Tag Archives: financial crisis

Desperate Americans Who Can’t Afford Housing Are Becoming “Modern-Day Nomads” …But Not By Choice

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By Robert Wheeler

Source: The Organic Prepper

A recent story floating around mainstream media regarding “modern-day nomads” reads like a contemporary article on Henry David Thoreau. It shares stories of people looking to downsize their life and live simply and stories of people who have fallen on hard times, unable to afford rent. 

However, what is lacking is the exposure of the dark underbelly of the “modern-day nomad” culture. In other words, they neglect to mention the fact that the enormous growth of the “modern-day nomad” is rooted in the fact that the world economy has all but collapsed, now mired in a global economic depression of unemployment, low wages, and personal financial catastrophes.

While it sounds romantic, it’s often rooted in desperation.

Nevertheless, some of the stories begin in the following way:

If you look closely on city streets, campgrounds, and stretches of desert run by the Bureau of Land Management, you’ll see more Americans living in vehicles than ever before. It was never their plan.

“I wasn’t prepared when I had to move into my SUV. The transmission was going. I had no money saved. I was really scared,” said April Craren, 52, bundled in blankets atop a cot inside her new minivan, a 2003 Toyota Sienna.

She flipped the camera on her phone to show me the camp stove she uses to make coffee and her view of the sun rising over the Colorado River. She has no toilet, shower, or refrigeration.

After separating from her husband, April found herself homeless in June 2020, exacerbating the depressive disorder for which she receives $1,100 a month in disability benefits.

“I could have gotten an apartment but in a crappy unsafe place with no money to do anything at all,” she explained.

Last year, where April lived in Nixa, Missouri, the average rent for an apartment was $762, slightly less than the national average. Like nearly half of American renters, she would have been crippled by the cost.

It’s not surprising, then, that job loss, divorce, or, say, the sudden onset of global health or financial crisis can push so many over the edge.

Many Americans have found themselves trapped in a spiral of poverty from which they simply can’t recover.

It doesn’t sound so bad to those of us with minimalist persuasions

At 52, April Craren didn’t choose this life. It was thrust upon her by unfortunate life circumstances. Craren couldn’t afford the exorbitant rent that is now average across the country on a fixed income. (Partly due to inflation but mostly due to the housing crash in 2008.)

The coordination of lockdowns and COVID restrictions have plunged the world into a deep depression of which we are only beginning to see. Even Wall Street couldn’t have caused this much damage. 

“If the Great Recession was a crack in the system, Covid and climate change will be the chasm,” says Bob Wells, the nomad who plays himself in the film Nomadland. Thankfully, Wells was able to help Craren adopt her lifestyle so she can now survive as a “nomad” through his Home On Wheels Alliance.

Wells’s lifestyle was a choice. But the newfound interest in the nomadic lifestyle is not a choice for many.

From Yahoo:

Realizing he had something valuable to share, he bought the domain name Cheap RV Living in 2005. He posted tips and tricks about better vehicle-dwelling, but what he was really offering was a road map to a better life.

Four years later, when close to 10 million Americans were displaced after the Great Recession, traffic to his site exploded. Finding himself at the center of a growing online community, he decided to create a meet-up in Quartzsite, Arizona. He dubbed it the Rubber Tramp Rendezvous (RTR), and in January 2011, 45 vehicles showed up. Eight years later, an estimated 10,000 vehicles convened for what was said to be the largest nomad gathering in the world.

The event’s explosive growth is undoubtedly a reflection of America’s increasing interest in van life as an answer to the affordable housing crisis, an idea made accessible by Bob on his YouTube channel, also named Cheap RV Living, created in 2015.

The “increasing interest in van life” that Yahoo News refers to is not some petit-bourgeois fantasy being realized by privileged middle-class white kids, able to go home at any time. It is the necessity of formerly middle class, working-class, and poor people all across America who are out of work or are working but cannot afford housing.

Minimalism is a legitimate lifestyle for some; others have no choice

For many, this culture of minimalism is genuinely how they wish to live. Nomads have a genuine desire to see empty overconsumption come to an end. However, we can not ignore that minimalism is being promoted to prepare the Western population who are used to high living standards to accept those that are much lower.

Why do you think we continually see articles promoting insects as a legitimate dining option? Why are The Great Reset promoters at the World Economic Forum telling the public that they will soon own nothing and learn to love it?

Being a nomad doesn’t mean you can’t be prepared.

For those who are already nomads, whether by choice or forced by economic circumstance, it might be helpful to know that there are many prepping options available to you. There is no need to be left to the mercy of wherever you are right now. 

I highly encourage you to access Daisy Luther’s article, “There’s Another Option Besides Hunkering Down and Bugging Out: Nomadic Living.” It will give you the perspective of someone who has voluntarily experienced and lived the nomadic lifestyle while also the mindset of remaining prepared for anything and everything. 

At the rate the Great Reset is taking shape, many of us may find ourselves embracing the nomadic lifestyle, willingly or not.

Have you considered nomadic living?

The Top 10% Is Doing Just Fine, The Middle Class Is Dying on the Vine

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By Charles Hugh Smith

Source: Of Two Minds

Please study these charts as a means of understanding the inevitability of economic stagnation and a revolt of the decapitalized middle class.

I’ve been covering the decline of America’s middle class for over a decade with charts, data and commentary on the social depression that has accompanied the decline.

While there are many mutually reinforcing dynamics in this 45-year decline–demographics, global energy costs, financialization and globalization, to name a few– one term describes the accelerating erosion of America’s middle class: decapitalization.

To understand decapitalization, we need to start with the fundamentals of any economy between labor (wages) and capital and between investment and speculation. Although it’s tempting to oversimplify and demonize one or the other of these basics (speculators bad! etc.), they each provide an essential role in a healthy economy, one which is in dynamic equilibrium, a state analogous to a healthy ecosystem with constantly changing interactions of numerous species, individuals and inputs (weather, etc.). This variability enables the order of fluctuations (to use Ilya Prigogine’s profound phrase), a dynamic stability / equilibrium.

If labor’s share of the economy drops too low, the workforce cannot consume enough to support their households and the economy as a whole. If capital can no longer earn an attractive return, investment dries up and production stagnates. If speculators are not allowed to take on risk, liquidity dries up and risk crushes investment. But if speculation becomes the foundation of the economy’s “growth,” then the inevitable collapse of speculative bubbles will crash the economy.

In modern social-capitalist systems, the core stabilizer of the system is the wage-earning middle class which provides the stable workforce driving production and the stable pool of consumers needed to borrow money and consume enough to soak up the production of goods and services at a profit to producers.

Without a stable, dominant middle class, capital has few opportunities to invest in productive capacity. Without a stable, dominant middle class, the economy stagnates and is prone to collapse as it is far from equilibrium.

The process of middle class decline is best explained as decapitalization because the middle class is fundamentally a means of transforming labor into capital via savings and investment. The traditional ladder of social mobility from the working class to the middle class is one of capitalizing work: time and savings are invested in higher education, in effect capitalizing future labor by increasing productivity.

Capital isn’t limited to cash, land or tools; in an information economy, knowledge and skills are also capital, as is the social capital of social networking and relationships formed with mentors, suppliers, lenders, colleagues, investors, etc.

The second way to capitalize work is to save earnings and invest the savings in assets that produce income or gain value: a house, land, rental property, small business and income-producing financial assets such as bonds or dividend-paying stocks.

Thrift, investing, long-term planning and deferred consumption are all essential to capitalizing work by turning that labor into income-producing assets. As the household’s ownership of these assets that yield unearned income rises, so does their income and wealth. These increase the financial security of the household and build a nestegg which can be passed down to the next generation, improving their security via inheritance of income-producing assets.

As long as productivity is increasing the value of their labor, the middle class can leverage future earnings into assets by borrowing money to invest in assets: to buy a house, a mortgage is borrowed against future earnings. As long as the mortgage is a fixed-interest loan and income can be expected to rise with productivity, then this is a win-win situation: capital earns a predictable, low-risk return from the mortgage and the middle class household has stake in a family home, an asset which acts as a savings mechanism as the mortgage slowly pays down the debt and increases the household’s home equity–a form of savings.

The processes of decapitalization have upended this entire structure. In the systems context outlined above, our economy is out of balance and far from equilibrium and thus prone to collapse.

For the bottom 90%, which of course includes the middle class however you define it, it’s increasingly difficult to capitalize labor into capital. There are a number of factors driving this decapitalization:

1. Wages’ share of the national income has continued a five-decade downtrend. (See chart below) National income since 1973 has shifted from labor (wages) to capital and more specifically, to debt and speculative gaming of the system, a.k.a. financialization.

Total household income in the U.S. in 2018 was $17.6 trillion. The decline in wages’ share of the national income from 1973 to 2018 is about 8.5%, which equals $1.5 trillion, the sum shifted from labor to capital every year. (See chart below)(source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/216756/us-personal-income/)

No, this is not a typo. As this RAND report documents, $50 trillion has been siphoned from labor (the lower 90% of the workforce) to the Financial Aristocracy and their technocrat lackeys (the top 10%) who own the vast majority of the capital (see charts below): Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018.

2. Within the workforce, wages have shifted to the top 10% who now earn 50% of all taxable income. (See RAND chart below) Financialization and globalization have decapitalized the skills of entire sectors of the workforce as automation and offshoring reduced the human capital of workers’ skills and experience and the value of their social capital. When the entire industry is offshored, skills and professional relationships lose their market value.

In a fully globalized economy, every worker producing tradable goods/services is competing with the entire global workforce, a reality that reduces wages in high-cost developed nations such as the U.S.

Financialization has heavily rewarded workers with specialized gaming the financial system skills and devalued every other skill as only the skills of financialization are highly profitable in a globalized, financialized economy.

3. As the high-wage jobs and capital shifted to coastal urban centers, middle class owners of homes and capital elsewhere saw the value of their assets decline. If a home valued at $100,000 in the late 1990s is now worth $150,000, the owners lost ground even with “official” inflation. In terms of real-world purchasing power, their home actually lost significant value in the past 23 years.

Meanwhile, middle class owners who bought their home in a coastal hot-spot for $100,000 23 years ago are now enjoying home valuations close to $1 million. Homes, along with every other asset, have been shifted into a casino where almost everyone is sorted into winners and losers, less often by skill and more often by luck.

For those who were too young to buy in 1997, sorry–the opportunity to buy a home for three times average middle class income is gone. The lucky generation who bought in the late 1990s in booming coastal magnets for global capital joined the top 10% and their colleagues in less desirable regions lost ground.

4. As capital siphoned off income and appreciation from labor (human and social capital), the gains accruing to capital accelerated. Those who already owned income-producing assets reaped both income and asset appreciation gains as yields on savings collapsed to near-zero as the Federal Reserve and other central banks dropped yields to near-zero in 2009 and kept them low for the following 13 years.

This had two devastating effects on the middle class: hundreds of billions of dollars that once flowed to savers and money markets disappeared, swallowed by the banks as a direct (and intentional) effect of the Fed’s ZIRP (zero-interest rate policy).

Since the Fed destroyed low-risk yields, anyone seeking any real yield (i.e. above inflation) would have to enter the casino and compete with hedge funds, insiders and the Financial Aristocracy. Very few middle class workers have the skills and experience to beat the pros in the casino, and so income and wealth accrued to those who already owned capital.

This is a key reason why the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. Those with capital accrued the majority of gains in income and wealth, leaving the bottom 90% in the dust.

A recent Foreign Affairs essay Monopoly Versus Democracy included these stunning statistics:

Ten percent of Americans now control 97 percent of all capital income in the country. Nearly half of the new income generated since the global financial crisis of 2008 has gone to the wealthiest one percent of U.S. citizens. The richest three Americans collectively have more wealth than the poorest 160 million Americans. (emphasis added.)

The 3% of income from capital collected by the bottom 90%–which includes the middle class– is basically signal noise: the middle class collects inconsequential crumbs of income from capital.

Prior to the Fed’s ZIRP and financialization of the economy, the middle class could both collect income from capital they owned and they could afford to acquire assets that yielded low-risk solid returns. Now they can do neither. Even worse, the puchasing power of their labor continues to decline, leaving them less able to save and buy assets.

This is why The Top 10% Is Doing Just Fine, The Middle Class Is Dying on the Vine. Please study these charts as a means of understanding the inevitability of economic stagnation and a revolt of the decapitalized middle class.

 

The Globalists Are Gonna Need A Bigger Virus As Economic Fraud Is Exposed

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Jaws (1975) |  [ Universal / The Kobal Collection ]


By Brandon Smith

Source: Alt-Market.us

It is a general rule that corrupt economies tend to operate on faith and not on fundamentals. And to be clear, it’s not so much about naive faith that the system is stable or functional. No, it’s more about the masses having faith that the corruption and instability will never be derailed. Most people are not as stupid as the establishment and central bankers think they are – Almost everyone knows the system is broken, they just refuse to consider the possibility that the fraud will be disrupted, or that it will be allowed to fail.

The old mantra “too big to fail” is a lie. NOTHING is too big to fail, and that includes the US economy, the dollar and the elaborate Kabuki theater that keeps them both afloat. All it takes is a single moment, an epiphany that the Ponzi scheme is unsustainable rather than unstoppable.

I’m reminded specifically of the inflationary crisis of Argentina in 2001 – 2002.

Argentina’s economy was highly dependent on foreign capital inflows, and its currency peg to the US dollar, not to mention they were precariously reliant on support from the IMF. The IMF openly validated the government of Argentina and their currency peg model, but foreign capital began to decline and the peg became unsustainable. Without tangible growth in manufacturing and a strong middle class, an economy cannot survive for long. A top down system based on illusory “financial products” and creative accounting is doomed to crash eventually.

All it took was for the IMF to criticize the policies they initially endorsed and announced that they were removing financial aid, and all hell broke loose in Argentina.

Almost overnight the Argentina peso plunged in value, interest rates spiked and inflation struck hard. People poured into the streets and civil unrest erupted. The IMF would later admit it made “errors” in its handling of the Argentina situation, but this was simply spin control designed to protect them from further scrutiny. The IMF avoided most of the blame and has been growing into a monstrous global centralization machine ever since.

I think we are witnessing the beginning of a similar end of mass faith in fraud in the US. The recent Robinhood short squeeze event as well as the current decoupling of physical silver prices from the paper ETF market have accelerated the timetable. Not surprisingly, these moves have forced the establishment to intervene to some extent to essentially stop renegade traders from freely investing. Accusations are flying and deplatforming has ensued. The idea that the system is a functional fraud is gone; The world now knows it is a dysfunctional fraud, and collapse cannot be very far behind.

Furthermore the collusion between banks, hedge funds and Big Tech is blatantly revealed. These relationships are supposed to remain hidden in the ether. They are obvious to anyone with any financial knowledge and sense, but they aren’t supposed to be wielded in the open. Conspirators aren’t supposed to admit to the conspiracy? Right?

Some people might say the establishment has been forced to unmask by activists. Maybe. But, as I have been warning for many years, when criminals start openly admitting to their crimes it is probably because they think that it’s too late for anyone to do anything about it.

The point is, bankers and globalists have ways of avoiding responsibility for the disasters they engineer. When the con-game breaks, they always have patsies to take the fall.

This sets up a bizarre dynamic in which the money elites that constructed the economy like a time-bomb are treated like victims (or heroes) and the people telling the truth about the fraud are treated like villains and criminals. Are activist stock market traders and silver market guerrillas to blame for any crisis that erupts in the near future? No, of course not, but they will be blamed anyway.

That said, propaganda narratives and scapegoats may not be enough to save the bankers this time. They will never allow a major fiscal crash to develop in a vacuum. They need more cover, and they need to have the means to lock down the public to prevent civil unrest or rebellion from spilling over into their backyards. I have long suspected that the covid pandemic is a useful tool in this regard. As I noted in my article ‘How Viral Pandemic Benefits The Globalist Agenda’, published in January of 2020:

“Even if a pandemic does not kill a large number of people, it still disrupts international travel, it disrupts exports and imports, it disrupts consumer behavior and retail sales, and it disrupts domestic trade. If it does kill a large number of people, and if the Chinese government’s response is any indication, it could result in global martial law. With many economies including the US economy already in a precarious balancing act of historic debt vs. crashing demand and useless central bank repo market intervention, there is little chance that the system can withstand such a tsunami…”

As we all know, medical martial law in the name of “public health” is being established in most countries regardless of the actual death rate. The insane globalist rantings of the World Economic Forum and Klaus Schwab have been very revealing; Schwab and other elites have even called the pandemic a “perfect opportunity” to execute there agenda for the “Great Reset”.

However, the globalists are highly fallible, and mistakes in judgment have been made. During the Event 201 pandemic wargame on a coronavirus outbreak (conveniently held two months before the real thing happened), the elites forecast at least 65 million initial deaths globally from such a virus. We are a year into the pandemic and nowhere near that kind of death rate. In fact, the death rate is so minuscule (0.26%), that the public is beginning to realize the lockdown mandates are pointless.

In the US, conservative states are moving on and keeping their economies wide open. Half the population is refusing to take the vaccines, and many members of law enforcement are refusing to implement lockdown policies. I don’t think this is what the globalists expected at all. They needed mass fear and they are getting mass defiance.

They’re going to need a bigger threat, or a bigger virus.

This is why I have been repeatedly warning that the talk of reopenings by Biden and other democrats is going to be very short lived. I have predicted that Biden will attempt a federal lockdown similar to the Level 4 lockdowns used in Europe and Australia after a couple of months of relative calm. I based this prediction on the covid “mutation” narrative being spread right now by the mainstream media and establishment cronies like Anthony Fauci. It is not hard to see where this is headed.

The globalists must have the “legal” option of restricting public movement as well as large gatherings, and they must have the option of surveillance on individuals 24/7 through contact tracing. This is the only way to prevent rebellion against the Reset and rising anger due to economic turmoil. The veil has been lifted, the conspiracy is being widely broadcast. Martial law alone would only inspire more dissent, medical tyranny in the name of “saving lives” is the ONLY play the globalists have. They have to have help from a large portion of the citizenry, so they must maintain the appearance that they are operating from the moral high ground.

The covid mutation story is clearly the next play, and Bank of America economists appear to agree with me. They recently stated that they see little optimism in terms of a reopening of the economy, and that hard lockdowns will return, possibly in March or April.

Another factor to consider is that the economic crash will have to reach a peak soon because Joe Biden now resides in the White House. If the crash happens in the near term, activist investors can be blamed, Trump can be blamed, and conservatives and liberty activists can be blamed. If the crash happens a year or two from now, only Biden and the globalists will get the blame.

Without lockdowns and scapegoats the scenario will end very badly for the globalists. It might end badly for them anyway. Be ready for more chaos by Spring; I suspect the elites are getting desperate, and if they allow America to go back to normal and for the pandemic to end with a whimper they will never get another chance at their precious Reset.

Return to the Source: Democracy is Dead

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By Margaret Kimberley

Source: Black Agenda Report

By what stretch of the imagination can the US be a democracy when ordinary citizens have virtually no influence over what their government does?

“The disregard of popular will is obvious for all to see.”

“Return to the Source” is a series in The Black Agenda Review that reprints previously-published interventions by Black Agenda Reportcontributors. Our title is inspired by an address delivered by Amilcar Cabral  on October 15, 1972 at Lincoln University and reprinted in the collection Return to the Source: Selected Speech by Amilcar Cabral  (1973). Cabral’s address was titled “Identity and Dignity in the Context of the National Liberation Struggle.” In it, he argued that a “return to the source” was critical to revolutionary transformation—a return to the ideas, culture, and demands that served as the foundational impetus for the struggle for African liberation. Guided by Cabral’s analysis, we will return to some of the “classic” interventions by Black Agenda Report contributors, revisiting their tremendous insights into the contemporary conditions of the Black World. 

We are launching the series by reprinting BAR columnist and Prejudential  author Margaret Kimberley’s incisive commentary “Democracy is Dead.” Originally published on April 23, 2014, Kimberley describes the domination of the US democratic process by capital, the abandoning of the working classes by the state, and the perplexing tendency of most US citizens to “suspend disbelief” while holding tight to the myth of US exceptionalism. Her analysis is as relevant now as it was when originally written.

Democracy is Dead 

by Margaret Kimberley

“The notion that this country is a democracy has become openly farcical.”

Too many Americans love to boast that the United States is a democracy. That idea is accepted uncritically and celebrated as proof of this country’s superiority. Every public activity and event is an opportunity for the false narrative to be repeated and indulged. Events as disparate as elections, holiday celebrations, advertisements, school commencements and religious worship are all used to propagandize and create false belief about the degree of power the average citizen has vis a vis their government. Of course all evidence shows that this narrative is and always was a lie. Dictionaries define democracy as government representing the citizens through elected representatives, or as majority rule, or a society which provides equal rights to all. The history of this country has rarely lived up to any of those descriptions but in the recent past the notion that this country is a democracy has become openly farcical. We have nothing but meaningless trappings and any power exercised by the people is sadly in short supply.

This state of affairs has been obvious to anyone who has been paying close attention. Americans not only don’t get what they want from the political system, they actually get the opposite of what they want. The pace of the oligarchic state has quickened lately but the dynamic has been evident for quite some time.

“Americans get the opposite of what they want.”

Even elite academia is taking notice and has given official imprimatur to a conversation that had been ignored. Professors Martin Gilens of Princeton University and Benjamin Page of Northwestern University are the authors of the study  “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens.” While their work does not as news stories suggest use the word oligarchy, the authors are quite clear about their findings. Professor Gilens gave this brief summary  of their conclusions:

“I’d say that contrary to what decades of political science research might lead you to believe, ordinary citizens have virtually no influence over what their government does in the United States [italics mine]. And economic elites and interest groups, especially those representing business, have a substantial degree of influence. Government policy-making over the last few decades reflects the preferences of those groups – of economic elites and of organized interests.”

While this study has however briefly changed public discourse, it is important to note that the disregard of popular will is obvious for all to see. If this were not true, the minimum wage would be higher, there would be no cuts to entitlement programs, and Americans would have a single payer health care system. There would be no NAFTA or TPP free trade agreements which force a race to the bottom for workers, destroy entire eco-systems and violate national and popular sovereignty. If this country were truly democratic, the city of Detroit would not have filed for bankruptcy for the simple reason that voters in Detroit and in the state of Michigan voted to repeal the emergency manager law which brought bankruptcy into being.

“Disregard of popular will is obvious for all to see.”

Americans don’t want the increasingly frequent interventions abroad forced upon by them by president after president yet that is what they get. We want to address the problems created by human made climate change. We don’t want hydraulic fracturing, or the pollution or earthquakes that come with it, but that is what we have. We don’t want rich people to control the political process but the Supreme Court has said time and again that money equals speech and those decisions prove the point of the study. Simply put, money talks and those without money have no voice.

If that were not the case, American workers would not be poorer than their counterparts in the rest of the world. The so-called middle class  workers in this country had the distinction of being better off than their peers around the world. That is no longer the case with stagnating wages and job loss and a country that does not practice income distribution that would keep people out of poverty. In a democratic country, Walmart and its low wages would not be the largest employer. The manufacturing that once dominated the economic landscape would still employ the bulk of the work force with its higher wages and other benefits that provide economic security.

In a democracy, the financial services industry that created the worldwide economic meltdown would not have been bailed out. Workers would be bailed out. Corporations wouldn’t get tax breaks and other government subsidies. Workers would get them. And if the average person had any say in the matter, the big time banksters would now be behind bars.

“In a democratic country, Walmart and its low wages would not be the largest employer.”

The myth of American democracy is just one of many that are cherished out of ignorance and suspension of disbelief but that is not a reason to continue the confusion and self-delusion. The only time we get any taste of democracy is when we proclaim that we don’t have it but assert plainly and loudly that we intend to get it.

The phony narrative wears thin as the quality of life diminishes. The United States of America is not a democratic nation if the only right that citizens have is to go to a polling place every few years. It is time to stop fetishizing what clearly does not work for the majority of people and start talking about something new. After all, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result. The only result we have to show is rule by the elites and if that is acceptable then the people have gone truly insane.

The Deep State’s Stealthy, Subversive, Silent Coup to Ensure Nothing Changes

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By John W. Whitehead

Source: The Rutherford Institute

“You have such a fervent, passionate, evangelical faith in this country…why in the name of God don’t you have any faith in the system of government you’re so hell-bent to protect? You want to defend the United States of America, then defend it with the tools it supplies you with—its Constitution. You ask for a mandate, General, from a ballot box. You don’t steal it after midnight, when the country has its back turned.”—Seven Days in May (1964)

No doubt about it: the coup d’etat was successful.

That January 6 attempt by so-called insurrectionists to overturn the election results was not the real coup, however. Those who answered President Trump’s call to march on the Capitol were merely the fall guys, manipulated into creating the perfect crisis for the Deep State—a.k.a. the Police State a.k.a. the Military Industrial Complex a.k.a. the Techno-Corporate State a.k.a. the Surveillance State—to swoop in and take control.

It took no time at all for the switch to be thrown and the nation’s capital to be placed under a military lockdown, online speech forums restricted, and individuals with subversive or controversial viewpoints ferreted out, investigated, shamed and/or shunned.

This new order didn’t emerge into being this week, or this month, or even this year, however.

Indeed, the real coup happened when our government “of the people, by the people, for the people” was overthrown by a profit-driven, militaristic, techno-corporate state that is in cahoots with a government “of the rich, by the elite, for the corporations.”

We’ve been mired in this swamp for decades now.

Every successive president starting with Franklin D. Roosevelt has been bought lock, stock and barrel and made to dance to the Deep State’s tune.

Enter Donald Trump, the candidate who swore to drain the swamp in Washington DC. Instead of putting an end to the corruption, however, Trump paved the way for lobbyists, corporations, the military industrial complex, and the Deep State to feast on the carcass of the dying American republic.

Joe Biden will be no different: his job is to keep the Deep State in power.

Step away from the cult of personality politics and you’ll find that beneath the power suits, they’re all alike.

Follow the money.  It always points the way.

As Bertram Gross noted in Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America, “evil now wears a friendlier face than ever before in American history.”

Writing in 1980, Gross predicted a future in which he saw:

…a new despotism creeping slowly across America. Faceless oligarchs sit at command posts of a corporate-government complex that has been slowly evolving over many decades. In efforts to enlarge their own powers and privileges, they are willing to have others suffer the intended or unintended consequences of their institutional or personal greed. For Americans, these consequences include chronic inflation, recurring recession, open and hidden unemployment, the poisoning of air, water, soil and bodies, and, more important, the subversion of our constitution. More broadly, consequences include widespread intervention in international politics through economic manipulation, covert action, or military invasion…

This stealthy, creeping, silent coup that Gross prophesied is the same danger that writer Rod Serling envisioned in the 1964 political thriller Seven Days in May, a clear warning to beware of martial law packaged as a well-meaning and overriding concern for the nation’s security.

Incredibly enough, almost 60 years later, we find ourselves hostages to a government run more by military doctrine and corporate greed than by the rule of law established in the Constitution. Indeed, proving once again that fact and fiction are not dissimilar, today’s current events could well have been lifted straight out of Seven Days in May, which takes viewers into eerily familiar terrain.

The premise is straightforward.

With the Cold War at its height, an unpopular U.S. President signs a momentous nuclear disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union. Believing that the treaty constitutes an unacceptable threat to the security of the United States and certain that he knows what is best for the nation, General James Mattoon Scott (played by Burt Lancaster), the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and presidential hopeful, plans a military takeover of the national government.  When Gen. Scott’s aide, Col. Casey (Kirk Douglas), discovers the planned military coup, he goes to the President with the information. The race for command of the U.S. government begins, with the clock ticking off the hours until the military plotters plan to overthrow the President.

Needless to say, while on the big screen, the military coup is foiled and the republic is saved in a matter of hours, in the real world, the plot thickens and spreads out over the past half century.

We’ve been losing our freedoms so incrementally for so long—sold to us in the name of national security and global peace, maintained by way of martial law disguised as law and order, and enforced by a standing army of militarized police and a political elite determined to maintain their powers at all costs—that it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when it all started going downhill, but we’ve been on that fast-moving, downward trajectory for some time now.

The question is no longer whether the U.S. government will be preyed upon and taken over by the military industrial complex. That’s a done deal, but martial law disguised as national security is only one small part of the greater deception we’ve been fooled into believing is for our own good.

How do you get a nation to docilely accept a police state? How do you persuade a populace to accept metal detectors and pat downs in their schools, bag searches in their train stations, tanks and military weaponry used by their small town police forces, surveillance cameras in their traffic lights, police strip searches on their public roads, unwarranted blood draws at drunk driving checkpoints, whole body scanners in their airports, and government agents monitoring their communications?

Try to ram such a state of affairs down the throats of the populace, and you might find yourself with a rebellion on your hands. Instead, you bombard them with constant color-coded alerts, terrorize them with shootings and bomb threats in malls, schools, and sports arenas, desensitize them with a steady diet of police violence, and sell the whole package to them as being for their best interests.

This present military occupation of the nation’s capital by 25,000 troops as part of the so-called “peaceful” transfer of power from one administration to the next is telling.

This is not the language of a free people. This is the language of force.

Still, you can’t say we weren’t warned.

Back in 2008, an Army War College report revealed that “widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.” The 44-page report went on to warn that potential causes for such civil unrest could include another terrorist attack, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters.”

In 2009, reports by the Department of Homeland Security surfaced that labelled right-wing and left-wing activists and military veterans as extremists (a.k.a. terrorists) and called on the government to subject such targeted individuals to full-fledged pre-crime surveillance. Almost a decade later, after spending billions to fight terrorism, the DHS concluded that the greater threat is not ISIS but domestic right-wing extremism.

Meanwhile, the police have been transformed into extensions of the military while the nation itself has been transformed into a battlefield. This is what a state of undeclared martial law looks like, when you can be arrested, tasered, shot, brutalized and in some cases killed merely for not complying with a government agent’s order or not complying fast enough. This hasn’t just been happening in crime-ridden inner cities. It’s been happening all across the country.

And then you’ve got the government, which has been steadily amassing an arsenal of military weapons for use domestically and equipping and training their “troops” for war. Even government agencies with largely administrative functions such as the Food and Drug Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Smithsonian have been acquiring body armor, riot helmets and shields, cannon launchers and police firearms and ammunition. In fact, there are now at least 120,000 armed federal agents carrying such weapons who possess the power to arrest.

Rounding out this profit-driven campaign to turn American citizens into enemy combatants (and America into a battlefield) is a technology sector that has been colluding with the government to create a Big Brother that is all-knowing, all-seeing and inescapable. It’s not just the drones, fusion centers, license plate readers, stingray devices and the NSA that you have to worry about. You’re also being tracked by the black boxes in your cars, your cell phone, smart devices in your home, grocery loyalty cards, social media accounts, credit cards, streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon, and e-book reader accounts.

So you see, January 6 and its aftermath provided the government and its corporate technocrats the perfect excuse to show off all of the powers they’ve been amassing so assiduously over the years.

Mind you, by “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats.

I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law.

I’m referring to the corporatized, militarized, entrenched bureaucracy that is fully operational and staffed by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the country and calling the shots in Washington DC, no matter who sits in the White House.

This is the hidden face of a government that has no respect for the freedom of its citizenry.

Brace yourself.

There is something being concocted in the dens of power, far beyond the public eye, and it doesn’t bode well for the future of this country.

Anytime you have an entire nation so mesmerized by the antics of the political ruling class that they are oblivious to all else, you’d better beware.

Anytime you have a government that operates in the shadows, speaks in a language of force, and rules by fiat, you’d better beware.

And anytime you have a government so far removed from its people as to ensure that they are never seen, heard or heeded by those elected to represent them, you’d better beware.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we are at our most vulnerable right now.

All of those dastardly seeds we have allowed the government to sow under the guise of national security are bearing demon fruit.

The gravest threat facing us as a nation is not extremism but despotism, exercised by a ruling class whose only allegiance is to power and money.

When America Became The Roman Empire: Wars, Social turmoil and Economic Decline

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America has never been an empire. We may be the only great power in history that had the chance, and refused – preferring greatness to power and justice to glory

George W. Bush

By Timothy Alexander Guzman

Source: Silent Crow News

America is the modern-day Rome.  There are many lessons from the collapse of the Roman empire that America can learn from.  The fiasco of Trump supporters and various agitators from the Democratic Party who charged into the US capital building to prevent Joe Biden’s stolen election win from getting certified is the latest sign of America’s societal collapse.  The comparisons between the Roman Republic that became an empire, to America’s rise as a global super power is uncanny.  On various levels from its endless wars for world domination to the creation of a domestic police state, in many ways, America fits the criteria of being an empire.  Historical research suggests that Rome’s rise and their eventual downfall is the most accurate scenario that America is following.

Rome’s downfall was caused by a long chain of events.  It had severe financial problems that was caused by their ongoing wars so they overtaxed its citizenry causing inflation, thus allowing many to escape tax authorities into the countryside.  Then in the second century, there was a labor deficit when Rome’s expansion slowed down due to a shortage of imported slave labor they usually brought back from the lands they conquered resulting in the decline of agriculture and essential commercial production which had an impact on trade.  Rome had rampant corruption and political instability with internal coups of sitting emperors carried out by the Praetorian Guard who were the bodyguards to the sitting emperor as they used their power to decide who would be emperor and who would be removed and sometimes even murdered for political reasons.  All sounds similar to the Military-Industrial Complex and its power it holds within the American establishment.  There was even a civil war within Rome around the third century when the emperor at the time, Alexander Severus had been assassinated by his own troops while at a meeting with his military cabinet so that Maximus Thrax can become the next Roman emperor.  On a global scale, Rome had launched many wars  against Britannia (England/Wales), Gaul (France), Hispania (Spain), Achaea (Greece), Judea (Middle East) and others as its army eventually faltered in the face of its perceived enemies which were many.  Rome eventually collapsed under its own weight.  After the fall of Rome, several major empires throughout history were born including Great Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, the Ottomans and others that followed the same path and all of them eventually collapsed.

Wars for Empire

Washington has committed numerous actions around the world to spread it’s form of democracy through wars of aggression, regime change, covert operations to interfere in foreign elections and economic warfare by using its dollar reserve status to impose sanctions on nations to maintain its global empire.  The US military has troops stationed in more than 80 countries with proactive wars in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq.  Now they have their sights on the oil-rich country of Venezuela and Iran.  For sure, Washington is getting ready to re-adjust its sights on Syria and Russia if Biden is successfully inaugurated on January 20th.  Today, the American empire has one of the largest military budgets in the world that has surpassed the next 10 countries combined.  Trump’s signed a defense bill worth more than $738 billion for 2020.  Rome also had an expensive military budget where emperors raised taxes that lead to inflation which put a strain on its economy.

Since World War II, the American citizenry became more patriotic especially during the Cold War against communism.  Like America, Rome’s citizenry was also patriotic but it came with a price of high-taxation to fund Rome’s military adventures around the world.  An interesting article from Smithsonian magazine ‘Lessons in the Decline of Democracy From the Ruined Roman Republic’ by Jason Daley explained how Rome became a hegemonic power, but it came with their share of consequences.  Daley said that “the Roman people’s strong sense of patriotism was unique in the Mediterranean world. Like the United States after World War II, Rome, after winning the Second Punic War in 201 B.C. (the one with Hannibal and the elephants), became the world’s hegemon” and that “it lead to a massive increase in their military spending, a baby boom, and gave rise to a class of super-wealthy elites that were able to use their money to influence politics and push their own agendas”  which sounds like what’s happening in Washington D.C. today.  Wars of conquest and maintaining an army to defend its borders due to barbarian attacks put pressure on the Roman bureaucracy so it increased taxes on the people.

Washington always manages to find enough funds to support its Military-Industrial Complex and its continuous wars of destruction.  They manage to bail out the billionaires, its American corporations and institutions through the Federal Reserve bank’s printing press who basically creates money out of thin air.  The Federal Reserve and the government then puts the burden on the American people by raising taxes and creating inflation to support America’s wars abroad while poverty is increasing at home.  Military spending was a priority for Rome who disregarded public housing for its citizens or abandoned the maintenance and upkeep of its crumbling roads and aqueducts as the ‘super-wealthy elites’ became more influential in politics. In America, there is crumbling infrastructure problem where airports, bridges, roads and subways such as the New York City mass transit system is practically falling apart.

As time went by, the citizens of Rome had lost faith in their government as the social and economic impact of being a hegemonic power became problematic so many chose not to defend the empire due to government mismanagement of resources.  What is interesting is that Rome recruited solders from what was called “unemployed city mobs” or even foreigners who were looking for ways to earn money even if it meant going to war and risking their lives.  Similarly, in America, there has been a “poverty draft”,  meaning the military either drafted people up to the time of the Vietnam war or they recruited people from mostly impoverished neighborhoods while promising them a world of benefits and bonuses which most never do receive.  The wealthy elites almost never join the US military as they recruit men from poor or middle class backgrounds and newly arrived immigrants with promises of citizenship and other benefits for them and their families if of course they come back home in one piece.  There have been cases of immigrants who fought in U.S. wars abroad were still deported back to their countries of origin.

The Economics of Empire

During Rome’s last days, farming was literally done with forced slave labor on large estates called latifundia’s owned by ultra rich landowners.  The average farmer in Rome had to pay workers, so they could not compete.  Farmers could not produce the goods as cheaply and more efficiently as the rich landowners so they had to sell their farms and lay-off their workers creating massive unemployment levels because there were no jobs left.  High levels of crime and corruption also took hold in Rome.  Rome had depended on humans and animals for labor intensive purposes, but failed to find or even create new technologies to produce new goods efficiently.

In America, the automotive industry was once competitive, but today they cannot compete with Germany, Japan, South Korea and others who produce better quality cars.  The closure of manufacturing companies that produced goods and services have been shipped to other countries including China, Indonesia and others has impacted the middle class who depended on those jobs have joined the ranks of the unemployed.  With Washington’s thirst for war, high levels of unemployment and poverty are increasing across the nation where cities and towns are going bankrupt and breadlines are becoming the norm.  Investments in crucial industries and reducing government taxes on small businesses and manufacturers will give American companies an opportunity to produce better products, to create jobs and to compete economically.  But like Rome, America is interested in war and conquest, not in producing quality products such as televisions, appliances and cars it needs to compete internationally with the exception of its high tech companies such as Apple, Microsoft and others.

As the Federal Reserve Bank continues to print money to support the powers that be and give peanuts to the masses, they will cause inflation.  The dollar will lose its value.  Rome famously clipped coins adding less value to its purchasing power for its population causing inflationary prices in food and other necessities.

History Is Repeating Itself

Past empires usually destroyed themselves from within followed by fighting endless wars and imposing economic policies that impoverished its people leading to social and moral decay.  In Rome, alcoholism was a major problem, America has an opioid problem killing tens of thousands of people annually since the problem began.  Before the opioids crisis, they (America) had a heroin and crack epidemics that destroyed many communities.

Empires past and present should be thrown into the dustbins of history.  Peace and prosperity with respect to cultural and political differences should be the norm between all nations, but the global elites or the world order is the problem.  Rome collapsed due to its foreign and domestic wars that eventually lead to its social and moral decline while it slowly destroyed its own economy are the same policies that are pursued by Washington today.

The social turmoil between Democrat and Republican cultists in America will lead to some form of civil war coupled with a fragile economy followed by the consequences of the of Covid-19 lockdowns that will have a guaranteed policy of endless money printing no matter who sits at the White House.  All will have a devastating impact on the American people for decades to come.  There will also be a coming war on any of the following countries including Syria, Lebanon (Hezbollah) that will set the stage for a possible devastating wider war with Iran, Russia and China reflects on the reality that America resembles the Roman empire who chose the same path of self-destruction.

We Are at War

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By Peter Koenig

Source: Global Research

We are at war. Yes. And I don’t mean the West against the East, against Russia and China, nor the entire world against an invisible corona virus.

No. We, the common people, are at war against an ever more authoritarian and tyrannical elitist Globalist system, reigned by a small group of multi-billionaires, that planned already decades ago to take power over the people, to control them, reduce them to what a minute elite believes is an “adequate number” to inhabit Mother Earth – and to digitize and robotize the rest of the survivors, as a sort of serfs. It’s a combination of George Orwell’s “1984” and Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”.

Welcome to the age of the transhumans. If we allow it.

Vaccination

That’s why vaccination is needed in warp speed, to inject us with transgenic substances that may change our DNA, lest we may wake up, or at least a critical mass may become conscious – and change the dynamics. Because dynamics are not predictable, especially not in the long-term.

The war is real and the sooner we all realize it, the sooner those in masks and those in social distancing take cognizance of the worldwide “anti-human” dystopian situations we have allowed our governments to bestow on us, the better our chance to retake our sovereign selves.

Today we are confronted with totally illegal and oppressive rules, all imposed under the pretext of “health protection”.

Non-obedience is punishable by huge fines; military and police enforced rules: Mask wearing, social distancing, keeping within the allowed radius of our “homes”, quarantining, staying away from our friends and families.

Actually, the sooner, We, the People, will take up an old forgotten characteristic of human kind – “solidarity” – and fight this war with our solidarity, with our love for each other, for mankind, with our love for LIFE and our Love for Mother Earth, the sooner we become again independent, self-assured beings, an attribute we have lost gradually over the last decades, at the latest since the beginning of the neoliberal onslaught of the 1980s.

Slice by tiny slice of human rights and civil rights have been cut off under false pretexts and propaganda – “security” – to the point where we, drowned in propagated dangers of all kinds, begged for more security and gladly gave away more of our freedoms and rights. How sad.

Now, the salami has been sliced away.

We suddenly realize, there is nothing left. Its irrecoverable.

We have allowed it to happen before our eyes, for promised comfort and propaganda lies by these small groups of elitists – by the Globalists, in their thirst for endless power and endless greed – and endless enlargements of their riches, of their billions. – Are billions of any monetary union “riches”? – Doubtfully. They have no love. No soul, no heart just a mechanical blood-pump that keeps them alive, if you can call that a “life”.

These people, the Globalists, they have sunk so deep in their moral dysfunction, totally devoid of ethics, that their time has come – either to be judged against international human rights standards, war crimes and crimes against humanity – similar as was done by the Nuremberg Trials after World War II, or to disappear, blinded away by a new epoch of Light.

As the number of awakening people is increasing, the western Powers that Be (PTB) are becoming increasingly nervous and spare no efforts coercing all kinds of people, para-government, administrative staff, medical personnel, even independent medical doctors into defending and promoting the official narrative.

It is so obvious, when you have known these people in “normal” times, their progressive opinions suddenly turning, by 180 degrees, to the official narrative, defending the government lies, the lies of the bought “scientific Task Forces” that “advise” the governments, and thereby provide governments with alibis to “tighten the screws” a bit more (Ms. Merkel’s remarks) around the people, the very people the governments should defend and work for; the lies and deceptive messages coming from “scientists” who may have been promised “eternal, endless ladders of careers”, or of lives in a hidden paradise?

What more may they get in turn for trying to subvert their friends’, peers’, patients’ opinions about the horror disease “covid-19”? – Possibly something that is as good as life itself – and is basically cost free for the avaricious rich. For example, a vax-certificate without having been vaxxed by the toxic injections, maybe by a placebo – opening the world of travel and pleasurable activities to them as “before”.

By the way, has anybody noticed that in this 2020 / 2021 winter flu-season, the flu has all but disappeared? – Why? – It has conveniently been folded into covid, to fatten and exaggerate the covid statistics. It’s a must, dictated by the Globalists, the “invisible” top echelon, whose names may not be pronounced. Governments have to comply with “covid quotas”, in order to survive the hammer of the Globalists.

Other special benefits for those selected and complacent defender of the official narrative, the placebo-vaxxed, may include dispensation from social distancing, mask wearing, quarantining – and who knows, a hefty monetary award. Nothing would be surprising, when you see how this tiny evil cell is growing like a cancer to take over full power of the world – including and especially Russia and China, where the bulk of the world’s natural resources are buried, and where technological and economic advances far outrank the greed-economy of the west. They will not succeed.

What if the peons don’t behave? – Job loss, withdrawal of medical licenses, physical threats to families and loved ones, and more.

The Globalists evil actions and influence-peddling is hitting a wall in the East, where they are confronted with educated and awakened people.

We are at war. Indeed. The 99.999% against the 0.001%.

Their tactics are dividing to conquer, accompanied by this latest brilliant idea – launching an invisible enemy, a virus, a plandemic, and a fear campaign to oppress and tyrannize the entire world, all 193 UN member countries.

The infamous words, spoken already more than half a century ago by Rockefeller protégé, Henry Kissinger, comes to mind:

“Who controls food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.”

Quoted below are some lines and thoughts of a 1 January 2021, RT Op-Ed article by Helen Buyniski entitled “Civil war, medical discrimination, spy satellites and cyborgs! How 2021 could make us yearn for 2020”. The article may point us in a direction of what may happen in 2021, that we certainly do not yearn for:

“People everywhere are eager to bid farewell to 2020, a year in which our lives were turned upside down by power-mad elites who seized the Covid-19 pandemic as a chance to go full police state.

But be careful what you wish for…. merely putting up a new calendar does nothing to address [the mounting repression and tyranny], which seem certain to reach a breaking point.

Humanity has been pushed to the limit with arbitrary rules, enforced poverty, and mandated isolation — it will only take a spark or two for things to explode.”

And it continues –

”As vaccines are rolled out to the general public, the divide between those obeying the rules and the dissidents will only grow. Those who decline to get the jab will be treated as pariahs, banned from some public spaces and told it’s their fault life hasn’t gone back to normal, just as so-called “anti-maskers” have been.”

And more glorious prospects

“Anyone who isn’t thrilled by the idea of ingesting an experimental compound whose makers have been indemnified from any lawsuits, will be deemed an enemy of the state, even separated from their children or removed from their home as a health risk. Neighbors will gleefully rat each other out for the equivalent of an extra chocolate ration, meaning even the most slavishly obedient individuals could end up in “quarncentration camps” for upsetting the wrong person.”

Yes, we are in the midst of war.

A war that has already ravaged our society, divided it all the way down to families and friends.

If we are not careful, we may not look our children and grandchildren in the eyes, because we knew, we ought to have known what was and is going on, what is being done, by a small dark power elite – the Globalists. We must step out of our comfort zone, and confront the enemy with an awakened mind of consciousness and a heart filled with love – but also with fierce resistance.

If we fail to step up and stand up for our rights, this war goes on to prepare future generations – to abstain from congregating with other people.

They are already indoctrinating our kids into keeping away from friends, school colleagues, peers, and from playing in groups with each other – as the New Normal.

The self-declared cupula – the crème of the crop of civilization – the Globalist evil masters, already compromised and continue to do so, the education systems throughout the globe to instill into kids and young adults that wearing masks is essential for survival, and “social distancing” is the only way forward.

Must see Video

Children of the Great Reset

Breaking the Social Fabric. Towards Totalitarian Rule

They, the Globalists, know damned well that once a civilization has lost its natural cohesion – the social fabric is broken, the very fabric that keeps a civilization together and dynamically advancing, they have won the battle. Maybe not the war, since the war will last as long as there is resistance. The “dynamic advancing” – or simply dynamics itself – is their nightmare, because dynamics is what makes life tick – life, people, societies, entire nations and continents. Without dynamics life on the planet would stand still.

And that’s what they want – a Globalist dictator, controlling a small population of serfs, or robotized slaves, that move only when told, own nothing and are given a digital blockchain controlled universal income, that, depending on their behavior and obedience, they may use to buy food, pleasure and comfort. Once the slaves are dispensable or incorrigible, their electronically controlled brains are simply turned off – RIP.

This may turn out to be the most devastating war mankind has ever fought.

May We, the People, see through this horrendous sham which is already now playing out, in Year One of the UN Agenda 21 /30;

And may We, the People, the commons, win this war against a power-thirsty elite and its bought administrators and “scientists” throughout the world – and restore a sovereign, unmasked, socially coherent society – in solidarity.

 

Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he has worked for over 30 years on water and environment around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and  co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020).

Peter Koenig is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

America Condemns One Violent Mob While Celebrating Another

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Tear gas being deployed outside the Capitol on January 6 as Trump supporters stormed the building. [Tyler Merbler / CC BY 2.0]

Where is the corporate media’s disgust for the courtesans of corporate destruction that wreak violence on Americans daily?

By Lee Camp

Source: ScheerPost.com

Most rational Americans have correctly criticized and denounced the violent insurrection in the Capitol last week. Those moments of attack by a racist, disgusting mob have not lacked for condemnation and denunciation. They were violent. They were reprehensible. They called for the killing of lawmakers, demanded the hanging of Congress members. The liberal media and even most of Fox News have not held their tongues when it comes to excoriating the morally bankrupt people who took part. And I agree with those thoughts.

BUT – why don’t we see an equal amount of disgust and condemnation for the violence done by our ruling class, the courtesans of corporate destruction?

Is allowing people to die or fall ill due to lead pipes in Flint, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and hundreds of other cities not violence?

Is allowing citizens to lose their lives to cancer from Teflon™ chemicals dumped in their water or preventable oil spills not violence?

Is allowing tens of thousands to die of preventable illnesses from our garbage healthcare system not violence?

Is allowing 15 million to lose their healthcare during a pandemic and therefore fear going to the hospital when they get sick not violence?

Is imprisoning millions of people for years for non-violent crimes not violence?

Is locking up political prisoners like Steven Donziger, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Reverend Pinkney, Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, Leonard Peltier not violence??

Is dropping a bomb every 12 minutes on innocent people in countries thousands of miles away not violence??

Is allowing millions in this country to go hungry while we throw out 40% of all food not violence?

Is arresting people who try to feed those who are starving not violence?

Is allowing hundreds of thousands to go homeless, living under bridges or on benches or squatting in collapsing structures while this country has trillions of dollars and millions of empty houses —is that not violence?

Is arresting, beating, and persecuting those who try to give those people houses not violence? And bulldozing the homes — is that not violence?

Is causing the sixth great extinction, the mass death of half the world’s wildlife, in pursuit of corporate profit not violence?

Is causing the deaths of tens of thousands of Venezuelans via economic warfare not violence?

Is creating an opioid epidemic by pushing pills on desperate people, ultimately leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands not violence?

And then arresting those who stand up and fight back against the pollution, against the pipelines, against the factory farming, against the war industry —IS—THAT—NOT—VIOLENCE?

Of course it is.

It’s violence on a breathtaking scale, far greater than what was done at the Capitol and far greater than any of us will witness in person. And yet large scale corporate-endorsed violence, death and destruction is not only allowable, it’s celebrated, it’s furthered, and promoted. Oil company documents show that they tell cities that oil spills are good for the economy. Other documents show that fossil fuel companies have known about the harm climate change would do since the 1970’s, but they simply saw it as the price of doing business. Corporate sacrifice zones like “Cancer Alley” in Louisiana are well known to be deadly to those who live there, yet it doesn’t matter to the corporations because their money will be green nonetheless. It doesn’t matter to the politicians because the poor who live in these sacrifice zones have no political power. The 40% of food that’s thrown out is not a secret. The subsidies paid to factory farms encourage them to produce heaping mountains of food and dairy and meat even if they can’t sell it all in our market economy. So they throw it out or bury it. Giving it to those in need would take too much time and effort.

Should the racist violent insurrectionists at the Capitol be punished? Absolutely. But so too should the bought-off politicians who do the bidding of our morally bankrupt corporate America. These politicians and the CEOs they serve are purveyors of violence. They trade in, produce, and reap violence. They sit on hordes of money—the obscene profit from feeding American lives into the death cult of unfettered capitalism.

Our mainstream media are blanketing the airwaves with talk of how the violent insurrectionists must be punished, and while they are not wrong, the criminal behavior those same talking heads and “reporters” ignore speaks volumes. All violence is not equal. Some of it is profitable and protected. Some of it is the American way.