This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Is The Cloward-Piven Strategy Being Used To Destroy America?
Submitted by Brandon Smith of Alt-Market blog,
In the mid-sixties at the height of the “social revolution” the line between democratic benevolence and outright communism became rather blurry. The Democratic Party, which controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress, was used as the springboard by social engineers to introduce a new era of welfare initiatives enacted in the name of “defending the poor”, also known as the “Great Society Programs”. These initiatives, however, were driven by far more subversive and extreme motivations, and have been expanded on by every presidency since, Republican and Democrat alike.
At Columbia University, sociologist professors Richard Cloward and Francis Fox Piven introduced a political strategy in 1966 in an article entitled 'The Weight Of The Poor: A Strategy To End Poverty'. This article outlined a plan that they believed would eventually lead to the total transmutation of America into a full-fledged centralized welfare state (in other words, a collectivist enclave). The spearpoint of the Cloward-Piven strategy involved nothing less than economic sabotage against the U.S.
Theoretically, according to the doctrine, a condition of overwhelming tension and strain could be engineered through the overloading of American welfare rolls, thereby smothering the entitlement program structure at the state and local level. The implosion of welfare benefits would facilitate a massive spike in poverty and desperation, creating a financial crisis that would lead to an even greater cycle of demand for a fully socialized system. This desperation would then “force” the federal government to concentrate all welfare programs under one roof, nationalize and enforce a socialist ideology, and ultimately, compact an immense level of power into the hands of a select few.
Cloward and Piven claimed that this could be accomplished at a grassroots level through community activism, and, that it would facilitate a more compassionate federal authority, however, there are numerous problems with these assertions.
The Cloward-Piven Strategy has nothing to do with grassroots activism, and accomplishes nothing tangible for the downtrodden poverty class. In fact, I would dare to say that Cloward and Piven as well as most social engineers are well aware that the concept ultimately only serves to give even more dominance to the establishment and pilfer even more freedom from the masses.
Cloward-Piven is not limited to the destabilization of state and local welfare programs. It can easily be used against federal level entitlements, and in reality, is much more effective against an entity with the proven tendency towards exponential debt spending. Though the federal government may be able to borrow fiat dollars through the Federal Reserve to prolong welfare rolls while the states cannot, a more volatile threat arises when debt monetization begins to wear down the purchasing power of the currency. Weakened purchasing power results in reduced consumer activity, less industrial growth, less GDP, and obviously, more poverty. The dollar has lost approximately 98% of its purchasing power since 1972, and after 50 years of the so-called “War on Poverty”, nearly one third of the American population now repeatedly slips under the official poverty line.
In the past decade alone, the number of people dependent on food stamps and EBT for their survival in the U.S. has doubled from 25 million people to nearly 50 million people. Those who receive some kind of payment from the government, including those on social security, disability, and veterans benefits, are approximately 100 million. Americans on social security do not consider themselves welfare recipients because they paid into the system, however, the point remains that if the federal money tap shuts down due to overwhelming participation, the checks will stop whether you paid into the system or not.
In the end, it is the Federal Government itself that is most vulnerable to the Cloward-Piven Strategy, and I believe the goal is to set fire to ALL social structures in the U.S., then assimilate them into a new globalist system.
The tactic of overwhelming the welfare structure REQUIRES the complicity of the government itself. A grassroots activist movement cannot and will never compel federal and state governments to expand welfare initiatives if they do not wish to. If welfare programs are not expanded beyond their capacity to be maintained, they cannot be overwhelmed. Therefore, government must cooperate with the Cloward-Piven Strategy by generating more and more welfare programs to be exploited. That is to say, the elitists who control our government, regardless of their claimed political party, must WANT to arrange circumstances to allow for Cloward-Piven to be successful.
Another key component of Cloward-Piven is the existence of an immense number of poverty stricken people. Without a significant portion of the population under the poverty level, there is no mass of people to use as a weapon. Again, grassroots activists would be hard pressed to actually create the kind of poverty levels they would need for exploitation. But wait! Government, along with the aid or direction of central bankers, is able to create any level of poverty it wishes at any time by simply pretending to bungle everything it does. Once again, Cloward-Piven (much like Saul Alinsky's repertoire of propaganda scams) is far more useful to the power elite than it is to the common citizen. As former White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, famously said:
“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before...”
In light of the Cloward-Piven Strategy, which is at its very core a method to artificially induce crisis, the otherwise insane policy actions of the Obama Administration and preceding puppet presidents now become perfectly logical. Obama, after all, has been a long time proponent of the methods of Saul Alinsky, the left wing gatekeeper equivalent to Neo-Con godfather Leo Strauss. Cloward and Piven were also both avid followers of Alinsky, who promoted lies, misdirection, subversion, and abandonment of conscience in order to win social power at any cost (special note – Alinsky also dedicated his book 'Rules For Radicals' to Lucifer...yeah, to the friggin' devil).
Under Obama's watch alone, our real national debt including unfunded liabilities and entitlements has risen to nearly $200 trillion. Our “official” national debt has gone from $10 trillion to $17 trillion in the short time Obama has been in office. Real unemployment including U-6 measurements stands at around 20% of all Americans. Personal wealth and savings have plummeted. Wages remain in stasis while prices on necessary goods continue to rise.
In my articles 'The Socialization Of America Is Economically Impossible' and 'Obamacare: Is It A Divide-And-Conquer Distraction?', I examined much evidence suggesting that Obamacare was actually designed to fail, and that the bumbling of the Obama White House when dealing with the program was purely deliberate. When coupled with Obama's handling of the current illegal immigration conflict, I would say that the Cloward-Piven Strategy is in full force.
Why fight tooth and nail against all common sense and history, why lie openly to millions of registered voters to get the program in place, only to allow it to derail because of a poorly designed website!? Because, Obama and his handlers know full well that it will end up costing the country billions that we cannot afford, and aid in a resulting crash.
Why the sudden surge of illegal immigrants into the U.S.? Why not! The White House has made it clear that it has every intention of keeping them within America by allowing the border patrol to ship the detained across the country where they are then released. Obama's threat to use executive action to force through his own version of the immigration bill is the icing on the cake. Amnesty is essentially guaranteed, I believe, in the near term, which is why tens of thousands of Central American parents are willing to send their children on a journey where they could very well be kidnapped by sex traffickers or killed. If the White House really wanted to stop this humanitarian crisis, the President would state publicly and clearly that America is not a drive through welfare center, that there will be no free goodies at the second window, and that there will be no chance of amnesty, instead of diverting more agents to the border to ensure more illegals are shipped into the interior.
The president does not wish to stop the flood of immigrants exactly because Cloward-Piven requires their presence. Not only would this officially add millions of people to welfare rolls, but I would venture to suggest that Obama will likely include automatic sign-up to universal healthcare as part of his amnesty measures.
If there wasn't enough strain on the social welfare structure before, there certainly will be now.
I would remind readers, though, that in the final analysis this is NOT about Obama. I have seen other commentators including Glenn Beck discuss Cloward-Piven in the past, but always through the blinders of the false left/right paradigm. Obama could not have attained the levels of destabilization he has without standing on the shoulders of those political errand boys who came before him. Ronald Reagan, for instance, was also responsible for signing the Immigration Reform And Control Act of 1986 into law, which was supposed to trade the amnesty of 3 million illegals for greater border security. This new "more comprehensive" security was never implemented by Reagan. Both Republican and Democratic regimes have made our current calamity possible, and the leaderships behind both parties are nothing more than paid mascots for international financiers and globalists who have a very different vision of what America should be.
If we allow ourselves to fall into the trap of making the developing crisis about a singularly unimportant man such as Obama, then the elites get exactly what they want – an angry and desperate citizenry out for the blood of a middleman and out for the blood of each other, while they sit back, relax, and wait to swoop in as our financial saviors with strings attached.
For those naïve enough to assume that Cloward-Piven is just a well intentioned activist method, it is important to understand that even if that were so, the effect of the Cloward-Piven Strategy will never achieve the goal its creators claimed to support. In my view, it is probable that they never really intended for it to produce wealth equality or an increased quality of life.
The tactic can only decrease wealth security by making all citizens equally destitute. As we have seen in numerous socialist and communist experiments over the past century, economic harmonization never creates wealth or prosperity, it only siphons wealth from one area and redistributes it to others, evaporating much of it as it is squeezed through the grinding gears of the establishment machine. Socialism, in its very essence, elevates government to the role of all-pervasive parent, and casts the citizenry down into the role of dependent sniveling infant. Even in its most righteous form, Cloward-Piven seeks to make infants of us all, whether we like it or not.
»
- 119374 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
When white folks make a mess they send in the black guy.
You're right. Best example is Detroit which was a total mess until it became majority black. And look at it now. Wealthy industrious and law-abiding.
The reasons for food stamps and other "social" programs are:
1) holdovers from the great depression when people erupted due to privation and suffering.
2) to keep the current populace from erupting due to privation and suffering.
The elite owners of society provide the bare minimum to keep the proles from revolting.
Do you really believe they care about us? Do you think they care if we riot?
this is about power, and dependency is the best source. it costs nothing because they are stealing our wealth to create the dependency that is now consuming us. rioting is more expensive as it destroys infrastructure and lives. they want a dependent and compliant population. sheep are much easier to herd than bear.
And that is also why we're being systematically dumbed-down.
i prefer the peter blunt system:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lURHNLrwtc
The strategy is being used to prepare an already destroyed American and impoverished Americans for one party rule.
The ideology and "Brown Shirts" will be fundamentalist Christian based.
Or put another way: If Obama were not a CIA manchurian candidate, would he be doing what he's doing with mid-terms around the corner?!
"The ideology and "Brown Shirts" will be fundamentalist Christian based."
Naw. More likely the ideology and "brown shirts" will be brainwashed Obamazombies who live as dependent slaves on the big government entitlement plantation and who will be more than willing to do the bidding of their dictatorial masters. They are being told that rich white folks are to be blamed for all their problems and that those people should be eliminated.
Brown shirts are elements of state control. All religions will be consumed by this. the state is outlawing churches from feeding the homeless. they are doing whatever they can to minimize their political impact (unless they are black liberation churches or Muslim). Christians will be fed to the lions before this is over. Anyone who offers an alternative to the state IS the target.
Is this how were going to save the lions? Can we feed Barry to them first?
What follows destruction of a society? Did Robespierre in French Revolution in any way expect Napoleon? Cloward-Piven is just a central pre-planning fantasy. It'll be a brave new world, but not that imagined by the Marxist ideologues.
Cloward-Piven, Barry-Sotero, Choom-Golf, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
Nihao
So two barflys land on a beer. One fly says to his buddy, "I can swim".
It's quite interesting that both Marxists and Fascists are equal destroyers of America, each in their own distinct ways. The US education system is definitely Marxist as are the entitlement programs. The Fascists ensure that croney capitalism, greed and corruption survive especially for the bankers and the MIC. The only distinction for the sheeple, as I see it, is that the future is a totalitarian society wherein the mantra will be "bend over or die"
Both are designed to destroy freedom and take absolute power. What's the mystery? Both offer something for nothing and ultimately take everything....just as we see playing out. I'm not concerned about how they might self identify, only how they identify me....a threat.
Is The Cloward-Piven Strategy Being Used To Destroy America?
Does a Barack Obama shit on the Constitution........?
Cloward, Pliven, Alinsky, Ayers, Strauss. Those damn Amish nation-wreckers at it again....
Hey Author,
YOU have zero to complain about, if YOU won't show the truth!
"The Public Be Suckered"
http://patrick.net/forum/?p=1230886
Is The Cloward-Piven Strategy Being Used To Destroy America?
Um, yes
Why is Bill Ayers still alive ?
Why is Bernardine Dohrn and the rest of Oblamo's radical leftist cronies still around?
"around"???
they are CELEBRATED and tenured by the left....
CP takes "help" from the top on down.
Fair warning.
Look at who this benefits.
I don't understand the conspiracy-mongering. Social-security, Medicare and public-sector pensions are getting set to vacuum up every every tax dollar in your federal, state and local government. No conspiracy needed, even the third-world refugees don't matter. It's just old folks - a tsunami of them.
The only conspiracy is people deliberately setting us up to do our worst. Make debt cheap and easy, make drugs cheap and easy, make sex cheap and easy, make sloth cheap and easy, and most of all, make theft cheap and easy and we can set back and watch the whole thing come crumbling down.
But hey, maybe thats our natural state. We never seem to be satisfied when things are going well.
This right here is why I come to Zerohedge. Thanks bringing it Oldwood.
but what of those who work steady and hard
to sustain the structure of it all, in the face
of those insured, who collect on the demise
when tricks come tumbling and crumbling?
these scams just don't give an inch, huh.
Today I ate soup and among the noodles I kept seeing sickles and hammers. I wonder if it's the same brand that Brandon eats too.
Great idea for my new breakfast cereal ...
"Obamos : One bite and you're hooked.
Orange hammers... lemon sickles...and (naturally) chocolate stars."
That'd be awesome. And very therapeutic. After all, this time people would actually be seeing sickles and hammers even in the soup.
<< would eventually lead to the total transmutation of America into a full-fledged centralized welfare state >>
Ya mean like now?
Nick Jihad:I don't understand the conspiracy-mongering. Social-security, Medicare and public-sector pensions are getting set to vacuum up every every tax dollar in your federal, state and local government. No conspiracy needed, even the third-world refugees don't matter. It's just old folks - a tsunami of them.
Actually it's much more simple than that.
It's a debt based system. You're a slave. Even if you take home a 6 figure income, it's still debt, and all about the skim.
You either produce or you do not.
And the outsourcing of millions of American jobs has nothing to do with it? If socialism for America is the plan then capitalism was very instrumental in achieving that goal.
"And the outsourcing of millions of American jobs has nothing to do with it? If socialism for America is the plan then capitalism was very instrumental in achieving that goal."
It was crony capitalism. There is a difference. Crony capitalism is the marriage of the state and private special interests.
You sound like those communists that say that the Soviet Union was crony communism. Crony capitalism is the failure of capitalism.
Protectionism was the only constitutional path to saving our jobs. It was rejected by business. and their elected representatives.
"Protectionism was the only constitutional path to saving our jobs. It was rejected by business. and their elected representatives."
Correction. Protectionism was rejected by large multinational corporations and the elected representatives whom they bought off.
Clinton signed NAFTA into law on December 8, 1993.
Agreed. business is far to generalized. i am a small business and have resisted this in every way I can. It is the commerce of power that has ultimately driven this agenda.
In the end the rich will still have their wealth. Its the Middle class that Obama keeps talking about that will be driven down to the depths of the poor. Notice Obama never mentions the poor? Always the middle class he claims to be helping. So much BS from the master Bullshitter.
The moral of the story is?
If you want to play with the big dogs, learn to pee in tall grass.
Bitchez
"The tactic can only decrease wealth security by making all citizens equally destitute."
I thought the 1% were already close to that goal. Who needs socialism to make people destitute when you have oligarchies?
"In the end, it is the Federal Government itself that is most vulnerable to the Cloward-Piven Strategy, and I believe the goal is to set fire to ALL social structures in the U.S., then assimilate them into a new globalist system."
DING DING DING! We have a winner!!!
I love you ! You get it I-R. I can;t wait to drink a beer with you.
One day...I currently do not drink. Just for today, but a San Pellegrino would do me just fine and I would gladly buy your beer.
Monsieur, une Amstel, une San Pellegrino, et un café pour moi s'il vous plaît. Merci.
I was having a conversation with a friend of mine last night when he asked, "You mean to tell me that there are actually people who are trying to rule the world?"
He laughed like I've never heard him laugh before. So then I started laughing at how obtuse he is but he thought he had convinced me to laugh at my own nonsense.
It was quite a few minutes of laughter.
Sad
Invited to dinner and sitting around the table. You look around and you don't see any fools,,,you're it...
;-D
Both the warfare and welfare state depend upon the ability of private banks to make the public "money" supply out of nothing as debts. Of course, therefore, the American economy is being deliberately destroyed. It was already destroyed when the international banksters regained control over the American "money" supply. That destruction by enforced frauds has merely unfolded faster, on a bigger scale, ever since. The basic thrust of all of those phenomena was the feedback loops through the funding of the political processes, which provided the maximum point of leverage for the vicious spiral of the profit from fraud to be reinvested in more fraud. The American democratic republic and its rule of law have been systematically destroyed, at an exponentially accelerating rate, by the ability of the funding of politics to drive systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence.
In that overall context, the welfare aspects were relatively trivial compared to the warfare aspects, while both were being "paid" for by "money" made out of nothing as debts. Furthermore, all of those social and political dimensions of civilization being controlled by the triumphs of backing up lies with violence are trivial compared to how that enables attitudes of evil deliberate ignorance towards the natural environment as a whole, and the future of life on planet Earth.
America was merely the most recent flourishing of Neolithic Civilization, which could be grafted onto a fresh continent. The basic systems are lies backed by violence. The theories of checks and balances, and divisions of powers, and the role of We the People within that kind of idealized political system, was systematically destroyed by the real roles that money played in politics, with corruption of the "money" itself then becoming profit from fraud, that paid for ever more frauds, in vicious spiral of corruptions.
American is the most advanced system of lies backed by violence there has ever yet been. It rose on that basis, and will be destroyed on that basis. The problems are far more profound than merely some superficial aspects of the strategies discussed in this article above. Those barely scratch the surface of the deeper ways that America has become almost totally based on systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence. Furthermore, that has become so extremely bad that there now seems barely anything which is a sufficiently radical truth about that which could become popular enough to be presented in any significant way to the public.
It is not possible to exaggerate the degree to which Neolithic Civilizations' successes through operating systems of lies backed by violence have been accumulating for thousands of years at an exponential rate to create a civilization which has become criminally insane. The destruction of the American democratic republic, and the American economy, are merely the leading symbols of how Neolithic Civilization has become runaway criminal insanity that is destroying itself.
Too bad, so sad, but there does not seem to be any ways that enough radical truth could be able to sufficiently transform the ways that people have been taught to think. Every time that some special interests were able to benefit from enforcing frauds, the society as a whole thereby became more insane. At the present time the degree to which that process has worked its way through the funding of politics, to corrupt the "money" system itself more than anything else, has resulted in the entire society becoming criminally insane, because BOTH the ruling classes have become criminally insane, AND the people they rule over have become criminally insane, in necessarily matching ways, due to the inherent nature of the paradox of successfully promoting systems of lies backed by violence, where that violence can not make those lies become true, but nevertheless, people can be forced to adapt those frauds, and build their lives on the basis of those frauds.
America is being destroyed by the degree to which the biggest bullies' bullshit social stories were able to dominate everything more and more, at a runaway exponential rate. The basic problem is that backing up deceits with destruction is socially successful to make the people who are able to enforce those frauds become more wealthy and powerful within those systems. However, those systems, as a whole, thereby become more and more criminally insane, and more psychotically detached from relatively more objective facts, because they are actually being controlled by fundamentally fraudulent financial accounting systems, backed up by deceitful death controls, which have matching levels of dementia.
In that overall predicament, another article by Brandon Smith is a typical kind of superficial analysis, which implicitly proposes old-fashioned impossible solutions. The real problems are far, far worse than that, while therefore the proposed solutions generated by a more superficial understanding of those problems are way too superficial to be sufficient. The deeper problems are the degrees to which Neolithic Civilizations developed to regard themselves, and their environment, became totally entangled in psychosis. It is hard to imagine how things could have become more completely backwards than they have, after thousands of years of social successes being based on backing up lies with violence.
The basic ways that we are taught to think about time and space are profoundly wrong. The basic ways that we are taught to think about ourselves in the world are profoundly wrong. The social pyramid systems waged a prolonged war against consciousness, in order to achieve control of civilization through systems of lies backed by violence, and they have become far too successful at doing that, in the sense that both the rulers, and those they rule over, share matching sets of post traumatic stress syndrome symptoms, from having been living through the war on consciousness, too much, for too long. That the political economy is based on fundamentally fraudulent accounting systems is an expression of that wider and deeper problem.
The overall degree of triumph of the biggest bullies' bullshit world view goes far beyond merely having a political economy based on frauds, which are therefore destroying themselves, due the paradoxical ways that too much successful fraud finally destroys itself. The degree to which Neolithic Civilization developed cultures that became alienated from their overall natural environment are now approaching their catastrophic consequences. Indeed, it is not merely the American economy and society that is being deliberately destroyed by the sequence of short-term successes of enforced frauds, it is the entire planet that is suffering from that fate!
Finally, another poster that thinks like I do. American psychopathology
must be fully aligned with drug addiction and the Wall Street excesses
with cocaine fueled High Frequency Trading. Type 'A' personalities
know no bounds and think they are limitless/omnipotent. The psychopathology of Wall Street is a good contemporary reflection
of civilization and a narcissistic view to control and rule over others and their conscience. Man has not advanced much lately IMHO. Gerald Celante characterizes Wall Streeters as fixated on their 'fix' of money like a junkie is fixated on heroin. Clearly, if one is seriously looking at
conciousness of the American people we must articulate the cocaine
addictions of traders and their executive CEOs. Wall Street looks for it's next fix every single minute of the day. Drugs will do this sort of thing to Nations as well as individuals. Americans are addicted to free money, drugs of all varieties, murder by proxy, debt, TV, real estate,
boats, cars, jewelry, gold, food, sex, et cetera. Hedonism rules American goal directed behaviour en masse.
'Where id was ego shall be' Sigmund Freud
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/
More heady stuff!
Yes, MASTER OF THE UNIVERSE.
However, I would emphasize the difference between drugs that are fatal in overdose, versus drugs that are not fatal in overdose. The best drugs are not fatal when taken in excess, and those drugs tend to increase consciousness, or be "psychedelic." The worst drugs are proportionately fatal with respect to how much of an overdose will be fatal. Drugs that are fatal in overdose can be used medically, if one is careful about limiting the dose. However, drugs which are fatal in overdose then to proportionately have bad longer term consequence, with fatality from overdose merely demonstrating what also may be more slowly happening due to chronic use at lower doses.
All of what I said above applies to your analogy. Drugs which are fatal in overdose provide a special kind of lowered level of consciousness, that is enjoyable for some. Obviously, alcohol is fatal in overdose, but feels like a stimulant, as it first begins to decrease the ability people have to worry about their situation or the consequences of their behavior. Drugs like heroin and cocaine are both fatal in overdose, but can be lived with, and enjoyed, for those who restrict themselves to lower intermittent doses.
The point of considering more details about the differences between drugs would be to consider the analogous differences between different kind of debts. There could be some debts that were relatively good, while the vast majority of debts would be bad. In that context, runaway QC, and the subprime Liars Loans, etc. that preceded the need for bailouts, etc., have become like overdoses on dangerous debts, like overdose on dangerous drugs.
The people who enjoy the legalized privilege to counterfeit the public "money" supply, by making money out of nothing as debts, are also inside a Money As Debt system where disappearing debts can cause the public money supply to disappear. Thus, inflation is too much "money" created out of nothing as debts, while deflation is too much "money" disappearing to nothing.
The overall trends of "debt users" like "drug users" tends towards ending up taking too much. The people who can make "money" out of nothing (while everyone else is forced by the government to accept that fraud, and so, they must adapt to living within that system), keep on finding excuse after excuse to do more of their making of "money" out of nothing, which causes booms to go bust, on bigger and bigger scales, like drug users who tend to take bigger and bigger doses, in order to try to still get the effects that smaller doses used to produce.
Overall, the American, and mostly globalized, systems of debt slavery, backed by wars based on deceits, have generated numbers which have become debt insanities. In that context, the problem is that the "debt junkies" keep taking bigger and bigger doses. Furthermore, those risks are being aggregated into bigger units, so that the government has become more and more the biggest of all the debt junkies! However, since it was the banksters, as the original debt pushers, that applied the methods of organized crime, in order to dominate the political processes, so that the government would start the debt slavery spiral going. That was like the government started the bogus war on (some) drugs going, since they are both basically systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, or both enforced frauds, which cause the opposite of what they claim they are doing to actually happen in the real world.
It is theoretically possible that drugs can be regarded as tools, which can be used to achieve some purposes. The same could be said about debts. However, in the real world, the vicious absurdities of governments controlled by the short-term concerns of some special interest groups has resulted in both drugs and debts being more and more misused and abused. Indeed, in my view, the American society as a whole is both the world's leader in drug abuse and debt abuse. Unless there was some prodigious series of political miracles, then American society is dominating the established global systems to become terminally sick and insane, due to their combined runaway drug and debt abuses.
Tragically, just like it is practically impossible to have better public debates about drugs, because the drug wars have resulted in those debates being almost totally dominated by bullshit, so too, it is almost impossible to have any saner discussion about debts inside of the American, and mostly globalized, systems of debt slavery, which are based on the banksters, and the corporations that grew up around them, being way too wealthy and powerful to be able to argue with. Indeed, one may as well argue with a drug abusing junkie, who is killing themselves, as try to argue with the debt abusing banksters, who have become like financial parasites that are killing their host. Overall, the ways that "money" has been perverted and inverted has resulted in the monetary system becoming like a metastasized cancer. In that context, it is almost impossible to imagine how there can be any cure, because those suffering are refusing to take any treatment, while most of those recommending various "cures" tend to also be still operating inside of the overall fraudulent frame of reference.
My basic conclusions are that established systems of enforced frauds, which surround both drugs and debts, at the present time, ARE enforced frauds, to whom no rational evidence nor logical arguments make any practical difference. As far as I can tell, the American people are NOT going to stop the Wall Street debt junkies from overdosing, and thereby killing the American economy. Instead, the Wall Street debt junkies, who are controlling the American government, appear to be criminally insane, because they appear to be like drug junkies who often end up committing suicide, because they did not want to stop.
Since the Wall Street debt junkies are able to transfer most of the suffering from the abuse of debts onto the American people in general (as through controlling the government, like through the TARP program, and other trillions of dollars of "bailouts," and through becoming Too Big To Fail, and Too Big To Jail) the Wall Street debt junkies are like "Dorian Gray."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Picture_of_Dorian_Gray
The Wall Street debt junkies are like drug junkies who have the entire American population as their co-dependents. Indeed, since the American dollar is the global reserve currency, most of the world's people are being forced to act as the co-dependents of the Wall Street debt junkies' debt abuses. The Wall Street debt junkies, like Dorian Grey, appear to be healthy, and getting wealthier, while the society that they are dominating gets sicker and more insane.
I fully agree with your analysis and appreciate that you articulated it.
I looking at this from a Clinical Psychology perspective and when we throw leaning Theory into the mix with a behavioural perspective such as Skinner espoused we have a Wall Street environment where traders are
reinforced for pathological behaviour in the markets with psychoactive
drugs such as cocaine and methamphetimine which are again reinforcers
for a dopaminergic high in terms of the brain. Each week the traders are developing a tolerence level to the drugs they take and they constantly need more. The reinforcement schedual is a 'fixed reinforement schedual' if they are making steady returns without variability. The reinforcement in variable if they only strike paydirt every now and then. Wall Street has the traders hierarchy of needs
reinforced based on variable reinforcement scheduals and fixed reinforcement scheduals and the traders are used up like pigeons
pecking for rewards in a Skinner box environment designed to foster risk taking behaviour on the part of traders so that they can in turn get the fixed reinforcement of hookers and cocaine on the weekends and days off. In terms of rewards based reinforcement all of Wakk Street
is on a schedual of dopaminergic reinforcement through the dopaminergic high they get during sex and through dopaminergic manipulation of the brain through cocaine and methamphetimine
use. In brief, the insanity you characterize Wall Street as having could be a secondary symptom of drug addiction en masse on Wall Street.
A behavioural approach to Learning Theory gives us the notion that we can unlearn behaviours that we learned in the first place so what we need is a bit of behavioural modification on the part of traders that are on Wall Street. If drug testing was required of traders on Wall Street we would end up with much less sociopathology in our economy and 'rish taking behaviour' would be more aptly controlled. Once the brain is classically conditioned to receive stimulus in the form of compensation that will purchase neuroactive gratification and sexual gratification the traders are merely acting on instinct when engaged in
their day-to-day work. Criminality does not factor into the equation in so far as most addicts lack a conscience when it comes to the ability to rationalize what they are doing to themselves and what they are donhg to society in general. As the drug of choice takes over for the rewards
that drive unethical behaviour it is simple to assert that one only needs
to ply an individual with drugs to exact the response one desires. Like Ivan Pavlov's dogs Wall Street traders are conditioned classically with a constant stream of cocaine and hookers, and entertainment. Likes rats in a Skinner box the traders are controlled by the designer of the game and the parameters of the rewards system. Risk on Wall Street in reinforced with cocaine and sexual gratification. Hedonists would find nothing wrong here at all IMHO. Unfortunately, most in society are not as hedonistic as a Wall Street trader jacked up on a risk taking lifestyle and close to pure medical grade cocaine. Throw in the other
needs on the list of the hierarchy of needs and we have more ways to manipulate the traders that consistently take our economy to the brink of death.
p.s. Erich Fromm's _Anatomy of Human Destructiveness_ is a good read. Chech it out you will like it.
The social life of many Wall Street traders, from all the anecdotes that I have been told, does appear to be "pecking for rewards in a Skinner box environment designed to foster risk taking behaviour."
Speaking of the "Skinner Box," here is a link to one of my favourite little articles about "drugs:" Rat Trap
P.S.
I did read considerable Erich Fromm once, but such a long time ago I barely remember it now. To be frank, considering how practically useless it has turned out to be to try to prevent civilization from MADly destroying itself, (Money As Debt backed by Mutual Assured Destruction) I kind of wish that when I was younger I had never started worrying about that MADness. To be frank, if I never learned anything about the bigger picture, and never thought about how insane the money system really was, I probably would have been able to make a lot more money. I can appreciate the attractions found in the life style: "Like Ivan Pavlov's dogs Wall Street traders are conditioned classically with a constant stream of cocaine and hookers, and entertainment. Likes rats in a Skinner box the traders are controlled by the designer of the game and the parameters of the rewards system. Risk on Wall Street in reinforced with cocaine and sexual gratification."
If I was not conflicted by the awareness of how insane that was, it would have been a lot more gratifying, and I probably could have enjoyed doing things like that myself a lot more. However, after one starts becoming aware of how insane the monetary systems really are, and how that insanity is destroying society as a whole, as well as the natural world, it gets harder to just enjoy making money, to spend on hookers and blow.
In retrospect, I sometimes wish I have never "woken up" and attempted to work on stopping the world from being MADly self-destructive, because that has, so far, turned out to be mostly a waste of time, and perhaps less entertaining than being a Wall Street trader "reinforced with cocaine and sexual gratification."
Well said, both of you.
Studies of creativity have yielded intrinsic reward systems that tend to govern the behaviour of 'creative' types. Less creative types of people tend to be governed by extrinsic rewards like peer pressure or social norms. This brings us to 'contingency' based rewards systems that can effectively explain why you 'wish you had never woken up'. Frankly, once
you realized that trading was less intrinsicly rewarding because of extrinsic factors like 'social consciousness' [ie; some trades are destructive to society] the contingency changed for you and you became less intrinsically rewarded because you realized that you could not single handedly change what was manifesting in a self-destructive world. Personal agency should have told you not to give up and abandon
what was intrinsically rewarding to you in the first place. Clearly, your reward system is wholeheartedly intrinsic as opposed to being extrinsic
and you are rewarded by a motivation to be creative in your approach. When one factors for creativity, and intrinsic rewards as opposed to extrinsic rewards, you will find that there are major differences between 'creative thinkers' and 'non-creative thinkers' when it comes to rewards that tend to govern behaviour. Fortunately, one creative person can indeed change the world if they are motivated enough to make the changes and do the work to invoke change. Consciouness
of one's ability, and the world around them, can have a negative effect on one's motivation to succeed at goal directed behaviour.
To place creativity back on track and remotivate one's self to take on a challenging task one needs to make the desired goal directed behaviour intrinsically rewarding once again. Simply make the goal directed behaviour of change contingent upon your own personal intrinsic rewards of being creative in your approach to problem solving.
Center or position the 'self' in terms of personal agency and make the goal directed behaviour you desire in yourself contingent upon meeting less desired goal directed behaviour. In brief, if you want to write a paper that will change the views of the world and invoke change of attitudes en masse, simply make the goal directed behaviour of completing the paper based on that which is intrinsicly self satisfying
to you. So, lets say you base completion of a paper on writing one page per day before you reward yourself with sleep at night. The end goal is to write an entire paper that will change attitudes towards society. Each page written brings one closer to the intrinsically desired goal and achievement can be intrinsically felt as one progresses towards a finished paper that is designed to change attitudes. As one actually approaches the goal directed behaviour that was intrinsically
rewarding to complete one will realize that personal agency made that possible and self satisfaction will be increased making it more likely that you will not give up on goal directed behaviour in the future. In point of fact, it is the self defeating statement of 'waste of time' that
makes you walk away from the challenge. Whole papers don't get written if one is too discouraged by self statements that are not going to motivate much. Re-engineer the motivatipon and make goal directed behaviour contingent upon completion of tasks that are less desired. and you will find that your creativity and intrinsic motivation will bounce back to life BIG time. Achievement is more imporatnt than entertainment in the long run of life IMHO. You are very creative in your approach and I, for one, would tap that source of intelligence to achieve set goal directed behaviour that was intrinsically important to yourself as opposed to others. Give yourself back the agency that you
thought you may have lost on Wall Street and reorganize extrinsic rewards into intrinsic rewards for more productive outcomes that you are seeking. Don't play with defeatest self statements like 'waste of time' until you understand who's time is being wasted. Put yourself back in play in a world where you can make a difference by your actions and inputs. In short, don't look back with any regrets. Look forward to achieve the goal directed behaviour you want to achieve
and don't buy into anything that thwarts that intrinsic motivation.
Creative people need to maintain their creativity IMHO.
Thanks for taking the time to give me that pep talk, MOU!
You cannot destroy that which is already rubble.
They are gonna make the rubble bounce, just to be sure.
You bet Cloward-Piven is being used to destroy America. Liberals have rotted our society & left us with moral decay & we are witnessing it every damn day.
Only a mindless jackass thinks thats the conditions in the USA are even remotely influenced by liberals or liberalism. The fascist crony capitalists who dominate US politics from the DNC and the RNC are neither liberal or conservative. They are representatives of the same fascist olgiarchs at the pinnacles of the global financial system who have no idealogy except to accumulate power.
the liberal ideology embraces this bullshit, while the conservative one rejects it. Now, what those elected to officials actually do, is another thing entirely. They are ultimately owned by the collective enjoying their boundless powers, spending their days trying to figure out the best way to bludgeon us with it. we are now watching as republicans who formerly were committed to the defeat of obamacare, now suggest that it simply needs tweaking. They have seen the power of the "ring" and are convinced they will only use it for "good'.
For sure, Barry Freed, I find it amazing that so many people who post comments on Zero Hedge continue being so superficial in their understanding, as to use old-fashioned labels, whose dictionary definitions do NOT match the social facts! It is ridiculous to blame any superficial "ism" when the realities ARE "fascist oligarchs at the pinnacles of the global financial system." However, after all, those banksters have been using their financial power to dominate the schools and mass media, in order to brainwash people with silly bullshit, like blaming "socialism," or accepting the political puppet show as being reality.
P.S. Did you notice this?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-04/5-things-ponder-under-surface
"Crapitalism"
That is such a great contraction of Crony Capitalism.
This article is too silly in that American Investment bankers leveraged
to a point of insanity and they blew the entire fucking world up with their
greed and hubris apart from some dickweed socialist paradigm from the God damned 60s like 'Cloward and Piven' or 'Rules for Radicals' by Alinsky. Expectation fueled the runs on Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. The runs manifested due to _EXPECTATIONS_ of participants
weighing the probabilities and possible outcomes. In brief, Economics proper has to go directly back to the Bear Stearns 'rumour mill' and ask who was the responsible party to the initial selloff. Pyramid schemes always implode when a principal investor decides to bail and cash out. Expectations cascade after each and every investor makes a corresponding probabilistic 'bet' on an expected outcome. That is exactly how the American house-of-cards imploded on Wall Street back in March of 2008 @ 11:00am Bear Stearns time. Americans can attempt to lay blame for their own incompetence on things like defunct
notions of 'Cloward and Priven' or some such 'Rules for Radicals' bullshit but it is clear to all in economics that the house-of-cards fell at Bear and Lehman being _OVERLEVERAGED_ to a point of mathematical stupidity and that's what blew the entire fucking world up, you fucking bozos!
Grow the fuck up, America!
NOTE: All ponzi schemes and pyramid schemes have one thing in common and that is the motherfucker that started it in the first place.
Kennedy was killed for attempting to stop the 'Fed' pyramid scheme.
Happy July 4th, U.S.A
OCCUPY THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA - OCCUPY EVERYTHING
And every bit of that banker leverage was fulcrumed upon debt, private and public. This agenda has been in place for a hundred years at least and it i no accident that everything that has happened moves us towards that agenda's goals.
Who were some of the biggest campaign donors to Obama's 2008 presidential campaign? Try the TBTF Banks and law firms who represented big banks:
Goldman Sachs
JPMorgan Chase & Co
Citigroup Inc
Morgan Stanley
UBS AG
Sidley Austin LLP
WilmerHale Llp
https://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cycle=2008&cid=n00009638
since all the money's going to the banks & the salaries of those in government, not the poor, this isn't Cloward-Piven. Enough fiat is routed to the poor in relation to inflated prices to avoid riots, for now. That's all. That's not CP that's just a short-term measure to have time to run and/or put up giant fences like around Palestine, but around Detroit, Chicago, etc.
And the monied bankers and gov employees are as dependent as the welfare mother on the continued corruption. Productive behaviors are being replaced with parasitic consumptive behaviors. The system collapses because government is THE source of money. The strategy is not based only on poverty but the cost of corruption in general. Everyone is becoming a dependent of government. It is not sustainable.
"as dependent" is not at issue. Non-sequitor.
What's at issue is the #1 source of damage. That's not the welfare mothers, it's the welfare bankers.
The system collapses because government is NOT THE SOURCE OF MONEY.
It is the source of thievery & everyone being stolen from is the source of money.
Banksters are dependent on thieving from people & government is but one of many choices they have, and they use them all, as tools to do that thieving.
Very, very few people are dependent on government for money, in terms of total damage, total theft.
Affirmative action economics.
Whatever Works - Official Trailer!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VeTEP3xoXo (2:17)
The sophistry is redundant. ¶ paragraph¶
The next time you see a news reel of dozens, hundreds. thousands of illegals, picture them as future democrats, voting for the party that promises them your wallet. Forget Section 8 housing, they are now being GIVEN homes {albeit in places and neighborhoods most here could not be paid to live in.} The illegals will vote away our precious rights and liberties {especially the 2nd Amendment} in exchange for entitlements. Repuklicunts could stopped this anytime they wanted to for over ten years, but the party leadership ordered a stand down on it. Soon, they will reap what they have sown, never again to be a major party, let alone a contender in national politics. Just far flung outposts in states with few electoral votes of NO CONSEQUENCE. FORWARD SOVIET!! PROGRESSIVES!!
There will be a violent American revolt against immigrants before that. It's part of the plan and baked in the cake.
See you at FEMA camp!
can you say "fascism"?
not yet?
yep, while the barbarians have overran us as in ancient Rome, we just fiddle.
Destroy from the inside?
"U.S. grounds entire F-35 fleet pending engine inspections"
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/04/us-lockheed-fighter-idUSKBN0F9...
"The U.S. military said it had grounded the entire fleet of 97 Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 fighter jets until completion of additional inspections of the warplane's single engine built by Pratt & Whitney, a unit of United Technologies Corp.
The Pentagon's F-35 program office, Air Force and Navy issued directives on Thursday ordering the suspension of all F-35 flights after a June 23 fire on an Air Force F-35A jet at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, according to statements by the Pentagon and the F-35 program office."
"The June 23 incident was the latest to hit the Pentagon's costliest weapons program, the $398.6 billion F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. It followed an in-flight oil leak that triggered mandatory fleetwide inspections of the jets last month."
lot of dunces out there.
happy 4th!
http://blogdredd.blogspot.de/2014/06/agnotology-surge-9.html
As Robert Plant once said at a concert "for all those shouting obscenities... it's all gonna come"
Larner will never show up in Paris to find out exactly how much time six and a half billion people there have for her vulgarity.
Paris is gonna be Fight Club on steroids lol
Thanks for the link Trader1
you're welcome MB and RM.
sorry if my patience-worn-thin posts are not as intellectual as i'd like them to be, but that's why you have to pull out some dreddblog.
you can spend hours reading that site in one sitting, because of all the back-links inserted into the posts.
content rich.
Yeah, I second that. Thanks for that link, trader1!
A lot of quotes featured there were quite correct, although one is dismayed to realize how horribly correct they are!
The greatest welfare dependant is government itself.
The whole process is mutually parasitic as government and recipients each take a turn at asking for more until those from whom they take, can no longer give and they themselves join the queue.
The longer it takes to collapse the longer and uglier will be the revival........if there is one.
I've always believed that TPTB purposefully destroyed our middle class economy for the reasons stated in this article. I might add, that ensuring young folk, males in particular, have no jobs was a surreptitious method for "selective service", leaving no other viable choice for many young men and women.
Why didn't you say something? I'm just as guilty.
We're lunatics
Uhh, I though that it's really, really obvious at this point.
Either get rid of the guy and his Ayers hangers-on or your country dies.
Sorry, but that is the Truth
Of course I have been saying this for years on ZH, but lets see if Tylers can go that one extra step and REALLY tell the truth. THE TRUTH is that Hussein Obama is not eligible for the office, since he was born BRITISH, of a BRITISH subject father, and is thus not an eligible natural born Citizen.
"Natural born Citizen" is defined by the "Common Law", i.e law of nations (See Sosa v. Alvarez (2004), that law of nations is the original Common law of the US, see also A1S8C10, that law of nations is part of the Constitution of the United States. Terms of Art ("natural born Citizen") are defined by the body of law from which they come, and usage of a term of art in a statutory scheme adopts the entire body of law from which the term of art derives (See also "Bills of Attainder" and "Letters of Marquis and Reprisal"). Terms of Art are not defined by breaking them down into their constituant words ("natural born Citizen" does not mean "born a US Citizen", and "born a US Citizen" was specifically rejected by the Constitutional Congress as the requirement of A2S1C5.)
Here is how law of nations defines "natural born Citizen" (Law of Nations, Vattel, Bk 1 Ch. 19 S. 212):
http://www.lonang.com/exlibris/vattel/vatt-119.htm
"The Natives, or natural born Citizens are those born in a country of parents who are citizens."
Now compare that to the definition stated by SCOTUS:
"The Constitution does not in words say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives or natural-born citizens," Minor v Happersett, 88 US 162, 167 (1874)
Obama told us repeatedly that he was not eligible, by touting his NON US CITIZEN father (See "Dreams from My Father"). He was muscelled in by the NWO, which is intent on destroying the US by the installation of an ilegal POTUS--- when there is no legal executor of the laws, then the law is only by decree (sound familiar?).
This is not a matter of D vs. R, as some prefer to obfuscate (maybe on purpose) the truth by the "D and R are the same" mantra, which hangs the straw man. This is a matter of the security of the nation, which has been breached by the installation of the domestic enemy foreigner Obama, who is exactly the perfect example of why a "natural born Citizen" is required--- he shows NO ALLEGIANCE OR ATTACHMENT to the United States.
In fact the Rs are promoting their own illegal NON natural born Citizen candidates (Cruz, Rubio and Jindal are all born of foreign parents, and Cruz was born in Canada. McCain was born in the PCZ, and was not a nbC either, thus ensuring that in 2008 an illegal President would be elected).
Apparently it is important to the NWO that an illegal executor of the laws sits in the WH, so why isn't it important to you?
So now Congress has been essentially blackmailed, and serve only to hide their treason (they also tried to illegally change the penalty for treason, which as part of the Constitution itself, can only be changed by Amendmnet. http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/12/17/Dem-Bill-Would-End-Death-P... ), as Obama and Holder oversee the destruction of the United States by Cloward Piven, and attack by decree every aspect of American life--- they infiltrate the institution of Marriage and the Military with Homosexuals, debase our money, neglect our borders, destroy the system of Health care, attack the second Amendment, stir up racial enmity, etc etc. It is right before your eyes what they are overseeing, as the blackmailed Congress cowers in silence.
Come on Tylers, you are fiinally almost there! Tell the truth. The TRUTH that Obama is not eligible is the Kryptonite of the NWO and King Obama. The wide dissemination of the TRUTH will end this illegal Presidency, and be the first step in the restoration of the lost Republic.
You gotta think the TRUTH is finally leaking out when you see this. One can only hope. I wonder what kind of apology tour the useful idiot MSM will put Rivers on. They will be aghast in the morning.
http://www.gossipcop.com/joan-rivers-michelle-obama-tranny-president-gay/
I also came to the conclusion that it seems very probable that Obama does not have the legal right to be President. However, that is just one of the many horrible ways that the system appears terminally insane. After all, Obama has an administration which is defending the idea that they could assassination Americans with drones, simply by making an executive order to do so.
When blatantly unconstitutional things like that are afoot, that the President should not be allowed to be President is merely a cherry on a big, big cake! Furthermore, since the whole system is almost completely corrupt, who the hell is going to replace Obama that would not end up being worse?
North America is sinking deeper and deeper into irreversible social polarization, as far as I can tell.
Don't be stupid. When the executor of the laws is an illegal entity then there is no law. I just can't believe that anyone thinks it doesn't matter. It is not about D or R, and the Rs have there own ineligible candidates for a reason.
My view is that there is NOTHING but organized lies operating robberies. There is NO de jure, but bullshit. There is ONLY de facto. The connection between human laws and natural laws is the ability to back up lies with violence.
Brandon's final para places the blame for this devious trickery squarely on hidden "socialism". This is correct in my view.
Destruction of society, impoverishment of the middle class and the imposition of a "dependency culture" across society has long been a major gameplan of the socialists. How else can they grab more power? There is no limit to the justifications they will fabricate for each and every new "progressive policy". "Fairness" "equality" "social justice" are just a few of them.
This destruction of society has been implemented successfully in Britain over many decades since WWII with no sign that it has been rumbled. In fact, both major political parties signed up to it a long time ago. Nowadays, the real choice is between "regular or soft socialism" from the Conservative Party and "in-your-face socialism" from the Labour Party/Lib Dems.
This gameplan intentionally precedes a collapse in society and the introduction of a much larger all-embracing authoritarian model of government. We all know this has begun. That it is now happening in the United States tells me the world is on the slippry slope into the abyss.
Hey Smacker,
[Nowadays, the real choice is between "regular or soft socialism" from the Conservative Party and "in-your-face socialism" from the Labour Party/Lib Dems.]
Since Glenn (God love his soul, ;-) is being mentioned here, let me add the studied presentation of false choices and manipulation of the "Overton Window".
There's no doubt that events are being crudely orchestrated... IMHO, ZHers know better what the probable outcome of this fantasy utopia construction effort will be than the constructors themselves.
THIS WILL END BADLY AND THIS WILL END SOON. We are at or near the tipping point. Whenever I say these scary words, my mind always goes back to the moment in the movie Titanic when they are hanging on the stern railing watching the cold cold waters of the North Atlantic coming up at them.
The 4th of July celebrations ring hollow for me now. Maybe before I die, we will have corrected that.
messymerry is the Greek word for nap time. I think I will go catch 40 more winks...
;-D
+100 smacker... its also true in Australia, NZ....
Therefore it is a game plan - unless one believes its a "coincidence".
I too am very concerned this is also true of the USA.
Naw, it is ridiculous to label the problem "socialism."
There are no good labels, since the reality is primarily the paradox of the best organized gang of criminals capturing control over the government. That the biggest gangsters, the banksters, have controlled the public "money" supply for about a Century is the main problem. Follow the money through it feedback loops in the political processes, to its SOURCE.
In my view is is absurd to use the word "socialism" in that context. Nothing about the dictionary definition of "socialism" fits the facts. I prefer a runaway fascist plutocracy juggernaut, under oligarchical control by corporatism. ... However, for sure, it is simply silly to use the label "socialism," or to blame that for the problems.
People who blame "socialism" I regard as being Black Sheeple, who are more part of the problem, because they are more like the Zombie Sheeple, in the degree to which they have a superficial understanding of the problems.
Everything you write ignores the evidence that is available.
Namely, that since (say) the end of WW II there has been a steady drift towards a NWO based upon socialist ideology (or Marxism).
At geo-political level this is seen in the existence of mighty institutions: UN, IMF, WB, WTO and others. Each of these has staggering powers and authority but never elected by anybody.
At national level, we see the abandonment of a Right-of-centre policy set and the introduction of a progressive Left-leaning policy set. See the growth in Welfare States across the Western world for evidence. Big Government Statism has become the norm. We see the state taking control of every market and stealing the savings and wealth of anybody who has it (except of their cronies). This amounts to "levelling down".
We also know that fascism is an incarnation of Leftism merged with crony capitalism, where ethics and honesty are abandoned and replaced by jackboot force.
In most Western countries there are whole organisations dedicated to growing the size/power of The State, including MSM itself and of brainwashing the younger generations who are growing up in a world of State dependency. They know nothing else. They don't know how to think for themselves or survive and operate in a world of personal effort, personal responsibility and self-determination. They are useful fodder from Day One.
In the UK there is an organisation known as "Common Purpose" which purports to be an organisational education and training outfit for management and professionals. Many BBC people attend their courses. A lot of people believe it is actually a progressive socialist brainwashing outfit dedicated to promoting Leftist views inside management etc.
http://www.cpexposed.com/about-common-purpose
http://www.stopcp.com/
It goes on and on. What I see is a determination to progressively replace individuality & personal responsibilty with a system of collectivism run by The State.
Welcome to socialism.
All of that is true enough, but what is more true is the tiny minority getting more fantastically wealthy and powerful throughout the ways that they used things like communism, socialism, and fascism, etc., as tools, or as irrational symbols exploited for the "rational" goals of divide and conquer, through which a tiny minority accumulate more and more tokens of social control over the vast majority.
Nothing compares to the legalized counterfeiting of the public money supply that the banksters achieved. All of the rest is fluff to hide that, in my opinion.
Glenn has NEVER spoken of C & P through the lens of right and left paradigm. It was through the lens of Progressivism that he spoke of C & P. He slams PROGRESSIVES be they left, right, Dem, or Republican.
Get your facts straight brandon.Beck is an idiot. People go on welfare because the Romney types shut the factory down and moved it off to China. Get your facts straight.
must be giving out free KoolAid someplace....
You are the idiot.
No factories would have ever been shut if Americans had not purchased foreign goods and labor over our own. The power has always been in the hands of the consumer. Sure, corporations AND government have profitted handsomely from this, but they could have never done it without us. GM had no problem agreeing to ever increasing wage contracts while watching Americans appetite for cheap imports grow. It made it all the more easy to move their jobs offshore. And we are still doing it to this day. buying ever more imports, turning the other cheek to foreign invaders as they only want a better way of life. We are sticking the barrel of the gun in our mouths while screaming that the bullet manufacturers are murderers.
Only an idiot blames others for their own stupidity.
Spot on Oldwood. And as long as it's the other guy loosing his job, it's " better him than me" . And then we go to Wamart, and opine it's the only way to afford to live.
But, no matter your philosophy, it's getting harder to survive without playing their game.
No doubt. Our past choices are severely limiting any future ones. That's why I believe we are doomed. We are here today because of past choices, those choices being ones of short term advantage over long term indifference. We have little choice today but buy the import or hire the illegal. if we were unable or willing to make the hard choices of the past, what chance to we have with the truly difficult ones of today, much less what we face tomorrow?
WE are doing this to ourselves, it is not being done to us by others. Others are enabling us, making the bad choices look better than they are through easy credit and the promise of forcing "others" to pay for it. But we are the useful idiots enslaving ourselves out of short term greed and fear. Until we stand up for our own individual self interests with the recognition that there is nothing for nothing, the true interests of the whole will never be realized. believing the lies, the dream that collectivized living will be our savior, that a centralized government will be the ultimate arbiter of truth and justice, is suicide of the highest order.
...better him than me... That notion is unfortunately true in the human condition and painfuly obvious to those of us who try to inform our fellows that we stand or fall together.
A friend was telling me humanity is like a herd of wildebeasts making our way across the Serengeti. At every river crossing we run across, hoping the crocs don't eat us. We see a few of our fellows devoured, shed a tear and forge on. Fooling ourseleves with confirmation bias and the mirage of safety in numbers, we imagine a crude statistical probability that our day will come and relax a bit thinking the odds are in our favor. One day we are surprised to find ourself standing at the rivers edge all alone.
"Consumers" do what they are told. Buy American, Buy Imported.
It is the Policy Makers who shape the reality.
The single most stupid article I have ever read. So, cloward and piven advocated shutting down all the factories, firing Americans to get them on welfare? Bullshit.
What put America on food stamps: crooks bought up the factories, shut them down, and moved the jobs to Mexico, China, Singapore, where they could get true slave labor. And the Walmarts of teh world put the slave labor products on the shelves.
What you describe is just a symptom of other problems. If I had more time to explain, I would.
Cloward-Piven looked at through the spying glass in the age of Nam driven MIC hubris and BW revoke leading to financial dystopia...
Brandon does ride roughshod over history with his branding iron searing the bogeyman theme of "outright communism" hysteria like it were a wayward steer.
Its funny how the anti-democratic neo-con knee jerks pull these old skeletons out of the cupboard forgetting the DOMINATING mantra of the age; enacted on Aldous Huxley day, which consecrated the rise of MIC Oligarchy in US of A to the detriment of "we the people".
You make me want to use the immortal words of John McEnroe : "You cannot be serious"....in the age of Nixonian shenanigans and Dear Henry's legacy of Oil patch diplomacy to the world which created the Pax Americana hegemonical age.
Zero incentive to clean house...exploit the reserve currency status to the max. Describes Atlantis 2 in the year 2014.
too busy looking for pinkos under their beds; all the while Putin sings : The only pink slime is in your industrial made food which is as fresh and healthy as your greenback dildo machine.
Play away Janet with your magical stick.
Did you say Coward Driven Strategy?
Happy "Independence" Day
The New Order of BarbariansTapes one and two were recorded in 1988 and are the recollections of Dr. Lawrence Dunegan regarding a lecture he attended on March 20, 1969 at a meeting of the Pittsburgh Pediatric Society. The lecturer at that gathering of pediatricians (identified in tape three recorded in 1991) was a Dr. Richard Day (who died in 1989). At the time Dr. Day was Professor of Pediatrics at Mount Sinai Medical School in New York. Previously he had served as Medical Director of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Dr. Dunegan was formerly a student of Dr. Day at the University of Pittsburgh and was well acquainted with him, though not intimately. He describes Dr. Day as an insider of the "Order" and although Dr. Dunegan's memory was somewhat dimmed by the intervening years, he is able to provide enough details of the lecture to enable any enlightened person to discern the real purposes behind the trends of our time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gjc4ywQVHEQ
Go to 1:02:00 in.
Thanks Q
but but but "both party's hour the same and Busch did the same thin two"......
I'll never get tired of making fun of stupid people who repeat that stupid Socialist Semite Democrat media propaganda......It's amazing how many of you idiots post that crap here....
Case #1...The President of the USA is a flaming homosexual. The First Lady is a Transvestite.
This has been known since 2008. Hell the President and his Chief of Staff boyfriend, Rahm Emmanuel, shared a LIFETIME MEMBERSHIP in the same Bathhouse in Chicgo's Gay District.
Now you'd think that Romney, losing by a couple of percentage points, would have thrown everything including the Kitchen Sink at the Asshole in Charge to win the fuckin' election. There was only ONE HALF BILLION DOLLARS of other people's money which he spent...TO LOSE?
And yet Romney did NOT.
Now really I do not care if the President Milks a Bull's "Nipple". It is rather humorous. But I am certain that more than 2% of the people do care that the President is a flaming homosexual. That exposure would have thrown the election to Romney.
And if you really think that Romney did not know it, or, if Romney did know it and decided not to use it, then Romney deserved to lose. But Romney and his staff knew it. Hell I knew it.
So when Joan Rivers makes that statement which Drudgereport reported I was not shocked.
Case #2...Then you have John Boehner and Mitch McConnell...They "Shut Down the Government" last October.
Then the Republican led House of Representatives VOTE TO FUND OBAMACARE. All funding originates in the House of Representatives according to LAW.
Why did both of these events happen? There are many, many more examples which I can provide.
Have you ever heard of the term, cognotive dissonance?
It has been known to cause delusions and delusional behavior.
Before calling people idiots here it is best to take a deep hard look in the mirror at yourself.
(I am not interested in hearing your apologies of excuses for the Republican's behavior...)
Many of the numbers and budget projections of the government have been based on far better employment numbers then we are currently facing or will be facing if this continues. The long-term implication of poor job creation will drastically impact in a negative way both the wealth and future of our children and America. It will mean some people never work or go decades without a job.
The alternative to working and producing is to use up your savings or be sustained by the government, family, or friends. The longer someone is out of the workforce the harder the adjustment to reentering becomes, they call it work for a reason, and one of those reasons is that often it means doing unpleasant things. More on the implications of unemployment in the article below.
http://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2013/09/implications-of-poor-job-creation...
Exactly why did Cloward and Piven come up with this strategy. Were they sitting around stoned one night and tire of playing "I have galaxies in my finger tips" decided how to make slaves of the USA? Or were they given a grant by the 1%? Or were they just ivory-tower academics trying to appear relevant?
They were not the evil geniuses of their time. They were simply expounding upon what the communist manifesto had laid out decades before them. It has been about the capture of the system, and it was recognized it could not be done militarily or by force. It had to be done through indoctrination, subterfuge and economics. communism flatly rejected the 'middle class" as nothing but useful idiots. Their sympathies to be played upon and used to destroy them. Cloward and Piven simply put it into a modern context.
People want to attach names and ideologies to this so as to better imprint what is happening inot peoples minds. it really doesn't matter what we call it.
It is simply the abandonment of our god given common sense to protect and preserve ourselves and our freedoms, for the sake of a sense of "Collective'. Those promoting it as the safety in herds, the advancement or "progress' to an elevated state of human existence....utopia....death.
Act 1: Disgruntled folks align through struggle and hard work, and create a system.
Act 2 : They build a social system that works and advances.
Act3: Things are good, they get complacent . Some can't make it , but that's ok, we have plenty and can help them. We hire administrators to dole out to those unfortunates.
Act 4: The unfortunates start to outnumber and overwhelm the strugglers and producers. The Administration has become a profession.
Act 5: Where we are. Followed by collapse.
Act 1: wash, rinse, repeat.
This reminds me of meetings I had in Venezuela way back when Chavez was about to be released from his prison. We were speaking to a lot of smart people about what would happen (it was so scary that we pulled all investments) if Chavez did come to power.
One message we heard was that Chavez was well-regarded for taking sole responsibility of the coup. He was seen as a loyal leader. The next thing we were told was that everyone washed their hands of him, and the only visitors he had were socialists (quite a foreshadowing, no?). the next comment stuck with me and still does today. "The thing about socialists and communists, is that all the smart ones became capitalists".
This is a bit of sad truth about the political leaders in the USA as well, no? (see someone else's comments below).
Every game has it's rules and somebody has to sit down and make them up.
There is always one winner and everyone else playing are the losers.
Playtime is over, now report to your Federal work station.
Hurry. You don't want to get demoted to the camps.
Trust me on this.
http://www.thenation.com/article/weight-poor-strategy-end-poverty written 1966
Cloward and Piven is old news and have been in the background with the Clintons and now 0bama and his ilk.
They are communists and if all your mentors are communists so are you.
The media has been hiding this fact for at least 10 years because the bulk of main stream media is packed with 'commie pinkos'.
yes
this article is a complicated discussion of a very simple reality, an inevitability of the modern state. the post industrial western states have all reached peak developement. there are very few growth oppprtunities especially with an aging, declining population. productivity gains have reduced the need for labor(even in the office towers). there is a surplus of labor worldwide which is why much of africa and south america and the south pacific are still poor. the west simply succumbed to the welfare model for taking care of it's excess labor problem for political reasons and the financial ability to do it. rioting, unemployed people are a real pain to .gov(bonus army) so the time honored method is to give them mo money. take a look at the welfare programs post 60s ghetto riots. there is no conspiracy.it does eventually bankrupt the state. that is true.
the main concern for the chinese .gov is another mass riot because of economic issues with the masses asking for a .gov bailout. china is already communist. what will they become?
the socialist model certainly suits the oligarchs because it is the easiest way to control the people and concentrates power in very few hands. as shrub famously admitted, a dictatorship is the easiest form of .gov, but a politburo, central committee, the fed and the chinese .gov are good compromises.
The author obviously hasn't ever listened to Beck.
Beck has hammered the GOP and the Democrat politicians regarding Cloward and Piven. He has backed non Progressive Republicans in primary contests for years because of this.
And, Beck was the first national figure talking about Cloward and Piven 5 years ago.
No, Beck steers everything towards Obama, and often suggests that change will somehow come through the Republican Party. He also attacks anyone who suggests that revolution might be necessary and paints people who do as "extremists". He is just another establishment shill. Controlled opposition is supposed to speak your lingo, that's how they get in your good graces.
Obviously, both parties work for the same banking families. There will be no help from either of them. We need a new party with one single platform, to force the fed govt back into the boundaries set in the Constitution. Neither of the political parties will do that.
Beck dismisses violence probably because if anyone in media supported violent overthrow of these fascists, they'd lock him up.
Are you a Totaltarian, a Libertarian, or a Slave?
You decide.
I'll take the fourth option. I am a Citizen
this makes me a co-sovereign, which makes me in part Totalitarian
this also makes me a free agent of my life, which makes me a Libertarian
but, alas, when in dire straits, this makes me also a Soldier, which makes me (for part of my life) a Slave
further, when I was born, I was a helpless babe. this made me a Communist, under a dictatorship of grown-ups
when I grew up, I was "socialized" in learning groups, aka schools (and later I was drafted). all very Socialist
then I learned to care about my environments and cultures, making me a Conservative*
then I became an entrepreneur, making me a Liberal*
* (in the european/classic sense)
nevertheless, I claim all of that. So I am a Citizen
You cannot be a T & L, sorry.
Libertarians do not force others to adopt their positions.
If you believe they do, then you are a Tyrant by definition.
Of course, the Slave doesn't care about anything.
BTW, both political parties in the U.S. are T.
Any third party is by circumstance L.
It's not that hard to understand.
Since I'm a L, you have the freedom to be a T.
But watch your ass MF!
Happy 4th everyone.
I understand that Libertarians do not force others to adopt their position. but what do they do when their biggest next-door polity is a Tyranny?
the lack of a clear answer to that question makes the Libertarian position slightly academic, imho
The simple answer is they do nothing. Libertarians are not advancing an empire of liberty, it expands around them by their presence not their influence. Whether some despot is killing the people who didn't vote for him is their problem, seriously. Once you start playing international police you are as good as the tyrant. Despite Obomba's nobel peace prize he will always be remembered as a weak statesman and a regular plain old warmongerer.
Hayek writes on this very issue in the Road to Serfdom and poses some interesting perspectives on Dictatorships and their value or lack of value to a libertarian particularly. By all means, invite people to adopt libertarianism, but don't pontificate and don't go getting the big iron off your hip like some kind of vigilante. People need to self determine their futures and it's no one's responisibility but theirs to decide how their lives play out. Slave or free man, the choice is always yours.
Calling the libertarian position academic because it doesn't feature ideological war in it's design subscribes to the idea that you need to have an agressive ideology to suppress others and ensure the surivival of an otherwise unsustainable ideology. Not affording the liberty for self determination would be deeply hypocritical and libertarians have other ways of growing than war. Once people see the common sense and systemic prosperity in a libertarian society it won't be long before they hop on it pretty quick.
Self defence is something else but an aggressive campaign is pretty much a no-go for most libertarians. Some will probably disagree but I struggle to see how they would defend that kind of position unless it was some sort of survival threat.
Most are Slaves who's fear has turned them into T.
The others are T because they are addicted to the power.
Libertarians should not be afraid to defend their positions.
You are not alone.
The Libertarian will ask why my neighbor is a threat.
The Totalitarian doesn't care what you think.
Chuck even if you consider yourself Libertarian as I do, others can clearly say we are forcing our position on them. Doing nothing can be deemed forcing your position. I don't think we will all get very far with that, even our great mind Dr. Paul doesn't have all the answers, just some really good ones.
This is brilliant. As much as we want simple answers, the truth we seek is often complex and multi-faceted. But few of us are willing to admit as much.
the person looking for THE answer, will be the one putting us in a cage. Life is never so simple that a single concept can have all of the answers. we should strive as a society to promote ideas that advance mutually agreed upon goals (as much as that is possible) without forcing anyone to do anything. i don't believe we can create any optimal society through force. if we can't convince the population of the benefits of voluntary action, then it should be abandoned.
Sadly Ghordius, being a citizen doesn't make you any of those things.
A fundamental and essential requirement to be a citizen is that you are directly involved - in fact a co-owner and controller - in the nation you are born and live in. Normally this would be through a proper Constitution where the citizenry have ultimate power, because it is "they" who actually own the country, not politicans.
No citizen of any EU member "state" (note the EU's favoured diminutive use of "state", not "nation") enjoys these features. Not only has citizen authority been utterly usurped by successive governments, but the EU itself decided to call each of us an "EU Citizen". This is a farce.
Absent all of the things you think you have - but don't really - you are as the previous poster alluded to "a slave". Albeit with a useful purpose for a while.
Sorry to disappont you.
The country has lost it's way which is clearly evident in the following public opinions:
1. Forcing voters to get an ID to vote causes and undue burden yet we have a law where every American must buy health insurance each year.
2. Schools aren't allowed to report if a minor is pregnant or asking for birth control yet schools have no problem sending a note home stating students are fat. What if they are fat because they are pregnant?
3. We spend millions trying to get people to stop smoking tobacco because 1st, 2nd, and 3rd hand smoke is bad yet we are legalizing the smoking of marijuana because it is about freedom and being cool. Wasn't tobacco smoking cool in the 1940s?
4. Students should be given birth control because it is all about the right to choose but go into any high school in America and the vending machines do not contain sugary drinks or junk food because the administrators will tell you that kids make bad choices and should be allowed to choose.
5. We want to release prisoners from Gitmo because it is inhumane to keep them there but no one has an issue when the gov drones to death an entire encampment to kill one person because it is much cheaper than shipping them to Gitmo.
6. Christians are told they should be more Christian and support higher taxes because it goes to the poor and then the Christians are told to keep religion out of politics when it comes to right to life issues.
7. There are laws where if you can prove you're competent you can legally end your life. However, if you are incompetent in the eyes of the law, you must remain alive until natural death.
8. All Americans are guaranteed equal protection under the law. However, there is a tiered tax law which forces high wage earners to pay a higher percentage in the system. A person paying 20% is working 1 day per week for .gov and someone paying 40% is working 2 days for .gov. How is that equal?
9. Prez traded 5 middle easterners for 1 American. How is that equal?
10. People believe the IRS did not target a political group that seeks to end the IRS even though the IRS admitted to doing it, an inspector general report found that they did it, and then after a year long investigation in which evidence was destroyed and the key people involved refused to answer any questions about, people arrived at the conclusion that it never happened.
Happy 4th!
Textbooks need a great deal of work these days.
Communism and Collectivism need to be re-cast in their proper light: They are a means of returning to feudalism.
Except they are wrong. What is likely to happen is water cannon, cutbacks, being handed a shovel in a nice forested glade, and The Hunger Games.
It's all charades until the largest army on earth (by far) puts the smack down.
If the military won't do it's job and slap the cuffs on the guilty, the American people will do it for them.
Brandon-Smith's argument seems to rest on the belief that government transfer payments are destroying the economic system, an assertion that ZH readers should recognize as not just wrong, but wrong-headed.
B-S believes the unfolding collapse of our economic system must be a deliberate plot by an all-powerful elite, who somehow want to bring it down so they can extend their control over us all and turn us all into welfare serfs. ZH readers, as we watch the frantic efforts of the masters of our fantastically over-leveraged system to hide or postpone its inevitable collapse, should find this laughable.
B-S presents as evidence for his claim the publication almost 50 years ago in the Nation, a liberal (not socialist) magazine, of a 1966 strategy proposal by Cloward and Pliven (C-P) for how the then-growing welfare rights movement (which barely exists today) could force a radical change in American politics.
The original C-P strategy paper contains some searing but now commonplace insights into the contradictory, unfairly administered and demeaning welfare system of the 1960's - how it traps the recipients and fosters conflicts, bitter resentments and divisions between the poor and working poor, and between those who have the pull to get it and those who don't. Nearly everyone understands these problems now, yet they have only grown worse over the past 50 years, written into the fabric of new generations of welfare legislation. Which begs the question: who wants welfare to remain unfair, divisive and ineffective?
C-P also propose a strategy for the poor peoples'/welfare rights movement - then being championed by Martin Luther King, Jr., Saul Alinski and others - to mobilize the victims of this destructive system to use their numbers and voting power to transform it. Those movements reached their greatest strength in the '70's and '80's, suffered terrible defeats in the welfare "reforms" of the Reagan and Clinton years, and have all but disappeared since.
As an aside: Many ZH readers are experiencing the dynamics of the welfare system, as our unemployment benefits are exhausted and as the 50 state Unemployment Assistance (UA) programs are deliberately degraded. UA is being transformed, under a mandate from the Obama Administration, into a lean, mean, impersonal, arbitrary and hard-to-access system built around astonishingly bad (and expensive) computer programs. In my state, some people still get the benefits owed them, others face such daunting obstacles - 10 to 15 weeks until the first check - that they end up homeless in the streets before they get their first check and still others, just as needy, give up in despair and walk away from the benefits they are owed.
Under this new system, often the only way to get the unemployment benefits is to ask an elected official or union leader to intervene, upon which unsolvable problems suddenly go away. Intended or not, this bakes into it a kind of corruption and favoritism. One of those union leaders shared with me that he is convinced the system is unfixable.
The goal C-P put forward, a guaranteed income for all, was proposed by Richard Nixon, then shot down in flames when George McGovern made it a Democratic campaign platform. It could in fact be profoundly liberating, and (theoretically) would have been well within the means of the immensely productive US economy.
However C&P didn't seem to have an analysis of the system as a whole: of why poverty and hunger have been a constant companion to America's fabulous and growing wealth, who rules, why they need managed poverty for the proper working of their system, or how the economy could continue to produce great wealth without it. Their strategy is not socialist, but rather Keynesian. It takes the capitalist system as a given, and makes the government a kind of god that can stand outside the system and intervene to mitigate its consequences. At the time this was a practical approach to a system that still had some "give" in it.
The instinctive rejection of the welfare rights movement by those with a stake in the system - even if it's just a "good job", remember those? - is based on the "golden goose" principle, a gut understanding that poverty needs to be terrifying to keep people (including themselves) in line and keep the system working. Many ZH readers grew up thinking like this. It also was a practical point of view at the time, depending which side of the bread your butter was on.
At a moment like this, for those of us who are watching and analyzing the system's apparently unstoppable self-destruction, it's not just wrong but dangerous to frame the cries for help from the desperate, poor and disposessed (which increasingly includes us) as the cause of it's failure.
Another excellent comment/analysis WW. Seems to me the same applies on the global scale, where the meaning of "failure" is rapidly evolving, not in a good way.
"B-S believes the unfolding collapse of our economic system must be a deliberate plot by an all-powerful elite, who somehow want to bring it down so they can extend their control over us all and turn us all into welfare serfs. ZH readers, as we watch the frantic efforts of the masters of our fantastically over-leveraged system to hide or postpone its inevitable collapse, should find this laughable."
I don't think it is, I know it is. You are an egghead, all books and no instincts. Your collegiate types think all control come from politicians. You are fools. They don't control a thing, never has this been so obvious except for the egghead's out there. Get the egg out of your head man.
@TahoeBilly, who controls the button that fires the WMD? I think the point WhyWait is making when s/he says it's laughable is that the so-called leaders have lost control and nobody is exactly sure who's finger is on the button. We are left to believe that those with the fancy job titles are supposedly 'disciplined' therefore everything is under control. IT'S BULLSHIT.
For me, nothing symbolizes this madness more than the idea that the climate change that could REASONABLY result from AGW kicking off positive feedback loops is something that we, here today, have "control" of. I suggest that this, more than any single thing, is what is causing everything to spiral out of control. If humanity cannot even see a problem that could have the ramifications that "climate change" could (ie: Canfield Oceans, Sixth mass-extinction) and deal with it like rational mature adults, and all "we" seem to be able to do about it is bicker like children, then we will bicker and argue about absolutely goddam everything because NOTHING ELSE MATTERS except the fight.
My view is that this bickering is going to end in Paris in 18 months. The undisputed global superpower had it's opportunity to end the squabble in Copenhagen and just look at the OVER-THE-TOP arguing FUCKING BULLSHIT that went on there. Hilary Clinton running around like a chicken with it's head cut off trying to make people believe she had some money to throw around. Obama saying at the close of the sordid affair that he thought they had made really good progress because they agreed to get together soon and set up another fucking meeting. ABSOLUTELY PATHETIC. And CONnie Hedgetard (oops Hedegaard) QUITTING!!! as the COP/CMP got under way. Yep, really quality stuff folks, masters in full control Mates!
Zero Hedge ignored the press releases this year of IPCC WG2 and WG3. The commentariat here attack Flakmeister from every angle. In Paris, nobody is gonna give a fuck what ZH says or doesn't say, and THE WHOLE WORLD is gonna be ready to pounce the SECOND Obama tries to BULLSHIT everyone. One thing I can be sure of, it won't be Hugo Chavez pounding his fist on the podium in Paris...
Guess who. The buck stops there. Everything we read here is just setting the stage. Get your popcorn ready folks : )
Welfare is forced charity, and forced charity is theft. Period.
B-S wrote:
"If we allow ourselves to fall into the trap of making the developing crisis about a singularly unimportant man such as Obama, then the elites get exactly what they want – an angry and desperate citizenry out for the blood of a middleman and out for the blood of each other ..."
Agreed. That's their game. Well put.
"... while they sit back, relax, and wait to swoop in as our financial saviors with strings attached."
There's the real problem! You're giving them too much credit. They are certainly manoeuvering to come out ahead, but at the same time they are frightened and confused by their inability to prevent this crisis, afraid they won't be able to limit it or prevent the collapse of the Dollar Empire, and starting to turn on each other.
And we have no need to join them in throwing the poor under the bus. Quite the opposite.
The question we all need to start thinking about is this: When the situation finally clarifies, which side of the barricades will we be on? If you think the poor and the zillionaires will be on the same side and we on the other, you need to check what you've been smoking.
Yeah, Why Wait, I agree with you and several others that the OVER-LEVERAGE, or the debt slavery systems driving numbers which have become debt insanities, where the physical is exceeded by about 100 times by the symbolic, because there is barely any collateral for the over-extensions of "paying" for things by stealing from the future, by creating "money" out of nothing, as debts, was driven by runaway greed to become social insanity at an exponential rate.
Furthermore, as MEAN BUSINESS also replied just above, the same fundamentally fraudulent financial accounting system was also "paying" for strip-mining the planet, in ways which may have already gone too far to be stopped?
I kind of wish that I could still have faith in some simple and successful, albeit evil, master plan. However, I believe the ruling classes have become criminally insane, and are no longer able to control the systems that they originally made and maintained.
There's only one way to find out if it can be stopped or not. As Cat Stevens said we're "on the road to find out". When I say "all roads lead to Paris" what I'm truly interested in is the journey BEYOND Paris. That may not include the USD, NATO, or even The UN...
So be it. There are more important things!
BTW, Cat Stevens also worked at Le Studio in Morin Heights Quebec, birthplace of eight RUSH albums : )