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Chestnut Tree Cafe |
George Orwell - from Notes on Nationalism
2010
The System is Working -
As expected, it didn't take long for the Obama administration to begin looking like its predecessor. From obstructing war crime investigations and refusing to release prisoner abuse photos to refusing to repeal the enhanced, kingly powers of President, ushered in during the Bush/Cheney era, and beating the the war drums. It all sounds too familiar.
No need to be surprised by what's been happening. Concerned, yes, but not surprised. Government abuse makes perfect sense if we look at how our system was set up. The system is not failing, it's succeeding. This is what is was designed to do. The genius of the United States government, from its very founding, was never its vision of equity and promotion of popular governance. The US Constitution was founded by monied interests and fashioned to protect those interests.
And strong opposition to popular government - by the overclass - has a strong historical precedent.
The connections between the Trilateral Commission and the Obama administration are so numerous it would be futile to attempt to list them all.
The ruling oligarchs have promulgated the idea of democracy and self-rule for the purposes of creating a milieu conducive to self-censorship, improved morale and productivity. They similarly promulgated the embarrassingly ridiculous idea of "chosen people" and "manifest destiny."
The Corporate/Bureaucratic Elite are Globalists - Historically, different parts of the world cycle through periods of prosperity followed by periods of difficulty, at different times. They will say that the push for global governance is precisely what is needed to bring the entire world into a common rhythm and to ameliorate uncertainty of these inconvenient cycles. We should no sooner accept this than the ridiculous notion that World War 1 would be "the war to end all wars", or that after World War 1, the purpose of the League of Nations was formed to prevent war from breaking out again. Shouldn't we be skeptical when elite, round table consortiums profess to be aiming to prevent war, or, as David Rockefeller's Trilateral Commission was supposed to, bring "peace and prosperity"? Uncertainty is going nowhere. War is going nowhere. They are both here to stay. The question is, will we also have the ultimate power consolidation - that of global governance - to accompany and exacerbate them?
The Two Party System - Even adding one more party (one that actually wins elections on a regular basis like dems and pubs do...) would confound things monumentally, making it statistically impossible to reign in public opinion. This is precisely why the media emphasizes (gives credence to) only two parties. With this mechanism in place, any initiative or legislation can garner significant public support simply by associating it - through the media - as righty or lefty initiative. In other words, having prominent lefties or righties endorse it publicly. A third (fourth, fifth ... ?? ) party would cut way into the efficacy of this mechanism for obvious reasons. The elite easily install their puppet in every election and subsequently whip up the requisite public support - through the media - for the initiatives they desire, which are drawn up long before the election. It is utterly impossible for a true grass roots candidate to gain any traction in this sort of system.
As children we are programmed for our role as consumers by our tvs, which conditions us to be self-censoring. Crowd control is much easier if you can get the crowd to censor itself, which is precisely what we have.
The subtext emanating from the mass media echoes this sentiment perfectly. The subtext is: there's something at stake here that is more important than the truth. We all sense that rabble rousing media righties and lefties like Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann are not reporting the news in a responsible, forthcoming fashion. Their righty and lefty hollywood editorializing is pathetic, yet we not only tolerate it, we embrace it. The reason is that we have been trained to accept imaginary, alternate realities in lieu of the truth. We live vicariously through Hollywood - why not get our principles in a similiar fashion, prefabricated like big macs? Hence we direct our frustrations at each other instead of the real source. Pseudo-principles, just like pseudo-food. It's just so easy and convenient.
The discourse between dems and pubs has come to resemble pro wrestling, and it serves a similar purpose - filling an empty void. We need diversion, entertainment, and distraction, and they give us that, but we also need principle. Having been manipulated into embracing our worker/consumer roles, and are no longer able to live our true principles, so they have been replaced, as if we were hosting a virus. We are increasingly dependent and beholden to the system. We spend far too little time doing what we love, and far too much time doing what the overclass loves. Our principles now come from without, instead of from within. They are artificial, like the food we eat and like the vicarious living. None of it real. It's just another Hollywood production - a cheap substitute for we really need and want. And underlying it all is a fake economy that no one understands or wishes to talk about.
The Globalist Agenda and the End of National Sovereignty - Conservation is being framed up by the media as part of a leftist or progressive agenda. But the fact is, the prominent people behind it are much more concerned about making money than they are about conservation or reducing their carbon footprint. But even this, as bad as it is, isn't the main concern. There is a much broader agenda here. The left side of the political spectrum is now being used, by the corporate, bureaucratic elite, as a platform for putting globalization into hyperdrive. The current trend involves the consolidation of power around global authorities. I would also suggest that this is no better - in fact it may be worse - than power consolidation in multi-national corporations. The fact is that the two are intimately intertwined, working together towards a global paradigm shift, one that will probably hinge upon an economic "crisis", which will itself probably be induced by another crisis (energy, disease outbreak, climate change, any combination thereof). And if history is any guide, the underlying cause of the "crisis" will be real, but it will most definately be overinflated, and promulgated by elite industrial interests which have the power to control governing bodies, whether at the national or global level.
So there a global trend which is an insidious process by design (though many of the events and sub-plots involved may be more acute ... ). Efforts are continually made to gradually erode the sovereignty of countries to capitulate to unions. The unions, in turn, capitulate to the central global authorities, "for the good of the whole" and in the spirit of "teamwork", of course. But this is a power grab, pure and simple. Whether anything but totalitarianism will come from it remains to be seen. But I think the rampant use of deception might be instructive here. The global warming issue will almost certainly play a pivotal role in this process going forward. Here, too, we see rampant deception by leading figures who have obvious ties to big industry, who use a good cause towards a bad end.
Global Warming - The fact that the climate change issue has galvanized around the UN is not an insignificant issue, given the UN's history as a tool for big corporate interests (see Chomsky on "forced acquiescence" and "the Washington consensus"). The idea that these big corporations, which control the UN, suddenly wish to talk about the environment has zero credibility. On the other hand, the idea that they have an ulterior motive is much more salient. Even a quick look into the backgrounds of the movers and shakers behind this movement reveals an obvious elitist bias. These sorts should have zero involvement, let alone leading involvement, in any legitimate effort. Clearly, they have a lot more than just global warming on their agenda. And profiting from trading carbon credits is not the only ulterior motive. Nor is the manifest destiny style of green investing that Al Gore has found an interest in. There is also a very concerted effort underway to foster globalization, which in turn entails increasing global governance, global taxation, and the consolidation of government power at the global level to the detriment of the sovereignty of nations. Those who want this are big corporations who stand to establish still more dominance from liberalizing international trade. And they would love nothing more than to legitimize their dominance around a global, central government authority. So, increasingly, we will see things dealt with on a supranational level, for the "good of the whole", or course. This will have the desired effect, namely the gradual ceding of national sovereignty and simultaneous consolidation of power around global authorities.
Investing With Al Gore - Where the problems arise is simultaneously being a spokesperson for one's own investments. How nice to have Paramount Pictures, now a subsidiary media juggernaut, Viacom, distribute "An Inconvenient Truth". No doubt that year was particularly good for Gore's very green investment firm. And how nice that Paramount also helped fund Gore's "Alliance for Climate Protection", which further promotes his investments. And, though there is nothing wrong in using one's celebrity to sell books, doesn't it cross a line when the content of those books dovetails so very nicely with personal investments, especially when one is a founding member of a very relevant investment firm, and a partner of a very relevant venture capitalist firm?!Generation Investment Management also owns a 10% stake in the Chicago Climate Exchange, which owns half of European Climate Exchange, creating yet another conflict of interest for Gore, since he benefits directly from the trading of carbon credits. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Investment_Management). By the way, Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers don't exclusively invest in green technology. Their "Pandemic Biodefense Fund" should do fairly well if all the hype over swine flu vaccination continues. (http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE53N6YO20090424) So too should an old friend, Donald Rumsfeld, since he also has very large stakes in Tamiflu (http://motherjones.com/mojo/2009/04/swine-flu-bringing-home-bacon).
Shock and Awe with National Geographic - In the past we have looked at cronies like Al Gore and Maurice Strong who are cashing in on "crisis". But National Geographic? Who would have thought? As it happens, this all makes perfect sense, really, when you consider who has partnered up with National Geographic (and many years ago, I might add) - it's an old friend from team Bushcraft, Ruppert Murdoch. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/georgianne-nienaber/fox-owned-inational-geogr_b_112699.html ... http://www.allbusiness.com/media-telecommunications/telecommunications/6645689-1.html. Yes, it would seem that Ruppert is now concerned with conservation. Amazing that this round of shock and awe is so mysteriously different from, in fact diametrically opposed to, the previous, Fox News style one. Hmmm ...
2009
I recall hearing my 8 year old tell my 6 year old something like that once, where she was "big business" and the 6 year old was "everyone else". I'm sure there's some truth to it - I'm just not too sure how well it reconciles with values like democracy and freedom. If history is any guide, then we can expect today's "stimulus packages" to reconcile poorly with these kinds of values, and reconcile much better with concepts like oligarchy and plutocracy. And once again, what better bit of history to look at than the New Deal, since there have been frequent, optimistic allusions to it lately."What's good for big business is good for everyone else."
This story came out on the Bloomberg site last month, regarding a federal lawsuit Bloomberg filed against our beloved "FED" in November. The suit seeks no damages, just the recipients of more than $2 trillion of emergency loans from U.S. taxpayers and the assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.
"Where'd the bailout money go? Shhhh, it's a secret" - http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2008547803_apmeltdownsecrets.html?syndication=rss
"But after receiving billions in aid from U.S. taxpayers, the nation's largest banks say they can't track exactly how they're spending the money or they simply refuse to discuss it."
This kind of “globalization” smacks of power consolidation and of multinationals that are bigger than countries and that destroy local commerce everywhere they go and control governments. But worse, they are governments! It has become relatively easy for most of us today to name the corporate associations of many of our most important leaders.
The net result? The global elite are getting
richer. No surprises there. What should we
expect when we ”liberalize” the globe in the name of the free
market global economy, giving giant transnationals unfettered access to
the markets of their choice, regardless of how that might affect the
local economy there? (What would we expect if we took
things like weight classes and age limits away from the Olympic
games? Wouldn’t we expect to ruin the competition?)
But don’t worry, it’s just globalization.