Elizabeth Warren gets a lot less coverage in the Conspirosphere than Catherine Austin Fitts but I think she does a pretty good job of documenting the death of the American and, by extension, the British, middle class
Because her presentation is based on US demographics it does include elements, such as health insurance, that aren't directly relevant to the UK but the core of her analysis is sound and relevant to people on the other side of The Pond
Another weakness in Warren's presentation is the lack of any analysis of the reasons why the changes she's identified have come to pass. She does an excellent job of demonstrating the size of the hole a typical double-income family finds itself in in 2005, compared to a single income family in 1970, but she doesn't even start to explain where that hole comes from (edit: she does a slightly better job here)
You could, of course, simply shrug your shoulders and say 'shit just happens' but then you probably wouldn't be reading this blog...
(I'd love to claim the expression 'Middle Class Proletariat' as my own but we have the Ministry of Defence to thank for that little pearl)
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edit: of course, as a commentator pointed out underneath one of my posts a little while back, James Goldsmith nailed this subject years ago...
Goldsmith was a peculiar chap. The analysis he presents in this video is perceptive and essentially anti-elitist. Yet, this same man was a robber baron who looked more like a Bond villain (complete with a Bond villain's multi-zillion dollar tropical fortress lair) than anyone else alive and whose family has bumped uglies with the Rothschilds and who are now leading players in the ongoing eugenic global eco-scam
I'm fucked if I know what he was playing at
He doesn't seem to be taking the piss in that video
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edit#2:
and, on the subject of the Fucked Middle Class Consumer, this warms up nicely towards the end...
Hmmm, the Power of Nightmares...
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20 comments:
And we all know what happens in countries without a middle class...
Si
I'm looking for some history of JFIT (Joint Forward Intelligence Team). The group who were set-up in order to interrogate people during GW2.
Can any readers of this blog point me in the right direction?
(Apologies for the hijack).
Not many readers since I cut back on posting but those that there are are of the very highest quality
I'll have a root round myself
In the meantime, these guys can always do with a plug...
http://fitwatch.org.uk/
and btw it's the hijacking that I miss most
on the subject of reading internet comments and despairing, as discussed in my previous post, the readers' comments underneath this Daily Mail article on JFIT make for depressing reading...
Defence probe into secret Army unit accused of torturing Iraqis
"So what?"
"We are at war and all is fair in love and war."
"VIVA, JFIT!"
there are some seriously ignorant cunts out there
/ off despairing again
Just been browsing through the Baha Mousa Public Inquiry website
Page 5 of this statement made by a British Army colonel makes for particularly depreesing reading
/reassumes the despair position
"I asked what intelligence was obtained. The reply was that the information related to the size and shape of the relevant Iraqi division in our area of operations. I recall replying that this information had very little relevance as that Iraqi division had surrendered a few days beforehand"
VIVA, JFIT!
None of which, of course, does anything to dampen confidence in the effectiveness of torture in establishing vitally important intelligence
How else would the Church have established that all those old women had flown around on broomsticks and had sex with Satan?
What was that Bertrand Russell quote again? "From an early age, diet, injunctions and injections will combine to form a desirable individual thought process..." something like that, right?
The responses you mention are almost predictable, programmed even.
Off topic, but I'm discovering just how difficult it is to find raw milk here...
Thanks for your efforts thus far, Stef.
Looks like I need to wade through evidence from the inquiries (Baha Mousa; Al Sweady and the pending one).
I asked about JFIT 'cos they were using illegal interrogation techniques, the Colonel's evidence being an example of such.
Depending upon when JFIT was set up could give evidence of pre-planning of GW2. As in, why do you need to set up JFIT if there isn't going to be a war and why do you have to set it up in such a way that they could be trained in a manner that would ensure that they are ignorant of the law. (Allegations from Phil Shiner of PIL).
As for the Baha Mousa and other inquiries, I wonder if this could lead to the dissolution of the Queen's Lancashire regiment?
Currently wading through the Baha Mousa evidence under a search for JFIT gives gems such as,
"Arabs are a difficult race to question. They often require close questions to pin down an answer."
From paragraph 19, Operational Directive - Joint Forward Interrogation Team (JFIT).
Note that this document is from 2004, not 1904.
The establsihment response would be that outfits like JFIT were establsihed as the result of experiences in Afghanstan, or the Balkans, or even the kind of feasibility studies the military are engaged in all the time
What I personally find more disturbing is the question what's the point of outfits like this?
As evidence by the colonel's testimony the fact that these professional torturers reported directly to London meant that they didn't have a fucking idea of the local military situation. So, what were they torturing people for?
I can't escape the feeling that in this case, as in others, the brutality and the brutalisation was almost an end in itself
I'd also be fascinated to know if JFIT was benefiting from the worldly wisdom of foreign special advisors, like the ones at Abu Ghraib or the ones who advised the Metropolitan Police on shooting innocent people in the face
... it should be abundantly clear by now that the only thing that particular country has to teach the rest of the world is how to piss people off
whilst I appreciate that there are those who think this is a useful skill I personally don't
"I'm fucked if I know what he was playing at"
Me neither. I know GATT has a long history but to argue over the ongoing attempted management of 'inevitable' globalisation without mentioning the Lima Declaration seems a bit distractionary.
Here's the speech he gave to the US senate in 1994, where everyone agreed with him, before ignoring him:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maouTP8vTO0
I hadn't heard that one before, ta
Can't help thinking that Goldsmith was borrowing from the RFK back catalogue a little...
"We will find neither national purpose nor personal satisfaction in a mere continuation of economic progress, in an endless amassing of worldly goods. We cannot measure national spirit by the Dow Jones Average, nor national achievement by the Gross National Product. For the Gross National Product includes air pollution, and ambulances to clear our highways from carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and jails for the people who break them. The Gross National Product includes the destruction of the redwoods and the death of Lake Superior. It grows with the production of napalm and missles and nuclear warheads.... It includes... the broadcasting of television programs which glorify violence to sell goods to our children. "And if the Gross National Product includes all this, there is much that it does not comprehend. It does not allow for the health of our families, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It is indifferent to the decency of our factories and the safety of our streets alike. It does not include the beauty of our poetry, or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials... the Gross National Product measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile..."
for the life of me I can't understand why anyone would've wanted him shot in the face
and back to those Daily Mail readers' support for torturing people to obtain out of date information
especially the line...
"We are at war and all is fair in love and war."
and I've been thinking, you wouldn't want to spend a romatic evening with that particular individual would you
@stef "I can't escape the feeling that in this case, as in others, the brutality and the brutalisation was almost an end in itself"
There is an 8mm feel about it all.
Talking of films ... I've had Salò in my lovefilm account for a longtime now but I don't have the stomach to view it.
If it was fiction, yes.
If it was historical, yes.
But not now; not today.
James Goldsmith died less than three years later from a heart attack brought on by pancreatic cancer.
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