Notwithstanding the obvious ethical problems with a social system that places brute force at the center of all human interactions, it should be clear from the empirical evidence that the state has been completely incapable, through its welfare apparatuses, of achieving anything but the most emetic failure, creating a system that is so obviously dehumanizing and arguably racist that it is incredible anyone can defend it in polite society. It is libertarians, though, who are the lepers under the political orthodoxy of today, who must defend voluntaryism as if coercion could ever be a morally tenable option. It is indeed difficult to imagine an arrangement less conducive to charitable giving than one that steals from individuals to provide services that do not even help their recipients, one that fritters away wealth for nothing but the consolidation of entrenched power. It is therefore the state and its flag-bearers who need to carry the burden of proof on the claim that violence and favoritism are the best way to alleviate the hardships of the poverty-stricken.

Rather than advocating the hyper-individualism that libertarians are so often arraigned for, market anarchism is the optimal expedient for social cooperation and harmony, substituting mutual respect between individuals for chaos and its actual source, the state. Though it may at first seem counterintuitive to associate anarchy with order and statism with chaos, even the most cursory inspection of the question reveals that truth. Owing to the state’s aggressive and unwarranted intrusion into our lives, we live at this moment in chaos, with violent crimes against the individual as the norm and with an absence of consistent rules or predictable outcomes. The state, the rule-giver and professed embodiment of order, is actually an institution defined by its regular and arbitrary breaking of social rules, both its own and those demanded by ethics, violating the rights of individuals with complete impunity. While the classic Hobbesian formulation insists that, without the “artificial man” of the state, society would plummet into a lawless war of all against all, that state is more appropriately and accurately descriptive of the strivings of special interests in a democracy than of an anarchic, natural order society. In our lives under the state, everyone competes in what Hans-Hermann Hoppe calls “the production of ‘bads,’” essaying toward positions that will allow them to avail themselves of the advantages of the “political means” to wealth. In contrast to this enshrinement of violence is anarchy’s consistent observation of rules, not capricious or authoritarian rules, but simple rules limiting permissible behavior and regarding what philosopher Roderick Long calls “equality in authority.”

This is what is meant by the statement often made by libertarians that “liberty is the mother, not the daughter, of order”; it is a restatement of the simple but far-reaching truth that excluding the use of aggression from human relationships necessarily gives rise to a “spontaneous order” and amity in society. Similarly, William Aylott Orton said, “In the end, given liberty to learn, men will find that freedom means community.” Anarchy therefore unites individuals as an engine of — in the truest sense — socialization, affirming the words of Friedrich Hayek that the “argument for liberty is not an argument against organization, … but an argument against all exclusive, privileged, monopolistic organization, against the use of coercion … .” Order is the natural and automatic upshot of freedom, individuals aligning their interest not because they are forced to, not even necessarily by purpose or design, but because, insofar as everyone observes the rights of everyone else, it is to their benefit to do so. The organization contemplated by the state, on the other hand, was perhaps best articulated by Hegel, who wrote, “A single person, I need hardly say, is something subordinate, and as such he must dedicate himself to the ethical whole. Hence if the state claims life, the individual must surrender it.” Under such a view, the state is the entity with autonomy and volition, and the individual is relegated to the status of a mere organ in the body politic, to obediently — or, better still, reflexively — discharge its duty to that empyrean thing called “the state.” “[A]ll the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality,” continues Hegel, “he possesses only through the State.” It is no surprise that such a notion, completely disregarding individuals and treating them as disposable means to an end, would yield enmity and contempt between neighbors, dissuading them from philanthropy as they painfully endure the unremitting theft of the state. Statism is hyper-individualistic in the disadvantageous sense of isolating people from one another, of situating people in a defensive, inward-looking framework wherein no right is secure or certain.

This might be thought of as an overly paranoid, cynical assertion, but trade — meaning freed markets — is the most powerful tool human beings have for communication, for interaction between people of assorted cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. When two ostensibly very different people trade voluntarily, something edifying takes place on a psychological and emotional level. Differences, however ephemerally, fall away in the face of the realization that all individuals share the same basic needs, that they can treat one another with dignity despite any disagreements as to worldview. Conceptually, it may be useful to think of the full scope of state action as economic isolationism or protectionism, its decisions governing which of our wares or services can leave our own borders as sovereign individuals and which can enter. In making these decisions, the state accordingly determines how many of the incidents of ownership over our property we lose to its control and how many we retain. What might be thought of as the economic sphere cannot be severed from the rest of human life because, by forcefully hindering trade, the state chooses the areas of our life that are open to persuasion and free exchange as against monopoly. If individuals were allowed to make any consensual exchanges they so desired, then the state would necessarily vanish, its own very definition requiring it to forcibly prohibit any competition with it in the market for those services which it monopolizes.

The new communitarian philosophers have fulminated against what they see as a growing “atomism” and, concomitantly, dearth of higher virtues in our society. Libertarian anarchists could find much in their arguments with which to agree. It will never be possible for individuals to more fully turn their attention to the cultivation of their minds and souls until those minds need no longer be occupied with the war of “all against all” that the state has foisted on society, rather than delivering it from. The advantages of community, advantages that libertarians should more often celebrate, could never be attained through the state’s “safety nets,” or through anything else the state might do. As an institution, it cannot act but to wage war, whether against an individual or a number of them. In a free society, voluntary associations insuring for retirement or against loss of one’s job would replace government’s machine of violence and subjugation. In this way, rather than individuals living cordoned off lives with their property neatly sequestered from one another, they would be interconnected in voluntary relationships of varying complexities, a peaceful collectivism based on market principles. The anarchists have always known that we would have to rework our semantic frameworks if we were to understand how a free society, a society without a state, might look. “Liberty without socialism,” noted Bakunin, “is privilege, injustice; socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality.” No great theoretical leap is required to appreciate what Bakunin probably meant, that complete freedom to do anything, without some reciprocal respect for rights within the human community, would result in entropic pandemonium. Similarly, he knew that the objectives of social justice, to ensure that everyone’s basic needs are met, could never be realized if the state — organized violence — were allowed to insert itself into relationships, only capacitating exploitation.

David D’Amato — Center for a Stateless Society

Spy Satellite Used on U.S. Citizens, ‘All Americans Should have Great Pride’
From a commenter on the site:

Yeah, we should all be proud slaves!

Saturday

George Carlin on American Owners and Education
I’ve had this on before, but I like it, and it needs to be transmitted again.

Sunday

Iran orders 99 lashes for woman facing execution, rights group says
Do I need to say it again? No masters, no gods.

Monday

Why The Fourth Branch Of The US Government Needs To Be Abolished, And Why “Authority” Should Never Be Trusted
An excerpt:

“…demonstrates why one must not only never rely on economists but on form of “authority” in general. Putting it all together is Buckler’s close analysis at the glue that makes it all possible: the Federal Reserve, also known as the fourth branch of government, and the entity that provides the endless funding for all of the system’s failed policies. As Buckler points out, any reversion to a system that follows the constitutional precepts of the founding fathers will need to do away with the Fed first and foremost, as “the issue is not the political will of the US government to go on spending beyond its means, it is the political will of the rest of the world to go on accepting the unworkable global system indefinitely. They will not do it.” In other words, in the step leading up to the last and most important defection in the global prisoner’s dilemma, it is up to the American people to take the necessary step to restore the systemic balance (which will happen regardless eventually, only in a far more violent fashion)."

Tuesday

Empire – Superclass

It’s about how global corporations have outgrown their nations. This is produced by Al Jazeera but they like Henry Kissinger….

Wednesday

Gingrich the Compulsive Mosque-Baiter: Reveling in Weakness
An except:

“America is experiencing an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization,” pontificated Gingrich. “Sadly, too many of our elites are the willing apologists for those who would destroy them if they could. No mosque. No self deception. No surrender. The time to take a stand is now – at this site on this issue.”

The supposed urgency of this refrain is dictated by Gingrich’s assumptions about how the “Ground Zero Mosque” would be perceived by radical Islamists rather than how the matter should be defined under our laws, traditions, and values.

This is to say that Gingrich, the supposed champion of American culture, is demanding that we play by their rules, rather than our own.

Thursday

PATCO riders undergo search
An except:

“We’ve been doing random searches for years,” said Amtrak spokesman Cliff Cole. “None have been in response to particular threats. It’s more to show force.

“We like to keep them a surprise.”

So they haven’t had any threats, so who are they threatening with a show of force? The people. The proles.

But did you realize that it said that corporations can give unlimited money to judges?

As William K. Black – professor of economics and law, and the senior regulator during the S & L crisis – pointed out last week:

The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision allows businesses to make unlimited political contributions to judges and politicians. When judges are elected, the need for these contributions inherently turns judges into politicians. Sympathetic judges are corrupt businesses’ most valuable allies. Corporations and their senior officials can commit civil or criminal wrongs with impunity if their case is assigned to a friendly judge. The Robber Barons often had judges on their payrolls. Judges can serve a corporation as both a shield and a sword. They can declare statutes and regulations unlawful. They can issue favorable decisions when corporations sue their critics, which can intimidate, tie up, or even bankrupt the critics.

The fact that corporations are “investing” so heavily in getting pro-business judges elected demonstrates that their CEOs believe that the election of friendly judges will increase their incomes and decrease the risk that they will ever be sanctioned. It’s a business decision – not a decision based on which judicial candidate would be more qualified or better serve justice. CEOs want to win cases when doing so would be unjust and contrary to the law, which is why they hire top attorneys and make the contributions necessary to elect judges they believe will be allies. The empirical evidence in Texas shows that judicial elections and contributions produces perverse dynamics. One study showed that hiring the former law firm of a Texas Supreme Court justice markedly increased the chances that the Texas Supreme Court would exercise its discretion and hear your appeal from an adverse decision. Hiring the former law firm of the Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court produced an even greater chance of having one’s appeal heard.

As Yves Smith noted recently:

A Mother Jones article, “Permission to Encroach the Bench,” (hat tip reader Francois T) discusses how already big ticket battles over state supreme court seats are likely to rocket to a new level of priciness:

For a down-ballot category that even well-intentioned voters pay little attention to, judicial races are astonishingly expensive. In 2004, $9.3 million was spent in the race for a single seat (pdf) on the Illinois Supreme Court. That’s higher than the price tag of more than half the US Senate races in the nation that year. In 2006, three candidates for chief justice in Alabama raised $8.2 million combined.

But those sums could look paltry compared to the spending likely to be unleashed in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling. In all, 39 states elect judges—and with the stakes including everything from major class actions to zoning and contract cases to consumer protection, workplace, and environmental issues, corporations have always taken a major interest in those races. The US Chamber of Commerce, Forbes reported in 2003, has devoted at least $100 million to electing judges sympathetic to its agenda. “No organization has had more success in the past 10 years of judicial elections,” says James Sample, a professor at Hofstra University who studies judicial reform issues. “Its winning percentage would be the envy of any sports franchise.” Citizens United has essentially wiped out not just federal restrictions on campaign spending, but many state-level regulations as well, Sample notes, and that’s “going to increase the ability of corporations, and to a much lesser extent unions, to engage in electioneering that is basically aimed at winning particular cases.” And given the low profile of these races, it may not take that much to sway that outcome, notes Bert Brandenburg, executive director of the advocacy group Justice at Stake. “A judicial election is a better investment for anyone spending money” than, say, a congressional campaign.

Note the reference to Alabama, a state I know a wee bit about, and my local sources say the Mother Jones figures are greatly understated, and attorneys in the state who’ve turned over a few rocks put the price tag for a state supreme court seat at $12 million. I’ve had a quick look at a Supreme Court justice’s house. It is in an implausibly costly district for his income (and no, there’s no heiress wife to explain the discrepancy).

Why is Alabama such a valuable state to control? It used to be a favorite venue for class action lawyers, since juries often handed out multi-million-dollar awards. Getting business-friendly jurists in place at the highest court has meant that any verdict, no matter how egregious and damaging the violations, is cut to $1 million.

And the degree of banana republic behavior is reaching new levels. Consider: a once prominent corporate firm has been reduced to becoming primarily a foreclosure mill. However, because longevity counts in the South, and many of the firm’s senior partners still dine with judges, it has clout well in excess of its fallen standing.

On a case which is now being tried, this fading firm (we’ll call it Billem) has managed to get the case (which is being heard only by a judge) moved from the court before a decision has been rendered to a sympathetic appeal court judge. In addition, Billem is appending four other cases which that have already been decided and are past the time frame for appeal (in Alabama, you have 43 days in which to file an appeal). The rationale is that these cases present similar issues, but that still has the effect of reopening cases which under existing law are settled. For lay reader, if you miss the deadline for appeal, you can’t appeal…..except in when the right people in Alabama want it to occur.

So this isn’t merely having judges who will provide the opinions big business wants. We now have a court running roughshod over basic elements of procedure. The last bastion of defense of the individual is being gutted, to the point where even the forms of the law will be ignored if that’s what it takes to produce the outcome the big money interests need.

I wrote in April:

As Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said:

We may have democracy [or you can substitute the word "republic"], or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.

***

Of course, antitrust laws were enacted to protect the economy and democracy, but – like the Depression-era laws separating depository banking from investment banking – are not being enforced.

And the government could use existing laws to force ill-gotten gains to be disgorged (see this and this), fraudulent transfers to be voided and – perhaps – even bonuses gained at the expense of taxpayers clawed back. Such actions would make the 800 pound gorillas a little smaller, helping to reduce concentration of wealth somewhat. But that would assume that America is still a nation governed by the rule of law.

Currently, it’s not. Only courageous prosecutors and brave judges can restore the rule of law to America.

I wrote that before I realized that the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision opened the floodgates to corporations buying judges.

George — Washington’s Blog
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Actual monopolies fully control the basic building blocks of the food that makes up the majority of the American diet — and no one seems to care.  Simply put, those who control the corn, wheat, and soybeans control all food, since all livestock and all processed foods are dependent on those food resources.  These monopolies place their cronies in government regulatory agencies like the FDA and USDA to weed out their competition through excessive regulation.  Currently proposed legislation are textbook examples of their methods.

There once was a time when free markets existed for food.  Back when local food ruled the day, if a farmer sold milk that was bad, he would not get return customers unless he adjusted his practices to make a healthier product.  This free market was self-regulating.  In other words, in a truly free market we shouldn't need the FDA.  However, as mentioned before, we are light years from a free market.

Subsidies rain down on big agribusinesses that grow what the government tells them to grow.  Industry leaders like Cargill, Monsanto, and Tyson essentially turn farmers into indentured sharecroppers.  The food engineers at General Mills and others weave corn, wheat, and soybeans into chemical concoctions that end up in brightly colored packages — some even come with free Chinese-made toys.  The finished product develops from a Genetically Modified base, using multiple poisons to glue it together, demonstrating that the monopolies and their regulatory lapdogs care not for our health.

But what about voting with our pocketbooks, isn’t that a free market? Surely that is what we have been taught.  Yet, all 16 flavors of Cheerios — which give the appearance of free choice — are all made by General Mills from a genetically modified corn base.  This illusion of choice hides the monopolistic nature of food.

Enter Senate bill S. 510 Food Safety Modernization Act, already passed in the House as HR 2749.  Some have demonized the bill as ultimate food fascism where the FDA will micromanage even small farms and co-ops to the point where it will become illegal to grow, share, trade or sell homegrown food.  While others see it as a measured way to control the health and quality of factory farms. One thing is for sure, S.510 gives more power to the corrupt FDA to regulate our food.  And there is renewed interest in the Senate to pass this bill since the recent massive egg and meat recalls due to salmonella and E. coli outbreaks.

This bill does nothing to change the actual practices of factory farming and the way the food for animals is grown and delivered.  It does give the FDA draconian powers to force inspections to be paid for by the farmers themselves.  This can be an effective tool for the big multinational agri-corporations to further squeeze out their competition and gain near complete control of food resources in America.  Furthermore, S.510 essentially hands much of the FDA's duties over to the liberty-smashing Department of Homeland Security — which is mentioned 41 times in the bill.

All 273 pages of the bill contain legalize that can be difficult to decode, but one of the easiest ways to determine if it is good for average Americans is to view who is supporting the bill, versus who opposes the bill.  Monsanto and other agri-monopolies support the bill with full force.  Indeed, some speculate that they even wrote the bill themselves.

Sadly, this bill is gaining momentum because of the recent food recalls.  One way or another, our corrupt politicians and their corporate overlords will see to it that there is more regulation over our food.  If this bill passes, we can expect more consolidation in agriculture and more police-state raids of private health-food cooperatives.  Worse yet, this bill may just be the primer for the even more egregious bill HR.759 Food and Drug Administration Globalization Act, which fully restricts local food producers and natural health remedies.

Food freedom starts at home with the individual choices that we make.  However, exposing the corrupt regulatory system and educating the powers that be about healthier ways to produce food is also vital to maintaining our food freedom.  It’s time we tell the corporate government to back off our food.

Eric Blair — Activist Post

Cable news providers like MSNBC and CNN have set the American people up for fall after fall; sometimes because they were blinded by their own bells and whistles, sometimes because they deliberately and blatantly lied in order to create engineered market sentiment. In the wake of the initial credit market collapse of 2008, these people, who didn’t see it coming and denied it was happening, still have their jobs, still have their TV shows and news columns, and, are still generally blowing smoke up our posteriors.

It’s not that the inhabitants of this country continue to trust the MSM (some do; seniors on prescription medication, yuppies on prescription medication, ignorant day traders who are often self-medicated, etc.), it’s just that the well established opposing views and arguments we in the Liberty Movement are exposed to by honest alternative news sources have not been properly presented in a forum that is widely visible to the average citizen. When was the last time you saw a Ron Paul, a Peter Schiff, a Gerald Celente, or a Max Keiser, etc. on a MSM financial program for any longer than ten minutes? When have we ever seen the opposing view given respectful consideration in a fairly moderated debate? Would any high level ghoul from Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, or the private Federal Reserve, submit to an unbiased hour long televised discussion with any analyst from our side of the line?

On the few occasions in which Ben Bernanke was cornered in the highly controlled environment of Congressional hearings, he was either completely unable or unwilling to give a coherent response of any substance to the questions of Ron Paul. Anytime these men are taken out of the protective element of the worshipful MSM shell and actually challenged, their arguments fall apart.

In some fields of research, dishonesty and misconceptions can cost lives. In economics, dishonesty and misconceptions can cost MILLIONS of lives. Mainstream financial analysts (and the MSM in general) have lost all sense of responsibility for what they do, and thus, continue to put our society at risk and continue to lose vaster portions of their audience year after year. The problem is that the vacuum left behind by this mass exodus from the MSM has not yet been correctly filled with principled alternative news providers. We are growing everyday, but the information void is still ever present, and the memory hole continues to be exploited by global bankers. Some people don’t know where to turn, and have instead given up on looking for the truth altogether.

My only option has been to continue drilling away at the root points of disinformation, along with many other uncompromised researchers, and hope that consistency and perseverance win the day by accumulation and attrition.

With that strategy in mind, we will now examine the instabilities behind our current recession/depression. We will then follow by deconstructing the most prominent economic misconceptions surrounding them (often perpetuated by the MSM), along with those misconceptions you will probably hear in the near future…

Did Someone Say “Recovery”?

There are a handful of exceptions in history, but those aside, one of the safest generalizations one can make, is that governments lie. Why do they lie? Simple; because they are afraid of how the public might react if they knew the truth. Governments are often composed of men with a strong sense of self-interest, and an even stronger sense of self preservation. This drives them to put their own agendas over the wellbeing of the people they are supposed to serve. And, if it’s safe to bet that governments lie, it’s an even safer bet that international bankers, who have no principled ties to any country, lie more!

During the Great Depression, government officials, mainstream financial analysts, and global bankers, released press notices and interviews every year for over a decade, all claiming that “recovery” was just around the corner, that good times were back again. Then, we witnessed a world war. A third of the planet was leveled, but America (unlike most countries) came out with its industrial base still intact, and so, we called it a recovery (actually just a reallocation of world assets into one of the few un-scorched nations left) and happily skipped on our way towards the comparably decadent 1950’s.

Today, we face a far more dangerous scenario than the Great Depression ever was, but the strategy of skewed statistics and denial by the elites has remained pretty much unchanged. Unsupported talk of recovery fumes from every word and every pore of the establishment media, and the investment community to some extent has even been convinced that if they “wish” for recovery hard enough, if they think happy thoughts, it will materialize, all without any effort, any sacrifice, any suffering, like magic. Unfortunately, fairy dust and fiat alone are not going to undo the slowly accumulated damage that our economy has sustained for the past several decades. Below, are the reasons why…

Employment Near Great Depression Levels

In the past week, the Obama Administration has preemptively claimed victory on two fronts; a military pullout in Iraq, and the American economy (and conveniently right in time for Labor Day I might add). Of course, he “exaggerated” the pullout in Iraq. There are still 50,000 troops on the ground, and the troops he did pull out are merely being replaced with private mercenary contractors like those from Blackwater. So, in Iraq, nothing has changed. The administration’s proclamation that they have “stopped the bleeding” in terms of the economy is a similar misrepresentation of the facts. Its not that they have stopped the bleeding, America has almost bled out!

Counting U-6 measurements of those not considered by the Labor Department as unemployed because they are either off jobless benefits or are working part time, the jobless rate of the U.S. has hovered near 20% for over a year at least. During the Great Depression at its peak, unemployment reached 25%, but even this comparison is misleading. The population of the U.S. during the 1930’s was around 122 million, meaning far less working age adults than there are today in our population of 310 million people. In fact, the actual number, not percentage, of unemployed and underemployed today far exceeds that of the Great Depression. The number of desperate people, the critical mass of poor in a country, can have a far more insidious effect on its social environment than the abstract historical “percentage”, at least in my view.

Given the real state of unemployment, why has there been such euphoria over the economy in the past few days? Well, August private employment numbers from the Labor Department of 67,000 jobs created “beat Wall Street estimates”, that’s why. Set aside the fact that 121,000 temporary government jobs were cut equaling an actual net loss of 54,000 jobs. At least the privet sector is alive, right? Wrong. Here’s the rub…

Mainstream analyst estimates have become an incredibly pervasive delusion among investors and the public lately, a delusion that now has the financial sector dancing to whatever tune the government and the central banks wish to play.

Analysts forecast monthly unemployment reductions or increases based on….? Certainly weekly unemployment benefits filings are a part of the prediction process, and perhaps a few other statistics which are questionable themselves, but at bottom, these estimates are a blind guess involving very little concrete math. A guess completely subject to the whims of the analysts themselves. This “guess” is then for some reason treated as a legitimate reference point by the entire market for determining the health of the economy. It becomes a purely fabricated psychological indicator with no basis in reality. Want to pump up the stock market for a couple weeks? Why not guess lower job creation than is liable to occur. Or, if you are the Labor Department, tweak the numbers up a little above estimates and then “revise” them down in another month or two after everyone has forgotten. Bankers and economists projected 40,000 new private sector jobs created in August. Labor Department numbers were 27,000 above that. Result: stock market jubilee and a declaration that the recovery is in full swing.

The market has become so addicted to the use of arbitrary monthly analyst estimates that they have forgotten to look at the bigger picture, the real and fundamental reference points compiled over decades and used for gauging the actual state of the economy. Below is a graph from Clusterstock which very clearly and concisely illustrates EXACTLY how our jobs market is doing by comparing the percent of job losses to peak employment today, along side the same statistics from every recession after WWII:

http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-percent-job-losses-in-post-wwii-recessions-2010-9?utm_source=Triggermail&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Clusterstock+Chart+Of+The+Day&utm_campaign=Clusterstock_COTD_090310

When one looks at the broader comparisons of our financial situation, he discovers that a 67,000 job boost isn’t even a drop in the bucket. In our current state, 300,000 to 400,000 jobs a month would have to be generated for at least three years straight in order to reach employment levels similar to those of 2006-2007, before the collapse was fully triggered.

Even if significant job loss has stopped (which is unlikely), no economy can recover without first reducing its static 20% unemployment rate. The longer this portion of the populace remains out of work, the harder it will be for the government to continue welfare and unemployment programs (modern day soup kitchens). Once these programs falter, the rampant poverty they obscured will become highly visible.

Housing Market Is Never Coming Back

Some might consider this statement to be rather brash. I disagree. According to the data, it is highly unlikely that we will see the housing market return to even a semblance of its former glory in our lifetimes. I often hear MSM analysts claim on a monthly basis that housing has bottomed, only to have home prices fall yet again, or mortgage rates hit record low after record low:

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE67P30X20100902

The establishment often tries to turn these numbers on their ear, as if they are a good thing. Record low mortgage rates are touted as investment candy. “Surely”, they say, ”such low rates will lure homebuyers out in droves.” However, as of the closing of August 2010, and the end of the homebuyer tax credit, there has been no real estate frenzy, and sales have fallen to the slowest pace on record, all during summer months when home buying is traditionally supposed to increase:

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/08/25/new-home-sales-fall-slowest-pace-record-july/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/24/existing-homes-sales-plun_n_692437.html

This long last gasp of the real estate sector is not just limited to residential property. Commercial property is also plunging in value and retail spaces are emptying at a substantial rate. The overall property value of American malls and shopping centers fell 11% in the second quarter of this year alone:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-19/retail-spaces-lead-biggest-drop-in-u-s-commercial-property-prices-in-year.html

This has caused some to suggest even more government capitalization of banks to protect them from further property declines:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-27/banks-will-need-new-capital-to-withstand-renewed-housing-dip-whitney-says.html

So, no recovery in employment, and no recovery in real estate; the two most important factors necessary for a legitimate revitalization of the U.S economy. Is there some golden bit of good financial news Obama knows that we don’t. I doubt it. But let’s continue…

FDIC Blackhole Bailout

Anyone who says the stimulus measures ever stopped doesn’t know what they are talking about. We actually have several “blackhole bailouts”; bailouts with undefined limits or no limits at all, draining money from the American taxpayer continuously. One would be the endless bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which will require more and more stimulus every quarter as the housing market continues to disintegrate. Another, would be the rarely spoken of bailout of the FDIC, which has been in the red for quite some time now. Just as Fannie and Freddie’s bailout is dependent on the constant default of mortgage loans, the FDIC’s bailout is predicated on the constant default of banks.

Last year, analysts estimated that we would see approximately 140 bank closures in 2010. It is now the beginning of September and already 118 banks have been shuttered, well on our way to surpassing the 140 bank estimate:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/21/shorebank-among-8-fdic-ba_n_689910.html

Keep in mind that all of these banks are closing while the FDIC is broke! Meaning, every penny the FDIC pays out to insured account holders is supplied by the Treasury, which is also broke! Where do they get the money? Where else? The Federal Reserve issues the money out of thin air. Where is this leading? One of two scenarios: either the Fed ends its printing and the FDIC goes bankrupt, causing a run on the banks, or, the Fed continues to print more fiat until the dollar is rendered absolutely worthless on the world market.

For those who think healthier banking is just around the corner, the FDIC expanded its “secret” list of troubled banks this year to over 800!

http://www.investorplace.com/news-opinion/bank-failures-plague-financial-sector.html

This has some of the smarter investors questioning if the bailouts will EVER end. The answer is ‘no’. At least, not until the government defaults, or our currency implodes, which we will discuss in a moment.

Stock Market Hanging By A Thread

The stock market is perhaps the worst possible indicator of the true health of the economy. No system is more prone to manipulation and engineered equity floods. Some Americans rarely if ever question why or how stocks increase or decrease in overall strength, all they know is, green means “good”, and red means “bad”. As long as they see green once or twice a week, they are content.

In a market not under duress by central banks, the Dow is supposed to reflect the profit health and viability of the companies that make up its index. However, in our current market, this is rarely the case. In fact, stock values for the past several months are far above what they should be when considering the low profits and massive debts of our corporate infrastructure. Some estimate using the P/E Ratio (price to earnings ratio), that stocks are at least 30% overvalued. I think that if we take into account the fact that most banks and funds hold toxic equities worth nothing and count them as AAA rated assets, it is more likely that stocks are 50% to 60% overvalued, and the Dow could easily lose this much in the near future.

The number of investors actively trading in the Dow also affects its “moods”. The lower the market volume, the more wild stocks tend to swing. This is because more and more market value is being determined by fewer and fewer people. The volume of this August was approximately 30% lower than the volume of August, 2009:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/38932472/August_Ends_With_Miserable_Volume

What this means is, many average investors are pulling out of stocks completely, leaving the big boys even greater dominance of the playing field, and greater ability to drive values up or down at will.

Larger corporations also use subversive tactics to drive up their short term stock value at the expense of long term stability. One such tactic is to forcefully expand through acquisitions of smaller companies in other fields that they cannot really afford. A good example is HP and Dell’s crazed bidding war for 3Par, or BHP’s bid for Potash:

http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/company-news/heads-in-the-cloud-why-hp-and-dell-are-crazy-about-3par/19615943/

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/19/business/global/19potash.html?_r=1

These companies could easily develop along the same guidelines as the companies they are spending incredible sums to purchase, IF they had the long term capital to do so. They don’t. And so, we will see top corporations drive harder and harder to devour smaller companies in order to drive up their own share values all while knowing they cannot continue to sustain themselves in the long run. Google alone has already announced 18 acquisitions so far this year:

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-08-11/google-steps-up-acquisitions-as-some-projects-falter.html

As for average investors, where is all their money going if not into stocks? Investors are snapping up bonds of all types (except municipals which are a death trap), and of course, gold, which is holding near record highs despite all the predictions made against it by the MSM:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-26/investors-redeem-7-1-billion-from-global-equity-funds-in-week-epfr-says.html

This trend has been developing for many months now, and it should come as no surprise that stocks have lost investor trust. It should also come as no surprise that due to this trend the dreaded “Hindenburg Omen” recently reared its ugly head not once, but twice within the span of 30 days!

http://www.thestreet.com/story/10835851/hindenburg-omen-is-a-stock-market-crash-imminent.html

The indicator has a 92% success rate in predicting a considerable stock market decline, and the probability of a major stock market crash after a single Omen is around 24%. Establishment analysts have attempted to shrug off the indicator, or apply a “modern take” to the definition of an actual Hindenburg Omen, so as to dilute its meaning and the warning. But this is what they have always done from the Great Depression to today; plant the seeds of false hope in an economy clearly on the verge of failure.

Asia Will Not Pick Up U.S. Slack

The prevailing argument in the MSM is the globalist one; that the fall of the U.S. consumer is a natural part of global “harmonization”, and that devaluation of the U.S. dollar is a “good thing” because it will “force” the east to begin purchasing more U.S. goods, driving up our exports and manufacturing leading to an “industrial rebirth” in America. There is absolutely no logical basis for this argument.

Essentially, establishment economists want us to believe that Asia is going to pick up where the American citizen left off as the new super-consumers, and we will jump right back into our post WWII role as manufacturing giants, all in time to head off any major crisis in the world economy. This is a fantasy.

While it is true that America must eventually return to its industrial roots if we are to survive, our manufacturing capability is almost non-existent compared to what is required to make such a transition in the short term. MSM talking heads argue that the U.S. has the greatest manufacturing capability on Earth, but what they fail to mention is that the vast majority of our factories are on foreign soil, not here in the U.S.! After outsourcing all our manufacturing capability to the third world, it could take a couple decades to rebuild our home industry to effective levels, and this is a conservative estimate considering our country has no savings and is drowning in debt.

China has shown it has no intention of turning to the U.S. for goods they could easily make themselves or import through the new ASEAN trading bloc, which is really just the foundation for an Asian Union, eventually relying on the Yuan as its reserve currency. Chinese trade has increased almost 50% this year with ASEAN, not the U.S.

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90776/90883/7119280.html

While China’s non-bond investments in the U.S. have dropped 47%:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-26/china-reducing-risk-by-cutting-u-s-investments-heritage-foundation-says.html

If the Obama Administration is so interesting in building a better trade relationship with China and convincing them to purchase our exports, as they have claimed in the past, you would think they would try to involve themselves further in the activities of ASEAN. Instead, Obama failed to name any ambassadors to the major ASEAN trade conference last month in Vietnam. This only caused China and other Eastern nations to feel slighted and ignored by the U.S; always a good idea to thumb your nose at someone before asking them to buy your stuff:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-26/u-s-absence-at-southeast-asia-trade-meeting-draws-criticism-from-senator.html

The financial and political moves by China show not a reversal of roles as exporter nation and importer nation, but a complete separation of the two economies, an ending of substantial economic interaction or reliance. The developments in Treasury bonds and the Chinese currency only reinforce this fact.

Japan, China, ASEAN, And The Dollar

The U.S. Dollar continues to exist for one reason and one reason only; habit. As the World Reserve Currency, the dollar has been entrenched across the globe as the primary trade mechanism. It holds psychological significance among investors not because it is stable but simply because it has played this role for so long. The common assumption is that this role will not change anytime soon. What most Americans don’t know though, and what the MSM rarely talks about, is that the dollar’s role has already changed. In light of endless quantitative easing measures, mushrooming U.S. debt, and Obama’s harebrained new plan for FDR-like public works programs which we cannot afford, the time has come to pay the piper.

Investors are abandoning the dollar as a safe haven and are now treating it as a “funding currency”, a middle-man investment for the purchase of higher yield assets, much like the Japanese Yen or the Swiss Franc. It was only a matter of time:

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE67J4M920100820

The Chinese Government has now publicly warned that they will be diversifying out of U.S. Treasuries (they already have been for months) and that this will result in “some” devaluation in the dollar:

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6820G520100903

China has ramped up cross-border Yuan transactions with other countries making their currency more viable as a trade mechanism, and making the dollar less necessary:

http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90778/90859/7126304.html

Both the U.S. and EU governments are practically begging China to allow a fast appreciation in the Yuan, which could only be precipitated by a dump of their Treasury reserves and a considerable devaluation of the dollar:

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE67R1H220100828

And most startling (but not all that unexpected), is the incredible amount of PR the Yuan is getting as a reserve currency from international banks and corporations. Global banks, including Citigroup and JP Morgan, are launching “roadshows” promoting trade using the Yuan or “Renminbi” instead of the U.S. dollar! That’s right! Global bankers are now openly pushing for the dollar to be replaced by the Yuan in international trade:

http://www.gata.org/node/8961/print

(Special Note: The article above was also published on CNN.com in full, but has since been removed)

Even McDonalds is now selling Yuan denominated bonds:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-19/mcdonald-s-yuan-bonds-set-standard-as-china-promotes-debt-credit-markets.html

There is absolutely no doubt, China is spreading the Yuan everywhere. Inflationary effects are already occurring because of this move:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-25/china-s-official-inflation-data-mask-surge-in-food-prices-medical-costs.html

The only way to avoid severe negative effects on the average Chinese citizen is to allow an unprecedented surge in the Yuan’s value in order to increase consumer buying power in line with inflation. Again, the best and most efficient way for China to make this happen is to dump their U.S. Treasury Bond holdings.

It seems that Japan, the second largest holder of U.S. debt, may not be far behind China in this respect. The Yen has recently risen to a 15 year high against the dollar, causing the Japanese Government to discuss the possibility of a currency intervention. However, Japan is well aware that if the U.S. is so adamant about Chinese currency manipulation, it will be just as disruptive over Japanese currency manipulation:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-27/japan-yen-intervention-may-fail-without-u-s-european-union-coordination.html

Without help from the U.S. and the EU, a currency intervention in Japan would surely fail. Japan, unlike China, has not re-engineered its economy for greater consumption and has maintained its traditional export relationship with the U.S. This has resulted in dismal revenues and a continuous deflationary spiral in the Japanese economy. So what is Japan to do? Every move by international banks to pump up China, along with the U.S. Government’s demand that China allow a quick appreciation in the Yuan despite the obvious negative effect it will have on the dollar suggests to me that there is a deliberate strategy by global bankers to end our currency’s world reserve status and debase our financial system, but, it also looks as though the Japanese people are being prepared at the same time to accept full membership in ASEAN.

This has been discussed by the Japanese for some time, but the cultural divide between China and Japan is still very strong. Making the Japanese populace highly dependent on China for economic stability may not go over well without prompting:

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6810LQ20100902

It appears that Japan, just like the U.S., is being positioned between the proverbial “rock and a hard place”. If they continue to rely on poor U.S. consumption, if investors continue to pour into the Yen as a safer hedge than the dollar, Japan will face dire deflationary consequences, especially if the EU and the U.S. do not support a Yen intervention. The only option left to them (rather conveniently) is to conform to the ASEAN trading bloc. Why is this bad for the U.S.? The side effect of this move would probably entail the Japanese dumping of U.S. Treasuries, right on top of China’s. This means the end of the dollar.

The World Hurts More Without The Truth

My favorite propaganda trend in the mainstream media today is one directed at researchers like myself who expose the darker side of our economic and political environment. The term “Apocalypse Porn”, or “Doomer Porn”, is rising as the preferred Ad hominem attack on Liberty Movement writers, in place of “conspiracy theorist” which doesn’t seem to be working for them anymore. The MSM apparently spends more time trying to develop ‘memes’ like this than they do actually researching the so called news they propagate. The insinuation is that we either embellish data to make it seem more frightening than it actually is, or, that by reporting on valid but terrible news, we are a “danger” to society, because we perpetuate fear. Basically, it is the beginnings of an argument for suppression of 1st Amendment rights.

The reason the information we report on is disturbing is not because it is “bad”, but because it is TRUE. There are children who could make the distinction, but some full grown men and women seem to have difficulty with the concept. When the establishment says that we as researchers and alternative media do not have a right to spread facts that might upset you, what they are also saying is that you as an American cannot be trusted to act responsibly and constructively with the facts you are given. They are saying that they need to protect you from yourself. Who ever gave them permission to take on that job?

The Doomer Porn argument rings hollow because what I state here in these articles is entirely subject to your verification. If I embellish, or lie, I will be caught, and thus, my writing becomes meaningless. If I tell the truth, the hard truth, it is not up to me or the MSM or anyone else accept yourself to decide what you will do with it.

Perhaps the greatest misconception of all, especially in economics, is that bad news encourages bad events. That the truth is hazardous, and for the economy to remain healthy, the establishment must continue to lie. The presumption that our financial system is so dependent on our mass psychology is complete nonsense. The dollar is being fundamentally debased whether or not we blindly “believe” the dollar is fine. Our country is facing unserviceable national debts whether or not we force ourselves to think positive thoughts. The stock market is exceedingly overpriced and primed for collapse even if you and I ignore all the warning signs and drink margaritas on white sandy beaches all day with big dumb smiles on our faces. Two plus two equals four no matter what the psychological state of our society is. The facts are not subject to my “good vibes” or “bad vibes”, and if this is the best argument MSM pundits can make against legitimate alternative financial analysts, then I think they need to pack it up and leave the thinking to more adequate men.

Without confronting the stark reality of our situation, be it economic, political, or social, we will never be able change things for the better. Ignorance is not bliss. The ignorant always end up paying a steep price. The U.S. economy is going to experience some rather horrifying repercussions, for the actions of the elites who seek to derail our culture and replace it with another, and for the publics’ continued lack of vigilance to those actions. In my next article, I will be discussing possible solutions to all of the dilemmas I describe above, but first and foremost on the list is developing the ability to accept the nature of the situation as it stands, and not as we would like it to be. Life has never worked that way, and finance is no different.

Giordano Bruno — Neithercorp Press

Some decades ago, while having dinner with a newly elected Attorney General of the State of North Carolina and the Chief Justice of that state’s Supreme Court, the jurist told me that everyone involved in the legal system and enforcement had to think like criminals to catch them. He believed the statement to be straight forward and evident until I pointed out that the line between thinking like a criminal and acting like one is very fine and is easily and frequently crossed, which results in increasing the amount of evil in society rather than reducing it. Few apparently notice this consequence and the criminal-like behavior of those charged with enforcing and adjudicating the law has increased so substantially that it has become common practice.

YouTube is replete with videos of police brutality. Police have been videoed beating subdued prisoners, tasering people (even little old ladies) indiscriminately, shooting mentally challenged people they have been called upon to help, and killing people caught committing non-capital crimes who try to escape (sometimes by shooting them in the back). Investigations to determine whether those officers should be held accountable rarely result in any punishment.

People providing forensic information in trials have been shown to have falsified evidence in ways that facilitate convictions. A recent report claims that “agents of the [N.C.] State Bureau of Investigation repeatedly aided prosecutors in obtaining convictions over a 16-year period, mostly by misrepresenting blood evidence and keeping critical notes from defense attorneys . . . calling into question convictions in 230 criminal cases.” Similar problems have been found with other forensic labs.

In Dallas, TX, a former prosecutor, Henry Wade, now deceased, has become infamous for having convicted a large number of innocent defendants. Dallas has had more exonerations than any other county in America; yet most requests for the retesting of DNA have been denied by trial court judges on the recommendation of former District Attorney Bill Hill, a protégé of Wade’s. Mr. Hill’s prosecutors routinely opposed testing. In addition to almost complete reliance on eyewitness testimony, a review of the Dallas County DNA cases shows that 13 of the 19 wrongly convicted men were black, eight were misidentified by victims of another race, investigators, prosecutors, and many of the juries in the cases were all white, police used suggestive lineup procedures and sometimes pressured victims to pick their suspect and then cleared the case once an identification was made, prosecutors frequently went to trial with single-witness identifications and flimsy corroboration and tried to preserve shaky identifications by withholding evidence that pointed to other potential suspects, and judges routinely approved even tainted pretrial identifications. When Bill Hill, who said he was confident his assistants verified the accuracy of all eyewitness identifications was told his office prosecuted one those exonerated, Mr. Hill said the two prosecutors on the case were incompetent holdovers from the previous administration. Terri Moore, the current DA’s top assistant and a former federal prosecutor, said, “It’s almost like it’s the whole system. Everybody drops the ball somewhere, starting with the police investigation. And we just take the case and adopt what the police say.”

Then there are those prosecutions that rely on the testimony of criminals who have been bribed to act as informants. Bribery is a criminal activity, and if a defense attorney were shown to have bribed a witness, disbarment would be the likely result; yet prosecutors commonly do it.

The preceding paragraphs limn an ugly picture, ugly indeed!

But the evil is not limited to local law enforcement. When officials realized that they can act with impunity without fear of suffering any personal consequences, the maxim, one must think like criminals to catch them, underwent subtle alterations. Now one must think like bankers to be able to regulate them. The same thing is said of stock brokers, oil men, and every other interest group. Everyone wants to be self-regulated. But self-regulation is nothing but a license to engage in criminal behavior. The whole system of governing becomes an oligarchy of old boys scratching each other's backs. Everyone knows just how well that works out.

Federal agencies, including the Supreme Court, are complicit, too. The Court violates the Constitution routinely. Remember the decision validating the incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII? Other decisions, perhaps not quite so obvious, can easily be cited. The FBI and Homeland Security routinely violate the privacy provisions of both the Constitution and the law, and the courts have failed to intervene. The CIA has become an official version of Murder, Inc., now even advocating the assassination of Americans living abroad who have been labeled "terrorists." The agency has become the dispenser of vigilante justice, while Americans are told to never take the law into their own hands.

No one seems to realize that the war against evil by the good cannot be won using evil tactics. Evil never yields goodness, and by using these evil practices on the pretext of fighting evil, the amount of evil in the world increases both in amount and extent. Attempting to save a nation by becoming what you are trying to save the nation from is an act of national self-destruction; it is suicidal.

So how can the good be expected to fight evil?

Edmund Burke’s claim, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing,” is often cited. Sounds good, doesn’t it? But the claim falls into the category of notions that Michael Faraday labeled “favorite ideas,” and he warned us to be leery of them. Think about it for just a minute. Are people who do nothing really good?

Anyone who has watched network television over the past decade has seen stories about people who have seen crimes taking place without ever intervening and people collapsing in the street without ever stopping to render aid. ABC News currently has a series, titled What Would You Do?, that stages illegal acts in public places to see how unaware bystanders respond. Many do nothing. The implication of these stories is that there’s something wrong with such people.

In fact, no one knows what the ratio of good to bad people in society is. Perhaps there simply are not enough good people to make a difference no matter what they do. But even supposing, as most people do, that the good outnumber the bad, few realize how hard it is for the good to fight evil.

Good people are repelled by it; they can never employ it even with the best of intentions; they know multiple wrongs never make right. So what are they to do?

They can, of course, rail against the evil. Some like the ACLU, the Innocence Project, and others file lawsuits, others expose evil by requesting documents through the Freedom of Information act and by becoming whistleblowers. Although all of these actions are worthwhile and often result in combating specific wrongful acts, they have little effect on the systemic evil that has been incorporated into institutional behavior. Good people seem to be limited by their very goodness. Is there then no hope? Can nothing be done to prevent the triumph of evil?

Some societies have developed benign and civil ways of dealing with it. Gandhi was able to use passive resistance to expel the evil British RAJ from India, but, unfortunately, the Indians were unable to use it to keep an evil local RAJ from acquiring control. Nevertheless, Gandhi demonstrated that passive resistance can work.

The Norwegians during WWII redefined the surname Quisling to mean traitor and thereby vilified Vidkun Quisling who assisted Nazi Germany after it conquered Norway so that he himself could rule. The term was later used to vilify fascist political parties, military and paramilitary forces and other collaborators in occupied Allied countries. If, as some claim, America is becoming a fascist state, “Quisling” can still be used today. Recently, Stephanie Madoff, daughter-in-law of Bernard Madoff, filed court papers asking to change her and her children’s last name to Morgan to avoid additional humiliation and harassment. Vilification by associating a person’s name with his acts and applying it to others who act likewise is an effective, benign way of attacking evil. In an earlier piece, I suggested that those who advocate war but deliberately avoid serving themselves be called Cheyneys.

The French Resistance, during and after WWII, shaved the heads of women caught consorting with German occupiers. These “shaved-heads” exposed their shame until their hair re-grew, and even later, others rarely forgot who they were. (Some would consider forcefully shaving a person’s head a battery which is illegal, but even so, it is a rather harmless battery.)

Primitive societies developed a whole range of benign ways of confronting evil, some of which are still in use today in isolated places. Ostracism, shunning, anathema, and social rejection have been used successfully. Then there are the more modern practices of boycotting and picketing.

But modern technological advances have made even other practices available. Imaginative uses of these tried and proven methods can be very effective.

For instance, most computer literate people are familiar with denial of service attacks used by hackers. A denial of service attack is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users. These attacks are a great nuisance, but often cause no real damage. No good person would recommend using such attacks, but consider the following situation:

People are routinely asked to write their congressmen to influence their voting on specific issues. These letters are usually delivered to Capitol Hill, perhaps causing congressmen some annoyance, but rarely enough to induce much real change. But what if the letters, written in civil language without threats, were sent to the residences of a congressman’s parents, siblings, spouse, and children? What if the letters merely asked the recipient’s to urge their relatives to consider changing his/her mind? What if thousands of letters were sent to these people? The annoyance would be enormous. If this were done to enough congressmen often enough, perhaps they would consider acting in more responsible ways or perhaps leaving office altogether. Denying miscreants of the convenient use of the proceeds of their actions could be a powerful tool.

This technique can be used against corporate officers and their governing boards, judges who routinely reduce the amounts jurors award plaintiffs, the police who are shown to have acted brutally, Justices of the Supreme Court who issue rulings that cannot be justified by normal readings of the Constitution, in short, anyone acting in an official capacity who has done a great wrong. Furthermore, the U.S. Postal Service needs the money. The establishment does not expect people to act in such ways; it expects them to use the normal established channels to express their disapproval. But those established channels have long ago been shown to be ineffective.

All that is required to win the battle against evil is to find ways to make the lives of the miscreants miserable. No laws, not violence, not even punishment is needed. Annoy them, shame them, shun them, ostracize them, turn them into social outcasts, personae non gratae. Even if the good in society constitute only a minority, if the minority is large enough, it can succeed using such benign but annoying techniques.

The situation described above is only one of many possibilities. Imaginative people can conceive of others which can be equally effective. Think of ways of using the telephone, twitter, posters, and anything else in similar ways. The governing maxim needed is just make the miscreant’s life miserable.

Unless such techniques are put to use, evil will prevail. Then, paraphrasing J. Robert Oppenheimer’s comment after the first atomic bomb was successfully tested, We will have become evil, the destroyer of goodness.

John Kozy — Global Research

Published by Al Jazeera’s Empire

Global Policy Forum

Vice-President Dick Cheney’s vision of completely redrawing the map of the Middle East following the 9/11 attacks is “not stupid,” and is “possible over time,” former British Prime Minister Tony Blair says.

In his new book, A Journey, the former Labour Party leader wrote that Cheney wanted a wholesale reorganization of the political map of the Middle East after 9/11. The vice president “would have worked through the whole lot, Iraq, Syria, Iran, dealing with all their surrogates in the course of it — Hezbollah, Hamas, etc,” Blair wrote.

What does this mean?

Well, as I have repeatedly pointed out, the "war on terror" in the Middle East has nothing to do with combating terror, and everything to do with remaking that region's geopolitical situation to America's advantage.

For example, as I noted in January::

Starting right after 9/11 — at the latest — the goal has always been to create "regime change" and instability in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Somalia and Lebanon; the goal was never really to destroy Al Qaeda. As American reporter Gareth Porter writes in Asia Times:

Three weeks after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, former US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld established an official military objective of not only removing the Saddam Hussein regime by force but overturning the regime in Iran, as well as in Syria and four other countries in the Middle East, according to a document quoted extensively in then-under secretary of defense for policy Douglas Feith’s recently published account of the Iraq war decisions. Feith’s account further indicates that this aggressive aim of remaking the map of the Middle East by military force and the threat of force was supported explicitly by the country’s top military leaders.

Feith’s book, War and Decision, released last month, provides excerpts of the paper Rumsfeld sent to President George W Bush on September 30, 2001, calling for the administration to focus not on taking down Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network but on the aim of establishing “new regimes” in a series of states…

***

General Wesley Clark, who commanded the North Atlantic Treaty Organization bombing campaign in the Kosovo war, recalls in his 2003 book Winning Modern Wars being told by a friend in the Pentagon in November 2001 that the list of states that Rumsfeld and deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz wanted to take down included Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan and Somalia [and Lebanon].

***

When this writer asked Feith . . . which of the six regimes on the Clark list were included in the Rumsfeld paper, he replied, “All of them.”

***

The Defense Department guidance document made it clear that US military aims in regard to those states would go well beyond any ties to terrorism. The document said the Defense Department would also seek to isolate and weaken those states and to “disrupt, damage or destroy” their military capacities – not necessarily limited to weapons of mass destruction (WMD)…

Rumsfeld’s paper was given to the White House only two weeks after Bush had approved a US military operation in Afghanistan directed against bin Laden and the Taliban regime. Despite that decision, Rumsfeld’s proposal called explicitly for postponing indefinitely US airstrikes and the use of ground forces in support of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance in order to try to catch bin Laden.

Instead, the Rumsfeld paper argued that the US should target states that had supported anti-Israel forces such as Hezbollah and Hamas.

***

After the bombing of two US embassies in East Africa [in 1998] by al-Qaeda operatives, State Department counter-terrorism official Michael Sheehan proposed supporting the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance in Afghanistan against bin Laden’s sponsor, the Taliban regime. However, senior US military leaders “refused to consider it”, according to a 2004 account by Richard H Shultz, Junior, a military specialist at Tufts University.

A senior officer on the Joint Staff told State Department counter-terrorism director Sheehan he had heard terrorist strikes characterized more than once by colleagues as a "small price to pay for being a superpower".

No wonder former U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski told the Senate that the war on terror is “a mythical historical narrative”.

But can Cheney’s desires can’t be equated to U.S. foreign policy as a whole? Well, the number two man at the State Department, Lawrence Wilkerson, said:

The vice president and the secretary of defense created a "Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal" that hijacked U.S. foreign policy.

And Cheney was the guy who set up the secret shop at the Pentagon to bypass the intelligence agencies and push fake "intelligence" showing that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

And as I wrote in 2009:

5 hours after the 9/11 attacks, Donald Rumsfeld said “my interest is to hit Saddam”.

He also said “Go massive . . . Sweep it all up. Things related and not.”

And at 2:40 p.m. on September 11th, in a memorandum of discussions between top administration officials, several lines below the statement “judge whether good enough [to] hit S.H. [that is, Saddam Hussein] at same time”, is the statement “Hard to get a good case.” In other words, top officials knew that there wasn’t a good case that Hussein was behind 9/11, but they wanted to use the 9/11 attacks as an excuse to justify war with Iraq anyway.

Moreover, “Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the [9/11] attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda"..

And a Defense Intelligence Terrorism Summary issued in February 2002 by the United States Defense Intelligence Agency cast significant doubt on the possibility of a Saddam Hussein-al-Qaeda conspiracy.

And yet Bush, Cheney and other top administration officials claimed repeatedly for years that Saddam was behind 9/11. See this analysis. Indeed, Bush administration officials apparently swore in a lawsuit that Saddam was behind 9/11.

Moreover, President Bush’s March 18, 2003 letter to Congress authorizing the use of force against Iraq, includes the following paragraph:

(2) acting pursuant to the Constitution and Public Law 107-243 is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.

Therefore, the Bush administration expressly justified the Iraq war to Congress by representing that Iraq planned, authorized, committed, or aided the 9/11 attacks. See this.

Indeed, the torture program which Cheney created was specifically aimed at producing false confessions in an attempt to link Iraq and 9/11.

So it should be clear to any honest, thinking person that Cheney and the U.S. used 9/11 as a pretext to redraw the map of the Middle East.

Cheney’s Oily Dream

But that doesn’t mean the Cheney’s goals had any impact on 9/11, right?

Well, it is surely just a coincidence that the Afghanistan war was planned before 9/11. See this and this.

And that top British officials, former CIA director George Tenet, former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill and many others say that the Iraq war was planned before 9/11.

Alan Greenspan, John McCain, George W. Bush, a high-level National Security Council officer and others say that the Iraq war was really about oil. They must be conspiracy theorists.

And it is surely meaningless that Cheney made Iraqi’s oil fields a national security priority before 9/11. As I pointed out in 2008:

You may have heard that the Energy Task Force chaired by Dick Cheney prior to 9/11 collected maps of Iraqi oil, Saudi and United Arab Emerates fields and potential suitors for that oil. And you might have heard that the oil bigs attended the Task Force meetings.

But you probably haven’t heard that – according to the New Yorker – a secret document written by the National Security Council (NSC) on February 3, 2001 directed NSC staff to cooperate fully with the Energy Task Force as it considered the “melding” of two seemingly unrelated areas of policy:

“The review of operational policies towards rogue states,” such as Iraq, and “actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields”.

It is difficult to brush off Cheney’s Energy Task Force’s examination of arab oil maps as a harmless comparison of American energy policy with known oil reserves because the NSC explicitly linked the Task Force, oil, and regime change.

But don’t believe me…

The above-linked New Yorker article quotes a former senior director for Russian, Ukrainian, and Eurasian affairs at the NSC said:

If this little group was discussing geostrategic plans for oil, it puts the issue of war in the context of the captains of the oil industry sitting down with Cheney and laying grand, global plans.

See also this essay.

As I wrote last year:

CIA director Leon Panetta told the New Yorker:

When you read behind it, it’s almost as if he’s wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point.

News commentator Ed Schultz said today that Cheney is wishing for a terrorist attack on the U.S.

What should we make of all this?

Well, everyone knows that Cheney is ruthless:

• Cheney is the guy who pushed for torture, pressured the Justice Department lawyers to write memos saying torture was legal, and made the pitch to Congress justifying torture. The former director of the CIA accused Cheney of overseeing American torture policies

Cheney is also the guy who:

• Helped found the Project for a New American Century, which called for a new American empire well before 9/11, and lamented that, without a “catastrophic and catalyzing event — like a new Pearl Harbor”, transformation of America into an empire would be very slow.

• In the 70’s — Cheney was instrumental in generating fake intelligence exaggerating the Soviet threat in order to undermine coexistence between the U.S. and Soviet Union, which conveniently justified huge amounts of cold war spending. See also this article.
• 30 years later, Cheney was largely responsible for generating fake intelligence about Iraq in order to justify the war. And, according to former British Defense Secretary, Cheney has called the shots in the failed Iraq war.

• According to former high-level intelligence officer Melvin Goodman, Cheney orchestrated phony intelligence for the Congress in order to get an endorsement for covert arms shipments to anti-government forces in Angola

• Cheney has been perhaps the leading advocate for strengthening the powers of the White House to the point of monarchy for at least 20 years

• Cheney was involved in debates concerning illegal wiretaps 30 years ago
• Cheney was probably responsible for outing CIA agent Valerie Plame.

• Pulitzer-prize winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh says that the military ran an “Executive Assassination Ring” throughout the Bush years which reported directly to Cheney.

• Hersh also says that Cheney is the main guy helping to fund groups which the U.S. claims are terrorists (see confirming articles here and here)

***

A well-known writer said of Dick Cheney:

For his entire career, he sought untrammeled power. The Bush presidency and 9/11 finally gave it to him . . . .

***

Cheney also knew 9/11 was going to happen. The government knew that terrorists could use planes as weapons — and had even run its own drills of planes being used as weapons against the World Trade Center and other U.S. high-profile buildings, using REAL airplanes -- all before 9/11. Indeed, the government heard the 9/11 plans from the hijackers’ own mouths before 9/11.

Indeed, Cheney was in charge of all counter-terrorism exercises, activities and responses on 9/11 (see this Department of State announcement; this CNN article; and this essay).

***

The Secretary of Transportation testified to the 9/11 Commission:

“During the time that the airplane was coming into the Pentagon, there was a young man who would come in and say to the Vice President … the plane is 50 miles out…the plane is 30 miles out….and when it got down to the plane is 10 miles out, the young man also said to the vice president “do the orders still stand?” And the Vice President turned and whipped his neck around and said “Of course the orders still stand, have you heard anything to the contrary!?”

(this testimony is confirmed here and here).

Could it be that Cheney got so lost in his dreams of redrawing the map of the Middle East (and grabbing some oil along the way) that he – as the guy in charge of all counter-terrorism efforts for the United States on 9/11 – spaced out and forgot to engage America’s standard air defenses?

I don’t know … But - unfortunately - Cheney's oily dream has turned into a nightmare for America. See this, this and this.

George — Washington’s Blog