Category Archives: Social Control

Zombies are us: The walking dead in the American police state

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By John W. Whitehead

Source: Intrepid Report

Fear is a primitive impulse, brainless as hunger, and because the aim of horror fiction is the production of the deepest kinds of fears, the genre tends to reinforce some remarkably uncivilized ideas about self-protection. In the current crop of zombie stories, the prevailing value for the beleaguered survivors is a sort of siege mentality, a vigilance so constant and unremitting that it’s indistinguishable from the purest paranoia.—Terrence Rafferty, New York Times

Fear and paranoia have become hallmarks of the modern American experience, impacting how we as a nation view the world around us, how we as citizens view each other, and most of all how our government views us.

Nowhere is this epidemic of fear and paranoia more aptly mirrored than in the culture’s fascination with zombies, exacerbated by the hit television series The Walking Dead, in which a small group of Americans attempt to survive in a zombie-ridden, post-apocalyptic world where they’re not only fighting off flesh-eating ghouls but cannibalistic humans.

Zombies have experienced such a surge in popularity in recent years that you don’t have to look very far anymore to find them lurking around every corner: wreaking havoc in movie blockbusters such as World War Z, running for their lives in 5K charity races, battling corsets in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and even putting government agents through their paces in mock military drills arranged by the Dept. of Defense (DOD) and the Center for Disease Control (CDC).

We’ve been so hounded in recent years with dire warnings about terrorist attacks, Ebola pandemics, economic collapse, environmental disasters, and militarized police, it’s no wonder millions of Americans have turned to zombie fiction as a means of escapism and a way to “envision how we and our own would thrive if everything went to hell and we lost all our societal supports.” As Time magazine reporter James Poniewozik phrases it, the “apocalyptic drama lets us face the end of the world once a week and live.”

Writing for the New York Times, Terrence Rafferty notes:

In the case of zombie fiction, you have to wonder whether our 21st-century fascination with these hungry hordes has something to do with a general anxiety, particularly in the West, about the planet’s dwindling resources: a sense that there are too many people out there, with too many urgent needs, and that eventually these encroaching masses, dimly understood but somehow ominous in their collective appetites, will simply consume us. At this awful, pinched moment of history we look into the future and see a tsunami of want bearing down on us, darkening the sky. The zombie is clearly the right monster for this glum mood, but it’s a little disturbing to think that these nonhuman creatures, with their slack, gaping maws, might be serving as metaphors for actual people—undocumented immigrants, say, or the entire populations of developing nations—whose only offense, in most cases, is that their mouths and bellies demand to be filled.

Here’s the curious thing: while zombies may be the personification of our darkest fears, they embody the government’s paranoia about the citizenry as potential threats that need to be monitored, tracked, surveilled, sequestered, deterred, vanquished and rendered impotent. Why else would the government feel the need to monitor our communications, track our movements, criminalize our every action, treat us like suspects, and strip us of any means of defense while equipping its own personnel with an amazing arsenal of weapons?

For years now, the government has been carrying out military training drills with zombies as the enemy. In 2011, the DOD created a 31-page instruction manual for how to protect America from a terrorist attack carried out by zombie forces. In 2012, the CDC released a guide for surviving a zombie plague. That was followed by training drills for members of the military, police officers and first responders. As journalist Andrea Peyser reports:

Coinciding with Halloween 2012, a five-day national conference was put on by the HALO Corp. in San Diego for more than 1,000 first responders, military personnel and law enforcement types. It included workshops produced by a Hollywood-affiliated firm in . . . overcoming a zombie invasion. Actors were made up to look like flesh-chomping monsters. The Department of Homeland Security even paid the $1,000 entry fees for an unknown number of participants . . .

“Zombie disaster” drills were held in October 2012 and ’13 at California’s Sutter Roseville Medical Center. The exercises allowed medical center staff “to test response to a deadly infectious disease, a mass-casualty event, terrorism event and security procedures” . . .

[In October 2014], REI outdoor-gear stores in Soho and around the country are to hold free classes in zombie preparedness, which the stores have been providing for about three years.

The zombie exercises appear to be kitschy and fun—government agents running around trying to put down a zombie rebellion—but what if the zombies in the exercises are us, the citizenry, viewed by those in power as mindless, voracious, zombie hordes?

Consider this: the government started playing around with the idea of using zombies as stand-ins for enemy combatants in its training drills right around the time the Army War College issued its 2008 report, warning that an economic crisis in the U.S. could lead to massive civil unrest that would require the military to intervene and restore order.

That same year, it was revealed that the government had amassed more than 8 million names of Americans considered a threat to national security, to be used “by the military in the event of a national catastrophe, a suspension of the Constitution or the imposition of martial law.” The program’s name, Main Core, refers to the fact that it contains “copies of the ‘main core’ or essence of each item of intelligence information on Americans produced by the FBI and the other agencies of the U.S. intelligence community.”

Also in 2008, the Pentagon launched the Minerva Initiative, a $75 million military-driven research project focused on studying social behavior in order to determine how best to cope with mass civil disobedience or uprisings. The Minerva Initiative has funded projects such as “Who Does Not Become a Terrorist, and Why?” which “conflates peaceful activists with ‘supporters of political violence’ who are different from terrorists only in that they do not embark on ‘armed militancy’ themselves.”

In 2009, the Dept. of Homeland Security issued its reports on Right-wing and Left-wing Extremism, in which the terms “extremist” and “terrorist” were used interchangeably to describe citizens who were disgruntled or anti-government. Meanwhile, a government campaign was underway to spy on Americans’ mail, email and cell phone communications. Recent reports indicate that the U.S. Postal Service has handled more than 150,000 requests by federal and state law enforcement agencies to monitor Americans’ mail, in addition to photographing every piece of mail sent through the postal system.

Noticing a pattern yet? “We the people” or, more appropriately, “we the zombies” are the enemy.

So when presented with the Defense Department’s battle plan for defeating an army of the walking dead, you might find yourself giggling over the fact that a taxpayer-funded government bureaucrat actually took the time to research and write about vegetarian zombies, evil magic zombies, chicken zombies, space zombies, bio-engineered weaponized zombies, radiation zombies, symbiant-induced zombies, and pathogenic zombies.

However, I would suggest that you take at face value the DOD’s strategy, outlined in “CONOP 8888,” recognizing that, in an age of extreme government paranoia, what you’re really perusing is a training manual for the government in how to put down a citizen uprising or at least an uprising of individuals “infected” with dangerous ideas about freedom. Military strategists seized upon the zombie ruse as a way to avoid upsetting the public should the “fictional training scenario” be mistaken for a real plan. Of course, the tactics and difficulties involved are all too real, beginning with martial law.

As the DOD training manual states: “zombies [read: “activists”] are horribly dangerous to all human life and zombie infections have the potential to seriously undermine national security and economic activities that sustain our way of life. Therefore having a population that is not composed of zombies or at risk from their malign influence is vital to U.S. and Allied national interests.”

So how does the military plan to put down a zombie (a.k.a. disgruntled citizen) uprising?

The strategy manual outlines five phases necessary for a counter-offensive: shape, deter, seize initiative, dominate, stabilize and restore civil authority. Here are a few details:

Phase 0 (Shape): Conduct general zombie awareness training. Monitor increased threats (i.e., surveillance). Carry out military drills. Synchronize contingency plans between federal and state agencies. Anticipate and prepare for a breakdown in law and order.

Phase 1 (Deter): Recognize that zombies cannot be deterred or reasoned with. Carry out training drills to discourage other countries from developing or deploying attack zombies and publicly reinforce the government’s ability to combat a zombie threat. Initiate intelligence sharing between federal and state agencies. Assist the Dept. of Homeland Security in identifying or discouraging immigrants from areas where zombie-related diseases originate.

Phase 2 (Seize initiative): Recall all military personal to their duty stations. Fortify all military outposts. Deploy air and ground forces for at least 35 days. Carry out confidence-building measures with nuclear-armed peers such as Russia and China to ensure they do not misinterpret the government’s zombie countermeasures as preparations for war. Establish quarantine zones. Distribute explosion-resistant protective equipment. Place the military on red alert. Begin limited scale military operations to combat zombie threats. Carry out combat operations against zombie populations within the United States that were “previously” U.S. citizens.

Phase 3 (Dominate): Lock down all military bases for 30 days. Shelter all essential government personnel for at least 40 days. Equip all government agents with military protective gear. Issue orders for military to kill all non-human life on sight. Initiate bomber and missile strikes against targeted sources of zombie infection, including the infrastructure. Burn all zombie corpses. Deploy military to lock down the beaches and waterways.

Phase 4 (Stabilize): Send out recon teams to check for remaining threats and survey the status of basic services (water, power, sewage infrastructure, air, and lines of communication). Execute a counter-zombie ISR plan to ID holdout pockets of zombie resistance. Use all military resources to target any remaining regions of zombie holdouts and influence. Continue all actions from the Dominate phase.

Phase 5 (Restore civil authority): Deploy military personnel to assist any surviving civil authorities in disaster zones. Reconstitute combat capabilities at various military bases. Prepare to redeploy military forces to attack surviving zombie holdouts. Restore basic services in disaster areas.

Notice the similarities? Surveillance. Military drills. Awareness training. Militarized police forces. Martial law. What’s amazing is that the government is not being covert about any of this. As I point out in my book, A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, it’s all out in the open, for all to see, read and learn from.

If there is any lesson to be learned, it is simply this: whether the threat to national security comes in the form of actual terrorists, imaginary zombies or disgruntled American citizens infected with dangerous ideas about freedom, the government’s response to such threats remains the same: detect, deter and annihilate.

It’s time to wake up, America, before you end up with a bullet to the head—the only proven means of killing a zombie.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book “The Freedom Wars” (TRI Press) is available online at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

Money Woes and the Trials of Job

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By Mark Anthony Rockeymoore

Source: Sacred Space in Time

Being broke seems to be endemic. Money woes, bills pilling up, creditors calling for blood and first born children. Money flowing in is gone before it is received and there seems to be no end in sight.

How can we focus on higher spiritual ideals when the daily grind calls for all our attention?

We can’t, as long as the two are separated.

By two, I mean, material concerns and spiritual concerns. Simply put, Divinity is not separate from the world. How we deal with our worldly concerns is directly related to how we deal with our spiritual concerns. If we diligently apply ourselves to becoming more accountable and responsible in our daily lives, carefully attending to the details of a normative life, then this concentration will similarly affect our pursuit of the higher goals. And vice versa, if balance is sought.

Money is energy. It greases the wheels of the mechanism of life, providing impetus to support our lifestyles. Money flows where energy goes. And our work, produces that energy. Labors of love produce value that result in success in life. If you do not care for what you do then your efforts are in vain and doomed to failure.

How hard are you working toward your goals? Or are you a debt slave, working toward someone else’s goals? Do you love what you do? If so, could you – in any conceivable way – get paid for it?

Whatever you are thinking about right this moment – that art, that writing, that building, that repairing, that knitting, that video game, that party you put together, the food you make – whatever it may be, if your passion is there then your joy is there as well. If you can get paid by doing what you love to do, then your success is guaranteed.

Money woes – being broke – are a transitory state, as money comes and goes. The idea of wealth itself is subjective and not necessarily even related to money. Health, family, friends are a form of wealth that are worth more than gold. Ask Job, of bible fame, who lost all – money, family, friends – but never disbelieved in the oneness of spirituality, thereafter receiving what he had lost and more as a result of his faith. For Job, there was no separation between his life and his relationship to his god. He saw all he experienced as expressive of his own failures, although the test of his faith through physical illness also challenged his understanding of the Greater Plan for his life. His humility in the face of total ruin is an exemplar of true faith, which is certain knowledge of the efficacy and necessity of each and every lesson we go through that we perceive as negative in nature. The appearance of God in the storm was all that was necessary for his faith to be restored, despite his continuing ignorance in the face of the Adversary’s enmity. It is funny, how, in life, so many things that appear bad, turn out good at some point.

As life shifts, perspectives shift. Life shifts as the mind and spirit undergo transformation. What occurs within, affects that which occurs without.

The trials of Job occurred because he was the best, not the worst. A faithful servant to his god. His faith and devotion were cast upon the flames of tribulation, resulting in the loss of his wealth, his health and his family. And yet, throughout his torment, Job’s confusion, misery and even anger reveal his pain and desperation and also his utter reliance upon his god as the ultimate salvation from his problems. Throughout his trials, his knowledge of the interwoven strands of body and soul remained intact. For him, there was no separation and, in the end, this knowing was his saving grace.

Hard times can be instructional if the lesson is internalized. As we undergo one or more of the trials of Job, realizing that, in the end, even though the workings of creation can be inscrutable and beyond our ability to understand, there is a reason for every iota of pain, suffering and heartache we experience. That the experience, no matter its intensity, is designed to lift us up, to make us stronger, and to bring us closer to the God that holds us in his arms, that loves, that is Love itself.

Building upon strong foundations can only lead to a solid structure. Living, then, within this structure – this house of many mansions – can be the realization of one’s highest dreams and aspirations, if the dream, the joy and the energy coincide.

The Web Revolution That’s Changing How the World Gets High

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By Mike Power

Source: Disinfo.com

It is mainly the young who are suffering the consequences of society’s inability to update our drug laws effectively for the modern age. Almost one third of young people are searching for ways of getting legally high, according to the latest survey commissioned by the Angelus Foundation, a campaign group founded in 2009 by Maryon Stewart, whose twenty-one-year-old daughter Hester, a gifted medical student and keen athlete, died after taking GBL in 2009. (Gamma-butyrolactone, a paint stripper and industrial cleaner, can be used as an intoxicant and is poplar on the club scene. It is active at 1 ml, and causes euphoria and disinhibition, but overdoses, where users fall into a coma-like state, are commonplace since it is so potent. It was legal until late 2009.)

Two-thirds of the 1,011 sixteen-to-twenty-four-year-olds surveyed by the Angelus Foundation in October 2012 admitted they were not well-informed about the risks associated with the new drugs on the market.

Festivals since Woodstock have been linked with drug use, whatever message their PR machines might seed in the press, so events there can tell us much about current trends of use and the attendant problems. Dip your head under the canvas at a festival medical tent and you arrive at the intersection of the net, new drugs and young people. Monty Flinsch, who runs Shanti Camp, a non-profit aid organization providing drug crisis intervention at American festivals, says that in recent years instead of dealing with the psychological issues caused by LSD, psilocybin and MDMA, they have seen seizures, delirium, violence and deaths. ‘Even discounting the hyperbolic news coverage of face-eating zombies, the real situation is substantially worse with legal research chemicals than it ever was before. It is now easier for an American teenager to obtain a powerful psychedelic than it is to obtain alcohol. Today’s scene is much more complex with the influx of large numbers of research chemicals ranging from the more common bath salts (MDPV, methylone) to much more obscure chemicals such as 25C-NBOMe and methoxetamine,’ he said.

The reasons the drugs are taken are manifold, but he believes their legality is a major draw, along with cultural influences. ‘Kids feel they are exposing themselves to less risk by taking drugs that are not going to get them arrested, and drug use is highly subject to countercultural trends, and whatever the cool kids are taking quickly becomes popular. In many cases the legal consequences of drug use far outweigh the medical risks. Our drug laws in the US are forcing users to experiment with increasingly dangerous compounds in order to avoid having their lives ruined by a criminal conviction.’

Flinsch says he cannot see any likely improvements in the future. ‘New research chemicals are ubiquitous and the problems associated with them are growing. From the frontlines we see the situation getting worse rather than better. The new compounds are poorly understood and have little or no history of human use, and therefore the problems we see are harder to characterize and therefore treat. It is sad that what is currently legal is substantially more dangerous than what is illegal.’

The entire debate around drugs, which was already philosophically and practically complex, has been made yet more intractable by the emergence of these new drugs and distribution systems. Our insistence on overlaying anachronistic models of drug control onto this digital world might, in future years, be seen as a fatal flaw that we did not address when we had the chance.

The popularization of research chemicals presents legislators, policymakers and police with an almost existential dilemma. They are charged with protecting the health of populations and reducing crimes, and these new drugs pose health risks, but are legal. The Chinese factories that produce them operate with none of the quality control typical in most pharmaceutical manufacturing plants, but customer uptake is enthusiastic. Each new ban brings a newer, possibly more dangerous drug to the market, and it is impossible to predict what the next moves might be.

Legal responses seem not only not to work, but to exacerbate the issue. The American Analog Act did nothing to prevent the arrival in 2009–11 of the JWH chemicals, the cathinones found in bath salts, and the other synthetic cannabinoids that had hit the UK and Europe in 2008. And where the early vendors of synthetic cannabis substitutes had sold the drugs online, the US did it bigger and better, and even more publicly and commercially.

In the US, in October 2011 the DEA responded by adding several of the new drugs to the controlled-substances schedule, making them formally and specifically illegal. The Synthetic Drug Control Act of 2011 was finally signed into law in July 2012, banning dozens of research chemicals at a stroke. Soon after the bill was passed, Time magazine quoted a Tennessee medic, Dr Sullivan Smith, who said the state had been engulfed by the new drugs. ‘The problem is these drugs are changing and I’m sure they’re going to find some that are a little bit different chemically so they don’t fall under the law,’ he said. ‘Is it adequate to name five or ten or even twenty? The answer is no, they’re changing too fast.’

Within weeks of these laws being passed, there were dozens more new drugs available in the US. One category, known as the NBOME-series of chemicals, is composed of unscheduled analogues of the banned Shulgin psychedelics 2C-I, 2C-B, 2C-D, and so on. Where Shulgin’s chemicals were generally active between 10 mg and 20 mg, these new compounds, created in legitimate medical settings for experimental purposes, are more potent by a large order of magnitude, active at around 200 µg. Each gram of these new, unresearched drugs contains around 5,000 doses, and they cost fractions of a penny per dose. The compounds existed before the most recent bans, but it was the new laws that inspired their wider use; use that will only grow as talk of their effects is amplified online. They have already claimed victims. At the Voodoo Fest in New Orleans in October 2012, twenty-one-year-old Clayton Otwell died after taking one drop of an NBOME drug. The New Orleans Times Picayune newspaper spoke to festival goers who said many dealers were selling the drug 25I-NBOME as artificial LSD or mescaline at the event. ‘This weekend, it was everywhere,’ festivalgoer Jarod Brignac, who also was with Otwell at the festival, told the paper. ‘People had bottles and bottles of it; they were walking through the crowd, trying to make a dime off people at the festival.’

There have been at least six other fatalities in the US from 25I-NBOME, Erowid reported in late 2012. There are dozens of other NBOME-drugs, and their use is growing. The Bluelight bulletin board has three threads on 25I-NBOME, running to over seventy-five pages with more than 100,000 views. Search Google for it and there are suppliers on the first page. A kilo of it can be bought for a few thousand dollars from China.

We must now allow drug users to make safer choices, and that means a gradual, tested, evaluated but concerted roll-back of all existing drug laws; particularly those concerning MDMA, marijuana, magic mushrooms and mescaline, for these are the drugs that most research chemicals seek to emulate. Only then will dangerous innovation end. Simultaneously, drug awareness classes should be compulsory at all schools with credible, evidenced and honest discussions of each drug’s effects, good and bad, including alcohol and tobacco. This will not end the debate, or addiction, or reduce drug use. But it will mean those who choose to take drugs in the future will be better informed and safer, and the costs to society lower. Governments must now seize control of the market in new and old drugs from amateurs, criminals and gangsters.

Perhaps the web’s final and most dramatic effect will be to strip drug culture of its mystique, its cachet of countercultural cool, to reveal that behind the magic and madness, there lie only molecules. At the end of it all, drugs are just carbon, hydrogen and a few other elements. They have their meaning projected onto them by users and the culture more widely. Remove the thrill of social transgression that acting illegally provides and reframe drug use in a clinical context, as a health issue, and that might change. We know in detail what the route we have taken for the last century results in: greater and more dangerous use. We now need a new approach and new data to analyse. It is not this book’s argument that any drug is entirely safe; they demonstrably are not. But to persist in the digital age with this failed and arbitrary strategy of prohibition in the face of all the evidence that it increases harm is irresponsibly dangerous.

However, although some politicians are able to admit grudgingly to youthful experimentation with drugs, it seems few are willing to experiment even moderately with new approaches in policy now they have the power to effect positive change – even at a time when the people who vote for them are demanding exactly that, and when it is more urgent than ever before.

Mike Power is a freelance investigative journalist living in London. He has worked for The Guardian, the Mail on Sunday, the BBC, and Reuters. In 2014 he received the Best Investigative Journalism Award, awarded by the Association of British Science Writers, for his piece “The drug revolution that no one can stop,” which appeared in the online journal Matter. Drugs Unlimited is his first book.

Confronting Battered Citizen Syndrome

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By James F. Tracy

Source: The Memory Hole

State-sponsored terrorism poses a significant challenge to the psychological well-being of the body politic. While evident in many geopolitical locales, this condition arising from such government abuses is especially prevalent in the West. Such a disorder is comparable to the psychological manipulation recognized on a micro-level in some spousal relationships.

Indeed, the 13-year-old “war on terror” has contributed to a grave societal malady that might be deemed “battered citizen syndrome.” As the project of a transnational New World Order is laid out, the psychological constitution of the polity must necessarily experience perpetual crises and the threat thereof. Genuinely non-conventional political communication, organization and activism are among the few substantial means of combating battered citizen syndrome and the spiritual and psychological slavery it perpetuates.

Battered citizen syndrome is an extremely damaging psychological condition that effects individuals who are collectively subjected to emotional abuse and political disenfranchisement by the psychopathic types that all-too-frequently occupy public office in an era of political and socio-economic decay. The condition is often the result of “false flag” terrorism initiated by a tyrannical state that has long grown unresponsive to the citizen’s actual needs. This syndrome subdues individuals’ awareness of their own historical and political agency, and discourages them from seeking assistance for and ultimately remedying their unsafe situation.

There are various stages one will experience as a result of this condition. When persons in the singular or aggregate undergo the threat or experience of state violence in the form of false flag terror (i.e., political assassinations, seemingly spontaneous bombings or shootings, gigantic skyscrapers falling inexplicably at free-fall speed, CIA-sponsored terror bogeys such as Al Qaeda and ISIS, and perhaps even deadly plagues) they will find it expedient to deny such exploitation and decline to admit they are being manipulated by a paranoid and psychopathic state. Corporate-owned or controlled mass media routinely propagating the notion of “free choice” and personal agency by touting the supposed integrity of electoral processes and political institutions actively aid in this denial.

Once a victim accepts the fact that such manipulation is taking place, they will feel remorse. Victims will often believe that the abuse is their fault and not the fault of criminal governance. Eventually, a victim of state terror and violence will realize that they are not to blame for the cruelty they are being subjected to. Despite this realization, the individual will typically choose to remain in the abusive relationship. It may take some time, but eventually the truly self-respecting citizen-victim will understand that in order to defend themselves and their loved ones from harm they must escape their injurious relationship. These stages can be observed in many of the victims who have ultimately recognized and escaped their relationships with an abusive state.

Denial
The first stage of battered citizen syndrome is denial. Denial occurs when a victim of abuse is unable to acknowledge and accept that they are being subjected to political violence in the form of false flag terror and contrived events. During this stage, a victim of such psychological abuse will not only avoid admitting the mistreatment to their friends and their family members, but they themselves will not acknowledge the brutality from which they suffering. They will fail to recognize any problems between themselves and their government. There are numerous factors that may contribute to such steadfast denial.

In many instances, an individual does not realize they are being subjected to such calculating state violence. This is largely due to the manipulative and coercive behavior of the offending government. The acts of abuse may be so subtle that they do not appear to be harmful or damaging. In other instances, a victim of Machiavellian offenses may suppose that denial is the most effective way to avoid being subjected to further violence and cruelty. Whatever the cause, denial is extremely unhelpful to the victim. Until citizens individually and collectively admit and confront the abuses they are experiencing, they will not be able to secure necessary psychic and material aid and protection.

Guilt
After a citizen experiences the denial period they will move on the guilt stage. During this phase, victims of such coercive violence will undergo feelings of extreme guilt and dishonor by being fingered as potential terrorists themselves. Through the suggestion that they may also be terrorists, citizens will believe they may have somehow caused the harm that in reality elements within their exploitative government has subjected them to.

Abusive governments stage false flag terror events not only to create confusion, but also induce guilt in their subjects. Professional political and opinion leaders prompt feelings of guilt through similar rhetorical appeals. Those of the liberal or “progressive” sort in particular claim that such events are the result of “blow back,” due to the given nation’s foreign policy and imperialist overreach. Similarly, conservatives assert that the nation has been victimized because it has been too forthright in parading its “freedoms.”

Once internalized, “war on terror” guilt ideation is reinforced via the messaging slogans of state agencies. Typical messaging may include communications such as, “Is your neighbor or coworker a homegrown extremist?” “Keep your luggage with you at all times,” “Step this way after removing your shoes and valuables,” and so on.

Regardless of guilt stimulus, feelings of culpability are used to exert further control via rituals of submission, such as enacting excessive and unwarranted security measures to partake in travel, gain access to a public building, or withdraw cash from one’s bank account.

Along these lines, the offending government will convince the victim that it must resort to physical violence in order to punish the citizenry for their negative qualities or behavior. They may threaten or enact violence to teach the citizen not to take part in the activities of which it disapproves or finds inconvenient, such as public demonstrations and civil disobedience.

In addition to such acts, tyrannical governments strip citizens of their civil liberties and establish or strengthen a police state in order to further expand their control. As a result, the citizen’s already low self-esteem and depression will accelerate downward. Once this occurs, it is not difficult to convince the victim that they are being subjected to abuse due to their own faults and inadequacies. If they could only be more dependent on the state and live up to its expectations, they would not be experiencing state terror and exploitation. Victims of such manipulation will believe this. Therefore, they will not contest the abuse being experienced because they have rationalized that their abusive government is not to blame for such cruelty.

Enlightenment
One of the most important phases of the battered citizen’s syndrome is enlightenment. This occurs when a target of abuse recognizes how they are not to blame for their ill-treatment. They will begin to understand that no one deserves to be subjected to state-inflicted terror and violence regardless of their personal characteristics or perceived shortcomings. The fact that the state  seeks to manipulate their subjects and exhibits disapproval of their victim’s behavior does not justify exposing the victim to the trauma prompted by terrorist threats and violence.

During this stage, a citizen will begin to acknowledge that most states are abusive, violent, overseen by psychopathic personalities, and thus the violence experienced is the result of an external socio-political condition and not inherent in themselves. It is now that a victim begins to realize the importance of coming to terms with their situation and holding those in power accountable.

Despite the realization that their fear, anxiety, and loss of civil liberties likely stem from the broader designs of treacherous individuals in power, victims will continue to accept overzealous state power and commit themselves to saving the seriously flawed relationship. They will often use various reasons in order to justify this decision. However, individuals who choose to remain in such an environment will soon find that in most cases the tyrannical government will only increase the severity of its abuses.

Responsibility
Once a citizen recognizes how the psychological torment and terroristic violence they are suffering from is the fault of their government, it is only a matter of time before these victims understand the importance of taking responsibility and escaping their current situation. In the majority of cases, state violence does not improve over time. Most governments subjecting their citizens to violence and brutality are “repeat offenders” and will continue to reinforce control by exposing subjects to heightened abuses. When an individual acknowledges this, they will understand that their safety, and the safety of their loved ones, depends on establishing new modes of governance. During the responsibility stage of the battered citizen’s syndrome, a victim of state violence may experience a vast array of difficulties.

It is essential that an individual plan their escape well. Citizens who have decided to depart from their unfavorable situation should avoid the enticements of major political parties that are usually the root cause of battered citizen syndrome.

If a victim would like support and advice about leaving their abusive relationship they may wish to contact or support a third party candidate running for public office. Citizen violence shelters in the form of information derived from alternative news media, meaningful political discussion and debate, and grassroots and independent political organizing can also provide victims with the necessary support to make a clean break from tyrannical state power that will ultimately lead toward the forging of more constructive political realities for themselves and their fellow citizenry.

Standard & Poor’s: Runaway Inequality Dampens GDP Growth, Leads to Boom/Bust Cycles and Discourages Trade, Investment and Hiring

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Source: Washington’s Blog

Inequality Also Dampens Social Mobility, Increases Political Pressure and Produces a Less Competitive Workforce

Standard & Poor’s released a report on inequality today, concluding:

Higher levels of income inequality increase political pressures, discouraging trade, investment, and hiring. Keynes first showed that income inequality can lead affluent households (Americans included) to increase savings and decrease consumption (1), while those with less means increase consumer borrowing to sustain consumption…until those options run out. When these imbalances can no longer be sustained, we see a boom/bust cycle such as the one that culminated in the Great Recession (2).

Aside from the extreme economic swings, such income imbalances tend to dampen social mobility and produce a less-educated workforce that can’t compete in a changing global economy. This diminishes future income prospects and potential long-term growth, becoming entrenched as political repercussions extend the problems.

Our review of the data, as well as a wealth of research on this matter, leads us to conclude that the current level of income inequality in the U.S. is dampening GDP growth, at a time when the world’s biggest economy is struggling to recover from the Great Recession and the government is in need of funds to support an aging population.

S&P joins many others in concluding that runaway inequality hurts the economy, including:

  • Former U.S. Secretary of Labor and UC Berkeley professor Robert Reich
  • Global economy and development division director at Brookings and former economy minister for Turkey, Kemal Dervi
  • Societe Generale investment strategist and former economist for the Bank of England, Albert Edwards
  • Michael Niemira, chief economist at the International Council of Shopping Centers
  • Former executive director of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, senior policy analyst in the White House Office of Policy Development, and deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the Treasury Department, Bruce Bartlett
  • Deputy Division Chief of the Modeling Unit in the Research Department of the IMF, Michael Kumhof

Even the father of free market economics – Adam Smith – didn’t believe that inequality should be a taboo subject.

Numerous investors and entrepreneurs agree that runaway inequality hurts the economy, including:

Indeed, extreme inequality helped cause the Great Depression, the current financial crisis … and the fall of the Roman Empire . And inequality in America today is twice as bad as in ancient Rome, worse than it was in Tsarist Russia, Gilded Age America, modern Egypt, Tunisia or Yemen, many banana republics in Latin America, and worse than experienced by slaves in 1774 colonial America. (More stunning facts.)

Bad government policy – which favors the fatcats at the expense of the average American – is largely responsible for our runaway inequality.

And yet the powers-that-be in Washington and Wall Street are accelerating the redistribution of wealth from the lower, middle and more modest members of the upper classes to the super-elite.

8 Facts About American Inequality

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By Pierce Nahigyan

Source: Nation of Change

…that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”

– James Truslow Adams, The Epic of America (1931)

The American Dream has been defined many ways by writers of both poetic and prosaic bent, but its essentials tend to involve life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (or property, depending on your source).

The Declaration of Independence, upon which an entire nation was radically brought into existence, asserts that not only are all men created equal but that this is a “self-evident” truth. The significance of this fact lies not in its semantics, which epistemologists would challenge, but in its utilization as a primary foundational creed. By this “unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,” a contract was agreed to, that their union would be founded on this principle. Furthermore, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are rights that governments are created to uphold. Thus, America was endowed with its dream at the moment of its conception: the freedom to succeed.  

The United States has promoted a self-congratulating exceptionalism for decades, waving its Declaration and Constitution in the faces of other sovereign nations as if the latter had never beheld such concepts. Our capital F “Freedom” sets us apart from the rest of the world, as the political rhetoric has repeated ad nauseam, no matter the freedoms enjoyed by democracies on every continent. And yet our basic freedom, the freedom to succeed, America’s contractual promise, has been shrinking for thirty years.

The freedom to succeed transcends economic systems but it is most potently expressed by capitalist gains. The ability to go “from rags to riches” is ingrained in this nation’s ethos and there is nothing intrinsically immoral about that goal. However, the current state of American inequality reveals a very real and expanding gap between the rich and poor that betrays the foundational endowment of this Union. When the freedom to succeed is denied every citizen, their equality is equally denied. 

The wealth and income inequalities in America do not require socialist reforms to fix, and capitalism is not the problem. The problem is that we have let inequality advance in this country so gradually that its obviousness is masked by its familiarity. Below I outline eight facts about inequality in America that every American should know. 

1) 400 Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined. To put that into context, as of 2013 there are an estimated 316,128,839 people living in the United States, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Just 400 Americans have more money than over 158 million of their fellow citizens. Their net worth is over $2 trillion, which is approximate to the Gross Domestic Product of Russia. This ratio has been verified by Politifact and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich. One explanation for the vast discrepancy in wealth is the definition of “worth,” which includes everything a person or household owns. This means savings and property but also mortgages, bills and debt. Poorer households can owe so much in debt that they possess a negative net worth.

2) America has the second-highest level of income inequality, after Chile. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development studies thirty-four developed countries and ranks them both before and after taxes and government transfers take effect (government transfers include Social Security, income tax credit and unemployment insurance). Before taxes and government transfers, America ranks tenth in income inequality. After taxes and transfers, it ranks second. Whereas its developed peers reduce inequality through government programs, the United States’ government exacerbates it. 

3) The current state of inequality can be traced back to 1979. After the Stock Market Crash of 1929, the gap between the rich and the poor began to narrow. For fifty years, wages still differed greatly between the upper- and working-classes, but a robust middle-class took shape, as well as the opportunity for working-class individuals to ascend. In his book, “The Great Divergence,” journalist Timothy Noah traces today’s inequality to the beginning of the 1980s and the widening gap between the middle- and upper-classes. This gap was influenced by the following factors: the failure of American schools to prepare students for new technology; poor immigration policies that favor unskilled workers and drive down the price of already low-income labor; federally-mandated minimum wage that has failed to keep pace with inflation; and the decline of labor unions.

4) Non-union wages are also affected by the decline of unions. The Economic Policy Institute claims that 20% of the growth in the wage gap between high-school educated and college educated men can be attributed to deunionization. Between 1978 and 2011, union representation for blue-collar and high-school educated workers declined by more than half. This has also diminished the “union wage effect,” whereby the existence of unions (more than 40% of blue-collar workers were union members in ’78) was enough to boost wages in non-union jobs – in high school graduates by as much as 8.2%. Not only did unions protect lower- and middle-class workers from unfair wages, they also established norms and practices that were then adopted by non-union employers. Two prime examples are employee pensions and healthcare. Today about 13% of workers belong to unions, which has reduced their bargaining power and influence. 

5) There is less opportunity for intergenerational mobility. In December 2011, President Obama spoke at Osawatomie High School in Kansas. He was very clear about the prospects of the poor in today’s United States:

“[O]ver the last few decades, the rungs on the ladder of opportunity have grown farther and farther apart, and the middle class has shrunk. You know, a few years after World War II, a child who was born into poverty had a slightly better than 50-50 chance of becoming middle class as an adult. By 1980, that chance had fallen to around 40 percent. And if the trend of rising inequality over the last few decades continues, it’s estimated that a child born today will only have a one-in-three chance of making it to the middle class – 33 percent.”

As refreshing as that honesty is, Obama promised no fix beyond $1 trillion in spending cuts and a need to work toward an “innovation economy.” 

In a speech one month later, Obama’s Chairman of Economic Advisers, Alan Krueger, elaborated on the dire state of America’s shrinking middle-class. The contraction, he stated, could partially be attributed to “skill-biased technical change”: work activities that have become automated over time, reducing the need for unskilled labor and favoring those with analytical training. He also highlighted the 50 year decline in tax rates for the top 0.1%, increased competition from overseas workers, and a lack of educational equality for children. Poor children are denied the private tutors, college prep and business network of family and friends available to their wealthier peers, which locks them into the class they are born into.

6) Tax cuts to the wealthiest have not improved the economy or created more jobs. Krueger also revealed that the tax cuts of the 2000s for top earners did not improve the economy any better than they did in the 1990s (meanwhile, income growth was stronger for lower- and middle-class families in the 1990s than in the last forty years). Tax rates for the top income earners in America peaked in 1945 at 66.4 percent. Following decades of gradual reductions, they have since been cut in half. During the same time, the payroll tax has increased since the 1950s and individual income tax has bounced between 40-50% through the present day. Conversely, corporate tax declined from above 30% in the 1950s to under 10% in 2011. All of these tax cuts are made ostensibly to improve the economy and create jobs. However, the National Bureau of Economic Research has concluded that it is young companies, “regardless of their size,” that are the real job creators in America. Tax cuts to the wealthiest do not create jobs. 

7) Incomes for the top 1% have increased (but the top 0.01% make even more). Between 1979 and 2007, the average incomes of the 1% increased 241%. Compare that to 19% growth for the middle fifth of America and 11% for the bottom fifth. Put another way, in 1980 the average American CEO earned forty-two times as much as his average worker. In 2001, he earned 531 times as much. 

Average income across the 1% is actually stratified into widely disparate echelons. Compare the $29,840 average income for the bottom 90% to the $161,139 of the top 10%. Compare the $1 million average income of the top 1% to the $2.8 million of the top 0.1%. Yet both still pale beside the $23 million average income of the top 0.01%. 

If those numbers seem a bit overwhelming, Politizane has created a video that illustrates this staggering inequality:

8) The majority of Congress does not feel your pain. Empowered by the Constitution to represent their constituents, United States Congress members are, for the first time in history, mostly millionaires. The 2012 financial disclosure information of the 534 current Congress men and women reveals that over half of them have a net worth of $1 million or more. After the past seven facts it is difficult to read this last one and believe that these 268 legislators have the best interests of the remaining 99% at heart. But if that is too presumptuous a leap, it is not too bold to say that wealthier donors, lobbyists and special interest groups enjoy greater access to these lawmakers than the average American. 

Life, and the Liberty to Go Hungry

Last week Congress failed to extend emergency benefits for unemployment, leaving 1.3 million people without federal aid. Congress is currently on a weeklong recess that will keep them from debating the issue until their return on January 27. The bill was too divisive for Republicans and Democrats to reach an agreement on, though unemployment is still above 7% nationally. 

Thankfully, the unemployed have their Congress working for them. And at $174,000 annual pay, those representatives are sure to return from vacation committed to fresh solutions. 

The pursuit of happiness is an ephemeral affair, but the freedom to succeed is not. It is something one possesses or lacks. It is the difference between enjoying a more prosperous life than one’s parents and believing there is no way out. A “self-evident” truth is one that is meaningful without proof, much akin to faith. If inequality continues to rise in America, the self-evident truths of its founding will be no more than words on an old piece of paper, its American Dream a tattered faith paid lip service by the deceitful and the blind.

We’re all criminals and outlaws in the eyes of the American police state

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By John Whitehead

Source: Intrepid Report

“Never in the civilised world have so many been locked up for so little.”—“Rough Justice in America,” The Economist

Why are we seeing such an uptick in Americans being arrested for such absurd “violations” as letting their kids play at a park unsupervised, collecting rainwater and snow runoff on their own property, growing vegetables in their yard, and holding Bible studies in their living room?

Mind you, we’re not talking tickets or fines or even warnings being issued to these so-called “lawbreakers.” We’re talking felony charges, handcuffs, police cars, mug shots, pat downs, jail cells and criminal records.

Consider what happened to Nicole Gainey, the Florida mom who was arrested and charged with child neglect for allowing her 7-year-old son to visit a neighborhood playground located a half mile from their house.

For the so-called “crime” of allowing her son to play at the park unsupervised, Gainey was interrogated, arrested and handcuffed in front of her son, and transported to the local jail where she was physically searched, fingerprinted, photographed and held for seven hours and then forced to pay almost $4,000 in bond in order to return to her family. Gainey’s family and friends were subsequently questioned by the Dept. of Child Services. Gainey now faces a third-degree criminal felony charge that carries with it a fine of up to $5,000 and 5 years in jail.

For Denise Stewart, just being in the wrong place at the wrong time, whether or not she had done anything wrong, was sufficient to get her arrested.

The 48-year-old New York grandmother was dragged half-naked out of her apartment and handcuffed after police mistakenly raided her home when responding to a domestic disturbance call. Although it turns out the 911 call came from a different apartment on a different floor, Stewart is still facing charges of assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest.

And then there are those equally unfortunate individuals who unknowingly break laws they never even knew existed. John Yates is such a person. A commercial fisherman, Yates was sentenced to 30 days in prison and three years of supervised release for throwing back into the water some small fish which did not meet the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission’s size restrictions. Incredibly, Yates was charged with violating a document shredding provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which was intended to prevent another Enron scandal.

The list of individuals who have suffered similar injustices at the hands of a runaway legal system is growing, ranging from the orchid grower jailed for improper paperwork and the lobstermen charged with importing lobster tails in plastic bags rather than cardboard boxes to the former science teacher labeled a federal criminal for digging for arrowheads in his favorite campsite.

As awful as these incidents are, however, it’s not enough to simply write them off as part of the national trend towards overcriminalization—although it is certainly that. Thanks to an overabundance of 4,500-plus federal crimes and 400,000 plus rules and regulations, it’s estimated that the average American actually commits three felonies a day without knowing it.

Nor can we just chalk them up as yet another symptom of an overzealous police state in which militarized police attack first and ask questions later—although it is that, too.

Nor is the problem that we’re a crime-ridden society. In fact, it’s just the opposite. The number of violent crimes in the country is down substantially, the lowest rate in 40 years, while the number of Americans being jailed for nonviolent crimes, such as driving with a suspended license, are skyrocketing.

So what’s really behind this drive to label Americans as criminals?

As with most things, if you want to know the real motives behind any government program, follow the money trail. When you dig down far enough, as I document in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, you quickly find that those who profit from Americans being arrested are none other than the police who arrest them, the courts which try them, the prisons which incarcerate them, and the corporations, which manufacture the weapons and equipment used by police, build and run the prisons, and profit from the cheap prison labor.

Talk about a financial incentive.

First, there’s the whole make-work scheme. In the absence of crime, in order to keep the police and their related agencies employed, occupied, and utilizing the many militarized “toys” passed along by the Department of Homeland Security, one must invent new crimes—overcriminalization—and new criminals to be spied on, targeted, tracked, raided, arrested, prosecuted and jailed. Enter the police state.

Second, there’s the profit-incentive for states to lock up large numbers of Americans in private prisons. Just as police departments have quotas for how many tickets are issued and arrests made per month—a number tied directly to revenue—states now have quotas to meet for how many Americans go to jail. Having outsourced their inmate population to private prisons run by corporations such as Corrections Corp of America and the GEO Group, ostensibly as a way to save money, increasing numbers of states have contracted to keep their prisons at 90% to 100% capacity. This profit-driven form of mass punishment has, in turn, given rise to a $70 billion private prison industry that relies on the complicity of state governments to keep the money flowing and their privately run prisons full. No wonder the United States has the largest prison population in the world.

But what do you do when you’ve contracted to keep your prisons full but crime rates are falling? Easy. You create new categories of crime and render otherwise law-abiding Americans criminals. Notice how we keep coming full circle back to the point where it’s average Americans like you and me being targeted and turned into enemies of the state?

That brings me to the third factor contributing to Americans being arrested, charged with outrageous “crimes,” and jailed: the Corporate State’s need for profit and cheap labor. Not content to just lock up millions of people, corporations have also turned prisoners into forced laborers.

According to professors Steve Fraser and Joshua B. Freeman, “All told, nearly a million prisoners are now making office furniture, working in call centers, fabricating body armor, taking hotel reservations, working in slaughterhouses, or manufacturing textiles, shoes, and clothing, while getting paid somewhere between 93 cents and $4.73 per day.” Tens of thousands of inmates in U.S. prisons are making all sorts of products, from processing agricultural products like milk and beef, to packaging Starbucks coffee, to shrink-wrapping software for companies like Microsoft, to sewing lingerie for Victoria’s Secret.

What some Americans may not have realized, however, is that America’s economy has come to depend in large part on prison labor. “Prison labor reportedly produces 100 percent of military helmets, shirts, pants, tents, bags, canteens, and a variety of other equipment. Prison labor makes circuit boards for IBM, Texas Instruments, and Dell. Many McDonald’s uniforms are sewn by inmates. Other corporations—Microsoft, Victoria’s Secret, Boeing, Motorola, Compaq, Revlon, and Kmart—also benefit from prison labor.” The resulting prison labor industries, which rely on cheap, almost free labor, are doing as much to put the average American out of work as the outsourcing of jobs to China and India.

No wonder America is criminalizing mundane activities, arresting Americans for minor violations, and locking them up for long stretches of time. There’s a significant amount of money being made by the police, the courts, the prisons, and the corporations.

What we’re witnessing is the expansion of corrupt government power in the form of corporate partnerships which both increase the reach of the state into our private lives while also adding a profit motive into the mix, with potentially deadly consequences.

This perverse mixture of government authoritarianism and corporate profits is now the prevailing form of organization in American society today. We are not a nation dominated by corporations, nor are we a nation dominated by government. We are a nation dominated by corporations and government together, in partnership, against the interests of individuals, society and ultimately our freedoms.

If it sounds at all conspiratorial, the idea that a government would jail its citizens so corporations can make a profit, then you don’t know your history very well. It has been well documented that Nazi Germany forced inmates into concentration camps such as Auschwitz to provide cheap labor to BASF, Bayer, Hoechst, and other major German chemical and pharmaceutical companies, much of it to produce products for European countries.

Makes you wonder, doesn’t it, whether what we are experiencing right now is fascism, American style, or Auschwitz revisited?

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book “The Freedom Wars” (TRI Press) is available online at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

Related Podcast:


http://s39.podbean.com/pb/5665c5c51244adb1a2a1a2bd4c8c642e/53e29fdc/data2/blogs18/371244/uploads/PCH080514.mp3

Ruling-Class Supremacy and the Free World

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By Mark Weiser

Source: Dissident Voice

Soon after children start noticing differences between others and themselves, they’re old enough to believe they’re superior or entitled in some ways. These feelings come naturally, and are reinforced by adults as children learn social behaviors by comparing attributes and values so they can fit in with, or be seen apart from, certain others in society. This is all instinctual to some degree and a normal part of life. To make the case for instinct and superiority, think about what anyone would consider when choosing a partner for a serious or long-term relationship. If a potential partner does not meet the standards of another, by default one person is considering their self above the other in some way. And speaking generally for superior humans, when considering procreation, they don’t want their superior self to mix with inferior genes. Everybody has standards of age, looks, intelligence, income, occupation, social standards and more or less, it’s different for everybody.

Pro-creationist superiority is instinctual to best insure our genetic code is passed along into the future. Of course there’s pure romantic attraction, but that’s only triggered because the partner being considered hasn’t been ruled out. It could ultimately be the depth and types of emotions which compel the romantic to get deeply involved, but they still make relative comparisons the first time meeting someone and along the way. We’re not speaking hypothetical, these attitudes are accepted realities and I would guess, at minimum, 96% of all readers over age twenty can relate by direct experience, even if they’ve not been in a serious intimate relationship.

Instinct and human nature overlap when it comes to seeking society with others, and societies or social groups necessarily have a culture that sets boundaries for ideological beliefs, abilities, practices, social status etc. If a group doesn’t set boundaries, by default, that group would be all inclusive and non-judgmental concerning any specific particulars. As individuals or groups looking at others, it’s all so much instinct and human second-nature, we may not be aware we’re being judgmental. Whether superiority by comparison is instinct due to genetics and the natural workings of the mind, or is influenced by personal nature and prejudices, or results from ideological and social culture, it makes no difference at all in the real world if the end result is the same.

What does make a difference in the real world is whether or not we unjustly impose on others. If our sense of imposing or taking advantage of others is not disabled, and we do impose unjustly on others, ultimately it’s some sense of superiority or entitlement which allows us to impose. Benign superiority is basically harmless as no actions are taken which harm or impose on others; although, if a person feels superior to others and doesn’t participate in something that could benefit himself, he could be a victim of his own perceived superiority.

In the U.S. we have laws against supremacist entitlement being imposed on the unwilling, but because of social conditioning there are times we might assume we’re not being imposed on when, in fact, we are the victim(s). It’s often considered justifiable that one should feel morally or intellectually superior to racists or sexists. But what about assuming religious or ideological superiority and entitlement(s)? Why would either of those be considered fair game in certain circles or social situations? If you have moral values you may feel superior to Wall Street bankers and our enabling Washington D.C politicians – as those two groups were literally the driving forces behind the 2008 economic crash – while at the same time they enriched themselves at the expense of innocent U.S. and world citizens.

The 2008 economic collapse was brought about by the deregulation and non-enforcement of banking laws which resulted in the Federal Reserve and banks both taking excessive risks. There was the Federal Reserve policy of giving the banks too much low interest money to begin with. The banks relaxed loan qualifications which led to real estate and stock market bubbles. It was all tied to fraudulent mortgage default insurance known as credit default swaps being used to prop up bundled mortgage securities which were sold all over the world to individuals, groups and all sizes of governments. The fraudulent mortgage default insurance and grossly exaggerated security ratings made the bundled mortgages securities look much less risky than they actually were, and the bundled mortgage securities were fraudulent due to the grossly misrepresented financial risks. So great were the cumulative risks of all combined, the world economy in 2008 was lined up like dominoes and literally ready to fall as soon as the mortgage defaults started adding up. By the time this was all recognized publicly as the unsustainable confidence game it was, the banks’ corporate officers had already pocketed hundreds of million$ and intended on leaving you and your grandchildren to pay for their entitlements.

With D.C. politicians, the regulatory boards, and Department of Justice looking the other way – while they’re supposed to oversee banking practices in some manner – the bankers were able to pull off the greatest financial scheme in human history. The two main groups which lined those dominoes up, the bankers and D.C. politicians, in this instance are prime examples of interdependent criminals. Our Republican and Democratic parties essentially accepted election campaign funding (bribes) from the bankers, in exchange for legislation the bankers wanted, which finally led to the 2008 crash. And because politicians wanted those campaign funding bribes to continue after 2008, they didn’t pressure the U.S. Attorney General to prosecute the bankers and most likely instructed him not to. These types of crimes and failure to prosecute are nearly guaranteed with the existing campaign funding laws when combined with the accepted political culture among the “ruling-class” in Washington D.C. Not only was the 2008 crash painful for many at the time, but people in the U.S and around the world are, in fact, enslaved to a certain degree while the true costs of those violations are still being paid off.

Assuming they didn’t suffer from psychological disorders, the bankers necessarily had to feel superior or entitled to put their personal interests above the U.S. law and country. A complex and intertwined scheme of 2008 magnitude could only have taken place if the laws on the books prior to the crash were non-existent (deregulated), corrupt as written, corrupted as practiced, or corrupted by enforcement (or non-enforcement) thereof; and we had all of those contributing factors leading up to the crash.

In the U.S. today we have a ruling-class supremacist culture holding itself, the self-chosen few, above the law. And they demand you comply with the law as they cultivate systemic enslavement to a degree as it’s being imposed on the vast majority of citizen-victims. And by all means they invite you, as a dupe, to join their party as a Democrat or Republican, neither of which are looking out for the American people; but join them, and you too can shill for the status quo. If big money likes you enough, they might select you through a screening and grooming process, to be in the U.S. Senate or Congress representing the personal best interests of ruling-class elites to the overall detriment of the country.

As a collective in the U.S. we believe ourselves to be validly non-supremacist as decreed by law, while also believing our culture is morally grounded, and that moral citizens wouldn’t impose unjust self-entitlements by forcing citizens into a degree of slavery. So what is it in our human instinct, human nature or various cultures which allow these types of supremacist-entitlement violations to occur? If the collective sense of injustice is not disabled by some psychological disorder, then as a “moral culture”, these transgressions could only take place by having a population with sufficiently corrupted-intellects, or by having a few corrupted-intellects imposing on the vast majority through concentrated political power. Corrupted-intellect for our purposes here would include the mindset to commit any act of deceitfulness, denial, or false rationalizations by either the perpetrators or victims, which allow legal violations to be committed without eventual prosecution. And regardless of whether or not we suffer from a disabling disorder, corrupted-intellect has collectively disabled our society from attaining a reasonable amount of “liberty and justice for all”. Among those unable to maintain intellectual integrity due to the influence of religious, academic or political cultures, collective denial can take the form of institutionalized supremacist-entitlements as we’ve seen with bankers and politicians surrounding the 2008 fiasco.

Does that mean we’re stuck in a non-democracy being run by a collective of predominately corrupted-intellects of a self-entitled ruling-class supremacist culture? That may depend on Americans understanding just how openly and blatantly they’re still being taken advantage of, and whether or not enough of them are outraged enough to demand some changes. Our two-party political system is essentially a self-perpetuating power structure and would require a major mutiny among members of at least one party to change the existing campaign funding laws, or the Supreme Court would have to overrule itself; the first case is extremely unlikely specifically because getting elected requires receiving huge amounts of campaign funds from the excessively wealthy “ruling-class”, and there’s little hope for the Supreme Court considering the corrupted-intellects sitting there on the bench without a clue.

The joke may be on “we the people” for the time being, but unjust power structures historically fail as the one in question is failing now by eroding the strength and health of its own population. It’s only a matter of time as to when and how a major shift takes place. And regardless of anyone’s sentiment toward the system as is, it’s not working to represent the best interests of the country. What’s left to be said for a system that has systemic corruption guaranteed by existing laws enjoyed by unjustly self-entitled ruling-class supremacists? According to the Declaration of Independence “we the people” have final say and it’s our duty as patriotic Americans, “to throw off such Government”.

Another group which more than deserves mention in the grand scheme of supremacy-entitlements is the so called “news” media. The press has immense power to pressure both, corporate industry and the government to operate within legal and moral parameters that would be beneficial to our overall society. What’s often referred to as “corporate news” isn’t really news, but is actually manipulative propaganda. And those running the show behind the scenes perceive personal benefits by having a bias slanted strongly toward corporate or special interests – which also means not exposing the government because the government works for corporate and special interests also. With the press not using its immense power to benefit U.S citizens and country as a whole, the people running the major news networks are performing a great disservice to the country by denying citizens the absolute truth for their own considerations. Corrupted-intellects are everywhere…

And going back to speaking of dupes, we need to acknowledge the entire subservient culture of politicians around the globe that cater to the whims of Washington D.C. Those foreign office holders often see their compliance to Washington as benefitting themselves personally while it victimizes their own citizens. If those “leaders” are not plain ignorant for any reason, then by default they are willing accomplices on some level. Whatever the case, they’re arguably not fit to look out for the best interests of their own countrymen – just as they’re currently not doing. This subservience is not only applicable to economic issues at present, but also enables unjust military incursions and illegal “wars” of chosen aggression for some perceived political or monetary gain.

If a constant and stable life could be realized, the vast majority of world citizens would prefer to live without trespassing on others. But the brokers of industry, media, and politics, who seek extreme wealth and power, are a different sort – some of these people are beyond being supremely self-entitled, where sociopath or psychopath would be a fitting definition. They act without consideration for truth or the lives they abuse and destroy. Nothing is beneath them, not robbing granny’s life savings while personally benefitting, not starting and backing unnecessary wars of personal choice for monetary or political gain. Over just the last five-and-a-half decades the U.S is directly and indirectly responsible for the deaths of millions in various places around the world. The worldwide self-entitled “ruling-class” supremacists of the “free world” predominately exists in a cultural bubble of extreme criminal immorality and exceptionalism — all due to a combination of genetic instinct, human nature and social culture(s) rendering their corrupted-intellects incapable of acknowledging absolute truth and the motives behind their actions. With most of these activities being approved and orchestrated from the epicenter in Washington D.C., the destructive earthquakes travel around the globe through varying forms of imposed ideological and economic tyranny, often with a military “solution” being carelessly and recklessly forced on countless innocent victims of the current day, year, decade or century as the case may be… The “ruling-class” puts all of our lives at risk by keeping our planet in constant jeopardy.

Due to the shear waste and destruction of war along with the possibility of wanton escalation, the entire earth and the world’s population are threatened by the practices of a tiny and miniscule minority comprising the collective ruling-class supremacist culture; and with everything on earth being directly and indirectly interconnected to everything else, their victims, I’m sure you know, include all living things and every last human being.