Erstwhile Urban Wanderer

June 16, 2009 – Is it just me, or do others think our world has never been more chaotic than it is today?

By Dave Eriqat

I suppose everyone who’s ever lived has felt their world was chaotic at some time during their life, but honestly, I feel that the world has never been more chaotic in my lifetime than it is today. From my own perch of tranquility, observing collectively the vast number of news stories I read, I get a sense of a world that’s flying apart at the seams. And the worst of it is that “leaders” and governments, loathe to be seen as not “doing something,” are making matters a whole lot worse.

It seems as if everything is in flux today; nothing is permanent or stationary. Nothing can be counted on anymore: not law, not men, not loyalty, not currencies, not jobs, not retirement plans, not even the arrival of tomorrow. About the only thing we can count on for certain is that if human beings disappear from the planet, it will continue to exist and thrive for millions of years without us. What sort of chaos have our “leaders” wrought?

Institutional Malfeasance

I hardly need belabor the financial system bailout activity, which was so clearly intended to benefit the profits of corporations and politically connected elites, as well as the politicians responsible for the bailouts, who unsurprisingly held financial interests in the corporations they were bailing out. But have the “bailouts” fixed anything? Aside from “fixing” the balance sheets of a handful of elites, the bailouts have actually made things a lot worse, which will become clearer in the fullness of time.

Now they are about to embark on a similar “bailout” of the health care system which will undoubtedly leave us all poorer in both money and health care. Yet, just as with the financial bailouts, the corporations, insiders and politicians will profit. And just as with the financial system, politicians have a large financial stake in maintaining the status quo in the health care system.

Not content to merely bail out the health care system, the government is flirting with making participation in it mandatory. This is how flawed the health care system has become, that it must resort to gun barrel medicine to force people to participate. And if my gun barrel metaphor seems outrageous, just wait until mandatory “swine flu” vaccines are imposed on us, which will no doubt bring immense profits to the suppliers of those vaccines, regardless of whether the vaccines are efficacious or even safe. If that comes to pass, I will be afraid to open the door, lest I be confronted by a gang of black-clad, heavily armed, masked “authorities” wielding syringes. Some people believe that such mandatory vaccination programs will have a secondary purpose beyond corporate profits, which will be to harm the populace. Given what I’ve seen for the last few decades, I can’t say I disagree with such views.

Under the cover of “law,” police today indiscriminately break down doors, even the wrong ones without apology. They steal money from innocent people who have utterly no recourse. They taser people needlessly, evidently to satisfy some prurient urge to dominate, and even if a victim of such an attack dies, the police department declares the officer’s actions to be “in policy,” leading me to believe that the official policy of police departments today includes murder.

The government allows illegal immigrants to flow unimpeded into the country and even to collect social benefits, while making it more difficult for U.S. citizens to leave the country. For the first time, passports are now required for U.S. citizens to cross borders with Canada and Mexico, which seems counterintuitive since the SPP/NAU agenda aims to relax border controls for corporations and “guest workers.”

The people continue to vote in earnest, failing to recognize that they have no voice anymore, which is why corruption and thievery are conducted so brazenly today. And the perpetrators have the gall to claim that their corrupt behavior is necessary for the benefit of society, the contemporary code words for such being “national security.” Everything, it seems, from disease pandemics, to financial crises, to “terrorism,” to environmental problems threatens “national security,” or the “children.”

Misguided Wars

What could be more inane than a broke nation expanding its war fronts from Iraq and Afghanistan to Pakistan and perhaps Iran? The U.S. has been covertly active in Iran for a long time already, a fact admitted in the past by the government itself. So it’s reasonable to assume that the U.S., through its CIA, is also involved in the current election turmoil in Iran, fanning the flames and exploiting the turmoil as an opportunity to destabilize the country. Should those efforts fail, how long before the U.S. resorts to “shock and awe,” and then, “boots on the ground” in Iran? I hope never, but with its “ally” in the Middle East uttering threats against Iran on a daily basis, the U.S. may be sucked into a war with Iran anyway.

Of course, nothing could be more perverse than that same “ally,” a country founded on the promise of never tolerating genocide again, being today’s biggest perpetrator of genocide. Yet to point out such an obvious, undeniable fact makes one vulnerable to a charge of indulging in “antisemitism.”

Massive Economic Dislocations

We hear about $134 billion in U.S. bonds being spirited through Italy, still uncertain whether the money is “real” or “counterfeit,” as if there’s much distinction any more.

But those billions are chump change compared to the trillions of dollars lavished by governments in Europe and the U.S. on their respective financial sectors. I don’t know about Europe, but in the U.S. that money is literally being stolen from the public and handed over to the elites, a form of reverse Robin Hoodism.

Meanwhile, one of the only genuine means of wealth creation, manufacturing and its associated jobs, continues to hemorrhage from the country, destined for Asia.

Asia, to its credit, is finally waking up to the dilemma it faces, that by continuing to prop up the U.S. in order to preserve the value of its prior investments, it’s digging itself into a deeper hole. The emergence of Asia as a dominant player in the global financial realm is underscored by its denial of a U.S. request to participate in a recent financial meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

The writing is on the wall as far as I’m concerned, but our “leaders,” instead of scaling back their future expectations in accord with reality, seem intent on doubling down and accelerating their harebrained initiatives, perhaps in order to achieve “mission accomplished” before the sheople wake up.

Crazy Markets

I watch the markets – stocks, metals, oil, currencies, real estate – pretty closely and these days they’re just crazy. Too many big funds that rely solely on technical analysis and don’t bother with fundamentals are influencing the markets, not to mention the undeniable manipulations of governments and their operatives, which is why the markets are so volatile today.

If people paid attention to fundamentals, U.S. dollar-denominated financial instruments, including the dollar itself would be shunned. Governments across the U.S. are facing massive, unprecedented and irremediable deficits, yet people are still buying government bonds! I know people who insist that government bonds are 100% safe, unlike other “assets.” While such bonds might be 100% safe in nominal terms, what about purchasing power terms? While one’s $100,000 investment in government bonds might be returned to them, it may be a moot victory if a loaf of bread costs $100,000, which is the direction we’re heading.

Meanwhile, gold, the age-old safe haven in times of chaos underperforms, while overpriced stocks of companies awaiting a formal declaration of bankruptcy mysteriously levitate.

All I do most days is shake my head, baffled, not by the market’s behavior, but by the behavior of people who continue to play along in a rigged game.

Environmental Crises

During the “up” leg of the housing bubble, when municipalities were raking in money hand over fist from all the new housing developments and strip malls being built, those municipalities abdicated their responsibility to do any sort of “planning.” Now that cities, such as San Diego, are facing predictable water shortages, which should have factored into the “planning” process, the cities are dumping the burden on us citizens in the form of increased taxes, fees and fines, as if to punish us for our use of water. But where is the culpability of the municipal government in failing to plan for such a predictable, periodic event?

I read that as much as 80% the global wheat crop is threatened by the UG99 fungus, which is probably an example of the perils of monoclonal agriculture, a practice resulting from allowing giant corporations to dominate our agricultural system.

The oceans are dying from overexploitation and over-pollution, yet we fiddle with silliness such as using ethanol for fuel, as if it’s the solution to all our problems, and even though ethanol requires more energy to produce than it yields. But at least subsidizing ethanol production profits agricultural corporations handsomely. Similarly, we are goaded to take strident action to thwart “global warming,” despite a dearth of supporting evidence, save the claims of avaricious advocates, such as one former vice president who graciously offers to be a broker of “carbon credits.”

Conclusion

It seems that for decades, while we were busy attending to our lives and trying to maintain a standard of living quietly being stripped from us, the powers-that-be have been given free reign to shape the world to their liking. Little did we realize that we were giving out and out criminals free run of the place. As their grip on the world has tightened, so have the seeds of chaos been sown. Today those seeds are bearing “fruit,” producing predictable chaos and reminding us once again why centralized control over the world is not as resilient as a decentralized structure, the design adopted by mother nature herself millions of years ago.