Debt and the Destruction of America

"The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the Government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson."
-- A letter written by FDR to Colonel House, November 21st, l933

Congress is once again heading for another rubber stamping of a requested of $190 billion to keep the war afloat for another year. When approved, Congress would have appropriated more than $760 billion for the two wars, having already approved of $450 billion for Iraq and $127 billion for Afghanistan. This already far exceeds the Congressional Budget Office's 2005 projection for the war to cost $600 billion by 2010.

Of course, fellow citizens, you and I will be asked to pay off the creditors who loaned the money to the government for a war we never asked for or wanted. And, according to our creditors, we (and not just those pod people on Capital Hill) must pay the money back, with interest. If we don't, the creditors will sell our country from under our feet.

Debt Crisis Sparks Another War

The oft heard response by most people in the left is that the war is about oil, and this is true to some extent, however, it is not the principle reason for war. Here is a telling statement from the U.S. Network for Global Economic Justice, a network committed to ending the neo-liberal economic programs of international finance:

"The economic restructuring of Iraq to benefit foreign investors was most likely one of the main motivations for the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq – or at least a highly profitable windfall. The fact that Paul Wolfowitz, the newly appointed president of the World Bank, was one of the major architects of the invasion only heightens the probability of a conscious plan on the part of the Bush administration."
www.50years.org/cms/updates/story/320

And, here Ed Kinane gives us an example of how countries lose their sovereignty when they go into debt:

"In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq and deposed Saddam. Most Iraqis were greatly relieved. But even apart from the ensuing occupation, their ordeal – their captivity – was far from over. Saddam's creditors, Saddam's former allies, have forced Iraqis to pay billions annually in debt service. If the United States and other world powers have their way, the Iraqis will keep being bled dry – and having their oil hijacked – paying off Saddam's loans for decades to come.

In an interesting wrinkle, the United States is simultaneously seeking to have some loans "forgiven." The United States isn't being altruistic; the price would be more IMF “reforms” and “privatization.” "In exchange [for some debt forgiveness], Iraq will surrender its economic sovereignty to global financial institutions, provide foreign investors greater access to Iraqi natural resources, and increase investment opportunities for multinational corporations." [Brian Dominick, “New Standard”]"
www.commondreams.org/views05/1207-29.htm

Hmmm, "surrender its economic sovereignty to global financial institutions."

Is there any doubt that the U.S. is heading in precisely the same direction as Iraq?

We are systematically being pillaged by the bankers and creditors who have no problem giving the U.S. government loans to carry out a criminal, illegal war in Iraq. That high priest of Mammon, Alan Greenspan, doesn't see any problems with the war (with the exception that it was being mismanaged) or the tax-cuts to the wealthy as long as other programs like Social Security, and public education were slashed. How kind of him. Americans can lose it all, but the investors of the Fed will demand that they get paid back...or else.

Or else.... there is a doctrine called "Odious Debt" that creditors dread to hear. This doctrine states that "when creditors lend to a dictatorial regime which they know is not using the loans to benefit the population, then debt payments cannot be demanded of those people once they are free."
www.swans.com/library/art10/iraq/alexander.html

Since most Americans didn't want this war and we repeatedly asked congress to put a halt to funding it (with congress ignoring us), we should feel no obligation to pay off the creditors who are financing it.

Of course, debt forgiveness is what many Iraqis have demanded to no effect. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Paris Club have concluded that the Iraqis must sell off most of their assets and privatize their economy to help pay off their creditors. If Iraqis seem a little pissed off about this it is pretty understandable.

What will happen when the creditors of this country start to demand payback of the loans for this evil war that our government (and the creditors) are perpetrating? Are we going to see a free-fall fire-sell of America's assets and public institutions at rock bottom prices? or are we going to do what the Iraqis are doing and fight back?

Either way, it looks increasingly bleak for America.

For further reading:

www.6towns.com/driving/Billions.html

addendum: a recent comment from radio talk show host Mike Malloy recently posted on Democraticunderground.com:

September 26, 2007

Under the radar, quietly hidden behind his disastrous foreign policy failures and trillion-dollar bloody affair in Iraq, the U.S. economy under Bush’s fiscal “leadership” is a speeding train heading into a brick wall. So far the major news networks have only been reporting on this around the fringes, but that’s about to change as recession and perhaps full-blown depression are looming around the corner.

Alex S. Gabor, writing for The American Chronicle put it this way: “Bush's military adventurism, not to mention his administration's exorbitant tax cuts for the wealthy, gutted the surplus of $128 billion Clinton handed him in 2001 into a deficit of well over $1 trillion today. Bush has simultaneously increased the national debt by over $3 trillion effectively nailing each and every US citizen with a bill for almost $30,000. The foreign bankers know that its time to wean America off its free debt ride and that any further debt will never be repaid. The greatest (Ponzi) scheme in the history of mankind is rapidly, within the next decade, completely unwinding.”

Want more good news? The U.S. unemployment rate is climbing, as is the poverty rate, there’s almost no such thing as an American manufacturing job, the personal savings rate is at a negative number, big corporations continue to ship jobs overseas with no restrictions or oversight, mortgage companies are going bankrupt, and the home ownership rate is at its lowest point in two decades. Worse, increasing numbers of foreclosures are depressing home prices all over the U.S., adding to the buildup of unsold inventory and further harming the already damaged housing market.

Meanwhile, despite recent rate cuts by the Fed, the dollar has fallen to par with the Canadian dollar with no bottom in sight. The national debt is now beyond $10 trillion. Foreign bankers have been shifting from dollar denominated oil contracts into Euro denominated exchanges such as the one recently established in Iran, and gradually shifting out of the US Treasury market along with the Chinese who have already shifted billions out of dollar denominated assets.

US taxpayers have spent over $450 billion on Iraq alone, while Bush/Cheney cronies continue making a killing from military contracts. Bush says he’s plenty capable of “being wise about the money.” ‘Fraid not Chucklenutz. You're not equal to managing a lemonade stand, much less the (formerly) largest economy on the planet. You've never been wise about anything and managing the huge budget surpluses Clinton left in your greasy hands is no exception.

We’re in serious financial trouble, Truthseekers."

Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine" and the policy of Disaster Capitalism

"Shock and Awe" is what the media and pentagon called the bombardment of Baghdad by U.S. forces at the start of the 2003 Persian Gulf War. We remember the horrible visuals well, just as we remember, in graphic detail, our own shock and awe event on September 11, 2001, when we were treated to the first in a series of psychological trauma for the new the "War on Terror" PR campaign. All of these horrible events were designed to turn us, and Iraqis, into pliable infants, willing to let our government do whatever they want in order to "protect us."

Many of us picked up early on how this shock therapy was being used to remake society to the benefit of the planners of these events, however, we just didn't know the root philosophy or the faces behind the doctrine. Now Naomi Klein helps us fill in the holes to our understanding with her new tour de force book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.

Based on years of research and four years of on-the-ground reporting in disaster zones, Klein outlines for us how the "shock doctrine" is used as an instrument of foreign and domestic policy to reengineer the political/economic landscapes of the world. Here is an excerpt from Naomi Klein's website on how it works:

"At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq’s civil war, a new law is unveiled that would allow Shell and BP to claim the country’s vast oil reserves…. Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly out-sources the running of the “War on Terror” to Halliburton and Blackwater…. After a tsunami wipes out the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts.... New Orleans’s residents, scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover that their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be reopened…. These events are examples of “the shock doctrine”: using the public’s disorientation following massive collective shocks – wars, terrorist attacks, or natural disasters -- to achieve control by imposing economic shock therapy. Sometimes, when the first two shocks don’t succeed in wiping out resistance, a third shock is employed: the electrode in the prison cell or the Taser gun on the streets."

The book traces the Shock Doctrine's origins back fifty years, to the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman, which produced many of the leading neo-conservative and neo-liberal thinkers whose influence is still profound in Washington today. New, surprising connections are drawn between economic policy, “shock and awe” warfare and covert CIA-funded experiments in electroshock and sensory deprivation in the 1950s, research that helped write the torture manuals used today in Guantanamo Bay."

Klein also writes in October's Harpers Magazine, "Disaster Capitalism" on how this reengineering by the elite is radically remaking the United States government by destroying the "New Deal" programs put in place by Franklin D. Roosevelt, in favor of pay-as-you-go privatized services by corporations. In effect, she outlines, that those that can afford good schools, health care, policing and fire department services will get them; and those that can't will have to try and survive with the decaying public-sector programs and infrastructure. She writes that what is being planned is the setting up of two parallel forms of government—one for the rich and one for poor.

Though I think Naomi has done a phenomenal work of research here, there is just one criticism I have regarding her conclusions as to who or what are behind these "shock" events. She lays out in Harpers that she doesn't believe these disasters are the work of conspiracies, with, perhaps, the exception of Iraq:

"The disaster-capitalism complex does not deliberately scheme to create the cataclysms on which it feeds (though Iraq may be a notable exception), but there is plenty of evidence that its component industries work very hard indeed to make sure that current disastrous trends continue unchallenged."

Naomi, I hope you will examine September 11, 2001 as much as you have examined this "shock doctrine". If you do, you will note that many of these disasters are man-made -- from the 9/11 event itself, to the Reichstag Fire, to the Gulf of Tonkin and Pearl Harbor. These events where either planned and carried out or instigated by people who wanted war. With such a level of understanding it will bring a whole new level of Machiavellian insight to your research.

In hindsight, the "shock doctrine" shouldn't surprise us more jaded individuals; the fact that the people that are behind this doctrine and are still getting away with it is the more shocking still.

Thanks Naomi for the great research into the twisted philosophy of unchecked corporate capitalism.

Here is a must-see mini-documentary by Alfonso Cuarón and Naomi Klein, directed by Jonás Cuarón.

North American Union - A Brave New Orwellian World

If you still don't believe that the "War on Terror" is a fraud let me just point you in the direction of the The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP), the initiative that will usher in the North American Union (NAU). The intended purpose of the NAU is to dissolve the borders between Canada, the U.S., and Mexico, allow trucks and people to cross unhampered over these once-sovereign nations' borders, and allow for joint military exercises between those once-independent countries. This plan was launched in March of 2005 without the consent of the American people or congress. Most Americans have not heard of it.

For those of you who don't already know about the NAU, here's a little background: The NAU is the initiative of the policy wonks from the Council of Foreign Relations, a stated world government organization, in cahoots with a group of conspirators of bankers, industrialists and other globalists (the Vatican?) with the intention to implement a dystopian world government straight out of "A Brave New World" and "1984".

The goal of the North American Union is to chunk up the world into more manageable blocks for the elites to control. They call these areas "free trade" zones. They have already done this in Europe with the EU, and are in the process of doing this in Africa with the African Union and in Asia with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations or ASEAN, and in Central America and South America with CAFTA. The Middle East has proven a problem for them because of Arab distrust of Western banking (and, for good reason). Because of this distrust we have the main reason for the war; the banking elite need to incorporate Arab states if they are to carry off world government (yes, oil is important, but the ultimate goal is to put a permanent footprint in the Middle East, controlled by Western Banking interests). This Middle East will eventually be a regional economic/security block as well if the globalists have their way.

So, what happens when -- and if -- they carry out their North American Union? The ultimate goal is to merge these larger regional economic/security blocks into a world government at some appointed time in history. The NAU is supposed to be fully implemented by 2010.

Using economic legal instruments like NAFTA, GATT and CAFTA the elites have managed to take States' sovereign rights away slowly and under the radar. Most citizen do not know of the loss of their nation's sovereign laws. The World Bank and IMF are two of the leading financial entities to be used to carry out global government. Do you ever wonder why Iraq war instigator Paul Wolfowitz went from Deputy Secretary of Defense to president of the World Bank? Because he is working for world government.

So, how does the "war on terrorism" fit into this lovely construct. By using this huge lie that Arabs attacked us on 9/11, the world government people now get to initiate the Global Security State. Terrorists are literally everywhere now, maybe under your bed, so the government needs to spy on you, take your civil liberties away, chip you, inoculate you, and maybe draft you as a global stormtrooper. You will be watched at all times under the New World Order. They are giving carte blanche to do this because of this huge 9/11 lie, which is why it is so important to expose the fraud.

So, the North American Union would be a preposterous idea if in fact there really was a real terrorists' threat. After all, just imagine how easy it would be for an al CIAduh operative to bribe a Mexican police officer and put a mini-nuke on a truck for transport to some destination in the U.S. or Canada, with the intended goal of exploding it? Very easy, in fact. But, let's not blame Mexicans as the corruptible ones, this scenario can easily be inverted back on Mexico by ours, and Canada's, own corrupt officials. So, the whole "War on Terror" is just a slight of hand -- a trick of the magicians who craft our realities (see quote on the right column of this blog). The government wouldn't open its borders to "free" commerce if we really had a real threat.

Like the "War on Terror," Democracy too is a fraud, otherwise we would be able to vote on this North American initiative and elect who we wanted as president. And, since we don't elect our higher elected officials (and this can be proven by the last two stolen presidential elections; ditto in Mexico and Canada) we know that policy is actually being driven by powerful interests who need to hoodwink you and me by putting on the horse-and-pony shows we call elections.

Okay, so maybe it will be a loving, peaceful New World Order and we shouldn't worry our little heads over it. Just let the "intellectual elites" ubermench do the thinking. Just go back to American Idol and your sitcoms. This would be foolish on your part as this is the same group that gave us 9/11, used lies to kill millions, and will again. Read this statement by Congressman Larry P. McDonald (killed in a plane crash in 1979):

"The drive of the Rockefellers and their allies is to create a one-world government combining supercapitalism and Communism under the same tent, all under their control.... Do I mean conspiracy? Yes I do. I am convinced there is such a plot, international in scope, generations old in planning, and incredibly evil in intent."

For more quotes by eminent individuals on the New World Order go here: http://www.svpvril.com/nwo.htm

I would suggest people reading this circulated this to all their right-wing yahoo friends and relatives who wave the flag, praising that murderous, treasonous thug in the White House and all his Council of Foreign Relation types who drafted this initiative. If they have more than ten brains cells left in their heads to ponder on the relevance of this information, they will see that they are being duped big time.


For more info:


http://www.spp.gov/

9/11 Truth Protesters Disrupt Fox News Programing

Oh, it doesn't get any better than this!

Media activist and 9/11 truther Alex Jones was arrested after he and and a large group of citizens showed up on Fox News' doorstep and disrupted Geraldo Rivera and his "cookie cooking" news analysis with signs and chants that "9/11 was an inside job!"

Presstitute Geraldo Rivera, ruffled and indignant, went into macho mode with "I wish I could..." shaking his fist in the air, implying that he would love to just whack one of the protesters. He also starts calling them everything under the book from "anarchists," "misfits," "nutjobs," "rabble," and the "least attractive group of demonstrators I have ever seen." Ouch! Now that really hurts! (I guess we can't compete with Kyla and the Fox News staff with their little white mini skirts and hooter tops).

Here Geraldo calls the demonstrators everything except what they really are -- citizens who want to get their censored message out.

He even says in one clip that the demonstrators are an "activists radical communist group. I don't know who they are." Geraldo, if you call yourself a real journalist wouldn't it be incumbent for you to bring the microphone out in the crowd and ask them who they are?

Later, after the police come to arrest Alex, Geraldo ask Hooters' waitress Kyla Ebbert (who was escorted off of a Southwest plane for her "provocative" outfit) how she likes New York.

Kyla, "I think I will come back when things calm down in in a few years."

Geraldo "I am not sure of that."

That's right Geraldo, that is the one thing you got right that night. We won't be calm or quiet.







(UPDATE: According to the Philadelphia Inquirer Michael Rivera said that he is has decided to trade in his microphone and run for the Knesset (reported Sept. 16, 2007). He is also quoted as saying that "I would die for Israel."

Asked in the Inquirer:

"And what would he do if elected to the Knesset?

'I would cause a fuss, and every day I would attack someone else,' he said."

And, how would that bring about peace between Israel and Palestine, Geraldo?)

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/1,7340,L-3223928,00.html