Once upon a time a child was born in a place called the land of the free and the home of the brave. She was told that she was very, very lucky to be born in this land, the best country on earth. In school every morning, her entire class stood, placed their hands over their hearts, and solemnly recited a Pledge of Allegiance to her nation’s flag. After that the class sang a stirring song about the greatness of this land and its purple mountain’s majesty. The same songs were heard on Independence Day, and, as the music swelled to a crescendo, tears filled the child’s eyes with gratitude for being a citizen of such a wonderful land.
In other countries, rulers did terrible things to their people, but few of their people would hear about it, as the newspapers printed only lies in support of the evil rulers. That would never happen in her country, Amerika, where the right of free speech had been enshrined for centuries as the first and the most important amendment in the founding documents of the republic. She learned that although her country had fought in many wars, it was always as either a victim of an unprovoked attack, or as a brave ally to those who were innocent victims.
The years passed and she lived her life with little regard to the work of her government. She voted every four years, wearing proudly her “I voted” sticker for the rest of the day.
To be sure, there were disturbing occurrences every now and then. A president was gunned down in broad daylight on a city street, then later his brother, an influential senator, was killed. A charismatic leader of the descendants of the slaves was shot and killed at the height of his popularity. But each time, thanks to quick police work, the lone nuts who committed these deeds were located within hours and punished, making the streets safe once again.
She understood that there were poor people, those living under bridges and eating cat food. But she also knew, because it was endlessly repeated, that anyone could succeed in Amerika, and those at the pinnacle of wealth and power were simply more talented and harder working than everyone else.
Her confidence in the integrity of her government continued until an event, quite suddenly, changed it. Amerika attacked a country which had done nothing to threaten it. The video of bombs falling on an innocent city filled her with sorrow and shame. She stood in her office and cried.
Then she resolved to find out how such a thing could have been perpetrated by a land that was a beacon of freedom to all mankind.
Fortunately, she had just acquired an amazing invention that enabled her to read the thoughts of all the smartest people from around the world at no charge. She began spending long hours on the invention, searching for wise words to explain how Amerika had gone so wrong, and what could be done to put her back on track. To her relief, there were many influential thinkers who agreed with her that Amerika had made a grievous error, and she felt confident that loud cries of indignation and alarm, from so many quarters, would soon force Amerika’s evil leaders to reverse course.
Alas, that was not the case. Pundits kept punditing, marchers kept marching, and the war went on. Years passed and hundreds of thousands of innocent people died as Amerika sought to subdue the black bearded patriots bravely fighting against the invaders. Why exactly were the Amerikans there? This was never made clear.
Even worse, she saw the laws that had made her country great being dismantled. Laws against torture, laws protecting citizens’ privacy, and laws insuring fair trials and fair treatment for the accused, were watered down or thrown out entirely. Again there was great outrage from brilliant writers, again nothing changed. It seemed that the conscience of Amerika, those who were supposed to intercede and assure that no single lunatic derailed the entire country, had taken an extended vacation.
She was told that the new laws would keep her safe from the terrorists who hated her freedoms and wanted to kill her. But now, she felt more afraid of her own government than of the terrorists.
One day, after four years of war, while researching impeachment on her amazing invention, she came across a bold statement: That powerfully constructed steel buildings could suddenly turn to dust, because they were struck by two flimsy aluminum airliners, and experienced small fires on a few floors, that burned for a short time, appears unexceptional to a majority of Americans.
Her eyes widened and she embarked on an even more feverish quest for the truth. Within a few days, she had read hundreds of pages about the day in September 2001 that had changed everything, the day that sent Amerika on a rampage on the other side of the world, and destroyed the freedoms at home that the terrorists hated so much.
It didn’t take long. The evidence was overwhelming and her jaw dropped and stayed dropped for a week. What of all the astute writers whose words she had devoured daily, year after year? What of her heroes: Robert Scheer, Josh Marshall, Paul Krugman? What of the many leftist websites she frequented: Buzzflash, Alternet, Counterpunch, TPM, Crooks & Liars, Salon? The pod casts she savored, like Left, Right and Center? The TV shows she giggled at, like The Daily Show? How could it be, that not one of these sources had told her the truth about 9/11? And if they were lying about 9/11, what else might they be lying about? She had to know.
She began investigating again. Her new plasma TV sat idle and unused, DVDs from Netflix piled up, unwatched, and dust lay thickly on dresser-tops, un-noticed. The UPS man became a frequent visitor, bearing books from Amazon, and she dug deeper into the far reaches of the Internet, following link, after link, after link, to get to the long buried truth that someone didn’t want her to know.
JFK. RFK. MLK. JFK Jr. Oklahoma City bombing. World Trade Center bombing 1993. Shoot down of KAL 007, TWA 800. Deaths of Paul Wellstone, William Colby, Vince Foster. All lies! Nothing had happened the way she had been told. The government—her government—had been killing people who were inconvenient for at least 50 years. The media spun tales as absurd as an Escher drawing, and the placid public accepted their wild tales as fact.
But why? And who? Her initial rage at Shrub and his side-kick faded as she realized that they were mere functionaries, carrying out orders. Was it only a coincidence that Shrub had sat reading a book called “My Pet Goat,” as New Yorkers leapt to their deaths from burning towers? Or was this planned as a humiliating inside joke by his sadistic master, a joke that would finally be understood by the masses only a decade later?
She began to discern the over-arching plan that spanned decades and proceeded apace regardless of who sat in the office shaped like an oval. Presidents were not so much elected as appointed, as the lock-step media had the power to raise up the compliant, and throw down the rebellious. Powerful people who spoke truth soon found themselves relegated to the inside pages of the daily broadsheets, with only their most unattractive photos and embarrassing peccadilloes revealed. Further indiscreet statements, and they would find themselves in the obituaries.
She learned that there was a single family with net worth of $100 trillion dollars—twenty times the amount of the entire US money supply (M3) and enough to finance the US military’s current budget for 200 years. How had they gotten so rich? Were they so much more talented and hard-working that all the rest of us?
No.
This family, and a few others like it, own a private corporation (no, you can’t buy stock) that issues US currency to the Amerikan people at interest. They create this money for no more than it costs to print it, while collecting billions of dollars every day in interest on the trillions now owed to them. Counterfeiting is legal in Amerika—and every nation with a Central Bank. They have a license to print money. They answer to no one.
With that money they rule the world. They control governments, corporations, the media, education, medicine. They create wars and fund both sides. They create booms and busts, and have the insider knowledge to sell at the peak and buy at the absolute nadir. Like squeezes of a wet sponge, each successive contraction drains more from the people into the vast pool of wealth controlled by the banksters.
Blackmail and bribery are the nature of their game. Pleased to meet you, have you guessed their name?
Perhaps most tellingly, they created the fiction of the nutso conspiracy theorist. You see why that was necessary? Anyone who uncovers the truth is ipso facto unreliable and borderline delusional. Thus they have built a nearly impenetrable barrier to a mass awakening. If only greasy-haired losers with comb-overs and grimy polyester shirts, who haven’t been laid since 1995, who spray spittle as they ventilate incoherently, have seen through the curtain, well-coiffed hockey moms will run from them screaming, and the banksters’ secrets are safe. Safe to continue counterfeiting, stealing, lying to those same hockey moms.
The woman had now reached the bottom of the rabbit hole. She had awoken from the American Dream to face the cold, clinical reality of evil encircling the world and tightening its hold on its unsuspecting victims a bit more every day, every year.
Something must be done! she resolved. She began writing, speaking, informing. But old friends backed away and her op-eds weren’t published. She appeared as little more than a lone, lunatic fly flailing in a solid web of geometrically perfect, internally consistent lies expanding outward indefinitely in all directions. Slowly, the full horror of the awful truth dawned upon her, as the fate of humanity became ever more apparent.
They will finally find out that they are enslaved, only when all possibility of escape has been eliminated.
She wept.
Great post Sheila, but things are worse than you described, in two respects:
"They create this money for no more than it costs to print it ..."
They do not print it. It is a digital entry on a computer, an electronic funds transfer to the treasury. It costs them nothing.
"... while collecting billions of dollars every day in interest on the trillions now owed to them."
They collect not only the interest, but the prinicipal, on these "loans." With the money loaned to the US Treasury, they buy treasury bonds, using money created from nothing.
Then they sell the bonds, mainly to China. We the taxpayers must pay the interest and principal on those bonds.
Posted by: Jerod | March 28, 2009 at 12:31 AM
I must say I really appreciated this article not as one so valuable to convince others but one to reflect and compare to a similar emotional journey I have made. You've provided solid site links and hjghlighted a couple of my favorite truth tellers (PCR and Richard Cook). I'd encourage anyone who comes by your site to explore it thoroughly and thank you for giving of your own time and energy to learn and educate. I can't imagine you for a nanosecond you think that all people that work for large corporations, the government, or mainstream political parties are necessarily evil and corrupt but I suspect you understand that at the heart of all of these things lies an unspeakable evil that has encouraged heinous historical crimes to be committed. It relies on plausible deniability, and a world of good people who don't want to hear about it. I would even grant that some of the worst contributors to the mess we're in have bought some of the lies of how the ends (?one world government with peace/security/order and population control/species-global survival) could justify the means. I would also concede that many others only see the small role they play, accept but minimize their own selfish ambitions and are trapped "just doing their job". Even those who are pushing for truth and justice are doing so largely as participants in the corrupted system and are surrounded by the vast majority in the Western world who are disempowered and apathetic in relative comfort. I weep with you for the hoards of innocents suffering now (in abject and relative poverty) and those we are surrounded by, especially our children whose time of suffering seems to be approaching soon. Thank you again.
Posted by: Paul McArthur | December 21, 2008 at 07:38 PM
I have sent numerous emails to the author, of which I am sure most have been deleted, unread, or at the very least, not considered. In any case, I have gotten no response to date. I believe that the world is not as simple as the author would have us believe. True, there are financial psychopaths. But I think it is incorrect to just label everyone who does not accept with this whole set of alternate views wholeheartedly as being simple-minded, cowardly, duped, lazy, or indifferent. True, the author does not do so in this particular post but she has on numerous other occasion. I think the author should take one or two points (i.e. the truth about the federal reserve system, for one) and work to get the message out. The message is diluted when the message gets too enmeshed with too many other ideas and the author refuses to consider any other opinions other than her own as being potentially valid. The author should realize that not all people who work for large corporations are corrupt; not all people who work for the government are corrupt; not all people in both the democratic and republican parties are necessarily evil; and in looking for the eye of the needle in the haystack, one can inadvertantly miss the entire haystack. The entire nation is in severe economic decline. And things aren't always as they appear. Sometimes people who appear to be financially sound are really only a month or two away from foreclosure. We cannot solve today's problems with the same mindset that created them. At times like this we need union among all kind souls--not division or alienation.
Posted by: Renee | December 14, 2008 at 11:54 PM