Next steps

Lately I've been thinking a lot about what we can actually do to save the world. Social media, I'm convinced, is NOT the way to bring down this toxic system. The elite don't fear social media, because they own and control it.

What the elite clearly fears is real-world organizing by the people. That's what the Occupy movement was starting to accomplish, and that's why the elite crushed that movement so blatantly. What can we do to duplicate or even exceed the potential of Occupy?

One option would be to simply revive Occupy. But what would stop the elite from crushing it again? It should be possible to develop some effective techniques for the movement to survive a nationwide police crackdown (and make no mistake, that's exactly what happened). But I would hope that the leaderless approach of Occupy would be retained. Because once you have leaders, you have targets for corruption and conscription by the 0.01%.

Another option: I've suggested starting local face-to-face groups for neighbors to support neighbors. I've written about that in more detail in other posts here. That sort of group might be most effective if combined with Occupy's public space approach; it would provide a fall-back option to continue organizing when the police crack down. Call it "Occupy the Neighborhood" if you like.

Here's a wilder thought: what about creating a new *religion*? That would offer certain legal protections which might prove more effective at protecting the movement from blatant use of force by the establishment. The core precept could be securing the survival of the human race, and the idea that human life and dignity are worth more than any amount of money. It could be the seed of a post-capitalist society.

So...what do you think?

What's going on

People aren't understanding what's happening here. If they did, they'd be marching in the streets. Wall Street - in this case Mitt "Corporations are People" Romney - used borrowed money to take over Toys R Us. He paid off the management to the tune of $200 million, forced Toys R Us to take out a business-killing loan for billions of dollars, and took that money. And then he took the retirement and severance pay of the people who'd been working there, some of them for decades.


Billionaire Romney legally robbed thousands of poor working people of their retirement and severance funds, and threw them onto unemployment. And he's going to do it again and again, unless someone stops him.

That "someone" won't be the Democrats. Three Democratic congressmen sent Romney a letter asking him to take pity on Toys R Us workers. And that was the sole extent of their efforts: hot air and posturing. Of course the Republicans have no interest in helping those workers, either. Both the Democrats and Republicans work for the same masters: people like Mitt Romney. The Republicans don't bother to figleaf it. And the sole concerns of the Democrats are to A) keep that big-donor cash rolling in, and B) to disguise the fact that they are the absolute servants of the financial elite.

That's all. Nothing else.

Heads need to roll. And if we don't do it, nobody will.

The E-Commerce Competition Lie

Lately, major and minor chain stores are going bankrupt at an ever-increasing rate. The usual explanation is that e-commerce is wiping them out - they simply couldn't handle the competition. But actually, competition from e-commerce is not the primary cause of these bankruptcies. Toy-R-Us, for example, was still profitable. The primary cause of the retail apocalypse is hedge funds.

They (Bain Capital, in the case of Toys-R-Us) borrow to acquire control of a retail chain, often in a hostile takeover. Once in control, they have the chain take out massive loans; in the case of Toys-R-Us, a loan for five billion dollars. Some of those funds are used to repay the very loan that the hedge fund took out to acquire them in the first place. The rest of those funds are taken by the hedge fund itself, along with anything else of value that they can loot from the company. I suspect that that usually includes as much of employees retirement funds as they can get.

Burdened with impossible debt, the chain struggles to avoid bankruptcy - but the debt is simply too high. Eventually the chain capitulates and declares bankruptcy. In the meantime, the hedge fund(s) move on to their next victims. Rinse, lather, and repeat.

We’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg so far. Hedge funds have been doing this a LOT lately, and we’ve seen less than 5% of that debt come due thus far. In the next five years, there will be an enormous increase in hedge-fund-caused bankruptcies. America may well be left with more empty chain stores than open ones.

It’s worth noting that chains which are still in private hands are generally doing well. Costco, for example, has seen its profits skyrocket. Competition from e-commerce did kill off brick and mortar chains in some sectors, such as book shops and video stores. But in general, the destructive effect of e-commerce is more a myth than reality: a myth that conveniently ignores the fact that these retail deaths are deliberate murders, rather than failures to compete.

Which is exactly how the hedge funds and the oligarchs want it, of course. They'd much rather that Americans see the destruction of their economy as the result of business failure, rather than what it is: the inevitable result of crony capitalism run amok and cannibalizing everything it can get its hands on. With, of course, the eager cooperation of the political establishment - itself probably the most profitable buy-out that the hedge funds ever made, if not actually the most profitable investment in history.

Of course, it can only be considered profitable if we ignore the cost of losing the Earth as a human habitation. But that's not a cost that is figured on balance sheets - yet.

The Great America Robbery

Toys R Us went bankrupt today. I Heart Radio filed for Chapter 11. This is just another stage of what historians of the future (if there are any) might call The Great America Robbery.

Private equity firms - Bain Capital is one of them - have been taking out loans to buy control of many major retailers and other companies. Then they have their new acquisitions take out massive loans. The borrowed funds are used not only to pay off the loans that the equity companies took out to acquire the business - meaning that they effectively buy control of the business at the business’s expense - but the rest of the funds are taken by the equity company as profit.

The business is left with the debt, And even if it’s a profitable business (and they usually are, or they wouldn’t have been targeted in the first place) the debt they’ve been saddled with by the equity company is so huge that they simply cannot pay it off. So they go bankrupt.

Often the equity company still owns the real estate. So they’re left with massive profits and empty stores. You might think that they’d rent those stores out. But these are private equity companies. So they set the rent so high that NOBODY could possibly make a profit in those locations. And then they write them off as losses on their taxes.

The result? It's being called the Retail Apocalypse. More and more empty stores. Economic deserts, that can never be used for retail - and all at our expense. Deserts that will keep expanding, because the private equity companies just keep doing the same thing: taking out loans, buying companies, and destroying them. It won’t stop until there’s nothing left for them to take.

Or if the people wake up and stop them.

Q.E.D.

Facebook is LITERALLY owned by an oligarch. What makes anyone think that they'll be allowed to start a revolution there?

Shadow On The Land

In 1968 a TV movie was aired. It depicted a near-future America which had become a dictatorship. An underground of freedom fighters were depicted as terrorists by the media. The movie featured a false flag attack, and a new organization, the "Internal Security Forces" which acted as Federal secret police. Sound at all familiar?

That movie was never released on video or disc, and it was never remade. I searched for a decent copy for years, but all I could find was a 20th-generation copy that wasn't much more than patterned static. Someone posted a legible copy of the movie on YouTube recently. You may find it a bit prescient.You might also want to download a copy, because I wouldn't be surprised if it got taken down soon.

A modern remake would really be something, wouldn't it?

The Real Gun Problem

Right now people are in a frenzy over the recent school shootings. But that won't last.

You don't even need me to spell it out for you, do you? Something else will come up, and people will get distracted. There's only so long that you can maintain a state of outrage, after all. And there's always a new atrocity.

Then there will be another shooting, and it will all start over again. Some will advocate gun control, others will advocate arming teachers and students, people will talk about mental illness, and still others will come up with other approaches. But nothing will be done. The shootings will continue.

Here's the thing: These shootings don't occur in a vacuum. They're not isolated incidents. They are a symptom of a larger problem: a society that is having everything of value extracted by the oligarchy. A people who are isolated and afraid of each other, spending most of their lives looking at screens instead of interacting face-to-face with real human beings. The relentless squeezing of a nation to death.

The psychological pressure that is being put on Americans is deadly. Most just live lives of secret fear...but some are closer to the breaking point. In a sane, humane culture, they wouldn't be under such killing pressure. And there would be medical and psychological services available to them, to help them cope with their problems rather than be crushed under them.

But our leaders aren't interested in providing such services. So some of the people under pressure...snap. They make plans. They buy weapons (from which the oligarchy profits). They go on a killing spree. The people react with terror and anger, pulling away from each other (which benefits the oligarchs). The media swarms in, and again the oligarchy profits.

What's the common denominator? The oligarchy. The real problem isn't guns, although obviously there are many sensible restrictions that should be in place. It's not mental illness, either. Rather, it's that the oligarchy is creating the circumstances which inevitably lead to breakdowns FOR THEIR OWN PROFIT.

Both sides of the gun debate are being used.The reality is that the issue is one of profit and power. The elite makes money in many ways with guns and gun violence; first, they profit from the sale of arms. Second, they profit from the inevitable media frenzy when a mass shooting occurs. Third, they profit still more after a mass shooting, because renewed calls for gun control increase the sales of guns and ammunition.

Meanwhile, both political parties get increased fanaticism and devotion from their members; that benefits the oligarchs by increasing the general level of hatred by the rank and file of each side towards the other (and therefore, distracting them from the real beneficiaries of mass shootings: the oligarchy, of course). While people are screaming with hate at those on the other side of the issue, the elite quietly keep raking in money and consolidating their power. It's heads they win, tails we lose - over and over.

The solution is revolution. We need to join together and bring down the oligarchs. At this point, it's either them...or us.