banker]

wow, what a story, hank paulson ceo golman gets SEC to toss NET CAPITAL requirement of holding assets to cover liabilities; ie derivitives, cdo, ect. wow, great work hear, i picked the top one;

http://www.google.com/search?q=david+degraw&tbo=p&tbm=vid&source=vgc&aq=0

[global banking institutions. All of them also strictly adhere to the Washington Consensus of the International Monetary Fund (I.M.F.) and the World Bank]

- there's that conspiracy groupthink again

[b_thunder]

The difference bet. Arab dictatorships and the USA is that they had one dictator, and int he USA we have a choice between 2, and people simply don't understand that both parties are just 2 sides of the same coin.

So 2 years ago a large numebr of those 50+ millions without health insurance, on foodstamps and below the powerty voted for Obama. Result?  Tax cuts for the wealthy, business tax breaks for the wealthy, capital gains remain taxed @ 15%, the Bernank is stil the Chairsatan, and bank bailouts preceeded uninterrupted.  Three month ago, another large part of the same 50+ million voted for Tea Party - yes, the below the powerty line Social Security, Medicare and disability recipients took to the streets with banners "Repeal Social Security", "Medicare = Socialism" and so on.  Soon they will have their benefits cut by the people they helped elect! 

In first case, the ex-Obama voters will blame GOP, and int he second case the Tea Party voters will blame the democrats.   The Dems and Tea-party voters will keep fighting among themselves, while their representatives from both parties will continue grabbing lobbying cash and aim for cushy jobs on wall street.  And in the meantime, Wall St. will pay itself hundreds of billions in bonuses, and The Bernank will print trillions more for their exclusive use. 

Mubarak's fatal error was that he did not sufficiently divided his country's poor folks, didn't aim one group against the other.

That's why I do not see any revolution taking place here - people do not understand who the real enemy is.

[Sad Sufi]

Yes Thunder, we are divided and confused. 

The way you describe it is great: First an elected "hero" weakens benefits and stability for the middle class, then, like a tag-team match, the "opposition" comes into power with new rhetoric, and chops away at different pillars of a civil society.

[Milton Waddams]

The socio-economic stratification began with the victory over National Socialism and accelerated with the downfall of Communism.

When there was a legitimate competing political-economic ideology to democratic born capitalism the distribution of the nation's wealth was more equitable. I'm not talking economic equality through the redistribution of the wealth, but a sense by TPTB that, while "I" may be better off than "you", we are in this struggle together and I must assist you in defeating an enemy that threatens to take my fortune away from me.

The competition that demanded this cohesion of classes no longer exists (oh yeah, beside Islamic terrorists LOL). As such, the average American is seen in a light no different than the average individual elsewhere. Cheap labor, and if you demand a wage greater than your foreign equivalent it is expected that you use the additional income to consume. When you stop consuming and still demand higher than average wages- you are expendable.

[AnAnonymous]

Wait for China to fall to see the potential of the US totally unleashed.

[snowball777]

A little something I cooked up back in 2003. The "Villains of Wall St" mug shots reminded me of it.

http://bit.ly/hk6ijD

[ebworthen]

Expand your horizons.

Include 50% Demicrats and you will be on the right road.

It isn't about Demicans and Republicrats.

Politics is the distraction.

[snowball777]

The image was made during the run-up to Iraq and there weren't many Dems in the executive branch during that insanity, but I'll make sure to include some when I make an image about the financial crisis and its causes.

[TruthInSunshine]

It all boils down to whether the American Soldier, in large part, ever actually obeys a command to fire on their American Brother or Sister.

Some say that incidents in the past such as Kent State prove that they will.

I am not so certain.

In fact, you could say I am a doubter.

American Soldiers, Airmen, Sailors, Marines & Coast Guardsmen all have civilian family members, and they are an all-volunteer force.

I point to Ghaddafi's use of African Mercenaries to do his truly evil bidding in Libya, and the refusal of the Egyptian Military to fire on Egyptians en masse, as contrasting points of proof supporting my thesis.

p.s. - Wall Street represented 14% of U.S. GDP in the 60s while manufacturing of a domestic nature represented over 40%. Now, the tables have flipped. And guess who has a disproportionate share of political and economic power now?

"The first thing we do...is kill all the Banksters, Squid-men, & JP Morgue-men."

[Milton Waddams]

"Son, your order is to fire. So fire!"

"Sir, um, those are American citizens..."

"American citizens? Those are worthless pieces of shit trying to wreck the country you have taken a vow to defend. If it was up to them you wouldn't have a job soldier. If it was up to them this country would be overrun by our foreign enemies in a heart beat. These are people who don't want to work for a living. Unlike you and your brothers in arms, they do not understand sacrifice. They want change for the sake of change... not for any high minded ideals. Your daddy used to beat you with a belt when you got out of line, correct soldier?"

"Sir, well, uh..."

"Right, and it was that discipline that helped make you the man you are today and subsequently a soldier! So why deny them what made you who you are today ..."

[JW n FL]

sure... Lt.'s are so very popular... Marines would cut his balls off and make him eat them for giving such and order... Brass can get treated like the Banker if need be.

[reader2010]

sure, they will have to drug them first before ordering them to gun down civilians.

[JW n FL]

the days of un-armed Kent State shit are long dead...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31vm3-BQRJU

[JW n FL]

XIV :: Silencing Dissent

The recent internal emails from cyber-security firm HB Gary, released by WikiLeaks, exposing online campaigns to crackdown on critical journalists, reveals some of the other common methods used by the financial elite, like the Chamber of Commerce and Bank of America, to target and silence political adversaries.

As one of the targets of the revealed campaign, Brad Friedman reported:

US Chamber of Commerce Thugs Used ‘Terror Tools’ for Disinfo Scheme Targeting Me, My Family, Other Progressive U.S. Citizens, Groups

“The US Chamber of Commerce, the most powerful Rightwing lobbying group in the country, was revealed to have been working with their law firm and a number of private cyber security and intelligence firms to target progressive organizations, journalists and citizens who they felt were in opposition to their political activism, tactics and points of view.”

Glenn Greenwald, a journalist who was a constitutional law and civil rights litigator, was also a target of these planned attacks. In a report on the campaign to smear and discredit him, he focused on how common these illegal attacks are:

The leaked campaign to attack WikiLeaks and its supporters

“The real issue highlighted by this episode is just how lawless and unrestrained the unified axis of government and corporate power is. As creepy and odious as this is, there’s nothing unusual about these kinds of smear campaigns. The only unusual aspect here is that we happened to learn about it this time because of Anonymous’ hacking. That a similar scheme was quickly discovered by ThinkProgress demonstrates how common this behavior is. The very idea of trying to threaten the careers of journalists and activists to punish and deter their advocacy is self-evidently pernicious; that it’s being so freely and casually proposed to groups as powerful as the Bank of America, the Chamber of Commerce, and the DOJ-recommended Hunton & Williams demonstrates how common this is. “

Greenwald later added:

“Given the players involved and the facts that continue to emerge — this story is far too significant to allow to die due to lack of attention…. As the episode… demonstrates, simply relying on the voluntary statements of the corporations involved ensures that the actual facts will remain concealed if not actively distorted…. Entities of this type routinely engage in conduct like this with impunity, and the serendipity that led to their exposure in this case should be seized to impose some accountability… that these firms felt so free to propose these schemes in writing and, at least from what is known, not a single person raised any objection at all — underscores how common this behavior is.”

Dylan Ratigan recently interviewed Glenn Greenwald and they summed up the situation, here’s a brief excerpt:

DYLAN: Am I correct in understanding that substantial, legitimate, serious, powerful private security firms were pitching Bank of America and the Chamber of Commerce a campaign for which they would be paid money, in which they would assassinate the reputations and intimidate and threaten the well-being of targeted private individuals. Is that true?

GLENN: Yes, the journalists, activists, political groups, and the like.

DYLAN: Whoever it may be. And that the law firm that brought these private security firms in was recommended by the U.S. Department of Justice. So it’s on a recommendation from the DOJ that private and substantial security firms are being brought in to pitch smear and intimidation campaigns against those who support transparency in information. Fair?

GLENN: Yes, exactly….

DYLAN: … they were saying, ‘You pay me money and those who are validating the efforts of WikiLeaks or the efforts of transparency, period, in the modern information world, we will threaten their careers such that they’ll give up the cause, if you pay us.’

GLENN: Right. ‘We’ll investigate them. We’ll find out dirt on them. We will destroy their reputation using all kinds of schemes and techniques.’

DYLAN: And this came out through another leak which is the ironic twist…

GLENN: Well, one ironic twist is that it came out through a leak and the other ironic twist is that these are internet security firms that held their expertise in providing internet security and yet their e-mail system was hacked.

******************************************************************************

Solicitation Number:

RTB220610

Notice Type:

Sources Sought

Synopsis:

Added: Jun 22, 2010 1:42 pm Modified: Jun 22, 2010 2:07 pmTrack Changes

0001- Online Persona Management Service. 50 User Licenses, 10 Personas per user.
Software will allow 10 personas per user, replete with background , history, supporting details, and cyber presences that are technically, culturally and geographacilly consistent. Individual applications will enable an operator to exercise a number of different online persons from the same workstation and without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries. Personas must be able to appear to originate in nearly any part of the world and can interact through conventional online services and social media platforms. The service includes a user friendly application environment to maximize the user's situational awareness by displaying real-time local information.

0002- Secure Virtual Private Network (VPN). 1 each
VPN provides the ability for users to daily and automatically obtain randomly selected
IP addresses through which they can access the internet. The daily rotation of
the user s IP address prevents compromise during observation of likely or
targeted web sites or services, while hiding the existence of the operation. In
addition, may provide traffic mixing, blending the user s traffic with traffic from
multitudes of users from outside the organization. This traffic blending provides
excellent cover and powerful deniability. Anonymizer Enterprise Chameleon or equal

0003- Static IP Address Management. 50 each
Licence protects the identity of government agencies and enterprise
organizations. Enables organizations to manage their persistent online personas
by assigning static IP addresses to each persona. Individuals can perform
static impersonations, which allow them to look like the same person over time.
Also allows organizations that frequent same site/service often to easily switch IP
addresses to look like ordinary users as opposed to one organization. Anonymizer IP Mapper License or equal

0004- Virtual Private Servers, CONUS. 1 each
Provides CONUS or OCONUS points of presence locations that are setup for
each customer based on the geographic area of operations the customer is
operating within and which allow a customer?s online persona(s) to appear to
originate from. Ability to provide virtual private servers that are procured using
commercial hosting centers around the world and which are established
anonymously. Once procured, the geosite is incorporated into the network and
integrated within the customers environment and ready for use by the customer.
Unless specifically designated as shared, locations are dedicated for use by
each customer and never shared among other customers. Anonymizer Annual Dedicated CONUS Light Geosite or equal

0005- Virtual Private Servers, OCONUS. 8 Each
Provides CONUS or OCONUS points of presence locations that are setup for
each customer based on the geographic area of operations the customer is
operating within and which allow a customer?s online persona(s) to appear to
originate from. Ability to provide virtual private servers that are procured using
commercial hosting centers around the world and which are established
anonymously. Once procured, the geosite is incorporated into the network and
integrated within the customers environment and ready for use by the customer.
Unless specifically designated as shared, locations are dedicated for use by
each customer and never shared among other customers. Anonymizer Annual Dedicated OCONUS Light Geosite or equal

0006- Remote Access Secure Virtual Private Network. 1 each
Secure Operating Environment provides a reliable and protected computing
environment from which to stage and conduct operations. Every session uses a
clean Virtual Machine (VM) image. The solution is accessed through sets of
Virtual Private Network (VPN) devices located at each Customer facility. The
fully-managed VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) is an environment that allows
users remote access from their desktop into a VM. Upon session termination,
the VM is deleted and any virus, worm, or malicious software that the user inadvertently downloaded is destroyed. Anonymizer Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Solution or equal.

Contracting Office Address:

2606 Brown Pelican Ave.
MacDill AFB, Florida 33621-5000
United States

Place of Performance:

Performance will be at MacDIll AFB, Kabul, Afghanistan and Baghdad, Iraq.
MacDill AFB , Florida 33679
United States

Primary Point of Contact.:

Russell Beasley,

Contracting Officer

[e-mail]

Phone: [phone]

Fax: [phone]

https://www.fbo.gov/index?_cview=1&id=d88e9d660336be91552fe8c1a51bacb2&mode=form&s=opportunity&tab=core

Army Deploys Psy-Ops on U.S. Senators

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/another-runaway-general-army-deploys-psy-ops-on-u-s-senators-20110223

[ft65]

JW n FL / Godlikeproductions ^TrInItY^ one word...

"Stevie"

make that two...

"Pussy"

[Yes_Questions]

Or, just call these guys:

www.xecompany.com/

[honestann]

And I can assure you, under those circumstances, I would shoot.

Yes, I must admit I would shoot.  I could not stop myself.

I would shoot that "superior officer"... as is appropriate.

Unfortunately, not everyone is me.

[prophet_banker]

[Hedge Funds to Short American States and Cities “The looming possibility of municipal defaults, which some say could total hundreds of billions of dollars]

i hope they can't short muni's, they would have to buy them 1st, and sell them later, when interest rates would be rising, they'd lose

but alas, i suspect the kleptocracy is naked shorting US treasuries, and muni's to, maybe that's what you mean, phantom shares.

i agree that there will be no revolt until hunger sets in in America, and unfurtunately, if that be so, it will be a long time, as American's don't spend the % of income on food

Frank Wisner Jr,

Only after President Obama's "personal envoy" openly admitted that he went to Egypt to support Mubarak did the BBC and other news outlets pick up on the "deliberate abiguity" of the Obama administration's deceptive Egypt policy.  Sending Frank Wisner of the C.I.A. to support the Mubarak dictatorship while Obama and Hillary Clinton pretended to be supporting "democratic change" in Egypt is more than ambiguous - it's downright deception.  Obama was caught deceiving the American people and the world.  This is what Robert Fisk of The Independent (U.K) reported on February 7:

Oddly, not a single journalist raised this extraordinary connection with US government officials – nor the blatant conflict of interest it appears to represent.
- Robert Fisk on Frank Wisner's connections to Mubarak in The Independent (U.K) on 7 February 2011

Readers of Bollyn.com, however, were well aware of this "blatant conflict of interest" and the policy of deception behind it since it began on January 31.  While the controlled media did not discuss Wisner's connections, I did - a week before the BBC or Robert Fisk.  The controlled press, including the BBC, was reporting that Wisner had been sent to urge Mubarak to leave office - a complete falsehood - up until February 5, when Wisner admitted that it was "crucial" to preserve the Mubarak regime. 

The mask has slipped from the two-faced Obama administration.  One can now clearly see how Obama and Hillary Clinton practice the art of deceit.  I have been reporting on the duplicity of the U.S. policy in Egypt since January 31 when President Obama sent Frank Wisner, a high-level C.I.A. man, as his personal envoy to manage the crisis in Cairo. 

BOLLYN EXPLAINS U.S. DUPLICITY IN EGYPT ON PRESS TV (click on box below)

http://www.bollyn.com/index.php

[JR]

Yes.  Wisner was sent and allowed into Egypt to preserve Israel’s interest; to find a replacement for Murakak that would be acceptable to Mubarak and Israel—probably Suleiman. 

The reason Obama gave for sending Wisner was that Wisner knew Mubarak and would be able to carry his personal message, implying that the personal message was: Mubarak, You don’t have a chance of staying in power and the US is not going to help you.

I didn’t believe it; Wisner was sent into Egypt to negotiate a transfer of power acceptable to Israel. 

Once you understand that Obama is going to do every little thing to every big thing that Israel wants, you can better interpret his moves. 

For example:  There is a revolution in Egypt and the people want Mubarak removed.  What interest is it to Obama at that point?  I’ll tell you; it’s Israel’s interest.  That’s the only reasosn Obama would tamper with the revolution.  It was not a violent revolution;; it was a peaceful protest pressure. What business it is of Obama’s? It’s Netanyahu’s business. That’s what.

To imply that the “Obama Administration” sent an emmisary in there to urge Mubarak to step down is rather thin.  CIA? Mussad?  What’s the difference?

[Occams Aftershave]

The US government would never use the Army and National Guard to attack and kill one's countrymen, would they?   Oh wait, Abraham Lincoln did..... oops

[dexter_morgan]

Yeah, Lincoln = bad president except for the freeing the slaves part. Beginnings of federal behemoth starts with him.

[Rusty Shorts]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rj2Wv0Yn5eE

[Papi_Al-Mahdi]

Yep, don't forget the Rockefeller ordered Ludlow Massacre too

[proLiberty]

"According to the CIA, the poverty rate in Egypt is 20%. With a population size of 83 million people, this would put 16.6 million Egyptians living in poverty. In the US, the current poverty rate is 16.8%, with a population of 309 million, this puts 52 million Americans living below the poverty line.

"When you consider that the US has 52 million people currently living in poverty, you realize, as shocking as it may sound, that we have a larger number of desperate people in the US than rebelling populations in countries throughout the Middle East and Europe."

It is just CRAP to compare the "poor" in the US to the poor in the third world.  The "poor" in the US are the single most likely demographic to be OBEASE! According to the National Center for Policy Analysis, [1] the “poor” in the US:

* Forty-three percent of all poor households actually own their own homes; the average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage and a porch or patio.

* Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning; by contrast, in 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.

* Only 6 percent of poor households are overcrowded; two-thirds have more than two rooms per person.

* The typical poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens and other cities throughout Europe (these comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor).

* Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 31 percent own two or more cars.

* Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television; over half own two or more color televisions.

* Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception.

* Eighty-nine percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo, and a more than a third have an automatic dishwasher.

Comparisons of the “poor” in this article are worse then worthless, they are socialist propaganda.

[1] NCPA, WHERE BEST TO BE POOR?, link: http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=19528

[Sad Sufi]

Fascinating figures, and interesting link, helps one re-think being poor.  Thanks.

[Bob]

"Poor" is a relative thing . . . and we'll see how long people can survive eating those precious trinkets of American Progress. 

Socialist propaganda?  The opposition you're fronting for has modestly seized the mantle of "Liberty" as a ridiculous new brand for the interests of the elite.

[jomama]

crying wolf never gets old for some

[dexter_morgan]

true dat

[prophet_banker]

i wounder if Frank Wisner was in on the 6Billion dollar insurance fraud payments payed by AIG to Larry Silverstein for blowing up demolition of the WTC, working with Hank Maurice Greenburg to make sure this bloodmoney for murdering americans got paid; they were working at AIG together after 9/11/2001

There is such a problem of organized crime partnering with organized capital. It was Jeff Gates that really got me thinking on this,

http://www.veteranstoday.com/author/jeffgates/ Organized Capital's claim that they deserve ever accumulating returns on their organized capital is immoral, fraudulent, anti-human, and this groupthink consensus being taught at our finest educational institution must be stopped.

 “When you take the time to research and analyze the wealth that has gone to the economic top one percent, you begin to realize just how much we have been robbed. Trillions upon trillions of dollars that could make the lives of all hard-working Americans much easier have been strategically funneled into the coffers of the Economic Elite. The denial of wealth is the key to the Economic Elite’s power. An entire generation of massive wealth creation has been strategically withheld from 99% of the US population.”

[dexter_morgan]

The new "ism"- BOHICAism

[snowball777]

Be...gentle.

[Yes_Questions]

Not So Fast!!

[PulauHantu29]

"Another year of record bonuses is coming," one CEO said filled with Hubris.

he is most likely right. I notice JP Moprgan Bank's CEO, Jamie Dimon started off his year on the right foot---giving himself a $17 Million Bonus.

[snowball777]

"I tell you Muffie...these people are so much less uppity now that they've tasted the bread line. They'll work for peanuts and always show up on time for their partial shifts."

[Strike Back]

One of the greatest assets we have, as Americans, is our ideological history.  It is NOT naive to think that something BIG could happen here.  The old world, the middle east, and asia, never had a revolution that actually put the ideology of liberty into practice.  We have that revolution to look back to and the ideas behind that revolution are planted deeply within our psyche.  These same ideas, from Adam Smith to Thomas Jefferson, are argued fervently today, by statesmen like Ron Paul, and by anonymous communicators such as Tyler Durden and the posters on ZH in the tradition of Thomas Paine.  There is simply no parrallel anywhere else, indeed, revolutions in other areas many times succumb to that old trickster, Marx.  Think about it.  "Common Sense" was at one time a fucking PAMPHLET.  Revolts against the old order start out as mere conversations.  Have the courage to fan the fire of hope.

[Hillbillyfreak]

"We have that revolution to look back to and the ideas behind that revolution are planted deeply within our psyche." 

Sorry to pop your bubble, but what is deeply planted in my psyche is the never ending question - will my wife get naked with me tonight?  What is deeply planted in the psyche of others, I'm sure, is whether they should upgrade to the new Ipad, or possibly, if they should get naked with my wife.  I suspect based on the reading scores of Wisconsin students, most people don't know what you mean when you say "we have a revolution to look back to."  Revolution?  Wasn't that a Beatles song? 

[AnAnonymous]

The old world, the middle east, and asia, never had a revolution that actually put the ideology of liberty into practice. 

What the others might not have (and yet) are people fooling themselves and unable to accept their own history up to the level US citizens commonly reached.

Putting the ideology of liberty into practice? When the US kept slavery?

Welcome to fantasy world. Try your luck with Disney or something, their writers suck and you definitively have the talent for fantasy.

[falak pema]

Apart from the more humoristic take off of your affirmation above, from a more historic perspective, your assumption a) that freedom was invented in 1776 and b) the word liberty acquired new universal meaning is simply wrong; on both accounts. Young America, is now realising the meaning of growing up, of becoming a more complex society. You've lived off the fat of the huge, virgin, continental land and not having any real competition in your continent, since all the originals were wiped out by the Spaniards, and the good ole US cavalry, sons of Jefferson et al. Then having admittedly invented the State, the capitalistic system, the fantastic entrepreneurial model, and having imposed it on the world, you became number 1, top dogs. Thanks to the concomitant european collapse and the subsequent, brave, great generation of FDR.

But now...it's back to the drawing table...lets get humble and reinvent..not forgetting yesterday's lessons...all the way back to Helen of Troy. It ALL helps. History is never too long, too rich to learn from. But I'm drooling... like Homer and that's boring. By the way, Ideology is a dirty word, two sided sword. I prefer dialectic, political process, nourishing heuristic, trial and error based pragmatic government. No one way streets please. Life goes on inventing ideological puzzles that facts and experience throw into the waste paper basket subsequently. Viva la vida.

[ebworthen]

REVOLUTION, REVOLUTION, REVOLUTION!

[JW n FL]

YES!, YES!!, YES!!!

[Yes_Questions]

+

+

+

[tony bonn]

this article is the most brilliant, learned, and cogent summation of the american situation i have read. it is single-handedly the most important one which zh has ever published. americans must take to the streets as i advocated many months ago....they must vent their fury at the academicians, politicians, and banksters who have brainwashed and enslaved them.

fuck the elite. they must be taken down and destroyed. the events of revelation are unfolding before our eyes with the worshippers of mammon playing the role of the eternal fool whom yahushua will crush with totality, bringing in at long last his peaceable kingdom....

it is a filthy obscenity that trillions are being spent to conquor the middle east in a wanton war of aggression while americans are living without heat.

fuck the elite....

www.obamacrimes.com

[VyseLegendaire]

I really was liking your response until the bible crap. 

[ebworthen]

Damn cultural references...

...next he'll be talking about the Constitution, the Magna Carta, and Joan of Arc...

...or King Arthur...

...or Moses...

...or Kahlil Gibran...

...or Buddha...

...or...

..

[falak pema]

Like all fire brands you have a case to make. But no solution to propose...It's this that keeps the oligarchy in power. It's the fundamental truth since the House of Atreus. One big bull run of the Oligarchy wouldn't you say? All these centuries. The Contrarian game is not easy. Makes me very humble, though no less determined for change. Spartacus we do venerate remembering well his fate! Lets hope the instant convergence of views via Internet loop helps in solidifying the Contrarian position. One lives and  learns.

Lol, the 'crappy' historical references that I doooooooo loooooove!

[props2009]

Measles breakout in Denver

http://dawnwires.com/health/health-alert-denver-exposed-to-bout-of-measles/

[props2009]

Saudi King begins new venture. Forms a website to collect one million signatures. 

http://dawnwires.com/politics/saudi-king-abdullah-cannot-sit-still-he-ha...

[Yes_Questions]

From somewhere deep in this article:

You can’t sentence the overwhelming majority of the population to slow death through economic policy and expect to get away with it.

Substitute Sutler with whoever fits..

Dominic: So do you know what's gonna happen?

Finch: No. It was a feeling. But I can guess. With so much chaos, someone will do something stupid. And when they do, things will turn nasty. And then, Sutler will be forced do the only thing he knows how to do...

The "V" avatars brought this to mind.

[honestann]

The answer remains the same as it has always been.

-----  OFF WITH THEIR HEADS   -----

[Sad Sufi]

Great interview about breakdown of systems on FSN:

http://www.financialsense.com/financial-sense-newshour/big-picture/2011/...

Introduces the "Red Queen" response by TPTB to systems breakdown, which refers to the Alice and Wonderland's character who tells Alice that she "must run very fast to stay in the same place."  I think that is where we are now: more money printing, more loss of civil rights, more power to the corporations, more military intervention in order to "maintain homeostasis."

And these responses by TPTB only worsen the situation...

[KickIce]

We are witnessing the largest power grab ever.

They already have the majority of the gold.

They are now going for land, what land they can't get they will attempt to control through legislation.  The Rothchild's have recently invested in a commercial real estate business.  In typical Rothschild fashion they will destroy the price via fraud and buy it up with pennies on the dollar.

Health Care control will be the icing on the cake.

They will fail.

[Creed]

question-

Who was it that junked the Thomas Jefferson quote?

answer-

Probably some moron that voted for Obama.

[Howard_Beale]

Neo-cons, now neo-libs? Whatever....

[Guy Fawkes Mulder]

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest-post-analysis-global-insurrection...

[props2009]

Ireland Elections over. fine gael wins 36% in exit poll.

http://dawnwires.com/investment-news/ireland-elections-over-ruling-party...

[Rodent Freikorps]

Liberals: Is there anything they can't kill?

Babies, families, economies....etc.

[ebworthen]

Just look at that gallery of assholes...hang them high.

[Henry Chinaski]

mkay... revolution. then what?

[Rodent Freikorps]

I know it is crazy, but how about we enforce the Constitution?

We start by hanging any judge who helped bastardize the Commerce Clause.

That was never meant to be a tool of oppression.

[DrLamer]

I know it is crazy, but how about we enforce the Constitution?

No, you pagans can not. Neither US Constitution nor US dollar are yours any longer. The reason? The US Constitution contains words

"the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven."

And the US dollar contains words "In God we trust". You comrades pigs have nothing common with both - due to your total idolatries.

God in the State Constitutions

http://www.usconstitution.net/states_god.html

[Bob]

The language has been completely and fundamentally corrupted.  Consider all the people who continue to harp against the socialist boogie man in this massive fascio-capitalist clusterfuck.  Words are becoming more passe with each passing day. 

[Rodent Freikorps]

Okay, you have the floor.

How will socialism save us?

[Bob]

Rodent, I'm a moderate.  Socialism and Capitalism are both utopian fables--it makes no difference which flavor of bedtime story you prefer or to which "side" you direct your prayers.  Both are fantastically blind and one sided. 

The communists got theirs in 1989.  Nobody contests that--at least nobody with any credibility.  What bothers me is that we now face the symetrical fall of Mad Capitalism and too few of those Bible thumpers have the integrity to tell it like it is. 

What's worse is that they've shifted to crying that "socialism" is the cause.  That's incredible.  A two year old should understand the difference. 

It doesn't speak well for their future or mine . . . it marginalizes them, imo.  Which is a shame--their otherwise legitimate concerns will be ignored when TSHTF.

[Rodent Freikorps]

You don't consider having "In God We Trust" on FRNs a form of blasphemy these days?

[DrLamer]

You don't consider having "In God We Trust" on FRNs a form of blasphemy these days?

No. This is a LIE, not a blasphemy.

Blasphemy is hexadecimal digital mess everywhere used instead of normal words, including your question,

<div style="float:left; margin-right: 10px; height: 40px;"><img src="/sites/default/files/pictures/picture-30222.jpg"/></div>

<div class="credit">by <a href="/users/rodent-freikorps" title="View user profile.">Rodent Freikorps</a> <br />on <em>Sun, 02/27/2011 - 08:47</em><br /><a href="/article/guest-post-analysis-global-insurrection-against-neo-liberal-economic-domination-and-coming-a#comment-1001483" class="active">#1001483</a> </div></div><br />
<div class="body"><p>You don't consider having "In God We Trust" on FRNs a form of blasphemy these days?</p>

"

this is not a posting error, this is a HTML source of information, this is a form of transferring of information. Even when info is visible as plain english, it is transferred, stored and processed as digital blasphemy.

[OldTrooper]

Might want to also deal with the body that should be impeaching and removing those judges.  Just a thought.

[Rodent Freikorps]

If the military backs them, they win. The only course there is to wait and see.

[garcam123]

The saving grace in this matter is the sensibilities of the founders when they opted for Americans to own guns!

And America owns guns!  And when the time comes those guns will be used against the criminal government and their minions!

Thank God the founders were so clear thinking!

I don't own a gun, but for those who do....clean em up and load them the day approaches!

[Rodent Freikorps]

If you do not own a weapon, you have no opinion worth hearing.

[bigredmachine]

quit your driveling. too fat too stupid to change a thing.

[Dick Darlington]

Great article, thanks for posting it here Tyler. I'm gonna pass this on to as many people as possible. Reading this sure beats watching Dancing with the Stars and all the other nonsense designed to keep people dumb and blind. The more people recognize the shameful acts of govts and the likes the better are the chances to change things.

[Youri Carma]

IMF same exact four-step program: http://www.gregpalast.com/the-globalizer-who-came-in-from-the-cold/

1.0 Privatization ‘Briberization.’

2.0 IMF/World Bank capital market deregulation allows investment capital to flow in and out the “Hot Money” cycle.

3.0 Market-Based Pricing, a fancy term for raising prices on food, water and cooking gas

3.5 IMF and World Bank call their “poverty reduction strategy”: Free Trade- “The IMF riot.”

[Northeaster]

I've only recently joined this site a short time ago after "lurking" for some time. Admittedly, I don't work in the financial field, but find some of the information here extremely useful. With that said:

Tyler, maybe you could reach out to some of the more learned people of present and past and put together an easy to read and identifiable conglomerate of information presentation? I'd probably even pay for it.

I say this after conversations over dinner with friends this weekend. All are educated, career people. They "know" something is wrong, everyone knows about political corruption but can't connect the dots. As I was trying to explain in my amateur ways about PPI, CPI, The Federal Reserve and Primary Dealers, POMO, liquidity, etc. I really started to lose them. I want to "inform", not brainwash, as they are my friends & family. Some are in jeopardy of losing career jobs, but don't understand why (one of them stated "My 401k is doing great, why should I worry?").

I have young children.

My letters to local media, State and Congressional Representation are probably pigeon holed. My family does the best it can with what "tools" we have, less than some, more than others environment. Some may say "screw them", but I say they are my friends and neighbors, and I want to help them.

[falak pema]

I live by the pen...mightier than the sword...like the Internet revolution amongst the young is showing before our very eyes. The future lies in peaceful demonstration to bring oligarchy to a halt, then oblige them through election and legal means to break down their oligarchic cabal. Keep the pressure on, we are more numerous than they. If we resist economically, and through constitutional means by throwing out their political surrogates, electing honest men, then putting in new regulatory, confiscatory laws, there is nothing they can do. They'll cave in, in the end.

[Rodent Freikorps]

The full quote is:

Beneath the rule of men entirely great,

The pen is mightier than the sword.

The full quote carries an entirely different meaning.

[falak pema]

Granted, the basic affirmation being 'entirely great'...like 'entirely cooked'... is what happens when you stay in the oven of power too long. 'Reaganomics' created this monster of 'entire greatness' ...truly admired by two american generations... until the tinsel curtain fell...Now its total turnaround time. Only those with pen who have noted, since those early days of the empire making, the hubris and its ideology, it's inevitable toxic fall out, know what I'm talking about. Since bleeding 1984....when deregulation became the mantra, the quarterly report its yardstick, total stockholder power its goal...financialisation the means to the end. Caramba!

Finding solutions now nigh thirty years down the road in the face of the rising tide whether you be king or rebel leader is not an easy solution. Keep writing scribes of the age as every word, every blow and counter blow, has its place in the whole true story. It'll be a day of rage, of glory and of betrayal...on all sides of the divide. Brave new world.

[Rodent Freikorps]

I'm burnt out. I don't want to lead the rebellion. All I want to do is sail around the gulf, eat seafood and screw pretty young Latinas when I'm in port.

[nmewn]

Context is everything.

One of my favorite belly laugh contextual crimes of literature is the oft cited "Am I my brothers keeper?" (and it's variants) as a defense of a moral obligation to our fellow man and or socialism.

The context of course is, Cain is attempting to lie to cover up murder to One who already knows he is in fact, a murderer.

Tattered webs...bobbing, weaving...etc...LOL.

[Those Fukerz Ha...]

Stop paying your mortgages. Seriously. Stop.

[DrLamer]

This is official: God Creator  demands all paper dollar (with imprinted "In God we trust") to be collected and destroyed as void, because they are not backed by the real faith.

I am ordered to collect them. All of them.

For your information: I am two-years-unemployed, with $50 in my pocket and a $3000+ debt, other person pays for my access to Inter-net. But with the Help of God I will do it. Maybe this collection will help modern american pagans to overcome 40+ years of starvation on a path to a new society. Maybe not, it depends on americans. Anyway I am ordered to try.

As this task is a little bit difficult, I will access ZeroHedge in read-only-mode, with the rear  write occasion.

Amen.

[Rodent Freikorps]

I liked you better when you were pimping Penthouse Pets, Leo.

[DrLamer]

Did I? Oh, I hope this will be a little proof that I am not a gay faggot. Please, remeber that for later reference.

And...  I am not Leo.

[Rodent Freikorps]

Whatever you say. After all, God is on your side.

With the way I've lived my life, I'm sure he's throwing a bit of stink eye in my direction.

[dark pools of soros]

http://www.foxtoledo.com/dpp/news/local/toledo-stripping-for-college-spe...

[Rodent Freikorps]

Now that is how you judge an economy.

[Lone Mad Minute...]

What ever happened to talking about investments and manuvering our little selves around the big guys? How did all this break down into class warfare? Let's get back on topic and beat these guys at their own game.

[props2009]

China revolution begins. Ultimate dictatorship needs to be thrown down.

http://dawnwires.com/investment-news/revolution-begins-in-china-petrifie...

[mind_imminst]

I don't agree with the portrayal of public unions as the "revolutionaries" we need to cheere for. They aren't the "elite rich" but they are richer than most and wield arbitrary power over the common man.

[Jerry Maguire]

I guess Alex Jones is calling for rebellion.  Do Americans have it in them?

The thought is that Social Security, that miserable 1930's FDR scam, is finally on the cutting table where it belongs. 

Will the old farts take to the streets in the US?

Better to amend the constitution, I think.  Read about it here:

http://strikelawyer.wordpress.com/2011/02/27/austerity-coming-to-the-usa/

[overmedicatedun...]

trying to boil it down: banksters run the pols/judges. American people are to be ground down by Gov education, control of MSM and entertainment-media.

Banksters/elite are not patriots..but loyal to themselves and the set up of A fascist global rule.

most obvious examples to support above:

1. bond holders and banks bailed out of criminal financial debt instruments..public takes the loss.

most recent example : Ireland

2. constant calls for a world bank/IMF reserve currency-run out of IMF/world bank; thru EU and FED. Fascist control on a world scale.

[props2009]

Shocker: China premier says he wants to slow growth to 7%

http://dawnwires.com/investment-news/shocker-china-premier-wen-jiabao-sa...

[dcb]

This the most significan and best article that makes a summary of what I have been sending out on a blog and to news papers for over two years. I wouold urge others to forward, because these connections I have been seing for a while. In my mind it is the rise of global facism, but others can call it what they want.

[overmedicatedun...]

John Boehner R leader of the house: we will not shut down the government, we must reduce spending..

tea party new congressmen: wanted 100 billion cut they get 60 billion maybe..

the games in DC continue with the oldline GOP and Democrats trying to hold onto to the expanded federal government at all cost (to us)

[overmedicatedun...]

Gov union workers:" I want it all, pensions, health-care, salary with multiple vacation days each year.." to those in private sector: in essence they say: "let them eat cake, you will pay for my steak."

[Gold 36000]

My easiest and highest paying job was a government job. I had six weeks per year holidays, vacation, and sick leave with amazing benefits. The benefits included everything, life, disability, dental including full orthodontics, vision, and no annual and only minimal copays that I paid pretax with a cafeteria plan. I got bored and left. Now that I have kids I wish I had stayed. I make ostensibly more money now, but when you factor in vacation and benefits I make about 35 percent less.

[Mr Deathcare]

Bring it on!!!!

[Gold 36000]

Probably the most important comment here was the guy who said we rail against corrupt government and a plutocracy yet we all want to keep and expand that same government in areas that benefit us personally.

But dont worry. The projections for our budget estimates include a trillion more per year in tax revenue due to economic growth in 2013. It is not going to happen.

The economy will solve our budget problems for us. If any of you have looked at the Little Hoover estimates and CBO estimates as well as state actuary projections then you already know that at least in the big blue states those benefits and pensions will be terminated one way or another. You are delusional or misinformed to believe otherwise.

In no system anywhere can two plus two equal seven. I might as well enjoy the show over the next 15 years. It's not like I can change the channel

[Rodent Freikorps]

Yes, dude, it is going to crash and burn. Plan accordingly. No sense in being pissed about it anymore. Might as well be angry at an earthquake.

[Gold 36000]

I am glad I enjoy gardening and I am well connected to grey market labor and can run my business on cash if I have too.

[Rodent Freikorps]

That's the spirit. I'll be trading fish for potatos.

[streetfighter]

I do not see any solutions proposed.I will propose one. Detroit

[bearbottom]

Leftist bollocks. More whining and winging on why the author does not have a yacht, but probably thinks he deserves one. Kill the rich yada, yada... So ok, you pull Jayz out of his escalade, beat him to death for being a neo liberal rich bastard...now what? You turn around and hand over his custom gold plated rims  to some guy in Detroit and then what? like they know what to do with it. We did this already somewhere around 1917 and people are still dying of Radiation poisning in the Ukraine today. Why? because that is what happens when you hand over the keys to a mob that is clueless. That the bankers have brought us to this calamity is in no doubt, but afterall, you chose to get into debt because you think that an iPad "defines you" and that is your own stupid fault. Moving to communism ala David Harvey (a geographer, not an economist) aint going to help. Communists discovered a long time ago that that the way you end poverty is to kill them all off, through war or starvation which exactly what they did. It was so much eassier then that individual was to sacrifice themselves for the collective and they did, they died in their millions. This lays out a lot of problems which we have already hashed out, but as usual with nationality orienatated socialist worker propaganda is weak on SOLUTIONS which means that if allowed they will quickly go for their old favourites war, executions and labour camps!

[bearbottom]

Junking??! yes, sorry, I forgot to mention dissuade and gag dissenting voices... before war, executions and labour camps.

[streetfighter]

Hmm no takers on my modest poroposal.I will have to expand. Detroit like many American cities in decay is ripe for monumental change. Led by freedom loving independant Americans willing to speak with more than mere words.Viable infrastructure still exists.Real estate is available nearly for the asking,nearly akin to homesteading.How many are willing to relocate to build a new community?Do we not have the resources amongst us to build new buisness new banks.schools etc.Can we not lead by example? Do any of us belive that an armed revolution could succed..Gov would love the opportunity to crush it as would the majority of fellow citizens. First a town than a city than a county than a state.Do we have a banker,a baker,a mechanic,a farmer? Can we not rebuild a city and shape it into what we all hope for.Pick any decaying city. How about NewOrleans or Camden,or any number of cities that people now flee.

How many could you bring along?

[no cnbc cretin]

Neo-Liberalism is the problem. If you don't agree, you better go back to school, because you did not learn a thing.

[bearbottom]

ha ha, well if Wisconsin is anything to go by, going back to school, is hardly a solution....unless what you really mean is "go back and get reprogrammed"

[Captain Benny]

I especially like the concept of forcing a shutdown of lower manhattan.  Scare the god damn bankers enough that they won't come to work for a few days.  I hope to one day spray paint all over the NY Fed building... hell, I might just go piss on it today.

[Guy Fawkes Mulder]

I was wondering when someone would mention this.

+1