WHY PRIVATE RESERVE BANKING IS A BAD IDEA!

Prognosis 2012: Towards a New World Social Order

Historical background – the establishment of capitalist supremacy

When the Industrial Revolution began in Britain, in the late 1700s, there was lots of money to be made by investing in factories and mills, by opening up new markets, and by gaining control of sources of raw materials. The folks who had the most money to invest, however, were not so much in Britain but more in Holland. Holland was the leading Western power in the 1600s, and its bankers were the leading capitalists. In pursuit of profit, Dutch capital flowed to the British stock market, and thus the Dutch funded the rise of Britain, who subsequently eclipsed Holland both economically and geopolitically.

In this way British industrialism came to be dominated by wealthy investors, and capitalism became the dominant economic system. This led to a major social transformation. Britain had been essentially an aristocratic society, dominated by landholding families. As capitalism became dominant economically, capitalists became dominant politically. Tax structures and import-export policies were gradually changed to favor investors over landowners.

It was no longer economically viable to simply maintain an estate in the countryside: one needed to develop it, turn it to more productive use. Victorian dramas are filled with stories of aristocratic families who fall on hard times, and are forced to sell off their properties. For dramatic purposes, this decline is typically attributed to a failure in some character, a weak eldest son perhaps. But in fact the decline of aristocracy was part of a larger social transformation brought on by the rise of capitalism.

The business of the capitalist is the management of capital, and this management is generally handled through the mediation of banks and brokerage houses. It should not be surprising that investment bankers came to occupy the top of the hierarchy of capitalist wealth and power. And in fact, there are a handful of banking families, including the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers, who have come to dominate economic and political affairs in the Western world.

Unlike aristocrats, capitalists are not tied to a place, or to the maintenance of a place. Capital is disloyal and mobile – it flows to where the most growth can be found, as it flowed from Holland to Britain, then from Britain to the USA, and most recently from everywhere to China. Just as a copper mine might be exploited and then abandoned, so under capitalism a whole nation can be exploited and then abandoned, as we see in the rusting industrial areas of America and Britain.

This detachment from place leads to a different kind of geopolitics under capitalism, as compared to aristocracy. A king goes to war when he sees an advantage to his nation in doing so. Historians can 'explain' the wars of pre-capitalist days, in terms of the aggrandizement of monarchs and nations.

A capitalist stirs up a war in order to make profits, and in fact our elite banking families have financed both sides of most military conflicts since at least World War 1. Hence historians have a hard time 'explaining' World War 1 in terms of national motivations and objectives.

In pre-capitalist days warfare was like chess, each side trying to win. Under capitalism warfare is more like a casino, where the players battle it out as long as they can get credit for more chips, and the real winner always turns out to be the house – the bankers who finance the war and decide who will be the last man standing. Not only are wars the most profitable of all capitalist ventures, but by choosing the winners, and managing the reconstruction, the elite banking families are able, over time, to tune the geopolitical configuration to suit their own interests.

Nations and populations are but pawns in their games. Millions die in wars, infrastructures are destroyed, and while the world mourns, the bankers are counting their winnings and making plans for their postwar reconstruction investments.

From their position of power, as the financiers of governments, the banking elite have over time perfected their methods of control. Staying always behind the scenes, they pull the strings controlling the media, the political parties, the intelligence agencies, the stock markets, and the offices of government. And perhaps their greatest lever of power is their control over currencies. By means of their central-bank scam, they engineer boom and bust cycles, and they print money from nothing and then loan it at interest to governments. The power of the banking elites is both absolute and subtle...

"Some of the biggest men in the United

States are afraid of something. They

know there is a power somewhere, so

organised, so subtle, so watchful, so

interlocked, so complete, so pervasive

that they had better not speak above

their breath when they speak in

condemnation of it."

-- President Woodrow Wilson

The end of growth – capitalists vs. capitalism

It was always inevitable, on a finite planet, that there would be a limit to economic growth. Industrialization has enabled us to rush headlong toward that limit over the past two centuries. Production has become ever more efficient, markets have become ever more global, and finally we have reached the point where the paradigm of perpetual growth can no longer be maintained.

Indeed, that point was actually reached by about 1970. Since then capital has not so much sought growth through increased production, but rather by extracting greater returns from relatively flat production levels. Hence globalization, which moved production to low-waged areas, providing greater profit margins. Hence privatization, which transfers revenue streams to investors that formerly went to national treasuries. Hence derivative and currency markets, which create the electronic illusion of economic growth, without actually producing anything in the real world.

If one studies the collapse of civilizations, one learns that failure-to-adapt is fatal. Continuing on the path of pursuing growth would be such a failure to adapt. And if one reads the financial pages these days, one finds that it is full of doomsayers. We read that the Eurozone is doomed, and Greece is just the first casualty. We read that stimulus packages are not working, unemployment is increasing, the dollar is in deep trouble, growth continues to stagnate, business real estate will be the next bubble to burst, etc. It is easy to get the impression that capitalism is failing to adapt, and that our societies are in danger of collapsing into chaos.

Such an impression would be partly right and partly wrong. In order to understand the real situation we need to make a clear distinction between the capitalist elite and capitalism itself. Capitalism is an economic system driven by growth; the capitalist elite are the folks who have managed to gain control of the Western world while capitalism has operated over the past two centuries. The capitalist system is past its sell-by date, the banking elite are well aware of that fact – and they are adapting.

Capitalism is a vehicle that helped bring the bankers to absolute power, but they have no more loyalty to that system than they have to place, or to anything or anyone else. As mentioned earlier, they think on a global scale, with nations and populations as pawns. They define what money is and they issue it, just like the banker in a game of Monopoly. They can also make up a new game with a new kind of money. They have long outgrown any need to rely on any particular economic system in order to maintain their power. Capitalism was handy in an era of rapid growth. For an era of non-growth, a different game is being prepared.

Thus, capitalism has not been allowed to die a natural death. First it was put on a life-support system, as mentioned above, with globalization, privatization, derivative markets, etc. Then it was injected with a euthanasia death-drug, in the form of toxic derivatives. And when the planned collapse occurred, rather than industrial capitalism being bailed out, the elite bankers were bailed out. It's not that the banks were too big to fail, rather the bankers were too politically powerful to fail. They made governments an offer they couldn't refuse.

The outcome of the trillion-dollar bailouts was easily predictable, although you wouldn't know that from reading the financial pages. National budgets were already stretched, and they certainly did not have reserves available to service the bailouts. Thus the bailouts amounted to nothing more than the taking on of immense new debts by governments. In order to fulfill the bailout commitments, the money would need to be borrowed from the same financial institutions that were being bailed out.

With the bailouts, Western governments delivered their nations in hock to the bankers. The governments are now in perpetual debt bondage to the bankers. Rather than the banks going into receivership, governments are now in receivership. Obama's cabinet and advisors are nearly all from Wall Street; they are in the White House so they can keep close watch over their new acquisition, the once sovereign USA. Perhaps they will soon be presiding over its liquidation.

The bankers are now in control of national budgets. They say what can be funded and what can't. When it comes to financing their wars and weapons production, no limits are set. When it comes to public services, then we are told deficits must be held in check. The situation was expressed very well by Brian Cowan, Ireland's government chief. In the very same week that Ireland pledged 200 billion Euro to bailout the banks, he was being asked why he was cutting a few million Euro off of critical service budgets. He replied, "I'm sorry, but the funds just aren't there". Of course they're not there! The treasury was given away. The cupboard is bare.

As we might expect, the highest priority for budgets is servicing the debt to the banks. Just as most of the third world is in debt slavery to the IMF, so the whole West is now in debt slavery to its own central banks. Greece is the harbinger of what is to happen everywhere.

The carbon economy – controlling consumption

In a non-growth economy, the mechanisms of production will become relatively static. Instead of corporations competing to innovate, we'll have production bureaucracies. They'll be semi-state, semi-private bureaucracies, concerned about budgets and quotas rather than growth, somewhat along the lines of the Soviet model. Such an environment is not driven by a need for growth capital, and it does not enable a profitable game of Monopoly.

We can already see steps being taken to shift the corporate model towards the bureaucratic model, through increased government intervention in economic affairs. With the Wall Street bailouts, the forced restructuring of General Motors, the call for centralized micromanagement of banking and industry, and the mandating of health insurance coverage, the government is saying that the market is to superseded by government directives. Not that we should bemoan the demise of exploitive capitalism, but before celebrating we need to understand what it is being replaced with.

In an era of capitalism and growth, the focus of the game has been on the production side of the economy. The game was aimed at controlling the means of growth: access to capital. The growth-engine of capitalism created the demand for capital; the bankers controlled the supply. Taxes were mostly based on income, again related to the production side of the economy.

In an era of non-growth, the focus of the game will be on the consumption side of the economy. The game will be aimed at controlling the necessities of life: access to food and energy. Population creates the demand for the necessities of life; the bankers intend to control the supply. Taxes will be mostly based on consumption, particularly of energy. That's what the global warming scare is all about, with its carbon taxes and carbon credits.

Already in Britain there is talk of carbon quotas, like gasoline rationing in wartime. It's not just that you'll pay taxes on energy, but the amount of energy you can consume will be determined by government directive. Carbon credits will be issued to you, which you can use for driving, for heating, or on rare occasions for air travel. Also in Britain, the highways are being wired so that they can track how many miles you drive, tax you accordingly, and penalize you if you travel over your limit. We can expect these kinds of things to spread throughout the West, as it's the same international bankers who are in charge everywhere.

In terms of propaganda, this control over consumption is being sold as a solution to global warming and peak oil. The propaganda campaign has been very successful, and the whole environmental movement has been captured by it. In Copenhagen, demonstrators confronted the police, carrying signs in support of carbon taxes and carbon credits. But in fact the carbon regime has nothing to do with climate or with sustainability. It is all about micromanaging every aspect of our lives, as well as every aspect of the economy.

If the folks who are running things actually cared about sustainability, they'd be investing in efficient mass transit, and they'd be shifting agriculture from petroleum-intensive, water-intensive methods to sustainable methods. Instead they are mandating biofuels and selling us electric cars, which are no more sustainable or carbon-efficient than standard cars. Indeed, the real purpose behind biofuels is genocide. With food prices linked to energy prices, and agriculture land being converted from food production to fuel production, the result can only be a massive increase in third-world starvation. Depopulation has long been a stated goal in elite circles, and the Rockefeller dynasty has frequently been involved in eugenics projects of various kinds.

'The War on Terrorism' – preparing the way for the transition

The so-called War on Terrorism has two parts. The first part is a pretext for arbitrary abuse of citizen's rights, whenever Homeland Security claims the action is necessary for security reasons. The second part is a pretext for US military aggression anywhere in the world, whenever the White House claims that Al Qaeda is active there.

I emphasized the word 'claims' above, because the terrorism pretext is being used to justify arbitrary powers, both domestically and globally. No hard evidence need be presented to Congress, the UN, or anyone else, before some nation is invaded, someone is kidnapped and tortured as a 'terrorist suspect', or some new invasive security measure is implemented. When powers are arbitrary, then we are no longer living under the rule of law, neither domestically nor internationally. We are living under the rule of men, as you would expect in a dictatorship, or in an old-fashioned kingdom or empire.

Part 1: Preparing the way for a new social order

In a very real sense, the terrorism pretext is being used to undo everything that The Enlightenment and the republication revolutions achieved two centuries ago. The very heart of the Bill of Rights – due process – has been abandoned. The gulag, the concentration camp, and the secret arrest in the night – these we have always associated with fascist and communist dictatorships – and now they are not only functioning under US jurisdiction, but being justified publicly by the President himself.

Is there really a terrorist threat to the homeland, and would these measures be a sensible response to such a threat? People sre strongly divided in their answers to these questions. Quite a bit of hard forensic evidence has come to light, including links to intelligence agencies, and my own view is that most of the dramatic 'terrorist' events in the US, UK, and Europe have been covert false-flag operations.

From an historical perspective this would not be at all surprising. Such operations have been standard practice – modus operandi – in many nations, though we usually don't get proof until years later. For example, every war the US has been involved in has had its own phony Gulf of Tonkin Incident, or its Weapons of Mass Destruction scam, in one form or another. It's a formula that works. Instant mobilization of public opinion, prompt passage without debate of enabling resolutions and legislation. Why would the War on Terrorism be any different?

As regards motive: while Muslims have only suffered as a result of these dramatic events, our elite bankers have been able to create a police-state infrastructure that can be used to deal with any foreseeable popular resistance or civic chaos that might emerge as they prepare the way for their post-capitalist future.

With the collapse, the bailouts, and the total failure to pursue any kind of effective recovery strategy, the signals are very clear: the system will be allowed to collapse totally, thus clearing the ground for a pre-architected 'solution'. Ground Zero can be seen as a metaphor, with the capitalist economy as the Twin Towers. And the toxic derivatives illustrate the fact that the collapse is actually a controlled demolition.

It seems to me inevitable, given the many signals, that martial law will be part of the transition process, allegedly to deal with the problems of economic collapse. Perhaps a collapse in the food-supply chain, due to a collapse in the energy-supply chain. The US emergency responses in New Orleans and again in Haiti give us more signals, actual test trials, of what kind of 'emergency response' we can expect.

First and foremost comes the security of the occupation forces. Those suffering in the emergency are treated more like insurgents than victims in need of help. In the case of Haiti, the US response can only be described as an intentional genocide project. When people are pinned under rubble in an earthquake, the first 48 hours, and 72 hours, are absolutely critical points, as regards survival rates. When the US military systematically blocked incoming aid for those critical hours, turning back doctors and emergency teams, they sealed the fate of many thousands who could have been saved.

One can imagine many nightmare scenarios, given these various signals, these ominous signs. World Wars 1 and 2 were nightmares that really happened, with millions dying, and these same banking dynasties orchestrated those scenarios and then covered their tracks. We must also keep in mind the Shock Doctrine, where catastrophe is seen as opportunity – when 'things can be done that otherwise could not be accomplished'. We are still being impacted by the shock waves that were sent out on 9/11, and again when the financial system collapsed. And the the really big shock, the general collapse of society, is yet to come. The ultimate version of the Shock Doctrine: 'If the collapse is total, we can accomplish any damned thing we want to accomplish'.

I won't venture a guess about how this transition process will play out, but I do expect that it will be a nightmare of one description or another. Already the growing homeless population is suffering a nightmare, by any civilized standards. One day you're living in a home whose value is going up, commuting to a good job, and the next thing you know your family is out on the streets. That's a nightmare. The transition time will be a difficult time, but it will be a transition, it will be temporary, like a war. And like a war, it will enable social and economic reconstruction in the aftermath.

Consider how Japan and Germany were socially and politically transformed by the postwar reconstruction process. Those were exercises in social engineering, as were the preceding transformations under Mussolini and Hitler. Although the outcomes were quite different, in each case a total collapse / defeat was the preamble to reconstruction. A total collapse of the capitalist economy is simply the application of a proven formula. The second part of the formula will be some new social order, or perhaps some old social order, or some mixture. Something appropriate to a non-growth, command economy.

That's part 1 of the War on Terrorism: it has enabled the creation of the police-state infrastructures required to to deal with the collapse of society, and to provide security for the reconstruction process.

Part 2: Preparing the way for global domination

Part 2 of the War on Terrorism is about the geopolitical dimensions of a non-growth-based global economy. Earlier I suggested that geopolitics was different under capitalism, than it was under sovereign monarchs. The whole dynamic was different, and outcomes were weighed on a different scale. Similarly, many things will change in a shift from chaotic, growth-oriented capitalism, to a centralized, micromanaged, economic regime.

Consider, for example, the significance of control over oil reserves. In a growth economy, profits were the prize, and controlling the markets and the distribution channels amounted to holding a winning hand in the game. The local dictators could manage things as they pleased, and take their cut of oil revenues, as long as they honored their contracts with the oil majors, who were happy to sell to the highest bidders.

In a non-growth economy, where the focus is on direct control over the supply and distributions of resources, it becomes necessary to secure, in the military sense, the sources of petroleum, and the routes for its distribution. It is no longer sufficient to merely profit from unbridled operations. Securing of the sources, and directly allocating the distribution, is the foundation for micromanaging the non-growth economy. This applies to other critical resources as well, such as uranium, and the rare minerals needed by the 'defense' and electronics industries.

In fact we are in the midst of a resource-grab war, with China and Russia making long-term energy deals with Iran and Venezuela, China buying up agricultural land in Africa, Washington making long-term deals for Brazilian biofuels, and there are many other examples. In many ways imperialism is reverting to colonial days, when direct administration was the model, rather than the capitalist model: profiting from corporate investments under dictators who suppress their populations.

There is a natural reversion to the dynamics of the 'good old days of empire' when the Great Powers of Europe focused their economic activity within their individual spheres of influence. Everyone knows that global resource limits are being reached, partly from population pressures, and partly from resource-exploitation practices. For this reason alone, we have the peaceful part of the resource-grab war.

In Iraq, Afghanistan, and now in Pakistan and Yemen, the US, with NATO support, is playing a very non-peaceful hand in the resource-grab game. It's the hand of a bully, 'I have the biggest gun, so I'll take what I want'. These aggressive actions are very provocative to Russia and China, and threatening to their vital economic interests. An attack on Iran would be more than a provocation, it would be a direct slap in the face, a challenge: 'Fight now or resign yourself to being subdued piecemeal'.

In addition to all this petroleum grabbing, the US has been surrounding Russia and China with military bases, and has recently accelerated the installations of anti-missile systems on their borders, over the strong objections of Russia and China. The US is being intentionally provocative, and it is threatening vital interests of these potential adversaries.

Alliances are being formed in response, on a bilateral basis, and in the form of the SCO. China and Russia are very close in their military cooperation, and technology sharing. Their strategic planning is based on the expectation of a US attack, and their strategic response is based on the principle of asymmetric warfare. For example, a million dollar missile capable of taking out a multi-billion dollar aircraft carrier. Or perhaps a handful of missiles capable of disabling the Pentagon's command-and-control satellite systems.

Meanwhile the US is spending astronomical sums developing a first-strike capability, with space-based weapons systems, control-of-theater capability, forward-based 'tactical' nukes, etc. The new anti-missile systems are an important part of a first-strike strategy, reducing the ability of Russia or China to retaliate. These systems are more than just provocative. They are the modern equivalent of marching your armies up to your adversary's border.

If there is a nuclear exchange between the major powers, historians will cite all of these things I've mentioned as 'obvious signs' that war was coming. Parallels would be drawn to the pre-World War 1 scenario, when Germany was eclipsing Britain economically, as China is eclipsing the US now. In both cases a 'desperate attempt to maintain hegemony' would be seen as the cause of the war.

There may or may not be a World War 3, but all of these preparations make it clear that our banking elite intend to preside over a global system, by hook or by crook. If they wanted a peaceful arrangement, a splitting of the third-world pie, so to speak, it could be easily arranged at any time, along with substantial nuclear disarmament. China and Russia would like to see a stable, multi-polar world; it is only our elite bankers who are obsessed with world domination.

It is possible that nuclear war is a 'desired outcome', accomplishing depopulation, and making the collapse even more total. Or perhaps China and Russia will be given an offer they can't refuse: 'Surrender your economic sovereignty to our global system, or face the consequences'.

One way or another, the elite bankers, the masters of the universe, intend to preside over a micromanaged global system. The collapse project is now well underway, and the 'surround your enemy' project seems to be more or less completed. From a strategic perspective, there will be some trigger point, some stage in the economic collapse scenario, when geopolitical confrontation is judged to be most advantageous. It's a multi-dimensional chess board, and with the stakes so high, you can rest assured that the timing of the various moves will be carefully coordinated. And from the overall shape of the board, we seem to be nearing the endgame.

Prognosis 2012 – a Neo Dark Age

2012 might not be the exact year, but it's difficult to see the endgame lasting much beyond that, and the masters of the universe love symbolism, as with 911 (both in Chile and in Manhattan), KLA 007, and others. 2012 is loaded with symbolism, eg. the Mayan Calendar, and the Internet is buzzing with various 2012-related prophecies, survival strategies, anticipated alien interventions, alignments with galactic radiation fields, etc. And then there is the Hollywood film, 2012, which explicitly portrays the demise of most of humanity, and the pre-planned salvation of a select few. One never knows with Hollywood productions, what is escapist fantasy, and what is aimed at preparing the public mind symbolically for what is to come.

Whatever the exact date, all the threads will come together, geopolitically and domestically, and the world will change. It will be a new era, just as capitalism was a new era after aristocracy, and the Dark Ages followed the era of the Roman Empire. Each era has its own structure, its own economics, its own social forms, and its own mythology. These things must relate to one another coherently, and their nature follows from the fundamental power relationships and economic circumstances of the system.

In our post-2012 world, we have for the first time one centralized global government, and one ruling elite clique, a kind of extended royal family, the lords of finance. As we can see with the IMF, WHO, and the WTO, and the other pieces of the embryonic world government, the institutions of governance will make no pretensions about popular representation or democratic responsiveness. Rule will be by means of autocratic global bureaucracies, who take their marching orders from the royal family. This model has already been operating for some time, within its various spheres of influence, as with the restructuring programs forced on the third world, as a condition for getting financing.

Whenever there is a change of era, the previous era is always demonized in mythology. In the Garden of Eden story the serpent is demonized – a revered symbol in paganism, the predecessor to Christianity. When republics came along, the demonization of monarchs was an important part of the process. In the post-2012 world, democracy and national sovereignty will be demonized. This will be very important, in getting people to accept totalitarian rule, and the mythology will contain much that is true...

In those terrible dark days, before the blessed unification of humanity, anarchy reigned in the world. One nation would attack another, no better than predators in the wild. Nations had no coherent policies; voters would swing from one party to another, keeping governments always in transition and confusion. How did they ever think that masses of semi-educated people could govern themselves, and run a complex society? Democracy was an ill-conceived experiment that led only to corruption and chaotic governance. How lucky we are to be in this well-ordered world, where humanity has finally grown up, and those with the best expertise make the decisions.

The economics of non-growth are radically different than capitalist economics. The unit of exchange is likely to be a carbon credit, entitling you to consume the equivalent of one kilogram of fuel. Everything will have a carbon value, allegedly based on how much energy it took to produce it and transport it to market. 'Green consciousness' will be a primary ethic, conditioned early into children. Getting by with less is a virtue; using energy is anti-social; austerity is a responsible and necessary condition.

As with every currency, the bankers will want to manage the scarcity of carbon credits, and that's where global warming alarmism becomes important. Regardless of the availability of resources, carbon credits can be kept arbitrarily scarce simply by setting carbon budgets, based on directives from the IPCC, another of our emerging units of global bureaucratic governance. Such IPCC directives will be the equivalent of the Federal Reserve announcing a change in interest rates. Those budgets set the scale of economic activity.

Presumably nations will continue to exist, as official units of governance. However security and policing will be largely centralized and privatized. Like the Roman Legions, the security apparatus will be loyal to the center of empire, not to the place where someone happens to be stationed. We have seen this trend already in the US, as mercenaries have become big business, and police forces are increasingly federalized, militarized, and alienated from the general public.

Just as airports have now been federalized, all transport systems will be under the jurisdiction of the security apparatus. Terrorism will continue as an ongoing bogey-man, justifying whatever security procedures are deemed desirable for social-control purposes. The whole security apparatus will have a monolithic quality to it, a similarity of character regardless of the specific security tasks or location. Everyone dressed in the same Evil Empire black outfits, with big florescent letters on the back of their flack jackets. In essence, the security apparatus will be an occupying army, the emperor's garrison in the provinces.

On a daily basis, you will need to go through checkpoints of various kinds, with varying levels of security requirements. This is where biometrics becomes important. If people can be implanted with chips, then much of the security can be automated, and everyone can be tracked at at all times, and their past activity retrieved. The chip links into your credit balance, so you've got all your currency always with you, along with your medical records and lots else that you don't know about.

There is very little left as regards national sovereignty. Nothing much in the way of foreign policy will have any meaning. With security marching to its own law and its distant drummer, the main role of so-called 'government' will be to allocate and administer the carbon-credit budget that it receives from the IPCC. The IPCC decides how much wealth a nation will receive in a given year, and the government then decides how to distribute that wealth in the form of public services and entitlements. Wealth being measured by the entitlement to expend energy.

In a fundamental sense, this is how things already are, following the collapse and the bailouts. Because governments are so deeply in debt, the bankers are able to dictate the terms of national budgets, as a condition of keeping credit lines open. The carbon economy, with its centrally determined budgets, provides a much simpler and more direct way of micromanaging economic activity and resource distribution throughout the globe.

In order to clear the way for the carbon-credit economy, it will be necessary for Western currencies to collapse, to become worthless, as nations become increasingly insolvent, and the global financial system continues to be systematically dismantled. The carbon currency will be introduced as an enlightened, progressive 'solution' to the crisis, a currency linked to something real, and to sustainability. The old monetary system will be demonized, and again the mythology will contain much that is true...

The pursuit of money is the root of all evil, and the capitalist system was inherently evil. It encouraged greed, and consumption, and it cared nothing about wasting resources. People thought the more money they had, the better off they were. How much wiser we are now, to live within our means, and to understand that a credit is a token of stewardship.

Culturally, the post-capitalist era will be a bit like the medieval era, with aristocrats and lords on top, and the rest peasants and serfs. A definite upper class and lower class. Just as only the old upper class had horses and carriages, only the new upper class will be entitled to access substantial carbon credits. Wealth will be measured by entitlements, more than by acquisitions or earnings. Those outside the bureaucratic hierarchies are the serfs, with subsistence entitlements. Within the bureaucracies, entitlements are related to rank in the hierarchy. Those who operate in the central global institutions are lords of empire, with unlimited access to credits.

But there is no sequestering of wealth, or building of economic empires, outside the structures of the designated bureaucracies. Entitlements are about access to resources and facilities, to be used or not used, but not to be saved and used as capital. The flow of entitlements comes downward, micromanaged from the top. It's a dole economy, at all levels, for people and governments alike – the global regimentation of consumption. As regards regimentation, the post-capitalist culture will also be a bit like the Soviet system. Here's your entitlement card, here's your job assignment, and here's where you'll be living.

With the pervasive security apparatus, and the micromanagement of economic activity, the scenario is clearly about fine-grained social control, according to centralized guidelines and directives. Presumably media will be carefully programmed, with escapist trivia, and a sophisticated version of 1984-style groupthink propaganda pseudo-news, which is pretty much what we already have today. The non-commercial Internet, if there is one, will be limited to monitored, officially-designated chat sites, and other kinds of sanitized forums.

With such a focus on social micromanagement, I do not expect the family unit to survive in the new era, and I expect child-abuse alarmism will be the lever used to destabilize the family. The stage has been set with all the revelations about church and institutional child sexual abuse. Such revelations could have been uncovered any time in the past century, but they came out at a certain time, just as all these other transitional things have been happening. People are now aware that widespread child abuse happens, and they have been conditioned to support strong measures to prevent it.

Whenever I turn on the TV, I see at least one public-service ad, with shocking images, about children who are physically or sexually abused, or criminally neglected, in their homes, and there's a hotline phone number that children can call. It is easy to see how the category of abuse can be expanded, to include parents who don't follow vaccination schedules, whose purchase records don't indicate healthy diets, who have dubious psychological profiles, etc. The state of poverty could be deemed abusive neglect.

With the right media presentation, abuse alarmism would be easy to stir up. Ultimately, a 'child rights' movement becomes an anti-family movement. The state must directly protect the child from birth. The family is demonized...

How scary were the old days, when unlicensed, untrained couples had total control over vulnerable children, behind closed doors, with whatever neuroses, addictions, or perversions the parents happened to possess. How did this vestige of patriarchal slavery, this safe-house den of abuse, continue so long to exist, and not be recognized for what it was? How much better off we are now, with children being raised scientifically, by trained staff, where they are taught healthy values.

Ever since public education was introduced, the state and the family have competed to control childhood conditioning. In religious families, the church has made its own contribution to conditioning. In the micromanaged post-capitalist future, with its Shock Doctrine birth scenario, it would make good sense to take that opportunity to implement the 'final solution' of social control, which is for the state to monopolize child raising. This would eliminate from society the parent-child bond, and hence family-related bonds in general. No longer is there a concept of relatives. There's just worker bees, security bees, and queen bees, who dole out the honey.

Postscript

This has been an extensive and somewhat detailed prognosis, regarding the architecture of the post-capitalist regime, and the transition process required to bring it about. The term 'new world order' is too weak a term to characterize the radical nature of the social transformation anticipated in the prognosis. A more apt characterization would be a 'quantum leap in the domestication of the human species'. Micromanaged lives and microprogrammed beliefs and thoughts. A once wild primate species transformed into something resembling more a bee or ant culture. Needless to say, regular use of psychotropic drugs would be mandated, so that people could cope emotionally with such a sterile, inhuman environment.

For such a profound transformation to be possible, it is easy to see that a very great shock is required, on the scale of collapse and social chaos, and possibly on the scale of a nuclear exchange. There needs to be an implicit mandate to 'do whatever is necessary to get society running again'. The shock needs to leave people in a condition of total helplessness comparable to the survivors in the bombed-out rubble of Germany and Japan after World War 2. Nothing less will do.

The accuracy of the prognosis, as prediction, is of course impossible to know in advance. However each part of the prognosis has been based on precedents that have been set, modus operandi that has been observed, trends that have been initiated, sentiments that have been expressed, signals that have been given, and actions that have been taken whose consequences can be confidently predicted.

In addition, in looking at all of these indicators together, one sees a certain mindset, an absolutist determination to implement the 'ideal solution', without compromise, using extreme means, and with unbridled audacity. World wars have been rehearsals for this historic moment. The police state infrastructure is in place and has been tested. The economy is in the process of collapse. The enemy is surrounded with missiles. Arbitrary powers have been assumed. If not now, the ultimate prize, then when will there be a better opportunity?

Our elite planners are backed up by competent think tanks, and they know that the new society must have coherence of various kinds. They've had quite a bit of experience with social engineering, nurturing the rise of fascism, and then engineering the postwar regimes. They understand the importance of mythology.

For example there is the mythology of the holocaust, where the story is all about extermination per se, and the story is not told of the primary mission of the concentration camps, which was to provide slave labor for war production. And some of the companies using the slave labor were American owned, and were supplying the German war machine. Thus does mythology, though containing truth, succeed in hiding the tracks and the crimes of elite perps, leaving others to carry the whole burden of historical demonization.

So I think there is a sound basis for anticipating the kinds of mythology that would be designed for leaving behind and rejecting the old ways, and seeing the new as a salvation. There is a long historical precedent of era changes linked with mythology changes, often expressed in religious terms. There will be a familiar ring to the new mythology, a remixing and re-prioritizing of familiar values and assumptions, so as to resonate with the dynamics of the new regime.

The nature of the carbon economy has been somewhat clearly signaled. Carbon budgets, and carbon credits, are clearly destined to become primary components of the economy. As we've seen with the elite and grassroots supported global warming movement, the arbitrary scarcity of carbon credits can be easily regulated on the pretext of environmentalism. And peak oil alarmism is always available as a backup. As elite spokespeople have often expressed, when the time comes, the masses will demand the new world order.

The focus on control over consumption, resources, and distribution is implicit in the emphasis on energy limits, is latent in the geopolitical situation, as regards depletion of global resources, and is indicated by the need for a new unifying paradigm, as the growth paradigm is no longer viable.

The nature of the security apparatus has been clearly signaled by the responses to demonstrations ever since 1998 in Seattle, by the increased use of hardened-killer mercenaries at home and abroad, by excessive and abusive police behavior, by airport security procedures, by Guantanamo and renditions, by the creation of a domestic branch of the army, dedicated to responding to civil emergencies, and by the way Katrina and Haiti have been handled.

It would be a major mistake to think of those last two as bungled operations. They were exercises in collapse management of a certain kind, to be applied to certain populations, where the training and equipment appropriate for combat in Afghanistan is seen as being appropriate for administering aid to civilian disaster victims. These selected disaster victims will be seen primarily as threats to civil order, or perhaps undesirables to be incarcerated or eliminated. They will be demonized as rioters and looters. Assistance will comes later, if at all. And it can all be broadcast on TV, and somehow be seen as the way things have to be. These two exercises were not bungled at all. They were alarmingly successful, most notably in the case of the realtime PR mythology.

The limited role of national governments, being primarily allocators of mandated budgets, has been clearly signaled by long-standing IMF policies in the third world, and by the way the bankers have been dictating to governments, in the wake of the over-extended bailout commitments. The carbon entitlement budgeting paradigm accomplishes the same micromanagement in a much more direct way, and is the natural outcome of the push toward hard carbon limits.

A Majority Of Americans Believe The US Government No Longer Operates Within The Constitution

A rather indicative poll released by Rasmussen earlier this week finds that a majority of Americans (44%) now believe that the government operates outside the confines of the Constitution, compared to just 39% who believe government does not take liberties with the precepts laid out by the founding fathers (and 17% were busy watching dancing with the stars to have an opinion either way). Some other unflattering findings on US democracy: "Earlier surveys have shown that just one-in-five voters believe that the government today has the consent of the governed. Forty-eight percent (48%) see the government as a threat to individual rights. According to the Declaration of Independence, governments are formed to protect certain inalienable rights." Not surprisingly, politicians are shown to not only be usurping and incompetent despots but biased as well: "As is often the case, there’s a wide gap between the perceptions of the Political Class and those of Mainstream voters when it comes to the federal government. Eighty-three percent (83%) of Political Class voters say the government now operates within constitutional limits, but 62% of those in the Mainstream don’t share that view." Most worryingly, "nearly two-out-of-three voters (65%) are at least somewhat angry at the current policies of the federal government, including 40% who are Very Angry." That's 65% with not even a whiff of austerity on the horizon...

While we uge readers to read the full survey for all queries, the following financial-related disclosure is important as it shows that the path the government is on will continue to make the vast majority of the American population increasingly angrier.

• Despite continuing gun control efforts by federal, state and local governments, Americans overwhelmingly believe the Constitution guarantees the right of the average citizen to own a gun.
• At the same time, most voters (65%) say they prefer a smaller government with lower taxes rather than one with more services and higher taxes.
• Most Americans say the government already has too much influence over the economy and is involved in too many things that would be better left to the private sector.
• Seventy percent (70%) of voters think big government and big business generally work together against the interests of investors and consumers.

If readers find these results disappointing now, we suggest waiting until austerity is adopted and 5 year interest-free installment plans are no longer offered on those 10 LCD TVs you just must have.

And while the topic of the Federal Reserve was not breached this time, the last time around Ben Bernanke's despotic institution was discussed, nearly 90% of Americans (those who actually knew what it is) expressed a very unfavorable opinion. The other 10% were probably all Wall Street executives.

Iceland Better Off Than Ireland Because They Let Big Private Banks Fail, says President

Iceland Recovering

Iceland’s President Olafur R. Grimsson said his country is better off than Ireland thanks to the government’s decision to allow the banks to fail two years ago and because the krona could be devalued.

“The difference is that in Iceland we allowed the banks to fail,” Grimsson said in an interview with Bloomberg Television’s Mark Barton today. “These were private banks and we didn’t pump money into them in order to keep them going; the state did not shoulder the responsibility of the failed private banks.”

Ireland’s Prime Minister Brian Cowen said this week his government has discussed an 85 billion-euro ($112 billion) bailout with the European Union and International Monetary Fund after the country’s banks threatened to bring the euro member to the brink of bankruptcy. Iceland’s banks, which still owe creditors about $85 billion, were split to create domestic units needed to keep the financial system running, while foreign liabilities remained within the failed lenders.

As a consequence, “Iceland is faring much better than anybody expected,” Grimsson said. The Icelandic state’s liability on foreign depositor claims stemming from Icesave accounts at failed Landsbanki Islands hf should be put to a national referendum, he said.

“How far can we ask ordinary people -- farmers and fishermen and teachers and doctors and nurses -- to shoulder the responsibility of failed private banks,” said Grimsson. “That question, which has been at the core of the Icesave issue, will now be the burning issue in many European countries.”

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WAR IS A RACKET

WAR is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.

How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?

Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few – the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.

And what is this bill?

This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.

For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.

Again they are choosing sides. France and Russia met and agreed to stand side by side. Italy and Austria hurried to make a similar agreement. Poland and Germany cast sheep's eyes at each other, forgetting for the nonce [one unique occasion], their dispute over the Polish Corridor.

The assassination of King Alexander of Jugoslavia [Yugoslavia] complicated matters. Jugoslavia and Hungary, long bitter enemies, were almost at each other's throats. Italy was ready to jump in. But France was waiting. So was Czechoslovakia. All of them are looking ahead to war. Not the people – not those who fight and pay and die – only those who foment wars and remain safely at home to profit.

There are 40,000,000 men under arms in the world today, and our statesmen and diplomats have the temerity to say that war is not in the making.

Hell's bells! Are these 40,000,000 men being trained to be dancers?

Not in Italy, to be sure. Premier Mussolini knows what they are being trained for. He, at least, is frank enough to speak out. Only the other day, Il Duce in "International Conciliation," the publication of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said:

"And above all, Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace... War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the people who have the courage to meet it."

Undoubtedly Mussolini means exactly what he says. His well-trained army, his great fleet of planes, and even his navy are ready for war – anxious for it, apparently. His recent stand at the side of Hungary in the latter's dispute with Jugoslavia showed that. And the hurried mobilization of his troops on the Austrian border after the assassination of Dollfuss showed it too. There are others in Europe too whose sabre rattling presages war, sooner or later.

Herr Hitler, with his rearming Germany and his constant demands for more and more arms, is an equal if not greater menace to peace. France only recently increased the term of military service for its youth from a year to eighteen months.

Yes, all over, nations are camping in their arms. The mad dogs of Europe are on the loose. In the Orient the maneuvering is more adroit. Back in 1904, when Russia and Japan fought, we kicked out our old friends the Russians and backed Japan. Then our very generous international bankers were financing Japan. Now the trend is to poison us against the Japanese. What does the "open door" policy to China mean to us? Our trade with China is about $90,000,000 a year. Or the Philippine Islands? We have spent about $600,000,000 in the Philippines in thirty-five years and we (our bankers and industrialists and speculators) have private investments there of less than $200,000,000.

Then, to save that China trade of about $90,000,000, or to protect these private investments of less than $200,000,000 in the Philippines, we would be all stirred up to hate Japan and go to war – a war that might well cost us tens of billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives of Americans, and many more hundreds of thousands of physically maimed and mentally unbalanced men.

Of course, for this loss, there would be a compensating profit – fortunes would be made. Millions and billions of dollars would be piled up. By a few. Munitions makers. Bankers. Ship builders. Manufacturers. Meat packers. Speculators. They would fare well.

Yes, they are getting ready for another war. Why shouldn't they? It pays high dividends.

But what does it profit the men who are killed? What does it profit their mothers and sisters, their wives and their sweethearts? What does it profit their children?

What does it profit anyone except the very few to whom war means huge profits?

Yes, and what does it profit the nation?

Take our own case. Until 1898 we didn't own a bit of territory outside the mainland of North America. At that time our national debt was a little more than $1,000,000,000. Then we became "internationally minded." We forgot, or shunted aside, the advice of the Father of our country. We forgot George Washington's warning about "entangling alliances." We went to war. We acquired outside territory. At the end of the World War period, as a direct result of our fiddling in international affairs, our national debt had jumped to over $25,000,000,000. Our total favorable trade balance during the twenty-five-year period was about $24,000,000,000. Therefore, on a purely bookkeeping basis, we ran a little behind year for year, and that foreign trade might well have been ours without the wars.

It would have been far cheaper (not to say safer) for the average American who pays the bills to stay out of foreign entanglements. For a very few this racket, like bootlegging and other underworld rackets, brings fancy profits, but the cost of operations is always transferred to the people – who do not profit.

CHAPTER TWO

WHO MAKES THE PROFITS?

The World War, rather our brief participation in it, has cost the United States some $52,000,000,000. Figure it out. That means $400 to every American man, woman, and child. And we haven't paid the debt yet. We are paying it, our children will pay it, and our children's children probably still will be paying the cost of that war.

The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are six, eight, ten, and sometimes twelve percent. But war-time profits – ah! that is another matter – twenty, sixty, one hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen hundred per cent – the sky is the limit. All that traffic will bear. Uncle Sam has the money. Let's get it.

Of course, it isn't put that crudely in war time. It is dressed into speeches about patriotism, love of country, and "we must all put our shoulders to the wheel," but the profits jump and leap and skyrocket – and are safely pocketed. Let's just take a few examples:

Take our friends the du Ponts, the powder people – didn't one of them testify before a Senate committee recently that their powder won the war? Or saved the world for democracy? Or something? How did they do in the war? They were a patriotic corporation. Well, the average earnings of the du Ponts for the period 1910 to 1914 were $6,000,000 a year. It wasn't much, but the du Ponts managed to get along on it. Now let's look at their average yearly profit during the war years, 1914 to 1918. Fifty-eight million dollars a year profit we find! Nearly ten times that of normal times, and the profits of normal times were pretty good. An increase in profits of more than 950 per cent.

Take one of our little steel companies that patriotically shunted aside the making of rails and girders and bridges to manufacture war materials. Well, their 1910-1914 yearly earnings averaged $6,000,000. Then came the war. And, like loyal citizens, Bethlehem Steel promptly turned to munitions making. Did their profits jump – or did they let Uncle Sam in for a bargain? Well, their 1914-1918 average was $49,000,000 a year!

Or, let's take United States Steel. The normal earnings during the five-year period prior to the war were $105,000,000 a year. Not bad. Then along came the war and up went the profits. The average yearly profit for the period 1914-1918 was $240,000,000. Not bad.

There you have some of the steel and powder earnings. Let's look at something else. A little copper, perhaps. That always does well in war times.

Anaconda, for instance. Average yearly earnings during the pre-war years 1910-1914 of $10,000,000. During the war years 1914-1918 profits leaped to $34,000,000 per year.

Or Utah Copper. Average of $5,000,000 per year during the 1910-1914 period. Jumped to an average of $21,000,000 yearly profits for the war period.

Let's group these five, with three smaller companies. The total yearly average profits of the pre-war period 1910-1914 were $137,480,000. Then along came the war. The average yearly profits for this group skyrocketed to $408,300,000.

A little increase in profits of approximately 200 per cent.

Does war pay? It paid them. But they aren't the only ones. There are still others. Let's take leather.

For the three-year period before the war the total profits of Central Leather Company were $3,500,000. That was approximately $1,167,000 a year. Well, in 1916 Central Leather returned a profit of $15,000,000, a small increase of 1,100 per cent. That's all. The General Chemical Company averaged a profit for the three years before the war of a little over $800,000 a year. Came the war, and the profits jumped to $12,000,000. a leap of 1,400 per cent.

International Nickel Company – and you can't have a war without nickel – showed an increase in profits from a mere average of $4,000,000 a year to $73,000,000 yearly. Not bad? An increase of more than 1,700 per cent.

American Sugar Refining Company averaged $2,000,000 a year for the three years before the war. In 1916 a profit of $6,000,000 was recorded.

Listen to Senate Document No. 259. The Sixty-Fifth Congress, reporting on corporate earnings and government revenues. Considering the profits of 122 meat packers, 153 cotton manufacturers, 299 garment makers, 49 steel plants, and 340 coal producers during the war. Profits under 25 per cent were exceptional. For instance the coal companies made between 100 per cent and 7,856 per cent on their capital stock during the war. The Chicago packers doubled and tripled their earnings.

And let us not forget the bankers who financed the great war. If anyone had the cream of the profits it was the bankers. Being partnerships rather than incorporated organizations, they do not have to report to stockholders. And their profits were as secret as they were immense. How the bankers made their millions and their billions I do not know, because those little secrets never become public – even before a Senate investigatory body.

But here's how some of the other patriotic industrialists and speculators chiseled their way into war profits.

Take the shoe people. They like war. It brings business with abnormal profits. They made huge profits on sales abroad to our allies. Perhaps, like the munitions manufacturers and armament makers, they also sold to the enemy. For a dollar is a dollar whether it comes from Germany or from France. But they did well by Uncle Sam too. For instance, they sold Uncle Sam 35,000,000 pairs of hobnailed service shoes. There were 4,000,000 soldiers. Eight pairs, and more, to a soldier. My regiment during the war had only one pair to a soldier. Some of these shoes probably are still in existence. They were good shoes. But when the war was over Uncle Sam has a matter of 25,000,000 pairs left over. Bought – and paid for. Profits recorded and pocketed.

There was still lots of leather left. So the leather people sold your Uncle Sam hundreds of thousands of McClellan saddles for the cavalry. But there wasn't any American cavalry overseas! Somebody had to get rid of this leather, however. Somebody had to make a profit in it – so we had a lot of McClellan saddles. And we probably have those yet.

Also somebody had a lot of mosquito netting. They sold your Uncle Sam 20,000,000 mosquito nets for the use of the soldiers overseas. I suppose the boys were expected to put it over them as they tried to sleep in muddy trenches – one hand scratching cooties on their backs and the other making passes at scurrying rats. Well, not one of these mosquito nets ever got to France!

Anyhow, these thoughtful manufacturers wanted to make sure that no soldier would be without his mosquito net, so 40,000,000 additional yards of mosquito netting were sold to Uncle Sam.

There were pretty good profits in mosquito netting in those days, even if there were no mosquitoes in France. I suppose, if the war had lasted just a little longer, the enterprising mosquito netting manufacturers would have sold your Uncle Sam a couple of consignments of mosquitoes to plant in France so that more mosquito netting would be in order.

Airplane and engine manufacturers felt they, too, should get their just profits out of this war. Why not? Everybody else was getting theirs. So $1,000,000,000 – count them if you live long enough – was spent by Uncle Sam in building airplane engines that never left the ground! Not one plane, or motor, out of the billion dollars worth ordered, ever got into a battle in France. Just the same the manufacturers made their little profit of 30, 100, or perhaps 300 per cent.

Undershirts for soldiers cost 14¢[cents] to make and uncle Sam paid 30¢ to 40¢ each for them – a nice little profit for the undershirt manufacturer. And the stocking manufacturer and the uniform manufacturers and the cap manufacturers and the steel helmet manufacturers – all got theirs.

Why, when the war was over some 4,000,000 sets of equipment – knapsacks and the things that go to fill them – crammed warehouses on this side. Now they are being scrapped because the regulations have changed the contents. But the manufacturers collected their wartime profits on them – and they will do it all over again the next time.

There were lots of brilliant ideas for profit making during the war.

One very versatile patriot sold Uncle Sam twelve dozen 48-inch wrenches. Oh, they were very nice wrenches. The only trouble was that there was only one nut ever made that was large enough for these wrenches. That is the one that holds the turbines at Niagara Falls. Well, after Uncle Sam had bought them and the manufacturer had pocketed the profit, the wrenches were put on freight cars and shunted all around the United States in an effort to find a use for them. When the Armistice was signed it was indeed a sad blow to the wrench manufacturer. He was just about to make some nuts to fit the wrenches. Then he planned to sell these, too, to your Uncle Sam.

Still another had the brilliant idea that colonels shouldn't ride in automobiles, nor should they even ride on horseback. One has probably seen a picture of Andy Jackson riding in a buckboard. Well, some 6,000 buckboards were sold to Uncle Sam for the use of colonels! Not one of them was used. But the buckboard manufacturer got his war profit.

The shipbuilders felt they should come in on some of it, too. They built a lot of ships that made a lot of profit. More than $3,000,000,000 worth. Some of the ships were all right. But $635,000,000 worth of them were made of wood and wouldn't float! The seams opened up – and they sank. We paid for them, though. And somebody pocketed the profits.

It has been estimated by statisticians and economists and researchers that the war cost your Uncle Sam $52,000,000,000. Of this sum, $39,000,000,000 was expended in the actual war itself. This expenditure yielded $16,000,000,000 in profits. That is how the 21,000 billionaires and millionaires got that way. This $16,000,000,000 profits is not to be sneezed at. It is quite a tidy sum. And it went to a very few.

The Senate (Nye) committee probe of the munitions industry and its wartime profits, despite its sensational disclosures, hardly has scratched the surface.

Even so, it has had some effect. The State Department has been studying "for some time" methods of keeping out of war. The War Department suddenly decides it has a wonderful plan to spring. The Administration names a committee – with the War and Navy Departments ably represented under the chairmanship of a Wall Street speculator – to limit profits in war time. To what extent isn't suggested. Hmmm. Possibly the profits of 300 and 600 and 1,600 per cent of those who turned blood into gold in the World War would be limited to some smaller figure.

Apparently, however, the plan does not call for any limitation of losses – that is, the losses of those who fight the war. As far as I have been able to ascertain there is nothing in the scheme to limit a soldier to the loss of but one eye, or one arm, or to limit his wounds to one or two or three. Or to limit the loss of life.

There is nothing in this scheme, apparently, that says not more than 12 per cent of a regiment shall be wounded in battle, or that not more than 7 per cent in a division shall be killed.

Of course, the committee cannot be bothered with such trifling matters.

CHAPTER THREE

WHO PAYS THE BILLS?

Who provides the profits – these nice little profits of 20, 100, 300, 1,500 and 1,800 per cent? We all pay them – in taxation. We paid the bankers their profits when we bought Liberty Bonds at $100.00 and sold them back at $84 or $86 to the bankers. These bankers collected $100 plus. It was a simple manipulation. The bankers control the security marts. It was easy for them to depress the price of these bonds. Then all of us – the people – got frightened and sold the bonds at $84 or $86. The bankers bought them. Then these same bankers stimulated a boom and government bonds went to par – and above. Then the bankers collected their profits.

But the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill.

If you don't believe this, visit the American cemeteries on the battlefields abroad. Or visit any of the veteran's hospitals in the United States. On a tour of the country, in the midst of which I am at the time of this writing, I have visited eighteen government hospitals for veterans. In them are a total of about 50,000 destroyed men – men who were the pick of the nation eighteen years ago. The very able chief surgeon at the government hospital; at Milwaukee, where there are 3,800 of the living dead, told me that mortality among veterans is three times as great as among those who stayed at home.

Boys with a normal viewpoint were taken out of the fields and offices and factories and classrooms and put into the ranks. There they were remolded; they were made over; they were made to "about face"; to regard murder as the order of the day. They were put shoulder to shoulder and, through mass psychology, they were entirely changed. We used them for a couple of years and trained them to think nothing at all of killing or of being killed.

Then, suddenly, we discharged them and told them to make another "about face" ! This time they had to do their own readjustment, sans [without] mass psychology, sans officers' aid and advice and sans nation-wide propaganda. We didn't need them any more. So we scattered them about without any "three-minute" or "Liberty Loan" speeches or parades. Many, too many, of these fine young boys are eventually destroyed, mentally, because they could not make that final "about face" alone.

In the government hospital in Marion, Indiana, 1,800 of these boys are in pens! Five hundred of them in a barracks with steel bars and wires all around outside the buildings and on the porches. These already have been mentally destroyed. These boys don't even look like human beings. Oh, the looks on their faces! Physically, they are in good shape; mentally, they are gone.

There are thousands and thousands of these cases, and more and more are coming in all the time. The tremendous excitement of the war, the sudden cutting off of that excitement – the young boys couldn't stand it.

That's a part of the bill. So much for the dead – they have paid their part of the war profits. So much for the mentally and physically wounded – they are paying now their share of the war profits. But the others paid, too – they paid with heartbreaks when they tore themselves away from their firesides and their families to don the uniform of Uncle Sam – on which a profit had been made. They paid another part in the training camps where they were regimented and drilled while others took their jobs and their places in the lives of their communities. The paid for it in the trenches where they shot and were shot; where they were hungry for days at a time; where they slept in the mud and the cold and in the rain – with the moans and shrieks of the dying for a horrible lullaby.

But don't forget – the soldier paid part of the dollars and cents bill too.

Up to and including the Spanish-American War, we had a prize system, and soldiers and sailors fought for money. During the Civil War they were paid bonuses, in many instances, before they went into service. The government, or states, paid as high as $1,200 for an enlistment. In the Spanish-American War they gave prize money. When we captured any vessels, the soldiers all got their share – at least, they were supposed to. Then it was found that we could reduce the cost of wars by taking all the prize money and keeping it, but conscripting [drafting] the soldier anyway. Then soldiers couldn't bargain for their labor, Everyone else could bargain, but the soldier couldn't.

Napoleon once said,

"All men are enamored of decorations...they positively hunger for them."

So by developing the Napoleonic system – the medal business – the government learned it could get soldiers for less money, because the boys liked to be decorated. Until the Civil War there were no medals. Then the Congressional Medal of Honor was handed out. It made enlistments easier. After the Civil War no new medals were issued until the Spanish-American War.

In the World War, we used propaganda to make the boys accept conscription. They were made to feel ashamed if they didn't join the army.

So vicious was this war propaganda that even God was brought into it. With few exceptions our clergymen joined in the clamor to kill, kill, kill. To kill the Germans. God is on our side...it is His will that the Germans be killed.

And in Germany, the good pastors called upon the Germans to kill the allies...to please the same God. That was a part of the general propaganda, built up to make people war conscious and murder conscious.

Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. This was the "war to end all wars." This was the "war to make the world safe for democracy." No one mentioned to them, as they marched away, that their going and their dying would mean huge war profits. No one told these American soldiers that they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here. No one told them that the ships on which they were going to cross might be torpedoed by submarines built with United States patents. They were just told it was to be a "glorious adventure."

Thus, having stuffed patriotism down their throats, it was decided to make them help pay for the war, too. So, we gave them the large salary of $30 a month.

All they had to do for this munificent sum was to leave their dear ones behind, give up their jobs, lie in swampy trenches, eat canned willy (when they could get it) and kill and kill and kill...and be killed.

But wait!

Half of that wage (just a little more than a riveter in a shipyard or a laborer in a munitions factory safe at home made in a day) was promptly taken from him to support his dependents, so that they would not become a charge upon his community. Then we made him pay what amounted to accident insurance – something the employer pays for in an enlightened state – and that cost him $6 a month. He had less than $9 a month left.

Then, the most crowning insolence of all – he was virtually blackjacked into paying for his own ammunition, clothing, and food by being made to buy Liberty Bonds. Most soldiers got no money at all on pay days.

We made them buy Liberty Bonds at $100 and then we bought them back – when they came back from the war and couldn't find work – at $84 and $86. And the soldiers bought about $2,000,000,000 worth of these bonds!

Yes, the soldier pays the greater part of the bill. His family pays too. They pay it in the same heart-break that he does. As he suffers, they suffer. At nights, as he lay in the trenches and watched shrapnel burst about him, they lay home in their beds and tossed sleeplessly – his father, his mother, his wife, his sisters, his brothers, his sons, and his daughters.

When he returned home minus an eye, or minus a leg or with his mind broken, they suffered too – as much as and even sometimes more than he. Yes, and they, too, contributed their dollars to the profits of the munitions makers and bankers and shipbuilders and the manufacturers and the speculators made. They, too, bought Liberty Bonds and contributed to the profit of the bankers after the Armistice in the hocus-pocus of manipulated Liberty Bond prices.

And even now the families of the wounded men and of the mentally broken and those who never were able to readjust themselves are still suffering and still paying.

CHAPTER FOUR

HOW TO SMASH THIS RACKET!

WELL, it's a racket, all right.

A few profit – and the many pay. But there is a way to stop it. You can't end it by disarmament conferences. You can't eliminate it by peace parleys at Geneva. Well-meaning but impractical groups can't wipe it out by resolutions. It can be smashed effectively only by taking the profit out of war.

The only way to smash this racket is to conscript capital and industry and labor before the nations manhood can be conscripted. One month before the Government can conscript the young men of the nation – it must conscript capital and industry and labor. Let the officers and the directors and the high-powered executives of our armament factories and our munitions makers and our shipbuilders and our airplane builders and the manufacturers of all the other things that provide profit in war time as well as the bankers and the speculators, be conscripted – to get $30 a month, the same wage as the lads in the trenches get.

Let the workers in these plants get the same wages – all the workers, all presidents, all executives, all directors, all managers, all bankers –

yes, and all generals and all admirals and all officers and all politicians and all government office holders – everyone in the nation be restricted to a total monthly income not to exceed that paid to the soldier in the trenches!

Let all these kings and tycoons and masters of business and all those workers in industry and all our senators and governors and majors pay half of their monthly $30 wage to their families and pay war risk insurance and buy Liberty Bonds.

Why shouldn't they?

They aren't running any risk of being killed or of having their bodies mangled or their minds shattered. They aren't sleeping in muddy trenches. They aren't hungry. The soldiers are!

Give capital and industry and labor thirty days to think it over and you will find, by that time, there will be no war. That will smash the war racket – that and nothing else.

Maybe I am a little too optimistic. Capital still has some say. So capital won't permit the taking of the profit out of war until the people – those who do the suffering and still pay the price – make up their minds that those they elect to office shall do their bidding, and not that of the profiteers.

Another step necessary in this fight to smash the war racket is the limited plebiscite to determine whether a war should be declared. A plebiscite not of all the voters but merely of those who would be called upon to do the fighting and dying. There wouldn't be very much sense in having a 76-year-old president of a munitions factory or the flat-footed head of an international banking firm or the cross-eyed manager of a uniform manufacturing plant – all of whom see visions of tremendous profits in the event of war – voting on whether the nation should go to war or not. They never would be called upon to shoulder arms – to sleep in a trench and to be shot. Only those who would be called upon to risk their lives for their country should have the privilege of voting to determine whether the nation should go to war.

There is ample precedent for restricting the voting to those affected. Many of our states have restrictions on those permitted to vote. In most, it is necessary to be able to read and write before you may vote. In some, you must own property. It would be a simple matter each year for the men coming of military age to register in their communities as they did in the draft during the World War and be examined physically. Those who could pass and who would therefore be called upon to bear arms in the event of war would be eligible to vote in a limited plebiscite. They should be the ones to have the power to decide – and not a Congress few of whose members are within the age limit and fewer still of whom are in physical condition to bear arms. Only those who must suffer should have the right to vote.

A third step in this business of smashing the war racket is to make certain that our military forces are truly forces for defense only.

At each session of Congress the question of further naval appropriations comes up. The swivel-chair admirals of Washington (and there are always a lot of them) are very adroit lobbyists. And they are smart. They don't shout that "We need a lot of battleships to war on this nation or that nation." Oh no. First of all, they let it be known that America is menaced by a great naval power. Almost any day, these admirals will tell you, the great fleet of this supposed enemy will strike suddenly and annihilate 125,000,000 people. Just like that. Then they begin to cry for a larger navy. For what? To fight the enemy? Oh my, no. Oh, no. For defense purposes only.

Then, incidentally, they announce maneuvers in the Pacific. For defense. Uh, huh.

The Pacific is a great big ocean. We have a tremendous coastline on the Pacific. Will the maneuvers be off the coast, two or three hundred miles? Oh, no. The maneuvers will be two thousand, yes, perhaps even thirty-five hundred miles, off the coast.

The Japanese, a proud people, of course will be pleased beyond expression to see the united States fleet so close to Nippon's shores. Even as pleased as would be the residents of California were they to dimly discern through the morning mist, the Japanese fleet playing at war games off Los Angeles.

The ships of our navy, it can be seen, should be specifically limited, by law, to within 200 miles of our coastline. Had that been the law in 1898 the Maine would never have gone to Havana Harbor. She never would have been blown up. There would have been no war with Spain with its attendant loss of life. Two hundred miles is ample, in the opinion of experts, for defense purposes. Our nation cannot start an offensive war if its ships can't go further than 200 miles from the coastline. Planes might be permitted to go as far as 500 miles from the coast for purposes of reconnaissance. And the army should never leave the territorial limits of our nation.

To summarize: Three steps must be taken to smash the war racket.

We must take the profit out of war.

We must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war.

We must limit our military forces to home defense purposes.

CHAPTER FIVE

TO HELL WITH WAR!

I am not a fool as to believe that war is a thing of the past. I know the people do not want war, but there is no use in saying we cannot be pushed into another war.

Looking back, Woodrow Wilson was re-elected president in 1916 on a platform that he had "kept us out of war" and on the implied promise that he would "keep us out of war." Yet, five months later he asked Congress to declare war on Germany.

In that five-month interval the people had not been asked whether they had changed their minds. The 4,000,000 young men who put on uniforms and marched or sailed away were not asked whether they wanted to go forth to suffer and die.

Then what caused our government to change its mind so suddenly?

Money.

An allied commission, it may be recalled, came over shortly before the war declaration and called on the President. The President summoned a group of advisers. The head of the commission spoke. Stripped of its diplomatic language, this is what he told the President and his group:

"There is no use kidding ourselves any longer. The cause of the allies is lost. We now owe you (American bankers, American munitions makers, American manufacturers, American speculators, American exporters) five or six billion dollars.

If we lose (and without the help of the United States we must lose) we, England, France and Italy, cannot pay back this money...and Germany won't.

So..."

Had secrecy been outlawed as far as war negotiations were concerned, and had the press been invited to be present at that conference, or had radio been available to broadcast the proceedings, America never would have entered the World War. But this conference, like all war discussions, was shrouded in utmost secrecy. When our boys were sent off to war they were told it was a "war to make the world safe for democracy" and a "war to end all wars."

Well, eighteen years after, the world has less of democracy than it had then. Besides, what business is it of ours whether Russia or Germany or England or France or Italy or Austria live under democracies or monarchies? Whether they are Fascists or Communists? Our problem is to preserve our own democracy.

And very little, if anything, has been accomplished to assure us that the World War was really the war to end all wars.

Yes, we have had disarmament conferences and limitations of arms conferences. They don't mean a thing. One has just failed; the results of another have been nullified. We send our professional soldiers and our sailors and our politicians and our diplomats to these conferences. And what happens?

The professional soldiers and sailors don't want to disarm. No admiral wants to be without a ship. No general wants to be without a command. Both mean men without jobs. They are not for disarmament. They cannot be for limitations of arms. And at all these conferences, lurking in the background but all-powerful, just the same, are the sinister agents of those who profit by war. They see to it that these conferences do not disarm or seriously limit armaments.

The chief aim of any power at any of these conferences has not been to achieve disarmament to prevent war but rather to get more armament for itself and less for any potential foe.

There is only one way to disarm with any semblance of practicability. That is for all nations to get together and scrap every ship, every gun, every rifle, every tank, every war plane. Even this, if it were possible, would not be enough.

The next war, according to experts, will be fought not with battleships, not by artillery, not with rifles and not with machine guns. It will be fought with deadly chemicals and gases.

Secretly each nation is studying and perfecting newer and ghastlier means of annihilating its foes wholesale. Yes, ships will continue to be built, for the shipbuilders must make their profits. And guns still will be manufactured and powder and rifles will be made, for the munitions makers must make their huge profits. And the soldiers, of course, must wear uniforms, for the manufacturer must make their war profits too.

But victory or defeat will be determined by the skill and ingenuity of our scientists.

If we put them to work making poison gas and more and more fiendish mechanical and explosive instruments of destruction, they will have no time for the constructive job of building greater prosperity for all peoples. By putting them to this useful job, we can all make more money out of peace than we can out of war – even the munitions makers.

So...I say,

TO HELL WITH WAR!