We as a race have been here before, many times. What makes this time different?

I think the fact we're all talking globally so quickly makes it different, some have said including myself we need focus. A goal. But what is the goal?

The goal for me as far as fiscal policy is simple in that it should be a closed loop, there should be no syphonong off of cash, milking the human race like cattle.

The infowars slogan is bang on -There's a war on for your minds.
When you engage with people they open up, it's harder than if you tap into the lizard brain like the politions and corporations using freebased thoughts.

Who is going to do such a thing i wonder? G has written a book( I wrote some songs but that's it 🙁 Money Flow . What else have us commentators done? Not much i guess otherwise we wouldn't be scratchung our heads would we now.
Ming the merciless and his buddies get up early every day and use every trick in the book. The whole world is set up for fear.

Capitalism is consumerism and the wiki definition is – The creation and fostering of desire.

I see it different myself in that consumerism is based on the creation and fostering of fear, the fear of standing out or looking like a fool in your out of date cr@p, not getting a mate etc etc etc. How do you fight against a worldwide smokescreen? With the only thing we have.

The Truth.
And how do we tell it to people?
Face to face.
Until we all make as much as an effort as G then there is no hope. I know i bang on about it but leaflets, logos, slogans, all the classic advertising is what we need, but advertising the truth, the option to open your mind.
Most people if given real evidence will see the light. But you've got to put it in their hand or through their front door or into their head via your voice (the last one can be forgotten, paper is physical and can be reproduced, spread).

Scarey eh? Actually making an effort.

None of us have come up with an ingenious way to make everybody listen because there isn't one. The bloodsuckers use everything in their means like the mafia to keep their racketeering going.
Be nice to RICO the clarts.

We have one real weapon which is better than strikes and better than Satyagraha and better than dressing up like ninjas and putting spanners in the works.

Filthy dirty money.

Getting everybody to boycott the banks, move accounts to (my knowlege grinds to a halt here) co-operatives or building societies. Let them play with their own money as ours is somewhere else. Give people a taste of affirmative action without marching or shouting and screaming. Give them a tase of what it's like to have the power.

Then after they've had a taste ask them to make a stand for the truth.

And their children.

In my opinion, what the political camps are frightened of is being at the helm during an economic meltdown with its attendant collapse in popularity. A meltdown which a) will happen if the banks are supported anyway, b) will not happen at all, or c) could be delayed until someone else is holding the grenade when it goes off.

If failure to support the banks detonates the grenade anyway, then there's no logical reason for any politician to stick it in their mouth and pull the pin; even if they believe a) to be a near certainty.

I believe a) to be a certainty and the effects will be much worse than if the banks and their liabilities were eradicated in an orderly manner. But for a politician? One form of electoral annihilation following an economic crisis is much like another.

So. How do we persuade our current batch of elected representatives to start chewing on that grenade?

For instance, should we be attacking austerity measures? Or should we be pleading with them to bring on the pain?

Keep up the good work, Unclear.

I didn't. Hugh Hendry generally does not mince his words and speaks his mind clearly. I agree with what you say, he said. For me, it means we have to remind our governments who they are supposed to listen to. They are so frightened of and in thrall to the financial world they are listening to them not us.

I can think of several ways we could rivet the politician's attention back where it belongs – on us. They all require us to actually do something. But even before we get around to doing something concrete, it is already a good start if they (the politicians) start to realize that we are talking and changing our thinking in ways they do not control and may not like.

They know, MI5 knows very clearly, that the greatest 'danger' to public order is when ordinary people start to think in ways that are not 'guided' by those who would seek to control us.

One can rail against these people and give up vast amounts of time protesting at their behaviour, but…it's pretty pointless really. Why not direct ones efforts where there's a chance somebody will be forced to listen?

glad you're with us.

Yes, I'm not really using Hobbes in a very deep way at all. I was simply and only using him as one fo the most recognized of those who were clear that there is a collective power in the people themselves. I was thinking especially of the famous drawing on the cover of the book.

As you say, he took a dim view of people's nature, and of the people's ability to govern themselves. I do not agree with his dismal assessment of either. So I am not calling upon any monarch nor aligning myself with his view of human nature.

The sovereign, for me, is the sovereign power of the people themselves. I am keen for people to go back and remember that they are a collective power in their own right. It seems to me, to be perhaps the most delbilitating aspect of individualism, that it tends towards isolating us as lone and powerless individuals. We can come to think that the only power we have is our solitary vote cast in isolation and secrecy.

Individualism has neutered the once prevalent idea that we have a collective power. Today 'collective power' is too often characterized as 'the mob' or 'mob rule'. Which it is not.

Those with political and financial power over us are, I think, very happy that we should see ourtselves exclusively as individuals and to distrust the very idea of collective power.

My idea of soverignty is tied up with the idea of culture. I defend the idea that we have a culture, it embodies important things about our history, our traditions, our notions of who we think we are and who we aspire to be. These are all vague notions but being vague does not lessen their power or their reality.

Since Wittgenstein's we have had the ready proof that dictionary definitioins of words fall apart on close inspection. But he and all since have recgonized that this does not mean 'we don't know' what a chair is', nor that because we can't define them accurately, that this means 'chairs don't exist'. Just because we can't define what it is to feel or be English, or Scottish or Irish or French does not mean that we aren't importantly defined and motivated by those concepts.

I do realize that I use terms which have become tainted and mistrusted. Part of my personal purpose is to re-claim those terms. I refuse to be bound by definitions which serve other people whose purposes I regard as malign. The terms I use are mine and I regard myself as free to use them as I will. I risk being misunderstood, I know. Which just makes it incumbent upon me to try to explain myself better.

I do not believe we will extricate ourselves from our current powerlessness unless we reclaim the vocabulary we need and the concepts we want. Hobbes is seen now as a reactionary. But if you are talking about conceptions of power and the idea that power resides in and flows from the people then Hobbes is a landmark. The Royalists were not at all sure about him. Neither were the Parliamentarians. To suggest that the power of the moarch flowed from the people rather than from God was a powerful insight.

Today we need to remember that Sovereignty is something that flows from the people not from the government. It is not tied to a flag nor even a parliament but to a culture.

I defend the idea of that I have a culture and this culture is central to what I am, what I think.

And so, to re-engage, I'd like to press Golem on the figure of the Sovereign that haunts this post. Hobbes, contentiously, claimed that unruled humanity was so cruel by its own nature that there had been at some ur-historical point a consensual decision to relinquish our individual sovereignty over ourselves, to be placed in the sovereign – and this handing over of power included the power of the sovereign to take human life. Strong stuff, and political philosophers have been arguing over Hobbes ever since.

So invoking Hobbes in the name of popular resistance is problematic to say the least, tho' Hardt & Negri did precisely that in their book Empire. They, however, had an explicit politics in the Marxist tradition – and they made explicit the way they were applying Hobbes. I'm not sure what Golem thinks about sovereignty, especially when he calls upon the figure of monarch again by suggesting that the bankers are guilty of 'treason'.

All best, as ever.

And of course such pie in the sky bullshit won't ever happen. Due both to the fundamentally conservative nature of the working class (at least here in America) and because most people are incapable or unwilling to put themselves in other people's shoes.

As you can see, I am not enamored of my fellow humans, and expect little from them until their backs are up against the proverbial wall. Revolutions, much less massive social change, don't usually happen unless people have nothing left to lose, or are at least close to it. It's the people most put upon who must begin/lead the fightback. And I don't see it happening.

While the American economy is in trouble, and unemployment is around 20%, we still have an awfully long way to fall before reaching the standards the neoliberals have in mind for us. Until then I don't expect much to change. It certainly isn't going to happen via our wonderful 2-party system.