Meet BlackRock, the New Great Vampire Squid, “Global Financial Giant”
[Economic] [Political]
Meet BlackRock, the New Great Vampire Squid, “Global Financial Giant”
By Ellen Brown
Posted July 23, 2020
BlackRock is a global financial giant with customers in 100 countries and its tentacles in major asset classes all over the world; and it now manages the spigots to trillions of bailout dollars from the Federal Reserve. The fate of a large portion of the country’s corporations has been put in the hands of a megalithic private entity with the private capitalist mandate to make as much money as possible for its owners and investors; and that is what it has proceeded to do.
BlackRock got a bailout with no debate in Congress, no “penalty” interest rate of the sort imposed on states and cities borrowing in the Fed’s Municipal Liquidity Facility, no complicated paperwork or waiting in line for scarce Small Business Administration loans, no strings attached. It just quietly bailed itself out.
It might be argued that this bailout was good and necessary, since the market was saved from a disastrous “doom loop,” and so were the pension funds and the savings of millions of investors. Although BlackRock has a controlling interest in all the major corporations in the S&P 500, it professes not to “own” the funds. It just acts as a kind of “custodian” for its investors — or so it claims. More…
Starve the Beast, Feed the Light
[Spiritual]
Starve the Beast, Feed the Light
By Tim Bryant
Posted July 22, 2020
The problem is that many people today go about activism in the totally wrong way, spinning the wheels, but going nowhere fast. The three most common tactics include constantly complaining about other people’s actions, protesting the actions of others by occupying space/holding signs, and lobbying middlemen politicians to enact new laws to fix the problems and “protect” the people. Though these tactics might work to some small degree (obviously not working very well at the moment), they all have one fundamental problem hindering genuine change, and that is direct individual action. By always asking and relying on some other entity to be the agent of change, like the government or private corporations, people are stripping themselves of their own power to change the system directly through their own individual actions.
It’s no wonder people feel incredibly powerless when coming face-to-face with the beast that is the system. However, if there is one truth that every social activist needs to fully understand, it is that We the People are what feeds the beast, and without our energy input, the parasite would starve and fall to its knees, dying off quicker than many can even fathom. It’s really not as complex as many are led to believe; it just requires hard work, focused discipline, open-minded thinking, in-depth research, and constant adaptation to an ever-changing world. More…
The Illusion of Control: What If Nobody’s in Charge?
[Economic] [Social]
The Illusion of Control: What If Nobody’s in Charge?
by Charles Hugh Smith
Posted July 21, 2020
I submit whatever control we discern is illusory, as the dynamics unleashed by the pandemic have already escaped the control of elites. The fundamental reason the elites have lost control is that all the systems they depend on have been broken for 12 years, but were successfully papered over by doing more of what broke them in the first place. This papering over of broken systems generated an illusion of functionality: everything appeared to function as before even as dysfunction spread into every corner of every system.
As doing more of what broke the systems in the first place is failing, the illusion of functionality has been shredded. Now that the illusion of functionality has been lost, control of the narrative via institutional authority has also been lost.
The last shred of power the elites hold is the belief of the masses that the elites are still in control. That belief is dissipating, despite the shrieks and cries of the elites that they are still in control. Events are illuminating their hubris and the fractals of incompetence that are crumbling beneath their feet. More…
Navy Veteran Speaks Out After Being Attacked by Secret Police in Portland
[Justice]
Navy Veteran Speaks Out After Being Attacked by Secret Police in Portland
By Jon Queally
Posted July 20, 2020
The U.S. Navy veteran who was brutally attacked by unidentified federal police in Portland, Oregon over the weekend is speaking out about the incident—a video of which has gone viral online—and explained that he traveled to the site of local protests to get some answers directly from the personnel in the secretive units after becoming outraged over their deployment by the Trump administration.
“I was enraged simply because I did not think they were taking their oath of office seriously or they were compromising their oath of office,” Christopher David, a 53-year-old disabled veteran who served in the Navy for eight years, told The Independent in an interview. “So I actually went down because I wanted to talk to them about it.”
The assault caught on film by local journalist Zane Sparling—and as of this writing viewed more than 9.6 million times on social media—shows David withstanding several blows from one officer before another pepper sprays him in the face from close range. More…
The Deep State Is Responsible for All Economic Turmoil
[Economic] [Social]
The Deep State Is Responsible for All Economic Turmoil
By Doug Casey
Posted July 20, 2020
The Deep State is an extremely powerful network that controls nearly everything around you. You won’t read about it in the news because it controls the news. Politicians won’t talk about it publicly. That would be like a mobster discussing murder and robbery on the six o’clock news. You could say the Deep State is hidden, but it’s only hidden in plain sight.
The Deep State is the source of every negative thing that’s happening right now. To survive the coming rough times, it’s essential for you to know what it’s all about.
The Deep State is destructive, but it’s great for the people in it. And, like any living organism, its prime directive is: Survive! It survives by indoctrinating the fiction that it’s both good and necessary. However, it’s a parasite that promotes the ridiculous notion that everyone can live at the expense of society. More…
COVID, Identity Politics, and the Global Ruling Elite
[Social]
COVID, Identity Politics, and the Global Ruling Elite
by Kurt Nimmo
Posted July 19, 2020
The following is my opinion based on more than a decade and a half of research into ruling elites. Please be aware this sort of commentary is now considered domestic terrorism by the FBI, the national security state, and its propaganda media.
I am convinced the ruling and financial elite consider most of us useless eaters, cattle to be exploited. They have spent the last decade accruing vast wealth at the expense of the so-called 99%. They are responsible for endless wars—now largely irrelevant to the average American—and are responsible for the murder of millions of innocent civilians and igniting social and sectarian violence in the smoldering ruins left in their “creative destruction” wake.
Finally, I sincerely doubt the American people are capable of confronting the elite and returning the nation to a sanity that has been missing for decades. First and foremost, they are unable to break free of the voodoo spell of relentless narrative propaganda. Millions view the left-right paradigm not as a cynically crafted ploy to divert them from the real problem—the theft of the future and present by psychopathic and misanthropic rulers, condemning billions of misery and privation—but rather as a political reality. More…
Against Big Philanthropy
[Social]
Against Big Philanthropy
by Alexis C. Madrigal
Posted July 18, 2020
First, big foundations are unaccountable. They answer neither to voters or to marketplace competition.
Second, they do not have to be transparent. They file one tax form. The $8 billion Simons Foundation International doesn’t even have a website.
Third, they are donor-directed. The employees—the people on the ground— “can’t determine the mission” of the organization.
Fourth, the donor’s intent must be respected even when the donor has died. Societies grow and change, but the mission defined by the creator of the foundation remains the mission in perpetuity.
And fifth, on top of all this, foundations are tax-subsidized. “We’re at a moment in American society in which the winners in the marketplace attempt to diminish their tax burdens, both corporately and individually, as low as they can legally go,” Robert Reich told me. “Then having diminished their tax burden as low as it can go, they turn around and set up a private foundation, taking a further tax break.”
Then, with money that would have otherwise have gone to the government, where at least there is nominal democratic control over spending priorities, the philanthropists use that money on whatever social purpose they’ve decided to support.
Is this system, as Reich describes it, really one that any democracy would want? More…
Why this ‘Pandemic’ Is Looking More Like a Social Engineering Experiment
[Social]
Why this ‘Pandemic’ Is Looking More Like a Social Engineering Experiment
By Richard Enos
Posted July 17, 2020
Now as to that staunch figure of worldwide deaths from COVID-19, which tells us that over a quarter of a million people have died from the virus–not an insignificant number, when it gets stand-alone framing in big bold print on mainstream media 24/7. That, in combination with the ongoing ticker of new cases cropping up, is used strategically to maximize fear, thereby maximizing public compliance.
Evidence is coming out every day that these numbers and the way they are presented are not truthful and are conflating the level of danger (and thus the need for a lockdown).
For example, many of the deaths that are in the official number of COVID-19 deaths are actually co-morbidities, meaning that the person who died had other pre-existing health conditions that contributed to their death. There is no evidence of the extent of the impact, if any, of COVID-19 in the case of these co-morbidities. In fact, in some cases, even where an alternative cause is determined, it is still registered as a COVID-19 death. More…
The Federal Reserve Has Its Own Police and Is Part of a Vast Surveillance Center – Should You Worry?
[Social]
The Federal Reserve Has Its Own Police and Is Part of a Vast Surveillance Center – Should You Worry?
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Posted July 16, 2020
Without any Congressional hearings on the matter, the USA Patriot Act in 2001 bestowed on the 12 regional Federal Reserve banks domestic policing powers. While the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in Washington, D.C. is deemed an “independent federal agency,” with its Chair and Governors appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, the 12 regional Fed banks are private corporations owned by the member banks in their region. As settled law under John L. Lewis v. United States confirms: “Each Federal Reserve Bank is a separate corporation owned by commercial banks in its region.”
In the case of the New York Fed, which is located in the Wall Street area of Manhattan, its largest shareowners are behemoth multinational banks, including JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. So what the USA Patriot Act effectively did was to give multinational corporations domestic policing powers in New York City via the New York Fed. More…
Quotable Sayings
There is no chance, no destiny, no fate that can circumvent or hinder or control the firm resolve of a determined soul.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
______________________________
You do not become a billionaire through labor. You become a billionaire through inheritance, corruption or economic rents – or, in most cases, some mixture of all three.
Grace Blakeley
______________________________
Mainstream American liberals think they’re clear-eyed because they can see the propaganda strings being pulled by Fox and Donald Trump, and mainstream American conservatives think they’re clear-eyed because they can see the propaganda strings being pulled by MSNBC and the Democrats, but the propaganda strings on both trace back to the same puppet master. And seeing that is just the beginning.
Caitlin Johnstone
______________________________
You alone are the judge of your worth and your goal is to discover infinite worth in yourself, no matter what anyone else thinks.
Deepak Chopra
_____________________________
It is obvious that the US government is destroying Assange to signal to journalists the consequences of publishing information. It is therefore also obvious that any journalist who fails to use whatever platform they have to speak out against Assange’s persecution has no intention of ever publishing anything that the US government doesn’t want published. Their silence on or support for what is being done to this man can and should be taken as an admission that they are nothing other than state propagandists.
Caitlin Johnstone
_____________________________
It’s quite fitting that the – imperially pre-determined – judicial fate of Julian Assange is being played out in Britain, the home of George Orwell.
Pepe Escobar
_____________________________
