Police State

Greetings good citizen,

Happy Sunday good citizen! Most Some of you have been to commune with ‘Spirit in the sky’ and don’t want anyone ‘harshing your mellow’ while your fresh from the pew…but for most of us those stirrings of ‘brotherly love’ we get from communing with God never make it out of the church’s parking lot.

But hey, not to worry, Big Brother’s got your back!

Why do I say that? You’d be hard-pressed to find someone more religious than a conservative!

On last night's Real Time, Bill Maher interviewed Dan Rather about his thoughts on opinion journalism ("I think it has its place" but "it's not my kind of journalism"), Rather's Bush-going-AWOL story, which famously got him fired, and media consolidation. His thoughts on that:

Whether you're a conservative or a liberal or a progressive, a Democrat or a Republican, everybody can be and should be concerned about this: the constant consolidation of media, particularly national distribution of media, with a few companies -- no more than six, my count is four -- now control more than 80 percent of the true national distribution of news. These large corporations, they have things they need from the power structure in Washington, whether it's Republican or Democrat, and of course the people in Washington have things they want the news to be reported. To put it bluntly, very big business is in bed with very big government in Washington, and has more to do with what the average person sees, hears, and reads than most people know.

And what does the Conservo-fascist do with political power?

Have a gander:

I've always thought of the Military Industrial Complex as welfare for white guys. This would back up that claim:

Among other unasked for changes, the bill keeps aging aircraft and ships the military wants to phase out, keeps the Army and Marines at larger force levels and orders construction of missile defenses.

They don't want it, they don't need it, but the Republican donors want the profits and their conservative base voters want the very well paying, extremely high benefits jobs.

They like to say they hate Big Government, but that's a lie. They love it. It's just that they want to funnel the money to their own constituencies --- and they want to build a police state that will keep everyone else in line in case they decide to do something about it.

And you thought I was paranoid? Not that they don’t have damn good reason to be, er, ‘suspicious.’

In a ‘free and democratic’ society, what could be the motivation of people ardently attempting to strangle democracy in its sleep?

Worse, good citizen…what kind of democracy is it that only asks you to chose someone who will decide in your name WITHOUT EVER CONSULTING YOU?

Because in my book that is NOT ‘democracy’, it’s FRAUD!

BY DEFINITION ‘democracy’ is you having your say DIRECTLY on the issue at hand.

This process that removes you completely from the entire decision-making process is both treachery AND fraud!

And you can see that this ‘process’ has been ‘duplicated’ right down the line.

So you CAN’T use the process to fix the process!

(Which has created the current pickle of the system being broken and there’s no way to fix it (from the outside and no will to fix it on the inside!))

So we ‘cast our votes’ (as we will in a couple of months) then they hand pick the winners, (completely disregarding your vote,) then they go ahead and do what they want without regard for the consequences!

Because to defy them now is to invite, whether you realize it or not, getting ‘disappeared’.

How ironic is it that it was the communists that made this a ‘common occurance’…but understand, this didn’t start until AFTER the ‘counter-revolution’ had succeeded.

Just as the ‘trade doors’ to China remained closed UNTIL the ‘counter-revolution’ and the usurpers had cemented their power! THEN they made overtures to the West to join the ‘global community’.

And who accepted? Richard Nixon. No matter where you look over the past forty years there's a conservo-fascist behind every big move!

Now we have a shattered global economy (capitalism was NEVER intended to be a ‘universal’ commerce system because of its ‘cannibalistic qualities’ and it’s over reliance on an extremely limited amount of ‘market share’.) threatening to leave a huge ‘void’ that much of the human race will fall into.

And the psychopath running the whole thing doesn’t care! Worse, he believes it is the ‘natural order’ of things.

Pushing humanity into its own cesspool is no more than we deserve, especially for ‘permitting’ something as cruel as capitalism to flourish!

And that’s a pretty damning indictment regardless of how you look at it.

It’s the same sad story, good citizen. The few will have to claw our way back from the brink to save the rest of us.

And among those saved will be the seeds of repeat episode.

Without the proper social safeguards, those seeds will contaminate society with a fresh crop of blind greed-heads, who will promptly destroy whatever they get their hands on.

Look at the job in front of us now and think for a moment; couldn’t all of this have been avoided if only we had the proper safeguards in place?

Look no further than A Simple Plan, the only revolutionary formula designed to defeat the ‘counter-revolution’ from the beginning!

With no money (hard currency) corruption is impossible and political power will remain permanently beyond the reach of the ‘self-serving’.

To even suggest removing political power from the hands of the people is an exile offense under the human anti-exploitation law!

Which is to point out that November is just the beginning of a long, slippery slope we need to claw our way back to the top of.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Educated

Greetings good citizen,

More basic than the state of our economy is the state of academic accomplishment in our (rapidly crumbling) society.

Hey, it’s not new and it’s not hidden. You can view ads on TV that show the US 17th in math and 25th in Science…(worldwide standing)

And what’s the ‘major malfunction’ here?

The official reason is not enough ‘qualified teachers’!

Why do you suppose that is, good citizen?

Could it be the same reason nobody in the US studies engineering. They’re all studying to be lawyers or stockbrokers…with a smattering of accountants trying to get a leg up into the financial sector…

How sad is it good citizen that none of those jobs ‘go begging’? Sadder still is the meat-grinder that passes for the path to partnership in law firms NOT OWNED by YOUR family.

This is what capitalism and the, er, ‘contest’ to line your own pockets with as much as you can, as quickly as possible results in.

You end up with more lawyers than the system can use and not enough teachers.

Yet nobody faults this basic flaw of capitalism, especially those seeking the best legal representation ‘money can buy’.

[I digress to point out that everybody knows, in corrupt times like these that ‘legal talent’ is virtually indistinguishable from ‘political connectedness’. The more ‘grease’ you have, the higher the likelihood of a judgement being in YOUR favor…]

So what of our crumbling educational system that the anti-tax conservatives seem bent on choking to death?

They DON’T give a fuck; they’ll send THEIR kids to ‘private school’.

And finally: critical thinking is the birthright of every American. We should not aspire to a feudal society where only the elites are taught to think independently, evaluate evidence, weigh complex factors, and make informed decisions. But it will become one -- in just a generation or two -- if we stop making this the foundational competence delivered by our educational system. A democracy in which a majority of people are no longer capable of basic critical thinking skills cannot remain a democracy very long.

Our educational system is a product of our deepest values. And the battles we're having now are, very directly, battles over what we believe is possible in America, and what kind of country we want to be 20 years from now. The conservatives are not wrong: for 150 years, the schools have been the leading promoter and disseminator of progressive values. They are now doing their best to dismantle that system, and replace it with one that produces followers, subjects and serfs.

What is education for? We won't even be a contender in this fight until we're committed to our own clear, coherent, values-based answer to that question. How we answer it will shape the country's future.

Our schools system already SUCKS (thanks to deeply mis-guided motivations of capitalism…which, ironically isn’t taught ‘in-depth’ in ANY school system!)

Then there is the other ‘cornerstone’ of a ‘free society’. A society incapable of making decisions for itself is doomed to follow the decisions of the self-interested, regardless of the consequences or competence.

Worse, we already know that conservative ideology is base on belief that has no basis in fact, so their decision-making capability is, by default, disastrous!

Look at the two ‘wars of choice’ conservatives have spent trillions on and still can’t define what ‘victory’ looks like!

Not to put too fine a point on it but a conservative decision has become synonymous with being a ‘wrong’ decision.

How do you like your stacked conservative deck in November’s elections now?

The more we re-visit this topic (November Elections) the more irksome it becomes.

IF we’re ‘lucky’ they won’t happen…although I use the term ‘lucky’ in the broadest possible context.

If elections DON’T HAPPEN this November it will likely be because we are locked in battle to decide the future of Western Civilization, a battle we can’t afford to lose.

But I digress, let us return to the often-overlooked (despite constant media attention) education system.

Where, once again, we see conservative ‘tax relief’ efforts gutting the funding from public education.

As one might expect, the bone-headed conservative position is that our kids are ‘too stupid’, which is why they test so poorly…as opposed to the real reason our schools suck, because of the warped values of the capitalist system.

A system where people who ‘manipulate’ money are paid more than the people who actually produce a product or provide a service (like education or healthcare…)

Not that our healthcare system doesn’t cost us dearly…but again, thanks to the perverted values of capitalism, a bulk of the cost goes to paying investors!

The ‘incentive’ to become a teacher doesn’t exist (just as the incentive to become a doctor in today’s litigious society is decidedly negative!)

Understand, teachers these days make a pretty darn good paycheck as opposed to what they’d get in the private sector as a ‘grunt’…but the private sector doesn’t have a ‘continuing Ed’ requirement to keep your education credentials current.

Worse, the private sector has all but disappeared.

And the public sector is seriously under-funded as a result.

BUT, if your scholastic record is, er, ‘strong’, why wouldn’t you take a shot at becoming a lawyer or a banker? (Although those jobs aren’t going begging anymore…)

And with student loans becoming increasingly toxic, more students will be ‘forced’ into the still highly competitive market for educators.

As the tax pool shrinks to nothing, educators jobs will compete with police and fire jobs on the local budget.

How will you kids learn if the library is only open a couple of hours a week, if at all?

The battle lines were drawn long ago, good citizen, why are you still reluctant to fight?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Snapshot

Greetings good citizen,

There’s nothing better than ending the week with a snapshot of the ‘Funny Farm’!

For your review, straight from the business section of today’s NY Times:

Reticent Rich: Preferred Style in Silicon Valley
By SOMINI SENGUPTA

At Facebook, ground zero for the nouveau tech riche in Silicon Valley, peer pressure dictates that consumption be kept on the down low.

DealBook: Facebook Raises $16 Billion in I.P.O.
Video: Silicon Valley's Lust for High-End Bikes
[Let’s not forget their ‘passion’ for $5,000 footwear!]

DealBook
Long Odds on a Big Facebook Payday
By NATHANIEL POPPER 29 minutes ago

If history offers any lesson, average investors may find they face steep odds if they hope to make big money in a much-hyped stock like Facebook.

Interactive How Will the Stock Fare?

[This is a stunning example of the ‘dearth of investment opportunities’ out there, good citizen. Once again, if this is ‘as good as it gets’, the rest of us are in a heap of trouble!]

Other Business News
News Analysis
A Greek Exit? Euro Zone May Be Ready
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

Years of foot-dragging and brinkmanship have prepared the currency union for life without Greece.
[WTF! Are they now trying to say that this was ‘the plan’ all along? What will become of the rest of the ‘PIIGS’? (Without Greece will the acronym 'pigs' still apply?)]

Euro Watch
Markets on Edge After Downgrades in Europe
By PAUL GEITNER 7:27 AM ET

Fresh credit rating downgrades affected Greece and Spain as the Group of Eight leaders gathered.
[Yet another ‘no shit, Sherlock!’ moment]

New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition seeks provide aid to farmers like these in Ethiopia.

White House Enlists 45 Companies to Invest in Food Production for the World’s Poor
By STEPHANIE STROM

President Obama and four African leaders will introduce the group of companies, the Alliance for Food and Nutrition Security, on Friday at a forum on food security and agriculture.

[Um, tucked quietly between tales of economic mayhem is this deeply troubling item that foretells of the coming famine, likely brought on by ‘Frankenfood’]

Workers at a solar panel factory in Huaibei, in Anhui province. A Chinese official called the American move “really dangerous.”

U.S. Slaps High Tariffs on Chinese Solar Panels
By KEITH BRADSHER and DIANE CARDWELL

The United States Commerce Department concluded that Chinese producers had “dumped” their products on the American market.
[Okay, how does Chong think the denizens of the ‘economic desert’ are going to react to a technology DEVELOPED HERE but being made somewhere else? Are we supposed to be ‘jumping for joy’ that Chinese workers can make them (more profitably) than US workers can? NO! US workers are going to be PISSED because we could (and should) have made them HERE (with native materials) and FUCK the weasel ‘owners’ for sending the technology to China in the fucking first place! Chong has the wrong idea about just how 'dangerous’ a move this is. It is not dangerous to China, it is dangerous for the capitalist!]


‘Princelings’ in China Use Family Ties to Gain Riches
By DAVID BARBOZA and SHARON LaFRANIERE

The authorities are eager to paint the fallen official Bo Xilai, whose family has a substantial fortune, as a rogue operator. But other officials’ relatives have also amassed vast wealth.
[I suspect it is safe to say that China is no longer a ‘communist’ country, considering the ‘new royalty’ that has, er, usurped the revolution.] (See why I don’t like Commies?)
Graphic: Power and Profit in China’s Economic Boom


Hewlett-Packard to Cut 30,000 Jobs
By QUENTIN HARDY

The tech giant will refocus on product development and sales, executives say, and operations in China will most likely be spared.

[Any questions?]

Bribery Case at Wal-Mart May Widen
By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD

The scope of an investigation into foreign bribery issues seemed to have widened at the retailer, which reported higher-than-expected first-quarter earnings.

That concludes this week’s ‘snapshot’.

Did I neglect to confirm that the destruction of our civilization is proceeding unabated?

Which, disturbingly, confirms my ‘kill-off via cascading systemic collapse’ theory.

Left to our imaginations is what will replace our failed attempt at a ‘benign republic’.

If history is any indication, the benign republic is usually replaced by crushing feudalism, a ruthless hereditary dictatorship.

The choice regarding what comes next is, of course, yours.

If you refuse to fight are you prepared to accept what will surely come next?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Elected?

Greetings good citizen,

Almost as disturbing as yesterday’s post about the ‘conservative tri-fecta’ assualt on the White House is today’s story expressing ‘guarded optimism that the party of ‘1 in 5’ can wrest control from the Democrats if THEY DON’T SCARE TOO MANY INDEPENDENTS!

For Senate Republicans, 2012 is starting a lot like 2010.

They have a shot at taking control away from Democrats as long as insurgent conservatives who are defeating the party's more establishment candidates in primaries don't frighten too many independent voters like they did two years ago.

Deb Fischer, a little-known state senator, became the latest unexpected Senate GOP nominee Tuesday, rallying late to upset the favored — and better funded — choices of both the party's mainstream and tea party establishments: Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning and state Treasurer Don Stenberg.

Her victory occurred just a week after tea party and other conservative groups embraced Indiana state Treasurer Richard Mourdock, who scored an arguably bigger upset — knocking off six-term Sen. Richard Lugar, the Senate's longest-serving Republican.

USA today prints some pretty outrageous stuff and this is just another example of how far ‘off the rails’ the predominantly conservative media has become.

Worse, it is this very same media that tells us who won the election.

So the answer to ‘gridlock’ in Washington is more ‘Tea Partiers’, eh?

How fucked up is it good citizen that the only 30,000 member strong ‘Tea Party movement’ is (well) financed by the > One Percent?

Just who are the ‘rank and file’ members of the Tea Party movement? Why they are the denizens of the dementia unit at the local nursing home!

And yet the corporate owned media has the audacity to claim this is the wind beneath the Tea Party’s wings…people who forget what the inside of a voting booth looks like!

Worse, the last person they REMEMBER voting for is Ike. (One of the last ‘true’ Republicans.)

Which only belabors the main point, Tea Partiers are OLD (and I’m no spring chicken myself!) hardly ‘representative’ of the general public but isn’t that just how the deep pocketed like it?

Yes, good citizen, just how much bullshit will you sit still for while the corporate owned media spoon-feeds it to you?

Because we’re going to be fed shovelfuls of it between now and November, then we’ll be expected to believe it happened again.

Then it’s four more years of waiting for another…chance.

When the truth is we don’t stand a chance. The cheaters have stolen the entire process and we have only one way to deal with it and this is to reject what can politely be called ‘the chute’.

Understand we’ve gotten where we are today via ‘non-participation’ so merely ‘ignoring’ the voting booth will do us no good.

We’ve got to ‘reject’ the entire process, vigorously!

Which, of course, assumes we even get that far. Last election I predicted we wouldn’t make it that far and was proven wrong…but what the hell, I never said I was psychic.

THIS time we have even less reason to subject ourselves to ‘more of the same’ but we can already see that is all there is going to be on the, er, ‘menu’.

Greece, Italy and France have all, er, ‘rejected’ austerity but we haven’t seen any lasting results. The Greeks can’t form a government and the Italians can't arrive at a consensus and the new French Prime Minister has already started ‘back-pedaling’ on some of his campaign promises…

Which is also what happened when Obama took office.

Worse, letting Obama be re-elected sends exactly the wrong message to Wall Street (who has contributed mightily to Obama’s re-election campaign…)

So, do YOU see an ‘alternative’ here to more of the same?

No…because you aren’t supposed to.

THAT is the message the > One Percent is sending to US!

So HOW do we reject this blind chute that robs us of our choices?

Do we petition THEIR courts?

Like the faux America United ploy, who do we get to run against such a ‘stacked deck’?

Who would be, er, ‘selfless’ enough to go and stand up against a brick wall of bought and paid for opposition?

Because YOU KNOW there isn’t a chance in hell of our man occupying the White House for longer than a few months before the ‘money power’ paid to have him (and his family) assassinated.

Nope, good citizen, the ‘old way’ of doing things is gone for good!

Which is both good news and bad news.

Good because the old way was corrupt beyond belief, bad because the current supporters of the old way want to go back to the ancient way of doing things, which will really suck!

Think they are ‘insufferable’ now…just wait until we HAVE TO address them as Your Lordship or Sir!

Then we’ll all have to ask ourselves if it isn’t better to die on our feet rather than live on our knees…(and we all know ‘feet’ wins, every time!)

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Alternatives

Greetings good citizen,

All of those ‘bargains’ lying around on the exchange floor were too much to resist for the typical NYSE trader…even though they are sinking like stones (again) as I write this.

Not that it matters from a long-term point of view.

It won’t be long before stock markets around the world collapse completely under their, er, ‘highly subjective’ valuations (that have zero basis in fact.)

Which brings us to another ‘weather balloon’ that suffered ‘failure to launch’ syndrome:

I haven't written much at all about the effort to create a new political party called 'Americans Elect.' It seemed so stupid that it didn't merit my attention. My only interest in it was to see who they nominated for president because it could potentially change the outcome of the general election in November. But every time I checked on their progress I discovered that no one was paying any attention to them and they were failing to nominate anyone at all. Now they've basically given up on getting a 'bipartisan' ticket nominated according to their bylaws. No one showed up to vote, so no one can be nominated.

They've already secured a ballot line in most states, so there is a powerful incentive to change the rules and pick some ticket, if only to vindicate the tens of millions of dollars these hedge fund managers invested in the effort. I enjoyed this comment on the meaning of their failure:

“The worst thing would be for people to look at a failure to field a candidate and conclude that there is no appetite for this kind of change, which would be just completely wrong,” argues Mark McKinnon, former chief strategist for the Bush campaign, a fellow Daily Beast columnist, and a member of the Americans Elect advisory board. “I think part of the issue is that politics have become so ugly that it is simply difficult to attract good people to participate,” McKinnon adds. “And who can blame them?”

Um, you can read the rest of the article but what is conspicuously missing from this article is the observation that all THREE efforts to take the White House were being ‘orchestrated’ by CONSERVATIVES…

And THAT’S NEWS!

The, er, ‘incumbent’ has proven repeatedly that he IS a conservative ‘running as’ a Democrat. Despite the clownish sideshow of endless public debates, Willard ‘Mitt’ Romney was the best/most credible candidate the Republican’s could come up with.

Which leaves us this, er, ‘backup plan’ of fielding some ‘Captain of Industry’ as a ‘third party alternative’ to ballot box stuffing conservative or nothing agenda we are being subjected to whether we like it or not.

Because that’s what it ALL comes down to, good citizen. This November you choice will boil down to the ‘conservative you know vs. the conservative you don’t…and there ain’t a nickel’s difference between the two of ‘em (cuz they both take their marching orders from the same people so it don’t matter ‘who’ wins, the rest of us lose!)

It could be fun to speculate just who the ‘hedgies’ would, er, ‘tempt’ to toss their hat in the ring!

I mean, what do you think of Jamie Dimon’s chances now?

Um, how about Jeff Immelt or Lloyd Blankfein?

More interesting (considering The Donald and NY’s Mayor Mr. Bloomberg have both floated test balloons that crashed and burned) is just who would be their ‘ideal mainstream candidate’ who ISN’T a member of the > One Percent…

And the answer is (cue chirping crickets) NOBODY!

Despite my total availability it should sadden you all to note I have not been approached about a possible run (not that I would.)

Which is to point out that they aren’t looking very, er, ‘diligently’ for…‘elect-able candidates’.

Their ‘failure’ to field speaks volumes about what this agenda driven crowd would find ‘acceptable’ in a candidate.

First and foremost he or she would need to an expert ‘fence rider’. Publicly railing against the > One Percent while rolling over and playing dead when it came to extending the Bush Tax cuts.

They’ll talk a ‘good game’ about financial reform but be totally unable to produce any.

Which is exactly what we’ll get from Mitt…and what we’ve come to expect from his, er, what do you call this sympatico duo? Opponent isn’t right, um, ‘placeholder’ seems to be as good as I can come up with, although Uncle Tom fits BOTH of them to a T!

Then there is the perceived ‘need’ for a ‘new and more responsive’ political party…because it has become obvious that the ‘money power’ destroyed the old opponent.

Like W’s assertion that this whole thing would be easier if HE were a dictator, the conservo-monkeys don’t really want any ‘political opposition’.

Ideally, their political opposition would make their proposals look sane and reasonable…

Too bad the Tea Party is a grassroots member of the decidedly whacko conservative brand!

Because the Tea Partiers would be the ‘perfect foil’ for the conservo-loonies!

What’s frightening is how THE ENTIRE PROCESS has been ‘commandeered’ by right-wing conservatives…including the, er, ‘search’ for a replacement for the Democrats…

Um, in case you haven’t figured this out for yourself yet, we are in a heap of trouble, good citizen!

Because the guy who left the building just before Elvis? That guy was ‘reason and empathy’.

If we don’t find him before the conservatives murder him, it’s game over…

And not just here in the USA, the puppet government thing is now global…so it’s a good thing that A Simple Plan is designed to be ‘universal’ as well!

When I say ‘clean sweep’, I mean all around!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Prophecy

Greetings good citizen,

The opening bell just sounded but it’s too early to see where the markets are going…although if the ‘rest of the world’ is any indication, our capitalist overlords have another day of bloodshed on their hands.

But who knows, it seems for some (totally illogical) reason; yesterday’s pigs morph into today’s gems!

How sad is it good citizen that the ‘rationale’ behind purchasing stocks has boiled down to, ‘because they’re there’?

But it leads us right up to the edge of the world of ‘funny money’. The ‘presto-chango' required for a nation to abandon one currency and to then issue their own…er, ‘fiat’ currency.

Many of you have probably already heard about Mr. Krugman’s self-fulfilling prophecy by now but here it is for those of you who like under a rock (or anywhere inside the US propaganda zone…)

Below is his post in its entirety.

Some of us have been talking it over, and here’s what we think the end game looks like:

1. Greek euro exit, very possibly next month.

2. Huge withdrawals from Spanish and Italian banks, as depositors try to move their money to Germany.

3a. Maybe, just possibly, de facto controls, with banks forbidden to transfer deposits out of country and limits on cash withdrawals.

3b. Alternatively, or maybe in tandem, huge draws on ECB credit to keep the banks from collapsing.

4a. Germany has a choice. Accept huge indirect public claims on Italy and Spain, plus a drastic revision of strategy — basically, to give Spain in particular any hope you need both guarantees on its debt to hold borrowing costs down and a higher eurozone inflation target to make relative price adjustment possible; or:

4b. End of the euro.

And we’re talking about months, not years, for this to play out

Switch mental gears here as we explore the task of putting your own currency out there on the ‘global currency market’.

Understand that nobody doubts that the new currency will be ‘named’ what the old currency was called, at least in Greece’s case, the Drachma will be ‘resurrected’.

The ‘trouble’ comes in at where this ‘new’ currency will be valued relative to the (mostly worthless) already existing currencies.

Get this bad boy wrong and you have instant Zimbabwe on your hands!

IF those who dictate what our currency is worth are ‘too generous’ to Greece there will be a mad scramble to abandon the Euro…so we can be assured that the new Drachma will not receive ‘favorable treatment’.

Now it all depends on (because we’ve got a ‘chickens and eggs situation on our hands here) what they do AFTER a price is ‘set’.

They won’t be able to print Drachma number one without first specifying how many they intend to issue at that price and what will be used to, er, ‘back that claim up’.

Which is to say the market makers won’t issue a ‘value’ for the new Drachma until they are given an idea how many of them there will be.

Naturally, the Greeks would want to, er, ‘undermine’ the Euro, the old Drachma was like the Italian Lira in that respect…which mimicked the Japanese Yen.

One yen is worth roughly one US cent (which was responsible for turning Japan into an exporting dynamo! So how sad is it that it also marks the beginning of the long slippery slope of ‘financial manipulation’ that ultimately destroyed the global economy?)

Like the ‘cesspool’ we live in? Thank a fucking banker!

Back to our ‘exploration’…

AFTER a ‘value’ is set, the Greeks will ‘revalue’ as quickly as possible.

This is where the ‘tug of war’ begins. It is also kind of how they got into this trouble in the first place.

How much money there actually is and how much money they SAY they have will soon turn into a matter of ‘conjecture’ and all of a sudden the global banking system will find itself ‘awash’ in Greek debt instruments.

Hell, it worked the first time and NOTHING has been fixed…

And this time it’s ‘shame on me’! (Which is to opine we should be ‘smart enough’ not to get taken twice…but what kind of world would it be if you couldn’t trust anyone?)

A mighty dysfunctional one good citizen…and no place you’d want to raise a family in.

In a world where nobody can trust anybody we have the beginnings of a global systemic collapse, and we have our financial sector to thank for it!

Naturally, we can only skim the surface of this issue in a few paragraphs but the point is quite clear.

If we can’t trust the people who handle our money then we are well and truly…

Don’t you agree?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Um, PS: A Simple Plan ‘stabilizes’ money by re-purposing it to its ONE useful social function, that of a regulator.

Under A Simple plan there is NO currency, only money of account that is totally non-transferable and therefore, non-negotiable.

Thus does the ‘cheaper there’ not exist, just as it is a ‘fiction’ today.

Um, you have to understand the ‘true nature’ of money to comprehend the above statements which refer to the frauds you are regularly victims of.

I’m unsure how helpful you would find the explanation of a Duck remaining a duck, a Pig remaining a pig and a Dollar remaining a dollar no matter where you were!

Demented

Greetings good citizen,

I am, er, ‘naturally attracted’ to articles with the words ‘demented capitalism’ in their titles…but when those articles turn to equally as mindless communism for contrast I sort of choke on my corn flakes…

But first a quick blurb about today’s financial markets…

Since nothing has been done to improve the situation it should shock no one that ‘the markets’ are globally hemorrhaging money.

The good news is it’s all ‘funny money’, the bad news is these idiots tied their funny money to our, er, ‘operating funds’, confusing the signals and fucking up production schedules.

This will (naturally) lead to a systemic collapse that the boneheads actually desire.

The mission objective now is to ‘muddy the waters’ so hopelessly that the worst perpetrators will walk away unmolested. (If they are frugal enough to flee into the third world and assume the native lifestyle…which ain’t gonna happen because most of these asshats are too full of themselves to save their own lives.)

Okay, when my digressing starts to digress it’s time to return to the subject at hand

The war on the Native Americans, like the wars waged by colonialists around the globe, was waged to eradicate not only a people but a competing ethic. The older form of human community was antithetical and hostile to capitalism, the primacy of the technological state and the demands of empire. This struggle between belief systems was not lost on Marx. “The Ethnological Notebooks of Karl Marx” is a series of observations derived from Marx’s reading of works by [European] historians and anthropologists. He took notes about the traditions, practices, social structure, economic systems and beliefs of numerous indigenous cultures targeted for destruction. Marx noted arcane details about the formation of Native American society, but also that “lands [were] owned by the tribes in common, while tenement-houses [were] owned jointly by their occupants.” He wrote of the Aztecs, “Commune tenure of lands; Life in large households composed of a number of related families.” He went on, “… reasons for believing they practiced communism in living in the household.” Native Americans, especially the Iroquois, provided the governing model for the union of the American colonies, and also proved vital to Marx and Engel’s vision of communism.

How curious is it good citizen that the average communist will readily attack capitalism but fails to see how closely aligned communism is to capitalism.

And I’m sure the columnist would vehemently deny any affiliation with the communist party, preferring to tone it down by saying he’s ‘sympathetic’ to communism.

Worse is how people ‘automatically assume’ that if you are not a capitalist then you are, by default, communist.

And somehow anarchists got ‘lumped in’ with communists because the capitalist labeled both ideologies ‘socialist’.

But the capitalist did the anarchists another ‘favor’; they got their propagandists to associate the word anarchy with ‘chaos’…

But this is not a lesson in politics…or semantics for that matter.

If there is a ‘useful takeaway’ in this article it is the emphasis the media has placed on playing up ‘pro-capitalism’ while literally assassinating anything that opposes its continued reign.

But even that, er, ‘understates’ the scope of the situation. All of our institutions ‘glorify’ capitalism and the few it benefits to the detriment of society itself.

You should really shun anyone who attacks socialism because society itself is a decidedly ‘socialist’ organization, regardless of whose rules you’re playing by.

More importantly, everything ‘good’ in our society is the product of ‘socialism’ so when an (obviously) ‘empty-headed’ conservative ‘attacks’ his opponent for being ‘socialist’, he is actually complimenting them!

You see, the ‘more for me’ (rugged individualist) capitalist doesn’t want to contribute to ‘the public good’.

He made his heap (by legitimately screwing) others and believes others should do likewise.

What’s truly disturbing is the people who idolize this variety of anti-social behavior.

Our capitalist cheerleading squad would have you believe that most of us aspire to the notion of being ‘king of the hill’ someday…to the point where capitalism ‘promises us’ our own private hill to be king of.

But if you don’t achieve that ‘ideal’ then it’s YOUR fault, you didn’t have ‘the right stuff’!

How ironic is it that the ‘right stuff’ is largely the kind of thing that will land you behind bars if your caught doing it!

Thus are the ‘heroes’ of our civilization mostly heartless criminals…with unscrupulous PR behind them, cleaning up/whitewashing their reputations.

You would be correct in your gut instinct that most people neither ‘envy’ nor idolize the, er, ‘successful’ (they are [sadly] too busy making someone else rich to be overly concerned.)

Perhaps more ironic is how YOUR meager existence is the foundation of some billionaires fortune!

Why most people never realize that it is THEIR labor that makes the rich man rich is ‘cognitive dissonance’ taken to the nth degree!

Wake up stupid, there is a better way!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner