Memorial Day Thoughts

Stephen Zarlenga

[Reprinted from GroundSwell, May-June 2008]

Memorial day is the most reflective of American Holidays, when we ought to honor and devote our attention to those who've given above and beyond to the advancement of humanity.

How far we have strayed from such an honor system! Look and see who is "honored" in our nation, and for what. Our society is so very sick, that instead of honoring those who contribute to its well being, the diseased mostly promote and emulate those who have unjustly accumulated an obscene share of our nation's wealth and power. There is often a direct relation between how much damage someone does and how much wealth they receive in payment for it! For example in the media: Rush Limbaugh, Shawn Hannity and even characters like ABC's Stephanopoulis and Gibson.

We have no real media in this country. Keith Olberman is a rare exception but remember one third of Americans (the poorest and least educated) don't have cable television.

However the media problem is small change compared to the macro-destroyers operating against America -- the financial sector (and the same is true in other lands). This does not require a conspiracy because in any case it would be the inevitable result of our flawed monetary and banking system. It results from the privatization of control over the nation's money system which has removed it from the checks and balances of our constitutional republic. Allowing it to function on a fractional reserve basis, which gives the banking system a huge accounting privilege. Letting the miscreants keep the loot they have stolen under color of law; so called "laws of economics" which deify the market.

That has fostered the accumulation of unearned wealth to obscene levels that are destructive to democracy, to justice and to humanity. With present day weaponry, it now even risks the annihilation of the species.

Thus the banking/money system promoted real estate speculation and created the real estate bubble, instead of focusing on repairing our vital infrastructure. New Orleans and Minneapolis and the army of unemployed pay the price so far, while the financial establishment gets bailed out. Who pays for the bailouts? One way or another the people of our country. Why? Because they don't understand how our money system operates against the general welfare. Their legislators also either don't understand, or find it convenient to pretend they don't understand.

The media does its best to block understanding, in order to promote the interests of the medias ultimate owners/controllers: the financial sector.

Memorial Day rightfully honors our veterans and our warriors who have and are now paying the ultimate price for the misdirection of our society by corrupt finance. A more meaningful thing would be to take better care of them. To pretend that America does not have the ability and resources to do that is an obscene lie.

Am I, as Director of the AMI overly passionate about this? Perhaps. You see we are involved in this battle on a daily basis. To get an idea how we are in combat against this insane system, please see our website at http://www.monetary.org Attached is a two page summary of the problem and solution: The Need for Monetary Reform. We try to make our materials easy to understand, yet accurate.

And we do this without comfortable funding. The Institute did not begin with an endowment but with a donation of books in 1996. We have survived and will continue to grow and move forward based on much appreciated donations, and the sales of our classic research achievement, The Lost Scence of Money book, and our CD's.