Who is Paul Volcker? Obama appoints a longtime enemy of the working class
Patrick Martin, WSWS



29 November 2008

President-elect Barack Obama announced Wednesday the appointment of former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker to head a White House advisory board to oversee the new administration's policies for stabilizing financial markets. The selection of the 81-year-old Volcker puts an inveterate enemy of the working class at the side of the new president, and demonstrates the class character of the right-wing government that Obama is assembling.

In the course of the week, Obama selected his entire economic team: Timothy Geithner, currently president of the New York branch of the Federal Reserve, who will become secretary of the treasury; Lawrence Summers, former Clinton treasury secretary, who will head the National Economic Council, the chief White House group for coordinating economic policy; and Peter Orszag, who will become budget director. Summers, Geithner and Orszag are all protégés of former Clinton treasury secretary Robert Rubin, former CEO of Goldman Sachs and now director and vice chairman of Citigroup.

These appointments have been greeted favorably on Wall Street, with a 1,200-point runup in stock prices since Geithner's name was made public last Friday. Congressional Republicans hailed the selection of Geithner and Summers, and an op-ed column in the Wall Street Journal November 28 by former Bush political adviser Karl Rove was headlined, "Thanksgiving Cheer From Obama: He's assembled a first-rate economic team."

But it is the selection of Volcker that is the sharpest warning to the working class. No other individual in modern US history is so closely identified with the deliberate creation of mass unemployment to drive down wages and smash the organized resistance of the working class to the demands of corporate America. He put into motion policies that led to the destruction of large sections of industry and the explosive growth of financial speculation in the US economy.

Volcker served as Fed Chairman from 1979 to 1987, a critical period in the history of the American working class, in which the official labor movement was effectively destroyed as an instrument of workers' self-defense, and the unions transformed into what they are today: a mechanism for the suppression of workers' struggles and the destruction of their jobs and wages.

Democratic President Jimmy Carter nominated Volcker—a former Chase Manhattan Bank executive—to head the Federal Reserve in August 1979, at a turning point for the American ruling class and world capitalism as a whole. The coming to power of Margaret Thatcher in Britain three months earlier first signaled the drastic shift to the right internationally on the part of big business. The selection of Volcker initiated a similar shift within the United States, which culminated in November 1980 when Ronald Reagan defeated Carter for reelection.

Runaway price inflation had sparked a series of bitter strikes by workers seeking to defend their living standards, and the Carter administration had suffered a humiliating defeat when more than 100,000 coal miners struck for 111 days in 1977-78 in defiance of a presidential no-strike order under the Taft-Hartley Law. The White House had been unable to cow the miners into submission—they publicly burned copies of the president's back-to-work order on the picket line—and Carter was compelled to rely on the leadership of the United Mine Workers union to deprive the rank-and-file of any gains from their struggle.

Volcker was brought in to initiate policies that would suppress inflation—and the wages movement in the working class—by driving up the rate of unemployment. Under his leadership, the Federal Reserve rapidly raised interest rates to an unprecedented 20 percent, choking off home-buying and purchases of cars and other durable goods and triggering a series of corporate bankruptcies.

The economic turmoil contributed heavily to Carter's defeat in the presidential contest, but that prospect did not faze Volcker, whose loyalty to the Democratic Party and the president who nominated him took a distant second place to his devotion to the long-term interests of American capitalism, which required the most draconian methods.

Once Reagan entered the White House in January 1981, Volcker worked closely with the new Republican administration, and was reappointed by Reagan in 1983 to continue his inflation-fighting course. In 1982-83, the US economy plunged into the sharpest recession of the post-World War II period.

The economic devastation was focused particularly in the industrial Midwest—steel mills, auto plants, coal mines were shut down, many of them permanently. The city of Detroit began the downward slide that has continued to this day, and Buffalo, Akron, Youngstown, Gary, Indiana and countless industrial towns followed suit.

The response to the attacks by big business and the Reagan administration was the biggest wave of strike struggles since the 1940s, beginning with the PATCO air traffic controllers strike in August 1981, where Reagan ordered the firing of 12,000 workers and made the firings stick. He had the backing of the entire US ruling elite, Democrats and Republicans alike, and critical assistance from the AFL-CIO bureaucracy, which blocked any large-scale mobilization of workers behind the PATCO strikers, leaving them to isolation and defeat.

Volcker famously praised Reagan for breaking the PATCO strike, calling his action the most important factor in bringing inflation under control.

PATCO set the pattern for the struggles which followed: Greyhound, Phelps Dodge, Hormel, International Paper, A. T. Massey Coal, Continental Airlines, and Eastern Airlines. Isolated groups of workers engaged in militant and protracted battles, in many cases against state repression and employer violence, all stabbed in the back by the AFL-CIO. The outcome was the destruction of union locals, the arrest, imprisonment and even murder of striking workers, the strengthening of the bureaucratic apparatus, and the emergence of corporatism—labor-management "partnership" —as the guiding philosophy of the American unions.

Throughout this period, there was a bipartisan anti-labor front in Washington: Republican Reagan in the White House, Democrat Volcker at the Fed, a Republican-controlled US Senate, and a Democratic-controlled House of Representatives. Democratic governors and mayors worked hand-in-glove with unionbusting corporations, calling out the National Guard or mobilizing local police against strikes in Arizona, Minnesota, Kentucky, West Virginia and countless cities and towns.

Particularly relevant today is the role played by the Democrats in the bailout of Chrysler Corporation in 1979-80. The Carter administration provided loan guarantees to Chrysler in return for concessions by the United Auto Workers union, including the first-ever cuts in wages and benefits imposed by a major American trade union on its own membership—setting the pattern for the concessions bargaining of the 1980s.

Like a criminal returning to the scene of the crime, Volcker now goes back to Washington as a principal adviser to another Democratic Party administration preparing to bail out bankrupt auto manufacturers at the expense of the auto workers and the working class as a whole. He can rely on his direct personal experience with the UAW bureaucracy to demand that the union finish the job it began three decades ago: transforming what was once the most powerful section of the American working class into a super-exploited mass of low-paid, casual laborers, without any rights.

When Obama announced that he was establishing the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, with Volcker as its head, he praised the "sound and independent judgment" of the former Fed chairman. That "judgment" included early support for Obama's presidential campaign—he gave $2,300 to Obama's primary campaign last February, the most Volcker has ever contributed to any candidate, Democrat or Republican.

"Paul Volcker hasn't been in Washington for quite some time," Obama said, "and that's part of the reason he can provide a fresh perspective."

Volcker's record from 1979 to 1987 suggests what this "fresh perspective" will consist of. Unemployment in the United States reached 11.3 percent in 1982, double the level of 1975. The average wage of young workers fell 30 percent by 1987. Infant mortality, family violence, drug addiction and other concomitants of economic hardship soared.

But the wealthiest 1 percent of the population saw a staggering 50 percent increase in their wealth during that period. That is why the American ruling elite remembers the Volcker years fondly, and why, acting through their servant Obama, the financial aristocracy has summoned the old reactionary for one last service in attacking the working class.









:: Article nr. 49190 sent on 30-nov-2008 08:28 ECT


www.uruknet.info?p=49190

Link: wsws.org/articles/2008/nov2008/volc-n29.shtml

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SOME THINGS NEVER CHANGE
Malcom Lagauche




November 22, 2008

It hasn’t taken long for some of those on the left who heralded Barack Obama as the long-awaited savior of the U.S. to begin asking, "Why has he appointed the same people from the Clinton and Bush II administrations to positions?" The answer is that he never promised huge changes. If any of his leftist supporters took the time to research his voting record and speeches, he/she would have come up blank with reasons to support Obama. He has taken some old names — like Daschle, Clinton, and even Colin Powell — thrown them in a bag, shook it up, and thrown the names on a table, some with new positions. Obama even is thinking of keeping Gates as the Secretary of War.

A year ago, I wrote the following article and prompted those who were desperate for a change in U.S. imperialistic policy to think again before they put their eggs in the Democrat basket. Names and dates may differ, but the actions of the Democratic Party have not.

DEMOCRATS SPEAK WITH FORKED TONGUES

Tuesday-Thursday, November 6-8, 2007

To listen to Democrats today, you would think they all opposed George Bush’s illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq. Bush, now at his lowest in public opinion polls, is open game for his Democratic opponents. He is being portrayed as a lying warmonger while the Dems are extolling the virtues of their anti-war philosophy.

All this posturing is false. Five years ago, the Democratic Party jumped on board the war bandwagon. Many voted to go to war and gave resounding testimony to the evil of Iraq. However, if you believe the messages being sent by Democrats, you would think that not one supported the war.

The Boston Globe of April 22, 2006 carried an op-ed piece written by 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. He mentioned his 1971 appearance before the U.S. Senate and how he spoke of opposing the Vietnam War. Then, he added:

Thirty-five years later, in another war gone off course, I see history repeating itself … Again, we must refuse to sit quietly and watch our troops sacrificed for a policy that isn’t working while Americans who dissent and ask tough questions are branded unpatriotic.

Just as it was in 1971, it is again right to make clear that the best way to support the troops is to oppose a course that squanders their lives, dishonors their sacrifice, and disserves the American people and our principles.

Good stuff, but there some minor omissions on Kerry’s part. He supported the invasion of Iraq, and, at times during the presidential campaign, called for more troops in Iraq than the Republicans sent. Here are a few quotes from the past John Kerry, not the "enlightened" one speaking today:

"We urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq’s refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs." (Oct. 9, 1998)
"I will be voting to give the president of the United States the authority to use force — if necessary — to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security." (Oct. 9, 2002)
"We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction. Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime … And now he had continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction … So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real." (Jan. 23, 2003)
This does not sound like the Kerry of today. It is possible for one to change opinions. However, when the person does, there is a usual explanation of how he/she was previously misled or made bad judgements. Not so with Kerry. For years, he supported military action against Iraq. Then, he shows up speaking of a misguided Iraq war and policy.

Madeleine Albright is another one who is changing her tune in the same manner as Kerry: just give a speech that is opposite from your years-long stance without an explanation for the change in course.

Al-Jazeera News published an article called "Albright Warns of Iraq Disaster" on April 23, 2006. Here is the beginning of the piece:

Madeleine Albright, the former U.S. secretary of state, has warned that the invasion of Iraq may end up as one of the worst disasters in American foreign policy.

In an interview with the New York Times, published on Sunday, Albright said she did not think Saddam Hussein had been an imminent threat to the United States.

"You can’t go to war with everybody you dislike," she said.

"I think Iraq may end up being one of the worst disasters in American foreign policy

"I’m for democracy, but imposing democracy is an oxymoron. People have to choose democracy and it has to come from below," she said.

Remember, this is the same Albright who told Leslie Stahl in an interview in 1997 that the deaths of more than 500,000 Iraqi children at the hands of the embargo was a worthy result of U.S. foreign policy. Here are a few statements from the old Albright:

"Iraq is a long way from here, but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face." (Feb. 18, 1998)
"Hussein has chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies." (Nov. 10, 1999)
Poor Saddam. In the space of a few years, he was relegated by Albright from being the "greatest security threat we face" to not being an imminent threat to the United States. They’ve even taken accusations for Saddam being a sonofabitch away from him. The U.S. talks out of both sides of its mouth.

Before and after the invasion of 2003, anti-war Democrats have argued with me about the merits of the Democratic Party. I have heard, and continue to hear, every lame excuse in the book about the party acquiescing to the warmongers from "They had bad information" to "That’s not their real position." Facts are facts. The Democrats allowed George Bush to invade Iraq for one reason: they were afraid that if the U.S. attacked Iraq and that the soldiers were welcomed with flowers and candy, they would have been on the wrong side of the issue and would have been considered anti-American. No matter how they talk today, Madeleine Albright, John Kerry, and many other Democrats allowed the invasion to occur. Integrity, research and truth went out the window.

Despite all their current anti-war talk, there is one aspect missing from the hollow mouths of the Democrats: not one has mentioned the plight of the Iraqi people and the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian deaths and the destruction of the country that came about because of their silence.

Demonic Cabal


The demonic cabal that's ruled America since the early decades of the twentieth century has retained its power through adjusting its strategies as world conditions change. In this essay, we'll investigate their changed strategies so we can understand their effects and discover ways to achieve victory over their savage tactics.


Fixed Elections
In the 2008 presidential election, Americans were made to feel that there were complex factors in determining how we should vote. We knew that Barack Obama was as much a creature of the cabal as John McCain. We were aware that only a person tied to the cabal could be elected.

The cabal had already selected Obama and its neoliberal Democratic Party wing to front for the continuation of its militaristic, imperialistic, fascist tactics. Had Americans wanted to understand this fact, they would only have had to look at Obama's receiving over twice as much financial backing as McCain and the Republican Party neocon wing.

As usual, it didn't matter one whit how we voted, since the cabal controlled this as it does all elections. The cabal had decided not to repeat their 2000 coup d'etat (starring Jeb Bush, Katherine Harris, and the Supreme Court) and their stealing of the 2004 election through vote fraud--because the American public might get a little skittish if such blatant criminal behavior was repeated too often.

The Bush-Neocon wing has served its purpose in perpetrating a Reichstag Fire syndrome 1 catastrophe--9/11, starting a warprofiteering armed conflict on two fronts, decimating Constitutional liberties through the Patriot Act and domestic spying, and committing a second 9/11 on the economic front by pulling off a 1929-style collapse of the entire world economy.



What Happens Next


"What happens next will be ratcheting in gains and preparing a fresh new story line [Obama the Messiah]. That is to say, none of the very impressive (ie, horrific) achievements of the neocons will be undone, and yet the American people will be led to believe that the evils are in the past—the same standard tactic that we saw work so well when Nixon resigned. The media will be filled with fresh new story lines, along with bright intelligent confident reassuring empathetic Earth-loving new faces, plus other new fantasies—and the Bush experience will fade from public memory, along with last season’s football scores. Such an advantage it is for our rulers, that we Americans have such tiny memory spans and such limited powers of independent observation, compared to the rest of the world’s population. I guess the purpose of the melting pot was to melt away our basic intuitive judgment."

Global Research, December 27, 2007, "The Post-Bush Regime: A Prognosis"



Now that Obama has been elected--and the confidence game ramped up--it becomes our responsibility to see through the false masquerade they've concocted, just as we had to penetrate the facade contrived around Dubya and the neocon junta. Many Americans were incapable of seeing through Bush II's innumerable crimes and outrages, perceiving him to be either a positive force or merely a harmless buffoon.
But discerning people worldwide saw through Dubya's "good ole boy" false front to his insane depravity. They comprehended that he and his co-conspirators had turned America into a militaristic police state.

The cabal has now contrived a powerful, multi-faceted disguise for Obama and the new Democratic administration, making many people believe that he's an independent agent who has genuine regard for the welfare of working people. We have to hand it to the cabal: they've manufactured an effective camouflage for Obama and the neo-liberals, turning him into a cult figure that people accept mindlessly as the new political Savior.

As we earlier penetrated Dubya's mask and the cabal's disguised policies of world devastation and looting during Bush II's reign of terror, we must now pierce Obama's disguise and the subterfuge they've placed around their new camouflaged policies of global plunder and despoilment.





If we don't penetrate through to the actual new policies and tactics of devastation the cabal has adopted in conjunction with their Obama-puppet regime, we'll be at the mercy of their propaganda and subterfuge. American citizens need to know the grand imperialist scheme that the criminal cabal is now carrying out. Only by understanding it fully will we be able to defeat this murderous plot of the plutocrats.
The imperialist schemers are so sure of themselves that they don't hesitate to publish their conspiracy plot to conquer the world politically, economically, and militarily. Mandarins such as Brzezinski, Kissinger, Wolfowitz, and a host of others, draw up the blueprints for their world police state. By studying their imperialist designs we can understand just how the demonic cabal plans to seize complete world dominance and maintain it.

Whereas we earlier pierced through to the cabal's schemes through a discerning scrutiny of Brzezinski's 1997 book The Grand Chessboard, now we can penetrate to their new world domination policies through a perspicacious examination of his 2004 book The Choice and his 2007 book Second Chance.

Even before the 2008 election of the supposed African-American savior--Barack Obama--it was possible to determine unequivocally that he was a cabal puppet, by seeing that his policy statements identically echoed Brzezinski's ideas in his book Second Chance.


Zbigniew Brzezinski the PuppetMaster Barack Obama the Puppet
"Americans must recognize that their patterns of consumption will soon collide head-on with increasingly impatient egalitarian aspirations. Whether through the exploitation of natural resources, excessive energy consumption, indifference to global ecology, or the exorbitant size of houses for the well-to-do, indulgent self-gratification at home conveys indifference to the persisting deprivations of much of the world. (Just try to imagine a world in which 2.5 billion Chinese and Indians consume as much energy per capita as Americans do.) That reality the American public has yet to assimilate. To lead, America must not only be sensitive to global realities. It must also be socially attractive. That calls for a broader national consensus in favor of correcting the key failings of the American social model."

Zbigniew Brzezinski, Second Chance At a recent campaign stop in Oregon, Obama stated: "We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK," Obama said. "That's not leadership. That's not going to happen," he added. If India and China's "carbon footprint gets as big as ours, we're gone." (AFP)




The Diabolical New Schemes

A perceptive study of Brzezinski's two books reveals what the cabal's new strategies are. (All quotations below are taken from these books.)

The United States will continue as the sole super-power for the foreseeable future, with a brand new assessment of the world situation.
"The former major European powers--Great Britain, Germany, and France--are too weak to step into the breach. In the next two decades, it is quite unlikely that the European Union will become sufficiently united politically to muster the popular will to compete with the United States in the politico-military arena. Russia is no longer an imperial power, and its central challenge is to recover socioeconomically lest it lose its far eastern territories to China. Japan's population is aging and its economy has slowed; the conventional wisdom of the 1980's that Japan is destined to be the next 'superstate' now has the ring of historical irony. China, even if it succeeds in maintaining high rates of economic growth and retains its internal political stability (both are far from certain), will at best be a regional power still constrained by an impoverished population, antiquated infrastructure, and limited appeal worldwide. The same is true of India, which additionally faces uncertainties regarding its long-term national unity."

"For the next two decades, the steadying effect of American power will be indispensable to global stability, while the principal challenge to American power can come only from within--either from the repudiation of power by the American democracy itself, or from America's global misuse of its own power."


The old brand of global militaristic imperialism will continue but will now have a new, amiable facade.

"Though hostility toward the United States has risen to unprecedented levels and has not yet crested, an America aware of its responsibilities, measured in its presidential rhetoric, sensitive to the complexities of the human condition, and consensual rather than abrasive in its external relations (in brief, entirely different from its recent emanation [Bush II]) is an America that much of the world would still like to see at the global helm."

"The post-1991 worldwide impression of U.S. global military omnipotence and Washington's illusions about the extent of America's power have been shattered by U.S. failures in postvictory Iraq. The United States acknowledges the need for cooperation with the European Union, China, Japan, and Russia regarding major issues of global security. The Middle East becomes the make-or-break test case of U.S. leadership."


Fascism and imperialism with a friendly face: This is why Obama was chosen--because he is a master at pretending to be an agreeable guy.

The reason for the good-natured mask is that Dubya and the neocons pushed the world into a dangerous reactive hatred for the U. S. and the cabal now needs to pretend to be playing nice.

The old brand of predatory capitalism will continue but will now pretend to be sensitive to economic and social inequities worldwide.

"The exercise of global leadership today requires an instinctive grasp of the times in a world that is stirring, interactive, and motivated by a vague but pervasive sense of prevailing injustice in the human condition."

". . . Income inequality has risen to new heights, with the best paid rewarded at almost obscene levels while average wages have barely crept upward."

The cabal understands the need to pretend to be concerned about economic inequality and other worker travails. The "natives" are becoming restless and the cabal must fool them into thinking that they're sympathetic to their plight.

"Many, disliking the status quo, are susceptible to being mobilized against those whom they perceive as self-interestedly preserving it."

"Only by identifying itself with the idea of universal human dignity--with its basic requirement of respect for culturally diverse political, social, and religious emanations--can America overcome the risk that the global political awakening will turn against it."

The old brand of domestic tyranny--devastation of Constitutional liberties--will continue but citizen awareness and agitation will be blunted by creating a new domestic civilian army.

"Even civil rights came to be seen by some as an impediment to effective national security."

"Needed social reassessment . . . can be encouraged by deliberate civic education that stresses the notion of service to a higher cause than oneself. As some have occasionally urged, a major step in that direction would be the adoption of an obligatory period of national service for every young adult, perhaps involving a variety of congressionally approved domestic or foreign good works."

5. The old non-winnable conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan will be phased out, but since a primary cabal strategy is ongoing barbaric annihilation through warfare, new armed conflicts will be identified and planned.

The general locus for these new wars is what Brzezinski calls the new global balkans. The way Brzezinski describes the global balkans, it's clear there are enough potential hot-spots to satisfy any blood-thirsty barbarian.

"Extending from Egypt's Suez Canal to China's Xinjiang region, from northern Kazakhstan to the Arabian Sea, the Global Balkans of today mirror the traditional Balkans of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in that they are internally unstable and their geopolitical importance causes foreign rivalries. The contemporary Balkans circled above, inhabited by 500 million people, are burdened by internal instability derived from ethnic and religious tension, poverty, and authoritarian governments. Ethnic conflict within the Global Balkans involves 5.5 million Jewish Israelis and 5 million Arab Palestinians. 25 million Kurds and their partitioning states of Turkey, Iraq, and Syria; and between India and Pakistan in the dispute over Kashmir, as well as numerous potentially severe ethnic and minority conflicts in Iran and Pakistan. Religious conflicts involve the Muslims and the Hindus, Muslin Shiites versus Sunnis, and a variety of others."
The cabal must select a primary conflict for its most immediate attention, and the choice--surprise, surprise--is Brzezinski's old nemesis: Russia.

"A central and massively destructive strategic war, at this stage still feasible though unlikely between the United states and Russia and perhaps in twenty or so years between the United States and China, as well as between China and Russia."
The plan appears to be to surround Russia with missiles, said to be for defense against Iran, admitting all or most of the previous Soviet regions into NATO, and driving Russia into collaboration with China, Venezuela, and Iran.





There are many additional insights about new cabal strategies to be gleaned from these two books by Brzezinski; what we've reviewed are merely some of the most significant. I would recommend that anyone who wishes to understand what will be happening in America in the next four years read them carefully. 2


A Cabal By Any Other Name

For the truly discerning reader, Brzezinski's discussion of what he calls "an American hegemonic elite"--what I'm calling a demonic cabal--is very informative, not the least in the very fact that he acknowledges that there is a group of "imperial bureaucrats."
"Animated by a forceful concentration of knowledge, interests, power, and responsibility, the imperial bureaucrats view themselves as singularly equipped to determine America's conduct in a complicated and dangerous world. . . . A vast web of expertise, access to information and interests abroad is inherent in the exercise of political-military power. Its very scope creates a multifaceted community capable at any one point of marshaling a powerful combination of experience, facts, and persuasion on behalf of a preferred policy." 3

Will The Real Obama Sit Down


Obama the cabal puppet is already revealing his true character by appointing Israeli "hit man" Rahm Emmanuel as his Chief of Staff, offering the Secretary of State position to Hillary Clinton, 4 and betraying his supporters by allowing the traitorous Joe Lieberman to remain in the Democratic caucus, among many other outrages. Whatever you do, watch out for Obama the False Messiah and his church of False Hope for Fake Change.


Stay tuned to see how these new cabal strategies play out. You can bet the American worker is going to get the short end of the stick in every way possible. By discerning what their new diabolical strategies really are we are forewarned--and thus forearmed!






Notes:

1 The Reichstag Fire Syndrome occurs whenever a democracy is destroyed by creating a law-and-order crisis and offering as a "solution" the abdication of civil liberties and states' rights to a powerful but unaccountable central dictator. The men of wealth who put the tyrant into power are then able to reap obscene war profits.

2 I wouldn't suggest you buy the books--since that supports one of the worst creatures of the cabal--but the books will be available in your local public library.

3 Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Choicee, pp. 200, 201

4 Some persons believe that the selection of Emmanuel and Clinton to those posts effectively neutralizes two potentially troublesome people.

What Is NorthCom Up To? -- Signs of the Times News

What Is NorthCom Up To? -- Signs of the Times News: "http://www.sott.net/articles/show/169044-What-Is-NorthCom-Up-To-"





The Bush-Obama-McCain Administration
Morton Skorodin, M.D.*, Axis of Logic



Oct 31, 2008, 03:56





The period we're living in now is the Bush-Obama-McCain Administration.

Bush obligingly initiated Obama's bombing campaign on Pakistan. The three of them colluded on the recent wealth transfer (about $840 billion) from the American people to Wall St.

The 24 hr/7 days/wk media Wurlitzer distracts us from looking at these white elephants too closely. The circus is so loud and visually entraining that it hides the deeper structure of society. The U.S. is a military dictatorship with scientific public relations. Part of this scientific PR is the careful cultivation of and trumpeting of America’s democratic trappings. The important thing to remember is that McCain and Obama were carefully vetted by the moneyed rulers and this is not particularly a secret. It’s called "campaign contributions". After that, we the people get to choose from two approved candidates.

The fix is in. McCain's a patsy. Obama's repeatedly been anointed sovereign on the cover of Time (That's of Time-Warner, the media conglomerate he won't break up.)

There's no left to speak of in the US. There are material reasons for this- weak unions, few strikes. (The reasons why unions are weak are beyond the scope of this discussion.) So left-wing stars like Ralph Nader and Amy Goodman are tethered to nothing, like bloated Macy parade balloons that have floated up and become more bloated. So their efforts, however well-intentioned, don't have force behind them and are sometimes completely ineffective.

The Society of the Spectacle meets the neo-totalitarian total information awareness society. The state has technology for and has commandeered the resources to spy upon everyone with 16 or 18 "intelligence" agencies and control us as much as possible with the media of five corporations that are pretty well unified as to how and how much the populace is "informed". On the other hand, the populace is atomized (deprived of meaningful ties to others); the only major non corporate-government institutions are the cooptable churches.

The handsome prince and his foil, the wicked, but comely, queen. They're comic book superheroes- perfect for TV, the key instrument of oppression and ignorance. (Notice the immense effort to make sure everybody has digital TV by next Feb. I wish they cared that much to give water to our brethren in New Orleans.)

Barack Obama and Sarah Palin are too good to be true:

Barack Obama- that name is foreign beyond foreign, mother a hippy who had a black's child, an actual African (gasp). This sounds as scary to many whites as the orchestrated excesses of the police state such as the Daarth Vader outfitted police with their North Korea style truncheons at the Republican convention seem to anxious liberals and righteous activists.

Sarah Palin - superhero mom, she'll serve milk and cookies for you while on the way to running and ruining the world. She’s not regular pro-gun, church, etc. She is the cartoon version- actually shoots wolves from helicopters; associates with, to put it a little too politely, "white nationalists".

This dichotomy serves only the rulers. What the vast majority on both sides need are exactly the same things: peace, economic relief, and freedom from the intrusive state.

Divide and conquer. The rulers have been promoting race war as a counter to class struggle since the 1600s. They are very good at it.

After the election the economy may get still worse and there will be further military adventures. As things unravel the game will be: blame the Black guy. This process has already started.

As far as U.S. military planners go, the election cycle and the public’s feelings are only a factor in determining the timing and announcement of aggressive actions, kind of like taking into account the weather for an optimal time for the Normandy landing in WW2.

It’s a military dictatorship with Handsome Presidents. The election is a joke, but more importantly, a waste of the people’s time (except, perhaps some local races). Get over it. Think and find effective ways to rebel.



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Morton Skorodin, M.D. submitted this article to Axis of Logic for republication. He is a columnist on My Town, the original source for this essay.