| The term red pill and its opposite, blue pill, are pop culture terms that have become a common symbol for the choice between the blissful ignorance of illusion (blue) and embracing the sometimes painful truth of reality (red). |
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- Expatriation in the Wake of the Facebook IPO
- Run, Saverin! Run!
- Brazil and the Spirit of Liberty
- Immune to the Financial Crisis
- Data Show US Economy is Improving
- Why the World’s Unemployed Youth are Flocking to Brazil
- “Jon Corzine – What’s Going On?”
- Correction Fighting: How Feds Prolong Economic Depressions
- British Pound Sterling Losses “Safe-Haven” Status
Building the Pentagon’s ‘like me’ weapon
The Pentagon wants to understand the science behind what makes people violent. The question is what do they plan to do with it?
In February this year, the US government was forced into full damage limitation mode. News that US troops in Afghanistan had sent copies of the Koran to be incinerated, sparked a wave of deadly protests that left 36 people dead and more than 200 injured. Despite an apology from President Barack Obama and assurances that the burning was accidental, the public relations offensive launched to counter the damage done to the military’s reputation and stem the violence showed little sign of success.
Now imagine that instead of employing public relations experts to advise on the best strategy, US officials had a device that could advise them what to say, generating a story based on a scientific understanding of the brain’s inner workings to soothe tempers and calm the mood of the population. It sounds like something from a science fiction blockbuster, but is in fact the premise behind the Pentagon’s growing interest in the neurobiology of political violence, a relatively new field that combines neuroscience with more traditional social science-based approaches to understanding human behaviour.
The Necessity of Disillusionment
Nothing is more sad than the death of an illusion. ~ Arthur Koestler
Our greatest illusion is to believe that we are what we think ourselves to be. ~ H.F. Amiel
If we only knew what Illusion is, we would then know the opposite: what Truth is. This Truth would liberate us from slavery. ~ Boris Mouravieff
The experience of disillusionment is one that is common to all. It is safe to say that at some time or another, every human being has had the experience of believing in something that turned out not to be true. The initial shock that comes when one’s perception of the world is revealed to be at odds with the hard facts of reality can range anywhere from mild disappointment to a feeling of overwhelming psychological trauma.
Whatever the degree of deception, the realization that one has been believing in a lie is a painful experience, not only psychologically but physically as well. Like a punch to the stomach, it can feel like one’s breath has been taken away. And because our beliefs about the world are interconnected with other beliefs fixed in our brains, the destruction of one belief can often lead to a cascade of collapse of many others.
When a person is confronted with facts that contradict currently held belief systems, they have one of two choices. The first choice is to go into denial mode by rejecting the facts as being untrue in order to prop up their chosen belief system and continue living as before. The second choice is to accept the new data and try and reconstruct a new internal paradigm or map of reality that accommodates the new information, which may mean putting into question all other beliefs associated with the old model.
The second choice is difficult and takes a great deal of strength in order to let go of one’s preconceived ideas and accept the new and factual data. The first choice is easy because it requires no effort, pain, sadness, or reordering of one’s life or values. It is also more comfortable, and because humans generally prefer comfort over pain, the first choice is often the default option.
The exact moment when a person becomes aware of facts that go against what is believed to be true, they experience what psychologists call cognitive dissonance; it is that tense, uncomfortable sensation that what one sees is so out of sync with what one already believes to be true, that the mind instantly rejects it, even when the facts are plain and indisputable. Continue reading
Student Loan Debt Slaves In Perpetuity – A True Story Of “Bankruptcy Hell”
The numeric implications as well as the magnitude of the student loan bubble have been discussed extensively before. Yet just like most people’s eyes gloss over when they hear billions, trillions or quadrillions, so seeing the exponential chart of Federal Student debt merely brings up memories of a math lesson from high school, or at best, makes one think of statistics. And as we all know statistics are faceless, nameless and can never apply to anyone else. It is the individual case studies that have the most impact. Which is why we would like to introduce you to Devin and Sarah Stang – student loan debt slaves in perpetuity.
First, for those who are still unfamiliar with the brush strokes, here is the big picture, courtesy of AP:
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York estimates 37 million Americans have student loan debt, totaling $870 billion. The average balance is around $23,000 (though that partly reflects a relatively small number of very large balances; the median is $12,800). Only 39 percent are paying down balances. An estimated 5.4 million borrowers have at least one student loan account past due.
Roughly 85 percent of outstanding student loan debt is owed to the federal government. The remaining 15 percent that’s counted as private student debt is owed to various non-federal lenders, ranging from banks to loan companies like Sallie Mae Corp. to non-profits and state-affiliated agencies (under the Durbin bill, loans from any government-funded entity still wouldn’t be dischargeable, only those from truly private lenders).
Generally, it’s these private loans that bring borrowers to the door of bankruptcy lawyers like Barrett. Private student loans often lack the protections of federal ones, and have rates that typically start higher and can shoot up. A recent survey of bankruptcy attorneys found 81 percent reporting more clients with student debt in recent years, and roughly half reporting a significant increase.
And, also by way of background to those unfamiliar, student debt has a very peculiar feature:
Virtually any other kind of debt — including medical bills, mortgage, credit cards and car loans, even gambling losses— can be discharged in bankruptcy, allowing the “honest but unlucky” a chance to restore their footing through an arduous restructuring overseen by a court.
But under a 2005 law passed by Congress to protect lenders, private student loans fall under the same nearly-impossible-to-clear category as child support payments and criminal fines.
“It’s a huge part of why the younger generations are here now,” said the Stangs’ bankruptcy lawyer, Matthew Barrett, whose busy office in Amherst, west of Cleveland, belies stories about the improving economy. He estimates half his clients have problems with student debt.
Continue reading
What Lincoln Foresaw: Corporations Being “Enthroned”
What Lincoln Foresaw:
Corporations Being “Enthroned” After the Civil War and Re-Writing the Laws Defining Their Existence
“We may congratulate ourselves that this cruel war is nearing its end.
It has cost a vast amount of treasure and blood. . . .
It has indeed been a trying hour for the Republic; but
I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes
me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war,
corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places
will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong
its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth
is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.
I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety
of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war.
God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless.
” The passage appears in a letter from Lincoln to (Col.) William F. Elkins, Nov. 21, 1864.
Separation of Corporation and State: Corporate Personhood
The following is essay about the relationship between corporations and government.
In his short dispatch entitled “Invaders from Mars,” British author Charlie Stross develops an “admittedly whimsical” working hypothesis to address why people feel so politically powerless in the UK, US, and elsewhere, and why they have such widespread and general distrust of government. He begins by synthesizing this popular sentiment with the quaint phrase, “Voting doesn’t change anything – the politicians always win,” and proceeds to highlight what he believes to be the root cause of disfunctional democracy and government. For Stross, corporate personhood lies at the heart of these disfunctional systems and his piece raises some crucial questions about corporate persons, namely where did they come from, in whose interest do they serve, and, perhaps most importantly, who controls them. At the foundation of the problem, he claims, is the establishment of this doctrine. “The rot set in back in the 19th century, when the US legal system began recognizing corporations as de facto people,” he says. He continues by addressing the second crucial question I mentioned (in whose interests do corporate persons serve?):
Corporations do not share our priorities. They are hive organisms constructed out of teeming workers who join or leave the collective: those who participate within it subordinate their goals to that of the collective, which pursues the three corporate objectives of growth, profitability, and pain avoidance. (The sources of pain a corporate organism seeks to avoid are lawsuits, prosecution, and a drop in shareholder value.) … Corporations, not being human, lack patriotic loyalty; with a free trade regime in place they are free to move wherever taxes and wages are low and profits are high. We have seen this recently in Ireland where, despite a brutal austerity budget, corporation tax is not to be raised lest multinationals desert for warmer climates.
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The history of petrodollar recycling…
According to research outlined in Dr. David Spiro’s book, The Hidden Hand of American Hegemony (1999), it was during this time OPEC began discussions on the viability of pricing oil trades in several currencies. This unpublished proposal involved a “basket of currencies” from the Group of Ten nations, or “G-10.” These 10 members of the Bank of International Settlements (plus Austria and Switzerland) included the major European countries and their currencies such as Germany (Mark), France (Franc), and the U.K. (Sterling), as well other industrialized nations such as Japan (yen), Canada (Canadian dollar), and of course the Unites States (U.S. dollar). 35 It should be noted the powerful G-10/BIS Group of Ten also has one unofficial member, the governor of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority, or SAMA.
In order to prevent this monetary transition to a basket of currencies, the Nixon administration began high-level talks with Saudi Arabia to unilaterally price international oil sales in dollars only – despite U.S. assurances to its European and Japanese allies that such a unique monetary/geopolitical arrangement would not transpire. In 1974 an agreement was reached with New York and London banking interests which established what became known as “petrodollar recycling.”
That year the Saudi government secretly purchased $2.5 billion in U.S. Treasury bills with their oil surplus funds, and a few years later Treasury Secretary Michael Blumenthal cut a secret deal with the Saudis to ensure that OPEC would continue to price oil in dollars only. 36
In typical understatement Dr. Spiro noted, “…clearly something more than the laws of supply and demand…resulted in 70 percent of all Saudi assets in the United States being held in a New York Fed account.” 37 Naturally, this arrangement with the Saudi government prevented a market-based adjustment, and was the basis for the second phase of the American Century, the Petrodollar phase. What follows is the extraordinary history in which petrodollar recycling was vigorously implemented during the 1970s.
