That pill-popping, boy-crazy nincompoop Ayn Rand has got a lot to answer for. Indeed, it’s not too much of a stretch to say that we owe at least part of the recent economic crisis to her and her philosophy of Objectivism, since former Fed chief Alan Greenspan was a lifelong disciple of both.

The two first met in the ’50s. Back then, a gang of acolytes, calling themselves the Collective, used to gather at Rand’s apartment on East 36th Street every Saturday night so they could tell each other how smart they all were. Along came Greenspan one evening, shy and somber.

It took a while for Greenspan and Rand to warm to one another. She nicknamed him “the undertaker,” owing to his dark clothes and mournful air, and he, a self-avowed logical positivist, required a certain amount of wooing on the philosophical side. But in time he became fiercely devoted to Rand, one of her most trusted confidants; he taught her something of the economics she shoehorned into Atlas Shrugged. He wrote for The Objectivist magazine, and stayed a close friend until her death in 1982.

Though the schemes of both these idealists crashed mightily and catastrophically to earth, both steadfastly refused ever to regret or repudiate the follies of Objectivism. The shocking thing is that despite all the evidence—which could not possibly be more damning—many on Wall Street and on the right continue to insist that Ayn Rand is a genius and that Objectivism is the answer to all mankind’s problems.

If that were so, doesn’t it stand to reason that the top genius’s own life would demonstrate at least a few of the benefits of being an Objectivist? Which, sadly, it really, really does not.

Greenspan’s tenure of nearly two decades as the chairman of the Federal Reserve is the second longest in history. Shouldn’t he have bestowed on a grateful public a legacy demonstrating the wisdom of Objectivist laissez-faire policies? We know how that turned out, too.

Read the rest at The Awl

Sesame Street has become loved and reviled for its socially-conscious programming; in one famous example from 1983, after an actor on the show died, Sesame Street took the chance to impart to very young children the temporal nature of human existence by marking his character’s death on the show. The forward-thinking episode invited some degree of opposition because even adults themselves continue to find death very uncomfortable or even impossible to psychologically confront.

Premiering tonight on PBS at 8 p.m. EDT is a program, “When Families Grieve,” that features four families, two of which features fathers from the American military. (One of the soldiers killed himself. The other died in a helicopter crash in Iraq.)  It’s important to note that the publicly-subsidized program has made a point of representing the suffering of military-serving families under the umbrella of a discussion of, as a whole, grief, a topic universal to the human experience. The program — sponsored by defense contractors BAE Systems, the Lockheed Martin Corporation, Oshkosh Defense — explores the concept of loss from a entirely nationalistic perspective.

Tonight’s special discusses military families’ suffering through the prism of the death of famed puppet character Elmo’s uncle, who was killed in the line of duty. At a press conference at the Pentagon yesterday morning, Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Admiral Michael Mullen greeted Rosita, the grieving daughter, along with her cousin Elmo.

Said Deputy Defense Secretary Lynn, “This [episode] deals with the even more difficult challenge [than a previous episode discussing servicemembers coming home injured] of confronting death and loss. It’s an essential part of the human experience, but talking about death is a very difficult thing.”

Said Gary Knell, president and CEO of Sesame Street Workshop, “This project, we hope, will help us to bridge the gaps that might exist between military kids, children within the general public.  Regardless of the situation experienced, millions of kids have to endure the most emotionally challenging experience in their lives.”

In front of a studio audience and broadcast on Pentagon Live, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the deputy Defense secretary shared a few tender moments with the two puppets.

Said the young puppet, Rosita, whose father died fighting an unseen enemy, “You know what? We love military families, our friends and we want to show them how much we care about all of you. And you know what? We care a lot. And we want to help in any way we can.”

Explained Elmo precociously, “Well, Elmo and Jesse are cousins. Elmo’s daddy and Jesse’s daddy were brothers.”

“That’s right. But my dad died last year.”

Looking on with utmost affection, Admiral Mullen replies to her, “We know that, Jesse.  And we also know that you’re here to share that experience, and we very much appreciate you doing that. That will make a big difference for military children who have experienced that as well, as well as other children in America.”

This nationalization of the death experience to children is truly the next step in military propaganda. If it was groundbreaking to simply feature one prominent character’s death in an episode, this is even more revolutionary. Through the use of beautiful, talented celebrities (such as John Mayer and Queen Latifah), PBS will help prevent military families’ grieving experiences from becoming in any way insulated from the (usually) natural death causes which other parents must face. Encouraging children to understand death as a distinctly American experience from their earliest conscious moments tacitly ensures that later on in life that they imagine that degree of suffering as a construct somehow remote from the foreigner’s perspective. This is absolutely critical to meeting recruitment goals, and further normalizing the military lifestyle.

“When Families Grive” will ensure that sympathy for human beings suffering the loss of a loved one is focused as exclusively as possible on Americans. And Americans only.

We have been conditioned from birth to believe that everything wrong in our society is about Greed: The inordinate desire to acquire or possess more than one needs or deserves, especially with respect to material wealth.

However, my research concludes the earth’s environmental damage and pollution was not the result of greed and the unintended consequences of our capitalistic consumer society, but was the goal.

Until the common man became “civilized” he had almost no environmental impact on the earth. Hunters, foragers and gatherers are unable to upset the ecological structures of the planet. [1]

The first civilized societies and their agrarian economies had an environmental impact but the damage was negligible because only 3% of the population, Kings and Lords were consumers.

The earth wasn’t in trouble until the House of Rothschild unleashed the middle class on the planet when they financed and fomented the American and French Revolutions. [2]

Now the Third Estate (97% of the population) was freed to become the consumers of useless and toxic products from the Industrial Revolution.  And thanks to those scoundrels behind the Federal Reserve, former serfs and slaves could now have their own castle with a Sport Utility Pollution Vehicle (SUPV) in the driveway.

The first industrial revolution, the textile industry, based on the one plant that does more damage to the environment than coffee or tobacco…cotton, marked the last time the earth would be in ecological balance. [3]

A Theory of Ecocide Explains the Unexplainable

To support my theory, I point out that the Federal Reserve isn’t evil because they print our money and make us pay interest on the principal.

They are evil because Rockefeller, Kuhn, Loeb and Morgan, all connected to the House of Rothschild’s global financial empire, directed the Federal Reserve (until October of 2008) to create money out of thin air to pay for the American Dream, an environmental nightmare for the planet. [4]

These scoundrels, at the beginning of the 20th century owned or controlled 1/6^th of the world’s real wealth: raw materials, commodities, copper, iron ore, petroleum, lead, silver and gold.

And when I write, “So how do they get rich exchanging real wealth for about $500 trillion of the Monopoly money they printed?”

I assume the answer is intuitive because their real wealth has been used up; they are the losers, not the middle class!

And I remind anyone still listening:

Remember those trees we chopped down and mountains we blew up so we could experience unprecedented prosperity for the last 60 years?

All of those resources (raw materials for the American Dream) “now used up”, were once owned or controlled by the scoundrels of our history books.

Their real wealth, not yours or mine has been “cut, mined and hauled away so consumers could trash the planet with houses, second houses, cars, RVs, TVs and DVDs— the material possessions we associate with the good life that put the planet on the downward spiral to ecocide.

Although this premise first appeared in Dem Bones is Connected To De Debt Bone (published at The Market Oracle and G. Edward Griffins website January 2009 [5]), the Internet is not buzzing about a theory of ecocide, which would explain the failure of public policies, government actions and inactions to protect the environment.

A theory of ecocide would allow hot, flat, and crowded Thomas L. Friedman to know what planet George W. Bush is on. Our last president Bush (we hope) wasn’t “stupid” if his goal was Ecocide.

At the G8 summit, Dubya was deadly serious about Ecocide when, after rejecting the global climate change targets of the July 2008 G8 summit, he said, “Goodbye, from the (then) world’s biggest polluter.”

He proposed drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, which would trash America’s last arctic wilderness. Sonar testing is about torturing whales and dolphins, and the border fence that keeps everything out but the illegals is disrupting an extraordinary source of biological diversity along a 2,000-mile-long region that includes deserts, mangrove forests, plains, mountains, river valleys and wetlands.

Bush lost the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq, but is winning the war waged on the environment.

A theory of ecocide is also the solution to the enigma of China’s economic policy, which resulted in every person in the (rich) U.S. borrowing about $4,000 from someone in the (poor) People’s Republic of China. China wanted to be the Air Pollution champion of the world and be able to say “Goodbye, from the world’s biggest polluter.” [6]

Cognitive Dissonance could explain why no one is jumping on a theory of ecocide.

After all, the premise that anyone would intentionally damage the planet, which future generations will inherit, contradicts a strongly held belief system that those responsible would have to live with the polluted air, fouled water and a poisoned food chain. [7]

Recently I debated a “critical thinker” trying to convince her the rich aren’t getting wealthy printing their own Monopoly money.  She articulated what we are conditioned to believe from birth:

“When we have more, it is never enough. Everything is about money, it doesn’t matter how much you have you want more, that’s just the way it is and if you are telling me the Federal Reserve isn’t getting rich printing their own money then I can tell you for sure you haven’t looked into this enough.”

And a nearby listener offered up his manly wisdumb, “After all everyone knows, “he who dies with the most toys wins.”

This got me thinking: I should be agreeing with them:

“You guys are right everyone wants more, that’s our nature. But wait, in 1910 they already had 1/6th of the world’s real wealth (some estimate ½): copper, iron ore, petroleum, lead, silver and gold silver, therefore, according to your Greed theory they should have MORE copper, iron ore, petroleum, lead, silver and gold NOT Less.”

Are you saying they didn’t know their real wealth would be “used up” and the planet would be damaged when we went shopping?

Footnotes:

[1] Civilization is a complex society in which many of the people live in cities and get their food from agriculture, as distinguished from tribal societies where people live in small settlements or nomadic groups and make their subsistence by foraging, hunting, or working small horticultural gardens.

[2] Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité – Providence, Miracle or What Really Happened, Robert Singer

[3] By 1850 the United States following the lead of England built their industrial revolution around textiles.  There arose a great demand for the one crop that does more damage to the environment than planting coffee or even tobacco… Cotton. Today, our planet is in desperate trouble. Earth is suffocating as large tracts of rain forests disappear. Pollution, poisons and chemicals are killing the planet. These problems could have been avoided if the British textile industry hadn’t “suddenly” discovered Cotton. What is Cotton doing in The Game?, Robert Singer

[4] During the last 100 years those swindlers were able to distort the structure of relative prices; generate misallocations of labor and capital throughout the economy; rationalize new governmental interventions in the face of the market “instability” manipulate the patterns of and the profits from international trade which resulted in the Industrial Revolution, the Great Depression, the stagflation of the 1970’s, the dot-com and the housing market bubbles…all of which created unprecedented prosperity for the middle class, $500 trillion of Monopoly money for the House of Rothschild and ecocide for the Planet. “We don’t want your tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to trash the planet” The Federal Reserve, 2009, Robert Singer

[5] Dem Bones is Connected To De Debt Bone, Robert Singer

[6] Meat, Milk and Motors: The New China Syndrome, Robert Singer

[7] Cognitive Dissonance (CD is the discomfort felt at the discrepancy between what you already know or believe, and new information or interpretation that contradicts a strongly held belief system – It’s that queasy feeling that rises in your gut and screams, I Don’t Believe That! Because, if you accepted the new information, you would have to admit you been ”had,” or ”conned,” in this case into shopping for stuff to trash the planet.

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Robert Singer is an Entrepreneur and the author of a forthcoming book on the Federal Reserve. His articles cover politics and the financial and environmental implications of our consumer society.  The articles have been main headlined and can be found on numerous popular websites: Marketoracle, Silverseek, Pakistan Daily, Silver Bear Café, Goldseek, Dissident Voice, The Peoples Voice, LAprogressive, Canadafreepress, Opednews, and many of the Wordpress sites. Richard Daughty, The Mogambo Guru, proclaimed him a Junior Mogambo Ranger (JMR).

“Aha! You catch us plotting in real time,” says Lloyd Blankfein, breaking away from a cabal of senior executives discussing his trip to Washington the previous day. Blankfein, 55, Goldman’s chairman and chief executive, is wearing a grey suit with a jaunty Hermès tie with little red bicycles on it. In his hand, he’s carrying one of those cups of coffee that look bigger than the human stomach. Maybe it’s the caffeine, maybe it’s the tie — a birthday present from his daughter — but he’s in a remarkably jolly mood for a man everyone seems to hate. “It’s like a safari here,” he jokes. “You’ve come in to look at the animals.”

Blankfein may be Wall Street’s Sun God, but, with the economic outlook stormy, he doesn’t want to advertise it, so the merest hint of a status symbol or — horror! — ostentation is airbrushed out of his life, publicly, at least. Take his office on the 30th floor. The chairs are the same ones that were there when he became CEO three years ago. There are none of the $87,000 handmade rugs or $5,000 wastepaper baskets of Wall Street lore. There’s no sign of irrational exuberance. Only coffee, which arrives cold. It sets just the right tone for the job in hand. The grand wizard of Wall Street is steeling himself for the hardest sell of his life: he’s here to argue for good ol’ capitalism, for investment banks and for Goldman Sachs…

[continues in the Sunday Times]