Is there a cabal of Plutocrats trying to decimate the working class? Yup.

[Zalatix]

Since I was locked out of my other thread by a jury, I'm going to continue this here. There is a cabal that is working to physically decimate the population of America's working class, and here is the evidence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabal

A cabal is a group of people united in some close design together, usually to promote their private views and/or interests in a church, state, or other community, often by intrigue.

So first I need to show that there is a group of people united in some close design together.

That's easy. The Koch Brothers are a good example of this. They are united with groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Tea Party. In fact, they bankrolled the Tea Party.

http://chamber.350.org/2011/03/the-us-chamber-and-the-koch-brothers/

Now I need to show that they promote private views in a church, state or other community. That much is easy, Google can help you all day on this if you want to look. Here's one supporting link:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/apr/08/koch-brothers-lobbying

Their agendas are all aligned: a war against American workers (defense of offshoring), and their agenda includes getting rid of the social safety net. Again, the evidence is all over the place.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its war on American workers:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/28/gop-chamber-of-commerce_n_741970.html

Koch brothers versus health care reform:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-greenwald-and-jesse-lava/koch-brothers-v-health-ca_b_1380731.html

Koch brothers and outsourcing American jobs:
http://www.kansasfreepress.com/2011/06/koch-brothers-outsourcing-jobs.html

Kich brothers and their opposition to the social safety net:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_H._Koch

Koch was the Libertarian Party's vice-presidential candidate in the 1980 presidential election, sharing the party ticket with presidential candidate Ed Clark. The Clark–Koch ticket promising to abolish Social Security, the Federal Reserve Board, welfare, minimum-wage laws, corporate taxes, all price supports and subsidies for agriculture and business, and U.S. Federal agencies including the SEC, EPA, ICC, FTC, OSHA, FBI, CIA, and DOE.

Now I need to show the intrigue. That's a crafty and involved plot to achieve one's ends. I might also, for extra credit, show that said group - defined above - is actually conspiring to subvert the democratic process and run America without any accountability to the American people.

Well, that much is glaringly obvious when you read up on how much money and influence the Koch Brothers wield against Congress... especially the GOP. Again, evidence on that is not all that hard to find:
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/feb/06/nation/la-na-koch-brothers-20110206

Are they accountable to the American people? Nope. Your opinion doesn't sway them. You can vote the GOP out and these people will simply attempt to buy Democrats with their money and power: particularly, the Blue Dogs. And lo and behold, the Koch Brothers have already had their hands in the DLC's cookie jar:
http://www.americablog.com/2010/08/koch-industries-gave-funding-to-dlc-and.html

Aside from the necessary elements of a cabal, there are other popular traits that are associated with them, too, such as meeting in secret. The Koch Brothers meet that requirement, too!

http://www.alternet.org/story/153998/koch_brothers_convene_super-secret_billionaires'_meeting_for_2012_elections/

They also fund climate change denial groups on the down low:
http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/campaigns/global-warming-and-energy/polluterwatch/koch-industries/

But the most popularly known example is their attempts to secretly fund the Tea Party, a fact that got made public, much to their chagrin.


Mind you, I can name plenty of other billionaires and right wing organizations who are in cahoots with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Koch brothers, and cite their behavior and their pursuit of a very common goal, all of which fits the definition of a cabal, but really, do we want to destroy the DU's bandwidth that way? And many people won't even read THIS much text, much less all the other evidence I'd be posting in the course of such a long expose'.

It's a cabal. All the necessary conditions for a cabal have been shown and met. This cabal has vast influence and power over Congress and their power completely circumvents our power as voters. It can even be argued, quite logically, that the entire campaign contribution system itself is a BREEDING GROUND for cabals.


Now, is this cabal trying to physically decimate the working class population? Well, let's look at the mechanics of what is happening.

The Koch Brothers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (mind you, as I said, there are more groups doing this besides just these examples, but I'm trying to save you some bandwidth and reading time) have been known to vigorously fight for sending American jobs overseas, even overriding the votes and will of the American people by going directly to Congress with their money and influence. They are known to come right back and fight against health care reform and also welfare and social safety net laws. I've documented this much up above.

So let's follow the inevitable consequences of their efforts. One, your job leaves the country and you are unemployed. Two, your unemployment benefits are cut off at 26 weeks, while your job search will probably take 2 years; which is 104 weeks (this is true for millions of Americans, in fact). Three, when your benefits run out and you need welfare to eat, the aforementioned cabal wants there to be no welfare, so now you need to go to a soup kitchen. Meanwhile you're also homeless. The soup kitchens, as we know, are overrun. There's plenty of news about the soup kitchens: http://www.sanduskyregister.com/sandusky/2010/jul/06/soup-kitchen-overrun-hungry-unemployed?similar

Who here doesn't know about the spread of drug-resistant tuberculosis among the homeless? Certainly, the CDC does. This is another risk you face when unemployment renders you homeless. http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00019922.htm

Is homeless going up? Yup. http://www.mainstreet.com/article/moneyinvesting/news/hunger-homelessness-increase-nationwide

It would be downright crazy to deny that this is a clear and classic case of proximate and ultimate cause. In short: the act of beating back welfare and defending the deprivation of jobs by sending them out of the country, plus fighting health care reform, sets off a very common chain of events that leads to a LOT of people suffering, and a number of them dying.

Now I must explain how this amounts to said cabal CONSPIRING to cause suffering and death on a large scale as to intentionally decimate the population of America's working class. Because according to Occam's Razor, this could simply be called sheer negligence on the part of the Plutocracy.

This is where logic invalidates Occam's Razor.

If you go driving through a neighborhood in a Hummer and you hit 5 schoolkids, killing 1, and you keep on driving, what is that? Homicide, vehicular manslaughter, all that stuff. You go to court and you fight it, you lose and pay the fine and do the time, or you win and go off scot-free. Negligence and a bit of sociopathy, too, right? Still not intentional mass slaughter.

But now let's say you do it again. And again. And again. 2 kids die in the next incident, then the incident after that you kill 1, then 3, then 5 survive but with bad injuries, then 2 deaths, etc. Each time you go to court and fight it, until you decide, fuck it, let's just buy off the judge and threaten the jury with moving your jobs out of the area and making the whole city unemployed. Now everyone backs off, and you're free to run over schoolkids at will.

At what point, after you just keep doing this, does it become PREMEDITATED MURDER? At what point does said town realize that this Hummer-driving madman is running over schoolkids for the lulz? How long does the mere negligence argument hold?

How many times does Occam's Razor have to get used until its blade becomes blunt and useless?

This is what that aforementioned cabal is doing to the working class: they're pulling out the entire world from beneath the working class and at some point

Now, we get around to understanding why President Barack Obama said that the Republicans will usher in an age of social Darwinism.

President Obama is a Harvard educated lawyer. He doesn't use hyperbole. His words are precise and intended to be on the mark.

Social Darwinism is a philosophy that says we must cull the weak and useless for the species/society/etc. to remain strong. The very concept of social Darwinism calls for mass exterminations.

President Obama would not call the Republicans social Darwinists unless he also saw their oft-oft-oft-repeated pattern of running over the working class despite having been shown the consequences of doing such.

Is it any coincidence that we've been told, publicly, that a global economic collapse, resource crash and population crash are due to happen by 2030?
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/next-great-depression-mit-researchers-predict-global-economic-190352944.html

Is it any wonder why a collapse is happening RIGHT NOW, in the form of a very slow decimation of the world's working class? It's not like we haven't talked about this on the DU before.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002639524

Every once and awhile I'll be listening to a podcast with one or the other writers specializing on the subject of Peak Oil or collapse and the subject of timetables will come up. When will the collapse finally be here, the callers ask insistently, almost pleadingly, so that they can finally justify their investments in freeze-dried foods, water purification tablets and solid gold coins. Inevitably the guest will demur, and speak more in general terms. But I'm going to be the first pundit to go out on the limb and assign a timeline for the collapse. Spread it far and wide, and let's see just how good my predictive powers are. Are you ready? Here it is: Right now.

What do they think a collapse is supposed to look like? It seems people just cannot just cannot get past the "Zombie Apocalypse" theory of collapse. They imagine hordes of disease-ridden folks dressed in rags stumbling around and fighting over cans of petrol and stripping cans of food from shelves. That's not what collapse looks like. It never has been. In fact, there's very little evidence that a Zombie Apocalypse style collapse ever occurred in the historical record. Instead we see subtle patterns of abandonment and decay that unfold over long periods of time. Big projects stop. Population thins. Trade routes shrink and people revert to barter. Things get simpler and more local. Culture coarsens. High art stagnates. People disperse. Expectations are adjusted downward. Investments are no longer made in the future and previous investments are cannibalized just to maintain the status quo. Extend and pretend is hardly a recent invention. And I remembered a comment I heard from Dmitry Orlov in an interview about how much of his high school class were now dead. Yet there were no headlines and there was never any official crisis or emergency. They did not die in gunfights over scraps of food like in The Road. Rather, more quotidian things like alcoholism, unemployment, suicide, homelessness, exposure, lack of medications and ordinary sicknesses like bronchitis and pneumonia took their lives.

Do you think that the Plutocrats will experience any kind of crisis? Nope. The crisis is for the rest of the 99%, not them; and it is entirely by design.

This is why it is NOT a conspiracy theory to say that there are a group of people of great wealth and power who are in fact conspiring to do a mass culling of the working class, and that mass culling is happening right now. Slowly, just like I said in the other thread.

The means, the motive and the weapon have all been laid out right here.

[2pooped2pop]

1. dont forget the schools and prisons

they are killing off the public school system. It would seem that they no longer think anyone not rich needs an education. After all, with all the laws bought in their favor and against the rest of us, all the non rich will surely be in their privatized prisons. We wont need an education since we are all heading to that prison or an early death, or drug addicted. We will then be allowed to work for them from prison fo a few pennies a day effectively reinstating slavery.

Sometimes I think that they kmow that they have fucked up this world beyond repair and that it will not sustain us all. they intend for only the rich to live. They think that there are enough resources for them only.

[Zalatix]

3. Yes, the prison/industrial complex is a whole other gigabyte of tl;dr proof.

Feudalism was about the rich living in protected castles, in ease and comfort, while the other 99% sat outside, waiting to be picked off by bandits, disease, famine, or by the wars that the rich liked to have with each other. We're headed back to that.

People on the DU get mad at me when I say we need a systemic collapse so complete that it destroys the Plutocracy. Yet, what they fear will happen as a result, will also happen under the emerging Plutonomy: except there is no such thing as escaping a techno-Plutonomy. A techno-Plutonomy is eternal, it only ends with humanity's extinction.

[malaise]

2. You may want to add Citigroup's 2006: America - A Modern Day Plutonomy

http://www.fundmymutualfund.com/2009/09/citigroup-2006-america-modern-day.html

[Zalatix]

4. Yes, Citigroup's Plutonomy/Plutocracy article is what educated me to the concept.

Their article is why I stop bashing THE RICH and concentrate specifically on the Plutonomy and Plutocracy.

It is why I also seek to specifically name names, and use less of the term "they" as a lead-in.

[Poll_Blind]

5. Some good points- especially one of my pet peeves, which is: When does repeated...

....negligence become malicious intent? Your analogy about the Hummer hitting the school kids...

PB

[Zalatix]

7. It seems people are willing to excuse that with "Occam's Razor".

The problem comes when you have to keep defending the same behavior by the same group of people a thousand times with the same razor...

[bvar22]

6. BIG DURec.

Anyone who has been awake during the last 30 - 40 years already KNOWS this in their gut.
You did an excellent job of presenting, organizing, and supporting the data.
Thanks.

There IS some hope.
Many of our neighbors in Latin America have successfully wrested their governments from the hands of the 1%.
They have given us a Blue Print for near bloodless revolution.
(Bloodless IF you don't count the martyrs of the years of oppression preceding the elections)

[font size=3]"The worst enemy of humanity is U.S. capitalism. That is what provokes uprisings like our own, a rebellion against a system, against a neoliberal model, which is the representation of a savage capitalism. If the entire world doesn't acknowledge this reality, that nation states are not providing even minimally for health, education and nourishment, then each day the most fundamental human rights are being violated."[/font]
----Bolivian Reform President Evo Morales

[font size=1]Pssssst. FDR said much the same thing in 1944 with his Economic Bill of Rights,
but FDR and THAT Democratic Party are long dead.[/font]

We have some work to do.
Look to the successful reforms of the Populist Revolutions if South & Central America,
but you won't hear about it from the 1% OWNED US Media,
or from either Political Party who will continue to Demonize these revolutions
and support the few remaining Right Wing Police States like Colombia.


VIVA Democracy!
I pray we get some here soon.



You will know them by their WORKS,
not by their excuses.
[font size=5 color=green]Solidarity99![/font][font size=2 color=green]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[/center]

[Zalatix]

22. Many thanks. As for the populist revolutions in South America...

no wonder the CIA waged so much war against them. They wouldn't interfere with those governments if they weren't such a big threat to the religion that is capitalism.

[white_wolf]

8. I wish it was a cabal.

Conspiracies can be stopped, but I think what we are seeing now is simply the natural growth of capitalism. It is happening all over the world. Even if every single person you mentioned in your OP suddenly vanished into thin air, someone else would take their place. It's the game that's fucked up, not just the players.

[Zalatix]

10. Well, it is both.

In my OP I said the campaign contribution system was a breeding ground for cabals. In reality, capitalism itself is a breeding ground for them, too. So yes, the game is fucked up.

[socialist_n_TN]

11. Hell of a post my friend.........

That's classic Trotskyist reasoning right there.

[Initech]

9. The Koch Brothers have done more damage to America than Al Qaeda could ever dream of.

Fuck 'em - arrest 'em and try them for treason for bankrolling the fucking tea party terrorists.

[socialist_n_TN]

12. Thanks for putting all this together Zalatix........

As bvar said above, we all knew it was happening and we have had all of the pieces for a while. You put them all in one place.

[Selatius]

13. I think you're fixating too much on the Koch Bros.

I don't disagree with the notion that they're harmful to the democratic process and that their ultimate goal is untold wealth at the expense of everybody else's welfare and the survival of this republic as a functioning representative democracy. They would run the country as a corporatist dictatorship if they had enough leverage to neuter Congress and the White House.

However, assuming the Koch brothers' power base is destroyed, how are we certain that others in the business world and on Wall Street won't move in and fill the power vacuum? A few powerful interests in that realm seek greater profits, seemingly at the expense of everything else around them. When we reference history, we see the Business Plot that was hatched to overthrow Franklin Roosevelt and install a pro-fascist/pro-Hitler dictatorship to deal with the Great Depression, for instance, and these guys pre-dated the Koch brothers.

[Zalatix]

14. But I addressed exactly that in my OP.

I am using the Koch brothers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as the most visible, obvious and current examples. See this in my OP:

Mind you, I can name plenty of other billionaires and right wing organizations who are in cahoots with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Koch brothers, and cite their behavior and their pursuit of a very common goal, all of which fits the definition of a cabal, but really, do we want to destroy the DU's bandwidth that way? And many people won't even read THIS much text, much less all the other evidence I'd be posting in the course of such a long expose'.

There are plenty of other examples. But to bastardize Engineer Scotty of the old Star Trek: "the net cannot handle the strain, cap'n!"

However, assuming the Koch brothers' power base is destroyed, how are we certain that others in the business world and on Wall Street won't move in and fill the power vacuum?

This is exactly why I wrote this in my OP:

It can even be argued, quite logically, that the entire campaign contribution system itself is a BREEDING GROUND for cabals.

In fact, I should have said

It can even be argued, quite logically, that the entire campaign contribution system, indeed the entire system of Capitalism, is a BREEDING GROUND for cabals.

[TBF]

36. Thank you for tying it back to capitalism -

many folks draw up elaborate "conspiracies" but the truth is far simpler. Nice work.

[REP]

15. Decimate = reduce by 1/10th; after the Roman practice

Perhaps you meant "annihilate"?

[Zalatix]

16. Good point on decimation. Annihilation? That depends on the definition.

Severely cull by over 50%? Most likely. 100%? Unlikely.

Why? Because the Plutocrats must have their entertainment.

[cali]

18. this is nuts. you think a link to a wiki article on sex tourism is evidence

of genocide? And you think that they're committing genocide on a scale larger than the world has ever seen because they must have their entertainment?

[Zalatix]

19. What's nuts is your interpretation of what you supposedly read.

My point is that the Plutocracy won't totally wipe out the working class because they need to keep a few folks around for *ahem* "entertainment".

As for the genocide... read my OP's documented reference to Russia. It is already happening. Slowly.

[cali]

21. simplistic is as simplistic does

the problem is it doesn't do very well.

Look, once you get to the point where you've wiped out say 50% of the population of a given culture, the culture collapses.

I read the reference to Russia. One more time: It is not evidence of genocide. There is not a single U.N. Agency or NGO that would agree with you.

White Wolf hit on it: It's institutional.

You seem to need to make things simple. You seem to need a "religious" unifying theory: All the bad things in the world are generated by a "cabal of plutocrats" who are methodically carrying out genocide for their amusement.

[Zalatix]

24. Nobody's interested in the denials you're selling. Sorry.

[cali]

27. LOL! so you think you speak for..... everyone?

quite the little authoritarian, aren't you?

[Zalatix]

30. Ok, those who agree with Cali, speak up!

[TheKentuckian]

37. It isn't genocide it is culling of the herd and it doesn't matter if that is the objective or not

because it is an absolutely inherent outcome, particularly as they step on the gas globally again irrelevant if it is a systemically natural occurrence or a plan willfully acted out in concert because the most likely outcomes are the same whether side effect or goal.

Deal with the cause and effect rather than getting caught up in motivations and worrying about if there is a conspiracy or not or if sometime there is and sometimes there aren't and always to varying degrees.
I'm not saying it doesn't matter but it is not prime. Cause and effect can be identified and addressed in real world application.

[cali]

38. I do deal with the reality and the causes and effect. you're right in that

it's not the most important thing. And I think some people need it to be this tidy organized plot when it's mostly about greed and stupidity.

[cali]

17. you're confused. a definition of the word cabal from wikipedia is not evidence that

there's a cabal of plutocrats committing genocide. It's just not. That the Koch brothers are allied with the National Chamber of commerce isn't evidence of it either. In fact, not a single one of your links is evidence of genocide- which is what you claimed in the other thread and it's what you're claiming here.

You post a bunch of threads that provide not a scintilla of evidence for your claim of genocide. I honestly believe you do think that they're evidence.

And what does this even mean? "This is where logic overrides Occam's Razor". Occam's razor is a rule of logic. You clearly have no idea what it means.

You never answered the question I asked repeatedly in the other thread: What is the motive for genocide? Why do the Koch Brothers and the others in the cabal want to murder millions of people? In the other thread you claimed they were more sophisticated and more effective mass murderers than Hitler.

You say that President Obama said something "very precise" and that he doesn't use hyperbole (he does of course) but you neglect to quote him. You say that he's calling the republicans mass murderers. No, he's not. That's you using him as your puppet.

Where we agree, is that the policies and influences of such people as the Koch Brothers result in great pain and suffering including lots of deaths, but I believe that the deaths are by-products of their greed and stupidity.

It's still a CT and all your word salad and pointless links don't make it less of one.

[Zalatix]

20. Wikipedia's definition of a cabal is correct. You have no counter definition.

That's just one of the glaring problems with your post. You made so many errors that it's not worth bothering because as soon as I point out the mistakes you made, you'll just come up with more.

Claiming that Wikipedia was wrong without presenting an opposing definition was the clincher. You have no argument, except an endless string of denial.

Let's do it this way: I continue on with this discussion by ignoring whatever you come up with, and let's see if your "reasoning" gains any traction at all.

My facts have been documented. You have nothing.

[cali]

23. Yes, it's correct. Never said it wasn't. I am saying that

it is not evidence that the cabal you purport to be carrying out the largest genocide in history, exists.

You have documented nothing.

As far as keeping this up, if I see you making more egregious and absurd claims, I'll probably call you on it.

[Zalatix]

25. The people need to know that they're being squeezed out of existence.

What's happening is social Darwinism, and the history of social Darwinism, which far pre-dates Malthusian theory or Charles Darwin (who did not even coin the term), is one of the ugliest parts of human history.

Peasant massacres have happened all throughout history. This time it's not being done with guns or direct action, but rather negligence.

The 99% isn't being killed because the Plutocrats came to their doors with guns. They're being killed because of a repeated pattern of unsafe workplaces, cuts to the social safety net, and the removal of jobs from this country.

This pattern has repeated itself time and time again in just the last 30 years of American society. At some point it goes past the point of negligence and into malicious intent, just as Poll_Blind said upthread.


Oh, I'm sorry, Cali, did you say something? You can count on me doing this forever.

[cali]

26. first of all, the people aren't interested. they're to busy checking out

the newest cell phone.

Social Dawinism does not pre-date Thomas Malthus or Charles Darwin. Of course Darwin didn't coin the term, but it's dependent on using, in a clumsy and inaccurate way, his theory and his name.

Peasant Massacres have indeed happened throughout history. In fact, humans massacring humans is as old as... humanity. Just out of curiosity, are you claiming that everyone who isn't in the 1% is a peasant? Come to think of it, how are you applying that word?

In any case, the population continues to grow. It's not being decimated. Could the suffering and unnecessary death be prevented by a juster society? Maybe. I don't know. Should we try to create a juster society? Of course. Should we reject the ugly greed and the philosophy of so many of those in the 1%? Yes.

And you can count on me pointing out your endless stream of cliched logical fallacies.

[Zalatix]

33. The problem with the Plutocracy is that they consider the 99% to be useless eaters.

This social Darwinism problem has existed as far back as ancient Rome, or even further. There were people on the Dole in Rome, and the elites back then were wondering why they didn't just cull the herd.

The problem goes well past the issue of a population decline, which is happening not just in Russia but across the industrialized world. There is also the issue of the growing prison population - which means even more people are being marginalized.

It even gets worse. Pundits are saying that an unprecedented great depression will happen in 2030, led by a resource availability crash and ending with a population crash. We're actually being told to our faces that this is coming. People won't listen, of course, and most people will be surprised when it does hit.

When it does, though, the rich won't be suffering. It'll be a bright and sunny day for them while, for everyone else, the cost of living seriously skyrockets, shortages occur, and real chaos erupts.

[cali]

28. the cabal is purposefully causing autism- among other afflictions-

by pushing vaccines.

[Zalatix]

29. Can't find anyone else interested in taking up your cause, eh?

[cali]

31. I don't need anyone. I'm perfectly capable of pointing out your

logical fallacies all by myself.

And alone or not, that doesn't make you the spokesman for DU.

[Zalatix]

34. No, you're not capable of pointing out fallacies, because I've made none.

[ananda]

32. Bilderbergers

for a global economy of slaves and serfs.

[Egalitarian Thug]

35. We rarely agree on anything here, but you're fighting the tide. n/t

[socialist_n_TN]

39. There will always be doubters. What's happening is that there IS ............

a cabal and/or a conspiracy by a certain percentage of the 1% to put a fascist political system in place. Fascist as Mussolini described it BTW, as a merging of corporations and the state. The Koch brothers come to mind most prominently, but I'm sure there are others. These are real live conspiracies where they have a specific agenda that they're using their wealth and influence to put into place.

Now what happens more generally among the capitalist class is that they see the goals of a fascist state (while it's not being called that) and decide to support this WITHOUT ACTUALLY JOINING INTO THE ACTIVE CONSPRACY. IOW, they materially support the conspirators without actually BEING a conspirator. Which of course, gives them plausable deniability when things inevitably fuck up.

However, the result is a large "culling of the herd" of "useless eaters", which the owning class sees as a good thing whether they're active conspiracists or not. If you're one whose culled, it doesn't matter whether you were "culled" by the active conspiracy or the fellow travelers of the active conspiracy. You're still just as dead.

[Zalatix]

40. And the politics of division is another part of how the Plutocrats achieve this

but damn, that's a whole OTHER series of novels to write...