Friday, April 15, 2016
Do you realize that you have been lied to???
Panama
Papers reveal London as center of ‘spider’s web’ … As-well as shining a
spotlight on the secret financial arrangements of the rich and
powerful, the so-called Panama Papers have laid bare London’s role as a
vital organ of the world’s tax-haven network. – JapanTimes
Further
down in this article, we’ll discuss the unraveling political system in
the US, which is now clearly revealing that parties choose candidates
not primaries. Taken together, these developments show once again the
impact that the Internet is having on hitherto private structures and
their propaganda.
The
Panama Papers revelations have convulsed Britain in a variety of ways.
The personal affairs of Prime Minister David Cameron have been exposed
in the leaks, and he may yet have to resign.
And in the US, as powerful political forces fight back against popular
electoral choices Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, anger over the entire
primary process is growing and may eventually result in significant
political change.
It is certainly important to note such developments – and take them into
account when making personal and professional decisions on a variety of
fronts. As Western mythologies evaporate, civil society itself becomes
more tenuous and prone to disintegration.
The Japan Times is
a mainstream media outlet. As such, we are surprised to find an article
critical of the City. We don’t often read items in the mainstream media
that focus on London’s City, certainly not from the standpoint of
white-collar criminality.
It provides further evidence – as has been broadly speculated – that the
furtive release of the Panama Papers was a botched mission, possibly
led by the CIA.
Why
botched? Because of the obviousness of the results. Those who had their
information released were often those who were in opposition to the
West’s current financial structure. People like Vladimir Putin and the
Prime Minister of Iceland who had led an effort to put bankers in jail
for various financial transgressions.
Meanwhile, individuals like David Cameron, Prime Minister of Britain
were caught up in the leaking. This was surely not its intended purpose
and further reinforces the idea that the affair was neither smoothly
conducted nor efficiently planned.
It certainly was ambitious in scope, a massive leak that encompassed
some 11.5 million emails. The intention is ambitious as well, to
embarrass enemies of the Anglosphere and further support international
regulation shutting down “offshore” entities.
But the blow-back from this operation is exposing the City itself to an examination that was surely not the intended outcome.
It would seem to show that those behind such ventures still have not
figured out how to control the free-flow of information on the Internet
that accompanies such obvious manipulations.
In
the US, the political process picking the next president is imploding
and, as it does, it presents a more naked version of reality.
That the political-industrial structure
has allowed the veil to be ripped away from mechanism of power
politics, thus exposing it, is a shocking development.
One can argue about intentions
surrounding this development but one cannot argue with the result: A
mythology of democracy has been decimated.
As people wake up to the reality of their social structures and their
own manipulation, the ramifications will have increasing impacts.
Those pressing for globalism are now willing to forego discretion to
press ahead with their larger goals. They are, apparently, are now
willing to have more of the infrastructure underlying international
constructs revealed.
Revelations
of the City as entrenched at the heart of a “spiderweb” of white-collar
tax evasion and exposure of the US political system as one manipulated
by forces at the very top of society … these insights cannot be undone.
They are fracturing the mythologies of democracy and self-determination.
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This can’t be said politely: the entire status quo in America is a fraud.
The financial system is a fraud.
The political system is a fraud.
National Defense is a fraud.
The healthcare system is a fraud.
Higher education is a fraud.
The mainstream corporate media is a fraud.
Culture–from high to pop–is a fraud.
Truth is a dangerous poison in centralized hierarchies: anyone caught telling the truth risks a tenner in bureaucratic Siberia. (In the Soviet Gulag ,a tenner meant a ten-year sentence to a labor camp in Siberia.)
And
so the truth is buried, sent to a backwater for further study,
obfuscated by jargon, imprisoned by a Top Secret stamp, or simply taken
out and executed.Everyone
in the system maximizes his/her personal gain by going along with the
current trajectory, even if that trajectory is taking the nation off the
cliff.
Consider the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, a $1+ trillion failure. The
aircraft is underpowered, under-armed, insanely overpriced, insanely
over-budget and still riddled with bugs after seven years of fixes,
making it an unaffordable maintenance nightmare that puts our
servicepeople and nation at risk.
But
no one in a position of power will speak the truth about the F-35,
because it is no longer a weapons system–it’s a jobs program. Defense
contractors are careful to spread the work of assembling parts of the
F-35 to 40+ states, so 80+ senators will support the program, no matter
how much a failure it is as a weapons system, or how costly the failure
is becoming.
As for our failed healthcare system, one anecdote will do. (You
undoubtedly have dozens from your own experience.) A friend from
Uruguay with a high-tech job in the U.S. recently flew home to
Montevideo for a medical exam because 1) the cost of the flight was
cheaper than the cost of the care in the U.S. and 2) she was seen the
next day in Montevideo while it would have taken two months to get the
same care in the U.S.
I’ve listed dozens of examples here over the years: $120,000 for a
couple days in a hospital, no procedures performed; $20,000+ for a
single emergency room visit, no procedures performed; several thousand
dollars charged to Medicare for a few minutes in an “observation room”
that was occupied by patients, no staff present–the list is endless.
We’ve habituated to fraud as a way of life because every system is fraudulent.Consider
the costly scam known as higher education. The two essentials higher
education should teach are: 1) how to learn anything you need to learn
or want to learn on your own, and 2) how to think, behave, plan and
function entrepreneurially (i.e. as an autonomous problem-solver and
lifelong learner who cooperates and collaborates productively with
others) as a way of life.
Fraud as a way of life caters an extravagant banquet of consequences. While
everyone maximizes their personal gain in whatever system of skim, scam
and fraud they inhabit, the nation rots from within. We’ve lost our
way, and lost the ability to tell the truth, face problems directly,
abandon what has failed and what is unaffordable, and accept personal
risk as the essential element of successful adaptation.