2014: List of Top Ten Deceptions.

Fire in the Holed.

The contradictions between what we say and what is meant keep sprouting like mushrooms on a forest floor.

The word "Free", whether it's free will or free insurance, as in FDIC, is always used to deceive, as nothing, not only in the world, but in the universe, comes without a cost. Free in the sense of, 'to rid of', as I freed my cat from fleas, is a useful term, but free health care, free Higher education, free dumb, are all used by manipulative persons or organisations to mute objections to whatever they wish to impose on others by advertising it as "free" when in fact it's not. As you well know, nothing is. That free health care is paid for by someone else, and is only called free to hide its true costs from those who want others to pay for it, is quite obvious. That is why, when offered as a benefit to employees it's true costs are hidden, it's tax-exempt status never mentioned.

Serve. When I was an altar boy, I used to perform a function called serving Mass. So when people use the phrase, "To serve your country" or for their years of "service" to the country, I always do a double-take, because well, no they didn't, they got PAID, if they hadn't, they wouldn't have served for a day. They were serving the needs of themselves, it being a last resort, because they couldn't find a job in the so-called private sector, they exposed their private sector as privates in the War Sector of the government. This serves their families more than their country.

Earning. The Pope: "Personal dignity comes from working, from earning your bread." This from someone who's never had a job in his life.

The term Private Sector, itself, is of course,  another one of the huge deceptions. There is no such thing in a Nation State as a Private Sector, at least not in the sense that it is defined in the Mainstream media. For it always and everywhere depends on the public sector, not only for security, of both its financial transactions and physical plant, but for the education of its workforce, the highway system upon which its goods, whether electronic or physical, travel over, but also for the fuel to run the enterprise, and the politicians to ease their way over the backs of existing businesses to successful implementation of their plans. For this one need think only  of an Amazon. A company that built their entire business, with a bozo Bezo, using a infrastructure built entirely with tax-payer dollars, and with an exemption from taxation not shared by any of its land-based competitors. Without this deceptive confiscation of government largesse, this Private Company would have gone up in flames with the rest of the Dot-com scalawags in the 2000 crash. Instead it has gone on to virtually destroy used bookkstores across the country, stores that flourished in all our cities, both as repositories for used books, so, keeping them from landfills, and thereby, albeit inadvertently, serving as a form of Carbon Sequestration, as well as a meeting place for the less well-heeled but intellectually curious.

The so-called Private Sector, is merely an accounting trick, putting the responsibility for an enterprise onto the shoulders of people willing to assume responsibility and accountability for an endeavor. It is, and always has been, an operation that exists by government allowance, and pays taxes on its profits as a means of demonstrating its viability and proof that its services are in demand, even if much of that demand comes directly from the government. This paradigm has shifted such that now, in a way to make any Communist Country proud, (the Republican Party isn't called the Red Party for nothing) by using accounting tricks and bribery of government officials, Corporations spend far more of what used to be tax dollars flowing into various governments' coffers,  to payoff politicians who ensure that those dollars flow directly into their pockets, as well as those of highly compensated lobbyists and Company shareholders, where they are taxed at less than half the rate they would be if they went to wage earners, whose earnings are taxed at twice the rate as those so-called investors.

Security. This is another word purposelessly debased and manipulated whose meaning has been corrupted so thoroughly that it now means little more than blackmail. Right now, as I sit here and type a few words into this little pane on my monitor, the hard drive on my computer is chugging away. What is it doing, why can't I monitor it to see what programs are churning it and tell if there's an entity online marauding through my files? I could see this and set up monitoring targets to ensure the inviolability of my data. Instead, Nortoon, using the word 'free', to deceive me into thinking I can get something for nothing, when it merely reduces the cost of their product for first time users, and, of course, driving up costs for those already using their product, blackmails me in to paying them to 'protect' me, which, of course, they only do marginally, yet should someone get through their defenses, they do like all Defense Departments do, simply shrug their shoulders and promise to try to do better, and then raise their price. You would do well to remember that financial instruments, which are now completely speculative in nature (as they are leveraged to an ever increasing percent on instruments based on highly questionable debt) are still, despite their high-risk nature, referred to as "Securities".

Currency. The state of currency is in such flux that I won't even pretend to know what it is anymore. It is indeed a facilitator of transactions, but it is not a storage of value. Whereas before the Fed used to hide what it did to inflate the currency, the burden of unpayable debt is now so huge and is growing so much faster than the economy, meaning that the amount of it that is actually going to be paid back keeps getting smaller the larger the overall debt gets, (take as an example, the trillion dollars in student debt extended to Collegiates, a huge percentage of whom will never get the jobs for which they are amassing the debt to obtain), yet it is used more and more by speculators as though it were cash, that now the Fed unabashedly admits that it is manipulating the currency by actively stoking inflation, which debases it such that none of the debts issued by the banks that it rescued, will ever get the return on investment  needed to keep them solvent.

Free Market. Although much of what has been written above should be a clue, the term Free Market has no value whatsoever in a Centrally controlled economy. Those business that the Fed wishes to remain viable, even as they produce products, not only that aren't good for either the economy or us, but are poisonously destructive to both, will remain viable, while those that don't meet the Fed's criteria simply won't. A good example of this is the Cigarette, or more generally, the tobacco, industry. Most people have no conception of how much this industry, growing a poisonous and addictive weed and using deceptive advertising mostly aimed at children so as to get them addicted at a very young age, as the older a person is when she gets addicted to tobacco, the easier it is for them to break that addiction, receives from both the Federal government  in direct subsidies and tax breaks, and the States. These companies are also given easy access to foreign markets (Like China) whose government is interested in seeing as many of its people die before they reach an age when they will become a burden to their bad Centrally planned economies (ie they have no money to sustain them so let the Westerners induce them to kill themselves).

Savings. As has been apparent for some time now, perhaps ever since the likes of Krugman, who concieves himself, however erroneously, as the conscience of a liberal, castigated the middle class in 2008 for their "Paradox of Thrift" and made it clear that they were a problem if they weren't out spending more than they earned,  savings is not what it use to be. This is primarily a factor of the economy of graft, extortion and fraud that a Free-for-all Enterprise System has been molded into, such that banks no longer need depositors to enhance their profitability, but need larger and larger loan portfolios. As Europe once again is under the microscope of IMF assessment, it has again been proposed that, since the mountain of debt is so huge, either 10% of their customers' saving will be confiscated or the balance that is in savings will not only not result in earnings, but will instead suffer negative interest rates, or worse, both of theses penalties to savings will be imposed.

Economic growth = environmental degradation and despoliation.

Capitalism = War and arms sales by the merchants of death grows to such an extent they push out other forms of constructive manufacturing and result in the annihilation of vast swaths of the burgeoning population. Competitive consumerism means that the populations of the world's nations, having had their savings confiscated, and therefore unable to sustain any viable economic function other than that of amassing more and more debt until they are unable to sustain it, in that the debt amassed is not assumed with any conception of how it will be paid, and therefore is not for construction of enterprises to provide the means to pay the debt, along with its attendant interest rate, off, but only with the thought of consuming vast quantities, conehead-style, of more and more deleterious products, making the entire atmosphere of the globe uninhabitable.

 Since it's easier to look at faults of other people than  our own, let's look at that country where more than 1.3 billion people reside, yet, having moved people from the rural environment where they could at least scratch out a meager, hardscrabble existence, they have been moved by the millions into cities where they have to live underground, as their pathetic wages don't provide them with enough to even rent one of the luxury high rises they live under. Because the debt amassed to build these structures and electrify and maintain them is such that only the rich can afford the rents thereby made necessary. However, the first thing a rich Chinese wants to do is move to China USA, otherwise known as San Francisco, Ca., leaving entire towns empty of inhabitants. In the meantime, the rural area they left has had its soil and biota so debauched by pollution of all sorts that they are now not only uninhabitable, but incapable of growing food. I don't mean to pick on China, either, it's just that they are reported on so often that I am more acquainted with their situation than, say, Thailand's, and the data is, in fact, even more frightening in other countries.

It is in this poisonous atmosphere that we approach the auspicious date of August 2014 as though it were just another number. The world never recovered from the financial panic of 1907, anymore than it did from the stock market crash of 1929 that led to the Great Depression until an all-consuming World War stopped the Rich from eating every one else alive, as they were doing in both cases before those conflagrations began. Neither has it recovered from the financial panic, credit crunch, and debt-defaults of 2007, which we also approached as though it were just another number, nor, despite the spectacular failure of all the apologists for Capitalism's sins of the past that the post WW2 consensus, destroyed by Ronald Reagan, papered over and said wouldn't be repeated, have we evolved one jot from where we were a century ago. All that has grown is the destructive power of our weapons, our belief in our right to deploy them against anyone obstructing our will, and the insistence that we are above nature. But as the world, and especially the OECD countries, becomes more and more difficult to live in, and as privileges are seen as entitlements and luxuries are confused with necessities, the inevitability of this unipolar world, bestraddled by one hegemonic Superpower ruling an Empire while it pretends it's a Democracy, insisting on its right to garnish more and more of the dwindling output only made possible by the festering wound called ecological devastation, the prospect of an all-consuming holocaust looms larger and larger, while all we do in response is click the remote to try and change the channel. But Reality isn't reality TV. It doesn't simply disappear just because we don' t like what's on next.