The Occupy movement now dances along the streets of the world, growing like a dandelion in sunlight. It is impossible to predict when such passionate awakenings will spring onto the scene, since this movement comes three years after the 2008 banking revolution which transformed the global economic structure into an Occupation by the Ruling Class of the People of the World, and more than a decade after 9/11 and the invasions of the Middle East.
Either way, the movement has arisen, and we can be sure that the powers-that-be will do EVERYTHING they can to ensure that this movement is CO-OPTED (commercially adopted), repackaged and USED for the furthering of their command-and-control agendas. If this cannot be done, then the movement will be destroyed through hard power; i.e. bloodletting.
As does any movement at its incipience, this growing movement has much to learn about its enemy, who currently maintain a way of the world that ensures subservience of the so-called “99%”, a phrase that really functions as a catchy metaphor. It, like the way in which the movement uses the term “Wall Street,” is really a catch-all phrase referring to a deeply embedded power structure run by a merciless ruling class that views this 21st century as “the century of change.” This ruling class, like all ruling classes down through history, have inherited a matured philosophy of control that instructs in the techniques of control. By “century of change,” this ruling class sees this century as a prime-time to overthrow freedom on the planet, and institute dismal conditions so that no people could ever undermine their power.
They implement the aforementioned techniques of control in accordance with the ages in which they rule, and they makeup a percentage of the world's population that is more like .000001%. The cabal atop the world inherits an ancient task, sometimes referred to in religions and some political dossiers as The Great Work, and that is to standardize global culture—in effect, to bring in a World State composed of myriads of aligned national and local institutions (like the UN, which means one in French, national governments, state governments, city governments, non-government organizations, non-profit foundations, and corporations).
By envisaging this century as a sort of turning point, the powers-that-be have decided that a revolution must take place, but not the sort of revolution Occupiers believe they are taking part in. Rather, this revolution falls more in line with the revolutions of the past—like the French Revolution or the Bolshevik Revolution—whereby a more concentrated and acute power structure becomes the way things are.
Knowing that, in order to achieve the transformation of society desired—towards a more totalitarian way—wealth confiscations through economic warfare are mandatory. Thus, we have seen in the second half of the 20th century and on into the current one the “structural readjustments” of nation after nation, the world over, through IMF and World Bank programs. Today we see that, since the world is satisfactorily standardized in the eyes of the central planners of the neo-soviet, it is now time to overturn the economic order of the United States; i.e. make us a much poorer.
It is the establishments' obsession with data and information, wealth accumulation, and the maintenance of their own power that allows them to function as a sort of oracle of the way of the world. That is why in government documents for at least the past decade institutions, like the State Department, have predicted the protests we now see today in Europe, the Middle East, South America, Africa and the United States. They also predict these will soon turn into food riots.
For many technocrats—a technocrat being an empowered expert in the controlling of resources—movements like the worldwide Occupy movement are mouth-watering, for it provides an opportune time to utilize the technique of “cognitive infiltration.” This is a technique in controlling the mind, which is considered by the self-declared “masters of the universe” an economic resource. Platforms like Occupy create fertile environments in which new ideas can flourish. Using their vast and easily acquired resources—made possible by their manipulation of the money supply through the Federal Reserve System—illuminist transnational corporations can ensure that it is their ideas which gain the most support through sophisticated –although outwardly simple—and well-financed advertising and marketing campaigns, and the institutionalization of these platforms through their control of virtually each government in the world.
They WILL intend to STEER the Occupy movement towards DESIRED OUTCOMES, and therefore catchy slogans imploring the government to raise TAXES, increase CONTROL, and call for radical, more TOTALITARIAN ways of society and culture will become popular. The REVOLUTION WILL BE TELEVISED, but only those revolutionary ideas conjured up by think-tanks who work tirelessly on the algorithms of everyday life. They WILL NOT promote FREEDOM and LIBERTY. Instead, they WILL promote COLLECTIVISM and GOVERNMENTAL INTERVENTION into the economy; i.e. our daily lives.
Of course, not everyone will be fooled. We are wise, and the flux of society, brought on by the “global insurrection against banker occupation” and the actions of these hijackers of mankind themselves, will cause increasing numbers of people to awaken to the true power-structure. So then, how will the establishment maintain their management of man?
There are many cards the powers-that-be could play, such as a false flag terror attack, wherein the transnational corporations plot some sort of fear-inducing event to be televised on the world stage. The powers-that-be could invade some country, such as Iran, by way of the US military, thereby furthering the current world war started and stoked by the United States and its management.
Seeing as how they control amounts of wealth well in excess of the GDP of the planet, planetary rulers essentially dictate the economy. They will, eventually, pull the rug out completely from underneath the people in the west, plunging the entire world into a collapse surpassing conditions during the Great Depression. While I believe this is already bound to happen, this event can be hastened if a global awakening begins to threaten the real power structure. Anybody who wishes to be free must prepare themselves mentally and physically for such conditions. Stock up on water and stock up on food. There are myriads of supplies that we must have on hand, if we wish to become independent from any system of exploitation.
Food riots will be thwarted by force, and people will depend on government welfare programs for food. In order to maintain order on the streets, TSA-like checkpoints will be rolled-out onto city streets, whilst a monumental surveillance system will be utilized. Inside those stores which do have food, food prices will be setup in such a way so that the poor and middle classes can only afford GMO food and food loaded with preservatives and pesticides. Thus, another way in which any true movement for freedom will be neutralized is through genocide. The critical mass any such movement would need to affect true change will be impossible, due to endemic sickness and death of the population.
That is why not only demonstrations and protests are the way towards a freer society. We must also become less dependent on any system. If the power goes out, we need to have flashlights, candles, transistor radios, access to clean water and nourishing food, et cetera. That is one way in which to become freer. Worst case scenario, put away canned food now, and save on the inflation later.
At the level of ideas, any freedom movement must move beyond the collectivization of the individual. Women's rights, black rights, gay rights, pothead rights: these are collectivist movements that define the individual in terms of a grouping. It is this collectivist belief system which got these aforementioned groups ostracized in the first place. Instead, we must stress the value of the individual, and his or her right to engage in the complex fabric of human relationships in the way he or she pleases, so long as this individual does not engage in any form of violence against others. Fostering an environment in which the individual can excel and find him or herself is the first step towards realizing cultural freedom.
Showing posts with label Alan Watt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alan Watt. Show all posts
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Monday, August 16, 2010
There Is No Incrementalism in Resistance
There is an old story, which tells of a frog in a pot. When the frog was put in the pot while the water inside was boiling, the frog would immediately leap out to safety. But, when the frog was placed into a cool pot, which was then heated up, it would remain in the pot until, eventually, it was cooked and dead. Now, I’ve never put a frog in boiling pot of water, nor have I ever tried to steam a frog, but the thought remains. Then again, maybe it depends on the frog.
For ages, however, this old tale has served as a metaphor for rulers, who, with their instinct of self-preservation intact, have used symbols along specific lines to lead individuals and the collective-mind, according to their self-declared jurisdiction and oft dark desires. Just as the latter frog might have only cooked because the process was incremental, those who make global policies rule by a philosophy of control that can be termed “incrementalism”; in other words, they are ever-so-patient in getting their way.
The capstone income-earners, the rulers--that is, those to whom the mass of wealth and power, in a contrived, yet natural manner, flows--direct investments, actions and reactions so as to unendingly consolidate, secure and promote their unswerving pre-eminence on earth. As monopoly men, they steer economic society in such a way that they increase their profit share. With goods and services on a centralizing course, those at the core of an economic system manage to perpetuate this arrangement. After all, that is how they view it: as managing the planet.
That such behavior is maintained, even when it is only those at the core of the system who benefit, at the fatal expense of a great many, speaks to the psychopathic nature of those who, in their minds, have successfully worked towards becoming CEO’s of the planet. In the captain’s helm of the neo-politburo, which guides the command-and-control economy of Western Civilization in its current stage, conscience is composed of an entirely different arrangement of matter as down below in the gallows, “where the men hang on for their dear lives.”
In incrementalism, the rulers persuade people to follow the path which, in their minds, will most likely result in the preservation of power for themselves. There is too, of course, a pseudo-spiritual or pseudo-religious aspect to this power, as the abuse of it, and the masochistic wielding of it, satiates their sick yearnings, perceived to be of luciferan origin by some of the players. Preserving the power, to be sure, is merely a means to an end, and this is where incrementalism comes in.
Totally authoritarian rule, complete domination and subordination, are the makings of a well-organized and orderly system in which rule is guaranteed to those who have previously wielded it. According to their logic, why they deserve to rule is quite simple: because they have previously ruled, and so therefore it is natural.
However, it is far from easy to implement such measures of control. Historically, in order to do so, ruling classes have, without fail, resorted to bringing in such systems slowly, so that, just as the frog won’t jump from slowly boiled water, people won’t notice and, therefore, act. In incrementalism, there are naturally stages through which society passes, and, as each stage comes into view, the paradigm of society shifts, although the general trajectory is logical in light of its predecessor.
There is no incrementalism in resistance. In a civilization scientifically dissected by/ for the capstone class, opposition to the dominant culture and its overseers would be futile were it to be bit-by-bit; that is, slow motion resistance can never re-create such a civilization towards less nihilistic and grotesque movements. Therefore, our civilization cannot incrementally be reoriented, not when “full spectrum dominance”, the literal construction of an omnipotent God as the system, is the never-ending agenda.
For these reasons, it is crucial for those who seek to help to become self-sustainable. This is done by learning skills such as acquiring even small plots of land, gardening for food, learning weapons skills, investing and securing wealth through gold and silver, seeking a network of reliable friends and family, and educating oneself and others in the techniques of control, consistently utilized by rulers, to protect the cognitive fabric of man.
For ages, however, this old tale has served as a metaphor for rulers, who, with their instinct of self-preservation intact, have used symbols along specific lines to lead individuals and the collective-mind, according to their self-declared jurisdiction and oft dark desires. Just as the latter frog might have only cooked because the process was incremental, those who make global policies rule by a philosophy of control that can be termed “incrementalism”; in other words, they are ever-so-patient in getting their way.
The capstone income-earners, the rulers--that is, those to whom the mass of wealth and power, in a contrived, yet natural manner, flows--direct investments, actions and reactions so as to unendingly consolidate, secure and promote their unswerving pre-eminence on earth. As monopoly men, they steer economic society in such a way that they increase their profit share. With goods and services on a centralizing course, those at the core of an economic system manage to perpetuate this arrangement. After all, that is how they view it: as managing the planet.
That such behavior is maintained, even when it is only those at the core of the system who benefit, at the fatal expense of a great many, speaks to the psychopathic nature of those who, in their minds, have successfully worked towards becoming CEO’s of the planet. In the captain’s helm of the neo-politburo, which guides the command-and-control economy of Western Civilization in its current stage, conscience is composed of an entirely different arrangement of matter as down below in the gallows, “where the men hang on for their dear lives.”
In incrementalism, the rulers persuade people to follow the path which, in their minds, will most likely result in the preservation of power for themselves. There is too, of course, a pseudo-spiritual or pseudo-religious aspect to this power, as the abuse of it, and the masochistic wielding of it, satiates their sick yearnings, perceived to be of luciferan origin by some of the players. Preserving the power, to be sure, is merely a means to an end, and this is where incrementalism comes in.
Totally authoritarian rule, complete domination and subordination, are the makings of a well-organized and orderly system in which rule is guaranteed to those who have previously wielded it. According to their logic, why they deserve to rule is quite simple: because they have previously ruled, and so therefore it is natural.
However, it is far from easy to implement such measures of control. Historically, in order to do so, ruling classes have, without fail, resorted to bringing in such systems slowly, so that, just as the frog won’t jump from slowly boiled water, people won’t notice and, therefore, act. In incrementalism, there are naturally stages through which society passes, and, as each stage comes into view, the paradigm of society shifts, although the general trajectory is logical in light of its predecessor.
There is no incrementalism in resistance. In a civilization scientifically dissected by/ for the capstone class, opposition to the dominant culture and its overseers would be futile were it to be bit-by-bit; that is, slow motion resistance can never re-create such a civilization towards less nihilistic and grotesque movements. Therefore, our civilization cannot incrementally be reoriented, not when “full spectrum dominance”, the literal construction of an omnipotent God as the system, is the never-ending agenda.
For these reasons, it is crucial for those who seek to help to become self-sustainable. This is done by learning skills such as acquiring even small plots of land, gardening for food, learning weapons skills, investing and securing wealth through gold and silver, seeking a network of reliable friends and family, and educating oneself and others in the techniques of control, consistently utilized by rulers, to protect the cognitive fabric of man.
Monday, July 19, 2010
On the Awakening at Western Civilization's Sunset
In the present day, individuals live between ways of life. In our temporal age of constant flux, existence can be dizzying. As things change, most exercise the powers of hope so as to cope, and, in the process, lose their will to act, for hope is a passive occupation. But, as many people these days are commenting on, many have chosen not to settle for a pair of fingers merely crossed for a better tomorrow. While most countries lose their sovereignty to interdependence through globalization of the current international system-- the process of which empowers a very real uberclass that lives above and beyond common law and traditions--many populations have begun to more fervently identify with their native countries, and even their local communities.
These “stirring” individuals have had enough of the long Anglo-American treadmill of exploitation and domination. They wish to restore Basic Freedoms given to them by Nature or God. In this essay, we’ll focus on the US-based part of the overall Global Awakening dubbed by US foreign policy hawk, Zbigniew Brzezsinki, the “global political awakening.” Although the ideas corresponding to the Peace and Patriot Movement--participants of which henceforth referred to as Peace Patriots-- are revolutionary in scope, many do not wish for the typical sort of Revolution. In other words, their work is not designed to replace one Regime with Another.
On the contrary, a radical revision of the role of Institutions--Institutions which, in the eyes of a near-majority of those who associate themselves either with the Peace Movement or the Patriot Movement are the obsolete, but everpresent machinery of a deep power structure designed to steer society--should work towards fostering conditions of freedom in all nations.
This would entail knowing the true leaders of the Corporations, Foundations (as the joke goes, especially those with “free” or “private” in their literature), Steering Committees and Governments which make economic and social society, instead of focusing on Presidents and Prime Ministers, who are once removed from the true policy makers in Government and Corporate Directorships; that is, those who truly make the decisions about what to promote in the mainstream.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, as the Business Plans of contemporary Corporations called for the expansion of markets into foreign countries, this power structure became globalized. And today, unlike in any other time period, the reach of the elite (elites have always existed, and, as Aldous Huxley assumes, always will) extends across the entire planet. To see this, one need only look at the transnational dealings of market maker Goldman Sachs or the transnational eco-terrorism of British Petroleum (in the Gulf), the War Racketeer, Shell (in Iraq), other Big Oil players, BigPharma, the chemical industry and so on. The gross sum = Eisenhower’s Military-Industrial Complex.
Some of the big-picture-economic philosophies (“big picture” meaning the large brushstroke, an overview of the present age, and not its opposite, the countless micro-policies giving rise to the big picture, the way thing are at any given time) of the Peace Patriots, regarding how to fairly remake society, are typically associated with the right-wing of the political spectrum. As an aside, this right-to-left-wing political spectrum doesn’t hold in water, if not for it’s over-simplicity, for the apolitical nature of many people, who do not see themselves primarily as the citizens of political organizations.
Those aforementioned “right-wing” ideas stem from the work of Adam Smith who wrote in detail of Free Markets and Capitalism, which he saw as coming to fruition in conditions of “perfect freedom” and given to “natural liberty.” By way of “free associations,” individuals could enter into the marketplace, sell their labor, and acquire the goods they needed and wanted, with little or no third-party interference. Theoretically, ubiquitous competition would team-up with its partner cooperation to set fair prices and weed out poor quality. Many of these people most readily identify themselves as libertarians.
It is not, however, only libertarians who give attitude to the American-Global Awakening to the elitist colorization of power structures, but also many people who, had they not awoken and unsubscribed to what some have termed the “false right-left wing paradigm”, would consider themselves liberals or democrats, not Republicans, the close cousin of libertarianism. These individuals collectively give the Peace Patriots its progressive tones.
The Progressives among the Peace Patriots value a responsible environmentalism, and scoff at the political-environmentalist rhetoric highlighting as our gravest threat “Global Warming” and “Overpopulation.” They might instead choose to bring up legal charges against the world’s largest polluter--the United States Department of Defense and Pentagon--on the road to abolishing these war making machines altogether. As Major General Smedley Butler, the most decorated marine in US history, wrote: War is a Racket. War benefits those psychopathic individuals and Corporations with the resources enough to make wars.
Another element of this section of the Peace Patriots is a progressive economic policy, whereby public representatives invest for the country based on fair formulas and an altruism that is first rewarded, and then adopted in the culture of the elected leaders. Progressive-Libertarianism in economics would promote the values of entrepreneurship through free associations, the new organizations and Institutions arisen therefrom, and a framework designed to give Representatives the privilege to be a conduit for beneficial collective endeavors.
The Peace Patriots represent an unprecedented progressive-libertarian political movement. Not only is the movement globalized yet diverse, but, also, its main-progenitors are scholastically informed activists, who, in an important demonstration of nuance, are wholly uninterested in the Presidents, Prime Ministers and Political Parties historically used to distract such movement’s away from those whom truly guide their lives.
This movement is very much skeptical of revolutions and the solutions handed-down from mass media and in spectacular speeches.
The history of Revolutions is not one of populist--that is, for the people-- victories, but, rather, social cataclysms that oft led to the splintering, decay and eventual elitist-driven remaking of cultures. As these societies came closer to Revolution, what is today termed “partisanship” increasingly ruled. This is precisely what we see transpiring today.
In France, at the end of the eighteenth century, that Revolution gave rise to the Reign of Terror and the attempted consolidation of Europe, and beyond, in the form of the Napoleonic Wars; In Russia in 1917, Revolution gave rise to Leninist and Stalinist Gulags and Great Purges, and a highly stratified socialist System in which psychological domination by education and the manipulation of the command-and-control economy greased the wheels; the National Socialist Revolution of 1933 Germany gave rise also to dictatorship and genocide.
Instead of Revolution, Peace Patriots champion a global spiritual and psychological Awakening, which is posited to then propel humanity to a next stage of maturity. The “unwashed masses” will then understand, and choose to deal with, the techniques of domination designed to coerce and control their lives and species: for instance, psychological terrorism in the form of toxic stimuli (the sounds and images of propaganda and public relations), contrived crises (false flag), crises generally, fear-mongering, economic scarcity, the alteration of human biochemistry by the introduction of toxic chemicals into the environment (through food, inoculation, and aerial spraying), and other forms of new eugenics.
The Awakening will function to undermine the usefulness of such techniques.
What does an awakening at civilization’s sunset entail?
The term “global political awakening” can be attributed to Zbigniew Brzezinski. He has referred to the phenomenon as “a truly transformative event on the global scene.” He goes on:
“For the first time in human history almost all of humanity is politically activated, politically conscious and politically interactive. There are only a few pockets of humanity left in the remotest corners of the world that are not politically alert and engaged with the political turmoil and stirrings that are so widespread today around the world. The resulting global political activism is generating a surge in the quest for personal dignity, cultural respect and economic opportunity in a world painfully scarred by memories of centuries-long alien colonial or imperial domination.”
Brzezinski sees the Global Awakening as among the most dramatic and significant phenomenon in geopolitics that has ever taken place, and it “is apparent in radically different forms from Iraq to Indonesia, from Bolivia to Tibet.” Brzezinski asserts, “the worldwide yearning for human dignity is the central challenge inherent in the phenomenon of global political awakening.” He writes further:
“America needs to face squarely a centrally important new global reality: that the world's population is experiencing a political awakening unprecedented in scope and intensity, with the result that the politics of populism are transforming the politics of power. The need to respond to that massive phenomenon poses to the uniquely sovereign America an historic dilemma: What should be the central definition of America's global role?”
In his book, “Out of Control,” Brzezinski defines two issues of “major importance”: how to define concepts freedom and the good life. He argues, “the first pertains to the meaning of citizenship and the second to the essence of the human being.” In the same book, he discusses the conflation of morality and law. That, increasingly, what is legal is considered moral, and that which is illegal, is considered immoral, not the other way around. So, therefore, by making new law, one can make new morality.
In the book, Brzezinski outlines the way in which corporate-dominated mass media gives to the child his view of the world. He pens:
“On the whole, the values conveyed by the media repeatedly manifest what justifiably might be called moral corruption and cultural decadence.
“Today, for much of the world--and especially for the young-- television is the most important instrument both for socialization and education. In that respect, it is rapidly replacing the roles traditionally played by the family, by the church, by the school.
“Television gives the young viewer a first glimpse of the outside world. It first defines--and does so compellingly, by combining the visual and the audio impact--the meaning of the good life...It conditions desires, defines aspirations and unacceptable behavior.”
Brzezinski continues by enunciating the “staggering” facts on televisions effects on behavior. How so many people spend so much time glued to their television sets. As far as the so-called “programming” televisions offers, the “programs” “clearly extol self-gratification...normalize violence and brutality, encourage sexual promiscuity through example and stimulated peer pressures...the result is loss of control over social behavior.”
As Bertrand Russell, the British philosopher, historian, mathematician, and social critic wrote in his book, “The Impact of Science on Society,” the importance of mass psychology “has been enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of propaganda. Of these the most influential is what is called “education.”
A nagging question, which has gone under-emphasized by most analysts of the Global Awakening, is what exactly Brzezinski means with his term?
Could it be that he truly means that, because the mass media extends to almost every corner of the globe, the ability to plug people into the grids of power has worked to be a coup over people’s minds? Is his language consciously doublespeak intended to confuse Peace Patriots and their colleagues the world-over into thinking they can take it easy? Or, more optimistically and, I think, more likely, as the present continues to shape a future System more desperate and hopeless than the current one, are larger numbers of people becoming inclined towards, or welcoming of, Populist Activism?
For each action, there is an opposite and equal reaction. Let’s now take a walk in our minds on one of Einstein’s thought dreams. Imagine the development of an immense power, abused and expanded upon. A tyrant leading an exhaust-less War of Terror aimed to so change the environment of a people, that they themselves are also changed in the process. Imagine the remaking of societies and purges by Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, and Mao, but not just within their imaginary-line borders; instead, by way of a Global State, a World Regime--if you will. Imagine the power such a Global Institution causes. According to Newton’s laws of motion, there is to this series of tyrannical Actions myriad opposite Reactions.
What one observes in the reading of history is that, often as power centralization quickens, decentralizing tendencies arise and contradict that primary trend, thereby at least slowing it. Andrew Gavin Marshall elaborates on the primary way in which Technological Globalization has changed the world:
“The Technological Revolution has led to a diametrically opposed, antagonistic, and conflicting geopolitical reality: never before has humanity been so awakened to issues of power, exploitation, imperialism and domination; and simultaneously, never before have elites been so transnational and global in orientation, and with the ability to impose such a truly global system of scientific despotism and political oppression. These are the two major geopolitical realities of the world today. Never in all of human history has mankind been so capable of achieving a true global political psycho-social awakening; nor has humanity ever been in such danger of being subjected to a truly global scientific totalitarianism, potentially more oppressive than any system known before, and without a doubt more technologically capable of imposing a permanent despotism upon humanity. So we are filled with hope, but driven by urgency. In all of human history, never has the potential nor the repercussions of human actions and ideas ever been so monumental.”
Generating these countering trends is a sort of information war, ongoing. Although it might sound cliche, the impact of today on history is unimaginable. The volume of the vector that jet-propels modern man’s exchange of symbols and language on is greater than all those ages we consider the turning points of our Civilization: greater than European fascism and World War II; greater than the American and French Revolutions; greater than the Renaissance; the Black Plague, and on and on down the ages.
The exchange of symbols and language is not repeating history, or even rhyming with history--as Twain would have it--but truly making it. As high technology and communications have divorced the present from bygone ages, the associated quickening in society’s primary events, also known as “progress”, have enlarged the impact of decisions and actions by individuals like never before.
Moreover, we live today in the digital age, like flies through a digital matrix of widow webs. Although many futurists envisaged, and still do, the nature of a technetronic society as non-intimate, and likely to usher in a near-totally atomized public of robot zombies, the truth of the situation points towards a near-opposite reality.
Issues such as those brought up by the 9/11 Truth Movement have become mainstream political issues, according to Time Magazine. As the incrementally creeping Abuse of Power protects, first and foremost, the “witting” Uberclass, as well as the armies of opulent and psychopathic cronies, the Global Awakening reacts and intensifies.
Make no mistake that, by any historical standards, the fast flux of man’s modern society is, in religious terms, truly a transfiguration. Websters defines “to transfigure” like this: “to give a new and typically exalted or spiritual appearance to.” To Christians, one keystone example of this is Jesus’ appearance upon the mountain. Matt. 17: 1-9
Now, how do You live and pray while wide-awake at Civilization’s Sunset?
Please see: Andrew Gavin Marshall. The Global Political Awakening and the New World Order, published by Global Research:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19873
These “stirring” individuals have had enough of the long Anglo-American treadmill of exploitation and domination. They wish to restore Basic Freedoms given to them by Nature or God. In this essay, we’ll focus on the US-based part of the overall Global Awakening dubbed by US foreign policy hawk, Zbigniew Brzezsinki, the “global political awakening.” Although the ideas corresponding to the Peace and Patriot Movement--participants of which henceforth referred to as Peace Patriots-- are revolutionary in scope, many do not wish for the typical sort of Revolution. In other words, their work is not designed to replace one Regime with Another.
On the contrary, a radical revision of the role of Institutions--Institutions which, in the eyes of a near-majority of those who associate themselves either with the Peace Movement or the Patriot Movement are the obsolete, but everpresent machinery of a deep power structure designed to steer society--should work towards fostering conditions of freedom in all nations.
This would entail knowing the true leaders of the Corporations, Foundations (as the joke goes, especially those with “free” or “private” in their literature), Steering Committees and Governments which make economic and social society, instead of focusing on Presidents and Prime Ministers, who are once removed from the true policy makers in Government and Corporate Directorships; that is, those who truly make the decisions about what to promote in the mainstream.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, as the Business Plans of contemporary Corporations called for the expansion of markets into foreign countries, this power structure became globalized. And today, unlike in any other time period, the reach of the elite (elites have always existed, and, as Aldous Huxley assumes, always will) extends across the entire planet. To see this, one need only look at the transnational dealings of market maker Goldman Sachs or the transnational eco-terrorism of British Petroleum (in the Gulf), the War Racketeer, Shell (in Iraq), other Big Oil players, BigPharma, the chemical industry and so on. The gross sum = Eisenhower’s Military-Industrial Complex.
Some of the big-picture-economic philosophies (“big picture” meaning the large brushstroke, an overview of the present age, and not its opposite, the countless micro-policies giving rise to the big picture, the way thing are at any given time) of the Peace Patriots, regarding how to fairly remake society, are typically associated with the right-wing of the political spectrum. As an aside, this right-to-left-wing political spectrum doesn’t hold in water, if not for it’s over-simplicity, for the apolitical nature of many people, who do not see themselves primarily as the citizens of political organizations.
Those aforementioned “right-wing” ideas stem from the work of Adam Smith who wrote in detail of Free Markets and Capitalism, which he saw as coming to fruition in conditions of “perfect freedom” and given to “natural liberty.” By way of “free associations,” individuals could enter into the marketplace, sell their labor, and acquire the goods they needed and wanted, with little or no third-party interference. Theoretically, ubiquitous competition would team-up with its partner cooperation to set fair prices and weed out poor quality. Many of these people most readily identify themselves as libertarians.
It is not, however, only libertarians who give attitude to the American-Global Awakening to the elitist colorization of power structures, but also many people who, had they not awoken and unsubscribed to what some have termed the “false right-left wing paradigm”, would consider themselves liberals or democrats, not Republicans, the close cousin of libertarianism. These individuals collectively give the Peace Patriots its progressive tones.
The Progressives among the Peace Patriots value a responsible environmentalism, and scoff at the political-environmentalist rhetoric highlighting as our gravest threat “Global Warming” and “Overpopulation.” They might instead choose to bring up legal charges against the world’s largest polluter--the United States Department of Defense and Pentagon--on the road to abolishing these war making machines altogether. As Major General Smedley Butler, the most decorated marine in US history, wrote: War is a Racket. War benefits those psychopathic individuals and Corporations with the resources enough to make wars.
Another element of this section of the Peace Patriots is a progressive economic policy, whereby public representatives invest for the country based on fair formulas and an altruism that is first rewarded, and then adopted in the culture of the elected leaders. Progressive-Libertarianism in economics would promote the values of entrepreneurship through free associations, the new organizations and Institutions arisen therefrom, and a framework designed to give Representatives the privilege to be a conduit for beneficial collective endeavors.
The Peace Patriots represent an unprecedented progressive-libertarian political movement. Not only is the movement globalized yet diverse, but, also, its main-progenitors are scholastically informed activists, who, in an important demonstration of nuance, are wholly uninterested in the Presidents, Prime Ministers and Political Parties historically used to distract such movement’s away from those whom truly guide their lives.
This movement is very much skeptical of revolutions and the solutions handed-down from mass media and in spectacular speeches.
The history of Revolutions is not one of populist--that is, for the people-- victories, but, rather, social cataclysms that oft led to the splintering, decay and eventual elitist-driven remaking of cultures. As these societies came closer to Revolution, what is today termed “partisanship” increasingly ruled. This is precisely what we see transpiring today.
In France, at the end of the eighteenth century, that Revolution gave rise to the Reign of Terror and the attempted consolidation of Europe, and beyond, in the form of the Napoleonic Wars; In Russia in 1917, Revolution gave rise to Leninist and Stalinist Gulags and Great Purges, and a highly stratified socialist System in which psychological domination by education and the manipulation of the command-and-control economy greased the wheels; the National Socialist Revolution of 1933 Germany gave rise also to dictatorship and genocide.
Instead of Revolution, Peace Patriots champion a global spiritual and psychological Awakening, which is posited to then propel humanity to a next stage of maturity. The “unwashed masses” will then understand, and choose to deal with, the techniques of domination designed to coerce and control their lives and species: for instance, psychological terrorism in the form of toxic stimuli (the sounds and images of propaganda and public relations), contrived crises (false flag), crises generally, fear-mongering, economic scarcity, the alteration of human biochemistry by the introduction of toxic chemicals into the environment (through food, inoculation, and aerial spraying), and other forms of new eugenics.
The Awakening will function to undermine the usefulness of such techniques.
What does an awakening at civilization’s sunset entail?
The term “global political awakening” can be attributed to Zbigniew Brzezinski. He has referred to the phenomenon as “a truly transformative event on the global scene.” He goes on:
“For the first time in human history almost all of humanity is politically activated, politically conscious and politically interactive. There are only a few pockets of humanity left in the remotest corners of the world that are not politically alert and engaged with the political turmoil and stirrings that are so widespread today around the world. The resulting global political activism is generating a surge in the quest for personal dignity, cultural respect and economic opportunity in a world painfully scarred by memories of centuries-long alien colonial or imperial domination.”
Brzezinski sees the Global Awakening as among the most dramatic and significant phenomenon in geopolitics that has ever taken place, and it “is apparent in radically different forms from Iraq to Indonesia, from Bolivia to Tibet.” Brzezinski asserts, “the worldwide yearning for human dignity is the central challenge inherent in the phenomenon of global political awakening.” He writes further:
“America needs to face squarely a centrally important new global reality: that the world's population is experiencing a political awakening unprecedented in scope and intensity, with the result that the politics of populism are transforming the politics of power. The need to respond to that massive phenomenon poses to the uniquely sovereign America an historic dilemma: What should be the central definition of America's global role?”
In his book, “Out of Control,” Brzezinski defines two issues of “major importance”: how to define concepts freedom and the good life. He argues, “the first pertains to the meaning of citizenship and the second to the essence of the human being.” In the same book, he discusses the conflation of morality and law. That, increasingly, what is legal is considered moral, and that which is illegal, is considered immoral, not the other way around. So, therefore, by making new law, one can make new morality.
In the book, Brzezinski outlines the way in which corporate-dominated mass media gives to the child his view of the world. He pens:
“On the whole, the values conveyed by the media repeatedly manifest what justifiably might be called moral corruption and cultural decadence.
“Today, for much of the world--and especially for the young-- television is the most important instrument both for socialization and education. In that respect, it is rapidly replacing the roles traditionally played by the family, by the church, by the school.
“Television gives the young viewer a first glimpse of the outside world. It first defines--and does so compellingly, by combining the visual and the audio impact--the meaning of the good life...It conditions desires, defines aspirations and unacceptable behavior.”
Brzezinski continues by enunciating the “staggering” facts on televisions effects on behavior. How so many people spend so much time glued to their television sets. As far as the so-called “programming” televisions offers, the “programs” “clearly extol self-gratification...normalize violence and brutality, encourage sexual promiscuity through example and stimulated peer pressures...the result is loss of control over social behavior.”
As Bertrand Russell, the British philosopher, historian, mathematician, and social critic wrote in his book, “The Impact of Science on Society,” the importance of mass psychology “has been enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of propaganda. Of these the most influential is what is called “education.”
A nagging question, which has gone under-emphasized by most analysts of the Global Awakening, is what exactly Brzezinski means with his term?
Could it be that he truly means that, because the mass media extends to almost every corner of the globe, the ability to plug people into the grids of power has worked to be a coup over people’s minds? Is his language consciously doublespeak intended to confuse Peace Patriots and their colleagues the world-over into thinking they can take it easy? Or, more optimistically and, I think, more likely, as the present continues to shape a future System more desperate and hopeless than the current one, are larger numbers of people becoming inclined towards, or welcoming of, Populist Activism?
For each action, there is an opposite and equal reaction. Let’s now take a walk in our minds on one of Einstein’s thought dreams. Imagine the development of an immense power, abused and expanded upon. A tyrant leading an exhaust-less War of Terror aimed to so change the environment of a people, that they themselves are also changed in the process. Imagine the remaking of societies and purges by Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, and Mao, but not just within their imaginary-line borders; instead, by way of a Global State, a World Regime--if you will. Imagine the power such a Global Institution causes. According to Newton’s laws of motion, there is to this series of tyrannical Actions myriad opposite Reactions.
What one observes in the reading of history is that, often as power centralization quickens, decentralizing tendencies arise and contradict that primary trend, thereby at least slowing it. Andrew Gavin Marshall elaborates on the primary way in which Technological Globalization has changed the world:
“The Technological Revolution has led to a diametrically opposed, antagonistic, and conflicting geopolitical reality: never before has humanity been so awakened to issues of power, exploitation, imperialism and domination; and simultaneously, never before have elites been so transnational and global in orientation, and with the ability to impose such a truly global system of scientific despotism and political oppression. These are the two major geopolitical realities of the world today. Never in all of human history has mankind been so capable of achieving a true global political psycho-social awakening; nor has humanity ever been in such danger of being subjected to a truly global scientific totalitarianism, potentially more oppressive than any system known before, and without a doubt more technologically capable of imposing a permanent despotism upon humanity. So we are filled with hope, but driven by urgency. In all of human history, never has the potential nor the repercussions of human actions and ideas ever been so monumental.”
Generating these countering trends is a sort of information war, ongoing. Although it might sound cliche, the impact of today on history is unimaginable. The volume of the vector that jet-propels modern man’s exchange of symbols and language on is greater than all those ages we consider the turning points of our Civilization: greater than European fascism and World War II; greater than the American and French Revolutions; greater than the Renaissance; the Black Plague, and on and on down the ages.
The exchange of symbols and language is not repeating history, or even rhyming with history--as Twain would have it--but truly making it. As high technology and communications have divorced the present from bygone ages, the associated quickening in society’s primary events, also known as “progress”, have enlarged the impact of decisions and actions by individuals like never before.
Moreover, we live today in the digital age, like flies through a digital matrix of widow webs. Although many futurists envisaged, and still do, the nature of a technetronic society as non-intimate, and likely to usher in a near-totally atomized public of robot zombies, the truth of the situation points towards a near-opposite reality.
Issues such as those brought up by the 9/11 Truth Movement have become mainstream political issues, according to Time Magazine. As the incrementally creeping Abuse of Power protects, first and foremost, the “witting” Uberclass, as well as the armies of opulent and psychopathic cronies, the Global Awakening reacts and intensifies.
Make no mistake that, by any historical standards, the fast flux of man’s modern society is, in religious terms, truly a transfiguration. Websters defines “to transfigure” like this: “to give a new and typically exalted or spiritual appearance to.” To Christians, one keystone example of this is Jesus’ appearance upon the mountain. Matt. 17: 1-9
Now, how do You live and pray while wide-awake at Civilization’s Sunset?
Please see: Andrew Gavin Marshall. The Global Political Awakening and the New World Order, published by Global Research:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19873
Friday, July 9, 2010
Special Alert: Language Update from Pentagon
At the beginning of July, the Associated Press reported that the Army planned to drop the Vietnam Era moniker “psychological operations,” citing that it can seem ominous.
Drilled into soldiers of the Vietnam Era and after, the goal of such techniques have been to win “hearts and minds” of peoples, foreign and domestic.
The Defense Department’s new, more neutral term, is “Military Information Support Operations,” or MISO. The name-change parallels the early 2009 move away from the Bush Administration terms, “The Global War on Terror” and “Long War” to the term “Overseas Contingency Operation.” For now, the term “War on Terror” remains the dominant one.
U.S. Special Operations Command spokesman, Ken McGraw, said the new designation, adopted in June, is a more accurate reflection of the unit’s job of producing leaflets, radio broadcasts, and loudspeaker messages to influence enemy soldiers and civilians.
Psychological warfare operations have been a keystone feature of US foreign policy techniques in especially the latter half of the twentieth century, and on into the current one. In the early years after the Second World War, for example, the new Central Intelligence Agency, taking the place of the Office of Strategic Services, found itself unprepared to counter a monolithic propaganda blitz, and organization effort, based out of the Soviet Union. Western Culture was portrayed by Soviet propagandists as decadent and degenerate. Soviet culture, so went the official myth, was the culture of the future.
The western intelligence community, with US organizations like the CIA-bankrolled Congress for Cultural Freedom at the pyramid’s top, countered the Soviets by portraying Soviet society as America’s antithesis: instead of a society based in freedom and democracy, like American society, communist culture was totalitarian , dictated, gray and unfree.
These psychological operations were dubbed “covert action” by early intelligence community operatives in the post-war era, and included everything from books and symphonies to Hollywood films. There indeed was an atmosphere of imperialism about such efforts, and Hollywood even called its post-war markets, not markets, but “territories.” Discussion by the public of such phenomenon is historically belittled and brushed under the rug, called by the hard-of-thinking mere “conspiracy theory.”
These propaganda-derived, present day public relations techniques were helped along, in the early twentieth century, by the godfather of propaganda, Edward Bernays, who wrote:
In a republican society, that is a society based in law designed to protect the Supreme Rights of all, especially the poor against the opulent, “the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses” is illegal. Obviously, it is also highly amoral.
For more on Bernays and the birth of modern public relations, one need only You Tube the great BBC documentary, “The Century of Self.”
“One of the catalysts for the transition is foreign and domestic sensitivities to the term ‘psychological operations’ that often lead to a misunderstanding of the mission,” McGraw said about the July 2010 name change.
The change of name is to be extended to all military services, though the form in which the change will take across the many army agencies remains unknown. The Army’s only active duty psychological operations unit, based in Fort Bragg, is called the 4th Psychological Operations Group.
The change was directed from the top, by Pentagon policy makers working for Defense Secretary Robert Gates. The old term is considered to be an atavistic artifact of the Cold War Era, and one that implies subterfuge and misinformation. Presumably, the new term is designed to avoid the implications associated with the old.
Language is passed down the culture creation chain to smaller information distributors, thereby causing a change in word choice among participants in the information and language exchange. An analogy might be the process whereby public drinking water arrives at consumers through the private sector. In the private sector, business of all sizes tend to use public water for their products, since the water is cheaper to use. Through the distribution of private products constituted with public water, many of the chemicals, such as lithium and sodium fluoride, reach the public. Therefore, it’s an inevitability that, a US citizen for example, will drink fluoridated water in his lifetime.
In a process of mass Synesthesia (synesthetes experience a muddling of the senses), the algorithm of the symbols, words and laws of cultures produce a certain way of knowing and understanding in that culture’s participants.
Another analogy of how language spreads comes from economics, specifically the concept of trickle-down theory, oft associated with Reaganomics. The term trickle-down was coined by humorist Will Rogers, who said during the Great Depression that “money was all appropriated from the top in hopes that it would trickle down to the needy.” Proponents of such policies argue that, when the top income earners invest heavily into business infrastructure and equity markets, more goods will be produced and available on the market at lower prices, thereby spurring job growth for middle and lower class individuals. This logic sees economic wealth flowing from top to bottom. What astute observers point out, is that the trickle-down effect in this construct is very minimal.
The allegiance of many individuals in the Reagan administration to trickle-down premises might have been due to the fact that the concept is a truism. Clearly the largest investments by the apex income earners make markets. That is, after all, what Goldman Sachs claims to be its main service to the global economy, and, after a zero trading loss during the first quarter of 2010, there’s no denying that that firm is a top income earner. Just like how in trickle-down theory only bread crumbs fall from the table of the uberclass, the true meanings behind changes away from terms like ‘psy-ops’ go unannounced to the lower and middle class “ignorant and meddlesome outsiders.” As I mentioned beforehand, the change of moniker is one towards a more neutral choice of words.
One of the premiere enunciators of Reaganomics under Reagan was former assistant secretary the Treasury, Paul Craig Roberts, who today is a force in the public US policy discussion. A staunch opponent of primary trends in US public and corporate culture, Roberts recently said of US propaganda techniques:
All-in-all, the big lie is composed of innumerable and oft contrived little lies, such as the switch away from the vaguely violent “psy-op” to the more neutral “Military Information Support Operation.” I suspect that, just as the “Global War on Terror” has yet to be superseded by “Overseas Contigency Operation,” “psy-op” will remain the popular catchphrase.
Alfred H Paddock Jr., a retired colonel and former Director for Psychological Operations in the Office of the Secretary of Defense from 1986 to 1988, dislikes the new name both because it is vague and misleading, uncatchy and unmarketable.
"Somehow it gives a nefarious connotation, but I think that this baggage can be overcome," said Paddock of the old term. In Vietnam an Laos, Paddock served three combat tours with Special Forces.
"Military Information Support Operations, or MISO, is not something that rolls off the tip of your tongue," Paddock said. "It makes it even more difficult for psychological operations personnel to explain what they do. That they still have the capability to employ programs and themes designed to influence the behavior of foreign target audiences."
Drilled into soldiers of the Vietnam Era and after, the goal of such techniques have been to win “hearts and minds” of peoples, foreign and domestic.
The Defense Department’s new, more neutral term, is “Military Information Support Operations,” or MISO. The name-change parallels the early 2009 move away from the Bush Administration terms, “The Global War on Terror” and “Long War” to the term “Overseas Contingency Operation.” For now, the term “War on Terror” remains the dominant one.
U.S. Special Operations Command spokesman, Ken McGraw, said the new designation, adopted in June, is a more accurate reflection of the unit’s job of producing leaflets, radio broadcasts, and loudspeaker messages to influence enemy soldiers and civilians.
Psychological warfare operations have been a keystone feature of US foreign policy techniques in especially the latter half of the twentieth century, and on into the current one. In the early years after the Second World War, for example, the new Central Intelligence Agency, taking the place of the Office of Strategic Services, found itself unprepared to counter a monolithic propaganda blitz, and organization effort, based out of the Soviet Union. Western Culture was portrayed by Soviet propagandists as decadent and degenerate. Soviet culture, so went the official myth, was the culture of the future.
The western intelligence community, with US organizations like the CIA-bankrolled Congress for Cultural Freedom at the pyramid’s top, countered the Soviets by portraying Soviet society as America’s antithesis: instead of a society based in freedom and democracy, like American society, communist culture was totalitarian , dictated, gray and unfree.
These psychological operations were dubbed “covert action” by early intelligence community operatives in the post-war era, and included everything from books and symphonies to Hollywood films. There indeed was an atmosphere of imperialism about such efforts, and Hollywood even called its post-war markets, not markets, but “territories.” Discussion by the public of such phenomenon is historically belittled and brushed under the rug, called by the hard-of-thinking mere “conspiracy theory.”
These propaganda-derived, present day public relations techniques were helped along, in the early twentieth century, by the godfather of propaganda, Edward Bernays, who wrote:
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.
In a republican society, that is a society based in law designed to protect the Supreme Rights of all, especially the poor against the opulent, “the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses” is illegal. Obviously, it is also highly amoral.
For more on Bernays and the birth of modern public relations, one need only You Tube the great BBC documentary, “The Century of Self.”
“One of the catalysts for the transition is foreign and domestic sensitivities to the term ‘psychological operations’ that often lead to a misunderstanding of the mission,” McGraw said about the July 2010 name change.
The change of name is to be extended to all military services, though the form in which the change will take across the many army agencies remains unknown. The Army’s only active duty psychological operations unit, based in Fort Bragg, is called the 4th Psychological Operations Group.
The change was directed from the top, by Pentagon policy makers working for Defense Secretary Robert Gates. The old term is considered to be an atavistic artifact of the Cold War Era, and one that implies subterfuge and misinformation. Presumably, the new term is designed to avoid the implications associated with the old.
Language is passed down the culture creation chain to smaller information distributors, thereby causing a change in word choice among participants in the information and language exchange. An analogy might be the process whereby public drinking water arrives at consumers through the private sector. In the private sector, business of all sizes tend to use public water for their products, since the water is cheaper to use. Through the distribution of private products constituted with public water, many of the chemicals, such as lithium and sodium fluoride, reach the public. Therefore, it’s an inevitability that, a US citizen for example, will drink fluoridated water in his lifetime.
In a process of mass Synesthesia (synesthetes experience a muddling of the senses), the algorithm of the symbols, words and laws of cultures produce a certain way of knowing and understanding in that culture’s participants.
Another analogy of how language spreads comes from economics, specifically the concept of trickle-down theory, oft associated with Reaganomics. The term trickle-down was coined by humorist Will Rogers, who said during the Great Depression that “money was all appropriated from the top in hopes that it would trickle down to the needy.” Proponents of such policies argue that, when the top income earners invest heavily into business infrastructure and equity markets, more goods will be produced and available on the market at lower prices, thereby spurring job growth for middle and lower class individuals. This logic sees economic wealth flowing from top to bottom. What astute observers point out, is that the trickle-down effect in this construct is very minimal.
The allegiance of many individuals in the Reagan administration to trickle-down premises might have been due to the fact that the concept is a truism. Clearly the largest investments by the apex income earners make markets. That is, after all, what Goldman Sachs claims to be its main service to the global economy, and, after a zero trading loss during the first quarter of 2010, there’s no denying that that firm is a top income earner. Just like how in trickle-down theory only bread crumbs fall from the table of the uberclass, the true meanings behind changes away from terms like ‘psy-ops’ go unannounced to the lower and middle class “ignorant and meddlesome outsiders.” As I mentioned beforehand, the change of moniker is one towards a more neutral choice of words.
One of the premiere enunciators of Reaganomics under Reagan was former assistant secretary the Treasury, Paul Craig Roberts, who today is a force in the public US policy discussion. A staunch opponent of primary trends in US public and corporate culture, Roberts recently said of US propaganda techniques:
An article in the journal, Sociological Inquiry, casts light on the effectiveness of propaganda. Researchers examined why big lies succeed where little lies fail. Governments can get away with mass deceptions, but politicians cannot get away with sexual affairs.
The researchers explain why so many Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, years after it has become obvious that Iraq had nothing to do with the event. Americans developed elaborate rationalizations based on Bush administration propaganda that alleged Iraqi involvement and became deeply attached to their beliefs. Their emotional involvement became wrapped up in their personal identity and sense of morality. They looked for information that supported their beliefs and avoided information that challenged them, regardless of the facts of the matter.
In Mein Kampf, Hitler explained the believability of the Big Lie as compared to the small lie: “In the simplicity of their minds, people more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have such impudence. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and continue to think that there may be some other explanation.”
What the sociologists and Hitler are telling us is that by the time facts become clear, people are emotionally wedded to the beliefs planted by the propaganda and find it a wrenching experience to free themselves. It is more comfortable, instead, to denounce the truth-tellers than the liars whom the truth-tellers expose.
All-in-all, the big lie is composed of innumerable and oft contrived little lies, such as the switch away from the vaguely violent “psy-op” to the more neutral “Military Information Support Operation.” I suspect that, just as the “Global War on Terror” has yet to be superseded by “Overseas Contigency Operation,” “psy-op” will remain the popular catchphrase.
Alfred H Paddock Jr., a retired colonel and former Director for Psychological Operations in the Office of the Secretary of Defense from 1986 to 1988, dislikes the new name both because it is vague and misleading, uncatchy and unmarketable.
"Somehow it gives a nefarious connotation, but I think that this baggage can be overcome," said Paddock of the old term. In Vietnam an Laos, Paddock served three combat tours with Special Forces.
"Military Information Support Operations, or MISO, is not something that rolls off the tip of your tongue," Paddock said. "It makes it even more difficult for psychological operations personnel to explain what they do. That they still have the capability to employ programs and themes designed to influence the behavior of foreign target audiences."
Thursday, June 10, 2010
From 9/11 to 4/20: BP Gulf Oil Leak and a Planned Course for History
A Kickoff for the Century of Change: 9/11
Evidence and September 11th fit well together, like puzzle pieces. The amount of data pointing towards alternative solutions to the who, what, why, and where’s of that fateful day leave many questions officially unanswered; not to mention millions of people perplexed about how their brethren just don’t seem to see what they see. Even former assistant secretary to the Treasury under Reagan and father of Reaganomics, Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, has extensively questioned that day’s events. In February, Roberts wrote an article about that month’s Washington Times article by Jennifer Harper, called “Inside the Beltway,” which detailed 31 press conferences held by Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, an organization of professionals which has 1,000 members, in cities in the US and abroad on February 19. [1]
This organization cites as suspicious the following in regards to the collapse of the north and south towers and WTC 7: for starters, that fires in high rises have never brought down a steel-framed high rise building; in the case of building 7, the tower collapses straight down into its own footprint at freefall acceleration in the first 100 feet or two and a half seconds; in that building, there were 40,000 tons of structural steel designed to resist the collapse of the 47 storey structure, which stood a football field away from the Twin Towers, as well as important Enron and WorldCom records. In the north and south towers, several tons of pooled molten iron—reported by first responders, structural engineers, and documented by FEMA—were detailed, although jet plane impact and normal office fires don’t produce molten iron or steel, since it doesn’t begin to melt until 3,000 degrees. The 9/11 fires probably produced upwards of 1,600 degree temperatures.
Chemical evidence of a high-tech incendiary called nano-thermite—used to cut through steel—was found in all the dust sprinkled throughout lower Manhattan. In this dust, there are several tons of tiny spheres of previously molten iron, a by-product of thermite. [2]
Retired army Major General Albert Stubblebine, who, in his last assignment, was responsible for all of the army’s strategic intelligence forces around the world, is one of many authoritative personalities on the 9/11 events; in his last command, he held the responsibility for signals intelligence, photos intelligence, counter-intelligence and human intelligence. While speaking out for 9/11 truth, he warrants his suspicious by citing his vast experience analyzing photos, and for all sorts of evidence at that. About his conclusions regarding the Pentagon explosion, the former Major General has said: “from the photographs that I have analyzed and looked at very carefully, it was not an airplane…for one thing, if you looked at the hole that was made in the Pentagon, the nose penetrated far enough so that there should have been wing-marks in the wall of the Pentagon…so where were they?” [3]
“A thousand architects and engineers want to know, and are calling on Congress to order a new investigation into the destruction of the Twin Towers and Building 7,” reports the Washington Times. The Times reports that the architects and engineers have concluded that FEMA and the National Institute of Standards and Technology garnered “insufficient, contradictory and fraudulent accounts of the circumstances of the towers’ destruction” and are “calling for a grand jury investigation of NIST officials.” [3]
Further implications abound, like pseudo-sophisticated trades made on insider information that caused huge profits for manipulators who foresaw the stocks of certain airline and insurance companies plummeting in the days after Sept. 11 2001.
The Institute for Counter Terrorism (ICT), in Herzliya, Israel, printed an article entitled, “Black Tuesday: World’s Largest Insider Trading Scam?” on Sept. 19, 2001. Author Don Radlauer, an expert in stock options and derivatives, gave details of the types and volumes of the trades, saying: “Obviously, anyone who had detailed knowledge of the attacks before they happened was, at the very least, an accessory to their planning; and the overwhelming probability is that the trades could have been made only by the same people who masterminded the attacks themselves.” According to Radlauer, the timing, specificity, size and unusual nature of the trades made them suspect. “The trading is sure to have been done under false names, behind shell corporations, and in general to have been thoroughly obfuscated.”
Up there with the most suspicious spikes in trading activity were high increases in “put options,” which are highly leveraged bets that a certain stock’s share price will fall. The spike in “put options” placed on the two airlines involved in the hijackings of Sept. 11, United Airlines (UAL) and American Airlines, have not been officially or satisfactorily investigated.
A 9,000 percent jump in United Air Lines (UAL) put options between Sept. 6 and Sept. 10, with a 285 percent jump on the Thursday before the attack, coincides with a 6,000 percent jump in American Airlines put options. There was no similar trading activity on other airlines, according to market reports. Major brokerage houses with offices in WTC, Morgan Stanley and Merrill-Lynch, had 27-fold and 12-fold increases in put option purchases on their respective shares between Sept. 7 and Sept. 10.
“The afternoon before the attack, alarm bells were sounding over unusual trading in the U.S. stock options market,” the CBS program 60 Minutes reported on Sept. 19. Investigator Michael C. Ruppert ensures: “These trades were certainly noticed after the attacks.”
“This could very well be insider trading at the worst, most horrific, most evil use you’ve ever seen in your entire life . . . this would be one of the most extraordinary coincidences in the history of mankind if it was a coincidence,” Bloomberg Business News’ Dylan Ratigan said Sept. 20.
Although the chief of enforcement at the Securities and Exchange Commission, William McLucas, said regulators would “certainly be able to track down every trade, where the trade cleared, where the trade was directed from,” no U.S. or foreign agency has made public arrests as a result of investigations into these trades. [4]
Making Economic Society for a Specific Transformation
Evidently, there was quite a bit of insider information to trade on in the days and weeks leading up to 9/11. That major Wall Street firms protected themselves and prospered from “lucky” trading, evidences perceived usefulness of 9/11 to major players of the planet’s increasingly total corporatocracy. A section entitled “Creating Tomorrow’s Dominant Force” in the neo-conservative think-tank Project for the New American Century’s document, Rebuilding America’s Defenses, vaguely, but clearly to those fluent in technocraticese, outlines what is needed to spur societal change: “Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor.” Many analysts see 9/11 as the “Pearl Harbor” prophesized by PNAC, whose membership includes Richard Dick Cheney, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Donald Rumself, Paul Wolfowitz, Steve Forbes, Jeb Bush, among others. Therefore, 9/11 can be seen as a multi-faceted opportunity on which policy makers could capitalize in favor of long-desired plans.
Shorting the Gulf Region: environmental and financial terrorism?
Just like trades before 9/11 should cause concern and questions, so too do trades made by major players in the days leading up the BP oil leak. Goldman Sachs, a premiere brokerage firm, sold 4,680,822 shares of BP in the first quarter of 2010. Goldman’s sales represented the largest of any firm during that period. If the firms’ shares been sold at the average price of BP’s stock that quarter, it would have gained more than $266 million from its holdings. Had the firm sold those shares today, their investment would have lost 36+ percent on its value; so, roughly $96+ million. Shares sold were 44 percent of Goldman’s position in the Big Oil firm, the largest sales of oil shares in its trading history. Of course, the remaining holdings have lost tens of millions in their value. [5]
Paul Noel, an expert on the Gulf Oil subject, provided intelligence on the shorting: [6]
Such movements of volume—such as those seen before 9/11 and 4/20, the first day of the oil leak—are not atypical of large asset management firms, for Wall Street brokerages regularly buy and sell huge blocks of shares, not only for themselves, but for their oftentimes uber-rich clients as well. That such a voluminous movement of economic power preceded incomprehensible destruction is par for the course in the embryonic, soviet modeled command-and-control global economy of today (and other deference systems before that, for that matter). By way of economic democracy, intriguing, but delicate super-alliances and their under-the-table agreements forge the future. For centuries, society has been made economically, and clearly today fits in well with the pattern: to usher in crises as a means to justifying artificial scarcity, presenting new solutions previously unviable, followed by the policy’s and courses to which those solutions lead.
Goldman was not the only asset firm to sell huge blocks of BP stock in the first quarter, though these other firms sold off fractions of what Goldman did. Wachovia, owned by Wells Fargo, sold 2,667,419 shares, while UBS—a Swiss bank—sold 2,667,419 shares. A staggering fact that points towards numerous interesting conversational rabbit holes, especially concerning Goldman Sachs’s clout, Wachovia and UBS sold greater percentages of their BP stock; those being, 98 percent and 97 percent respectively.
BP Chief Executive, Tony Hayward, also sold considerable stock in BP. Four weeks before the oil leak, the BP chief cashed in about a third of his holdings in the company. By doing so, he avoided losing £423,000 pounds when BP's share price plunged after the leak. His decision, however, helped him to avoid losing more than £423,000 when BP’s share price plunged after the oil spill began six weeks ago. [7] Further, on April 12th, more than a week before the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, Haliburton, the world's second largest oilfield services corporation, unexpectedly acquired Boots & Coots, a small but much experienced oil well-control company. The company handles fires and blowouts on oil rigs and oil wells. [8]
Wellington Management, a large asset firm, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation were reported to be purchasing BP’s stock. [5]
Corporate Operational Defiance Disorder and the Management of Globalization
BP officially admits to just a few thousand barrels hemorrhaging into the ocean each day. Contradictorily, experts estimate the true figure at 60,000 barrels or 2.5 million gallons daily. Truth being, the real figures are unknowable, considering that BP has barred independent engineers from looking at the breach. When this part of the Earth will run out of oil, nobody can be certain. Meanwhile, under the radar of the corporate media, Transocean Ltd.—the owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig leased by BP—has made $270 million off the oil leak through post-disaster insurance payouts. [9]
On May 20th, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ordered the London-based BP to cease dispersant of Corexit 9500 (used to break up the leaked oil) or to describe in detail why other dispersants do not meet environmental standards. BP stated that the chemical product now in use is “the best option for subsea application.” [10]
The 1989 Exxon Valdez spill leaked nearly 11 million gallons of crude, killing vibrant and diverse wildlife and damaging the reputation of Exxon. In fact, the leader of containment efforts in the hours just after the tanker began leaking was not Exxon Mobil Corp, but, truly, BP, owing to their 1989 ownership of a controlling 50.01 percent share in the consortium.
Watching the crisis in the Gulf unfold is akin to reliving the Valdez disaster for attorney Zygmut Plater, who conducted the legal team for the state-appointed Alaska Oil Spill Commission that investigated the Exxon spill. “I feel this horrible, sickening feeling,” said Plater, now a teacher at Boston College. “What happened in Alaska was determined by decisions coming from (BP in) Houston,” he said.
Today, Plater laments an approach in regards to the ’89 spill that attempted to avoid pointing fingers. “In retrospect, it could’ve focused attention on BP and created transparency which would’ve changed the internal culture,” he said. “As we see the internal culture appears not to have changed with tragic results.” [11]
One defense yet to be tried to stop the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico is billions of hydrocarbon-chewing microbes, like Alcanivorax Borkumensis. One purpose of the 830,000 chemical dispersants used to combat the oil slick is to break the oil into smaller droplets, which are easier for bacteria to consume. Nature hosts innumerable types of organisms who, as a community, combine to decompose oil. No single microbe has proved more efficient than this natural defense. “Every ocean we look at, from the Antarctic to the Arctic, there are oil-degrading bacteria,” says Atlas, who analyzed genetically engineered microbes and other cleanup methods in the wake of the Exxon-Valdez oil spill in Alaska. “Petroleum has thousands of compounds. Its complex and the communities that feed on it are complex. A superbug fails because it competes with this community that is adapted to the environment.” Marine-dwelling bacteria and fungi use hydrocarbons as fuel by breaking up hydrocarbons with enzymes and oxygen, their populations growing exponentially in days. [12]
Basis for Legal Action
A clause buried in the U.S. Clean Water Act means that BP and others could be charged with, for all intents and purposes, near unlimited fines. The act enables the government to seek civil penalties in court for each drop of oil that spills into US navigable waters, including the area of the leaking well. The US government could fine BP or others up to $4,300 for each barrel leaked into the Gulf and surrounding marine ecosystems, say legal experts familiar with official documents. Should the US government aggressively pursue legal action, the amount of fines could potentially bankrupt BP. [13]
Those investors who divested from BP could have done so due to information regarding pipe conditions, since BP knew of equipment problems on the Deepwater Horizon rig at least hours before the explosion, implicating them as accessory to the events. In mid-May, the House of Representatives energy and commerce committee learned that documents and company briefings were suggestive that BP, the well’s owner; Transocean, the rig owner; and Haliburton, the company which cemented into place the casing for the well, ignored 20 April tests that indicated faulty equipment. Among the failures are a dead battery in the blowout preventer, suggestions of a breach in the well casing, and “failure” in the shear ram, which was the device responsible for cutting through and sealing the drill pipe in the event of blowout.
While the energy and commerce committee reviewed the gross negligence on the part of the oil industry, Senator John Kerry and Joe Lieberman introduced a climate and energy bill that for the very first time will put a price on carbon and impose cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.
“This is a bill for energy independence after a devastating oil spill, a bill to hold polluters accountable, a bill for billions of dollars to create the next generation of jobs and a bill to end America’s addiction to foreign oil,” said Kerry, who believes the oil spill would help get the American Power Act passed. The passage of this law is viewed by experts as essential to a global deal on climate change. [14]
Or maybe the stocks were sold pre-spill due to predicted drops in the price of the oil due to a poor economy. The US Energy Information Administration reduced its 2010 and 2010 forecasts for oil prices. The change represents a drop in oil prices since the last report, the reason being concerns over an elusive economic recovery. To cite this as a reason for Goldman Sach's largest divestment from an oil company in its history would be unsatisfactory. [15]
Trickle Down Terror
Like the 9/11 events were used to justify “transformation” towards a more totalitarian order in not only the United States, but myriad countries, 4/20 could give way to its own transformations. Thus far, all evidence suggests it is the largest environmental catastrophe in US history. While actions taken after 9/11 were officially said to be crucial to America’s collective safety, the aftermath of 4/20 might result in a quickening of the U.S. economy’s greening. The ‘green’ economy program has been criticized by many for its ultimate results, which mirror IMF and World Bank austerity measures and structural adjustments, also known as “economic medicine.” Spain’s experience with a ‘green’ economy speaks to that trend.
Spain’s current unemployment rate is 18.1 percent, more than twice the European Union average. Gabriel Calzada has furnished a report arguing that Spain’s high-velocity spending on the production of electricity from renewable sources, higher than any other nation, creates only temporary jobs. Moreover, each job devoted to wind farms and other alternative energy projects entails the loss of 2.2 other jobs lost or not created due to politicized investment towards a ‘green’ economy.
The sub-optimum allocation of capital was accompanied by European media reports on so-called “eco-corruption,” which entailed a “footprint of sleaze”—subsidy systems were gamed, profiteering from land sales for wind farms, etc. According to Calzada, the alternative energy job program has subtracted approximately 110,000 jobs from other sectors in Spain’s economy. To further de-industrialize the US economy would be in-line with arrangements of the last decade, such as NAFTA and GATT treaties, which have all abetted the transformation of the US economy into an interdependent service economy. [16]
It comes as no surprise that BP finds itself at the center of controversy on President Obama’s watch, who received a hefty campaign contribution from British Petroleum (the largest of any of the candidates). [17] Overall, the foremost concerns of both BP and the President—Goldman Sachs, by the way, was his largest campaign contributor—have centered on public relations and marketing. The apologist corporate-media have been complicit, but BP has taken further and absolute measures to ensure they control their image. The Big Oil firm bought terms like “oil spill” from search engine providers such as Google Inc. “to help direct users to its website as it attempts to control the worst oil spill in U.S. history.” Taking Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Cass Sunstein’s theory of “nudging people” to make better decisions, BP has invested capital in the art of “nudging people” away from the environmental catastrophe they were complicit in bringing about. BP will pay fees so its own website would rank higher or top the list of results when Internet users search on terms such as “oil spill,” “volunteer” and “claims.” On the “boob tube”, BP has spent $50 million on TV advertising to bolster its image during the crisis. [18]
As I highlighted earlier, Bloomberg Business News’ Dylan Ratigan said this of the insider trading before 9/11:
In these times, is there such a thing as coincidence? Has 4/20 outdone even 9/11?
1. Roberts, Paul Craig, Phd. 9/11: The Road to Armageddon, CounterCurrents, 26 February 2010.
Accessed at: http://www.countercurrents.org/roberts260210.htm
2. Richard Gage video interview
Accessed at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssuAMNas1us
3. Major General Stubblebine video interview:
Accessed at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssuAMNas1us
4. Bollyn, Christopher. Revealing 9-11 Stock Trades Could Expose The Terrorist Masterminds. Global Research, 18 December 2004.
Accessed at: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/BOL412B.html
5. Byrne, John. Goldman Sachs sold $250 million of BP stock before spill. Raw Story, 2 June 2010.
Accessed at: http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0602/month-oil-spill-goldman-sachs-sold-250-million-bp-stock/
6. Sterling, Allan. No Joke: Goldman Sachs Shorted Gulf of Mexico. Examiner, 5 May 2010.
Accessed at:
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-8199-Breakthrough-Energy-Examiner~y2010m5d5-No-joke-Goldman-Sachs-shorted-Gulf-of-Mexico
7. Swaine, John and Winnett, Robert. BP chief Tony Hayward sold shares weeks before oil spill. Telegraph UK, 05 June 2010.
Accessed at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/7804922/BP-chief-Tony-Hayward-sold-shares-weeks-before-oil-spill.html
8. Watson, John Paul and Alex Jones. Evidence Points To BP Oil Spill False Flag. InfoWars, 8 June 2010.
Accessed at: http://www.infowars.com/evidence-points-to-bp-oil-spill-false-flag/
9. Perdono, Daniela. Ten Things You Need (But Don’t Want) To Know About the BP Oil Spill. Global Research, 27 May 2010.
Accessed at: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19408
10. Roosevelt Margot and Carolyn Cole. BP Refuses EPA order to switch to less toxic oil dispersant. LA Times, 23 May 2010.
Accessed at: http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/23/nation/la-na-oil-spill-0100523
http://blog.al.com/live/2010/05/bp_had_a_key_role_in_the_exxon.html
11. Schwartz, Noaki. BP Had a Key Role in the Exxon Valdez Disaster. Associated Press, 25 May 2010.
Accessed at:
12. Biello, David. Slick Solution: How Microbes Will Clean Up the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, Scientific American, 25 May 2010.
Accessed at: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-microbes-clean-up-oil-spills
13. Schneyer, Joshua. Civil Fine in Gulf Oil Spill Could Be $4,300 barrel. Reuters, 26 May, 2010.
Accessed at:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64O75Q20100526
14. Goldenberg, Suzanne. Gulf Oil Spill: firms ignored warning signs before blast, inquiry hears. UK Guardian, 13 May 2010.
Accessed at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/12/deepwater-gulf-oil-spill-hearing
15. Baskin, Brian. EIA Cuts Oil Price Outlook As Uncertainty About Economy Weighs, NASDAQ 8 June 2010.
Accessed at: http://www.nasdaq.com/aspx/stock-market-news-story.aspx?storyid=201006081243dowjonesdjonline000349&title=eia-cuts-oil-price-outlook-as-uncertainty-about-economy-weighs#ixzz0qHZIM2CN
16. Will, George. Spain’s experience with the ‘green’ economy: Save the planet, lose some jobs. The Seattle Times, 25 June 2009.
Accessed at: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2009385016_will26.html
17. Burkart, Karl. Coast Guard and BP threaten journalists with arrest for documenting spill. Mother Nature Network, 18 May 2010
17.Young, Sarah and Bergin, Tom. BP buys search term “oil spill” from Google. Reuters, 9 June 2010.
Accessed at: http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/bp-buys-search-term-oil-spill-from-google-reuters_molt-c8ff670e72dc.html;_ylt=Al_QfhKyykBmyN4XkTc1oqnBXGwF;_ylu=X3oDMTE2djI4c2liBHBvcwMxMgRzZWMDdG9wc3RvcmllcwRzbGsDYnBidXlzc2VhcmNo?x=0
Evidence and September 11th fit well together, like puzzle pieces. The amount of data pointing towards alternative solutions to the who, what, why, and where’s of that fateful day leave many questions officially unanswered; not to mention millions of people perplexed about how their brethren just don’t seem to see what they see. Even former assistant secretary to the Treasury under Reagan and father of Reaganomics, Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, has extensively questioned that day’s events. In February, Roberts wrote an article about that month’s Washington Times article by Jennifer Harper, called “Inside the Beltway,” which detailed 31 press conferences held by Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, an organization of professionals which has 1,000 members, in cities in the US and abroad on February 19. [1]
This organization cites as suspicious the following in regards to the collapse of the north and south towers and WTC 7: for starters, that fires in high rises have never brought down a steel-framed high rise building; in the case of building 7, the tower collapses straight down into its own footprint at freefall acceleration in the first 100 feet or two and a half seconds; in that building, there were 40,000 tons of structural steel designed to resist the collapse of the 47 storey structure, which stood a football field away from the Twin Towers, as well as important Enron and WorldCom records. In the north and south towers, several tons of pooled molten iron—reported by first responders, structural engineers, and documented by FEMA—were detailed, although jet plane impact and normal office fires don’t produce molten iron or steel, since it doesn’t begin to melt until 3,000 degrees. The 9/11 fires probably produced upwards of 1,600 degree temperatures.
Chemical evidence of a high-tech incendiary called nano-thermite—used to cut through steel—was found in all the dust sprinkled throughout lower Manhattan. In this dust, there are several tons of tiny spheres of previously molten iron, a by-product of thermite. [2]
Retired army Major General Albert Stubblebine, who, in his last assignment, was responsible for all of the army’s strategic intelligence forces around the world, is one of many authoritative personalities on the 9/11 events; in his last command, he held the responsibility for signals intelligence, photos intelligence, counter-intelligence and human intelligence. While speaking out for 9/11 truth, he warrants his suspicious by citing his vast experience analyzing photos, and for all sorts of evidence at that. About his conclusions regarding the Pentagon explosion, the former Major General has said: “from the photographs that I have analyzed and looked at very carefully, it was not an airplane…for one thing, if you looked at the hole that was made in the Pentagon, the nose penetrated far enough so that there should have been wing-marks in the wall of the Pentagon…so where were they?” [3]
“A thousand architects and engineers want to know, and are calling on Congress to order a new investigation into the destruction of the Twin Towers and Building 7,” reports the Washington Times. The Times reports that the architects and engineers have concluded that FEMA and the National Institute of Standards and Technology garnered “insufficient, contradictory and fraudulent accounts of the circumstances of the towers’ destruction” and are “calling for a grand jury investigation of NIST officials.” [3]
Further implications abound, like pseudo-sophisticated trades made on insider information that caused huge profits for manipulators who foresaw the stocks of certain airline and insurance companies plummeting in the days after Sept. 11 2001.
The Institute for Counter Terrorism (ICT), in Herzliya, Israel, printed an article entitled, “Black Tuesday: World’s Largest Insider Trading Scam?” on Sept. 19, 2001. Author Don Radlauer, an expert in stock options and derivatives, gave details of the types and volumes of the trades, saying: “Obviously, anyone who had detailed knowledge of the attacks before they happened was, at the very least, an accessory to their planning; and the overwhelming probability is that the trades could have been made only by the same people who masterminded the attacks themselves.” According to Radlauer, the timing, specificity, size and unusual nature of the trades made them suspect. “The trading is sure to have been done under false names, behind shell corporations, and in general to have been thoroughly obfuscated.”
Up there with the most suspicious spikes in trading activity were high increases in “put options,” which are highly leveraged bets that a certain stock’s share price will fall. The spike in “put options” placed on the two airlines involved in the hijackings of Sept. 11, United Airlines (UAL) and American Airlines, have not been officially or satisfactorily investigated.
A 9,000 percent jump in United Air Lines (UAL) put options between Sept. 6 and Sept. 10, with a 285 percent jump on the Thursday before the attack, coincides with a 6,000 percent jump in American Airlines put options. There was no similar trading activity on other airlines, according to market reports. Major brokerage houses with offices in WTC, Morgan Stanley and Merrill-Lynch, had 27-fold and 12-fold increases in put option purchases on their respective shares between Sept. 7 and Sept. 10.
“The afternoon before the attack, alarm bells were sounding over unusual trading in the U.S. stock options market,” the CBS program 60 Minutes reported on Sept. 19. Investigator Michael C. Ruppert ensures: “These trades were certainly noticed after the attacks.”
“This could very well be insider trading at the worst, most horrific, most evil use you’ve ever seen in your entire life . . . this would be one of the most extraordinary coincidences in the history of mankind if it was a coincidence,” Bloomberg Business News’ Dylan Ratigan said Sept. 20.
Although the chief of enforcement at the Securities and Exchange Commission, William McLucas, said regulators would “certainly be able to track down every trade, where the trade cleared, where the trade was directed from,” no U.S. or foreign agency has made public arrests as a result of investigations into these trades. [4]
Making Economic Society for a Specific Transformation
Evidently, there was quite a bit of insider information to trade on in the days and weeks leading up to 9/11. That major Wall Street firms protected themselves and prospered from “lucky” trading, evidences perceived usefulness of 9/11 to major players of the planet’s increasingly total corporatocracy. A section entitled “Creating Tomorrow’s Dominant Force” in the neo-conservative think-tank Project for the New American Century’s document, Rebuilding America’s Defenses, vaguely, but clearly to those fluent in technocraticese, outlines what is needed to spur societal change: “Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor.” Many analysts see 9/11 as the “Pearl Harbor” prophesized by PNAC, whose membership includes Richard Dick Cheney, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Donald Rumself, Paul Wolfowitz, Steve Forbes, Jeb Bush, among others. Therefore, 9/11 can be seen as a multi-faceted opportunity on which policy makers could capitalize in favor of long-desired plans.
Shorting the Gulf Region: environmental and financial terrorism?
Just like trades before 9/11 should cause concern and questions, so too do trades made by major players in the days leading up the BP oil leak. Goldman Sachs, a premiere brokerage firm, sold 4,680,822 shares of BP in the first quarter of 2010. Goldman’s sales represented the largest of any firm during that period. If the firms’ shares been sold at the average price of BP’s stock that quarter, it would have gained more than $266 million from its holdings. Had the firm sold those shares today, their investment would have lost 36+ percent on its value; so, roughly $96+ million. Shares sold were 44 percent of Goldman’s position in the Big Oil firm, the largest sales of oil shares in its trading history. Of course, the remaining holdings have lost tens of millions in their value. [5]
Paul Noel, an expert on the Gulf Oil subject, provided intelligence on the shorting: [6]
There is a reason they could have known the rig was going to fail up to two weeks ahead of its failure. The nature of these wells is that they leave the drill mud in the well and compress using very heavy drill mud to keep the well from blowing up unlimited. The well would begin to bump (similar to boiling a big bubble) and the acoustic signals would tell the rig was in trouble that far ahead. Goldman Sachs could just have had inside info. They also know the scale of things. This is the best explanation. It could be otherwise.
If you were going to sabotage a drilling team, all you would have to do is load a lighter mud in the mix as they pulled a drill pipe…There are lots of ways to have this happen either accidentally or deliberately. Goldman teams are great on statistical stuff sort of like the odds of rolling dice. They might just have figured stats for probability of failure??? Of course we could surmise other reasons are possible.
Such movements of volume—such as those seen before 9/11 and 4/20, the first day of the oil leak—are not atypical of large asset management firms, for Wall Street brokerages regularly buy and sell huge blocks of shares, not only for themselves, but for their oftentimes uber-rich clients as well. That such a voluminous movement of economic power preceded incomprehensible destruction is par for the course in the embryonic, soviet modeled command-and-control global economy of today (and other deference systems before that, for that matter). By way of economic democracy, intriguing, but delicate super-alliances and their under-the-table agreements forge the future. For centuries, society has been made economically, and clearly today fits in well with the pattern: to usher in crises as a means to justifying artificial scarcity, presenting new solutions previously unviable, followed by the policy’s and courses to which those solutions lead.
Goldman was not the only asset firm to sell huge blocks of BP stock in the first quarter, though these other firms sold off fractions of what Goldman did. Wachovia, owned by Wells Fargo, sold 2,667,419 shares, while UBS—a Swiss bank—sold 2,667,419 shares. A staggering fact that points towards numerous interesting conversational rabbit holes, especially concerning Goldman Sachs’s clout, Wachovia and UBS sold greater percentages of their BP stock; those being, 98 percent and 97 percent respectively.
BP Chief Executive, Tony Hayward, also sold considerable stock in BP. Four weeks before the oil leak, the BP chief cashed in about a third of his holdings in the company. By doing so, he avoided losing £423,000 pounds when BP's share price plunged after the leak. His decision, however, helped him to avoid losing more than £423,000 when BP’s share price plunged after the oil spill began six weeks ago. [7] Further, on April 12th, more than a week before the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, Haliburton, the world's second largest oilfield services corporation, unexpectedly acquired Boots & Coots, a small but much experienced oil well-control company. The company handles fires and blowouts on oil rigs and oil wells. [8]
Wellington Management, a large asset firm, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation were reported to be purchasing BP’s stock. [5]
Corporate Operational Defiance Disorder and the Management of Globalization
BP officially admits to just a few thousand barrels hemorrhaging into the ocean each day. Contradictorily, experts estimate the true figure at 60,000 barrels or 2.5 million gallons daily. Truth being, the real figures are unknowable, considering that BP has barred independent engineers from looking at the breach. When this part of the Earth will run out of oil, nobody can be certain. Meanwhile, under the radar of the corporate media, Transocean Ltd.—the owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig leased by BP—has made $270 million off the oil leak through post-disaster insurance payouts. [9]
On May 20th, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ordered the London-based BP to cease dispersant of Corexit 9500 (used to break up the leaked oil) or to describe in detail why other dispersants do not meet environmental standards. BP stated that the chemical product now in use is “the best option for subsea application.” [10]
The 1989 Exxon Valdez spill leaked nearly 11 million gallons of crude, killing vibrant and diverse wildlife and damaging the reputation of Exxon. In fact, the leader of containment efforts in the hours just after the tanker began leaking was not Exxon Mobil Corp, but, truly, BP, owing to their 1989 ownership of a controlling 50.01 percent share in the consortium.
Watching the crisis in the Gulf unfold is akin to reliving the Valdez disaster for attorney Zygmut Plater, who conducted the legal team for the state-appointed Alaska Oil Spill Commission that investigated the Exxon spill. “I feel this horrible, sickening feeling,” said Plater, now a teacher at Boston College. “What happened in Alaska was determined by decisions coming from (BP in) Houston,” he said.
Today, Plater laments an approach in regards to the ’89 spill that attempted to avoid pointing fingers. “In retrospect, it could’ve focused attention on BP and created transparency which would’ve changed the internal culture,” he said. “As we see the internal culture appears not to have changed with tragic results.” [11]
One defense yet to be tried to stop the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico is billions of hydrocarbon-chewing microbes, like Alcanivorax Borkumensis. One purpose of the 830,000 chemical dispersants used to combat the oil slick is to break the oil into smaller droplets, which are easier for bacteria to consume. Nature hosts innumerable types of organisms who, as a community, combine to decompose oil. No single microbe has proved more efficient than this natural defense. “Every ocean we look at, from the Antarctic to the Arctic, there are oil-degrading bacteria,” says Atlas, who analyzed genetically engineered microbes and other cleanup methods in the wake of the Exxon-Valdez oil spill in Alaska. “Petroleum has thousands of compounds. Its complex and the communities that feed on it are complex. A superbug fails because it competes with this community that is adapted to the environment.” Marine-dwelling bacteria and fungi use hydrocarbons as fuel by breaking up hydrocarbons with enzymes and oxygen, their populations growing exponentially in days. [12]
Basis for Legal Action
A clause buried in the U.S. Clean Water Act means that BP and others could be charged with, for all intents and purposes, near unlimited fines. The act enables the government to seek civil penalties in court for each drop of oil that spills into US navigable waters, including the area of the leaking well. The US government could fine BP or others up to $4,300 for each barrel leaked into the Gulf and surrounding marine ecosystems, say legal experts familiar with official documents. Should the US government aggressively pursue legal action, the amount of fines could potentially bankrupt BP. [13]
Those investors who divested from BP could have done so due to information regarding pipe conditions, since BP knew of equipment problems on the Deepwater Horizon rig at least hours before the explosion, implicating them as accessory to the events. In mid-May, the House of Representatives energy and commerce committee learned that documents and company briefings were suggestive that BP, the well’s owner; Transocean, the rig owner; and Haliburton, the company which cemented into place the casing for the well, ignored 20 April tests that indicated faulty equipment. Among the failures are a dead battery in the blowout preventer, suggestions of a breach in the well casing, and “failure” in the shear ram, which was the device responsible for cutting through and sealing the drill pipe in the event of blowout.
While the energy and commerce committee reviewed the gross negligence on the part of the oil industry, Senator John Kerry and Joe Lieberman introduced a climate and energy bill that for the very first time will put a price on carbon and impose cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.
“This is a bill for energy independence after a devastating oil spill, a bill to hold polluters accountable, a bill for billions of dollars to create the next generation of jobs and a bill to end America’s addiction to foreign oil,” said Kerry, who believes the oil spill would help get the American Power Act passed. The passage of this law is viewed by experts as essential to a global deal on climate change. [14]
Or maybe the stocks were sold pre-spill due to predicted drops in the price of the oil due to a poor economy. The US Energy Information Administration reduced its 2010 and 2010 forecasts for oil prices. The change represents a drop in oil prices since the last report, the reason being concerns over an elusive economic recovery. To cite this as a reason for Goldman Sach's largest divestment from an oil company in its history would be unsatisfactory. [15]
Trickle Down Terror
Like the 9/11 events were used to justify “transformation” towards a more totalitarian order in not only the United States, but myriad countries, 4/20 could give way to its own transformations. Thus far, all evidence suggests it is the largest environmental catastrophe in US history. While actions taken after 9/11 were officially said to be crucial to America’s collective safety, the aftermath of 4/20 might result in a quickening of the U.S. economy’s greening. The ‘green’ economy program has been criticized by many for its ultimate results, which mirror IMF and World Bank austerity measures and structural adjustments, also known as “economic medicine.” Spain’s experience with a ‘green’ economy speaks to that trend.
Spain’s current unemployment rate is 18.1 percent, more than twice the European Union average. Gabriel Calzada has furnished a report arguing that Spain’s high-velocity spending on the production of electricity from renewable sources, higher than any other nation, creates only temporary jobs. Moreover, each job devoted to wind farms and other alternative energy projects entails the loss of 2.2 other jobs lost or not created due to politicized investment towards a ‘green’ economy.
The sub-optimum allocation of capital was accompanied by European media reports on so-called “eco-corruption,” which entailed a “footprint of sleaze”—subsidy systems were gamed, profiteering from land sales for wind farms, etc. According to Calzada, the alternative energy job program has subtracted approximately 110,000 jobs from other sectors in Spain’s economy. To further de-industrialize the US economy would be in-line with arrangements of the last decade, such as NAFTA and GATT treaties, which have all abetted the transformation of the US economy into an interdependent service economy. [16]
It comes as no surprise that BP finds itself at the center of controversy on President Obama’s watch, who received a hefty campaign contribution from British Petroleum (the largest of any of the candidates). [17] Overall, the foremost concerns of both BP and the President—Goldman Sachs, by the way, was his largest campaign contributor—have centered on public relations and marketing. The apologist corporate-media have been complicit, but BP has taken further and absolute measures to ensure they control their image. The Big Oil firm bought terms like “oil spill” from search engine providers such as Google Inc. “to help direct users to its website as it attempts to control the worst oil spill in U.S. history.” Taking Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Cass Sunstein’s theory of “nudging people” to make better decisions, BP has invested capital in the art of “nudging people” away from the environmental catastrophe they were complicit in bringing about. BP will pay fees so its own website would rank higher or top the list of results when Internet users search on terms such as “oil spill,” “volunteer” and “claims.” On the “boob tube”, BP has spent $50 million on TV advertising to bolster its image during the crisis. [18]
As I highlighted earlier, Bloomberg Business News’ Dylan Ratigan said this of the insider trading before 9/11:
“This could very well be insider trading at the worst, most horrific, most evil use you’ve ever seen in your entire life . . . this would be one of the most extraordinary coincidences in the history of mankind if it was a coincidence.”
In these times, is there such a thing as coincidence? Has 4/20 outdone even 9/11?
1. Roberts, Paul Craig, Phd. 9/11: The Road to Armageddon, CounterCurrents, 26 February 2010.
Accessed at: http://www.countercurrents.org/roberts260210.htm
2. Richard Gage video interview
Accessed at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssuAMNas1us
3. Major General Stubblebine video interview:
Accessed at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssuAMNas1us
4. Bollyn, Christopher. Revealing 9-11 Stock Trades Could Expose The Terrorist Masterminds. Global Research, 18 December 2004.
Accessed at: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/BOL412B.html
5. Byrne, John. Goldman Sachs sold $250 million of BP stock before spill. Raw Story, 2 June 2010.
Accessed at: http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0602/month-oil-spill-goldman-sachs-sold-250-million-bp-stock/
6. Sterling, Allan. No Joke: Goldman Sachs Shorted Gulf of Mexico. Examiner, 5 May 2010.
Accessed at:
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-8199-Breakthrough-Energy-Examiner~y2010m5d5-No-joke-Goldman-Sachs-shorted-Gulf-of-Mexico
7. Swaine, John and Winnett, Robert. BP chief Tony Hayward sold shares weeks before oil spill. Telegraph UK, 05 June 2010.
Accessed at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/7804922/BP-chief-Tony-Hayward-sold-shares-weeks-before-oil-spill.html
8. Watson, John Paul and Alex Jones. Evidence Points To BP Oil Spill False Flag. InfoWars, 8 June 2010.
Accessed at: http://www.infowars.com/evidence-points-to-bp-oil-spill-false-flag/
9. Perdono, Daniela. Ten Things You Need (But Don’t Want) To Know About the BP Oil Spill. Global Research, 27 May 2010.
Accessed at: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19408
10. Roosevelt Margot and Carolyn Cole. BP Refuses EPA order to switch to less toxic oil dispersant. LA Times, 23 May 2010.
Accessed at: http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/23/nation/la-na-oil-spill-0100523
http://blog.al.com/live/2010/05/bp_had_a_key_role_in_the_exxon.html
11. Schwartz, Noaki. BP Had a Key Role in the Exxon Valdez Disaster. Associated Press, 25 May 2010.
Accessed at:
12. Biello, David. Slick Solution: How Microbes Will Clean Up the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, Scientific American, 25 May 2010.
Accessed at: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-microbes-clean-up-oil-spills
13. Schneyer, Joshua. Civil Fine in Gulf Oil Spill Could Be $4,300 barrel. Reuters, 26 May, 2010.
Accessed at:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64O75Q20100526
14. Goldenberg, Suzanne. Gulf Oil Spill: firms ignored warning signs before blast, inquiry hears. UK Guardian, 13 May 2010.
Accessed at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/12/deepwater-gulf-oil-spill-hearing
15. Baskin, Brian. EIA Cuts Oil Price Outlook As Uncertainty About Economy Weighs, NASDAQ 8 June 2010.
Accessed at: http://www.nasdaq.com/aspx/stock-market-news-story.aspx?storyid=201006081243dowjonesdjonline000349&title=eia-cuts-oil-price-outlook-as-uncertainty-about-economy-weighs#ixzz0qHZIM2CN
16. Will, George. Spain’s experience with the ‘green’ economy: Save the planet, lose some jobs. The Seattle Times, 25 June 2009.
Accessed at: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2009385016_will26.html
17. Burkart, Karl. Coast Guard and BP threaten journalists with arrest for documenting spill. Mother Nature Network, 18 May 2010
17.Young, Sarah and Bergin, Tom. BP buys search term “oil spill” from Google. Reuters, 9 June 2010.
Accessed at: http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/bp-buys-search-term-oil-spill-from-google-reuters_molt-c8ff670e72dc.html;_ylt=Al_QfhKyykBmyN4XkTc1oqnBXGwF;_ylu=X3oDMTE2djI4c2liBHBvcwMxMgRzZWMDdG9wc3RvcmllcwRzbGsDYnBidXlzc2VhcmNo?x=0
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Truth About California’s Gubernatorial Election 2010
California is renowned for all the obvious reasons. As the most populous state in the United States, California holds unprecedented power: often estimated as roughly the eighth largest economy in the world, the region is the second largest national subentity on the globe, behind Sao Paulo, Brazil. Californians mostly dwell on the concrete islands that constitute the Los Angeles-San Diego and San Francisco-San Jose agglomerations, artificial human constructs which are products predominantly of last century. With an economy roughly the size of Italy's, California makes up one of the U.S.'s "FnCOMA" states (Florida, Nevada, California, Oregon, Michigan and Arizona). Between two ages, California today sits at distinct crossroads. Will the 59th largest political entity in the world work for a fairer world or will its superlative-filled ecology—the state boasts the largest, tallest and oldest trees—have its destiny dictated by the most efficient paths to profit by an increasingly consolidated state-enterprise, working as a rule out of New York, City of London, France, and Germany?
That, as of 2005, 57.59 per cent of California residents age five and older spoke English as a first language at home, while 28.21 per cent spoke Spanish, indicates the degree to which the modern keystone border doesn't divide nation-states and citizens of nations. The world's true borders divide the generations living at one time, families and, of course, entire people's based on something as shallow as the color of one's skin, which is an illusion basically conjured by the sun, melanin and time. Nation-states are units of control, influenced as a rule by transnational entities, such as corporations, foundations and think tanks. Today, nearly all of the premiere conglomerations and their subsidiaries—from banking and finance, military and security, to agriculture and medicine—all act as if they're one, influencing the markets and therefore everyday commerce. The current poster-child for such "market making" corporations has been Goldman Sachs, and for considerably good reason. In California, the news is no different: all three leading candidates in the race do business with G-Sachs; they are, Meg Whitman (R), Scott Poizner (D), and Jerry Brown (D). We'll begin with the multi-billionaire CEO, Meg Whitman.
Of her long record of involvement with Goldman Sachs, Whitman says she "regrets" doing business with the investment and securities firm. Whitman, former CEO of eBay, served on Goldman's board from October 2001 to December 2002. The position paid $475,000 in cash and stock options. Still earlier in 1998, she had hired Goldman to advise eBay's Initial Public Offering. The firm advised a second eBay stock offering and also helped the takeover of online biller PayPal in 2002. Meanwhile, Whitman was also a personal banking client of Goldman and engaged in "spinning," a now-illegal practice in which the bank enabled her some of the first shares in companies going public. Once the shares were made widely available, their prices soared. Thus, stock belonging to preferred clients such as Whitman was sold for a quick profit. Whilst spinning was legal, Whitman made $1.78 million through it. [1]
In the LA Times, Michael Hiltzik ponders Whitman's involvement with Goldman Sachs:
Eight years ago, it came out that Whitman was among an elite group of favored executives who had accepted preferential stock deals from Goldman Sachs while it was seeking business from their companies.
In spinning, executives would typically get shares in coveted initial public stock offerings, which they would "spin," or resell, into a soaring market, usually within days and sometimes within hours. Their quick and almost entirely risk-free profits were effectively gifts, and the investment banks the givers.
Whitman attempted to dodge responsibility for her actions by claiming that there was "nothing illegal" about them at the time.
"Such investment opportunities were common at the time," Whitman wrote in her autobiography released this year. "And I had never seen anyone in the government, the media, or anywhere else raise the idea that this practice was a conflict of interest."
In 2002, Congress looked into spinning, and, a year later, the Securities and Exchange Commission banned it. "I supported those changes," she insisted in her book. The day she left the Goldman Sachs board, the government announced a $1.4 billion settlement with Goldman and nine other firms that included a ban on stock spinning. EBay shareholders sued Whitman for conflict of interest. She maintained that she received insider information only through her personal banking relationship with Goldman. Whitman and two other eBay executives settled the suit in 2005, having admitted no wrongdoing.
Seventy-three percent of Americans believe it to be "somewhat likely" that Goldman is guilty of fraud in the home mortgage market after hearing of the Securities and Exchange Commission's lawsuit against the firm last week, says a Rasmussen poll. 75% also don't oppose the auditing of the Federal Reserve, in which Goldman holds stock, according Bob Chapman of the International Forecaster. [2]
Whitman has publicly received $110,500 in campaign contributions last year from Goldman contacts, among whom are two former executives who are members of Whitman's campaign finance committee, according to her website. Investment adviser Brad DeFoor, a Goldman Sachs managing director in San Francisco, gave her campaign $24,900 and Gene Sykes, who co-chairs Goldman's global mergers and acquisitions group in Los Angeles, donated $25,900.
Further, records detail that Whitman's family foundation is managed by a subsidiary of Goldman Sachs, the Ayco Company out of New York,that manages money for wealthy families, according to the description on its website. The Griffith R. Harsh and Margaret C. Whitman Charitable Foundation had $48 million in assets at the time of its 2008 tax filing.
"It is highly disingenuous and hypocritical for Team Brown to make accusations surrounding Meg's service on a board for only 15 months nearly 10 years ago, when Jerry Brown's own sister oversees Goldman Sachs' dealings with the state of California," said Tucker Bounds, a spokesman for Whitman. Brown's sister, Kathleen Brown, has led the West Coast region of municipal finance for Goldman Sachs since 2003.
"Unsurprisingly, Meg Whitman and her campaign is once again trying to avoid her taking responsibility for her actions. Jerry's sister is an adult who needs no one's permission to take a job," said Jerry Brown's campaign spokesman, Sterling Clifford.
His sister oversaw a deal with the city of Oakland, where he "served" as mayor for eight years. The deal, known as an "interest rate swap," was advertised as guaranteeing Oakland stability in its debt payments, but now costs the cash-strapped city $5 million a year. The agreement goes until 2021, with an estimated cancellation cost of $19 million. The city is trying to renegotiate it, and union officials representing government employees are calling on Goldman to let Oakland and other municipalities free of such agreements.
The swap, like those of many governments, began in 1998, one year before Brown assumed office. City officials renegotiated it in 2003, just before his sister, who was also a former state treasurer, began working for Goldman as the West Coast head of municipal finance. In 2005, when the city paid off the debt Goldman had packaged, it left the interest rate swap in place. Municipal servants argued the decision made sense because they would have had to pay $15 million to cancel the deal. In doing so, a major revenue stream for Goldman Sachs remained in place, benefiting them further during the Downturn, while hurting the city.
Bounds called the agreement "a big-money deal for Wall Street that is costing California taxpayers millions of dollar a year...no matter how you look at it, Jerry and his sister were on both ends of a bad deal for taxpayers, and Goldman Sachs pocketed millions." Not only was Brown mayor, responsible for appointments to city administrator and finance officials who oversaw the city borrowing, Brown was president of the Oakland Joint Powers Financing Authority, though in a non-voting capacity, as it renegotiated the deal and repaid Goldman's debt in 2005. Sterling Clifford, Brown's campaign spokesman, claimed he was not involved.
Poizner borrowed $500,000 to finance his 2004 state assembly race with the help of Goldman Sachs, and state financial records detail his history of investments with the firm. "Attacking a candidate for flimsy ties to a private company is exactly what you would expect from a desperate liberal - and I guess that includes Steve Poisner, too," said Whitman's spokesman, Bounds.
Looming in the shadows of campaign rhetoric, is the continued collapse of California. Almost one year ago, the state government was so deeply indebted that it began to issue IOUs instead of wages. It's current unemployment rate nudges 30 per cent. Unannounced and generally ill-perceived austerity measures and structural adjustments have commenced, with spending for education and healthcare slashed, mass layoffs and forced unpaid leave. An epicenter of suburban living, the housing bubble collapse has impoverished millions and forced tens of thousands of families out of their homes. The political system "is locked in paralysis" and the two-term rule of former movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger seen as a disaster. Professor Kevin Starr, who wrote an acclaimed history of the state, recently stated that "California is on the verge of becoming the first failed state in America."
Starr has a history of mulling over the future of the golden state. In 1988, following three years of debate, a who's who of corporate and civic celebrities handed to then Mayor Bradley a detailed plan for the future of Southern California. L.A. 2000: A City for the Future devotes itself to hyperbolic rhetoric about Los Angeles's certain destiny as a "world crossroads" a la imperial Rome or LaGuardian New York. In a section of the epilogue, Starr, showing his colors as a devotee of totalitarian measures, considered what might happen if the city failed to create a new "dominant establishment" to manage the city and regions diverse peoples. He wrote, "there is, of course, the Blade Runner scenario: the fusion of individual cultures into a demotic polyglotism ominous with unresolved hostilities."
At LittleSis.org, there is a list of Goldman Sachs cronies who have worked as U.S. government officials. To be sure, an international version of the list would show connections with key players in countries such as Germany and Greece, as a small example. U.S. connections from LittleSis: [3]
NAME
POSITION
Gary D Cohn
President and COO of Goldman Sachs
Pete Coneway
Investment Banker, Goldman Sachs & Co
Diana Farrell
Deputy director of Obama's National Economic...
Jose Fourquet
Investor, Goldman Sachs & Co.
Stephen Friedman
Chairman of Stone Point Capital; director of...
Gary Gensler
ex-Goldman Sachs executive, Chairman of Commodity...
Dick Gephardt
US Representative from Missouri
Bob Hormats
Under Secretary of State for Economic, Energy,...
Robert J Hurst
Reuben Jeffery III
Undersecretary of State for Economic, Energy, and...
James A Johnson
Vice Chair of Perseus and Goldman director;...
Neel Kashkari
Treasury official in charge of TARP; former...
James C Langdon Jr
Senior Executive Partner at Akin Gump and Bush...
Philip D Murphy
Ambassador to Germany-Designate
Mark Patterson
Chief of Staff to Tim Geithner
Henry M Paulson Jr
Secretary of Treasury under George W Bush; former...
Karthik Ramanathan
Domestic Finance: Acting Assistant Secretary for...
Robert E Rubin
Former Treasury Secretary and senior advisor at...
Faryar Shirzad
Global Head of Government Affairs at Goldman...
Robert K Steel
CEO of Wachovia; Under Secretary of Treasury...
Adam Storch
SEC Chief Operating Officer; former Goldman Sachs...
Larry Summers
Director of the National Economic Council ...
John Whitehead
Banker and public official (ex-Goldman Sachs)
Robert Zoellick
US Trade Representative and World Bank president...
The allegations against Whitman and her ties to G-Sachs have received the most press. For that reason, desperation is setting in at her campaign headquarters. In Roseville on Monday, she told a small audience that she would appoint a grand jury to eliminate the more than $7.5 billion in fraud she claims occurs every year in programs for the poor, seniors, and people with disabilities. Many claim, however, those numbers have little or no basis in reality. [5]
Greg Lucas analyzed her claim from California's Capitol:
Logic suggests hospitals, case workers, emergency room physicians, state administrators, nurses, drug companies, employment training facilities, childcare providers, in-home care workers and the myriad other participants in the three programs would have to work serious overtime to do their jobs and bilk the state 60 cents on the dollar.
SEIU State Council Communications Director Mary Gutierrez:
If Meg Whitman were truly committed to protecting taxpayer dollars, she'd be fighting to protect home care services that fare more cost-effective and compassionate than the alternative -- forcing people with disabilities and our elderly into nursing homes at five times the cost.
In 2008, Goldman Sachs was criticized for proposing ways for investment clients to profit from California's financial Downturn. It urged some of its biggest clients to place investment bets against California bonds despite having collected millions of dollars in fees to help the state sell some of those same bonds. Goldman Sachs financial transactions in Greece reveal that such trades are a uniform policy in Goldman Sachs’s international business model.
1. Jamison, Jane. Meg Whitman's Troubling Connection to Goldman Sachs. Red County, 30 April 2010
Accessible at:
http://www.redcounty.com/meg-whitmans-troubling-connection-goldman-sachs/39291
2. Marinucci, Carla; Williams, Lance. Whitman feels heat as Goldman's image tarnishes. SFGate, 22 April 2010.
Accessible at: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/04/22/BA6C1D2B0H.DTL#ixzz0oP7be0UP
3. O’Connell, Justin. Profiling the Power-That-Be. DissidentVoice,
Accessible at:
3. Rothfeld, Michael. Whitman, Brown have ties to Goldman Sachs. Los Angeles Times, 24 April 2010.
Accessible at:
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/apr/24/local/la-me-jerry-brown-20100424
4. Harris, Paul. Will California Become America's First Failed State? Guardian UK, 4 October 2009.
Accessible at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/04/california-failing-state-debt
5. Smith, Steve. Whitman Uses Bogus Claims of Fraud to Attack Workers, Seniors and People with Disabilities. California Progress Report, 18 May 2010.
6. ______. Firm urged to hedge against state bonds it helped sell. Los Angeles Times, 11 November 2008.
7. Liberto, Jennifer. Fed probing Goldman trades with Greece. CNNMoney, 25 February 2010.
That, as of 2005, 57.59 per cent of California residents age five and older spoke English as a first language at home, while 28.21 per cent spoke Spanish, indicates the degree to which the modern keystone border doesn't divide nation-states and citizens of nations. The world's true borders divide the generations living at one time, families and, of course, entire people's based on something as shallow as the color of one's skin, which is an illusion basically conjured by the sun, melanin and time. Nation-states are units of control, influenced as a rule by transnational entities, such as corporations, foundations and think tanks. Today, nearly all of the premiere conglomerations and their subsidiaries—from banking and finance, military and security, to agriculture and medicine—all act as if they're one, influencing the markets and therefore everyday commerce. The current poster-child for such "market making" corporations has been Goldman Sachs, and for considerably good reason. In California, the news is no different: all three leading candidates in the race do business with G-Sachs; they are, Meg Whitman (R), Scott Poizner (D), and Jerry Brown (D). We'll begin with the multi-billionaire CEO, Meg Whitman.
Of her long record of involvement with Goldman Sachs, Whitman says she "regrets" doing business with the investment and securities firm. Whitman, former CEO of eBay, served on Goldman's board from October 2001 to December 2002. The position paid $475,000 in cash and stock options. Still earlier in 1998, she had hired Goldman to advise eBay's Initial Public Offering. The firm advised a second eBay stock offering and also helped the takeover of online biller PayPal in 2002. Meanwhile, Whitman was also a personal banking client of Goldman and engaged in "spinning," a now-illegal practice in which the bank enabled her some of the first shares in companies going public. Once the shares were made widely available, their prices soared. Thus, stock belonging to preferred clients such as Whitman was sold for a quick profit. Whilst spinning was legal, Whitman made $1.78 million through it. [1]
In the LA Times, Michael Hiltzik ponders Whitman's involvement with Goldman Sachs:
Eight years ago, it came out that Whitman was among an elite group of favored executives who had accepted preferential stock deals from Goldman Sachs while it was seeking business from their companies.
In spinning, executives would typically get shares in coveted initial public stock offerings, which they would "spin," or resell, into a soaring market, usually within days and sometimes within hours. Their quick and almost entirely risk-free profits were effectively gifts, and the investment banks the givers.
Whitman attempted to dodge responsibility for her actions by claiming that there was "nothing illegal" about them at the time.
"Such investment opportunities were common at the time," Whitman wrote in her autobiography released this year. "And I had never seen anyone in the government, the media, or anywhere else raise the idea that this practice was a conflict of interest."
In 2002, Congress looked into spinning, and, a year later, the Securities and Exchange Commission banned it. "I supported those changes," she insisted in her book. The day she left the Goldman Sachs board, the government announced a $1.4 billion settlement with Goldman and nine other firms that included a ban on stock spinning. EBay shareholders sued Whitman for conflict of interest. She maintained that she received insider information only through her personal banking relationship with Goldman. Whitman and two other eBay executives settled the suit in 2005, having admitted no wrongdoing.
Seventy-three percent of Americans believe it to be "somewhat likely" that Goldman is guilty of fraud in the home mortgage market after hearing of the Securities and Exchange Commission's lawsuit against the firm last week, says a Rasmussen poll. 75% also don't oppose the auditing of the Federal Reserve, in which Goldman holds stock, according Bob Chapman of the International Forecaster. [2]
Whitman has publicly received $110,500 in campaign contributions last year from Goldman contacts, among whom are two former executives who are members of Whitman's campaign finance committee, according to her website. Investment adviser Brad DeFoor, a Goldman Sachs managing director in San Francisco, gave her campaign $24,900 and Gene Sykes, who co-chairs Goldman's global mergers and acquisitions group in Los Angeles, donated $25,900.
Further, records detail that Whitman's family foundation is managed by a subsidiary of Goldman Sachs, the Ayco Company out of New York,that manages money for wealthy families, according to the description on its website. The Griffith R. Harsh and Margaret C. Whitman Charitable Foundation had $48 million in assets at the time of its 2008 tax filing.
"It is highly disingenuous and hypocritical for Team Brown to make accusations surrounding Meg's service on a board for only 15 months nearly 10 years ago, when Jerry Brown's own sister oversees Goldman Sachs' dealings with the state of California," said Tucker Bounds, a spokesman for Whitman. Brown's sister, Kathleen Brown, has led the West Coast region of municipal finance for Goldman Sachs since 2003.
"Unsurprisingly, Meg Whitman and her campaign is once again trying to avoid her taking responsibility for her actions. Jerry's sister is an adult who needs no one's permission to take a job," said Jerry Brown's campaign spokesman, Sterling Clifford.
His sister oversaw a deal with the city of Oakland, where he "served" as mayor for eight years. The deal, known as an "interest rate swap," was advertised as guaranteeing Oakland stability in its debt payments, but now costs the cash-strapped city $5 million a year. The agreement goes until 2021, with an estimated cancellation cost of $19 million. The city is trying to renegotiate it, and union officials representing government employees are calling on Goldman to let Oakland and other municipalities free of such agreements.
The swap, like those of many governments, began in 1998, one year before Brown assumed office. City officials renegotiated it in 2003, just before his sister, who was also a former state treasurer, began working for Goldman as the West Coast head of municipal finance. In 2005, when the city paid off the debt Goldman had packaged, it left the interest rate swap in place. Municipal servants argued the decision made sense because they would have had to pay $15 million to cancel the deal. In doing so, a major revenue stream for Goldman Sachs remained in place, benefiting them further during the Downturn, while hurting the city.
Bounds called the agreement "a big-money deal for Wall Street that is costing California taxpayers millions of dollar a year...no matter how you look at it, Jerry and his sister were on both ends of a bad deal for taxpayers, and Goldman Sachs pocketed millions." Not only was Brown mayor, responsible for appointments to city administrator and finance officials who oversaw the city borrowing, Brown was president of the Oakland Joint Powers Financing Authority, though in a non-voting capacity, as it renegotiated the deal and repaid Goldman's debt in 2005. Sterling Clifford, Brown's campaign spokesman, claimed he was not involved.
Poizner borrowed $500,000 to finance his 2004 state assembly race with the help of Goldman Sachs, and state financial records detail his history of investments with the firm. "Attacking a candidate for flimsy ties to a private company is exactly what you would expect from a desperate liberal - and I guess that includes Steve Poisner, too," said Whitman's spokesman, Bounds.
Looming in the shadows of campaign rhetoric, is the continued collapse of California. Almost one year ago, the state government was so deeply indebted that it began to issue IOUs instead of wages. It's current unemployment rate nudges 30 per cent. Unannounced and generally ill-perceived austerity measures and structural adjustments have commenced, with spending for education and healthcare slashed, mass layoffs and forced unpaid leave. An epicenter of suburban living, the housing bubble collapse has impoverished millions and forced tens of thousands of families out of their homes. The political system "is locked in paralysis" and the two-term rule of former movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger seen as a disaster. Professor Kevin Starr, who wrote an acclaimed history of the state, recently stated that "California is on the verge of becoming the first failed state in America."
Starr has a history of mulling over the future of the golden state. In 1988, following three years of debate, a who's who of corporate and civic celebrities handed to then Mayor Bradley a detailed plan for the future of Southern California. L.A. 2000: A City for the Future devotes itself to hyperbolic rhetoric about Los Angeles's certain destiny as a "world crossroads" a la imperial Rome or LaGuardian New York. In a section of the epilogue, Starr, showing his colors as a devotee of totalitarian measures, considered what might happen if the city failed to create a new "dominant establishment" to manage the city and regions diverse peoples. He wrote, "there is, of course, the Blade Runner scenario: the fusion of individual cultures into a demotic polyglotism ominous with unresolved hostilities."
At LittleSis.org, there is a list of Goldman Sachs cronies who have worked as U.S. government officials. To be sure, an international version of the list would show connections with key players in countries such as Germany and Greece, as a small example. U.S. connections from LittleSis: [3]
NAME
POSITION
Gary D Cohn
President and COO of Goldman Sachs
Pete Coneway
Investment Banker, Goldman Sachs & Co
Diana Farrell
Deputy director of Obama's National Economic...
Jose Fourquet
Investor, Goldman Sachs & Co.
Stephen Friedman
Chairman of Stone Point Capital; director of...
Gary Gensler
ex-Goldman Sachs executive, Chairman of Commodity...
Dick Gephardt
US Representative from Missouri
Bob Hormats
Under Secretary of State for Economic, Energy,...
Robert J Hurst
Reuben Jeffery III
Undersecretary of State for Economic, Energy, and...
James A Johnson
Vice Chair of Perseus and Goldman director;...
Neel Kashkari
Treasury official in charge of TARP; former...
James C Langdon Jr
Senior Executive Partner at Akin Gump and Bush...
Philip D Murphy
Ambassador to Germany-Designate
Mark Patterson
Chief of Staff to Tim Geithner
Henry M Paulson Jr
Secretary of Treasury under George W Bush; former...
Karthik Ramanathan
Domestic Finance: Acting Assistant Secretary for...
Robert E Rubin
Former Treasury Secretary and senior advisor at...
Faryar Shirzad
Global Head of Government Affairs at Goldman...
Robert K Steel
CEO of Wachovia; Under Secretary of Treasury...
Adam Storch
SEC Chief Operating Officer; former Goldman Sachs...
Larry Summers
Director of the National Economic Council ...
John Whitehead
Banker and public official (ex-Goldman Sachs)
Robert Zoellick
US Trade Representative and World Bank president...
The allegations against Whitman and her ties to G-Sachs have received the most press. For that reason, desperation is setting in at her campaign headquarters. In Roseville on Monday, she told a small audience that she would appoint a grand jury to eliminate the more than $7.5 billion in fraud she claims occurs every year in programs for the poor, seniors, and people with disabilities. Many claim, however, those numbers have little or no basis in reality. [5]
Greg Lucas analyzed her claim from California's Capitol:
Logic suggests hospitals, case workers, emergency room physicians, state administrators, nurses, drug companies, employment training facilities, childcare providers, in-home care workers and the myriad other participants in the three programs would have to work serious overtime to do their jobs and bilk the state 60 cents on the dollar.
SEIU State Council Communications Director Mary Gutierrez:
If Meg Whitman were truly committed to protecting taxpayer dollars, she'd be fighting to protect home care services that fare more cost-effective and compassionate than the alternative -- forcing people with disabilities and our elderly into nursing homes at five times the cost.
In 2008, Goldman Sachs was criticized for proposing ways for investment clients to profit from California's financial Downturn. It urged some of its biggest clients to place investment bets against California bonds despite having collected millions of dollars in fees to help the state sell some of those same bonds. Goldman Sachs financial transactions in Greece reveal that such trades are a uniform policy in Goldman Sachs’s international business model.
1. Jamison, Jane. Meg Whitman's Troubling Connection to Goldman Sachs. Red County, 30 April 2010
Accessible at:
http://www.redcounty.com/meg-whitmans-troubling-connection-goldman-sachs/39291
2. Marinucci, Carla; Williams, Lance. Whitman feels heat as Goldman's image tarnishes. SFGate, 22 April 2010.
Accessible at: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/04/22/BA6C1D2B0H.DTL#ixzz0oP7be0UP
3. O’Connell, Justin. Profiling the Power-That-Be. DissidentVoice,
Accessible at:
3. Rothfeld, Michael. Whitman, Brown have ties to Goldman Sachs. Los Angeles Times, 24 April 2010.
Accessible at:
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/apr/24/local/la-me-jerry-brown-20100424
4. Harris, Paul. Will California Become America's First Failed State? Guardian UK, 4 October 2009.
Accessible at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/04/california-failing-state-debt
5. Smith, Steve. Whitman Uses Bogus Claims of Fraud to Attack Workers, Seniors and People with Disabilities. California Progress Report, 18 May 2010.
6. ______. Firm urged to hedge against state bonds it helped sell. Los Angeles Times, 11 November 2008.
7. Liberto, Jennifer. Fed probing Goldman trades with Greece. CNNMoney, 25 February 2010.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Cutting Through Book 1 Alan Watt: The Androygynous
Buy the Book: http://www.alanwattsentientsentinel.eu/english/booksEnglish.html
Cutting Through Book 1 by Alan Watt
The Androgynous (Hermaphroditic) Agenda
SAMPLE PAGE FROM BOOK 1
Page 5
To form is to Shape. People are shaped by IN-Forming. Information is neutral, like law, neither true nor false. Masters of Gnosis dispence the sequences of directives which, in scientifically designed order, form the ideas, opinions and life, the beliefs, reality AND DESTINY of the receiver YOU. When IN-DOCTRINATION is complete you have been MASTERED. To "doctor" means "to fix" by a science or Discipline. YOU ARE NOW A MASTER-COPY, not original but ABORIGINAL. Original people saw things in entirety. Pythagorus taught a science of controlling the mind, by reducing all thought down to mathematical formulae. The REAL priesthood call this THE TRINITY. It's as easy as A1B2C3
The Greek philosophers taught the method in story form. An imaginary Dialogue would occur between two or more people. By "logic" every societal problem was reduced to the BINARY CODE. EITHER-OR. We know it better as the Dialectic Process. By how LOGOS(the WORD) is used, those following the conversation are brought to a conclusion. The conclusion BEE-comes their own. They are now INFORMED. The purpose is to usurp power from the individual and have him slave willingly towards "the betterment of humanity." The beehive has always been the symbol of the perfect society in ancient Egypt, the Minoan culture and Freemasonry. Behave is from Beehive. Plato discussed the types of bees in relation to classes of people. The majority were workers who brought home the nectar. The drone priests sorted it into grades of honey. The best is Royal Jelly for themselves and the "Queen" while the workers are given denaturalised refuse.
Unlike modern freemasonry where the initiate must say "I AM" pre-Jaques- Pierrian English had no Am. The candidate said "I BEE". The number of masonry is Four. "To bee or not to bee=2xb(2)=4. Jaques is French for Jacob, Pierre is Peter, Rock etc.. This is typical masonic "allegory" for Jacob's Pillow (foundation) on which he had his "dream". This is a re-hash from the Egyptian Book of the Dead story of Ascended Masters to-day known as M ITREAS. The nobility ruling Egypt and their empire were called Hamites. The priesthoods taught their own race the doctrine of REINCARNATION. Those who ruled were "spirits" which had completed many cycles with such perfection, they only returned to "help rule" the "poor masses" which "could not rule themselves". Elitists Murderers, Thieves and liars, a Brotherhood which hi-jacked reality and gave illu(light)si(spirit of)on. Every Lodge has its picture of Jacob's ladder(rungs are degrees) symbolizing the ascention of the novice, returning as angels(angles) to earth, perfected.
Cutting Through Book 1 by Alan Watt
The Androgynous (Hermaphroditic) Agenda
SAMPLE PAGE FROM BOOK 1
Page 5
To form is to Shape. People are shaped by IN-Forming. Information is neutral, like law, neither true nor false. Masters of Gnosis dispence the sequences of directives which, in scientifically designed order, form the ideas, opinions and life, the beliefs, reality AND DESTINY of the receiver YOU. When IN-DOCTRINATION is complete you have been MASTERED. To "doctor" means "to fix" by a science or Discipline. YOU ARE NOW A MASTER-COPY, not original but ABORIGINAL. Original people saw things in entirety. Pythagorus taught a science of controlling the mind, by reducing all thought down to mathematical formulae. The REAL priesthood call this THE TRINITY. It's as easy as A1B2C3
The Greek philosophers taught the method in story form. An imaginary Dialogue would occur between two or more people. By "logic" every societal problem was reduced to the BINARY CODE. EITHER-OR. We know it better as the Dialectic Process. By how LOGOS(the WORD) is used, those following the conversation are brought to a conclusion. The conclusion BEE-comes their own. They are now INFORMED. The purpose is to usurp power from the individual and have him slave willingly towards "the betterment of humanity." The beehive has always been the symbol of the perfect society in ancient Egypt, the Minoan culture and Freemasonry. Behave is from Beehive. Plato discussed the types of bees in relation to classes of people. The majority were workers who brought home the nectar. The drone priests sorted it into grades of honey. The best is Royal Jelly for themselves and the "Queen" while the workers are given denaturalised refuse.
Unlike modern freemasonry where the initiate must say "I AM" pre-Jaques- Pierrian English had no Am. The candidate said "I BEE". The number of masonry is Four. "To bee or not to bee=2xb(2)=4. Jaques is French for Jacob, Pierre is Peter, Rock etc.. This is typical masonic "allegory" for Jacob's Pillow (foundation) on which he had his "dream". This is a re-hash from the Egyptian Book of the Dead story of Ascended Masters to-day known as M ITREAS. The nobility ruling Egypt and their empire were called Hamites. The priesthoods taught their own race the doctrine of REINCARNATION. Those who ruled were "spirits" which had completed many cycles with such perfection, they only returned to "help rule" the "poor masses" which "could not rule themselves". Elitists Murderers, Thieves and liars, a Brotherhood which hi-jacked reality and gave illu(light)si(spirit of)on. Every Lodge has its picture of Jacob's ladder(rungs are degrees) symbolizing the ascention of the novice, returning as angels(angles) to earth, perfected.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
And Oh-So Austere: globalization coming into view
The globalization of cultural symbols and concepts has left the world in between two ages, a temporal space where persons and their generations find it hard to find themselves. Thanks to technological developments, the ability for culture to be diffused to distant regions of globe—from, say, a European or American cosmopolitan center to less influential nations and cities—is vastly expanded. Still, despite this intermixing in a global melting pot, with populations fleeing far westward or eastward for reprieve, promotional worlds are built up around users hunched over computers and laptops, where advertisements are personally tailored for them, divorcing them from their cluster of friends.
Whilst most of the literature on the topic of globalization argues that, as fewer and fewer transnational corporations compete to expand market share, once diverse cultures have fallen victim to a homogenization process, some research sees the reality differently. By arguing the case for blowback or resistance to trends of global cultural standardization, these analysts seemingly borrow from laws of physics that state for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
This reaction from below is newfangled nationalisms in nations that perceive a whittling away of their national sovereignty by the vector of global governance, business, and sociality as anti-republican traditions, totally devoid of respect for common law.
In his essay, Learning to be local in Belize, Richard Wilk puts his hand on this transpiration in Belize, where a mere two decades ago, at a time when foreign cultural influence was scarcely so pervasive as now, most Belizeans denied that such a thing as ‘Belizean culture’ existed at all. They did, after all, live where the United States considered backyard. For example, in the realm of cuisine, the honored guest from the north, Wilk, was usually treated to something from a can.
Such observations by Wilk turn his paper not into further proffering of the “progressive penetration of global commodities into every crevice of daily life,” but, instead, as an account of local diversification amid global standardization. To be sure, the global standardization remains, but there is community blossoming and counter-trends taking part that is very much important to the makeup of the dominant culture. In other words, Belizean absorption into international markets and contests has resulted in the people of the country flexing their distinctiveness and diversity apart from other nations. This process represents their entering into, what Wilk terms, the “structure of common difference.” (Wilk 1995)
This Belizean expression of difference positions itself contrary to the ideologies of nonpareil professional marketing managers, who attempt to invoke a transformation in consciousness, in terms of consumer behavior, from an episteme that holds for truth the existence of a universal rationality based on the western model. Put succinctly, a basic premise of their marketing techniques holds that consumers, markets and competitors around the world will behave the same; that, when put in environments more similar than different, the differences in people will tend to blur, to fade with time. This managerial rationality is an “undisputed instrument of knowledge.”
For instance, the field of neuro-marketing helps to make a science of predicting—more to the point, dictating—global consumer habits. The foundational study that gave rise to this field analyzed how, in test subjects shown products with which they identified and, therefore, enjoyed, blood rushed to a small location at the front of the brain called the medial prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain responsible for self-identification and the formation of personality. Such knowledge of human behavior can help to globalize a certain type of commoditization, a professional marketing manager might reason. (Lone 2009)
For some, globalization is an ideology, a fact of life. It certainly is a reality in every person on the plants life. Moreover, its process is a political one. As George Orwell told, everything is politics. Policies of deregulation and philosophies of free trade—a euphemism for corporate expansion—abet globalization and justify not just the macroeconomic axiom of comparative advantage, but, also, the microeconomic foundations of neuro-economics in the neo-classical economic model—including therein basic assumptions of inherent maximizing inclination of ‘Homo-economicus’ in an environment of scarcity. For historically powerful global elite financiers, internationalists and their national bureaucrats, globalization serves as a rationale for the recent history’s restructuring of states and economies; “a historically specific project of global economic management.” It is, for such entrenched power interests, “a view of ordering the world.”
Managers and experts of transnational corporations are particularly strong advocates of globalization because they view it as offering opportunities of boundless proportions; the concept by which to judge quality, mere efficiency. For them, globalization represents the possibility of doing business without restriction; that, de facto, supply and demand does not do autonomous market making and eradication, they can and do. And will continue doing so, in their “view of ordering the world.” They ensure this progression persists.
Such a worldview stands in contraposition to the free market capitalist ideology, by its mainstream definition. The vision of TNC managers, consultants and management academics is a global one. In fact, they are referred to by many as “globalist,” with “globalist” occasionally being prefaced with the qualifier “demise-of-the-state,” meaning, essentially, they hold no allegiances to any nation-state or its culture. TNC marketers built a worldview upon the maxim of globalization, thereby forming theories about consumers and competitive strategies. Although a complex abstraction, globalization daily becomes increasingly the true superstructure of our daily lives. (Applbaum 2002)
1.Wilk, Richard. (1995) Learning to be local in Belize: global systems of common difference,
2.Frank, Lone. “How the Brain Reveals Why we Buy.” Scientific American, 2 November 2009.
Accessed at:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=neuromarketing-brain
3.Applbaum, Kalman. (May 2000). Crossing Borders: Globalization as Myth and Charter in American Transnational Consumer Marketing, American Ethnologist, Vol. 27, No.2, pp. 257-282.
Whilst most of the literature on the topic of globalization argues that, as fewer and fewer transnational corporations compete to expand market share, once diverse cultures have fallen victim to a homogenization process, some research sees the reality differently. By arguing the case for blowback or resistance to trends of global cultural standardization, these analysts seemingly borrow from laws of physics that state for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
This reaction from below is newfangled nationalisms in nations that perceive a whittling away of their national sovereignty by the vector of global governance, business, and sociality as anti-republican traditions, totally devoid of respect for common law.
In his essay, Learning to be local in Belize, Richard Wilk puts his hand on this transpiration in Belize, where a mere two decades ago, at a time when foreign cultural influence was scarcely so pervasive as now, most Belizeans denied that such a thing as ‘Belizean culture’ existed at all. They did, after all, live where the United States considered backyard. For example, in the realm of cuisine, the honored guest from the north, Wilk, was usually treated to something from a can.
Such observations by Wilk turn his paper not into further proffering of the “progressive penetration of global commodities into every crevice of daily life,” but, instead, as an account of local diversification amid global standardization. To be sure, the global standardization remains, but there is community blossoming and counter-trends taking part that is very much important to the makeup of the dominant culture. In other words, Belizean absorption into international markets and contests has resulted in the people of the country flexing their distinctiveness and diversity apart from other nations. This process represents their entering into, what Wilk terms, the “structure of common difference.” (Wilk 1995)
This Belizean expression of difference positions itself contrary to the ideologies of nonpareil professional marketing managers, who attempt to invoke a transformation in consciousness, in terms of consumer behavior, from an episteme that holds for truth the existence of a universal rationality based on the western model. Put succinctly, a basic premise of their marketing techniques holds that consumers, markets and competitors around the world will behave the same; that, when put in environments more similar than different, the differences in people will tend to blur, to fade with time. This managerial rationality is an “undisputed instrument of knowledge.”
For instance, the field of neuro-marketing helps to make a science of predicting—more to the point, dictating—global consumer habits. The foundational study that gave rise to this field analyzed how, in test subjects shown products with which they identified and, therefore, enjoyed, blood rushed to a small location at the front of the brain called the medial prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain responsible for self-identification and the formation of personality. Such knowledge of human behavior can help to globalize a certain type of commoditization, a professional marketing manager might reason. (Lone 2009)
For some, globalization is an ideology, a fact of life. It certainly is a reality in every person on the plants life. Moreover, its process is a political one. As George Orwell told, everything is politics. Policies of deregulation and philosophies of free trade—a euphemism for corporate expansion—abet globalization and justify not just the macroeconomic axiom of comparative advantage, but, also, the microeconomic foundations of neuro-economics in the neo-classical economic model—including therein basic assumptions of inherent maximizing inclination of ‘Homo-economicus’ in an environment of scarcity. For historically powerful global elite financiers, internationalists and their national bureaucrats, globalization serves as a rationale for the recent history’s restructuring of states and economies; “a historically specific project of global economic management.” It is, for such entrenched power interests, “a view of ordering the world.”
Managers and experts of transnational corporations are particularly strong advocates of globalization because they view it as offering opportunities of boundless proportions; the concept by which to judge quality, mere efficiency. For them, globalization represents the possibility of doing business without restriction; that, de facto, supply and demand does not do autonomous market making and eradication, they can and do. And will continue doing so, in their “view of ordering the world.” They ensure this progression persists.
Such a worldview stands in contraposition to the free market capitalist ideology, by its mainstream definition. The vision of TNC managers, consultants and management academics is a global one. In fact, they are referred to by many as “globalist,” with “globalist” occasionally being prefaced with the qualifier “demise-of-the-state,” meaning, essentially, they hold no allegiances to any nation-state or its culture. TNC marketers built a worldview upon the maxim of globalization, thereby forming theories about consumers and competitive strategies. Although a complex abstraction, globalization daily becomes increasingly the true superstructure of our daily lives. (Applbaum 2002)
1.Wilk, Richard. (1995) Learning to be local in Belize: global systems of common difference,
2.Frank, Lone. “How the Brain Reveals Why we Buy.” Scientific American, 2 November 2009.
Accessed at:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=neuromarketing-brain
3.Applbaum, Kalman. (May 2000). Crossing Borders: Globalization as Myth and Charter in American Transnational Consumer Marketing, American Ethnologist, Vol. 27, No.2, pp. 257-282.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Town and Country Unedited: Chapter 1 or "With a wrinkled brow and his head cocked to the side"
Seraville Country Club sat atop a hill not only in physical space, but also in the minds of those who mingled there. To them it was a kingdom on a hill not just in somewhere, but nearer to the heavens, where those made up of the most meaningful matters fit in. The continents of fantasy which gave form to pallid thought were oft made to be real in that all-encompassing, open-ended conglomeration of spacetime. Seraville was no exception, and all of this was made possible in that place plush with uncertainty, otherwise known as “now.” If there was one thing that was certain to the Country Club membership, it was that playing there was a privilege. Politicians, lauded business men, clergymen, judges, media anchors, bank owners, the sons of bank owners, and one closet drug-handler spent their days together discussing the weather and the things to which their money was connected. Of temporal course, deference was no stranger at Seraville, for it had a hologram hierarchy broadcast by minds.
The peak of the Roman Catholic pyramid is occupied by what amounts to few officials. There are one Pope, 55 cardinals, 22 apostolic delegates, 256 vicars apostolic, 245 archbishops, 1, 578 bishops. And so, they hang around tables eating and musing about how comfy they live underneath the heaven’s floorboards. In the Soviet Union, the Communist party had its pointy heavenward end in the Political Committee of only nine or ten members. They didn’t concern themselves much with God, but watched their own backs and feared for their lives just the same. The relatively loose structure of the United States confers considerable influence upon a Supreme Court of nine, a Presidency of one, the Congress of a few hundred congressmen, and the American Senate for 480 Senators. Deference pyramids are over time sheer and steep. Seraville, whose members—just as all Good Catholics, Comrades, Germans and Americans—thought of themselves as the center of the universe, came to a head in a 10 person Board of Governors. Democratic, one might argue, considering only a few hundred were members.
The club covered approximately 250 acres of planet Earth owned by Randolph Avery, the proud owner of Avery Real Estate, the second largest Real Estate firm in the United States. His concern for his under lords, his subjects, had no end. He made a point of reminding them this intermittently throughout the years. He knew that their dedication to the cause was pertinent to the continuity of their little abode away from the doldrums of most other people’s experiences. The club is just as much theirs as his, he would tell them, though they were his capital and not vice versa. Everyone had been contented by a decade of prosperity and a growth they envisaged as unswerving, linear and perdurable. And so Mr. Avery began his speech for the night within a room enveloped by a clear night, underneath stars punched in the fabric of space, hinting of universes without.
“Gentlemen of the Seraville Country Club, their better-halves,” the crowd chuckled robotically, as if little signs appeared above stage right and stage left:
Chuckle Appropriately
What a neat trick.
“I would like to welcome you to one of the most important banquets in this country club’s young life,” Mr. Avery carried on. Seraville’s most distinguished members were on hand this evening awaiting the formal announcement of something they already knew. Judge Finestone was there, as well as Senator Mathewson, Pastor Schroeder, Head News Anchor for BEST News, Skippy Style, and even the owner of BEST News and the myriad associated news centers, Clemens Roger. Some other people were there too. Behind Avery on stage sat a number of personages, some unfamiliar to club members. Investors and city officials celebrated the new era for Seraville, many of whom had put much at stake in the name of club progress. “In its long and colorful history, some of Los Angeles’ most prominent have called Seraville their second home. There is no denying that Seraville is one of the best Country Clubs in this great land and that you, the members of Seraville, are among the privileged elite.”
Applause
Mr. Avery’s body was hardly decrepit, in spite of its sixty years. The slicked-backed, phony black of his hair hid a plastic bag gray with the same polymers in the acrylic paints that protested the scene on the concrete walls in the city, with such slogans as:
“Is anybody out there?”
And,
“Ahhhhh”
Furthermore, Avery’s gray, two-piece suit hinted at party-line. In the last row and furthest chair on the right, Danny Tolstoy paid with attention, at a cost of wandering thoughts in five minute intervals, sometimes four or even three.
“It is a surprise that he still has to read his speeches, considering they are all the same,” said Danny to a Mervin Montague, a man who happened to be as deaf as a worm. Danny knew this; nevertheless he persisted, certain the others would notice. “His speeches are pop songs.”
Avery: “In 1896, when Seraville first opened, it was an escape for the most important people of the day—from the military and the press—and it is clear to see not much has changed. Many of your great, great grandfathers and uncles were here when my great, great grandfather presided over club affairs more than 85 years ago,” Avery went on and on, for he had the persistent vector of tradition, and only tradition, at his desperate defense. He molded it with a fierce accuracy. Knowing precisely the right time to pluck the fruit from the tree, he told the others that, they too shared the thousand-point light bright nexus.
“While I was a boy I used to help out my father as he managed the grounds, trying my darndest to learn everything he taught me about how to be a successful in real estate and otherwise courtly in my conduct. Oh, how surprised our forebears would be today to see how far the club has come. With the addition of more than 200 acres and the residential area Freedom Ridge, it is hard to counter the assertion that Seraville is truly a place for the blessed,” Mr. Avery contended, convincingly enough, thereby making some in the audience to absolve themselves from church in the morning. “Freedom Ridge, if you didn’t already know, is seventy-five enormous mansions within Seraville territory, safely gated and watched 24 hours a day by top-of-the-line security guards—so that you and your family may be safe at night.”
“Top of the line security guards? Where has this wrinkly-old, senile cracker been? I sleep for seventy-five percent of my night shifts at that gate, and then I have sex,” said Marlon, a young man of twenty-five, fresh on the force of mercenaries at Holy Security. “This asshole pays us $7.50 an hour and then calls us top of the line. Shit, if I was top of the line…”
“The minimum wage is like $8.40 an hour, that’s what we’re making, I think. But, you seriously get laid during your shifts!?” Tim, another security guard, interrupted eagerly in a whisper. “And I am always paranoid during my shifts because I am getting stoned.”
“I do that, too. How do you pass the mandatory drug tests?” Marlon quietly snapped, his curiosity piqued.
“Cranberry juice,” Tim answered in a deadened but somehow uplifting tone, as one does when reminding another. “I think I give about one-half of my paycheck to those goddamn cranberry drink companies.”
“Hope you get the shit without any high fructose corn syrup in it,” Marlon said. “I hear that shit is like in everything nowadays.”
“Yeah, so what if I do? A homie’s got to pay for his weed. Cheap cranberry drink is just that—cheap. You apparently stay away from that stuff, and you aren’t exactly the sharpest tool in the shed.”
Meanwhile, the speech: “In 1997 the Seraville Club Center was opened up providing you, the members and therefore the bosses of Seraville, with a gym, gourmet restaurant and gambling room.”
“We’re onboard, you had us at hello,” said the audience through their applause. “And now ladies and gentlemen, it is time to announce the most crucial point of the history of Seraville,” after which Avery exhaled and looked at the special guests sitting mannerly behind him.
In the kitchen of the ballroom, two young servers hid in a corner obstructed by an ice machine where they attempted to hastily polish off two water glasses filled halfway with vodka.
“We have to drink these fast, Avery is almost finished with his speech,” said Landon, a brown eyed, lightly skinned student with short, wavy hair.
“Oh, to hell with Avery,” snapped Landon’s corpulent colleague, Barbeque, quietly. “Without these drinks I’d never be able to look him in the face and inform him not only was his speech bullshit, but that he’s an asshole too. The way I see it, we’re doing him a favor getting wasted.”
“The way you see it got you fired from your last job, Barbeque,” Landon riposted. “You even told me so.”
Knowing perfectly well the speech was coming to a close, the two took deep breaths and let the clear, pungent liquid slide along the glasses and down their throats, filling their stomach with a hot sensation as if a stove in their stomachs had been turned on. Filling up these very moments in the ballroom, the chicanery lingered as it had: “It is time for us to hoist Seraville up on our shoulders and carry it among the most adept classes of society, where we and it belong.”
With a wrinkled brow and his head cocked a little to the side, Danny curiously glanced around the room before leaning to Merv and whispering, “You should have somebody explain that to you later. I would, but we don’t speak the same language.” “On this date, I, Randolph Avery, formally announce the consolidation of the Seraville Country Club into the proper town of Seraville, California, and name myself Mayor; effective immediately. Confusion the semi-colon conveyed was lost on the crowd, as they erupted into a rogue applause that was not to be tamed for some time. Danny curled over in laughter struggling for breath as he incontinently exhaled, and Merv was stuck in the interstitial of audio-less visuals.
Those who noticed Danny whispered deride to their neighbors, plenty familiar with his customary fracas. Mr. Avery, now finished with his speech, walked the length of stage right shaking the hands of those that presided from atop the stage over the preceding and their wives. The crowd grew tired of ovation and adulation, and dispersed, the lion’s share seeking hors d'oeuvres and alcohol. Landon and Barbeque placed the dirtied glasses in their proper places so as to not make unnecessary work for others and wore proudly the smiles stirred to veracity by the vodka.
“Let’s do this quick as we can. Just make it look nice, you know,” Landon said. As the two left the white, sterile kitchen, they were stopped by the one whose role was Manager. It crossed Barbeque’s mind that the two likely exuded the smell of alcohol, but remained calm and cool, and focused his attention patiently at the divergence in his way. Landon, aloof in thoughts whose foundation was that of arrogance, did not fear the Manager, for he had, over the years, learned to let himself be free of traditional worries. He feared only that the history found in the past, lay as well in the future.
“Good smiles,” the Manager praised.
“Now, be sure the two of you make this place so clean you’d drink from the ground,” like a cat might do. A degrading remark from a superior to subordinates, although the workers were used to such maltreatment, and their obsequiousness set the stage for still further discomfiture.
“Yes, sir,” they said together, all at once. The two began their work. Landon was filled with the satiating energy of affirmation he found in the alcohol. The two hastily crowded as much dinnerware as they could onto their thin, round trays, walked into the kitchen and crowded everything around Manuel—whose duty it was at the end of the night to wash the dishes—and repeated, ever so often nattering or making offhanded remarks to each other about the soup of gobbledygook in which they wasted away.
The addressees at the banquet mostly ignored the presence and surface diligence of Landon and Barbeque. Save for now and then as someone articulated to them something they believed to be pointed, but was, in an honest reality, the defeated nudging of air molecules. In all probability, to be sure, these assorted espousals or nippy jokes or irrelevant and nosy inquiries were stabs for attention or camaraderie or something of the sort.
“Be aware not to miss a napkin or a used rum and cola glass!” shouted a lowly club member from a nearby table as Landon cleaned. Landon customarily smiled. “Come here,” the man said, gesturing with his index finger, pulling it in towards his chin.
“What’s your name?”
“Landon, what is yours, Sir?” in a contrived cheerfulness, he answered.
“And where do you go to school and church, young man?” the man said, ignoring Landon’s question.
“Well, I went to high school at San Juarez Academy. Now I am at the University. And I don’t go to church.”
“Well, perhaps that can be forgiven as you went and got yourself into an academy. You must at least have potential to earn your keep.”
“Yes sir.”
“I tell you what, here is my business card. Give me a call sometime and if you need anything, and you’re on Mr. Avery’s good side, I might just see what I can do,” said the drunken man, tripping over phonemes. Landon was prescient enough to notice that the man in the striped suit addressed him with a drunk sincerity and, also, had trouble stringing together sense. But he didn’t care enough to ask for sense to be made, or think much of it, for that matter; for he had been conditioned to associate others with balderdash.
Without having consciously tried, Danny found himself within earshot of Mr. Avery, who was placing onto his plate assorted cheeses and small slices of white bread. Danny couldn’t think of much to say worth his own while, and so he mulled over the cake provided. Antagonistically, Avery gestured in his direction, breaking his hobnob with important folk to talk to the eccentric fellow nobody much cared for. They spoke seldom, Avery and Danny, although the newly self-appointed mayor had learned to respect Danny, for his myriad talents endowed him with an air of exceptionable mystery.
“So, what do you think Danny, to be part of such a community?”
“Well, I’m honored—what else can I say? Rumor has it there’s even going to be a new shopping center? Wow, this is really something—a historic day, for sure.”
“You betcha,” Avery said. “We have just about our own little country here. Next thing you know we’ll write a constitution.”
“Well, is that so? I’m sure some of the corporations our members work for have larger GDP’s than most countries, but you and I both know that that’s par for the course these days. But a constitution? Have you thought about just opening up a PR office? I’d love to run it. I’ve always thought I’d have a knack for pulling at heart strings.”
“By golly, that’s an idea.”
“An idea indeed,” Danny rejoindered, taken aback by the mayor’s keenness for observation.
“All we’d need is a simple slogan people could latch onto. How about, ‘come join us, you rich hunk, you.’ Isn’t that the latest marketing trend: hitting on your consumer base?’” “We’ll see Danny. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to return to the members at hand.”
“Or wait, I’ve got another one,” Danny rushed to get it out before the Mayor had departed the conversation. “’Be Rich, bitch.’ What do you think?”
Mr. Avery pretended not to hear. Although Danny had known for quite some time that he was not a part of the membership in the minds of most of the members, per se—he did, all the same, enjoy being on the outside looking in—he had never anywhere else been so blatantly ostracized as he had been at the Club—not in school, not at work, not ever. He was always among the most popular. That this was not the case at Seraville did not deflate his ego. After pondering the affront, Danny made his way towards Landon, whom he’d always tipped lavishly, despite that such loyalty to a meager club worker elicited suspicion among the courtlier members.
“What’s up, Danny?” Landon inquired. \
“Not much, Landon. What do you think of all this self-indulgent frippery?”
“It’s a contumacious bunch, these shitheads. It’s pleasurable at one level, though, to watch them all lick spit-filled water out of a bowl at master’s feet. By Master I mean Mayor, of course. Not so pleasurable when you consider they have no idea they’re doing it.”
“Karma is on a round trip, right back to them in the end.”
“Karma’s not in demand.”
“Oh Landon, you’re a cynical bastard. How old are you—thirty ?”
“No, twenty-six.”
“You ought to muster up some pep and spare some of the chagrin for later on. There’ll be plenty of time for that.”
“But Danny, by then I will be a member of the club,” Landon said in a rising, expectant voice. “What more could a working class white boy ask for, but the steady climb up; you know, a little upward mobility?”
“All right, I need to get one more glass of wine for the road; when the kids are this sardonic we must be on the edge of a new dark age. I should also mingle once more so everyone’s last memory of me on this night isn’t commiserating with a modern day Karl Marx.” He started on the wend.
“I’d prefer Malcom X,” said Landon with a grin. Danny stopped moving, one foot already started in front of the other—direction wine—and looked at Landon for an extra second in blasé bewilderment.
“Yeah okay, farewell my boy—see you tomorrow for our golf game,” Danny said, palm of his hand now on Landon’s shoulder blade. Danny walked briskly to the seat in which he had sat during the newly anointed mayor’s speech, where he nodded his head forward to acknowledge Montague, and then bent at the waist to pick up his portable coffee cup.
“Not to worry Mr. Montague, the lights are prettier than the sounds,” he said, albeit without successfully luring the attention of his deaf friend. He said it again, but this time to himself: “The lights are prettier than the sounds. What does that even mean?” he wondered, and decided he ought to attempt to cut back on his dosage of pharmaceutical pills.
With a look of earnestness—so as to disguise his intent—he set off for the bottles of wine, knowing full-well it would take a smooth maneuvering of blather and stealth to pour wine into the coffee cup without alluring too much attention towards himself. He had done this before, but remained nervous in spite—nevertheless, he parted not from determination and the task. As a gist of thought made him aware that everyone had turned away, he seized the opportunity, and started over towards the table on which the wine sat. He walked over confidently and briskly, uncorked the already opened bottle of wine and then poured smoothly.
The coffee cup filled to the brim, the bottle found its way back to the table and on the bed of ice. Danny glanced around the room. The others busied each other while he made for the door. He stepped outside where his body interrupted a fragment of breeze that splashed around his body—it was neither cold nor hot nor warm for that matter: Usually, so long as vanity was excluded from the equation, one felt as at home in the air of a Los Angeles eventide as in one’s own skin.
On his way to the valet, he kept his nose to the sky and watched the wind bully, in slow motion, colluviums clouds; nudging them like marching prisoners of war herded by officers, on and on for some vague eternity. He then handed the valet a card on which a description of his car was written: A silver hybrid, the only one at Seraville. Danny felt hip in it. The valet said thanks and went off to fetch the auto. Danny turned his body in circles and wondered if an owl turning only its head had it any easier. More and more, as his eyes adjusted to the night, the scenery around him emerged out of an ebon formlessness like fresh hallucinations. The valet returned with the hybrid, Danny handed him a scrunched up twenty dollar bill—one of the better tips the young valet would receive on this night—and drove off, but not before taking a sip from his “coffee.” On the inside, Landon and Barbeque finished their duty. Although they would soon be free to carry on with their night, the bulk of the fun elsewhere—at parties and bars, etc.—waned. For, in a contrivance of work, the hour was always growing later. Still, they made haste.
The peak of the Roman Catholic pyramid is occupied by what amounts to few officials. There are one Pope, 55 cardinals, 22 apostolic delegates, 256 vicars apostolic, 245 archbishops, 1, 578 bishops. And so, they hang around tables eating and musing about how comfy they live underneath the heaven’s floorboards. In the Soviet Union, the Communist party had its pointy heavenward end in the Political Committee of only nine or ten members. They didn’t concern themselves much with God, but watched their own backs and feared for their lives just the same. The relatively loose structure of the United States confers considerable influence upon a Supreme Court of nine, a Presidency of one, the Congress of a few hundred congressmen, and the American Senate for 480 Senators. Deference pyramids are over time sheer and steep. Seraville, whose members—just as all Good Catholics, Comrades, Germans and Americans—thought of themselves as the center of the universe, came to a head in a 10 person Board of Governors. Democratic, one might argue, considering only a few hundred were members.
The club covered approximately 250 acres of planet Earth owned by Randolph Avery, the proud owner of Avery Real Estate, the second largest Real Estate firm in the United States. His concern for his under lords, his subjects, had no end. He made a point of reminding them this intermittently throughout the years. He knew that their dedication to the cause was pertinent to the continuity of their little abode away from the doldrums of most other people’s experiences. The club is just as much theirs as his, he would tell them, though they were his capital and not vice versa. Everyone had been contented by a decade of prosperity and a growth they envisaged as unswerving, linear and perdurable. And so Mr. Avery began his speech for the night within a room enveloped by a clear night, underneath stars punched in the fabric of space, hinting of universes without.
“Gentlemen of the Seraville Country Club, their better-halves,” the crowd chuckled robotically, as if little signs appeared above stage right and stage left:
Chuckle Appropriately
What a neat trick.
“I would like to welcome you to one of the most important banquets in this country club’s young life,” Mr. Avery carried on. Seraville’s most distinguished members were on hand this evening awaiting the formal announcement of something they already knew. Judge Finestone was there, as well as Senator Mathewson, Pastor Schroeder, Head News Anchor for BEST News, Skippy Style, and even the owner of BEST News and the myriad associated news centers, Clemens Roger. Some other people were there too. Behind Avery on stage sat a number of personages, some unfamiliar to club members. Investors and city officials celebrated the new era for Seraville, many of whom had put much at stake in the name of club progress. “In its long and colorful history, some of Los Angeles’ most prominent have called Seraville their second home. There is no denying that Seraville is one of the best Country Clubs in this great land and that you, the members of Seraville, are among the privileged elite.”
Applause
Mr. Avery’s body was hardly decrepit, in spite of its sixty years. The slicked-backed, phony black of his hair hid a plastic bag gray with the same polymers in the acrylic paints that protested the scene on the concrete walls in the city, with such slogans as:
“Is anybody out there?”
And,
“Ahhhhh”
Furthermore, Avery’s gray, two-piece suit hinted at party-line. In the last row and furthest chair on the right, Danny Tolstoy paid with attention, at a cost of wandering thoughts in five minute intervals, sometimes four or even three.
“It is a surprise that he still has to read his speeches, considering they are all the same,” said Danny to a Mervin Montague, a man who happened to be as deaf as a worm. Danny knew this; nevertheless he persisted, certain the others would notice. “His speeches are pop songs.”
Avery: “In 1896, when Seraville first opened, it was an escape for the most important people of the day—from the military and the press—and it is clear to see not much has changed. Many of your great, great grandfathers and uncles were here when my great, great grandfather presided over club affairs more than 85 years ago,” Avery went on and on, for he had the persistent vector of tradition, and only tradition, at his desperate defense. He molded it with a fierce accuracy. Knowing precisely the right time to pluck the fruit from the tree, he told the others that, they too shared the thousand-point light bright nexus.
“While I was a boy I used to help out my father as he managed the grounds, trying my darndest to learn everything he taught me about how to be a successful in real estate and otherwise courtly in my conduct. Oh, how surprised our forebears would be today to see how far the club has come. With the addition of more than 200 acres and the residential area Freedom Ridge, it is hard to counter the assertion that Seraville is truly a place for the blessed,” Mr. Avery contended, convincingly enough, thereby making some in the audience to absolve themselves from church in the morning. “Freedom Ridge, if you didn’t already know, is seventy-five enormous mansions within Seraville territory, safely gated and watched 24 hours a day by top-of-the-line security guards—so that you and your family may be safe at night.”
“Top of the line security guards? Where has this wrinkly-old, senile cracker been? I sleep for seventy-five percent of my night shifts at that gate, and then I have sex,” said Marlon, a young man of twenty-five, fresh on the force of mercenaries at Holy Security. “This asshole pays us $7.50 an hour and then calls us top of the line. Shit, if I was top of the line…”
“The minimum wage is like $8.40 an hour, that’s what we’re making, I think. But, you seriously get laid during your shifts!?” Tim, another security guard, interrupted eagerly in a whisper. “And I am always paranoid during my shifts because I am getting stoned.”
“I do that, too. How do you pass the mandatory drug tests?” Marlon quietly snapped, his curiosity piqued.
“Cranberry juice,” Tim answered in a deadened but somehow uplifting tone, as one does when reminding another. “I think I give about one-half of my paycheck to those goddamn cranberry drink companies.”
“Hope you get the shit without any high fructose corn syrup in it,” Marlon said. “I hear that shit is like in everything nowadays.”
“Yeah, so what if I do? A homie’s got to pay for his weed. Cheap cranberry drink is just that—cheap. You apparently stay away from that stuff, and you aren’t exactly the sharpest tool in the shed.”
Meanwhile, the speech: “In 1997 the Seraville Club Center was opened up providing you, the members and therefore the bosses of Seraville, with a gym, gourmet restaurant and gambling room.”
“We’re onboard, you had us at hello,” said the audience through their applause. “And now ladies and gentlemen, it is time to announce the most crucial point of the history of Seraville,” after which Avery exhaled and looked at the special guests sitting mannerly behind him.
In the kitchen of the ballroom, two young servers hid in a corner obstructed by an ice machine where they attempted to hastily polish off two water glasses filled halfway with vodka.
“We have to drink these fast, Avery is almost finished with his speech,” said Landon, a brown eyed, lightly skinned student with short, wavy hair.
“Oh, to hell with Avery,” snapped Landon’s corpulent colleague, Barbeque, quietly. “Without these drinks I’d never be able to look him in the face and inform him not only was his speech bullshit, but that he’s an asshole too. The way I see it, we’re doing him a favor getting wasted.”
“The way you see it got you fired from your last job, Barbeque,” Landon riposted. “You even told me so.”
Knowing perfectly well the speech was coming to a close, the two took deep breaths and let the clear, pungent liquid slide along the glasses and down their throats, filling their stomach with a hot sensation as if a stove in their stomachs had been turned on. Filling up these very moments in the ballroom, the chicanery lingered as it had: “It is time for us to hoist Seraville up on our shoulders and carry it among the most adept classes of society, where we and it belong.”
With a wrinkled brow and his head cocked a little to the side, Danny curiously glanced around the room before leaning to Merv and whispering, “You should have somebody explain that to you later. I would, but we don’t speak the same language.” “On this date, I, Randolph Avery, formally announce the consolidation of the Seraville Country Club into the proper town of Seraville, California, and name myself Mayor; effective immediately. Confusion the semi-colon conveyed was lost on the crowd, as they erupted into a rogue applause that was not to be tamed for some time. Danny curled over in laughter struggling for breath as he incontinently exhaled, and Merv was stuck in the interstitial of audio-less visuals.
Those who noticed Danny whispered deride to their neighbors, plenty familiar with his customary fracas. Mr. Avery, now finished with his speech, walked the length of stage right shaking the hands of those that presided from atop the stage over the preceding and their wives. The crowd grew tired of ovation and adulation, and dispersed, the lion’s share seeking hors d'oeuvres and alcohol. Landon and Barbeque placed the dirtied glasses in their proper places so as to not make unnecessary work for others and wore proudly the smiles stirred to veracity by the vodka.
“Let’s do this quick as we can. Just make it look nice, you know,” Landon said. As the two left the white, sterile kitchen, they were stopped by the one whose role was Manager. It crossed Barbeque’s mind that the two likely exuded the smell of alcohol, but remained calm and cool, and focused his attention patiently at the divergence in his way. Landon, aloof in thoughts whose foundation was that of arrogance, did not fear the Manager, for he had, over the years, learned to let himself be free of traditional worries. He feared only that the history found in the past, lay as well in the future.
“Good smiles,” the Manager praised.
“Now, be sure the two of you make this place so clean you’d drink from the ground,” like a cat might do. A degrading remark from a superior to subordinates, although the workers were used to such maltreatment, and their obsequiousness set the stage for still further discomfiture.
“Yes, sir,” they said together, all at once. The two began their work. Landon was filled with the satiating energy of affirmation he found in the alcohol. The two hastily crowded as much dinnerware as they could onto their thin, round trays, walked into the kitchen and crowded everything around Manuel—whose duty it was at the end of the night to wash the dishes—and repeated, ever so often nattering or making offhanded remarks to each other about the soup of gobbledygook in which they wasted away.
The addressees at the banquet mostly ignored the presence and surface diligence of Landon and Barbeque. Save for now and then as someone articulated to them something they believed to be pointed, but was, in an honest reality, the defeated nudging of air molecules. In all probability, to be sure, these assorted espousals or nippy jokes or irrelevant and nosy inquiries were stabs for attention or camaraderie or something of the sort.
“Be aware not to miss a napkin or a used rum and cola glass!” shouted a lowly club member from a nearby table as Landon cleaned. Landon customarily smiled. “Come here,” the man said, gesturing with his index finger, pulling it in towards his chin.
“What’s your name?”
“Landon, what is yours, Sir?” in a contrived cheerfulness, he answered.
“And where do you go to school and church, young man?” the man said, ignoring Landon’s question.
“Well, I went to high school at San Juarez Academy. Now I am at the University. And I don’t go to church.”
“Well, perhaps that can be forgiven as you went and got yourself into an academy. You must at least have potential to earn your keep.”
“Yes sir.”
“I tell you what, here is my business card. Give me a call sometime and if you need anything, and you’re on Mr. Avery’s good side, I might just see what I can do,” said the drunken man, tripping over phonemes. Landon was prescient enough to notice that the man in the striped suit addressed him with a drunk sincerity and, also, had trouble stringing together sense. But he didn’t care enough to ask for sense to be made, or think much of it, for that matter; for he had been conditioned to associate others with balderdash.
Without having consciously tried, Danny found himself within earshot of Mr. Avery, who was placing onto his plate assorted cheeses and small slices of white bread. Danny couldn’t think of much to say worth his own while, and so he mulled over the cake provided. Antagonistically, Avery gestured in his direction, breaking his hobnob with important folk to talk to the eccentric fellow nobody much cared for. They spoke seldom, Avery and Danny, although the newly self-appointed mayor had learned to respect Danny, for his myriad talents endowed him with an air of exceptionable mystery.
“So, what do you think Danny, to be part of such a community?”
“Well, I’m honored—what else can I say? Rumor has it there’s even going to be a new shopping center? Wow, this is really something—a historic day, for sure.”
“You betcha,” Avery said. “We have just about our own little country here. Next thing you know we’ll write a constitution.”
“Well, is that so? I’m sure some of the corporations our members work for have larger GDP’s than most countries, but you and I both know that that’s par for the course these days. But a constitution? Have you thought about just opening up a PR office? I’d love to run it. I’ve always thought I’d have a knack for pulling at heart strings.”
“By golly, that’s an idea.”
“An idea indeed,” Danny rejoindered, taken aback by the mayor’s keenness for observation.
“All we’d need is a simple slogan people could latch onto. How about, ‘come join us, you rich hunk, you.’ Isn’t that the latest marketing trend: hitting on your consumer base?’” “We’ll see Danny. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to return to the members at hand.”
“Or wait, I’ve got another one,” Danny rushed to get it out before the Mayor had departed the conversation. “’Be Rich, bitch.’ What do you think?”
Mr. Avery pretended not to hear. Although Danny had known for quite some time that he was not a part of the membership in the minds of most of the members, per se—he did, all the same, enjoy being on the outside looking in—he had never anywhere else been so blatantly ostracized as he had been at the Club—not in school, not at work, not ever. He was always among the most popular. That this was not the case at Seraville did not deflate his ego. After pondering the affront, Danny made his way towards Landon, whom he’d always tipped lavishly, despite that such loyalty to a meager club worker elicited suspicion among the courtlier members.
“What’s up, Danny?” Landon inquired. \
“Not much, Landon. What do you think of all this self-indulgent frippery?”
“It’s a contumacious bunch, these shitheads. It’s pleasurable at one level, though, to watch them all lick spit-filled water out of a bowl at master’s feet. By Master I mean Mayor, of course. Not so pleasurable when you consider they have no idea they’re doing it.”
“Karma is on a round trip, right back to them in the end.”
“Karma’s not in demand.”
“Oh Landon, you’re a cynical bastard. How old are you—thirty ?”
“No, twenty-six.”
“You ought to muster up some pep and spare some of the chagrin for later on. There’ll be plenty of time for that.”
“But Danny, by then I will be a member of the club,” Landon said in a rising, expectant voice. “What more could a working class white boy ask for, but the steady climb up; you know, a little upward mobility?”
“All right, I need to get one more glass of wine for the road; when the kids are this sardonic we must be on the edge of a new dark age. I should also mingle once more so everyone’s last memory of me on this night isn’t commiserating with a modern day Karl Marx.” He started on the wend.
“I’d prefer Malcom X,” said Landon with a grin. Danny stopped moving, one foot already started in front of the other—direction wine—and looked at Landon for an extra second in blasé bewilderment.
“Yeah okay, farewell my boy—see you tomorrow for our golf game,” Danny said, palm of his hand now on Landon’s shoulder blade. Danny walked briskly to the seat in which he had sat during the newly anointed mayor’s speech, where he nodded his head forward to acknowledge Montague, and then bent at the waist to pick up his portable coffee cup.
“Not to worry Mr. Montague, the lights are prettier than the sounds,” he said, albeit without successfully luring the attention of his deaf friend. He said it again, but this time to himself: “The lights are prettier than the sounds. What does that even mean?” he wondered, and decided he ought to attempt to cut back on his dosage of pharmaceutical pills.
With a look of earnestness—so as to disguise his intent—he set off for the bottles of wine, knowing full-well it would take a smooth maneuvering of blather and stealth to pour wine into the coffee cup without alluring too much attention towards himself. He had done this before, but remained nervous in spite—nevertheless, he parted not from determination and the task. As a gist of thought made him aware that everyone had turned away, he seized the opportunity, and started over towards the table on which the wine sat. He walked over confidently and briskly, uncorked the already opened bottle of wine and then poured smoothly.
The coffee cup filled to the brim, the bottle found its way back to the table and on the bed of ice. Danny glanced around the room. The others busied each other while he made for the door. He stepped outside where his body interrupted a fragment of breeze that splashed around his body—it was neither cold nor hot nor warm for that matter: Usually, so long as vanity was excluded from the equation, one felt as at home in the air of a Los Angeles eventide as in one’s own skin.
On his way to the valet, he kept his nose to the sky and watched the wind bully, in slow motion, colluviums clouds; nudging them like marching prisoners of war herded by officers, on and on for some vague eternity. He then handed the valet a card on which a description of his car was written: A silver hybrid, the only one at Seraville. Danny felt hip in it. The valet said thanks and went off to fetch the auto. Danny turned his body in circles and wondered if an owl turning only its head had it any easier. More and more, as his eyes adjusted to the night, the scenery around him emerged out of an ebon formlessness like fresh hallucinations. The valet returned with the hybrid, Danny handed him a scrunched up twenty dollar bill—one of the better tips the young valet would receive on this night—and drove off, but not before taking a sip from his “coffee.” On the inside, Landon and Barbeque finished their duty. Although they would soon be free to carry on with their night, the bulk of the fun elsewhere—at parties and bars, etc.—waned. For, in a contrivance of work, the hour was always growing later. Still, they made haste.
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