The factors that determine social class vary widely from one society to another with different people or groups within society having very different ideas about what makes one "higher" or "lower" in the social hierarchy. A complete discussion of social class is beyond the scope of this article, and I want to focus on the most basic class distinction: that is, between the powerful and the powerless, and how the conflict is waged on the political, social, economic, and spiritual fronts.
Perhaps Manfred Davidmann summarized the struggle between the
classes best...
"What we see all around us is conflict between
authoritarian minds wishing to dominate, control and exploit on the one hand
and, on the other hand, citizens wishing to maintain and improve the standard
of living and quality of life for the population as a whole by democratic
(grassroots level) decision-taking."
Throughout history, mankind has
witnessed authoritarians who only want to dominate, control and exploit the
population. Social classes with more power usually subordinate classes with
less power, while attempting to cement their own power positions in society.
The first such oppressor and mentor to those that have followed was Satan in
the Garden of Eden. Some notable followers would include the Pharaoh of Egypt,
numerous Roman Emperors, Louis XIV of France, Peter the Great, Joseph Stalin,
and Adolph Hitler.
Sometimes it's not the
individual tyrant but the
system to which they are beholden to. In America, for example, there have been
a long string of wanna-be oppressors in the past 100 years all obliged to the
same corrupt system.
Individual
presidents such as Richard Nixon,
Bill
Clinton, George W. Bush, and
Barack Obama stand out among those who wish to dominate,
control and exploit the citizens of America. While they have not yielded the
power individually like a Pharaoh or Hitler, they have each acted to forward
the cause of the ruling class to dominate, control and
exploit.
Consider, for example, the "divide and conquer" strategy
pursued by Barack Obama. He has popularized the
Marxist philosophy of the
redistribution of wealth as he has pitted the "oppressed" lower class against
the "priviledged" uppper class. He would have you belive that rich people
flying around on their corporate jets are responsible for starving little old
ladies and denying our children basic health care.
Instead of bringing
Americans together with a shared vision, the Club
of Rome influenced Obama has driven a wedge of discontent and mistrust in
the ordering of class structure in America.
His rhetoric of fear and
dishonest statements about just about everything is classic doublespeak. For
example, he says he wants everyone to "pay their fair share," yet
ignores the fact that 51% of American households pay NO income tax at all, the
top 1% of American rich people pay nearly 40% of the income taxes, and the top
5% pays 59% of the income taxes. If he really wants to be "fair", he would
demand that the 51% of non-taxpaying taxpayers cough up their fair share and
reduce the unfair burden on the top 5% of taxpayers. The fact is, his reasoning
doesn't make sense because it's not supposed to make sense. What he really
wants is a transformational change in the fabric of American society, one more
closely resembling Socialism, or as President Bill Clinton said in 1997, "We
are redefining in practical terms the immutable ideals that have guided us from
the beginning."
Obama has successfully accomplished what Al Gore spoke
about in the 1988 presidential campaign, "Everything that should be up is down,
and everything that should be down is up." He has turned everything upside
down. Talk to any devoted dumbed down Obamanoid miscreant and you'll discover
they speak another language; like talking to creature from another planet.
Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! - Isaih 5:20
To say this appetite to dominate, control and exploit is only epitomized by the Democratic party would be incorrect. Both parties, left and right, have fundamentally the same agenda and have both acted on that agenda in recent years to expand the size and scope of a centralized government, impugn our founding documents (the U.S. Constitution and it's Bill of Rights), and to enslave Americans with a monstrous debt that can never be repaid while handing over the wealth of America to offshore banks and financial intrests. In this struggle, the Democrats and Republians are united against the American people.
Also not beyond the realm of possibility would be for the Establishment to trigger (or simply do nothing to prevent) the collapse of the monetary and banking systems in a full-blown depression, coupled with acts of aggression (so-called "preemptive strikes") by the General Government's armed forces overseas that ignite a world war. Properly managed, a depression and world war would result in massive redistribution of real wealth from common Americans to the Establishment and its clients, while the victims found themselves so severely regimented by the General Government's exercise of wartime "emergency" powers that they could not effectively complain. One need not be overly suspicious to suggest a sequence that history already partly bears out: World War I, the League of Nations, and the undermining of the international gold standard—followed by World War II, the United Nations, the adoption of Federal Reserve Notes as the world's reserve currency, and the "demonetization" of gold and silver as currencies—followed by World War III, a New World Order based on the tripartite division of the globe into European, American, and Asian blocs, and a supra-national world central bank emitting a world fiat currency. [Dr. Edwin Vieira, "Don't Count on Washington to Protect us from Looming Banking Crisis"]
Crony Capitalism
Over the past 100 years in
America, we have seen political cronyism spilling over into the business world
creating self-serving friendships and family ties between businessmen and the
government that have influenced the economy and society to the extent that it
has corrupted public-serving economic and political ideals.
Perhaps
the most dramatic example would be the alliance between
banking trusts and the
government in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, shifting economic power
from the government to private banks and creating new buracracies to transfer
the wealth of American citizens to the oligarchs through an
income tax.
Another well
known example in the United States would be the Interstate Commerce
Commission, which was established in 1887 to regulate the railroad "robber
barons;" instead, it quickly became controlled by the railroads, who set up a
permit system that was used to deny access to new entrants and functionally
legalized price fixing.
Today, success in business depends on those
close relationships between businessmen and government officials and can be
exhibited by favoritism in the distribution of legal permits, government
grants, special tax breaks, government guarantees, and so forth.
For
example, after the mad cow scare, Creekstone Farms decided to test all its cows
for mad cow disease. It built the proper facilities and hired the personnel to
make such a change only to have the U.S. Department of Agriculture issue an
injunction that refused to allow Creekstone to buy the kits necessary to test.
This allowed the larger beef producers to keep their costs low and effectively
block Creekstone from competing in the lucrative Japanese export market.
In yet another example of the unholy alliance between government and the
private sector was the use of telecommunications companies by the government to
spy on American citizens. The government eavesdropped on American phone and
computer lines for almost six years after the Sept. 11 attacks without
permission from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the special panel
established for that purpose under the 1978 law. After some 40
lawsuits were filed
against AT&T, Verizon Communications and other telecom firms by groups and
individuals who thought the Bush administration illegally monitored their phone
calls or e-mails, the U.S. Congress passed new surveillance laws that
effectively shielded telecommunications companies from lawsuits arising from
the government's terrorism-era warrantless eavesdropping on phone and computer
lines.
"He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark of his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark..." - Revelation 13:16-17
Banks and Financial Institutions
Banks such as the Bank of America and CitiBank are relatively recent
inventions. There were no lending institutions or banks in the modern sense to
be found in ancient Israel. Commercial transactions and the lending of credit
were entirely in the hands of private individuals, landowners, and merchants.
Contemporary cultures in Mesopotamia lent money or produced at interest (in
some cases as much as 3313 percent per annum). The temptation among the
Israelites to do this was suppressed by laws forbidding the charging of
interest on loans (Ex. 22:25; Lev. 25:36-37; Ezek. 18:8). According to these
statutes, only foreigners could be charged interest on a debt (Deut. 23:20).
Pledges were sometimes required to guarantee a loan (Gen. 38:17), but
essential items, like a cloak, could not be kept past nightfall (Deut. 24:12;
Amos 2:8). In periods of famine or high taxation a man might mortgage his home
and fields, pledging his labor as a debt-slave or the labor of his family to
satisfy the loan (Neh. 5:1-5; Ps. 119:11). Abuse of this system occurred often
enough that the prophets condemned it (Neh. 5:6-13; Ezek. 22:12), Proverbs
called it folly (17:18; 22:26).
The widespread introduction of coined
money after 500 B.C. and the expansion of travel and commerce in the Roman
empire aided the establishment of banking institutions in the New Testament
period. Money lending was a common and acceptable activity in the cities.
Jesus’ parables of the talents (Matt. 25:14-30) and the pounds (Luke
19:11-27) lend credence to the practice of giving sums to the bankers to invest
or to draw interest. The older custom of burying one’s money for safe
keeping (Josh. 7:21) Jesus condemned as “wicked and slothful” (Matt.
25:25-27).
The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is
servant to the lender.
[Proverbs 22:7]
The banker, called a lender in Proverbs 22:7, suffered a poor
reputation among the Jews. Their religious law forbade the lending of money for
interest.
In the New Testament, these bankers were the “money
changers” of the Temple.
Some of these money changers, taking
advantage of the large number of currencies in circulation in Palestine, set up
some of the early banks. Farmers and merchants came to them to weigh coinage
and exchange it for the Tyrian drachma favored in the city. The regulations
regarding the Temple tax in Jerusalem also worked in the financiers’
favor. The “moneychangers” charged a fee of 12 grains of silver and
set up their tables in the Court of the Gentiles. They exchanged foreign
currency for the silver didrachma required by the law (Matt. 17:24).
Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple may have been in part a response to the
unfair practices of these money-changers (Matt. 21:12-13; Mark 11:15-17; John
2:14-16).
With sums coming into the Temple from Jews throughout the empire, the Temple itself became a bank, lending money to finance business, construction, and other programs. Pilate raised a storm of protest when he tapped one of the Temple funds, which was to be used exclusively for religious purposes, to build an aqueduct. After the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70, the Roman emperor Vespasian ordered the continued payment of the tax and its deposit in the Temple of Jupiter.
The “harsh” master who expects interest and reaps what he
did not sow (Matt. 25:24, 26-27; Luke 19:21-23) is hardly to be taken as a
model for Christian business practice. Luke’s parable in particular
contains reminiscences of the hated Archelaus (Luke 19:12, 14; compare Matt.
2:22). Jesus stood firmly in the Old Testament tradition when He commanded His
disciples to give freely to the needy who asked (Matt. 5:42; 10:8).
Some people feel compelled to defend the common, contemporary practice of
charging interest. Any moral decision on the matter must carefully weigh rival
claims: (1) that capital loaned at interest provides an opportunity for persons
to escape poverty and (2) that the inability of both individuals and nations to
pay interest on borrowed capital contributes to continued poverty.
"Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes it's laws." - Mayer Anselm Rothschild
With the U.S. federal government now bought and paid for by an
international banking cartel, we have witnessed some of the largest transfers
of wealth from the middle class to the elite ruling upper class. Banks are
institutions of theft, as they practice "fractional reserve
lending". Paper money is theft; inflation is theft, and the income tax is
theft. Paper money prevents people from saving property (money) since it is
constantly losing value due to the theft of inflation. It is the primary
mechanism whereby wealth is stolen from poor people and given to the wealthiest
people of all: the ones who have the power to create money out of thin air, and
loan it back to the U.S. government (at interest), to enslave everyone
else.
The motive in loaning without interest to fellow Israelites was
to prevent the formation of a permanent underclass in Israel. Ezekiel regarded
the charging of interest as a watershed act separating the righteous from those
practicing abominations (Ezek. 18:8, 13, 17; 22:12). Nehemiah challenged
neglect of the Mosaic prohibition which had resulted in dire poverty for some
of the returned exiles (Neh. 5:6-13). Today, because of the unjust banking
system, we have a massive underclass of citizens enslaved to the money masters.
They own no real property... only debt in
the form of paper money and promises to pay. Their gold and silver have been
taken from them and given to the international banksters.
Big money
lobbyists control most political leaders and stops the government from
regulating usurious interest rates or stopping the rape of poor neighborhoods
in which thousands of families are losing their homes through predatory
mortgage, home-improvement and foreclosure scams.
Take, for example,
the "behind the scenes" negotiations that took place between corrupted
government officials and crony banks in creating new bankruptcy laws making it
harder for Americans to get a second chance and disqualfying Hurrican Katrina
victims from filing for relief. Critics note that the Bankruptcy Abuse
Prevention and Consumer Protection Act did nothing to curtail the predatory
practices of credit card companies, such as exorbitant interest rates, rising
and often hidden fees, and targeting minors and the recently bankrupt for new
cards. The bill's critics pointed out that these practices are themselves
significant contributors to the growth of consumer bankruptcies. To his credit,
Barack Obama voted against this measure.
Subprime Mortgage Crisis
In a subprime mortgage crisis beginning in
late 2006 and still reverberating through the world economic systems today, the
international banking cartel has looted national treasuries and confiscated
vast amounts of wealth of the lower and middle classes. The crisis began with
the bursting of the US housing bubble and high default rates on "subprime" and
adjustable rate mortgages (ARM). Once home prices failed to go up as
anticipated, refinancing became more difficult and defaults and foreclosure
activity increased dramatically as easy initial terms expired and ARM interest
rates reset higher.
Too Big to Fail
A new
Orwellian phrase came on the scene that said these institutions are "too big to
fail." While there may be some economic truth behind that statement, the behind
the scenes dimension that is not newsworthy enough for the corporate bought
mainstream media is how corrupt politicians were protecting their crony buddies
in these institutions. Clinton cronies, James Johnson and Franklin Raines, ran
Fannie Mae leading up to the current crisis.
- Franklin Raines is the former chairman and chief executive officer of Fannie Mae who served as White House budget director under President Bill Clinton. He is currently employed by Barack Obama's Presidential Campaign as an economic adviser. In 2003 alone, Raines's compensation was over $20 million.
- From 1991 to 1998, James Johnson served as chairman and chief executive officer of Fannie Mae, and was previously vice chairman of Fannie Mae (1990-1991) and a managing director with Lehman Brothers (1985-1990). He was the campaign manager for Walter Mondale's failed 1984 presidential bid and chaired the vice presidential selection committee for the presidential campaign of John Kerry. He was involved in the vice-presidential selection process for the 2008 Democratic presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama, and is currently an economic adviser to Obama's campaign. Johnson is also a member of the the American Friends of Bilderberg, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Trilateral Commission.
Fannie and Freddie is the number one contributor to Senator Chris
Dodd between 1989 and 2008. The number two recipient of campaign funds from
Fannie and Freddie is Barack Obama. Further down the list of contributions from
Fannie and Freddie, John McCain received about $21,000.
President
Obama and the federal government doesn't talk about what is really going on and
don't seem interested in protecting the real victims in this scandal - the
people losing their homes in foreclosure and bankruptcy. Rather, they are
protecting their crony CEO's of these financial institutions while transferring
the wealth of the middle class to the ruling international banksters. And, as
if to rub salt into the gaping American wound, the American taxpayer is
expected to pay for the bailouts of these criminal enterprises.
Why is it so hard to figure out what's going on in
commodities markets -- oil specifically?
The reason it's hard to
figure out is about 30 percent of our crude oil energy futures are traded in
what is called a dark market -- that is a market that was deregulated in
December of 2000 at the behest of Enron and the increasingly powerful
international banking elite. Prior to that legislation being passed, all energy
futures traded in the United States or affecting the United States in a
significant fashion were regulated by United States regulators under a very
careful regime that had been perfected over about 78 years. Now that those
markets are not being policed, malpractices are being committed and traders are
able to boost the price virtually at their will.
Corrupt Banking
System
Money As Debt
This highly informative and easy
to understand film covers just about everything that isn't taught in school
regarding the corrupt banking system. It explains how these institutions get
away with robbing the unsuspecting public by creating monetary policies
designed to enslave society, while keeping the system in a perpetual state of
rising debt.
Declaration of
Independence
The Preamble of the United States Declaration of
Independence says,
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all
men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of
Happiness.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted
among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That
whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the
Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government,
laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such
form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be
changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath
shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable,
than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the
same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is
their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new
Guards for their future security.
