blog.arithm

It’s a distraction. The real issue is exponentially greater.

Saw this on Lifehacker. Excellent.

On October 11, 2002 Congress approved the “Iraq War Resolution” granting the Bush administration authorization to invade Iraq.  It was to be a quick war, we were told.

Six years later, 1 in 3 Iraqis have been killed, wounded, or displaced.  Over 4,000 U.S. soldiers have been killed with tens of thousands more seriously wounded.

The three trillion dollar Iraq War, burning through $10 billion dollars per month, has been funded with deficit dollars — money we do not have.

How much longer will we borrow to wage a war founded on lies; when our ailing economy threatens jobs, education, healthcare, and disaster relief?

On Saturday, October 11th, 2008, Bostonians will gather in Boston Common to make a stand.

For more information, see the official rally website and the program for a list of performers and speakers.

Update: This drew a much larger crowd than I anticipated; where I expected to see hundreds, there were thousands. Still much smaller than it needs to be, but encouraging.

Crowds will certainly grow as the economy worsens.

In light of recent events, I want to remind myself of an extremely important fact that I have read a number of times, and yet somehow always seem to forget or, more likely, ignore.

From the opening of Murray N. Rothbard’s The Case Against the Fed:

By far the most secret and least accountable operation of the federal government is not, as one might expect, the CIA, the DIA, or some other super-secret intelligence agency. The CIA and other intelligence operations are under control of Congress. They are accountable: A Congressional committee supervises these operations, controls their budgets, and is informed of their covert activities.

The Federal Reserve, however, is accountable to no one; is has now budget; it is subject to no audit; and no Congressional committee knows of, or can truly supervise, its operations. The Federal Reserve, virtually in total control of the nation’s monetary system, is accountable to nobody.

America’s Founding Fathers held a deep distrust of centralized banking. Before long, we may find out why, first-hand, for ourselves.

Plus a counter-game recommendation.

I’m still trying to get my head around what the hell is going on, but best I can tell is that Colonel Klink, social climber that he is, has somehow lifted himself from an obscure commandant of Stalag-13 to the very highest levels of the  American military industrial complex.

And he appears to be a mere thirty-two words away from unilateral control over the American banking system.

Where’s Hogan when you need him?

Seriously though, I’ve spent a good chunk of the last two days trying to get a better handle on what’s really happening.  As someone who, until just about a week ago, knew virtually nothing of American or international finance, I’m the first to admit that I have no idea what I’m talking about.  That said, here’s my take on it all; oddly enough much of which can best be summarized via this tiff between Naomi Klein and Andrew Sullivan:

I think they both might just be right.  Certainly an administration that relies on shock doctrine to achieve it’s goals could leverage a generation of Americans raised on the concept of credit as money — after all, “Life takes Visa” doesn’t it? — to engineer a self-imposed financial disaster.

C’mon, let’s put on our tinfoil hats and ask a few “what if” questions.

• What if the current administration colluded with the likes of Goldman Sachs to setup mortgage packages that were difficult to trace and, more importantly, doomed to fail.
• What if these mortgages were promoted as part of an ownership society, a get-rich concept sold to an American public that grew up on credit and believing in the words of Gordon Gekko: that somehow greed “will save that malfunctioning corporation called the USA.”
• In other words, what if the current administration set out with the intent of producing a — this — disastrous event as a means of furthering an agenda?

Of course, some would call this financial terrorism:

And if it’s true, they’re damn right.  But terrorism to achieve what end?  What’s the agenda? More profit for Bush cronies as the dollar collapses?

I wonder if the Bank of Klink will offer a good Dollar to Amero exchange rate..