Sunday, December 21, 2008
Merry Xmas, Ha Ha
And as we run into Xmas, isn't there lots of neat stuff happening at the moment? An untouchable, Bernard Maddox, falls. Where might his money have gone? Could be anywhere, says James Petras, of a fellow he acknowledged a few paras earlier as a zionist. In fact, says Petras, for destroying the upper class, Maddox is a hero and deserves to be sent to Israel. No really! He actually said that.
Otherwise I can't help thinking of Zim Shipping moving out of the WTC a fortnight before its collapse. Who'll give me odds that we soon see our Bernard swanning about in Tel Aviv? Along with those Jewish billionaires he 'defrauded'. If I said that the Rothschilds are giving everyone their take-it-or-leave-it marching orders, would the argument fall at the first hurdle?
The wars in the Middle East are as much about destroying the US military as they are about destroying the Middle East. And the Rothschild's Fed is destroying the US economy. So why don't we just say it? The US is in the process of being destroyed. Or let's put it this way - If the US was being destroyed by the Rothschilds (say), wouldn't the penultimate act be to destroy the wealth of the American ruling class and spirit away the assets of the Jewish Billionaires? It works for me.
Anything else going on? Assorted cables were cut in the Middle East. Again! One cable sure. Two, a mind-buggering coincidence. Three, a flat out impossibility. Last time it was actually eight cables, believe it or not. This time let's see if this current number of three doesn't climb. Me, I'm still convinced that this cable cutting is big. Dry runs are one thing but eventually it'll be the real deal. Is this it? Well, yours truly, great sage and equal of heaven, seems to have misplaced his hindsight spectacles. I'll find them eventually, and get back to you.
Otherwise Canada's Harper pulled a swifty, crushed a no confidence motion, and is now ruling without parliament until the New Year. Wow, that sounds drastic doesn't it? In Europe, Greece has dissolved into riots with the question being, when does Europe follow? Israel is set to invade Gaza. All they need is the right international distraction. Actually Israel has lots of war plans. They're just itching to have Lebanon, Syria, and Iran all 'Get Some!' Netanyahu is exactly the kind of guy who'd climb in a chopper just for the joy of machine gunning running peasants. 'Get Some!'
But I'm being premature surely - they'd never pull anything over Xmas. Xmas is sacrosanct ...really? To whom? Try to picture an attack on Xmas day. Can you imagine that? How about the Rothschilds? Might they imagine it? I don't see why not. They're imaginative people. Perhaps the most imaginative who ever lived.
One thing's for sure, if anything happens on Xmas day we'll know that this is it. A monster false flag on Xmas itself would count as a 'fuck-you' so huge that it could mean only one thing - the time is now and the New World Order is upon us. A Xmas day attack would be the spit-on-the-crucifix that makes all the other crucifix-spitting look like a ho-hum daily event in Palestine.
There'll be no questions about this in the media of course. They will be the fear-and-anger sound system that goes to eleven. If you ask them why not just make it go to ten - or any other thing - they will just look at you blankly. They will have us all know the rightness of bombing, killing and otherwise inflicting misery and suffering upon whomever. Muslims I expect. Muslims revere Jesus as much as Christians do, but never mind. That will be spun somehow - spun so that we in the West will be so angry that we'll get all-kinds-of-Old-Testament on... Hell! You tell us! We're good!
A Xmas day attack will be the end of as-we-know-it. The plans of the CFR, the Bilderbergers, and their Rothschild sponsors do not call for more of the same. The plans call for more-for-them and less-for-us. The population must be thinned. The pretence of democracy will be over. The death-and-mayhem chaos must be total. Many, many will have to die. From this chaos will rise the Rothschild's lovely one world thingy. We will have peace, love and understanding - with lovely Rothschilds uber alles. 'Oh, thank God, peace at last.'
But that's only if they blow shit up on Xmas day. If nothing blows up, ignore everything I just wrote. What was I thinking of? Madness. Just forget the whole idea and have a lovely Xmas. And you can look forward to the New Year safe in the knowledge that you've at least another year of freedom. So! Merry Xmas! I hope you and your families enjoy a day of love and laughter. And me, I'm off to the beach for the traditional Xmas day surf.
PS. If this is it, and the internet ceases to function and we never meet again, can I just say how nice it was to have met you all! It was all absolutely brilliant.
Lots of love, nobody, ha ha.
Labels:
false flag,
israel,
maddox,
muslims,
palestine,
population,
rothschilds,
wtc
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Muntadhar al Zaidi منتظر الزيدي - Man Of The Decade
For fearlessly speaking the naked truth by way of two lustily thrown shoes; for his whisker-close accuracy; for gallantry above and beyond the rock hard certainty of his torture; for the succinct, spot-on beauty of his prose; for showing that there is such a thing as a journalist who isn't a whore; and for getting it so marvellously right with an idea whose time was long past due, there's nothing for it but to declare Muntadhar al Zaidi, not just man of the year, but Man Of The Decade.
Seriously folks. Who can remember the last time we saw a single individual get it so exactly right? And let's not quibble over the fact that he missed. Given the now-or-never situation he was in, he got in two cracking throws. Not forgetting that what's truly great about this, what sets it apart, it that this is just the beginning. There will be plenty more shoes shied at plenty more heads in the days to come. Muntadhar al Zaidi will go down in history as that greatest of things, the fellow who came up with an idea so simple, and so obvious, that everyone else then fell about wondering how come they never thought of it.
And shoe throwing eh? There's a subtle genius in this. For instance, how do you guard against it? Make everyone take their shoes off? Really? As security precautions go, it sounds like the kind of final-straw that could break a fascist camel's back. And what did his protest cost? Half of bugger all? Oh all right, maybe you have shoes that cost a hundred dollars. But seriously, bounce one of those suckers off John Bolton's head (just for starters you understand) and it's money well spent. The other beauty of this is that it's beyond the control of all those bullshit gate-keeping protest movements. These being the movements that are currently busy ensuring the protests starting to sweep Europe are just what the NWO doctor ordered (more on this soon).
Muntadhar al Zaidi - I salute you! You've single-handedly restored the pride of the people of Iraq, the Arabic speaking people, and Muslims everywhere. We in the West can only look on in admiration. May God bring you peace, prosperity, and health.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Open Letter to the Villains of the World
Att - Messrs. Vladimir Putin, Hu Jintao, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez, Hassan Nasrallah, Fidel Castro, et al,
Dear Sirs,
The Western bloc-media has declared you the villains of the world. You know as well as I do that none of you, nor your countries, nor your people, will ever get a break in the Western media. The entire media sings from the same song-sheet with a simple message. Each of you is a variation of Orwell's Emmanuel Goldstein. Collectively you are those whom we must hate.
To be honest, I don't know where your heads are at precisely. But I'm assuming that you understand how the world works. I'm assuming that you're perfectly aware that the Reserve Banks of the world are privately owned and what this means. Tie this power to the undeniable bloc nature of the media and its refusal to acknowledge this power, and it's no great feat of logic to arrive at the conclusion that the media is, in essence, a machine to cloud our minds to the nature of our subjugation.
Effectively we are all participate in a mad charade, an idiotic drunken parlour game, wherein the perpetual topic-du-jour is that old chestnut 'What's to be done?' To obey the rules of the game we must discuss this topic in every way possible but we must never mention the chief protagonists, which is to say, international banking. The entire perverse system of monetary policy, and control of the means of exchange, must be dealt with, not as a human contrivance subject to alteration, but as an act of God that may not be questioned.
I notice that you all play within the parlour game rules. And some of you do quite well occasionally. Mr Putin has had some interesting footage showing him staring down a tiger and displaying his martial arts ability. Hats off. But between these minor efforts (which, trust me, the media did its best to spin as vaguely comedic, or undignified, or otherwise as 'not quite the thing') and, say, the watertight depiction of Russia as the ogre of Ossetia, it's small potatoes. But all of you receive the same thing.
In China, never mind the tirelessness of Hu Jintao throwing himself amongst the people struck homeless in that earthquake, nor the millions of servicemen and women he then mobilised into a fearless hands-on disaster relief (which the American government could watch as a 'How to' if the welfare of their citizens was worth tuppence to them), the Western media barely batted an eyelid. Besides, their reporters were far too busy looking for Chinese citizens unhappy with their government. And they found them, sure enough, one after another. (Well, shit, eh? Like this is difficult - Pick a country, any country). With this as the perpetual template, unsurprisingly we in the West will only ever know of the Chinese as villains. And when the bankers move against China (à la David Sassoon and his opium wars) we in the deluded West will righteously cheer its destruction. And geez, you can hardly blame us - all we know is what we are told.
Perhaps you have your fingers crossed. Just like Tariq Aziz. He was the Iraqi Foreign Minister in the run up to the invasion of Iraq. It didn't matter how much he kowtowed and did as he was ordered (always scrupulously obeying the rules of the parlour game). His handing over of the complete 40,000 pages detailing the weapons programme and allowing the CIA-infested weapons inspectors to wander all over his sovereign nation was never going to make a lick of difference to Iraq's inevitable bombing. And that's the lot of anyone who plays within the rules of the parlour game. You will always be on the back foot. It's not your game and if you stay within it, you will lose. And lose big. Destruction-of-your-nation big. I'm sure you get it.
In any conflict, whoever follows the agenda set by their opponent will always be on the back foot, always reduced to defensive tactics. It stands to reason. The only way to 'win' (exactly the wrong word but let's carry on) is to seize the initiative. And the only way to do this is to Call The Game. The game isn't hidden from public view for no reason. Nor does its veiled nature add some minor degree of utility to the whole caper. This veil of delusion is the single crucial function by which the enterprise succeeds or fails. Pull away that veil and start a global public discussion on the true nature of reserve banking (and the role the media plays as its handmaiden) and the bankers (and their media monkeys) will be forced into unfamiliar territory. I expect that even wrongfooted like this they will still be formidable opponents. But at least you'll have them on the back foot.
So. Rather than stand in front of the UN and call George Bush the devil, or mouth generalities about peace amongst men of good will, why not call the game? I'm not going to say that this is easy. Packing the history of international banking and control of the world's money supply into fifteen minutes is no easy task. But it can be done. Hell, if you want a hand, for an absurdly modest fee I'm your man. The comment section is below, and world leaders are perfectly welcome, ha ha.
But forget me, I'm nobody. This will be your gig. In English 'your' can be singular and plural. Take it here as the plural. Acting in concert will be vital. Each of you must reinforce the others and put out a consistent, coordinated and coherent message. And the beauty of it is that all you will have to do is: tell the truth; not waste time on red-herrings; and stick to your guns. The last part of this will not be easy. God knows that in this bullshit world there's nothing braver than the man who tells the truth. And we all know how powerful those who control the money supply are. They whacked Kennedy and got away with it. And they can whack you too. But only if you're a singleton. Act in concert and the possibility of your silencing becomes ever more unlikely.
But if you stay silent, stay isolated, one way or another they're going to whack you anyway. You and your whole nation. The bloc-media hasn't invested all this time and capital painting each of you as the enemy for nothing. They don't do this lightly. They do this because they are the part of the machine that is going to destroy you. How about this - the media is the laser that paints the target so that the bomb knows where to go. The bomb is us, sure enough. Make no mistake, you are lit up by that laser.
Forget living in the shadows. The media-laser loves it there. The media doesn't just light things up, they actually render in the shadow also. In fact, this rendering of shadow is their primary purpose. If anything they're better at that than casting light. The only strategy for dealing with this mastery of darkness is to flood the whole place with the broad daylight of truth.
It's easy and it's hard. But the time is now, you're the men for the job, and no job was more worth doing. You know this is true.
I have a dream. I dream that you're not the servants of the bankers. I dream that you're possessed of intellect, of free will, and of big balls. I dream that you're men whose place in history will be that reserved for those who usher in an era. An era free from delusion. An era of peace and prosperity. A second Enlightenment, perhaps. It's not impossible. And all things being equal, why wouldn't you pick this dream? Who but a slave would follow someone else's dream of warfare, starvation, misery and suffering? Are you not masters of which dreams you choose? If you are serious, bold, act in concert, and stay true, this false dream, this nightmare, is yours to smash. You will be your own masters and earn the thanks of a world freed of delusion and subjugation. That's my dream. What's yours?
Dear Sirs,
The Western bloc-media has declared you the villains of the world. You know as well as I do that none of you, nor your countries, nor your people, will ever get a break in the Western media. The entire media sings from the same song-sheet with a simple message. Each of you is a variation of Orwell's Emmanuel Goldstein. Collectively you are those whom we must hate.
To be honest, I don't know where your heads are at precisely. But I'm assuming that you understand how the world works. I'm assuming that you're perfectly aware that the Reserve Banks of the world are privately owned and what this means. Tie this power to the undeniable bloc nature of the media and its refusal to acknowledge this power, and it's no great feat of logic to arrive at the conclusion that the media is, in essence, a machine to cloud our minds to the nature of our subjugation.
Effectively we are all participate in a mad charade, an idiotic drunken parlour game, wherein the perpetual topic-du-jour is that old chestnut 'What's to be done?' To obey the rules of the game we must discuss this topic in every way possible but we must never mention the chief protagonists, which is to say, international banking. The entire perverse system of monetary policy, and control of the means of exchange, must be dealt with, not as a human contrivance subject to alteration, but as an act of God that may not be questioned.
I notice that you all play within the parlour game rules. And some of you do quite well occasionally. Mr Putin has had some interesting footage showing him staring down a tiger and displaying his martial arts ability. Hats off. But between these minor efforts (which, trust me, the media did its best to spin as vaguely comedic, or undignified, or otherwise as 'not quite the thing') and, say, the watertight depiction of Russia as the ogre of Ossetia, it's small potatoes. But all of you receive the same thing.
In China, never mind the tirelessness of Hu Jintao throwing himself amongst the people struck homeless in that earthquake, nor the millions of servicemen and women he then mobilised into a fearless hands-on disaster relief (which the American government could watch as a 'How to' if the welfare of their citizens was worth tuppence to them), the Western media barely batted an eyelid. Besides, their reporters were far too busy looking for Chinese citizens unhappy with their government. And they found them, sure enough, one after another. (Well, shit, eh? Like this is difficult - Pick a country, any country). With this as the perpetual template, unsurprisingly we in the West will only ever know of the Chinese as villains. And when the bankers move against China (à la David Sassoon and his opium wars) we in the deluded West will righteously cheer its destruction. And geez, you can hardly blame us - all we know is what we are told.
Perhaps you have your fingers crossed. Just like Tariq Aziz. He was the Iraqi Foreign Minister in the run up to the invasion of Iraq. It didn't matter how much he kowtowed and did as he was ordered (always scrupulously obeying the rules of the parlour game). His handing over of the complete 40,000 pages detailing the weapons programme and allowing the CIA-infested weapons inspectors to wander all over his sovereign nation was never going to make a lick of difference to Iraq's inevitable bombing. And that's the lot of anyone who plays within the rules of the parlour game. You will always be on the back foot. It's not your game and if you stay within it, you will lose. And lose big. Destruction-of-your-nation big. I'm sure you get it.
In any conflict, whoever follows the agenda set by their opponent will always be on the back foot, always reduced to defensive tactics. It stands to reason. The only way to 'win' (exactly the wrong word but let's carry on) is to seize the initiative. And the only way to do this is to Call The Game. The game isn't hidden from public view for no reason. Nor does its veiled nature add some minor degree of utility to the whole caper. This veil of delusion is the single crucial function by which the enterprise succeeds or fails. Pull away that veil and start a global public discussion on the true nature of reserve banking (and the role the media plays as its handmaiden) and the bankers (and their media monkeys) will be forced into unfamiliar territory. I expect that even wrongfooted like this they will still be formidable opponents. But at least you'll have them on the back foot.
So. Rather than stand in front of the UN and call George Bush the devil, or mouth generalities about peace amongst men of good will, why not call the game? I'm not going to say that this is easy. Packing the history of international banking and control of the world's money supply into fifteen minutes is no easy task. But it can be done. Hell, if you want a hand, for an absurdly modest fee I'm your man. The comment section is below, and world leaders are perfectly welcome, ha ha.
But forget me, I'm nobody. This will be your gig. In English 'your' can be singular and plural. Take it here as the plural. Acting in concert will be vital. Each of you must reinforce the others and put out a consistent, coordinated and coherent message. And the beauty of it is that all you will have to do is: tell the truth; not waste time on red-herrings; and stick to your guns. The last part of this will not be easy. God knows that in this bullshit world there's nothing braver than the man who tells the truth. And we all know how powerful those who control the money supply are. They whacked Kennedy and got away with it. And they can whack you too. But only if you're a singleton. Act in concert and the possibility of your silencing becomes ever more unlikely.
But if you stay silent, stay isolated, one way or another they're going to whack you anyway. You and your whole nation. The bloc-media hasn't invested all this time and capital painting each of you as the enemy for nothing. They don't do this lightly. They do this because they are the part of the machine that is going to destroy you. How about this - the media is the laser that paints the target so that the bomb knows where to go. The bomb is us, sure enough. Make no mistake, you are lit up by that laser.
Forget living in the shadows. The media-laser loves it there. The media doesn't just light things up, they actually render in the shadow also. In fact, this rendering of shadow is their primary purpose. If anything they're better at that than casting light. The only strategy for dealing with this mastery of darkness is to flood the whole place with the broad daylight of truth.
It's easy and it's hard. But the time is now, you're the men for the job, and no job was more worth doing. You know this is true.
I have a dream. I dream that you're not the servants of the bankers. I dream that you're possessed of intellect, of free will, and of big balls. I dream that you're men whose place in history will be that reserved for those who usher in an era. An era free from delusion. An era of peace and prosperity. A second Enlightenment, perhaps. It's not impossible. And all things being equal, why wouldn't you pick this dream? Who but a slave would follow someone else's dream of warfare, starvation, misery and suffering? Are you not masters of which dreams you choose? If you are serious, bold, act in concert, and stay true, this false dream, this nightmare, is yours to smash. You will be your own masters and earn the thanks of a world freed of delusion and subjugation. That's my dream. What's yours?
Labels:
bloc-media,
china,
cia,
fear and delusion,
goldstein,
gwb,
international banking,
iran,
iraq,
money,
orwell,
russia,
truth,
venezuela,
villains
Thursday, November 27, 2008
following the script
Mumbai is ablaze. This attack is huge. My guess is that over a hundred people are involved. All of the people in on this plot ran on a well laid out schedule. Whatever the fuck is going on has been well organised. And whatever it was the organisers intended to achieve, they've achieved it.
Sure enough, it's Muslims. Or so the media tells me. Apparently the terrorists are unhappy with the treatment of Muslims in India. Their plan, as best I can tell, is to kill Indians and foreigners indiscriminately, set fire to major pubic buildings, and take hostages and refuse to release them until Muslims are treated better. Good thinking. Am I alone in wondering at this disconnect?
Between me and the media, it sure looks like it. But it's early days yet. Me, I confidently look forward to the members of the media stating the obvious and saying, 'This doesn't make any sense at all. Who in their right mind would expect that a huge Muslim murder spree would improve the lot of Muslims? How will this achieve anything but having Hindus and Muslims at each other's throats? How would this be in the interest of Muslims?'
Just joking - those questions will never be asked. But if they were I imagine the answer would be that these people are not in their right mind. They're nuts. Nuts who can pull off a coordinated 100 man attack. When it comes to the 'how' they're rational, but on the subject of 'why', they are insane. Um, okay.
Sorry, but between the two prospects of madmen seeking one thing and achieving the obvious and inevitable opposite, and perfectly rational people seeking discord by way of lies and dupes, and succeeding admirably, I'm going to put my money on the latter.
The difference between me and the media is that I have a smattering of history. I know that in 1954 Israeli agents pretending to be Muslims blew up American targets in Cairo in the hopes of prompting the US to attack Egypt. They didn't succeed because the bombers were caught and spilled all the beans. I know that they did it again in 1967 when they attempted to sink the USS Liberty with the loss of all hands and blame it on the Egyptians. The nuke-laden skyhawks were already on their way to Cairo before LBJ and McNamara realised that the Israelis had failed to sink the most lightly armed boat in the US navy and called them back. Oops.
Clearly the Israelis decided that their previous lies had been too modest and on the 11th of September 2001, they attacked multiple US targets and killed 3000. Finally success! Christians and Muslims, at each other's throats. High fives all round. Confirmation indeed that they were precisely as great as they thought they were.
The media obviously doesn't do history. Not unless it's Nazis, that is. Anyway, who in the media has time for history? They can barely keep up with the script on the autocue, never mind all that boring history stuff about who bombed who whilst pretending to be Muslims. As they say in the media - Don't think, just read the script! And are the words, 'false-flag', 'Israeli agents', or 'overpaid media whores' in the script? Of course not.
Nor should one ask who writes the script. Whoever they are, they're very clever. Without them how would we know that Muslims are irrational murderous motherfuckers who will kill us in spite of the fact that it will advance their interests in no way, shape, or form.
Bullshit.
Sure enough, it's Muslims. Or so the media tells me. Apparently the terrorists are unhappy with the treatment of Muslims in India. Their plan, as best I can tell, is to kill Indians and foreigners indiscriminately, set fire to major pubic buildings, and take hostages and refuse to release them until Muslims are treated better. Good thinking. Am I alone in wondering at this disconnect?
Between me and the media, it sure looks like it. But it's early days yet. Me, I confidently look forward to the members of the media stating the obvious and saying, 'This doesn't make any sense at all. Who in their right mind would expect that a huge Muslim murder spree would improve the lot of Muslims? How will this achieve anything but having Hindus and Muslims at each other's throats? How would this be in the interest of Muslims?'
Just joking - those questions will never be asked. But if they were I imagine the answer would be that these people are not in their right mind. They're nuts. Nuts who can pull off a coordinated 100 man attack. When it comes to the 'how' they're rational, but on the subject of 'why', they are insane. Um, okay.
Sorry, but between the two prospects of madmen seeking one thing and achieving the obvious and inevitable opposite, and perfectly rational people seeking discord by way of lies and dupes, and succeeding admirably, I'm going to put my money on the latter.
The difference between me and the media is that I have a smattering of history. I know that in 1954 Israeli agents pretending to be Muslims blew up American targets in Cairo in the hopes of prompting the US to attack Egypt. They didn't succeed because the bombers were caught and spilled all the beans. I know that they did it again in 1967 when they attempted to sink the USS Liberty with the loss of all hands and blame it on the Egyptians. The nuke-laden skyhawks were already on their way to Cairo before LBJ and McNamara realised that the Israelis had failed to sink the most lightly armed boat in the US navy and called them back. Oops.
Clearly the Israelis decided that their previous lies had been too modest and on the 11th of September 2001, they attacked multiple US targets and killed 3000. Finally success! Christians and Muslims, at each other's throats. High fives all round. Confirmation indeed that they were precisely as great as they thought they were.
The media obviously doesn't do history. Not unless it's Nazis, that is. Anyway, who in the media has time for history? They can barely keep up with the script on the autocue, never mind all that boring history stuff about who bombed who whilst pretending to be Muslims. As they say in the media - Don't think, just read the script! And are the words, 'false-flag', 'Israeli agents', or 'overpaid media whores' in the script? Of course not.
Nor should one ask who writes the script. Whoever they are, they're very clever. Without them how would we know that Muslims are irrational murderous motherfuckers who will kill us in spite of the fact that it will advance their interests in no way, shape, or form.
Bullshit.
Labels:
911,
bloc-media,
false flag,
india,
lavon affair,
muslims,
uss liberty
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Wherein I dream of ruining a fellow's dinner
When the stock markets crash and the banks fail everything stops working. Factories fall idle, people become unemployed, and families struggle and fail with the three prime necessities of food, shelter, and health. Everyone's behaviour is suddenly transformed into a chaotic, counter-productive, mad scrabble. And all because a tiny percent of humanity conduct an organised arrangement pivoting on numbers and relationships. This being banking and the stockmarket, you understand.
Funnily enough, shortages or collapses of real world products or services (ie. tangible things that actually exist) we seem capable of coping with. With the current collapse in this system of assigning numbers to various people, it is clear that intangibles have got tangibles beat. Money is more important than, I don't know - water. Which is to say an intangible arrangement of thinking controls humans above and beyond pretty much anything. Even other arrangements of thinking, like religion say, cannot compete. This contrived system of numbers being attached to humans rules over all.
A power who possesses oil, or water, or a military power, or a power possessed of tremendous natural defences, or any power at all, must succumb to this ultimate power. That sounds god-like doesn't it? Imagine wielding that power. And wielded it will be. Power of this nature will always be striven for. Ambition exists and amongst those who are ambitious will be those who are ultimately ambitious. Everyone here understands perfectly the ceaseless, unrelenting nature of those who would control the money supply. Andrew Jackson described today's world very eloquently just a few short column inches earlier, which is to say a century and a half ago. But that's time for you - hundreds of years of same-as-it-ever-was.
Back to this god-like thing - if a bum like me gets it, imagine being them. I view it as a complete certainty that they have spent a not inconsiderable amount of time dwelling on it. What god would this controller-of-money imagine himself as? We need a metaphor that involves a god that distributes something amongst his worshippers and thereby controls them. How about Prometheus? He wasn't a god so much as a titan but never mind. He gave man fire. Certainly this was a curse and a blessing. That aside, I don't recall any part of that story that involved wealth, treasure and flesh flowing back to Prometheus. Nor the bit where he controlled the flow of fire to alternatively enrich and starve his minion humans. Okay, so much for that metaphor.
Perhaps this metaphor will never fly because all the gods of myth who distributed things amongst their subjects did so as an act of generosity. And besides, these born-of-women men-who-would-be-gods would have nothing but disdain for these false idols invented by fools. They would view themselves as above and beyond such silly stories. Either way, it's an interesting question. How do these people view themselves?
Caesar had a fellow at his shoulder whose job it was to whisper in his ear, 'Remember you are mortal.' Obviously the Romans spent time thinking about what it meant to possess such power. Well you would wouldn't you? It stands to reason. And I expect that the people who control whether humans live in chaos or harmony do too. Do they employ a fellow to stand behind them and whisper to them that they're human? Somehow I doubt it.
On a daydream now - 'If you could have any superpower what would it be?' Me, I would be that man who whispers in their ear, but unlike the Roman, I couldn't be dismissed. I would be some variety of untouchable apparition. I would dog them and never shut up. I would simply be present and see what they see, hear what they hear, and read what they read. They would have no secrets.
There would be no violence in this superhero mag. My power would merely consist of being beyond harm and confinement. Actually someone beat me to this idea already. He was an obscure fellow name of Bill Shakespeare. Some of you may have heard of him. Anyway his superhero was called Banquo's Ghost™ and he featured in a particularly bloody comic called Macbeth.
Imagine that power. There's our villain, the man who would be God, giving a great banquet and revelling in those who've come to pay homage to him. And there's me as Banquo's Ghost chattering in his ear. "Fraud. Imposter. Self-impressed bullshit artist. If you were truly great you would do good. Good for mankind. You could raise human consciousness, lead people to new heights of peace, love and understanding. Don't smirk you fuckwit. This vaunted power you possess is nothing. You're little more than a sneak-thief. No wonder you lurk in the shadows and nobody knows who you are. If they did they'd spit on you, tear you limb from limb, and piss on your grave. And that is the truth of you. You're merely a sneak writ large. You're a shit who thinks he's clever."
I would be nothing more than the man who'd ruin a fellow's dinner. That dinner and every other one. And that would be enough. As superhero movies go, it would be crummy one, sure. 'Too talky' say the critics. But bugger them and their thirst for violence. In the real world, with real people, the smashing of delusions would suffice. The sin of the villains of this world is that they have abandoned 'to thine own self be true'. Truth cannot be self-serving. If one's starting position is 'I am great' then everything that follows will be corrupt. 'To thine own self distort the facts until 'I am great' is true.' Ha ha ha ha, fuckwits. Self-impressed gits.
And sure, the above is just an adolescent daydream. There are no superheroes. I'm merely a tiny voice in a roaring cacophony. The cacophony of course is created and encouraged by these men who would be gods. Whether consciously or sub-consciously, they know that any voices speaking a counter-proposition would destroy their delusion. The Roman at their shoulder would have to be killed. Not least so that others might know fear. Do we know that fear? Turn on the TV. I could make a case that every goddamn thing on TV pivots around fear - even the sitcoms.
Above and beyond all other mundane concerns, the ultimate reason we are kept fearful is so that those who imagine themselves as gods do not have their delusions punctured. Well I ain't fearful. And yes, my voice (and yours too) amounts to nothing more than a lousy 0.0001% of a decibel. Pathetic. The men who would be gods sneer. Where's our voice who'll fill an opera hall? Where's our booming tenor? Actually we don't need him. Anyone who's ever heard a two hundred voice choir doing Carmina Burana knows that the tenor is superfluous. The choir blows a tenor, regardless of how great he is, to smithereens.
We are that choir. Each of us is a voice adding to the whole. And yes, it's shambolic, but never mind - the decibel count is slowly climbing. Eventually the bullshit cone-of-silence cum echo-chamber that the men who would be gods live in, will eventually start to fail. With enough true notes the glass will break and the delusions of the self-impressed false idols will be smashed.
---
Did anyone notice in the last piece, violent though it was, that I wasn't actually proposing that we smash George Bush's brains all over the walls. It was merely imagery. Imagery as a sideways means of showing the aforementioned sock-puppet who he really is, ie. the fellow in the movie whose death we'd cheer. It was a back-handed means of puncturing delusion. Certainly I understand the appeal of insert-villain-here dangling from a lamp-post. But the truth of the matter is that even a piece of shit like our George could be rehabilitated. Honestly. The fellow that the voting public imagined as 'someone we'd like to have a beer with' could be that fellow. Him and anyone. I will never concede that rehabilitation is impossible. Unlikely, sure - impossible, never. And so it is here.
Funnily enough, shortages or collapses of real world products or services (ie. tangible things that actually exist) we seem capable of coping with. With the current collapse in this system of assigning numbers to various people, it is clear that intangibles have got tangibles beat. Money is more important than, I don't know - water. Which is to say an intangible arrangement of thinking controls humans above and beyond pretty much anything. Even other arrangements of thinking, like religion say, cannot compete. This contrived system of numbers being attached to humans rules over all.
A power who possesses oil, or water, or a military power, or a power possessed of tremendous natural defences, or any power at all, must succumb to this ultimate power. That sounds god-like doesn't it? Imagine wielding that power. And wielded it will be. Power of this nature will always be striven for. Ambition exists and amongst those who are ambitious will be those who are ultimately ambitious. Everyone here understands perfectly the ceaseless, unrelenting nature of those who would control the money supply. Andrew Jackson described today's world very eloquently just a few short column inches earlier, which is to say a century and a half ago. But that's time for you - hundreds of years of same-as-it-ever-was.
Back to this god-like thing - if a bum like me gets it, imagine being them. I view it as a complete certainty that they have spent a not inconsiderable amount of time dwelling on it. What god would this controller-of-money imagine himself as? We need a metaphor that involves a god that distributes something amongst his worshippers and thereby controls them. How about Prometheus? He wasn't a god so much as a titan but never mind. He gave man fire. Certainly this was a curse and a blessing. That aside, I don't recall any part of that story that involved wealth, treasure and flesh flowing back to Prometheus. Nor the bit where he controlled the flow of fire to alternatively enrich and starve his minion humans. Okay, so much for that metaphor.
Perhaps this metaphor will never fly because all the gods of myth who distributed things amongst their subjects did so as an act of generosity. And besides, these born-of-women men-who-would-be-gods would have nothing but disdain for these false idols invented by fools. They would view themselves as above and beyond such silly stories. Either way, it's an interesting question. How do these people view themselves?
Caesar had a fellow at his shoulder whose job it was to whisper in his ear, 'Remember you are mortal.' Obviously the Romans spent time thinking about what it meant to possess such power. Well you would wouldn't you? It stands to reason. And I expect that the people who control whether humans live in chaos or harmony do too. Do they employ a fellow to stand behind them and whisper to them that they're human? Somehow I doubt it.
On a daydream now - 'If you could have any superpower what would it be?' Me, I would be that man who whispers in their ear, but unlike the Roman, I couldn't be dismissed. I would be some variety of untouchable apparition. I would dog them and never shut up. I would simply be present and see what they see, hear what they hear, and read what they read. They would have no secrets.
There would be no violence in this superhero mag. My power would merely consist of being beyond harm and confinement. Actually someone beat me to this idea already. He was an obscure fellow name of Bill Shakespeare. Some of you may have heard of him. Anyway his superhero was called Banquo's Ghost™ and he featured in a particularly bloody comic called Macbeth.
Imagine that power. There's our villain, the man who would be God, giving a great banquet and revelling in those who've come to pay homage to him. And there's me as Banquo's Ghost chattering in his ear. "Fraud. Imposter. Self-impressed bullshit artist. If you were truly great you would do good. Good for mankind. You could raise human consciousness, lead people to new heights of peace, love and understanding. Don't smirk you fuckwit. This vaunted power you possess is nothing. You're little more than a sneak-thief. No wonder you lurk in the shadows and nobody knows who you are. If they did they'd spit on you, tear you limb from limb, and piss on your grave. And that is the truth of you. You're merely a sneak writ large. You're a shit who thinks he's clever."
I would be nothing more than the man who'd ruin a fellow's dinner. That dinner and every other one. And that would be enough. As superhero movies go, it would be crummy one, sure. 'Too talky' say the critics. But bugger them and their thirst for violence. In the real world, with real people, the smashing of delusions would suffice. The sin of the villains of this world is that they have abandoned 'to thine own self be true'. Truth cannot be self-serving. If one's starting position is 'I am great' then everything that follows will be corrupt. 'To thine own self distort the facts until 'I am great' is true.' Ha ha ha ha, fuckwits. Self-impressed gits.
And sure, the above is just an adolescent daydream. There are no superheroes. I'm merely a tiny voice in a roaring cacophony. The cacophony of course is created and encouraged by these men who would be gods. Whether consciously or sub-consciously, they know that any voices speaking a counter-proposition would destroy their delusion. The Roman at their shoulder would have to be killed. Not least so that others might know fear. Do we know that fear? Turn on the TV. I could make a case that every goddamn thing on TV pivots around fear - even the sitcoms.
Above and beyond all other mundane concerns, the ultimate reason we are kept fearful is so that those who imagine themselves as gods do not have their delusions punctured. Well I ain't fearful. And yes, my voice (and yours too) amounts to nothing more than a lousy 0.0001% of a decibel. Pathetic. The men who would be gods sneer. Where's our voice who'll fill an opera hall? Where's our booming tenor? Actually we don't need him. Anyone who's ever heard a two hundred voice choir doing Carmina Burana knows that the tenor is superfluous. The choir blows a tenor, regardless of how great he is, to smithereens.
We are that choir. Each of us is a voice adding to the whole. And yes, it's shambolic, but never mind - the decibel count is slowly climbing. Eventually the bullshit cone-of-silence cum echo-chamber that the men who would be gods live in, will eventually start to fail. With enough true notes the glass will break and the delusions of the self-impressed false idols will be smashed.
---
Did anyone notice in the last piece, violent though it was, that I wasn't actually proposing that we smash George Bush's brains all over the walls. It was merely imagery. Imagery as a sideways means of showing the aforementioned sock-puppet who he really is, ie. the fellow in the movie whose death we'd cheer. It was a back-handed means of puncturing delusion. Certainly I understand the appeal of insert-villain-here dangling from a lamp-post. But the truth of the matter is that even a piece of shit like our George could be rehabilitated. Honestly. The fellow that the voting public imagined as 'someone we'd like to have a beer with' could be that fellow. Him and anyone. I will never concede that rehabilitation is impossible. Unlikely, sure - impossible, never. And so it is here.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Hey George
I have you pegged as a man of vice. C'mon buddy, where's that famous smirk? There it is! But forget those drugs you hoovered up. Forget the kids you fucked and had killed. Forget the war and the misery, suffering, and death you inflicted upon millions. All of that. Forget about it. Let's just go with gambling. You like a bet don't you? Sure you do. You and Dick used to put down a quiet couple of grand as to who could shoot that 'rabbit' first. Rabbits in high heels, ha! But forget the hunting too, we're talking gambling. Well here's a bet for you.
You know that scene in Platoon where the redneck stomps the head of the idiot son - "Holy shit, you see that fucking head come apart, man? Shit, I've never seen brains like that before, man!"? C'mon George, think back into those coke-addled wilderness years. Even though you couldn't get it up then (what with viagra not having been invented) you got a bit of a soft-on. Just in case it's a bit dim in your drug-fried brain, here's a pic. Remember this guy? He stomped that gook head.
And here's the set-up - We take that scene and digitally alter it so that the idiot son is you (not much of a stretch I admit). It'll be you copping the stomping. And with digital effects being what they are nowadays it'll be so real even you'll think it's you. Then we screen it in any multiplex as a short before the main feature just like in the old days. And here's the crunch - I'll bet every penny I have that the audiences cheer. They'll cheer when you're whimpering in terror and they'll laugh when your brains are spattered all over the walls. How about it George? You up?
Because that's you mate. You are the guy in the movie whose grisly death would have the audience cheering. That's you. Enjoy the rest of your worthless fucking life.
---
Apologies to Les Visible. This really ought to have been a comment on his marvellous George W. Bush, Grade A. USDA-Prime Sonofabitch but I whacked it up here instead.
You know that scene in Platoon where the redneck stomps the head of the idiot son - "Holy shit, you see that fucking head come apart, man? Shit, I've never seen brains like that before, man!"? C'mon George, think back into those coke-addled wilderness years. Even though you couldn't get it up then (what with viagra not having been invented) you got a bit of a soft-on. Just in case it's a bit dim in your drug-fried brain, here's a pic. Remember this guy? He stomped that gook head.
And here's the set-up - We take that scene and digitally alter it so that the idiot son is you (not much of a stretch I admit). It'll be you copping the stomping. And with digital effects being what they are nowadays it'll be so real even you'll think it's you. Then we screen it in any multiplex as a short before the main feature just like in the old days. And here's the crunch - I'll bet every penny I have that the audiences cheer. They'll cheer when you're whimpering in terror and they'll laugh when your brains are spattered all over the walls. How about it George? You up?
Because that's you mate. You are the guy in the movie whose grisly death would have the audience cheering. That's you. Enjoy the rest of your worthless fucking life.
---
Apologies to Les Visible. This really ought to have been a comment on his marvellous George W. Bush, Grade A. USDA-Prime Sonofabitch but I whacked it up here instead.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Rivero and McGowan
Hands up - who likes whatreallyhappened? Thank you. Hands up - who likes Dave McGowan? Thank you. Actually truth be known I have no idea if anyone stuck their hands up or not. I just imagine it. Just like I imagine that far more people stuck their hands up for the former over the latter. No one would be surprised if that were so, would they?
And they're very different creatures these two. Mike Rivero is huge. He's mentioned everywhere. Everyone links to him. And he links to everyone. He's an aggregator, a bit like Reuters. No one would declare him a great writer, but that's okay. Thanks to him and his links I learnt about the USS Liberty and all manner of things.
Dave McGowan on the other hand is a guy almost no one has heard of. I first found him via an obscure google trail that led to an extract from his book Programmed to Kill, which analysed serial killers. It was a mindfucker. I'd never read anything like it. But I went nowhere from there. Perhaps a year later I came across his website and hoovered up everything. And finally, (thanks to Penny), I came across the absolutely extraordinary 'Pedophocracy'. The Pedophocracy is the mindfuck to end all mindfucks.
(I'm going to take it as read that you, yes, you reading here, are familiar with The Pedophocracy. And if you haven't read it yet, for chrissakes go read it, it's not that long)
Me, I reckon that the Pedophocracy is the Rosetta Stone of the wickedness in the world. It is the perfect self-perpetuating mechanism of corruption. It is the ultimate carrot and the ultimate stick. What it offers cannot be had anywhere else. No one who participates in it - no one - will ever spill the beans. Besides, so extreme is its perversity that no one would believe them if they did.
The key thing that strikes one when reading The Pedophocracy is the size of the thing. The last time I wrote about it I was particularly impressed with the CIA, the FBI and the DC metro police all cooperating to shut down the entire investigation into 'the Finders'. But then again, public outrage at government complicity in the Dutroux case in Belgium resulted in a National strike, shutting down the entire country. That's pretty big. Mind you, this was arse-about trumped by the utter lack of any decent response. Only a single guy, Dutroux, went to jail.
But with the Pedophocracy, even the small stuff is big. Let's just take the McMartin case which pivoted on a single pre-school. Under this school was a network of tunnels. Think about that. A network of tunnels is not the kind of thing that could be pulled off by a pervy hobbyist and his buddy. Think of every tunnel you ever heard of or saw in the movies - like The Great Escape. Tunnels are dug by teams of people. Teams, dig it.
McMartin was a single school. The army base child-care scandal spanned the country, from the Presidio to West Point, and every famous base in between. In spite of army officer parents resigning their commissions in disgust, not a single person stood trial for any of this. The army had nothin' to say 'bout nothin' to no one.
And beyond the scale of each of these was the horrific fact that all of them were, in some fashion or another, connected and part of a bigger picture. All of them involved satanistic ritual perpetually featuring fecal matter and animal sacrifice. All of them were grist for the ubiquitous well-funded experts on 'false-memory syndrome' comprised almost totally by 'ex'-paedophiles, or spooks, or both. None of these cases seemed to be of any interest to anyone in the media beyond a blame-the-victim angle. If the investigations weren't farces, the trials were. Most involved no trials at all, in spite of staggering evidence. And then there were the actual connections, as in hard-wired connections with telexes etc. When the DC police busted the Finders warehouse in Washington they found evidence of elaborate communications links and contacts spanning the globe. And a working audio-visual studio. And a sacrificial altar. Belgium looks like nothing special. It's almost impossible to escape the conclusion that the Pedophocracy is FUCKING HUGE.
Hold that thought.
---
I lost count of how many times here I've declared that if one wanted to know who ran the world one need merely look to the media and see who isn't mentioned. The media is the reality machine. If a thing is mentioned in the media then we can all agree that it exists. In this category go things like Al Qaeda, Iraqi WMDs (Iranian, whatever), Arab/Muslim wickedness etc. etc.
As for the flipside, the ne plus ultra thing-that-doesn't-exist is the private ownership of the Fed and every other nation's Reserve Bank. Since this fact is never mentioned we may safely conclude that the people who own the banks own the media. And besides, it stands to reason. Ownership of the money supply only works if no one knows. Were it common knowledge the Fed would be in flames.
Okay, so here we are on the net. We know better. We go to wrh. There, Mike Rivero tells us all about the private ownership of the Fed. Three cheers for him. Now - Can anyone ever remember ever having seen anything about the Pedophocracy, anything at all, on wrh? Or anywhere?
Call me old fashioned but I hit Dave McGowan daily just to see if there's anything new. Like I said, I'm a fan. But it occurs to me that in my daily wandering around on the web that there's the whole rest of the internet, and then there's Dave McGowan. Apart from a few small-timers like Pen and yours truly no one will touch this guy. How is that possible?
And did you hold that thought?
And are you wondering yet?
And they're very different creatures these two. Mike Rivero is huge. He's mentioned everywhere. Everyone links to him. And he links to everyone. He's an aggregator, a bit like Reuters. No one would declare him a great writer, but that's okay. Thanks to him and his links I learnt about the USS Liberty and all manner of things.
Dave McGowan on the other hand is a guy almost no one has heard of. I first found him via an obscure google trail that led to an extract from his book Programmed to Kill, which analysed serial killers. It was a mindfucker. I'd never read anything like it. But I went nowhere from there. Perhaps a year later I came across his website and hoovered up everything. And finally, (thanks to Penny), I came across the absolutely extraordinary 'Pedophocracy'. The Pedophocracy is the mindfuck to end all mindfucks.
(I'm going to take it as read that you, yes, you reading here, are familiar with The Pedophocracy. And if you haven't read it yet, for chrissakes go read it, it's not that long)
Me, I reckon that the Pedophocracy is the Rosetta Stone of the wickedness in the world. It is the perfect self-perpetuating mechanism of corruption. It is the ultimate carrot and the ultimate stick. What it offers cannot be had anywhere else. No one who participates in it - no one - will ever spill the beans. Besides, so extreme is its perversity that no one would believe them if they did.
The key thing that strikes one when reading The Pedophocracy is the size of the thing. The last time I wrote about it I was particularly impressed with the CIA, the FBI and the DC metro police all cooperating to shut down the entire investigation into 'the Finders'. But then again, public outrage at government complicity in the Dutroux case in Belgium resulted in a National strike, shutting down the entire country. That's pretty big. Mind you, this was arse-about trumped by the utter lack of any decent response. Only a single guy, Dutroux, went to jail.
But with the Pedophocracy, even the small stuff is big. Let's just take the McMartin case which pivoted on a single pre-school. Under this school was a network of tunnels. Think about that. A network of tunnels is not the kind of thing that could be pulled off by a pervy hobbyist and his buddy. Think of every tunnel you ever heard of or saw in the movies - like The Great Escape. Tunnels are dug by teams of people. Teams, dig it.
McMartin was a single school. The army base child-care scandal spanned the country, from the Presidio to West Point, and every famous base in between. In spite of army officer parents resigning their commissions in disgust, not a single person stood trial for any of this. The army had nothin' to say 'bout nothin' to no one.
And beyond the scale of each of these was the horrific fact that all of them were, in some fashion or another, connected and part of a bigger picture. All of them involved satanistic ritual perpetually featuring fecal matter and animal sacrifice. All of them were grist for the ubiquitous well-funded experts on 'false-memory syndrome' comprised almost totally by 'ex'-paedophiles, or spooks, or both. None of these cases seemed to be of any interest to anyone in the media beyond a blame-the-victim angle. If the investigations weren't farces, the trials were. Most involved no trials at all, in spite of staggering evidence. And then there were the actual connections, as in hard-wired connections with telexes etc. When the DC police busted the Finders warehouse in Washington they found evidence of elaborate communications links and contacts spanning the globe. And a working audio-visual studio. And a sacrificial altar. Belgium looks like nothing special. It's almost impossible to escape the conclusion that the Pedophocracy is FUCKING HUGE.
Hold that thought.
---
I lost count of how many times here I've declared that if one wanted to know who ran the world one need merely look to the media and see who isn't mentioned. The media is the reality machine. If a thing is mentioned in the media then we can all agree that it exists. In this category go things like Al Qaeda, Iraqi WMDs (Iranian, whatever), Arab/Muslim wickedness etc. etc.
As for the flipside, the ne plus ultra thing-that-doesn't-exist is the private ownership of the Fed and every other nation's Reserve Bank. Since this fact is never mentioned we may safely conclude that the people who own the banks own the media. And besides, it stands to reason. Ownership of the money supply only works if no one knows. Were it common knowledge the Fed would be in flames.
Okay, so here we are on the net. We know better. We go to wrh. There, Mike Rivero tells us all about the private ownership of the Fed. Three cheers for him. Now - Can anyone ever remember ever having seen anything about the Pedophocracy, anything at all, on wrh? Or anywhere?
Call me old fashioned but I hit Dave McGowan daily just to see if there's anything new. Like I said, I'm a fan. But it occurs to me that in my daily wandering around on the web that there's the whole rest of the internet, and then there's Dave McGowan. Apart from a few small-timers like Pen and yours truly no one will touch this guy. How is that possible?
And did you hold that thought?
And are you wondering yet?
Labels:
bloc-media,
cia,
dutroux,
false memory syndrome,
fbi,
finders,
mcgowan,
mcmartin,
pedophocracy,
presidio/west point,
reserve bank,
rivero,
wickedness
Friday, November 14, 2008
Kikz's Halloween
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Insight with Jenny Brockie
Here is the transcript of my appearance on SBS Television's 'Insight' programme with Jenny Brockie*. The topic of the evening was 'Mortgages in a recession - How will families be affected?'. The panel was composed of various representatives of banking, real estate, politics, as well as home-owner's associations.
Jenny Brockie - We'll go to another question from the audience. Perhaps the tall fellow at the back who's been very quiet. Yes, hello. What was your question?
nobody - Thanks, Jennie. I don't know that I have a question as such. Certainly not one that anyone on the panel would care to address I expect. Rather I'd like to wonder at the rightness of an economic system run on interest and interest rates.
Banker on Panel - There's no other system. If you don't like interest you should take it somewhere else.
n - Well I understand that you like interest. It's money for nothing. But this is not your show mate. You haven't bought it yet. This is a show that seeks a variety of views, yes? And here we have the views of the lending industry, and the views of those who must borrow from them and pay them interest, yes? Well here's another somewhat more holistic angle - why not question the whole arrangement? It seems to me that it's flawed at a fundamental level and that if we were really interested in alternative views, (which is the point of the programme as I understand it), we'd step outside this model and look at how we might come to some other arrangement. [interjections from panel and audience].
No, listen, if we were discussing medicine here, as you've done in the past, it would be inconceivable to do so without including the views of practitioners of alternative medicine. And yet this discussion here is like that, except that the only people on the panel are the practitioners of conventional medicine, along with the representatives of the hospitals that employ them, the drug companies that supply them, the insurer middle men who make out in both directions, and of course the patients, happy and otherwise, of this conventional medicine. There is no alternative here. Well, now there is. And it already seems [indicates the panel] I'm making the members of the AMA here unhappy. [laughter]
JB - What is this alternative?
n - We ban interest. [uproar] Gee whiz, the bankers don't like that do they?
JB - You can't ban interest!
n - Why not? Interest used to be called usury. It used to be a sin. Christians used not to practice it. Muslims still don't. Believe it or not, economies can function without it. In fact they'd function far better. Muslim economies right now, the ones that aren't being bombed that is, are coping with the current 'economic shake-out' better than we are.
JB - But every aspect of our economy is controlled by interest.
n - It's crazy isn't it? Interest rate changes are inevitably the biggest story on any given day. They control our lives. And yet the Reserve Bank is 'independent'. Why is that? Why is the single most powerful body in this country not answerable to: the people; our representatives; anyone at all? Kevin Rudd in his election campaign declared his fealty to the independence of the Reserve Bank. Why did he do that? It's a head-scratcher for voters. So who was he talking to? That question aside, we subsequently have politicians flapping their arms about, pleading with the banks not to raise interest. Why do we, the people of Australia have no say in this? You'd almost think we were talking about the weather and other acts of God. Aren't we grown-ups? Can't we walk and chew gum at the same time? Why do we act as if there's no alternative? [yelling from panel and audience]
JB - Well what are you suggesting? That we all become Muslims?
n - Hardly. Eating fish on a Friday doesn't make you a Catholic. And eating falafel doesn't make me a Muslim. [confused laughter]
JB - So...
n - So, how about this - the means of exchange, which is all money is, is the single most crucial thing in any country. Believe it or not, it's more crucial than any other thing that we seem to think should be publicly owned and controlled by the people of this democracy. Even defence, believe it or not. And no one here would care to have our defence force as an 'independent' body answerable to no one, would they?
Audience Member - Like Blackwater! [isolated laughter]
n- Exactly, thank you. Okay then. We keep it simple. We have a single publicly owned bank. It charges no interest and nor does it pay any. It is merely a safe place to put your money. And for those small depositors thinking they'll miss out the interest they'd otherwise earn - seriously, do you earn any? Last time I did my tax and had to declare interest, in spite of having over ten thousand dollars in the bank all year, my interest was a few tens of dollars. What a waste of time! There's nothing in it for you, or me
To hell with it, scrap the whole thing. Interest only serves the bankers. We ban making money from money. The only way to make money should be from labour, ie. making goods or providing services. Charging money for money is not a service. It's a disservice. An economy is not served by paying yet more money to those who already have heaping great piles of it. It stands to reason.
Banker - This is bullshit! Why do we have to listen to this? It's economic lunacy...
n - Bullshit yourself! You want lunacy? Lunacy is global debt that exceeds the GDP of the whole world. That's lunacy! Figure the logic of this - to repay the bankers to whom we are indebted we'd have to hand them every piece of land, every building, everything we own, from our cars to our shoes, and we'd still owe them! How does that work? It makes no sense at all. The bankers, who didn't make anything, but merely ran some expensive printing presses, effectively own everything. To hell with them! To hell with the whole system! [At this point, the microphone is taken away and I am dragged from the studio].
n - [Voice diminishing down the corridor] No alternative permitted folks! You're going to pay interest whether it makes sense or not! All money flows to the bankers...
*Not really. I just made it all up.
Jenny Brockie - We'll go to another question from the audience. Perhaps the tall fellow at the back who's been very quiet. Yes, hello. What was your question?
nobody - Thanks, Jennie. I don't know that I have a question as such. Certainly not one that anyone on the panel would care to address I expect. Rather I'd like to wonder at the rightness of an economic system run on interest and interest rates.
Banker on Panel - There's no other system. If you don't like interest you should take it somewhere else.
n - Well I understand that you like interest. It's money for nothing. But this is not your show mate. You haven't bought it yet. This is a show that seeks a variety of views, yes? And here we have the views of the lending industry, and the views of those who must borrow from them and pay them interest, yes? Well here's another somewhat more holistic angle - why not question the whole arrangement? It seems to me that it's flawed at a fundamental level and that if we were really interested in alternative views, (which is the point of the programme as I understand it), we'd step outside this model and look at how we might come to some other arrangement. [interjections from panel and audience].
No, listen, if we were discussing medicine here, as you've done in the past, it would be inconceivable to do so without including the views of practitioners of alternative medicine. And yet this discussion here is like that, except that the only people on the panel are the practitioners of conventional medicine, along with the representatives of the hospitals that employ them, the drug companies that supply them, the insurer middle men who make out in both directions, and of course the patients, happy and otherwise, of this conventional medicine. There is no alternative here. Well, now there is. And it already seems [indicates the panel] I'm making the members of the AMA here unhappy. [laughter]
JB - What is this alternative?
n - We ban interest. [uproar] Gee whiz, the bankers don't like that do they?
JB - You can't ban interest!
n - Why not? Interest used to be called usury. It used to be a sin. Christians used not to practice it. Muslims still don't. Believe it or not, economies can function without it. In fact they'd function far better. Muslim economies right now, the ones that aren't being bombed that is, are coping with the current 'economic shake-out' better than we are.
JB - But every aspect of our economy is controlled by interest.
n - It's crazy isn't it? Interest rate changes are inevitably the biggest story on any given day. They control our lives. And yet the Reserve Bank is 'independent'. Why is that? Why is the single most powerful body in this country not answerable to: the people; our representatives; anyone at all? Kevin Rudd in his election campaign declared his fealty to the independence of the Reserve Bank. Why did he do that? It's a head-scratcher for voters. So who was he talking to? That question aside, we subsequently have politicians flapping their arms about, pleading with the banks not to raise interest. Why do we, the people of Australia have no say in this? You'd almost think we were talking about the weather and other acts of God. Aren't we grown-ups? Can't we walk and chew gum at the same time? Why do we act as if there's no alternative? [yelling from panel and audience]
JB - Well what are you suggesting? That we all become Muslims?
n - Hardly. Eating fish on a Friday doesn't make you a Catholic. And eating falafel doesn't make me a Muslim. [confused laughter]
JB - So...
n - So, how about this - the means of exchange, which is all money is, is the single most crucial thing in any country. Believe it or not, it's more crucial than any other thing that we seem to think should be publicly owned and controlled by the people of this democracy. Even defence, believe it or not. And no one here would care to have our defence force as an 'independent' body answerable to no one, would they?
Audience Member - Like Blackwater! [isolated laughter]
n- Exactly, thank you. Okay then. We keep it simple. We have a single publicly owned bank. It charges no interest and nor does it pay any. It is merely a safe place to put your money. And for those small depositors thinking they'll miss out the interest they'd otherwise earn - seriously, do you earn any? Last time I did my tax and had to declare interest, in spite of having over ten thousand dollars in the bank all year, my interest was a few tens of dollars. What a waste of time! There's nothing in it for you, or me
To hell with it, scrap the whole thing. Interest only serves the bankers. We ban making money from money. The only way to make money should be from labour, ie. making goods or providing services. Charging money for money is not a service. It's a disservice. An economy is not served by paying yet more money to those who already have heaping great piles of it. It stands to reason.
Banker - This is bullshit! Why do we have to listen to this? It's economic lunacy...
n - Bullshit yourself! You want lunacy? Lunacy is global debt that exceeds the GDP of the whole world. That's lunacy! Figure the logic of this - to repay the bankers to whom we are indebted we'd have to hand them every piece of land, every building, everything we own, from our cars to our shoes, and we'd still owe them! How does that work? It makes no sense at all. The bankers, who didn't make anything, but merely ran some expensive printing presses, effectively own everything. To hell with them! To hell with the whole system! [At this point, the microphone is taken away and I am dragged from the studio].
n - [Voice diminishing down the corridor] No alternative permitted folks! You're going to pay interest whether it makes sense or not! All money flows to the bankers...
*Not really. I just made it all up.
Monday, November 3, 2008
to hell with Jack Nicholson
A fellow in the comments section recently expressed his unhappiness about me bagging out gamers. But he was not a jerk. He was alright, this fellow. He just didn't care to be shat on for the fact that he liked playing this game. Fair enough.
And truth be known, I've played a few computer games. I periodically grooved on shooting galaga invaders, doom monsters, and WWII Germans. But that was then, this is now. I'm on a different gig now.
And you're on the gig too. If you're here (unsuspecting google arrivals aside) you're in amongst this thing. In short, you have become aware of the disparity between what you are told in the media and the facts-of-the-matter. I'm sure you can dig it.
I don't care if your focus is Palestine, corporations, the Fed, the Roman Church, the CFR, the Constitution, the Holocaust, whatever. If you get that any one of these things is being misused or misrepresented, then you have already set foot in the camp. If you have used the internet to find out the truth of the matter, you're 'it'. Welcome to the resistance, ha ha.
Whatever views you hold, you have conceded that people should pursue the truth. Which is to say, the truth beyond that which is fed to us in the mainstream media. All Hail Thee! You cherish the truth and seek to arrive more nearly at it. Don't shy away from describing yourself in this fashion or, further, in attempting to embody it. It is a good and noble sentiment and I say this without any media-inspired post-modernist smirk. That the media would have us view such statements as unhip or geeky says all that needs to be said about the media, and about how, right this minute, you and I are not paying it any attention. Instead we are here on the net seeking the truth. Bully for us.
I don't have it by the way. The truth, that is. I merely search with you. (And laugh at my own jokes as I go, ha ha). If this 'truth-seeking' talk sounds religious, that's okay. I suspect that most of the people who come here are not religious or only vaguely so. Frankly I don't care either way. My searching led me to the truth of the equivalence of religions. But amongst religions, some are better, some are worse. Some do more good than harm, and vice versa. But forget the differences. Here we unite and it's the commonalities that count.
Our commonality is that we seek the truth. And we seek it outside the boundaries of control. That's us.
Here on the net, even those of us of a narrow focus find ourselves rubbing up against unlikely things. A gun nut goes to wrh and ends up reading about the USS Liberty. Excellent. The beauty of the internet as a means of seeking the truth is that it defeats the narrow focus. Me? I've had so many unlikely things turn out to be true I no longer dismiss anything.
So where were we? Oh yeah, that fellow who didn't care for me thinking poorly of games and gamers. Mind you, I'd have been him a few years ago. "Who's this jumped-up nobody bagging out games. I play them, I like them and there's nothing wrong with them." But I left that fellow behind as my focus continued widening and everything around me came up for scrutiny. I am the opposite to my bacteria-expert uncle who was declared to know 'the most about the least'. I attempt to more nearly approach the opposite, ha ha. There's no point viewing the micro without the macro.
Computer games, eh? Why not computer games? They're a micro in the macro. Oughtn't they too to be re-considered? We who seek the truth. We who wonder at things. We have no limits, or if we do, we will soon be disabused of them. But we welcome this. It is good and useful. The truth cannot be compartmentalised. It cannot be self-serving. If the things we love are shown to be false, so be it. The truth wins and the only certainty is change. Huzzah!
Let's look at this game in the macro. The big money corporate media is bullshit, yeah? Games make more money than movies, yeah? Money that big will be corporate - bankers, accountants, and other black-hearted sons-of-bitches will all climb in bed and fuck like monkeys. You know that. Movies and TV (same same), are propaganda machines right? They teach you how to think. They say the world is us-and-them. They tell us who to hate. Yes? And games differ from this how?
Hitman posits a world in which one, merely by participating, embraces the rightness of the killing of complete strangers at the say-so of others. Do we - who object to being lied to about Iraq, and the stories we were told about those-whom-we-must-kill - not object to a game that does precisely that? Like I said, if it hadn't existed the CIA or Mossad would have made it anyway.
If we're prepared to acknowledge the wickedness and misrepresentation of: health, insurance, and big pharma; GMO's, food, and starvation; politics, money, and war; of every goddamn thing, why baulk at this game? Question its rightness and if need be, let go of it. It is just another part of the enormity.
But this is no acid test. If you really want to play that game, go play it. As long as you know what it is and don't fool yourself. I smoke Champion Ruby tobacco in Zig-Zag rollies. I know the tabacco companies are wicked. I know smoking is fucked for 28,000 reasons all of which I get. But I smoke. I smoke and I get it. Do you get it?
You and me, the both of us. We're going to be ditching things or otherwise viewing them in a new light - things once cherished. We have to figure out our whole lives over again. What works, what doesn't. What's real, what's bullshit. We will not be told how to be human. We will cease defining ourselves by things that are not us. Can you dig it?
And you're in something big. There has never been a thing like this. It's growing and edging towards dangerous. It has universal appeal. There will come a tipping point when it will take over as the pre-dominant thought. It will be defined by its curiosity, its disregard for thought crime, along with its compassion and seeking of concord. All we want is the truth.
And to hell with Jack Nicholson - You can handle the truth.
And truth be known, I've played a few computer games. I periodically grooved on shooting galaga invaders, doom monsters, and WWII Germans. But that was then, this is now. I'm on a different gig now.
And you're on the gig too. If you're here (unsuspecting google arrivals aside) you're in amongst this thing. In short, you have become aware of the disparity between what you are told in the media and the facts-of-the-matter. I'm sure you can dig it.
I don't care if your focus is Palestine, corporations, the Fed, the Roman Church, the CFR, the Constitution, the Holocaust, whatever. If you get that any one of these things is being misused or misrepresented, then you have already set foot in the camp. If you have used the internet to find out the truth of the matter, you're 'it'. Welcome to the resistance, ha ha.
Whatever views you hold, you have conceded that people should pursue the truth. Which is to say, the truth beyond that which is fed to us in the mainstream media. All Hail Thee! You cherish the truth and seek to arrive more nearly at it. Don't shy away from describing yourself in this fashion or, further, in attempting to embody it. It is a good and noble sentiment and I say this without any media-inspired post-modernist smirk. That the media would have us view such statements as unhip or geeky says all that needs to be said about the media, and about how, right this minute, you and I are not paying it any attention. Instead we are here on the net seeking the truth. Bully for us.
I don't have it by the way. The truth, that is. I merely search with you. (And laugh at my own jokes as I go, ha ha). If this 'truth-seeking' talk sounds religious, that's okay. I suspect that most of the people who come here are not religious or only vaguely so. Frankly I don't care either way. My searching led me to the truth of the equivalence of religions. But amongst religions, some are better, some are worse. Some do more good than harm, and vice versa. But forget the differences. Here we unite and it's the commonalities that count.
Our commonality is that we seek the truth. And we seek it outside the boundaries of control. That's us.
Here on the net, even those of us of a narrow focus find ourselves rubbing up against unlikely things. A gun nut goes to wrh and ends up reading about the USS Liberty. Excellent. The beauty of the internet as a means of seeking the truth is that it defeats the narrow focus. Me? I've had so many unlikely things turn out to be true I no longer dismiss anything.
So where were we? Oh yeah, that fellow who didn't care for me thinking poorly of games and gamers. Mind you, I'd have been him a few years ago. "Who's this jumped-up nobody bagging out games. I play them, I like them and there's nothing wrong with them." But I left that fellow behind as my focus continued widening and everything around me came up for scrutiny. I am the opposite to my bacteria-expert uncle who was declared to know 'the most about the least'. I attempt to more nearly approach the opposite, ha ha. There's no point viewing the micro without the macro.
Computer games, eh? Why not computer games? They're a micro in the macro. Oughtn't they too to be re-considered? We who seek the truth. We who wonder at things. We have no limits, or if we do, we will soon be disabused of them. But we welcome this. It is good and useful. The truth cannot be compartmentalised. It cannot be self-serving. If the things we love are shown to be false, so be it. The truth wins and the only certainty is change. Huzzah!
Let's look at this game in the macro. The big money corporate media is bullshit, yeah? Games make more money than movies, yeah? Money that big will be corporate - bankers, accountants, and other black-hearted sons-of-bitches will all climb in bed and fuck like monkeys. You know that. Movies and TV (same same), are propaganda machines right? They teach you how to think. They say the world is us-and-them. They tell us who to hate. Yes? And games differ from this how?
Hitman posits a world in which one, merely by participating, embraces the rightness of the killing of complete strangers at the say-so of others. Do we - who object to being lied to about Iraq, and the stories we were told about those-whom-we-must-kill - not object to a game that does precisely that? Like I said, if it hadn't existed the CIA or Mossad would have made it anyway.
If we're prepared to acknowledge the wickedness and misrepresentation of: health, insurance, and big pharma; GMO's, food, and starvation; politics, money, and war; of every goddamn thing, why baulk at this game? Question its rightness and if need be, let go of it. It is just another part of the enormity.
But this is no acid test. If you really want to play that game, go play it. As long as you know what it is and don't fool yourself. I smoke Champion Ruby tobacco in Zig-Zag rollies. I know the tabacco companies are wicked. I know smoking is fucked for 28,000 reasons all of which I get. But I smoke. I smoke and I get it. Do you get it?
You and me, the both of us. We're going to be ditching things or otherwise viewing them in a new light - things once cherished. We have to figure out our whole lives over again. What works, what doesn't. What's real, what's bullshit. We will not be told how to be human. We will cease defining ourselves by things that are not us. Can you dig it?
And you're in something big. There has never been a thing like this. It's growing and edging towards dangerous. It has universal appeal. There will come a tipping point when it will take over as the pre-dominant thought. It will be defined by its curiosity, its disregard for thought crime, along with its compassion and seeking of concord. All we want is the truth.
And to hell with Jack Nicholson - You can handle the truth.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
The Gordian Knot and other Impossible Riddles
It seems I am the expert on things economic. Ha ha ha. Actually I'm the furthest thing from it. I never understood economics. Curiously enough, I did it in high-school as a major and did quite well at it. I even momentarily considered studying it at uni. But the truth is, I never got it. It was like I knew how to use a sextant to find a true midday, but I didn't care what time it was, nor knew why it mattered. It's a less than brilliant analogy, but whatever.
And whatever! Here we are on the edge of the economic armageddon I cleverly predicted years ago and obviously I must know the ins and outs of it. So a friend who didn't care for any of my ideas then, is now emailing me with questions like, 'Why is the Australian dollar falling?' Ha! Hell if I know! Instead I told her about Alexander and the Gordian knot.
This is a myth, sure, with various versions and various meanings. But since we're here, this is my version. And my version is less interested in what the knot looked like, say, than in whose knot it was and what purpose it served. Apparently the knot was tied on the brace of the first king of Gordia's ox-cart. Or was it a chariot? Who knows? Who cares? The main thing was that the cart was in the temple and it belonged to the priests. The knot was their impossible riddle to ensure that no one else took the reins of power (ahem).
And sure enough, everyone fell for it. 'I want to have a go at the puzzle!' 'No, me!' People came from far and wide to see if they were smart enough to solve the priests' genius puzzle. But truth be known, it wasn't a genius puzzle. It was a con. The only genius in its making was in ensuring that it couldn't be solved and that no one would be any the wiser. The trick with impossible riddles is that they're hard to solve but easy to make.
Does anyone remember that old sitcom 'WKRP in Cincinnati'? I used to like that show. I recall an episode where, in a desperate attempt to boost ratings, the staff decided to host a competition with an absurdly large cash prize. They didn't have the cash natch, so they made a name-that-tune competition that no one would ever be able to solve. There were ten songs jammed into one second and all you got was pi,ca,fa,mb,pe,ho,ip,un,ca,gr. Nuts. But where would a sitcom be without a situation? The comedy situation was that the listeners unbelievably solved the puzzle and the team had to flail about looking for the money. Thank you ball-boy, thank you scriptwriters.
In the real world however, with no writers pulling the deus-ex-machina strings, the puzzle would never have been solved. Just like the Gordian knot. For those who don't know, the fellow to 'unsolve' the Gordian knot was Alexander the Great. Whilst uttering the famous words 'Fuck this shit!', he cut the knot in two with his sword. And sure enough went on to win whatever it was the solver of the riddle was promised - the keys to Asia or something. Mind you, I expect having a big army helped somewhat.
If it hadn't been for Alexander's involvement this story would have been a very minor footnote. It's Alexander's action that counts here. The conventional wisdom on the Gordian knot is that it represented 'an intractable problem' and Alexander's cutting of it was a 'bold stroke'. God forbid we should discuss it in terms of who made the knot and why, nor should we view Alexander's actions as an emphatic rejection of an impossible riddle and the bullshit artists who made it. We may not have that discussion because where would the priest class be then? Impossible riddles is all they have. And God forbid they should be called bullshit on it.
'Hmm... is he having a go at religions now?' Sure, why not? The logic works and the argument is sustainable. But let's do a quick double-pike-with-twist and say that between God and money, money wins. The old religions ain't a patch on the new one. The religious might pray and go to church but the other ninety five percent of their waking lives are devoted to things economic. Bankers comprise our priest class now.
And in the last couple of years they've really topped themselves haven't they? Their impossible riddles have reached impossible heights. Take derivatives. Please! No one understands them. Except for Warren Buffet who famously called them 'Weapons of Financial Mass Destruction'. And what - we think that the people who invented derivatives don't know that? Ha ha ha, of course they do. In fact, it's why they invented them. And you'll note that Buffet isn't explaining derivatives so much as calling them out as bullshit. Well almost anyway. He's Alexander without a sword and without wishing to cause offence. These be powerful priests.
Mind you, derivatives are just the piece-of-resistance, the final curlicue, on the insanely busy Gordian knot that is control-of-the-money-supply and usury. This impossible riddle isn't sitting harmlessly on an ox-cart in a temple. It has each and every one of us tied up. And how we labour looking for the end of the snarl! We tug and we pull and spend our entire lives labouring to free ourselves. And all we want is what we see on TV. We want big houses, cars, nice clothes, and a life that doesn't seem to involve much work.
And yet madly, we imagine that this can be done with debt. We imagine that interest is natural and right. We imagine that those who've accumulated heaping great sums of money should be rewarded with yet more money for letting people use their piles of otherwise inedible paper. At a really fundamental level there's no logic to this. Like there was no logic to a knot on the brace of an ox-cart in a temple in Gordia.
The only answer to the Gordian knot was Alexander's anti-bullshit sword. The only answer to the current impossible economic riddle is to likewise call bullshit to the whole caper. Monetarism is bullshit. Interest is bullshit. Banks are bullshit. Throw them all down. And the priests? They can all fuck off.
Governments may print money. People with an excess of money may put it in a safe place - say, a non-profit publically-owned bank. Those with more money than others may consider themselves fortunate. But that's it. Their money doesn't then go on to earn more money by way of some imagined gravitional pull. All debt is reconsidered with interest viewed in a new (and unflattering) light. Any interest paid to date is counted against the principal. This consideration is only extended to real humans. Debts to banks, the IMF, and other supranational entities - wiped off the board. Tabula Rasa Time.
And that is how you cut a Gordian knot.
And whatever! Here we are on the edge of the economic armageddon I cleverly predicted years ago and obviously I must know the ins and outs of it. So a friend who didn't care for any of my ideas then, is now emailing me with questions like, 'Why is the Australian dollar falling?' Ha! Hell if I know! Instead I told her about Alexander and the Gordian knot.
This is a myth, sure, with various versions and various meanings. But since we're here, this is my version. And my version is less interested in what the knot looked like, say, than in whose knot it was and what purpose it served. Apparently the knot was tied on the brace of the first king of Gordia's ox-cart. Or was it a chariot? Who knows? Who cares? The main thing was that the cart was in the temple and it belonged to the priests. The knot was their impossible riddle to ensure that no one else took the reins of power (ahem).
And sure enough, everyone fell for it. 'I want to have a go at the puzzle!' 'No, me!' People came from far and wide to see if they were smart enough to solve the priests' genius puzzle. But truth be known, it wasn't a genius puzzle. It was a con. The only genius in its making was in ensuring that it couldn't be solved and that no one would be any the wiser. The trick with impossible riddles is that they're hard to solve but easy to make.
Does anyone remember that old sitcom 'WKRP in Cincinnati'? I used to like that show. I recall an episode where, in a desperate attempt to boost ratings, the staff decided to host a competition with an absurdly large cash prize. They didn't have the cash natch, so they made a name-that-tune competition that no one would ever be able to solve. There were ten songs jammed into one second and all you got was pi,ca,fa,mb,pe,ho,ip,un,ca,gr. Nuts. But where would a sitcom be without a situation? The comedy situation was that the listeners unbelievably solved the puzzle and the team had to flail about looking for the money. Thank you ball-boy, thank you scriptwriters.
In the real world however, with no writers pulling the deus-ex-machina strings, the puzzle would never have been solved. Just like the Gordian knot. For those who don't know, the fellow to 'unsolve' the Gordian knot was Alexander the Great. Whilst uttering the famous words 'Fuck this shit!', he cut the knot in two with his sword. And sure enough went on to win whatever it was the solver of the riddle was promised - the keys to Asia or something. Mind you, I expect having a big army helped somewhat.
If it hadn't been for Alexander's involvement this story would have been a very minor footnote. It's Alexander's action that counts here. The conventional wisdom on the Gordian knot is that it represented 'an intractable problem' and Alexander's cutting of it was a 'bold stroke'. God forbid we should discuss it in terms of who made the knot and why, nor should we view Alexander's actions as an emphatic rejection of an impossible riddle and the bullshit artists who made it. We may not have that discussion because where would the priest class be then? Impossible riddles is all they have. And God forbid they should be called bullshit on it.
'Hmm... is he having a go at religions now?' Sure, why not? The logic works and the argument is sustainable. But let's do a quick double-pike-with-twist and say that between God and money, money wins. The old religions ain't a patch on the new one. The religious might pray and go to church but the other ninety five percent of their waking lives are devoted to things economic. Bankers comprise our priest class now.
And in the last couple of years they've really topped themselves haven't they? Their impossible riddles have reached impossible heights. Take derivatives. Please! No one understands them. Except for Warren Buffet who famously called them 'Weapons of Financial Mass Destruction'. And what - we think that the people who invented derivatives don't know that? Ha ha ha, of course they do. In fact, it's why they invented them. And you'll note that Buffet isn't explaining derivatives so much as calling them out as bullshit. Well almost anyway. He's Alexander without a sword and without wishing to cause offence. These be powerful priests.
Mind you, derivatives are just the piece-of-resistance, the final curlicue, on the insanely busy Gordian knot that is control-of-the-money-supply and usury. This impossible riddle isn't sitting harmlessly on an ox-cart in a temple. It has each and every one of us tied up. And how we labour looking for the end of the snarl! We tug and we pull and spend our entire lives labouring to free ourselves. And all we want is what we see on TV. We want big houses, cars, nice clothes, and a life that doesn't seem to involve much work.
And yet madly, we imagine that this can be done with debt. We imagine that interest is natural and right. We imagine that those who've accumulated heaping great sums of money should be rewarded with yet more money for letting people use their piles of otherwise inedible paper. At a really fundamental level there's no logic to this. Like there was no logic to a knot on the brace of an ox-cart in a temple in Gordia.
The only answer to the Gordian knot was Alexander's anti-bullshit sword. The only answer to the current impossible economic riddle is to likewise call bullshit to the whole caper. Monetarism is bullshit. Interest is bullshit. Banks are bullshit. Throw them all down. And the priests? They can all fuck off.
Governments may print money. People with an excess of money may put it in a safe place - say, a non-profit publically-owned bank. Those with more money than others may consider themselves fortunate. But that's it. Their money doesn't then go on to earn more money by way of some imagined gravitional pull. All debt is reconsidered with interest viewed in a new (and unflattering) light. Any interest paid to date is counted against the principal. This consideration is only extended to real humans. Debts to banks, the IMF, and other supranational entities - wiped off the board. Tabula Rasa Time.
And that is how you cut a Gordian knot.
Labels:
impossible riddles,
international banking,
money,
religion,
reserve bank,
usury
Thursday, October 23, 2008
wondering through google
People arrive at this blog through various means. In what is effectively both a blessing and a curse, I am able to see how people come here via statcounter. This is simultaneously fascinating and frustrating. It's a bit like getting a snippet of a conversation but failing to grasp what it's about.
The majority of people come here as 'no referring link'. This means they've bookmarked me. And it's nice that people bookmark me. If you're one of those people I salute you and compliment you on your good taste, ha ha. But you'll have to forgive me for saying that this is not what fascinates me. What has me spellbound are the people who've searched for a topic and had one of my pieces come up in google.
Following on from the last piece and its discussion of the net as a place for those who seek, being privy to what people are looking for (at least when they arrive here) is an enthralling process. Were one higher in the food-chain, like Sergei Brin the owner of Google, I could well imagine it to be intoxicating. Unsurprisingly Google has dreams of creating some kind of Artificial Intelligence. If Ladbrokes were taking bets on it, I'd put my money on that particular venture not ending well. Not for us, anyway. (This and a thousand other things...). In the meantime there's merely me and my glimpse into what people are searching for.
People search for the strangest things. One individual arrived at my recent piece about Curt Maynard and the Apple Onion by searching for 'shat myself'. Um, okay... why not? But other search subjects are real head-scratchers. For these, I will click the google address they came from and see the same page they were looking at that prompted them to click the link to here. I'm just guessing but I expect that a lot of these searchers will be disappointed at what they find, ha ha. Someone searching for 'barber's stool' almost certainly did not want a discussion about fear and repression (or the lack thereof) in China. Never mind, they should feel free to dismiss me.
And then there are the disappearing google pages. I often go to the google page which someone used to arrive here, and I see the terms they searched for and the results they got, and yet this blog is not amongst them. Nor on the next page, nor the next, nor any of them. And yet I know they came to me via that search a few hours earlier. So where did I go in between times? If I re-enter their precise terms and add the word 'nobody', I still don't get me. How does that work? Does it mean anything? Obviously I did turn up in their results and now I don't. Me, I shrug my shoulders.
These are curiosities, sure. But in amongst them are obvious trends. I shall get the biggest and most obvious out of the way first. As such, it is my melancholy duty to inform you that easily the greatest number of people arriving at this blog via google (with daylight second) consists of brain-dead gamers looking for news on when they might re-indulge themselves in more mindless killing - which is to say they search for hitman 5. Hitman is an assassination game, for those who don't know. It's the kind of game that, if it didn't exist, the CIA would have invented it anyway. If the people who did make Hitman weren't funded by the CIA, then they missed out on free money.
Me, I find this ever-increasing avalanche of would-be assassins unfailingly depressing. To be honest it's my own fault. I wrote the piece deliberately to be found in this fashion. I intended to screw with the heads of both the gamers and the people who wrote the game, by way of a mock interview. As best I can make out, I failed. I doubt I made a dent on a single one of their rock-hard skulls. But my timing was something else! I'm guessing that hitman 5 is due out shortly and the gamers are working themselves into a lathered frenzy of anticipation. A whole new world of people to be shot, stabbed, and poisoned! Fantastic!
Absurdly, if you put any variation of 'hitman-latest-news' into google, my imagined interview is top of the page, more or less on it's own. It's also been linked to by two gamer sites, one in Holland and one in Finland. I have no idea what they make of it all, since it's all Greek to me (there's babelfish of course, but it provides information in inverse proportion to comedy). Amongst this brouhaha, I'm vaguely astounded that the creators of the game haven't sent me a cease-and-desist or somesuch. Perhaps they think I'm not worth it. To be honest I don't know what I'd do if they did. Frankly I'm sick of the whole fucking thing. My brain fills with tedious images of cockroaches taking over the earth. For now I leave the article there as an act of bloody-mindedness. If those addicted to assassination games gain nothing from my piece apart from confusion, then fine, long may it continue.
But there are glimpses of hope. I see other trends in searches. Curiously, many are transient. I wonder at these 'waves of interest'. I suspect that google features 'that-which-is-new' and with the passing of time older articles are less likely to pop up - ie. people are constantly interested in a given topic but only found me whilst the article was new. Or it could be that people search in a faddish pattern - ie. google hasn't changed but the people have. I have no idea.
But some topics are perennial. In what I view as a good and useful thing, people continue to be curious about the holocaust. I figure if anyone is going to read about the holocaust they may as well read my take on it. At least it's funny. The other topic that perpetually pops up is that of Amalekites. Me, I'm pleased, because I liked that piece and it seemed that other people grooved on it too. Three cheers. I have no idea if these searchers are religious froot-loops or the right-thinking curious. For me, it's all good.
But by far my favourite searchers, the people I love, are those who come here seeking to know more about selflessness. If this blog was a zombie movie (ha ha), the gamers would be the zombies and those seeking selflessness would be our plucky heroes. Silly cinematic metaphors are the first thing to pop out of my brain, sure, as I roll around what these searches mean. But other thoughts occur too. Firstly, there are people out there who put 'selflessness' into google. They exist. This augurs well and makes me happy. But this happiness is something of a mixed feeling. I wonder if it isn't a variation of Groucho Marx's line about not wanting to be a member of any club who'd have him.
Which is to say that when people search for selflessness, why am I so front and centre? Oughtn't there to be a zillion articles on this? Shouldn't this little blog be 'selflessness' search-page #47? Seems not. Best I can tell is that selflessness is a word that doesn't get much coinage. If they're coming to me, then there ain't much out there, if you can dig it. And then there's the awful thought - They come to me? What the hell would I know? I'm an ex-advertising bullshit-artist who spent a week in a monastery. God spare us. It's sad really. So - I'm happy and I'm sad. Three cheers and commiserations. Still, in amongst the zombified army of the undead it's nice to know that humans live still.
Labels:
computer games,
google,
holocaust,
selfishness/selflessness
Saturday, October 18, 2008
this thing
I grew up as a variant of soft right-winger. I started reading Time magazine when I was ten and went on subscribe for decades. To a greater or lesser degree its world view was mine - Vietnam was lost because of the protest movement; Palestinians were wicked troublemakers; WWII was a good war; coloured people couldn't organise a shitfight in a brewery and were responsible for their own woes; white people were good and made the world a better place, etc etc.
But I've come a long way since then. As have we all. If you are here, you have travelled this path. This was not by some random series of footfalls. You were drawn. Once we were weary, beset by confusion, and wishing merely for some honesty. It's this honesty that drew us. That it exists at all comes as something of a surprise. As we slough off the crust and filth of the lies we've been told for our whole lives, we find new energy. We find ourselves anew. And we do this by means of nothing more than the written word.
Forget me and this blog. I am merely a body drawn by a gravity. The gravity belongs to Les Visible. But I don't want to talk about Les. I, like most of us, have never met him. Were I to jabber away I'd be giving voice to my imagination as much as anything. And I ain't much given to hagiography regardless. (Hey Les, how you doing?) For the purpose of this exercise let's view Les' blogs, and those circling it (like this one) as a collective, a meeting of minds, a thing comprised of all who participate in it.
In addressing this we must acknowledge the medium in which it takes place. There has never been a thing quite like it, this internet thing. It's so singular, one struggles for metaphors to describe it. Words like 'web', or 'net' are the merest of thumbnails barely hinting at the possibilities of what it means. But regardless of its potential, it is a cacophony, a white noise, an everything all at once.
But mayhem aside, it is a place in which one may seek. In my own attempts at this, I participated in various forums having 'discussions' with people who lied like they blinked. It was not uncommon to find single individuals who would pretend to be a dozen people. A given individual would attack someone 'en masse' each voice in agreement. Invariably they'd compliment each other on what great thinkers they were. What the hell is that? What sort of a sick freak would do that? Why should I participate in such idiocy? These were not discussions, they were the opposite. And I'm not here to play a part in some self-obsessed individual's bullshit charade. I just want to know where the grown-ups were at.
This thing we have comprises that place for grown-ups. It's for people who are seeking, and wish to do so honestly. It is a place to cast off confusion. If this involves stepping beyond the artificial boundaries on what constitutes acceptable thought then so be it. We wish to view the world clearly. Sure enough, we do this with the written word. If this is not served by the usual style-less newspaper prose, then we will embrace metaphor, poetry, the metaphysical, whatever. With the aforementioned newspapers having failed us so abysmally, why not?
We are all of us in the gutter,
But some of us aren't distracted by the movie stars.
(excellent base line follows, and apologies to the Pretenders)
Leaping now - We are all of us in the labyrinth. But some of us have grasped that the labyrinth is also the library of Alexandria. We are the scenario of a movie. We're a band of the curious, separately wandering through the library pursuing lines of enquiry. We meet and swap tales, we wonder, we posit. We are men and women, young and old, rich and poor, the beset and the free, possessed of belief and not, and all here in the same spirit. We are here for the same purpose, with the same attitude of honest inquiry, and with a desire to truthfully describe this world and its possibilities.
This is the ideal in this gathering, or perhaps an idealised default position. Frequently the thing that exists here is riled with discord. These eddies in the stream can be stirred up, people baited, arguments started and egged on (I've done it myself, sure) but ultimately the stream we are in, is flowing in a direction we all agree upon. None of us knows, or can say definitively, what the precise destination of the stream is. It is enough that it leads away from confusion and towards clarity, truth, mindfulness and compassion. (We could call this 'love' but since it's me writing, I have to say I don't much care for that word. It carries too much soppy baggage. But some people really like that word and if you're one of them, don't let me stop you.)
If a place, or a meeting of people, is devoted to the truth, harmony will be that place's equilibrium, the state towards which it will naturally tend. It's my opinion that humans when not in a state of confusion will naturally seek harmony with each other. Forget Hollywood's fights for no reason. The real world is invariably much duller. And much friendlier.
Thinking about that stream - what if we were to expand the metaphor? Are other people not in the stream? Are there lots of streams? Where do they go? Is this metaphor falling apart? Maybe not. Clearly the majority of people are floundering in an ugly cross-grained ocean beset by the elements and struggling to keep their heads above water.
The stream of before is a metaphor of the micro. What is this water in the macro? Perhaps we could call it chi, or existence, or the zeitgeist, or the collective mind, or the spirit of the times - whatever suits really. You may call it anything you like. And that's the thing. You can call it. Others will attempt to call it too. They will bring wind and rain and every confusion they can think of. But here, we attempt to cast off the distractions; to know them for what they are; to name the riddle rather than dwell in its complications. We decide that we are flowing in a stream and we decide where it is flowing to.
Each of us on our own might qualify as a rivulet, a pool, a billabong, a creek, a cascade, but together we will make something bigger than ourselves, something that will flow and cannot be stopped. Think of the name of a great river. Consider the regard in which each is held and why. Let's declare, that none of us at Smoking Mirrors seek this regard. A river does not seek its worthiness. It merely is.
And truth be known, we are not a great river. We're just a stream. But for mine, we're a stream possessed of an irresistible nature. Those waking up to their confusion and grasping at each piece of truth, continue to find their way here. The frank discussions they find come as solace, a freedom, a cleansing. Where we are going and the way we're going there is a trip any right-thinking person would choose. Only those who have black holes for hearts, who would walk upon the bodies of the drowning would choose not to join. We are not them.
So, this place, these minds, this style of thought, this quest - Is it nothing? Is it something? Certainly between us and the bullshit media, it is the smallest thing imaginable. So let's think small. Perhaps we are a 19th century coffee klatsch transported in time. But just like then, it was less about the venue than it was about the conversation. Here we are geographically unbound, our societies disparate, and very few of us will ever meet. But it doesn't matter. Our conversation is not less real.
Nor does it matter that this thing is evanescent and will change and cease to be. The thing we are an alternative to is subject to the same realities. Meanwhile we are an alternative. We are not driven by ambition, desire, or fear. We shed these things as prisoners might shed their fetters. We seek truth, clarity and compassion. Nothing is simple, clear or obvious. But never mind. Each of us provides small inspirations for the others. Together we create - we create who we are. We are not owned. We are for ourselves. We are for each other. We are for all.
In this world of darkness where even the stars have been digitally blacked out, we make a flickering light, a sparkling scintilla of possibility and hope. We hold to this thing and we cherish it. It's not nothing. It's something. It's this thing that we share.
Thanks Les.
But I've come a long way since then. As have we all. If you are here, you have travelled this path. This was not by some random series of footfalls. You were drawn. Once we were weary, beset by confusion, and wishing merely for some honesty. It's this honesty that drew us. That it exists at all comes as something of a surprise. As we slough off the crust and filth of the lies we've been told for our whole lives, we find new energy. We find ourselves anew. And we do this by means of nothing more than the written word.
Forget me and this blog. I am merely a body drawn by a gravity. The gravity belongs to Les Visible. But I don't want to talk about Les. I, like most of us, have never met him. Were I to jabber away I'd be giving voice to my imagination as much as anything. And I ain't much given to hagiography regardless. (Hey Les, how you doing?) For the purpose of this exercise let's view Les' blogs, and those circling it (like this one) as a collective, a meeting of minds, a thing comprised of all who participate in it.
In addressing this we must acknowledge the medium in which it takes place. There has never been a thing quite like it, this internet thing. It's so singular, one struggles for metaphors to describe it. Words like 'web', or 'net' are the merest of thumbnails barely hinting at the possibilities of what it means. But regardless of its potential, it is a cacophony, a white noise, an everything all at once.
But mayhem aside, it is a place in which one may seek. In my own attempts at this, I participated in various forums having 'discussions' with people who lied like they blinked. It was not uncommon to find single individuals who would pretend to be a dozen people. A given individual would attack someone 'en masse' each voice in agreement. Invariably they'd compliment each other on what great thinkers they were. What the hell is that? What sort of a sick freak would do that? Why should I participate in such idiocy? These were not discussions, they were the opposite. And I'm not here to play a part in some self-obsessed individual's bullshit charade. I just want to know where the grown-ups were at.
This thing we have comprises that place for grown-ups. It's for people who are seeking, and wish to do so honestly. It is a place to cast off confusion. If this involves stepping beyond the artificial boundaries on what constitutes acceptable thought then so be it. We wish to view the world clearly. Sure enough, we do this with the written word. If this is not served by the usual style-less newspaper prose, then we will embrace metaphor, poetry, the metaphysical, whatever. With the aforementioned newspapers having failed us so abysmally, why not?
We are all of us in the gutter,
But some of us aren't distracted by the movie stars.
(excellent base line follows, and apologies to the Pretenders)
Leaping now - We are all of us in the labyrinth. But some of us have grasped that the labyrinth is also the library of Alexandria. We are the scenario of a movie. We're a band of the curious, separately wandering through the library pursuing lines of enquiry. We meet and swap tales, we wonder, we posit. We are men and women, young and old, rich and poor, the beset and the free, possessed of belief and not, and all here in the same spirit. We are here for the same purpose, with the same attitude of honest inquiry, and with a desire to truthfully describe this world and its possibilities.
This is the ideal in this gathering, or perhaps an idealised default position. Frequently the thing that exists here is riled with discord. These eddies in the stream can be stirred up, people baited, arguments started and egged on (I've done it myself, sure) but ultimately the stream we are in, is flowing in a direction we all agree upon. None of us knows, or can say definitively, what the precise destination of the stream is. It is enough that it leads away from confusion and towards clarity, truth, mindfulness and compassion. (We could call this 'love' but since it's me writing, I have to say I don't much care for that word. It carries too much soppy baggage. But some people really like that word and if you're one of them, don't let me stop you.)
If a place, or a meeting of people, is devoted to the truth, harmony will be that place's equilibrium, the state towards which it will naturally tend. It's my opinion that humans when not in a state of confusion will naturally seek harmony with each other. Forget Hollywood's fights for no reason. The real world is invariably much duller. And much friendlier.
Thinking about that stream - what if we were to expand the metaphor? Are other people not in the stream? Are there lots of streams? Where do they go? Is this metaphor falling apart? Maybe not. Clearly the majority of people are floundering in an ugly cross-grained ocean beset by the elements and struggling to keep their heads above water.
The stream of before is a metaphor of the micro. What is this water in the macro? Perhaps we could call it chi, or existence, or the zeitgeist, or the collective mind, or the spirit of the times - whatever suits really. You may call it anything you like. And that's the thing. You can call it. Others will attempt to call it too. They will bring wind and rain and every confusion they can think of. But here, we attempt to cast off the distractions; to know them for what they are; to name the riddle rather than dwell in its complications. We decide that we are flowing in a stream and we decide where it is flowing to.
Each of us on our own might qualify as a rivulet, a pool, a billabong, a creek, a cascade, but together we will make something bigger than ourselves, something that will flow and cannot be stopped. Think of the name of a great river. Consider the regard in which each is held and why. Let's declare, that none of us at Smoking Mirrors seek this regard. A river does not seek its worthiness. It merely is.
And truth be known, we are not a great river. We're just a stream. But for mine, we're a stream possessed of an irresistible nature. Those waking up to their confusion and grasping at each piece of truth, continue to find their way here. The frank discussions they find come as solace, a freedom, a cleansing. Where we are going and the way we're going there is a trip any right-thinking person would choose. Only those who have black holes for hearts, who would walk upon the bodies of the drowning would choose not to join. We are not them.
So, this place, these minds, this style of thought, this quest - Is it nothing? Is it something? Certainly between us and the bullshit media, it is the smallest thing imaginable. So let's think small. Perhaps we are a 19th century coffee klatsch transported in time. But just like then, it was less about the venue than it was about the conversation. Here we are geographically unbound, our societies disparate, and very few of us will ever meet. But it doesn't matter. Our conversation is not less real.
Nor does it matter that this thing is evanescent and will change and cease to be. The thing we are an alternative to is subject to the same realities. Meanwhile we are an alternative. We are not driven by ambition, desire, or fear. We shed these things as prisoners might shed their fetters. We seek truth, clarity and compassion. Nothing is simple, clear or obvious. But never mind. Each of us provides small inspirations for the others. Together we create - we create who we are. We are not owned. We are for ourselves. We are for each other. We are for all.
In this world of darkness where even the stars have been digitally blacked out, we make a flickering light, a sparkling scintilla of possibility and hope. We hold to this thing and we cherish it. It's not nothing. It's something. It's this thing that we share.
Thanks Les.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Jackson and the bankers
I spent this morning clicking links in Encyclopaedia Brittanica. I used to revere Brittanica but no longer. The complete absence of an entry for David Sassoon says all there is that needs to be said. But it's not completely worthless. In leaping about from James Madison, to the war of 1812, to Andrew Jackson, I came upon Jackson's farewell speech. Via the net, I've read a great deal about the history of banking but somehow I never came across this before. I post it here for those who, like me, have never encountered it.
It's extraordinary. And long though this post is, I've only posted about half of it. The opening paras that I've omitted concern Jackson's dealings with the Indians. I will happily admit that Jackson was no paragon of virtue. On the subject of race there's nothing good to be said for the fellow. The latter paras I've lopped off because they're dull and concern the re-arming of the navy. However the vast bulk of his address is spooky. His chief topic is tax and control of the money supply which he discusses with a perspicacity and frankness that is now impossible. On this topic the man was something near a seer.
PS. As if any further proof was needed as to who owns the media, wonder at the subsequent complete absence of any public discussion that resembles what Jackson says here. The bankers knew how to ensure that Jackson's urging of 'eternal vigilance' would come to nought. They would control the media. And sure enough, here we are today wall to wall in a media discussion of the banking 'crisis' and all we get are clueless, drivel-spouting popinjays and flibbertigibbets. Not one of them could hold a candle to Jackson.
"There is, perhaps, no one of the powers conferred on the federal government so liable to abuse as the taxing power. The most productive and convenient sources of revenue were necessarily given to it, that it might be able to perform the important duties imposed upon it; and the taxes which it lays upon commerce being concealed from the real payer in the price of the article, they do not so readily attract the attention of the people as smaller sums demanded from them directly by the tax gatherer. But the tax imposed on goods enhances by so much the price of the commodity to the consumer; and, as many of these duties are imposed on articles of necessity which are daily used by the great body of the people, the money raised by these imposts is drawn from their pockets.
Congress has no right, under the Constitution, to take money from the people unless it is required to execute some one of the specific powers entrusted to the government; and if they raise more than is necessary for such purposes, it is an abuse of the power of taxation and unjust and oppressive. It may, indeed, happen that the revenue will sometimes exceed the amount anticipated when the taxes were laid. When, however, this is ascertained, it is easy to reduce them; and, in such a case, it is unquestionably the duty of the government to reduce them, for no circumstances can justify it in assuming a power not given to it by the Constitution nor in taking away the money of the people when it is not needed for the legitimate wants of the government.
Plain as these principles appear to be, you will yet find that there is a constant effort to induce the general government to go beyond the limits of its taxing power and to impose unnecessary burdens upon the people. Many powerful interests are continually at work to procure heavy duties on commerce and to swell the revenue beyond the real necessities of the public service; and the country has already felt the injurious effects of their combined influence. They succeeded in obtaining a tariff of duties bearing most oppressively on the agricultural and laboring classes of society and producing a revenue that could not be usefully employed within the range of the powers conferred upon Congress; and, in order to fasten upon the people this unjust and unequal system of taxation, extravagant schemes of internal improvement were got up in various quarters to squander the money and to purchase support. Thus, one unconstitutional measure was intended to be upheld by another, and the abuse of the power of taxation was to be maintained by usurping the power of expending the money in internal improvements.
You cannot have forgotten the severe and doubtful struggle through which we passed when the Executive Department of the government, by its veto, endeavored to arrest this prodigal scheme of injustice and to bring back the legislation of Congress to the boundaries prescribed by the Constitution. The good sense and practical judgment of the people, when the subject was brought before them, sustained the course of the executive; and this plan of unconstitutional expenditure for the purpose of corrupt influence is, I trust, finally overthrown.
The result of this decision has been felt in the rapid extinguishment of the public debt and the large accumulation of a surplus in the treasury, notwithstanding the tariff was reduced and is now very far below the amount originally contemplated by its advocates. But, rely upon it, the design to collect an extravagant revenue and to burden you with taxes beyond the economical wants of the government is not yet abandoned. The various interests which have combined together to impose a heavy tariff and to produce an overflowing treasury are too strong and have too much at stake to surrender the contest. The corporations and wealthy individuals who are engaged in large manufacturing establishments desire a high tariff to increase their gains. Designing politicians will support it to conciliate their favor and to obtain the means of profuse expenditure for the purpose of purchasing influence in other quarters; and since the people have decided that the federal government cannot be permitted to employ its income in internal improvements, efforts will be made to seduce and mislead the citizens of the several states by holding out to them the deceitful prospect of benefits to be derived from a surplus revenue collected by the general government and annually divided among the states. And if, encouraged by these fallacious hopes, the states should disregard the principles of economy which ought to characterize every republican government and should indulge in lavish expenditures exceeding their resources, they will, before long, find themselves oppressed with debts which they are unable to pay, and the temptation will become irresistible to support high tariff in order to obtain a surplus for distribution.
Do not allow yourselves, my fellow citizens, to be misled on this subject. The federal government cannot collect a surplus for such purposes without violating the principles of the Constitution and assuming powers which have not been granted. It is, moreover, a system of injustice, and, if persisted in, will inevitably lead to corruption and must end in ruin. The surplus revenue will be drawn from the pockets of the people, from the farmer, the mechanic, and the laboring classes of society; but who will receive it when distributed among the states, where it is to be disposed of by leading state politicians who have friends to favor and political partisans to gratify? It will certainly not be returned to those who paid it and who have most need of it and are honestly entitled to it. There is but one safe rule, and that is to confine the general government rigidly within the sphere of its appropriate duties. It has no power to raise a revenue or impose taxes except for the purposes enumerated in the Constitution; and if its income is found to exceed these wants, it should be forthwith reduced, and the burdens of the people so far lightened.
In reviewing the conflicts which have taken place between different interests in the United States and the policy pursued since the adoption of our present form of government, we find nothing that has produced such deep-seated evil as the course of legislation in relation to the currency. The Constitution of the United States unquestionably intended to secure to the people a circulating medium of gold and silver. But the establishment of a national bank by Congress with the privilege of issuing paper money receivable in the payment of the public dues, and the unfortunate course of legislation in the several states upon the same subject, drove from general circulation the constitutional currency and substituted one of paper in its place.
It was not easy for men engaged in the ordinary pursuits of business, whose attention had not been particularly drawn to the subject, to foresee all the consequences of a currency exclusively of paper; and we ought not, on that account, to be surprised at the facility with which laws were obtained to carry into effect the paper system. Honest and even enlightened men are sometimes misled by the specious and plausible statements of the designing. But experience has now proved the mischiefs and dangers of a paper currency, and it rests with you to determine whether the proper remedy shall be applied.
The paper system being founded on public confidence and having of itself no intrinsic value, it is liable to great and sudden fluctuations, thereby rendering property insecure and the wages of labor unsteady and uncertain. The corporations which create the paper money cannot be relied upon to keep the circulating medium uniform in amount. In times of prosperity, when confidence is high, they are tempted by the prospect of gain or by the influence of those who hope to profit by it to extend their issues of paper beyond the bounds of discretion and the reasonable demands of business. And when these issues have been pushed on from day to day until the public confidence is at length shaken, then a reaction takes place, and they immediately withdraw the credits they have given; suddenly curtail their issues; and produce an unexpected and ruinous contraction of the circulating medium which is felt by the whole community.
The banks, by this means, save themselves, and the mischievous consequences of their imprudence or cupidity are visited upon the public. Nor does the evil stop here. These ebbs and flows in the currency and these indiscreet extensions of credit naturally engender a spirit of speculation injurious to the habits and character of the people. We have already seen its effects in the wild spirit of speculation in the public lands and various kinds of stock which, within the last year or two, seized upon such a multitude of our citizens and threatened to pervade all classes of society and to withdraw their attention from the sober pursuits of honest industry. It is not by encouraging this spirit that we shall best preserve public virtue and promote the true interests of our country.
But if your currency continues as exclusively paper as it now is, it will foster this eager desire to amass wealth without labor; it will multiply the number of dependents on bank accommodations and bank favors; the temptation to obtain money at any sacrifice will become stronger and stronger, and inevitably lead to corruption which will find its way into your public councils and destroy, at no distant day, the purity of your government. Some of the evils which arise from this system of paper press, with peculiar hardship, upon the class of society least able to bear it. A portion of this currency frequently becomes depreciated or worthless, and all of it is easily counterfeited in such a manner as to require peculiar skill and much experience to distinguish the counterfeit from the genuine note. These frauds are most generally perpetrated in the smaller notes, which are used in the daily transactions of ordinary business; and the losses occasioned by them are commonly thrown upon the laboring classes of society whose situation and pursuits put it out of their power to guard themselves from these impositions and whose daily wages are necessary for their subsistence.
It is the duty of every government so to regulate its currency as to protect this numerous class as far as practicable from the impositions of avarice and fraud. It is more especially the duty of the United States where the government is emphatically the government of the people, and where this respectable portion of our citizens are so proudly distinguished from the laboring classes of all other nations by their independent spirit, their love of liberty, their intelligence, and their high tone of moral character. Their industry in peace is the source of our wealth, and their bravery in war has covered us with glory; and the government of the United States will but ill discharge its duties if it leaves them a prey to such dishonest impositions. Yet it is evident that their interests cannot be effectually protected unless silver and gold are restored to circulation.
These views alone of the paper currency are sufficient to call for immediate reform; but there is another consideration which should still more strongly press it upon your attention.
Recent events have proved that the paper money system of this country may be used as an engine to undermine your free institutions; and that those who desire to engross all power in the hands of the few and to govern by corruption or force are aware of its power and prepared to employ it. Your banks now furnish your only circulating medium, and money is plenty or scarce according to the quantity of notes issued by them. While they have capitals not greatly disproportioned to each other, they are competitors in business, and no one of them can exercise dominion over the rest. And although, in the present state of the currency, these banks may and do operate injuriously upon the habits of business, the pecuniary concerns, and the moral tone of society, yet, from their number and dispersed situation, they cannot combine for the purpose of political influence; and whatever may be the dispositions of some of them their power of mischief must necessarily be confined to a narrow space and felt only in their immediate neighborhoods.
But when the charter of the Bank of the United States was obtained from Congress, it perfected the schemes of the paper system and gave its advocates the position they have struggled to obtain from the commencement of the federal government down to the present hour. The immense capital and peculiar privileges bestowed upon it enabled it to exercise despotic sway over the other banks in every part of the country. From its superior strength it could seriously injure, if not destroy, the business of any one of them which might incur its resentment; and it openly claimed for itself the power of regulating the currency throughout the United States. In other words, it asserted (and it undoubtedly possessed) the power to make money plenty or scarce, at its pleasure, at any time, and in any quarter of the Union, by controlling the issues of other banks and permitting an expansion or compelling a general contraction of the circulating medium according to its own will.
The other banking institutions were sensible of its strength, and they soon generally became its obedient instruments, ready at all times to execute its mandates; and with the banks necessarily went, also, that numerous class of persons in our commercial cities who depend altogether on bank credits for their solvency and means of business; and who are, therefore, obliged for their own safety to propitiate the favor of the money power by distinguished zeal and devotion in its service.
The result of the ill-advised legislation which established this great monopoly was to concentrate the whole money power of the Union, with its boundless means of corruption and its numerous dependents, under the direction and command of one acknowledged head; thus organizing this particular interest as one body and securing to it unity and concert of action throughout the United States and enabling it to bring forward, upon any occasion, its entire and undivided strength to support or defeat any measure of the government. In the hands of this formidable power, thus perfectly organized, was also placed unlimited dominion over the amount of the circulating medium, giving it the power to regulate the value of property and the fruits of labor in every quarter of the Union and to bestow prosperity or bring ruin upon any city or section of the country as might best comport with its own interest or policy.
We are not left to conjecture how the moneyed power, thus organized and with such a weapon in its hands, would be likely to use it. The distress and alarm which pervaded and agitated the whole country when the Bank of the United States waged war upon the people in order to compel them to submit to its demands cannot yet be forgotten. The ruthless and unsparing temper with which whole cities and communities were oppressed, individuals impoverished and ruined, and a scene of cheerful prosperity suddenly changed into one of gloom and despondency ought to be indelibly impressed on the memory of the people of the United States.
If such was its power in a time of peace, what would it not have been in a season of war with an enemy at your doors? No nation but the freemen of the United States could have come out victorious from such a contest; yet, if you had not conquered, the government would have passed from the hands of the many to the hands of the few; and this organized money power, from its secret conclave, would have directed the choice of your highest officers and compelled you to make peace or war as best suited their own wishes. The forms of your government might, for a time, have remained; but its living spirit would have departed from it.
The distress and sufferings inflicted on the people by the Bank are some of the fruits of that system of policy which is continually striving to enlarge the authority of the federal government beyond the limits fixed by the Constitution. The powers enumerated in that instrument do not confer on Congress the right to establish such a corporation as the Bank of the United States; and the evil consequences which followed may warn us of the danger of departing from the true rule of construction and of permitting temporary circumstances or the hope of better promoting the public welfare to influence, in any degree, our decisions upon the extent of the authority of the general government. Let us abide by the Constitution as it is written or amend it in the constitutional mode if it is found defective.
The severe lessons of experience will, I doubt not, be sufficient to prevent Congress from again chartering such a monopoly, even if the Constitution did not present an insuperable objection to it. But you must remember, my fellow citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty; and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing. It behooves you, therefore, to be watchful in your states as well as in the federal government. The power which the moneyed interest can exercise, when concentrated under a single head, and with our present system of currency, was sufficiently demonstrated in the struggle made by the Bank of the United States. Defeated in the general government, the same class of intriguers and politicians will now resort to the states and endeavor to obtain there the same organization which they failed to perpetuate in the Union; and with specious and deceitful plans of public advantages and state interests and state pride they will endeavor to establish, in the different states, one moneyed institution with overgrown capital and exclusive privileges sufficient to enable it to control the operations of the other banks.
Such an institution will be pregnant with the same evils produced by the Bank of the United States, although its sphere of action is more confined; and in the state in which it is chartered the money power will be able to embody its whole strength and to move together with undivided force to accomplish any object it may wish to attain. You have already had abundant evidence of its power to inflict injury upon the agricultural, mechanical, and laboring classes of society, and over whose engagements in trade or speculation render them dependent on bank facilities, the dominion of the state monopoly will be absolute, and their obedience unlimited. With such a bank and a paper currency, the money power would, in a few years, govern the state and control its measures; and if a sufficient number of states can be induced to create such establishments, the time will soon come when it will again take the field against the United States and succeed in perfecting and perpetuating its organization by a charter from Congress.
It is one of the serious evils of our present system of banking that it enables one class of society, and that by no means a numerous one, by its control over the currency to act injuriously upon the interests of all the others and to exercise more than its just proportion of influence in political affairs. The agricultural, the mechanical, and the laboring classes have little or no share in the direction of the great moneyed corporations; and from their habits and the nature of their pursuits, they are incapable of forming extensive combinations to act together with united force. Such concert of action may sometimes be produced in a single city or in a small district of country by means of personal communications with each other; but they have no regular or active correspondence with those who are engaged in similar pursuits in distant places. They have but little patronage to give the press and exercise but a small share of influence over it; they have no crowd of dependents about them who hope to grow rich without labor by their countenance and favor and who are, therefore, always ready to exercise their wishes.
The planter, the farmer, the mechanic, and the laborer all know that their success depends upon their own industry and economy and that they must not expect to become suddenly rich by the fruits of their toil. Yet these classes of society form the great body of the people of the United States; they are the bone and sinew of the country; men who love liberty and desire nothing but equal rights and equal laws and who, moreover, hold the great mass of our national wealth, although it is distributed in moderate amounts among the millions of freemen who possess it. But, with overwhelming numbers and wealth on their side, they are in constant danger of losing their fair influence in the government, and with difficulty maintain their just rights against the incessant efforts daily made to encroach upon them.
The mischief springs from the power which the moneyed interest derives from a paper currency which they are able to control; from the multitude of corporations with exclusive privileges which they have succeeded in obtaining in the different states and which are employed altogether for their benefit; and unless you become more watchful in your states and check this spirit of monopoly and thirst for exclusive privileges, you will, in the end, find that the most important powers of government have been given or bartered away, and the control over your dearest interests has passed into the hands of these corporations.
The paper money system and its natural associates, monopoly and exclusive privileges, have already struck their roots deep in the soil; and it will require all your efforts to check its further growth and to eradicate the evil. The men who profit by the abuses and desire to perpetuate them will continue to besiege the halls of legislation in the general government as well as in the states and will seek, by every artifice, to mislead and deceive the public servants. It is to yourselves that you must look for safety and the means of guarding and perpetuating your free institutions. In your hands is rightfully placed the sovereignty of the country and to you everyone placed in authority is ultimately responsible. It is always in your power to see that the wishes of the people are carried into faithful execution, and their will, when once made known, must sooner or later be obeyed. And while the people remain, as I trust they ever will, uncorrupted and incorruptible and continue watchful and jealous of their rights, the government is safe, and the cause of freedom will continue to triumph over all its enemies.
But it will require steady and persevering exertions on your part to rid yourselves of the iniquities and mischiefs of the paper system and to check the spirit of monopoly and other abuses which have sprung up with it and of which it is the main support. So many interests are united to resist all reform on this subject that you must not hope the conflict will be a short one nor success easy. My humble efforts have not been spared during my administration of the government to restore the constitutional currency of gold and silver; and something, I trust, has been done toward the accomplishment of this most desirable object. But enough yet remains to require all your energy and perseverance. The power, however, is in your hands, and the remedy must and will be applied if you determine upon it."
It's extraordinary. And long though this post is, I've only posted about half of it. The opening paras that I've omitted concern Jackson's dealings with the Indians. I will happily admit that Jackson was no paragon of virtue. On the subject of race there's nothing good to be said for the fellow. The latter paras I've lopped off because they're dull and concern the re-arming of the navy. However the vast bulk of his address is spooky. His chief topic is tax and control of the money supply which he discusses with a perspicacity and frankness that is now impossible. On this topic the man was something near a seer.
PS. As if any further proof was needed as to who owns the media, wonder at the subsequent complete absence of any public discussion that resembles what Jackson says here. The bankers knew how to ensure that Jackson's urging of 'eternal vigilance' would come to nought. They would control the media. And sure enough, here we are today wall to wall in a media discussion of the banking 'crisis' and all we get are clueless, drivel-spouting popinjays and flibbertigibbets. Not one of them could hold a candle to Jackson.
"There is, perhaps, no one of the powers conferred on the federal government so liable to abuse as the taxing power. The most productive and convenient sources of revenue were necessarily given to it, that it might be able to perform the important duties imposed upon it; and the taxes which it lays upon commerce being concealed from the real payer in the price of the article, they do not so readily attract the attention of the people as smaller sums demanded from them directly by the tax gatherer. But the tax imposed on goods enhances by so much the price of the commodity to the consumer; and, as many of these duties are imposed on articles of necessity which are daily used by the great body of the people, the money raised by these imposts is drawn from their pockets.
Congress has no right, under the Constitution, to take money from the people unless it is required to execute some one of the specific powers entrusted to the government; and if they raise more than is necessary for such purposes, it is an abuse of the power of taxation and unjust and oppressive. It may, indeed, happen that the revenue will sometimes exceed the amount anticipated when the taxes were laid. When, however, this is ascertained, it is easy to reduce them; and, in such a case, it is unquestionably the duty of the government to reduce them, for no circumstances can justify it in assuming a power not given to it by the Constitution nor in taking away the money of the people when it is not needed for the legitimate wants of the government.
Plain as these principles appear to be, you will yet find that there is a constant effort to induce the general government to go beyond the limits of its taxing power and to impose unnecessary burdens upon the people. Many powerful interests are continually at work to procure heavy duties on commerce and to swell the revenue beyond the real necessities of the public service; and the country has already felt the injurious effects of their combined influence. They succeeded in obtaining a tariff of duties bearing most oppressively on the agricultural and laboring classes of society and producing a revenue that could not be usefully employed within the range of the powers conferred upon Congress; and, in order to fasten upon the people this unjust and unequal system of taxation, extravagant schemes of internal improvement were got up in various quarters to squander the money and to purchase support. Thus, one unconstitutional measure was intended to be upheld by another, and the abuse of the power of taxation was to be maintained by usurping the power of expending the money in internal improvements.
You cannot have forgotten the severe and doubtful struggle through which we passed when the Executive Department of the government, by its veto, endeavored to arrest this prodigal scheme of injustice and to bring back the legislation of Congress to the boundaries prescribed by the Constitution. The good sense and practical judgment of the people, when the subject was brought before them, sustained the course of the executive; and this plan of unconstitutional expenditure for the purpose of corrupt influence is, I trust, finally overthrown.
The result of this decision has been felt in the rapid extinguishment of the public debt and the large accumulation of a surplus in the treasury, notwithstanding the tariff was reduced and is now very far below the amount originally contemplated by its advocates. But, rely upon it, the design to collect an extravagant revenue and to burden you with taxes beyond the economical wants of the government is not yet abandoned. The various interests which have combined together to impose a heavy tariff and to produce an overflowing treasury are too strong and have too much at stake to surrender the contest. The corporations and wealthy individuals who are engaged in large manufacturing establishments desire a high tariff to increase their gains. Designing politicians will support it to conciliate their favor and to obtain the means of profuse expenditure for the purpose of purchasing influence in other quarters; and since the people have decided that the federal government cannot be permitted to employ its income in internal improvements, efforts will be made to seduce and mislead the citizens of the several states by holding out to them the deceitful prospect of benefits to be derived from a surplus revenue collected by the general government and annually divided among the states. And if, encouraged by these fallacious hopes, the states should disregard the principles of economy which ought to characterize every republican government and should indulge in lavish expenditures exceeding their resources, they will, before long, find themselves oppressed with debts which they are unable to pay, and the temptation will become irresistible to support high tariff in order to obtain a surplus for distribution.
Do not allow yourselves, my fellow citizens, to be misled on this subject. The federal government cannot collect a surplus for such purposes without violating the principles of the Constitution and assuming powers which have not been granted. It is, moreover, a system of injustice, and, if persisted in, will inevitably lead to corruption and must end in ruin. The surplus revenue will be drawn from the pockets of the people, from the farmer, the mechanic, and the laboring classes of society; but who will receive it when distributed among the states, where it is to be disposed of by leading state politicians who have friends to favor and political partisans to gratify? It will certainly not be returned to those who paid it and who have most need of it and are honestly entitled to it. There is but one safe rule, and that is to confine the general government rigidly within the sphere of its appropriate duties. It has no power to raise a revenue or impose taxes except for the purposes enumerated in the Constitution; and if its income is found to exceed these wants, it should be forthwith reduced, and the burdens of the people so far lightened.
In reviewing the conflicts which have taken place between different interests in the United States and the policy pursued since the adoption of our present form of government, we find nothing that has produced such deep-seated evil as the course of legislation in relation to the currency. The Constitution of the United States unquestionably intended to secure to the people a circulating medium of gold and silver. But the establishment of a national bank by Congress with the privilege of issuing paper money receivable in the payment of the public dues, and the unfortunate course of legislation in the several states upon the same subject, drove from general circulation the constitutional currency and substituted one of paper in its place.
It was not easy for men engaged in the ordinary pursuits of business, whose attention had not been particularly drawn to the subject, to foresee all the consequences of a currency exclusively of paper; and we ought not, on that account, to be surprised at the facility with which laws were obtained to carry into effect the paper system. Honest and even enlightened men are sometimes misled by the specious and plausible statements of the designing. But experience has now proved the mischiefs and dangers of a paper currency, and it rests with you to determine whether the proper remedy shall be applied.
The paper system being founded on public confidence and having of itself no intrinsic value, it is liable to great and sudden fluctuations, thereby rendering property insecure and the wages of labor unsteady and uncertain. The corporations which create the paper money cannot be relied upon to keep the circulating medium uniform in amount. In times of prosperity, when confidence is high, they are tempted by the prospect of gain or by the influence of those who hope to profit by it to extend their issues of paper beyond the bounds of discretion and the reasonable demands of business. And when these issues have been pushed on from day to day until the public confidence is at length shaken, then a reaction takes place, and they immediately withdraw the credits they have given; suddenly curtail their issues; and produce an unexpected and ruinous contraction of the circulating medium which is felt by the whole community.
The banks, by this means, save themselves, and the mischievous consequences of their imprudence or cupidity are visited upon the public. Nor does the evil stop here. These ebbs and flows in the currency and these indiscreet extensions of credit naturally engender a spirit of speculation injurious to the habits and character of the people. We have already seen its effects in the wild spirit of speculation in the public lands and various kinds of stock which, within the last year or two, seized upon such a multitude of our citizens and threatened to pervade all classes of society and to withdraw their attention from the sober pursuits of honest industry. It is not by encouraging this spirit that we shall best preserve public virtue and promote the true interests of our country.
But if your currency continues as exclusively paper as it now is, it will foster this eager desire to amass wealth without labor; it will multiply the number of dependents on bank accommodations and bank favors; the temptation to obtain money at any sacrifice will become stronger and stronger, and inevitably lead to corruption which will find its way into your public councils and destroy, at no distant day, the purity of your government. Some of the evils which arise from this system of paper press, with peculiar hardship, upon the class of society least able to bear it. A portion of this currency frequently becomes depreciated or worthless, and all of it is easily counterfeited in such a manner as to require peculiar skill and much experience to distinguish the counterfeit from the genuine note. These frauds are most generally perpetrated in the smaller notes, which are used in the daily transactions of ordinary business; and the losses occasioned by them are commonly thrown upon the laboring classes of society whose situation and pursuits put it out of their power to guard themselves from these impositions and whose daily wages are necessary for their subsistence.
It is the duty of every government so to regulate its currency as to protect this numerous class as far as practicable from the impositions of avarice and fraud. It is more especially the duty of the United States where the government is emphatically the government of the people, and where this respectable portion of our citizens are so proudly distinguished from the laboring classes of all other nations by their independent spirit, their love of liberty, their intelligence, and their high tone of moral character. Their industry in peace is the source of our wealth, and their bravery in war has covered us with glory; and the government of the United States will but ill discharge its duties if it leaves them a prey to such dishonest impositions. Yet it is evident that their interests cannot be effectually protected unless silver and gold are restored to circulation.
These views alone of the paper currency are sufficient to call for immediate reform; but there is another consideration which should still more strongly press it upon your attention.
Recent events have proved that the paper money system of this country may be used as an engine to undermine your free institutions; and that those who desire to engross all power in the hands of the few and to govern by corruption or force are aware of its power and prepared to employ it. Your banks now furnish your only circulating medium, and money is plenty or scarce according to the quantity of notes issued by them. While they have capitals not greatly disproportioned to each other, they are competitors in business, and no one of them can exercise dominion over the rest. And although, in the present state of the currency, these banks may and do operate injuriously upon the habits of business, the pecuniary concerns, and the moral tone of society, yet, from their number and dispersed situation, they cannot combine for the purpose of political influence; and whatever may be the dispositions of some of them their power of mischief must necessarily be confined to a narrow space and felt only in their immediate neighborhoods.
But when the charter of the Bank of the United States was obtained from Congress, it perfected the schemes of the paper system and gave its advocates the position they have struggled to obtain from the commencement of the federal government down to the present hour. The immense capital and peculiar privileges bestowed upon it enabled it to exercise despotic sway over the other banks in every part of the country. From its superior strength it could seriously injure, if not destroy, the business of any one of them which might incur its resentment; and it openly claimed for itself the power of regulating the currency throughout the United States. In other words, it asserted (and it undoubtedly possessed) the power to make money plenty or scarce, at its pleasure, at any time, and in any quarter of the Union, by controlling the issues of other banks and permitting an expansion or compelling a general contraction of the circulating medium according to its own will.
The other banking institutions were sensible of its strength, and they soon generally became its obedient instruments, ready at all times to execute its mandates; and with the banks necessarily went, also, that numerous class of persons in our commercial cities who depend altogether on bank credits for their solvency and means of business; and who are, therefore, obliged for their own safety to propitiate the favor of the money power by distinguished zeal and devotion in its service.
The result of the ill-advised legislation which established this great monopoly was to concentrate the whole money power of the Union, with its boundless means of corruption and its numerous dependents, under the direction and command of one acknowledged head; thus organizing this particular interest as one body and securing to it unity and concert of action throughout the United States and enabling it to bring forward, upon any occasion, its entire and undivided strength to support or defeat any measure of the government. In the hands of this formidable power, thus perfectly organized, was also placed unlimited dominion over the amount of the circulating medium, giving it the power to regulate the value of property and the fruits of labor in every quarter of the Union and to bestow prosperity or bring ruin upon any city or section of the country as might best comport with its own interest or policy.
We are not left to conjecture how the moneyed power, thus organized and with such a weapon in its hands, would be likely to use it. The distress and alarm which pervaded and agitated the whole country when the Bank of the United States waged war upon the people in order to compel them to submit to its demands cannot yet be forgotten. The ruthless and unsparing temper with which whole cities and communities were oppressed, individuals impoverished and ruined, and a scene of cheerful prosperity suddenly changed into one of gloom and despondency ought to be indelibly impressed on the memory of the people of the United States.
If such was its power in a time of peace, what would it not have been in a season of war with an enemy at your doors? No nation but the freemen of the United States could have come out victorious from such a contest; yet, if you had not conquered, the government would have passed from the hands of the many to the hands of the few; and this organized money power, from its secret conclave, would have directed the choice of your highest officers and compelled you to make peace or war as best suited their own wishes. The forms of your government might, for a time, have remained; but its living spirit would have departed from it.
The distress and sufferings inflicted on the people by the Bank are some of the fruits of that system of policy which is continually striving to enlarge the authority of the federal government beyond the limits fixed by the Constitution. The powers enumerated in that instrument do not confer on Congress the right to establish such a corporation as the Bank of the United States; and the evil consequences which followed may warn us of the danger of departing from the true rule of construction and of permitting temporary circumstances or the hope of better promoting the public welfare to influence, in any degree, our decisions upon the extent of the authority of the general government. Let us abide by the Constitution as it is written or amend it in the constitutional mode if it is found defective.
The severe lessons of experience will, I doubt not, be sufficient to prevent Congress from again chartering such a monopoly, even if the Constitution did not present an insuperable objection to it. But you must remember, my fellow citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty; and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing. It behooves you, therefore, to be watchful in your states as well as in the federal government. The power which the moneyed interest can exercise, when concentrated under a single head, and with our present system of currency, was sufficiently demonstrated in the struggle made by the Bank of the United States. Defeated in the general government, the same class of intriguers and politicians will now resort to the states and endeavor to obtain there the same organization which they failed to perpetuate in the Union; and with specious and deceitful plans of public advantages and state interests and state pride they will endeavor to establish, in the different states, one moneyed institution with overgrown capital and exclusive privileges sufficient to enable it to control the operations of the other banks.
Such an institution will be pregnant with the same evils produced by the Bank of the United States, although its sphere of action is more confined; and in the state in which it is chartered the money power will be able to embody its whole strength and to move together with undivided force to accomplish any object it may wish to attain. You have already had abundant evidence of its power to inflict injury upon the agricultural, mechanical, and laboring classes of society, and over whose engagements in trade or speculation render them dependent on bank facilities, the dominion of the state monopoly will be absolute, and their obedience unlimited. With such a bank and a paper currency, the money power would, in a few years, govern the state and control its measures; and if a sufficient number of states can be induced to create such establishments, the time will soon come when it will again take the field against the United States and succeed in perfecting and perpetuating its organization by a charter from Congress.
It is one of the serious evils of our present system of banking that it enables one class of society, and that by no means a numerous one, by its control over the currency to act injuriously upon the interests of all the others and to exercise more than its just proportion of influence in political affairs. The agricultural, the mechanical, and the laboring classes have little or no share in the direction of the great moneyed corporations; and from their habits and the nature of their pursuits, they are incapable of forming extensive combinations to act together with united force. Such concert of action may sometimes be produced in a single city or in a small district of country by means of personal communications with each other; but they have no regular or active correspondence with those who are engaged in similar pursuits in distant places. They have but little patronage to give the press and exercise but a small share of influence over it; they have no crowd of dependents about them who hope to grow rich without labor by their countenance and favor and who are, therefore, always ready to exercise their wishes.
The planter, the farmer, the mechanic, and the laborer all know that their success depends upon their own industry and economy and that they must not expect to become suddenly rich by the fruits of their toil. Yet these classes of society form the great body of the people of the United States; they are the bone and sinew of the country; men who love liberty and desire nothing but equal rights and equal laws and who, moreover, hold the great mass of our national wealth, although it is distributed in moderate amounts among the millions of freemen who possess it. But, with overwhelming numbers and wealth on their side, they are in constant danger of losing their fair influence in the government, and with difficulty maintain their just rights against the incessant efforts daily made to encroach upon them.
The mischief springs from the power which the moneyed interest derives from a paper currency which they are able to control; from the multitude of corporations with exclusive privileges which they have succeeded in obtaining in the different states and which are employed altogether for their benefit; and unless you become more watchful in your states and check this spirit of monopoly and thirst for exclusive privileges, you will, in the end, find that the most important powers of government have been given or bartered away, and the control over your dearest interests has passed into the hands of these corporations.
The paper money system and its natural associates, monopoly and exclusive privileges, have already struck their roots deep in the soil; and it will require all your efforts to check its further growth and to eradicate the evil. The men who profit by the abuses and desire to perpetuate them will continue to besiege the halls of legislation in the general government as well as in the states and will seek, by every artifice, to mislead and deceive the public servants. It is to yourselves that you must look for safety and the means of guarding and perpetuating your free institutions. In your hands is rightfully placed the sovereignty of the country and to you everyone placed in authority is ultimately responsible. It is always in your power to see that the wishes of the people are carried into faithful execution, and their will, when once made known, must sooner or later be obeyed. And while the people remain, as I trust they ever will, uncorrupted and incorruptible and continue watchful and jealous of their rights, the government is safe, and the cause of freedom will continue to triumph over all its enemies.
But it will require steady and persevering exertions on your part to rid yourselves of the iniquities and mischiefs of the paper system and to check the spirit of monopoly and other abuses which have sprung up with it and of which it is the main support. So many interests are united to resist all reform on this subject that you must not hope the conflict will be a short one nor success easy. My humble efforts have not been spared during my administration of the government to restore the constitutional currency of gold and silver; and something, I trust, has been done toward the accomplishment of this most desirable object. But enough yet remains to require all your energy and perseverance. The power, however, is in your hands, and the remedy must and will be applied if you determine upon it."
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