There is a conspiracy; I have no doubt about it. In a rare TV-watching spree today, I was kind of channel-surfing from one news broadcast to another, paying attention to the reporting on the European market, and the political situation in France and the Netherlands.
Many of the "experts" being interviewed by the hapless "reporters" were bankers at the biggest financial firms in the world. Others were people from places like the propaganda outfits like the American Enterprise Institute, and the Heritage Foundation.
On BBC World News one guy was lamenting (you could see the pained expression in his face) that democracies make it hard to make the right type of macro-economic decisions (i.e., drastic austerity measures).
The meme was eerily similar across the board. As I changed from channel to channel, I almost felt I was within one of those dystopian science fiction movies about an Orwellian society.
Populations are getting older and as a result social security and other social safety net programs are about to go bankrupt; the governments have too much debt; investors were getting jittery because it looked like many countries were resisting implementing agreed-upon austerity measures.
Not once did I hear anybody talking about the fact that the reason Western economies were in peril was because of the unprecedented pillaging of the entire world financial system by Wall Street criminal banksters.
We are being robbed in plain sight. We are being robbed of the last semblance of democracy; our public education system is being systematically torn down; the public sector is being dismantled and privatized; hard-fought workers and human rights are being undermined and weakened.
Our police departments are being quickly militarized; the private, for-profit prison encampments sector is being expanded at a very fast pace. The total information awareness surveillance police state has been fully deployed. The legal framework for an oppressive totalitarian system is almost complete.
Many people are perplexed as to why the "financial sector" and big international, interlocking corporate cartels would be so stupid as to push for draconian austerity measures that plunge entire populations into poverty and despair, thus diminishing the pool of potential consumers.
Understand one thing... These people are not like you and me (as someone once said about the rich). These are very twisted individuals, sharing some of the most depraved, fascistic tendency in history.
For those who have been following the issues related to ALEC, think about the extreme right wing bent of that organization, which has pushed for "license to kill" legislation in multiple states, and its behind multiple voter suppression legislative efforts.
Who's behind ALEC? Who funds this anti-democratic, fascist organization? The biggest corporations in America!
Folks, it's not too hard to extrapolate that scenario to apply to Western economies. Similar organizations with similar shared interests are doing the same thing at the international level: In England, and Ireland, and Spain, and Italy, Greece, and other countries.
Although they are the international one-percent (highly influence by unquenchable greed and sadistic and psychopathic impulses, by and large), they are able to accomplish their share goals because they are highly organized and pretty much march in lockstep, and have control of the media (brainwashing propaganda), and the security apparatus.
These are the types of characters you've always had in tyrannical societies of yore. The only difference now is that they have been able to join forces and impose tyranny at an international level.
Many seemingly benign organizations, like the World Bank, the IMF, the G8 (and others) serve as their center of operations where they devise strategies and policies to accomplish their goals.
Those hundreds of thousands of people who have been demonstrating (and largely ignored by the general population) during the last few decades, at WTO and G8 gatherings were right all along.
Unless there is a very clear understanding and acceptance of this reality by a large-enough segment of the population, the dismantling of democracies across the Western World will continue apace, unmolested. And once this new "system" is fully in place, it would be almost impossible to defeat it.
And unfortunately at this point the political system is not going to be enough to address this situation. The political system in the major "Western Democracies," from the U.S., to England, to Italy, to France, has been totally corrupted. The political class is one and the same as the corporatist financial class. They are in bed with each other.
The only chance we have to help bring about true democracy and clean government is to exert pressure from outside the one-party system (in the U.S.).
Of course, I'm not saying that people should not vote, or campaign, or get involved at all levels of the the political system. It is a given that needs to be done.
But it is not enough since we are basically talking about a Wall Street government, whether we have Republicans or Democrats in office.
The protest movement needs to be escalated. All gatherings by these multinational organizations (G8, WTO, IMF) need to be followed by large protests. People should start thinking about forming international workers unions who share strategy and information on a constant basis. All high-priced political fundraiser gatherings should be encountered by massive protests.
Basically, we need to rattle their cages... It should not be that hard given the fact that "they" are indeed only one percent of the population.
But it needs to be done without resorting to violence since "they" have the militarized police forces (corporatist goons) at their disposal, ready to pounce with violent force against protesters.
People need to stop being distracted by meaningless bullshit that's being fed to us by the brainwashing propaganda machine that is the mainstream media (including much of the so-called progressive media).
Stop watching TV. Think. Reach out to others. Organize. Strategize. Occupy.