Shake Down of America, the Prozac Nation

[Jim]

by Al Martin

(Feb 24) It's official and it's scientific too. The British Medical Journal has officially declared America the Prozac Nation.

They report an explosive increase in the use of Prozac, more than a 40% increase in the use of Prozac, since the election of George Bush. And they report how wimpy Americans are and how the psyche of Americans has completely changed.

According to the British Medical Journal, we are now a bunch of confused and depressed people, moping around, looking for a reason not to think about what Bushonomics has done to our IRAs and 401ks and to our economy.

This combined with the fear of terrorism has turned the American people into a nation of Prozac users and has sapped America of its traditional will. And they directly blame this on why there is so little opposition to the Bush Cabal. The American people have essentially given up.

The reason we don't see more opposition reported in the news is due to the Bushonian control of the media. What they're talking about is the majority of the American people being confused and depressed and they have given up. They see their IRA and 401k accounts destroyed. They see their retirement dreams destroyed. There have been millions of jobs lost and millions of people having lost their medical coverage. The cost of medical care has increased by one third since the "election" of George Bush, and Bush will, of course do nothing to reduce the cost of medical care insofar as the medical industry, including the pharmaceuticals is the third largest contributor to the Republican Party after oil and defense.

The British Medical Journal also concluded that there is a growing sense of hopelessness in the United States and that's why Prozac usage has increased so much because people feel that there's nothing they can do. They believe that the Bush Cabal is now all-powerful, so they feel helpless and hopeless.

Interestingly enough they tie this directly into the diminishing future expectation component that you see released in the University of Michigan's or the Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index, which shows a record gap between current expectations and future expectations. Traditionally this gap was plus or minus 3 to 5 percentage points. In other words, people expected economic conditions to either improve or decline by 3 to 5-percentage points in the future. But now as they pointed out, since 9-11 in particular, wherein the scourge of Bushonomics has become more evident, the average future expectation is now 10 to 15% lower than current expectations and this is a gap that has never been seen in this series of numbers. And this isn't a new series. This is a series of numbers that was started in the late 1930s, and there has never been such a gap between current and future expectations, which according to them, is directly related to the depression of the people.

Even though there has been a book written called Prozac Nation, this statement by the esteemed and august British Medical Journal is the first authoritative declaration. The United States has now been officially declared a "Prozac Nation" by a medical body, which is considered the most esteemed in the world, even more esteemed than the New England Journal of Medicine. The United States has been duly and officially declared to be a Prozac Nation.

Since the election of George Bush, in the United States the use of Prozac has increased more than 40% and the use of hard liquor has increased by 25%. (You can tell it's pretty bad when you see that even cats and dogs and kids have their own form of Prozac now.) However, in Britain in the last 3 years, the use of Prozac and other anti-depressants has remained relatively flat, while there has been a doubling of the consumption of liquor. That is traditionally the way the British handle it. They are meanwhile in the grips of the Never-Ending Pint Syndrome, pints marching to infinity.

This report was very authoritative, describing how different nations are handling what has happened. The British economy continues to decline. British consumer spending and industrial production are down for the 19th straight month. Germany is teetering close to an out and out economic depression. Then there's the way the German people traditionally deal with it. When the German people become depressed, they simply commit suicide. The suicide rate since the election of George Bush has increased 50%, a larger increase than in any other nation. All the major industrial nations have seen dramatic record increases in suicide rates since the election of George Bush. In Germany it has been higher, but it's blamed on the fact that Germany and Japan, there is a cultural tradition, where they handle depression with suicide. They don't need Prozac.

So now it's not only official but also it's scientific. Bloomberg news had a piece about what's unusual about this economic decline and what separates it from past economic declines -- we began this economic decline with the election of George Bush and his policies have of course made it much worse. It began at a time when the rest of the world was weak and has continued to weaken. Britain, Germany and France have all seen spurts of 3 or 4 months of growth during Bushonomics prevailing in the United States, but that growth would be cut short because all the world's economy is so tied to the United States. What separates this economic decline from others is that this time the United States is dragging down the rest of the world with it. As Bloomberg pointed out, this is a dangerous situation because economic recoveries have usually started in Asia and Europe and then spread to the United States and not the other way around. But now Bushonomics is acting like a giant anchor around the neck of the world's economy - from which there is no recovery.

The shakedown of America by our "allies" continues. And then comes the final straw with Turkey demanding $32 billion from the United States so it would agree to allow its territory to be used in the War Against Iraq. The Bush administration offered $26 billion - take it or leave it. The way it was couched, of course, to make it sound more politically palatable to the American people was $20 billion in loans and $6 billion in direct aid. But of course, what the administration failed to say is that all of the money we have ever "lent" to Turkey in the so-called "loans" (which now exceed $560 billion), the Turks have never paid back a dime of the capital.

As a matter of fact, the United States has consistently and quietly written off Turkish loans in the past - just as they're going to have to write off this $20 billion in "loans" because the Turkish economy is perpetually bankrupt. It has effectively depended on US and European loans almost since the end of the Second World War. Turkey has not had sufficient net gross domestic product to service its debt since after the Second World War. It has been effectively supported by the rest of the world. This harkens back to late in the Eisenhower Regime when they had to cough up $3 billion in so called aid to Turkey (which of course was never paid back) in order to get Turkey's agreement to place our Jupiter class medium range thermo-nuclear missiles in Turkey which Kennedy withdrew as part of the Cuban Missile Crisis Accord. He had to throw Khrushchev a bone. Otherwise Khrushchev could not make the deal. So the deal was that Khrushchev would pull his medium range missiles out of Cuba and the United States in exchange would pull their medium range missiles out of Turkey. Over the course of 3 years this is what happened. We put them in 3 years earlier and took them out 3 years later at the cost of $3 billion to the American taxpayer.

But if you add to that the preponderance of the shakedown from the French, the Germans, the British and the Russians (that we have to guarantee Iraqi foreign debt to those nations) and we have to agree in a post Hussein regime to use American taxpayers' money to rebuild the Iraqi oil infrastructure at a cost of about $3.5 billion of the American taxpayers money. Then we have to agree to subordinate the production until all of the Iraqi foreign debts to our allies (including the $13 billion of war reparations to Kuwait which were awarded Kuwait by the World Court in 1992 of which Iraq has never paid a dime)-all of this money has to come out of Iraqi oil production.

We're essentially mortgaging Iraqi oil production - and that's under the assumption that we can return Iraq to producing 3 million barrels a day. We are essentially subordinating Iraqi oil production for 13 years to pay back all these deals made by our "allies" putting the arm on us in exchange for their support. Furthermore, to sweeten the pot, the "allies" demanded that whatever US installed interim government was put in Iraq and what final government that turned into (which obviously couldn't survive without US support) would guarantee all existing commercial contracts between the government of Iraq and our allies. So we're forcing whatever Iraqi regime comes in next to honor contracts, which it had nothing to do with and will not profit by. All of the remaining $1 trillion/ 20-year deal is all going to come out of US taxpayers' pocket.

Incidentally an Australian research group has estimated that a "short" War Against Iraq is going to cost $1 trillion to the global economy. And that assumes that our allies all back us up 100% -- and make a commitment of a quasi-military presence in Iraq. It also makes an assumption that the allies will stand by the post-Hussein regime agreement they've made with the United States to provide aid to a new Iraqi regime.

The Japanese, the French and the Germans were all part of the $1 trillion Rebuild Afghanistan 20 year program. The US taxpayers are only supposed to come up with about $350 billion or so, but none of the so-called "allies" who have agreed to this deal have come up with a dime -- and they won't. And you know that the Bush Administration will never say anything about it because the deal that got sold to the American people got sold for American political consumption -- as in "don't worry the whole trillion isn't coming out of our pockets; the allies are kicking in." That's how the Afghanistan aid package got sold to Congress-and the American people.

These agreements only exist in George Bush's mouth. Look at what happened during the First Iraqi War when Saudi Arabia said it would defray all US expenses and then when the US submitted a bill for $78 billion to the Saudi government, they never paid a dime. And the Bush Administration, either II, or I never said a word about it. It should piss people off.

Bush consistently defends US military presence in Saudi Arabia and to a lesser degree in Egypt as a "stabilizing force." And he has consistently lied to the American people. Jane's Defense Weekly has asked him this question. It's costing the US taxpayers $7 billion a year to station US troops permanently in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the Arab Emirates and surrounding area ostensibly for the protection of Middle Eastern oil. Bush says, "Oh yes, but the Saudi government pays us the $7 billion every year." They don't. They don't pay a dime. And you can't force that information out of the Treasury Department.

The GAO (General Accounting Office) has tried. And the Bush Administrations I and II simply put a " national security" seal on everything. There has never been so many Treasury financial records sealed under "national security" as there have been during Bush I and Bush II administrations. Everybody laughs about it, because past administrations have sealed CIA, FBI and NSA documents for years. There's nothing new about that, but Bushonian malfeasance takes things to a new height, where it becomes necessary to seal Treasury records, Federal Reserve records, and all sorts of financial records that shouldn't really have to be sealed. And nobody comes forward and asks the question, "Why are Treasury records sealed particularly when it comes to payments from foreign governments who are obligated to make treaty payments?" Because the payments aren't being made.

It's a shakedown. That's all it is. The first Iraqi campaign was a shakedown, and now the American taxpayer (who has still not paid for all the money spent during Iraq I) is going into a $1+ trillion commitment for Iraq II, on top of a 20 year Afghani commitment, which will cost the American people another trillion dollars.

We're all alone. The allies will pay nothing, despite Bushonian lies to the contrary. And we haven't even finished paying for the Bush I "Iraqi Adventure."

This "Iraqi Adventure" ride is rather akin to the Bush Regime taking the taxpayers on a trip to Disney World - at a trillion dollars a ticket.

The way this Bush is going, we've already got Mars mortgaged.

By the time we get him out of office, whoever comes in after him will have to mortgage Pluto to make up for the damage this guy has done. Soon the entire Solar System will be in hock.

Since the accumulated US debt now exceeds the total resources of the entire planet, Bush has to mortgage all the mineral wealth on the Earth's moon and any potential commercial wealth Mars will have in the future. Then by the time he's done, whoever comes after him will have to mortgage Pluto.

You could mortgage all the ice on Pluto, ship it back and sell it to the Arabs on promissory notes. And never get paid for it.

(But if there's a Bush around at the time, he'll certainly hypothecate the worthless Saudi Ice Promissory Notes to some group of hapless banks...)

AL MARTIN is America's foremost expert on corporate and government fraud. A relentless whistleblower, he has written a book called, "The Conspirators: Secrets of an Iran Contra Insider," which chronicles his adventures with the Bush Cabal (National Liberty Press, Order Line: 866-317-1390). This detailed account of government criminal operations, namely State-sanctioned fraud, drug trafficking and illicit weapons sales, is unprecedented in publishing history. Al Martin is also well known for his great charm and profound insights into world events, and he is frequently interviewed on many talk radio shows across the nation. His weekly column "Behind the Scenes in the Beltway" is published regularly online at Al Martin Raw, http://www.almartinraw.com