Remember when the US hiked its debt ceiling on Friday courtesy of a formulaic 52 affirmative votes in the Senate, giving the Treasury $1.2 trillion in dry debt powder to attempt to grow the economy one more time according to the algorithmic fantasies of voodoo priests with pieces of Ivy League parchment on their walls? Well, two days later, the dry powder is less than $1.1 trillion. In other words, in the past two days, total US debt increased by $120 billion, along the lines of our expectations, as the Treasury filled up all the G-fund cash it had pillaged to continue issuing debt throughout the month of January even though it was formally above the debt ceiling. What is more concerning, is that as the chart below shows, the trendline of US debt since the beginning of 2011 is no longer a straight line, but has slowly transformed into a parabola, the very same word used as the root in such other infamous words as, for example, parabolic.
Please note that the use of any recording equipment to capture this film is strictly forbidden, including: camcorders, cameras, cell phones, charcoal, ink, paint (oil or water-based), and the human brain. On leaving the theater, you will be assaulted by baseball-bat-weilding ushers, who will pummel your skull until you forget what you have seen.
When the Cold War ended, a secret fund planned for by President Ronald Reagan had been set aside to rebuild America, pay off the national debt and reward Americans for decades of sacrifice.
This was the real accomplishment of his presidency, one few knew of.
As the funds finally came together, during the first years of the Clinton administration, instead of going to America, the man chosen to secure this legacy for America was put in a Swiss dungeon, then a mental hospital and eventually railroaded into prison on charges now admitted to have been “manufactured.”
Of the funds, only $4.5 trillion remain (plus interest, less taxes), belonging to Ameritrust Corporation, held for the American people. This is some of the story of those funds and continuing attempts by politicians and bankers to continue destroying the United States through economic terrorism.
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What we want to know and “we” is not a harmless bunch of cranks. “We” means many of the people who formerly and currently represent key “capabilities” that protect and defend the United States.
We want to know why, for years, the Federal Reserve illegally “loaned” trillions of dollars to banks that claimed they were insolvent, money in escrow and not under their authority for distribution.
We want to know why, for years, the Secretaries of Treasury authorized these illegal acts which have been reported in the news but never investigated.
We want to know where the trillions of dollars are in profits that were generated by using this currency to collateralize offshore transactions never listed by the banks who received the illegal loans.
Phi Beta Iota: We sought out Mr. Duff and interviewed him for two hours. Among the speculative but at face value compelling opinions he offered are that there are a great many earnest professionals at the top levels of the US secret intelligence community and within the US military that are fed up with the continuing criminal enterprise that has captured the portions of the US Government. Denver as the money-laundering capital of the USA; the failed war on drugs and the open border for the convenience of the Bush family cartel; Romney as a prime suspect (accusation, neither indictable nor proven) of massive money laundering for the other cartels — Bain as a form of BCCI replacement; attack on Libya as a joint US-French spanking of Israel and its biological weapons factories there to include a Level 5 (robotic only) vault; Iran war as a means of covering bad oil futures bets made by specific investors including Goldman Sachs; Obama to stay in place for four more years; Bert Laden CIA patsy play partly to sideline General Patraeus; many non-combat casualties from Bert Laden play drop-kicked in the staged CH-46 crash later. Bottom line: heavy smoke, some cinders, certainly a sufficiency of information to warrant at least 100 supoenas and extended interrogations, but absent a deep honest investigation, the show goes on. At this point, all sources–including Ron Paul and Veterans Today–must be considered suspect as elements of the controlled opposition. Absent the development of a public intelligence network able to develop public intelligence with total integrity, we simply cannot arrive at meaningful conclusions.
On Saturday, Occupy Oakland re-entered the national spotlight during a day-long effort to take over an empty building and transform it into a social center. Oakland police thwarted the efforts, arresting more than 400 people in the process, primarily during a mass nighttime arrest outside a downtown YMCA. That number included at least six journalists, myself included, in direct violation of OPD media relations policy that states “media shall never be targeted for dispersal or enforcement action because of their status.”
After an unsuccessful afternoon effort to occupy a former convention center, the more than 1,000 protesters elected to return to the site of their former encampment outside city hall. On the way, they clashed with officers, advancing down a street with makeshift shields of corrogated metal and throwing objects at a police line. Officers responded with smoke grenades, tear gas, and bean bag projectiles. After protesters regrouped, they marched through downtown as police pursued and eventually contained a few hundred of them in an enclosed space outside a YMCA. Some entered the gym and were arrested inside.
As soon as it became clear that I would be kettled with the protesters, I displayed my press credentials to a line of officers and asked where to stand to avoid arrest. In past protests, the technique always proved successful. But this time, no officer said a word. One pointed back in the direction of the protesters, refusing to let me leave. Another issued a notice that everyone in the area was under arrest.
I just heard about what happened in Oakland. Rather than threatening lawsuits against the police, the OWS movement should use this moment to make a public appeal to protestors and say that destruction of any kind will not be tolerated by the OWS movement.
For Gandhi, even unduly embarrassing the opponent was considered counter-productive. And inducing fear in them was out of the question. If one of his satyagraha campaigns had gotten out of control like this, he would have called an end to it immediately. And he would have criticized his supporters more than his opponents, because he understood that things like this turn events to the advantage of his opponents: the oppressors.
The OWS movement was a good idea, but it seems to have been their last good idea. Of course, the vandals and flag-burners may have been clandestine agent provocateurs, but all the more reason that their actions should be publicly denounced, otherwise authorities will soon turn events to their advantage.
I can't understand why the OWS movement has such trouble understanding these social dynamics. They are complete pushovers for provocative authoritarian tactics used against them. Gandhi was not so easily fooled. That's why he was able to take on the British Empire, pluck the crown jewel from the crown, and then convince the British to leave voluntarily. No easy feat.
The OWS is not that smart. And because they won't wise up, they are perpetually on the precipice of hurting not only their own cause but the cause of all Americans who want to be free of government tyranny. But I suspect it's because they really want to destroy everything related to the old system. They don't know when enough is enough. The American system of government is like a person with cancer, and the OWS movement was a doctor, they are misjudging the dose of chemotherapy. What they have in mind seems to be the death of the patient not the cure of him. Something is wrong with their minds.
The OWS are like puppets on a string. They will end up doing exactly what authorities want them to do so they can justify a crackdown, not just on the movement, but on all Americans. THIS member of the 99% no longer wants the OWS movement to speak in his name.
While many of us are working to ensure that the Occupy movement will have a lasting impact, it’s worthwhile to consider other countries where masses of people succeeded in nonviolently bringing about a high degree of democracy and economic justice. Sweden and Norway, for example, both experienced a major power shift in the 1930s after prolonged nonviolent struggle. They “fired” the top 1 percent of people who set the direction for society and created the basis for something different.
Both countries had a history of horrendous poverty. When the 1 percent was in charge, hundreds of thousands of people emigrated to avoid starvation. Under the leadership of the working class, however, both countries built robust and successful economies that nearly eliminated poverty, expanded free university education, abolished slums, provided excellent health care available to all as a matter of right and created a system of full employment. Unlike the Norwegians, the Swedes didn’t find oil, but that didn’t stop them from building what the latest CIA World Factbook calls “an enviable standard of living.”
Neither country is a utopia, as readers of the crime novels by Stieg Larsson, Kurt Wallender and Jo Nesbro will know. Critical left-wing authors such as these try to push Sweden and Norway to continue on the path toward more fully just societies. However, as an American activist who first encountered Norway as a student in 1959 and learned some of its language and culture, the achievements I found amazed me. I remember, for example, bicycling for hours through a small industrial city, looking in vain for substandard housing. Sometimes resisting the evidence of my eyes, I made up stories that “accounted for” the differences I saw: “small country,” “homogeneous,” “a value consensus.” I finally gave up imposing my frameworks on these countries and learned the real reason: their own histories.
Then I began to learn that the Swedes and Norwegians paid a price for their standards of living through nonviolent struggle. There was a time when Scandinavian workers didn’t expect that the electoral arena could deliver the change they believed in. They realized that, with the 1 percent in charge, electoral “democracy” was stacked against them, so nonviolent direct action was needed to exert the power for change. In both countries, the troops were called out to defend the 1 percent; people died. Award-winning Swedish filmmaker Bo Widerberg told the Swedish story vividly in Ådalen 31, which depicts the strikers killed in 1931 and the sparking of a nationwide general strike. (You can read more about this case in an entry by Max Rennebohm in the Global Nonviolent Action Database.
The Norwegians had a harder time organizing a cohesive people’s movement because Norway’s small population—about three million—was spread out over a territory the size of Britain. People were divided by mountains and fjords, and they spoke regional dialects in isolated valleys. In the nineteenth century, Norway was ruled by Denmark and then by Sweden; in the context of Europe Norwegians were the “country rubes,” of little consequence. Not until 1905 did Norway finally become independent. When workers formed unions in the early 1900s, they generally turned to Marxism, organizing for revolution as well as immediate gains. They were overjoyed by the overthrow of the czar in Russia, and the Norwegian Labor Party joined the Communist International organized by Lenin. Labor didn’t stay long, however. One way in which most Norwegians parted ways with Leninist strategy was on the role of violence: Norwegians wanted to win their revolution through collective nonviolent struggle, along with establishing co-ops and using the electoral arena.
In the 1920s strikes increased in intensity. The town of Hammerfest formed a commune in 1921, led by workers councils; the army intervened to crush it. The workers’ response verged toward a national general strike. The employers, backed by the state, beat back that strike, but workers erupted again in the ironworkers’ strike of 1923–24.The Norwegian 1 percent decided not to rely simply on the army; in 1926 they formed a social movement called the Patriotic League, recruiting mainly from the middle class. By the 1930s, the League included as many as 100,000 people for armed protection of strike breakers—this in a country of only 3 million!
