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September 26 2011
The Daily Bell -- How Tony Blair Earns His Millions
'Dominant Social Theme: Blair started the Libya war. Gaddafi didn't give him and JP Morgan what they wanted and now he's paid a dreadful price. It's all about the money. Modern wars are always about resources. Besides, we're running out of aluminum. Peak Aluminum is only years away! -- The Anglosphere elites have a motive in ensuring the war-for-resources meme is spread about the mainstream media, mainly in leftist newspapers. The idea of greedy, grubbing capitalists is a quite convenient one as it confuses what is actually happening. Much better to blame wars on exploitative corporations than intergenerational familial regimes controlling central banks. Blair ... is being paid to attract heat and light that might otherwise end up striking London's City itself... Blair is yet only a pimple on a larger, uglier visage, though surely a sizeable blemish. -- The roots run much, much deeper. And so does the institutionalized malevolence. Maybe all the way back to Babylon.'August 06 2011
CynicusEconomicus -- Round 2?
'If you increase the workforce by 10% but only increase the resource by 5% then something is going to happen to the distribution of resources. ...the real reason for this crisis is not capitalism, but the actions of communist and socialist governments before they started the process of opening their economies. They created barriers to the integration of their labour force into the productive and enriching capitalist world economy, and then suddenly started 'dropping' the labour into the world economy at a rate that the capitalist system could not absorb. It is why we see the increasing divide in incomes between the rich and the rest. It is not the evils of capitalism, but rather the last terrible contribution of years of rejection of capitalism in countries like China and India. They created a flood of new labour into the world economy, and the result is that labour has been devalued. ...the fundamental causes...[:] government constraints and interference with free market capitalism.'June 28 2011
The Daily Bell -- China and the West: One and the Same?
'Gone are the days when there was a great philosophical divide between East and West, or between the West's so-called democracies and "communism." Jiabao's speech could have been given by any functionary of the (hopefully tottering) EU. Or even have been delivered by someone from the US State Department. It tends to confirm once more the idea that the powers-that-be are working hard to smooth out differences between major powers. The rhetoric, philosophical overtones and ambitions are statist, but couched in the rhetoric of the marketplace. The idea is that the state sets parameters for capitalism, which then functions within that defined space. It is a kind of soft fascism, though one is never supposed to use the word "fascism." Additionally, in practice, it is not necessarily soft at all. The state is actually in charge of almost every facet of life and corporations, also artificial, statist entities, are merely the receptacles of state power and deliver it to "consumers."'June 09 2011
The Daily Bell -- Robert Reich & the Debt Ceiling: The Softer Side of Radicalism
'...Reich is just one example of what's gone wrong with America's – and the West's – political system. Reich is regularly presented by the mainstream media as a fierce critic of the powers-that-be, a radical friend of the workingman. It is apparently an act, a farce, a beard. This man foresees chaos if the debt ceiling is not raised and considers those who wish it to remain stuck where it is to be "insane." Reich is no radical freethinker, no rebel-with-a-cause. He is merely one more piece in the phony Hegelian dialectic that the elites have foisted on the West to make sure no real sociopolitical dialogue ensues. He's taken it on himself (nobody forced him) to become part of a dominant social theme. (The world is divided between communists and capitalists and there's no other choice.) There are plenty of these people around. 99 percent of the journos, analysts and big-thinkers writing for the mainstream press participate in this false dichotomy.'April 23 2011
The Daily Bell -- Council on Foreign Relations: 'Free-Markets Need Our Help'
'...global capitalism is actually the outcome of a deliberate societal reshaping that has as its underpinnings judicial corporate activism and central banking fiat money flows. Without fiat-money flows, corporations would not have the markets and wherewithal to make disposable consumer goods that pass for modern technology. The accumulated ephemera of modern societies is startling but that doesn't make it necessary. One of the problems that Chinese leaders have in directing consumer inwards is that the various gadgets that its factories are exporting to the West are disdained by their own populations. Western capitalism is by no means preordained and has been created by mercantilist and judicial fiat. Absent "laws," industry would be generally consist of smaller companies oriented around partnerships and individuals... multinationals would not exist without judicial activism. There is no such thing as a corporation actually; there are only people—making things and buying and selling.'April 19 2011
The Daily Bell -- Western Wars Are for Oil?
'Dominant Social Theme: Capitalism always seeks to exploit the worker and is always expansive. Wars are always those of exploitation. -- The above is nonsense of course but the memes keep getting repeated. It is a form of mind control ... an elaborate thematic fiction involving the way society is supposed to work. The press will play up the BP documents endlessly because they make great fodder for the perceptions that Western elites want to confirm: All wars, certainly the smaller ones, are those of Western imperialism with the goal of raw material exploitation. This removes the onus of war from the government itself, which is seen suddenly as a passive, put-upon actor. (Without evil corporations, government would be a force for good.) It also obscures the ... small, familial power elite that stands BEHIND government and is waging a war not for resources ... but to, in a sense, RUN THE WORLD. The Anglo-American elites will do anything and everything they can to obscure this fact!'March 18 2011
Wikipedia -- Agnotology
'Agnotology is the study of culturally-induced ignorance or doubt... Schiebinger: "Ignorance is often not merely the absence of knowledge but an outcome of cultural and political struggle."' -- Betancourt: "Agnotologic capitalism": The systemic production and maintenance of ignorance. The creation of systemic unknowns where any potential "fact" is always already countered by an alternative of apparently equal weight and value renders engagement with the conditions of reality – the very situations affective labor seeks to assuage – contentious and a source of confusion... Affective labor is the enabler for the creation of the bubbles that are characteristic of the digital capitalist economy. Where the reduction of alienation is a precondition for the elimination of dissent. Affective labor is part of a larger activity where the population is distracted by affective pursuits and fantasies of economic advancement.'March 09 2011
The Daily Bell -- Break Up Wall Street?
'Dominant Social Theme: Incarcerate ‘em. Then everything will be better. -- ...there is no doubt Wall Street is an enabler and that Goldman Sachs in particular sits near the center of the modern conspiracy in all its fundamental criminality. There really is no "private" sector in America anymore (but for struggling small-time entrepreneurs). However, from the power-elite point of view, these are unimportant distinctions. Capitalism is to be blamed whenever possible with an eye toward creating evermore regulation, government bureaucracy and mercantilism.' Ultimately modern-day high finance is a technocratic function. It is a supporting mechanism not a strategic one. The planning for the New World Order – the fundamental strategy of ruin – is made at much higher levels by a handful of banking families and their enablers. Blaming financial entities for the endless economic catastrophes that afflict the West is a bit like blaming meteorologists for earthquakes.'March 02 2011
The Daily Bell -- Mervyn King Caught Spreading a Meme
'King's statement to the Treasury Select Committee as reported in the UK Telegraph is a pitch-perfect defense of central banking using the meme of private-sector blame. ...central banking blows up economies, leading to more regulation which further concentrates power in the hands of a few, allowing government and society to be even more efficiently run by the elite via mercantilism. It's kind of a closed feedback loop. The more chaos, the more regulation, the more leverage the elite has to reignite the process. Power is continually being centralized and the middle classes themselves (the elite's ultimate target) will actually clamor for the regulation that facilitates the process. In order to initiate the process, blame must be cast. There has not been enough anger at the private banking sector, especially in Britain where wrath has been focused – most alarmingly from the elite's point of view – at central banking itself. This is a direct result of the Internet...'February 24 2011
The Daily Bell -- Privatize the US to Avoid Default?
'...what is the incentive for a company running a government monopoly to provide a better brand of service to its "clients?" Ultimately, privatization is nothing more than mercantilism – the opportunity for private entities to gain control of the public purse. The very same private entities, controlled by wealthy elite money interests who have generated their enormous purchasing power by sucking the productive lifeblood from the very populace, will now "save the day" by effectively managing the countries infrastructure on behalf of a bankrupt (defrauded) populace. They will "invest" some of their appropriated fiat wealth, all made possible thanks to the central bankers and bought-and-paid-for politicos, and end up owning anything of "value" still remaining in America. What a deal! Privatization is just one more dominant social theme in our view, making the realization of elite command-and-control goals even more achievable. It's not what it appears to be.'February 23 2011
The Daily Bell -- Where are the Baby-Boomer Nest Eggs?
'Dominant Social Theme: Invest wisely and well. – Let's try to put this long-running power elite promotion into perspective. We don't agree with the LA Time's perspective (see article excerpt above). It's not nest-egg versus Social Security (which the US cannot afford, especially because there are no SS funds, only fancy IOUs). There is a third way, which is to get rid of central banking entirely and let tortured Western economies gradually deflate. As economies undistort without the endless goad of monetary stimulation, people would gradually begin to be self-sufficient again. Nuclear families would collapse and extended families would reappear; this is the logical solution to old age, not frantic investing leading to the selection of an old-age home where one is likely to be abused before dying. ...the dollar-reserve system died in 2008, along with the popular belief that one could count on "investing" for retirement. It was never a reality; it was fiction.'January 30 2011
Freedomain Radio -- #1484 A Theory of Marxism (2) (MP3)
"If you unconsciously resent the unjust and exploitative authority of your parents, and you project that onto the capitalist, you will not escape brutal authority – in fact, you will only intensify it. And that intensification takes the form of the State. If you are a slave, you can't escape. Involuntaryism leads to vengeance, to anger, to rage, to fantasies of destruction. Where we are not free to choose we become slaves to hatred. If you are not free to choose your companions then displacement, distortions, rippled subterfuges in rational thought, abandonment of empiricism, retreat into rank delusion – is inevitable. Because everything that you will believe when you don't have choice will be a mask for that lack of choice ... a mask to justify abandoning choice. If you fundamentally reject choice, you cannot have as your ideal a voluntary system. If you reject voluntaryism in your personal relations, you cannot sustain voluntaryism as an ideal in your ideology."
Freedomain Radio -- #1484 A Theory of Marxism (1) (MP3)
"What is it that goes on in somebody's life that would lend them to be more susceptible to Marxism? There is a strangely stale and dead relationship that is always depicted in Marxism where there is a factory owner, a bunch of workers – and nobody else throughout the entire economic landscape. There is also within the Marxist class analysis not much room for [the idea of social mobility amongst the classes]. The capitalists can't fall and the workers can't rise. It's all frozen in time. Why [would Marxists] accept that there's no competition for workers between capitalists unless they are [unconsciously] mistaking the employer/employee relationship for the parent/child relationship? [There is no social mobility within a family.] Children are children and parents are parents. The family is communism; the family is socialistic. From each according to their ability to each according to their needs... That is the definition of the parent/child relationship."
January 16 2011
P2P Foundation -- The role of the internet and netroots in recent UK social movements...
'From Laurie Penny: "These young people are sick of leaders, even leaders our own age. They won’t be told what to do, but that sentiment is more of a honed manifesto than a collective teenage door-slamming strop. When the meeting is over and consensus reached, the collective slams back into action, planning an escalation in the protests leading up to the crucial vote on tuition fees later this month. These protesters have a honed protestant work ethic, a coherent ideological framework, stunning technological facility and absolutely nothing to lose. No wonder the administration is getting worried.“ -- And here from Phil: "Twitter is as capitalist as McDonalds. Facebook is fundamentally the same beast as Microsoft. Your internet connection is owned by a private company. Private ownership of the means of social media allows the ruling class to assert their monopoly over communication if needs be.”' -- Haha! "The means..." -- What have you bought into; what will it cost to buy you out?December 08 2010
The Daily Bell -- Is Capitalism Dead?
'Is there a recovery? Do you feel it, dear reader? Deep down in 'dem bones? We don't. We've explained the reasons why in dozens of articles: The fiat meltdown of 2008 was a meltdown of MONEY caused by the Internet's ability to expose the truth of a fraudulent central banking controlled monetary system and the power elite who benefit from the process of wealth redistribution. It was not caused by "faulty" economies specifically. It is the system itself that collapsed and at the base of it all is the myth of the mighty US dollar. What "melted down" in 2008, as we've long observed, was a 100-year-old central banking system. The mainstream Anglo-American media won't comment on this of course. We're still reading articles attributing the meltdown to the removal of Glass-Steagal or the mispricing of sub-prime mortgages. No, the same thing happened in 2008 that happened in 1929. The system collapsed. But this is the mother-of-all-collapses. It is the Big Bang of Black Swan events.'November 18 2010
The Daily Bell -- Chinese Statists = American Ones?
'The so-called differences between Chinese and Western business is increasingly a kind of dominant social theme in our view, one intended to present the perspective that private-market capitalism is under attack from a more brutal form of "state"-capitalism. This is in fact an effort to defuse criticism that the West is becoming too authoritarian and too statist. Look there – we are told – China is far worse, though perhaps more efficient. Here in the West we are devoted to our freedoms and will never go down the Chinese road. How has corporatism evolved in the West? In the past, we've discussed the idea that the corporation itself is an artificially manufactured entity and that, absent the current statist judicial system, corporations would not exist. When one examines Western capitalism, one continually comes to the conclusion that it has evolved away from entrepreneurialism and private markets and that this evolution is accelerating.'November 12 2010
The Daily Bell -- NATO Needs Afghanistan?
'This is how Western capitalism operates after all. Too little is made of the connection between stock exchanges and central banking, though much is made of the connection between central banking and the graduated income tax which is seen as necessary to pay off the interest of the debt that the larger government accumulates. But in fact stock exchanges along Western (American) lines are part of the process of managing the booms and busts that central banks inevitably generate. Because too few people understand the inevitability of booms and busts, nor the connections between central banks and exchanges, the middle class is inevitably damaged by market downturns. Only those who have some understanding of Austrian economics have a chance, in our view, of participating in the stock market on equal footing with market pros. ...understanding macro-economic forces are perhaps the most efficient for people who don't want to spend all their spare time involved in market analysis.'November 05 2010
The Daily Bell -- Bernanke's Squeeze
'Dominant Social Theme: We need to print trillions of dollars from nothing. -- Western capitalism—regulatory democracy—has always been sold to the masses as a system in which the biggest and smallest have an equal chance at grabbing the proverbial gold ring. What the financial crisis and the "greater recession" have shown clearly is the amount of capital concentrated in a few hands. The real power and money is indeed concentrated at the very top and the scary thing is that Bernanke is merely a servant of money power, not a chieftain by any means. And yet despite the vast power and wealth available to the intergenerational and familial banking elite that runs the Western world, we detect more than a whiff of panic in the air. The creaky mechanism of counterfeiting that animates the heart of the central banking conspiracy has been wielded in full view of the Internet. The Western elites, we understand, are terrified of only one thing: civil insurrection.'October 28 2010
Freedomain Radio -- #1615 God, the State and the Family - Sibling Abuse Part 4: Marxism and Christianity (MP3) (7)
"Parental/sibling trauma has to go somewhere. The more it goes into the state, the less it needs to go into religion, which is why marxists were virulently anti-capitalist, anti-corporatist, anti-democratic/existing quasi- monarchical governments within Europe in the 19th century. They had given up on God and therefore all of their projections [went] out of God and into the state/corporations – which is why marxists are so virulently anti-capitalist, because the capitalist is the elder sibling and the state is the parent. That's why they focus so much of their rage onto the capitalist because the capitalist is the intermediate power, [the elder sibling who has] more power than the worker [(the younger siblings)] but less power than the state. But they can't focus on the evils of the state because if they focus on the evils of the state, they have no solution because their solution is an ultimate state."
Freedomain Radio -- #1615 God, the State and the Family - Sibling Abuse Part 4: Marxism and Christianity (MP3) (6)
"On the other hand, you would then assume that people who were not religious but also drawn to the same [family abuse] paradigm... that because they don't have God or Satan to project their family/sibling abuses into, they would be far more ferocious about the existing state and existing corporations. So if you're an atheist or agnostic or skeptic or rationalist or non-fundamentalist – then you don't have the big bag of God – therefore your projections have to go somewhere else. Which explains why the more secular, humanistic/left-wing/marxist cadres within society tend to be so virulently anti-corporate and anti- existing state." -- Continues...
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