Graduation

A ZeroHedge article today, describing the record rise of the student loan debt bubble - the only credit market still growing, praying on the young and uneducated to deepen and expand our debt enslavement - linked the following video:

Her delivery, to a degree, betrays the truth and power of the speech. I recommend visiting her blog and reading the complete text.

I found myself experiencing a myriad of emotions as watched and read and re-read this speech - elation, awe, inspiration - but more than anything else, I felt shame.

By the time I reached Junior High I had become completely disillusioned with my education. I had arrived at many of the same conclusions that Erica did, though at that time certainly not as eloquently so. I had recently been introduced to the restaurant business, garnering a job as a dishwasher at the restaurant where my father worked. I was having more fun, experiencing more of the real world, and by extension learning more working in the dish pit than I had at school since I could remember. I had already decided that I would simply go through the motions of finishing school while pursuing my new passion of learning to be a chef.

It was during my 7th grade year that I was fortunate enough to be put before Carolyn Simons, my “Donna Bryan,” for English. I am still to this day thankful that she not only recognized that I was phoning it in, but was also able to genuinely inspire me to stop doing so.

I say this because my resignation was not evident in my work or my report card. Mine was a small and mostly rural community (at the time) and as we all know the system is tailored to teach the students we have, not to produce the graduates we want. As such I easily completed the assignments given me, regurgitated the desired answers in the designated bubbles before me, and continued to receive high grades and honors despite the fact that I had long ceased going to school in any way that mattered.

But anyone who has ever been subjected to the tutalidge of Carolyn Simons knows what I quickly learned - an attitude such as that simply does not fly in her classroom. I will not delve into the multitude of ways that she opened my eyes as it would take a volume to do so, but I will say that she taught me the most important lesson that anyone can ever learn: Education is not a passive activity. Real, visceral, meaningful education can never be forced upon an unwilling student. It comes only from determined interest, inquisition, and examination. Teachers, in whatever form they may come, can only plant seeds. We must endeavor ourselves to grow them.

The best spent years of my entire formal education were the three at Bay Middle School in her class and in the classes of many other teachers like her. At that school the students were given the autonomy and latitude, the flexibility and inspiration to think outside of the box and to discover knowledge of our own accord, rather than to have it force fed to us as has become our institutionalized custom.

After Junior High I followed most of my classmates to a small, brand new public high school called South Walton. The programs were limited, the options small, the traditions non-existent, but the system for churning out volumes of obedient, unquestioning, line-toting, direction following youth was well in place. Seeing that the educational rubric I had had grown to love and embrace had been replaced by the one I had long since grown to loathe and detest, I once again retreated from school. Having become a decent line cook, and having snuck my way in to a kitchen run by an incredible chef, I spent most of my junior and senior year in the kitchen as opposed to the classroom.

I finished school not as the Valedictorian of my class, but as the 2nd runner up - a technical foul I received for logging over one hundred absences in a particular (and wholly useless) class during my senior year, and though I always submitted the assignments on time and scored well on the exams, the absences alone were enough to cause the blemish in my transcript knocking me out of the top spot. Of course, it was not the only class I frequently skipped. Thankfully, however, it was the only one taught by an instructor that could not plainly see that I did not need to be there.

My parents were furious and several of my teachers dismayed by the fact that after a lifetime of being at the top of my class I failed to graduate in that position. I was mostly apathetic. As was described in Erica’s speech, I was just happy to be getting the hell out of there - off to college where the system would be different, where teachers and students alike would be overwhelmed by a desire for a genuine education. (Can someone please invent a sarcasm font?)

Still and all, I was asked to give a speech. It was a request that I fervently refused. In fact, had it not been for a collective familial tongue-lashing, myself and my two best friends (also high placed finalists in our scholastic reality show) would have skipped graduation entirely.

Of course I found much the same in college that I had found in school before - brilliant minds and incredible tutors frustrated by a system designed to stifle creativity, discourage individualism, prohibit radical thinking, and produce increasingly efficient and obedient workers to feed our increasingly inefficient and irrational consumer driven society. Our colleges, once great venues of open debate and creative education have become incubators for the social lobotomy of entertainment-driven cultural values and a method by which we are intentionally streamlined into narrower areas of specialization with little to no emphasis on seeing, investigating, and understanding the whole puzzle, favoring instead a total focus on just our tiny piece.

It wasn’t until after college that I realized the problem lies not only in how we’re taught, but also in what we’re taught. I was perhaps most disturbed to learn that facts that I’ve accepted since I was old enough to read are in truth complete fabrications that have been inextricably burned into the educational curriculum, repeated ad nauseum by countless text books of every grade level, and used as foundational argument by academics, pundits, and public figures, all of which are easily exposed as the lies they are upon any critical investigation. Unfortunately when we are told something enough, told it from an early age, and told it by people we trust, it becomes almost impossible to consider that it might be false. It is the definition of indoctrination. And given the light in which such comparatively radical deviations in empirical thought are often cast, it is all too easy to leave those things unpublished, those possibilities unexplored, those words unspoken. It has become far easier to cling to knowns at our detriment than to explore unknowns for our empowerment.

“Ignorance is bliss.”
“Why stress about what you can’t change?”
“Only fight the fights you can win.”

These have become the mantras of our day. But the truth is that ignorance inevitably leads to slavery while knowledge leads to empowerment, change has never come from a person or group that was not stressed, and we MUST fight the fights that need fighting, especially now in what is perhaps human civilization’s most dire hour.

When I was asked to address my class, my teachers and my community I should have accepted that opportunity. I should have eagerly voiced my concerns rather than resigning myself to the belief that I could have no effect, that there was no difference I could make. I should have given that speech, or at least one very similar to it.

This is the source of my shame, for I forgot the lesson Mrs. Simons so endeavored to teach me. We are all, and have always been, both students and teachers. It is a sacred duty instilled upon us by simple virtue of our birth. It is our job as citizens of the world to constantly learn and grow, and to teach others. We must continue to question that which we are told, to re-examine that which we believe we know, to challenge others to do the same, and to accept those challenges from others. We cannot allow ourselves, individually or as a society, to become complacent and stagnant. We cannot cease to move forward, to seek innovation in thought, evolution in consciousness. There is no graduation.

This is a lesson I vow to never again forget or attempt to subdue. I am elated, awestruck, and inspired to see others - teenagers no less - who realize and embrace this conclusion, and it is my greatest hope that more of us continue to do the same.

Questions

Photo Credit: toiletpapermoney.blogspot.com

For the last few weeks I've thought a great deal about what I wanted to write regarding the 10th Anniversary of  the attacks of 9/11. Initially I thought I'd do an in-your-face, in-depth, no-holes-barred amalgamation of all of the evidence that exists which, for anyone who takes the time to look at it and processes it objectively, clearly shows that the official, 'history book version' of 9/11 is the ultimate house of cards.

I've recently re-watched many of the documentaries including The Truth & Lies of 9/11, Zeitgeist: The Movie, Loose Change, Confronting the Evidence, ZERO, In Plane Sight, and Aftermath. I've gone back and re-watched much of the news coverage from that morning where the tone of reporters was one of shock at the realization that the WTC collisions were not accidents, but were targeted attacks. Fast forward 10 years and any time there is an emergency the first speculations are always terrorism. I've thought about how this shift in mentality has, by and large, defined the 21st century thus far. I've thought about how different the Bill of Rights looks now as opposed to 10 years ago. I've thought about the various wars in which we are involved around the globe and the thousands of Americans that have been lost to those conflicts, as well as the untold number of civilians of foreign nations. I've thought about the climate of fear that is ever present in American life today - all of this a direct result of the events of that day 10 years gone.

Mostly, I've thought about the moments I remember most vividly - Mrs. Murphy coming into the computer lab at Sandestin Academy and telling our class that an airplane had just collided with one of the World Trade Center buildings in New York City - my mom picking my friend August and I up from school two hours later and taking us back to my house where we flipped through channels and found coverage of the events on every single cable station save one: MTV - receiving an email from a family friend a few days later containing a picture of the Statue of Liberty holding up her middle finger in place of the torch with the words "We're Coming Motherfuckers" written across the bottom - watching the live CNN coverage with my dad as the invasion of Afghanistan began - being pulled out of class the following year by Mrs. Stratton who said "Something's happening that you're going to want to see. Come with me." as she led me to the SWHS library where I sat with a few other students and faculty and watched as American forces invaded Baghdad and that big, beautiful tank ripped down the statue of Saddam Hussein... There are many more.

I remember how enthusiastically patriotic I felt in those years of high school, I remember how that patriotism waned throughout college as I began to see the evils that were occuring at home and abroad guised under the cloak of antiterrorism, and I remember how that patriotism faded entirely and was replaced by disappointment and disgust when I learned the truth about the 9/11 attacks and the depth of the changes they've had on every facet of our society since.

But how can I sum up all of the facts & falsehoods, effects & emotions, repercussions & realizations surrounding 9/11 in anything short of a lengthy book?

I can't. Nor shall I attempt to do so. The truth is that there is nothing else to be said about that day or the aftermath that followed. Of course, this won't prevent the corporate media from spending an entire day ignoring the real, pertinent news of the world and ruinning a slough of commentary and special features - probably even some "news" - on the recap of 9/11. They'll try to extract a few extra ratings points praying on the grief of victims, the remembrances of eyewitnesses, and the continuing ethnocentrism and institutionalized fear of the American population at large.

Don't misunderstand me: I'm not saying that today is just another Sunday. The tragedy of 10 years ago should be reflected upon, and the fallen should be remembered, but it should be done by each of us privately or with our friends, family and community - not in the orgasmic barrage of media frenzy seen across America right now. And if anyone bothers to look at today's coverage in any foreign media outlets you'll see that an entirely different narrative is being discussed - one of culpability, duplicity, greed, and ignorance.

So today, in rememberance of those who died, in recognition of those who murdered them, and in respect of the fact that I simply cannot say anything that has not already been said, I will look not to the answers, but the questions, and not to the past, but the future.

A future in which the world faces an unmitigated economic collapse.

A future in which a planet in peril is becoming more violent and unpredictable.

A futue in which increasing numbers of the world's citizens are taking to the streets with varying degrees of violence in an attempt to make known to their leaders that they have had enough of the failed neo-feudalist system.

A future in which the costs of energy, medicine, food, shelter - Maslow's most basic necessities - are becoming unaffordable to all but the most affluent.

A future in which 12 citizens appointed by congressional leaders will decide the economic & social fate of the entire nation.

A future in which more middle-of-the-night blind legislation will be passed without ceremony to further the interests of the same elites who are responsible for much of the depravity and destruction we've seen over the past 10 years.

A future in which the defense budget will necessarily be slashed along with social programs in a futile attempt to address our absolutely unmanageable debt and budget deficit.

A future in which we will certainly see another malitious attack on innocent American civilians in order to foster another Higalian Dialectic and keep the money flowing into the coffers of the Masters of War at the expense of those who work on Maggie's Farm.

What do you suppose will be the next iconic target that they destroy to renew the lease on our eternal fear? Mall of the Americas? Golden Gate Bridge? Cowboys Stadium?

How many innocent lives will they sociopathically terminate in order to push the rest of us to move willingly in the direction they want us to go?

Who will be their new scapegoats? What group or nation or class of citizens will they lay the blame at the feet of? Will it be the Chinese, garnering for them the popular support to escalate from economic oppression to militaristic supression? Will it be American seperatists vocally opposed to government-sponsored tyranny, leading to public acquiescence of further stripping of the rights and freedoms our ancestors fought, bled and died to give us, all in the name of public safety and security? Will it be Americans funded by the Chinese?

How will their new doctrines deepen our dominion? Will they rob us of our right to own property as they've already (in large part) robbed us of our ability to do so? Will they take from us our immunity of group assembly to discuss and debate our ideals? Our constitutional guarantee of local governance? Our perogative to seek a redress of our grievances from our government? Our access to information outside of their control? Our privalege to legally challenge the validity of our purported infractions? Our control over our own bodies? The freedom of use of our own minds?

How low must we bow, how completely must we be subjected, how enslaved must we become before they are satisfied? How long will it be before we collectively realize and admit that the man and the dog are working together & how many innocent lives will be lost before we elect not to blindly follow where they lead?

Another thing I've re-watched recently is the Zapruder Film. For nearly 50 years we have examined and re-examined that short piece of video, clearly showing Kennedy's head blowing back and to the left, as opposed to forward and to the right as would have been the case if he had been shot by Oswald from the window of the 4th floor book depository. What good has it done us? All that is required to expose the man behind the curtain is the desire to do so. What will it take for you personally to find that desire?

Casino

The anger, frustration, bewilderment, and desperation that hangs in the record-breaking scorching summer air above Washington D.C. is so palpable I can taste it right through my netbook. Every day brings the same charade: One paper says a deal on deficit reduction and the debt ceiling is immanent, and another reports the two sides (because there are only two) have never been farther apart. Cantor screams, Obama laughs, Boehner cries – it's like a really bad tella novella. So what the hell is really going on in Washington? Are we going to default? If we do, will it really be as bad as many claim? What exactly is the deal with the debt ceiling?

We've raised the federal debt ceiling dozens and dozens of times throughout our history. We've raised it eight times in the last decade. It was raised 18 times just during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. It generally requires the passage of a one sentence bill, and given the vital importance of our government's ability to pay our bills, it generally glides through congress without incident. There have been a few times in the past where it's had some bumpy rides, but never anything like the political theater before us now. So what is so different this time?

For starters, we are. The American people are, like never before, demanding some real fiscal responsibility from our government. For the last two years we've watched as the Fed, the Treasury Department, and the TBTF banks have lived high on the hog while we have suffered immensely due to the financial boondoggle that they created in the housing market. People are sick of living under unmanageable levels of credit card debt, college debt, mortgage debt, and government debt – not being able to feed their families and pay the bills while the financial fat cats fly into Bohemian Grove in their private planes. So we are to some degree happy to see our leaders being made to sweat it out and address the nation's budget problems in the same way we've had to address our own.

Also, it is certainly lost on no one that we have a relatively young Republican congress who see an excellent opportunity to score some big electoral points heading into campaign season by setting the agenda and blackmailing the Democrats into following it.

However, these are just the factors that make the debt ceiling debacle good television. To understand where we are and how we got here, and why this time it really is different, you have to understand the following:

“Until you change the way money works, you change nothing.” -Michael C. Ruppert.

All money is created out of debt. If all the outstanding debts were paid back today, there would not be a single dollar in circulation. The modern monetary paradigm is designed to continually create new debt, not to allow for the paying off of old debt. If you do not understand this, you will never understand the fragility of our current predicament. If you need a refresher on how money works, click here and scroll down to Part Two: Money.

Over the last half decade we, human industrialized civilization, have hit a number of peaks. We saw peak oil back in 2005, followed by peak coal, peak manufacturing, peak food, etc. Of course, all of those stem from the first, because everything we do is so inextricably tied to oil that without it there can be no growth. However, since the crash of 2008 we've kept the infinite growth paradigm on life support, compensating for our energy shortfalls by continually expanding outlandish amounts of debt.

And now we've hit peak debt. As we see in Greece and Spain and Italy and Portugal and England and Ireland and India and China and Saudi Arabia and Egypt and Turkey and on and on...we have so overextended ourselves that faith in all fiat currencies is evaporating all over the world. We've reached the point where no matter how many times TPTB alter or recalculate sovereign debt, bond yields, treasury ratings, the CPI, the GDP, or any other traditional measurement of growth and prosperity, people simply aren't buying it anymore. We're circling the drain, and we know it. A recent CNN poll found that 48% of Americans think we will be in another Great Depression by this time next year, and unfortunately they're right, except that this depression will rewrite the definition of the word.

And this brings us back to the debt ceiling and what is really happening on The Hill and at The White House. The jig is up, and everyone now realizes it. There is no growth. There is no recovery. There are no jobs. There is no money. All that remains is debt. Piles and piles of debt.

Ask yourself this question: How is it possible for every nation in the world to be absolutely broke or in financial distress simultaneously? Where did all the money go?

The representatives of the people and the policy makers in Washington realize that they cannot reduce deficit spending in any meaningful way without massively cutting social entitlements, gouging defense spending, and increasing taxes across the board. Of course, it would be political suicide for any of them to even suggest enacting legislation to accomplish such in a run up to an election year, so they are doing what they do best – a whole bunch of not shit.

U.S. Treasuries have always been regarded as the safest investment on the planet, and for good reason: Given the petrodollar's reserve currency status, we have always been able to simply print whatever money we need to pay our bills. Through commodity speculation, complex derivatives, compound interest, asset securitization, fractional reserve banking, and the completely unconstitutional and amoral taxation of citizens' labor, the Fed, the Treasury Department, and the Wall Street banks have built the ultimate casino - a perfect perpetual debt machine - with the debt ceiling being the only barrier between them and infinite debt.

Unfortunately for them, anyone with an elementary understanding of economics can now see how untenable the situation is. The derivatives bubble alone is 900 trillion dollars. That is the equivalent of about 15 years worth of the gross domestic product of the entire world. That kind of money can never and will never be paid off.

So our leaders in Washington are simply going to continue this bullshit spectacle of partisan bickering until we do in fact default, which will force us to prioritize spending and both sides will get the cuts they want without ever having to publicly vote on them. They're attempting to create a Hegelian Dialectic in which the economy will experience a short term crash (problem) scaring the hell out of the populous, and to save ourselves we will demand that everything be put on the table (reaction) and a deal, whatever its requirements, be worked out (solution). Of course, this method has been used to accomplish a vast array of ends in the past, but there is a glaring miscalculation that dooms it to failure this time – the systemic weakness of the dollar in the world today. There will be no rally, no stemming of the tide or stoppage of the bleeding. The next time the dollar plunges it will not stop until it gets all the way to the basement, and every other currency in the world will ride down with it.

And as the dollar falls, impervious to all attempts to save it, the partisan rhetoric will go into overdrive as an endless barrage of fingers are pointed in an attempt to lay the blame of the collapse at the feet of this group or that. The talking heads on the news networks will emblazon us with their simple and easy fixes that would surely right the ship if only they were heeded. In the end it will all be boiled down to ten-word answers, with no regard for nuance or the complexity of the situation.

And of course, the obvious fact will remain that this collapse was always inevitable, was very accurately foretold by many, all of whom have been all but ignored, going back 70 years, and that the real blame for it lies at the feet of a scam 600 years old – loaning people money that does not exist and charging them interest on it.

Ignaz Semmelweis was a Hungarian physician in the early 19^th century who noticed an interesting phenomenon. He saw a correlation between deaths during childbirths and physicians not washing their hands after performing autopsies. He began to warn his colleagues that they should wash their hands before performing any medical procedure, and he was laughed at, ignored, discredited, and was eventually committed to an insane asylum where he died. Of course, many decades later Louis Pasteur published the Germ Theory of Disease, and the observations of Semmelweis were given their due credit.

All truth passes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Next it is violently opposed. And finally it is accepted as self-evident. Just ask Galileo.

The global financial paradigm is, and has been for some time, run like a casino. But everyone knows that the axiom of casinos is “The house always wins.” And our planet is the house. The house cannot support a human population of seven billion people. It cannot tolerate a dominant species that demands more growth, more waste, and more destruction every single year. In nature, the only thing that continues to grow after the age of maturation is cancer, and the Earth can no longer sustain the proliferation of our human industrial cancer. Weather you ridicule it, violently oppose it, or accept it as self-evident, our modern way of life is dead, and these are but the initial stages of the greatest course correction in human history.

What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object? Like it or not, we're all about to find out. May luck be on our side.

Y8PJZHNQ4SK2

Dusk

China is falling apart before our eyes, veiled though they may be.

Waves of violent civil unrest are sweeping across the country as migrant workers by the millions are increasingly finding themselves out of work due to declines in manufacturing. The Chinese people, not unlike the rest of the world, are also financially weakened from massive price inflation, caused by both monetary policy and a biosphere gone far awry. The country is experiencing the worst drought in decades and unprecedented flooding simultaneously. These climate anomalies are partially caused by the massive damns built along the Yangtze River to generate hydroelectric power, which have drastically altered natural ecosystems. This is decreasing generation output from the damns, which only compounds the energy problems they're already facing from a decline in coal extraction - causing the price of coal to rise while the government keeps the price of power fixed. This has brought about massive blackouts across major population areas, a harbinger of bad news for an already slowing manufacturing sector. This can and will only lead to decrease in output, trade imbalance, GDP decline, and further economic contraction.

But here in America we seem to want to make China out as the bad guy, the boogie man, the up-and-coming global superpower. We bested the Germans, destroyed the Russians, & slaughtered the terrorists, but we still have this huge military that needs an enemy, and China is a convenient target. There are an awful lot of Chinese people, they talk funny, they're Commies (although not really), and THEY TOOK OUR JOBS! Just look at these ads.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFsqkI5gg84]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTSQozWP-rM]

This is an attempt to paint the picture of a dominant, unified, prosperous, hegemonic China that has the United States under its thumb, when the truth is quite the opposite. The people of China are not dissimilar from those of Greece or Spain or Egypt or Ireland or Syria. They have had enough of widespread blatant government corruption. They have had enough of watching a very few get fabulously rich while they struggle in squalor. They have had enough of religious oppression and economic malfeasance. And they are aware, just like many other impoverished peoples around the globe, that we, the United States, are a large part of the cause of their strife, their anguish, their futility, and their distress. The actions of our Wall Street banks, to which we gave the keys to the kingdom, directly and with purpose caused their monetary woes for a nice profit. And yet we have the righteous indignation to hold malice towards them for taking our jobs, for prospering in our despair, and for burgling our American Dream.

That politicized picture is testament to a nice piece of advertising by the "Fair & Balanced" cable news networks (both self-professed and not), but it is just another in a long line of loads of crap force fed to us via the clicker.

The truth of course is that the CEO's of formerly "American" but now "Multinational" companies and the traders (traitors) on Wall Street caused China's financial mess just as they caused ours.

They are the ones who sent this plague of corporatized industrialized slavery around the world. It wasn't the Chinese who "took our jobs" - lending to some vague propagandized visual of an Asian man literally snatching them from underneath us while we were out to lunch.

They are the ones who's salaries have increased by outrageous orders of magnitude profiting from their institutionalized global slave trade while we have lost our jobs, our homes, our savings, our futures, and our dignity.

They were the ones who saw the American worker, empowered through unity (the stem of the term "Union" that we've somehow grown to loathe) as an adversary to be conquered, and decided to move their operations elsewhere to further bolster that all-important bottom line.

They are the ones who show no regard or respect for our communities, our local economies, or our individual prosperity, and certainly no remorse over their destruction.

They are the ones who made possible Bopal, Chernobyl, Texas City, Hinkley, & Deepwater Horizon, and then tried their best to wriggle out of any blame for their hubris.

They are the ones who have morphed our once just and fair legal system into one that encourages bribery through political contributions, requires corporations to maximize profits by any means available, and equates cash with speech.

They are the ones who continually and aggressively foster the ever widening inequality we so clearly see throughout the world - and particularly here at home.

Best articulated by the Dropkick Murphy's, "...our skills are not needed, they've streamlined the job, and with sliderule and stopwatch our pride they have robbed."

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uU5Fx2WqNkE]

The Chinese workers, along with the Indian, Taiwanese, Filipino, Mexican, Honduran, Hatian, (et. al.) ones, have been just as used, abused, manipulated, and discarded as American workers. They, like we, were offered the "American Dream" - the ability to invest their own hard work in a better future for themselves, to provide for their families, and to own their small piece of the world. Those principles were codified by the founders of our nation as inalienable rights, not as lofty ambitions, and the same greedy fucks that sucked the wealth and spirit out of us have done the same to them.

Historical precedent and common sense demonstrate that it is much easier to get people to do your bidding, regardless of the costs, if you can make them believe that eventually it will work out in their favor. But the Chinese version of the American Dream is not different than the domestic one in that it is exactly that: a dream. In the words of George Carlin, "You'd have to be asleep to believe it."
And I'm certain some will read this and think "At least it's China and not us."

But it is us. The only real threats are ones that effect all of us equally. In a world where every economy, every ecosystem, and every life are inextricably tied, there is no Chinese problem, no Greek problem, no American problem. There is only a human problem. Our human problem is that the people we've long allowed to run the place are doing it very badly - to the continual detriment of the overwhelming majority and for the obtuse benefit of a fraction of a percentage.

Thomas Jefferson once said, "If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that grow up around them will deprive the people of all property, until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."

I cannot think of a more eloquent or succinct way to articulate what has become of America than that. Unfortunately, through globalization it is also what has become of the rest of the world. We are necessarily all in it together now.

China is the only economic engine still powering the global economy. It is the only domino left between what is left of industrialism and the post-petroleum abyss, and it is clearly toppling. Now all we can do is sit back and watch dusk descend on the Empire of the Sun, and prepare as best we can for nightfall.

Drones

The United States Military, under the direction of its Commander and Chief President Barack Obama, is now engaging in drone attacks against Yemen, killing dozens of civilians in just the past couple of weeks. This of course follows the similar campaigns in Libya, Pakistan, & Afghanistan. Just another factoid on a news ticker. Just another Wednesday in America.

Think for at least a moment about the climate of fear in which the citizens of these countries must live. Every waking moment they face the possibility that the house or coffee shop or market or public square they are in might suddenly explode. How must it feel to approach each conversation with a friend, family member, lover, coworker, or complete stranger as if it might be their last? And how can we as Americans simply allow this to occur in our collective name? How can we not be astonished and abhorrent that this is all being orchestrated and presided over by a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize?

Perhaps even more unseemly is that fact that due to the foreign policy of the United States and the monetary policies and actions of the Federal Reserve, billions of people both abroad and right here at home face not an immediate death from military attack, but a slow, painful, drawn out one from an attack financially. The cost of food and energy - not just the price, but the cost (i.e. Fukushima, Deepwater Horizon, global civil unrest, et al.) - has risen so much so fast that people the world over have had it.  As Celente famously says, "When people lose everything and they have nothing left to lose, they lose it." They are losing it right now, together, in a global revolution. If it seems at all like this claim employs hyperbole,  go to YouTube, type in "civil unrest" or "riots" and see how many different countries you can count in the first four or five pages. How much of this have you seen covered in the American press?

In November I wrote "Civil unrest has already begun and will only widen and intensify..."  When will we collectively face the fact that what is happening in Madison, Illinois, & Detroit is mere calisthenics for what is to come on our native soil?

The following is an excerpt from the mission statement of the Spanish Protest Movement's website:

"We are ordinary people. We are like you: people who get up every morning to study, work, or find a job. People who have family and friends. People who work hard every day to provide a better future for those around us. Some of us consider ourselves progressive, others conservative. Some of us are believers, some not. Some of us have clearly defined ideologies, some are apolitical...but we are all concerned and angry about the political, economic, and social outlook around us: corruption among politicians, businessmen, bankers, leaving us helpless, without a voice. This situation has become normal, a daily suffering, without hope.

But if we join forces, we can change it."

I labored tirelessly, without pay, and did so with gusto to help get Barack Obama into the White House. I was so proud - perhaps the most proud I've ever been in my life - the night he was elected for playing my small part. I thought to myself "Finally, I'm a part of something that matters." I recall thinking that bringing some intellect back to the West Wing, the end of the ridiculous and expensive wars, a real, objective look at the economy, and an assessment of the disparity of wealth in America - this is how I would be paid for my labor. During the voter registration drive I recall convincing many people to make the effort to vote by simply saying, "This could potentially be the President when you're 30. You don't want a say in who that will be?"

Of course, we have no say.

If anyone caught the CNN Republican Presidential "Debate" the other day, you saw the hard hitting questions that were being hurled at the candidates in our nation's perhaps most dire hour:

Blackberry or iPhone?

Deep Dish or Thin Crust?

Dancing With the Stars or American Idol?

If you even have an opinion on that last question, you are not qualified to be President of the United States. Perhaps of these United States...

But whomever of these men elicits the most funding (in our longstanding system of political bribery) and whomever of these men the press collectively decides is best will inevitably receive the Republican Party's nomination and will square off against President Obama in a race to the bottom. All 3rd Party candidates will be ignored, as evidently we as a people have decided (or we've allowed the "News Networks" a la idiot box to decide for us) that in order to rule our nation you're either a Jet or a Shark, with no room for "middle ground" or an alternative opinion.

Sadly, the winner is selected long before he is elected, and by the time we see ballots his policies are already in action. But we get to rejoice in our freedom because we were allowed to fill in a bubble with a pencil (or touch a screen, because computers are tamper-proof).

In the, to me at least, immortal words of George Carlin "..rights aren't rights if someone can take em away. They're priveledges. That's all we've ever had in this country is a bill of TEMPORARY priviledges; and if you read the news, even badly, you know the list gets shorter, and shorter, and shorter."

I wanted and expected this man to, on his first day in office, burn the Patriot Act on the White House lawn, to reassure us that this is a country of laws to which even those at the top are held. Instead, we're extending and expanding the Patriot Act. And a recent Supreme Court ruling states that police can now come into your home if they arrive at your door and hear any suspicious activity inside. Of course, the definition of suspicious is fungible at their discretion.

I wanted and expected this man to throw out all of the goddamn banksters along with the Bernank, bring some common sense rationality back to the financial system, and at least make an effort to fix the economy. Instead, he borrowed his entire treasury department from Goldman Sachs, as was the case of his predecessor - the same greedy, lying, thieving, conniving, sleezey, fat, obscenely gratuitously insanely rich rat bastards who deliberately, corruptly, selfishly, and eagerly created the problems we now face.

Why?

Money.

Lots of Money.

Now the State Department has agreed with Goldman's assessment that it would be in the nation's vital interest to see the bank pay a nominal fine rather than face a criminal charge for their criminal behavior of intentionally robbing their clients, as Goldman is simply "too big to fail." In Florida last week a couple who's home had been foreclosed upon illegally by Bank of America managed get a court order to seize assets at the local BoA branch, including the cash in the drawers, after they beat the bank in court, but had still not received the fines and damages the court ordered BoA to pay. This past winter a debt collector in Pennsylvania sent out fake cops with fake summons to a fake courtroom to sit before a fake judge in order to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars in debts under the threat of actual imprisonment.

I wanted and expected this man to close down the illegal detention center at Guantanamo, as he promised he would. Not only is it still open and in use, now a recent report documents the number of young men who have spent their entire adolescence there, a tragic parable for a generation of boys - all over the world - now becoming men who have nothing but disdain for the nation once seen as the saviors of the world. Not because of religious animus or institutionalized hatred, but due to our own actions in a part of the world that we clearly do not understand.

I wanted and expected this man to end the senseless wars that are daily draining not only our economy, not only our budget, not only our national morale, but also any credibility or goodwill we still have with anyone anywhere in the world. Now, not only are we fighting wars in Iraq & Afghanistan, but also in Pakistan, Libya, & Yemen, and we're sending toy planes flown with Xbox controllers over innocent people and dropping bombs on the utterly defenseless in the detached manor of a deranged video game. And of course, the contractors who build the drones are already vying for the bids to build models for domestic use. A year from now, they'll be all over American skies...to keep us safe. All of this signed, proscribed, & presided over by, I keep coming back to this, a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

I wanted and expected this man to set a new tone, to remind us that the idea of America still stands for something, still means something, that it could still be a beacon to the rest of the world instead of the blight upon it that we have long since become. Unfortunately, it seems that all that is left of what once was America is the idea.

Why is that?

Why are we intentionally, bitterly divided by a two-party system that seeks only to further its own interests, a system that will employ any means to maintain its hegemony, and a system that will continue to sink while simultaneously professing its soundness, greatness, impunity, and altruism? At the same time, the majority of Americans want the exact same things - a living wage, the freedom to express our ideals unrestrained, an end to oligarchy, corruption, and financial debt slavery, the ability to feel safe and secure - and, by and large, we do not have these things. Even more sinister and depraved, we're being made to feel as though perhaps we don't deserve them.

But we cannot blame that on politics or corporate greed or government control or inequality of wealth. Were those the causes of our strife, we might have a real problem. But we absolutely cannot allow ourselves to say "This is their fault." The 300 wealthiest people in America have more money than the bottom 200 million combined, and those at the top make all the rules. But 300 people do not rule 200 million...they cannot decide what does and doesn't happen to us - unless we allow them to do so.

I beg of you this: If you are still proud to call yourself an Obama supporter, a Democrat, a Republican, or an American - please tell me why. Because it seems to me that, in the face of evidence all to the contrary, anyone who still thinks this is the "Hope" & "Change" we so desperately wanted, that this is the man of peace we sought to empower, that unregulated capitalism is so obviously the best social structure, that food and energy will always be cheap, that a home will always be a safe investment, that journalism and news are one and the same, that the government has your best interests at heart, that the Titanic simply cannot sink...anyone who still believes these things...simply must be a drone.

That term was adopted from one used for bees. A drone is just one solitary worker bee out of hundreds of millions that has no information, no autonomy, no freedom, and no understanding of the whole puzzle - buzzing voraciously about doing exactly what it is programmed to do - in perpetuity & without choice, without belief, without contemplation, reflection, or emotion. It simply is and it simply does. And even as a colony withers and dies, it continues to buzz about voraciously, doing as it is programmed to do, until one day there is nothing left to return to...and then it dies.

Ask yourself this: When was the last time that in your daily life, in your paycheck, in your conversations with friends and family, in your mind, in your heart...when was the last time you felt like things were getting better instead of worse? Is it perhaps time to stop thinking about what we will do when things get better, and start thinking about what we will do as things get even worse?

All of these riots and protests we're seeing all over the world, they're coming here. In many places, they're already here. When they arrive at your city, your job, your home...what side do you want to be on, and how well prepared do you want to be?

I will again close with my favorite prose, and my constant plea:

"Rise like lions after slumber

In unvanquishable number

And shake to earth your chains like dew

Which in sleep have fallen on you

Ye are many, they are few."

Percy Bysshe Shelley - The Mask of Anarchy