The Stink of it All

Happy Holidays, whether you celebrate Hanukkah, Christmas, or nothing at all.

On an altogether different note, the news of late is following the trend I predicted, which is for the worse, and that is definitely NOT a good thing. And it isn't just your stereotypical right winger that's got his panties in bunch, either. From the Bank of Spain Chief, to the global legal community to the head of the International Monetary Fund, the outlook for the future is fairly grim.

For the record,this is hardly a uniquely American outlook. When the British Telegraph UK and its most prestigious opinionist Mr. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard have lines like these in their articles, you had best take heed and pay attention,for instance: The riots have begun. Civil protest is breaking out in cities across Russia, China, and beyond. and that's just the byline!

When people say things to me like, "It can never happen again (Tm)," or "it could never happen here, OH!bama, etc etc" it reminds me that like the great writer Santayana said, those who forget their history are condemned to repeat it. Just today, I saw another fearsome reminder of just how fragile our freedom really is. Similar to the article I posted almost a month ago now about the 20,000 "battle-hardened" US troops being dispatched onto the streets of an American city near you, comes this story about how the same troops are "preparing for domestic disturbances." I hope you didn't hear that from me first, but if you did, at least you heard it. From the article:

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn warned last week of riots and unrest in global markets if the ongoing financial crisis is not addressed and lower-income households are beset with credit constraints and rising unemployment, the Phoenix Business Journal reported.
Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma and Rep. Brad Sherman of California disclosed that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson discussed a worst-case scenario as he pushed the Wall Street bailout in September, and said that scenario might even require a declaration of martial law.

Is it funny now?

Once again, government has created a problem by involving itself in areas it has no business being in, where it complicates things further and destroys trust in open and free markets and takes more of your liberty away, and their solution is always the same: more government, more government intervention, more restrictions and less individual freedom. The American so-called press is daily talking of putting armed soldiers on the streets to deal with the folks who "just won't take it any longer." And unfortunately, their numbers appear to be growing daily and rapidly. What happens when the foreign banks run by foreign governments suddenly call their money home to support their own failing economies, and nothing helps? Will the country with the biggest and most mobile land army ultimately dominate the world's scarce resources through geonocide and mass-deportations from fertile, native lands? Do you know how to routinely and accurately hit a man-sized target at 50 yards with a pistol and 500 yards with a rifle?

R. Buckminster Fuller once said, "If success or failure of this planet and of human beings depended on how I am and what I do...HOW WOULD I BE? WHAT WOULD I DO?"