Oil's energy contribution has declined by about 12% since 1999. The world's economies have also declined by about 12%. (Using conventional metrics, which are time delayed determinations, this will only be seen in hind sight). The massive destruction of asset values now occurring testifies to it happening.
Peak is well behind us, world economies have peaked and will continue to decline.
Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 11:50 am Post subject: American coup in a democratic tinderbox
We've all seen it coming, we saw their armies massing at the gates of American democracy, but today was the day that the Bankers pulled the trigger. They unleashed their financial shock and awe on the US people and the world. They effectively took over American democracy in the last 24 hours. They have Congress writing legislation as we speak to buy all their bad loans, which everyone admits are "toxic" and have no value. They have committed billions of tax dollars to insure previously uninsured money market funds after private insurance like AIG pulled out due to "market risk." They changed the SEC rules so that the stock of their companies cannot decrease in value when they should. They have effectively sealed their position at the helm of the United States, which cannot be referred to as a democracy, because change is a natural part of democracy and capitalism.
These are men who have no national loyalty except to the electronic dollars stored in their laptops. There is certainly no religious moral which allows these men to break the backs of the American taxpayers with their usurious toxic loans or break the backs of the world's poor by exporting their usurious loans throughout the world. There certainly is no capitalist moral which justifies insulating them from failing as institutions, and there certainly is no democratic moral which allows them access to the Congress, which is supposed to be representative and guardians of the people.
The American people now cry, as the poor have cried for years. Year after year, election after election, the American people cry out for a "change" that never comes, despite all the presidential campaign themes and slogans. Congressional approval ratings have dropped to about 9%. I wonder if they can go any lower statistically. The President's rating is not much better, and is at historical lows. The only surprising thing about the these low ratings is that these imperialist now holding Washington and NYC are allowed to continue sleeping so well in expensive mansions, send their kids to the best schools, eat at the finest restaurants, and collect millions in bonuses, all paid by the taxpayers. They didn't earn that money, we did.
America is a democratic tinderbox. All it would take is "one shot heard around the world", and the ghost of Robspierre would rise. The flood gates of democratic hell would let loose and put these men on the gallows where they belong. Just one video on MSM news of any Federal Reserve Bank burning would set in motion an unstoppable chain of events removing these men from power and restore power to the people where it belongs.
What would Jefferson think of Paulson's bailouts?
Quote:
It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.
Thomas Jefferson
After 200 years of democracy, Jefferson would not be surprised by Paulson's coup.
Quote:
Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.
Thomas Jefferson
And, Jefferson would not be surprised that it was the bankers who took over. Jefferson once said the greatest thread to American democracy would be to turn it over to the bankers. Do we need any further proof?
Quote:
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.
Thomas Jefferson
3rd president of US (1743 - 1826)
I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.
Thomas Jefferson
Please do not confuse voting this upcoming November, or voting in any November, with living in a democracy. That fallacy of confusing voting with living in a democracy is best summed up in this quote attributed to non other than the dictator Stalin:
Quote:
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing.
Those who count the votes decide everything."
Jefferson's worst fear, that the bankers would take over, has now come to fruition. In one month, they have saddled the American taxpayer with trillions of Freddie and Fannie debt, even though they told everyone these were sound institutions. They bailed out at taxpayer expense an insurance company, they somehow they claimed was sound, just couldn't pay their bills. They literally printed money that they didn't have to loan. They suspended shorting banking stocks to prop them up, even though the toxic waste on their books makes the banks worthless, and, now they are going to have the American taxpayer buy all the toxic waste on their books, yet no one will go to jail, no banker willb be forced to give up their lavish lifestyle. They sell these bailouts with fear, arguing that its necessary to prevent catastrophe, but to who? The bankers? Who really cares.
These bankers aren't Americans. They believe in globalization. They have loyalty to no one and no values.
Quote:
Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.
Thomas Jefferson
These bankers are obviously not Christian, because they charge usurious rates on sinful lengths of time. Doesn't the Bible preclude usury? Doesn't it say debt forgiveness after 7years? Why 30 year loans? They certainly aren't muslim, because they prohibit usury as well. And, they certainly aren't capitalist, because the banks are not allowed to fail. They are imperialist imposing a tyranny under the ruse of a democracy.
America is no longer a democracy. It has become a fascist tyranny ruled by a bankers cabol led by Paulson, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and Bernanke.
Quote:
I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
Thomas Jefferson
We were warned by people other than Jefferson. Read the words of former Vice President Wallace, made during WWII, when he said the greatest threat to America was not Nazi sympathizers in the US, but the take over of American democracy by corporations.
Quote:
But, again, this is not America’s first encounter with fascism.
In early 1944, the New York Times asked Vice President Henry Wallace to, as Wallace noted, “write a piece answering the following questions: What is a fascist? How many fascists have we? How dangerous are they?”
Vice President Wallace's answer to those questions was published in The New York Times on April 9, 1944, at the height of the war against the Axis powers of Germany and Japan. See how much you think his statements apply to our society today.
“The really dangerous American fascist,” Wallace wrote, “… is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.”
In his strongest indictment of the tide of fascism he saw rising in America, Wallace added, “They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.” By these standards, a few of today’s weapons for keeping the common people in eternal subjection include NAFTA, the World Trade Organization, union-busting, cutting worker benefits while increasing CEO pay, elimination of worker benefits, security and pensions, rapacious credit card interest, and outsourcing of jobs — not to mention the largest prison system in the world.
Read more on modern fascism here and then tell me why America is still called a democracy.
Quote:
Living Under Fascism
By Rev. Davidson Loehr
11/07/04 -- -- You may wonder why anyone would try to use the word “fascism” in a serious discussion of where America is today. It sounds like cheap name-calling, or melodramatic allusion to a slew of old war movies. But I am serious. I don’t mean it as name-calling at all. I mean to persuade you that the style of governing into which America has slid is most accurately described as fascism, and that the necessary implications of this fact are rightly regarded as terrifying. That’s what I am about here. And even if I don’t persuade you, I hope to raise the level of your thinking about who and where we are now, to add some nuance and perhaps some useful insights.
The word comes from the Latin word “Fasces,” denoting a bundle of sticks tied together. The individual sticks represented citizens, and the bundle represented the state. The message of this metaphor was that it was the bundle that was significant, not the individual sticks. If it sounds un-American, it’s worth knowing that the Roman Fasces appear on the wall behind the Speaker’s podium in the chamber of the US House of Representatives.
Still, it’s an unlikely word. When most people hear the word "fascism" they may think of the racism and anti-Semitism of Mussolini and Hitler. It is true that the use of force and the scapegoating of fringe groups are part of every fascism. But there was also an economic dimension of fascism, known in Europe during the 1920s and '30s as "corporatism," which was an essential ingredient of Mussolini’s and Hitler’s tyrannies. So-called corporatism was adopted in Italy and Germany during the 1930s and was held up as a model by quite a few intellectuals and policy makers in the United States and Europe.
As I mentioned a few weeks ago (in “The Corporation Will Eat Your Soul”), Fortune magazine ran a cover story on Mussolini in 1934, praising his fascism for its ability to break worker unions, disempower workers and transfer huge sums of money to those who controlled the money rather than those who earned it.
Few Americans are aware of or can recall how so many Americans and Europeans viewed economic fascism as the wave of the future during the 1930s. Yet reviewing our past may help shed light on our present, and point the way to a better future. So I want to begin by looking back to the last time fascism posed a serious threat to America.
In Sinclair Lewis's 1935 novel "It Can't Happen Here," a conservative southern politician is helped to the presidency by a nationally syndicated radio talk show host. The politician - Buzz Windrip - runs his campaign on family values, the flag, and patriotism. Windrip and the talk show host portray advocates of traditional American democracy — those concerned with individual rights and freedoms — as anti-American. That was 69 years ago.
One of the most outspoken American fascists from the 1930s was economist Lawrence Dennis. In his 1936 book, The Coming American Fascism — a coming which he anticipated and cheered — Dennis declared that defenders of “18th-century Americanism” were sure to become "the laughing stock of their own countrymen." The big stumbling block to the development of economic fascism, Dennis bemoaned, was "liberal norms of law or constitutional guarantees of private rights."
So it is important for us to recognize that, as an economic system, fascism was widely accepted in the 1920s and '30s, and nearly worshiped by some powerful American industrialists. And fascism has always, and explicitly, been opposed to liberalism of all kinds.
Mussolini, who helped create modern fascism, viewed liberal ideas as the enemy. "The Fascist conception of life," he wrote, "stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with the State. It is opposed to classical liberalism [which] denied the State in the name of the individual; Fascism reasserts the rights of the State as expressing the real essence of the individual." (In 1932 Mussolini wrote, with the help of Giovanni Gentile, an entry for the Italian Encyclopedia on the definition of fascism. You can read the whole entry at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/mussolini-fascism.html)
Mussolini thought it was unnatural for a government to protect individual rights: The essence of fascism, he believed, is that government should be the master, not the servant, of the people.
Still, fascism is a word that is completely foreign to most of us. We need to know what it is, and how we can know it when we see it.
In an essay coyly titled “Fascism Anyone?,” Dr. Lawrence Britt, a political scientist, identifies social and political agendas common to fascist regimes. His comparisons of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Suharto, and Pinochet yielded this list of 14 “identifying characteristics of fascism.” (The following article is from Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 23, Number 2. Read it at http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/britt_23_2.htm) See how familiar they sound.
How do we deal with the bankers that will saddle us and our children with sinful usury to amass personal fortunes and build their own personal mansions, dine at the finest restaurants and send their kids to the finest schools?
Thomas Jefferson also said that:
Quote:
Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state.
Thomas Jefferson
3rd president of US (1743 - 1826)
The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.
Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 1:17 pm Post subject: Re: American coup in a democratic tinderbox
Well written. Agree with all points (except the religious implications).
My question has been, and will continue to be, "why should I lift a finger to help?"
What would come of it?
Even if you could lead a peaceful revolution and change things, what would be the point?
A few years of decency before the bankers take over again?
The problem is that people are genetically hard wired to live for the present, and that includes taking on debt to have now what one can not afford based upon one's means.
So the bankers are the perfect predator, because they prey on the fundamental, virtually irremovable failure of their brethren.
The genetics aren't going to change anytime in the next few thousand years, so why bother? _________________ Massive Human Dieoff must occur as a result of Peak Oil. Many more than half will die. It will occur everywhere, including where you live. If you fail to recognize this, then your odds of living move toward the "going to die" group.
Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 1:17 pm Post subject: Re: American coup in a democratic tinderbox
Indeed, a great post and historical information that should be common knowledge. But as far as expecting, or even stimulating, action from your fellow American's? Don't hold your breath. I see absolutely no evidence that the vast majority of American citizens are troubling their beautiful minds with current affairs. _________________ Gravity is not a force, it is a boundary layer.
Everything is coincident.
Love: the state of suspended anticipation.
To get any appreciable distance from the Earth in
a sensible amount of time, you must lie.
Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 2:31 pm Post subject: Re: American coup in a democratic tinderbox
I expect nothing from those who have given up, nor do I ask anything of them. I expect nothing from anyone but myself. I made that post to others out there who feel the same way. They know what to do with it.
Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 3:46 pm Post subject: Re: American coup in a democratic tinderbox
seahorse2 wrote:
I expect nothing from those who have given up, nor do I ask anything of them. I expect nothing from anyone but myself. I made that post to others out there who feel the same way. They know what to do with it.
I said this in the Republican convention thread, but I'll repeat it here. What do you do? How do you stop it? It's not that I'm not willing, but darned if I have a clue what to do. Seems like most American dissidents are completely caught in the epic value of repeated spectacular failure and self deprecation. Getting tear gassed and beaten on by the cops doesn't fix this. You tell me what does, and I'm there. _________________ "We were standing on the edges
Of a thousand burning bridges
Sifting through the ashes every day
What we thought would never end
Now is nothing more than a memory
The way things were before
I lost my way" - OCMS
Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 5:12 pm Post subject: Re: American coup in a democratic tinderbox
RdSnt wrote:
Indeed, a great post and historical information that should be common knowledge. But as far as expecting, or even stimulating, action from your fellow American's? Don't hold your breath. I see absolutely no evidence that the vast majority of American citizens are troubling their beautiful minds with current affairs.
Believe me that we're not holding out hope that the Canadians are going to do anything but watch from the edge of the whirlpool until they are sucked in on top of us. I'm just watching for the moment that the one way mirror on the border suddenly becomes reflective, and the silly grins turn to looks of horror.
Given that the Canada has entered recession officially already, I'm not sure I get the whole grinning thing anyway. _________________ Massive Human Dieoff must occur as a result of Peak Oil. Many more than half will die. It will occur everywhere, including where you live. If you fail to recognize this, then your odds of living move toward the "going to die" group.
Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 7:02 pm Post subject: Re: American coup in a democratic tinderbox
If all Americans keep taking on debt to buy guns and bullets, I don't think the bankers have much of a chance at all.
One option to scare the living poop out of this pig face mother farkers is to take out loans and buy bullets!
That's the way America was created and that's the way it will be recreated. Of course we never have to pull the triger util they banker boyz come knock'n for their money.
It's kind of a MAD (mutually assured distrution) mentality only on a smaller scale
I'm not even a gun advocate but I'm glad they're out there!!!
edit: the server changed all my bad words.... _________________ got cash?
Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 9:07 pm Post subject: Re: American coup in a democratic tinderbox
I notice even Obama, "Mr. Change", is all onboard in support of the financial bailouts. See National Post
" WASHINGTON -- Throughout the U.S. presidential campaign, Democrat Barack Obama has sought at every turn to link his Republican rival, Senator John McCain, to President George W. Bush.
But with one senior politician warning the nation was just "days away from a complete meltdown of our financial system" it was Mr. Obama who sided Friday with Mr. Bush's plan for a potential $1-trillion government bailout of the U.S. banking industry. With the financial crisis testing partisan allegiances and putting the presidential candidates on treacherous political terrain, Obama said he would "fully support" the Bush administration's effort to prevent a collapse of financial markets."
I still think it the ultimate irony, that the U.S. cannot find a way to fund universal health care for people but now has embarked on an even bigger price tag program of public funded life support for banks.
What are the real priorities for the government? I guess we know now.
Last edited by Denny on Fri Sep 19, 2008 10:47 pm; edited 1 time in total
Joined: Oct 15, 2004 Posts: 2258 Location: Arkansas
Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 9:35 pm Post subject: Re: American coup in a democratic tinderbox
There are simple things individual things any peace lover can do to do their part to break this system:
(1) Quit using credit cards;
(2) Quit using banks;
(3) Don't vote in Federal elections, it is a farce;
(4) Don't contribute at all to any of the political parties, they are a joke;
(5) Stop any and all unnecessary spending;
(6) Continually email blast your congressmen and senators and tell them what a joke they are for bailing out banks;
There are more active things that can be done, but the above are the easy and most obvious. If you haven't done those, then you're not doing your part.
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