A few months ago, Robert Fisk of The Independent UK took the gloves off (my emphasis added):
Writing from the very region that produces more clichés per square foot than any other “story” – the Middle East – I should perhaps pause before I say I have never read so much garbage, so much utter drivel, as I have about the world financial crisis.
But I will not hold my fire. It seems to me that the reporting of the collapse of capitalism has reached a new low which even the Middle East cannot surpass for sheer unadulterated obedience to the very institutions and Harvard “experts” who have helped to bring about the whole criminal disaster.
Let’s kick off with the “Arab Spring” – in itself a grotesque verbal distortion of the great Arab/Muslim awakening which is shaking the Middle East – and the trashy parallels with the social protests in Western capitals. We’ve been deluged with reports of how the poor or the disadvantaged in the West have “taken a leaf” out of the “Arab spring” book, how demonstrators in America, Canada, Britain, Spain and Greece have been “inspired” by the huge demonstrations that brought down the regimes in Egypt, Tunisia and – up to a point – Libya. But this is nonsense.
The real comparison, needless to say, has been dodged by Western reporters, so keen to extol the anti-dictator rebellions of the Arabs, so anxious to ignore protests against “democratic” Western governments, so desperate to disparage these demonstrations, to suggest that they are merely picking up on the latest fad in the Arab world. The truth is somewhat different. What drove the Arabs in their tens of thousands and then their millions on to the streets of Middle East capitals was a demand for dignity and a refusal to accept that the local family-ruled dictators actually owned their countries. The Mubaraks and the Ben Alis and the Gaddafis and the kings and emirs of the Gulf (and Jordan) and the Assads all believed that they had property rights to their entire nations. Egypt belonged to Mubarak Inc, Tunisia to Ben Ali Inc (and the Traboulsi family), Libya to Gaddafi Inc. And so on. The Arab martyrs against dictatorship died to prove that their countries belonged to their own people.
And that is the true parallel in the West. The protest movements are indeed against Big Business – a perfectly justified cause – and against “governments”. What they have really divined, however, albeit a bit late in the day, is that they have for decades bought into a fraudulent democracy: they dutifully vote for political parties – which then hand their democratic mandate and people’s power to the banks and the derivative traders and the rating agencies, all three backed up by the slovenly and dishonest coterie of “experts” from America’s top universities and “think tanks”, who maintain the fiction that this is a crisis of globalisation rather than a massive financial con trick foisted on the voters.
The banks and the rating agencies have become the dictators of the West. Like the Mubaraks and Ben Alis, the banks believed – and still believe – they are owners of their countries. The elections which give them power have – through the gutlessness and collusion of governments – become as false as the polls to which the Arabs were forced to troop decade after decade to anoint their own national property owners. Goldman Sachs and the Royal Bank of Scotland became the Mubaraks and Ben Alis of the US and the UK, each gobbling up the people’s wealth in bogus rewards and bonuses for their vicious bosses on a scale infinitely more rapacious than their greedy Arab dictator-brothers could imagine.
I didn’t need Charles Ferguson’s Inside Job on BBC2 this week – though it helped – to teach me that the ratings agencies and the US banks are interchangeable, that their personnel move seamlessly between agency, bank and US government. The ratings lads (almost always lads, of course) who AAA-rated sub-prime loans and derivatives in America are now – via their poisonous influence on the markets – clawing down the people of Europe by threatening to lower or withdraw the very same ratings from European nations which they lavished upon criminals before the financial crash in the US. I believe that understatement tends to win arguments. But, forgive me, who are these creatures whose ratings agencies now put more fear into the French than Rommel did in 1940?
Why don’t my journalist mates in Wall Street tell me? How come the BBC and CNN and – oh, dear, even al-Jazeera – treat these criminal communities as unquestionable institutions of power? Why no investigations – Inside Job started along the path – into these scandalous double-dealers? It reminds me so much of the equally craven way that so many American reporters cover the Middle East, eerily avoiding any direct criticism of Israel, abetted by an army of pro-Likud lobbyists to explain to viewers why American “peacemaking” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be trusted, why the good guys are “moderates”, the bad guys “terrorists”.
The Arabs have at least begun to shrug off this nonsense. But when the Wall Street protesters do the same, they become “anarchists”, the social “terrorists” of American streets who dare to demand that the Bernankes and Geithners should face the same kind of trial as Hosni Mubarak. We in the West – our governments – have created our dictators. But, unlike the Arabs, we can’t touch them.
The Irish Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, solemnly informed his people this week that they were not responsible for the crisis in which they found themselves. They already knew that, of course. What he did not tell them was who was to blame. Isn’t it time he and his fellow EU prime ministers did tell us? And our reporters, too?
Fisk is right.
If you have any doubts about that, take the time to review this blog’s many articles showing how banksters rule Australia too.
Here’s just a small selection out of many, many examples:
The World’s Most Immoral Institution Tells You How
Ticking Time Bomb Hidden In The Carbon Tax
Barnaby Is Right 
Thanks, Robert Fisk, for speaking frankly!
Frankly speaking, I suspect that we all bought into a fraudulent democracy: Dutifully voting for different political parties – which then handed their democratic mandates and the people’s power to SOMEONE who maintained the fiction that this is a crisis of globalisation rather than a massive financial con trick foisted on the voters.
WHO gave us globalization and post-modern consensus science in exchange for slavery and loss of our constitutional “Bill of Rights” ?
We are trying to solve that mystery here: http://omanuel.wordpress.com/
(See comments also)
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
Emeritus Professor
Nuclear/Space Science
Q: Who ? offered us globalization (unite nations) and post-modern, consensus science in exchange for slavery and loss of our constitutional “Bill of Rights” ?
a.) Bankers?
b.) Borrowers?
c.) Capitalists?
d.) Communists?
e.) Publishers?
e.) Readers?
f.) Liberals?
g.) Conservatives?
h.) Club of Rome?
i.) Bilderberg Group?
A: Only the powerful ones, recoiling in fear of “nuclear fires” that vaporized Hiroshima on 6 Aug 1945: Fear of Reality – the Creator & Destroyer of elements, the Preserver & Sustainer of life, the Sun and the entire expanding cosmos !
Q: Who now includes world leaders, bankers, communists, publishers, dictators, liberals, conservatives, the UN’s IPCC, the US NAS, the UK’s RS, editors of our most prestigious news reports and research journals, and even members of the Nobel Prize Committee.
The sixty-six plus years (66.66 yr) of deceit in the recent past
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/
Parallels the 16th Century deceit that Karen Koen describes in the novel, “Face to Face”.
Thanks again for bringing this issue to the fore BI.
One does indeed wonder when, or even if, the criminals who hide in plain sight shall ever be called to answer for their crimes.
Such a shame that 9/10 people in the western world are so apathetic that they cannot recognise or even accept the brutal truth.
I have little hope for the next 2 generations of being able to live their lives as anything less than a commodity for the corporate oligarchy.
Better to spill a little blood now, than to bathe in it for the next 50 years don’t you think?
“is that they have for decades bought into a fraudulent democracy: they dutifully vote for political parties – which then hand their democratic mandate and people’s power to the banks and the derivative traders and the rating agencies”
And just why do you think I don’t vote? As it stands, voting is a meaningless charade, Fat Freddy Freekoutski told me that when I was about 18 & he is drug f*@&!d comic book character, yet still smarter than your average human!
Note Fisk also says it is the government who hands their democratic mandate to the banks, not the banks take it by force, a force they don’t have. You people who vote, then blame the bankers, are your own worst enemy.
My reason for beleiving Malcolm Turnbull is labor’s biggest asset in the coalition. He supported Rudd in carbon trading. Background in Goldman Sachs. Has many $million reasons for beleiving in AGWarming. Not sure about Joe Hockey., another beleiver in AGW. Time will tell
Joe Hockey’s wife is Melissa Babbage. She was, until recently, Head of Foreign Exchange and Global Finance at Deutsche Bank, for some 14 years (from memory). ‘Nuff said?
That he was “Labor’s preferred coalition leader” was a bit of a giveaway. Suddenly those rumours about his offering to join Labor didn’t seem so fanciful. That he dutifully negotiated the carbon tax fit all too well with his history in Goldman Sachs. Unfortunately the Libs have almost as many lawyers as Labor, which explains how Abbott barely won.
He’s just another wolf in sheep’s clothing.
http://www.morningliberty.com/2011/12/05/top-3-american-vices-arrogance-greed-and-denial-destroying-usa/
The reality still is that the majority are ignorant of the truth.
“You can ignore reality, but you cannot ignore the consequences of reality.” Ayn Rand
“……..The dollar collapse will end the ability of the average American to deny their active or passive participation in the dominance of the world by spreading debt and death. When people’s entire life’s savings are wiped away, they will wonder what their life has been all about. All of the missed times with their family and connections with others has been stained by the pursuit of material gains. Only when everything is taken from them, will they start to see the real importance of life. Many will not be able to come to terms with this coming reality. Those that are aware and prepared stand a great chance of making it through this paradigm shift and thrive. (Join the Sons of Liberty Academy.)
http://www.pakalertpress.com/2012/04/05/25-must-know-skills-for-surviving-the-coming-nightmare/