How to Become a Serf

Man is a pathetic creature; a brute trying to be god but traveling in the wrong direction.

Educational systems now train workers to fulfill the needs of companies. A society in which people exist for the sake of companies is a society enslaved. But there’s a deep problem with the notion that education should equal vocational training. To paraphrase a very famous and renowned person, man does not live by work alone. Indeed, the knowledge and skills needed to earn a living in a capitalist industrial economy are of little use in human relationships, and human relationships are the core of everyone’s life. Schools devoted to vocational training provide no venue for teaching cultural differences, for trying to understand the person who lives next door or in another country. Value systems are never evaluated; alternatives are never considered. As a result, although we all live on the same planet, we do not live together. At best, we only live side by side. At worst, we live to kill each other. Education as vocational training reduces everything to ideology, our devotion to which causes us to reject the stark reality that stares us in the face, because our ideologies color the realities we see and people never get wiser than those of previous generations. People have become nothing but the monkeys of hurdy gurdy grinders, tethered to grinders’ organs with tin cups in hands to be filled for the benefit of the grinders. And this is the species we refer to as sapient. What a delusion!

For many years, I have been troubled by what I saw as the results of what passes for education in America and perhaps elsewhere too. Why is it, do you suppose, that one generation does not seem to get any smarter than the previous one? Oh, it may know more of this or that, but what it “knows” does not translate into smarts. In other words, why don’t people ever seem to get wiser? Why do they repeat the same mistakes over and over?

For centuries, an education was thought to be comprised of considerably more than one providing the skills and requirements needed to carry on a trade or profession. For instance, consider this passage:

“Education is not the same as training. Plato made the distinction between techne (skill) and episteme (knowledge). Becoming an educated person goes beyond the acquisition of a technical skill. It requires an understanding of one’s place in the world—cultural as well as natural—in pursuit of a productive and meaningful life. And it requires historical perspective so that one does not just live, as Edmund Burke said, like ‘the flies of a summer,’ born one day and gone the next, but as part of that ‘social contract’ that binds our generation to those who have come before and to those who are yet to be born.

An education that achieves those goals must include the study of what Matthew Arnold called ‘the best that has been known and said.’ It must comprehend the whole—the human world and its history, our own culture and those very different from ours. . . .”

This idea of an educated person was often summarized in the phrases, a Renaissance man, and un homme du monde. But these expressions are hardly heard any more. Educated people no longer exist. We are nothing but the monkeys of hurdy gurdy grinders, tethered to grinders’ organs with tin cups in hands to be filled for the benefit of the grinders.

“Governor Rick Snyder wants to tie retraining programs to companies’ needs . . . and encourage more Michigan residents to earn math and science degrees under an initiative aimed at making workers more competitive in the global marketplace.”

The hurdy gurdy grinder’s monkey exists for the sake of the organ grinder; Governor Snyder wants Michigan’s residents to educate themselves for the sake of companies. Workers are to fulfill companies’ needs rather than vice versa. President Obama has said similar things.

But there’s something wrong, something terribly wrong, with this picture. A society in which people exist for the sake of some non-human entity is a society enslaved. And this picture gets even more horrid with the realization that workers are expected to pay to acquire the required skills. Students are being asked to pay for the privilege of becoming serfs.

Living things in the natural world exist as ends in themselves. Everything they do is done for their own benefit or the benefit of their offspring. Horses in the wild do not acquire skills in order to perform tasks that benefit other horses. When a human being acquires a horse and trains it to perform a skill for the person’s benefit, the person provides for all the natural needs of his horse. Horses don’t come begging to be trained to be ridden. What kind of perversion is the requirement that people should beg to be trained to be serfs?

But neither a hurdy gurdy grinder’s monkey or a riding horse are educated; they are trained. There is no such thing as a Renaissance monkey!

Education in America, and perhaps other places too, is as fractured as shattered glass. The federal agency called the Department of Education’s only power is the ability to cajole schools mainly by offering them money. There are public and private schools, and the public ones are governed by local school boards, the members of which are not even required to be able to read or write. State school boards exist to have some influence over local boards, but again, the power of the states is limited. Education in America is a local affair. The people on these school boards are the ones that control what is and how it is taught. For instance, creationism is often given equal standing with evolution. Students are often required to engage in practices that are clearly unconstitutional. All of this is done to suit the views of school board members, not society or even students.

Teachers are certified by subject matter. Perfectly good mathematics teachers may not be able to write literate essays. English teachers are not required to understand even elementary algebra. The schools do not employ hommes de monde. And what is true in the primary and secondary schools is also true in colleges and universities. Les spécialistes rule the classroom. Trained monkeys all!

Now vocational training works, of course, if people know what industries need workers and if workers want those jobs. But often, especially in times of crisis, this knowledge doesn’t exist. Yet there’s a deeper problem with the notion that education should equal vocational training. To paraphrase a very famous and renowned person, man does not live by work alone. Indeed, the knowledge and skills needed to earn a living in a capitalist industrial economy are of little use in human relationships, and human relationships are the core of everyone’s life.

Although the United States is often referred to as a multicultural melting pot, most highly developed nations today have multicultural populations. Different cultures embody different values. Those values often clash and erupt in violent behavior. If people understood these cultural differences, these clashes could be ameliorated. But schools devoted to vocational training provide no venue for teaching cultural differences, for trying to understand the person who lives next door or in another country. Various value systems are never evaluated, and alternatives are never considered. As a result, although we all live on the same planet, we do not live together. At best, we only live side by side. At worst, we live to kill each other.

Education as vocational training reduces everything to ideology. Religion is an ideology and no one ever questions a person’s right to her/his own. Economics, although often touted as a science, is an ideology. Part of free marked economic theory is the belief that when an established industry falters and declines, some new industry will come forth and employ the newly unemployed. But nothing in economics can compel that to happen. This belief is akin to the belief in a Second Coming. It is purely ideological. Even science has become an ideology. People believe, for instance, that science will discover solutions to all of our problems. But again, there is nothing in science that compels that. It is perfectly possible that, as human beings destroy their environment, science will be unable to correct the damage and that life on this planet will perish. Worse, ideologies contribute to human stupidity; our devotion to them causes us to reject the stark realities that stare us in the face. (See here and here.)

So what is required if we are to make one generation smarter than the previous one? We need to educate Renaissance men who comprehend the whole human world, its history, our own culture, and those very different from ours. Vocational training will never produce such people.

John F. Kennedy was glorified when he said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country.” Shouldn’t he have been vilified? Do countries exist to benefit their peoples or do their peoples exist to benefit their countries? What good is a country that requires the sacrifice of its people?

Since the Enlightenment, it is generally agreed that legitimate governments are those that govern with the consent of their peoples. Does anyone really believe that people would consent to living in a nation that made it clear that the lives of most citizens would be fated to live for the benefit of the few who control the nation’s institutions? Isn’t that exactly what slavery is?

Analytical thinking, even when valid, can lead people down invalid roads, because analysis alone tends to overly simplify questions. When used to answer the question, What must be done to put unemployed people to work?, it leads to attempts to make education equivalent to vocational training. But when put into practice, it results in people who lack the ability to understand their value systems and evaluate them properly. They end up being hurdy gurdy monkeys or, as Arnold put it, the flies of a summer, born one day and gone the next. If a nation’s institutions do not exist to benefit its citizens, the institutions, not the people, are faulty.

In Classical Greece it was known that the unexamined human life is not worth living. Vocational training never presents people with opportunities to examine one’s life; so people end up relying entirely on ideologies which have no intellectual basis and are often absurdly false, but “falsehoods are not only evil in themselves, they infect the soul with evil.”

If human beings wish to endure, their ideologies must be subjected to serious criticism; otherwise, no generation will ever be smarter than its predecessors and continuing to refer to ourselves as sapient is a sheer delusion.

John Kozy is a retired professor of philosophy and logic who writes on social, political, and economic issues. After serving in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, he spent 20 years as a university professor and another 20 years working as a writer. He has published a textbook in formal logic commercially, in academic journals and a small number of commercial magazines, and has written a number of guest editorials for newspapers. His on-line pieces can be found on http://www.jkozy.com/ and he can be emailed from that site’s homepage.

Source.

A grim report just issued by the Finance Ministry that is circulating in the Kremlin today says the United States Clearing House Interbank Payments System (CHIPS) has ground to a virtual halt signaling that a major global economic collapse is currently underway and could very well likely enter into the dreaded “freefall zone.”

Virtually unknown to all but the global financial elite, CHIPS is the main privately held clearing house for large-value transactions in the United States, settling well over $1 trillion a day in around 250,000 interbank payments that together with the Fedwire Funds Service, which is operated by the Federal Reserve Banks, forms the primary US network for large-value domestic and international US dollar payments where it has a market share of around 96%.

The cause underlying the collapse of CHIPS, this report says, is due to the “unprecedented” demand for immediate liquidity relief being sought by the largest banks in the US and EU that are being crushed under of the combined debt of both the United States and Europe said to total near $39 trillion.

Important to note is that what is currently happening is a virtual repeat of the 2008 Financial Crisis that the United States Senate’s Levin–Coburn Report found “was not a natural disaster, but the result of high risk, complex financial products; undisclosed conflicts of interest; and the failure of regulators, the credit rating agencies, and the market itself to rein in the excesses of Wall Street.”

Grimly echoing this Ministry report is the latest data [see chart 2^nd photo left, or click on link] from The Baltic Dry Index (BDI) that is a number issued daily by the London-based Baltic Exchange and shows it in freefall dropping 65% in the past 30 days alone, a terrifying amount of loss not seen since the dark days of late 2008.

Not restricted to Baltic Sea countries, the BDI tracks worldwide international shipping prices of various dry bulk cargoes that has collapsed so severely global shipping has all but ceased thus leaving our world’s largest transport ships anchored and empty off the coast of Singapore in what is described as“the biggest and most secretive gathering of ships in maritime history whose numbers are equivalent to the entire British and American navies combined.”

During the 2008 Financial Crisis an outright global economic catastrophe was only averted after the US Federal Reserve secretly gave out to US banks and corporations, and foreign banks everywhere from France to Scotland, over $16 trillion that was only discovered due to an amendment to the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act passed by the American Congress that called for their being audited for the first time in their 99-year history.

Note: To place that $16 trillion into perspective, remember that the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the United States is only $14.12 trillion, and the entire national debt of theUnited States government spanning its 200+ year history is “only” $14.5 trillion.

Curiously, the aforementioned amendment to the Dodd-Frank law only called only for a one-time audit of any emergency lending facility established by the Federal Reserve since 1 December 2007 and ending with the date of enactment of the law when it was signed by President Obama on 21 July 2010 thus keeping hidden from the American people who is getting their money.

To if anyone in the world, even the powerful US Federal Reserve, has the power to avert this coming catastrophe, this Ministry report warns, it is unlikely due to the cascading collapse of the global derivative market due to the mounting gridlock in liquidity that US billionaire and Obama confidant Warren Buffet warned back in 2003 were “financial weapons of mass destruction.”

Though the word “derivatives” sounds complicated and technical, understanding them is really not that hard.  A derivative is essentially a fancy way of saying that a bet has been made.  Originally, these bets were designed to hedge risk, but today the derivatives market has mushroomed into a mountain of speculation unlike anything the world has ever seen before.  Estimates of the notional value of the worldwide derivatives market go from $600 trillion all the way up to $1.4 quadrillion.

$1.4 Quadrillion is roughly: -40 TIMES THE WORLD’S STOCK MARKET. -10 TIMES the value of EVERY STOCK & EVERY BOND ON THE PLANET. -23 TIMES WORLD GDP.

Failing to be noticed by the Western peoples about this global economic collapse is that it has been, in all probability, a “planned event” due to occur so as to initiate a New World Order that has long been sought after by the elites, but was condemned by the ancients who warned that the uniting of our world as an economic dictatorship would lead to every human being having to obtain the Mark of The Beast thus bringing this present age to its end.

In a Western world devoid of morality, and lacking the knowledge of the ancients, it is beyond doubt that this coming economic collapse will take them by complete surprise (as the last one did) as they have been trained like dutiful slaves to only adhere to those voices leading them to their doom.

But for those who know the truth, the time is nearing an end for preparing… it will come much sooner than anyone will believe.

February 1, 2012 © EU and US all rights reserved. Permission to use this report in its entirety is granted under the condition it is linked back to its original source at WhatDoesItMean.Com.

Syria rejected Monday a new Arab League plan aiming to end the country’s 10-month crisis by calling on the government and the opposition to form a national unity government within two months.

The Syrian statement carried by the state-run news agency SANA came a day after Qatari Foreign Minister Sheik Hamad Bin Jassem Bin Jabr Al Thani told reporters in Cairo that the Arab League was launching a new initiative to solve the crisis.

The Syrian uprising began in March following popular revolts that overthrew long-serving leaders in Tunisia and Egypt. President Bashar Assad retaliated with a deadly crackdown that the U.N. says has left more than 5,400 people dead.

A statement issued by Arab foreign ministers after a Sunday Arab League meeting in Cairo called for the establishment of a national unity government within two months, in which the government and the opposition are included, and which is led by a figure of consensus.

The mandate of this government, said the statement, is to prepare for free parliamentary and presidential elections to be held under Arab and international supervision.

It also provides for Assad to give his vice president full powers to cooperate with the proposed government to enable it to carry out its duties during a transitional period.

SANA quoted an unnamed official as saying Syria considers the plan “a violation of its sovereignty and a flagrant interference in its internal affairs.” It added that the plan comes as part of the “conspiracy Syria is being subjected to.”

The Syrian government blames the violence in Syria on terrorists and armed gangs that it claims are part of a foreign conspiracy to destabilize the country.

The Local Coordination Committees opposition group also criticized the Arab League plan saying it gives the Syrian regime “a new opportunity, time and cover, in its attempt to bury the revolution.”

The LCC said the Arab League should declare that it failed to end the crisis, and ask for help from the “United Nations to force the regime to comply with the demands of the opposition.”

Arab League foreign ministers also extended the much-criticized observers mission for another month, according to a statement from the 22-member organization.

The Arab League faced three options Sunday: ending the mission and giving up its initiative, extending it, or turning the crisis over to the U.N. Security Council, as some opposition groups have urged. There, however, it would face a possible stalemate because of disagreements among permanent members over how far to go in forcing Assad’s hand.

The mission’s one-month mandate technically expired on Thursday.

Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal told reporters that his country will pull out its observers because “the Syrian government did not implement the Arab plan.” He urged Muslim countries, China, Russia, Europe and the U.S. to put pressure on Assad’s government to stop the violence.

Saudi Arabia has been one of the harshest Arab critics of the crackdown, It recalled its ambassador from Damascus last year in protest.

Source.

The world is facing a serious systemic crisis, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said in an article published on his election website and in the Izvestiya daily.

“By their scale, today’s global imbalances are such that they can hardly be overcome within the framework of the current system,” the premier wrote.

“Fundamentally, what the world is facing today is a serious systemic crisis, a tectonic process of global transformation. This is a visible manifestation of a transition to a new cultural, economic, technological and geopolitical era,” Putin said.

He said the world is entering a turbulent period.

“This period will be long and painful. No illusions should be cherished,” the prime minister said.

Russia will hold presidential elections on March 4, 2012. Putin, who held the presidential post in 2000-2008, is considered the most likely candidate to win them.

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Introduction

The economic, political and social outlook for 2012 is profoundly negative. The almost universal consensus, even among mainstream orthodox economists is pessimistic regarding the world economy. Although, even here, their predictions understate the scope and depth of the crises, there are powerful reasons to believe that beginning in 2012, we are heading toward a steeper decline than what was experienced during the Great Recession of 2008 – 2009. With fewer resources, greater debt and increasing popular resistance to shouldering the burden of saving the capitalist system, the governments cannot bail out the system.

Many of the major institutions and economic relations which were cause and consequence of world and regional capitalist expansion over the past three decades are in the process of disintegration and disarray. The previous economic engines of global expansion, the US and the European Union, have exhausted their potentialities and are in open decline. The new centers of growth, China, India, Brazil, Russia, which for a ‘short decade’ provided a new impetus for world growth have run their course and are de-accelerating rapidly and will continue to do so throughout the new year.

The Collapse of the European Union

Specifically, the crises wracked European Union will break up and the de facto multi-tiered structure will turn into a series of bilateral/multi-lateral trade and investment agreements. Germany , France , the Low and Nordic countries will attempt to weather the downturn. England – namely the City of London, in splendid isolation, will sink into negative growth, its financiers scrambling to find new speculative opportunities among the Gulf petrol-states and other ‘niches’. Eastern and Central Europe, particularly Poland and the Czech Republic , will deepen their ties to Germany but will suffer the consequences of the general decline of world markets. Southern Europe ( Greece , Spain , Portugal and Italy ) will enter into a deep depression as the massive debt payments fueled by savage assaults on wages and social benefits will severely reduce consumer demand.

Depression level unemployment and under-employment running to one-third of the labor force will detonate year-long social conflicts, intensifying into popular uprisings. Eventually a break-up of the European Union is almost inevitable. The euro as a currency of choice will be replaced by or return to national issues accompanied by devaluations and protectionism. Nationalism will be the order of the day. Banks in Germany , France and Switzerland will suffer huge losses on their loans to the South. Major bailouts will become necessary, polarizing German and French societies, between the tax-paying majorities and the bankers. Trade union militancy and rightwing pseudo ‘populism’ (neo-fascism) will intensify the class and national struggles

A depressed, fragmented and polarized Europe will be less likely to join in any Zionist inspired US-Israeli military adventure against Iran (or even Syria ). Crises ridden Europe will oppose Washington ’s confrontationalist approach to Russia and China .

The US : The Recession Returns with a Vengeance

The US economy will suffer the consequences of its ballooning fiscal deficit and will not be able to spend its way out of the world recession of 2012. Nor can it count on ‘exporting’ its way out of negative growth by turning to previously dynamic Asia, as China, India and the rest of Asia are losing economic steam. China will grow far below its 9% moving average. India will decline from 8% to 5% or lower. Moreover, the Obama regime’s military policy of ‘encirclement’, its economic policy of exclusion and protectionism will preclude any new stimulus from China .

Militarism Exacerbates the Economic Downturn

The US and England will be the biggest losers from the Iraqi post war economic reconstruction. Of $186 billion dollars in infrastructure projects, US and UK corporations will gain less than 5% (Financial Times, 12/16/11, p 1 and 3). A similar outcome is likely in Libya and elsewhere. US imperial militarism destroys an adversary, plunging into debt to do so, and non-belligerents reap the lucrative post-war economic reconstruction contracts.

The US economy will fall into recession in 2012 and the “jobless recovery of 2011” will be replaced by a steep increase of unemployment in 2012. In fact, the entire labor force will shrink as people losing their unemployment benefits will fail to register.

Labor exploitation (“productivity”) will intensify as capitalists force workers to produce more, for less pay, thus widening the income gap between wages and profits.

The economic downturn and growth of unemployment will be accompanied by savage cuts in social programs to subsidize financially troubled banks and industries. The debates among the parties will be over how large the cuts to workers and retirees will be to secure the ‘confidence’ of the bondholders. Faced with equally limited political choices, the electorate will react by voting out incumbents, abstaining and via spontaneous and organized mass movements, such as the “occupy Wall Street” protest. Dissatisfaction, hostility and frustration will pervade the culture. Democratic Party demagogues will scapegoat China ; the Republican Party demagogues will blame the immigrants. Both will fulminate against “the Islamo-fascists” and especially against Iran .

New Wars in the Midst of Crises: Zionists Pull the Trigger

The ‘52 Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations’ and their “Israel First” followers in the US Congress, State Department, Treasury and the Pentagon will push for war with Iran . If they are successful it will result in a regional conflagration and world depression. Given the extremist Israeli regime’s success in securing blind obedience to its war policies from the US Congress and White House, any doubts about the real possibility of a major catastrophic outcome can be set aside.

China: Compensatory Mechanisms in 2012

China will face the global recession of 2012 with several possibilities of ameliorating its impact. Beijing can shift toward producing goods and services for the 700 million domestic consumers currently out of the economic loop. By increasing wages, social services and environmental safety, China can compensate for the loss of overseas markets. China ’s economic growth, which is largely dependent on real estate speculation, will be adversely affected when the bubble is burst. A sharp downturn will result, leading to job losses, municipal bankruptcies and increased social and class conflicts. This can result in either greater repression or gradual democratization. The outcome will profoundly affect China ’s market – state relations. The economic crisis will likely strengthen state control over the market.

Russia Faces the Crises

Russia ’s election of President Putin will lead to less collaboration in backing US promoted uprisings and sanctions against Russian allies and trading partners. Putin will turn toward greater ties with China and will benefit from the break-up of the EU and the weakening of NATO.

The western media backed opposition will use its financial clout to erode Putin’s image and encourage investment boycotts though they will lose the Presidential elections by a big margin. The world recession will weaken the Russian economy and will force it to choose between greater public ownership or greater dependency on state funds to bail out prominent oligarchs.

The Transition 2011 – 2012: From Regional Stagnation and Recession to World Crises

The year 2011 laid the groundwork for the breakdown of the European Union. The crises began with the demise of the Euro, stagnation in the US and the outbreak of mass protests against the obscene inequalities on a world scale. The events of 2011 were a dress rehearsal for a new year of full scale trade wars between major powers, sharpening inter-imperialist struggles and the likelihood of popular rebellions turning into revolutions. Moreover, the escalation of Zionist orchestrated war fever against Iran in 2011 promises the biggest regional war since the US-Indo-Chinese conflict. The electoral campaigns and outcomes of Presidential elections in the US , Russia and France will deepen the global conflicts and economic crises.

During 2011 the Obama regime announced a policy of military confrontation with Russia and China and policies designed to undermine and degrade China ’s rise as a world economic power. In the face of a deepening economic recession and with the decline of overseas markets, especially in Europe , a major trade war will unfold. Washington will aggressively pursue policies limiting Chinese exports and investments. The White House will escalate its efforts to disrupt China ’s trade and investments in Asia, Africa and elsewhere. We can expect greater US efforts to exploit China ’s internal ethnic and popular conflicts and to increase its military presence off China ’s coastline. A major provocation or fabricated incident in this context is not to be excluded. The result in 2012 could lead to rabid chauvinist calls for a costly new ‘Cold War’. Obama has provided the framework and justification for a large-scale, long-term confrontation with China . This will be seen as a desperate effort to prop up US influence and strategic positions in Asia . The US military “quadrangle of power” – US-Japan-Australia-South Korea – with satellite support from the Philippines , will pit China ’s market ties against Washington ’s military build-up.

Europe: Deeper Austerity and Intensified Class Struggle

The austerity programs imposed in Europe, from England to Latvia to southern Europe will really take hold in 2012. Massive public sector firings and reduced private sector salaries and job opportunities will lead to a year of permanent class warfare and regime challenges. The ‘austerity policies’ in the South, will be accompanied by debt defaults resulting in bank failures in France and Germany . England ’s financial ruling class, isolated from Europe, but dominant in England , will insist that the Conservatives ‘repress’ labor and popular unrest. A new tough neo-Thatcherite style of autocratic rule will emerge; the Labor-trade union opposition will issue empty protests and tighten the leash on the rebellious populace. In a word, the regressive socio-economic policies put in place in 2011 have set the stage for new police-state regimes and more acute and possibly bloody confrontations with workers and unemployed youth with no future.

The Coming Wars that Ends America “As We Know It”

Within the US , Obama has laid the groundwork for a new and bigger war in the Middle East by relocating troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and concentrating them against Iran . To undermine Iran , Washington is expanding clandestine military and civilian operations against Iranian allies in Syria , Pakistan , Venezuela and China . The key to the US and Israeli bellicose strategy toward Iran is a series of wars in neighboring states, world- wide economic sanctions , cyber-attacks aimed at disabling vital industries and clandestine terrorist assassinations of scientists and military officials. The entire push, planning and execution of the US policies leading up to war with Iran can be empirically and without a doubt attributed to the Zionist power configuration occupying strategic positions in the US Administration, mass media and ‘civil society’.

A systematic analysis of American policymakers designing and implementing economic sanctions policy in Congress finds prominent roles for such mega-Zionists (Israel-Firsters) as Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Howard Berman; in the White House, Dennis Ross in the White House, Jeffrey Feltman in the State Department, and Stuart Levy, and his replacement David Cohen, in the Treasury. The White House is totally beholden to Zionist fund raisers and takes its cue from the ‘52 Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organization. The Israeli-Zionist strategy is to encircle Iran , weaken it economically and attack its military. The Iraq invasion was the US ’s first war for Israel ; the Libyan war the second; the current proxy war against Syria is the third. These wars have destroyed Israel ’s adversaries or are in the process of doing so.

During 2011, economic sanctions, which were designed to create domestic discontent in Iran , were the principle weapon of choice. The global sanctions campaign engaged the entire energies of the major Jewish-Zionist lobbies. They have faced no opposition from the mass media, Congress or the White Office. The Zionist Power Configuration (ZPC) has been virtually exempt from criticism by any of the progressive, leftist and socialist journals, movements or grouplets – with a few notable exceptions. The past year’s re-positioning of US troops from Iraq to the borders of Iran , the sanctions and the rising Big Push from Israel ’s Fifth Column in the US means expanded war in the Middle East . This likely means a “surprise” aerial and maritime missile attack by US forces. This will be based on a concocted pretext of an “imminent nuclear attack” concocted by Israeli Mossad and faithfully transmitted by the ZPC to their lackeys US Congress and White House for consumption and transmission to the world. It will be a destructive, bloody, prolonged war for Israel ; the US will bear the direct military cost by itself and the rest of the world will pay a dear economic price. The Zionist-promoted US war will convert the recession of early 2012 into a major depression by the end of the year and probably provoke mass upheavals.

Conclusion

All indications point to 2012 being a turning point year of unrelenting economic crisis spreading outward from Europe and the US to Asia and its dependencies in Africa and Latin America . The crisis will be truly global. Inter-imperial confrontations and colonial wars will undermine any efforts to ameliorate this crisis. In response, mass movements will emerge moving over time from protests and rebellions, and hopefully to social revolutions and political power.

by Prof. James Petras
Global Research, December 25, 2011

Ever dream of leaving it all behind and heading out of America? You’re not the only one. A new study shows that more US citizens than ever before are living outside of the country.

According to statistics from the US State Department, around 6.4 million Americans are either working or studying overseas, which Gallup says is the largest number ever for such statistic.

The polling organization came across the number after conducting surveys in 135 outside nations and the information behind the numbers reveal that this isn’t exactly a longtime coming either — numbers have skyrocketed only in recent years. In the 24 months before polling began, the number of Americans between the ages of 25 and 34 living abroad managed to surge from barely 1 percent to over 5.1 percent. For those under the age span wishing to move overseas, the percentage has jumped in the same amount of time from 15 percent to 40.

While the United States of America was at one point (and largely still is) a magnet for foreigners in search of work, the statistics makes it clear that an opposite trend is quickly picking up steam.

“There’s a feeling among more entrepreneurial Americans that if you really want to get anything done, you have to get out of country and away from the depressing atmosphere,” Bob Adams of America Wave tells Reuters. “There’s a sense of lost direction, so more people are looking for locations that offer more hope about the future.”

Many of those leaving the US have job skills that would transfer quite well in the American market. Instead, however, they chose to bring those out of the States, attracted instead to opportunities elsewhere.

While America offers some employment opportunities unmatched outside of the United States, the country has also seen dire economic statistics since the dawn of the Obama administration, with jobless benefit claims soaring in recent months, and only last week did the Department of Labor reveal an unemployment statistic below 9 percent. On the contrary, the number of Americans that want full-time work and have given up on finding it or unable to locate it is closer to double that figure, while at the same time many of America’s largest employers have outsourced positions across the globe. Banking giant Goldman Sachs announced earlier this year that in the wake of a recession, they would finally be creating 1,000 new positions, yet making them available only to workers in Singapore. Other industries, significantly American, have been relocated as well; the ending of NASA’s space shuttle program this year left many intelligent US citizens with little choice but to continue in their field outside of the States.

“We’ve pretty much outsourced everything else,” aerospace technician Giovanni Pinzon tells RT. He was left scrambling for a job after years working in America’s space program.

America Wave’s Adams adds to Reuters that the statistics prove surprising to him, but noted that it doesn’t exactly make sense to think that it is a fluke.

“They’re looking for work because of the sluggish economy, and they’ve lost confidence that the U.S. is going anywhere,” says Adams.

Source.

A grim Ministry of Defense bulletin issued to Prime Minister Putin and President Medvedev today states that President Hu has “agreed in principal” that the only way to stop the West’s aggression led by the United States is through “direct and immediate military action” and that the Chinese leader has ordered his Naval Forces to “prepare for warfare.”

Hu’s call for war joins Chinese Rear Admiral and prominent military commentator Zhang Zhaozhong who, likewise, warned this past week that “China will not hesitate to protect Iran even with a Third World War,” and Russian General Nikolai Makarov who grimly stated last week, “I do not rule out local and regional armed conflicts developing into a large-scale war, including using nuclear weapons.”

The raising of global tensions between the East and West was exploded this past fortnight when Russian Ambassador Vladimir Titorenko and two of his aides retuning from Syria were brutally assaulted and put in hospital by Qatar security forces aided by CIA and British MI6 agents attempting to gain access to diplomatic pouches containing information from Syrian intelligence that the United States was flooding Syria and Iran with the same US-backed al Qaida mercenaries who toppled the Libyan government.

Further evidence in these diplomatic pouches, this bulletin says, reveals that the United States is preparing an “ultimate solution” to the Middle East Crisis should nuclear war break out by attacking Syria and Iran with lethal biological agents intended to kill tens of millions of innocent civilians.

The discovery of the biological agent to be used by the West was revealed a fortnight ago by Dutch virologist Ron Fouchier of the Erasmus Medical Centre in the Netherlands who lead a team of scientists that discovered that a mere five mutations to the avian flu virus was sufficient to make it spread far more easily and would make it the most lethal killer of mankind ever invented.

Should the US begin an attack utilizing this deadly virus, this bulletin continues, its most likely method of delivery would be via its RQ-170 Sentinel Drone which is operated by the CIA.

These frightening assessments of future US actions against its enemies were revealed in this bulletin based upon Russian intelligence analysts examination of the RQ-170 Sentinel Drone brought down over Iranian territory last week by the Russian made Avtobaza ground-based electronic intelligence and jamming system used against this unmanned aerial vehicle with little damage and that showed it be equipped with a sophisticated aerosol delivery system.

Important to note is that the Western powers first use of a deadly flu virus to destroy their enemies and overthrow the established global order was first used less than a century ago in 1918 when the Spanish Flu variant was unleashed at the ending of World War I and killed an estimated 500 million people which represented fully 3% of the world’s entire population.

Archived KGB files on the Spanish Flu pandemic have always stated that this deadly virus was “bio-engineered” by US military scientists who used as their“guinea pigs” American Soldiers who were the first recorded victims and were stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas.

To fully understand the underlying reasons behind the United States and its Western allies push for Total Global War was recently detailed by the top American investigative journalist Greg Hunter whose shocking in depth report titled “Is the World Spinning Out of Control?” revealed that the entire edifice of the Western economic systems is crumbling under the weight of over $100 Trillion in debt no one is able to pay and wherein he warned: “Never in history has the world been this close to total financial chaos and nuclear war at the same time.”

Sadly, but as always, the American people are not being allowed to know the horrific future their elite leaders are planning for them, a situation made even worse this past week when the US Senate passed a new law by a 93-7 vote that is warned will destroy America for all time by giving total control of this once free nation over to its military forces and destroy their Constitution.

As we noted in our previous report, it is worth mentioning again the words of the American Founding Father, Thomas Jefferson, who warned his fellow citizens over 200 years ago about what is happening today by saying:

“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, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”

December 7, 2011 © EU and US all rights reserved. Permission to use this report in its entirety is granted under the condition it is linked back to its original source at WhatDoesItMean.Com.

Imagine for a moment that somewhere in the middle of Texas there was a large foreign military base, say Chinese or Russian. Imagine that thousands of armed foreign troops were constantly patrolling American streets in military vehicles. Imagine they were here under the auspices of “keeping us safe” or “promoting democracy” or “protecting their strategic interests.”

Imagine that they operated outside of US law, and that the Constitution did not apply to them. Imagine that every now and then they made mistakes or acted on bad information and accidentally killed or terrorized innocent Americans, including women and children, most of the time with little to no repercussions or consequences. Imagine that they set up checkpoints on our soil and routinely searched and ransacked entire neighborhoods of homes. Imagine if Americans were fearful of these foreign troops, and overwhelmingly thought America would be better off without their presence.

Imagine if some Americans were so angry about them being in Texas that they actually joined together to fight them off, in defense of our soil and sovereignty, because leadership in government refused or were unable to do so. Imagine that those Americans were labeled terrorists or insurgents for their defensive actions, and routinely killed, or captured and tortured by the foreign troops on our land. Imagine that the occupiers’ attitude was that if they just killed enough Americans, the resistance would stop, but instead, for every American killed, ten more would take up arms against them, resulting in perpetual bloodshed. Imagine if most of the citizens of the foreign land also wanted these troops to return home. Imagine if they elected a leader who promised to bring them home and put an end to this horror.

Imagine if that leader changed his mind once he took office.

The reality is that our military presence on foreign soil is as offensive to the people that live there as armed Chinese troops would be if they were stationed in Texas. We would not stand for it here, but we have had a globe-straddling empire and a very intrusive foreign policy for decades that incites a lot of hatred and resentment towards us.

According to our own CIA, our meddling in the Middle East was the prime motivation for the horrific attacks on 9/11. But instead of re-evaluating our foreign policy, we have simply escalated it. We had a right to go after those responsible for 9/11, to be sure, but why do so many Americans feel as if we have a right to a military presence in some 160 countries when we wouldn’t stand for even one foreign base on our soil, for any reason? These are not embassies, mind you, these are military installations. The new administration is not materially changing anything about this. Shuffling troops around and playing with semantics does not accomplish the goals of the American people, who simply want our men and women to come home. 50,000 troops left behind in Iraq is not conducive to peace any more than 50,000 Russian soldiers would be in the United States.

Shutting down military bases and ceasing to deal with other nations with threats and violence is not isolationism. It is the opposite. Opening ourselves up to friendship, honest trade and diplomacy is the foreign policy of peace and prosperity. It is the only foreign policy that will not bankrupt us in short order, as our current actions most definitely will. I share the disappointment of the American people in the foreign policy rhetoric coming from the administration. The sad thing is, our foreign policy WILL change eventually, as Rome’s did, when all budgetary and monetary tricks to fund it are exhausted.

Imagine!: speech written & given by Ron Paul
should you be a US citizen in support of Ron Paul: http://revolutionpac.com/defense

Analysts are doing a lot of worrying lately about all the bad things that could happen in the global economy, despite positive economic data and occasional market rallies.

Looking ahead to 2012, Deutsche Bank analysts Tom Joyce and Ram Nayak lay out 10 of the biggest worries investors have to look out for in the coming year in a massive investor note about what we should be looking forward to in the coming 12 months. What’s more, they tell you how to hedge for the worst case scenario.

Ironically enough, analysts remains so bearish that one of the biggest risks is that the economy does well.

#1 A Greek exit rom the euro

Image: real democracy

Probability: A Greek euro exit and return to the Drachma is not DB’s base case, but then again it’s not inconceivable.

What would happen: Big haircuts on private sector assets, capital controls, collapse of Greek banking system, run on peripheral European banks

Hedges: Switch from European assets to gold or U.S. Treasuries, long yen or sterling, and long volatility indices

#2 Funding crises in Italy and Spain

Image: Alberto Pizzoli / AFP / Getty

What to watch: In Spain, the private sector and banking system. In Italy, politics and growth.

What would happen: A crisis of confidence would prohibit both countries from accessing cash and threaten both the euro and the global financial system.  The European Central Bank would need to “respond aggressively,” to save the global economy from collapse.

Hedges: Short French and British banks, short Eastern European currencies, long options on CDX.IG

#3 The U.S. gets hit with a downgrade or double-dip recession

Image: bthomso via Flickr

Catalysts: Risks #1 or #2 materialize, fiscal cuts disappoint, or growth underperforms

What would happen: The U.S. bank sector could also be downgraded. Timing is everything to measure the impact.

Hedges: Issuers can win out by pre-funding, investors should be overweight on non-financials and highly rated non-cyclicals.

#4 A hard landing in China

Image: Daniel Goodman / Business Insider.com

How it happens: 5-6% growth, which would feel like a recession

What would happen: Global capital markets would be affected by sharp declines in commodity prices, but China’s large Forex reserves it could probably stop the fall and stimulate growth.

Hedges: 6-month put option on commodities baskets

#5 France loses its AAA rating

Image: MJC Rodez on Flickr

Probability: “Quite possible,” given lack of progress on austerity measures

What would happen: French-German bond spreads may indicate that this risk is already priced in, but this would have negative implications for the European Financial Stability Facility and already mounting funding pressures.

Hedges: Buy French CDS, “buy best-of-put options”—a put over the equity index that performs best on the period (because equity markets generally go down simultaneously with a macro shock)

#6 Aggressive and sustained deleveraging of European banks

Image: eyeSPIVE on Flickr

Probability: Deleveraging is definite. The only question is by how much.

What would happen: Deleveraging will probably total up to $2 trillion in 18 months, but this could be exacerbated by crisis.

Hedges: Investment in cyclical industries, lower-rated credits and financials, long volatility indices.

#7 Commodity trade finance faces a liquidity crunch

Probability: High, particularly if aggressive bank deleveraging (risk #6) materializes.

What would happen: The European banks that provide financing for the big Swiss-based commodity trading houses could cut funding, and commodities prices would fall.

Hedges: European borrowers should seek funding from the U.S., one-year USD puts on Brent

#8 Safe haven assets disappear

Signs for caution: Traditional safe-haven assets like gold, the Swiss franc, and the yen have all been volatile/

Worse still: U.S. Treasuries and bunds have been go-to investments recently, but high debt levels in the U.S. and Germany could change that.

Hedges: Other AAA-rated investments like supranational bonds and gilts.

#9 U.S. pension fund deficits continue to balloon

Image: Flickr Vertigogen

How it happens: Both public and private sector funding gaps for pensions are out of control, and this could get worse. Rock bottom interest rates are making this worse.

What would happen: Rating agency downgrades, declines in corporate profitability, and funding crises.

Hedges: Puts on equity indices where premium is only paid out when rates rise (the idea is that they don’t).

#10 BETTER than expected economic growth

Image: Aepoc, CC.

How this is a problem: Betting against the market always carries the risk of being surprised.

What would happen: Europe stabilizes, the global economy grows, and risk asset prices exceed expectations.

Hedges: “10y/20y euro rates payer spreads; long non-conforming mezzanine debt; Short AUD v Long MXP”

Source.

The Federal Security Service (FSB) is reporting today that the “secret letter” sent to Prime Minister Putin by Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda contains a warning that United States President Barack Obama has issued an executive-level “kill order” against US Congressman Ron Paul over fears this charismatic politician, who many believe could capture the Republican Presidential 2012 nomination, is about to expose to all Americans what can only be described as the largest mass theft in human history.

According to this report, Prime Minister Noda first became aware of this “kill order” after a private meeting with Obama at last weeks ASEAN Summit meeting in Indonesia when the American President expressed his “unconstrained joy” over the toppling of the Greek and Italian governments in bloodless coups by EU banksters who installed to run these countries unelected former Goldman Sachs executives.

Not known to many Americans is that the giant global investment firm Goldman Sachs put Obama into office by being its top donor and after winning the Presidency put so many of its former executives into the US government it is known as the “Wall Street Cabinet.”

The reason for Goldman Sachs, and other top American and European banksters, putting Obama into office, this report continues, was to loot the Americans taxpayers of an estimated $100 Trillion…nearly $30 Trillion of which went directly into the pockets of international banksters around the world and another $70 Trillion in lost home values, stock portfolios and pensions funds.

The main conduit of this massive theft was the US Federal Reserve System which during the 2008 Financial Crisis secretly doled out, without the American peoples knowledge, over $16 Trillion to European banks and companies and another nearly $8 Trillion in “secret loans” to the largest banks in the United States.

Causing Obama and his bankster allies to fear Ron Paul, this report continues, is the Congressman’s ability to hold US Congressional hearings on the $8 Trillion in secret loans to the largest banks in American without the public’s knowledge exposing this largest theft in human history and laying bare for all to see the total criminality of their entire elite political, financial and corporate class.

Though the US mainstream media has virtually ignored Ron Paul’s candidacy the American people themselves appear to have broken through this deliberate government ordered blackout of his Presidential run as evidenced by his rise in the polls in the first campaign States of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, which should he win them all would assure him the Republican nomination.

The fears Ron Paul is causing among Americas elite classes appear to be justified as he recently likened the US Federal Reserve System to “drug addiction” warning that the deception it has foisted upon the public will lead to the destruction of the United States.

Ron Paul further warned the American people this year that their nation was becoming a “police state,” called for the impeachment of Obama for ordering the assassination of an American citizen without charges or trial, and stated that Obama had violated the War Powers Act over his actions against Libya.

Ron Paul’s fears of a police state America being ruled by a dictatorial tyrant were confirmed yesterday when the US Senate, in a 61-37 vote gave, for the first time in history, the power to the US Military to hold citizens without charges or trial indefinitely by passing a bill that was written in secret and never openly debated.

So frightening is this new law that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in the days prior to its passing warned, “The Senate is going to vote on whether Congress will give this president—and every future president — the power to order the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians anywhere in the world. The power is so broad that even U.S. citizens could be swept up by the military and the military could be used far from any battlefield, even within the United States itself.”

Most ominous in this FSB report is its stating that the “assassination regime” ordered against Ron Paul by Obama may already be underway as one of theUS foreclosure fraud whistleblowers subpoenaed by Ron Paul to testify before the US Congress named Tracey Lawrence was found “suicided” yesterday inLas Vegas.

The destruction of anyone found opposing the Obama regime and its bankster backers was, also, brought into sharp relief this week by the smearing by mental illness allegations of one of America’s top heroes US Marine Sergeant Dakota Meyer, who in September received the Congressional Medal of Honor from Obama (who called him one of the most “down-to-earth guys that you will ever meet”) for saving the lives of 36 of his comrades, but after he alerted the press that his employer defense contractor BAE Systems was selling high-tech sniper rifles to Pakistan that are being used to kill America Soldiers was labeled as a “drunk and mentally ill.”

So concerned has the Kremlin become about the growing American fascist police state it caused General Nikolai Makarov, Russia’s top military commander, to issue a warning to the West last week that the Motherland was fully prepared for a nuclear World War III and which prompted the Obama regime to state that it would immediately cease observing their arms treaty with Russia.

To if the American people will be able to rally around Ron Paul before he is assassinated by the Obama regime it is not in our knowing, other than to note that in a country where every public demonstration – however peaceful and orderly it might be – is ordered by their authorities to be treated as the equivalent of a prison riot, where the former police chief of Seattle blamed the militarization of local US police forces on Obama’s Homeland Security Department, and where the media is described as being nothing more than a “lapdog” for Obama and his bankster allies, the likelihood of these people escaping the worst horrors to come do, indeed, seem inescapable.

November 30, 2011 © EU and US all rights reserved. Permission to use this report in its entirety is granted under the condition it is linked back to its original source at WhatDoesItMean.Com.