Let's Let the Empire Dry Up and Blow Away

The first rule of holes is to stop digging. With 700 military installations around the globe, and more armament than sense, how can we not see that hauling our men and women and equipment home, one by one, and putting them to work at a new green energy job, or a new local/organic agriculture job, would increase our quality of life and our respect around the world a thousand-fold? When will people stop believing the lies that are told by those in power ~ when it is obvious that those in power only care about enriching themselves at the expense of other's labor, blood and sorrow? From Nature Bats Last, please click on over and read it all.

QUOTE In a Tucson coffee shop last week I saw a woman, apparently in her early twenties, dressed in a short skirt, an apron, and high heels. Had she been behind the counter, she would have been the perfect symbol of the 1950s, a refugee from two generations gone by. We’ve moved from the unquestioning automatons of Aldous Huxley and George Orwell to the firebrands of a radical counter-cultural worldview and back again. A generational sea change swept us from post-war “liberators” drunk on early 1950s propaganda to revolutionaries willing to take risks in defense of late 1960s ideals. The revolution gained steam through the 1970s, but lost its way when the U.S. industrial economy hit the speed bump of domestic peak oil. The Carter Doctrine — the world’s oil belongs to us — coupled with Ronald Reagan’s soothing pack of lies, was the perfect match to our middle-aged comfort, so we abandoned the noble ideals of earlier days for another dose of palliative propaganda. Three decades later, we’ve swallowed so much Soma we wouldn’t couldn’t find a hint of revolution in Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto. UNQUOTE

Tough Diagnosis

What happens to a society that cannot distinguish between reality and illusion? This is the question asked by author Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the New York Times, is the author of several books including the best sellers War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning and Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.

QUOTE And yet, even in the face of catastrophe, mass culture continues to assure us that if we close our eyes, if we visualize what we want, if we have faith in ourselves, if we tell God that we believe in miracles, if we tap into our inner strength, if we grasp that we are truly exceptional, if we focus on happiness, our lives will be harmonious and complete. This cultural retreat into illusion, whether peddled by positive psychologists, by Hollywood or by Christian preachers, is magical thinking. It turns worthless mortgages and debt into wealth. It turns the destruction of our manufacturing base into an opportunity for growth. It turns alienation and anxiety into a cheerful conformity. It turns a nation that wages illegal wars and administers offshore penal colonies where it openly practices torture into the greatest democracy on earth. And it keeps us from fighting back. UNQUOTE

Here's an interview from 2007 that can serve as a good introduction to the man and his work.

Denner's Take on Fannie & Freddie

I have followed Robert Denner's comments on and off for a couple of years. He is readable and well-informed, with a fresh viewpoint you won't find in your local paper. His slant is contrarian/bearish and he is very knowledgeable about Peak Oil ~ rare indeed. His writing is like cod liver oil ~ goes down nasty but is very good for you.

Be sure and click over and read his whole post.

From Daily Economic Update

QUOTE This doesn’t necessarily mean that the government will have to dole out 4 trillion dollars but it does mean that they will now backstop the rest of this collapse ON YOUR DIME and the first payment due is going to be about 200 billion dollars. How does our “free market” friends on Wall Street and all the other markets in the world react TO THIS SOCIALIST INTERVENTION IN THE MARKETS?? Why you guessed it, they are up on average about 3 to 5% this morning and the US markets which open in 45 minutes are up a stagering 260 points in premarket trading which will probably equate to a 300 to 500 point gain on the day.
You see watching charts can be a good thing for you .. The markets crossed over a very important mark on Thursday and that signalled to me that something had to give. As usual I BET ON THEM DOING THE RIGHT THING FOR ONCE and as usual I was proven wrong. Instead of just letting reality finally rule on the markets and to let the blood flow, they once again deferred the pain and they bailed out the Chinese and Japanese and all the other 60 some odd National Banks. NOW DO YOU SEE why the dollar went up and why I called it manipulation. This was a tit for tat move that has been in the works for weeks now evidently.
YOU MUST UNDERSTAND NOW THAT YOUR MONEY IS NOTHING TO THEM!!!!!!! The money sitting in the markets right now is nothing more than pure unadulterated GAMBLING and cannot be considered any thing close to an investment. Investments are good things that help to pave the way to the future. They are conservative uses of money and are meant to build a future that is bright and optimistic. If you have money in the markets(and that includes your 401k money) you must understand that it is nothing but a gamble at this point. If they, with the wave of a pen, can do what they have done this weekend, what do you think they can do to your “investments”. UNQUOTE
***************

Cognitive Disconnect: Rice On Military Might in the 21st Century

From Salon.com

" Russia is a state that is unfortunately using the one tool that it has always used whenever it wishes to deliver a message and that's its military power. That's not the way to deal in the 21st century. " - Condoleeza Rice

As the playground taunt goes, it takes one to know one. Historically stable empires, as opposed to developing ones, have usually been fairly careful with force -- if only because their most dangerous source of regime change came from their armies. That's the big problem with America's current course -- the "successful" bit. Constant and endless war, torture winked at as policy and hypocrisy in our leaders can and will bankrupt us, fiat currency and Dick Cheney notwithstanding. It also makes a mockery of our history and principles and burns our flag more definately than a 17 year old anarchist.

We are feeling the effects of decades of misspent national wealth. All our manufacturing has gone overseas taking our jobs with it, save weaponry. Our physical infrastructure is inferior to that of many less powerful nations, and our schools, health care and energy independence likewise.

An excerpt:

"Just during the time Rice has served in the Bush administration, we bombed, invaded and occupied Afghanistan; did the same to Iraq; repeatedly bombed Somalia, killing all sorts of civilians; fed bombs to Israel as they invaded and bombed Lebanon; top political officials (led by John McCain and Joe Lieberman) have repeatedly threatened, and advocated, that the same be done to a whole host of other countries, including Iran and Syria. That's to say nothing of the virtually countless interventions and bombings in the pre-Bush, "peacetime" years -- from the Balkans and Panama to Somalia, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, and on and on and on.

"

c c c c c

The Crisis Is Upon Us: Rep. Ron Paul

QUOTE I have, for the past 35 years, expressed my grave concern for the future of America. The course we have taken over the past century has threatened our liberties, security and prosperity. In spite of these long-held concerns, I have days – growing more frequent all the time – when I'm convinced the time is now upon us that some Big Events are about to occur.

These fast-approaching events will not go unnoticed. They will affect all of us. They will not be limited to just some areas of our country. The world economy and political system will share in the chaos about to be unleashed.

Though the world has long suffered from the senselessness of wars that should have been avoided, my greatest fear is that the course on which we find ourselves will bring even greater conflict and economic suffering to the innocent people of the world – unless we quickly change our ways.

America, with her traditions of free markets and property rights, led the way toward great wealth and progress throughout the world as well as at home. Since we have lost our confidence in the principles of liberty, self-reliance, hard work and frugality, and instead took on empire building, financed through inflation and debt, all this has changed. This is indeed frightening and an historic event.

The problem we face is not new in history. Authoritarianism has been around a long time. For centuries, inflation and debt have been used by tyrants to hold power, promote aggression, and provide “bread and circuses” for the people. The notion that a country can afford “guns and butter” with no significant penalty existed even before the 1960s when it became a popular slogan. It was then, though, we were told the Vietnam War and the massive expansion of the welfare state were not problems. The seventies proved that assumption wrong.

Today things are different from even ancient times or the 1970s. There is something to the argument that we are now a global economy. The world has more people and is more integrated due to modern technology, communications, and travel. If modern technology had been used to promote the ideas of liberty, free markets, sound money and trade, it would have ushered in a new golden age – a globalism we could accept.

Instead, the wealth and freedom we now enjoy are shrinking and rest upon a fragile philosophic infrastructure. It is not unlike the levies and bridges in our own country that our system of war and welfare has caused us to ignore.

I'm fearful that my concerns have been legitimate and things may even be worse than I first thought. They are now at our doorstep. Time is short for making a course correction before this grand experiment in liberty goes into deep hibernation.

There are reasons to believe this coming crisis is different and bigger than any the world has ever experienced. Instead of using globalism in a positive fashion, it's been used to globalize all of the mistakes of the politicians, bureaucrats and central bankers. UNQUOTE

Read the rest at LewRockwell.com.

Top Signs Your Empire Is Collapsing

Everybody likes lists ~ here's an interesting and sobering one. All the things listed are intuitively obvious to the most casual observer, yet the mass mind trance ~ the "Matrix" of this world ~ marches on oblivious to the signs and omens. Pray the Divine Mercy Chaplet and live like a Catholic, help your family and neighbors. As people wake up, we can make a better life.
From the Vermont Commons.

QUOTE Just like Nineveh, just like Tyre. In fact, it’s classic– just like all the empires that have preceded it, from Akkad toHapsburg, from Babylonian to Dutch, from Persian to Ottoman, from Romanto Soviet, the American empire is collapsing, collapsing around us, andthe consequences will not be pleasant.
Youknow your empire is collapsing when the UN, comparing a number ofmeasures of child well-being in the industrial world, ranks youtwentieth out of 21, behind Poland, Portugal, and Hungary, ahead onlyof Britain. UNQUOTE