The politics of greed is what keeps this world wrapped in corruption. If you want to stick around for a while longer, I suggest you educate yourself and try to do something constructive to help save what little good, honesty, and trust we have left.

A motto for us old vets: Take one with you!

Use your Go Back and Go Forward commands to get to where you were in a previous file.

Go to Home

Highest Go To numbers are the latest Links of all coruption pages.


Go to 12540
http://money.cnn.com/2008/01/30/news/international/okeefe_rogers.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2008013103
February 3 2008: 7:07 AM ESTEmail | Print Type Size
'It's going to be much worse'
Famed investor Jim Rogers sees hard times ahead for the United States - and a big opportunity looming in China.
By Brian O'Keefe, senior editor
NEW YORK (Fortune) -- You might expect Jim Rogers to be gloating a little bit. After all, the famed investor has been predicting a recession in the U.S. economy for months and shorting the shares of now-tanking Wall Street investment banks for even longer. And with fears of a recession sparking both a worldwide market sell-off and emergency action from Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, Rogers again looks prescient - just as he has over the past few years as the China-driven commodities boom he predicted almost a decade ago began kicked into high gear. But when I reached him by phone in Singapore the other day there was little hint of celebration in his voice. Instead, he took a serious tone.

"I'm extremely worried," he says. "I have been for a while, but I just see things getting much worse this time around than I expected." To Rogers, a longtime Fed critic, Bernanke's decision to ride to the market's rescue with a 75-basis-point cut in the Fed's benchmark rate only a week before its scheduled meeting (at which time they cut it another 50 basis points) is the latest sign that the central bank isn't willing to provide the fiscal discipline that he thinks the economy desperately needs.

"Conceivably we could have just had recession, hard times, sliding dollar, inflation, etc., but I'm afraid it's going to be much worse," he says. "Bernanke is printing huge amounts of money. He's out of control and the Fed is out of control. We are probably going to have one of the worst recessions we've had since the Second World War. It's not a good scene."

Rogers looks at the Fed's willingness to add liquidity to an already inflationary environment and sees the history of the 1970s repeating itself. Does that mean stagflation? "It is a real danger and, in fact, a probability."

Where the opportunities are
The 1970s, of course, was when Rogers first made his reputation - and a lot of money - as George Soros's original partner in the Quantum Fund. And despite his gloomy outlook for the U.S., he still sees opportunities in today's world. In fact, he sees the recent correction as a potential gift for investors who know where to head in global markets: China.

Rogers has been fascinated with China ever since he rode his motorcycle across the country two decades ago, and he's been a full-fledged China bull for several years. In December he published his latest book, an investor-friendly tome titled "A Bull in China: How to Invest Profitably in the World's Greatest Market." And that same month he sold his beloved Manhattan townhouse for $15.75 million to a daughter of oil tycoon H. L. Hunt and moved his family full-time to Singapore - the better to be closer to the action in Beijing and Shanghai. (He bought the New York mansion 30 years ago for just over $100,000; not a bad return on his investment.)

But in a November interview I conducted with Rogers, he admitted that he was rooting for a serious correction in China to cool off an overheating market and bring back prices to a reasonable level. With the bourses in Shanghai and Hong Kong both some 20% off their recent highs as of late January, Rogers says he's starting to consider new investments.

"I'm delighted to see what's happening in Shanghai and Hong Kong," he says. "As I've said, if things hadn't cooled off, the Chinese market was in danger of turning into a bubble. I find this most encouraging. The government's been doing its best to try and cool things off. Mainly they've been trying to deal with real estate but it's having an effect on stocks, too. I would suspect the correction isn't quite over in China. But I'm gearing up. I didn't put in any orders for tomorrow but I'm starting to prepare my list of things to buy in China. Whether I buy this week or this month or this quarter, who knows. But I'm starting to think about buying new shares in China for the first time in a while. And I'm not thinking about buying in America."

Ultimately, Rogers doesn't think that the troubles in the United States will be much of a drag on the prospects for the People's Republic. "Anybody who sells to Sears (SHLD, Fortune 500) or Wal-Mart (WMT, Fortune 500) is going to be affected, without question," he says. "Some parts of the Chinese economy are going to be untouched, however. They won't even know America's in recession. They won't care if America falls off the face of the earth."

“We are probably going to have one of the worst recessions we've had since the Second World War. It's not a good scene.”
Jim Rogers
What's on his China buying list? Rogers says it will depend in large part on which stocks come down to the right level, but he's keeping his eye on certain high-growth sectors including tourism, agriculture, power generation and airlines.

The pullback in commodity prices on recession fears hasn't dampened his enthusiasm for resources investments, either. More like a cyclical correction in the middle of a long-term bull market. "Certainly some commodities are going to be affected," says Rogers. "But it's not as if the markets haven't figured this out. Remember the old expression: 'Dr. Copper is the best economist in the world.' Well, Dr. Nickel and Dr. Zinc figured out a few months ago what I thought I had figured out, that we were going to have a recession. Nickel is already down 50%. Other commodities may fall more. But I don't see the economics of agriculture being much affected at all. Maybe there will be a few less cotton shirts bought. Maybe there will be a few less tires bought. But the supply is under more duress than the demand."

Once again Rogers draws on the 1970s in his analysis. "Think about the story of gold in the '70s," he says. "Gold went up 600%, and then it started correcting. It went down nearly every month for two years, nearly 50% from the high point. And everybody said, 'Well, that's the end of the gold market. It was just a fluke. It's over.' It scared everybody out. And then gold turned around and went up 850% from that level. This is what happens in markets. But the fundamentals of the secular bull market in commodities are not over any more now than they were for gold in the '70s."

Where he expects the pain to be most intense is on Wall Street. He says he hasn't covered his short positions on the investment banks or Citigroup (C, Fortune 500) and won't for a while. "Those things are going to go way, way, way down," says Rogers. "The investment banks are down now because of the problems in the credit market. Wait until the effects of the bear market come along. If you just go back and look at other bear markets, investment bank stocks have gone down enormously. We haven't gotten to that stage yet. It's going to bring their balance sheets under duress. This is going to get much worse. But that's where there have been excesses for the past decade or so. And whenever you have a bear market come along the great excesses of the previous period are the ones that get cleaned out the most."

He'll be watching - from Singapore.



Go to 12539
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-koehler/defeat-without-end_b_84253.html
Defeat Without End
Posted January 31, 2008 | 10:28 AM (EST)

Read More: Vets Iraq Bush Cost Economy, Breaking Politics News

"Many in this chamber understand that America must not fail in Iraq, because you understand that the consequences of failure would be grievous and far-reaching . . ."

There it is again, that choking lie, so smoothly administered -- with just enough fear to help America gag down all that righteousness.

President Bush told it again in his final State of the Union address the other night, of course. What choice did he have? The truth, coming from him at this point, would be . . . too weird, too offensive, impossible to comprehend.

But the truth is that we've already failed in Iraq, and throughout the Middle East and Central Asia -- failed with consequences beyond reckoning. God knows someone will have to take a swig of political courage and acknowledge it one of these days, simply to stop the lie -- the lies, a governmental cluster bomb of them -- from doing further harm.

It's common knowledge now that we "went to war on a lie" -- the WMD scam -- but what isn't common knowledge is how the war is sustained on a daily basis by lies and partial truths and desperate, behind-the-scenes financial damage control. The war is all weapons systems and public relations, with the reality of wrecked countries and wrecked lives and a hemorrhaging of the national treasury suspended in media hoodoo and denial.

Consider the number 72,000. This number -- of total U.S. battlefield casualties in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, through Jan. 5, 2008 -- is simple enough, but as I ponder the fact that Paul Sullivan and his organization, Veterans for Common Sense, had to wrest it from the Department of Defense with a Freedom of Information Act request, and the fact that the only media outlet to pick up on it so far is the Scottish newspaper The Herald, I begin to grasp the extent of the deception in place sustaining the war on terror.

The reason that the casualty totals reported are far lower, Sullivan explained to me, is that the Defense Department releases the stats on only one category of battlefield casualty to the media, the number of GIs "wounded" in action, that is, harmed by the instrumentation of war: bullet, shrapnel or knife.

A GI who cracks his head on the windshield of his Humvee in a crash, though he may have suffered brain damage and had to be evacuated from the battlefield, is considered "injured," not "wounded," Sullivan explained, and thus doesn't show up in the figure the DoD releases and the media misleadingly report. Likewise, a GI who suffers a heart attack, or, let's say, one of those desert mystery illnesses, or a severe emotional collapse, is "ill," not "wounded," and is also MIA from the official casualty count. And in this way does the war remain a tad more statistically palatable to a distracted public.

"This administration has a concerted plan to conceal the human and financial costs of these two wars to maintain public support," said Sullivan, a Gulf War 1 vet and former Veterans Administration project manager who was blowing the whistle on the shoddy quality of vets' health care long before the Washington Post "broke" the Walter Reed scandal a year ago.

"There are some in the VA -- top political appointees -- who are fundamentally opposed to providing health care to vets," Sullivan went on, talking about the deeper deceptions of the war on terror that keep the political debate focused on vague future "consequences of failure" rather than the present-day consequences of a criminally inept, shoot-from-the-hip foreign policy of aggression.

It is at this level of deception that things get horrific: in the denial of care for physically and, especially, emotionally wounded vets -- men and women suffering from the private hell of post-traumatic stress disorder.

"VA hospitals and clinics have already treated 263,909 unplanned patients from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars," according to a Vets for Common Sense press release. "On top of that, VA reported 245,034 unanticipated disability claims from veterans of the two wars."

Note well the words "unplanned" and "unanticipated." This facet of the Bush administration's lack of planning for its invasions has so far escaped significant notice. Apparently the neocon brain trust expected such a cakewalk that the costs and logistics of GI medical care weren't taken into account. Sullivan said he fully expects the VA to face as many as 700,000 patient claims -- including staggering numbers of PTSD claims as our battle-weary troops "deploy for a third or fourth combat tour in an escalating war that surrounds our troops with 360-degree combat 24 hours per day" -- which could run up a tab of $700 billion. The only way to control this monster expense is routine claim denial.

"This administration is so absolutely corrupt, incompetent and malevolent, it pales anything that came before it," Sullivan said. "Why is our economy tanking? The war, the war, the war."

Note particularly that the human and financial costs Sullivan and others are making are not "projections" for an endless war but estimates based on where things stand at the moment. But this is a war we can keep on losing into the indefinite future.



Go to 12538
http://www.rense.com/general80/mroe.htm
Illegals Costing US Taxpayers
More Than Iraq War
2-4-8

1. $11 Billion to $22 billion is spent on welfare to illegal aliens each year. http://tinyurl.com/zob77

2. $2.2 Billion dollars a year is spent on food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens. http://www.cisorg/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html

3. $2.5 Billion dollars a year is spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens. http://www.cisorg/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html

4. $12 Billion dollars a year is spent on primary and secondary school education for children here illegally and they cannot speak a word of English http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.0.html

5. $17 Billion dollars a year is spent for education for the American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

6. $3 Million Dollars a DAY is spent to incarcerate illegal aliens. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

7. 30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal aliens. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

8. $90 Billion Dollars a year is spent on illegal aliens for Welfare and Social Services by the American taxpayers. http://premium.cnn.com/TRANSCIPTS/0610/29/ldt.01.html

9. $200 Billion Dollars a year in suppressed American wages are caused by the illegal aliens. http://transcripts..cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

10. The illegal aliens in the United States have a crime rate that's two-and-a-half times that of white non-illegal aliens. In particular, their children, are going to make a huge additional crime problem in the US. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0606/12/ldt.01.html

11. During the year of 2005 there were 4 to 10 MILLION illegal aliens that crossed our Southern Border also, as many as 19,500 illegal aliens from Terrorist Countries. Millions of pounds of drugs, cocaine, meth, heroin and marijuana, crossed into the U. S from the Southern border. Homeland Security Report. http://tinyurl.com/t9sht

12 The National Policy Institute, "estimated that the total cost of mass deportation would be between $206 and $230 billion or an average cost of between $41 and $46 billion annually over a five year period."http://www.nationalpolicyinstitute.org/pdf/deportation.pdf

13. In 2006 illegal aliens sent home $45 BILLION in remittances back to their countries of origin. http://www.rense.com/general75/niht.htm

14. "The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration: Nearly One Million Sex Crimes Committed by Illegal Immigrants In The United States". http://www.drdsk.com/articleshtml


Total cost is a whooping... $338.3 BILLION A YEAR!!!

If this doesn't bother you then just delete the message, but on the other hand, if it does raise the hair on the back of your neck, then forward it.

Snopes is provided for doubters:
Go to 12537
http://www.snopes.com/politics/immigration/bankofamerica.asp



Go to 12536
http://www.kevinmacdonald.net/Blog-Heilbrunn.htm
Kevin MacDonald Blog
The Neocons as a Hostile Conservative (!) Elite

January 24,2008

I haven't read Jacob Heilbrunn's book on the neocons yet, but I'm not sure I need to after seeing Philip Weiss's review. Weiss's review makes it clear that Heilbrunn's book corroborates several of the themes in my writing on the neocons and on Jewish intellectual and political movements generally.

First, neoconservatism is a Jewish movement. That should have been clear to everyone by now, but references to the Jewish basis of the movement have been noticeably missing from much of the mainstream media, to the point that Bill Kristol was introduced as a columnist at the New York Times as simply a "conservative." This is critical because the neocons have now become the conservative establishment. When Kristol (or Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity) hold forth at Fox News, most people have no idea that they are tuning into the public face of a fundamentally Jewish movement that elbowed out more traditional conservatives.

Secondly, Jewish neocons not only have a strong Jewish identity, they also have strong Jewish interests. This is obvious from their involvement in pro-Israel activism, their personal relationships with Israeli leaders, and close ties with other Jews and with the wider Jewish community. In fact, I have argued that the neocons are more strongly identified as Jews than the mainstream liberal/left Jews — that the neocons form the vanguard of the Jewish community. After all, neocons were the first segment of the Jewish community to strongly condemn the USSR, both for its domestic anti-Semitism and for its alliances with Arab governments. Prominent neocons like Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz began their political careers by making alliances with Cold War hawks like Henry Jackson This was at a time when the Jewish left was prominently involved in defending the USSR, apparently blind to the fact that the status of Jews as an elite in the USSR had changed greatly following World War II.

And the neocons are notorious for their strong ties to the most extreme racialist and nationalist segments of Israeli society — elements that the mainstream liberal/left Jewish community probably wishes would disappear or at least be less visible. (Hence the uproar over Christiane Amanpour's God's Jewish Warriors.) Indeed, the Jewish liberal/left has a huge blind spot, continuing to pursue its leftist multicultural agenda in the U.S. while ignoring the fact that the organized Jewish community is deeply complicit in dispossessing the Palestinians and erecting a racialist, apartheid state in Israel. As Weiss has noted elsewhere, "Steve Rabinowitz, Clinton friend, told me this year that if anyone did a study of how much [Democrat] money comes from Jews, it would fuel conspiracy theories." The Jewish liberal/left lavishly supports Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, but makes no attempt to wrest control of the pro-Israel lobby from the hands of what James Petras terms the "reactionary minority of American Jews" who head the major American Jewish organizations.

But more interestingly, Heilbrunn points to the “lifelong antipathy toward the patrician class among the neocons … [that] prompted them to create their own parallel establishment.” In this regard, the neocons are entirely within the American Jewish mainstream. As I noted in a previous blog (also commenting on Philip Weiss), "Jews have become an elite, but an elite that does not identify with its subjects — a hostile, estranged but very wealthy elite that still sees themselves as outsiders." And along with the American Jewish mainstream, the neocons have been vital players in the establishment of a variety of policies opposed to the interests and attitudes of the American majority, most egregiously unrestricted immigration which has successfully altered the ethnic composition of the country. Indeed, neoconservative Ben Wattenberg famously wrote that "The non-Europeanization of America is heartening news of an almost transcendental quality."

This hostility toward the traditional peoples and culture of America among people calling themselves conservatives is striking — the antithesis of normal and natural conservative tendencies. As Sam Francis noted, what the neocons dislike about traditional conservatives is simply that they "are conservative at all":

There are countless stories of how neoconservatives have succeeded in entering conservative institutions, forcing out or demoting traditional conservatives, and changing the positions and philosophy of such institutions in neoconservative directions…. Writers like M. E. Bradford, Joseph Sobran, Pat Buchanan, and Russell Kirk, and institutions like Chronicles, the Rockford Institute, the Philadelphia Society, and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute have been among the most respected and distinguished names in American conservatism. The dedication of their neoconservative enemies to driving them out of the movement they have taken over and demonizing them as marginal and dangerous figures has no legitimate basis in reality. It is clear evidence of the ulterior aspirations of those behind neoconservatism to dominate and subvert American conservatism from its original purposes and agenda and turn it to other purposes…. What neoconservatives really dislike about their “allies” among traditional conservatives is simply the fact that the conservatives are conservatives at all—that they support “this notion of a Christian civilization,” as Midge Decter put it, that they oppose mass immigration, ... that they entertain doubts or strong disagreement over American foreign policy in the Middle East, that they oppose reckless involvement in foreign wars and foreign entanglements, and that, in company with the Founding Fathers of the United States, they reject the concept of a pure democracy and the belief that the United States is or should evolve toward it.

Francis, S. (2004). The neoconservative subversion. In B. Nelson (ed.), “Neoconservatism.” Occasional Papers of the Conservative Citizens’ Foundation, Issue Number Six, 6–12. St. Louis: Conservative Citizens’ Foundation, p. 9.


That the New York Times can call Kristol a conservative without shame or irony is a striking commentary on the death of American conservatism.

There are several other themes highlighted in Weiss's review that are worth mentioning because they are typical of other Jewish intellectual and political movements. Heilbrunn describes neocon "cabals" in the State Department and in academic departments at elite universities. This is a reference to Jewish ethnic networking. In general, all of the important Jewish intellectual and political movements — from psychoanalysis and Boasian anthropology to neoconservatism — have a mutually reinforcing core of Jews centered around charismatic leaders. In the case of the neocons, individuals such as Leo Strauss, Richard Perle, and Norman Podhoretz have played this role. Neoconservative cabals have been largely successful in controlling or at least heavily influencing elite institutions in academia, the government, think tanks, and the media.




And finally, the neocons are prime examples of another important theme of Jewish intellectual life — self-deception. Weiss writes:

The reader is left with the shadowy sense that the neocons have a pro-Israel agenda that they are not upfront about. But it isn’t a conspiracy, Heilbrunn warns. The neocons have convinced themselves that the U.S. and Israel have congruent interests. “They just believe this stuff. They’re not agents,” an anonymous source tells him, speaking of Cheney aide David Wurmser, who is married to an Israeli.


Married to an Israeli. The neocons may believe it, but the rest of us need not be so foolish. For example, Douglas Feith is depicted by Heilbrunn as having published a letter defending the capture of the West Bank while still a teenager. Feith has also been credibly charged with spying for Israel, and was deeply involved in the disinformation used by the U.S. government to justify the invasion of Iraq. He has close ties to the settler movement, and was a participant in the notorious "A Clean Break" paper that advised the Israeli government that removing Saddam Hussein should be an Israeli strategic goal. The authors of this report speak as Jews and Israelis, not as U.S. citizens: “Our claim to the land—to which we have clung for hope for 2000 years—is legitimate and noble.”

European Americans may have a difficult time processing all of this. Their individualism and their own fragile and beleaguered sense of ethnicity make them less likely to attribute ethnic motives to others. And there is an imposing edifice of taboos surrounding even the mention of Jewish influence, much less anything that hints that Israel is the first loyalty of Jewish neocons — an edifice aggressively maintained by the organized Jewish community. But the rather unpleasant facts are staring European Americans in the face, even if the New York Times insists on calling them conservatives.



Go to 12535
http://www.rense.com/general80/diss.htm
Methodists Renew Push For
Divestment From Israel
Battle Lines Drawn Between Jewish Groups & Protestant Churches
By Nathan Guttman
Forward - NY Newspaper
2-2-8

Tensions are re-emerging between Jewish organizations and some mainline Protestant churches in the wake of a renewed drive for churches to divest from companies doing business with Israel.

The United Methodist Church opened discussions last Friday on a resolution calling for divestment from Caterpillar, the tractor manufacturer, because the company supplies Israel with bulldozers used in building the separation barrier and in demolishing Palestinian homes. The divestment resolution comes only months after the publication of a church-sponsored report referring to the creation of the State of Israel as the "original sin."

Relations with the Presbyterian Church (USA) are also strained, following remarks by church officials criticizing Israel because of the Gaza closure. A recent study by an affiliate of the Presbyterian Church called on American Jews to "get a life" instead of focusing on defending Israeli policies.

"This reflects a very disturbing trend in these churches," said Ethan Felson, assistant executive director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. "These developments are a result of work of several very wicked forces that play in the church."

The divestment campaign, thought by many in the Jewish community to be dormant, is still active among mainline Protestant churches and is re-emerging as a main issue on the agenda of Jewish groups. Attempts to block the divestment drive, which began four years ago, have proved only partially successful. Interreligious dialogue efforts and public pressure managed to mute some churchwide calls for divestment, but other initiatives are still gaining support.

The Methodist meeting, held on January 25 in Fort Worth, Texas, was an initial orientation meeting for delegation heads who will lead their groups at the church's quadrennial conference in April. Delegation leaders were presented with speakers both supportive and opposed to the draft divestment resolution, which calls for removing all Methodist pension fund holdings from Caterpillar. "The United Methodist Church holds $141 million of pension funds in companies that sustain the occupation," said Susan Hoder, a member of the church's Interfaith Peace Initiative. "This has to stop. We have to cut our ties to the occupation."

Hoder, who strongly favors passage of divestment measures, went on to claim that American taxpayer dollars are used to fund Israeli military. "A lot of this money goes into the pockets of Israeli military leaders and politicians who get rich while the population of Israel suffers," she said. With 11 million members, The United Methodist Church is the largest mainline Protestant denomination in the U.S. The upcoming April general conference, the church's main forum for making policy decisions, will first discuss the divestment resolution in a subcommittee. Afterward, the panel's recommendations will be put to a general vote to make them official policy.

A spokesman for the United Methodist Church did not return calls from the Forward seeking comments on the divestment drive.

Arrangers of the pre-conference meeting last Friday in Fort Worth allowed a representative of the organized Jewish community to speak on the issue. Rabbi Gary Greenebaum, the American Jewish Committee's director of interreligious affairs, told the Methodist delegates that the Jewish community was concerned about the resolution. "I told them that while they may think it is not anti-Israel and not anti- Jewish, for us it feels anti-Israel and feels anti-Jewish," Greenebaum told the Forward after the meeting.

At the same time, Greenebaum warned the Jewish community against overreacting to anti-Israel sentiments in the church. Protestant churches, he said, "care very deeply about their relations with the Jewish community."

What prompted Jewish activists to take action was not only the renewed divestment drive but also a report from the women's division of the Methodist church, which addressed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The 225-page report, compiled by the Rev. Stephen Goldstein, attempts to outline the historical and current contours of the conflict, but according to Felson, the report amounts to "the most egregious thing that has crossed my desk that was not put out by an overt hate group."

Among the statements in the report that irked Jewish community activists are a reference to the founding of the State of Israel as "the original sin," a passage calling Israeli founding father David Ben-Gurion an "extremist" and a passage defining Israeli actions as acts of "terror." Discussing the impact of the Holocaust on Israeli society, the Methodist report claims it has been the cause for "hysteria" and "paranoiac sense" among Israelis.



Go to 12534
http://www.roguegovernment.com/news.php?id=6413
Paul: Secretive Elite Control America
02-01-2008
Press TV

Presidential candidate Ron Paul says he traces America's problems to the flawed monetary policy of the wealthy and secretive elite.

During a speech at the University of Washington on Thursday, Paul said the Congress and the Federal Reserve will not be able to stem the recession spurred by the home mortgage meltdown.

"The most important thing you can do is nothing," said the Texas congressman, who voted against the recent $146 billion economic stimulus package passed by the US House of Representatives.

The 10-term Texas congressman maintained that a series of wrong economic decisions by the Bush administration has led to a recession.

The government should allow the market to correct itself, Paul added.

Although the mainstream media attempts to keep a low profile on the 72-year-old presidential hopeful, he has managed to find a staunch group of supporters who say he has captured their hearts with his 'message of freedom' and constitutionalism.

"The Constitution was written for one specific purpose and that was to restrain the government, not to restrain the people," Paul has said.



Go to 12533
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/massachusetts-charges-merrill-fraud/story.aspx?guid=%7B799EBC0C%2D623B%2D4324%2DB2EB%2D5C5D3A0D1E8B%7D
Massachusetts charges Merrill with fraud

By Greg Morcroft, MarketWatch
Last update: 2:46 p.m. EST Feb. 1, 2008
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Massachusetts state authorities on Friday charged Merrill Lynch and Co., Inc. with fraud and misrepresentation related to about $14 million worth of subprime securities it sold to the city of Springfield.
The complaint also charges Merrill agents Carl Kipper and Manuel Choy.
"This complaint is focused on Merrill Lynch's (MER:MER
News, chart, profile, more
Last:


Delayed quote dataAdd to portfolio
Analyst
Create alertInsider
Discuss
Financials
Sponsored by:
, , ) sale, through agents Kipper and Choy, of certain esoteric financial instruments known as collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) to the City of Springfield Massachusetts, which were unsuitable for the city and which, within months after the sale, became illiquid and lost almost all of their market value," the state said in its complaint. See full complaint
The charges come a day after Merrill Lynch reimbursed the city for its investment, and related legal fees, and said it had determined that the securities were bought without explicit permission from the city. See full story at WSJ.com (subscription required)
The complaint concurred, and said, "The city did not authorize these specific CDO purchases in advance."
The complaint seeks a cease and desist order against the firm and its agents and, a return of any profits from the deals and an unspecified fine.
According to the complaint, the relationship between Merrill and agents Kipper and Choy sprung from a longstanding friendship between Kipper and Stephen Lisauskas, the executive director of Springfield's Financial Control Board.
So, in November of 2006, the city hired Merrill to invest its surplus cash, the state said.
"The accounts, at least by the terms of the Merrill account documents, were not discretionary accounts," The complaint said. That means that any purchases made for the accounts have to be approved by authorized accountholders, not by the agents selling the securities.
"It was understood that Merrill was supposed to invest only in safe money-market-like investments authorized by city personnel that would protect the city's investment," the complaint reads.
But, the state argues that Kipper and Choy invested about $14 million of the city's money without the proper authorization, from the firm's own inventory, "circulated periodically to its agents for them to sell."
The largest position Springfield bought was in something called the Centre Square CDO, for which Merrill earned fess as an underwriter, and earned further fees for selling it on to the secondary market.
The complaint further states that Springfield was not even told the investment was in CDOs until months after the sale and, and that Kipper and Choy never evaluated their suitability for Springfield, "nor did they make any attempt to understand what these CDOs were collateralized with."
Greg Morcroft is MarketWatch's financial editor in New York.



Go to 12532
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article3570.html
US Banking System Teetering on the Brink of Collapse
Stock-Markets / Financial Crash
Feb 01, 2008 - 01:09 AM

By: Mike_Whitney

Somebody goofed. When Fed chairman Ben Bernanke cut interest rates to 3% yesterday, the price of a new mortgage went up. How does that help the flagging housing industry?

About an hour after Bernanke made the announcement that the Fed Funds rate would be cut by 50 basis points the yield on the 30-year Treasury nudged up a tenth of a percent to 4.42%. The same thing happened to the 10 year Treasury which surged from a low of 3.28% to 3.73% in less than a week. That means that mortgages which are priced off long-term government bonds---will be going up, too.



Is that what Bernanke had in mind; to stick another dagger into the already-moribund real estate market?

The Fed sets short-term interest rates (The Fed Funds rate) but long-term rates are market-driven. So, when investors see slow growth and inflationary pressures building up; long-term rates start to rise. That's bad news for the housing market.

Now, here's the shocker: Bernanke KNEW that the price of a mortgage would increase if he slashed rates, but went ahead anyway.

How did he know?

Because 8 days ago, when he cut rates by 75 basis points, the ten-year didn't budge from its perch at 3.64%. It just shrugged it off the cuts as meaningless. But a couple days later, when Congress passed Bush's $150 "Stimulus Giveaway", the ten year spiked with a vengeance---up 20 basis points on the day. In other words, the bond market doesn't like inflation-generating government handouts.

So, why did Bernanke cut rates when he knew it would just add to the housing woes?

Some critics say that he just wanted to throw a lifeline to his fat-cat investor buddies on Wall Street by providing more liquidity for the markets. But that's not it, at all. The fact is, Bernanke had no choice. He's facing a challenge so huge and potentially catastrophic; that cutting rates must have seemed like the only option he had. Just look at these graphs and you'll see what Bernanke saw before he decided to cut interest rates. http://benbittrolff.blogspot.com/2008/01/really-scary-fed-charts-why-bernanke.html



Go to 12531
http://www.statesman.com/money/content/shared-gen/ap/Finance_General/Earns_Oil.html
Exxon, Chevron Post Record Profits
By JOHN PORRETTO

AP Business Writer

HOUSTON — Suppose Exxon Mobil decided to return the favor and buy you a tank of gas. Then again, why stop there? The oil giant turned a profit last year fat enough to buy a fill-up for every car, truck and SUV in America — four times.

Beating its own record to rack up the largest annual corporate profit in American history, Exxon Mobil Corp. said Friday it earned $40.6 billion for the year, reaping the benefits of crude-oil prices around $100 a barrel.


(enlarge photo)
A worker delivers fuel to an Exxon station in Keller, Texas in this Jan. 27, 2007 file photo. Exxon Mobil Corp. on Friday posted the largest annual profit by a U.S. company _ $40.6 billion _ as the world's biggest publicly traded oil company benefited from historic crude prices at year's end. (AP Photo/Donna McWilliam, file)
Exxon Mobil also topped its own record for profit in a single quarter, posting net income of $11.7 billion for the final three months of the year — about $1 billion more than the same period in 2005, the previous quarterly record.

The annual profit was enough, at $3 a gallon, to buy nearly four 15-gallon fill-ups for the roughly 243 million registered passenger vehicles on American roads. Put another way, it's almost equal to what Microsoft has offered to buy Yahoo outright.

And the quarterly profit alone is about the same as the size of the entire economy of Iceland or Namibia. The previous record for annual profit was $39.5 billion, posted by Exxon Mobil in 2006.

Chevron Corp., No. 2 behind Exxon Mobil among U.S. oil companies, also had its best year ever in 2007, saying Friday that it banked a profit of $18.7 billion.

The results were eye-popping but not a total surprise: For most of the fourth quarter, oil prices hovered around $90 a barrel, 50 percent higher than a year earlier. Crude reached an all-time high of $100.09 on Jan. 3 but has fallen about 10 percent since.



Go to 12530
http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUKN0146993820080202
US nuclear power plants to get more Russia uranium
Sat Feb 2, 2008
By Tom Doggett

WASHINGTON, Feb 1 (Reuters) - U.S. nuclear power reactors will be able to obtain more supplies of Russian enriched uranium for fuel, under a trade deal signed by the two countries late on Friday.

The agreement will provide U.S. utilities with a reliable supply of nuclear fuel by allowing Russia to boost exports export to the United States while minimizing any disruption to the United States' domestic enrichment industry.

"The agreement will encourage bilateral trade in Russian uranium products for peaceful purposes," said U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez. "It will also help to ensure that U.S. utilities have an adequate source of enriched uranium for U.S. utility consumers.

Gutierrez and Russian Federal Atomic Energy Agency Director Sergey Kiriyenko signed the deal allowing for sales of Russian enriched uranium directly to U.S. utilities. Before the agreement, such direct transactions were not permitted.

For years, the U.S. government has restricted Russian uranium shipments, fearing Russia would dump uranium in the U.S. market and financially hurt the major American uranium supplier, USEC Inc (USU.N: Quote, Profile, Research).

A spokesman for the Russia's Atomic Energy Agency said with the new trade deal "the volumes of direct deliveries of uranium enrichment services may total 20 percent of the market, so one in every five atomic stations in the U.S. will work thanks to the import of Russian uranium enrichment services."

Under the deal, Russian uranium exports to the United States would increase slowly over a 10-year period, beginning in 2011, when shipments would be allowed to reach 16,559 tons.

Exports would then increase about 50 percent annually over the next two years and increase more than tenfold from 41,398 tons in 2013, when the current "Megatons to Megawatts" program expires, to 485,279 tons the next year.



Go to 12529
http://www.rense.com/ufo3/skol%2Dmerch.htm
Threats Against Chicago
Mercantile Exchange? - Skolnick
By Sherman H. Skolnick
5-20-99

Note - The views of Mr. Skolnick do not necessarily represent those of this
site. Serious replies are always welcome.

It is an open secret: The Red Chinese and their Secret Police dominate the commodity and currency markets in Chicago.

The long-time head of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Leo Meladmed, has reportedly been quiet that he was born in China, speaks fluent Chinese, and from time to time reportedly travels there. Former Clinton White House Senior Advisor, Rahm Emanuel, is now reportedly big in promoting the financial deals of Red China.

The Red Chinese, along with the ethnic Chinese, the ruling elite of Indonesia, reportedly are using the Chicago Board of Trade, the Chicago Board Options Exchange, and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, to launder huge illicit funds from the trafficking into the U.S. via a major in-take point of Chicago, of "China White", high purity heroin from S.W. China. Some of it is coming in through the drug trafficking of the Kosovo Liberation Army, largest druglords in Europe.

Also laundered through the Chicago markets are funds from the burgeoning traffic from Red China of human body parts, merchandised like auto parts, through U.S. hospitals. [We are going to expose these hospitals in an up-coming public access Cable TV Show in Chicago of which I am the producer/moderator].

The Chinese supply the human body parts harvested from political prisoners in good health--they are condemned to death as the U.S. hospitals receive orders from wealthy patients requiring hearts, livers, lungs, etc. The trade is dealt with on a soon-as-needed basis, with political prisoners shot as the body parts are needed in the U.S.


Rahm Emanuel operates as a bigwig of an investment firm reportedly with sizeable Red Chinese accounts or dealings, Wasserstein & Perrella, a New York headquartered firm with offices in Chicago. Emanuel also apparently is now an official of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. This route is used for among other things, the raising of huge funds for William Rockefeller Clinton and his cronies in the Rockefeller family.

Clinton comes from time to time to speak before the "Merc" as it is called, yet the local pressfakers never seem to report what it is the President says there. Now as part of a series of international manipulations of public opinion, the counter-terrorism consultants available to the "Merc" have reportedly warned them that it is an open secret that the "Merc" whose security is lax and difficult is possibly subject to an attack of some violence, such as a bombing. The consultants no doubt if such a disaster occurs may well have certain alleged "lone bombers" in mind or that it is part of some complicated scheme.

"Merc" traders are grumbling so loud that they suspect a bombing, that some of them insist to their trading firms they want to go home by 3 p.m. on weekday afternoons. Some even talk openly but off the record that they would like to leave the building by 2 p.m. in the afternoon even though the markets would still be open. Some of the brokers, introducing brokers, and such, are equipped with computers to trade and transact off-site such as at home or from a non-downtown office site. Back-office personnel are livid that no provision is reportedly made to have them not stay late doing the office work at various trading firms. The counter-terrorism experts reportedly are comparing the threatened situation to the non-accidental bombing of the Red Chinese Embassy in Belgrade which altered world opinion on several levels. If violence occurs, as some suspect, will the Red Chinese claim they are the victimized party like in Belgrade?

Some alternative journalists have warned all these matters are dangerous to discuss. Why? The FBI is circulating rumors, believed by some to be true that they soon will be more "physical" in dealing with loud-mouth dissidents who rail against the U.S. central government and circulate stories that Clinton is a traitor, having committed treason, and should be arrested.

Can the FBI prevent such fears and threats reportedly against the "Merc" from being posted on Internet? Savvy folks point to the fact that AOL is not an Internet Service Provider but rather an On-Line Service transmitting folks to an ISP. AOL has a screening committee that reserves the right to censor--and we are not talking here about porn but politics. Post this story on other websites and categories---it is important that these matters be openly and publicly discussed.



Go to 12528
http://www.new-enlightenment.com/2008_depression.htm
Out-of-control predatory capitalists have perpetrated a worldwide economic depression.
Capitalism's degenerate character is now extraordinarily visible during this time of multiple crises.

This exposure of capitalism's depravity must awaken us to the necessity of instituting a commonwealth in place of this cannibalistic monstrosity.

We cannot allow economic tyranny to continue to destroy us. We must have a government and an economy of and for the people.






The 1929 world depression and the current one which became unavoidably evident in 2007 have exactly the same cause: the systemic corruption and excess of vulture capitalism. This depression is the inevitable outcome of capitalism's perverse practices and dogmas.
The demonic cabal that controls the U.S. is attempting to brainwash Americans into believing that we're merely experiencing a mild, temporary recession, and that the whole thing can be easily remedied by the current stimulus package that provides tax rebates to citizens and businesses.
Depression: in economics, a period of economic crisis in commerce, finance, and industry, characterized by falling prices, restriction of credit, low output and investment, numerous bankruptcies, and a high level of unemployment.
A less severe crisis is usually known as a recession, a more common occurrence generally thought to be a normal part of the business cycle; it is technically defined as two consecutive quarterly declines in the gross national product.





Anyone who tells you that we're merely in a mild, accidental recession is attempting to befuddle and manipulate you for their own purposes.
The current depression is a wake-up call: we must recognize that vulture capitalism is totally out of control and destroying workers worldwide.

Once people in all countries awaken to this intolerable economic devastation, we can begin to take back our nations and institute commonwealths for the good of all humankind.




Americans should already have been shaken awake by the large number of murderous acts perpetrated by the demonic cabal and the Bush junta who seized control of America in the 2000 coup d'etat. A partial listing of these outrages would include:

Slaughtering American military personnel and "enemy" civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq

Cannibalizing American workers through stock market and real estate swindles

Turning America into a police state

Plundering other nations through world economic conquest



“The illegal we do immediately.
The unconstitutional takes a little longer.”

Henry Kissinger, Cabal Hit Man

American workers need to wake up to the fact that unemployment, shrinking income, home foreclosure and eviction, and lack of medical care that they're experiencing are not "natural" phenomena. These are not inevitable, unavoidable aspects of a sane political-economic system. Americans must realize that the current economic depression has been caused by the vulture capitalists who've seized control of our nation and with callous disregard watch as average citizens are ground into the dust.


(Click on specific areas of the image below to access additional information)



The current world depression is more visible than usual because we're seeing not only the annihilation of workers--the usual victims of vulture capitalism--but also elements within the capitalist system itself being devastated: banks, businesses, and financial institutions.


Capitalist Fratricidal War
"The drive to accumulate dramatically pits capitalist against capitalist, capitalist against worker, worker against worker. Accumulation thereby fuels competition . . . So, as capitalists strive to accumulate, as their actions become mere functions of capital, they inevitably clash with other capitalists hoping to do likewise. What erupts is a fratricidal war. Soon different 'fractions' of capital jostle with their respective corporate or sectoral peers in a treacherous zero-sum accumulation mania. Accumulation is the centrifugal force of 'capital in general.' But the positionality of each individual capitalist within this process, like that of the working class's, varies and changes over time, subject to the pace and trajectory of competition. Competition hastens a splintering of capital, as it does for labor, compounding it into many aliquot parts." 1


The current depression is caused not by new-sprung and unusual features of predatory capitalism, but by the hyperbolic overindulgence in criminal behavior and the debauchery of maniacal greed which are the very essence of this looting malignancy. Both depraved indifference and corruption are distinguishing characteristics of crony capitalism--as is evidenced by the presence of these activities from the beginning of its history.


"Given the inherent tendencies of capitalist production, credit has also been a tremendous accelerator of overproduction, of overvaluing the capacity of the market to absorb products and has thus been a catalyst of speculative bubbles with the consequent crises and drying up of credit. Side by side with facilitating these social catastrophes the stock markets and the banking system have encouraged all the individual vices of greed and duplicity that are typical of an exploiting class living off the labour of others; vices that we see flourishing today in insider trading, fictitious payments, outrageous 'bonuses' that amount to huge fortunes, 'golden parachutes', accountancy fraud, plain theft etc.
"The speculation, the risky loans, the swindles, the subsequent stock market crashes and the disappearance of huge quantities of surplus value are therefore an intrinsic feature of the anarchy of capitalist production." 2



Some defenders of capitalism claim that the present crisis results from financiers holding the economy hostage. But, central banks, private banks, stock markets, and other credit mechanisms have been integral to the development of capitalism since its inception in the 18th century. Such instruments for creating currency out of nothing are required for the amassing and centralizing of money capital in order to permit the levels of investment required for vast industrial expansion that was beyond the scope of wealthy individual capitalists.

An industrial or financial entrepreneur could not acquire sufficient capital by saving or by risking his own money--no matter what the capitalist myths say. In all the industrial, corporate, and stock market gambling casinos, fat cats don't bet with their own individual fortunes but with monetized wealth created by fiat.


Capitalism Is a Failed, Destructive, Unfixable System
We must make sure that people worldwide understand that monopoly capitalism is no longer an acceptable or viable economic system--that we must replace it with a new commonwealth order.


"No economic system, particularly capitalism, left to follow its own logic unrestrained can possibly survive, as Schumpeter [Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942)] stressed. In the end it will undermine itself. The idea of 'free market capitalism' is a dangerous illusion in a time of growing class polarization, monopolization, speculation, militarism, and imperialism. The politics of the right, lacking any substantial or rational basis, has increasingly turned to a predatory culture of open barbarism: the resurgence of open racism, war, imperialism, sexism, religious fundamentalism. Eventually such a society, trapped in stagnation and left to follow its own downward logic, will destroy itself and everything else within its reach--not through economic breakdown but through an intensification of barbarism on a global scale. 3



"For globalization to work, America can't be afraid to act like the almighty superpower that it is. The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonald-Douglas, the designer of the F-15, and the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technology is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps."

Thomas Friedman, New York Times, March 28, 1999


Joseph Schumpeter, a Harvard apologist for what he called "rational capitalism," saw imperialism as a byproduct of a war machine and monopolization rather than an intrinsic property of capitalism. This part of his analysis of capitalism--as well as all the rest--has proven totally false. Global capitalism's poster child--the United States under the cabal--has openly adopted a strategy of retaining its economic and political hegemony through militaristic imperialism, announcing this to the entire world in the National Security Strategy of the United States released in 2002.
Workers worldwide need to comprehend that the present depression is precisely the same kind of total collapse of casino capitalism as America suffered in 1929. In 1933, all American banks were finally forced to close--which made it clear to America and the world that American and world capitalism had collapsed utterly.



Identical Elements of the 1929 and Current Depressions
1929 Depression Current Depression
Liquidity expansion:
In the "roaring twenties" the value of shares in the
New York Stock Exchange, the biggest in the world,
had increased five fold Liquidity expansion:
The FED has continued to pump currency into the stock market and investment funds resulting in the dot.com, stocks, and housing bubbles bursting
Stock market crash:
1932: stocks had lost 89% of their 1929 peak value
1929 share value was not reached again until 1954 Stock market crash:
A series of crashes beginning in the 1980s
Bank failures:
President Hoover refused to assist failing banks
All banks failed in 1932 Bank failures:
Banks are failing worldwide but most failures are being covered up by central bank loans
Banks are having to "write off" tens of billions of bad investments and are now going hat-in-hand to foreign investors to sell a piece of their business
GDP:

Down 50% in 1932 GDP::
20% decline in the GDP and a 50% decline in the value of the dollar
Unemployment:
13 million workers became unemployed with no relief to speak of; a third of the population sank into abject poverty Unemployment:
Unemployment figures are falsified; at least 25% of American workers are unemployed or underemployed
A third of the population lives in poverty
Fake investment (gambling) funds:
Brokers' loans, buying on margin: investors could pay down only a percentage of what they were investing Fake investment (gambling) funds:
Hedge funds: The estimated assets of these funds have risen from $491 billion in 2000 to $1.75 trillion in 2007. The funds' complicated financial transactions, mostly secret and unregulated, use debt as a tradeable security in the search for short term gain
The 1930s depression appeared to be the result of the 1929 Wall Street Crash, but 1929 only made apparent a systemic defect, capitalism's chronic overproduction in its decadent phase. This same phase of chronic overproduction began again as early as 1968, finally resulting in the present depression.

Vulture capitalists are trying to make sure average citizens don't realize that their predatory shell game has totally disintegrated. The present crisis was triggered by the fall in house prices in America, along with the slump in housing construction and large scale defaults on mortgages by workers who couldn't afford the escalating interest rates of the infamous "sub-prime" or risky loans. Empty-headed consumers contributed by signing on to mortgage agreements they didn't bother to read and rapidly heaping up personal debt.

Shock waves then traveled throughout the entire world financial system. In August, 2007, investment funds and entire investment banks, whose assets included billions of dollars of sub-prime loans, either collapsed outright or had to be rescued. Two hedge funds of the US investment bank Bear Sterns crashed, costing investors $1 billion. The German bank IKD had to be bailed out and two investment funds of the French bank BNP Paribas failed. The shares of mortgage lenders and other banks declined sharply leading to steep falls on all of the world's major stock exchanges, wiping out billions of dollars of worthless "betting slips."

To befuddle world citizens into retaining confidence in capitalism and to allow banks to continue extending credit, the central banks--the US Federal Reserve Bank, the Bank of England, and the Eurobank--intervened through providing cheaper loans of additional billions. The hundreds of thousands of people made homeless by the "sub-prime" fiasco and the tens of thousands of workers laid off by the collapse of the housing construction industry didn't receive a penny of these loans from central banks. The dole went exclusively to the credit markets themselves--the very financial institutions who had squandered enormous sums of cash. These outlaws were being rewarded by receiving more gambling money. But this farce didn't solve the crisis.

The first clearly visible sign of the failure of world capitalism's bailout strategy was the depositor run on the fifth largest mortgage provider in the UK, Northern Rock, whose fraud strategy was borrowing from credit markets and then re-lending the money to homebuyers at a higher rate of interest.

As the credit markets began to crumble, so did Northern Rock. Even with the announcement of the rescue of Northern Rock by the Bank of England, long queues of depositors began to form outside the branches of the bank to withdraw their money, taking out £2 billion in just three days.

This was the first run of this type on a British bank in 140 years. To try to make sure depositors didn't start the same kind of run on other banks, the British and European governments stepped in to give a 100% guarantee to the depositors of Northern Rock and savers in other threatened banks.

Looter capitalism tries to conceal its failures through bailouts. TV "news" programs have run specials on how millions of homeowners were cannibalized by the subprime mortgage scam. But the personal catastrophes mortgage fraud victims suffered have all been neatly sanitized, with no one seemingly to blame for the devastation. And the CEOs of the fraud-perpetrating financial corporations, hedge funds, investment banks, and Wall Street firms are all silently gliding to earth with multi-million dollar parachutes to break their fall.


"The U.S. hasn't faced a downturn like this since the Great Depression of the 1930s."

Bill Gross, chief investment officer of Pimco, the world's largest bond fund, 2008


Intelligent, informed members of the working class--in mutual solidarity--constitute the only force capable of eliminating the failed anarchy of looter capitalism and developing a commonwealth system. Fortunately, the number of these persons is expanding and they're becoming increasingly disaffected with the rotting capitalist corpse. But we must help people worldwide realize that recent dramatic events, beginning in the housing industry in the United States, that have shaken international finance and the entire world economic system, are intrinsic symptoms of the total bankruptcy of predatory capitalism--not merely an accidental, temporary aberration.
Workers worldwide must be fully aware that the current depression is a clear sign of a process of disintegration endemic to capitalism that will inevitably lead to more and more violent convulsions and increasing human misery. Only this clear knowledge--and the dismay it fosters--will provide the momentum to replace predatory capitalism with an economic system for the common people.

The crucial need for action against vulture capitalism can only be kept in mind if workers remain constantly aware that they're being decimated by a system that deliberately aims to destroy as many of them as possible. Monopoly capitalists will attempt to keep people's attention diverted to irrelevant, trifling wedge issues--as is now the entire focus of the 2008 election campaigning. Reactionary issues and candidates--from both parties--will try to keep American citizens focused on forces that pursue policies objectively against workers' interests.

Obscenely rich people are no longer tolerable, because their looting of working class people bears no relation to what they contribute to society. Their predatory actions are neither proportional nor justified as inevitable economic success due to honest effort. Poor and middle class people can no longer believe that the economic system is fair and properly rewards those who work harder or have better capabilities.

Truly exorbitant economic rewards should arouse working people to a struggle against the entire monopoly capitalist system. When most prosperity and wealth is unfairly channeled to relatively few upper class people, it's only a matter of time until fuming, resentful people in the working class decide enough is enough and begin to throw the rascals out.

Now that the conditions of widespread affluence and freedom of economic mobility are no longer profitable for American capitalists, some of the more unpleasant and inevitable features of their oppressive order are affecting American citizens directly. The harsh realities of unemployment, slave wages, tax-slavery, and government harassment will provide the kind of incentive we need to consider deeper values in life beyond mindless, superficial, addictive entertainment and sports--the "circuses" provided by the present rulers. Now we can begin to explore what a commonwealth is and how we can train for it.

The present political-economic situation is a desperate one, with predatory capitalism having seized the reins of power in all nations. But progressive forces have historically moved human civilization forward even in such wretched times as these. In America, we need to remember that we have experienced genuine advancement in times of extreme hardship: the Progressive era, the New Deal, and the Great Society. Broadbased progressive movements have appeared which changed the direction of our country.

These reformist movements need to be understood in their material and social context so that we can comprehend why they were as successful as they were. In the early part of the twentieth century, when Wall Street and the railroads abused the farmers and the early industrial workers, resistance built up and radical politics came into play. In the thirties, ordinary working people were active in the New Deal transformations, unions were organized, and the corruption of corporate leaders was widely exposed. When the 1929 Wall Street crash brought on the Great Depression, factions of the ruling class recognized that they were virtually helpless to remedy the catastrophic situation. Both rich and poor supported Franklin D. Roosevelt's reforms and regulations, and capitalism was saved from itself, along with improvement in the plight of ordinary Americans. A strong liberal-labor bloc moved the country to the left.




“The middle classes could become a revolutionary class. The growing gap between themselves and a small number of highly visible super-rich individuals might fuel disillusion with meritocracy, while the growing urban under-classes are likely to pose an increasing threat . . . Faced by these twin challenges, the world’s middle-classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest.”

A 2007 report from the UK Defense Ministry's Development,
Concepts and Doctrine Centre suggesting what might happen by 2035




Which Way Will We Go?




Two diverse responses to the 1929 economic world depression led to two diametrically opposite political and economic systems:
The progressive New Deal of
Franklin D. Roosevelt

The fascist Nazi totalitarianism of Adolph Hitler





As I'm writing this essay on January 30, 2008, the FED has within 8 days raised the discount rate a staggering 1.25 points and Shell Oil corporation has announced £20 billion in profits for 2007. These are two unmistakable indicators that vulture capitalism has collapsed and its obscene excesses are no longer tolerable. Given that world capitalism is bankrupt, America will move either toward a progressive development of a commonwealth political-economic system or toward a total police state, a la the Hitlerian nightmare of 1930s Germany.


American Fascism
The cabal has already twisted America into an almost total police state under the Bush junta. It may now use the economic collapse of American capitalism to impose a complete fascist totalitarianism in which all dissenters are placed in concentration camps already built by Halliburton.

As was true in 1930s America and Germany--and again is true now--economic factors play a significant role in determining how a society evolves. After its demoralizing defeat in World War I, Germany suffered from the fiendish Versailles treaty being imposed on it by the "Allies." Germany was forced to pay incredibly large reparations to France and Great Britain, and was forced to give up thirteen percent of its land.

Economically devastated, Germany tried to recover from the war by way of social spending. But the revenue from income taxes began to fall. In 1913, over fifty three percent of all tax revenues was from income, but in 1925 it dropped down to 28%. Even with all its economic problems, Germany could have made reparation payments if foreign countries hadn't placed protective tariffs on German goods. French and British protective tariffs further depressed the German economy. Faced with reparation payments they could't pay, Germany began printing huge amounts of money, throwing Germany into a state of super inflation.

Inflation reached the point where common essentials cost millions of marks. Cartoons of the time depicted people with wheelbarrows full of money who couldn't buy a loaf of bread. To make matters worse, foreign lenders withdrew capital and world markets further closed against German imports. When the U.S. was hit by the great depression it immediately called in its loans to Germany. This, in addition to all of Germany's other problems, caused the German economy to collapse.

This state of runaway inflation and political breakdown with the collapse of the German Republic, made the German people particularly vulnerable to being manipulated by a predator like Adolf Hitler. Foreign vultures such as Prescott Bush (grandfather of Dubya) financially supported Hitler, creating conditions that would inevitably lead to a war in which predatory capitalists would reap huge profits.

Economic and political catastrophe in Germany led the people to embrace any way out. Along came Hitler with his plan for a swift economic recovery. Hitler outlined a plan where in four years he would completely eliminate unemployment throughout Germany. Never mind that Hitler's plan wouldn't raise the level of income for ordinary people--that it was a plan for a new militaristic imperialism. The German people felt desperate and allowed Hitler to seize power in the same way Bush seized power illegitimately in 2000.


American Commonwealth
The other possibility is that American workers will take back their country from the looting capitalists and institute a government and an economy for the welfare of all citizens. The challenge for the working class will be to defend and affirm itself against the annihilative forces of plutocracy, to gain confidence in its own forces and to become increasingly conscious that it is the only social force capable of overthrowing capitalism.

Roosevelt's New Deal progressivism saved America from devolving into a Hitlerian nightmare of militaristic fascism. However, it saved vulture capitalism from it own excesses and left it alive to begin again its relentless pillaging of the working class. The plight of workers improved but full economic recovery occurred only when it was harnessed to arms production in preparation for a new plundering of world markets in the imperialistic bloodbath of World War II. In other words, even the "miracle" of FDR's recovery was possible only when unemployed workers had been transformed into cannon fodder for a new world conflagration.

If we want a stable, just, egalitarian, sustainable world in which the "free development of each is the condition for the free development of all," there is no alternative but a long march to commonwealth propelled forward by a fully-informed, effective workers' movement.

A commonwealth can only be instituted when a small group of persons--having suffered under an oppressive form of rule and having prepared themselves for self-rule--take over the direction of a group or community. This preparation involves, among other things, the close examination of real, as opposed to assumed or imagined capacities, and the development of real competence.

A commonwealth can only come to those who are willing to work for the best and highest in human development for all. At almost any point in a nation's history it can be said: "Yes, there are problems here, but it could be worse. Instead of being a malcontent working for unnecessary change, be thankful for what you have." That has been said to every enslaved or oppressed group in human history. That's what the white owner said to his black slave, the British trying to mollify the oppressed colonists in America and India in the 1770s. The good is often enemy to the best. Today we hear: "What oppression? We never had it so good. Don't rock the boat." For many people, life under this present plutocracy, which they have been fully programmed to experience as a democracy, appears rewarding and complete.




To institute a commonwealth, we must study carefully how current economic cannibals will be defeated through philosophical understanding and activity.
1) How Philosophy Overcomes Tyranny

2) Overthrowing the New Slavery

3) The New American Civil War

4) Realizing a New World

5) Overcoming the Present Dark Age

6) Realizing the New Commonwealth

7) How Philosophy Overcomes Propaganda


Each of us has a part to play in helping people worldwide come awake to the devastation of the current world economic depression--using this awakened insight to overthrow predatory capitalism and institute a commonwealth order for the betterment of humankind.




"When I, the People, learn to remember, when I, the
People, use the lessons of yesterday and no longer
forget who robbed me last year, who played me for
a fool--then there will be no speaker in all the world
say the name: 'The People,' with any fleck of a
sneer in his voice or any far off smile of derision.
The mob--the crowd--the mass--will arrive then. "

Carl Sandburg, "I am the People"








Updates and References:


12/31/08: FED Rate Cuts Have No Effect on Current World Depression

A Fascist America

Capitalism's Structural Crises

Capitalism As Imperialism




Notes:
1 Andy Merrifield, "Class Formation, Capital Accumulation, And The Downsizing Of America," Monthly Review, Oct, 1999

2 International Review, No. 131 - 4th quarter 2007

3 John Bellamy Foster, "The End of Rational Capitalism," Monthly Review, March 2005



Use your Go Back and Go Forward commands to get to where you were in a previous file.