US Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Warns of Washington’s Secret Agendas

Guest Post by Paul Craig Roberts


One might think that by now even Americans would have caught on to the constant stream of false alarms that Washington sounds in order to deceive the people into supporting its hidden agendas.

The public fell for the lie that the Taliban in Afghanistan are terrorists allied with al Qaeda. Americans fought a war for 13 years that enriched Dick Cheney’s firm, Halliburton, and other private interests only to end in another Washington failure.

The public fell for the lie that Saddam Hussein in Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction” that were a threat to America and that if the US did not invade Iraq Americans risked a “mushroom cloud going up over an American city.” With the rise of ISIS, this long war apparently is far from over. Billions of dollars more in profits will pour into the coffers of the US military security complex as Washington fights those who are redrawing the false Middle East boundaries created by the British and French after WW I when the British and French seized territories of the former Ottoman Empire.

The American public fell for the lies told about Gaddafi in Libya. The formerly stable and prosperous country is now in chaos.

The American public fell for the lie that Iran has, or is building, nuclear weapons. Sanctioned and reviled by the West, Iran has shifted toward an Eastern orientation, thereby removing a principal oil producer from Western influence.

The public fell for the lie that Assad of Syria used “chemical weapons against his own people.” The jihadists that Washington sent to overthrow Assad have turned out to be, according to Washington’s propaganda, a threat to America.
The greatest threat to the world is Washington’s insistence on its hegemony. The ideology of a handful of neoconservatives is the basis for this insistence. We face the situation in which a handful of American neoconservative psychopaths claim to determine the fate of countries.

Many still believe Washington’s lies, but increasingly the world sees Washington as the greatest threat to peace and life on earth. The claim that America is “exceptional and indispensable” is used to justify Washington’s right to dictate to other countries.

The casualties of Washington’s bombings are invariably civilians, and the deaths will produce more recruits for ISIS. Already there are calls for Washington to reintroduce “boots on the ground” in Iraq. Otherwise, Western civilization is doomed, and our heads will be cut off. The newly created propaganda of a “Russian threat” requires more NATO spending and more military bases on Russia’s borders. A “quick reaction force” is being created to respond to a nonexistent threat of a Russian invasion of the Baltics, Poland, and Europe.

Usually it takes the American public a year, or two, three, or four to realize that it has been deceived by lies and propaganda, but by that time the public has swallowed a new set of lies and propaganda and is all concerned about the latest “threat.” The American public seems incapable of understanding that just as the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth, threat was a hoax, so is the sixth threat, and so will be the seventh, eighth, and ninth.

Moreover, none of these American military attacks on other countries has resulted in a better situation, as Vladimir Putin honestly states. Yet, the public and its representatives in Congress support each new military adventure despite the record of deception and failure.

Perhaps if Americans were taught their true history in place of idealistic fairy tales, they would be less gullible and less susceptible to government propaganda. I have recommended Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick’s The Untold History of the US , Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the US , and now I recommend Stephen Kinzer’s The Brothers , the story of the long rule of John Foster and Allen Dulles over the State Department and CIA and their demonization of reformist governments that they often succeeded in overthrowing. Kinzer’s history of the Dulles brothers’ plots to overthrow six governments provides insight into how Washington operates today.

In 1953 the Dulles brothers overthrew Iran’s elected leader, Mossadegh and imposed the Shah, thus poisoning American-Iranian relations through the present day. Americans might yet be led into a costly and pointless war with Iran, because of the Dulles brothers poisoning of relations in 1953.

The Dulles brothers overthrew Guatemala’s popular president Arbenz, because his land reform threatened the interest of the Dulles brothers’ Sullivan & Cromwell law firm’s United Fruit Company client. The brothers launched an amazing disinformation campaign depicting Arbenz as a dangerous communist who was a threat to Western civilization. The brothers enlisted dictators such as Somoza in Nicaragua and Batista in Cuba against Arbenz. The CIA organized air strikes and an invasion force. But nothing could happen until Arbenz’s strong support among the people in Guatemala could be shattered. The brothers arranged this through Cardinal Spellman, who enlisted Archbishop Rossell y Arellano. “A pastoral letter was read on April 9, 1954 in all Guatemalan churches.”

A masterpiece of propaganda, the pastoral letter misrepresented Arbenz as a dangerous communist who was the enemy of all Guatemalans. False radio broadcasts produced a fake reality of freedom fighter victories and army defections. Arbenz asked the UN to send fact finders, but Washington prevented that from happening. American journalists, with the exception of James Reston, supported the lies. Washington threatened and bought off Guatemala’s senior military commanders, who forced Arbenz to resign. The CIA’s chosen and well paid “liberator,” Col. Castillo Armas, was installed as Arbenz’s successor.

We recently witnessed a similar operation in Ukraine.

President Eisenhower thanked the CIA for averting “a Communist beachhead in our hemisphere,” and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles gave a national TV and radio address in which he declared that the events in Guatemala “expose the evil purpose of the Kremlin.” This despite the uncontested fact that the only outside power operating in Guatemala was the Dulles brothers.

What had really happened is that a democratic and reformist government was overthrown because it compensated United Fruit Company for the nationalization of the company’s fallow land at a value listed by the company on its tax returns. America’s leading law firm or perhaps more accurately, America’s foreign policy-maker, Sullivan & Cromwell, had no intention of permitting a democratic government to prevail over the interests of the law firm’s client, especially when senior partners of the firm controlled both overt and covert US foreign policy. The two brothers, whose family members were invested in the United Fruit Company, simply applied the resources of the CIA, State Department, and US media to the protection of their private interests. The extraordinary gullibility of the American people, the corrupt American media, and the indoctrinated and impotent Congress allowed the Dulles brothers to succeed in overthrowing a democracy.

Keep in mind that this use of the US government in behalf of private interests occurred 60 years ago long before the corrupt Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama regimes. And no doubt in earlier times as well.

The Dulles brothers next intended victim was Ho Chi Minh. Ho, a nationalist leader, asked for America’s help in freeing Vietnam from French colonial rule. But John Foster Dulles, a self-righteous anti-communist, miscast Ho as a Communist Threat who was springing the domino theory on the Western innocents. Nationalism and anti-colonialism, Foster declared, were merely a cloak for communist subversion.

Paul Kattenburg, the State Department desk officer for Vietnam suggested that instead of war, the US should give Ho $500 million in reconstruction aid to rebuild the country from war and French misrule, which would free Ho from dependence on Russian and Chinese support, and, thereby, influence. Ho appealed to Washington several times, but the demonic inflexibility of the Dulles brothers prevented any sensible response. Instead, the hysteria whipped-up over the “communist threat” by the Dulles brothers landed the United States in the long, costly, fiasco known as the Vietnam War. Kattenburg later wrote that it was suicidal for the US “to cut out its eyes and ears, to castrate its analytic capacity, to shut itself off from the truth because of blind prejudice.” Unfortunately for Americans and the world, castrated analytic capacity is Washington’s strongest suit.

The Dulles brothers’ next targets were President Sukarno of Indonesia, Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba of Congo, and Fidel Castro. The plot against Castro was such a disastrous failure that it cost Allen Dulles his job. President Kennedy lost confidence in the agency and told his brother Bobby that after his reelection he was going to break the CIA into a thousand pieces. When President Kennedy removed Allen Dulles, the CIA understood the threat and struck first.

Warren Nutter, my Ph.D. dissertation chairman, later Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, taught his students that for the US government to maintain the people’s trust, which democracy requires, the government’s policies must be affirmations of our principles and be openly communicated to the people. Hidden agendas, such as those of the Dulles brothers and the Clinton, Bush and Obama regimes, must rely on secrecy and manipulation and, thereby, arouse the distrust of the people. If Americans are too brainwashed to notice, many foreign nationals are not.

The US government’s secret agendas have cost Americans and many peoples in the world tremendously. Essentially, the Foster brothers created the Cold War with their secret agendas and anti-communist hysteria. Secret agendas committed Americans to long, costly, and unnecessary wars in Vietnam and the Middle East. Secret CIA and military agendas intending regime change in Cuba were blocked by President John F. Kennedy and resulted in the assassination of a president, who, for all his faults, was likely to have ended the Cold War twenty years before Ronald Reagan seized the opportunity.

Secret agendas have prevailed for so long that the American people themselves are now corrupted. As the saying goes, “a fish rots from the head.” The rot in Washington now permeates the country.

This article first appeared at Paul Craig Roberts' website Institute For Political Economy.  Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His Internet columns have attracted a worldwide following.

Stopping Western Aggression and Killing of Innocents in Syria

Guest Post by Tony Cartalucci

As the US begins token airstrikes on both sides of the Syrian-Iraqi border , the fighting capacity of the “Islamic State” or “ISIS,” has seen no visible setbacks. This is because ISIS is in fact the very proxy mercenaries intentionally created to fight the West’s proxy war against Iran and its arc of influence stretching from neighboring Iraq, through Syria, and into Lebanon.

As early as 2007 – a full 4 years before the 2011 “Arab Spring” would begin – Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh in his New Yorker article titled, “ The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefiting our enemies in the war on terrorism? ” would warn specifically (emphasis added):

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

After the West’s flooding of the region with billions of dollars worth of weapons, equipment, vehicles, training, and cash for the purpose of bolstering “moderate rebels,” what has emerged is precisely the “extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam” and are “sympathetic to Al Qaeda” Hersh warned about in 2007. The West has thus far otherwise failed to explain who else besides extremists could have received the aid, or who is funding extremists above and beyond the collective support provided by the US, Europe, and the West’s Middle Eastern partners, that have allowed these extremists to dominate the battlefield so decisively.

Now the US claims it must raise another army of “moderate” ground troops to augment its aerial bombardment of “ISIS.” But in reality, attacks on phantom enemies in the desert serve the singular purpose of creating a no-fly zone and no-drive zone for Syria’s military , preventing the final annihilation of the West’s terrorist mercenaries in Syrian territory and in fact giving them a second chance to finally march on the gates of Damascus with US airpower in tow.

For all intents and purposes, the US through its airstrikes has carved out a de facto buffer zone protected by US airpower. The ground troops it seeks to deploy “against ISIS” are intended instead for Damascus, the overthrow of the Syrian government, and the handover of Syria to sectarian warlords for the same genocidal conflagration still being suffered in Libya after a similar “intervention” by the US and its NATO allies.

Turning the Tables

Despite this diabolical, criminal conspiracy unfolding before the world’s eyes – a verbatim repeat of the crimes against humanity committed by NATO in Libya – there still exists an opportunity to turn the tables on the West, using its propaganda and the precedents it has set against it and its insidious agenda.

While in all actuality ISIS and other extremist factions already constitute the ground component of the West’s campaign against Damascus, now enjoying sanctuary under the cover of US airpower, the general public neither knows this, nor would ever accept this should they find out. The rhetorical hysteria surrounding the “awesome threat” ISIS suddenly poses to the world still has considerable momentum.

In a move of geopolitical redirection, Syria’s allies can cite that “awesome threat” of ISIS as impetus for their own actions in Syria – and more specifically – an overt, wide-ranging, arming, training, and funding regiment for forces already on the ground, already guaranteed not to be extremists, and the only legitimate force in Syrian territory - the Syrian Arab Army .

The Syrian Arab Army or More “Moderates?” – A Clear Choice

Indeed, the biggest quandary facing the West’s next attempt to overthrow Syria is the creation of its “ground force.” These troops would by necessity need to be indeed “moderates,” and not simply “more moderate” than the bogeymen Western propaganda has created under the name “ISIS.” Already, terrorists factions confirmed to have been armed with heavy weapons by the US have condemned airstrikes on ISIS and have openly admitted they fight alongside and within the ranks of Al Qaeda itself.

The Daily Beast would report in its article, “ Al Qaeda Plotters in Syria ‘Went Dark,’ U.S. Spies Say ,” that (emphasis added):

One Syrian rebel group supported in the past by the United States condemned the air strikes on Tuesday. Harakat Hazm, a rebel group that received a shipment of U.S. anti-tank weapons in the spring, called the airstrikes “an attack on national sovereignty” and charged that foreign led attacks only strengthen the Assad regime. The statement comes from a document, purportedly from the group, that has circulated online and was posted in English translation from a Twitter account called Syria Conflict Monitor. Several Syria experts, including the Brookings Doha Center’s Charles Lister, believe the document to be authentic.

Before the official statement, there were signs that Harakat Hazm was making alliances in Syria that could conflict with its role as a U.S. partner. In early Septemeber a Harakat Hazm official told a reporter for the L.A. Times: “Inside Syria, we became labeled as secularists and feared Nusra Front was going to battle us…But Nusra doesn’t fight us, we actually fight alongside them. We like Nusra.”

Harakat Hazm is the rule, not the exception. Beyond the nebulous title “moderates,” the West has thus far failed to name any of these actual groups – because they do not exist. Weapons and cash it is pouring into Syria have ended up “alongside” Al Qaeda’s al-Nusra front and ISIS, just as groups like Harakat Hazm have.

Russia, China, and Iran have an opportunity to cite the Syrian Arab Army as the most capable and appropriate force in the region with which to fight ISIS - a task the Syrian Arab Army has been demonstrably doing since at least 2011 . It was the US State Department itself that stated in their official designation of Jabhat al-Nusra as a foreign terrorist organization that Al Qaeda and other hardcore sectarian terrorists had been fighting the Syrian government, spearheading the violence in Syria since the conflict began in 2011.

The US State Department’s official press statement titled, “ Terrorist Designations of the al-Nusrah Front as an Alias for al-Qa’ida in Iraq ,” stated explicitly that:

Since November 2011, al-Nusrah Front has claimed nearly 600 attacks – ranging from more than 40 suicide attacks to small arms and improvised explosive device operations – in major city centers including Damascus, Aleppo, Hamah, Dara, Homs, Idlib, and Dayr al-Zawr. During these attacks numerous innocent Syrians have been killed.

It is no stretch then to characterize Syria’s conflict as one between a secular government and a menagerie of foreign-backed sectarian extremists. Without even mentioning these extremists’ foreign sponsors, Syria’s allies can use the current hysteria created by the Western media itself to offer overt and wide-ranging military and political support to the Syrian government and above all, the Syrian people. Beyond the buffer zone the West is struggling tactically, strategically, and politically to establish and maintain, will be a Syrian nation-state backed with the resources necessary to stop further aggression in its tracks and roll back the terrorist hordes the West is clearly perpetuating within Syria’s borders and all along them.

The US is Not the Only Nation Entitled to “Defend” Itself Against ISIS

The US appears to believe it is entitled to unilaterally attack, invade, and even occupy nations to “defend” itself against supposed threats. In the case of Syria, it is clear that after multiple failed attempts to sell regime change under the pretext of supporting “democracy,” multiple manufactured “humanitarian” pretexts, and the threat of “chemical weapons ,” neutralizing ISIS is simply the latest excuse in a long line of verified, increasingly desperate lies being used to advance the West’s agenda in the Middle East.

Russia - threatened explicitly by ISIS terrorists - and China are both demonstrably facing sectarian extremists within their own borders – many of whom are directly linked to Al Qaeda. Both could easily make a case for assisting the Syrian government in eliminating the “ISIS threat.” Moscow and Beijing – and many others – could argue that clearly the West’s strategy of arming “moderates” has failed, and their latest plan to arm and train between 5,000-15,000 more is a disaster in the making.

Instead, the secular nation-state of Syria should be given the resources and support it needs to finally bury the threat of extremism it itself has warned the world of since the West began disingenuously both stoking and perpetuating the conflict in 2011. If the West can unilaterally begin military operations within a sovereign nation and without a mandate from either Syria or the UN, surely Syria’s allies can offer substantial and overt material and political support if given Damascus’ approval.

For the so-called “moderates” – if any in fact exist – an opportunity to join the Syrian government in its fight and broker a truce with government forces could be an attractive alternative to the zero-sum and zero-gain scenario Washington has planned for Syrians on both sides of the conflict.

A Syrian soldier needs only look at the current state of Libya to understand the necessity to continue fighting on, and any genuine rebels there may be can do likewise, understanding the ploy against their own nation they have been used and abused for, and the ignoble end their fight is leading toward.

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”, where this first appeared.

The Islamic State “Big Lie”

 

Guest Post By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

Under the auspices of the United Nations Security Council,  with president Obama chairing the Council session, the United States has called upon the international community to adopt strong measures, at national and international levels, to curtail the recruitment of Islamic State fighters.
What is not mentioned in the media reports is that the heads of State and heads of government  who have endorsed America’s campaign against the Islamic State, advised by their respective secret services,  are fully aware that US intelligence is the unspoken architect of the Islamic State, which is part of a vast network of  US supported “jihadist” terrorist entities.  Countries are either coerced into supporting the US sponsored resolution or they are complicit in the US terror agenda.


Lest we forget, Saudi Arabia, Qatar,  have been financing and training the ISIL terrorists on behalf of the United States.  Israel is harboring the Islamic State (ISIL) in the Golan Heights, NATO in liaison with the Turkish high command has since March 2011 been involved in coordinating the recruitment of  the jihadist fighters dispatched to Syria. Moreover, the ISIL brigades in both Syria and Iraq are integrated by Western special forces and military advisers.

All this is known and documented, yet not a single head of state or head of government has had the courage to point to the absurdity of the US sponsored United Nations Security Council resolution, which was adopted unanimously on September 24.
“Absurdity” is an understatement. What we are witnessing is a criminal undertaking under UN auspices.
While international diplomacy is often based on deception, US foreign policy lies are no longer credible. What we are witnessing is a total breakdown of established diplomatic practice.   The “Forbidden Truth” is that the Islamic State is an instrument of Washington, a US ” intelligence asset”. ISIL is not an independent entity, nor is it an “outside enemy” which threatens global security, as conveyed by the Western media.
While everybody knows this, the big lie prevails. The Lie becomes the Truth.

The  United Nations Security Council resolution calls upon member states to “suppress the recruiting, organizing, transporting, equipping” and financing of foreign terrorist fighters,”  Specifically, the resolution points to the “the particular and urgent need to implement this resolution with respect to those foreign terrorist fighters who are associated with ISIL [Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant], ANF [Al-Nusrah Front] and other cells, affiliates, splinter groups or derivatives of Al-Qaida…” But are these not precisely the “opposition freedom fighters” trained and recruited by the Western military alliance in their quest to unseat the government of Bashar Al Assad?

United Nations Security Council Meeting, September 24, 2014, chaired by president Obama

The ISIL are the foot soldiers  of the Western military alliance. Their unspoken mandate is to wreck havoc and destruction in Syria and Iraq, acting on behalf of their US sponsors. The endgame is to transform countries into territories.

John McCain with leaders of Al Qaeda entities in Syria
Political leaders present at the UN Security Council session applauded the US counter-terrorism initiative. France’s  President Francois Hollande pointed to the fact that “terrorism has taken on another dimension, and it wants to conquer territory now.”

Several US allies including Jordan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar which are currently involved in supporting ISIL and Al Nusrah are now involved in the US sponsored air raids allegedly targeted against the ISIL inside Syria.

Turkey and Jordan have borders with Syria. Saudi Arabia and Turkey have borders with Iraq.  The direct military involvement of these countries points to a scenario of escalation and sectarian warfare extending from the Mediterranean to Central Asia.

In this regard, Turkey has already announced that it will be involved in ground operations inside Syria and Iraq. The newly-elected Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu announced (a day prior to the UN Security Council meeting) that his government will be seeking the endorsement of the Turkish Parliament to intervene militarily in both Iraq and Syria.

What is at stake is a so-called “no fly zone” in disguise, a justification  to bomb Iraq and Syria under a counter-terrorism mandate, largely targeting the civilian population. The political architects of the Islamic State including president Obama, prime minister Cameron and their counterparts in France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, et al, are now waging a  military campaign against the Islamic State, which they themselves created. Boots on the ground are also contemplated. According to Iraqi government sources, the US will be deploying sending ome 13000 troops to Iraq.

The leaders of western countries are either utterly ignorant and stupid, or totally corrupt and complicit?  “The Terrorists R US.” Moreover, they seem totally unaware of the broad implications of their actions.
War propaganda is a criminal act under Nuremberg: Crime against the Peace. By upholding the lies and fabrications of US foreign policy, the mainstream media is complicit in war crimes.

Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron is to bring the matter to the British parliament. The revocation of citizenship is contemplated in Britain as well as  in Canada for those suspected of supporting the jihadist movement.  While Britain’s Prime minister has called upon Her Majesty’s government “to restrict or rescind the passports of British jihadists … Home Secretary Theresa May has threatened to deprive those Britons already fighting with the Islamic State of their citizenship.” ,

Ironically, Prime Minister Cameron is complicit in facilitating and organizing within the UK the recruitment of British jihadists.  And indeed one might suggest, pending the formulation of criminal charges, that his passport should be revoked for “supporting the jihadist movement”.

George W. Bush stated in 2001, “you are either with us or with the terrorists.” The forbidden truth is that the US is involved in a diabolical  undertaking: it has created an Islamic terror network with a view to destroying sovereign countries and now it is waging a war against its own terror network. Without media propaganda, this military agenda under the guise of counter-terrorism would fall flat, collapse like a deck of cards.

The US president and his indefectible British ally “R the Terrorists”, they are the “state sponsors of terrorism”, with a view to waging a war of conquest.  The United Nations is complicit in this undertaking

Warning from Anonymous - The Next Crisis – Part Two – A Manifesto for the Supremacy of the 1%

  

Guest Post By Golem XIV

The present crisis is not yet over and yet we are already overdue for the next.

In Part One I suggested that not only are the 1% well aware of this but that while they have been telling us how we must ‘save’ the present system and assuring us that any radical break with the policies of the past will result in catastrophe, they have in fact been working hard to engineer very radical changes.  We have all seen the decline in living standards and are all acutely aware of the changes which directly effect us. But I wonder if  the true significance of the changes, when taken together, has largely gone unnoticed? Certainly the Over Class has not made clear their real intentions. Why would they?  I believe the 1% know that to protect their wealth and power next time will require radical political dismantling of what is left of our democracy.  Necessarily much of what follows is speculative. But the speculation is, I think, rooted in and extrapolated from what we can already see happening today.

Some things about the present system must be maintained, others expanded and some new ones added. Taken together the changes, I think, amount to the beginnings of a Manifesto for the 1%. So here are some of the things, I think, our global Over Class would like to achieve and how they intend to achieve them.
As I have been writing this article it has grown, each section getting longer. I’m afraid I sometimes find it difficult to know where the sweet point is between, on the one hand – being too dense, and on the other – over explaining. So here is a outline of the sections so that you can see where I’m going and skip the sections that seem obvious.

Outline.
1) The Over Class must retain and consolidate their control over the global system of debt.
2) The power to regulate must be taken from nations and effectively controlled by corporations.
3) Professionalize governance. Democracy can be and must be neutered, and an effective way of doing this is to insist that amateur, elected officials MUST take the advice of professional (read corporate) advisors. Expand current law to enforce this.
4) The financial system badly needs un-encumbered ‘assets’ to feed the debt issuing system. A new way must be found to prise sovereign assets from public ownership. Such a new way is suggested.
5) In order to facilitate the political changes necessary, the public mind-set must be changed. National Treasures such as the NHS in Britain must be re-branded as evil State Monopolies.
6) Effective ways must be found to convince people that democratic rule is no longer sufficient to protect them.
7) An alternative to Democracy must be introduced and praised. That alternative must be the Rule of International Law as written and controlled by the lawyers of the 1%. People must be told that this is all that stands between them and an increasingly hostile and anarchic world. But that it can only keep them safe if it has absolute authority over democracy. People must voluntarily bow to it out of fear and its decisions must be as absolute and unquestionable.

In conclusion, I suggest that this amounts to a dystopian version of the old environmentalist idea of Spaceship Earth. A corporate version where we are just passengers who must pay our passage in a ship someone else owns. No longer inhabitants or citizens with the same inalienable right to be there and be heard as anyone else. 

And yet, dark as all this may seem, victory for the 1% depends on no one understanding what is happening. If we are already beginning to see the outlines of what the Over Class wants, then their victory is not assured. If our ignorance is their bliss, then our understanding is like sunlight on a vampire’s skin.
All is not lost, not by a bloody long way.

Towards a Manifesto for the supremacy of the 1%

1) Control of debt.
The 1%, through their ownership of the private banking system, must continue to issue and handle the majority of debt and have legal control over the payment of those debts. Power over the system of debt is critical to the 1% and one thing is paramount – there must be no democratic, nor public, control of it. That old saying, “give me control over a nation’s currency…” should now read, give me control over a nation’s debt. Debt trumps currency. Which in turn means the 1% must maintain custodial power over the money used to pay those debts.

At the moment, the largest custodial banks are those on Wall Street. Which means any dispute over what happens to that money gets settled in the Southern District Court of Manhattan. And that court has consistently interpreted international law in ways that have elevated the rights of private banks and bond holders over the rights of nations and entire peoples.  Two recent decisions in the US Supreme Court, which upheld the Southern District rulings regarding the Vulture funds Elliott Associates, NML Capital and others, forced the Wall Street custodial banks holding Argentina’s money, not only to freeze all payments but also to reveal all confidential information regarding Argentina’s assets. It is no exaggeration to say that these rulings favoured the Vulture Capitalists so decisively that it has changed the balance of power between private bond holders and entire peoples, in favour of the former. Even the UN wrote that the rulings were so sweeping that they,

…set legal precedents which could have profound consequences for the international financial system…

and which,

… will erode sovereign immunity.

Such is the power that the present arrangements give to the global 1% and their banks, that no group of emerging nations must be allowed to create rival custodial banks under a different court. Such would not only rival the mighty custodians of Wall Street but would stop the trend of enforcing US corporate law as de facto global law. If ever sovereign nations did not fund themselves by issuing debt, and if ever the 1% did not control where that debt and the ‘money’ to pay it was stored, and if ever the true sovereignty of nations was re-asserted against Vulture capitalism, then a great deal of the 1%’s power would evaporate. So none of that can be allowed to happen.

It is perhaps THE most important point of any for-profit, debt-based, currency or system (debt doesn’t HAVE to involve interest) that that debt must increase.  Not because it is a law of physics nor even that it benefits the 99% (largely it doesn’t) – it happens because it benefits the 1% to whom the interest is owed and more fundamentally because the entire value of the 1%’s debt-based, paper wealth depends upon there being a constant increase in debt. If debt didn’t increase then their wealth would become, first unstable, and then burn to ash. If that seems like I plucked this claim out of thin air I suggest that our present crisis and many others before it are the abundant proof. When the expansion of the global bubble of debt began to slow in 2007 it made the value of all the existing debt-based wealth first uncertain and then implode. Everything done since has been for the sole purpose of reflating the bubble of debt so that debt-based wealth could be said to have value. The 1% will never give up the power they currently enjoy to issue and control the inflation of debt, because their wealth would evaporate if they did.

2) Regulatory power.

One of the areas of power remaining to nations which act as an unwelcome hindrance to global corporate power is the power to regulate. This must be curbed and proposals are already on the table to do so. Such an effort is now enshrined in the multilateral trade agreements currently being agreed behind closed doors: the TPP, TTIP and the one which will remove finance from national control, TISA. These agreements all contain a new approach to regulation which we could summarize as “Our experts, Our data, Our regulations.” In a paper submited to the TTIP negotiations jointly by the US Chamber of Commerce and Businesseurope we find a proposal to adopt what they call “Regulatory Cooperation”. Which the paper says will,

“…put stakeholders [the corporations]  at the table with regulators to essentially co-write regulation.”  P. 4

The new philosophy, despite its coy claim to being about ‘cooperation’, puts corporations firmly in charge of setting the regulations for themselves and their products on the grounds that only they have the necessary experts, who have the necessary access to the data which is otherwise “confidential”. Or, to appropriate a phrase from the American revolution and use it for demanding more rights for corporations, “No Regulation without Consultation.”

The policy already being written in to the Trade Agreements and given specific teeth by their Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) clauses, is not simply about who regulates what, it is the leading edge of a broad concern to remove any important decisions from democratic control.  The ISDS, in case you are not familiar with the jargon, is the clause first used in Bilateral Trade Agreements, now being incorporated into all Trade agreements, which gives corporations the right to take nations  to privately run arbitration at which they can sue the nations … and almost always win. And this, for me, is the key point. Disastrous as the Trade Agreements will be in and of themselves, they are a leading edge of this much more profound attack (see below) which I think we will see gathering pace in the next few years.

3) Neuter Democracy by Professionalizing Governance.
The Global   do not like democracy. In their less guarded comments this is beginning to show. Here is the EU Trade Commissioner, Karel De Gucht, quoted in a piece over at The Automatic Earth talking about the Scottish independence vote, 

 “A Europe driven by self-determination of peoples … is ungovernable … ”

One of the main ways the 1% can most effectively neuter democratic power (in a way that they can claim it is not their intent at all) – and the regulatory attack contained in the Trade Agreements is just one example –  is to advocate professionalizing governance. This has the advantage of sounding good on the surface. Who wouldn’t want professionals giving advice? In practice it will mean that although anyone can still be elected (that can be left in place) there will be a new insistence that they MUST – not ‘can’, but MUST, take the advice of professionals – corporate professionals. And as noted above a good step towards this has already been proposed for trade regulations in the corporate submissions to the TTIP negotiations.

The 1% and their media outlets will argue that Amateurism is no longer good enough. After all would you want an amateur heart surgeon, or an amateur nuclear engineer? No of course not. So why would you want amateurs to make decisions in any other sphere of governance? Elected officials are amateur. The experts whose ‘advice’  they, till now, “could” take, they from now on MUST take. And luckily there is precedence for this. Already when it comes to government ‘regulation’ of financial enterprises they use, retain, rely upon (you chose the phrase you like the sound of) the big 4 accountancy firms to do it for them. KPMG, not the government, inspects the books and signs to say that everything is tickety-boo and all the corporate bosses and their political friends then have to do is smile for the cameras. And it worked ‘really well’ in 2008 – in the sense that ‘The Regulator’ said whatever the 1% needed them to say at the time, until it was too late for anyone to do anything about it. That is precisely the kind of ‘regulation’ the overclass need going forwards.  Thereby, “No regulation without consultation” gets expanded to “No laws without consultation”. And of course that ISDS system of arbitration could be easily expanded to other spheres of government and used to stop any laws or changes to laws taken without or against ‘professional’ advice.

If any of this is put in place then it has the wonderful effect of leaving the politicians effectively powerless, but still in place so as to be the focus of blame. The 1% will hold the real power but the politicians will always take the blame. Any time things go wrong it will be because they made a mistake or did not follow advice as well or as fully as they should. Nothing will ever be the fault of the advice or the advisors.
As long as the 1% make sure the politicians are well taken care of after office, then there will be plenty of takers for the jobs. How utterly empty would the pantomime of our democracy be then?
So far this has been about taking from us. What about giving to them? Let’s not forget they have needs too.

4) From bail-out-cash to assets-for-pledging.
We all know banks would have died if it were not for the Trillions (yes, it is now counted in trillions) in public cash we have pumped in to them since 2007, to replace the flow of cash their brilliant loans should have been bringing in but of course weren’t and never will.  And that flow of public cash in to the private banks continues. Despite yet more empty lies about the banks being fine and fixed, as I said above we are not fixing them we are feeding them. The latest feeding will be when the  ECB gives them another third of a trillion in TLTRO (Targeted Long Term Refunding Operation) which replaces the sad, plain old LTRO of the last few years which gave the banks a trillion or so and was supposed (both times) to be the definitive fix. Of course since the LTRO ’fixed’ things two major european banks still had the ungrateful effrontery to collapse – Banco Espirto Santo in Portugal and Monte dei Paschi bank in Italy. Right now all the other European, ‘not-in-need-of-any-help-being-perfectly-fixed and fine-thank-you-according-to-several-official-and-therefore-absolutely-trustworthy-stress-tests’ banks are lining up to take another third of a trillion. This, we are told will not only fix them…again…not that they need it, but will also encourage them to lend in to the ‘real’ economy. Which, oddly, we were assured the previous half dozen fixes were also going to do. But necessary as this sort of direct cash bail out still is, there is another pressing need which the bail-outs do not address. And that is the on-going but now rather accute need for assets which can be pledged as collateral for loans.

The reason assets are in many ways more important than cash is that although cash keeps imminent death at bay, assets, pledgeable ones, are the key to profit.

Banks want assets. The kind they are looking for are physical assets which produce wealth – like factories, or frackable land, or electricity grids, or ports, or telecoms systems. Assets that, unlike money, cannot be so easily withdrawn, tapered or ‘tightened’. The kind of assets  a nation might have, funnily enough. The banks don’t want these assets in order to use them to produce wealth directly, but rather to use them as collateral for creating more credit and debt. To think of the value of an asset in terms of the wealth or profit it can produce by its productive nature, is to be so very last century. It’s akin to thinking the value of a stock or share is to hold it and watch it go up in price. The real value of the stock or share is in trading it up and down as fast as possible. Let some slow-poke sit and just watch it. Similarly the value of an asset is vastly greater when thought of as the means for expanding the system of credit and debt. In the real world of making stuff, an asset like an electricity grid or a factory only makes the profit it makes. But in the world of credit and debt the same asset can be pledged over and over to create more and more credit. I pledge it to you and get a loan. You pledge it to someone else and you  get a loan. The system has grown twice. Have a factory and you get the profit it makes from its widgets. Use the title to that factory as collateral to get a loan or extend a loan (if you are a bank) and you and the rest of us in the system can use the same asset over and over. You can create a loan based on its collateral value. Or you could hypothecate your claim on the asset to another bank who can re-hypothecate the same asset and so on. And everyone else can write derivatives based on its value going up or down. Till we are all rich in paper credit and debt.

Of course we all know that if the music should ever stop, it’s the factory itself and the slow old boring profit it makes from selling widgets that survives while the paper turns to ash. Which would make you think that the smart people would play the credit and debt game for a little while but then cash out and buy up the real stuff before the music stopped. And that is, of course what they all tell themselves they will do. The problem is that as soon as you get out of the endless creation of paper debt and credit and buy real stuff you are in effect leaving the fast lane and driving back in the slow lane. Those who stay in the fast lane a little longer will do better that quarter and make you look like a loser. No one in the financial world can survive long as a loser. So there is a terrible pressure to stay in the fast lane just a little longer. Which means they all do. No one wants to be the first to lose his nerve and get out too soon. This is the nature of bubble growth. It is always better to stay playing the bubble. It is the nature of a bubble that even the smart players, who know it is a bubble, will want to hold and trade bubble assets rather than the boring, low growth real ones it is all ultimately based on.  And that is why they always, without fail, get caught holding them in the end. And then demand we bail them out. Which is how assets beget debts which beget the crash which beget the demand for a bail out so it can all start afresh.

The question is how to get your hands on those assets for a good price? The old fashioned way would be to invest wisely and buy it. The new way is to try to buy them at fire sale prices from a debt burdened or defaulting sovereign who you are ‘advising’ on how to cut its debt or pay its bonds by selling state assets. Of course the obstinate problem is that sometimes people don’t want their governments to sell off their nation’s treasures and assets. As long a some tattered shreds of democracy remain, this can hinder the process of looting.

At the moment nations can still default and force bond holders to accept a ‘hair cut’ – meaning a loss on their loan. This is always portrayed by our loyal media as some sort of crime against nature and an evil plot by crooked politicians. Despite the fact that when you lend money (and buying a bond is just that) you do so knowing you are taking a risk which is precisely why you are paid interest on your loan. So the risk of a loss is known and agreed at the start. And let’s remember most of the money made on bonds is, in fact, from the buying and selling of the risk of default. The trade in CDS (Credit Default Swaps) wouldn’t exist without it.
Of course if a corporation should act unwisely, go bankrupt and force losses on their bond holders – pick your example – Chrysler, AIG, GM, the S&L’s there’s an endless number – this is seen as a perfectly normal, if unfortunate.  But it is clear that there is a push to put a stop to nations being afforded the same right.

At the moment the major victory, which I mentioned above, is by the latest Supreme Court rulings in the US in favour of the Vulture funds against Argentina making it harder for any government ( I am thinking or Ireland in particular) to put the good of its people above the good of the bond holders.  The rulings make it now very likely that more and more bond holders will refuse to engage in any sort of voluntary agreement to restructure sovereign debts. The problem is, this route, the Vulture route, can take a long time and requires specialist lawyers. Not every bond holder has that expertise. They, the majority, need another quicker, easier route to getting their hands on national assets.

Here is one way I think they could do it. If I am right, and if this is a viable way, then they will have thought of it already and should be busy working out the legal fine print and preparing the politicians to agree to it.
In a nut-shell, I think nations will be urged to issue a new kind of sovereign bond which would be the equivalent of a corporate Covered Bond or, as they are sometimes known, a Pfandbrief. Don’t be put off by the jargon it’s quite simple. Should the borrower default or go bankrupt, a normal bond gives you a claim on the general pool of the borrowers’ remaining assets. But all the other bond holders have the same claim.  So you must all wait for the auditors to sort out what assets there are to be shared out and who gets how much back. Then you all form an orderly line with those holding the most senior bonds at the front and those with more junior bonds at the back. If the pool of  assets runs out before you get to the front of the line, then you go away empty handed. I’m simplifying but that is the general way it works. Except for one group of bond holders – those who have Covered Bonds or Pfandbreif, because those bonds not only have general claim on the pool of assets but have a unique claim, written in when the bond was issued, on assets that were ring-fenced as the specified collateral for those bonds ONLY. Those bonds have their value ‘covered’ by a specified group of assets. 

Now at the moment when a company goes bankrupt what we mean by ‘assets’ is everything: Cash, investments and any and all physical assets,  which means buildings, land mines, oil fields, and equipment, from machinery to paper-clips. However, nations are not considered as companies (YET). The 1% has encouraged the talk of UK Plc but it is not YET a legal reality. Which means when a nation defaults it does so because it says it does not have the cash (from financial holdings and tax flow) to pay the bond which is due for repayment. Till a few months ago no one had the right to claim for themselves a nation’s assets in payment of a debt. Nor had they any legal authority to force a nation to sell assets to get cash to pay a debt.
But over the years this presumption has been eroded. The privatization programmes of Thatcher were a major step in governments claiming the power to dispose of the assets of the people, as that government of the day saw fit. The recent rulings in favour of the Vulture funds have been another important step in giving the corporations  new rights – under US law only so far – to seize sovereign assets wherever they could. Which, in effect, means. if they could get their hands on them without the use of an army – such as seizing assets held in a third party bank or another country which would comply with the order. Thus a private custodial bank might agree to give the contents of a  sovereign nation’s accounts to a Vulture fund. Or a country in which, for example, Argentina had moored a state ship might agree to impound that ship till the Vultures could swing by and pick it up.

BUT a Covered Bond would make life so very much simpler for the bond holders. If a nation was induced to issue a Covered Bond then it could be written in to the agreement at the start, which national assets – a train system or oil and gas fields – were the specified and pledged as collateral for this particular bond. The government in charge when the default happened could then say to its electorate, “We’re terribly sorry but its right here in the small print – you – via your government agreed to forfeit these assets if you failed to pay. This is international law which we must obey.” And THAT last phrase is the key which opens the door to the future the 1% want.  A future were International Law is held up as the new supreme, and completely non-democratic arbiter of right and wrong. International law would be the new god. And like god would be above the whims and breezes of merely popular wants and desires. People already see the law as somehow above democracy, forgetting that democratic governments wrote the laws and have the power to unwrite them if the people so direct them. This last point is the one will be overlayed and suppressed. I will come back to this.

But back to Covered Bonds. It would be a simple matter for a compliant government – an ably advised one of course – to issue such bonds in the people’s name. Will nations be stupid enough to go for  it? Well the ‘nation’ might well object but that’s precisely what politicians are for. Elected politicians would be willing to do it today - except for the fact they know they would be thrown out of office immediately. So what is needed is a major media campaign complete with paid-for experts and pundits all saying how the way forward for nations who are presently unable to access the bond markets is for them to issue Covered Bonds. Get experts from Germany to talk about the long history and success of the German Pfandbrief. Have them talk about how banks that have issued such bonds are considered among the safest. Link together in the popular mind the issuing of Covered Bonds with the general idea of safety and prosperity. Never mind the one doesn’t cause the other. Don’t mention what enormous rights they would be giving the corporations nor what a huge part of their sovereignty they would have signed away. Don’t let these things be mentioned. Then move on to suggest that issuing such covered bonds would lead to greater investment even for nations that are not having trouble issuing bonds. As soon as you have made this link between issuing these kind of bonds and ‘greater inward investment’ the job is almost done. It is this link to attracting greater inward investment which is being used to sell the Trade Agreements, Bilateral Investment Treaties and the Investor State Dispute Settlement mechanism, saying that it is only those nations who agree to them, who will benefit by attracting more investment. It isn’t true, (there have been several studies the first in 2002 by the World bank concluding it isn’t true)  but as long as we keep saying it is, who will argue? And people will eventually come to think it must be a good idea.

In the Covered Bond future a hideous inversion will take place. Once upon a time bonds were issued so that a nation could build up a wealth of essential infrastructure such as hospitals and roads, and to develop natural resources for the benefit of the entire nation. In the Covered Bond future those resources and national treasures would be pledged for nothing more than raising more debt and would, after another financial crisis and the deluge of new bail-out demands it would bring, undoubtedly hand over their ownership to the bond holders. And it would all happen without a Vulture having to stir from its perch and where any murmur of discontent would be met with righteous sermons about the sanctity of international law.

5) From National Treasures to State Monopolies.
Of course it will not be quite that straight forward to prize a nation’s assets and wealth from its people’s ownership.  Other ideas will have to be changed as well. National Assets must be re-named as State Monopolies. Instead of talking about, for example, how efficient a national health system is, or what good care it provides per capita expenditure it must be referred to, darkly, as a State Monopoly and all the talk must be about how bad monopolies are. No attention must be paid, no reference ever allowed to studies by the WHO or this one by the Commonwealth Fund that have consistently found,

The United States health care system is the most expensive in the world, but…the U.S. fails to achieve better health outcomes than the other countries, and … is last or near last on dimensions of access, efficiency, and equity.

No mention of such studies must be made. Instead all talk must simply concentrate on how restrictive state monopolies must be and how they must limit ‘choice’ and allow inefficient and greedy public workers to burden everyone else.  And wouldn’t you know it, the effort is already under way. Here is a paper from the Fraser Institute in Canada calling state education a State Monopoly. The Fraser Institute is resolutely free-market and is funded by the likes of ExxonMobil and the Koch brothers.
The paper doesn’t claim, because it hasn’t any evidence to support any such claim, that the State school system educates badly or that for-profit schools are a better way to educate a nation. Instead it simply says how bad monopolies are. How they restrict choice.

Canadians rightly complain about protected industries – whether it’s dairy products, telecoms, banking, or transport – and the consequences in the form of less choice, poorer service, and/or higher prices….

The paper then begins to talk about education as if it were a ‘protected’ industry. Allowing it to elide the harm done by monopolies in the market, with free education.

 When government is the sole supplier of services, the options for consumers are extremely limited.

Of course in the case of the NHS in the UK where the government is the sole supplier and it is, therefore, a State Monopoly the result has, for several generations, been a health care system that is cheaper and better than the US free-market version in almost every single way.  You may hate the conclusion on ideological grounds but, in fact, all the actual evidence is on my side.

But evidence has never been the concern of the global overclass, has it?. Fear and greed is more their currency. And so the assets of every nation are to be denigrated along with those who work in them, as inefficient and staffed by greedy, lazy state-worker parasites bent on restricting everyone’s ‘choice’. If enough people can be taught to hate the teachers who teach their children and the doctors and nurses who care for their parents and if a general culture of hate-thy-neighbor can be engendered, then the Over-class will be significantly closer to asset stripping your nation – with your help. You might imagine an Orwellian slogan of “Give up ownership/Get more Choice!” Believe it at your peril.

This is speculation, of course, but papers like the Fraser institute’s make it not so much ‘groundless speculation’ but more ‘extrapolation from what already is’. There already is a firm intent to privatize education in those countries where state education is good, and a huge desire to privatize all the state health systems that DO WORK and DO deliver fantastic services, like the NHS in the UK, because they would be priceless assets to strip. And every nation has natural resources which, like the common land of centuries ago, the over-class would like to enclose using exactly the same argument they used to clear the Highlands and enclose the Common Lands of England – “Oh they’ll be so much more valuable and productive when accumulated in our private hands than if we leave them distributed among the unworthy commoners.
It warmed for them a few hundred years ago. They are hoping it will work for them again. We must stop them and not only do I belive we can, so do they.

Which is why discrediting democracy itself, above all else, must be the urgent task of the Over Class.

At the risk of your ire I am pausing again here. I hope that the argument so far has provided sufficient to disagree with, comment upon, refine and improve so that you will forgive me for holding back the last few sections.  It seemed to me better to get this much published, and give people a chance to comment rather than deliver it as one enormous lump. Anyway the last part will be finished soon and will follow shortly. Promise.

Warning from Anonymous - The Next Crisis – Part One

  

Guest Post By Golem XIV

The present global financial ‘crisis’ began in 2007-8. It is not nearly over. And that simple fact is a problem. Not because of the life-choking misery it inflicts on the lives of millions who had no part in its creation, but because the chances of another crisis beginning before this one ends, is increasing. What ‘tools’  - those famous tools the central bankers are always telling us they have – will our dear leaders use to tackle a new crisis when all those tools are already being used to little or no positive effect on this one?

I think it is worth remembering how many financial crises we have had since the economy became globally interconnected and since we began the deregulation of finance and the roll back of all Great Depression safeguards under Reagan and Clinton.  It’s also worth noticing that the causes and pattern of the various crises have an unpleasant ring of familiarity about them – as in – the bank lobbyists making sure nothing gets learned and nothing gets changed.

In the 80′s there were four financial crises: The Latin American crisis caused by those countries borrowing and the global banks agreeing to lend them far too much (too much lending to people who couldn’t afford it – check), the American Savings and Loan (S&L) crisis when American S&L’s made too many bad, long-term and leveraged loans relying on rolling over and over short-term loans to fund it all (reliance on short-term liquidity to cover massive loan books of dodgy loans – check) , and the 1987 Stock market crash when the system of global debt had its first major modern global paroxysm (systemic contagion – check) . And before the dust had even settled from that we had the Junk Bond collapse ( Too much junk – check. $400 billion in junk bonds were issued in 2013 alone). In the 90s there were two more crises (if one ignores the Mexican currency devaluation): The Asia currency crisis (a replay of the Latin Crisis with the same global banks doing the same lending to different corrupt or stupid leaders who agreed to loans on behalf of  people who couldn’t afford to pay back – ie nothing learned at all  - check) and the Dot Com bubble (valuations way above reality fueled by cheap money and lax lending – check). I think that’s most of the kinds of greed fueled idiocy accounted for.

If you line up the S&L, the Junk Bond and the Dot Com bubble, America has had a major home-brewed financial crisis every ten years. If you consider that none of these events happened in isolation nor limited their effects to the country of origin then we have to conclude that the global financial system is prone to crises. You can, if you see the world through resolutely libertarian glasses, blame everything on interfering governments – it matters little. The fact remains that the system as is, is unstable and run by the myopic, the greedy and the corrupt. Where they draw their salary, which side of the revolving door they happen to be on, on any day seems to me irrelevant. The worst of them don’t understand and are easily bought. The best have no concern for anyone or anything beyond their next bonus.

And here we are being led by them.

Of course saying another crisis is coming is like saying we are due a large earthquake in Southern California. True, but it doesn’t mean one is going to happen tomorrow. What I think it does mean is that we should be thinking what our leaders, what the people they work for – the global overclass – might already have in mind or have already put in place, for what they want done next time. I think it would be foolish to imagine they have not thought about it and are not putting in place the things which will close off some futures and force us into others that they prefer. They have so very much to lose and so very much more they want to gain.
The next crisis.

To know what the next crisis might look like we first have to look at the conditions today that will form its starting point. Necessarily everything from here on is speculation, nevertheless even when we can’t know what people will do and what ‘events’ will overtake us, we can, I think,  discern quite a bit of the general topography, the landscape, of the future.

The first thing we should bear in mind is that however it starts, the next crisis will be another debt-crisis like the current one. This is because debt is now the global currency and global financing mechanism. Once it starts, however, one thing will be very different from the last time – this time nearly all nations are already heavily indebted. Last time they were not. And this is what changes everything for the over-class.
Contrary to the endless misinformation repeated at every juncture by austerity politicians and bankers alike, the debt load of most nations at the beginning of the present crisis was not already out of control before the banks blew up.




The green bars are debt as percentage of GDP before the bank bail outs and the blue bars are after. These are official Eurostat figures. Notice Ireland. Its debt to GDP was down at 27%.  The ONLY thing that altered between 2007 and 2010 was the bank bails outs. Ireland’s ENTIRE debt problem is due to bailing out private banks and their bond holders. Britain’s debt almost doubled and again the ONLY thing that happened was bailing out the banks. The government claims that UK public debt was out of control due to spending on public services is just WRONG. UK government debt against GDP had not gone up in 7 years. Then when we bailed out the banks it nearly doubled. That is the fact as opposed to the propaganda of what happened and why.

If you look a little more closely into the figures for government debt levels in Europe between 2000 and 2010 the fact is that all European nations apart from Portugal were either reducing their debt-to-GDP level or at least not allowing it to grow. Most of Europe was reducing government debt to quite manageable and historically low levels. Ireland’s debt was very low (27%). Take a good long look at those two bars for Ireland. Even Spain was bringing in more in tax than it was spending. Don’t take my word for it look at the figures yourself. Almost  every European country was keeping debt to GDP even or going down – before the banks were bailed out that is. The exceptions, of course, were Greece and Italy whose debt was already very high even before they bailed out their banks.

The sudden explosion of European sovereign debt is the direct and indisputable result of all our political parties deciding they would safeguard their mates’ and their own personal wealth (it is the top 10% who hold the bulk of their wealth in the financial products which would be destroyed in a bank collapse. NOT the rest of us!) by bailing out the private banks and piling their unpaid debts on to the public purse.

So whatever the trigger of the next crisis may be, they know any solution which saves the wealth and power of the over-class will have to involve piling new, private-bank bad-debts on to already indebted sovereigns and that, our leaders must be keenly aware, will not be easy to force on an already angry public. They know a whole range of the assurances they might like to give us about what must be done when the next crisis hits and how those things will undoubtably save us, will not be so easy to shove down people’s throats. 

“So what,” I can hear the 1% saying, “can we do?”

Here are some thoughts on what I think they can do, will do, are already begining to do and WHY they are doing them.

The over-arching thought that I have, which shapes everything from here on, is that this crisis is no longer primarily financial; it is now political. Any solution, no matter for whose benefit, is beyond the scope of financial ‘reform’ but will depend on radical political change. In my opinion, the era of reformist politics is over. The questions are:  radical change in which political direction? in whose hands? and for whose benefit?
At the moment, I believe the radical thinking is almost all being done on the 1%’s side. They may talk about fixing, but what I think they mean is changing. When Obama spoke of change, he meant it. Just not primarily for you. The 1% are not stupid. They see the need for change and intend to control it.

I think one of the cleverset things the 1% have done over the last few years is the way they have created a relentlless public discourse, via their paid political front-men and women and their media empires, to insist on the need to ‘fix’ and protect the system, and the extreme danger to us all  should the system not be ‘saved’. This has served as a perfect cover for making sure that not enough people have noticed that the system is, in fact, being gutted and replaced by something that better serves the interests of the 1%. We have not been fixing the banks, we have been feeding them.

So while the 1% are thinking ahead, too many of the 99% are still like rabbits in the headlights, mesmerized and paralysed. They have been told over and over that any radical change to our present financial and political system is impossible, and if tried, would only bring disaster upon us. The 1%, on the other hand, see clearly that the present system will bring disaster upon them if it is not changed radically. They can see that it must be almost done away with entirely – in all but name. The important thing for them is that the direction of radical change benefit them and that the 99% not even realise that it is happening.

And so far it’s working – just. Just enough people continue, if grudgingly, to take refuge in a moribund political system made of parties and theories which date back to the Victorian age.  The temporary triumph of the 1% is that despite the fact that no one would drive a Victorian car, nor wear Victorian shoes or clothes, they somehow feel there’s no choice but to rely on Victorian political institutions, parties and ideas.  The good news is that the number who really believe this is dwindling and most of those who do, do so out of fear not faith. Which is why our present, 1% controlled politics, is increasingly about engendering fear rather than inspiring faith. 

Luckily truth has a wonderfully cleansing effect upon lies and fear. So here are some of the things I think might be true about what is really happening to and around us. Taken together I feel they begin to amount to Manifesto for the 1%.

The Real Reason We Are Bombing Syria

Guest Post By Dennis Kucinich

The administration’s response to the conjunction of this weekend’s People’s Climate March and the International Day of Peace?

1) Bomb Syria the following day, to wrest control of the oil from ISIS which gained its foothold directly in the region through the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Jordan funding and arming ISIS’ predecessors in Syria.2) Send the president to UN General Assembly, where he will inevitably give a rousing speech about climate and peace, while the destruction of the environment and the shattering of world peace is on full display 5,000 miles away.

Nothing better illustrates the bankruptcy of the Obama administration’s foreign policy than funding groups that turn on the U.S. again and again, a neo-con fueled cycle of profits for war-makers and destruction of ever-shifting “enemies.”

The fact can’t be refuted: ISIS was born of Western intervention in Iraq and covert action in Syria.
This Frankenstein-like experiment of arming the alleged freedom-seeking Syrian opposition created the monster that roams the region. ISIS and the U.S. have a curious relationship — mortal enemies that, at the same time, benefit from some of the same events:

a) Ousting former Iraqi President Nouri al Maliki for his refusal to consent to the continued presence of U.S. troops in his country.
b) Regime change in Syria.
c) Arming the Kurds so they can separate from Iraq, a preliminary move to partitioning Iraq.

What a coincidence for war-profiteering neo-cons and the war industry, which has seen its stock rise since last week’s congressional vote to fund the rapid expansion of war. We have met the enemy and he isn’t only ISIS, he is us.

Phase two of the war against Syria is the introduction of 5,000 “moderate” mercenaries (as opposed to immoderate ones), who were trained in Saudi Arabia, the hotbed of Wahhabism, at an initial installment cost of $15 billion. These new “moderates” will replace the old “moderates,” who became ISIS, just in time for Halloween.

The administration, in the belief that you can buy, rent, or lease friends where they otherwise do not exist, labor under the vain assumption that our newfound comrades-in-arms will remain in place during their three-year employment period, ignoring the inevitability that those “friends” you hire today could be firing at you tomorrow.

One wonders if Saudi training of these moderate mercenaries will include methods of beheading which were popularized by the Saudi government long before their ISIS progeny took up the grisly practice.
The U.S. is being played.

Qatar and Saudi Arabia can now overtly join with the U.S. in striking Syria, after they have been covertly attempting for years to take down the last secular state in the region. We are now advancing the agenda of the actual Islamic States — Saudi Arabia and Qatar — to fight the ersatz Islamic State of ISIS.
Now U.S. bombs and missiles might inadvertently “make the world safe” for theocracy rather than democracy. Today we read reports that Israel has shot down a Syrian warplane, indicating the terrible possibility of a wider regional conflict.

What does this have to do with the security of the 50 States United? Nothing!
Last week Congress acted prematurely in funding a war without following the proscriptions of Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution. (The day of the vote, I urged Congress to resist this dangerous and misguided legislation.) But even while the funding was given, the explicit authorization to go to war was not. To authorize a war, Congress must vote for war. It has not done that yet.

To sell its case, the administration is borrowing from the fear mongering tactics of the Bush administration. ISIS poses no direct, immediate threat to the United States –The White House even said so yesterday, just hours before bombing commenced — yet we are being sold make-believe about ISIS sleeper cells.
This attack on Syria, under the guise of striking ISIS, is by definition, a war of aggression. It is a violation of international law. It could lead to crimes against humanity and the deaths of untold numbers of innocent civilians. No amount of public relations or smooth talking can change that.

And yes, members of this Democratic administration, including the president who executed this policy, must be held accountable by the International Criminal Court and by the American people, whom he serves.
But as we know, war is a powerful and cynical PR tactic. I expect the bombing of Syria will momentarily boost the White House’s popularity with self-serving heroic accounts of damage inflicted upon ISIS (and the U.S. equipment they use). Stuffing the November ballot box with bombs and missiles may even help the Democratic Party retain the Senate.

But after the election the voters will discover that the president played into the hands of extremists, hurt civilians, and embroiled our country deep into another conflict in the Middle East.
There were alternatives. The U.S. and the international community could have contained and shrunk ISIS by cutting off its funds and its revenue from sale of oil on the black market. We could have looked to strike a deal with Syria and Iran.

In foreign policy, the administration has failed. Congress has failed. Both the Democratic and Republican Parties have passed the national checkbook to their patrons in the war-contracting business. And passed the bill to future generations.

The American people, who in 2008 searched for something redemptive after years of George W. Bush’s war, realize in 2014 that hope and change was but a clever slogan. It was used to gain power and to keep it through promoting fear, war, the growth of the National Security state, and an autumnal bonfire of countless billions of tax dollars which fall like leaves from money trees on the banks of the Potomac.

The Ease of Fooling Boobus Americanus

 
Guest Post By Butler Shaffer

It is easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled. – Mark Twain.

The political establishment – masquerading as the sock puppet du jour – continues to find new “enemies” with which to terrorize Boobus Americanus into surrendering their lives, liberty, wealth, and intelligence in a “fight” that is intended to go on forever.

The latest concocted foe is ISIS, successor to the Al Qaeda “threat” that was so useful in bamboozling Americans into the war-whooping that continues in Iraq and Afghanistan. Using the anniversary of the 9/11 attack to work the mob into a frenzy, President Obama introduced what the establishment hopes will be a new wrinkle in its efforts to overcome popular resistance to the “perpetual war for perpetual peace” that has become America’s epitaph. America will only resort to using machines – e.g., bombers, missiles, drones, etc. – for the killing of people the government has been so anxious to begin killing: Syrians. The practice will give a whole new meaning to “Syrial killers!”

How easy it has been to find a fungible supply of popular “enemies.” War-whooping was aided, during World War I, by allegations that members of the German army were cutting off the arms of babies and small children in Belgium, a lie soon revealed – after the war – not only by the allied admission of this having been propaganda, but by the obvious absence of disarmed youngsters. The current Bushobama war in the Middle East was advanced with the lie that Taliban/Al Qaeda forces were killing babies in hospital nurseries and incubators. We now have the beheading of two American journalists, allegedly by ISIS people, as the cause celebre for yet another round of carefully calculated barbarism.

America has created a breeding ground for its endless enemies by its foreign policies. If you attack, torture, bomb, kill, and otherwise mistreat other human beings long enough, they might have a tendency to resent the practice. The American Indians were labeled as “savages” – in earlier political rhetoric as well as movies – by the fact that, when the 7th Cavalry came to slaughter them, the Indians fought back! Renaming the enemy created by the United States in order to keep the profitable war-machine well-lubricated with the blood of innocents does not change the causative factors underlying our collective insanity. As long as the moral lepers are able to continue getting otherwise intelligent men and women to invest their children in the racket, the depraved game will continue, with the mainstream media maintaining the drumbeat.

You will doubtless see more of this celebration of murder at weekend sporting events. As Laurence Vance has so well documented, academia is committing its forces to the slaughter. College football games will feature players dressed in American flag uniforms, Air Force flyovers, soldiers dressed in camouflage, patriotic music, and other symbols of warfare to keep tens of thousands of enthusiasts in stadiums wildly cheering. All of this should remind the few who have bothered to study history of the final days of the Roman Empire: as the Roman legions carried their violence throughout the rest of Europe, the hometown boobeoisie was whooping it up for the local athletes performing at the coliseum!

 Butler Shaffer [send him e-mail] teaches at the Southwestern University School of Law. He is the author of the newly-released In Restraint of Trade: The Business Campaign Against Competition, 1918–1938, Calculated Chaos: Institutional Threats to Peace and Human Survival, and Boundaries of Order. His latest book is The Wizards of Ozymandias.