Welcome to Wall $treet

In the U.S., the average individual wage earner makes around $34K.  

On Wall $treet, the average income was recently reported as $362K. They're well paid and immune to prosecution, apparently.  Too big to jail, as has been said in halfhearted protest.

Until the world's financial marketplace is perhaps disassembled and rebuilt from scratch, we are faced with a well-equipped battle force with an impressive record of conquest, plundering, and indirect deaths now exceeding millions.

The suggestion to 'enter at your own risk' is sarcasm, of course; you can't get far enough away to be safe.

There's currently no place on earth that is safe from their reach.  Estimated deaths in sub-Saharan Africa range from 1.1 to 2.4 million from the world marketplace crash in '08/'09.  They're no longer with us, and Wall $treet has faced not one conviction, not one prosecution, not one admission of wrongdoing.  

If such things cause you concern, write your congressman before moving on.  Or drop a note to the White House at http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact

Truth Ver.0.6

What if you were being told a version of the truth?
    Just the part someone wanted you to know...

Michel Foucault

“Reality” is created by those who have power. One of postmodernism's key theorist Michel Foucault argues that whoever dominates or controls the “official” use of language in a society holds the key to social and political power.

Like when the Soviet Union was the ‘red menace’ or the ‘evil empire’; that’s what our leadership told us about it. The CCCP actually was all those things, of course; at least at the leadership level it was. Interestingly, their citizens were told similar things about us. Those were similarly true. The power play and posturing of nations was in the hands of the few.

The citizens of the Soviet Union were just people, though. Just like us, we discovered after the wall came down; just exactly like us in hopes for peace and prosperity and in desires for their children’s future. They and we were fed the lies of power players; it’s called propaganda. It works; both we and they were fed the fodder that keeps sheep happy and cooperative, and we ate it.  We did so without the proverbial 'grain of salt' that suggests we inquire a bit before blindly accepting.

In the 60’s, I remember an emerging alternative. It was volatile, radical, fractured, and demanding. The response of my government was violent and intolerant. It denied the claims made against it, that the war in Vietnam was immoral and based on lies, that the military/industrial interests were driving the nation down the wrong path. It took fifty years to put to rest that in basic substance, the radicals were correct. We were lied to in extraordinary depth and breadth. Our nation had become un-American.

We found that the Chinese were building nuclear weapons, perhaps 400, in order to take over the world; lies. America had at the time more than 10,000 and was improving their targeting precision; the Chinese were nervous, understandably.

Colin Powell holding a model vial
of anthrax while giving a presentation
to the United Nations Security Council

Down the road, we found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; false, it later turned out. Our intelligence organization found massed troops on the Saudi border; also false.  Not mistakes, but selected reasons justifying a war already in the plan.  We traced chemical weapons; also false.

Radical, militant Islam isn't universal. Some of what we see is a response to a perceived American sponsored reshaping of the world. We've attacked them, or so it appears to them.  And we've not attempted to correct their thinking.  After all, they're irrational fanatics that cannot be intelligent or diplomatic; more misrepresentation.

Congressional studies over the last twenty years have been published; they show that America is distrusted around the world now. Folks are nervous about the nice folks that used to be their friends, and who now look like they are in fact conquering the world. The world admires our historic principles and uniformly distrusts our behavior. From their viewpoint, we do not live by the principles we advertise. Truth, justice, freedom, and democracy, all are in question if judged by our behavior outside our own borders; and inside too, sometimes.

President George W. Bush addresses the
nation from the Oval Office, March 19,
2003, to announce the beginning of
Operation Iraqi Freedom, "The people of
the United States and our friends and allies
will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime
that threatens the peace with weapons of
mass murder." The Senate committee found
that many of the administration's pre-war 

statements about Iraqi WMD were not
supported by the underlying intelligence.
(understatement, understandable but troubling)

In recent decades, regulatory changes gave us imaginary money and derivatives as a means to generate wealth apart from the legitimate marketplace. Things to buy and sell that extract monetary value from the legitimate marketplace. These aren't investments in food or machines or services; they're just bets on which way the wind will blow. Imaginary stuff and not connected to the real world.  That imaginary money, pumped from the legitimate marketplace, exceeds the GDP of the world several times over.  That means ...

Most of the money in the world is not tied to value any more; it used to be, but now it's tied directly to derivatives; that is most of the money in the world.  (Derivatives were gambling in the U.S. until Wall Street persuaded the government to change the law.)

Most financial transactions (15 times world GDP) are just foreign currency exchanges.  Use dollars to buy francs or whatever.  The financial industries spend little time on goods and services and most of their time on extracting wealth from the marketplace where the rest of us live.

Your money used to represent value.  X dollars = an ounce of silver.  Or more X dollars = and ounce of gold.  It crossed over to mean a bag of potatoes = nn dollars = a day's work = a ticket to Birmingham = a small bag of processed corn meal.  Goods and services; things of value.  Now it's also a wager; worth millions or nothing; all imaginary and completely disconnected from 99% of the people in the world.  Well, actually, it's a drain-line connected directly to their artery, pumping life blood.  Out.

So what have we done to the world? We had the chance to be community participants, to work together for good. Have we done well?  Are we well received?  Or is the world approaching the occupy/tipover point where such thinking is deadly.

We've been here before, of course; a tipover point, I mean.  There's still time to pick your side.

Speaking of choosing a side ...

"You're probably right, a man should have an opinion ... but those mountains have been there for 600 million years.  Long after we're gone, they'll still be right there.  Talking about who owns them is like two fleas arguing over which one owns the dog."  ~ Crocodile Dundee

The Uberwelt War Machine

America is at war, it appears, and against its own citizens in some cases; at least the unimportant ones.

Wars between nations are generally over territory and resources. Driven from the top, war focuses on some power or wealth at the expense of others. Individuals become progressively less valuable, more expendable and insignificant as you move down the chain of command. They matter less. 

Interestingly, we find that same wealth and power are the focus on Wall Street and in the international markets.  Lacking the freedom of former despots to invade a region and kill the residents, financiers create new ways to extract wealth and resources from others.  Others who matter less.

Wall Street and the EU spent two decades leading to the crash of '07/08.  Too big to fail, they were rewarded by governments at the expense of citizenry.  At the periphery, millions died.

“Globalization is the result of powerful governments, especially that of the United States, pushing trade deals and other accords down the throats of the world’s people to make it easier for corporations and the wealthy to dominate the economies of nations around the world without having obligations to the peoples of those nations.” — Noam Chomsky 

Thomas Jefferson said in 1802:
"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency ..."

Wall Street and the international financial community, whom government serves unfailingly, have created an uberwelt, an over-world of imaginary wealth and imaginary plays.  It has virtually nothing in common with the real world, the source from which it extracts wealth.  For the moment, the financiers and their political playmates have the upper hand.  The gap between the wealthy and everyone else is widening as it has for decades, now at an impressively accelerating pace.  The inherent instability in such a structure is becoming clear as is the greed and arrogance of those who would facilitate their dream of luxury by burdening the poor to do so.

In 1988, then-Fed chairman Alan Greenspan stated, "What many critics of equity derivatives fail to realize is that the markets for these instruments have become so large not because of slick sales campaigns, but because they are providing economic value to their users."  But not everyone had a good feeling about this financial instrument. In his 2002 Berkshire Hathaway letter to shareholders, company chairman and CEO Warren Buffett expressed his concern with derivatives, referring to them as "weapons of mass destruction."  He wasn't worried enough.  The 'Great Recession' followed.

Didn't the banks pay back the bailout funds with interest?!  Spokespersons for government and industry point to the payback as justification, somehow, for their irresponsible behavior that caused the death of so many. 

• The middle-class lost a percentage of what they had; it will be another decade before they've reached the break-even point; did the payback cover that?  It's only the middle-class; they matter less.
• The poor lost ground and the safety net is strained beyond capacity; did the payback cover that?  It's just those poor; they matter less.
  
• Elsewhere in the world, the price of corn doubled as a result of government mandates for ethanol and Wall Street's misbehavior; five years later, it has yet to recover.  Did the payback cover that?  Oh, never mind; they died; by the hundreds of thousands up and down the east coast of Africa, they starved.  But it's OK, they matter less.  At least to Wall Street and their government playmates, they don't matter at all. (do not follow the link without parental permission)

What goes around comes around, sadly.  If you plant, you harvest.  We needn't concern ourselves with providing the punishment that the greedy deserve; absent a radical change of heart, they've already bought it.

  

Of great concern though is the suffering caused among the less fortunate in our own country and around the world.
  

Feel free to shift sails and join in.  It's a different world than it was just a few years ago.

Some things matter more

( this is NC-17 material )  

Dr. Paul Farmer said it best, perhaps. "The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world."



He's devoted himself to those in need; it's folks in Haiti recently.  Called 'the man who would cure the world' in literature, he's an impressive fellow.  He points to a root; specifically, the idea that some lives matter less.

Things have gotten a bit disjointed in my lifetime.  Murder isn't murder if the child you're killing is still in the womb.  D&C, D&E, chemical poisoning; with D&X, the baby can be completely outside the womb except for the head which you can then crush.  It's not murder if you do it that way.

"Because the cranium represents the largest and least compressible structure, it often requires decompression…  Decompression can be accomplished with forceps or by making an incision at he base of the skull through which the intracranial contents are suctioned. If the fetus is in cephalic presentation (head first) with the calvarium well-applied to the cervix, the surgeon can pierce the calvarium with a sharp instrument and collapse it externally."  It's restricted by law now, but if you do it, you get fined, not charged with murder.  To circumvent the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban, the NAF advises abortionists to kill the baby by injection prior to performing a D&X procedure.   Their lives matter less, of course.

This same bizarre and irrational thinking extends throughout western culture.  My preferences, my wealth, my success are in competition with the lives of others... but they matter less.  

This kind of thinking extends through Congress to Wall Street where making money supersedes due diligence regarding the impact of actions on the world.  We watched dumbstruck in 2007/8 while Wall Street and their international partners committed theft on a global scale and conscienceless murder.  Tens of thousands died.  Some lives matter less.

“Globalization is the result of powerful governments, especially that of the United States, pushing trade deals and other accords down the throats of the world’s people to make it easier for corporations and the wealthy to dominate the economies of nations around the world without having obligations to the peoples of those nations.” - Noam Chomsky

Our nation did perhaps have a noble birth.  Prospects now are for an ignoble end as America joins the ranks of those who forgot whom they serve and why.

It's hard enough for regular folks.  The poor and disenfranchised have no voice in the matter at all, and their circumstances ensure they suffer and die quietly on the outskirts of world awareness.  Shall we leave the discussion quietly and resign ourselves to the emerging status quo?

Not a chance.  Not even a sliver of a chance.  


Issues:
Inequality
Discrimination
Oppression
Segregation
Access 
  Education
  Healthcare
  Employment
  Advancement
Fair treatment
Fair wages
Fair representation
Prejudice
  Hatred
  Injustice
  Marginalization
  Disenfranchisement
Religious extremism
Opportunity denied
Selfishness
  Greed
  Malice
          and
Willingness to do harm to another

We've got some difficult years ahead.  How might we provoke the needed change?



Update July 2016: the fact that someone finds it necessary to say, "black lives matter," suggests the roots are deep, permeating more of our culture than we'd thought.

The Path of the White Rose

Just five years before I was born, a group of university students and their professor launched a small campaign against government policy. They were non-violent, thoughtful, and concerned by the direction government had taken. Conscience required that they take a stand, and they did.

The group was named 'the White Rose'.  They published and covertly distributed around 15,000 pamphlets illuminating the government's policies of oppression and abuse.  They called for citizens to join them and resist what they saw as morally wrong in government.  They even painted anti-government graffiti on government buildings in the capital city.

They continued for just eight months. Three student leaders were captured, tried and sentenced to death by the Nazi People's Court, and executed by guillotine. They were brave to the end. Hans Scholl shouted "Es lebe die Freiheit! (long live freedom!)," as the blade fell.  Other members were captured, tried, and sent to concentration camps or executed.  It was the Spring of 1943.

The White Rose came to represent opposition to tyranny in the German culture, and after the war, members were lauded for acting without interest in personal gain.

Lilo Furst-Ramdohr at 99 years old is a White Rose survivor. She says the student group just could not understand how people had been so easily led into supporting the Nazi Party and its ideology. "They must have been able to tell how bad things were, it was ridiculous."

We're reminded how easily folks were led astray, and how easily they are led astray today.  Rolling along en masse, we line up to be containers of some political ideology, however ambiguous and impractical.

It's perhaps unthinkable to most, when given a choice between two candidates, that perhaps neither is actually acceptable, nor is either party.  And we're reminded also of those who pay the price.

Is there a better way?  Might we venture some distance down the path of the White Rose?

_______________________________________________________

The sixth and final leaflet produced by the White Rose was smuggled out of the country and scattered over Germany by Allied planes.

"The day of reckoning has come, the reckoning of German youth with the most repellent tyranny our nation has ever seen...  The German name will be dishonoured forever if German youth does not rise up, ....  Students! The German nation looks to us!"

Today, every German knows the story of The White Rose. A square at the University of Munich is named after Hans and Sophie Scholl. And there are streets, squares, and schools all over Germany named for the members of The White Rose. 

Perhaps our grown children will similarly say of us, "They must have been able to tell how bad things were, it was ridiculous."
_________________________________________________________________

The World War II death toll was 60+ million.
The child death toll is 600+ million since WWII and all from preventable causes. That's just the children under age 5, and the death of each child was a great loss.  While the overall death rate continues to decline, low income countries still have a child death rate 30x higher than those with high income.

While there are many difficult problems associated with poverty, it's worth remembering that poverty from generation to generation is not chosen by the victims, it is chosen by policy makers and imposed by rules of trade and finance.  Persistent poverty is imposed.

Perhaps our grown children will similarly say of us, "They must have been able to tell how bad things were, it was ridiculous."

In the U.S. today, 20%+ of our children live in poverty. We're the wealthiest country in the world, but the inequality GAP has been growing wider for decades. Our version of capitalism has become more aggressive and destructive, and the impact touches every country in the world. Our government supports big business and the wealthy at the expense of all others.

Wall Street gave us the Great Recession and went home with their multimillion dollar bonuses. In sub-Saharan Africa, the number of hungry people rose by 1 million a year in 2000-05 but by more than 6 million a year between 2007-09 and 2010-12.  

Starvation is perhaps as harsh a death as might be imagined.  For a child, it is a horrifying cruelty.

The world produces enough food to feed everyone. 

World food availability has risen from about 2220 to 2790 kcal/person/day since the '60's. 

Poverty is the principal cause of hunger and starvation, of course. 
The causes of poverty include lack of personal resources, an unequal income distribution, crisis and conflict, and predatory economics. The World Bank estimates there are 896 million poor people in developing countries who live on $1.90 a day or less.

See the UN report.
See the factors.

Update - Summer 2019:  Our government continues down the road of big business, of corporate influence, and of economic policies that have proven detrimental. Our political culture is more divided than at any time since the Civil War.  The world of common folks is progressively more difficult, and as a nation, we're sometimes making matters worse.  And children remain in poverty, ours and others.

Perhaps our grown children will similarly say of us, "They must have been able to tell how bad things were, it was ridiculous."

I protest (understatement of the century), and fortunately, I'm not likely to be arrested for doing so.  That's one small step forward.

What you see

What you see is what you are.     ??

That is NOT what we want to hear.  If it's true, it's a problem.


It means we have to decide what we're going to watch... or not watch... and what we're going to let our kids watch... and what kind of video games ...  nuts.

Can't I watch violent stuff without becoming violent?  Of course I can.

But does it shape my thinking in any way?  Of course it does.

Observational learning is the addition to thought processes by what we see portrayed.  Kids do it.  Teens do it.  Adults do it.  Old folks do it too.  It's not a new idea, but perhaps newly acknowledged in some respects.   Patterns and contexts we see are added to our thinking, to our view of things.

So now comes the problem of free speech and free press.  With our newscasts, we sensationalize the worst in human behavior.  Destructive behavior becomes a world-wide story; perhaps the mentally fractured fellow that shot up a school.  Did you know that the Sandy Hook shooter was attempting to surpass the Norwegian mass killer's body count?

News is portrayed for revenue, not for objectivity or for benefit to the citizenry.  News agencies compete for viewers, and revenue decides which stories are told and how they are portrayed.  Is there a threshold beyond which harm is likely?  Of course.

On television this season, an example
of perhaps what might be considered
beyond a reasonable threshold.
Should we put this in our own
or our children's minds?  Is
there risk in doing so?

Ratings protect children to some degree, and they imply that adults are immune or can choose wisely.  Neither is true, as we all know from personal experience.

So we sensationalize the violence in our world.  We tell the detailed stories of deviant and violent behavior; then others latch on and consider what it might be like.  To kill innocent people.  Because we popularize it with our news.  And our video games.  And our television drama.  Like 'The Following', a new series this season about a serial killer who builds a network of serial killers.  It's a popular show, but the question of what such portrayals feed into our society remains unexamined.

We've recognized that some violent behaviors are at least in part a result of mental dysfunction.  We've also recognized that they wouldn't have thought of it unless the behavioral type were in some manner illustrated for them.

It's an ancient idea; some things should not be publicly detailed.  For every reasonable crowd who listens and is informed, there's a taint left behind in each individual.  You're aware of it sometimes when at the end of a show, you feel soiled somehow.  Some will watch and perhaps be inspired, even titillated by the story.  How do you balance that one?

On a list of things that perhaps shouldn't be publicly detailed /fictionalized /sensationalized:

Xxxxxxxxxxx
Xxxx and xxx
Xxxxxx xxxxxxx

Know what I mean?

Oh, and xxxxxx on the internet, perhaps as well.

“Where the mind goes, the man follows.
For as he thinks in his heart, so is he”

Noel Jones, in “The Battle for the Mind” states that, "Once a man accepts the world’s thoughts and puts them into practice, it becomes the character and core of who he is.  He is giving someone else control of his mind and destiny.  Adopting the mannerisms of the crowd, he is no longer an original, but a copy.  You are not in control of your own mind, you are being controlled -- according to the definition of conformed -- by something or someone else.  That means you are living a masquerade; you have picked up and copied the world’s mannerisms, speech, expressions, and style.  Those have become embedded in your mind; you are conformed to the world’s behaviors and standards."

We begin to understand why Paul would suggest we should focus 'on things above...'.  It's practical advice which he explains at length. With the religion removed, it makes sense. You are what you see, what you focus on, what you give your attention to.