115 Socialism & the Nanny State

(1) 1950s Australia with its Public Ownership - was it "Socialism" or "State Capitalism"?
(2) Reply to Charles - Peter M., October 4, 2009:
(3) Socialism & the Nanny State
(4) Economists, 'running dogs', and fake statistics
(5) IMF Warns Countries to Sustain Stimulus
(6) Skewed up recovery
(7) Americans: Serfs Ruled by Oligarchs - Paul Craig Roberts
(8) DAVID CAMERON and his shadow cabinet have found a new billionaire backer

(1) 1950s Australia with its Public Ownership - was it "Socialism" or "State Capitalism"?

From: Charles F Moreira <moreira_charles@yahoo.com.sg> Date: 03.10.2009 04:49 AM

> Socialism is not rule by the Banks, but the
> nationalization of the banking system - as happened
> to a large degreee in Australia from the 1940s ...
> That Public Ownership was Socialism

Looking at the various arguments below, firstly I'm no fan of President Obama and having agreed to the bailout of the banking institutions, the escalation of troops in Afghanistan, the sabre rattling with Iran and his pandering to the Zionists in Israel makes him no socialist by any stretch of the imagination.

The Marxist definition of socialism is social control of the means of production, distribution and exchange, with production being to satisfy social need, rather than private profit.

Where production serves profits of the private owners of industry, when productive capacity exceeds market demand to maintain profit, the private owners will cut back on production and lay off workers, hence unemployment.

When automation is introduced, the private owners will cut back on staff, hence unemployment.

However under a socialist system, production is planned and when automation is introduced, workers will benefit from the cheaper goods it enables in terms of shorter working hours with no loss of job security and opportunity to upgrade their skills or to engage in other economic or other socially beneficial activities, since the means of production are theirs, much like a washing machine relieves housewives from the drudgery to devote more time to other family activities.

Under such a system, the encouragement of people to get into debt to continue buying goods the privately owned industries produce will not happen, nor the encouragement of a consumer culture, especially through insidious peer pressure to make people buy the latest gadget just to keep up with the Jonses, whilst the private owners laugh their way to the bank.

Under such a socialist system will it be much easier to implement environmentally friendly production.

What Peter is talking about which existed in Australia previously is not Marxist socialism but rather social democracy, state capitalism or a regulated capitalist economy, with systems in place to protect local industry, the citizens and to provide quality healthcare, education, housing and other such services to the public either for free or at nominal charges.

Well, between a regulated, statist capitalism with welfare state measures versus un-fettered, neo-liberal (libertarian), globalised, open-borders capitalism with total faith in the power of market operation to redress all ills; I'd go for the former any day.

On Jeffersonian libertarianism, does that include the freedom to own slaves. Does it include the right to discriminate against people based on their race, religion or culture. What measures does Jeffersonian libertarianism have to help certain disadvantaged segments of society to upgrade their skills to be able to function on par with the rest of society - without which measures they forever be at the bottom of the economic ladder.

Agreed that the liberal (not libertarian) measures introduced since the civil rights movement have not solved problems of racial minorities, especially the Blacks and this perhaps requires further, unbiased investigation as to why. One possibility is that the social workers involved in "helping" the Blacks don't want to solve the problem entirely, since if they did, they would be out of work.

However, things could have been worse for the Blacks if not for them.

What would Jeffersonian libertarianism's response to companies increasingly outsourcing of work to lower wage countries. What would they do to try and keep some jobs for people in their home countries.

As a technology writer, I hear so much talk of workers having to upgrade their skills and "move up the value chain" but how much room and opportunities are there up the higher one moves up the value chain. If the river keeps on eroding the river bank, forcing people to move further and further inland but how long can they keep on doing so as there would be less available land to live on, so would it not be better if measures were taken to stop the river's erosion of the river bank by building a protective wall along the bank

Check out an article I wrote about graduate unemployment in Malaysia over five years ago. http://web.kwx.com.my/kwx/ASP/articles02/articles_view00.asp?strID=19

So much for "moving up the value chain"

Just a few days ago, I had a media interview with an Oracle executive who said that after graduation in the mid-90s, he first found work serving fast food before he found a job fitting his qualifications.

I did not say it as it may have sounded too rude but my first job after graduation was as a process engineer in National Semiconductor Electronics back in 1980. Back then, the term "Internet" would have been understood to be an inter-convent netball tournament.

Australia used to be the leading base for call centres back in the early 2000s but today, in this globalised world with open borders, it's no more in the lead as call centre operators have found cheaper places, so such "benefits" of neo-liberal, globalisation are transient.

On healthcare, does the "patient's rights" advocated by opponents of healthcare reform include the rights of patients who can't afford the medical fees to have access to medical treatment or just the rights of wealthy patients to choose?

I don't know enough about Obama's healthcare reforms but some criticise them for benefitting the healthcare insurers more than the the patients.

The only point of agreement I have with the Jeffersonian libertarians is their opposition to imperial military adventures such as in Iraq, Afghanistan and elswehere but on domestic social and economic issues, that's where we part company.

I leave you with this little story: Back in 1992 to 1994, when I was in Canada, One of my colleagues in that "up the value chain" call centre (information & services job) we worked in complained, "In China we did not have to pay income tax but here we must."

So I asked her, "Why did you protest at Tian An Men Square then." She was one of the protestors at Tian An Men Square and had to seek refuge in Canada where she had to pay taxes as a result. On the other hand, if she did not have to pay taxes, she would not have welfare in case she lost her job, medical care if she fell ill and a pension after she retired.

I also wrote a letter to one of those right wing publications, BC Report which protested against taxation that they could always move to a real communist country such as North Korea or Cuba where they would not have to pay income tax. I did not see my letter published.

Whilst there are many cases of abuse of such welfare systems by people who want to make a career of not working, it provides benefits and some financial security to the many more hardworking people in capitalist countries who are unfortunate to fall on hard times, such as now.

There are many in the former Soviet Union and socialist Eastern Europe who look back with nostalgia to better days before the fall of socialism in their part of the world. At first, the freedom and dream of being a part of the devloped world with all those consumer goods was euphoric for many but soon they realised that the most important thing in life is their economic stability and well being, without which everything else is superfluous, especially when it's available but they cannot afford them.

After all, is getting the latest mobile phone or new PC every six months necessary for our survival and well-being and does it help the ecology and environment.

(2) Reply to Charles - Peter M., October 4, 2009:

You're accepting Karl Marx's definitions of Socialism and Commnunism. And, on that basic, classifying all other modern economies as "Capitalist".

Trotskyists even call Stalin's USSR "State Capitalist".

Confucius said that "Fixing the Language" is an urgent task. We need to fix the meanings of "Socialism" and "Communism".

Firstly, the Marxist theory specifies two stages: it says that the Soviet system, with its totalitarian state, was "Socialist" but not "Communist". Once the "Communist" stage was reached, the state would wither, "new Soviet Man" having emerged and no longer needing regimentation from above.

That's just Pie-in-the-Sky: utopian and unrealistically anarchic.

Ordinary Russians - forsaking the Marxist theoreticians - never envisaged a "second stage". They, and the rest of the world, called their system "Communism". Communism varied a bit from country to country, but the similarities were sufficient for a common pattern to be identified.

The idea of "two stages" being relegated to the dustbin, that leaves one stage, which is best called "Communism".

And it frees up the word "Socialist" for the Mixed Economy.

The US-style laissez-faire system is "Capitalist", while the State-managed Mixed Economy (of postwar but pre-Privatization Australia, Germany and Japan; and of post-Mao China) is "Socialist".

That gives us three words (categories) for three distinct systems, with variations within the three.

In the American Health debate, only two words (categories) are used for the options: Libertarian and Socialist. But the word "Socialist" has Communist connotations there, because of the use of only two words. If three words (categories of economic system) were used, the Obama scheme would be called "Socialist" but free of "Communist" connotations.

Although Obama's proposal is said to be over-friendly to the "Health" (read "Drug") lobby & Insurers, that's just because of the difficulty of making even a small Socialist step in the bastion of Laissez-Faire Capitalism, where the Insurers are probably behind the whipping up of the Libertarian "Patriots" into a frenzy.

In the Communist Manifesto, Marx & Engels wrote "the Workers have no Country". What does this mean?

It means "World State or nothing". A bit like "One World or None". It's a rejection of any kind of National Communism - or "Communism in One Country" (ie Stalin's kind). It means that Marx opposed National Unity (unity of the classes, unity of the sexes), insisting, instead, on Class War - on Winner Take All. That's why (he says) he supported Free Trade in 1848, and that's why the Trots supported the dismantling of Australia's postwar Socialist system: http://mailstar.net/classwar.html.

It also means that Marx rejected any kind of nation-based Socialism (such as Australia had from the 1940s to 1991). He demanded a Communist world state; nothing less.

Omitting the middle option sets up a false dichotomy.

The mixed economy, with substantial public ownership and public management of the econonomy, is not Capitalist, because "ownership of the means of production" is largely in public hands. Yet its private sector gives it the inventiveness anbd creativity that Communism lacked; the USSR, in contrast, had to rely on spying and covert acquisition to obtain much of its technology.

Neither the "Libertarians" (who only care about freedom for the upper classes) nor the hardline Communists want a middle path. Yet it's just such a middle path that we desperately need.

(3) Socialism & the Nanny State

From: kearsey@comcast.net Date: 04.10.2009 11:06 PM

I agree that the root of our problem is not Socialism, but the socialist illusion of a nannystate that redistributes wealth and creates a better society is one of the major tools being used to get people to surrender more control to DC. That said, the root of the problem is not capitalism either. As I've detailed several times previously, rule by the oligarchy, a corporatocracy of collusion between Congress, Wall St, an assortment of mega corporations, and special interest groups like the unions and trial lawyers is decidedly not a free market. Just as hemorrhaging heart liberals are duped into supporting the democrat half of the oligarchy, flag draped neocons dupe republicans with visions of capitalism and far off wars to defend the motherland.

Reply (Peter M.):

The Free Market you have in mind is mythical. It's one where small business and small farmers are the norm. That might have been so in the Wild West, but now, the Free Market always means rule by Big Business.

The Nanny State, however, is new. It only came in about 30 years ago.

It did not exist in the Socialist Australia of the 1950s & 60s, when I was growing up.

Instead of the Government spending huge amounts on Welfare (as it does now), it spent that money on building up the Australian economy via publicly-owned assets.

We had strong centralised government, of the nation-building type - working in conjunction with the private sector, rather than stifling it.

There were no "Speech Codes" in those days. The Government did not issue myriads of rules, and was not about controlling private lives. For example, migrants from overseas would build a garage, then live in it while building a house. That is now illegal.

We had lots of government monopolies then (100% Government-owned and operated):

The Reserve bank - Australia's central bank. It was required to make full employment a top priority.
The Commonwealth Bank - providing affordable loans, and savings schemes.
A State bank in most states, 100% Government-owned and operated.

The Post Office (including Telecom, or Telstra, which was later split from it).
Qantas - Australia's overseas airline.
Trans-Australian Airlines - one of the two internal airlines; the other (Ansett) was privately owned.

The railways - 99% of the railways were 100% Government-owned and operated.
The Australian National Line, Australia's shipping line, doing the coastal & much of the oversas shipping.
The Snowy Mountains Authority - it built the biggest hydro-electric scheme in the country; diverted the Snowy River westwards to water the desert. Citrus, grapes, wheat, rice etc are grown with this water.
The Hydro Electric Commission, Tasmania's electricity authority, built hydro-electric dams.

The Grain Board and other marketing boards, 100% Government-owned and operated.
The Universities were all 100% Government-owned and operated.
The ABC (Australian Broadcastic Commission) and SBS - with 2 national radio networks & two TV networks.
The CSIRO as the peak scientific research body.
75% of schools were 100% Government-owned and operated.

Taxes were used to build these assets, creating jobs, not for handouts as at present.

Welfare is basically a substitute for the Family. It came in with the Feminist/Gay attack on the family, which was Communist-led. Hate Speech laws and Speech Codes have the same origin.

Don't blame Socialism for them; blame Communism.

Big Brother laws, and the Nanny State, only came in after the 60s movement, energized by the Vietnam War, launched Feminism, the Green movement and the various Minority movements.

University-student demonstrators were led by two groups at odds with one another, Trots and Maoists; of the two, the Maoists have since faded away. The Nanny State has been engineered by Trots as "outsiders" (ie the avant-garde) and Fabians as "insiders".

Australia's Trotskyist Party published a book in 1979 arguing for Free Trade, for the abandonment of tariffs, and against the 1950s economic model. The book condemned Australia's socialism as Race-based (which it was), and condemned all the other Communist parties as Stalinist and Nationalist: http://mailstar.net/xTrots.jpg

There is a link between the ensuing Privatization/Deregulation. and the rise of "Hate Speech" and other Big Brother (nanny-state) laws.

Rick Farley, head of the National Farmers Federation, drew attention to it:

NFF warns of 'social control'

The Australian, Wednesday March 9, 1988, p. 19

By rural writer JULIAN CRIBB

{quote} THE electorate should be warned of cynical moves by government into "big brother" social regulation, the director of the National Farmers Federation (NFF), Mr Rick Farley, said yesterday.

Mr Farley told the conference that as government progresively withdrew from the area of industry regulation, it was seeking new areas of social regulation to provide a basis for political debate and an appearance of
activity. ... {end quote}

See the original article: http://mailstar.net/farley.jpg

On the one hand, they've deregulated and privatized the economy (letting Big Business do what it likes); on the other hand, they're meddling in our private lives.

Very early in the Deregulation process, Rick Farley drew attention to the connection between the two.

We're losing at both ends of the stick.

(4) Economists, 'running dogs', and fake statistics

From: Tony Ryan <tonyryan43@gmail.com>  Date: 03.10.2009 08:24 AM
Subject: Re: G20 Summit secretly set up IMF as Global Central Bank - Ellen Brown

Paul Craig Roberts and Steven Hill (Peter Myers 3 October) are at pains to point out the dangerous absurdity of economists accepting official unemployment, inflation and consumer price index rates. My position is that anyone who publishes the work of these 'running dogs' (as the Marxists would put it, if they were honest; which they are not) becomes a participant in the great lie that is destroying the global economy, but more importantly, the lives of billions of human beings... men, women and children.

Most politicians and journalists have little grasp of economic or social reality at the best of times, and if prattling economists prognosticate with diagnoses and forecasts that make the politicians look almost intelligent, they adopt these like a drowning man would clutch a floating cork. Economists like Steve Keen dedicatedly serve this purpose; which I consider is the reason why Keen reneged on the idea of a joint 2007 survey of Australian unemployment. He realised that accurate statistics would turn his articles into poison for politicians, thereby causing him to be jettisoned from his career vehicles of ABC and SBS.

So, Australians are denied the truth about our deepening socio-economic crisis because publishers believe that all views must be heard. On a level playing field this would be true, but anyone who thinks the Murdoch media is regulated by some kind of egalitarian spirit level is not wearing the same kind of lens that holds my nose in position.

I could lob in Paul Kelly's office and present this position and he would simply call security. I accept this as the position of an intransigent media; but I do not understand why you help the free trader enemy by publishing Steve Keen on this otherwise excellent compilation of observations? It only serves to drive moderates into the camp of harder-edged activism.

Even Paul Kelly has recently warned politicians they alienate rural Australians at their peril, many of whom are confronted by certain financial ruin and are persuaded by their familiarity with the harsh reality of nature to take the obvious next step. A focus on truth is the only element that keeps vocal moderates in the forefront, albeit an Internet front.

(5) IMF Warns Countries to Sustain Stimulus

OCTOBER 1, 2009

By BOB DAVIS

http://www.brettonwoods.org/news/index.php/187/IMF_Warns_Countries_to_Sustain_Stimulus

ISTANBUL -- The global economy is staging so modest a recovery that additional fiscal stimulus may be needed to prevent another slump, the International Monetary Fund said.

"Fiscal stimulus needs to be sustained until the recovery is on a firm footing and may need to be amplified...if downside risks to growth materialize" said the IMF in its World Economic Outlook. "Governments should thus stand ready to roll out new initiatives."

Overall, the IMF forecast the global economy will grow at a 3.1% clip in 2010, compared to a 1.1% contraction this year. For 2010, the U.S. is estimated to grow at 1.5%, the euro area at 0.3% and Japan at 1.7%. That compares to 2009 declines of 2.7% for the U.S., 4.2% for the euro area and 5.4% for Japan.

Asia is the star performer, led by China, which the IMF expects to grow at 9% in 2010, compared to 8.5% this year. The IMF said Asia's "swift turnaround of economic fortunes is remarkable." But there, too, it issued caution. China's sharp credit expansion risks creating an investment bubble, the IMF said, and other Asian nations may still be relying too heavily on exports to the U.S., which may not materialize.

The IMF did say the world had climbed out of the deepest recession since the Great Depression. It cited a pick-up in manufacturing, a reduction in inventory, and stabilizing retail sales and housing prices. .

Mostly, the IMF credited expansive fiscal and monetary policies for the turnaround, and worried that countries would feel political pressure to remove the props before economic recovery was certain.

Write to Bob Davis at bob.davis@wsj.com

(6) Skewed up recovery

Sep 30, 2009

By Max Fraad Wolff

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/KI30Dj02.html

As consensus builds for economic recovery, mass anger is building in lock step. Consumer sentiment surveys show that the public does feel better about the economy. Stock and bond markets have been celebrating, in the United States and elsewhere, since March. Public officials have been speaking of the rebound for at least three months.

But unemployment continues to rise and poverty to deepen; foreclosures increase and house price declines also continue. Thus, the real economic situation for the least affluent 80% of Americans continues to decline amidst the recovery. This is creating anger and opposition that is exploding in unlikely places, debates and attitudes. This is one ingredient driving the anger at "tea parties", health policy meetings, protests and proclamations.

In the United States, the national gross domestic product - the broad value of final goods and services sold in America - will grow in the third quarter of 2009. Interest rates on corporate debt, US government debt and mortgage rates are low. Corporate profits have rebounded on rising productivity, a falling dollar and rising sentiment. Why is our "recovery" so skewed up?

There are many and complex answers to this vital question. One answer is our reliance on monetary policies focused on addressing the financial crisis. This is one element of the structural economic decline that is battering American fortunes. We have a structural economic crisis and a financial crisis. These two different elements of the great recession have been confused and conflated by analysts, policy makers and public perception. This created excess focus on financial matters by most.

Angry masses see the recession as purely financial. This is false. Policy makers have rushed to address the financial crisis. This is near sighted. Monetary policies have dominated our policy response. We have addressed one of our afflictions and left the greater economic problems under-appreciated and unaddressed. This makes our recovery very fragile and skewed up.

Monetary policies have provided over US$11.5 trillion of assistance to our monetary/financial sectors since March 2007. The rules for remaining financial institutions have been re-written many times over the last 18 months. New access, support and assistance have been provided with each leg down.

The Federal Reserve has led this process. You can see this leadership in the $1.2 trillion, approximately 150%, increase in the Federal Reserve balance sheet. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Treasury Department, Congress and two White House administrations have been deeply involved. You already know this and it has been exhaustively reported. What no one seems to have discussed is how this response skews up our "recovery".

Our leading responses to the crisis have been to slash interest rates and provide trillions of dollars in assistance to our financial institutions. This makes sense but betrays the structural problem.
We are a society that lives on debt and speculation. Our houses are ever more owned by investors - 2007 was the last year American's owned more than 50% of their homes. Today, America owns 43% of its housing stock, creditors own the other 57%. We have $10.4 trillion in mortgage debt and $2.5 trillion in consumer debt. Every month 350,000 American houses are being seized by creditors.

These numbers hint at the real problem. We are dependent on the financial sector. This is result of our structural economic problem. We have been over-consuming for 15 years. American wages, salaries and savings have not been enough. We have been borrowing and speculating for the difference. The world has joined the game with global financial deregulation and market integration. Real recovery will take time, and has not been attempted. Instead, we have been working and spending to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

We have been straining to jump start the financial machine that has enabled a debt and speculation economy. This skews up the recovery. Low interest rates and enabling policies for lenders have succeeded in buoying our surviving firms. They borrow cheaply from the Federal Reserve, the markets and the public. Safe investments offer very low yields but they can borrow for even less. This pushes up earnings.

Even more essential, government programs buy and assure safe assets. The Federal Reserve has purchased $700 billion in mortgage-backed securities and plans another $500 billion to $600 billion in purchases over the next year. The federal government's Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have purchased more than 75% of the mortgages and mortgage-backed securities sold in the first six months of 2009.

The Federal Reserve has also been buying US Treasury debt. This drops the returns on safe assets. People re-enter more risky markets and start speculating again. This is done by design to drop the price on mortgages. Thus, our policy response helps people with good credit to get cheap mortgages.

We are also providing assistance to financial institutions and returns to speculators. We are making vast sums of money available and make the returns on safe assets very low. You don’t need me to tell you what this creates. This drives money into riskier and riskier investments. Look at stocks, particularly in the developing world.

This skews up our recovery. The job market continues to be very weak and it is clear that it will be several years before we create the 7 million jobs lost, let alone the backlog of missing jobs that we need. Our population growth suggests we need 125,000 new jobs a month just to keep at a standstill.

Weak job markets mean stagnant wages and rising productivity. It is hard to get wage increases and easy to be overworked in understaffed workplaces when fear runs high. People with bad or questionable credit don't get those new lower borrowing rates. Today's cheaper mortgages are hard to get for many and out of the question for those in trouble.

The rapid rise in asset prices does nothing fast and direct for the mass of Americans who own few of the assets. What is owned is squirreled away in battered retirement accounts. The stagnation in the US economy, a falling dollars and falling debt flow make foreign markets and enterprises more essential to enterprises. This directs attention, new employment and excitement to other nations. All of this shrinks the future importance of the lower 80% of Americans in global business terms.

Our skewed recovery is fragile and has left behind many people and businesses. This is rarely discussed and even more rarely understood. In the absence of discussion and understanding, anger simmers and erupts in odd places, times and ways.

Max Fraad Wolff is a doctoral candidate in economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and editor of the website GlobalMacroScope.

(Copyright 2009 Max Fraad Wolff.)

(7) Americans: Serfs Ruled by Oligarchs - Paul Craig Roberts

From: IHR News <news@ihr.org>  Date: 28.08.2009 05:16 PM

http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/index.php/2009/08/19/americans-serfs-ruled-by-oligarchs/

Americans: Serfs Ruled by Oligarchs

by Paul Craig Roberts
August 19th, 2009

“In a little time [there will be] no middling sort. We shall have a few, and but a very few Lords, and all the rest beggars." - R.L. Bushman

“Rapidly you are dividing into two classes - extreme rich and extreme poor." - "Brutus"

Americans think that they have “freedom and democracy" and that politicians are held accountable by elections. The fact of the matter is that the United States is ruled by powerful interest groups who control politicians with campaign contributions. Our real rulers are an oligarchy of financial and military/security interests and AIPAC, which influences U.S. foreign policy for the benefit of Israel.

Have a look at economic policy. It is being run for the benefit of large financial concerns, such as Goldman Sachs.

It was the banks, not the millions of Americans, who have lost homes, jobs, health insurance and pensions, that received $700 billion in TARP funds. The banks used this gift of capital to make more profits. In the middle of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, Goldman Sachs announced record second-quarter profits and large six-figure bonuses for every employee.

The Federal Reserve's low interest rate policy is another gift to the banks. It lowers their cost of funds and increases their profits. With the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, banks became high-risk investment houses that trade financial instruments, such as interest-rate derivatives and mortgage-backed securities. With abundant funds supplied virtually free by the Federal Reserve, banks are paying depositors virtually nothing on their savings.

Despite the Federal Reserve's low interest rate policy, beginning Oct. 1, banks are raising the annual percentage rate (APR) on credit card purchases, cash advances and on balances that have a penalty rate because of late payment. Banks are also raising the late fee. In the midst of the worst economy since the 1930s, heavily indebted Americans, who are losing their jobs and their homes, are to be bled into bankruptcy by the very banks that are being subsidized with TARP funds and low interest rates.

Moreover, it is the American public that is on the hook for the TARP money and the low interest rates. As the U.S. government's budget is 50 percent or more in the red, the TARP money has to be borrowed from abroad or monetized by the Fed. This means more pressure on the U.S. dollar's exchange value as well as a rise in import prices and domestic inflation.

Thus, Americans will pay the TARP and low interest rate subsidies to their financial rulers with erosion in the purchasing power of the dollar. What we are experiencing is a massive redistribution of income from the American public to the financial sector.

And this is occurring during a Democratic administration headed by America's first black president, with a Democratic majority in the House and Senate.

Is there a government anywhere that less represents its citizens than the U.S. government?

Consider America's wars. As of the moment of writing, the out-of-pocket cost of America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is $900 billion. When you add in the already incurred future costs of veterans' benefits, interest on the debt, the forgone use of the resources for productive purposes and such other costs - as computed by Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard University budget expert Linda Bilmes - "our" government has wasted $3,000 billion on two wars, which have no benefit whatsoever for any American whose income does not derive from the military/security complex, about which five-star general President Eisenhower warned us.

It is now a proven fact that the United States invasion of Iraq was based on lies and deception of the American public. The only beneficiaries were the armaments industries, Blackwater, Halliburton, military officers who enjoy higher rates of promotion during war, and Muslim extremists whose case the U.S. government proved by its unprovoked aggression against Muslims. No one else benefited. Iraq was a threat to no one, and finding Saddam Hussein and executing him after a kangaroo trial had no effect on ending the war or preventing the start of others.

The cost of America's wars is a huge burden on a bankrupt country, but the cost incurred by veterans might be even higher. Homelessness is a prevalent condition of veterans, as is post-traumatic stress. American soldiers, who naively fought for the munitions industry's wars - for high compensation for the munitions CEOs and for dividends and capital gains for the munitions shareholders - paid not only with lives and lost limbs, but also with broken marriages, ruined careers, psychiatric disorders and prison sentences for failing to make child-support payments.

What did Americans gain from an unaffordable war in Iraq that lasted far longer than World War II and put into power Shiites allied with Iran?

The answer is obvious: nothing whatsoever.

What did the armaments industry gain? Billions of dollars in profits.

What about President Obama? “A corporate marketing creation," sums up the distinguished British journalist John Pilger.

Obama is the presidential candidate who promised to end the war in Iraq. He hasn't. But he has escalated the war in Afghanistan, started a new war in Pakistan, intends to repeat the Yugoslav scenario in the Caucasus and appears determined to start a war in South America. In response to the acceptance by U.S. puppet president of Columbia, Alvaro Uribe, of seven U.S. military bases in Columbia, Venezuela warned South American countries that the “winds of war are beginning to blow."

Here we have the U.S. government, totally dependent on the generosity of foreigners to finance its red ink, which extends in large quantities as far as the eye can see, completely under the thumb of the military/security complex, which will destroy us all in order to meet Wall Street share price expectations.

Why does any American care who rules Afghanistan? The country has nothing to do with us.

Did the armed services committees of the House and Senate calculate the risk of destabilizing nuclear-armed Pakistan when they acquiesced to Obama's new war there, a war that has already displaced 2 million Pakistanis?

No, of course not. The whores took their orders from the same military/security oligarchy that instructed Obama.

The great American superpower and its 300 million people are being driven straight into the ground by the narrow interest of the big banks and the munitions industry. People, and not only Americans, are losing their sons, husbands, brothers and fathers for no other reason than the profits of U.S. armaments corporations. And the gullible American people seem proud of it. Those ribbon decals on their cars, SUVs and monster trucks proclaim their naive loyalty to the armaments industries and to the whores in Washington who promote wars.

Will Americans, smashed and destroyed by “their" government's policy, which always puts Americans last, ever learn more about their real enemies?

Will Americans realize that they are not ruled by elected representatives, but by an oligarchy that owns the Washington whorehouse?

Will Americans ever understand that they are impotent serfs?

(8) DAVID CAMERON and his shadow cabinet have found a new billionaire backer
From: info@odeion.org  Date: 30.09.2009 08:31 AM

> DAVID CAMERON and his shadow cabinet have found
> a new billionaire backer
> http://centurean2.wordpress.com/2009/09/22/police-surrender-liberty-to-islamists-the-edl-and-uaf/

So, Alan Howard "switched most of his fund’s investments to cash in the weeks before markets crashed in the credit crunch"

More Odigo-style warnings for the Jewish brethren, by the sound of it. I am not taken in for an instant by the crap about "black swans". Howard is a Rothschild bagman and so is party to advance insider information. That Cameron and his crew can't see through such blatant and obvious frauds explains why they have been selected to win the next "election".