My New Blog

Started a new blog primarily dedicated to monetary reforms. Been working on it since about November of 2008.

Please check it out and let me know what you think.

Jere

WHAT MUST WE DO TO FIX OUR ECONOMIC CRISIS?

Jere L Hough
2008-01-18

The first thing we must do to fix the economic crisis is to correctly perceive the nature and gravity of the problem. This might seem obvious at first blush, yet it is not widely or generally known exactly what has caused the financial meltdown. The few of us who actually understand the causes of the problem are dismayed and disheartened at the lack of comprehension that is nearly universally displayed, even by the supposedly best economic thinkers of our world, including Nobel Prize winners, and the Heads of Economics Departments at the best universities in the world.

Financial Bailouts and economic stimulus packages will not work, except as a most short-term band-aid. Such short-sighted proposals only highlight the failure to comprehend the true nature of the problem.

Only a few of the hundreds or thousands of prominent books and articles proposed as solutions even come close to apprehending the real underlying cause of the world's financial and monetary disease, and for the most part the ones that are revealing the truth are unpopular, banned or blacklisted by mainstream media and publishers, widely debunked and ridiculed.

What is this widely scorned truth of the basic cause of our money and financial problems?

It is that no less than the entire worldwide system of money creation and distribution itself is fundamentally and fatally flawed. Moreover, the flawed system was deliberately advanced and maintained over the centuries and even millenniums past and into the present day by a small group of very wicked and designing persons for the purposes of exercising financial power and control over others, even over the entire world.

It is at this revelation that the vast majority of minds rebel, and the onslaught of denial, ridicule and accusations begins. This truth is so shocking and laden with negative implications that it is rejected out of hand, and without further examination. Nothing approaching serious consideration or debate is ever reached. Derision and ridicule are so much easier than serious thought.

It's just another “conspiracy theory” and the author is a “conspiracy theorist”. “Tinfoil Hat” stuff, and so on, go the chants.

And so our disastrous financial and monetary problems continue, as they surely must until serious thinking, discussion and debate replace ridicule as our way of dealing with (or of avoiding dealing with) this most serious of all the problems humanity has ever faced. It could lead to our destruction as a civilization or even of our extinction as a species.

The problems underlying our financial system are that severe. Moreover, the consequences of decades and centuries of abuse of monetary policy are imminent. We will either solve the problem or reap the harvest of our failure to solve it. That harvest will not be a pleasing one, for us and for generations to follow.

So... what needs to be done?
We have to completely overhaul and transform our dying financial system into one that is vital and sustainable. This means a monetary system that serves the public good, instead of the good of the few who now monopolize the monetary system for their own benefit.

“Qui bono” is always the key question to get to the root of all social, political and economic problems. “Who benefits?” The flip side of the coin is “who suffers”, or “who pays?” Another key is to “follow the money”. That is especially true when talking about money problems, or those of monetary policy within a society or a government.

The essence of the problem is that most people go from birth to death without understanding money, or its role in a society or an economy. The extent of most people's concerns about money is how to get more of it, with as little effort as possible, Everyone understands that money “buys things”, or that one exchanges money for goods and services one desires. Yet that is about all they understand. Few people have any real understanding of where money comes from, or how it is created, or enters the economy, and where it goes from there, or who benefits the most or the least from the way things work now, or who benefits the least.

We all know the “rich get richer and the poor get poorer”, but do we all understand how and why? I submit that few people really do, or how a few fundamental shifts in consciousness (paradigm shifts) could level the playing field considerably, saving millions and even billions from poverty and deprivation, even death.

Now I will attempt to state the problem another way, so that hopefully, it is easier to understand. I intend to be blunt.

For thousands of years, kings, priests, priest-kings and rulers of all stripes and colors have built and maintained their power and control though a few closely guarded secrets about money, land titles, wealth, natural resources, labor and the relationships between them. These “secrets” are maintained today, and are kept obscured, buried, under mountains of superficial data, statistics, mathematical formulas, and outright mumbo-jumbo that passes for “economics” in all of the major schools of modern economic thought. The biggest secret has been the deliberate deceptions about money – it's nature, origin, purpose, and destiny.

Here it the core of that secret: money is not gold, silver, platinum, metals, gems, paper, ink, or anything else of tangible value. These are all forms of wealth, not money. They are not the same thing. Wealth and money are two different things entirely. The deception is, was and will always be, that they are the same thing. In particular, gold and silver have been sold to us as “real money”. By whom? Those who own or control much of the gold and silver, and always have – the bankers and financiers.

[Jesus well understood this simple fact when his righteous indignation at the prostitution of the Temple at Jerusalem by the “moneychangers” (bankers) rose to the sole forceful action on record. He drove the “moneychangers” from His Father's Temple.]

The truth about money is that it is not a commodity or other form of wealth, goods, or services. Money is not something that can be found in nature, or the natural, tangible world.

Money is a concept. It is an abstraction. It is a social creation that can and should be used by societies and economies for the highest and greatest good of its people. Please reread and ponder this all-important concept. It is not a new idea. Aristotle wrote about it, as did other in antiquity.
Do you realize the vast difference between this concept of money as a social tool for the exchanging of goods and services and the common definitions in use today? More importantly, the creation and distribution, as well as the regulation of the value of money, is almost completely a private enterprise rather than a government (social) activity. Additionally, the creation of money is a very profitable monopoly granted to bankers by the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. This money-monopoly essentially loans money into existence at usurious interest rates, usurping the money-creation powers granted to congress by our US Constitution: Article 1, Section 8.

Stated another way, money should be thought of as no more than a simple debit or credit in a bank account, or debit or credit card account, except that it should bear absolutely no burden of interest, much less compound interest that can add up to far more than the original amount.

Yet banks charge interest on “loans” of money which are created out of nothing but the promissory note itself. This act of money creation is so outrageous that it “repels the mind” as renowned economist John Kenneth Galbraith on observed. Banks are not now lending money that is theirs, or their depositors. They are lending money because it is created through the bookkeeping entry of making the loan.

There are many excellent resources one can study to better understand the ways money now comes into being, and who benefits and who pays. They will be listed at the end of this article and I highly recommend reading or viewing the books or videos.

For now it is important to understand that we now have an unsustainable system of private money creation for an enormous profit to the elite few, where we should have a non-profit system of money creation that is run for and by the people, or the people's duly elected representative governments.

This means we must reform our banking system from top to bottom, and redefine money as a social tool that, properly used rather then misused, can move our society and civilization forward toward new heights of achievement for all. Only reforms shifting money-creation from the private for-profit sector to the non-profit public sector can save our world from the convulsions of economic disaster and doom that are looming on our horizons, and all of the ripple-effects an economic collapse would cause.

A oppressive and destructive totalitarian government awaits our failure to act swiftly and properly.

I pray to our creator that we can find the wisdom and courage to do the right and necessary things to avert our current course. The hope of humanity hangs in the balance.

Recommended reading or viewing:

Books: 1. Web of Debt, by Ellen Hodgson Brown; 2. The Lost Science of Money, by Stephen Zarlenga; 3. Tragedy and Hope by Carrol Quigley; 4. The Creature From Jekyll Island, by G. Edward Griffin; 5. How the World Really Works, by Alan B Jones; 6. When Corporations Rule the World, by David C. Korten; The Case Against the Fed, by Murray Rothbard; Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, by John Perkins.

Videos and Websites: Webofdebt.com; Monetary.org; chrismartenson.com; moneyasdebt.net; themoneymasters.com; The Monopoly Men: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7065177340464808778

Open Letter to President-Elect Barack Obama
by Jere L Hough
2009-01-06

Dear Barack Obama:

Congratulations. Your election brings the “audacity of hope” for real and meaningful change in these dark economic times. I have always wondered if you fully comprehend the nature and gravity of the economic problems facing our nation, and the world, and if, indeed, whether any human being is capable of offering the leadership and inspiration to effect the depth and breadth of the needed changes in our critically ill economy and financial system. There are a few people – very few indeed – who really understand what is wrong with our banking and financial system, and how to actually fix the problems at the level of causation.

I have agonized over how to best get this message out to those who can influence policy and bring about needed fundamental and substantive, rather than cosmetic, change.

Let me digress for a moment. After growing up in the last “Great Depression”and WW II, I became aware during my military service and my college years that the great sounding slogans of the Post-WW I era, the League of Nations, the FDR New Deal, the wars “to make the world safe for democracy” and the post WW II promise of world peace brought by the United Nations, were all just so much empty rhetoric, canned for public consumption.

Nothing of any real consequence changed. All of the human problems of poverty, hunger, disease, warfare, genocides, and man's brutality and exploitation of his fellow human brothers and sisters has continued to grow, even as some enjoyed unprecedented wealth, technology, and luxury. Surface levels of prosperity for the privileged few hid most of these problems from public view in America.

The gap between the “haves” and “have-nots” of the world is increasing exponentially, but why? This is the eternal question for which there are thousands of answers, all of which make little sense and will not work to actually address the problems at the fundamental levels. About 50 years ago I resolved to figure out the answers to that great and seemingly unsolvable question. The answers are not to be easily found in the halls of formal education, although a broad understanding of the Liberal Arts, Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences, and most especially, History are indispensable in laying the foundations for working though the “maze of deception” and misinformation that obscure the most important truths of our current social economic and cultural era, and how it is really controlled.

My journey of discovery resulted in a long string of “epiphanies”, each built upon the former. What I finally discovered, or came to realize, was shocking, disturbing, unnerving, and yet strangely hopeful. I found that there is one root problem and a key solution for it that has not yet been tried, or even seriously considered, much less widely discussed or debated. “The Powers That Be” want it that way, and so the real root problems and their solutions are inimical to the interests of TPTB.

I want to emphasize the “hopeful” aspect, because the solution to our greatest problem, the root cause of most other large-scale human problems, is unbelievably simple, easily achievable, and can be accomplished almost overnight, IF, and this is the big IF, the political and economic will to do so can be mustered, and the special interests that reap enormous unearned wealth from the current system can be overcome. And this will take massive education, informed leadership, elimination of centuries of conceptual error, and the adoption of an entirely new paradigm in our ways of thinking about one of the most basic institutions that shape our modern world: money.

The failure to understand the truest and highest concepts and definitions of money, and what is is, or should be, is leading to the series of unprecedented economic upheavals that have begun, and will continue to escalate in a downward economic spiral that can only end in total despotism or economic slavery for most of the world for untold generations to come.

This statement is not an exaggeration or hyperbole. It simply is a recognition of the universal laws that govern such things, and was a part of my learning process. I hope I can make it a part of yours, and with enough awakening, real change just might be possible in time to avert the worst of the cause-effect consequences that are now manifesting.

Money, or the love of it, is the root of all evil. As true as that proverb is, there is more to the story that that. The greater evil is the misunderstanding of money, what it is, where it comes from, and who controls it, or should control it. How is should be controlled is also crucial, as to volume and regulation of value. How money enters into circulation, or is withdrawn from circulation is also a major issue.

But the greatest of all issues is “who benefits?” What groups or individuals profit the most from the current monetary system? How and why do they profit? Why did renowned economist John Kenneth Galbraith say that the process of money creation is so simple that it “repels the mind”? Is it the simplicity that “repels the mind” or the deception surrounding it? I think it is both, but mainly the latter.

Since the average person's eyes glaze over after a paragraph or so of modern Econospeak (or what I sometimes used to call “Greenspeak”) most people never get to that point where their minds can be “repelled”. The issue, they think, is simply beyond their comprehension. Either that or they entertain pleasing illusions and fairy tales about money, like ,“only gold or silver is real money”.

Almost no one actually understands what money really is. This is why Meyer Amschel Rothschild, who might be called the “father” of modern international central banking, said that so few people had the time or inclination to delve into the intricacies of the central banking system that they had little to worry about from them, and the few that could really understand the “system” were its major beneficiaries, so they had little opposition from that quarter. In other words, almost no one outside of those who benefited from it could understand the system of money creation. He was correct 300 years ago, and is still largely correct today.

Even major economist and economics professors are so locked in to the current economic and monetary paradigms that few of them can see the real truth about money.

The simple truth about money is that it is, or should be in its highest form, an abstraction, a social construction, and an accounting system of debits and credits that grease the machines of commerce and trade. Money, whether it is coin, paper currency, or debits and credits in monetary accounts, is just a way of keeping track of wealth, production, and labor within a given economy and between different economies. Money should be created by sovereign governments and be spent into circulation, or lent out at very low interest rates – far lower than they are today. Fractional reserve banking should be illegal. The entire privately owned and operated Federal Reserve System should be made “Federal”, as its name deceptively implies. Yes, that implies “nationalization”, and that is not a popular word, mainly because the entire subject is so universally misunderstood.

It it not within the scope of this letter to explain all the details of an “ideal” money system, (or at least a better one) such as how the volume and velocity of money should be determined or regulated. It should be firmly established that these are social functions and should be subject to social checks and balances through democratic or republican forms of elected governments, “of, by and for the people”.

Perhaps the most important statement I could make is that our current system of money creation is a privately owned federal government money monopoly. Even more than a money monopoly, it is an unsustainable “Ponzi Scheme” on a scale larger and grander than anything Bernie Madoff could ever imagine – and his scheme was reportedly worth 50 billion or more. Here we are talking about hundreds of trillions of dollars in national, public and private debts on money that was literally “created out of thin air” in exchange for promissory notes. More schemes like Madoffs will be uncovered.

In any other field of business lending or selling something that one does not own or possess is a crime. It should be a crime in this case as well. It is the largest criminal enterprise of all time.

What, exactly, is that criminal enterprise? Our current system of money creation, or money monopoly is that “criminal enterprise”. That “system” is a syndicate or cartel of international central banks and bankers that include, but are not limited to, all of the US Federal Reserve System banks, the Bank of England, International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, Bank of International Settlements (BIS) and most other National Central banks, especially of the G-8 or G-22 nations. All are basically Ponzi Schemes that owe their continued appearances of fiscal health to the “Ponzi Scheme” effect of new money creation to satisfy the need for infinite growth.

Any system based on a need for infinite expansion in a limited and finite arena is essentially unsustainable, and that which is unsustainable must eventually crash, or collapse. All well-conceived Ponzi Schemes are so large and complex that they can seldom be detected until a depositor or investor wants to withdraw more money than can be obtained. That is what happened in the Bernie Madoff Scheme and in virtually every other Ponzi type Pyramid Scheme ever exposed.

Ponzi Schemes are all based on expansion and growth. New money at the bottom must be brought in to pay off the former investors or depositors. When the new money dries up, the scheme collapses, and is exposed. Even the most sophisticated investors cannot usually detect most Ponzi Schemes until they reach their limits of growth and collapse. The reason for this is that we, as a culture, have gotten away from the basic economic principles and the correct definitions of wealth and money upon which all sound economics must be based.

An economic system with an unsound concept or definition of money is doomed to suffer much disaster at some point, and we of the Western World are now at that point where we must borrow, plunder, or steal in order to maintain the appearances of economic growth and health.

Appearances can only be maintained for so long without substance, and there is no substance to our current economic system. We have two broad and general options. We can tinker with rearranging the deck chairs on the sinking Titanic, or we can actually repair the ship and pump out all the unwanted water. In other words, cosmetic changes are not going to save us. Only the real work and effort of repairing the economic system and ridding it of excess and unearned profits for the few at the expense of the many will save us.

How do we repair the economic system? That is easy in theory but more difficult in practice. We simply have our government take back our constitutionally mandated authority to create and regulate our money, in all its forms. The central bankers tricked congress into giving them this ultimate sovereign power of money creation and regulation in 1913, with their authoring of, and lobbying for, the passage of the Federal Reserve Act. It should be called the Money Monopoly and Usury Legalization Act. All of the most serious disasters of our modern world began at that point, WW I in 1914, the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression it triggered in 1930-1940, WW II in 1938-45 and so on. In the 20th Century more human lives were lost to wars, revolutions, genocides, and man's inhumanity to man than in all previous human history combined. And unless we fix the root cause – money - the worst is still to come.

Sound money should be stable, almost universally accepted, and legally binding tender for the satisfaction of debts and taxes (within that economic system). Sound money can be issued and used locally, spent on infrastructure, roads, public schools, media centers, bridges, etc. The right to issue and regulate money is the supreme right and highest creative opportunity of governments of, by, and for the people. This was what Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, the best and brightest of our Founding Fathers intended for the United States of America, and hopefully, eventually for the world.

But perhaps the most important aspect of sound money is that it be publicly controlled with the same checks and balances of any of the branches of government, and that it be free of usury or interest in all but the most speculative cases. All money that increases productive capacity and general wealth and welfare should be interest-free, or nearly so.

Let us summarize. Societies have a right and obligation to create and regulate the volume and value of their money. Money is nothing more or less than an accounting tool to facilitate the transfer of the wealth and value created by labor and natural resources. The concepts of gold, silver, and other valuable resources or goods “backing” money is false, and has been used by those who have monopoly controls on such resources in order to gain, maintain and extend their power and control over the peoples of the world, and their governments. The current worldwide monetary structure is essentially a Ponzi Scheme, and like all such schemes based on endless exponential rates of growth, it must and will fail, and is now in the process of doing so. It is already insolvent, essentially bankrupt, except that there is no authority powerful enough to declare it so. Various stimulus schemes and taxpayer bailouts can keep the dying patient on life support a while longer, but the end is inevitable and imminent – a decade or two at best. Hyperinflation, reorganization and depression are all inevitable without a massive, brilliantly conceived and perfectly executed overhauling of our entire economic and banking systems from top to bottom. How likely is that, even under the wisest and most altruistically motivated new administrations?

Change is coming, not so much because you (President Elect Obama) have called for it, or because the election mandated it, but because of immutable, inevitable laws of cause and effect. Uncontrolled, unmitigated human avarice and greed in the highest seats of world power have brought us to this abyss. The insane philosophy of “laissez-faire” or “hand-off”, unregulated, unsupervised markets has allowed the criminals and inmates to run the asylum, and the result is what any sane person would expect – chaos, disorder, and massive theft on a scale never before imagined. The international central bankers now literally run the world, and all governments dance to their tunes rather than the people's greater good.

The laws of nature and God assure that “balance” and sanity will someday be restored to our planet. How long or how painful that process will be is largely up to us. It is time to begin the real discussions and debates on these substantive issues of monetary reform that may significantly impact the next 1000 years on this planet. Until this point that impact has been largely negative. We can change that.
Yes we can. The remaining question, is “will we?”

For further reading and study on these gravely important issues I would suggest the following:

Books: 1. Web of Debt, by Ellen Hodgson Brown; 2. The Lost Science of Money, by Stephen Zarlenga; 3. Tragedy and Hope by Carrol Quigley; 4. The Creature From Jekyll Island, by G. Edward Griffin; 5. How the World Really Works, by Alan B Jones; 6. When Corporations Rule the World, by David C. Korten; The Case Against the Fed, by Murray Rothbard; Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, by John Perkins.

Videos and Websites: Webofdebt.com; Monetary.org; chrismartenson.com; moneyasdebt.net; themoneymasters.com;

What Caused our Economic Meltdown?

What Caused our Economic Meltdown?
Jere L Hough
2008-11-22

I have been in the process of composing articles like this one for many years. This analysis is one of hindsight, and it is 20-20. But I have been writing of the now unfolding economic collapse for decades, and especially since GWB was elected in 2000. What is happening in our world was fully predictable to even ordinary citizens (such as myself) who had time or the will to access the hard facts and look at them truthfully.

This article has my full endorsement, as far as it goes. However, it doesn’t go nearly far enough to get at the roots of the causes of our economic collapse and all the impending chaos that it will trigger like a chain of falling dominoes. The roots of the problem are so deep that almost no one can find them. They are so ingrained in our current cultural and economic paradigms that they appear ludicrous to the unlearned and PhD alike – even Economics PhDs. Please read the article first, and then see my postscript for the deeper root causes and the true solutions. – Jere L Hough

Once and For All...

Dr. James Glenn

"There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit (debt) expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit (debt) expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved." - Ludwig von Mises

Like most Americans I've been watching the dramatic, and often titillating, finger pointing exchanges between Wall Street,Congress, the media, and the candidates with a combination of glee, dismay, disgust, and jaw dropping incredulity. Mostly incredulity, because few of these people, pundits, politicians, or patricians has gotten the story right about our recent financial apocalypse. Let me set the record straight, once and for all.

The right likes to blame the mess on "Big Government" (surprise), and 'The Community Reinvestment Act" passed in 1977 which outlawed "redlining" by consumer banks (cherry picking loan customers), and dictated that they must "serve" all of their market when it came to home loans, not just the most lucrative segments. In other words, they had to provide home loans to marginal customers if they could pass the underwriting guidelines. They also heap blame, not entirely meritless, on Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac, government sponsored entities (GSEs) which were responsible for providing sub prime loans to many of the now bankrupt subprime mortgage market. The critical point missed by these people is that it was investment banks on Wall Street and Wall Street Bankers and a corrupt irresponsible Fed responsible for the meltdown, not consumer banks, sub prime borrowers, or Fannie and Freddie. Limbaugh, Hannity, and their ilk love to demonize the left with sound bites for simpletons, this latest financial debacle being but another perfect example of their taking extremely complex issues like this latest meltdown and its causes, and disgorging simplistic, vacuous, incoherent, and incorrect ruminations to their rabid listeners.

The right has part of this story right however. It was Ronald Reagan's "big government" of the 80s, which ran up the first trillions in our now 11 trillion dollar debt, which set the ball rolling on our current meltdown. Reagans "deregulation" and "privatization" mantra, aided and abetted by that banking shill, Alan Greenspan, who he appointed as chief fed head, that "deregulated" the S&Ls, which lead to the property bubble of the late 80s, a housing collapse, and the recession of 90-91. This cost the taxpayer approximately 500 billion. Sound familiar? Greenspan just last week, under glaring Congressional testimony, admitted that his long held beliefs regarding deregulation, and banks, and Wall Street being able to "police" themselves, had "proven to be "incorrect." His "model" of the world was erroneous he says. Thank you Sir Alan for the scintillating confession. A day late and two trillion dollars short. Thus the grubby grasping at "deregulation" by those self serving miscreants in the 80s, as a panacea for everything from the common cold, to world war, set the stage for what was to follow.

On the heels of "deregulation" of the S&Ls came "securitization" in the 90s, which banks and brokerages dreamed up to shift investment risk from themselves to "investors". Securitization you see allowed banks to "bundle" asset classes for resale. One of the most lucrative of these "asset classes" was mortgages, which could now be taken off the banks balance sheets and sold to investors. This effectively absolved the banks of any responsibility in performing their traditional job, i.e., underwriting good loans by correctly assessing credit risk. Banks balance sheets were freed up, and their reserves replenished so they could "turn" their inventory (mortgages) virtually as fast as they could be written. They no longer kept the mortgage so who cared about credit risk? They just wanted their 1-2% origination fee that came with each loan. Profits soared. Add deregulation, and securitization, to a somnambulant, laizzez faire Fed, the evisceration under Bush of the regulatory and rating agencies, and a rapacious Wall Street, and we had the makings of a tremendously explosive financial meltdown cocktail.

The real coup de gras came in the 90s with the creation of exotic and mostly unregulated financial instruments called "derivatives" which allowed Wall Street to take an asset, like a mortgage, and "leverage" it many, many times over (30-60:1), ostensibly for "risk management" but just as often for pure speculation. Warren Buffet recently called these derivatives "weapons of financial mass destruction" and many, myself included, have been warning about the unregulated, opaque, and greed infested waters in which they trade as a financial disaster waiting to happen for many years.

What cemented our current disaster was the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, passed in 1933 to prevent the cronyism, corruption, and greed of the 20s, brought to you by the same cast of characters as today, from ever happening again. Glass-Sreagall for over 65 years had stood as an effective bulwark against the baser instincts of bankers, brokers, and politicians, essentially preventing banks from buying brokerages, and both of those from buying insurance companies. It strictly forbade co mingling of funds, clients, and personnel between banks, brokerages, and insurance companies because this is what had led to the meltdown in the 20s, and the Great Depression. With the passage of Graham-Leach-Blyly in 1999, the sponsor of whom recently called us all "a nation of whiners", and said the recession was "imaginary, and all in our heads", the last remaining semblance of any economic restraint in financial services disappeared with a flourish of the pen. Investment banks could now own consumer banks, insurance companies, mortgage companies, appraisal companies etc. Imagine the possibilities! For cronyism, conflicts of interest, rampant speculation, and unbridled malfeasance! We got it all, not necessarily in that order, and in less than ten years, the same bankers, brokers, and politicians had us dangling from a knife edge, staring into the financial abyss, staring down the barrel of another Great Depression. Amazing isn't it? How people, and history never change?

Credit default swaps, originating from insurance companies like AIG in the late 90s, and investment banks on Wall Street like Lehman Brothers, were the real icing on the cake however. These instruments were issued to insure against bond defaults. Sounds simple right? Pay us a premium of X, and we'll insure your bond issue for Y. If the issue went bad, the originators had recourse against AIG to collect on the losses from the issue. These CDSs (Credit Default Swaps) were used extensively at the height of the housing bubble by nervous mortgage originators worried about the solvency of the underlying mortgage pools they were creating (I wonder why), packaging, and reselling to pension funds, insurance companies, bond funds and individual investors worldwide. The collateralized mortgage obligations (CMOs), GNMAs, FNMAs all represented securitized mortgages. Many of these mortgages were of the sub prime variety.

Problem was, the people insuring these mortgage pools were not using realistic pricing models to evaluate the real intrinsic risk in the new asset (mortgage pool). Surprise, surprise. Their models were using totally unrealistic default rates of 3-4% (marked to myth) because it was more profitable (required fewer reserves) when in actuality, nearly anyone with a cerebral cortex knew the default rates on these CDSs would be much, much, higher. More like 25-30%. And of course, it turns out that the rating agencies were in bed with the purveyors of this trash, giving these bonds highly inflated, and undeserved ratings.

When the housing bubble burst and the asset underlying these derivatives and credit default swaps went south, all hell broke loose of course. The inevitable happened as it always does. The leverage of 30-60:1 started working against the hedge funds, brokers, and banks that had been buying these derivatives. Leverage of 60:1 (possible with the eradication of Gas-Steagall and a complicit Fed) against you is not pretty, as we've seen in the last 3 months. The value of these instruments plummeted, forcing these players to raise cash. This required selling all other asset classes from gold to stocks, creating a cascade in the financial markets, an "unwinding" of leverage the likes of which no one has ever seen.

Owners of mortgage backed securities, likewise, demanded restitution from those that had "insured" them against default, AIG and Lehman in this example. AIG was on the hook for anywhere from 40-unknown billions due to their massive issuance of CDSs in the last ten years. It had been a massive revenue generator, but was now about to bury the company. In addition, if AIG did not honor its commitments to pay, many of which were to our major creditors, Japan, China, Korea, and the EU, they would not only never lend us another dime, but a "domino effect" could ensue in which AIGs counter parties went belly up, causing their counter parties to go belly up, creating a symbiotic implosion heard around the world. Oh, and by the way, ending capitalism as we know it. Maybe not such a bad thing. So here we were.

Deregulation=S&L debacle (80s) + Securitization (90s)= financial bubbles in bonds/stocks=bust/tech wreck of 2000 = Derivatives + Credit Default Swaps (2000s)= Housing Bubble Extraordinaire= Bust + Depression. Clear?

Or, if you prefer:

Deregulation - Securitization - Glas-Steagal Repeal--Derivatives - Credit Default Swaps--Financial Armageddon

This is the daisy chain that leads us to today. This financial "unwinding" as CNBC likes to put it, prompted Paulson, who ran Goldman Sachs for years, and is now head of our Treasury unbelievably, to ironically, run red faced, and panting, to that "Big Government" the right loves to demonize so much for a 750 billion "bailout" just a few short weeks ago. Talk about Socialism! A government owned banking and insurance sector??? Why the rush to pump the taxpayer you rightly ask? Kind of reminiscent of Bushes' "war resolution" just before midterm elections, or ramming the Patriot Act through Congress, isn't it?

Paulson has intimate ties to AIG through his days at Goldman, which would also be bailed out by the by, and AIG begged him (or paid him) to get them off the hook. Without a handout, they'd go under and the western world as we know it would cease to exist they pleaded. I'm sure this was the scenario. Their dutiful errand boy then runs to Congress and using extortion and threats (falling financial markets and possible martial law) to force Congress to pony up. A little more sophisticated than a protection racket run by the mob, but not by much. So the thugs get their money, select investment banks (Goldman) and banks (Bank of America and 7 others) get bailouts, while others like Lehman Brothers are allowed to go under. Why Lehman you ask?

Because Lehman was a major competitor to Goldman of course, and this was the perfect opportunity to let them be swallowed up by the cess pit of banking history, and free up more business for Goldman and Morgan, the two go to boys for the Federal Reserve. That is, Morgan and Goldman are the two major purveyors of government bonds, and it is they whom "open market operations" of the Fed are choreographed. Couldn't have the major purveyors of the bankrupt governments worthless paper going out of business, could we? That wouldn't instill much "con"fidence in what has come to the biggest con game of all, selling government paper.

So friends, as McCain would say, there you have it. PLEASE get your facts straight before showing off your ignorance. It was unbridled, unregulated, and fraudulent use of derivatives and credit default swaps, by Wall Street, and a corrupt Federal Reserve, which led to this fiasco. Not "big government", not mortgages made to poor people (they never could have been made if the Fed had been doing its job), not Fannie and Freddie, and certainly not the Community Reinvestment Act. This tripe, drivel and vacuous nonsense peddled by the likes of Hannity would be laughable, if our economy were not at stake. These are the same charlatans calling anyone who disagrees with the bald faced lying, corruption, irresponsibility, and disgraceful and unlawful shenanigans of the last eight years, Marxists and Communists. It would be laughable if it weren't so tiresome, ugly, and untrue. Some people just have no self respect, or shame, it seems.

Good night friends.

Dr. James Glenn

October 31, 2008

End Glenn Article – Begin The Rest of the Story” by Jere L Hough.

I applaud this article, especially the point that this is not a left/right, liberal/conservative or Democrat/Republican issue. Nor is it an exercise in placing the blame just to make the “other guy” look bad. The only valid reason for fixing blame is in order to come up with the right solution. It also does little good and much possible harm to blame persons for systemic problems, unless the systemic flaws are also addressed.

Dr. Glenn is accurate on every point he covers. He just doesn’t cover nearly enough.

He sums it up in a very helpful way:

“Deregulation=S&L debacle (80s) + Securitization (90s)= financial bubbles in bonds/stocks=bust/tech wreck of 2000 = Derivatives + Credit Default Swaps (2000s)= Housing Bubble Extraordinaire= Bust + Depression. Clear?

Or, if you prefer:

Deregulation - Securitization - Glas-Steagal Repeal--Derivatives - Credit Default Swaps--Financial Armageddon”

To his list of causation I could add another dozen or two of antecedents, going back to the wars, panics, booms and busts, and The Great Depression of the 20th Century, and all the way back to the US Constitution itself, and the Supreme Court decisions from that time to today.

I will leave out the details and get to the last layer of the onion.

MONEY - The Founding Fathers of our nation did not understand or properly define the nature of money, where it should come from, how it should come into being, how its value should be regulated, and by whom it should be created and regulated. At least they could reach no consensus on money. Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, and Paine had some advanced ideas on the subject, especially Franklin. This inability to reach a consensus that was written into our constitution has led to an imbalance of political and economic power that was not foreseen by the FFs, or they would have provided checks and balances to issues of economic and monetary power and policy, as they tried doing with other powers and functions of federal government.

The largest and most essential of these neglected constitutional issues are whether or not money should be publicly or privately created and controlled and how “money” is defined.

Definition: Money is a medium of exchange. It can be any medium, as long as it is nearly universally accepted within a given economy, and it accepted in payment of government taxes and fees. Money can be metal coins, paper, commodities, checks, accounting entries (debits & credits) on paper or electronically, debit or credit card transactions, and so on. The purpose of money is to enable transactions of land, resources, products, labor and services (real wealth).


The US Constitution does give clear authority to congress to coin (create) money and set its value. (Article 1, Section 8)


The creation of money in any and all its forms should be a sovereign right and responsibility. In a democracy or republic the “citizen” is the ultimate sovereign, and only cedes certain sovereign rights to government in a “social contract” – matters of maintaining civil order, defense, safety of person, home, business, trade and commerce, education, public health, sanitation, water, utilities and infrastructure such as roads, bridges, schools and media centers. All other sovereign rights not “ceded” to governments are to be retained by “the people”. This includes the right to use one’s labor and creativity to work as he chooses and to profit from his labors or their fruits, the end products.

In order to profit from the fruits of one’s labors one must sell or market them. So trade, commerce and markets are essential rights, as is the right to barter, exchange, or use a common medium of exchange to assist in realizing the fruits of one’s labor. That means having access to money to use to grease the wheels of trade. So the creation of money should be a sovereign right that can be delegated upward to be useful to more people and wider markets. Money should be under public supervision. Money should not be privately created and loaned into circulation as it is today, under our unconstitutional Federal Reserve System.

Money creation should be a public enterprise, according to formula including population and trade per capita, and other considerations.

The point is that the usurious system of money-creation and regulation we have today is broken, and banker and corporate elites with heavily vested interests want to keep us from fixing it, or even discovering the true causes of its failure. Banking and money creation as it is structured today is nothing but a grand Ponzi Scheme – the granddaddy of them all – huge enough to funnel the world’s wealth up the pyramid to those at the very top – while giving those in the middle the illusion of prosperity until the growth at the bottom stops, as it always must.

Unless the power to create interest-free money is reclaimed by the public (our government) there is no hope of avoiding an escalating and widening Apocalypse. The derivates and credit default swaps are just the looters and plunderer’s “new game strategies” for grabbing all they can before it all unwinds, or collapses – same thing.

Collapse will mean world financial and political reorganization, with new global money and new economic systems. ( [i] ) In many or most places it will mean martial (military) law, curfews, banning of private or public discussions and meetings, gasoline or food rationing, and possibly the economically or militarily forced enslavement of populations – for their own protection, of course. Their lands and resources may be “appropriated” in a number of ways, lease, purchase, or outright theft - annexation. It won’t be a pretty scenario.

The solution is to create viable alternative public money systems. The window has probably closed for doing this on the US National level by placing the Fed and FRS under public control – even with the election of “pro-change” Barack Obama as US President and a more liberal democratic congressional majority. But there are other levels of government that could implement their own currencies, credits, or bookkeeping systems that could allow local commerce to continue.

It is my view that the US Constitution preserves the rights of people to a fair and just medium of exchange (money) with which to advance commerce and trade in private and public transactions. Furthermore, the background discussions, papers and letters of the framers show they would have been in agreement with this just principle of fair, debt-free money.

In today’s world and with our current technology, only the cost of maintaining an office with a half-dozen staff, fail-safe accounting system and printing press should suffice to keep track of most commerce of a decent-sized town. Merchants and customers could pay a small transaction fee far less than today’s ATM charges to keep the system going.

It remains to be seen how such local, county or state money or debit systems will be viewed by national and global government and monetary authorities. However, it is probably a survival paradigm to experiment with alternative systems of monetary exchange. It will certainly be better than barter.


Endnotes:

(i) This will probably mean returning to some kind of money at least partially backed by gold, silver or other precious metals, gems or commodities. Or it could be pure fiat, backed by nothing but the “full faith and credit” of that issuing government or corporate authority. It really matters little to a society what the so-called “backing” is. What matters is who issues it, public or private – and whether or not those who “create it” charge interest, and use a “fractional reserve” basis for loaning (creating) money. The best and most stable money is debt-free money that can be spent into circulation by communities, towns, cities, states or nations for the public welfare. Money creation by making fractional reserve loans is immoral, unethical and should be illegal. It is a "Ponzi Scheme", pure and simple, only on a scale for too large for most people to ever comprehend or imagine possible.

World Problems and Solutions

Welcome to my new blogsite. I have attempted to combine other past blogs from as early as 2003 into this one. Not sure how successful it will be.

My main interest now is in the dire need for governmental and economic reforms on a systemic scale. Only education, information and non-violent resistance can bring this about. It will not be done by physical or military force.

First we must inform and educate ourselves about what is really happening to our world, and then find and apply solutions from all directions. We need "people-power", public opinion, and public mobilization of concerted peaceful actions, PACs, People's Lobbies, and pressure groups on all government levels.

We are facing a crisis of unimaginable proportions. We need similar sized solutions. I think I may have some answers, but we need more. If you have studied these problems then we need your input and ideas. If you are just trying to get your mind around it all, then stay tuned. I intend, God willing, to fill this site up with the research of many years. The ideas and ideals here will be the best I could find over my 70 years of life and learning.

I represent no special, financial or corporate interests, and always remain impartial and dispassionate, even in disagreement. Being a retired middle class schoolteacher and self-employed small businessman makes me a fairly ordinary citizen. My interest is for my family and fellow man and his greater good, health, and happiness. May we all seek and find hope and solutions for a better world, if not for today, then for tomorrow, and our children and grandchildren.

The best websites I have found for information and education on our current economic meltdown are listed below in my reading list. The best book is Web of Debt by Ellen H Brown.
Many more links will be added in the near future.

Thanks for tuning in. Hope you come back soon.

The new Medicare legislation is basically 400 billion dollars in corporate subsidies for HMO's and pharmaceutical giants. It will do little to help senior citizens, and will force them into HMO's in order to get Rx benefits. Corporate greed is literally stealing our country out from under us!



AARP has sold us out!



It should not take 400 billion in pork and corporate welfare to get seniors and the disabled a prescription drug benefit. This bill should be defeated!



Urge your representatives to vote against this corporate rip-off!



Signed: 65 and angry!

Introductory Notes:



These are troubling times, and are growing more so with each passing year of my life. Because of a chronic illness that forced an early disability retirement, I've had the last seven or eight years to largely devote to the leisure time pursuit of subjects of interest, using the internet as a research tool. The quantities of material to be found on the internet make it possible for ordinary people to research and learn in few weeks or months what it once took one a PhD and a lifetime to learn with traditional library tools.

Although never being interested in material degrees or purely technical pursuits, I have delved deeply into areas of philosophy, government, economics, politics, ancient, medieval and modern history, metaphysics, religion, spirituality that have always held fascination for me. I hoped that if I put enough interdisciplinary insights together I might find answers to some of our most troubling issues of modern life in a nuclear age.

The good news is that I did find answers to the deepest and most persistent questions in the above realms. The bad news is that childless and unable to physically socialize and discuss my insights, I felt like most of what I'd learned would go with me to my earthly grave.

Since I've never published a book, or done much research about how to do so, this is my primary legacy for now. I hope to share some of my most important and relevant discoveries and insights with the reader on myriads of topics of pressing interests at the beginning of this 21st century - the new millennium.

And yes, we are entering a new millennium, a new age, a new time, a new direction. When Columbus set out to find a new route to India just over 400 years ago he opened up a whole new world that has developed as the Americas. At this time, there is little physical or external exploration left to be done on this planet. However, there is much internal and spiritual exploration and development that mankind must accomplish, and accomplish fairly rapidly, if we are to survive without re-entering another long age of darkness similar to that which fell on the earth after the collapse of Roman civilization about 1600 years ago.

The next few years, perhaps a few decades, will decide that fate. Our decisions will determine the kind of world we will leave for our children and grandchildren. Will it be a world we will be able to point to with satisfaction? Or will it be one we would not want to inherit ourselves, much less leave to our heirs?

Jere L Hough

WAKE UP AMERICA!

Jere L. Hough
Sunday, July 20, 2003

INTRODUCTION

Global warming, air and water pollution, viral outbreaks, floods, firestorms and disease, joblessness and economic collapse, wars and threats of wars, famine and hunger, storms and severe weather, are all on the increase in our modern world. More people died from wars in the first half of the 20th century alone than in all of previous recorded human history.

Our nation and way of life, the very American Dream itself, is crumbling around us. Worse, it is turning into a nightmare. Our government, our Democracy, has been hijacked by a growing wealthy corporate elite, an elite that includes our commercial media. Our people have been sold, and have bought, the siren song of unsustainable consumerism and consumption. We are spending ourselves into bankruptcy. Our paper currency has no intrinsic value, and our financial system is built on a house of cards that is destined to collapse, along with all that depends on it. Scandal and corruption on unprecedented scale are daily occurrences in our stock markets, largest corporations, and mutual and pension funds. Corporate greed, the drive to make money faster, has become our national obsession. Materialism has become the dominant philosophy of our age.

We have been engaged in a long slide toward the “dumbing down” of America. We make our most important national decisions based on disinformation and misinformation. Even worse, our worldview is based on the expansion of corporate markets, exploitation of foreign resources. The predatory mentality predominates over all else. Corporate mergers and acquisitions are creating artificial entities, multi-billionaire multinational global Frankenstein’s with on one life force – greed. Lust for money is the overriding force these Frankensteins feed upon. Even those who think they are in control of these corporations only temporarily serve their money hunger, and are immediately replaced if they don’t feed the beast fast enough. CEO’s are expendable if and when they don’t produce profits quickly enough. Long term viability and humanitarian interests are thereby sacrificed to the expediency of immediate gratification.

This overwhelming abandonment of primary timeless values now permeates every aspect of our national life. More, bigger, faster, newer, flashier, sexier – these are the drumbeats of our current lifestyles. Media advertisements begin indoctrinating our children before the age of one or two. We need to buy the right toys, wear the right clothes, keep up with the right styles, or so we’re told – sold. The backbone of our country has always been our large middle class and the attempt to universally educate our citizens. Both these sources of our strength are dwindling. Middle classes are shrinking, labor unions are declining, and education has become baby-sitting and warehousing.

NBC, CBS, ABC etc., decide for us what is and isn’t important news, or what would be right for us to hear or learn about. Propaganda has replaced real news. We tune in for a while on an issue, a country, a problem, and then it fades from memory and consciousness. Few people read newspapers or news magazines any more. Radio and TV are our sources – commercial sources – that sell our way of life and dream.

We are in a state of denial of many of our most pressing and immediate problems: industrial waste, air and water pollution, vanishing forests, wetlands, unsustainable consumption of natural resources at the permanent impoverishment of the populations whose resources are being harvested.

The military-industrial-chemical complexes have won absolute control of our lives and our politics. Money decides not only who can be elected, but also who can even be heard or run for office. True grassroots candidacies are rare indeed in America today. Our congressmen and senators are bought and sold by global corporate interests. Jobs are being exported overseas, where labor is cheap and plentiful, and unions do not exist or have no leverage.

War is being glorified and fed by arms makers and dealers who profits are measured in billions. So called “balances of power” justify the selling of equal amounts of machines of destruction to both or all sides, countries, or potential combatants. The machinery of war is the largest single industry in the world, other than the financial interests who collect compound interests on these billion dollar sales.

Our brave soldiers and patriots who gave their lives in two world wars to the just cause of democracy and freedom have been mocked by the defining events of the last 50 or 60 years.

The reality is that few people – really few – fully understand how different Adam Smith’s view of capitalism is from the reality that exists today in America. The supposedly free-market economy that we have now is a fiction, and has been increasingly so for the last 150 or so years in the USA. What we actually have today is a kind of mega- corporatism. What we have is exactly what true conservatives like Theodore Roosevelt fought against during the early 20th century, and what the Sherman Anti-trust act failed to prevent. Mergers, acquisitions, friendly and hostile takeovers, holding companies, and bankruptcies have led to four or five hundred huge corporations owning just about everything in the world. If they don’t own it outright, they hold the mortgage on it, and are collecting compound interests on it.

How many people even understand how the central bankers and financiers dictate policy and rule in the affairs of mankind? The IMF, World Bank, and leading G-8 banks thrive off of deficit financing, and manufacture billionaires by keeping the world in debt. Our monetary system is a sham and a farce since it became divorced from any concrete material wealth. Bankers can manufacture money the same endless way China turns out sneakers and inexpensive electronics.

The causes of all of the above can be traced to a decline in the relevancy of modern religious thought that extends to every major world religion, including Christianity and Islam. Instead of inspiring men to believe in the spiritual fatherhood of God and the resulting brotherhood of all men, most of the world’s religions have descended into a doctrinal internecine warfare for temporal supremacy, power and control. Instead of teaching about the love of God and fellow man, and the best ways to manifest that love, religion has become an obstacle to real worldwide progress, hope and peace. Instead of teaching peace, light and life, they are too often teaching war, death and darkness.

One of the clearest examples of this obstacle can be illustrated by fundamentalist ecclesiastical attitudes toward birth control, which have contributed much to the coming apocalyptic catastrophes facing the world today. Sadly there are too many other examples of the abdication of true spiritual leadership to begin to name here.

Few people in the world today realize the extent to which the wealthiest, most powerful and influential families and their networks, many of them secret, manipulate and control international affairs today. They have been doing so for centuries, even millennia, but modern technology makes such control much more possible and thorough today than ever before. Although some of these influential families or individuals may only pledge their allegiance to a godless materialism, many or most of them follow and worship the darker spiritual forces of this deviant world. They have formed alliances that cut across national boundaries, and hold themselves above national wars. They have structured international financial matters in ways that insure their victory regardless of which side wins a military conflict.

In many cases they are fostering policies and actions that will insure that catastrophes occur, because they believe they are insulated from their effects and will control the remnant of those who also survive.

SOUNDING THE ALARM

Like the stories of Atlantis, we are living in an age where our technological progress has so overwhelmed our moral and spiritual development that modern civilization is on the brink of self-destruction. Nuclear proliferation, as well as chemical and biological weapons proliferation, has already reached proportions that, without drastic remedial action, is guaranteed to end in global catastrophe. That remedial action would require the combined actions of the best and brightest human intelligences with selfless motives in order to avert the coming disasters. Sadly the quality of the policies of our current US administrations is alarmingly naïve and foolish – insuring and hastening the coming sea of fire, death, disease, hunger, terrorism, economic and political chaos that will drown huge portions of present day humanity.

Instead of intelligently and selflessly dealing with the global problems - overpopulation, environmental pollution, global warming, economic divisions, increasingly suicidal, genocidal and sociocidal wars, and insane armaments and weapons proliferations - our national and international policies are actually facilitating and compounding the problems. Instead of deactivating the bomb, we are lighting the fuse. Instead of harm reduction policies, we have harm acceleration policies. The wisdom with which we choose our leaders has never been so crucial for our planetary survival, yet has never been so lacking or misguided.

There is a dark and sinister element infecting our beloved country, an economic and political movement that threatens the prospects for world peace, our constitutional freedoms, and our blood-bought liberty. This dark ideology from within our borders threatens us far more certainly than any outside force or power ever could.

It is important for all Americans – indeed all citizens of the world - to recognize what that threat is, and how it operates, and what can be done about it, before it is too late for remedial actions. Representative democracy or republicanism has only existed on this planet for a relative blink of the eye. It was a long hard multi-millennia struggle for humankind to achieve some measure of it. It should be taken for granted only at the peril of losing it. It is a part of this thesis to show that this threat is closer to becoming a reality than most people care or dare to think. Most people will never take the time to read through this or other similar warnings readily available to all in this day and age. Will you? Will you remain part of the problem or join those working for solutions?

A TITANIC ANALOGY

When traveling in a vehicle that is headed for a collision, the sooner evasive action is taken the more likely it is that the collision can be avoided or the damage minimized. That is the purpose of my writing: damage control, harm avoidance or reduction. Perhaps a better analogy is that we can be likened to the Titanic speeding recklessly toward not one fatal iceberg ahead, but a whole sea filled with them! Some are closer and larger than others; some are smaller and more distant. The question is how soon we realize they are there and once seen how will we deal with the situations? Will we act in a way that will save the greatest numbers of passengers or only to save the elite, powerful, wealthy few?

For the most part, I am talking about the people who are already aware that the icebergs lie ahead, and for whatever self-centered reasons they may have are not sounding the alarm. They stand to profit if the course stays the same and the icebergs are avoided, but are sure to be near a lifeboat if or when disaster strikes. They care little or nothing whether others make it to safety or not. There simply are not enough lifeboats for all, and this fact is most clearly seen by those steering us in the most dangerous directions. Remember that it was human arrogance and pride – the idea that the Titanic was unsinkable and the desire to create publicity by breaking transatlantic speed records – that was the real cause of the Titanic tragedy. It was the arrogance of those who planned and captained the voyage that were most responsible for the lives that were lost. It is an apt analogy for our national and world situation today. It is my hope to illuminate the icebergs in time to avoid them.

We will all clearly see the icebergs in due time. The question is whether or not we will see them in time to take a planned, orderly corrective action, or simply react in panic, confusion, and deadly disorder or chaos.

THE NATURE OF THE THREAT

The threat of which I speak exists all around us, growing so slowly and imperceptibly that at most times it is not recognized. The threat is a political ideology, a philosophy, an attitude, and a state of mind. Although vaguely perceived by some, the threat is not often clearly articulated, even among the more informed or well-educated segments of our society. The majority of the American people are blissfully ignorant of this threat, and indeed have unwittingly bought into the ideologies that constitute this danger. Much of our current presidential administration and large sectors of our congresspersons and judiciary reflect this wayward philosophy.

Those few brave and visionary souls who try to point out the dangers are dismissed as crackpots or alarmists, and labeled as troublemakers, criminals, fuzzyheaded liberals, subversives, or worse. Often this is with some good reason, because the “alarmists” or whistle-blowers often cannot see the whole problem clearly, or articulate it. Often those parts of the problem that they can articulate or identify seem remote and bizarre to most who hear their warnings. People who don’t want to hear bad news tend to shoot the messenger rather than address the message.

THE ESSENTIALS OF CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY

And therein lies the heart of the problem. In order for democracy – representative government by and for the people, under a framework of laws – to work, the voting electorate must be both educated and informed about the large and important issues of the day. Hard choices must be made rather than avoided. Unpleasant or unflattering information must be faced and acted upon.

Thomas Jefferson said, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." The fragile experiment of democracy on this planet has only lasted two hundred years or so – a relative blink of any eye over the span of human history. It should be cherished and nurtured and never taken for granted. Our national ignorance, to which our mass media’s contribute, is threatening to undermine our freedoms and the very underpinnings of our civilization.

Our Constitution, and Bill of Rights, with its three-part division of balanced legislative, judicial and executive, is in my opinion, as close to being a divine document as civilization has yet managed to create. It was forged out by a fortuitous combination of efforts by a convention of extraordinary men. Its healthy birth was never a forgone conclusion, as was its continued survival. Ben Franklin, immediately after the signing of the Constitution, was asked what kind of government had been given to the people. He replied, "A Republic, madam, if you can keep it." That remains the essential issue concerning us today. If we are to keep our constitutional guarantees they must remain intact and inviolate. The denial of constitutional rights to any one of our citizens is a danger and intolerable affront to all. Yet the economic and political forces behind the Patriot Act, the largest ever threat to our constitutional rights, are doing just that, and trying to convince us that is in our national best interests to do so. Believe them at your peril.

ELECTION REFORM

If there is any one flaw in our Constitution it might be in the prescribed manner of choosing an executive – our President. To a lesser extent reform is needed in the ways other representatives are elected, most specifically in the role money and contributions play in the election process. For presidential elections, direct elections, even as modified by a defunct nominal Electoral College, may prove unwise because of their susceptibility to demagoguery - propaganda. A model along British lines, whereby elected representatives choose the President, might be less subject to persuasion and demagoguery than our current electoral practice. Admittedly the process would be difficult to change or amend at this point in time.

Another modern election reform I’d recommend would be making election day and national holiday and keeping polling places open longer. Also unwise is allowing a plurality – less than a majority – of voters to decide elections. If no candidate achieves a clear majority, runoff elections between the two top vote getters should be provided. That would prevent third party candidates from deciding elections by taking votes from the most closely aligned competitor.

However debatable the forgoing issues, one point is crystal clear to me: That is that any and all elections systems that involve computers or electronic counting of the votes must provide for a paper trail in order to provide re-countability, retain accountability, and avoid any appearance of fraud or manipulation of votes or outcomes. Computers can break down, are subject to power failures, and programming manipulation and errors. Although I agree that the use of computers can speed up election returns, no voting system that does not provide a fail-safe paper trail can be considered worthy of a free society with elected public servants. It is also unconscionable that any automated system be as subject to counting errors as Florida’s punch card system was during the 2000 elections. In a democracy every vote is sacred and must be accurately tabulated.

Education and information are essential ingredients of democracy. There also must be meaningful dialogues about these issues and their solutions, and these essentials are sadly lacking today in America. Yes, there is what passes for meaningful dialogue in our talk radio and TV shows, but with the occasional notable exception heard on National Public Radio or the BBC, it is all too shallow and devoid of substance – especially when that substance is unflattering to the national image or conscience.

There are of course, other exceptions, but they are all too infrequent, and often untimely. If the important issues are not raised or debated in time to shape policy or influence the course of events, it is of little use except in hindsight. Our hasty and foolish involvement in a war in Iraq will prove to be one of those events, as more and more Americans will come to understand. Those who parry such criticism often ask what better alternatives those who warned against the war might offer? They lose sight of the fact that some decisions and actions are not easily reversed, and if reversible, are done only at a very high price. That is the dilemma we’ve involved ourselves in the Iraqi quagmire. That is what happens when nationalism and pride take precedence over foresight and principles. However one piece of advice I can offer on Iraq is this: When one finds that he has dug himself into a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging. That is made more difficult by the fact there is gold being unearthed as digging proceeds, but it still must be done. Otherwise we will find ourselves with much gold, but in a hole we can’t get out of to spend it.

Even if the topic is as important as war and peace, economic or foreign policy, those points or positions that can be stated in a few simple terms and in brief seconds are usually what we hear. There is little or no tolerance for complexity or subtlety. We shape our opinions and policy on slogans and 7-second sound bytes, and that is not sufficient to settle the huge problems faced by today’s world. These short snappy slogans and simple solutions are well suited to the neo-conservative mind of today that so predominates on our talk shows. When 99% of our talk or debate programs are cut in the Rush Limbaugh mold we are in deep philosophical poverty. The idea that our media has a liberal bias has long been a myth, perpetuated by the neo-conservative drive toward the right.

Our most important elections are being decided on by slogans and simple solutions to complex problems. When major elections are being decided by promises for illogical and self-destructive tax reductions, in the face of rising costs and growing environmental and health crises that require financial solvency, we are insuring disaster. Interest must be paid on borrowed money, and as any responsible family should know its payment can become the major household expenditure if debt gets out of control. A large portion of our future taxes will go toward interest on borrowed funds rather than actual goods or services to our citizens.

While it seemed for a while that the huge problem of balancing the national budget was moving toward a solution, in just a few short years after the turn of the millennium we are back in a severe debt crisis. This purposely created obscene and irresponsible debt burden will severely handicap our ability to deal with the major challenges that lie ahead. It will also weaken our nation and our ability to defend ourselves against an angered and alienated world. It will deprive our citizens of our healthcare and social security benefits, as those who promoted it knew it would. The shapers and framers of our post millennia economic policy have cheated American people, and it was their purpose to do so. Again we see the narrow self-interests of the wealthiest few trumping broader national interests or the many. Wake up, America.

THE ROLE OF THE MEDIA

The USA was forged out of traditions of town-hall meetings and gatherings. Most people in America today are sadly uninformed or misinformed on issues that really matter, and all too complacent. They are too busy making a living or engaged in various forms of pleasure or self-gratification (entertaining themselves) to realize that what passes for information in the mass media today is largely hype, spin or propaganda where unpleasant facts are euphemized or ignored. Anyone following the BBC, NPR, PRI or other foreign news source would recognize that events as seen from abroad or a more worldwide perspective are not reported in the same way they are in the USA by the major networks or news sources. There is a slant, bias or spin to most stories, particularly the important ones. Events are reported or ignored for the wrong reasons. Polls are conducted without a proper or relevant framing of the questions and issues. How you ask a question often determines the nature of the response.

The US news media is a part of the problem, and an important one, insuring that debate about meaningful issues takes second place to that is sensational or entertaining. What passes for news today is largely glitz and hype, show business, ratings driven pabulum, and would be clearly recognized as yellow journalism in the days of my youth the 40’s and 50’s. What is happening to news media today, and why, is a subject for another discussion. But the media is only a small accomplice to the larger, unrecognized threat that will be identified and named here. The important points here are that for democracy or self-government to survive, the minimal essentials include an educated and informed electorate and a free and unbiased media that will openly debate and explore real and important issues.

But what we actually see, nearly universally, from channel to channel is glitz, glamour and showbiz instead of substantive issues. We see attractive, sexy young women or handsome virile young men who, even if reasonably intelligent and well-educated in their craft, lack the maturity, perspective or wisdom to properly illuminate crucial issues deciding our fate. They either don’t know how to ask or raise the real issues of cause and effect, or purposely avoid controversy. Either attitude contributes to our growing crisis of a lack of meaningful information and dialogue. There are a few notable attempts to discuss major societal issues in depth. Outstanding TV journalists like Ted Koppel, Peter Jennings or NPR’s Dianne Rehm come to mind, but they are the exception, and far too many people are busily entertaining themselves with sports, sex, gossip, games and glamour to watch such town meeting forums in numbers large enough to matter. Sadly, only a small percentage of Americans have the attention spans or backgrounds needed to gains much from such in-depth discussions and they often lack the ratings to justify them.

Speaking of the ratings, another glaring deficit in today’s media is the ratings game or evaluation of market shares. Just about everything on television or radio today is ratings driven, even of late, the news programs. This can be fine as long as we are talking strictly entertainment, but when it comes to serving the public interest with news, information and debates, the goals of education should prevail. Debate and discussion shows should not be measured by entertainment ratings.

It must be added that in any successful society there is one other essential ingredient. There must be a critical number of those people that are of good will or intent toward mankind at large – people who capable and desirous of deciding issues on the greater good or welfare of mankind rather than on a basis of limited self interest, greed, market share or lust for power. There must be a sufficient number of people who study the arts, social sciences and humanities, and are motivated by altruism and the desire to serve rather than self-interest or the desire for material gain.

OLD ENEMIES WITH NEW NAMES

The threat of which I hope to warn people is the revitalization and reinvigoration of old political and philosophical enemies, commonly thought to have been vanquished during two world wars during the last century, This threat comes in the form of two “Isms” Fascism and Nazism, which are reappearing in America today under other innocent sounding or appealing names or labels.

Before you laugh, or dismiss this idea out of hand, can you accurately define either of those terms, and identify the main characteristics of the societies that existed by those names? I mean, those other than the widely known fact that Nazism and Fascism existed in their extreme forms under the dictators Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini? Do you know what the differences between Fascism and Nazism are? There are also important distinctions between them. And do you realize how many of these characteristics our own government and collective consciousness is exhibiting lately, in a trend that has been slowly emerging since the industrial revolution? Do you know that this trend has grown exponentially since WWII and the Korean War and Vietnam, and most particularly in the wake of the Gulf War I and 9-11? The average person could probably only vaguely identify a few traits of fascism and would probably say that they must exist under a dictator, or militant tyrant. The average person would scoff and claim, “it couldn’t happen here”, in a “free” society of elected representatives. Yet, nothing could be further from the truth. Fascism and Nazism are states of mind as well as national philosophies, and they can exist under other than totalitarian conditions.

Are you prepared to face some harsh but all too evident truths? Dr Lawrence Britt, a political scientist and author, has written perhaps the finest examination of the traits and tendencies of fascism. As you read them ask yourself how applicable they are to present-day America. It is quoted below:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

THE 14 DEFINING CHARACTERISTICS OF FASCISM
by Dr. Lawrence Britt

“Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5. Rampant Sexism - The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.

6. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in wartime, is very common.

7. Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined - Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

9. Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

10. Labor Power is Suppressed - Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.



12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

14. Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

ADDITIONAL CHARISCTERISTICS

To the above I would add secrecy, or lack of openness about what the government is doing, and why. Openness and freedom of information are essential qualities of democracies, just as secrecy and closed-door policies are allies of fascism or corporatism. It is noteworthy that the Freedom of Information Act was abolished in the wake of 9-11.

In conjunction with secrecy is the idea of big brotherism, or paternalism. The notion that the government has privileged classified information that the average person lacks gives this paternalism its validity. This can be true in a society where elections are held by simply insuring that the candidates are all somewhat representative of the fascist paternalism that captures the more selfish interests of the voters. Fascism can exist in a nominally two or multiple party system if the dominant party has the funding and wealth of the corporate sector behind it. This is especially true if the two parties are both dependent of corporate money in order to win elections, as has been the growing trend for the past century.

The idea that fascism can exist in a non-totalitarian society is somewhat counter-intuitive, and difficult to comprehend, but is true nonetheless. All that is necessary is for those who favor that fascist/corporate mentality to sell it to the voters, or at least enough of them to sway an election. If the mass media is a managed monopolized corporate media, as is becoming the troubling trend, all the easier to manipulate the masses.

A final component of fascism o corporatism is much more difficult for non-economists to comprehend: A managed economy. The classic model of a free-market economy ceased to exist long ago, if indeed it ever existed in reality, outside of theory. Our economic system stopped being comprehensible to most people when it was severed from the gold standard some seventy years ago – when it was divorced from a tangible measure of wealth. Today we have an economy that might be called magical money creation; an economy where money growth and creation is a matter of national or international banking policy. This is a hodgepodge of Federal Reserve banks, world banks, giant multinational financial institutions and governments that few people can comprehend or understand.

What is clear to me is that money is being created and distributed. Far less clear is how it is created, by whom is it created, why it is created, and to whom it is distributed. Who is the beneficiary of monetary creation, expansion and contraction? How is it decided to create more money or to withdraw money from circulation? The bottom line question, for me, is who benefits from these monetary policies? What individuals, institutions, or sectors of our nation or world are doing the reaping and who is doing the sowing? I’ve done my best to penetrate the mysteries and magic of post- Keynesian Economics, but have been largely unsuccessful. What I have gleaned is that the masses on the continents of Africa, Asia, India, and Malaysia, will not be the beneficiaries. They are the largely expendable people who sow what others plan to reap, people whose very existence is threatened by the corporatism of the Western world, particularly the USA. Will the benefits of democracy, corporatism, and economic prosperity be extended to these peoples? Will it even be extended to the lower classes in America? It is indisputable that the gulf between the richest and poorest peoples on earth is growing geometrically, rather than arithmetically. How long are such robber-baron policies sustainable? Will the attempt to sustain this pattern result in catastrophe?

Do any of the above traits sound familiar? Can we identify growing elements or degrees of these characteristics in our society today? Do any of them exist to degrees that should cause us concern? Dare we more closely examine these concerns?

THE PRIMARY THREAT: CORPORATISM

"Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.'' - Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

Consider this quote from Benito Mussolini, the commonly acknowledged founder of fascism: “Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism because it is a merging of state and corporate power.” * So corporatism was the single word Mussolini coined as synonymous with fascism. Does this raise any eyebrows? Should it?

The main element or ingredient that should be emphasized in the above list of traits of fascism is number 9, Corporatism, in conjunction with #10, the suppression of Labor Unions. If there is any one defining name or label for fascism as it is emerging today in America, it would be “corporatism”, especially a militant, nationalistic, ultra-patriotic, flag waving corporatism.

What’s wrong with this”, you ask? What is wrong lies in the degree to which this corporatism exists, and exerts its control and influence over our politics and our government. In fact this whole paper is not about absolutes, but is about degrees or extremes to which certain of these identifiable neo-fascist traits are taking. This is the reason it is so difficult to recognize or identify. Subtle distinctions or shades of gray are difficult for most people to grasp or see. Black and white thinking is so much easier and convenient. The trouble is that evil seldom announces itself so plainly. The most dangerous wolf is always the one disguised as a sheep.

What is wrong with today’s corporate brand of neo-fascism (neo-conservatism) is that corporate funding has become absolutely essential in order to be elected to most major leadership positions or offices. Corporate interests are not always public interests, and are often directly opposed to them. This is so self-evident it needs no elaboration, or examples. Attempts to clean up our air and water are just obvious conflicts of public and corporate interests. To further emphasize the obvious, we need look no further than the recent criminal actions of those who ran Enron, WorldCom, and numerous other corporations that “cooked their books” to deceive and defraud shareholders and investors. Greed and immorality are rampant in corporate America.

So aren’t corporations democratic institutions? Don’t they elect their boards of directors, officers, presidents and CEOs? True, depending on the way the corporation is structured, they are democratic in degree; but only shareholders get to vote, and their quantity of their votes depends on their monetary investment – the number of shares in the corporation they hold. Corporate voting is not based on one vote for one person, and employees of the corporation get no vote- only vested shareholders.

Corporations get the best executives and managements that money can buy. Is that same thing becoming true of American government? Is the degree of participation in the electoral process dependant on how much money one’s has, or has available to promote one’s candidacy? If so, is that how a democratic republic should work? To what extent are votes in America today bought and sold?

Realistic answers to these questions will begin to illuminate the degree to which corporations and corporate money determine not only elections, but also policies – domestic and foreign, economic and political. And remember that Mussolini’s defining word for fascism was “corporatism” – the merging of government and corporate power and interests. Keep this idea firmly in mind when concepts of “privatization” of government services are debated. Remember that “privatization” and “corporization” are synonymous terms and both nearly always involve profits and higher management costs than the same government service. According to one source the administrative cost of Medicare were about 2%, while those for similar private insurance or HMO was closer to 30%. When you remember that multi-billion dollar cost must be paid either by the taxpayer or the insured, we are talking either tremendous savings or burden on those who pay the price – ultimately the taxpayer and consumer.

THE COLLAPSE OF LABOR AS A BALANCING POLITICAL FACTOR

What most clearly marks and defines this “corporate” atmosphere in America today is the decline or suppression of Labor Unions over the last 30 or 40 years. The emergence of these strong labor unions had a counterbalancing effect to the rising tide of corporationism during the first two thirds of the 20th century. For many decades during the last century there was a degree of political equilibrium between corporatism and labor. Government can be viewed as serving the interests of either capitol or labor in varying degrees, or attempting to act as a mediating force between them. For a while this seemed to be the case, but during the last third of the 20th century we have seen a decline in the voice and power of collective labor.

The reasons for this decline are a whole separate discussion, but they can be essentially reduced to a few central ideas. Labor unions or workers collectives suffered poor images because of corruption within, and were first undermined by importation of cheaper labor from other countries and the hiring of non-union workers, coupled with the exportation of manufacturing plant and equipment to undeveloped nations where there was an abundance of cheap building materials for plants and equipment, and cheap labor. When you link the forgoing to lower or non-existent taxes local taxes coupled with tax avoidance of US import taxes the picture becomes clear. Strong labor unions could not hope to survive under such conditions. They didn’t, and have been on the decline for the past 30 years.

In political terms the corporations and special interests have always been identified with the Republican Party and more conservative, less progressive values, while Labor and the working public have always been identified with the Democratic Party, who have espoused more liberal or progressive causes, and are thought less conservative. Republicans have traditionally favored corporate interests while Democrats have favored labor or working class interests. These generalizations are never absolute, but a continuum, or sliding scale. There are overlappings, as between the more progressive Republicans or the more regressive or conservative Democrats. There is no question that in places at time such distinctions have been blurred, especially in the South during the last 40 years where a reversal has taken place, and traditional conservative Democrats have shifted to the Republican Party. This has helped shift the balance of political power in America today toward Republicanism, or Corporationism. Among other factors strengthening the corporatist shift toward the right in American politics have been the identification of the more conservative traditional religious churches and councils or groups of churches with the Republican Party. Women’s rights, Roe V Wade, the supremacy of personal bodily choice, the legality and morality of abortion, questions of when human fetal rights supercede the adult host and parental rights - these are all issues the religious right has more closely identified with the political right and Republicanism. Neo-conservatives, rightly or not, are seen as more patriotic, more nationalistic, more militaristic, more religiously correct, more business friendly, and protective of traditional values, and because of that are gaining support among a broader base of Americans today. Conversely, Democrats are losing their traditional base among the working and middle classes.

The fact of this shift can be clearly seen in the numbers. In the last 50 years, there have been only 20 years of Democratic presidencies: Kennedy-Johnson, Carter, and Clinton. These years were punctuated with significant disruption by the assassination of Kennedy and political assassination (attempted impeachment) of Clinton. During this time there were the Eisenhower-Nixon, Nixon-Ford, Reagan-Bush, Bush-Quayle, and Bush-Cheney continuums. During these periods there was a ever-growing power base for Corporatism and military-industrial power, and a decline of labor or people-power.

Eisenhower himself warned the American people about this threat in his exit speech in 1961, when he spoke of the growing dangers of the “military-industrial complex”.

THE NEO-CONSERVATIVE AGENDA AND ECONOMIC CRISES

Most people do not understand the degree to which corporate corruption has affected the economic crises of the early years of the 21st century, because those in power would rather hide or gloss-over the embarrassing facts, or point fingers in efforts at misdirection. Nor do most people have any idea about how devastating to their futures the misguided version of Corporatism GW Bush and this administration have sold to the US citizens and voters. This misguided policy can best be seen in the huge tax cuts that primarily benefit the wealthiest 1% of our citizens and corporations. These policies and tax giveaways to the rich have turned projected multi-trillion dollar surpluses into their equivalent deficits.

The cuts cannot and will not provide the stimulus they are supposed to give to our sagging economy, but will only insure that more money and investments are exported to other countries, while driving us so deep into national debt that education, healthcare and social security cannot be funded, and therefore cease to exist. That is after all, one of the primary secret agenda’s of the neo-con, neo-fascist corporatist strategists. It’s a part of the plan. They plan to eliminate all “non-essential” or “discretionary” spending by putting so much into national defense, security, and our military and armed forces that there simply will be nothing left for these social programs we now enjoy, and which have been historically despised by a powerful and influential element of the right. They always predicted the failure and collapse of those social programs. Now they are intent on working toward insuring that happens, if not directly then indirectly though a lack of funding. Your Social Security surplus has already been “raided” or appropriated for other government expenditures, primarily the tax cuts for the wealthy, wars and munitions funding an replenishment, and “national defense”, little of which actually makes us more secure from terrorism, and much of which will probably make such terrorist events even more likely in the future.

What they, the corporatists, can’t eliminate or sabotage, they plan to privatize or corporatize. That includes education, schools, armies, police forces, prisons, healthcare, and, if they had their druthers, all three branches of state and national governments. The notion that US army units might one day wear the patch of GE or GM once seemed impossible to me. It not only no longer seems implausible, but quite likely.

THE IMPORTANT ROLE OF FEAR

The one galvanizing force that will allow them to accomplish these seemingly impossible goals is fear. There must always be a threat to national security, and there must always be a war or stimulus to military industrial (corporate) spending. That is how profits must be generated in order for the currently structured corporatism to exist or grow.

FD Roosevelt said: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”. These words are both true and relevant to an understanding of what is happening in America today.

Corporations exist for only one purpose: To make money; to show profits; to grow and expand their power and profits. There are larger societal and environmental issues facing the world that directly conflict with the profit motive. How we deal with these larger issues world wide import, including overpopulation, dwindling resources, and consumption, in a world which consists mostly of emerging, underprivileged or third-world peoples, will make the difference on how much damage our iceberg-bound ship will take, and who takes most of it. So it matters a great deal where the money comes from that elects are leaders to positions of decision and trust. It matters what degree profit-driven corporate interests control our government, and manipulates the media towards its own ends – always growth and expansion of profits and power.

This is a corporatism that elevates nationalism far above concepts of internationalism or world citizenship, and it is that distinction that makes it so universally dangerous and ultimately self-destructive. We will examine the reasons for this more closely in due time, but the key reason is that solutions to today’s problems require a multi-national or global approach. The kind of fervent corporate nationalism espoused by these neo-cons is a direct obstacle to the multinationalsim truly needed if we are to avert the worst of the disasters that lie ahead for humankind on this planet. The extremes of Isolationism or Imperialism are no longer viable options, except for a minority of the wealthy or powerful elite who have secured “space on their lifeboats”. They plan to survive the coming holocaust that their self-interested policies are determined to cause.

The problem in a nutshell is our national reaction, or in many ways, overreaction to the terrorism of 9-11. That event provided the shock and fear needed to give opportunistic rise to a neo-fascist fringe element that already existed in the newly elected GOP. Great social upheavals, revolutions, and political movements are always spawned or precipitated by some catastrophe or event that galvanized the masses behind them. Nazi Germany had its Reichstag Fire; we had our 9-11. Both instances serve to galvanize an “us against them” mentality of fear and mistrust behind a leader that wants to exert more power and influence over their citizens. They both allow assumption of war powers and a suspension of civil liberties and rights. The first casualty of any war is the truth.



This element is best described, in my view, as neo-fascist or neo-corporatist, and is represented by the doctrines and declarations of the PNAC, or Project far a New American Century, in their own signed words on their website and published papers. While it appears on the surface benignly patriotic it actually undermines the only possible real solution to world problems – international cooperation.

The solution to the problem lies in correctly addressing the best ways for freedom-loving representative democracies of the world to effectively deal with these new threats of terrorism. It means finding solutions to international terrorism without losing the very rights and freedoms we strive to protect, either through financial chaos or direct usurpation of power by elements of the executive branch of our government in concert with national intelligence or security agencies. It means getting to the root causes of suicidal terrorism and addressing those causes, while taking direct defensive actions. It means involving a multinational coalition of like-minded democratic nations and giving them teeth – the authority and might to enforce international ethics and justice. It means – and this a point upon which most special interests within the USA balk - giving this international body some of our sovereignty, just as the 50 states of the USA gave up some of their authority to join the larger federation of states that now comprise the USA. It means adopting an international government divided along the lines of our own executive, judicial and legislative model. This means submitting the USA to the authority of a World Court, something this current administration has flatly rejected. Under the current conditions that exist in the UN that position is reasonable, but that only advances the argument that the United Nations needs to be reorganized in ways more closely aligned to how the federal government of the USA is organized under our Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Nearly every sentence in the above paragraph could be a the subject of a separate essay or paper. But before I get too far ahead of myself, let us return to an earnest look at fascism and its similarities with what is happening in the USA today.

Obviously not all of the above ingredients of fascism are applicable to the USA today and those that are appear in varying degrees. But especially since 9-11 much of it should cause legitimate concern, if not outright alarm. This is particularly true at the direction of the radical right wing elements that now control the Republican Party, and the current executive branch of government and outline the policies now mouthed by President GW Bush. This element is clearly identified in the declarations of the PNAC, or Project for the New American Century*, and is often euphemistically referred to as “neo-conservative”, although it is about as far from real conservatism as is possible. Certainly Teddy Roosevelt, a staunch traditional free-market conservative, would not recognize this “neo-con” movement of today.

The label that most closely fits this “neo-con” philosophy is fascism, or more properly neo-fascism – a new or modern restatement of the merging of corporate, government, military, media and financial power which coalesces around a perceived national security threat, terrorism. An even better label or defining word is Corporatism, because fascism is most often thought of as requiring a dictator at its head, while corporations have elected boards of directors, officers, and CEOs.

This “neo-con”, corporatist philosophy was plainly written in the “Statement of Principles” page of the website of the PNAC, at http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm and is signed by some of the most powerful and influential names in America today.

Elliott Abrams, William J. Bennett, Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, Steve Forbes,

Donald Kagan, Norman Podhoretz, Dan Quayle, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz were initial signers of the declaration of principles. Richard Perle, Frank Carlucci, Eliot Cohen, Robert Kagan, William Kristol, the Carlyle Group, and other powerful persons and groups are signers and active participants. The real hidden force behind this neo-conservative, neo-corporatist (actually neo-fascist) movement is the “Establishment” or the financial and banking power structure that orchestrates world events.

This is only a small part of the more recognizable persons that shape this neo-con think tank that has been shaping America’s domestic and foreign policies for the last two and a half years.

This statement of principles reads eerily like a declaration from Mussolini or Hitler seven decades ago. It would have made a Caesar or any good Roman Emperor proud. Empire, power, military action, intervention and preemption are cornerstones of this ideology. Cherished civil rights and liberties are put aside for reasons of national security. People can now be arrested and detained without charges or right of habeas corpus on any charge, however specious, of sympathizing or aiding terrorism or any group thought to be affiliated with terrorist actions or philosophies. It is but a small step from this to the arrest and detention of any dissident, protester, or non-conformist political activist seen as a threat to a party or person in power, as long as it is explained as in the interest of national security.

It couldn’t happen here, you say? Good and decent citizens of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and the Stalinist USSR voiced the same denials. Yet it happened to them under a variety of circumstances, among which nearly always fear, distrust, chaos, and a perceived enemy or scapegoat are constant denominators. 9-11 could be just the circumstance that could allow it to happen here, if we don’t take actions to prevent it or are not cognizant of the dangers.

So while you are reading these documents, keep in mind some of the basics of fascism, and see if you can see the similarities of these dialogues. Once again here are the primary essentials of Fascism or its modern day neo-conservative or corporatist cousin today.

ELEMENTS OF CORPORATISM

Remember first that the terms neo-corporatism, neo-conservatism and neo-fascism are interchangeable. They differ mostly in their degree of euphemism.

First, Fascism (Nazism is a variant of Fascism) entails a fervent patriotism, or devoted nationalism that rises to a near religious fervor. The word itself comes from the Roman word “fasces”, a totem symbol of Roman power. There is no question that Roman power was dependant on the powerful economic interests of that day, and each hand washed the other.

Second, Fascism glorifies war and violence, and views pacifists as weak and unworthy. The solution to social, economic and political problems lies in the exercise of military force. This force is usually employed in protection or assertion of economic power or resources. But it must always be emphasized that war or the threats of war is the single most powerful galvanizing force that a leader can use to unite a state or nation behind the common cause of victory, and to silence opposition and criticism to the current leadership or group in power.

Thirdly, there is an intolerance, mistrust and even disgust of debate, dialogue, diplomacy and the democratic process. Democracy and diplomacy require patience and it is that impatience that marks the fascist (corporatist) mindset. Hitler and Mussolini made the trains run on time – or else! There is certain efficiency about a dictatorship that can never be matched in a true democracy.

Fascism is also imperialistic in its nationalism. It contains elements of finance capital: Extending a nation's authority by territorial acquisition or by the establishment of economic and political domination of one state over others.

Fascism and Nazism are both primarily characterized by a combining or merging of state and corporate power. Corporate interests are often granted huge monetary boons and favors from the governments that support them. Lucrative contracts are liberally awarded to companies on the basis of partisan support, often without any bidding or competitive process.

Government and corporate interests in a fascist or corporatist nation are assisted by a news media that is influenced by these two aligned powers. Actually the media is nearly an equal partner in the equation, as propaganda and spin are needed to maintain corporatist control over the voting public.

Fascism is the polar opposite of an equally deplorable Marxist socialism or communism. Fascists are extreme militant corporate elitists who often dismiss those who differ with them by labeling them as communists, socialists, traitors, left-wing radicals or subversives.

Fascism and Nazism are terms for certain militant organizations or reorganizations of society that have identifiable characteristics. They can also be largely thought of as states of mind, or of collective mentality. If they did not have appeal they could have never captured the hearts and minds of the peoples of Germany and Italy during the early half of the 20th century, or at least enough of them to allow these ideas to dominate, and control the course of events leading up to WWII. Most good and decent people of those cultures simply stood silent or looked the other way rather than draw attention to themselves by dissenting.

All of the above elements describe classical fascism, but also describe modern corporatism. Do we in America today not see this merging today of corporate and national interests? Or are we simply not looking? Isn’t a candidate’s electability directly tied to his or her ability to raise campaign funds? And don’t the bulk of those campaign contributions come from large wealthy corporate interests or those individuals that run them? Haven’t these interests defeated all efforts toward meaningful election reform, healthcare reform or social security reform? Isn’t there something troubling about the fact that corporate money and an increasingly monopolized corporate media are absolute essentials for any serious bid for the white house? Even election to the Senate or House of Representatives requires support from these two segments of society. No one can win major elections without money and the media spotlight.

DISTRURBING REMINDERS

It may be helpful to remember that elections were held in both Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy during the rise of the tyrants, Hitler and Mussolini. They were both elected to some high public office prior to their usurpation of their ultimate roles as dictators. The majorities of these citizens “thought they were free” while they were being largely manipulated by fear, terror, mind control, and propaganda (spin). While both these tyrants were elected to posts within their governments, they usurped most of their final powers by various strong-arm tactics, power plays, or coups. Often their rivals died, were murdered or just disappeared. They “sold” their programs to the people through manipulative methods of fear, distrust, mind & media control and propaganda or spin on news and events.

Most of the people of these societies turned a blind eye toward the worst of the abuses of power by the police and security forces – storm troopers, black shirts, SS and Nazi Gestapo thugs - because they were swept up in the perverted pride and patriotism of Fascism. Today in America the threats and signs are just different or distant enough that people are unable or unwilling to see them. As a people we have short attention spans and are often ignorant of history. Failing to learn the important lessons of history inevitably leads to repeating them. Are we as a nation doomed to follow this pattern? Time will tell.

Clearly, the USA today is in no significant or imminent danger of a coup or military takeover of our country by force. The threat is far more subtle than that. The threat, as I see it, is that our country’s goals and national character could be shaped by the same forces of salesmanship or persuasion as those that sell breakfast cereals, computers or cars. This has already happened to a large extent, but it has happened so slowly and over such an extended period of time that few people can comprehend it.

When the mass media combines its persuasive power with the deep pockets of corporate enterprises, enough people can be persuaded to determine the outcome of elections. It could become a very real possibility that candidates who hold the public or common interests above that of corporate economic interests might find it impossible to get elected for lack of funding. Indeed this has already happened to a large extent, or at least to the extent that such unencumbered candidates are exceedingly rare in America today. Nearly all are indebted to large corporate special interests and lobbies to some extent. Again it is a matter of subtlety as to what degree that has happened across the board. I am concerned about that degree that it has happened and the continuing increasing trend that public elections today are decided by partisan special interest money. A man cannot serve two masters and one who is elected with corporate money finds it very difficult or impossible to act in the best interests of the country as a whole. There are very few lobbies for the general public welfare and those that represent broad sections of the general public, such as senior citizens or consumers, are puny in comparison to those of the financial giants.

IDENTIFYING EVILS OR FINGERING SCAPEGOATS?

“An evil exists that threatens every man, woman and child of this great nation. We must take steps to insure our domestic security and protect our homeland.” Spoken by GW Bush? Dick Cheney? Donald Rumsfeld? Colin Powell? Guess again. Those were the words of Adolph Hitler. Hitler, and all national leaders who desire to wield, extend and consolidate political power fully realize that they can rally support by identifying a national threat or evil, often a scapegoat, as were the Jews in Nazi Germany. The easiest way for any would-be dictator or group to extend power is to identify an enemy threat and mobilize for war. Perhaps some day we may grow enough to realize that the real threat and enemy is war itself, and the fear that feeds it. The call to rally around the flag has always worked to unify power and silence dissent or inquiry. Franklin D Roosevelt was very accurate when he said. “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

FEAR AND THE PATRIOT ACT

9-11 set the stage for the last round of strengthening the CIA, FBI, NSA, Secret Service, and combining them all under the umbrella of the newly created office of “Homeland Security”. The name is exactly the same one chosen by Hitler. The grossly misnamed “Patriot Act” suspends or takes away many of our cherished constitutional rights and civil liberties. This could only happen in the atmosphere of national fear that now exists in America. Remember that fear is the prime objective of terrorism. To the degree that fear controls our national political actions and economy, the terrorists have achieved their prime objectives.

The abominable and psychotic criminal attack on the WTC naturally resulted in panic and terror. That was, after all, its intent. That resulting terror and insecurity would have been significant even if it had been met with a calm head and resolute determination to improve our negligent vulnerabilities. Unfortunately that didn’t happen and fear and overreaction ruled the day.

Certainly the goal of bringing the perpetrators in Al Qaeda to justice was justifiable, even commendable. Also essential was the repairing of glaring holes in our defenses, particularly in our airliners and immigration policies. The reaction of our administration under GW Bush was one that far exceeded what was needed in some respects, and lacking in others. It generated an excess of fear and a sense of vulnerability, and lacked in actually shoring up the first lines of real defense against such terrorism. The pros and cons of this observation exceed the scope of this work. I will leave it to historical perspective to judge the accuracy of those generalizations. Every state or nation has the right and duty to defend itself from invasion. The point is that the irrational generation of fear and the mobilization for war far exceeded reactions that would have been appropriate.

The hunt for Osama bin Laden and the organizers of the 9-11 attacks disregarded the lives and safety of many innocent people, not the least of which were Afghanis. But it also put a huge financial burden on our future generations. It may prove to be an economic burden too great for our society to overcome and yet remain stable.

Together with national security expenditures, some rational, some not, we went from a budget surplus to a budget deficit in one short year. Two tax cuts to the rich added to that burden, but the worst effect has been the extension of the “war against terrorism” into Iraq, and the consequent financial and political quagmire that will certainly follow. Setting the stage for a huge financial collapse or depression will not help the USA or the world resolve the crises of overpopulation, food and water shortages, energy shortages, and popular unrest and revolt that are sure to occur around the world. But that is exactly what is occurring with the huge deficits this Bush administration is incurring. He has borrowed against our future to line the pockets of his corporate and wealthy constituents, and there will be a high interest to pay for such folly.

The masters of war, the captains of the weapons and armaments industries, and their stockholders will profit from the massive government borrowing, while humanity suffers and future taxpayers must repay the debts incurred along with a high interest rate. When 40% of your tax dollars are going to pay interest on the national debt, rather than buy health, education infrastructure, we will once again see the foolishness of Bush’s actions. After all these huge deficits are going to finance those wartime industries, along with all the support systems for defensive, security systems and the technologies that update them. For every winner there will be hundreds, perhaps thousands of losers.

Our attempted occupation of Iraq, or indeed any Muslim nation, will lead to the same kinds of dishonor and defeat we experienced in Vietnam, not to mention the countless loss of American and Iraqi life and limb, and the destruction or disruption of Iraqi economy, infrastructure and culture. An armed citizenry cannot be occupied against their will for long. The occupation of Arab territory will only inflame and mobilize pro-Arab, anti-American passions. The net result will be more, rather than less, of a threat to US citizens from suicidal terrorist attacks. As I predicted in the wake of 9-11, our over reaction to that catastrophe, or unwise reactions, would result in recruiting more anti-US terrorists. The fact is that military or police suppression of Iraqis by the USA that is seen as anti-Muslim or anti-Arab will backlash in very unpleasant ways. It will become increasingly difficult to keep the Afghani and Iraqi invasions from being viewed as a Muslim – Christian conflict. Arab moderates and voices of reason will be drowned out by the increasing ranks of those calling for Jihad – religious war. We will ultimately be less safe from terror rather than more so.

It does little good to win a war if one is not prepared to win the ensuing peace and occupation that must follow it. We were and are not so prepared. Perhaps there was no way we could have been adequately prepared. However, winning the peace in Iraq or Palestine will not be done though force. Peace cannot be won with war. To the average Iraqi, Hussein, the devil they knew, was replaced by the US, a foreign one who is a stranger to them. Saddam imposed order and security through tyranny and force. Is what we are doing, or appearing to be doing much different to them, after destroying their law and order, healthcare, banking and monetary system, economy, culture and much of their physical infrastructure – water, power, air conditioning, and many other basic human services? How many Iraqis have been put out of work, lost homes, lost relatives or loved ones while the USA was extracting its revenge against Saddam?

Even if this administration had not used inaccurate intelligence and false statements to justify the case for unilateral war the preceding would still be the case. Even if the links between Saddam ad Al Queda had been real, which they weren’t, the Iraqi’s would still be in the same situation. Even if there was a clear and present danger posed by Iraq, and there wasn’t, the damage done there would be the same. Innocent lives would still be lost and damaged. That is the price of war, justified or not. However, if the Iraqi war had been sanctioned by NATO, or the UN, and a carried out by a genuine coalition instead of the US and UK going it alone, we would not be bearing the cost of anti-American backlash alone as we are now. Nor would we be having the problems we are in gaining support for UN peacekeeping forces to go into Iraq to stabilize the bloody Iraqi resistance now taking place.

In any event we now find ourselves in a post 9-11 disaster that would have far exceeded anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped would result from that attack. We are involved in a military and political quagmire in Iraq, in growing financial chaos at home, have earned scorn among the democracies around the world, lost international respect and support among our allies, and have given recruiting and revenge incentive to our enemies. In addition we have weakened our financial and military position as well as resolve or national will to take needed actions or exert influence in places like Liberia and North Korea. Those who attempt to justify this unilateral war (and the term “coalition” is a joke – political doublespeak) will have about as much credibility as those who continue to justify our war in Vietnam, and its economic, psychological, and human costs. The terrible costs of the Vietnam fiasco are still being counted 30 years after our humiliating withdrawal from that mistake. How long will we count the costs of the invasion and occupation of Iraq? My prediction is that it will be far longer than people think, or were led to believe. I also think the costs will be much higher than expected. Already they are doubling or tripling original administration projections, as knowledgeable persons knew would happen.

While we have succeeded Gulf War 1 and 2 in re-establishing the fact of our military power, we have not established our moral and philosophical right to wield that power. It is also very possible that our over reactions to 9-11 have helped draw the battle lines for Armageddon - the war to end all wars. Perhaps it will take that before we gain the wisdom to put war and violence behind us and learn to live in peace.

OUR SHADOW GOVERNMENT: THE DARK SIDE OF THE FORCE

There exists within our government today a very real, dark and threatening “shadow government” that is largely beyond the control of any democratic process or oversight. It was created for the purposes of National Security during WWII and the “Cold War” against Russian Communism that followed the resolution of that conflict. It is mainly embodied by the intelligence and security sectors, the CIA and NSA, but is influenced by international financial controls through secret societies.*

The average American would be shocked and appalled if they were fully informed of the activities of the darker elements of this “shadow government”. The activities of which I speak include projects and experiments that would make the staunchest Hitlerian Nazi proud, but will likely never be fully revealed “for reasons of National Security” – the catch all phrase that permits unconscionable abuses of power to occur out of sight of the media or average American. Among those abuses were and are biological and chemical development and experimentation, including the probability that viruses like HIV, Ebola, and other quickly deadly hemorrhagic viruses were offshoots of these covert operations and experiments.

This “shadow government” exists because of the so-called interests of “National Security” and the belief that secrecy is a necessity in order for these programs to exist or succeed. The key ingredient in all of these shadow programs is deniability – the ability of higher levels of our executive branch to deny their existence. Information is revealed about these operations only to each individual on a “need to know” basis, and even our own elected congresspersons or senators know little or nothing about them. But US citizens should know that many billions in tax dollars go to support these activities, often encompassing unspeakable injustices or atrocities. Even worse, much of the financing of the CIA covert operations comes from their illicit profits from international drug dealing, smuggling, prostitution, and perhaps in some instances even using counterfeit US and other currencies – usually for the stated purpose of snaring criminals. Buying huge quantities of drugs with counterfeit money (usually seized) and then reselling these drugs while ostensibly gathering information on drug rings is one example of activity that should not be condoned. Yet there is solid evidence that it happens.

An example of one such nightmarish program was Project Monarch or MKULTRA. These are mind control experiments on unwilling victims (social throw-aways, missing children, outcasts, etc.) using LSD and other psychedelics or mind-altering drugs, electroshock, food, drink or sleep deprivation, sexual exploitation and humiliation, along with myriads of other mental, psychological and physical degradations and abuses, punishments and rewards. Much of the above is so unimaginable or unpalatable to the average citizen that evidence of its happening is rejected out of hand. This is similar to the fact that the average citizen in postwar Nazi Germany could or would not believe the atrocities that did happen or were happening within nearby concentration camps. But the evidence is there, nonetheless, in all its disturbing clarity, that it is taking place today.

Such dark and secret programs can only exist in a free republic because of the perceived or real fear or threat to our national security. This threat began as a result of WWII and continued throughout the cold war. Now the fear or threat is international terrorism, and this threat can extend as far in to the future as the eye can see.

The war against terrorism is the perfect war, as good or better in terms of longevity than the wars against crime or drugs, and for similar reasons. Terrorism, like criminality, is the never-ending threat. The reason for that is the simple fact that our own narrow and unenlightened national policies and actions insure that terrorism becomes a self-fulfilling and self-perpetuating prophecy. We are drawing the inevitable lines of conflict between large segments of human society that include the divisions between rich and poor, haves and have-nots, those wielding power and those being manipulated by it, Christian and Muslim, those who enjoy a relatively comfortable standard of living and those who do not. The divisions are forming and the barriers to peaceful resolutions are being erected and fortified. The dice are rattling and the time for decision is growing short.

Instead of looking to the roots of the problems for tenable solutions or resolutions to these problems, we are only trimming a branch here and there. We will not look at the elements of causation that our own shortsighted, self-interested foreign policies in the Middle East have created. We will not look at the intrigues and behind-the-scenes activities the CIA has engaged in to achieve coups, regime changes, often taking one side in one decade only to take the other in the next. The CIA masterminded the overthrow of the Shah of Iran, which enabled the Ayatollah Khomeini to assume power. Then we backed Saddam Hussein in Iraq with arms and weapons to wage war against Iran in order to counter the new threat we helped to create in Iran. We armed and trained Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in order to repel the Soviets, and the result was the Taliban and Al Queda. Then we had to invade Afghanistan in order to overthrow the Taliban and Osama’s terrorist followers. Such is the result of the politics of shifting expediency and self-interest, and the lack of a coherent foreign policy designed to foster democracy and economic well being in the countries we influence.

Is there a trend or identifiable pattern here in Afghanistan, in Iran or Iraq? Were not the power and threats of both Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein created or advanced by errant policies of the United States via direct intervention of the CIA? Why are we constantly going to war with states, factions or powers that we ourselves helped to create? Aren’t we playing a political form of Dr. Frankenstein OR Dr. Strangelove? Who or what is the cause of our growing international dilemma? Can we awake to the fact of our manipulation by powerful forces of darkness in time to avoid the coming nightmare?

I have answered all of these questions myself in the affirmative. How do you see them? How do you answer them? What actions do you need to take to do your part? How will you be a part of the problem or the solution?

Shouldn’t these and other questions like them be a part of a national dialogue that goes beyond political partisanship? Or is it impossible to divorce political leanings or limited self-interest from the discussion?

Perhaps the real issue is who is willing to look at these issues from the point of the general holistic interest, e.g., the greatest good for the greatest number over the longest time, and who will only see them from a limited self-interested, short term view of immediate gratification – altruism versus greed.

As previously stated it may prove that we as a people are not yet wise or spiritually evolved enough to resolve these questions and issues without catastrophic confrontations and consequences. We are at the center of so many converging political, environmental and sociological merging forces that it seems that huge numbers of people must be caught up in the whirlwind of consequences.

ATLANTIS: MYTH OR PROPHECY?

The question of whether or not we are spiritually and morally mature enough to solve these problems is still unanswered. Are we, like the people of mythological Atlantis, a people whose technology has so far outpaced spiritual wisdom that it is unable to avoid destruction? Has our technology and material development insured that life, or large portions of it, must perish? Can we gain spiritual perspectives in time to avoid the coming threats to so much of the world’s population?

Although I have no unqualified answers to these troubling questions, I am absolutely confident that one thing is true: Outside of eternal mercy, there is no escaping of the laws of cause and effect. These questions will be answered, at least in large degree, in the coming generation or two. They will be answered by the wisdom and depth of our political choices, locally, nationally and internationally. They will be settled by our priorities as exercised in our economic lives and choices of career paths. They will be determined on how we use our leisure time. They will be answered in the spiritual wisdom and choices that we, and most importantly, our elected officials and leaders, make. These questions will be largely decided by the quality of our leaders, our role models, our heroes, and our spokesmen.

Most importantly these coming crucial issues will be decided on the quality of the education we provide to our children and the values and ideals we instill in them. Together with the forgoing, the fate of our nation and of the world will hang on the quality of the public discussions and debates on these issues – or lack of them.

If what I have seen to this date did not leave me troubled and concerned for our immediate fate, I would not be writing this. My hope is that this voice might be added to the warnings of others, and become loud enough to be heard in time to matter. The sand has almost emptied from the hourglass. Time is running out.

SUMMARY

The military-industrial-technology complex, or corporatism, and modern neo-fascist merging of government and corporate power are approaching the world’s problems from a perspective of unenlightened financial self-interest. The corporate media has joined the neo-con corporate coalition, and spins the news to make it palatable or undisturbing to Americans in a time when hard facts and reality coverage are most needed. This media manipulation and corporate mind control is part of a more complex international network of financial interests and secret societies, among which the Illuminati, The Order, The Trilateral Commision, The Company, The Family, and even the Federal Reserve System, World Bank and International Monetary Fund, are just a few.

The USA is currently using its power to undercut the United Nations, NATO, and other multinational organizations whose success is essential if worldwide catastrophe is to be avoided. Unilateral force, or threat of force (bullyism) is the policy of the Bush administration and the PNAC that is its statement of principles, and those policies will not and cannot work, nor has there ever been a historical instance of their doing so over any test of time. Corporate money and power are being used to buy elections, and too many of our leaders are indebted to these corporate interests and powerful lobbies. Corporate money influences elections to the degree that makes it impossible to achieve impartial decisions based on the general welfare of either the world at large, or our own general citizenry.

Dramatic changes in election methods or dialogs are needed immediately, so that corporate money can not so easily sway people, smear honorable candidates, and in effect buy the government they want. The “best government money can buy” is not the government that will solve the problems that are threatening our civilization. Our citizens are going to have to make the choices between “guns and butter”, militarism and arms proliferation and our democratic freedoms - economic well-being, jobs, food, water, shelter, and even physical survival. These choices have already been poor for long enough to bring worldwide grief; the choices now have to do with grief limitation – harm reduction. Worldwide disarmament must happen or catastrophe is inevitable. A corollary to enabling disarmament is the evolving of an international democratic government with sovereign authority and the power enforce the peace and law. The national and international debate must be about how to best take the needed evolutionary steps to achieve this international federalism, which in turn means having governments committed to achieving this ideal. There are two divergent inevitables – worldwide disaster and economic collapse or worldwide representative government. Those are the choices toward which we can move. Which will it be?

However, it is essential to note that these choices cannot be made by the people under the present scheme of things. Unless the balance is restored between corporate interests and public welfare, these choices will be made for you, not by you. If that continues, then the fate of the world is bleak indeed, and the course of self-destruction will remain unchanged. Our civilization will become Atlantis retold. We will reenact the Titanic disaster. The iceberg cannot be avoided by a huge ship at the last moment. Those who are steering the ship stand to profit from the collision, and have insured themselves a lifeboat. Have you? Have your children or grandchildren? Are we leaving them in a sinking ship without lifeboats?

PERSONAL NOTES IN CONCLUSION

As a youngster I once chuckled at those who carried signs proclaiming the coming of “Armageddon”. “The End is Near”, or “Judgment Day is at Hand”, were so often seen or repeated that they were universally disdained. Today I am no longer chuckling. I’m now carrying a sign of a similar note of warning. Although I do not literally believe all of the biblical Revelation of John, (I think much of it has been edited and altered) I do see too much of it unfolding to remain aloof. John was shown a future vision of where godless materialism and selfishness would lead, and I have been convinced over a lifetime of the essential accuracy of that vision. I am also convinced that the solutions to the coming cataclysms lie in spiritualizing our thinking to embrace the idea of the parenthood of God and the brotherhood of all mankind.

You, your children and your grandchildren will have the final burdens of deciding at least a portion of the fate of large sectors of humanity. It is my conviction that as individuals we have one lifetime in which to choose survival or cessation or personality. A corollary to this is the inescapable conviction is that, as a society or collection of societies that encompass all of humanity, we are also approaching an end-times in terms of our choices – at least of those choices that are most overtly suicidal or self-destructive for the collective humanity on this earth. There are consequences to prior and present choices that will bring and end to the time for such destructive and unwise choices. To any that dare to look, that time is now.

All of the objective evidence that I can see points to an approaching end to the predominant use of violence and force to solve human planetary problems. Likewise I see the concomitant evolutionary ushering end of an age or era of peace and goodwill among men. This era will unfold in stages. Exactly how long or how widespread the pain and suffering from this figurative, and to a degree literal, death and rebirth will be remains to be seen. Also remaining to be seen is what precisely what form the rebirth or redirection of the remnant of humanity will take. Will we be able to salvage the best values and most worthy achievements of human civilization? Will large populations or portions thereof survive? Will the remnants of humanity be only a handful, restarting from a nuclear wasteland? How much of our technology will survive into the next age? How much of it is worthy of salvaging?

Individual physical lives can be shortened by violence or accident. I believe those of faith – good intent and purpose with eternal values and principles - will and do go on with those interrupted lives elsewhere. However, a purposeful Creator will not allow the certain or suicidal destruction of His collective creation, even if He allows that choice among his individual sons and daughters. The world will not totally end before its time, even if we should individually or collectively will it or attempt to cause its total destruction. Our Creator has a greater and grander purpose for our world than we can imagine.

Ultimately, because of my spiritual faith, however unconventional or nondenominational it may be, I am optimistic about the long-term course of human events. I am not so optimistic about the course of our more immediate futures that our political, technological and social decisions have mapped out for us. Only time, and the remaining choices available to us, will tell.

Disclaimer: This document is intended to be viewed or taken as a whole. It is clearly recognized that some statements taken out of context could be misinterpreted to give an impression exactly the opposite of my overall perceptions, views, questions and conclusions. Much of the above is a kind of “thinking out loud” undertaken by myself to help clarify my thinking on some of these finer points of economic issues. However my thinking in regards to the more obvious dangers and threats facing mankind today are all too vivid and real. Nothing short of a dramatic change in course can avoid the coming catastrophes.

Nothing herein should be interpreted to the effect that I am in any way against free market economies or the more benign forms of a humanely regulated capitalism. My arguments are precisely that what we call capitalism in America today does not represent classical free-market capitalist thinking at all, but a new form of manipulated markets that has not been previously clearly seen or articulated. It includes the various stock and bond markets but also includes the Federal Reserve, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and a host of other managers and players. It is a new kind of managed capitalism that must as yet answer the questions about for whom and by whom it is being managed. Questions are being asked about to what degrees or purposes the government manages our economy, or vice-versa, to what degree our corporate and economic forces manage our government.

A further note to concerned readers who might be inclined to pursue solutions to the dilemmas outlined herein: Although some of the writings above might be reflective of my personal philosophical and spiritual viewpoints, and they may have certain things in common with biblical attitudes and prophesies, they are not strictly biblical in orientation.

My philosophies have been shaped by a decades-long study of the Urantia Book. Like the Bible or other works of philosophy or spiritual thought, different people may read and interpret the same work in different ways. I’d recommend the Urantia Book to those that seek philosophical and spiritual solutions to the obvious problems facing the human race today. It was, in fact, written expressly for that singular purpose, a century or so ahead of its time. It was written as an expansion and correction of the traditional institutional religious doctrines and dogmas we have inherited down through the centuries, along with the inevitable human errors our current religious attitudes and thoughts contain. It was meant to correct the schisms and divisions that afflict religions today, and remedy the dilemma that, “A house divided cannot stand”. It claims that people of divergent religions, creeds and philosophies can unite about goals and objectives.

Those of any race, religion of creed, or none at all, might do well to look to the Urantia Book for the spiritual guidance with which to better approach solutions to the problems faced by humankind today. Indeed it contains an ageless and eternal wisdom and viewpoint that might upgrade and inspire all current religious thought on this planet.

But the opinions of this writer are his own, for better or worse. They have been formed over a lifetime of study and intellectual and spiritual inquiry, and do not necessarily reflect any one influence. The intellectual and philosophical influences in my life range from Homer to Hume, from Abraham and Moses to Martin Luther King, from Adam Smith to JM Keynes, from Shakespeare to Steven Spielberg and beyond. Perhaps most significantly they have been shaped by the restatement and enlargement of the life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, as related in the Urantia Book.

Of course there are many other sources of learning and wisdom that those who seek earnestly to answer to mountainous problems facing the world today might find. I only reference the UB as the pinnacle of knowledge and philosophy and spirituality to be found in any one book, or written source. However, yet another more personal and universally accessible source of answers resides within all those of good will and peaceful intent. There is a personal spark or spiritual fragment of our Creator that indwells each of us, no matter our culture, education or environment. It is a source that anyone can tap and no one has the power to deny you access. That is what Jesus meant with perhaps his most important message to humanity outside of the fact of the loving fatherhood of God and the resulting brotherhood of Mankind. That is that the realm of God lies within. You will always be well served if you look to your inner spiritual source for guidance. Everyone who seeks it has it; no one that wants it can lose it. That is your special gift from the universal God of all creation, and the irrevocable promise of salvation for all individuals and societies. No better guide could ever be found. However, if intellectual barriers exist between you and this inner spiritual source, or if one seeks answers not provided by traditional religious thought, then I would again recommend the Urantia Book.

Future Related Topics:

Democracy, Republicanism, Socialism, Communism, Fascism, Capitalism, Totalitarianism and other Isms: Political or Economic Systems? Pure Systems or Mixed?

The Privatization, or “Corporatizing” of American Government and Military: Pros and Cons.

Media Control: News, Entertainment, Propaganda or Spin?

Eisenhower and his warnings about the threat to American freedom from the military-industrial complex.

Taxation: Not a Question of Whether but of How Much and to Whom? - Progressive or Regressive Taxes

Terrorism: The Real Threats; Causes and Cures.

Unilateralism or Multi-Nationalism? The pros and cons of the United Nations or similar world organizations versus direct military interventions.

The Bush Doctrine of Pre-emptive Strikes: Pros, Cons, Implications and Repercussions for the USA and the World

The Reintroduction of Class Warfare by GW Bush: Rich Vs Poor - a Shrinking and Devitalized Middle Class. Do the Rich Get Richer and the Poor get Poorer? Why?

References:

http://www.frbsf.org/publications/education/greateconomists/grtschls.html

http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm

http://www.nationinstitute.org/tomdispatch/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=870

Read Between the Lines of Those 28 Missing Pages

Fascism Anyone?

TOMPAINE.com - All Spin All The Time

Global Development: Money creation for sustainable development

Alex Jones Presents Infowars.com to Fight the New World Order - Ron Paul's Address: Neo-Conned

Alex Jones Presents Infowars.com to Fight the New World Order --There's a War on For Your Mind

Dean for America: 16 QUESTIONS FOR PRESIDENT BUSH

http://www.mega.nu:8080/ampp/

"Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no Constitution, no Law, no Court can save it...Where do you stand Citizen?'' -Judge Learned Hand (1961)"

The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.'' -James Madison

"All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.'' -Joseph Conrad

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.'' -John F. Kennedy, 1962

"As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there's a twilight where everything remains seemingly unchanged, and it is in such twilight that we must be aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.'' -Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas

''No matter how far you've gone down the wrong road, turn back.'' -Turkish proverb

"People only see what they are prepared to see.''

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

''The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything. Except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands.''

-Oscar Wilde

"Our job is to give people not what they want, but what we decide they ought to have.'' -Richard Salant, former President of CBS News

"There ought to be limits to freedom. We're aware of the site, and this guy is just a garbage man.'' -George W. Bush, commenting on the website www.gwbush.com

"If this were a dictatorship, things would be a lot simpler. As long as I was the dictator. Heh heh heh.'' -George W. Bush, 2000-Dec-18, in Washington DC, on the occasion of a public appearance with Democratic Congressional leaders

"When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic.'' - Dresden James

"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.'' - George Orwell

"It is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts ... For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth, to know the worst, and to provide for it.'' - Patrick Henry

"Logical consequences are the scarecrows of fools and the beacons of wise men.'' -Thomas Henry Huxley (1825 - 1895)

"Most people stumble over the truth, now and then, but they usually manage to pick themselves up and go on, anyway.'' - Winston Churchill

``The Rothschilds, and that class of money-lenders of whom they are the representatives and agents---men who never think of lending a shilling to their next-door neighbors, for purposes of honest industry, unless upon the most ample security, and at the highest rate of interest---stand ready, at all times, to lend money in unlimited amounts to those robbers and murderers, who call themselves governments, to be expended in shooting down those who do not submit quietly to being robbed and enslaved.''-Lysander Spooner, 1870, in No Treason #6

"The best time to buy is when blood is running in the streets.'' - Baron Nathan Mayer de Rothschild

"The few who understand the system, will either be so interested in its profits, or so dependent on its favors, that there will be no opposition from that class. The great body of people, mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantages, will bear its burden without complaint.''
- Rothschild Brothers of London, 1863-Jun-25, in a letter to fellow members of the establishment

"It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.'' - Henry Ford, a man admired by Adolph Hitler

"One of the shrewdest ways for human predators to conquer their stronger victims is to steadily convince them with propaganda that they're still free...''
-Dr. N.A. Scott

“None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free.'' - Johann Von Goethe

``And do not forget the petty scoundrels in this regime; note their names, so that none will go free! They should not find it possible, having had their part in these abominable crimes, at the last minute to rally to another flag and then act as if nothing had happened!'' - From the fourth leaflet of the White Rose Resistance in Germany, 1942. Five students and a professor who wrote and distributed the leaflets were executed in 1943.

"A clique of U.S. industrialists is hell-bent to bring a fascist state to supplant our democratic government and is working closely with the fascist regime in Germany and Italy. I have had plenty of opportunity in my post in Berlin to witness how close some of our American ruling families are to the Nazi regime. Certain American industrialists had a great deal to do with bringing fascist regimes into being in both Germany and Italy. They extended aid to help Fascism occupy the seat of power, and they are helping to keep it there.'' - William E. Dodd, U.S. Ambassador to Germany, 1937, from Facts and Fascism, George Seldes, p. 122, and Trading with the Enemy, Charles Higham, p. 167

"The CIA, the State Department, and U.S. Army intelligence each created special programs for the specific purpose of bringing selected former Nazis and collaborators to the United States.... The government employed these men and women for their expertise in propaganda and psychological warfare, for work in American laboratories, and even as special guerrilla troops for deployment inside the USSR in the midst of a nuclear war.... Hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of such recruits were SS veterans; some had been officers of the bloody Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the Nazi party's security service.'' - Christopher Simpson, Blowback, 1988