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The U.S. is Not a Democracy, It Never Was

December 16, 2017

The U.S. is Not a Democracy, It Never Was

Photo by Daniel Huizinga | CC BY 2.0

One of the most steadfast beliefs regarding the United States is that it is a democracy. Whenever this conviction waivers slightly, it is almost always to point out detrimental exceptions to core American values or foundational principles. For instance, aspiring critics frequently bemoan a “loss of democracy” due to the election of clownish autocrats, draconian measures on the part of the state, the revelation of extraordinary malfeasance or corruption, deadly foreign interventions, or other such activities that are considered undemocratic exceptions. The same is true for those whose critical framework consists in always juxtaposing the actions of the U.S. government to its founding principles, highlighting the contradiction between the two and clearly placing hope in its potential resolution.

The problem, however, is that there is no contradiction or supposed loss of democracy because the United States simply never was one. This is a difficult reality for many people to confront, and they are likely more inclined to immediately dismiss such a claim as preposterous rather than take the time to scrutinize the material historical record in order to see for themselves. Such a dismissive reaction is due in large part to what is perhaps the most successful public relations campaign in modern history. What will be seen, however, if this record is soberly and methodically inspected, is that a country founded on elite, colonial rule based on the power of wealth—a plutocratic colonial oligarchy, in short—has succeeded not only in buying the label of “democracy” to market itself to the masses, but in having its citizenry, and many others, so socially and psychologically invested in its nationalist origin myth that they refuse to hear lucid and well-documented arguments to the contrary.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Warning: ‘They Need The Markets To Implode’ To Usher In Cashless System

December 7, 2017

Warning: ‘They Need The Markets To Implode’ To Usher In Cashless System

stockmarketcrash

Market analyst Lynette Zang predicts in the next market meltdown, “real estate, stocks, and bonds will all crash.” When asked when this will happen, Zang says, “Enjoy your Christmas,” but in 2018, all bets are off.

Greg Hunter interviewed Lynette Zang, Chief Market Strategist at ITMtrading.com, and her assessment of the 2018 economy is dire.  Zang predicts, “In 2018, I don’t think they can hold these things together. I think we will see a major market correction in 2018. When that happens, that will cause the derivative implosion. We have to feel a lot of pain. . . . I think we are going to go into hyperinflation, and I think we will start to see that in 2018 because I think we will see these markets implode. I think we will see QE4 (money printing) for sure. . . . We have QE right now propping it up, according to the Fed’s own documents.”

Zang says ever since the 2008 meltdown, the elite have just been buying time to set up a debt reset.

“I am 100% certain we are in the middle of a money standard shift.  Ultimately, they need the markets to implode. . . . In 2008, the debt based system broke.  It died, it was done.  The central banks, globally, put it on life support, and they have to create a new system.  In my opinion, they want us cashless, and they want everything in digital form.  They want to dematerialize wealth at least for the masses.  I am 100% certain that this Bitcoin craze, and all of this, is about getting people used to digital currencies.  So, when they shift us from the debt based system to the digital system, we are more comfortable with it and more familiar with it.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Future Is What We Make of It – Part 1

November 28, 2017

The Future Is What We Make of It – Part 1

Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced. … Most of us are about as eager to change as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.

– James Baldwin

2017 has been a really strange year for me. As tens of millions of my fellow Americans have experienced mental breakdowns following the election of Donald Trump, an unexpected sense of calm has come over me and I can’t remember the last time I was this optimistic about the future.

Importantly, the optimism I feel isn’t the demented, tribal and transient sort that many people experience when their politician of choice wins an election. I strongly disliked both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton and I refused to support or vote for either. As such, I already knew going into November 2016, that we’d emerge on the other side with a dangerous authoritarian in power, and I mentally prepared myself to push back against whoever won. Although I think Trump is a terrible President and a fake populist, I think his winning the election might serve as the necessary kick in the ass our society needs in order to evolve.

If Hillary Clinton had been elected, she would’ve been given an incredible amount of slack from our depraved corporate media. In fact, the entire first year of her Presidency would’ve been dominated by non-stop slobbering about how amazing it was that the U.S. chose a female leader. This would’ve overshadowed anything she actually did and we’d continue to hear endless platitudes about how exceptional America is from our corrupt, self-proclaimed “elites” via the propaganda press machine. In short, Hillary Clinton would’ve gotten a gigantic pass by the media class which claims to keep the public informed.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How The Elite Dominate The World – Part 3: 90% Of What You Watch On Television Is Controlled By Just 6 Giant Corporations

October 17, 2017

How The Elite Dominate The World – Part 3: 90% Of What You Watch On Television Is Controlled By Just 6 Giant Corporations

How much is your view of the world shaped by what you see on television?  On average, Americans spend more than 150 hours watching television every month, and it is called “programming” for a reason.  If you allow anyone to pour ideas and information into your mind for five hours a day, it is going to change how you look at reality.  Everyone has an agenda, and every single news program, television show and movie is trying to alter your views.  Sadly, our society has become absolutely addicted to media, and the mainstream media is completely dominated by the elite.  In fact, about 90 percent of the programming that comes through your television is controlled by just 6 gigantic media corporations.  Most of us are willingly plugging ourselves into this “propaganda matrix” that is completely dominated by the elite for several hours each day, and that gives them an enormous amount of power over the rest of us.

In Part I and Part II of this series, I discussed how the elite use money as a tool to dominate the planet.  Today, we are going to talk about how they use information.  If you control what people think, then you control a society.  And through their vast media empires, the elite are able to shape how we all think to a frightening degree.

Just think about it.  What do we talk about with our family, our friends and our co-workers?  To a large extent, those conversations are about movies, television shows, something that we just saw on the news or a sporting event that just took place.  The reason why we talk about certain things is because the mainstream media gives those things attention, and other things we ignore because the mainstream media does not make them seem to be important.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How The Elite Dominate The World – Part 1: Debt As A Tool Of Enslavement

October 16, 2017

How The Elite Dominate The World – Part 1: Debt As A Tool Of Enslavement

Throughout human history, those in the ruling class have found various ways to force those under them to work for their economic benefit.  But in our day and age, we are willingly enslaving ourselves.  The borrower is the servant of the lender, and there has never been more debt in our world than there is right now.  According to the Institute of International Finance, global debt has hit the 217 trillion dollar mark, although other estimates would put this number far higher.  Of course everyone knows that our planet is drowning in debt, but most people never stop to consider who owns all of this debt.  This unprecedented debt bubble represents that greatest transfer of wealth in human history, and those that are being enriched are the extremely wealthy elitists at the very, very top of the food chain.

Did you know that 8 men now have as much wealth as the poorest 3.6 billion people living on the planet combined?

Every year, the gap between the planet’s ultra-wealthy and the poor just becomes greater and greater.  This is something that I have written about frequently, and the “financialization” of the global economy is playing a major role in this trend.

The entire global financial system is based on debt, and this debt-based system endlessly funnels the wealth of the world to the very, very top of the pyramid.

It has been said that Albert Einstein once made the following statement…

“Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it … he who doesn’t … pays it.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Elites ‘Have No Credibility Left’: Interview With Journalist Chris Hedges

October 16, 2017

Elites ‘Have No Credibility Left’: Interview With Journalist Chris Hedges

Pulitzer Prize winner and Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges. (Cheryl Biren / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

On Monday, WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David North interviewed Chris Hedges, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author, lecturer and former New York Times correspondent. Among Hedges’ best-known books are War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, The Death of the Liberal Class, Empire of Illusion: the End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, which he co-wrote with the cartoonist Joe Sacco, and Wages of Rebellion: the Moral Imperative of Revolt.

In an article published in Truthdig September 17, titled “The Silencing of Dissent,” Hedges referenced the WSWS coverage of Google’s censorship of left-wing sites and warned about the growth of “blacklisting, censorship and slandering dissidents as foreign agents for Russia and purveyors of ‘fake news.’”

Hedges wrote that “the Department of Justice called on RT America and its ‘associates’—which may mean people like me—to register under the Foreign Agent Registration Act. No doubt, the corporate state knows that most of us will not register as foreign agents, meaning we will be banished from the airwaves. This, I expect, is the intent.”

North’s interview with Hedges began with a discussion of the significance of the anti-Russia campaign in the media.

Chris Hedges: It’s as ridiculous as Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. It is an absolutely unproven allegation that is used to perpetuate a very frightening accusation—critics of corporate capitalism and imperialism are foreign agents for Russia.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Upon The Next Crisis, The Rules Will Suddenly Change

September 29, 2017

Upon The Next Crisis, The Rules Will Suddenly Change

For the benefit of the elites; not the rest of us

We can add a third certainty to the two standard ones (death and taxes): The rules will suddenly change when a financial crisis strikes.

Why is this a certainty? The answer is complex, as it draws on human nature, politics and the structure of societies/economies ruled by centralized states (governments).

The Core Imperative of the State: Expand Control

As I explain in my book, Resistance, Revolution, Liberation, the core (i.e. ontological) imperative of every central state is to expand its reach and control.  This isn’t just the result of individuals within the state seeking more power; every centralized state views whatever is outside its control as a threat.  The way to reduce or neutralize a threat is to take control of the mechanisms that generated it.

Once the state has gained control of these mechanisms, it is loath to relinquish them; to relinquish control is to invite chaos.

There is of course an intensely self-serving dynamic to extending state control: those being paid to enforce this state control have an immense vested interest in the state retaining (or even extending) this control, as their livelihoods now depend on the state doing so.

The higher-ups in the state also have a vested interest in retaining these new controls, as more control means more wealth and power accrue to those at the top of the centralized power pyramid: this extension of state control means private enterprise must now lobby the state for favors, and it gives the higher-ups more perquisites and favors to dispense—for a price, of course.

This vested interest arises throughout the power pyramid, from the bottom functionary with newfound power over common citizens to the managers of the departmental bureaucracy tasked with enforcing the new control to the apex of state authority.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Silencing of Dissent

September 25, 2017

The Silencing of Dissent

The ruling elites, who grasp that the reigning ideology of global corporate capitalism and imperial expansion no longer has moral or intellectual credibility, have mounted a campaign to shut down the platforms given to their critics. The attacks within this campaign include blacklisting, censorship and slandering dissidents as foreign agents for Russia and purveyors of “fake news.”

No dominant class can long retain control when the credibility of the ideas that justify its existence evaporates. It is forced, at that point, to resort to crude forms of coercion, intimidation and censorship. This ideological collapse in the United States has transformed those of us who attack the corporate state into a potent threat, not because we reach large numbers of people, and certainly not because we spread Russian propaganda, but because the elites no longer have a plausible counterargument.

The elites face an unpleasant choice. They could impose harsh controls to protect the status quo or veer leftward toward socialism to ameliorate the mounting economic and political injustices endured by most of the population. But a move leftward, essentially reinstating and expanding the New Deal programs they have destroyed, would impede corporate power and corporate profits. So instead the elites, including the Democratic Party leadership, have decided to quash public debate. The tactic they are using is as old as the nation-state—smearing critics as traitors who are in the service of a hostile foreign power. Tens of thousands of people of conscience were blacklisted in this way during the Red Scares of the 1920s and 1950s. The current hyperbolic and relentless focus on Russia, embraced with gusto by “liberal” media outlets such as The New York Times and MSNBC, has unleashed what some have called a virulent “New McCarthyism.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

We’re in a Boiling-Point Crisis of Exploitive Elites

June 18, 2017

We’re in a Boiling-Point Crisis of Exploitive Elites

The “fixes” to the stagnation of postwar Capitalism in the 1970s were financialization, globalism, and the sustained expansion of debt–all have run out of steam.
Many of us have written about cycles in the past decade: Kondratieff economic cycles, business/credit cycles, the Strauss–Howe generational theory (an existential national crisis arises every four generations, as described in their book The Fourth Turning), and long-wave cycles of growth and decline, as described in seminal books such as The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History and War and Peace and War: The Rise and Fall of Empires.
There is another Rhythm of American History that few recognize: the economic, social and political crises sparked by exploitive Elites. There are two dynamics that drive these crises:
1. The exploitation of commoners by financial/political Elites reaches extremes that create systemic instability as commoners no longer have the means to improve their conditions.
2. The economic mode of production that generated Elite wealth no longer functions, but the Elites cling to the failing system and enforce it with increasingly violent suppression of dissent.
Here are the previous Crises of Exploitive Elites:
1. Slavery, 1850 to 1865. Though the toxins generated by slavery are still with us, the existential political, social and economic crisis arose in the years between 1850 and the end of the Civil War in 1865.
In broad brush, the rise of the American West triggered a political crisis in the U.S. as the southern states realized the non-slave West’s rising political power would doom the fragile balance between the non-slave Northern industrial-economy states and the cotton/agricultural slave-economy South.
It was a trend the South couldn’t possibly win, but the South’s exploitive Elites refused to concede any of their power–and that refusal to adapt tp changing conditions guaranteed the Civil War.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Real Reasons Why Trump Has Flipped On His Campaign Promises

May 7, 2017

The Real Reasons Why Trump Has Flipped On His Campaign Promises

Back in December of 2016 I wrote an article titled ‘Trump Is Exactly Where The Elites Want Him’, which I think was very difficult for a large part of the liberty movement to read and accept. In that article I outlined the future of the Trump presidency; a future dominated by Washington insiders, Goldman Sachs internationalists and Neo-Con warmongers. Trump, at the very onset of his administration, broke one of his most important campaign promises — to “drain the swamp.” Instead, he filled his cabinet with all of the same swamp creatures he originally attacked; the same swamp creatures Hillary Clinton was notorious for serving.

I also warned in numerous articles that because of this initial broken promise, conservatives should not expect that Trump would fulfill most if any of his original plans. In the BEST CASE SCENARIO, Trump is surrounded by enemies dictating policy from every corner and corridor of the White House.

This article, of course, triggered quite a bit of wrath from hardcore Trump supporters. And, of course, time has so far proven I was right yet again.

The only argument at this point in defense of Trump is that it is still very early in his first year and that no president should be expected to accomplish much in just a few months. Okay, I’ll entertain that notion, but let’s be realistic here and look at the current circumstances.

As I write this, Congress is on the brink of forging a spending bill which essentially removes ALLbacking for Trump’s original projects, including the southern border wall. Now, given, the bill only provides funding for government until the end of September, but we have witnessed very little resistance from the Trump administration so far. Are we about to see the Republicans roll over yet again in the name of avoiding a government shutdown? I would say yes, for now.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Opinion: Inside the global elite’s bag of financial tricks

February 21, 2017

Easy money masks global economy’s precarious health

Shutterstock

Too much of economic growth and the accompanying bull market in stocks is the result of financial engineering. Increasingly, companies seek to improve earnings or increase their share price by means that are not necessarily directly linked to their actual business.

Companies have increased the use of lower-cost debt financing, taking advantage of the tax deductibility of interest. In private equity transactions, the level of debt is especially high. Complex securities have been used to arbitrage ratings and tax rules to lower the cost of capital.

Major benefits appear to have accrued financially to corporate insiders, bankers, and consultants.

Mergers and acquisitions as well as various types of corporate restructurings (such as spin-offs and carve-outs) have been used to create “value.” Given the indifferent results of many such transactions, the major benefits appear to have accrued financially to corporate insiders, bankers, and consultants.Share buybacks and capital returns, sometimes funded by debt, have been used to support share prices. In January 2008, prior to the global financial crisis, U.S. companies were using almost 40% of their cashflow to repurchase their own shares. Ominously, that position is similar today.

Tax arbitrage, especially by international companies operating in multiple jurisdictions, has increased post tax earnings. The use by many companies of special vehicles in low tax jurisdictions, like Ireland, evidences this trend.

Some companies have used trading to increase earnings. Oil companies can make money from trading or speculating in oil, for example. Accordingly, they can make money irrespective of whether the oil business is good or bad or the price of crude is high or low, profiting from uncertainty and volatility. It is not even necessary to produce, refine, or consume oil to benefit from its price fluctuations.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

The New Wave of Violent Protests is Exactly What The Elite Want — Here’s Why

February 21, 2017

The New Wave of Violent Protests is Exactly What The Elite Want — Here’s Why

Over the past 18 months, there has been a significant increase in the frequency and severity of riots conducted by the extreme left.  Their ranks are comprised of self-described anti-fascists,  anarcho-communists, radical 3rd wave feminists, Black Lives Matter (BLM), and other social justice warriors (SJWs).  They have attained great notoriety through their willingness to employ violence/intimidation, vandalize/loot private property, and engage in the very same behavior they accuse their ideological opponents of perpetrating.  Tragically, innocent and non-interested bystanders often get caught in the cross hairs whilst they throw their violent temper tantrums.  To add further cause for concern, these otherwise marginal groups are coalescing under the banner of “intersectionality” thereby effecting a swelling of their ranks, temerity, and menace.

However, there is cause for hope as Professor Matthew Feinberg of the University of Toronto recently published a study confirming “extreme protest tactics reduce popular support for social movements.” Violent and destructive protests render peaceful protestors inept and guilty by association.

The following summarizes the results of the study in greater detail:

“Social movements are critical agents of change that vary greatly in both tactics and popular support. Prior work shows that extreme protest tactics – actions that are highly counter-normative, disruptive, or harmful to others, including inflammatory rhetoric, blocking traffic, and damaging property – are effective for gaining publicity. However, we find across three experiments that extreme protest tactics decreased popular support for a given cause because they reduced feelings of identification with the movement. Though this effect obtained in tests of popular responses to extreme tactics used by animal rights, Black Lives Matter, and anti-Trump protests (Studies 1-3), we found that self-identified political activists were willing to use extreme tactics because they believed them to be effective for recruiting popular support (Studies 4a & 4b).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Johnson: Elites Eying the Exits Signals America’s Crisis

February 18, 2017

Johnson: Elites Eying the Exits Signals America’s Crisis

Institute President Rob Johnson interviewed by the New Yorker on hedge-fund managers and the market for air strips in New Zealand

Interviewed as part of an extraordinary New Yorker investigation into growing anxiety among America’s corporate elite over the potential for anarchic social collapse, Institute President Robert Johnson saw his peers’ talk of bolt-holes in New Zealand as reflecting a deeper crisis.

Johnson told writer Evan Osnos of the mounting anxiety he had encountered among hedge-fund managers and other wealthy Americans he knew. “More and more were saying, ‘You’ve got to have a private plane,” Johnson said. “You have to assure that the pilot’s family will be taken care of, too. They have to be on the plane.’ ”

Osnos writes: “By January, 2015, Johnson was sounding the alarm: the tensions produced by acute income inequality were becoming so pronounced that some of the world’s wealthiest people were taking steps to protect themselves. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Johnson told the audience, ‘I know hedge-fund managers all over the world who are buying airstrips and farms in places like New Zealand because they think they need a getaway.’ ”

Johnson bemoaned the lack of a “spirit of stewardship” and openness to more aggressively redistributive tax policy among the wealthy.

“Twenty-five hedge-fund managers make more money than all of the kindergarten teachers in America combined,” he told the New Yorker. “Being one of those twenty-five doesn’t feel good. I think they’ve developed a heightened sensitivity.”

If anything, Osnos wrote, inequality is widening, noting recent statistics from the National Bureau of Economic Research that showed that while incomes for the top 1 percent of Americans have nearly tripled, half of the population was earning at the same level they did in 1980, comparing America’s wealth gap to that seen in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

When Did Our Elites Become Self-Serving Parasites?

October 4, 2016

When Did Our Elites Become Self-Serving Parasites?

Combine financialization, neoliberalism and moral bankruptcy, and you end up with self-serving parasitic elites.
When did our financial and political elites become self-serving parasites? Some will answer that elites have always been self-serving parasites; as tempting as it may be to offer a blanket denunciation of elites, this overlooks the eras in which elites rose to meet existential crises.
As historian Peter Turchin explained in his book War and Peace and War: The Rise and Fall of Empires, the value of sacrifice was a core characteristic of the early Republic’s elite:
“Unlike the selfish elites of the later periods, the aristocracy of the early Republic did not spare its blood or treasure in the service of the common interest. When 50,000 Romans, a staggering one fifth of Rome’s total manpower, perished in the battle of Cannae, as mentioned previously, the senate lost almost one third of its membership. This suggests that the senatorial aristocracy was more likely to be killed in wars than the average citizen….
The wealthy classes were also the first to volunteer extra taxes when they were needed… A graduated scale was used in which the senators paid the most, followed by the knights, and then other citizens. In addition, officers and centurions (but not common soldiers!) served without pay, saving the state 20 percent of the legion’s payroll.
The richest 1 percent of the Romans during the early Republic was only 10 to 20 times as wealthy as an average Roman citizen.”
Now compare that to the situation in Late Antiquity Rome when
“an average Roman noble of senatorial class had property valued in the neighborhood of 20,000 Roman pounds of gold. There was no “middle class” comparable to the small landholders of the third century B.C.; the huge majority of the population was made up of landless peasants working land that belonged to nobles. 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A conspiracy theory about conspiracy theories

October 1, 2016

A CONSPIRACY THEORY ABOUT CONSPIRACY THEORIES

conspiracytheories

One of the funny things about conspiracy theories, including false flag attacks, is how often they are proven to be true. You have to wonder how long the shame-inducing slam, “That’s a conspiracy theory,” will keep working.

But that’s not my point for today. Today, I want to introduce a conspiracy theory of my own, a conspiracy theory about conspiracy theories. Here it is:

The powers that be – the elite, the deep state, whomever – want wild conspiracy theories to spread. Because after these wild theories set the “outrage meter” very high, they can get away with almost anything below that line.

In other words, wild theories ensure that the “I’ll act if I see that” trigger is never reached and Joe Average remains docile, even as he is progressively abused.

I hope I haven’t given any nefarious people ideas, but I think this is already happening. And in any event, I’m fairly certain it’s worth pointing out.

A Second Theory

There is a second reason for the lords of the status quo to love conspiracy theories, which is that such theories make it easy to discredit troublesome ideas.

For example, we now know – thank you again, Edward Snowden – that government agents are infiltrating websites to sow fear, uncertainty, and doubt, as well as to destroy reputations.

So, rather than just pulling out the usual manipulation to discredit a troublesome idea (“conspiracy theory!”), why not tie it to some really nasty racist crap?

Lots of people have avoided discussions of the Federal Reserve, for example, because trolls attached to the discussions demonize Jews. Disgusted by anti-Semitism, people turn away from the whole subject, and the central banking scam remains unquestioned.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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