[Because the people are so programmed to see things through the rose-colored lenses supplied by Hollywood, it is presently impossible to make a logical assessment of the American psyche and have it understood by more than a handful. If, by some miracle, it was possible to write a comprehensible assessment, it could not circulate beyond the alternative universe.

For those reasons, it will be up to future historians to interpret why the American people of the current generation just sat on their asses quietly, passively, while their world caved-in all around them. Maybe some of us who still bother to think for ourselves should leave them a few clues to aid them in their investigation of our collective dereliction of duty. Perhaps they will have to look no deeper than our national addiction to electronic entertainment, but in my opinion, the downfall of the American Republic reflects mankind’s genetic flaws, imperfections of the human experiment.

We were genetically programmed to fail, because man, the hybrid animal (neanderthal + homo sapien), has always been at war with himself–and modern man (Americans especially) has done nothing to bring that inner conflict to an end. We have no science that is dedicated to healing the mental turmoil that is “Man.” To the contrary, every available means has been exploited by the American and British governments to exacerbate human conflict, in particular, primitive human reactions have been exploited by amoral political scientists to serve as the basis for an elementary system of behavioral mind-control.

Where man, the psychologically conflicted being, was naturally going to have problems evolving beyond his primitive state, Americans, as life-long subjects in a massive illegal mind-control experiment, have had to overcome a form of evolutionary sabotage coming from a hidden military dictatorship masquerading as a benevolent govt. In my mind, where the Creator might have created us in an imperfect form, American govt. has compounded those imperfections and guaranteed the failure of the political experiment known as the American Republic, in order to multiply profits for a limited few, many of them not even American citizens.

America, the strong “superpower” is fast becoming a pauper state which cannot be saved by any conceivable military action, no matter what the brainwashed “warrior culture” believes to the contrary. Americans will remain on their asses, while the TV tells them that some “surge,” escalation, or other military ejaculation issues forth to cover the crime scenes with their superior warrior seed, thus miraculously saving the town and the blushing leading lady, and the “hero” rules the day. The armchair patriots will wipe a tear from their eyes, knowing that all is swell here in “Pleasantville,” and the bankers will really haved saved our Nation from the greed that enslaves us all, until their TVs are taken or have no power, and their busted armchairs sit propped-up on bricks in the alley or behind the local mall.

Sit on your asses and mock those stupid Europeans, as they pour into the streets and demand that government save their “Socialist” health care system. Suppress your instinct to react to my words by smacking me in the face for a few moments, while your minds have time to reflect on what I have said, and your wiser internal voice will tell you that I am right.]

Italian students demonstrate against new education law

Italian students hold anti-government protests

ROME : Students took to the streets across Italy on Wednesday amid heavy security to protest against a radical reform of the university system planned by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s government.

The rallies came just over a week after protest clashes in the centre of Rome that injured nearly 200 people and saw cars set alight and tear gas fired in some of the most tourist-heavy streets of the Italian capital.

Protest organisers on Wednesday said they would avoid a confrontation with police by steering clear of the “palaces of power” in the city centre.

A student delegation was set to meet with President Giorgio Napolitano later on Wednesday to present a list of complaints over the planned reform.

“I hope that everything takes place without any serious incidents,” Education Minister Mariastella Gelmini told reporters.

Several hundred students clashed with police in Palermo in Sicily, as they tried to enter a local government building. A group of students was later seen throwing stones and bottles against the main police station in the city.

The university reform — which would merge some smaller universities, limit academic hiring and introduce non-academic university deans — is set to be adopted definitively by the Senate, the upper house of parliament, this week.

Napolitano would then have to sign the reform into law.

The student protest has become part of a wider opposition movement against the government’s austerity measures and high rates of youth unemployment.

– AFP /ls

Protesters gather during a rally in Athens

Protests in Athens ahead of 2011 austerity budget vote

ATHENS : Protests and rubbish clogged central Athens on Wednesday as lawmakers prepared to approve an austerity budget under a tough economic overhaul imposed after the debt-hit country’s international bailout.

Unionists, Communists and leftists staged separate demonstrations to reject the economic blueprint containing over 14 billion euros in savings for 2011 in a bid to restore balance to Greece’s woeful public finances.

The streets of the capital were already clogged with traffic since morning from a public transport strike — the fourth this month — against wage cuts and parts of the city are overflowing with garbage after a sanitation walkout.

The 2011 budget includes cuts in the badly mismanaged Greek health sector and public companies, a two-percent increase in the lower sales tax rate from 11 to 13 percent, a tax evasion crackdown, lower defence spending and a nominal pension freeze.

The Socialist government of George Papandreou has a six-seat majority in parliament and is expected to carry the vote to be held after midnight.

But the strain of the fiscal correction after decades of profligacy has exposed deep strains in the ruling Pasok party, with many prominent lawmakers now publicly questioning a strategy that has plunged Greece into recession.

“Is this budget reliable? The answer is no,” said Vasso Papandreou, the head of the Greek parliament’s economic affairs commission, and no relation to Prime Minister George Papandreou.

“It has shortcomings in its aims and execution,” she argued in the chamber.

Investors also doubt that Greece can pull off what it promises, despite having slashed its public deficit by some six percent of output this year.

One of the big rating agencies, Fitch, said on Tuesday it could downgrade its rating on Greece after a similar warning from another agency, Moody’s, last week.

In an interview with Newsweek magazine on Wednesday, the prime minister insisted that “reform was long overdue.”

“Greece is one of the richest countries in the world but was also one of the most mismanaged. The world financial crisis highlighted all our weaknesses.”

With thousands of jobs already lost, wages cut and prices climbing from tax hikes, the country’s influential unions have hit back with seven general strikes this year and waves of street protests.

“Right now people are in limbo,” Papandreou admitted on Wednesday.

“Our drastic measures are still fresh, and people feel the pain. Reforms need time to kick in and show results,” he said.

Fearful of further social unrest in the midst of the festive season, the government has opted to postpone to early next year a controversial reform to liberalise scores of regulated professions.

Officials say that existing entry or pricing restrictions in these sectors have stymied competition for decades but many of the professionals targeted in the reform, including notaries, pharmacists, engineers and architects, counter that the measure will harm quality of service and have pledged to resist it.

The economic overhaul has been mandated by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund which in May extended Greece a 110-billion-euro (145-billion-dollar) loan when the country came close to bankruptcy.

The money is released in instalments conditional on Greece making progress in its reforms.

Under the terms of the rescue, Greece agreed that its public deficit would be reduced to 7.6 percent of Gross Domestic Product in 2011, aiming to eventually reach the EU limit of three percent.

But additional measures became necessary after the 2009 public deficit was revised upwards last month to 15.4 percent of GDP from the previous 13.6 percent by Eurostat, the EU statistics agency.

The resulting effect is that the 2010 shortfall will now be 9.4 percent of output, above the 8.1 percent target.

Accordingly, Athens has had to find extra savings to keep its finances on track to meet the 2011 target.

– AFP /ls