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May 7, 2009<BR><BR> <A HREF="http://www.unknownnews.org/0905-07HR.html"><FONT COLOR=blue>#</FONT></A>&nbsp; Congratulations, folks. You are the privileged witnesses of momentous historical change. It's like one of those page-turner novels &#151; each day brings surprises and convinces us ever more that anything can happen next. Putting aside for the moment, as much as possible, an analysis of the <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: collapse" width="340" align="left"><tr><td class="fonty" vAlign="top" align="left" width="98%" bgColor="#ffffff"><table cellSpacing="5" cellPadding="5" width="100%" border="0"><tr><td class="fonty" vAlign="top" align="left" width="100%" bgColor="#ffffff"><table cellSpacing="1" cellPadding="1" width="100%" border="0"><tr><td class="fonty" vAlign="top" align="left" width="100%" bgColor="#cccccc"><table cellSpacing="1" cellPadding="1" width="100%" border="0"><tr><td class="fonty" vAlign="top" align="left" width="100%" bgColor="#dddddd"><table cellSpacing="8" cellPadding="8" width="100%" border="0"><tr><td class="fontpq" vAlign="top" align="left" width="100%"bgColor="#eeeeee"><b> <img src="http://unknownnews.org/greedybastard-hr.jpg" border="1" width="320" height="294"><BR><BR> The fully commodified world of today, where you are your job and without a job you are nothing, where actual people and human needs hardly ever enter into the decision-making of giant corporations, where governments timidly follow the corporate tune, where law has been replaced by a series of prices and court judgments for damages (that take decades to be filed and hardly ever help the injured), where all professions (with the exception of the librarians) have sold out their professional dignity to the highest bidder, where skills of self-sufficiency common to earlier generations (particularly the ability to creatively "make do") have largely disappeared, where we watch TV as the poor of New Orleans drown abandoned by society &#151; this modern world, is much, much more fragile than it was in previous such economic crises.</b></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></td><td class="fonty" vAlign="top" align="left" width="2%" bgColor="#ffffff">&nbsp;</td></tr></table> millennial long buildup to this moment in history, this is my bare bones, CliffsNotes impression of the play on the field, the state of the narrative of our potential demise.<BR><BR>We have so indulged our current ruling class, in return for a share of the imperial loot (that amounts only to the crumbs from their table), that they have come to believe that they are super-human and deserving of anything they want, and the rest of us are a form of livestock. We have so thoroughly enabled them in this delusional view that they have come to think of everything and everybody as mere commodities, to be bought and sold and gambled with at their whim.<BR><BR>Under this system of power division the rich became richer and the poor poorer at an increasingly rapid pace. The orgy of greed that this set off has made possible a kind of virtual gambling den of unregistered securities that is tens of times greater in dollar denomination than the entire real economy of the world. New, bigger Ponzi schemes, manipulated market bubbles and other sources of organized criminal activity were invented and nurtured largely to allow ever greater amounts of this imaginary (as opposed to real economy &#151; Wall Street vs. Main Street) financial wealth to continually double down its bets.<BR><BR>This has occasioned some remarkable winnings and equally remarkable losses based on bets secured with 10% cash down. He who held cash in this insane casino economy was king, and often as not these kings were just plain gangsters with their cash taken from traditional criminal markets of drugs, prostitution and other parts of the black economy (conservatively be estimated at 20% of the world's total economy). Laundering illegal cash became the main spring of "wealth creation" (see Catherine Austin Fitts' piece called <A HREF="http://www.drugwar.com/fittsnarco1.shtm">Narcodollars for Dummies</A>).<BR><BR>When the bubbles started to bust and the overtly criminal activities of various multinational companies began to come to light, the irrational confidence in this system of casino economics also began to decline, leading to a de-leveraging (calling in the rest of those bets placed with 10% down). We were facing what is called a deleveraging crisis such as started the Great Depression. However, now, as opposed to our previous near economic death experience of the Great Depression, gangsters have assumed control of choke points in this amoral house of cards and tell us that either we, the citizens of the countries of the loosing gamblers in these opaque markets, make good on these gambling bets or they will break our legs, or the economic equivalent of that.<BR><BR>The entire nation is being extorted for astronomic amounts of money for which we are taking out loans in the form of the national debt that we will be paying off for multiple generations ensuring a radically reduced standard of living for the 99% of the population <i>that was not part of the gambling scheme that produced the debt!</i> We have sold ourselves into generation after generation of debt peonage and virtual serfdom.<BR><BR> <!-- author page --><table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="4" style="border-collapse: collapse" width="379" align="right"><tr><td class="fonty" vAlign="top" align="left" width="100%"><img src="http://unknownnews.org/homelessjobless.jpg" border="1" width="359" height="341"></td></tr></table> Ideologically speaking, we fell for the hyperintellectual BS of Friedrich Hayek (and all of his intellectually criminal offspring that we now call neo-conservatives), popularly presented in his famous book <i>The Road To Serfdom</i>. The mass of us thought of this as a dire warning and sought to avoid becoming serfs, whereas the leadership was reading the book with a 180 degree counter-interpretation where serfdom was secretly seen as a good thing and the only rational social management goal for concentrated wealth seeking ever greater profits by robbing labor.<BR><BR>This is the result of whole nations of children playing without benefit of adult supervision. Loot (euphemistically called "profits" by the press and "primitive capital accumulation" by Marx) has been collected so easily that it was like taking candy from babies.<BR><BR>This now world-wide, finely meshed technical and intellectual culture, that is the metaphorical equivalent of a rigged Monopoly game, has finally concentrated wealth to the limit and the system is about to blow (chickens coming home to roost in the vernacular, the final stage of Capitalism per Marx).<BR><BR>In dominator style cultures like this (with modern multinational gangster capitalism as its ultimate form) it is normal for cycles of concentration and collapse to occur, but previous episodes were regional and uneven in their effects. There were always areas that were spared the periodic wildfires of over-exploitation and economic collapse. Even during the Great Depression (what are we going to call it after this?) there were residual resources available for subsistence, valuable resources that had not yet been fully commodified. <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: collapse" width="50%" align="left"><tr><td class="fonty" vAlign="top" align="left" width="98%" bgColor="#ffffff"><table cellSpacing="5" cellPadding="5" width="100%" border="0"><tr><td class="fonty" vAlign="top" align="left" width="100%" bgColor="#ffffff"><table cellSpacing="1" cellPadding="1" width="100%" border="0"><tr><td class="fonty" vAlign="top" align="left" width="100%" bgColor="#cccccc"><table cellSpacing="1" cellPadding="1" width="100%" border="0"><tr><td class="fonty" vAlign="top" align="left" width="100%" bgColor="#dddddd"><table cellSpacing="8" cellPadding="8" width="100%" border="0"><tr><td class="fontpq" vAlign="top" align="left" width="100%"bgColor="#eeeeee"><b>The entire nation is being extorted for astronomic amounts of money for which we are taking out loans in the form of the national debt that we will be paying off for multiple generations ensuring a radically reduced standard of living for the 99% of the population <i>that was not part of the gambling scheme that produced the debt!</i><BR><BR>We have sold ourselves into generation after generation of debt peonage and virtual serfdom.</b></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></td><td class="fonty" vAlign="top" align="left" width="2%" bgColor="#ffffff">&nbsp;</td></tr></table>Someone in the family might have had some farm land that could feed and provide useful employment for the extended family. Subsistence technologies such as home food preservation and small animal husbandry, home gardens and barter, were commonly understood by the population and provided a lifesaving cushion. A much, much larger part of the worlds population then lived in the countryside, where opportunities to exert themselves to survive existed, unlike what is available to families in the fully urbanized and commodified world of today. Then food kept being produced in spite of the collapse of commodity markets by small farmers who just responded to collapsing farm prices by just trying harder. In the days of the previous financial panic Mom and Pop stores stayed open, sold local produce on commission, kept the embers of the economy smoldering.<BR><BR>Not today. Today, as soon as the profit is gone the corporate fields are left fallow and there are no small farmers to take up the slack. As soon as the credit to finance wholesale purchases of goods is no longer available, the corporate shelves are immediately empty. The national chains just close down. The fully commodified world of today, where you are your job and without a job you are nothing, where actual people and human needs hardly ever enter into the decision-making of giant corporations, where governments timidly follow the corporate tune, where law has been replaced by a series of prices and court judgments for damages (that <!-- author page --><table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="4" style="border-collapse: collapse" width="420" align="right"><tr><td class="fonty" vAlign="top" align="right" width="100%"><BR><img src="http://unknownnews.org/NewOrleansFlood.jpg" border="1" width="400" height="244"></td></tr></table>take decades to be filed and hardly ever help the injured), where all professions (with the exception of the librarians) have sold out their professional dignity to the highest bidder, where skills of self-sufficiency common to earlier generations (particularly the ability to creatively "make do") have largely disappeared, where we watch TV as the poor of New Orleans drown abandoned by society &#151; this modern world, is much, much more fragile than it was in previous such economic crises.<BR><BR>The effects of the collapse of today's highly specialized, highly interdependent economy, where the necessities of daily living routinely come from extremely remote sources, will be greatly magnified. The blow will be stunning. The excitement of the viewer, if untrammeled by fear and panic, will be great. Enjoy the show if you can.<BR><BR>Future historians will be arguing a great deal about what to call this period. In the near term it is likely to be called many things depending on our yet to be demonstrated ability to cope with the demons we have unleashed. However, with enough time, far into the future, and also in the increasingly unlikely event that a human culture survives the coming tumult and are able to keep the flame of recorded history alive, I suspect that it will simply be called the beginning of the <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene">Anthropocene Epoch</A>, the point on the geological clock when humans changed everything.<BR><BR>But then, why do people build houses of cards other than for the thrill of finally having them suddenly collapse? <BR><CENTER><br>&#169; by the author.<BR> This page is archived at <A HREF="http://www.unknownnews.org/0905-07HR.html">unknownnews.org/0905-07HR.html</A></CENTER><BR> <A NAME=08Anton1227></A> <TABLE CELLPADDING="8" CELLSPACING="8" WIDTH="100%" border=0><TR> <TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="100%" bgcolor="#dddddd" class="fonta"> <A HREF="#08Anton1227"><FONT COLOR=blue>#</FONT></A>&nbsp; <i><B>5/8/2009:</B></i> &nbsp; <BLOCKQUOTE><i>We have so thoroughly enabled them in this delusional view that they have come to think of everything and everybody as mere commodities, to be bought and sold and gambled with at their whim.</i></BLOCKQUOTE> In another word: collateral.<BR><BR> These definitions of the word collateral lead to some interesting meditations on why the powers chose this word to describe killing our cousins and how they view their relationship with us...<BR><BR>Dictionary<BR><BR>collateral (n.)<BR>1 something pledged as security for repayment of a loan, to be forfeited in the event of a default.<BR>2 a person having the same descent in a family as another but by a different line.<BR>(adj.)<BR>1 descended from the same stock but by a different line : a collateral descendant of George Washington.<BR>2 additional but subordinate; secondary : the collateral meanings of a word.<BR>" situated side by side; parallel : collateral veins.<BR>ORIGIN: late Middle English (as an adjective): from medieval Latin collateralis, from col-  together with + lateralis (from latus, later-  side ). Sense 1 (originally U.S.) is from the phrase collateral security, denoting something pledged in addition to the main obligation of a contract. <BR><BR><DIV align="right">Anton &nbsp; </div><!-- reply --> </TD></TR></TABLE> <center><TABLE CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" WIDTH="625" border=0><TR> <TD ALIGN="center" VALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="100%" class="fonty"><BR> <iframe src="http://www.unknownnews.org/support-wide.html" width="625" height="550" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" frameborder="0"></iframe></TD></TR></TABLE></center> <center>|&nbsp;&nbsp; <A HREF="http://www.unknownnews.org/"><B>Home</B></A> &nbsp;&nbsp;|&nbsp;&nbsp; <A HREF="http://www.unknownnews.org/about.html">About us</A> &nbsp;&nbsp;|&nbsp;&nbsp; <A HREF="http://www.unknownnews.org/contact.html">Contact us</A> &nbsp;&nbsp;<A HREF="http://www.unknownnews.org/!workfiles.html"><FONT COLOR=black>|</FONT></A>&nbsp;&nbsp; <A HREF="http://www.unknownnews.org/faq.html">FAQ</A> &nbsp;&nbsp;|&nbsp;&nbsp; <A HREF="http://www.unknownnews.org/mysterylinks.html">Mystery links</A> &nbsp;&nbsp;|&nbsp;&nbsp; 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