Some days it feels really hard to get your head on straight. I guess this is why.

Of course it's why nobody mentions contractors and voter participation is so embarrassingly low, Dr. "They" really don't mind being accomplices to genocide.

Even more disturbing than the Neanderthal obamamaniacs who have taken over open sewer are the "people" who "represent" us.

Only recently, I tried to post a Glenn Greenwald piece, in which Debbie Wasserman, chair of the DNC is asked about the weekly kill list meetings, and she lies into the camera saying she has never heard of such meetings.

I've heard of such meetings. You've heard of such meetings. They're plastered all over the internet. Would Ms. Wasserman have us believe that all her correspondence is produced via an Underwood manual typewriter and she is unaware of a phenomenon called THE internet.

The lies they spin are so countless and endless that the claque of barbarians, who have taken control of open sewer, resort to sports metaphors, to deny their complicity.

Bravo, Dr.

-R-

For a clear view of the political and economic mechanics of the US government and how it relates to domestic and foreign policies see:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/10/23/envy-and-resentment/

No doubt should be left that those in control are using every method in their capabilities to maintain and extend their status of acquiring and maintaining their unequal status. The rest is bullshit.

and yet, when i point out a simple way to get democracy in america, and with democracy, get accountability- silence.

the problem is not the corruption in government, it is the debased fatalism of the people.

Thank you for your comment, Mark, about the duplicity (to be blunt they're lying bastards) of the Democratic Party hacks who run the Obama campaign.

Interesting link, Jan. Thanks for sharing.

Al, I think the situation you are describing is typical of any oppressed people. When you look at African American slaves during the 19th century, only a small proportion (20-25%) actively fought to overturn slavery. The others felt rebellion was far too dangerous and chose to accommodate instead. The reaction of Jews to Nazi oppression during WWII was similar - only a small proportion actively fought the Nazis. My guess is that approximately one million Americans have dedicated their lives to dismantling the US economic/political system. Radical political change only seems to occur in response to some natural or economic catastrophic. The experts are predicting one or both within the next 12 months. Thus there is a good chance one million will be enough.

Ah yes..... once more around the mulberry bush singing "wake up and smell the sewer that your government has become." I've been hearing that tune since my political awakening in the early - very early - sixties - over 50 years ago.

I have to wonder where you, Dr. Bramhall, and the many others as well, who keep on and keep on iterating and re-inerating this information, get your courage to continue doing it in the face of such sad apathy on the part of the population. You are very brave souls indeed!


THIS BREAKS MY HEART:
We here on OS have all read first hand accounts of some of our fellow OSers who've lost their jobs, been unable to find a replacement job and have suffered greatly; some even losing their homes.

The one bright spot about that awful situation was that some of those people began to awaken to the causes - the true causes - of their plight. A very rude awakening to be sure, but an awakening nonetheless. One could see in their writing that they were coming to understand how things really are as opposed to how they had thought things were a short time ago.

I had begun to think that those responsible for this awakening had better watch their butts because they were creating circumstances that would lead to a great part of the population being "on to them" and maybe coming looking for them with blood in their eyes.

But look what has happened. No matter how conscious these folks became during their victimization, as soon as they again had a job, they went back to sleep again!! Their political consciousness? Gone! Out the window! Not remembered!

One can only, wonderingly, say WTF.....

It is this which makes me know that whatever the future holds, it won't be a tearing down of this horrible oligarchy or the fascism it has engendered. It will be an accommodation to it.

Does this not make you weep for the children of the future who will never know a moment of true freedom in their entire lives?

*Thanks to you for posting that video, Dr. Bramhall. and thanks to Jan for that URL to another part of the story.*

R
.

Sky, I have always been taught (and believed) that genuine political change only occurs in the context of a major crisis or catastrophe. It's the job of revolutionaries to keep the ideas alive - to ensure there would be a critical mass of enlightened people who knew exactly what to do when confronted by the right crisis.

Over the last decade, this theory I have always believed in has been proved, as socialist (in many cases indigenous) governments have taken control of most of the countries of Latin America.

Believe me, this is a great time to be alive.

So, strangely enough, I think you will find, I agree with nearly everything written in that article and video (and wrote about it all long ago...using a site and userid that have long since been wiped out of existence here), except the part about the voters.

I'll get to that in a sec, but do you know what the actual root cause problem is with the Federal Reserve? It's not what they do or the instruments they have available to do it. It's the organizational set-up. They are a sanctioned, and now largely unregulated, oligarchy.

Member banks are given seats on the board of governors (which, as Romney will find, are out of the purview of anyone and so when he fails to re-up Bernanke, he'll just move to a different spot on the board and have just as much influence as the new chairman), a 3% stake in the FRB, and the power to influence monetary policy, not to the benefit of the country, but to the benefit of their profit margin.

And, THAT'S WHAT THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO DO (corporate officers have an ethical duty to do anything they can to maximize share value, just like a defense lawyer has an ethical duty to zealously defend a rapist...neither are pleasant on their face, but they serve a greater good..as long as they are made to serve a greater good). Anyone with half a fucking brain knows this, so how in God's name, given that they are a protected oligarchy, have they been let loose to run roughshod on the American Economy?

I liked a lot of things about Ron Paul, though not his economic ideas, nor his crazy conspiracies about The Fed, but I did like the fact that he wanted them audited. I don't think he would have found the UFOs he thinks are hiding in Fort Knox, but he would find the abuses of power that any 1st year Economics student could have told him about if given half the chance.

The major political parties, though, while effectively the same, have found a great schtick that I actually blame on the hippies. They both pander to the polar opposite type of person (so, I tend to like the GOP less, because they chose all the assholes, at their extreme, anyway), and they have made it such that those groups have such an uncontrollable hatred of the other one, that even when good ideas come out of the other side, or the same distasteful policies are being instituted by other side, no one cares. It's us vs. them...Elvis vs. Jimi, and they all think that 50,000,000 Elvis fans (or Jimi fans, depending) can't be right.

Meanwhile, we have at our fingertips the most powerful communication tool in the history of man, and no one can seem to get the idea that perhaps it could be used to promote another option and begin to breakdown this other unregulated oligarchy we call the 2-party system.

Of course it's corrupt. Pepsi doesn't directly compete with Coke, either. Why would they? There's more gained by agreeing and fucking the whole world in the process.

But again, it's the job of the person in power to grab at more power. It's the job of government to control those people.

The former are doing their jobs, as in the case of The Fed. It's the latter who have stopped doing theirs that have lead to this crisis that we're in, and no one can seem to suggest that voting for someone who would discontinue these disastrous policies is doing anything but throwing away their vote.

I don't get it.

Oh, I blame it on the hippies because I think the animosity that arose between those who consider themselves liberal and those who consider themselves conservative, became the vitriolic "battle for the soul of the country" as soon as those patchouli drenched sex fiends started growing their hair out.

Read Kerouac, drop Leary, and get a fuckin' haircut, why don'tcha? Your country is depending on it.

If you really want to understand the catastrophe that is overtaking, not only the USA, but the whole world, read this analysis which penetrates all parties and forces.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/10/24/the-dark-age-of-money/

The mass media is a propaganda machine as you know and so do most of the people reading this. I couldn't access that video but don't need to to see that. LOL

On another note I thought you might be interested in reading this post, or lack of it.

http://occupywallst.org/forum/obamas-youth-army-the-militarization-of-our-youth-/

The post was deleted but the comments are still available for some reason. It was based on the following NYT article and before it was news articles.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/us/14explorers.html?_r=1&

http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2012/09/obama-fema-create-civilian-army-trained-in-domestic-preparedness-2470832.html

Presumably the reason the original post was deleted was because it included what they considered a "conspiracy theory" which included some exaggerations and a comparison to Hitler's Youth. I don't have a copy of it but I read it before it was deleted and thought it was worth more attention even though I thought there was some scrutiny that was required and some of it went too far but some of it was important.

I'll get back to it next week; the NYT article is from 2009 and I missed it the first time around but think it deserves more attention. I know you wrote about the CIA being involved in the OWS movement. I don't suppose you can remember which article(s) of yours was best on this? I wouldn't expect them to be running the whole thing but get the impression they like to have their fingers everywhere.

[r] stuart, having trouble accessing link. the reality is darker than those of us who even think we know it at its worse, as mark recently stressed to me. the desensitization of the majority of voters lapping up the "god cop/bad cop" corporate kabuki of the presidential race, coming out of their stupor to pretend they are protecting democracy by rallying against one corporate party with another vile one. EVIL is in the driver's seat. I feel despair. Authoritarian following? Is that it? Anti-intellectualism? Peer group think. Fear and embracing of denial? TV media propaganda -- so incredibly saturated with profit motive and manipulations? And here comes the fiscal cliff brought to us by the sociopath robber class and the frontman for oligarchs with that amiable Oprah-endorsed smile or the other corporate puppet, romney! best, libby

I really like your ideas about the Federal Reserve and the hippies, Malcolm. I think where the hippies ran into difficulty was they had no real understanding of class differences. For the most part they were privileged rich kids trying to avoid the draft.

Interesting article about monetary capitalism, Jan. People were predicted in 1929 that capitalism was about to end. Putting everyone on a war economy in 1950 stretched things out another 20 years and then embarking on finance capitalism (deriving profit from financial products, insurance and real estate) stretched it out until 2008. I really believe the party is over now - in large part due to fossil fuel depletion. People forget it was cheap fossil fuels that made the industrial revolution possible.

Interest articles you mention, Zachery. Too bad they were deleted. I wasn't arguing that the CIA was directly involved in OWS. I was arguing that a number of CIA funded left gatekeeping foundations (e.g. Ford Foundation) seemed to be involved - especially the ones taking a militant position that OWS had to be nonviolent. I have major concerns about Gene Sharp's links to some of these foundations as well as all the people with intelligence and Pentagon connections at the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict.

Here's an article I did on Gene Sharp for the Daily Censored: http://www.dailycensored.com/2012/03/21/the-cia-and-nonviolent-resistance-3/

And two articles I did for OpEdNews on left gatekeeping foundations:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Does-the-CIA-Fund-Both-the-by-Dr-Stuart-Jeanne-B-110416-54.html

http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Cointelpro-Role-of-Lef-by-Dr-Stuart-Jeanne-B-110422-198.html

Libby, I have often felt the kind of despair you talk about. We can always take comfort from the fact that at least 50% of Americans aren't taken in by the hype - the ones who know that voting is a total waste of time.

“If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal” (Emma Goldman) and “the best argument against democracy is a ten minute conversation with the average voter.” (Winston Churchill)

I have no illusions about Obama. Gays now enjoy the dubious privilege of serving as cannon fodder: this being a gift from a Harvard-educated so called ‘civil rights lawyer’ president who first said that religion was sufficient reason to deny a ‘fundamental’ civil right (marriage) and not a bubble of protest from gays! But only when the wind shifted he then ‘evolved’ to cavalierly toss over no more than Dick Cheney offered eight years prior as he still pandered to the classic segregationist ‘state’s rights’ rubbish - and again not a bubble of protest. Unless they (with a wink and a nod to hidden agendas) play along with the joke it takes a pretty stupid and legally ignorant audience to get away with that.

But I don’t blame Obama for the fact that legal and intellectual honesty would be political suicide and I must admire how masterfully he has played the cynical game by the hypocrites’ rules. He sails a risky course in a nasty storm through shark infested waters and rocky shoals are everywhere.

Still, while I have no illusions about Obama (whom I take as a good man struggling in a corrupted and rotting system) if anyone is REALLY so stupid and naive as to think one man can change all this then they really are away with the fairies. If you can separate the stupid sheep from the goats who will eat anything it’s a wonder that anyone as good as Obama can seize the day.

Take a look at the wing-nut crack-pot nut-jobs that have commanded the political scene (mostly on the Republican right-money really can buy almost anything) and bear witness to a Confederacy of dunces called an electorate who can be programed to march in lock-step like frightened sheep eager to get to their own fleecing. (Then again the U.S. is somewhere around #18 in educational level amongst industrial nations). It seems that everyone is telling everyone else what to think and no one it teaching people how to think.

Charlie McGrath. has nothing to say that has not been said a hundred times over. He merely parrots a banal diagnosis.

And you, of course, are entirely correct. I think Chris Hedges did somewhat of a good job of it in Empire of Illusions. Few humans ever escape Plato’s cave where they are chained in thrall of moving shadows cast by the fires behind them as they remain totally unaware that outside the cave the sun shines. Your argument is where all philosophers still begin; but Americans are famously anti-intellectual: who gives a hoot about philosophers? It’s not the job of a philosopher to provide solutions to human dilemmas but to show people what deep shit they are stuck in and give them the analytical tools to think for themselves. This is why they are dangerous.

This state of affairs was easy enough for propagandists to achieve. The Rev. J. Wright was not all that much of a nut job when he said the powers that be know one thing for sure: "You gotta keep the people ignorant." This proving that every fool is given his share of wisdom.

So I will vote as I live and for the same reason you post here: "as if" one person can matter in a world where we all agree no one person can make a real difference.

If you are in a solid blue or red state where your vote surely can not matter the voting independent may be the best way to be counted and to have your vote noticed. I leave the rest to wallow in their nihilism.

Dr. Bramhall, it turns out the article was retracted by the person that posted it for his own reasons so it wasn't censored, which was making me wonder. But it is still something that deserves more attention; many other people have been addressing it I will add my name to the list soon enough. I'll take a closer look at your links even if they aren't related.