I have no assets to stuff into a mattress or its electronic equivalent. I'm in my 30s and have no 401(k). I've no fear whatsoever. I am going to die someday; we all will. That's a cold hard fact. I'm not going to let anyone else convince me to be afraid of that fact so that I'll act in the way they want me to (in this case, a wasteful consumer and a obedient taxpayer). The truth is that we don't need a 401(k) to survive. We don't need big houses or plasma TVs to survive. The luxurious lifestyle many complacent and overfed Americans have come to enjoy is not necessary for survival. Beans. Rice. Bread. Clean water. A dry shelter. So stop being afraid. You'll survive. If we want to thrive after the upcoming depression, we must rise up against the Federal leviathan and take back what's rightfully ours. But as long as we allow them to control us through fear, we are sheep to the slaughter.

I'm just surprised they haven't come up with a phony name for it like the War on Liquidity.

The War on Christmas, the War on Drugs, the War on Terror.

None of them are real wars. They're just chicken-hawk punks talking tough while they screw up the world.

It's not just Bush...it's Dodd, Frank, Pelosi, and includes both sides of the aisle. It's the greed and corruption of banking and securities execs, and the bad decisions of our friends and neighbors who lived on credit they could not afford.

Yeah, Bush has loved to use fear to get us to play along, but it's also the Dems. We have been used. DOH!

I'm just surprised they haven't come up with a phony name for it like the War on Liquidity."

How about an accurate name like "The War on Responsibility"?

Operation Hamptons Shield.

By golly I think its time for a new world order.

You game?

Try this on for size:

Members of Congress were told they could face martial law if they didn't pass the bailout bill. This will not be the last time.

October 8, 2008
By Naomi Wolf
AlterNet

Background: the First Brigade of the Third Infantry Division, three to four thousand soldiers, has been deployed in the United States as of October 1. Their stated mission is the form of crowd control they practiced in Iraq, subduing "unruly individuals," and the management of a national emergency. I am in Seattle and heard from the brother of one of the soldiers that they are engaged in exercises now. Amy Goodman reported that an Army spokesperson confirmed that they will have access to lethal and non lethal crowd control technologies and tanks.

George Bush struck down Posse Comitatus, thus making it legal for military to patrol the U.S. He has also legally established that in the "War on Terror," the U.S. is at war around the globe and thus the whole world is a battlefield. Thus the U.S. is also a battlefield.

He also led change to the 1807 Insurrection Act to give him far broader powers in the event of a loosely defined "insurrection" or many other "conditions" he has the power to identify. The Constitution allows the suspension of habeas corpus -- habeas corpus prevents us from being seized by the state and held without trial -- in the event of an "insurrection." With his own army force now, his power to call a group of protesters or angry voters "insurgents" staging an "insurrection" is strengthened.

U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman of California said to Congress, captured on C-Span and viewable on YouTube, that individual members of the House were threatened with martial law within a week if they did not pass the bailout bill:

"The only way they can pass this bill is by creating and sustaining a panic atmosphere. … Many of us were told in private conversations that if we voted against this bill on Monday that the sky would fall, the market would drop two or three thousand points the first day and a couple of thousand on the second day, and a few members were even told that there would be martial law in America if we voted no."

If this is true and Rep. Sherman is not delusional, I ask you to consider that if they are willing to threaten martial law now, it is foolish to assume they will never use that threat again. It is also foolish to trust in an orderly election process to resolve this threat. And why deploy the First Brigade? One thing the deployment accomplishes is to put teeth into such a threat.

I interviewed Vietnam veteran, retired U.S. Air Force Colonel and patriot David Antoon for clarification:

"If the President directed the First Brigade to arrest Congress, what could stop him?"

"Nothing. Their only recourse is to cut off funding. The Congress would be at the mercy of military leaders to go to them and ask them not to obey illegal orders."

"But these orders are now legal?'"

"Correct."

"If the President directs the First Brigade to arrest a bunch of voters, what would stop him?"

"Nothing. It would end up in courts but the action would have been taken."

"If the President directs the First Brigade to kill civilians, what would stop him?"

"Nothing."

"What would prevent him from sending the First Brigade to arrest the editor of the Washington Post?"

"Nothing. He could do what he did in Iraq -- send a tank down a street in Washington and fire a shell into the Washington Post as they did into Al Jazeera, and claim they were firing at something else."

"What happens to members of the First Brigade who refuse to take up arms against U.S. citizens?"

"They'd probably be treated as deserters as in Iraq: arrested, detained and facing five years in prison. In Iraq a study by Ann Wright shows that deserters -- reservists who refused to go back to Iraq -- got longer sentences than war criminals."

"Does Congress have any military of their own?"

"No. Congress has no direct control of any military units. The Governors have the National Guard but they report to the President in an emergency that he declares."

"Who can arrest the President?"

"The Attorney General can arrest the President after he leaves or after impeachment."

[Note: Prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi has asserted it is possible for District Attorneys around the country to charge President Bush with murder if they represent districts where one or more military members who have been killed in Iraq formerly resided.]

"Given the danger do you advocate impeachment?"

"Yes. President Bush struck down Posse Comitatus -- which has prevented, with a penalty of two years in prison, U.S. leaders since after the Civil War from sending military forces into our streets -- with a 'signing statement.' He should be impeached immediately in a bipartisan process to prevent the use of military forces and mercenary forces against U.S. citizens"

"Should Americans call on senior leaders in the Military to break publicly with this action and call on their own men and women to disobey these orders?"

"Every senior military officer's loyalty should ultimately be to the Constitution. Every officer should publicly break with any illegal order, even from the President."

"But if these are now legal. If they say, 'Don't obey the Commander in Chief,' what happens to the military?"

"Perhaps they would be arrested and prosecuted as those who refuse to participate in the current illegal war. That's what would be considered a coup."

"But it's a coup already."

"Yes."

http://www.alternet.org/rights/101958/thousands_of_troops_are_deployed_on_u.s._streets_ready_to_carry_out_%22crowd_control%22/?page=entire

I'm convinced that at least some portion of the present fear and panic in our financial markets is caused by individuals simply not believing what we are told, by those who, at least in theory, are in a better position to know what is going on. In such situations, it's human nature to assume the worst. But why now? After all, we've known that lies by government officials and corporate CEOs have always been with us - and since Watergate, there's a much more widespread belief that it's pretty commonplace both places.

Maybe the last eight years of Bush and his ilk on the corporate side have simply pushed us to a critical mass that has never been reached before - not even Depression I, where the fundamentals were much worse than today.

I thought of the "we have nothing to fear, but fear itself" maxim when I saw George W. Bush on (inter)national TV saying "key sectors of the finance system are collapsing". That's dialing in fear on a massive level. These neocons have exploited fear as their key motivator for 8 years.

The next day, some congressman asked Paulson if people should be afraid for the future. Paulson says "people should absolutely be afraid".

But, like Frank above, I have no fear. I have few assets of any value. I don't have a mortgage, a wife, a child, a car payment, a 401(k) of any size, or just about anything else I am mortally afraid of losing. I have realized for some time, like most people should, that credit capitalism is unsustainable. (Having a major war without taxes to pay for it has also never worked.)

At the present time I do have a job and a modest rented roof over my head, both of which I would rather keep.

I have consoled myself that if I lose my job, like I did after 9/11, I would receive unemployment benefits for a certain period of time. But I read tonight that those funds are dangerously close to bankruptcy in several states. (Way to plan ahead, geniuses.)

Frank and none...you guys rock. Thanks for sharing. A song by Tool about lattes, Prozac, hairpieces and lawsuits came to mind as I read your posts.

I am fortunate. I have a wife, I have children, I have family and I have friends. In the final analysis, these are the only things in my life that make me truly rich.

When my mom dropped me off at college at age 18, she spotted me $10 for laundry money. My entire savings from my summer that year going through Army Reservist boot camp went to books and assorted costs that weren't covered by my needs based scholarship. I went to work washing dishes, cleaning houses, doing laundry at the athletic center...whatever it took to get by. Somewhere between then and now, I lost that guy that I was then, but deep down I know that I'm still that same guy...even if I con myself into thinking I'm a fancy hot shot now and then.

Look around at how the other half of the planet lives for a change, and then try to feel sorry for yourself because your 401 K went down 30%. Living on hot dogs, Tater Tots and Top Ramen isn't the end of the world if you think about it. They scare you only because you let them scare you.

All fears are really only one fear, and that is fear of the unknown. The problem is, no one knows what 'unknown' means. So no one agrees with the first sentence, since they can't identify with it. But it means fear of the dark, fear of spiders, fear of heights, fear of death, etc., is all only and just fear of the unknown.

When I was in the adolescent passage everyone experiences, (the brain process development which comprehends, or cognizes, mortality/immortality), my interior dialogue one day came upon the discovery that I was not afraid of dying, so, logically, why avoid it?, and analytically, being lazy, why endure the effort of all the duties and responsibilities and pains and sufferings that come along in life and, instead, simply check out suicide and so skip the grueling 100-year grind? I pondered the questions for several days, because they are good questions and a good mind should make a good effort at coming up with some good answers -- a worthy question is worth answering. Why not suicide? In the question came my epiphany: I was afraid of living. I feared to live.

I've mostly never feared living ever since.

Which, I think, is a fear that many folks have.

It's just that the part of it (of living, of 'life ahead,' of what's to come) that is unknown or unknowable, (and not being able to tell the difference between unknown and unknowable), that 'gets to' me, sometimes, and 'surges' the fear once more, the fear of living, out of the darkest night ... my lord what a morning, you'll hear the trumpet sound, oh sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, when the stars begin to fall.

FWIW, to whoever, however: I had a dream. About two or three years ago. In the dream I was seeing people living in some strange sorta half-agrarian, half-technoSciencey world about 50 years in the future, and I was sorta in the dream going around looking at the unfamiliar ways people did things and how they lived, and I had some role or variety of roles in different scenes and what-all, and the dream was all virtually indistinct and confused and pointless and unsettled -- to a degree of being unsettling. When I awoke the thought occurred to me that the dream showed there is a future.

Beyond 3 or 4 years out. Beyond the Mayan 2012 doomsaying. Beyond the nihilistic zenith of the apocalypse-pushers and -users. Beyond the mightiest effort of the evilest souls ever to walk this planet -- D.Rockefeller, GHWBush, and Babs his crutch, Henry the K., and the House of Ibn Saud -- trying to destroy all humankind's ascent except their own. They lose. We win.

I don't know how, I don't know why. I know it is soon. ('Soon' as a relative term from someone (me, sorta) who considers plus 50 or minus 150 years to be 'the present time.')

They lose. We win. The conclusion is soon. It is not unknown. There is no cause to fear living, it is not unknown that the future comes to be. Au contraire, there is cause to love living and live loving. Love is the opposite of fear. The same suborgan in the brain handles both processes, depending on how 'in balance' it is grown; (amygdala? hippocampus? pineal body? I forget).

Que sera, sera -- What will be, will be. And I'm adding the knowing that there IS an 'is' which is going to come to be; that is not an unknown, there is a future. No fear. Much love. Arrest and justly prosecute the persons named, (above), and then what comes to be is world peace. (Their sin, shame, crime, indecency and abomination in the world court, since 1930, is: advocating and instigating eugenics, playing God.)

--- GET! THIS! 'The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed' - Steve Biko, 1946-1977. ---

---
To some comments:
I'm convinced that ... present fear and panic in our financial markets is caused by individuals simply not believing what we are told, by those who ... know what is going on. ... But why now?

In 1957, L. King Hubbert mathematically proved that the finite Supply of oil in the US would peak in 1971 and, if consuming 'use' continued, then deplete and be used up, dried up soon after; and, proved that the finite Supply of oil on the planet would peak in 2006 +/- and, if consuming 'use' continued, then deplete and be used up, dried up soon after. In 1971 US oil production peaked, and is now gone. In 2007 global oil production peaked, and at the current rate is going to be zero in about 25 years, (say 2030). Period.

Hubbert said this in 1957. (Google it.) It answers the question, Why now? It's 2006 +/-

In 1957, GHWBush was a posed 'oil man' for a false front in his career as a CIA agent and 'major asset' (1947-present). He/they/The Company received and understood Hubbert's forecast (given at a symposium in Houston) and its implications. All US domestic and foreign 'policy' since then is in anticipation for and support to Hubbert's oil forecast.

(For instance, the Vietnam coastline has the only other offshore oil deposits in shallow water, besides offshore Texas. Vietnam 'war' was staged to control that oil. See: Eisenhower.Archives.GOV/dl/IGY/IGYdocuments.html regarding sea bed seismic exploration; and see: Tarpley.NET/bush8.htm regarding deep-sea drilling rig invention, the SCORPION.)

'Policy' basically meant acquire (control of) all (global) oil Supply by the time oil runs out, and in order to control that end time when oil runs out. This goes to questions of "those (in position) who know what is going on." The original plans and timeline, of strategy and adaptive tactics and logistics, could probably have obtained or been obtained, in the most or whole part, in secret, (by deceit and lies to us ... which we sensed to doubt or disbelieve, but lacked the true facts to use instead), and the Grand Scheme of a New World Order (as GHWB pronounced in 1990) could have 'worked' except for an unanticipated and fatal flaw. Which was: the advent of the internet, 1995. And the 'secret' (true facts) getting out to everyone around the world. ahead of time.

The total oil supply on our planet is declining toward zero in our lifetime.

At the rate we are consuming oil.

(Reference your googles at 'peak oil' and see: http://theoildrum.com/ )

Now, there are two methods of altering "the rate we are consuming oil," also known as 'Demand,' (whereas there is NO WAY to alter finite Supply). The euphemistic term for altering the timeline future is "Demand destruction." The definition of the term which we are told by LIARS is: "it means everyone use less oil, including people in other countries, even if we have to take it away from them or otherwise enforce their rations." But the definition of the term truly in operation of 'Demand destruction' is: "murder more than half of humankind on the planet, say 4 billion souls." Mass starvation is one adaptive tactic; (by impoverishment, which goes to questions about the "fear and panic in global financial markets"). Another adaptive tactic is pandemic infectious lethal disease, a quite operational consideration 'by those in the know' who direct the deployment of mountainous stockpiles of grotesque Αρμαγεδδων germs, (also, Armageddon; also, Har-Magedon for 'Mount of Megiddo;' also, Amagideon at TinyURL.COM/42hghd). And anthrax ain't the half of it.

Anyway and however, 'Demand destruction' by annihilating half of humankind is supposed to make the oil last twice as long. And so forth.

You're supposed to not care if you're dead. Why ask Why? (Think: eugenics.) Yet it seems, gripped in fear of living, one could ask Why not?

---
A local (Oregon) mentor who organized and guides much of my thought in this is Mike Ruppert. He recently wrote to brandish his name toward the prosecution and demise of the above-named inhuman monsters.
See:
FromTheWilderness.COM/WhatReallyHappenedToday2008.shtml
See:
FromTheWilderness.COM/NowIsTheTime2008.shtml

Take back from the oppressors our minds into our hands and share them here with each other.

The two links to FromTheWilderness require adding the WWW prefix to work pasted into my browser.

Nope, they don't work by adding the WWW prefix, either. Well, figure it out. Something screwy going on. Mike's site is under constant barrage.

Yeah, not much fear for me, neither. I couldn't afford to put much in my 401k in the first place, so I'm not really losing anything. I lost my credit before the credit crunch. Haven't been able to afford to go out to eat or buy a new car or buy a house or even finance a Starbucks habit. But, despite being a one income household these days (my SO had an industrial job, bye bye job), we're still making it, canning what grows our and our neighbors yards, cutting our own fuel for the winter, fixing our rattletrap cars and squeezing what we can out of each and every dollar. Welcome to my world-it's not as scary as you think.

Again, I ask, where's my bailout?

I'm a renter, not a homeowner. If I don't pay my rent, I'm out on the street. Why am I being asked to bail out people who bought homes when they couldn't afford it?

My fear comes from the realization that institutions which seemed austere and conservative, have collapsed before our very eyes. Sure some greedy fly-by-night finance companies sprung up to join the property value feeding frenzy. I would expect some of those to go south. I started to tremble though when the FDIC stepped in with Indy Mac. Now we have seen the sudden demise of "button down" institutions. I knew the banking industry would have to contract, but I could not imagine it happening from the top down. The fear is not of loss, but from the unknown. Where do we go from here? We are in a holding pattern right now, waiting out the storm. The waves are crashing the wheel house and we're hunkered below deck. Ah, but we're a restless crew, and a new day awaits the voyage - but when?
Maybe unified legislative/executive leadership will help develop a more sustainable future?
At a personal level, I treasure more dearly those things money can't buy.

Jack,
With the Bailout package, all we needed behind Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank at their news conference last Thursday was a nice, once used "Mission Accomplished" Banner.

John

Your parents, or grandparents, and maybe even your great grandparents, survived The Great Depression.

The future is very scary right now for just about everyone. We just have to stick together and help each other through whatever comes.

Kudos to Blue Woman for her upbeat attitude.