So the 1% fucked us over world-wide. What do we DO about it?

[Fire Walk With Me]

via Ichingcarpenter in GD:

The Confidential Memo at the Heart of the Global Financial Crisis

http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/larry-summers-and-the-secret-end-game-memo

"The Treasury official playing the bankers’ secret End Game was Larry Summers. Today, Summers is Barack Obama’s leading choice for Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, the world’s central bank. If the confidential memo is authentic, then Summers shouldn’t be serving on the Fed, he should be serving hard time in some dungeon reserved for the criminally insane of the finance world.

The memo is authentic.

snip

The new FSA pulled the lid off the Pandora’s box of worldwide derivatives trade. Among the notorious transactions legalised: Goldman Sachs (where Treasury Secretary Rubin had been co-chairman) worked a secret euro-derivatives swap with Greece which, ultimately, destroyed that nation. Ecuador, its own banking sector de-regulated and demolished, exploded into riots. Argentina had to sell off its oil companies (to the Spanish) and water systems (to Enron) while its teachers hunted for food in garbage cans. Then, Bankers Gone Wild in the Eurozone dove head-first into derivatives pools without knowing how to swim – and the continent is now being sold off in tiny, cheap pieces to Germany.

(More at the link.)

[Warpy]

1. It's not going to last.

Empire never lasts. Oh, it can cover lifetimes of agony but all empires of all types are doomed to fail and fall, usually when the participants just decide not to play the game any more.

As for me, I'm perfecting a lot of old skills people will need when it does fall and I'm teaching them.

[SummerSnow]

2. when you say old skills do you mean skills to survive after the fall?

Cause if you are that's a good thing. I'm learning lots of stuff

[Warpy]

5. Well, being prepared is always a good idea

but the fall won't be bad in a lot of areas, landfills will keep us going for a very long time.

However, I do love talking to homeless people and picking their brains. You want to learn survival skills for any sort of a crash, those are the people to talk to, not the idiots on TV amassing the huge arsenals and building bunkers.

[grasswire]

3. it's different this time

They also fucked our dear planet Earth -- to the extent that it might be uninhabitable. They fucked polar bears and First People. The oceans and the forests. The air. The water supply.

So going back to the old ways or the survivalist mentality will not ameliorate their damage.

I spose many of them think the "rapture" will make the ruination of the Earth immaterial.

[KT2000]

4. keep Summers out of the Fed

as best we can - make noise about it and what they did.

[dickthegrouch]

6. We take back what's ours

We have to demand prosecutions. Demand restitution. Demand Shame and poverty for the greedy.

Change the law so that it is no longer so attractive to be filthy rich ("Of whom much is given, much is expected&quot .

Level the playing field. Do what the prosecution does to the 99%, find an obscure part of the law that they have actually broken, and nail them with it.

I know all the stupid idiots at treasury think no laws have been broken, many of us were in fact stolen from. 100,000 "little" civil suits all asking for our money back from the same bank managers or mortgage granters might get their attention.

Bury the bastards in their own paperwork.

[Joe Shlabotnik]

7. The masses must come to accept that this IS class warfare.

Its not about politics.

The 1%, and the next 5% (their enablers), have no intention of being "reasonable" or magnanimous, and they have no intention of ceding even an inch of their power or wealth to anyone. They will use spying, propaganda, coercion, intimidation and even force, to keep us compliant, vaguely hopeful, ignorant and divided in order to protect their privilege.

The war on the middle class and poor must be seen for what it is. The plutocracy and its aspiring henchmen collectively shit their pants in the late '60s, and realized that an educated, empowered and Just society would not continue to tolerate their callous disregard for human life and dignity. They vowed to never let that happen again, and have been pushing ever since, for a restoration of a neo-guilded age.

What we can do is apply some practical anarchism. Stop consuming the news. Turn off the TV completely. Invest some of that time listening to the cicadas, crickets and katydids and accept that we have more in common with nature than we do with do with corporations. Then start talking to your neighbors, and get to know your community. Create bonds based on kindness and empathy. Exchange the currency of knowledge, goodwill and mutual respect. Defend homes. Mic check bullshit. Question authority. Physically stand up to brute force. Don't consume what you don't need, share what you have. Slow productivity at work. Jam culture.

But we must also realize that the measure of our success is not the polluted industrial skylines of the 1960s. We don't have much to win if we measure our success in terms of returning to our glory days of consumption and waste.

However as it stands we have everything to loose. If successful we may reclaim our humanity, and possibly abundant food and shelter, some fresh air, and clean water for future generations who can then use their free educations for the good of all.