Economic Crisis = USA Riots |

“The riot be the rhyme of the unheard!”
Citizens of the US… Brace for IMPACT!
As the global economy continues its downward spiral, rioting due to this Wall Street led meltdown is spreading through the globe like wildfire. The list of countries experiencing civil unrest is growing by the day, to name some recent hotspots: Bolivia, Bosnia, Brazil, Britain, Bulgaria, Cameroon, China, Egypt, France, Greece, Germany, Haiti, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Ivory Coast, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico, Montenegro, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, Philippines, Russia, Senegal, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine and Yemen.
In an article titled “A Planet at the Brink: Will Economic Brushfires Prove Too Virulent to Contain?” Michael T. Klare explains:
“As people lose confidence in the ability of markets and governments to solve the global crisis, they are likely to erupt into violent protests or to assault others they deem responsible for their plight, including government officials, plant managers, landlords, immigrants, and ethnic minorities. (The list could, in the future, prove long and unnerving.) If the present economic disaster turns into what President Obama has referred to as a ‘lost decade,’ the result could be a global landscape filled with economically-fueled upheavals.”
A UK Guardian news report ran with the headline: “Governments Across Europe Tremble as Angry People Take to the Streets.”

Once stable countries have seen millions of their citizens revolt - taking to the streets, disrupting public services, blocking roadways, participating in nationwide strikes, seizing shopping malls and engaging in many other forms of civil disobedience - as entire governments have fallen. Government offices, public facilities, businesses, homes and cars have been vandalized, looted and burnt to the ground. Death tolls and crime rates due to this crisis are reaching epidemic levels.

However, here in the US, we haven’t seen much unrest yet. With the election of Obama we have had a brief reprieve, as HOPE momentarily shined across the USA. The US presidential election and the rise of Obama came just in time. (Could you imagine what might have happened under another year of Bush-Cheney rule?) The hope-filled Obama is the perfect figurehead casting the perfect illusion. The Obama illusion is one of a new day, one of hope and better times ahead.
As positive an impact as Obama might have on governmental policy and national confidence, we can only escape reality for so long. In the words of Chris Hedges:
“It is only a matter of time. And not much time. When things start to go sour, when Barack Obama is exposed as a mortal waving a sword at a tidal wave, the United States could plunge into a long period of precarious social instability.”
/ The Obama Illusion \

Things have obviously been bad for the past year, but things are just beginning to get much worse. As economic forecasters predict another two years of decline, the Associated Press reports: “The economy’s downhill slide at the end of last year was likely much steeper than the government initially thought and it is probably doing just as poorly now — if not worse — as a relentless slew of negative forces feed on each other, pushing the country deeper into recession.” Danny Schechter, a journalist who was one of the first to sound the economic alarm and author of Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity, explains: “It seems endless, and we are not even touching the surface of the real economic time bombs on the horizon from credit default swaps, derivatives and credit cards.” A BBC report states: “There is now $2.2 trillion of toxic bank debt worldwide, the IMF says, $500bn more than it estimated a few months ago.”
It was staggering in January when 655,000 people lost their job in the US, but this pace has continued with no signs of slowing. The US economy is now shedding over 23,000 jobs every day. Since the beginning of the crisis, a little over one year ago, over 4.4 million jobs have been lost, with more than half of the cuts occurring in the past four months. We haven’t seen losses like this since World War II - over 60 years ago. A record (and quickly increasing) five million US citizens now file for unemployment benefits. In the past month, 787,000 people had their work hours cut and now work part-time instead of full-time, bringing the number of underemployed people up to 8.6 million. When you add in unemployed people and jobless workers who have literally given up looking for a job, you get a astounding number of over 22 million unemployed/underemployed people - that’s a 14.8% rate - and climbing fast!
The International Labor Organization predicts there will be over 50 million jobs lost worldwide in 2009. The world’s largest credit insurer reports that 42,000 companies went out of business in 2008, a 45% increase over 2007, and they expect a stunning 62,000 to fail in 2009. Just think of what will happen when all these companies and people are added to the masses that already can’t pay back loans and credit cards, let alone afford to keep their warehouses, stores, offices and homes. The US government, which is about to pump another $787.2 billion of tax payer funds into the dying economy, is already over $60 TRILLION in debt - that’s over $500k per US household - owed before the new stimulus bill! On top of that, US consumers are already $14 trillion in debt from credit cars and mortgages.
On the housing front things are in full-blown crisis mode. As Depression-era style tent cities spread throughout the US, Ariana Huffington writes, “we are facing nothing less than a national emergency, with 10,000 Americans going into foreclosure every day and 2.3 million homeowners having faced foreclosure proceedings in 2008. When we put flesh and blood on these numbers, the suffering they represent is enormous and so is the social disintegration they entail.”
Other than a few worker strikes and some significant, but under-reported, incidents on the home foreclosure front, things have been eerily tame in the US thus far. But with things quickly going from bad to worse, that’s all about to change. For example, ACORN, the nation’s largest grassroots community organization of low and moderate-income people, recently stated:
“ACORN’s campaign is working to put the human faces of foreclosure victims front and center while escalating the campaign tactics to include civil disobedience aimed at keeping people from losing their homes. Everything is on the table: disruption of sales, disruption of banking business, even refusing to be evicted or moving families back into their foreclosed homes. The urgency of the crisis demands no less.”
Salon writer Glenn Greenwald recently wrote about a Fox News interview that shows how much of a disconnect there is between large corporate news organizations and the obviously frustrated public:
“This Fox News interview with Virg Bernero — the Mayor of highly unionized Lansing, Michigan and himself the son of a retired GM worker — is, for several reasons, really worth watching…. The glaring discrepancy he notes — between (a) the consensus of our political class that workers must endlessly give up wage, health and other benefits even as (b) we shovel trillions of dollars in government subsidies to Wall Street for ongoing massive executive bonuses and the like for the very people who caused the collapse — is one that… is rarely heard in our mainstream debate with such clarity and passion.
Even more notable is the dripping condescension directed at him by the Fox personality at the end of the interview for having committed the sin of exhibiting genuine passion and anger over something as trivial as the disappearing middle class and the massive and growing rich-poor gap. That’s the crime of Shrillness, one of the prime hallmarks of Unseriousness — failing/refusing to suppress one’s anger towards our political and financial establishment.”
For another recent example of reality bursting through the numbing television set, former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski expressed his fears with MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough:
JOE SCARBOROUGH: You also talked about the possibility of class conflict.
ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: I was worrying about it because we’re going to have millions and millions of unemployed, people really facing dire straits. And we’re going to be having that for some period of time before things hopefully improve. And at the same time there is public awareness of this extraordinary wealth that was transferred to a few individuals at levels without historical precedent in America….
And you sort of say to yourself: what’s going to happen in this society when these people are without jobs, when their families hurt, when they lose their homes, and so forth?
We have the government trying to repair: repair the banking system, to bail the housing out. But what about the rich guys?… Where is the monied class today? Why aren’t they doing something: the people who made billions, millions…. there’s going to be growing conflict between the classes and if people are unemployed and really hurting, hell, there could be even riots!
Things are about to… EXPLODE
As desperate people in the US and throughout the world look to take vengeance on the people responsible for this disaster, the US, and Wall Street in particular, will be their target. Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Laureate in Economics, recently stated that this economic global crisis has a “made in the USA label on it.” Harvard economic historian Niall Ferguson adds:
“… this is a very unfair crisis. The epicentre is the United States… it’s an unfair world…. Here is the world’s biggest economy, which gave us subprime mortgages, rampant securitization, the collateralized debt obligation, Lehmann Brothers, Merrill Lynch….
There will be blood, in the sense that a crisis of this magnitude is bound to increase political as well as economic [conflict]. It is bound to destabilize some countries. It will cause civil wars to break out, that have been dormant. It will topple governments that were moderate and bring in governments that are extreme. These things are pretty predictable.”
These conflicts are something that the US government has been expecting, and preparing for. Dennis Blair, the new US Director of National Intelligence, recently testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee stating that the greatest threat facing the US is not terrorism, but the current economic crisis:
“The primary near-term security concern of the United States is the global economic crisis and its geopolitical implications. The crisis has been ongoing for over a year…. Of course, all of us recall the dramatic political consequences wrought by the economic turmoil of the 1920s and 1930s in Europe, the instability, and high levels of violent extremism.” [Let us not forget the lessons of history, in the most extreme case, it was the Wall Street led economic meltdown in the 1930's that led to Hitler's rise in Germany.]
So, as Intelligence Committee Vice-Chair Christopher Bond feared, the economic crisis is now “the primary focus of the intelligence community.”
In addition to threats from outside US borders, the US Army has been preparing for expected riots and turmoil from US citizens. Chris Hedges sums it all up:
“The specter of social unrest was raised at the U.S. Army War College in November in a monograph [click on Policypointers’ pdf link to see the report] titled ‘Known Unknowns: Unconventional ‘Strategic Shocks’ in Defense Strategy Development.’ The military must be prepared, the document warned, for a ‘violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States,’ which could be provoked by ‘unforeseen economic collapse,’ ‘purposeful domestic resistance,’ ‘pervasive public health emergencies’ or ‘loss of functioning political and legal order.’ The ‘widespread civil violence,’ the document said, ‘would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.’
‘An American government and defense establishment lulled into complacency by a long-secure domestic order would be forced to rapidly divest some or most external security commitments in order to address rapidly expanding human insecurity at home,’ it went on.
‘Under the most extreme circumstances, this might include use of military force against hostile groups inside the United States. Further, DoD [the Department of Defense] would be, by necessity, an essential enabling hub for the continuity of political authority in a multi-state or nationwide civil conflict or disturbance,’ the document read.
In plain English, something bureaucrats and the military seem incapable of employing, this translates into the imposition of martial law and a de facto government being run out of the Department of Defense. They are considering it. So should you.
Adm. Blair warned the Senate that ‘roughly a quarter of the countries in the world have already experienced low-level instability such as government changes because of the current slowdown.’ He noted that the ‘bulk of anti-state demonstrations’ internationally have been seen in Europe and the former Soviet Union, but this did not mean they could not spread to the United States.”
As Joshua Holland put it: “At least in Western Europe, cries of ‘burn the shit down!’ are being heard in countries with some of the highest standards of living in the world…”
Are you ready for the “Summer of Rage”?

In preparation for what many believe is going to be a tumultuous summer, the Obama administration has recently made $2 billion in aid available to local police departments.
In Europe, Military Intelligence and police are bracing for the worst. They have been preparing to suppress mass civilian disorder, as they fear a “summer of rage.” A recent UK poll revealed, “More than a third of voters believe the Army will have to be brought in to deal with a ’summer of rage’ on British streets as the recession bites…” Police and governments around the world know that it is now much easier to recruit “foot-soldiers” to take part in civil disobedience when you have so many unemployed and struggling to make ends meet.
Now that President Obama is off the campaign trail and settled into the oval office, his “Hope” seems to be fading fast as he sees the tidal wave heading for us. Just listen to the “hopeful” Obama in his first news conference as president:
“And if there’s anyone out there who still doesn’t believe this constitutes a full-blown crisis, I suggest speaking to one of the millions of Americans whose lives have been turned upside down because they don’t know where their next paycheck is coming from.”
Or, as George W. Bush said about the US economy just before leaving office: “This sucker is going down!”
So, as we sit here in the US, at the epicenter of the economic meltdown - also the country with the highest inequality of wealth in the industrialized world - it seems to be just a matter of time before all hell breaks lose.
Tick… tick… tick…
AMPED VIDEO: Turn up the volume and click play!
Now that you’ve seen it…
Email This Post
Related posts:
- National Emergency: Economic Coup in the USA (Audio) AmpedStatus founder and editor David DeGraw was recently interviewed on...
- National Economic Crisis Video Screenings & Forums: A New Way Forward By A New Way Forward The bailouts are widening the...
- Econo-cide: Epidemic of Suicide & Murder Due to the Economic Crisis By Nick Turse, TomsDispatch In a recent interview about our...
- Report: Climate Crisis is the Greatest Threat to Humanity By Megan Rowling, Reuters Climate change causes 315,000 deaths a...
- Michael Lewis on the Economic Crisis and Future of Wall St. (Video) CNN's Fareed Zakaria talks to 'Liar's Poker' author Michael Lewis...













![Wall Street Economic Death Squad Roundup [Reports & Videos]](http://ampedstatus.com/images/wall-street-economic-death-squad.jpg)






Amped Status » Blog Archive » AMPED VIDEO: Citizens of the US… Brace for IMPACT! said:
[...] Economic Crisis = USA Riots - 1 vote [...]
March 10th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
Bob Canty said:
This is an intense piece - way to bring it all together! I’ll forward it on
March 10th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Amy said:
Awwww shit! I love how Sublime is at the end of the video… “Riots on the streets of Tulsa!”
March 10th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
Obama Yomama said:
‘When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.’ Thomas Jefferson
REVOLUTION is the Solution!!!
‘God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion…. And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms…. The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.’ - Thomas Jefferson, in letter to William S. Smith, 1787
March 10th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
Smolder said:
No. Now is not the time to riot. It is a trap. Lovers of liberty and self-govt.. do not be drawn in.
The economic collapse was pulled off by the Elite criminals in the COMPLETE LIGHT OF DAY for all to see. On purpose. To start a class war with socialists, hate groups, etc. all in the fray. The collapse AND the “publics” response AND the response of our loving Govt is ALL PLANNED. They want us to rise up in a state of confusion.
Liberty lovers and proponents of self-government.. do not fall for this trap. ACORN is out on the streets fomenting for MORE taxes and not enough govt spending! The Elite are loudly in the media banging the drums for CLASS WARFARE. Class warfare is THE chosen method for communists and hyper-socialists to bring societies and nations to their knees.
The Elite are creating class warfare divisions among us hoping we will riot in the streets in confusion. The military and lzw enforcement is ready to crush us. Do not fall for the trap. Wait. Wait for the right time to go directly after the Elite persons who rule. The time is not now…..
March 10th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
Mike D said:
Obama better ‘change’ something soon. So far, he’s stolen another trillion from the taxpayers to give to bankers, walked into a window in the White House (thinking it was the door), flubbed his very first act as President (to competently recite the Oath), killed 15 civilians in Pakistan (adding another theatre to our wars), and pulled no troops out of anywhere. On top of that, he wants more troops in Afghanistan. Did Bush really leave or is he in black-face now?
George Wallace said it best, “there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between” Republicans and Democrats. The Democrats willingly went along with the War in Iraq, suspension of Habeas Corpus, Patriot Act, banning books like “America Deceived’ from Amazon, Wikipedia and Facebook, warrant-less wiretapping and opening private mail. They are both guilty of treason.
Clean them all out (except Ron Paul) and save this great nation.
Last link (before Google Books bends to gov’t Will and drops the title):
http://www.iuniverse.com/Bookstore/BookDetail.aspx?BookId=SKU-000083883
March 10th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
Mike Allison said:
Yeah D! Way to start the site off!
March 10th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
John Galt said:
Just a bunch of fear mongering and misplaced blame by a bunch of idiot liberals. Why don’t you talk about the government programs that helped enable this crazy lending? Why don’t you talk about the incredible corruption and greed of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (quazi government lending institutions)? Why don’t you talk about all the people in the country that ran up outrageous credit card debt? Or took 100% loans to buy houses? Or took out ADJUSTABLE Rate Mortgages at a time when interest rates were at historical lows?
Yeah banks we shady about lending and many of them should have been more conservative with their lending, but guess who looks out for you? YOU! People were falsely stating income to get loans!! Now they want the government to adjust the terms of their loan so they can afford it. That means they just stole money with the help of the government.
We are all to blame! Our lives of six iPods, 4 brand new leased cars per family, flat screen tvs, credit cards, overspending, lavish vacations, and $5 coffees caused this crash. We want it all and we want it now, and the result of satisfying everyone’s childish whims is this crash.
Those of us who didn’t live outside our means and maintained a simpler life should be the one’s who should be really pissed. The government is going to bail out all the idiots (private citizens and businesses alike) so they can continue with reckless lifestyles.
If we’re going to start rioting, then anyone who ran up huge credit card balances should have their houses rioted! Anyone who bought a larger house than they could afford should be held PERSONALLY ACCOUNTABLE! Anyone who bought a brand new car instead of paying off their old one and saving the money should be shamed!
But like always it’s much easier to blame the “big bad companies”. Grow up everyone!
Once we have full riots over this situation we will have fully made the transition to a nanny state, and the riots will be a our childish tantrum.
March 10th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
mike said:
yea the prospect of riots is a trap an excuse to put the military on the streets create the economic problem the people react by rioting and martial law the solution exactly what the state wants far better to withdraw our labour peaceful if every single person went on strike change could be brought about peacefully and quickly stop working for the system and the system will stop working.
March 10th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
Tracy McMullen said:
Obama will save us! Ummmm, maybe? hmmm, maybe not? Thank god Bush is gone though!
March 10th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
george in toronto said:
Blame us! While Bush regime authorized the 911 attacks and contracted the whole affair to Israel,we the obtuse people were offered a booming hell of a time.Cheap mortgages,sky is the limit stocks,easy credit and hell of a good time in government freebees. Little did we care–government took us for suckers. Worse than fleeced drunken sailors on the bing.
Back in Sept 10 2001, Rumsfeld announce that $2.3 trillion was unaccounted and missing from the Military budget. Most Senators and congressmen after 1 1/2 terms become multi millionair$. Like George Carlin said–They got us by the balls. Israel firsters –Pathological liars–you been had–now you have been awaken–do something about it.Send them back to Russia :^(
March 10th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
Katrina said:
Those of you in the States should see what is happening over here in Europe. People are in serious trouble and every day I fear what is going to happen next. It is shocking how things have got so bad so fast. Let’s hope people can maintain order and civility, and hope that the people who put us in this position are held accountable!
Peace!
l
March 10th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
Amped Status » Blog Archive » Economic Crisis = USA Riots : PlanetTalk.net - Learn the truth , no more lies said:
[...] View original here: Amped Status » Blog Archive » Economic Crisis = USA Riots [...]
March 10th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
alfred stites said:
Well, now we have it. There was a meltdown in the 1880’s, and then in the 1930’s, and now in the 2000’s, all caused by the lack of restraint (greed) by the capitalists - those people who make money by selling money, without producing anything. This may be the natural order of a capitalistic society, because this system does not allow regulation (that’s Socialism)! Sooner or later we must learn that ALL people have to be cared for, or … see what happens? In 6 months we will all see what happens when an unfettered society takes what it wants when it wants.
Now is the time for Obama to require sacfrifice by ALL the people - starting with Congress who can show leadership (hah!) by cutting their own salaries. Let’s put some draconian
measures in place and pare this thing down to the bare minimum and start building again.
Yes, it may not be the America of which Jefferson spoke, but this is a new global economy, never faced before, and it does require a different approach of REAL sacrifice by everyone, especially those who have reaped all the benefit in the past and were instrumental in causing the grief. Good luck to us all!
March 10th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
Alfred said:
Americans will skip straight to shooting.
March 10th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Laticia said:
Riots alone will accomplish little, except making the road towards dictatorship, 9/11-type inside jobs, and wars, likelier. The resistance must be planned, and it must follow strategies that have, at the very least, a small chance of winning. One such strategy is to fight for TOTAL campaign financing. Another is to directly target the criminals themselves, not their hired cops.
March 10th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
Tread on it's head said:
If America wants a general idea of what is probably to come (many modern day prophets have warned will happen to America) read up on the black-out of 1977, when the power went out on the East Coast. The city went crazy with killings, theft and riots.
Or just look to what happened during Katrina, all left to die while FEMA sat it out,(testing, 1 - 2 ??)
When you people are starving after a couple day’s, no water, no helping hands of the government, only iraqi style mercenary killers pointing their toys at you, the last thing you will do is worry about being a patriot. Then again, America’s last despression (How many Americans actually died? I heard over a million?) The people wandered in a daze , kinda the same way you are now after 911 and the stolen elections and broken promises of impeachment. It’s no wonder you’ve thrown in the towel.
March 10th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
jason said:
i don’t own a weapon and never will. i’ve got dirt under my finger nails. i’ve never “cooked the books” to get what i could’nt afford. i’ve worked for the same man for 15 years now (we’re a two man operation). our newest vehicle is a ‘98, the only one we ever bought new. i’ve got a small house a wife and two kids all of which my small income supports. i live on long island n.y. i fix what i own, i rarely buy new…”why buy new when used will do”….if i get killed by some pissed off well groomed hummer driving yuppie that got pissed off that he lost his money selling job and bought a gun because he could…well i’ll be laughin in heaven…DON’T BE STUPID…PEACE!
March 10th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
slapbangwallah said:
Riot? Don’t riot? Let’s bring the riot in the 21st century. With the Internet, we have enough information spinning through the ether to identify those people who caused it. So…let’s organize and just target those individuals who brought about the collapse. Marching down the street gets a lot of innocent people killed. We know who did it. Go after them. For example, Bernie Madoff should be hanging on the lamp post outside his $7 million condo. This wasn’t created by some nebulous entity. This was created by certain individuals. Did you read about the hero in the gym who recognized the CEO of Lehman Brothers from the television in front of him and noticed that that was the person on the treadmill in that gym? We went over and punched him out, cold. This was confirmed by other Lehman Brothers executives who saw it happen. Congratulations! He should have threw him out the window. Who are these people getting multi-million dollar bonuses on bailout money? Hunt them down. Our government is no longer dispensing justice. It’s time for the people to do it.
March 10th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
John said:
We need to be real careful here, and be sure that the people who deserve our rage get a facefull of it!
March 10th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
Jeremy said:
As long as greed triumphs, suffering will follow-
http://www.care2.com/politics/worse-financial-crisis-since-1930s-c.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_derivative
Shakeup in Nashville
excerpt:
The same note was struck when Stanley asked if the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), activated under the Clinton administration, had been a major cause of housing-loan defaults by telling financial institutions “to lend money to those they wouldn’t ordinarily lend money to.
”
To a man, the bankers said no. As Tony Thompson of First Tennessee Bank said, “the crux” of CRA had been “to make credit available to all borrowers, regardless of race, color, or creed.” He was emphatic: “We were not asked to make a loan to somebody who could not pay it back …. [but] to those people who are able to pay it back.
”
Bunch was incredulous: “Do you not already do that? Do you mean y’all put yourselves in the position of making all these bad loans?” Answered Thompson: “If bad loans are made, we’re the ones who made them.
”
http://www.memphisflyer.com/memphis/Content?oid=oid%3A55919
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act
———————————-
and this on the Stanford heist / our corrupt political system:
On Capitol Hill, Money Is the Root of All Hypocrisy
http://www.truthout.org/022109Y
———————————–
Then there’s this article I found on sane versus insane capitalism and our American Oligarchy:
“Hindsight shows how the pain of the late 1970s and early 1980s could have been avoided, yet we’re now again planning to borrow and spend — and raise taxes — as President Jimmy Carter did. Soon we may again find ourselves watching a rising “misery index” of inflation and unemployment together”.
http://www.mydd.com/story/2009/2/15/0349/96300
Hmm, so Jimmy Carter set an example we shouldn’t be following? I guess it depends on who you believe and how well educated you are in economic theory. Although I thought we were yet again cutting taxes not raising them.
See:
“More than one-third of this bill is dedicated to providing tax relief for middle-class families, cutting taxes for 95 percent of American workers…”
http://tinyurl.com/cmckd5
March 10th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
sheeple said:
Listen !! If you understand what has been happening at the hands of corrupt government/banking power,not just lately but an orchestrated plan undergoing for at least 100 years…. you must also Know that ….THEY WANT CITIZENS TO RIOT.
SO THEY CAN PROCEED WITH THE NEXT STEP OF THEIR PLAN….MARTIAL LAW,TOTALITARIAN CONTROL/POLICE STATE.
March 10th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
sheeple said:
Listen !! If you understand what has been happening at the hands of corrupt government/banking power,not just lately but an orchestrated plan undergoing for at least 100 years…. you must also Know that ….THEY WANT CITIZENS TO RIOT.
SO THEY CAN PROCEED WITH THE NEXT STEP OF THEIR PLAN….MARTIAL LAW,TOTALITARIAN CONTROL/POLICE STATE. Welcome to the new USSR…right here in the bad old USA.
be wise….do NOT riot. do NOT protest. sit still. stay calm. find a peaceful way to survive,and maybe you will find yourself still living in something short of total Fascist Police State.
March 10th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
Denmason said:
Hello everyone. Be smart and understand that we are being lead to the slaughter. I read this article awhile back and thought I’d post it up here for EVERYONE to read.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/3545879/Survive-Martial-Law
March 10th, 2009 at 8:04 pm
UncaRay said:
Here’s an idea, don’t riot. Take over. Use the Internet to organize local trading associations with your neighbors, undertake the task of seeing to it that everybody in the association gets what they need as far as food, shelter, and security. Turn your lawns into organic gardens and learn how to treat illness with herbs. It is our dependence on the System for our basic needs is thir only real power over us. Break that bond. Create your own community currency, band together for a neighborhood Watch, and learn how to run a buying club for food you can’t grow yourself. Get your town Board to rescind corporate “personhood.” We don’t actually have to kill anybody. Just walk away from their control mechanisms and start rebuilding society on OUR scale.
It’s moments in history like this that we have an opportunity to change the world without firing a shot. Right now the Powers That Be fear family gardens more than armed resistance.
March 10th, 2009 at 8:55 pm
Daphne said:
Naaah! American’s are too complancent and lazy. Not gonna happen.
March 10th, 2009 at 10:05 pm
TheComingDepression said:
John Galt–Don’t blame the public for 4 ipods 3 TVS and a few cars. Blame the banks for throwing applications at your doorstep. Blame the BANKS for cheap loans. THEN blame the people for taking these free obligations with no payments for days then months, then finally YEARS! 0% interest, 3 months payments on us, no payments,buy one get one free,low payments, the list goes on…
March 10th, 2009 at 10:05 pm
Ponce said:
Being from Cuba I am very familiar with “revolutions”……however…..what will happen here will be a lot worse because the American people are not ready for what is going to happen.
“To be ready is not”… Ponce
March 10th, 2009 at 10:25 pm
www.buzzflash.net said:
Economic Crisis = USA Riots…
Things have obviously been bad for the past year, but things are just beginning to get much worse. As economic forecasters predict another two years of decline, the Associated Press reports: “The economy’s downhill slide at the end of last year was…
March 10th, 2009 at 10:58 pm
Dumb and getting Dumber said:
More Fluoride in the water, should stop this in its tracks.
March 11th, 2009 at 12:54 am
Joe Citizen said:
It is indeed a trap for Marshall Law folks! Pay attention! Don’t be a stupid Charlie Brown trying to kick that football from Lucy when all she will do is pull it away to watch you fall on your butt. Google: Money Masters and http://www.911mysteries.com. It is a trap and you can almost smell it. Don’t be a fool like George Armstrong Custer. Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, Eleanore Roosevelt, and Obi Wan Kanobi, etc had the right idea. Organize yourselves, join organizations who will defend your Civil Rights like the http://www.National Lawyers Guild, American Civil Liberties Union, CodePink, Veterans for Peace, etc. Think first! Use your mind-gift and out maneuver, out think and move faster. Use the Internet as your Magical Alladdin’s Lamp, to take back your Constitution, Bill of Rights and Civil Rights. You who read thsi, get on the stick, there is no one else. It’s you! Not immigrants, not the poor, YOU!
March 11th, 2009 at 1:20 am
Thomas Jefferson said:
www americanfreepress net worth your time!
March 11th, 2009 at 2:05 am
Tom Dennen said:
TROUBLE ON THE WATERFRONT
Tom Dennen
Read a great piece the other day, going around the Internet, about Heidi the bar owner who gave all her old drunk customers credit for a year.
The word spread like wildfire: “Free Booze at Heidi’s!” and all kinds of new drunks came into the scheme.
On paper, her turnover went ballistic what with every old and young and other drunks coming into the scam; the breweries extended her credit, she lowered her prices against volume sales, the banks lent her a shitload of money to expand the building to include a whorehouse and a Wallmart … happy days!
Until the people that bought her thriving business asked the old drunks to pay their bills at the end of the year and started a credit collapse throughout the little system that shook the walls, I’m telling you!
That’s pretty much what happened recently, but big time all around the world and only a few old drunks really got anything out of it - a year’s worth of free beer!
In the current situation, ‘respectable’ banks loaned money to people who they knew could not pay it back, just like the honorable Heidi.
Now, Henry Ford said that we don’t learn anything from history, so I thought I’d be the first old drunk to have a look and see what I could learn from history, which goes some way back.
I started with laws and rules, beginning with the Ten Commandments, but they are just totally ignored social rules, and went on to Hammurabi’s Code, which made much more sense, written a little later, about one thousand and seven hundred years before Christ through to Tacitus, who wrote ‘The Annals of Rome’ at about the time of Christ, which gave me some perspective.
On the one hand, it’s all about food – production, storage, protection, and distribution, all with a force of arms standing by with fierce looks.
On the other hand, who owns the system that produces, stores, protects, etc., the Daily Bread? The government – in this case, run by Hammurabi?
Hammurabi’s Code is a simple set of rules that makes any interruption of commerce a crime. And commerce then was run on payment of corn. Interruption of commerce meant interruption of corn on the way to Hammurabi’s own table.
Food.
Tacitus is just as interesting in that he was a very dry, factual and non-partisan commentator on what was happening in Italy two thousand years ago, but he reveals an interesting scenario: dual or parallel economies operating symbiotically but without real awareness of each other – one based on the ‘food chain’ part of the extractable resources including people and materials, the other a ‘fiat’ economy based on credit, meaning debt, implying interest (which Rome capped at 5% and banned usury).
General ‘Ike’ Eisenhower warned us of the power of the ‘Military Industrial Complex’, which existed in Roman times in much the same way as today – a separate economy from the ‘real’ economy of general commerce and real estate, which operated aside from the then Military Industrial Complex which was and still is resource-based, taking people and material as needed fundamentally to protect the internal food supply of the nation.
The wealth of all nations depends on many factors, but essentially rests on this parallel economy theory – one resource-based economy taking what it needs from the environment without ‘paying for it’, and another, ‘fiat’ economy dependent on the real resource wealth of the nation in which it resides, protected by the Military Industrial Complex of the time.
The fiat economy is not resource based at all but quite arbitrary and based on fluctuating and equally arbitrary rules of commerce measured in and by the manipulation and accumulation of currency, which is either printed or minted and is created ‘out of thin air’, traditionally representing a base of gold or other ’real’ hard assets that can be quickly converted to tradable currencies or, as the moneylenders realized thousands of years ago … debt.
Like the debt created with Heidi’s extended booze credit.
Hiedi’s ‘credit bubble’ was created out of the thin air of free booze payable a year later (which she certainly knew would not be made, but since she sold the business as soon as she could after creating the bubble, way before the year was up, and left the country, she’s having quite a ball in the Seychelles).
I’m joining her next week for a conference on how to make some coinage out of the current credit crunch – after all, credit is debt and debt is money from the future we can trade up to and including my new ‘free booze’ package called the Credit Default Swap derivative system of leaning on tomorrow’s childrens piggy bank savings … well, not yet, they have to grow up and get jobs and be mortgaged and all, but you have to look ahead in this world.
It’s our own fault, because we are still not learning anything from history.
It does help if you read some of it, though, in case we want to avoid this happening again.
Also, there is nothing wrong with the study of contemporary history: Last week Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Advisor and early supporter of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, warned that civil unrest on American soil is a possibility that should not be dismissed.
Brzezinski explained that “the United States is going to have millions and millions of unemployed, people really facing dire straits. And we’re going to be having that for some period of time before things hopefully improve.
“And at the same time there is public awareness of this extraordinary wealth that was transferred to a few individuals at levels without historical precedent in America - (The people Heidi sold her business to sold the debt to another bunch who sold it on and then also left the country shortly after she did.)
Brzezinski concludes with this noteworthy remark “…hell, there could even be riots”.)
March 11th, 2009 at 3:58 am
Beth said:
This is a joke. Americans will never riot. In order to riot they would have to put down that bag of potato chips, turn off the coverage of Octo Mom on Fox, and get their over weight butts off the couch. That is not going to happen. Americans watched reality TV while Bush turned the constitution into toilet paper. And while Bush was lying about how strong the economy was, Americans were shoveling another quarter pounder into their mouths instead of demanding the truth and securing their stocks.
Americans riot - Get real!!!
March 11th, 2009 at 11:53 am
Skulz fontaine said:
Amerikans just might be angry enough to FINALLY break out the gear. Now, that might not be such a good idea. Our “grand” government is just looking for any excuse to slap the old ‘martial law’ scenario on ‘we the people’. Yup. Best not give them the opportunity. Besides, how many of the braggadocios are really going to square up against a squad of battle hardened Marines?
March 11th, 2009 at 6:32 pm
WolfHawk said:
There is a 1/2 billion dollar-a-year PE firm that contracts out FT permanent on-site janitors, firewatch and decontamination personnel to the large power/nuclear concerns (billions in profits) in Illinois and have employees that have applied for welfare (sounds similar to Wallmart tactics).
Some of these employees, earning barely above minimum wage have to pay 50%, yes, that is 50% of their net pay if they want family medical insurance, so any employees with a kid, or a spouse, that can’t afford it, simply go apply for welfare at tqaxpayer expense? Umm, wonder how much the PE firm is charging per hour? Bet it’s alot more than barely above minimum wage!
And then you look at what these nuclear concerns make, and you look at these people that are temped out so that the nukes don’t have to offer them the same working conditions as the more privleged employees and they are literally dumpster diving and applying for welfare to survive.
Think they’ll put that in their next glossy investor newsletter? Nuclear Janitors dumpster diving to survive this economic collapse!
Yeah America has a collosal problem, it’s called GREED.
March 12th, 2009 at 2:47 am
MD said:
Why don’t we start talking about the REAL upper class, since the Federal Reserve is about as federal as Federal Express. It’s important to keep in mind that those Zombie Banks we’ve been hearing about are the owners of The Federal Reserve. So we have the Zombie Banks who caused all these problems bailing out themselves through THEIR Federal Reserve with OUR money. I think we should nationalize the Fed and cancel all that interest debt we owe them. Why in the world do we need to pay interest to THEM when our government could print its’ own money interest free. The United States of America can no longer afford this CRAZY arrangement that was crafted by Bankers.
March 12th, 2009 at 10:16 am
tez said:
lets do it!!!!
March 12th, 2009 at 10:54 am
messianicdruid said:
“Let’s put some draconian measures in place and pare this thing down to the bare minimum and start building again.”
Major financial news services have reported that the federal government has committed Americans to $9.7 trillion worth of bailouts. Only a small portion of this has actually been made available yet, but that is what the government says it will pay out. This sum is enough to pay off 90% of ALL the mortgages in America, including all the “good” mortgages.
If the banks are in trouble because of bad mortgages, then the smart thing to do would be just pay off all of the bad mortgages. This would allow those whose salaries have been cut, or get cut, to still be able to afford to live on less income, as well as stimulate the economy. However, folks who are not yet “underwater” don’t enjoy the prospect of higher taxes for the rest of their lives, due to other’s mistakes. A Jubilee on all debt is the only way to reset a system that has grown unrepairable.
The President’s plan to solve the “mortgage crisis” is misdirected. The current corporate welfare spending bill {disguised as a “stimulus” package} is like a machine gun shooting all around the target but missing it entirely, and will make matters much worse, just as the actions of the government in the 1930’s caused the depression to drag on for over a decade. It’s also an opportunity to enact top-down social programs that have been rejected over the years as too costly, as well as despised by taxpaying Americans.
It is disappointing to me that most biblically oriented people are ignorant of the need {and authority} to regularly declare a Jubilee on all debt. This would set an example for the whole world to follow, and is an opportunity to lead, which might actually give real hope, and more than empty promises of change.
March 12th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
John Galt said:
To TheComingDepression:
Your logic is the logic that has caused this mess. What a stupid statement.
“John Galt–Don’t blame the public for 4 ipods 3 TVS and a few cars. Blame the banks for throwing applications at your doorstep. Blame the BANKS for cheap loans….”
You’re just another lazy democratic piece of crap looking for a hand out from someone else, and one of the idiots who blames all their problems on other people. No matter what anyone offers a person, the person has to make financial decisions for themselves. Just because loans were cheap doesn’t mean you need to buy a gigantic house. Just because you have 0% interest financing for 2 years doesn’t mean you need to buy that product if you don’t have any money.
It isn’t the job of lenders to make personal financial decisions for the customers. Just because a bank is able to look at a credit score and approve you for a ton of money doesn’t mean they have access to your personal budget or personal financial objectives.
In the past, the only people who used debt were people in difficult financial situations. People looked down on others for using debt. Today we triumph people for using debt. Today’s reward for being financially successful is to act like a person who was considered a financial failure in the past. This type of mentality has caused this mess.
Debt is useful in certain circumstances but it is extremely dangerous. THE TRUTH IS THAT THE DEBTOR BECOMES THE SLAVE TO THE LENDER. So America and the rest of the world has sold themselves into slavery. If you don’t believe me, what happens to the money you earn from your labors if you take out a lot of debt? The majority of your earnings go to someone else, and if you stop paying them, they can take everything you own. If that isn’t a form of slavery, I don’t know what is.
And in the end, each one of us makes the choice to sign on the dotted line. No one (not the government, bank, salesman,…etc.) holds a gun to your head and forces you to accept debt. Humanity has fought for centuries for freedom and in the relatively small amount of time we have sold ourselves and our children’s future right out of it. Shame on all of us.
March 12th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
charlie apostol said:
the united states of america will suffer the same fate as the ussr. the states will be shuttered into several independent countries and a few states choose to remain in the union. the independent states is determined by its population. thus there will be states dominated by african americans, asian americans and latino americans. the rest will be dominated by the so-called white supremacist and continue to trouble and dominate the rest of the independent states. the signs for these great happening in the united states is now getting to be clear and this speculation is relevant to the present times. the seeds of independence is already planted and growing healthy and well. but time will tell.
March 14th, 2009 at 8:08 pm
paranoiastrksdp said:
When the riots start happening, make sure you bring something more powerful than rocks and bottles to turn on the pigs - and aim for their thighs, where their armor is weakest.
March 14th, 2009 at 9:26 pm
Matthew said:
army loan military…
I can’t believe I missed this! I’m going to have to do some more reading me thinks….
April 8th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
Alex Schmorell said:
Americans in the past got quite a bit more agitated than they have since. In the 1930’s strikers got into massive melees with riot police etc. Food riots happened in NYC in 1917. Massive wildcat strikes happened toward the end of WWII or just after; prisoners rioted in Alcatraz in 1946 with sufficient effect to provoke a naval bombardment. Sailors toward the end of the Vietnam war mutinied and (for whatever reason) dumped fighter jets overboard (1975?).
For the past 35 years “organized resistance” seems to have consisted largely of prison riots and lunatic fringe right-wing cults getting in standoffs with the FBI and ATF and doing themselves in. There are on the other hand large-scale demonstrations etc. done by various groups whose inclinations could turn toward greater militancy in the future, which may be why they’re so intensely harassed by law enforcement. I’m not sure what they would accomplish. Unlike the 1930’s street battles I’d expect the left wing to play Ghandi while the right wing (i.e. police, military, Republicans, KKK, Aryan Nations, etc.) hauls them off to indefinite incarceration en masse or otherwise slaughters them as opposed to the left wing getting militant. Fox News would doubtlessly report that the demonstration had been efficiently dispersed with no mention of casualties (even 100% KIA), if it’s mentioned at all. By the time the results of the first few such mass arrests percolate through the media blackouts there won’t be much left of these movements.
I don’t see the pinpoint strikes having much historical precedent in the US. Literally the only instance I can think of is Alexander Berkman vs. Henry Clay Frick. I doubt they’d get far to begin with. A rich man has no country. The moats around their gated communities have names like “Atlantic Ocean.” Their gated communities have names like “Liechtenstein” and “Monaco.” When pressed, sufficiently geographically isolated tax havens like Vanuatu could serve their purposes. Then there’s the “you and what army?” question when each has a literal mercenary army feeding off a palace economy centered around them. The would-be assailants are going to be marooned on the opposite side of the planet from the oppressors they wish to target, and further face the challenge of getting through a mercenary army of bodyguards with all the tanks and helicopters implied, and infiltrating fortresses to boot.
I think the thought I’m having here is that the “authorities” so to speak are more than ready to take on starving hordes and have been preparing for it for some time. I rather doubt the “concentration camp” junk since the logistics of large-scale mass incarceration (e.g. 10M people) actually aren’t that difficult to improvise, plus the concrete evidence is actually that they’re not there, unless you count preexisting prisons. It doesn’t take a very hard look at cops these days to see they’re heavily militarized and more than ready for outright warfare whether or not their designated opponents fight back at all, as is apparent from the daily barrage of police brutality stories coming across the news wires. Also note that Geneva conventions regarding chemical and various other exotic sorts of weapons don’t apply to civilians, not that they’re enforced anywhere anyway except as quasi-legalistic charades to continue warfare against defeated opponents.
I’ll leave it there since I’ve already blustered on too long.
October 19th, 2009 at 10:11 am
Marcelo Raglin said:
Simply want to say your article is brilliant. The clearness in your post is simply spectacular and i can assume you are an expert on this subject. Well with your permission allow me to grab your rss feed to keep up to date with future post. Thanks a million and please keep up the delightful work.
December 29th, 2009 at 8:22 am
Doreen Snyder said:
I’m doing a research paper on the cause of the great depression and your blog is really alot of help, but I am trying to find even more info. I found this article cause of the great depression but I’m not sure I believe the ‘official’ story… I’m trying to find the ACTUAL cause of the great depression, if you have any tips of some other additional sources for info please let me know.take care
January 10th, 2010 at 5:55 pm