Paulie -I’ve replied to David, which may be, or may not be of interest to you.

One of the major problems facing us is we do not know exactly who or where our enemies are. We have names of banks, businesses and institutions but they’re only sepulchres, who is in real control of the inner temple (if anybody) we don’t know.

As a people or a nation I believe we should aim our scorn at our governments. It is they who have failed in their responsibilities and pawned our futures.

We gave them stewardship of vast resources and by dint of mediocrity they’ve squandered them – or and this is even more bewildering – they seem happy to accept they have when in fact nothing has moved or changed in any substantial way other tha chattering zeros on computer screens.

Problem with these people is the haven’t the wit to master progress. Technology lessens – and it always will – the need for work to be drudgery. Their answer to that is to increase the retirement age and add costs to the potentials and enjoyment of education. They advocate consumption and worship growth for the sake of profit when we should be practising sustainability. But most of all they’ve backed the myth of acting sensible will create misery when in fact the opposite is true.

Have a go at them Paulie – they have no legitimate authority over you.

David -I’ve struggled with this since the mid eighties (“This” is the money thing -everything priced and nothing valued) And I’m knocking nobody, for the simple but sound reason that we, the bewildered herd, have stumbled into the quagmire of idiocy at different times and for different reasons.

In essence -there are far too many examples to isolate any of them – we have allowed peace to be distorted into a misery of greed. To aspire to greed is a corruption of the human psyche and as such it threatens our species and the world -the only bloody world – and the one life we have to live on it.

Now I think you know that as do most of the contributors to the blog so I won’t harp on about it. But I will repeat a question i have previously posited -If a development does not benefit the species has it any legitimate purpose?

And as a rider to that; has the distortion of money beyond a simple means of exchange had a negative or positive effect on our lives?

You pose the question whether I’m advocating we should man the barricades.
Metaphorically I suppose I am, though not in the way you suppose.

In an earlier response to Mr Shigemitsu I suggested we should instigate a bank withdrawal day. I don’t think for a moment such action would cause a further melt-down nor anything more than a minor glitch for the administrators. But if actioned it would draw a line in the sand. A direct connection between the exploiters and the exploited with the exploited telling them their intrusion into our lives has gone too far.

Enough numbers and it would be a demonstration by queues forming to go about their legitimate business of drawing money from their banks and as such there would be no need to seek permission from the authorities nor attract the herding or brutality usually adopted by the authorities in order to marginalise and frighten those participating.

Others may have better ideas and strategies but to probably paraphrase a man of wisdom – Good Generals win the war before they fight – in the absence of competent generals either within the governments or the institutions we have to consider our armoury.

It seems to me the left on the whole believe in human perfection, abolish greed, perfect the rules, think progress, history is generally a tragedy I am afraid and so the future will be too. ouch theres that nasty Conservative pessimism again.

And those evil anglo-saxons hey! the ones who had more a sense of democracy for their time that what had come before, I am sure they would have something to say about Leopold Kohrs cult of bigness, be it a big bank or a big state.

Sorry not big on the guilt by associations its a very dangerous route to take, be it with Connolly or krugman at Enron, deeds and words need to be judged on their individual merit, on that basis I should ignore him for working for the EU in the first place. I have to fess up I once sat on a plane next to nick leeson.

If you go to work for the police then you can expect to do police work, so too AIG.

The only way to fix …. is growth! HA!

Banks depend upon the illusion of growth caused by expansion in credit. We have a far too big FIRE sector! Those jobs must go! The pension theft must stop!

All the kleptocracy has to go before this will be solved.

Then we must be careful not to all fictional reserve banking to start again, unless I get massive access to loans…… Or does Golem think there will be growth in this economy????

Neil

Re that last link, you might want to read this, not good news I’m afraid

http://grapevine.is/Features/ReadArticle/A-Deconstruction-of-Icelands-Ongoing-Revolution

I’m reminded of a line in one of terry prattchet books

Something along the lines of “revolutionaries start off by thinking we have the wrong type of govt but end up realising we have the wrong type of people” I should go and look it up, he is far more elegant than me. But I can’t help but think that the neocons and the MSM are creating the right type of people for their ends, that society has changed over the last 30 years and is still changing and that change is being directed. Any attempt to change the system will fail unless the people are changed or change themselves, this is why I’m so interested in direct democracy because I really believe that having more decision making power and responsibility will change society. I refuse to believe that most of our fellow citizens are too stupid to engage actively with politics after all most bloke can talk for hours about the intricacies of football and that is way more complicated than politics. Sorry I’ve lost my thread now, ill come back to it another time

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/do-we-need-politicians-or-can-we-cut-out-middleman

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/do-we-need-politicians-or-can-we-cut-out-middleman-0 .

And here’s a reminder of what Iceland achieved:

http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2011/08/25/why-iceland-shold-be-in-the-news-but-is-not/

Great campaign

I think we’re still at an early stage yet. The systems of politics, democracy, economics and media are all so badly corrupted, intellectually & otherwise, that they all need to be radically changed.

This is only going to happen when a critical mass are prepared to call a general strike, get out on the streets (non violently) & stay there until the demand is met for a credible process leading to binding reform, agreed by national/international referendum.

A decent effort at prescribing that process of achieving radical reform for Ireland has begun here:

http://www.2nd-republic.ie/site/

In my view, this site is an important part of getting that critical mass of understanding the determination, need & extent of change. Occupy Wall Street & associated efforts are others are excellent developments. Opposition is growing. If we can all keep up some momentum, it will continue to do so until we succeed.

Facebook and Twitter, the Arabs didn’t need MSM