Wolf-Crier's Festival And Pancake Breakfast

Ya know?  If we Far Siders weren't so darned smart, we might think that the US is purposely squandering its moral and economic leadership.

Not the the US has/had any real moral superiority, but it was a position into which it thrust itself/was thrust by the currents of history.  It was an enviable position for a group of people to be in, had they something to offer beside bombs and grifts.

At any rate, they were there for whatever reasons, and they went and tossed it out the window.  Of course, maintaining such a position requires at least a modicum of wisdom, which is a commodity of which Washington has never been accused of having a surplus.

As the so-called "leader of the free world," Obama had a chance to unseat China as the elephant in the living room of Southeast Asia.  When he was selected the first time, Indonesia went nuts.  The whole country was ready to be annexed into the US.  They built statues to him and made his childhood home a museum, nay a shrine is more accurate.

Then Obama kept delaying a victory lap around Southeast Asia, and the fervor cooled a bit.  When he finally came to Indonesia, he was aloof and even a bit disrespectful.  In fact, everyone was waiting for his big speech in Indonesian, but the whole time here, he spoke all of four words of the local lingo.  That left folks scratching their heads.

Then there was the APEC meeting just recently in Bali.  Indonesia spent several millions of dollars to meet the US delegation's security demands, jumping through dozens of hoops to make sure the Terrorist in Chief wasn't accosted by his competition.

Obama cancelled at the last minute.

Suppose you're throwing a big party and it is centered around the Guest of Honor.  In order to attract the GoH, you spend lavishly to make sure there are no crusts on the sandwiches, no brown M&Ms and no paprika in the egg salad, even though all your other guests love crusts, brown M&Ms and paprika.  All is in readiness.  Guests are arriving.  The phone rings.  GoH won't be able to make it after all.

In a panic to rescue your party, you turn to GoH's biggest rival, who was gracious enough to show up...and early at that.  You dub him GoH and proceed as if nothing happened, but you'll never forget the snub.

And so China once again has snatched the role of leadership out from under the US, whose bloated self-importance and intense self-interest is wearing thin on the rest of the world.

Americans seem either incapable or unwilling to view themselves as others do.  This lack of empathy is generally diagnosed as sociopathic when it occurs in individuals.  It is common in the offspring of wealthy, powerful people, since the children inherit without the pain and suffering that tempers hubris.  This leads to an inflated sense of self-importance and an inability to comprehend that those called friends are only there because you throw great parties and your left-overs are better than most people's first rounds.

But when you ultimately become withdrawn and the parties become less frequent and perhaps there's a little trouble in paradise, those 'friends' will not only not come to your aid, they lie in wait to pounce on you, should the opportunity arise.  Since you can't afford to pay your bodyguards anymore, those opportunities start becoming very frequent.  In your paranoia, you become a recluse, thus further reinforcing the perception that you are not worth hanging out with.

Look what has happened to America.  Once upon a time, it sent people to fight its wars and people to venture into the unknown (such as Moon landings).  Now, it sends drones to fight while the people hide deep in mountain redoubts.  It sends robots to explore, while the people go home at night to their cushy southern California manors.  Classic signs of paranoid reclusivity. 

Instead of throwing lavish parties, the US argues over who will pay the tab.  Once upon a time, the US was fun and everyone wanted to hang out with him.  Now, to be his friend, you have to take his gifts.  Instead of the cool electronics and gadgets he used to give away, now he only gives out guns and bombs, and he expects you to fill in as his bodyguard in your part of town because his regular staff up and quit and the current staff just want to sit in bunkers under mountains.

The worst part is that the world got hooked on Uncle Sugar's gifts.  Everyone wanted to have some of those green bits of paper that he handed out and the world got used to having them around.  Of course, Uncle Sugar handed out so much of the little green paper that it seems like everyone has a pile or two laying around these days.  Used to be you could trade them with other folks for neat stuff, but now everyone's got so many of them that no one will trade anymore.

Not to mention Uncle Sugar's habit of borrowing money and not paying it back.  Oh sure, he says he always pays, but really all he does is give you more paper in exchange for the original paper.  The new stuff has different magical symbols and incantations on them, but really it's just more paper when it come down to it.  People start losing interest in Uncle Sugar's stuff and wander off to look for more novel entertainment.  Besides, Uncle is really paranoid and grumpy these days, so who wants to hang around that attitude?

Folks start doing things without inviting Uncle Sugar.  He gets upset and starts throwing his weight around.  He threatens everyone by saying he'll start throwing his pieces of paper from helicopters to keep everyone using them, but all that does is make folks look for alternatives.

And lo and behold!  There's Uncle Chin Xiao just chomping at the bit to step in an be the new party house.

Heck, even Uncle Sugar's own family is turning its back on him.  Not a good sign.

Probably too late to fix it, too.

Oh, and the whole budget crisis charade?  Just histrionics to get everyone panicked and rallied around old Uncle Sugar again.  But this time, the world just shrugged and went about its business.  All the apocollapse tales and fear porn don't work anymore.  Call it 'boy who cried wolf syndrome'.  World's got better things to do.

To Lance And Squeeze

Regular readers may recall that sometime back, we looked at the word 'sequester', as in the program the US government instituted back in January of this year, to cut costs.  If you look up the legal definition of 'sequester', it means to take possession of property from a debtor until the bills are paid.  Although no one ever seems to talk about this, the US government being chock full of lawyers would certainly have chosen that word for a reason, which is what lawyer types are paid to do - dissemble, prevaricate and obfuscate.

Given that the US government has been running a sequestration program for the past year, is it any wonder that it has shut down?  Is this really a "budget battle"?  Or is it instead the prime lenders cutting off the flow of money?  Is Ben Bernanke going out and Janet Yellen coming in because she has the longer curriculum vitae in public sector economics and her husband is a Nobel lariat economist able to handle things like entire nations in receivership?

The reader is advised to scan down the right column and find the links on this page.  The first one is the US National Debt Clock.  This sobering website tells us that the US has a total of $126 trillion in unfunded liabilities and total taxpayers of 115 million people, so that every man woman and child in the US owes $1.101 million on total assets per capita of $332 thousand.  Even if we remove things like Social Security and Medicaide (now Obamacare) and count only money already borrowed, then each man woman and child in the US owes $190 thousand. In other words, if you confiscated all the assets of all the citizens of the US, it would only pay one-third of the national liabilities.

That is the textbook definition of BROKE, referred to in polite circles as bankrupt.  No amount of lawyering will change the facts, only the terminology.

"It is not, perhaps, unreasonable to conclude, that a pure and perfect democracy is a thing not attainable by man, constituted as he is of contending elements of vice and virtue, and ever mainly influenced by the predominant principle of self-interest. It may, indeed, be confidently asserted, that there never was that government called a republic, which was not ultimately ruled by a single will, and, therefore (however bold may seem the paradox), virtually and substantially a monarchy."  - Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee, (1854). Universal History: From the Creation of the World to the Beginning of the Eighteenth Century, Vol. I. Petridge and Company. p. 216.

It is now the point in US history when things will continue to worsen until the people cry out for someone - anyone - to fix the problem.  As in every other instance, this 'savior' will not be beneficial to either the American people, nor the world.  Experience has shown that the person who ultimately gets tapped for the job usually ends up causing more problems than are solved.  In recent history, we need look no further than one Adolf Hitler.

It is important to keep in mind that, no matter what else may have happened, Hitler did a bang-up job of fixing the German economy.  The people went from abject poverty under the Weimar Republic, to living the high life and nearly taking over the world in less than ten years.

One can feel the moment coming when the US citizens will cry out against a do-nothing Congress.  They will search, find and install a powerful and charismatic leader who will assume the entire powers of government in a popular mandate to 'clean up Washington.  This leader will be wildly successful at reversing decades of economic mishandling and America will get back to work - only it will be at the sacrifice of liberty and the well-being of the rest of the world.

Things could be fixed by simply repudiating the debt and returning to some semblance of sanity, much as Russia did when the USSR fell.  It is now much healthier and able to dictate policy to the US, it seems.  However, given the American public's predilection for doing nothing out of fear and/or ignorance, it is safe to assume that within the coming decade, a new global menace will emerge at the helm of the most powerful and pervasive techno-dictatorship ever built.

The reason there is so much fear and trepidation over so simple a solution as repudiation is that Americans have enjoyed about 70 years of high living based solely on the fact that it was 'last man standing' after WW2.  That's it.  Because that represents roughly three generations of good times, no one can imagine what it will be like to tighten the belt and trim a little fat.  That, however, does not make it less necessary.

In order to keep the illusion - commonly called the American Dream - going, history tells us that Americans will chose the worst of all possible solutions.  They will rally behind a single powerful leader perceived as able to cut through the Congressional morass and make things work the way they used to.  Without thinking of the consequences, the people will choose the most destructive and dangerous path out of fear of pain.  They will not lance the boil because it will hurt.  In turn, the boil will fester, causing blood poisoning, organ failure and death.  All preventable had they chosen a little pain up front.

At this point, it all seems rather unavoidable.  The American people appear unwilling to take the necessary steps to fix the problem correctly because it will mean ending a system of largesse and lard on which they have grown dependent.  Suddenly taking full and complete personal responsibility for one's life, after years of shoving it off on government, is terrifying to the average American.  Decades of voting themselves a free lunch, couching in terms like "The Great Society" and "social safety net", they must now face the prospect of going it alone - the skills for which have been lost over the past several generations.

Very soon, we will see a leader rise up who will promise not to stop the gravy train, but only if he or she is allowed to side-step the usual channels of Congress and courts.  This leader will ask to be given extraordinary powers that will be returned when the 'Great Work' is done.

America must admit two things: it can not continue monopolizing the world's resources for its pleasure, and there is no painless remedy for the current problem - either it will hurt a little at first, or a lot at the end.

As for the rest of the world, we should be prepared for uncountable troubes ahead.  If Hitler's Germany destroyed a major part of the world to stop, how much more will it take to stop a far larger nation with many more resources and technology only dreamed of by the Nazis.  And if the US goes (more) rogue, this will encourage others to launch their own initiatives without any moral stops, such as Israel, North Korea and any of dozens of non-aligned interests.

It has already begun.  Iraq and Afghanistan were the Poland of our generation.  Obama was supposed to be our Hitler, but he fizzled out like a wet fuse.  The big danger is the 2016 US elections.  We should look for someone much like Obama started off to be, with 90% approval ratings, Nobel Peace Prizes and a sort of quasi-religious support base.

The new Hitler is likely visible, though low key just now, just as Obama was after making his big speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.  The person won't be entirely new, but won't be anyone with much of a track record to distract from the message either.  We can be reasonably sure that he or she will rise up out of the US, though.  The die has been cast in that regard.

Why not Obama?  Because if he tried to take the kind of control necessary, fully half the country would start shooting.  Bad public image for a dictator.  No, it will be someone fresh who can rally the masses on all ideological sides.

We still have the option to bite the bullet and allow the US to collapse in a controlled and contrived manner, or allow the scenario painted above to play out, with nothing less than the complete disruption of the globe as the consequence.

How desperate are you to pawn off your personal responsibility to Uncle Sugar?

Pick A Vlad, Any Vlad

Oh man, we humans are so FumBucked.

Just to put a fine point on how nutz the world is these days, Vlad Putin is being pushed for a Nobel Peace Prize.  Now that in itself is not so crazy, but his name comes up because he stopped a Nobel Peace Laureate from prosecuting a war on Syria.

We are so screwed.

Most of the insanity is coming out of America today.  World War 2 vets are catching flack for assembling at the World War 2 monument in DC.  If you think this is something new, then you should read up on the Bonus Army.  Keep in mind that then-Majors Patton and Eisenhower were riding through the protesters hacking and slaying with their swords.  Now they just use microwaves.  So much cleaner and doesn't provide unseemly photo ops.

More fun?  Just as full-blown socialism arrives in America (Obamacare), the country crashes and burns.  No wonder a dozen countries all want their gold back.  There may not be anyone to load it pretty soon.

One good thing about the government shut-down...the US won't be invading any countries for several days.  One bad thing...if it goes on too long, old Bammy might just start exercising Emergency Executive Powers and finding it much easier to operate without that silly old Congress in the way.  Remember some guy names Hitler?

This is likely the beginning of the end of the Anglo-American empire.  The country is already in receivership - euphemistically called sequestation (note definitions 3 and 4).

As the London Telegraph notes, this is no way to run a country.  Of course, being stupid hasn't stopped the polidiots yet, and London has little room to talk on the subject.

At any rate, these events will likely, and may already be causing a crisis of confidence in US bonds.  Even more to the point, Russia and China may be holding US by the short and curlies with the threat of a mass sell-off of US debt instruments, which is at the root of all this mess.

We shouldn't be surprised if Germany, Venezuela, Finland, Poland, Romania, and a number of others start getting very cozy with the BRICS alliance.  Furthermore, we should look for Russia and China to kick their efforts to establish a seperate system of finance into high gear.  They've got to get their safety net in place before the last few threads break under the Evil Empire's behind.

What's a real head-slapper here is that the more we see, the more Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was right.  He said many pressient things, but the one that stands out just now is, "The Capitalists will sell us the rope by which we will hang them."

The US sold its soul to Russia and China thinking that by owning piles and piles of US debt, they would never stand up to Anglo-American hegemony.  The neo-whatevers apparently never considered that the transfer of wealth and manufacturing to points east, as well as the decades-long effort to completely destroy family cohesiveness and educational excellence at home have completely destroyed capitalism and the empire in one fell swoop.

The Capitalists not only sold the rope, they tied the knot, found the tree, and stuck their head into the noose.  Lenin is stunned into a catatonic state just pondering how right he was.

Where to now?  Well, if you're in the US, you might want to get out.  If the collapse of Rome is any indication, that country will be no place to live pretty soon.  All those post-apocalyptic movies, like Mad Max and The Postman are probably mild compared to what's coming.

As one Texas politician put it some time back, "Rape is like the weather - if it's inevitable, just relax and enjoy it."  Heck, if nothing else, we may get to see two Nobel Peace Laureates go to war against each other.

Won't that be entertaining...

Sequestering A Nation

Here's something you are not likely to see anywhere in the mainstream media:

se·ques·ter [si-kwes-ter]

verb (used with object)

1. to remove or withdraw into solitude or retirement; seclude.

2. to remove or separate.

3. Law. to remove (property) temporarily from the possession of the owner; seize and hold, as the property and income of a debtor, until legal claims are satisfied.

4. International Law. to requisition, hold, and control (enemy property).

Origin:
1350–1400; Middle English sequestren  < Latin sequestrāre  to put in hands of a trustee, derivative of sequester  trustee, depositary

I draw the reader's attention to the last two definitions, having to do with law, and the etymology of the word.  Focus on the use of words like debtor, enemy and trustee.

Now, if you've been under a rock lately, the US government is on the verge of entering sequestration.  A law passed about a year and a half ago required Congress to find a solution to the US debt or face 'sequester'.  Since Congress is the national law-making body of the US and it is chock full of lawyers, we can safely assume that the use of the word 'sequester' was chosen for its legal meanings.

Furthermore, depending on which set of conspiracy theories you subscribe to, the US has been under international maritime law since the late 1800s, about the time the gold fringe of admiralty law began appearing on flags used in political and religious settings.

Mr. and Mrs. America, you are either a debtor whose property (your country) has been seized to pay a debt, or you are an enemy combatant whose national treasure has been seized to repay war damages.  Take your pick; the result is the same.  Personally, I think it doesn't matter either way, though I come down on the side of the former.

In a nutshell, what has happened is that Congress failed to come up with a plan to repay the national debt to the holders of that debt, namely the 12 private banking houses that own the Federal Reserve.  As a consequence, the Federal Reserve has placed the nation in receivership under a Trustee, whoever that may be.

All property of US citizens, especially those which have mortgages, liens, etc., is now under the control of the Trustee and may be liquidated to service the debt.  Clear titles may be a bit stickier, but I doubt owners with clear title will have the knowledge or where-with-all to put up much of a fight when the knock comes at the door.

If the latter case of war damages is true, then the US has lost some war somewhere and is now a captive nation of war under an as yet unseen reparations tribunal.  Therefore, all property of the State is under the control of the victor(s), who may opt to liquidate or remove the property as repayment of damages from the war (c.f. Germany post-WW1 & 2).

It is possible that both definitions are intended by the sequester law, as the debt holder may perceive Mr. and Mrs. America as potential combatants once they realize what exactly has taken place, especially if/when they become aware that their birth certificates make them 'property' of the State and thus, under the control of the Trustee.

All of which sheds new light on events of the past several years.  The increased use of domestic surveillance is to allow the Trustee to keep an eye on any and all 'property', whether human or material; the wholesale buying of ammunition by government agencies to enforce the Trustee's rights; the privatization of prisons; the Supreme Court decisions debasing the rule of law; and the list goes on.

You see, once the US is under receivership, then the rule of law is suspended.  The only thing with any force is the rule of the Trustee.  As an agent of the Trustee, the presidency becomes a de facto dictatorship, making Executive Orders the will of the Trustee and the only form of law in the country.

Think of what happens when an individual files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.  The court appoints a Trustee who is in charge of enforcing the court's orders on the property and income of the individual.  The court decides which bills will be paid, how much and when.  If necessary, the court will begin liquidating property in order to pay off debts.  Various law enforcement agencies can be employed to protect the interests of the debt holder and prevent the individual from interfering with these proceedings.

Sound familiar?

Once the sequester law takes effect, most likely the president will be appointed Trustee in order to maintain the appearance of 'normalcy'.  This will prevent the 'property' from figuring things out too fast while the debt holder liquidate the holdings of the nation.  In the event the population figures out what is happening, then the command and control system, which has been built up over the past 15 years, will kick in to protect the interests of the debt holders from irate former owners.  It's kind of like when the sheriff comes to oversee the auction of a foreclosed property.

What does this mean for expats?  Well, open your passport and find the words "property of the United States government".  That should be enough.  It is conceivable that all passports will be rescinded and the holders forced to return to the US, or at best be restricted from traveling while a full reckoning of their personal holdings can be completed.  Much of this scenario depends on what happens and how fast it happens back home.

A lot of folks are going to read this and poo-poo the whole thing.  They will default to 'business as usual' mode and tell themselves this would 'never happen in America'.  These same people will refuse to read the sequester law, nor will they look up the word 'sequester' in a law dictionary (or any dictionary really).  These are the people who chided the EU for their 'austerity' efforts, little realizing that it was all a sneak preview of what's to come.

At the moment I am writing this, each US citizen is in hock to the tune of over $1 million dollars for the national debt, the budget overruns and all unfunded liabilities (government handouts).  The debt holder wants his pound of flesh...NOW!

In light of all this, let's review the events of the past 15 years...the Clinton budget balancing act, the offensive wars to control energy centers, the gold repatriation efforts, the bearer bond busts, the currency and computer wars, the growth of Russian and Chinese economic influence, the bank bailouts, the controlling interests in major US corporations (AIG, GM, et al.), the movement in Germany to exit the EU, and even the recent snubs of the new SecState John Kerry.  They are all symptoms of a nation desperately trying to pay off its debts, and of other nations in the know trying to unload their dollar-denominated assets and distance themselves from the US.  Think of the latter as vendors who smell a rat and stop extending credit to a buyer.

The Big Game is about to come to a crashing halt and 99% of Americans are blissfully unaware of what is being waved under their noses.  All this attention to 'sequester' is little more than the PTB giving themselves an out when the SHTF.  They can say, "Hey, we've been talking about this for years!"  The problem is, they've been using covert language that most ignorant Americans don't understand and wouldn't bother to look up in the dictionary, if they even knew how to use one.

My question is, once the sequester law goes into effect, will the media and their controllers open up finally?  Or will they pretend as if nothing has happened to try to keep the Big Game going just a little longer?  I come down on the side of the latter.  Can't wake 'em all up at once.  It will make it far more difficult to liquidate and get paid.

Without gloating, I have to say, "Told you so," and so did a lot of other people.  Ron Paul comes to mind, along with Gerald Celente, George Ure, and a bunch of other rather bright folks.

The deed is done.  It remains only to see how the masses react when the fog clears and the Big Tit runs dry.