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September 29 2011
Wikipedia -- World War I reparations
'The economic problems that the payments brought, and German resentment at their imposition are usually cited as one of the more significant factors that led to the end of the Weimar Republic and the beginning of the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler. -- #Current status: After Germany’s defeat in World War II, payment of the reparations was not resumed. There was, however, outstanding German debt that the Weimar Republic had used to pay the reparations. An international conference decided (Agreement on German External Debts, 1953) that Germany would pay some parts of the remaining debt only after the country was reunified, at that time an event thought very unlikely to happen. West Germany paid off the remainder by 1980. According to the agreement, the debt would be serviced for 20 years, leading to the last payments being due on 3 October 2010, the 20th anniversary of German reunification. About 10% of this debt, about 20 million euro, has not been claimed yet.' -- Debt repayment is a sin!
YouTube -- RussiaToday: Cash Sweet Poison: 'Greece victim of Europe cheap money' -
'Dr Markus Kerber, says that German taxpayers are fed up with being Europe's cash cow.' -- "There's a growing split between the German public and the political elite. Never ever before the split has been greater than today. The political elite is still united to support the Chancellor's policy of continuous bailout and the German public is more united than ever to oppose it. And sooner or later the European project is going to lose the popular support it has always had in Germany until now. So, we are really at a crossroad."
'Dr Markus Kerber, says that German taxpayers are fed up with being Europe's cash cow.' -- "There's a growing split between the German public and the political elite. Never ever before the split has been greater than today. The political elite is still united to support the Chancellor's policy of continuous bailout and the German public is more united than ever to oppose it. And sooner or later the European project is going to lose the popular support it has always had in Germany until now. So, we are really at a crossroad."
September 28 2011
The Onion -- Historians Politely Remind Nation To Check What's Happened In Past Before Making Any Big Decisions
'According to the historians, by looking at things that have already happened, Americans can learn a lot about which actions made things better versus which actions made things worse, and can then plan their own actions accordingly. While the new strategy, known as "Look Back Before You Act," has raised concerns among people worried they will have to remember lots of events from long ago, the historians have assured Americans they won't be required to read all the way through thick books or memorize anything.'July 24 2011
The Daily Bell -- Edwin Vieira, Jr. on the Power Elite, the Police State and Opposing the Authoritarian Trend
'Edwin Vieira, Jr: To call these actions "conspiracy" may or may not be correct, depending on whether the ends envisioned or the means employed are illegal or immoral. But to deny that they are concerted actions of particular people, intentionally directed to some specific goals believed by those people to be beneficial to themselves, and that they are usually more successful, because they are concerted, than similar actions by isolated individuals, is ridiculous. Sometimes these groups attain so much economic, political, or military power or influence that, for a time, they "direct" (or seem to "direct") a society's course, or important aspects of it. ... But we must remember that competition always develops among existing groups, causes some old groups to disappear, and stimulates the formation of new groups. So we might say that there is "sporadic direction", or "intermittent direction", and certainly "competition in direction", but not "permanent direction" by any one group.'July 22 2011
Bible Believers -- Modern 'Commercial Law' is based on Ancient Babylonian Codes by Charles Bruce Stewart
'...Babylon's Religious Priesthood is commonly recognizable as the source of all of the modern so called "Laws of Commerce". These "Laws of Commerce" are shown to be a specific body of Codes which authorize the Administration of the Compelling Force of the State in the En-Force-ment of Contracts, mostly for Payments of Debts. The ancient Babylonian Priests were involved because Contracts were deemed to be a form of "Oath" entered into by the contracting parties; and the approval of their Gods were invoked so as to more effectively legitimize/bamboozle the entire process in the minds and the consciences of the contracting parties and all public witnesses. Under the ancient Babylonian Religious Codes, "Slavery" is clearly facilitated. People were not recognized as People but were items in Commerce. The text-book says that "The slave is not regarded or spoken of as a man, but as a thing, and is reckoned in the same way as cattle."' -- Nothing personal, Jack. It's just good business.June 23 2011
The Daily Bell -- Afghan War Down, Freedom Up?
'Western history is mostly a fairy tale. The wars, the economic expansions and contractions, "representative government"—all these are a kind of phantasmagoria, spun for the delectation of those who squat around magic boxes willingly imbibing such electronic fairy tales. The reality is much as it has been for the past 300 years (at least). A ruthless band of plutocrats—elite banking families with a base in the City of London—have been engaged in a remarkable mission to take over the globe. They have used war (mostly war), regulatory terrorism and central banking/monetary devastation to advance their cause. They have not hesitated in our view to plunge this miserable planet and its hapless citizens, especially in the West, into repeated recessions and depressions to consolidate power and advance centralization. They have built up a skeleton of world governance authorities—the UN, NATO, BIS, World Bank, IMF and global courts (ICC); they are still at it; they do not easily retreat...'June 22 2011
YouTube -- CorbettReport: The Last Word on Snake Oil
'The image of the traveling snake oil salesman of 19th century America is by now a familiar trope. It is the image of the heartless huckster who preys upon the trust of the general public to swindle them out of their hard-earned savings. With a bottle of useless tonic and the help of a plant in the audience, the snake oil salesman made a living out of lies and deceit. In these respects, William Levingston was your average snake oil salesman...' -- Rockefeller Family -- "Competition is a sin!"
'The image of the traveling snake oil salesman of 19th century America is by now a familiar trope. It is the image of the heartless huckster who preys upon the trust of the general public to swindle them out of their hard-earned savings. With a bottle of useless tonic and the help of a plant in the audience, the snake oil salesman made a living out of lies and deceit. In these respects, William Levingston was your average snake oil salesman...' -- Rockefeller Family -- "Competition is a sin!"
June 18 2011
Adam Curtis Blog -- THE BABY AND THE BAATH WATER
'Elections were due in Syria in 1947, and the Americans decided to give "a discreet nudge here and there". This involved warning landowners, employers, ward bosses and police chiefs not to intimidate the voters. The American oil companies were paid to put up big posters telling the Syrians to "vote for the candidate of your choice" (apparently this baffled all the Syrians because the posters didn't mention any candidates by name). Hundreds of taxis were hired to take voters to the polls free of charge. And the Americans brought in automatic, tamper-proof voting machines. It didn't go as expected. The landowners and other elites ignored all the warnings and intimidated everyone. There were massive gun fights and scores of people were killed. The taxi-drivers bonded together and sold themselves to different candidates - promising to make their passengers vote the "right" way.' And worst of all, most of the pro-American candidates defected to other foreign powers.'June 17 2011
Global Wars to Restore U.S. Masculinity - The Origins of War in Child Abuse by Lloyd deMause
'Nor are wars begun mainly in periods of economic distress as is often claimed. Goldstein’s study of economic cycles and war found a strong and consistent correlation between the severity of war and economic upswings. Although developed democracies do not go to war with each other, they nevertheless go to war against non-democratic nations do even more often than other nations, since they must act out the emotional distance between their Progressive and Reactionary classes... -- Depressions therefore are periodically experienced when nations feel they are too successful, growing too fast, and then engage in hyper-risky behavior, like the unregulated borrowing that the world engaged in during the past two decades. Like gambling addicts, they were not being “greedy” but were self-destructive, causing grandiose internal sacrifices costing many billions of dollars each time they occur, even though each time the risks taken are excused as “This time is different.”'Global Wars to Restore U.S. Masculinity - The Origins of War in Child Abuse by Lloyd deMause
'Most books and articles ... begin with the belief that wars are for utilitarian purposes, “to get something.” They may admit that wars are “anything but rational,” but explain the causes of wars by saying they occur “when hardliners dominate their leadership”—never asking why only periodically do these hardliners come to power, promising that they “will not discuss individual factors of human nature” and consider the minds of nations starting wars as “black boxes.” But no modern war has been shown to have been started because of greed, and none have in fact been profitable for nations starting them if the full cost of maintaining the military and of loss of productive life are considered. Even maintaining the British Empire was actually an economic loss. Wars are pathological moral crusades against “evil,” revenge group-fantasies, designed to “get respect” for oneself and make up for the disrespect and abuse of their early years.'June 09 2011
Ribbonfarm -- A Brief History of the Corporation: 1600 to 2100
'...energy and ideas could be used to shrink autonomously-owned individual time and grow a space of corporate-owned time, to be divided between production and consumption. Two phrases were invented to name the phenomenon: productivity meant shrinking autonomously-owned time. Increased standard of living through time-saving devices became code for the fact that the “freed up” time through “labor saving” devices was actually the de facto property of corporations. It was a Faustian bargain. Many people misunderstood the fundamental nature of Schumpeterian growth as being fueled by ideas rather than time. Ideas fueled by energy can free up time which can then partly be used to create more ideas to free up more time. It is a positive feedback cycle, but with a limit. The fundamental scarce resource is time. The point isn’t that we are running out of attention. We are running out of high-energy-concentration pockets of easily mined fuel. Each new pocket of attention is harder to find...'May 30 2011
The Daily Bell -- Queen Worried About Empire's Meltdown
'In 1971, the Anglosphere elites created the world's first fully fiat reserve currency – the US dollar – by instructing their Saudi surrogates to accept payment for oil only in dollars. Since this meant that every other country in the world had to hold dollars to purchase oil, the US could print as much money as it needed to fund whatever global adventures it wished to undertake. It used much of its windfall to further build out the military. Eventually, this money-printing capacity helped undermine – or at least provide the justification for the collapse of – the Soviet Union. Everything was going well for the elites in the late 20th century. Russia was westernizing, Israel's power was advancing and world government was gradually moving forward as well with the expansion of the West's various globalist instrumentalities. Even the dollar was holding steady. But then came the Internet. People know too much, or at least are beginning to learn. And they are angry.'The Social Alter by Lloyd deMause
'...people first become hypervigilant and paranoid as catacholamine imbalances and serotonin depletion lead them to expect attack, then engage in sacrificial restaging rituals that are usually both sadistic – inflicting the trauma upon others – and masochistic – destroying your own wealth and even sacrificing your own lives. The result is a feeling of relief that we have survived the apocalypse in our heads plus a feeling of triumph produced by the manic opioid surge. Thus our early traumas become wired into separate emotional memory module and become projected onto the historical stage in such a manner that they appear to be happening to the group rather than being internal, creating group-fantasies so intense and compelling that they take on a life of their own, a life that is imagined as happening in a dissociated sphere called "society." These group-fantasies are dissociated and seem to have a life of their own, a life we term "social" or "political" or "religious."'The History of Child Abuse by Lloyd deMause
'...the history of humanity is founded upon the abuse of children. Most historical families once practiced infanticide, erotic beating and incest. Most states sacrificed and mutilated their children to relieve the guilt of adults. Even today, we continue to arrange the daily killing, maiming, molestation and starvation of children through our social, military and economic activities. I would like to summarize here some of the evidence I have found as to why child abuse has been humanity's most powerful and most successful ritual, why it has been the cause of war and social violence, and why the eradication of child abuse and neglect is the most important social task we face today. -- The main psychological mechanism that operates in all child abuse involves using children as what I have termed poison containers – receptacles into which adults project disowned parts of their psyches, so they can control these feelings in another body without danger to themselves.'May 28 2011
The Daily Bell -- Turning Points of Empire's End? by Anthony Wile
'The City of London has a big problem. Once you have fallen back on the immoveable rigor of brute force you have to make sure that people understand that you will not back down. Not now. Not ever. If people cannot be frightened into supporting one-world-government (the point of it all) by fear-based memes, then they must be panicked into supporting it via military power. They must be made to feel that they have no other choice. But what if the biggest war – the most important war of the past 100 years – is also the war that you are evidently and obviously LOSING? What then? Well, if you are the top honcho of the Pentagon or Hillary Clinton, you will do ANYTHING to make sure your pending defeat does not become common knowledge and tabloid fodder. No, you cannot admit it! No how, no way! It will lead to a chain reaction, or so you fear. If people begin to understand that the entire Western world HAS LOST ITS MOST IMPORTANT WAR TO A BUNCH OF GOAT-HERDERS AND POPPY GROWERS ... what then?'The Daily Bell -- Turning Points of Empire's End? by Anthony Wile
'Bin Laden's supposed death is tied into the unfortunate reality that the US (and NATO) is losing the Afghan war. The Afghan war is a critical power elite meme. The US needs Pakistan to attack the Pashtun/Taliban. If they do not, the war is likely lost. Enter bin Laden and his "death." Whatever else it may be, it was likely supposed to shove Pakistan into an aggressive posture against the Pashtun/Taliban. With bin Laden's "death" there were few rhetorical alternatives. Either Pakistan's leaders had been terribly incompetent in letting the terror master live in Pakistan for years or the military had been horribly incompetent – or perhaps both. Either way, the Pakistanis had much to apologize for. And the biggest way for Pakistan to atone was to attack, the Taliban. For a while, it must have seemed like a stroke of genius. And yet ... something went horribly WRONG. The result in this increasingly bipolar world was only to push the Pakistanis into the waiting embrace of China.'The Daily Bell -- G8 Clarifies Response to Phony Arab Spring
'Dominant Social Theme: Supporting the glorious Arab Spring is important. -- There are five countries that we count as successfully destabilized by the West (America in particular). They are Afghanistan, Iraq, Tunisia, Egypt and the Ivory Coast. The money shows where the West wants to go. ...there is a sudden scramble to bankroll efforts to steer these destabilized countries in the "right" direction. This is the stated goal then – regulatory democracies not Islamic republics. It is a predictable dominant social theme. Destabilizations have taken place and the citizenry has been freed! We do not put it past Western elites to be playing an even more subtle game. It is possible that Saudi Arabia is supposed to be destabilized to usher in a non-dollar, global currency. It is possible that the creation of a string of Islamic republics is still the ultimate goal (the better to support the "war on terror"). It is even possible that general chaos and regional war is the preferable outcome.'May 23 2011
The Daily Bell -- Expanding World War III
'...a hyper-regional war aimed primarily at Pakistan and Iran could entail a draft and, of course, a steady demand for new fiat money from the Federal Reserve to fund the whole charade. Troublesome young people in Europe and the US will be taken off the street and retrained by competent sergeants. All this is going through the perfervid brains of Pentagon planners even as we write. War seen this way is a fungible, powerful tool. Mostly it is generated to create social cohesion in our view and just as importantly to distract people from focusing on the source of their frustration and anger, which is more often than not their own ruling elite. Is a super-regional war – a kind of World War III – something the elites are currently working to induce? It would change everything. We recall after World War II that the Anglosphere elites were able to create a new economic system featuring a reserve dollar and global financial infrastructure. Is it a solution destined to reoccur?'May 18 2011
Wikipedia -- Ministry of Truth
'Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary.'The Daily Bell -- US, Losing the War, Seeks Further Talks With Taliban?
'...having failed to take control of Afghanistan, the elites are faced with yet another dilemma in that the failure will breed further resistance, and this in turn will further destabilize their internationalist plans. It is ironic that two of the world's oldest tribes, the Punjabis and the Pashtuns – traditional rivals – have apparently faced down the depredations of an equally merciless tribal community with equally ancient roots based in the City of London. Like Titans of ancient days, these ancient tribal elements have hurled thunderbolts at each other from half a world away with the planet itself as the prize. Even more astonishingly, this analysis continues to be ignored by the mainstream press, and even the alternative 'Net media. The most significant war of our time – and perhaps any time – may pass into the realm of history without a historical narrative appropriate to its importance. Is it ever thus?'
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