How To Win The War For Your Mind

All battles, all wars, all fistfights and bar brawls, all conflicts in every place and in every time (except those conflicts in which both sides answer to the same puppeteer) begin and end as battles of the mind. No struggle is determined on strength of arms alone.  In fact, the technologically advanced adversary with all his fancy firepower is often more vulnerable than his low-tech counterparts. This fact is, of course, counterintuitive to our Western manner of thinking, which teaches us to believe that the man with the bigger gun (or the bigger predator drone) always wins. Sadly, we have had to suffer through multiple defeats and overdrawn occupations in Asia to learn otherwise. One of the great unspoken truths of our era is the reality that the modernization of warfare has changed little the manner in which wars are won. Since the beginning of history, intelligence, force of will, and guiding principles are the dominant factors in any campaign.

Therefore, it only stands to reason that the most vital battle any of us will ever face is the psychological battle, the battle within; for success in the mind will determine success in all other endeavors.

Unfortunately, very few people ever consider the importance of the mind war, let alone know how to defend themselves against psychological attack. As with any method of self-defense, constant training is required.

For the past century, at least in the United States, a subversive and secret cold war has been waged against the people in the form of psychological subjugation. This cold war is designed to weaken our resolve, our heritage, our self-belief, our confidence and our integrity in preparation for a “hot war” against our time-honored Constitutional rights. The power elite know well that the most effective strategy for victory in any battle is to convince your enemy to surrender before the fight even begins. Today, the American populace is being conditioned to lie down and die a mental death, to give up the inner war, so that when the outer war comes, they will already be defeated.

Corrupt governments rely heavily on what they call “psyops,” which are primarily propaganda initiatives meant to demoralize their target (usually the citizenry). In the case of a despotic regime, psyops involves the insinuation of lies, half-truths, threats and brutality that is choreographed to elicit a very specific reaction. It is used to instigate strong emotional responses en masse that will work in favor of the oligarchy. The following guidelines can shield you from the arrows of deceit, allowing you to maintain control and avoid being unconsciously influenced to labor against your own cause…

Do Not Fear Hypothetical Dangers

Fear is the weapon of choice when it comes to totalitarian proponents. Conquering armies and bureaucracies are notorious for exaggerating their strength and numbers in order to squelch the fighting spirit of those they intend to rule. Genghis Kahn, for instance, used the tactic of exaggerated numbers, along with vicious genocide, to strike terror in regions he had not yet attempted to overtake. Upon his arrival, the Mongol hordes had received such a reputation (some of it fabricated) that many regions surrendered immediately without question.

When becoming an activist against a criminal establishment, it is very common to be the target of fear campaigns. Today, those of us in the liberty movement hear warnings from “random” concerned parties constantly telling us that our efforts are “all for nothing,” that we are “making ourselves targets.” That the globalist system is far too strong and far too advanced to be defeated.  That they have predator drones and NSA databases and soldiers without empathy etc, etc.

Their hope is to make us afraid of hypothetical situations which can neither be confirmed nor denied.  To make us obsess over the “odds” rather than the objective.  In other words, they hope to encourage a state of mass cowardice.  To undo this tactic, you must remain focused on your goal regardless of the possible danger. That is to say, the strength of the enemy, whether real or fantasy, is irrelevant. It is meaningless. Goliath is nothing but an obstacle, and all obstacles can be dealt with. Move forward toward the objective and never stop.

Do Not Be Distracted By Minor Inconveniences And Personal Problems

At the height of communist power in East Germany, the Stasi secret police deployed a tactic which they called “Zersetzung,” which means to “corrode” or “undermine.” The Zersetzung policy involved the use of subtle manipulations of a particular person’s life in order to interfere with his ability to function normally and participate fully in dissenting activities. The Stasi would send agents to a person’s home to rearrange items or fake a break-in. Often, they would attempt to create emotional conflicts between the dissident and his wife, family and friends and to damage business relationships. The purpose was to force the target to divert his attention from his political and social work over to more minor inconveniences.

Personal firestorms, whether engineered by Stasi or by natural conflict, are destructive only when you give them too much credence and attention. Some people become utterly fixated with their own private soap operas, and this weakness is often exploited by government elements.

The truth is, our home lives and the tensions in them are secondary when it comes to defending our principles and our culture against enslavement and oblivion. Woman troubles, family arguments and invasions into our private lives are not important. Only the mission is important; and in the Liberty Movement, our mission is to awaken the public, disrupt the indoctrination of the masses and, if necessary, physically remove the elites from power. Family and friends who get in the way or are manipulated into getting in the way should be ignored.

Do Not Be Seduced By Gifts 

Tyrants love to offer gifts to the populace, especially at the onset of their rise to dominance. It may be the promise of new jobs, better infrastructure, free healthcare, more food, more safety or even free cellphones. They may offer payment for provocateuring or snitching.  The point is to entice citizens with something for nothing, or at least the lie of something for nothing. If a government official (or anyone else for that matter) is pouring gifts into your lap, it is time to become suspicious.

Governments do not “pay” for the gifts you receive. You pay for the gifts you receive either through taxation or inflation. Free goodies should never influence the mind warrior to endear himself to any bureaucratic or corporate entity. Never allow yourself to be bought.  The only treasures worth anything are our individualism and self respect.

Never Trust The Media Machine – Always Verify Information

There is no such thing as “objective journalism” in the mainstream media anymore. What you see and hear is not the truth but a facsimile of the truth, twisted to benefit the establishment alone. Media outlets today do not investigate events. Instead, they obstruct investigation by promoting only one side of every story and attacking anyone who questions their asserted narrative. The “official version” of any news story is almost always a convoluted fabrication that protects the oligarchy from harm.

No one who considers himself an intelligent human being should accept the official narrative at face value. It is important to question always that which we are told and to investigate using independent or original sources. Never allow yourself to be “taught.” Always examine the facts on your own.  Demand that the establishment mouthpieces provide source information, instead of acting as if we should adopt everything they say on blind faith.

Do Not Concern Yourself With Ridicule

Fighting disinformation is vital, but our personal pride is not important. Safeguarding our egos is not important. Trying to please everyone all the time is impossible and also not important. Ridicule is used not only to discredit activists; it is also used to make them question their own resolve. If you cannot be embarrassed or browbeaten, then you cannot be made afraid and you cannot be defeated by mere words.

Require your opponents to answer your legitimate questions.  Move past their distractions and push the issue of tangibility.  Make them produce a legitimate argument.  When they cannot, and continue to revert to Ad Hominem attacks, they expose the frailty of their position, and you have won.

Accept The Risk Before Confronting The Enemy

I am still amazed by those dissenters and freedom fighters who act as though they are surprised when the potential wrath of the system is directed at them. Did they not understand the risk when entering into the battle? Did they really believe it wouldn’t be all that bad?

In any conflict against a larger, ruthless, and immoral opponent, always assume that you will have to go through hell to accomplish anything. Accept that your life will no longer be peaceful or comfortable. Know that you may not survive to see the fruits of your efforts. Realize that you may have to walk through fire and embrace pain. Otherwise, you will remain a pathetic and laughably inadequate soldier in the mind war.

Personal risk is not important.  Only the truth and the future are important.  Being effective means being “on the radar”.  If you are making a difference, and you are a concrete threat, then you should expect to have a target painted on your chest.

Understand Your Own Weaknesses 

Pretending as if you have no weaknesses is the best way to help your enemy. If you are prideful, your overconfidence will be used against you. If you are spiteful, your jealousy will be exploited to distract you. If you are easily angered, your rage will be used to lure you into destroying yourself. Examine yourself as deeply and as thoroughly as you would the enemy. Though it might sound like a cliché, you actually can become far worse an enemy to your own cause than any army your opponent can muster.

Ironically, by identifying our own limitations, we also can become adept at seeing the weaknesses in others.  Unblinded by our own biases, the biases of the opponent become starkly visible.

Do Not Buy Into Petty Authority

Perhaps it is in our tribal nature, but many people seem to suffer from an insatiable desire for hierarchy and leadership — even if that leadership is based on falsehoods. The ultimate protection against corruption is to become one’s own leader, rather than waiting around for a miraculously infallible overseer (or a talented conman) to guide the way for you. Relying on others to choose your path for you opens the door to having your right to choose removed from the picture completely.

Petty authority is authority derived from false pretenses, rather than earned respect and recognition. No man, regardless of title, is above the truth; and he is certainly not more worthwhile than you.  Like a title, a uniform is a symbol of an ideal, but the man inside the uniform may not embrace that ideal.  Do not focus on the uniform.  Focus on the man, and question whether or not he lives up to the uniform.

If anyone wants to determine whether you go left or right, he should be put to the most stringent tests imaginable. He should have to prove that he has your best interests at heart, and that he has the wisdom to handle your future with care.

Acknowledge The Power Of Symbolism And Myth

Oligarchs use theater and pageantry to influence the collective unconscious because the human mind gravitates toward rituals that feed our inherent need for myth and symbol. Psychologist Carl Jung often referred to the inborn symbolic processes of the psyche as “archetypes,” which exist in the art, dreams and spiritualism of every society regardless of time, place, religion or culture. Knowing these universal symbols and how we react to them emotionally allows a person to prevent himself from being conditioned or influenced by them.

Not all fantastic events in history are spontaneous. Some are staged as a means to appeal to a particular side of a nation’s collective psyche. These “false flag” actions very often revolve around a symbol that is culturally valued. The construction or destruction of this symbolic edifice, famous person, social mechanism or loved representation of the future leaves a lasting and deep-rooted impression on thousands, if not millions, of people. They become emotionally invested in the event — frantic, fearful or furious — without having the slightest inkling why. In the end, they can be conned into acting in disastrous ways just to appease the inner imbalance. They can be led to war, to enslavement and to death — all on the promise of preventing a myth from appearing or disappearing.

The secret is to explore our inner life with more vigor than we waste on outer fantasy. By discovering our own internal myth and, thus, our own individuality, we make ourselves impervious to false-flag conditioning. Our emotions remain within our control, our biases become non-existent and our fears become irrelevant. We do not become overly attached to images, to superficial expectations, or to the collective.  The theater of the mind loses its power; and from that point on, we choose our own destinies.

Never Forget Your Individualism

Collectivists consistently promote the idea that human beings are empty vessels; blank slates to be molded by the environment, or mere biological machines with rudimentary animal instincts that we “mistake for a soul”.  As I pointed out above, Carl Jung’s work on inborn psychological archetypes proves that we are in fact NOT empty vessels.  Each of us is born with common qualities, like conscience and insight, as well as distinctive qualities that make us unique.  We are born with dual concepts of good and evil.  Right and wrong.  Because of this duality, we are given the power to choose.  To ignore conscience, or embrace it.

Collectivists pander their blank slate propaganda because they want us to believe that we have no inherent qualities, and therefore, no conscience.  They want us to ignore our intuition and adopt moral relativism.  For if every man is empty, then there is no right or wrong, and nothing the elites do can be qualified as “criminal”.  If every man is convinced that he is purely a product of his environment, then he can also be convinced to turn over his free will to those who appear to have the most control over the environment.  If he believes he is not in possession of individual determination, then he may assume the role of a robot, waiting to be programmed by the outside world.

This is the ultimate collectivist dream:  to become the “great providers and makers” of the masses.  To feed us what they like, clothe us in what they like, teach us what they like, and to tell us what we are to think and when we are to think it.  They wish to see themselves as the painters, and us as the canvas.  Only then, in their minds, will our society reach “perfection”.
If mankind loses track of his individuality and accepts the blank slate ideology, he will surrender the mind war, perhaps without even knowing it.

Mind Over Matter 

Facing down an adversary with firearms or with fists is an easy thing to grasp. Facing down a lie, or an idea meant to destroy one’s mental capacity for resistance, is incredibly complex. When an opponent attempts to play mind games, though, it is a sure sign that he does not have the capacity to thwart you with physical strength alone. The fact that our government and the power structure behind it has so desperately relied on such strategies for so many years shows that they believe they cannot enact centralized authority over our nation and undo our free imperative simply by the momentum of military might.  No gun, no matter how big, will get them what they want. So they continue to play the game until our resolve is broken and our ability to fight diminished.

In order to prevail, we must make ourselves immune to the game. We must walk away, separating ourselves from it completely. We must relinquish all unnecessary fear, doubt, and hatred, and do what we know needs to be done. We must ignore the rhetoric of defeat and nihilism.  We must take that long solemn step beyond the veil of doubt, knowing that all great men before us fought their own battles despite the so called “certainty of death”.

If we cannot take lordship of our own psychological world, we are doomed to failure in every other fight that envelops us. Without impervious will, we cannot overcome, and we cannot find peace.

Source: Brandon Smith | Alt-Market

2013: It’s Going To Be A Rough Year

I candidly confess that I am not very superstitious. I don’t care how many cracks I step on on a sidewalk; I don’t care how many cracked mirrors I look at; I’ve never thrown salt over my shoulder; I’ve never rubbed a red-headed boy’s head for luck; I don’t carry four-leaf clovers or rabbit’s feet in my pocket; and the number 13 doesn’t scare me a bit. All of that notwithstanding, however, I can’t help but believe that 2013 is going to be a rough year.

One thing is certainly clear: the last year that ended in 13 was a horrific year for the people of the United States. In fact, 1913 was one of the worst years of the Twentieth Century. Consider the following:

February 3, 1913

This is the date when the 16th Amendment was ratified, and the direct income tax and IRS were instituted. This was a flagrant repudiation of freedom principles. What began as a temporary measure to support the War of Northern Aggression became a permanent income revenue stream for an unconstitutional–and ever-growing–central government.

April 8, 1913

This is the date when the 17th Amendment was ratified. This amendment overturned the power of the State legislatures to elect their own senators and replaced it with a direct, popular vote. This was another serious blow against State sovereignty. The framers of the Constitution desired that the influence and power in Washington, D.C., be kept as close to the people and states as possible. For example, the number of representatives in the House of Representatives was to be decided by a limited number of voters. In the original Constitution, the ratio of “people of the several States” deciding their House member could not exceed “one for every thirty thousand.” (Article. I. Section. 2. Paragraph. 3.) And when it came to the US Senate, the framers also recognized the authority of each State legislature to select its own senators, thereby keeping power and influence from aggregating in Washington, D.C. The 17th Amendment seriously damaged the influence and power of the states by forcing them to elect their US senators by popular vote. The bigger the State, the less influence the State legislature has in determining its US senator. Senators who answered to State legislators, each answering to a limited number of voters, were much more accountable to the “citizens of the several States” than those who were elected by a large number (many times numbering into the millions) of people. For all intents and purposes (at least in the larger states), US Senators are more like “mini-Presidents” than they are representatives of sovereign states.

December 23, 1913

This is the date when the Federal Reserve Act was passed. This Act placed oversight of America’s financial matters into the hands of a cabal of private international bankers, who have completely destroyed the constitutional principles of sound money and (for the most part) free enterprise. No longer would the marketplace (private consumption, thrift, growth, etc.) be the determinant of the US economy (which is what freedom is all about), but now a private, unaccountable international banking cartel would have total power and authority to micromanage (for their own private, parochial purposes) America’s financial sector. Virtually every recession, depression, and downturn (including the one we are now experiencing) has been the direct result of the Fed’s manipulation (again, for its own purposes and with Washington’s cooperation) of the market.

Already, 2013 is shaping up to rival the monstrous year of 1913. Here are some of the reasons why:

Health Care

The elements of Obamacare will begin to be felt this year in earnest. The American people can expect the cost of everything associated with health care to quadruple or more. Physicians will begin leaving their practices or significantly scaling back their services. Hospitals will start dispensing assembly line-type care. The quality of health care will plummet. But, of course, welfare recipients (including illegal aliens) will see a dramatic increase in benefits.

Taxes

Don’t expect the Republican-led House of Representatives to hold the line on taxes. John Boehner and the RINOs in the GOP will give Obama the vast majority of what he wants on taxes. The result is our taxes are going up. Big time! This also means that the cost of everything else is going up. Real inflation is on its way, folks.

Gun Control

This is the big issue! Barack Obama and his gun-control fanatics in the Democrat Party have already declared war on the Second Amendment. They are going to attempt to outlaw semi-automatic rifles, high capacity magazines in both rifles and handguns, and make the private sale of firearms illegal. It will be the biggest assault on the Second Amendment since 1968–and maybe in US history!

If gun owners, and freedom lovers of all types, expect to pass any freedom on to their posterity, they are going to have to fight, AND FIGHT HARD, to preserve their liberties. The same GOP-led House that is going to cave-in on taxes will also have a propensity to cave-in on more gun control. Only the biggest outcry of opposition that they have ever seen from their constituents will come close to helping them stay the line. Freedomists all over America had better take the gloves off come January and rally support against these assaults against the Second Amendment or our liberties will be gone FOREVER!

In addition, State legislators, governors, etc., must also rise up in massive opposition to this tyrannical assault against the Second Amendment by Washington, D.C. In short, states need to tell Washington to go to hell! That they are not going to comply with Washington’s attempt to outlaw the most fundamental right in American history: the right to keep and bear arms.

Thomas Jefferson correctly stated, “The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.”

George Washington said, “Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the American people’s liberty teeth and keystone under independence… From the hour the Pilgrims landed, to the present day, events, occurrences, and tendencies prove that to ensure peace, security, and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispensable… The very atmosphere of firearms everywhere restrains evil interference. When firearms go, all goes.”

Remember, too, semi-automatic rifles are not “assault rifles,” no matter what media propagandists say. Assault rifles are capable of fully automatic fire. These guns are already illegal without jumping through a myriad bureaucratic hoops in order to obtain a special permit to possess them. That assault rifles are illegal is bad enough. To take away the citizen’s right to bear a semi-automatic rifle is to, in effect, completely disarm him. Such an act must be regarded as an act of war against the life and liberties of the American people!

The semi-automatic rifle is the backbone of freedom; it is the single most significant protection against tyranny and oppression in modern times. Is it mere coincidence that the Bloody Butchers of Beijing are calling for the American citizenry to surrender their semi-automatic rifles? US troops won World War II because of the semi-automatic rifle. Switzerland maintained its peaceful neutrality even when the entire continent was soaked in war because of the semi-automatic rifle. The only reason that would-be tyrants in the US government have been kept at bay is because of an American citizenry fully armed with semi-automatic rifles. Foreign enemy-states such as Communist China are more intimidated by an American nation filled with citizens who bear semi-automatic rifles than they are our nuclear arsenal–and that is a fact!

Furthermore, semi-automatic rifles have been around since before World War II, and they are used by millions of hunters every year. Predator hunters, especially, need a semi-automatic rifle. In 1990, one hundred thousand police officers delivered a report to Congress that only 2-3% of crimes were committed using semi-automatic rifles. In 1993, a Bureau of Justice report noted that, nationwide, “military-type” guns are only used in about 1% of crimes. These statistics would not vary much today.

In fact, a person is much more likely to be killed with a knife than with a gun. According to FBI reports, a person in Chicago (for example) is 67 times more likely to be knifed or beaten to death than killed with a so called “assault weapon,” meaning a military-looking semi-automatic rifle.

To view a fully-documented gun control fact sheet containing these facts and much more, go to:

http://gunowners.org/fs0404.htm

Beyond that, high capacity magazines are essential to self-defense. Bad guys who commit violent crimes are normally “high” on chemicals, drugs, alcohol, etc. Such people are often impervious to pain. Throw in a high level of adrenaline, and many violent attackers cannot be stopped with one or two bullets. Plus, such miscreants often attack like wolves: in packs.

Police Captain Massad Ayoob: “The likelihood of multiple opponents who move fast, often wear body armor, know how to take cover, and tend to ingest chemicals that make them resistant to pain and shock, are all good reasons for carrying guns that throw a whole lot more bullets than six-shooters do.”

Ladies and gentlemen, the semi-automatic rifle is the vanguard of our liberty; it is the surest and most trustworthy means of our self-defense; and it is the primary companion of any man who would both protect and feed his family.

Make no mistake about it: to take away an American’s right to a semi-automatic rifle is to FULLY DISARM HIM. There is no Second Amendment; there is no right to keep and bear arms; there is no citizen militia; there is no liberty without the semi-automatic rifle! This is a line in the sand that is so important that no man or woman who believes in liberty should be willing to comply with any attempt by government to take away his or her semi-automatic rifle. There are some 50-75 million (a very conservative number) owners of semi-automatic rifles all across America. Each of us needs to make up our minds about this RIGHT NOW! What say you?

As with 1913, it looks like 2013 is shaping up to be a rough year. And it has nothing to do with bad luck and everything to do with bad government. But with God’s help, the enemies of freedom will not prevail! With God’s help, you and I will be free to pass down to our children and grandchildren both our freedom and our semi-automatic rifles come 2014 and beyond!

Global Economic Slowdown Signals Sad New Year

The markets, as most people reading this should now well know, no longer reflect in any way the true economic health of our country.  If one was to measure the financial “recovery” of this nation by the strength of global stocks alone, he would probably come to the conclusion that the collapse of 2008 was a mere hiccup in the overall success of the worldwide economic system.  However, electronically traded equities with little more to back their value than scraps of receipt paper and numbers on a screen have no bearing on what is going to happen to you, and to me, over the course of the coming year.  The stock market is a sideshow, a popcorn movie, a façade.  The real drama is going on behind the scenes and revealed in fundamentals that mainstream analysts no longer discuss…

The only advantage of a long drawn disintegration of the overall system is that as the years pass, it becomes possible to discover a pattern through which we can gauge where we really stand today and will stand tomorrow, giving us a chance (a narrow chance) to limit the eventual damage.  Unfortunately, the pattern now in motion suggests that the next year will be exactly what we have been predicting over the past several months:  Dismal.

The MSM refuses to discuss it at great length, but all signs show an epic global slowdown in demand and production, especially in the final quarter of 2012.  This slowdown cannot be denied, nor can it be shrugged off as inconsequential.  This development is exactly as I predicted in January of this year using the Baltic Dry Index as a guide.  During that first quarter, the BDI fell to record lows, indicating an extreme decline in shipping demand around the world, which, in turn, indicated a fall in demand for raw goods, which, in turn, indicated a fall in demand for consumer goods.  Mainstream pundits sought to distract the public from this fact by claiming that the BDI was collapsing due to an “oversupply of ships”, not rescinding demand.  This disinformation was proven incorrect in the beginning of the third quarter of this year, when export nations from China, to Japan, to Germany all began reporting abysmal manufacturing numbers and steep faltering in overseas purchases.

Of course, we all know what happened next:  The markets began to tank when they caught the scent of a slowdown, losing a thousand points within the span of a week.  Not so unpredictably (since I also predicted it at the beginning of the year) the Federal Reserve leapt into action with its announcement of QE3 (QE Infinity).

QE3 has done little to change the problem of falling global demand, but it has certainly defibrillated stocks.  In fact, I think it is safe to say that a majority of QE fiat funds are flowing (directly or indirectly) into the DOW, and not much else.  International trade and consumption is starting to feel the pain, and respective countries are no longer able to hide it.  Keep in mind that this slowdown is occurring right at the height of the Christmas season, when consumption is usually supposed to reignite.

Despite the sugar coated claims of insane Keynesians who only a few years ago were predicting a “resurgence” of American industry and exports due to the Federal Reserve’s ongoing devaluation of the dollar, production in the U.S. has remained pathetically weak, and continues to decline:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/12/business/economy/decline-in-exports-hurts-us-trade-deficit.html

This is of course a direct result of slowing global demand, reducing potential markets all over the world, which is something deflation fear mongers apparently didn’t see coming.  The reality is that demand is faltering EVERYWHERE, not just in the U.S., and this begs a particular question:  In an interdependent economic system driven primarily by consumption, who is going to fill the void when all nations are dry of spending cash?  That is to say, who is going to take up the slack, when obviously no one has the wealth to do so?  Without a cultural cash engine, the globalized framework is destined to fail.

China’s export growth fell far more than expected in November, something which many Chinese economists are attributing to a complete lack of revival in American markets:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/10/us-china-economy-idUSBRE8B80FL20121210

Manufacturing in the UK went into steep decline almost simultaneously, showing that sinking demand is striking both the Pacific and the Atlantic:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-07/u-k-manufacturing-drops-more-than-forecast-on-food-alcohol-1-.html

Germany, the largest economy in the EU and the only country still holding the absurd political entity together, has been shocked to discover that its own Bundesbank is forecasting a contraction in growth to near zero in 2013:

http://www.actionforex.com/analysis/daily-forex-fundamentals/germany%27s-bundesbank-revise-lower-2013-outlook-20121207180090/

Japan’s economy suffered an annualized decline in GDP in November greater than that which occurred during the Fukushima disaster:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-11/japan-s-economy-shrinks-at-fastest-pace-since-earthquake.html

This contraction has recently caused Japan to install a new revamped government during elections this month, which unfortunately will be instituting almost identical policies to the last regime.

Finally, Brazil, a developing export nation with very important significance as a litmus test for world consumption, posted near zero growth in the third quarter of 2012, far below expectations but in line with the bigger picture.  The global financial machine is grinding to a halt right under our very noses…

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/30/us-brazil-economy-gdp-idUSBRE8AT0KM20121130

At the end of 2012, it is undeniable; the system is running out of steam, and not even constant fiat injections by central banks are reversing our current course.

In order to understand what is happening, I want you to imagine a quickly diminishing cycle.  Imagine that in 2008, America was on the edge of a whirlpool, or a spinning vortex, and was suddenly caught in the outermost current.  Today, we have circled the epicenter several times, each rotation becoming smaller and more volatile than the last.  Eventually, the whirlpool will reach an end, and our economy will be sucked into the destructive funnel.  One can see clear evidence of this decline in the Baltic Dry Index:

Notice how each year since 2008 there is a spike in shipping rates indicating a rise in demand for materials at the onset of the Christmas season, which is the natural progression of things.  Yet, also notice that this spike in demand grows smaller with each passing year.  In 2012, the increase has been almost nonexistent, meaning that we are likely very close to going down the drain.

Some pundits may argue that November’s Black Friday sales were tremendous, and this signals a recovery in spending and consumption.  I would point out that such numbers are deceiving.  High sales during the most discounted day of the Christmas buying season is not necessarily a good thing.  What it really reveals is that a majority of shoppers were looking for the lowest prices possible because of a lack of personal savings.  It is a sign of desperation, not revitalization.  Full season numbers have not yet been released, but when they are, I believe we will see a fantastic spike in sales on Black Friday followed by a complete flatline for the rest of the year.  Obviously high consumption has not been sustained, otherwise, worldwide manufacturing and shipping would be in much better shape.

The issue here is one of priorities.  With multiplying distractions going on around the globe, including the fear of recent mass murders at home, will the public be able to keep track of the deadly financial tidal waves just off the coast, or will they even care when distracted by so many sharks in the water?  The next two months will be very revealing.  The so-called “fiscal cliff” is on the way, and the question of whether or not the U.S. government should kick the can down the road or take the sour medicine it needs and move on has arisen once again.  This debate is and always has been an illusion.  Whether we continue to increase government spending, taxation, and inflation, or we cut all spending and shut down the fiat presses, there is still going to be a collapse.

However, the “fiscal cliff” could be very dangerous in an entirely different respect…

The coming collapse will not be due to the indecision or partisan bickering of our politicians.  They are in much closer agreement than the MSM would like to admit.  Instead, the monolithic Catch-22 of our age will be the direct result of the actions of the private Federal Reserve and the peripheral international banking cartel; the engineers who gave birth to the toxic derivatives implosion in the first place.  What I fear most is that the results of the fiscal cliff negotiation along with other triggers around the planet (Syria, Iran, the EU breakdown, etc.) will be used to veil the true weaknesses of our already imploding system, and eventually be exploited as scapegoat events for a disaster that has been in the making for decades, not just a few years.  The omens are not good for 2013, and we can only circle the drain for so long.

Source: Brandon Smith | Alt-Market

Popular Culture Promotes The Police State

The New World Order, designed around a functional police state that is encouraged by continuous popular cultural messages, is apparent to even the most avid establishment apologist. Liberty and freedom, hardly ever mentioned in a positive light by the mass media, is a direct threat to the ruling class. The proliferation of degenerate behavior is lauded so that those who object to such conduct will be demeaned as outcasts of the decadent society. The imposition of a police state is necessary to coerce decent people into forced obedience.

Cultural celebrities and icons come and go, but their art often rings on for good or bad. Political propaganda, embedded in media projects, has transcended subliminal messages and now emphasizes in your face brashness. The breakdown of the traditional value society is so complete, that what was once viewed as insulting political disinformation now passes as a promotion for a loyalist NWO drama.

One such Showtime production is the pathetic Homeland series. Rachel Shabi offers her review assessment in the piece; Does Homeland just wave the American flag?

“Instead, Homeland presents a retuned version of the same unshakeable assurance that, even when things are really complicated, American values are the fairest, the most right and the best. Sure, the series shows US forces doing terrible things: covering up a drone attack that kills civilians in Iraq; trigger-happy in a US mosque, leaving innocents dead there, too. But these are presented as necessary acts in pursuit of far worse crimes. Homeland’s core message is that the US means well, but sometimes has to do bad things; while the Arab and/or Muslim enemy doesn’t mean well and hence does unfathomably bad things. Not much of a progression really, is it?”

When the postmortem of the Patriotic Act era is dissected, the treason of intelligence community operations will be written in their full horror. The police state glorified in Homeland episodes is meant to prepare the public for the next stage of centralized oppression.

While cable or broadcast TV is so removed from Little House on the Prairie, today’s programming is designed to facilitate the psychological acceptance of the transition into a maximum lock down prison society.

In the essay, Mass Mind Control Through Network Television, Alex Ansary warns of the prison industrial complex.

“Turn on your local newscast. You have a few minutes of blue-collar crime, hardly any white collar crime, a few minutes of sports, misc. chit chat, random political jibber-jabber, and a look at the weather that no one is forecasting correctly. Is that what happened in your town? And we’re supposed to own the airwaves! The mainstream media openly supports the interests of the prison industrial complex. The stories focus on minority criminal groups, and exploit the real threat to appear much more dangerous than they are. Think about the growing per capita number of prisoners in the country. Then remember that this is happening at the same time that our prison boom began. The police on our streets have created criminals. The focus is to keep us in a state of fear, that way the elitists can attack any group they want to without fear of consequence. This is why the media is continuing to craft the timeless art of dehumanization.”

The cutting edge of mind control has long included the use of music and lyrics that produce subconscious meanings. Now the fascist messages in street music indoctrinate not only the youth but target to reinforce the despotic aspirations of TSA flunkies.

The article, The Transhumanist and Police State Agenda in Pop Music, provides two examples of globalist messages disguised as performances by Rihanna and Beyonce.

“In hip-hop slang, the term “hard” usually refers to someone who is street-savvy, gritty, rebellious and who is decisively “not down with police”. Hard transposes this term to a military context. Her militaristic video features a gang of uniformed men dancing under the orders of “General Rihanna”. We’ve come a long way from Public Enemy’s Fight the Power…it is now Submit to the Power. All of this military/dictatorial imagery is mixed with Rihanna’s sexy moves and outfits, appealing to the masses’ basest instinct: sex.”

“Beyonce walks on stage with a bunch of men dressed in riot gear… the type of unit a police state would use to repress opposition during popular turmoil. What are they doing in Beyonce’s performance? Contributing to permeate popular culture with police-state imagery.”

In the follow-up account, you can read the description mentioned in this report.

“Two recent examples of the perpetuation of the police state agenda in popular culture are Jay-Z and Kanye West’s music video No Church in the Wild and Adam Lambert’s Never Close our Eyes. In spite of, or perhaps because of, the fact that these songs are two different genres that aim to reach two different markets, they both contribute to the saturation of popular culture with police state imagery. While the authorities are not necessarily portrayed as the “good guys”, they are nevertheless there, as if their presence at any kind of public demonstration is normal.”

Contrast this dark brute force portrayal, with an age of optimism and hope. The peace and love themes in the music and political actions of John Lennon offer a rudimentary alternative to the grisly atrocities that the establishment commits routinely in the name of national security.

 

 

Gangster rap has little in common with All You Need is Love.

Rebellion of youth is natural, but resigned acceptance for submission to the police state is repression. The thirty-two years since his assassination has been one long road into oblivion. Read the “Interview With Investigative Reporter Jack Jones” for insights into the elimination of a dangerous messenger of peace.What a long way away from John Lennon’s lyrics in the song Revolution.

You say you’ll change the constitution

Well, you know

We all want to change your head

You tell me it’s the institution

Well, you know

You’d better free your mind instead

But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao

You ain’t gonna make it with anyone anyhow

Now, transition from the mental liberation of the Beetle era, and go back and examine the overt war crimes of the premier American despot, Abraham Lincoln. Biographer and jingoism jezebel LBJ groupie, Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln served as the backdrop of Steven Spielberg’s production of the recent released Lincoln film.

Alec Ryan writes in the American Renaissance:

“In the modern Hollywood narrative, all American history revolves around the Sacred Black Experience. Lincoln confirms this, bending historical truth to paint the most ruthless, bloody-minded, strong-willed American leader in history as some kind of smug, pre-post-modern storyteller croaking gamely through the difficulties like a paleface Obama sans teleprompter. The few Southerners are snarling, greasy bigots, recoiling before the erect, scowling black Union guards as they slink by during a meeting that led to the Hampton Roads peace conference of February 1865.

The film has throughout a sense of hushed awe, as if kowtowing to its own self-evident righteousness. There is no balance, no complexity, no sense of inner struggle or desperation. No opposing arguments. Its simplistic outlook more closely resembles the popcorn-psychology Avengers or Justice League rather than the serious historical movie that it clearly wishes to be acclaimed.”

The point of evaluating the worship adoration of the destroyer of the Republic with the authoritarianism of the newly re-elected president is to equate the despotism of both of their regimes. The imposition of the police state is part of the master plan to enslave the inherent autonomy of free citizens.

The insidious popular culture strips the institutions of traditional constitutional protections and separations of powers by diminishing the will of sovereign citizens to fight tyranny. The goal of imposing savage dehumanizing ruthlessness seeks to spread the Sons of Anarchy mindset into positions of authority. The merging of law enforcement into the ranks of criminal organizations becomes a common occurrence in the police state environment.

Once upon a time, the peace officer maintained order and balance. Now law enforcement deems that natural rights are arbitrary and conditional on obedience to government dictates.

911 provided the excuse to inflict a “War of Terror” under the disguise of national security. The Homeland program scripts that foster the ends justify the means are repugnant to every liberty advocate. Each day, the evolving police state is becoming more invasive and punitive.

A culture that glorifies jack booted thugs that order innocent citizens around as sinister terrorists destroys the essence of the nation. The New World Order essentially uses depressing indoctrination of the inevitability for submission to their mind game matrix.

The walking dead that accept a dependent society administered by bureaucratic goons, willingly tolerant a fate of bondage. Since texting is all the rage and the written language is sorely deficient, maybe the best way to communicate though the popular culture is to withdraw from the experience as much as possible. Try one on one contact; you might be surprised with the results.

Devvy Kidd Is Wrong!

Sharia Law Is Not The Enemy…

Devvy Kidd is an intelligent, incisive, and talented writer who stays at the vanguard in the fight to preserve freedom.  Her articles are well researched and widely read.  She is a lead writer for the NewsWithViews internet page which is and has been a potent force against the cloud of oppression that threatens our nation.

Nevertheless, I take issue with her recent column entitled “Plotting for America to Be Ruled Under Sharia Law is Sedition”.

The NewsWithViews website is theologically Dispensational.   The intention of its owner and its excellent cadre of writers is honorable.  But, like most of our media, there is a dangerous and detrimental side that concentrates on symptoms, omits essentials, and directs our attention away from real danger. 

Islam and Sharia Law are being skillfully used to create conflict and fear.  Fear and strife weaken the ability of a society to resist the despotic intentions of the elite globalists.  Islam is a heretical religion but like all religions it demands exclusivity making it an enemy to the prevailing United States religion of humanism.  The percentage of Muslims in the United States population is tiny compared to professing Christians but because it is a full orbed religion with a legal system and a vibrant world view it is growing rapidly.

Like Christianity, Islam has different theological factions.  Most Muslims are not militant.  They seek to live under Sharia law because they understand that law forms the religious base of society.  If Sharia law can be demonized and forbidden, the entire religion of Islam will quickly follow.   They have seen this occur in United States of America where human law has been allowed to supersede the overarching law of God making us a nation of flaccid professing Christians who live under and support a government controlled by Satanic forces.

The world is engaged in a religious war.  Christianity has been almost defeated in the United States but Islam is still alive and promoting Sharia law rather than the sinful laws of the elite power structure.  Since religion is changed by changing the law, antinomian Christianity was unable to stem the advance of humanism.  It lost the battle without a fight.  Islam’s Sharia law is a strong impediment to the advance of the pagan world order and every effort is being made to destroy it. 

Devvy has fallen for the propaganda that makes Sharia law an enemy and written an article that creates fear and loathing for a religion that is an ally in the fight against the elite globalist agenda.  Christianity and Islam are god centered religions.  Talmudic Judaism is a humanistic religion.  Like the United States, Zionist, neo-Israel has a pagan government that regularly defies God’s Commandments.

Devvy provides a link to Publius Huldah’s Blog.  Ms. Huldah contends that our rights come from God and it is “the purpose of civil government to secure the Rights GOD gave us.”  She lists a number of rights that are God given and before copiously excoriating Muslims asserts that “God means for us to enjoy life!  Healthy food, wine and strong drink (in moderation); attractive dress for women, the marriage relation between man & woman, prosperity, and liberty!”

This is rubbish!  God is not our bartender, He does not furnish blessing at our demand.  We are His servants not He ours.  Peace, freedom, and prosperity are results of obedience to His Law.   The Bible is not a book about human rights; but a documentation of the results of obedience and disobedience.  It is a book about obligation; our obligation to obey the Creator of the Universe.  In response to our obedience God promises us blessings.  Obligation first; blessing second.

Our adversary is a cunning, elite, nihilistic, cabal that is using deception, torture, murder, theft, and mass destruction to gain control of the entire planet.  They have no allegiance to an overarching morality; where their power reins, their word is law.  Their behavior provides an excellent example of human nature in its unrestrained form.  It is not new but another in the thousands of replays that history records.

Attempts to resurrect the United States Constitution are passé.  In 2002, powerful congressman Henry Hyde responded to Ron Paul with this statement:  ”There are things in the Constitution that have been overtaken by events, by time. Declaration of war is one of them…. Inappropriate, anachronistic, it isn’t done anymore.”  Unfortunately, congress began the process and President Obama has finished it.  The civil liberties outlined in the Bill of Rights have been superseded by laws and Executive orders that expose most of our population to false arrest, torture, and extraordinary rendition.

Heretical Dispensational theology is the platform for the NewsWithViews Website and their  Christian writers often produce an aberrant description of the Will of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. NWVs elevates Talmudic Judaism and the neo-Pharisees from enemies of the Faith that Jesus railed against to leaders that are revered and preserved.  It distorts the Christian religion willed to us by the Reformers and by denying the validity of the law destroys the ability of Christianity to impact the social order.

The Talmud is an historic compilation of the thoughts of Rabbi’s; it is humanistic and often conniving.  Zionist Jews place the Talmud in a position similar to that of Mary in the Catholic religion but instead of being the Mother of God the Talmud is the father of the devil.  It puts the opinions of the Rabbis above the Word of God.  It affirms the superiority of the Jewish race.  It condones sinful behavior, allows God’s Law to be broken, and builds the ego of those who revere it.  In “Judaism’s Strange God’s” Michael Hoffman writes “The Talmud is such a heap of rubbish, and Judaism is so harmful to Judaic people, that it is difficult to find any good whatsoever in it.”  He goes on to describe the reverent regard given to Talmudic scholars by the Orthodox Jewish community.

Paul Craig Robert’s recent column contained a 2001 Pakistani interview with Osama bin Laden Bin Laden denied having anything to do with the 9/11 attack. He said, “I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States. As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. I had no knowledge of these attacks, nor do I consider the killing of innocent women, children, and other humans as an appreciable act. Islam strictly forbids causing harm to innocent women, children, and other people.”  This was a Pakistani interview.  Bin Laden was speaking to fellow Muslims.   We can decide not to believe him but we know our media lies to us and there is a good chance Osama is truthful.  His profession of honesty is far and away better than the rampant prevarication in our society!

The source material for Devvy’s article could have come directly from the propaganda machine of Judaism’s Zionist faction.  The same humanistic Zionists that have debased our morals with filthy movies, destroyed our culture with multi-culturalism, banished Christianity with the ACLU, attacked patriots with the Southern Poverty Law Center, fed us distorted and propagandized news through ownership of television stations, radio stations, newspapers, and book publishers;  the same group that surrounds and controls our government leaders and was the source for the warmongering Project for the New America Century (PNAC).  These are rabid humanists who seek to use our nation to invade Iran and stamp out the Muslim religion.  

It is not a Godly group, not a group that might accept Jesus as the propitiation for their sin.  Not a group that God would bless.  These are Christ haters; men and women who would crucify Jesus again today.  Their prayers cannot be heard by the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  His ears are only attuned to the Name of His Son.  He does not hear prayers in the name of another.

No, my Christian friend, Sharia law is not the enemy.  Islam is an ally against humanistic world government.  Talmudic Jews are prominent in the elite cabal that seeks control of the world. Dispensational support for humanistic Judaism is Satanic.

There are few, if any, Christian heads-of-state in today’s world.  I was surprised to read of one such leader and of his eloquent prayer of repentance.  This is the prayer of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni on the fiftieth anniversary of their independence from British rule:

“Father God in heaven, today we stand here as Ugandans, to thank you for Uganda. We are proud that we are Ugandans and Africans. We thank you for all your goodness to us.”

“I stand here today to close the evil past and especially in the last 50 years of our national leadership history and at the threshold of a new dispensation in the life of this nation. I stand here on my own behalf and on behalf of my predecessors to repent. We ask for your forgiveness.”

“We confess these sins, which have greatly hampered our national cohesion and delayed our political, social and economic transformation.”

“We confess sins of idolatry and witchcraft which are rampant in our land. We confess sins of shedding innocent blood, sins of political hypocrisy, dishonesty, intrigue and betrayal.”

“Forgive us of sins of pride, tribalism and sectarianism; sins of laziness, indifference and irresponsibility; sins of corruption and bribery that have eroded our national resources; sins of sexual immorality, drunkenness and debauchery; sins of unforgiveness, bitterness, hatred and revenge; sins of injustice, oppression and exploitation; sins of rebellion, insubordination, strife and conflict.”

“These sins and many others have characterised our past leadership, especially the last 50 years of our history. Lord forgive us and give us a new beginning. Give us a heart to love you, to fear you and to seek you. Take away from us all the above sins.”

“We pray for national unity. Unite us as Ugandans and eliminate all forms of conflict, sectarianism and tribalism. Help us to see that we are all your children, children of the same Father. Help us to love and respect one another and to appreciate unity in diversity.”

“We pray for prosperity and transformation. Deliver us from ignorance, poverty and disease. As leaders, give us wisdom to help lead our people into political, social and economic transformation.”

“We want to dedicate this nation to you so that you will be our God and guide. We want Uganda to be known as a nation that fears God and as a nation whose foundations are firmly rooted in righteousness and justice to fulfill what the Bible says in Psalm 33:12: Blessed is the nation, whose God is the Lord. A people you have chosen as your own.”

“I renounce all the evil foundations and covenants that were laid in idolatry and witchcraft. I renounce all the satanic influence on this nation. And I hereby covenant Uganda to you, to walk in your ways and experience all your blessings forever.”

“I pray for all these in the name of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

Are you listening America?

Elite Intrigues And Military Purges: It’s Not About Sex, Stupid!

The headline stories claim that CIA Director General David Petraeus resigned as head of the CIA because of an adulterous relation with his young biographer and that General John Allen, Supreme Commander of US troops in Afghanistan, was under investigation and his promotion to top commander of US troops in Europe was on hold, because, we are told, of his ‘inappropriate’ comments in the exchange of e-mails with a civilian female friend.  We are told that a ‘hard-charging’ local FBI agent, Frederick Humphries, Jr., had uncovered amorous e-mails sent by General Petraeus to his girlfriend-biographer in the course of investigating a complaint of ‘cyber-stalking’.  Out of concern that the General’s ‘adulterous behavior’ posed a risk to US national security, Florida-based FBI Agent Humphries handed the evidence over to one of Washington, DC’s most powerful Republican, Congressman Eric Cantor, who in turn passed them on to the Director of the FBI… leading to Petraeus resignation.

In other words, we are asked to believe that a single, low-ranking, zealous FBI agent has toppled the careers of two top US Generals: one in charge of the principle global intelligence agency, the CIA, and the other in command of the US and allied combat forces in the principle theater of military engagement – on the basis of infidelity and flirtatious banter!

Nothing could be more far-fetched simply on prima facie evidence.

In the sphere of tight hierarchical organizations, like the military or the CIA, where the activity and behavior of subordinate functionaries is centrally directed and any investigation is subject to authorization by senior officials (most especially regarding prying into the private correspondences of the heads of the CIA and of strategic military operations), the idea that a lone agent might operate free-lance is preposterous.  A ‘cowboy’ agent could not simply initiate investigation into such ‘sensitive’ targets as the head of the CIA and a General in an active combat zone without the highest level authorization or a network of political operatives with a much bigger agenda.   This has much deeper political implications than uncovering a banal sexual affair between two consenting security-cleared adults despite the agent’s claim that fornication constitutes a threat to the United States .

Clearly we are in deep waters here:  This involves political intrigue at the highest level and has profound national security implications, involving the directorship of the CIA and clandestine operations, intelligence reports, multi-billion dollar expenditures and US efforts to stabilize client regimes and destabilize target regimes.  CIA intelligence reports identifying allies and enemies are critical to shaping global US foreign policy.  Any shift at the top of the US empire’s operational command can and does have strategic importance.

The ‘outing’ of General Allen, the military commander in charge of Afghanistan, the US main zone of military operations occurs at a crucial time, with the scheduled forced withdrawal of US combat troops and when the Afghan ‘sepoys’, the soldiers and officers of the puppet Karzai regime, are showing major signs of disaffection, is clearly a political move of the highest order.

What are the political issues behind the beheading of these two generals?  Who benefits and who loses?

At the global level, both Generals have been unflinching supporters of the US Empire, most especially the military-driven components of empire building.  Both continue to carry out and support the serial wars launched by Presidents Bush and Obama against Afghanistan and Iraq , as well as, the numerous proxy wars against Libya , Syria , Yemen , Somalia , etc.  But both Generals were known to have publicly taken positions unpopular with certain key factions of the US power elite.

CIA Director, General Petraeus has been a major supporter of the proxy wars in Libya and Syria .  In those efforts he has promoted a policy of collaboration with rightwing Islamist regimes and Islamist opposition movements, including training and arming Islamist fundamentalists in order to topple targeted, mostly secular, regimes in the Middle East .  In pursuit of this policy – Petraeus has had the backing of nearly the entire US political spectrum.  However, Petraeus was well aware that this ‘grand alliance’ between the US and the rightwing Islamist regimes and movements to secure imperial hegemony, would require re-calibrating US relations with Israel .  Petraeus viewed Netanyahu’s proposed war with Iran, his bloody land grabs in the Occupied Territories of Palestine and the bombing, dispossession and assassination of scores of Palestinians each month, were a liability as Washington sought support from the Islamist regimes in Egypt, Tunisia, Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Gulf States, Iraq and Yemen.

Petraeus implied this in public statements and behind closed doors he advocated the withdrawal of US support for Israel ’s violent settler expansion into Palestine , even urging the Obama regime to pressure Netanyahu to reach some settlement with the pliable US client Abbas leadership.  Above all, Petraeus backed the violent jihadists in Libya and Syria while opposing an Israel-initiated war against Iran, which he implied, would polarize the entire Moslem world against the Washington-Tel Aviv alliance and ‘provoke the US-proxy supplied Islamist fundamentalists to turn their arms against their CIA patrons.  The imperial policy, according to General Petraeus world view, was in conflict with Israel ’s strategy of fomenting hostility among Islamist regimes and movements against the US and, especially, the Jewish state’s promotion of regional conflicts in order to mask and intensify its ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.  Central to Israeli strategy and what posed the most immediate threat to the implementation of a Petraeus’ doctrine was the influence of the Zionist power configuration (ZPC) in and out of the US government.

As soon as General Petraeus’ report naming Israel as a ‘strategic liability’ became known, the ZPC sprang into action and forced Petraeus to retract his statements – at least publicly.  But once, he became head of the CIA, Petraeus continued the policy of working with rightwing Islamist regimes and arming and providing intelligence to jihadi fundamentalists in order to topple independent secular regimes, first in Libya, then on to Syria.  This policy was placed under the spotlight in Benghazi with the killing of the US ambassador to Libya and several CIA/Special Forces operatives by CIA-backed terrorists leading to a domestic political crisis, as key Republican Congress people sought to exploit the Obama administration’s diplomatic failure.  They especially targeted the US Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, whose maladroit efforts to obscure the real source of the attacks in Benghazi , have undermined her nomination to replace Hilary Clinton as Secretary of State.

General Petraeus, faced with mounting pressure from all sides: from the ZPC over his criticism of Israel and overtures to Islamist regimes, from the Republicans over the Benghazi debacle and from the FBI, over the personal investigation into his girlfriend and hyped up media smear, gave in.  He ‘fessed up’ to a ‘sexual affair’, saluted and resigned.  In so doing, he ‘sacrificed’ himself in order to ‘save the CIA’ and his strategy of long-term alliance-building with ‘moderate’ Islamist regimes while forming short-term tactical alliances with the jihadists to overthrow secular Arab regimes.

The key political operative behind the high-level FBI operation against Petraeus has been House Majority leader Eric Cantor, who cynically claims that the General’s romantic epistles represent a national security threat.  We are told that Congressman Cantor gravely passed the e-mails and reports he had received from the ‘Lone Ranger’ FBI agent Humphries to FBI Director Mueller ordering Mueller to act on the investigation or else face his own Congressional inquiry.

Washington-based Representative Cantor is a zealous lifetime Israel-firster and has been hostile to the Petraeus report and the General’s assessment of the Middle East .  Florida-based, Agent Humphries was not just any old conscientious gum-shoe:  He was a notorious Islamaphobe engaged in finding terrorists under every bed.  His claim to fame (or infamy) was that he had arrested two Muslims, one of whom, he claimed, was preparing to bomb the Los Angeles airport while the other allegedly planned a separate bombing.  In a judicial twist, unusual in this era of FBI sting operations, both men were acquitted of the plots for lack of evidence, although one was convicted for publishing an account of how to detonate a bomb with a child’s toy!  Agent Humphries was transferred from Washington State to Tampa , Florida – home of the US military’s Central Command (CENTCOM).

Despite their clear differences in station and location, there are ideological affinities between House Majority Whip Cantor and Agent Humphries – and possibly a common dislike of General Petraeus.  Concerns over his Islamophobic and ideological zealotry may explain why the FBI quickly yanked Agent Humphries out from his mission of ‘obsessive’ prying into CIA Director Petraeus and General Allan’s e-mails.  Undeterred by orders from his superiors in the FBI, Agent Humphries went directly to fellow zealot Congressman Cantor.

Who would have benefited from Petraeus ouster?  One of the top three candidates to replace him as head of the CIA is Jane Harmon, former California Congresswomen and Zionist uber-zealot.  In another twist of justice, in 2005 the Congresswoman had been captured on tape by the National Security Agency telling Israeli Embassy personnel that she would use her influence to aid two AIPAC officials who had confessed to handing classified US documents to the Israeli Mossad, if the AIPAC could round up enough Congressional votes to make her Chairwoman of the US House Committee on Intelligence, an act bordering on treason, for which she was never held to account.  If she were to take his position, the ousting of CIA Director Petraeus could represent to the greatest ‘constitutional coup’ in US history: the appointment of a foreign agent to control the world’s biggest, deadliest and richest spy agency.  Who would benefit from the fall of Petraeus? – first and foremost – the State of Israel.

The innuendos, smears and leaked investigation into the private e-mails of General Allen revolve around his raising questions over the US policy of prolonged military presence in Afghanistan .  From his own practical experience General Allen has recognized that the puppet Afghan army is unreliable: hundreds of US and other NATO troops have been killed or wounded by their Afghan counterparts, from lowest foot soldiers to the highest Afghan security officials, ‘native’ troops and officers that the US had supposedly trained for a much ballyhooed ‘transfer of command’ in 2014.  General Allen’s change of heart over the Afghan occupation was in response to the growing influence of the Taliban and other Islamist resistance supporters who had infiltrated the Afghan armed forces and now had near total control of the countryside and urban districts right up to the US and NATO bases.  Allen did not believe that a ‘residual force’ of US military trainers could survive, once the bulk of US troops pulled out.  In a word, he favored, after over a decade of a losing war, a policy of cutting the US ’ losses, declaring ‘victory’ and leaving to regroup on more favorable terrain.

Civilian militarists and neo-conservatives in the Executive and Congress refuse to acknowledge their shameful defeat with a full US retreat and a likely surrender to a Taliban regime.  On the other hand, they cannot openly reject the painfully realistic assessment of General Allen, and they certainly cannot dismiss the experience of the supreme commander of US ground forces in Afghanistan .

When, in this charged political context, the rabidly Islamaphobic FBI agent Humphries ‘stumbled upon’ the affectionate personal correspondences between General Allen and ‘socialite’ femme fatale Jill Kelly, the Neocons and civilian militarists whipped up a smear campaign through the yellow journalists at the Washington Post, New York Times and Wall Street Journal implying another ‘sex’ scandal – this time involving General Allen. The neo-con– militarist-mass media clamor forced the spineless President Obama and the military high command to announce an investigation of General Allen and postpone Congressional hearings on his appointment to head the US forces in Europe .  While the General quietly retains his supreme command of US forces in Afghanistan , he has become a defeated and disgraced officer and his expertise and professional views regarding the future of US operations in Afghanistan will no longer be taken seriously.

Key Unanswered Questions Surrounding Elite Intrigues and Military Purges

Given that the public version of a lone-wolf, low ranking, zealously Islamophobic and incompetent FBI agent who just happened to ‘discover’ a sex scandal leading to the discrediting or resignation of two of the US highest military and intelligence officials is absurd to any thinking American, several key political questions with profound implications for the US political system need to be addressed.  These include:

1.       What political officials, if any, authorized the FBI, a domestic security agency to investigate and force the resignation of the Director of the CIA?

2.       Have the current police state structures, with their procedures for widespread and arbitrary spying led to our spy agencies spying on each other in order to purge each other’s top personnel?  Is this like the sow devouring her own offspring?

3.      What were the real priorities of the political power-brokers who protected the insubordinate FBI agent Humphries after he defied top FBI officials’ orders to stop meddling in the investigation of the CIA Director?

4.      What were FBI Agent Humphries ties, if any, to the neo-con, Zionist or Islamophobic politicians and other intelligence operatives, including the Israeli Mossad?

5.      Despite Obama’s effusive praise of his brilliant ‘warrior-scholar’ General Petraeus in the past, why did he immediately ‘accept’ (aka ‘force’) the CIA Director’s resignation after the revelation of something as banal in civilian life as adultery?  What are the deeper political issues that led to the pre-emptive purge?

6.      Why are critical political issues and policy disputes resolved under the guise of blackmail, smears and character assassination, rather than through open debates and discussions, especially on matters pertaining to the nation’s choice of strategic and tactical ‘allies’ and the conduct of overseas wars?

7.      Has the purge and public humiliation of top US military officers become an acceptable form of “punishment by example”, a signal from civilian militarists that when it comes to dealing with politics toward the Middle East, the role of the military is not to question but to follow their (and Israel’s) directives?

8.      How could a proven collaborator with the Israeli-Mossad and Zionist zealot like Jane Harmon emerge as a ‘leading candidate’ to replace General Petraeus, as Director of the CIA, within days of his resignation?  What are the political links, past and present between Congressman Eric Cantor, (the fanatical leader of the pro-Israel power bloc in the US Congress, who handed Agent Humphries’ unauthorized files on Petraeus over to the FBI Director Muellar) and Zionist power broker Jane Harmon, a prominent candidate to replace Petraeus?

9.       How will the ouster of Director Petraeus and Jane Harman’s possible appointment to head the CIA deepen Israeli influence and control of US Middle East policy and the US overtures to Islamist countries?

10.  How will the humiliation of General Allen affect the US ‘withdrawal’ from the disaster in Afghanistan ?

Conclusion

The purge of top-level generals and officials from powerful US foreign policy and military posts reflects a further decay of our constitutional rights and residual democratic procedures: it is powerful proof of the inability of leadership at the highest level to resolve internecine conflicts without drawing out the ‘long knives’.  The advance of the police state, where spy agencies have vastly expanded their political power over the citizens, has now evolved into the policing and purging of each other’s leadership:  the FBI, CIA , Homeland Security, the NSA and the military all reach out and build alliances with the mass media, civilian executive and congressional officials as well as powerful foreign interest ‘lobbies’ to gain power and leverage in pursuit of their own visions of empire building.

The purge of General Petraeus and humiliation of General Allen is a victory for the civilian militarists who are unconditional supporters of Israel and therefore oppose any opening to ‘moderate’ Islamist regimes. They want a long-term and expanded US military presence in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

The real precipitating factor for this ugly ‘fight at the top’ is the crumbling of the US empire and how to deal with its new challenges.  Signs of decay are everywhere:  Military immorality is rampant; the be-medaled generals sodomize their subordinates and amass wealth via pillage of the public treasury and military contracts; politicians are bought and sold by millionaire financial donors, including agents of foreign powers, and foreign interests determine critical US foreign policy.

The disrepute of the US Congress is almost universal – over 87% of US citizen condemn ‘the House and Senate’ as harmful to public welfare, servants of their own self-enrichment and slaves of corruption.  The economic elites are repeatedly involved in massive swindles of retail investors, mortgage holders and each other.  Multi-national corporations and the fabulously wealthy engage in capital flight, fattening their overseas accounts.  The Executive himself (the ever-smiling President Obama) sends clandestine death squads and mercenary-terrorists to assassinate adversaries in an effort to compensate for his incapacity to defend the empire with diplomacy or traditional military ground forces or to prop-up new client-states.  Cronyism is rife: there is a revolving door between Wall Street and US Treasury and Pentagon officials.  Public apathy and cynicism is rife; nearly 50% of the electorate doesn’t even vote in Presidential elections and, among those who do vote, over 80% don’t expect their elected officials to honor  their promises.

Aggressive civilian militarists have gained control of key posts and are increasingly free of any constitutional constraints.  Meanwhile the costs of military failures and burgeoning spy, security and military budgets soar while the fiscal and trade deficit grows.  Faction fights among rival imperial cliques intensify; purges, blackmail, sex scandals and immorality in high places have become the norm.  Democratic discourses are hollowed out:  democratic state ideology has lost credibility.  No sensible American believes in it anymore.

Is there a broom large enough to clean this filthy Augean stable?  Will a ‘collective Hercules’ emerge from all this intrigue and corruption with the strength of character and commitment to lead the revolutionary charge?  Surely the sell-out and crude humiliation of American military officials on behalf of the ‘chicken-hawk’ civilian militarists and their foreign interests should make many an officer re-think his own career, loyalty and commitment to the Constitution.

Source: Prof. James Petras | GlobalResearch.ca

Ron Paul’s Farewell To Congress

This may well be the last time I speak on the House Floor. At the end of the year I’ll leave Congress after 23 years in office over a 36-year period. My goals in 1976 were the same as they are today: promote peace and prosperity by a strict adherence to the principles of individual liberty.

It was my opinion, that the course the U.S. embarked on in the latter part of the 20th Century would bring us a major financial crisis and engulf us in a foreign policy that would overextend us and undermine our national security.

To achieve the goals I sought, government would have had to shrink in size and scope, reduce spending, change the monetary system, and reject the unsustainable costs of policing the world and expanding the American Empire.

The problems seemed to be overwhelming and impossible to solve, yet from my view point, just following the constraints placed on the federal government by the Constitution would have been a good place to start.

How Much Did I Accomplish?

In many ways, according to conventional wisdom, my off-and-on career in Congress, from 1976 to 2012, accomplished very little. No named legislation, no named federal buildings or highways – thank goodness. In spite of my efforts, the government has grown exponentially, taxes remain excessive, and the prolific increase of incomprehensible regulations continues. Wars are constant and pursued without Congressional declaration, deficits rise to the sky, poverty is rampant and dependency on the federal government is now worse than any time in our history.

All this with minimal concerns for the deficits and unfunded liabilities that common sense tells us cannot go on much longer. A grand, but never mentioned, bipartisan agreement allows for the well-kept secret that keeps the spending going. One side doesn’t give up one penny on military spending, the other side doesn’t give up one penny on welfare spending, while both sides support the bailouts and subsidies for the banking and corporate elite. And the spending continues as the economy weakens and the downward spiral continues. As the government continues fiddling around, our liberties and our wealth burn in the flames of a foreign policy that makes us less safe.

The major stumbling block to real change in Washington is the total resistance to admitting that the country is broke. This has made compromising, just to agree to increase spending, inevitable since neither side has any intention of cutting spending.

The country and the Congress will remain divisive since there’s no “loot left to divvy up.”

Without this recognition the spenders in Washington will continue the march toward a fiscal cliff much bigger than the one anticipated this coming January.

I have thought a lot about why those of us who believe in liberty, as a solution, have done so poorly in convincing others of its benefits. If liberty is what we claim it is- the principle that protects all personal, social and economic decisions necessary for maximum prosperity and the best chance for peace- it should be an easy sell. Yet, history has shown that the masses have been quite receptive to the promises of authoritarians which are rarely if ever fulfilled.

Authoritarianism vs. Liberty

If authoritarianism leads to poverty and war and less freedom for all individuals and is controlled by rich special interests, the people should be begging for liberty. There certainly was a strong enough sentiment for more freedom at the time of our founding that motivated those who were willing to fight in the revolution against the powerful British government.

During my time in Congress the appetite for liberty has been quite weak; the understanding of its significance negligible. Yet the good news is that compared to 1976 when I first came to Congress, the desire for more freedom and less government in 2012 is much greater and growing, especially in grassroots America. Tens of thousands of teenagers and college age students are, with great enthusiasm, welcoming the message of liberty.

I have a few thoughts as to why the people of a country like ours, once the freest and most prosperous, allowed the conditions to deteriorate to the degree that they have.

Freedom, private property, and enforceable voluntary contracts, generate wealth. In our early history we were very much aware of this. But in the early part of the 20th century our politicians promoted the notion that the tax and monetary systems had to change if we were to involve ourselves in excessive domestic and military spending. That is why Congress gave us the Federal Reserve and the income tax. The majority of Americans and many government officials agreed that sacrificing some liberty was necessary to carry out what some claimed to be “progressive” ideas. Pure democracy became acceptable.

They failed to recognized that what they were doing was exactly opposite of what the colonists were seeking when they broke away from the British.

Some complain that my arguments makes no sense, since great wealth and the standard of living improved for many Americans over the last 100 years, even with these new policies.

But the damage to the market economy, and the currency, has been insidious and steady. It took a long time to consume our wealth, destroy the currency and undermine productivity and get our financial obligations to a point of no return. Confidence sometimes lasts longer than deserved. Most of our wealth today depends on debt.

The wealth that we enjoyed and seemed to be endless, allowed concern for the principle of a free society to be neglected. As long as most people believed the material abundance would last forever, worrying about protecting a competitive productive economy and individual liberty seemed unnecessary.

The Age of Redistribution

This neglect ushered in an age of redistribution of wealth by government kowtowing to any and all special interests, except for those who just wanted to left alone. That is why today money in politics far surpasses money currently going into research and development and productive entrepreneurial efforts.

The material benefits became more important than the understanding and promoting the principles of liberty and a free market. It is good that material abundance is a result of liberty but if materialism is all that we care about, problems are guaranteed.

The crisis arrived because the illusion that wealth and prosperity would last forever has ended. Since it was based on debt and a pretense that debt can be papered over by an out-of-control fiat monetary system, it was doomed to fail. We have ended up with a system that doesn’t produce enough even to finance the debt and no fundamental understanding of why a free society is crucial to reversing these trends.

If this is not recognized, the recovery will linger for a long time. Bigger government, more spending, more debt, more poverty for the middle class, and a more intense scramble by the elite special interests will continue.

We Need an Intellectual Awakening

Without an intellectual awakening, the turning point will be driven by economic law. A dollar crisis will bring the current out-of-control system to its knees.

If it’s not accepted that big government, fiat money, ignoring liberty, central economic planning, welfarism, and warfarism caused our crisis we can expect a continuous and dangerous march toward corporatism and even fascism with even more loss of our liberties. Prosperity for a large middle class though will become an abstract dream.

This continuous move is no different than what we have seen in how our financial crisis of 2008 was handled. Congress first directed, with bipartisan support, bailouts for the wealthy. Then it was the Federal Reserve with its endless quantitative easing. If at first it doesn’t succeed try again; QE1, QE2, and QE3 and with no results we try QE indefinitely – that is until it too fails. There’s a cost to all of this and let me assure you delaying the payment is no longer an option. The rules of the market will extract its pound of flesh and it won’t be pretty.

The current crisis elicits a lot of pessimism. And the pessimism adds to less confidence in the future. The two feed on themselves, making our situation worse.

If the underlying cause of the crisis is not understood we cannot solve our problems. The issues of warfare, welfare, deficits, inflationism, corporatism, bailouts and authoritarianism cannot be ignored. By only expanding these policies we cannot expect good results.

Everyone claims support for freedom. But too often it’s for one’s own freedom and not for others. Too many believe that there must be limits on freedom. They argue that freedom must be directed and managed to achieve fairness and equality thus making it acceptable to curtail, through force, certain liberties.

Some decide what and whose freedoms are to be limited. These are the politicians whose goal in life is power. Their success depends on gaining support from special interests.

No More ‘isms’

The great news is the answer is not to be found in more “isms.” The answers are to be found in more liberty which cost so much less. Under these circumstances spending goes down, wealth production goes up, and the quality of life improves.

Just this recognition – especially if we move in this direction – increases optimism which in itself is beneficial. The follow through with sound policies are required which must be understood and supported by the people.

But there is good evidence that the generation coming of age at the present time is supportive of moving in the direction of more liberty and self-reliance. The more this change in direction and the solutions become known, the quicker will be the return of optimism.

Our job, for those of us who believe that a different system than the one that we have had for the last 100 years, has driven us to this unsustainable crisis, is to be more convincing that there is a wonderful, uncomplicated, and moral system that provides the answers. We had a taste of it in our early history. We need not give up on the notion of advancing this cause.

It worked, but we allowed our leaders to concentrate on the material abundance that freedom generates, while ignoring freedom itself. Now we have neither, but the door is open, out of necessity, for an answer. The answer available is based on the Constitution, individual liberty and prohibiting the use of government force to provide privileges and benefits to all special interests.

After over 100 years we face a society quite different from the one that was intended by the Founders. In many ways their efforts to protect future generations with the Constitution from this danger has failed. Skeptics, at the time the Constitution was written in 1787, warned us of today’s possible outcome. The insidious nature of the erosion of our liberties and the reassurance our great abundance gave us, allowed the process to evolve into the dangerous period in which we now live.

Dependency on Government Largesse

Today we face a dependency on government largesse for almost every need. Our liberties are restricted and government operates outside the rule of law, protecting and rewarding those who buy or coerce government into satisfying their demands. Here are a few examples:

Undeclared wars are commonplace.

Welfare for the rich and poor is considered an entitlement.

The economy is overregulated, overtaxed and grossly distorted by a deeply flawed monetary system.

Debt is growing exponentially.

The Patriot Act and FISA legislation passed without much debate have resulted in a steady erosion of our 4th Amendment rights.

Tragically our government engages in preemptive war, otherwise known as aggression, with no complaints from the American people.

The drone warfare we are pursuing worldwide is destined to end badly for us as the hatred builds for innocent lives lost and the international laws flaunted. Once we are financially weakened and militarily challenged, there will be a lot resentment thrown our way.

It’s now the law of the land that the military can arrest American citizens, hold them indefinitely, without charges or a trial.

Rampant hostility toward free trade is supported by a large number in Washington.

Supporters of sanctions, currency manipulation and WTO trade retaliation, call the true free traders “isolationists.”

Sanctions are used to punish countries that don’t follow our orders.

Bailouts and guarantees for all kinds of misbehavior are routine.

Central economic planning through monetary policy, regulations and legislative mandates has been an acceptable policy.

Questions

Excessive government has created such a mess it prompts many questions:

Why are sick people who use medical marijuana put in prison?

Why does the federal government restrict the drinking of raw milk?

Why can’t Americans manufacturer rope and other products from hemp?

Why are Americans not allowed to use gold and silver as legal tender as mandated by the Constitution?

Why is Germany concerned enough to consider repatriating their gold held by the FED for her in New York? Is it that the trust in the U.S. and dollar supremacy beginning to wane?

Why do our political leaders believe it’s unnecessary to thoroughly audit our own gold?

Why can’t Americans decide which type of light bulbs they can buy?

Why is the TSA permitted to abuse the rights of any American traveling by air?

Why should there be mandatory sentences – even up to life for crimes without victims – as our drug laws require?

Why have we allowed the federal government to regulate commodes in our homes?

Why is it political suicide for anyone to criticize AIPAC ?

Why haven’t we given up on the drug war since it’s an obvious failure and violates the people’s rights? Has nobody noticed that the authorities can’t even keep drugs out of the prisons? How can making our entire society a prison solve the problem?

Why do we sacrifice so much getting needlessly involved in border disputes and civil strife around the world and ignore the root cause of the most deadly border in the world-the one between Mexico and the US?

Why does Congress willingly give up its prerogatives to the Executive Branch?

Why does changing the party in power never change policy? Could it be that the views of both parties are essentially the same?

Why did the big banks, the large corporations, and foreign banks and foreign central banks get bailed out in 2008 and the middle class lost their jobs and their homes?

Why do so many in the government and the federal officials believe that creating money out of thin air creates wealth?

Why do so many accept the deeply flawed principle that government bureaucrats and politicians can protect us from ourselves without totally destroying the principle of liberty?

Why can’t people understand that war always destroys wealth and liberty?

Why is there so little concern for the Executive Order that gives the President authority to establish a “kill list,” including American citizens, of those targeted for assassination?

Why is patriotism thought to be blind loyalty to the government and the politicians who run it, rather than loyalty to the principles of liberty and support for the people? Real patriotism is a willingness to challenge the government when it’s wrong.

Why is it is claimed that if people won’t or can’t take care of their own needs, that people in government can do it for them?

Why did we ever give the government a safe haven for initiating violence against the people?

Why do some members defend free markets, but not civil liberties?

Why do some members defend civil liberties but not free markets? Aren’t they the same?

Why don’t more defend both economic liberty and personal liberty?

Why are there not more individuals who seek to intellectually influence others to bring about positive changes than those who seek power to force others to obey their commands?

Why does the use of religion to support a social gospel and preemptive wars, both of which requires authoritarians to use violence, or the threat of violence, go unchallenged? Aggression and forced redistribution of wealth has nothing to do with the teachings of the world great religions.

Why do we allow the government and the Federal Reserve to disseminate false information dealing with both economic and foreign policy?

Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority?

Why should anyone be surprised that Congress has no credibility, since there’s such a disconnect between what politicians say and what they do?

Is there any explanation for all the deception, the unhappiness, the fear of the future, the loss of confidence in our leaders, the distrust, the anger and frustration? Yes there is, and there’s a way to reverse these attitudes. The negative perceptions are logical and a consequence of bad policies bringing about our problems. Identification of the problems and recognizing the cause allow the proper changes to come easy.

Trust Yourself, Not the Government

Too many people have for too long placed too much confidence and trust in government and not enough in themselves. Fortunately, many are now becoming aware of the seriousness of the gross mistakes of the past several decades. The blame is shared by both political parties. Many Americans now are demanding to hear the plain truth of things and want the demagoguing to stop. Without this first step, solutions are impossible.

Seeking the truth and finding the answers in liberty and self-reliance promotes the optimism necessary for restoring prosperity. The task is not that difficult if politics doesn’t get in the way.

We have allowed ourselves to get into such a mess for various reasons.

Politicians deceive themselves as to how wealth is produced. Excessive confidence is placed in the judgment of politicians and bureaucrats. This replaces the confidence in a free society. Too many in high places of authority became convinced that only they, armed with arbitrary government power, can bring about fairness, while facilitating wealth production. This always proves to be a utopian dream and destroys wealth and liberty. It impoverishes the people and rewards the special interests who end up controlling both political parties.

It’s no surprise then that much of what goes on in Washington is driven by aggressive partisanship and power seeking, with philosophic differences being minor.

Economic Ignorance

Economic ignorance is commonplace. Keynesianism continues to thrive, although today it is facing healthy and enthusiastic rebuttals. Believers in military Keynesianism and domestic Keynesianism continue to desperately promote their failed policies, as the economy languishes in a deep slumber.

Supporters of all government edicts use humanitarian arguments to justify them.

Humanitarian arguments are always used to justify government mandates related to the economy, monetary policy, foreign policy, and personal liberty. This is on purpose to make it more difficult to challenge. But, initiating violence for humanitarian reasons is still violence. Good intentions are no excuse and are just as harmful as when people use force with bad intentions. The results are always negative.

The immoral use of force is the source of man’s political problems. Sadly, many religious groups, secular organizations, and psychopathic authoritarians endorse government initiated force to change the world. Even when the desired goals are well-intentioned – or especially when well-intentioned – the results are dismal. The good results sought never materialize. The new problems created require even more government force as a solution. The net result is institutionalizing government initiated violence and morally justifying it on humanitarian grounds.

This is the same fundamental reason our government uses force for invading other countries at will, central economic planning at home, and the regulation of personal liberty and habits of our citizens.

It is rather strange, that unless one has a criminal mind and no respect for other people and their property, no one claims it’s permissible to go into one’s neighbor’s house and tell them how to behave, what they can eat, smoke and drink or how to spend their money.

Yet, rarely is it asked why it is morally acceptable that a stranger with a badge and a gun can do the same thing in the name of law and order. Any resistance is met with brute force, fines, taxes, arrests, and even imprisonment. This is done more frequently every day without a proper search warrant.

No Government Monopoly over Initiating Violence

Restraining aggressive behavior is one thing, but legalizing a government monopoly for initiating aggression can only lead to exhausting liberty associated with chaos, anger and the breakdown of civil society. Permitting such authority and expecting saintly behavior from the bureaucrats and the politicians is a pipe dream. We now have a standing army of armed bureaucrats in the TSA, CIA, FBI, Fish and Wildlife, FEMA, IRS, Corp of Engineers, etc. numbering over 100,000. Citizens are guilty until proven innocent in the unconstitutional administrative courts.

Government in a free society should have no authority to meddle in social activities or the economic transactions of individuals. Nor should government meddle in the affairs of other nations. All things peaceful, even when controversial, should be permitted.

We must reject the notion of prior restraint in economic activity just we do in the area of free speech and religious liberty. But even in these areas government is starting to use a backdoor approach of political correctness to regulate speech-a dangerous trend. Since 9/11 monitoring speech on the internet is now a problem since warrants are no longer required.

The Proliferation of Federal Crimes

The Constitution established four federal crimes. Today the experts can’t even agree on how many federal crimes are now on the books – they number into the thousands. No one person can comprehend the enormity of the legal system – especially the tax code. Due to the ill-advised drug war and the endless federal expansion of the criminal code we have over 6 million people under correctional suspension, more than the Soviets ever had, and more than any other nation today, including China. I don’t understand the complacency of the Congress and the willingness to continue their obsession with passing more Federal laws. Mandatory sentencing laws associated with drug laws have compounded our prison problems.

The federal register is now 75,000 pages long and the tax code has 72,000 pages, and expands every year. When will the people start shouting, “enough is enough,” and demand Congress cease and desist.

Achieving Liberty

Liberty can only be achieved when government is denied the aggressive use of force. If one seeks liberty, a precise type of government is needed. To achieve it, more than lip service is required.

Two choices are available.

A government designed to protect liberty – a natural right – as its sole objective. The people are expected to care for themselves and reject the use of any force for interfering with another person’s liberty. Government is given a strictly limited authority to enforce contracts, property ownership, settle disputes, and defend against foreign aggression.

A government that pretends to protect liberty but is granted power to arbitrarily use force over the people and foreign nations. Though the grant of power many times is meant to be small and limited, it inevitably metastasizes into an omnipotent political cancer. This is the problem for which the world has suffered throughout the ages. Though meant to be limited it nevertheless is a 100% sacrifice of a principle that would-be-tyrants find irresistible. It is used vigorously – though incrementally and insidiously. Granting power to government officials always proves the adage that: “power corrupts.”

Once government gets a limited concession for the use of force to mold people habits and plan the economy, it causes a steady move toward tyrannical government. Only a revolutionary spirit can reverse the process and deny to the government this arbitrary use of aggression. There’s no in-between. Sacrificing a little liberty for imaginary safety always ends badly.

Today’s mess is a result of Americans accepting option #2, even though the Founders attempted to give us Option #1.

The results are not good. As our liberties have been eroded our wealth has been consumed. The wealth we see today is based on debt and a foolish willingness on the part of foreigners to take our dollars for goods and services. They then loan them back to us to perpetuate our debt system. It’s amazing that it has worked for this long but the impasse in Washington, in solving our problems indicate that many are starting to understand the seriousness of the world -wide debt crisis and the dangers we face. The longer this process continues the harsher the outcome will be.

The Financial Crisis Is a Moral Crisis

Many are now acknowledging that a financial crisis looms but few understand it’s, in reality, a moral crisis. It’s the moral crisis that has allowed our liberties to be undermined and permits the exponential growth of illegal government power. Without a clear understanding of the nature of the crisis it will be difficult to prevent a steady march toward tyranny and the poverty that will accompany it.

Ultimately, the people have to decide which form of government they want; option #1 or option #2. There is no other choice. Claiming there is a choice of a “little” tyranny is like describing pregnancy as a “touch of pregnancy.” It is a myth to believe that a mixture of free markets and government central economic planning is a worthy compromise. What we see today is a result of that type of thinking. And the results speak for themselves.

A Culture of Violence

American now suffers from a culture of violence. It’s easy to reject the initiation of violence against one’s neighbor but it’s ironic that the people arbitrarily and freely anoint government officials with monopoly power to initiate violence against the American people – practically at will.

Because it’s the government that initiates force, most people accept it as being legitimate. Those who exert the force have no sense of guilt. It is believed by too many that governments are morally justified in initiating force supposedly to “do good.” They incorrectly believe that this authority has come from the “consent of the people.” The minority, or victims of government violence never consented to suffer the abuse of government mandates, even when dictated by the majority. Victims of TSA excesses never consented to this abuse.

This attitude has given us a policy of initiating war to “do good,” as well. It is claimed that war, to prevent war for noble purposes, is justified. This is similar to what we were once told that: “destroying a village to save a village” was justified. It was said by a US Secretary of State that the loss of 500,000 Iraqis, mostly children, in the 1990s, as a result of American bombs and sanctions, was “worth it” to achieve the “good” we brought to the Iraqi people. And look at the mess that Iraq is in today.

Government use of force to mold social and economic behavior at home and abroad has justified individuals using force on their own terms. The fact that violence by government is seen as morally justified, is the reason why violence will increase when the big financial crisis hits and becomes a political crisis as well.

First, we recognize that individuals shouldn’t initiate violence, then we give the authority to government. Eventually, the immoral use of government violence, when things goes badly, will be used to justify an individual’s “right” to do the same thing. Neither the government nor individuals have the moral right to initiate violence against another yet we are moving toward the day when both will claim this authority. If this cycle is not reversed society will break down.

When needs are pressing, conditions deteriorate and rights become relative to the demands and the whims of the majority. It’s then not a great leap for individuals to take it upon themselves to use violence to get what they claim is theirs. As the economy deteriorates and the wealth discrepancies increase – as are already occurring – violence increases as those in need take it in their own hands to get what they believe is theirs. They will not wait for a government rescue program.

When government officials wield power over others to bail out the special interests, even with disastrous results to the average citizen, they feel no guilt for the harm they do. Those who take us into undeclared wars with many casualties resulting, never lose sleep over the death and destruction their bad decisions caused. They are convinced that what they do is morally justified, and the fact that many suffer just can’t be helped.

When the street criminals do the same thing, they too have no remorse, believing they are only taking what is rightfully theirs. All moral standards become relative. Whether it’s bailouts, privileges, government subsidies or benefits for some from inflating a currency, it’s all part of a process justified by a philosophy of forced redistribution of wealth. Violence, or a threat of such, is the instrument required and unfortunately is of little concern of most members of Congress.

Some argue it’s only a matter of “fairness” that those in need are cared for. There are two problems with this. First, the principle is used to provide a greater amount of benefits to the rich than the poor. Second, no one seems to be concerned about whether or not it’s fair to those who end up paying for the benefits. The costs are usually placed on the backs of the middle class and are hidden from the public eye. Too many people believe government handouts are free, like printing money out of thin air, and there is no cost. That deception is coming to an end. The bills are coming due and that’s what the economic slowdown is all about.

Sadly, we have become accustomed to living with the illegitimate use of force by government. It is the tool for telling the people how to live, what to eat and drink, what to read and how to spend their money.

To develop a truly free society, the issue of initiating force must be understood and rejected. Granting to government even a small amount of force is a dangerous concession.

Limiting Government Excesses vs. a Virtuous Moral People

Our Constitution, which was intended to limit government power and abuse, has failed. The Founders warned that a free society depends on a virtuous and moral people. The current crisis reflects that their concerns were justified.

Most politicians and pundits are aware of the problems we face but spend all their time in trying to reform government. The sad part is that the suggested reforms almost always lead to less freedom and the importance of a virtuous and moral people is either ignored, or not understood. The new reforms serve only to further undermine liberty. The compounding effect has given us this steady erosion of liberty and the massive expansion of debt. The real question is: if it is liberty we seek, should most of the emphasis be placed on government reform or trying to understand what “a virtuous and moral people” means and how to promote it. The Constitution has not prevented the people from demanding handouts for both rich and poor in their efforts to reform the government, while ignoring the principles of a free society. All branches of our government today are controlled by individuals who use their power to undermine liberty and enhance the welfare/warfare state-and frequently their own wealth and power.

If the people are unhappy with the government performance it must be recognized that government is merely a reflection of an immoral society that rejected a moral government of constitutional limitations of power and love of freedom.

If this is the problem all the tinkering with thousands of pages of new laws and regulations will do nothing to solve the problem.

It is self-evident that our freedoms have been severely limited and the apparent prosperity we still have, is nothing more than leftover wealth from a previous time. This fictitious wealth based on debt and benefits from a false trust in our currency and credit, will play havoc with our society when the bills come due. This means that the full consequence of our lost liberties is yet to be felt.

But that illusion is now ending. Reversing a downward spiral depends on accepting a new approach.

Expect the rapidly expanding homeschooling movement to play a significant role in the revolutionary reforms needed to build a free society with Constitutional protections. We cannot expect a Federal government controlled school system to provide the intellectual ammunition to combat the dangerous growth of government that threatens our liberties.

The internet will provide the alternative to the government/media complex that controls the news and most political propaganda. This is why it’s essential that the internet remains free of government regulation.

Many of our religious institutions and secular organizations support greater dependency on the state by supporting war, welfare and corporatism and ignore the need for a virtuous people.

I never believed that the world or our country could be made more free by politicians, if the people had no desire for freedom.

Under the current circumstances the most we can hope to achieve in the political process is to use it as a podium to reach the people to alert them of the nature of the crisis and the importance of their need to assume responsibility for themselves, if it is liberty that they truly seek. Without this, a constitutionally protected free society is impossible.

If this is true, our individual goal in life ought to be for us to seek virtue and excellence and recognize that self-esteem and happiness only comes from using one’s natural ability, in the most productive manner possible, according to one’s own talents.

Productivity and creativity are the true source of personal satisfaction. Freedom, and not dependency, provides the environment needed to achieve these goals. Government cannot do this for us; it only gets in the way. When the government gets involved, the goal becomes a bailout or a subsidy and these cannot provide a sense of personal achievement.

Achieving legislative power and political influence should not be our goal. Most of the change, if it is to come, will not come from the politicians, but rather from individuals, family, friends, intellectual leaders and our religious institutions. The solution can only come from rejecting the use of coercion, compulsion, government commands, and aggressive force, to mold social and economic behavior. Without accepting these restraints, inevitably the consensus will be to allow the government to mandate economic equality and obedience to the politicians who gain power and promote an environment that smothers the freedoms of everyone. It is then that the responsible individuals who seek excellence and self-esteem by being self-reliance and productive, become the true victims.

Conclusion

What are the greatest dangers that the American people face today and impede the goal of a free society? There are five.

1. The continuous attack on our civil liberties which threatens the rule of law and our ability to resist the onrush of tyranny.

2. Violent anti-Americanism that has engulfed the world. Because the phenomenon of “blow-back” is not understood or denied, our foreign policy is destined to keep us involved in many wars that we have no business being in. National bankruptcy and a greater threat to our national security will result.

3. The ease in which we go to war, without a declaration by Congress, but accepting international authority from the UN or NATO even for preemptive wars, otherwise known as aggression.

4. A financial political crisis as a consequence of excessive debt, unfunded liabilities, spending, bailouts, and gross discrepancy in wealth distribution going from the middle class to the rich. The danger of central economic planning, by the Federal Reserve must be understood.

5. World government taking over local and US sovereignty by getting involved in the issues of war, welfare, trade, banking, a world currency, taxes, property ownership, and private ownership of guns.
Happily, there is an answer for these very dangerous trends.

What a wonderful world it would be if everyone accepted the simple moral premise of rejecting all acts of aggression. The retort to such a suggestion is always: it’s too simplistic, too idealistic, impractical, naïve, utopian, dangerous, and unrealistic to strive for such an ideal.

Source: LewRockwell.com

No Change

As everybody on the planet knows now, Barack Obama was re-elected President of the United States. Democrats retained control of the US Senate, while Republicans retained control of the US House of Representatives. In other words, the national elections produced no change. But, in reality, we haven’t had any significant change in a national election in many years.

The last significant national election that produced dramatic change (at least temporarily) was the congressional elections of 1994, when Republicans swept both houses of Congress and denied President Bill Clinton’s Democrats control of the legislature. It was dubbed the “Conservative Revolution.” The other election that could be regarded as a national coup against the established political order was the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.

However, within a year of the 1994 congressional elections, Newt Gingrich and Trent Lott had successfully fought off attempts of rank and file GOP congressmen to truly reduce the size and scope of the federal government, and by 1995, it was business as usual once again. And after Mr. Reagan was shot just a little over a year after taking office, much of the conservative agenda that he had campaigned on seemed to quickly fade away.

But ever since Reagan, republicans have routinely rejected legitimate freedomists and have nominated pseudo-conservatives. The result has always led to a resounding defeat for republicans at the polls. Since the defeat of George H.W. Bush after one term in 1992, due to his blatant big-government and globalist policies, Democrats have dominated the White House. The lone exception was the election of G.W. Bush in 2000 and 2004. But, Bush, Jr., ran as a Reagan-conservative. He wasn’t, of course, but he was perceived as one. But it was Bush, the Big-Spending-Warmonger, that doomed the GOP’s future failures. Bush’s out-of-control deficit spending, coupled with his preemptive wars of aggression, and the implementation of a burgeoning police state/surveillance society made the name “Republican” something dirty to the American electorate. As a result, the GOP is in complete disarray and without principled leadership.

Mitt Romney was just the latest attempt by the GOP establishment to force a big-government “moderate” upon party faithful. The true freedomist Ron Paul was treated in much the same way that Pat Buchanan was treated back in 1996. By hook or by crook, the GOP was not going to let a principled freedomist win the Presidential nomination. They wanted a controlled big-government toadie. They got what they wanted, and they lost! In fact, every time the GOP nominates a “moderate” as their Presidential nominee, he loses. Every time! One could almost get the feeling that the party establishment would rather lose with a moderate than win with a conservative. After all, why would the American people want a Wall Street moderate who will implement 85% of the Democrat agenda when they can elect a blue-collar Democrat and have the real deal? At least the Democrats are perceived as being compassionate. The GOP’s refusal to listen to their grassroots, to advance populist causes, and to disconnect themselves from Wall Street continues to cost them elections. In short, the Republican Party in Washington, D.C., is completely out of touch with average Americans.

The same scenario played out here in the State of Montana. The GOP candidates for Governor and US Senator (both pseudo-conservatives) lost to Democrats. (At the time of this writing, the race for governor is very close with only 7000 votes separating them; but the Democrat has held the lead all yesterday and today, and it is doubtful that the Republican can overtake him.) This is actually a good thing for the Montana Republican Party, as it removes from leadership the two most powerful neocons. These are men who had steered and manipulated the State party away from freedomist principles in much the same way that both Bush I and Bush II had done nationally. Now, true freedomists within the State GOP have an opportunity to rise to positions of leadership and begin steering the party back to its conservative roots.

But as I predicted earlier, the Presidential election did not provide long coattails. In DC, Republicans ended where they started, with control of the House of Representatives. Neither did Democrats increase their advantage on Capitol Hill at all. So, let’s not forget that the GOP controls the US House of Representatives. This means that the GOP controls the purse strings for ALL federal spending. If the Republican Party is serious about reducing spending, they have the power to do it. All monies appropriated for federal expenditures must be authorized by the House of Representatives. So, Republicans should quit crying in their milk and start demanding that House Speaker John Boehner and the rest of the House Republican leadership start growing some man-stuff and stop funding all of these big-government, unconstitutional expenditures-including all of these foreign wars that are sapping both our freedom and our prosperity.

Here in Montana, Republicans maintained a significant majority in the State House of Representatives (my son, Tim, ran as a Republican in a predominantly Democrat district, and appears to have lost a close race) and picked up the attorney general’s office. Furthermore, there were five ballot initiatives, all of which had to be regarded as Republican issues. All five passed overwhelmingly.

Republican propagandists can complain all day long about principled freedomists who choose to vote for a third party or not vote at all for a given race. But they shouldn’t blame the voters; they should cast blame where it rightly belongs: at the feet of the GOP leadership. I no more owe allegiance to a political party than I would owe allegiance to a retail store. If the business does not convince me by its product, service, and price to shop there, I am under no obligation to do so. I will go down the street. It’s laughable to think that I owe my business to one store. What a joke!

It is equally laughable to suggest that I owe my vote to one political party. Each candidate has an obligation to convince me that he or she is worthy of my vote. When he or she does, my vote is given them. But when a candidate doesn’t earn my vote, they are not getting it–regardless of party label. That’s the way most Americans vote. Oh sure, you have the party loyalists who would vote for their party’s candidate if a baboon was nominated. Thankfully, the numbers of these types of voters are quickly shrinking.

And in truth even the party loyalists who condemn people who won’t vote for the “lesser of two evils” (meaning someone from their party) are blatant hypocrites, because they won’t do it either. The only difference is whether the “lesser of two evils” is defined by either principle or party. Let me explain.

Here in Montana there was a two man race for Clerk of the Supreme Court. One was a Democrat; the other was a Libertarian. There was no Republican in the race. The Democrat won by 14 percentage points. Pray tell, why didn’t all the Republicans vote for the “lesser of two evils” and give the Libertarian the victory? Why? Because party loyalists refuse to vote for anyone who is not a Republican, meaning the “lesser of two evils.” In other words, they behave in exactly the same way that many freedomists behave: they refuse to vote for the “lesser of two evils.” The only difference is the definition of “evil.” To freedomists, “evil” is the abandonment of constitutional, freedom principles; to party loyalists, “evil” is the abandonment of the Republican Party.

Here is the bottom line: Republicans don’t win elections when they nominate pseudo-conservatives. They crash and burn. And they have been crashing and burning for decades now. If Romney had any coattails, it was to taint true Republican conservative candidates with his brand of neoconism. When will they ever wake up and realize that they are perceived as being an out-of-touch, elitist, money-driven party that doesn’t give a darn about average people? Furthermore, when will they stop treating principled freedomists like toilet paper?

All over America, in State after State, the GOP leadership bullied, harangued, and stomped on Ron Paul and his supporters. The way Ron and his followers were treated in many State GOP conventions and in the national GOP convention was nothing short of criminal. Had Mitt Romney behaved as a gentleman and not like a vengeful tyrant, had the GOP leadership treated Ron and his supporters with the respect and dignity that they had earned, this election might have turned out differently.

Frankly, Mitt Romney deserved to lose, not only due to his big-government, liberal track record, which is out of step with rank and file freedomists, but also due to the shameful treatment of Ron Paul and his supporters, which he either knowingly tolerated or may have even orchestrated.

Furthermore, for the Republican Party to ask principled conservatives to support candidates who routinely trample constitutional government, who routinely support bigger and bigger government, who routinely aid and abet a growing police state, who routinely finance more and more unconstitutional wars of aggression, who routinely vote to bankrupt America with deficit spending, who routinely provide bailouts for their banker-buddies, and who routinely treat honest, hardworking freedomists like doormats, is to ask for more and more disaster at the polls.

So, the net result of the 2012 elections was NO CHANGE. And the reason there was no change in the elections is because there was no change in the Republican Party. What was the definition of insanity again?

Living In Illusion: A Modern Epidemic

“Our media is pumping out lies and propaganda because it is part of the one percent; it is owned by conspirators and populated with talented individuals who have sold their souls to the same devil that is loose in our government. Like a nation of Zombies our elected officials support the lies, live the lies, and betray their trust to the liars. It is a charade of great magnitude so big that a few decades ago everyone would have thought such mendacity would be impossible.” From my essay “The End of Democracy”

“His watchmen are blind, all of them know nothing. All of them are dumb dogs unable to bark, dreamers lying down, who love to slumber; and the dogs are greedy, they are not satisfied. And they are shepherds who have no understanding; they have all turned to their own way, each one to his unjust gain, to the last one. ‘Come,’ they say, ‘let us get wine, and let us drink heavily of strong drink; and tomorrow will be like today, only more so.’” Isaiah 56: 10-12

Some years ago, as the sun shone on an office building window, someone noticed that the reflection looked like the Virgin Mary. Believers in apparitions soon gathered in great numbers to see the “miracle”. Some saw her weeping. The story gained media attention and hundreds were convinced it was a genuine miracle.

While not debunking the origin of this particular apparition it is plain that God’s human creations are vulnerable to believing all sorts of things that have no basis in fact; especially when the false beliefs fulfill a subliminal desire.

There are millions of United States citizens whose cherished beliefs are unshakeable but patently false:

We believe Arabs are our enemies though they lack the resources to threaten us and, before recent provocations, have never done so. We support the Middle East War because we entertain the illusion that they hate us for our freedom and intend to attack us.

We hate Arab immigrants and fear Sharia law while it is neocon hegemony in our own government that has encoded the cultural deteriorating principles of multi-culturalism allowing Muslims legal entrance into our nation.

We believe illegitimate, neo-Israel is our friend and Jews are a persecuted people deserving our sympathy when, in reality, neo-Israel, founded against the will of Arabs who had owned and occupied the land for centuries, has gained control of the power centers of our nation and is using us for its own evil purposes. Jews, the world’s most powerful race, hate us and our Christian religion with a Devilish passion.

We believe a group of Arabs planned and executed the 9/11 travesty because they hate us for our freedom when there is irrefutable evidence that the murder of thousands of U. S. citizens on that ignoble day was a false flag operation, that may have been conducted by our Israeli comrades to bring on the Middle East War.

Hundreds of thousands of government employees along with a lesser number of media mavens live, breath, sleep and act as if the shaky government story on 9/11 is factual; purposely refusing to report or even consider mountains of data that refute it.

Millions of Evangelical Christians believe the heretical theology of Dispensationalism which supports contemporary Pharisees who hate and seek to destroy the Christianity Evangelicals claim to cherish.

Both candidates for President of the United States vow to support the afore-mentioned Zionist cabal to the detriment of our nation; sacrificing the lives our young men, ruining our reputation, deteriorating our morals, and bankrupting the government. One of these illusion filled individuals will become the stooge that governs United States of America.

While encouraging us to conserve energy to prevent depleting our resources, the ruling elite has exported our manufacturing to China cluttering our highways with trucks and requiring the shipment of millions of tons of product half way around the world in the most inefficient, energy consuming system imaginable.

Christians, even the few that actually claim The One True God is sovereign, deify the government by forgetting God and seeking salvation from a government idol.

Weather gurus, harnessed to our underhanded media, keep us posted on outside conditions but fail to address Chemtrails which are plainly visible but universally ignored.

While our elected representatives claim they are satisfied that President Obama was born in the United States the president continues to create suspicion by hiding his Passport and Educational records.

Christians claim to “believe in God” but act as if He is their servant rather than they His.

Wives often live as if everything is normal while their husbands philander. Christian pastors who are homosexual or see prostitutes often have wives who act as if all is well. Internet pornography is a captivating vice that festers in families that ignore its dangers. Gambling bankrupts other deluded homes.

Illusion is a common condition. We are born with the ability to fanaticize. It produces great novels, plays, music, and operas. When it is recognized, properly labeled and properly used, it can be an entertaining diversion offering relief from the tedium of everyday life. But when it invades the decisions of authority centers it is a shifting, toxic foundation that creates chaos by destroying the ability to reach sound conclusions.

Some illusion is a result of planned deception and manipulation; some is a result of intentional evasion; some is useful human diversion; some is a result of coercion; and, some enhances artistic endeavors.

Toxic illusion is deeply entrenched in our nation. We have ignored it too long. Much of what we believe is fictitious.

Seeing 435 congresspersons, 100 senators, and 8 justices with little American flags prominently pinned on their garb acting as if the government agenda is unquestionable when their computers are exploding with contrary data is a curious phenomenon. It is unanimously assumed that 9/11 was a malicious al-Qaeda attack on our nation resulting in the destruction of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and the deaths of three thousand people. The validity of this scenario is never seriously questioned even though it has been refuted by hundreds of reputable engineers and thousands of citizens. Illusion encompasses our entire government.

Government, a human administration of power, if it is not properly critiqued tends toward imperialism. The Christian Church is responsible for the continuity of freedom by regularly comparing government actions with the Word of God. Unfortunately, the Christian Church is as deep into fantasy as the government they are supposed to critique. Contemporary Christians have never learned to swim; instead they wade about in neophytic shallow water unable to swim into the sea of Godly service and reach the distant shore and the commendation “Well Done Good and Faithful Servant”!

God wants us to evangelize, He wants to fill us with His Spirit and He wants us to praise Him, however, before all of this He wants us to obey and serve Him. We cannot serve Him until we obey Him. Learning to swim is learning to obey, it allows a Christian to leave the shallow water and enter the deeper water of service. Obedience is a prerequisite to service. Obedience to human law without regard for God’s Law leaves us in shallow water. Mass Christian conversions are of little use when the converts are not obedient.

Christians who claim that God “speaks” to them are always subject to indwelling sin. Personal guidance is real but it is always questionable and not the same as obedience. Obedience involves the Law God gave to Moses which is recorded in our Bible and which is the same today as it was when it was given to Moses. It is a solid platform not subject to the darkness of the fallen human spirit. Obedience to God’s Law is the deep water of the Gospel. Those who depend on personal guidance will always remain in the shallows and the Christian religion will remain with them.

Christians define it as sin but regardless of its name we all have a tendency to choose a lie and allow it to distort our actions. Too many citizens cling to the belief that their elected officials would deceive them or act against the interests of the nation. When this subliminal tendency is exploited by the cunning owners of our press and media the result is disastrous; a majority of our citizens are deceived into acting against and fighting the Will of God and their own better interests! It is not what they know that causes the problem but what they don’t know, are not told, and sometimes do not want to know.

R. J. Rushdoony wrote several volumes of daily devotional readings entitled “A Word in Season”. These reading are unique because they apply God’s Word to our actions and the actions of society. He compares our generation to the ancient Israeli generation that Moses led from Egypt. God would not allow this generation of former Egyptian residents to enter the Promised Land because they were unfit for freedom. They were more concerned about access to cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic than the freedom of the Promised Land. He ends the short reading with this question: “Will we too perish in a desert of our own making because we reject the responsibilities of faith and freedom?”

Unfortunately we have been and are doing so!

The End of Democracy

Advancing Totalitarianism…

Gerald Celente claims World War III has begun, Vaclac Klaus says Europe has given up on Democracy; other sources have acknowledged its demise.

Riots are breaking out around the world.   A new kind of war has begun.

Chaos has been the intent of the power structure for many years.  The United States government has prepared a legal structure to control an uprising.   Police forces have been militarized and federalized, National Guard units are under government control, Canada has agreed to join in putting down rebellion, various agencies of the government have purchased billions of rounds of ammunition, check point structures have been obtained, burial containers have been stockpiled, and detention camps have been constructed.

Leaders, including our government, are urging citizens to prepare for disasters. Celente recommends gold, guns, and a getaway plan.  Gold is widely accepted as a hedge against inflation and chaos.  Many are recommending that we become self-sufficient by learning to grow our own foods and care for our own health. There is fear that our food supply is being polluted with genetic modifications and contaminated imports. Water is gaining value and the price of fertile farm land is skyrocketing.

The war is between the ninety-nine percent who work and produce the world’s products and the one percent who accumulate the wealth and power.  The faceless one percent is in the process of exerting world-wide control over the ninety-nine percent.  Massive amounts of wealth are being transferred and grinding controls are being put in place.

There have been riots in Spain and Greece; governments overthrown by U. S. armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan are unstable and under siege.  In Libya, our ambassador was kidnapped and slain.  Chaos abounds in Syria, Egypt, Pakistan, Yemen, Bahrain, Morocco, and even potentially in Saudi Arabia.

As the wealth transfer (debt crisis) continues and major nations begin to feel the pain additional unrest is inevitable.  It will finally spread to the United States, England, France, and Germany.  It has been foreseen and preparations have been made.   WWIII involves an effort to gain control of the world.

The United States of America is a strategic part of this new world war.  Our media is pumping out lies and propaganda because it is part of the one percent; it is owned by conspirators and populated with talented individuals who have sold their souls to the same devil that is loose in our government.  Like a nation of Zombies our elected officials support the lies, live the lies, and betray their trust to the liars.  It is a charade of great magnitude so big that a few decades ago everyone would have thought such mendacity would be impossible.

The rewards are great for participating in the biggest lie in the history of the world.  Last year the Obama family spent $1.4 billion of taxpayer money.  President Obama has spent three months of his presidency playing golf.  Each outing involves a retinue of friends, several earth vehicles and often the presidential airplane as well.  Foreign trips are even more expensive; a two day trip to India may have cost taxpayers $200 million a day.

Ambitious, money conscious, Westerners, sans immutable restraint, easily succumb to the wiles of a wealthy life and because their souls are secular they sell them cheaply to the evil god of this world. Such people are incapable of governing themselves.

Those predicting the end of Democracy seem concerned.  But students of good government should rise up and cheer!  Our Founders hated Democracy and rightfully contended that it would lead to tyranny.  Change agents have been so successful in destroying our government that the Word Republic has been forgotten, almost universally replaced by a misnomer called Democracy.  Our Founders gave us a Constitution designed to guide and restrain the actions of government.  Since law is harder to manipulate than people, the world government power elite have succeeded in convincing too many of our citizens that we are a Democracy and must abide by the will of the people.  The will of the people places the lesser half of society in tyranny to the remainder and in a nation like ours where the press is controlled, Democracy is a controllable sham.   WWIII is a war against national sovereignty.  On one side is the existing legal structure of the nations of the world, on the other side is the world power structure (one percent) seeking to make their word law.

While being destroyed socially and financially our nation is being used as a military unit to captivate the few remaining independent nation/states.   We are engaged in worldwide aggressive warfare under the aegis of bringing Democracy to the world and the “Democracy” we are intent on constructing will be controllable.  The same puppet masters that are pulling the strings of our government want to replicate it in other nations so their puppet show will have more characters.

American citizens who believe that working to elect one political party or the other can create a change in our nation are seriously deluded.  The candidates were pre-selected, the winner is controlled by the media that is owned by the power elite, votes are counted by machines that are made by the power elite, and the results are announced by media under the same control.  You can be sure the person elected will enter office with strings in the hands of the same puppet masters.

The loss of our industrial base depicts the massive power of the people that control our government and our lives.  Consider the blunt malevolent force needed to rob the world’s richest nation of a substantial portion of its wealth and do it with absolute impunity; the power to throw thousands of people out of work and to substantially reduce the standard of living of the entire middle class.  The power to reduce the life saving of millions of industrious workers to almost zero making it impossible for elderly Americans to enjoy the rewards of their sacrifice.  The power to obligate already victimized American citizens for trillions of dollars showered on banks owned by the robber barons while those same citizens drive their vehicles over pot holed roads and unsafe bridges.

We have allowed these denizens of darkness to render our Constitution anachronistic.  Our elected officials exist and function in a sea of mendacity, our media, an arm of the power elite, determines what we see and hear; and our government dances to our detriment.  We are fighting an unnecessary costly war and the government has made the populace dependent to an extent that cannot be sustained.  We are in serious trouble and many of us are still under the spell of the malevolent power structure.

Democracy has reached its destination; we are under the evil hand of tyranny. Time to wake up and hear the cry of dying freedom!

The end of Democracy is good; the end of freedom is bad!

How To Identify The True Enemies Of Freedom

The greatest and most often exploited weakness of any revolution for freedom is the inability of the downtrodden populace to identify the true enemy.  History is littered with the shattered remnants of rebellions that were built upon legitimate causes but suffered because of misdirection and faulty assumptions.  For centuries, the real culprits of tyranny have found ways to redirect the ire of those they harmed in their quest for power, usually by offering a tempting scapegoat that appeals to the public’s darker impulses; their biases, their prejudices, their fears, etc.  Usually, this ends in an even more pervasive totalitarian environment as the insurgents and the scapegoats decimate each other while the elites sit back and enjoy the show.

Even the most successful battles against despotism, like the American Revolution, often only had a distant sense of who they were really fighting against.  This is what makes the 21st Century extraordinarily unique in the annals of civilization.  For the first time in human record, the common man has all the information necessary to examine and define the real culprits behind his subjugation.  The truth is at our fingertips, all we have to do is reach out and take it…

Because of the decentralized nature of information flowing through the alternative web media, our ability to generate opposition to organized elitism has never been greater.  However, this also means the stakes have never been higher.  The establishment understands well that their criminality is clearly visible, and eventually, they will be personally subject to the rage of the people.  The next fight could very well be the last for them.

Their playbook may be old, but the tactics they use can always be applied on a grander and more terrible scale.  Not only will they pursue whatever menacing distractions necessary to occupy the attentions of the public, they will also attempt to pose as guiding lights in the darkness they themselves created.  They will hide behind broad generalized target groups; fabricated boogie men, branded and prepackaged like franchise coffee shops on every street corner of America’s collective psyche.  Terrorists, traitors, saboteurs, whatever ethnic group happens to be convenient at the moment, whoever is easiest to present as a target for our projected malice; false enemies will be rolled out like a nightmare buffet.

If our nation and the rest of the world have any chance of achieving peace and liberty, it will be because those who choose to dissent against the totalitarian tide focus on the authentic virus invading and assimilating our culture.  Some call them “elitists”, “collectivists”, “centralists”, etc.  They sometimes even refer to themselves as such, but the most prominent and useful label today is that of “globalist”.   That said, we must ask what it is that defines these people?  What makes them who they are?  The following is a list of behaviors and characteristics that have been common to oligarchs through most of history.  Regardless of how a political or financial leader presents himself through rhetoric, if he displays these properties in action, he is more likely than not an opponent of individual freedom and an adversary to the principles of honor and conscience that all good men strive for.

1)  They Seek Centralization Of Power 

Does your favorite political candidate, corporate “guru”, or media shill have a history of promoting globalization, economic harmonization, socialization, etc., sacrificing the protections of sovereignty in the name of some “greater good” that never seems to come?  Does every action they take only appear to benefit a select elite?  Do they regimentally remove options and choices from the system?  Do all of their solutions ultimately lead to the same outcome?  Do all the roads they build converge towards less liberty for the masses and more control for government?  Is their answer for every crisis to remove checks and balances and borders?  Do they constantly claim that sovereign and Constitutional protections get in the way of “progress”?  Do they use phrases like “the greater good” or “sustainable development” on a regular basis?  Add them to your list of potential mass murderers, and unfriend them on your social media accounts.  They do not have your best interests at heart…

2)  They Enforce Policies Despite Widespread Disapproval 

In any healthy Republic, the political class is supposed to be the servant of the people.  Their employment is supposed to be predicated on their willingness to hear and understand the wishes of their constituency.  If a bill or policy arises that threatens the civil liberties or financial safety of the people, and they call for a representative to oppose it, that is exactly what he is supposed to do.  If he does otherwise, and supports a damaging or unconstitutional bill while fully aware of massive voter resistance, it means he is not in fear for his job, which means his job has not necessarily been secured by our votes, which means he is likely working for somebody else; somebody who will benefit from the bill in question.

Two perfect examples would be the passage of the banker bailout bills, and the indefinite detention provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act.  Both were vehemently opposed by a majority of Americans on both sides of the so called political “aisle”, and yet, they were given a majority support by our representatives in government.  This reveals an ulterior motivation within our government that is, to put it bluntly, treasonous.  If they voted for a liberty killing bill, then cross them off your roster of principled leaders and add them to your list of enemies…

3)  They Find Ways To Rationalize Any Behavior 

Sociopaths and psychopaths operate on their own personal form of twisted rationalism.  The magic of pure cold logic untempered by conscience or intuitive wisdom is that truth can become whatever we want it to become as long as our inner voice remains repressed.  For them, any crime can be vindicated as long as a perceived benefit can somehow be derived.  For a globalist oligarch, however, psychopathy goes far beyond mechanical moral relativism.  They are well aware that their actions are an affront to human conscience, and, they couldn’t care less.  Instead, they use rationalism as a way to manipulate the public into accepting their maniacal behavior so that they can continue without interference.

Globalists are so convinced of their own intellectual superiority that they feel no desire for redemption, or to compartmentalize their own evil.  They embrace that evil fully as if it were a form of strength.  One weakness of this philosophy is that it comes with a strange obsession; a desperate drive to inject moral relativism into all people around the globalist.  This exposes an inherent reliance on surrounding environment, and dependency on one’s environment to reinforce a belief system is a significant psychological weakness.

The great power that truth holds over the empire of lies is that the truth is not contingent on mass perception; it exists regardless of how many people believe in it.  It is autonomous.  The truth has its own soul, and arises from the ashes again and again without the benefit of mass recognition.  Lies and perverted rationalizations require an astounding amount of energy and armies of the ignorant in order to exist.  A foundation of lies is inferior, and thus, anyone who depends upon the existence of that foundation is also, by association, inferior.  Globalist are, therefore, a sub-species, an unnecessary and outdated remnant of social evolution that should be allowed to finally fade out and die away.

4)  They Promote Economic Dependency

Anyone who consistently tells you that you need them in order to survive has something to gain by your dependency.  A good person or government seeks to make people INDEPENDENT and self reliant, so that they can survive on their own merits and participate in the construction of their own destinies.  A manipulative person or government needs people to believe that without the services the despot provides all will come to ruin.  Totalitarian control cannot exist unless WE hand that control to them.  If the man before you claims that there is no other way to live except through him or his system, no matter how charmingly he phrases it, add him to your list as a danger to your freedom.

5)  They Belong To A Think Tank

I am usually apprehensive about using a broad brush to paint any single group or subset as fully criminal and beyond repair.  This kind of methodology is used daily by globalists to create rifts in societies and lure people into destroying each other.  However, I have tried to the utmost of my ability to find an influential think tank with ties to the government in our modern era that does not display the despicable behaviors listed so far, and for the life of me, I can’t find a single one.  From the the CFR, to the Rand Corporation, to the Washington Institute For Near East Policy, you will find the many of the same exact writhing globalist tapeworms and most certainly the same exact philosophies of moral relativism on display.  If they belong to a mainstream think tank, they are not a friend to liberty.

6)  They Cast No Reflection In The Mirror

Or perhaps I’m thinking of a different kind of monster…

7)  They Promote Military Force As The Primary Means To Achieve Their Ideological Objectives

Do they confront the dynamic of every social and diplomatic problem with the use of military force and the death of those who disagree with them?  Does every conflict between them and another culture end with the destruction of thousands if not millions?  Do they flaunt a distinct kind of “my way or the highway to hell” kind of attitude?  Do they seem to crave war to the point that they are willing to manufacture excuses to fire the first missile?  If they are a warmonger, then they are your enemy, even when they happen to be trying to kill people you don’t necessarily like at the moment.

8)  They Offer Promises They Never Intend To Keep

If a politician promises to end an illegal war and pull American troops from the battlefield if elected to office, and then doesn’t, or, pretends to pull troops out while maintaining permanent bases and shifting private Blackwater-style contractors into the field to take their place, then he is a liar.  It’s that simple.  If a central banker promises fiat printing and massive stimulus programs will unfreeze credit markets and generate an employment recovery within a couple of years, and the fiscal situation only becomes worse afterwards, then he is a liar.  It’s that simple.

If a person in a position of power continuously makes promises that are impossible to fulfill, or that he obviously knows cannot be fulfilled, then he is buying time.  But buying time for what?  Well, usually, he is buying time so that he can consolidate more power, and he is hoping the public will be duped into giving that power to him in exchange for false hopes and empty dreams.  Any entity, corporate or governmental, that is unable to attain the public’s consent without conning them, is an enemy to the welfare of the public, and should be removed like a throbbing tick.

9) You Wouldn’t Leave Your Children Alone With Them

Ask yourself, could you leave your children in a room with this person or group and feel safe about it?  If the answer is an honest “No”, then how could you leave your country and your children’s future in their hands instead…?

In the coming years, the American people will face numerous threats; some real, some imagined in the sterile conference rooms of a black-hearted think tanks.  But, the most terrifying threat to our cultural roots of free thought, expression, and prosperity is wielded by a very particular and exclusive group of thin-blooded ego-maniacs.  Identifying them is not difficult.  Hiding their true nature is nearly impossible for a person or institution whose narcissism is so pronounced.  They adore their own insanity and wish to share it with the world.  If they fit the profile listed above, it is a guarantee that they will wreak havoc upon your life, directly or indirectly, someday.  Know who they are, so that when that time comes you know who to blame, and who to bring to justice.

Source: Brandon Smith | Alt-Market

It’s Not America Anymore

Many of us in the liberty movement find ourselves searching for a distinct root cause of the trials and tribulations of American culture — the Holy Grail catalyst that, if unraveled, would save this country and heal the septic wounds covering the landscape of our hobbled society. The obvious answer would be to remove the global elites who are poisoning the well from the picture entirely. Yes, this has to be done eventually. However, we must also identify how those elites have been able to so thoroughly con the masses of this nation for so long.

What inherent weakness has made us susceptible to manipulation? For this question, there are NO easy answers. But, if I had to choose a single frailty of our collective psyche as paramount to our downfall, I would say that Americans most of all are confounded by their own patriotism. We often embrace the ideal without knowing what it really means.

There are in fact two kinds of patriotism: the concrete, and the imagined. Many Americans fall haphazardly into the fantasy of being patriotic. They define patriotism upon the exploits of the mainstream and of the government in control at the time. They become cheerleaders for the establishment instead of stalwart champions of their country’s founding principles. In fact, true patriotism is NOT about blindly defending one’s nation or leadership regardless of its trespasses; true patriotism is about defending the philosophy that made one’s nation possible and prosperous in the first place — even if that means standing against the power structure in place today.

I often hear the uneducated and unaware claim that America and its principles have been a bane to the rest of the world. They say America is at the center of the vampire squid, flailing its vicious tentacles against innocent foreign civilizations. This is an oversimplification at best. The crimes that these well-meaning but naïve activists scorn cannot be attributed to “America” because the American ideal has been completely abandoned by those in the seat of power in our modern era. We do not live in “America” — at least, not the America that the Founding Fathers and authors of the Constitution created.  Therefore, the original philosophy that gave birth to America is not the issue, the abuse and neglect of that philosophy is.

America has been ransacked and deformed into a hideous lampoon of its former self. This has been done for the most part through the destruction of the guiding principles we pretend we still hold onto as a culture, but in reality have cast aside. If we are ever to undo the damage that has already been done, we have to rediscover what the original design of America was. Wailing and growling about the inadequacies of the present does nothing unless we also establish where it is that we have fallen from grace. What is America supposed to be? What did the Founders truly intend?

America Is Supposed To Be Controlled By The People

The concept of a Republic revolves around a reversal of the traditional narrative of power. Throughout most of history, government stood at the top of the pyramid, where the hands of a few dominated the destinies of the citizenry. The future was a matter for the elites, not the peasants, to be concerned with. The American Republic, as designed by the revolutionary colonists who defeated the old oligarchy (at least for a time), flipped the role of government to servant rather than master. The goal was to make government tangible and accountable rather than abstract and untouchable. The America of today has no such accountability anymore.

We have a two-party system that pursues the mechanizations of globalism in tandem, not in contest. When both parties have the same desires and goals, when both parties collude to remove civil liberties rather than protect them, and when both parties are funded by the same corporate backers, there is no such thing as change through the process of elections. Anyone who claims that government corruption can be punished through the ballot box hasn’t the slightest clue how our system really functions. They think we are still living in the original “America,” one that values the voice of the people.

When the government decides to push through banker bailouts, the Patriot Act, the National Defense Authorization Act, etc., all while ignoring opposition by a vast majority of citizens, it is clear that the paradigm has shifted and the American value of representation by and for the people is lost.

America Is Supposed To Prosper Through Free Markets

One of the first acts of the American Revolution in the fight against British tyranny was to decouple from British economic dominance. They stopped relying on goods produced in England and peddled by the European merchant class and began making their own. From homespun clothing to homemade rifles, Americans created a legitimate free-market environment. Free markets are systems controlled by the people, thriving on the natural functions of supply and demand. They are not administered by bureaucracies or corporate hierarchies that manipulate the economy to fit preconceived political and social ends.

Free markets are decentralized markets. Corporations, which obstruct decentralization, were never meant to exist according to Adam Smith, the architect of traditional free markets. Today’s framework operates on centralization and the removal of options and choices, which is facilitated by the imbalance and lack of accountability in the corporate legal structure.

I have to laugh every time I hear someone attack “capitalism” and free markets as the source of all our ills. America has not had the pleasure of free markets for at least 100 years (since the construction of the private Federal Reserve, a collusion between banking and government interests). No one alive today has ever seen an actual American “free market” beyond community barter, so to blame free markets for our modern failings is rather thoughtless.  To summarize, the U.S. economy is nothing like what the founders envisioned and fought for.

America Is Supposed To Have A Reserved Foreign Policy

The Founding Fathers specifically sought to keep America out of foreign entanglements and haphazard alliances. They knew from experience that the elites and monarchies of Europe often used wars as a means of consolidating power and keeping populations in relative fear. They were well aware of the methodologies of Niccolo Machiavelli and knew that forced alliances were a trap used to ensnare nations into unnecessary conflict and financial dependency while keeping the masses subservient through false patriotism.

Today, our government has utterly violated the original principles of reserved foreign policy, especially in the past century. The excuse always used is that “we are under attack,” yet we usually discover later that these “attacks” were actually fabricated by our own leaders. From the sinking of the USS Maine, to the sinking of the Lusitania, to the Gulf of Tonkin and beyond, for the past 100 years, Americans have been presented with false flag threats used as leverage to convince us to become entangled in foreign engagements. This strategy has become so common that elitists now openly admit their intentions to commit future false flags in order to draw us into yet another war, this time with Iran.

The current policy of “exporting democracy” has not only been a complete failure (just look at Egypt, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.), it is also a total affront to the foundation of the American dynamic. Patriotism in the name of interventionism is foolhardy and decidedly un-American.

America Is Supposed To Respect Individual Rights

The Founders witnessed the extreme abuses of government firsthand: invasion of privacy, invasion of property, wrongful arrest and imprisonment, loss of representation, overt and malicious taxation, thuggish law enforcement, and the targeting of those who dared to dissent in their speech. The excuse used by the British for their tyrannical behavior was, essentially, national security. In the end, though, the elites’ actions had nothing to do with security for the populous and everything to do with what they saw as opposition to their hegemony. Our government has become a mirror image of the elitist power-mongers of Britain in the days of the revolution. Absolutely everything the colonists fought against has been re-established by the globalists in our political structure today, once again, all in the name of national security.

We have seen the enslavement of our money supply and general economy by the Federal Reserve; invasive and violent taxation through the Internal Revenue Service; loss of privacy through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance and the Patriot acts; loss of property rights through multiple agencies including the Bureau of Land Management, the Environmental Protection Agency, the IRS, the Food and Drug Administration, etc. (who claim their tightening fist is for our own safety, yet they constantly overlook corporate misdeeds that put the public in true danger while pummeling average citizens for minor or non-existent offenses); the militarization of law enforcement through the Department of Homeland Security and Federally dominated fusion centers; potential loss of Habeas Corpus through the NDAA; and even wrongful arrest against those who merely speak openly of their discontent (look into the case of Marine veteran Brandon Raub for a taste of what lay ahead).

What Have We Become?

Those who rally behind the modern concept of America rally behind a façade — an empty shell devoid of the heart and soul that gave life to this once great experiment. I do not support what America is. I support what America was and what it could be again if the truth is adequately smashed into the faces of the currently oblivious public. If this country is content to suckle from the putrid teat of globalism and forsake the moral force of conscience that gave it life, then it has become another place — an alien land.

I have heard the argument that America is meant to be a kind of chameleon built to change its stripes and adapt to the demands of the era. I have heard it argued that the Constitution and the principles of the Founding Fathers are outdated and inadequate for our new age of technological wizardry and terrorist ideologies. This is pure intellectual idiocy. The principles of freedom never expire. Individual liberty is inherent and eternal. It is the driving force of every great accomplishment in the history of mankind. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights embody the spirit of that eternal battle of individual liberty. There is no adaptation. There is only freedom or tyranny.

It is time for us to decide what kind of Americans we wish to be: the deluded rah-rah puppets of a desiccated totalitarian society, or the watchmen on the wall. Will we be the keepers and protectors of the vital core of the American identity, or will we be fly-by-night consumers of the flavor-of-the-day political carnival, eating every tainted sample from the elitist platter in an insane attempt to replace our free heritage with a sleek, sexy, rehashed form of top-down feudalism?

Source: Brandon Smith | Alt-Market

Americans Putting Noose Around Own Necks

Former Presidential candidate and Reform Party founder Ross Perot broke his self-imposed public retirement to make a bold warning: America could be taken over.

Perot was the last man to make a serious independent run for President. That was back in 1992. He withdrew from the race after he and his family had received serious threats against their lives. By the time he had gathered himself enough to reenter the race, all of his momentum was lost and Republican hacks like Rush Limbaugh had a heyday making sport of him. But the things Perot tried to warn us about back then have all come to pass. The economic malaise that currently envelopes this country could have been averted had Presidents and Congresses from both major parties over the past two decades had the sagacity and courage to heed Ross Perot and Ron Paul’s warnings. In fact, looking back, Bill Clinton looks like a fiscal saint compared to fiscal sinners G.W. Bush and Barack Obama.

Yahoo! News covers the story: “Former presidential contender and billionaire Ross Perot is worried that America is a sitting duck for an unnamed foreign invader. In an interview for his new autobiography, Perot said the nation’s weak economy has left us open for a hostile takeover–and neither presidential candidate is the man to save the country.

“Citing an impending fiscal cliff, Perot warned of disaster. ‘If we are that weak, just think of who wants to come here first and take us over,’ the former CEO of info-tech company Perot Systems told USA Today on Monday.

“‘The last thing I ever want to see is our country taken over because we’re so financially weak, we can’t do anything,’ Perot says.

“When asked for his take on the presidential race, Perot added, ‘Nobody that’s running really talks about it, about what we have to do and why we have to do it. They would prefer not to have it discussed.’”

See the report here.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of the American people do not truly understand the danger they are in. The national news media is mostly about NOT reporting what’s going on. The conspiracy of silence by the three major network news shows and the cable news shows is so overwhelmingly successful, the average American citizen truly doesn’t realize how dangerously close our country is to utter destruction–either by an economic collapse or by a nuclear war, or both. And all the two major parties can do is cast all the blame on each other, while the truth of the matter is BOTH major parties in Washington, D.C., are equally culpable for the jeopardous condition in which America now finds herself.

And Ross Perot is right: neither Obama nor Romney have the guts to even discuss (much less work to fix) the real causes of America’s fiscal woes.

Perot is also correct in his observation that America could be “taken over” by a foreign power. While the Bush and Obama administrations were beating the war drums for aggression against Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, and God only knows who else in the Middle East, they have turned a blind eye and deaf ear to the clear and present danger posed by China and Russia. The fact that China and Russia are salivating over nuclear war with the United States seems totally lost to the State Department, CIA, NSA, DHS, the mainstream media, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, and 95% of the American people.

Allow me to say at this point that if you live within a couple hundred miles to the east of a major nuclear target area, I would be making plans to relocate NOW. But you do what you want. That’s just what I would do. And in case you do not know where the major nuclear target sites are located in the United States, I highly encourage you to order Joel Skousen’ masterpiece: Strategic Relocation. Learn about it here.

Joel believes that China and Russia will not launch their nuclear attack against us for another ten years or so, but when it happens, it will be the catalyst for both a financial collapse and the rise of a totalitarian government. This leads to my question. Are we going to be taken over (as Mr. Perot is worried about), or are we already being taken over? Is our threat Beijing and Moscow or Washington, D.C.?

Without a doubt, the threat posed by Russia and China is very, very real (unlike the pseudo-threat posed by Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, etc.). In fact, Russian and China have been preparing their countries’ civil defense and fallout shelters for years. The only such shelters that are being constructed in the United States, however, are those the federal government is building for the power-elite. And that is being done virtually invisibly.

But even short of a nuclear attack from Russia and China, is not the America that we knew, the America that was governed by a constitution, the America that believed in the principles of federalism and limited government, the America that regarded the principles enshrined in the Bill of Rights as sacrosanct, the America that believed in paying its bills, the America that had an intrinsic fear of God within it, ALREADY being taken over?

Virtually every principle upon which America was founded and that guided this nation for over 200 years is being thoroughly expunged. Every one of them! My fear is that by the time a foreign power decides to push the button, the America that will be destroyed will only be a museum of what this country once was. The real America is being destroyed NOW–not by a foreign power, but from within!

As an example, try to wrap your brain around this report: “Close to half of Americans say they are in favour of police departments deploying surveillance drones domestically.

“According to a survey conducted by The Associated Press and The National Constitution Center, 44 percent support the idea of police using unmanned aerial vehicles to track suspects and carry out investigations.

“Only 36 percent said that they ‘strongly oppose’ or ‘somewhat oppose’ police use of drones, according to the survey.

“The poll also found that only one third of Americans say they are significantly concerned about their privacy being eroded by the adoption of drones by police forces throughout the country.

“Thirty-five percent of respondents said they were ‘extremely concerned’ or ‘very concerned’ when asked if they believed that police departments’ use of drones for surveillance would impact their privacy.

“Almost exactly the same number, 36 percent, noted that they were ‘not too concerned’ or ‘not concerned at all’, while twenty-four percent were neutral on the issue, saying they were only ‘somewhat concerned’ about a potential loss of privacy.

“David Eisner, president and CEO of the constitution center in Philadelphia, told the AP that he was somewhat baffled by the response to the poll:

“‘I had assumed that the idea that American police would be using the same technology that our military is using in Afghanistan would garner an almost hysterical response,’ Eisner said. Support for drone use ‘shows that people are feeling less physically secure than they’d like to because they are willing to accept fairly extreme police action to improve that security.’”

See the report here.

So, how could half of the American people be utterly unconcerned or even enthusiastic about this country being turned into a giant surveillance society? Are they so ignorant of history as to not realize that the most glaring observation of every totalitarian regime in modern–or even not so modern–memory was always the implementation of a massive surveillance network within the country? It seems that there is virtually no intrusion into our personal lives and liberties so egregious that the American people will not support it, if it is presented as a way of making them more “secure.”

Today, the vast majority of the American people don’t think twice about the government tracking them and listening to them through their cell phones, spying on their financial transactions, recording their phone conversations, reading their emails, scanning the data on their computers, setting up ubiquitous checkpoints on highways, and now sending drones over their homes and neighborhoods–drones that are currently being used to kill mostly innocent men, women, and children in the Middle East. Yes, you read it right: mostly innocent men, women, and children.

So, Really, Why Do They Hate Us?

Recent attacks on American embassies and consulates in numerous Muslim countries are claimed to be irrational and undue reactions to a film portraying the Muslim prophet Mohammed in a degraded manner. The film is intentionally sacrilegious and incendiary toward Islamic beliefs and seems intended to add fuel to the rage of a Muslim world already incensed at the U.S. for its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,  for destructive  American drone attacks in Yemen and Somalia and multiple other nations,  and one-sided support for Israel accompanied by platitudes for Palestinians. Thus, the roots of  widespread anti-Americanism are much deeper than can be explained merely by recent events. Instead,  Muslim fury can be traced to the ever increasing intervention by Washington in Muslim countries since the end of World War II.  Prior to that, the U.S. was considered a non-interventionist, even anti-imperialist, friend in much of the region. Yet, even before the war ended President Roosevelt made a secret deal with the Saudi king to provide American protection (and ultimately arms as well, used primarily to suppress his own population) to the Saudis in return for unobstructed American corporate access to the recently discovered Saudi oilfields.

Few today remember American policies during the Iranian crisis of 1946, when the U.S. obliquely threatened to force Soviet Troops out of Iran. American, British and Soviet troops occupied Iran in 1941 because it had tilted toward the Nazis under the father of the later American client, Shah Reza Pahlavi. The Soviets occupied the oil fields of northern Iran with Washington’s approval during the war to prevent them from falling into Nazi hands. The Soviets were supposed to withdraw in March of that year but refused until a deal could be arranged whereby the USSR could purchase Iranian oil in order to begin rebuilding its war-ravaged society. Initially the Truman Administration encouraged the Iranian government to accept the deal. Then when the Red Army did withdraw also encouraged the Iranians to renege on the arrangement. It is worth noting that the Red Army did not then re-occupy the territory, thereby putting the lie to the claim made immediately after WWII that the Soviets were bent on world domination. There was nothing, not even employing atomic weapons, that the U.S. could have done to stop the Red Army had it chosen to reoccupy Iran’s oilfields since that would have destroyed the very resources that were being contested.  The Soviets were only one of the principal obstacles to American post-war plans- though they were trumpeted as the prime mover. Equally important was nationalism, especially the sort of national independence craved by countries possessing vital resources that the U.S. coveted. Few also realize that until WWII the U.S. was the prime exporter of petroleum. By war’s end the U.S. had used so much of its domestic oil, and its hydrocarbon-based economy had grown so exponentially, that from that point on the U.S. was impelled to begin importing oil.

Many do remember the overthrow of the prime minister of Iran, Mohammed Mossadeqh in 1953. Exceeding its legal mandate to gather intelligence, the newly minted Central Intelligence Agency, initiated its first successful overthrow of a constitutional and elected government because that government decided that Iranian oil belonged to the Iranians and not to the British oil company that would eventually become British Petroleum. The American scheme was calculated to ensure that American companies would thereafter dominate Iranian oil production and get rid of most British competition in Iran as well. The Shah and his brutal government was then installed to act as Washington’s gendarme in the region. To ensure his rule the U.S. military and CIA then trained his dreaded secret police in the fine arts of torture and terror.

Meanwhile the CIA was active in similar efforts across the planet to undermine any form of nationalism, socialism, or communism that would interfere with the overarching American agenda, which was not the promotion of “democracy” but the installation of friendly clients into positions of power in countries considered strategic for their resources or geographic position. Space does not allow a complete catalog but of importance to current events is certainly the role the “Company” played in the overthrow of the British client king of Iraq in 1958, an intrigue in which Saddam Hussein played a role and that led eventually to his dictatorship, one with which Washington was happy to cooperate after the Shah of Iran was overthrown in 1979. The famous film of Donald Rumsfeld warmly shaking Saddam’s hand perfectly illustrates the lower depths to which Washington has too often stooped to achieve its ends. The U.S. provided highly technical intelligence to Iraq against Iran, aiding the mass slaughter that ensued, and when he used poison gas made from chemicals provided by American corporations against Iraqi Kurds during the war with Iran, Washington prevented sanctions against his regime. At that point he was assisting the American agenda to weaken Iranian fundamentalism so his crimes could be whitewashed. However, his invasion of Kuwait in 1990 became the perfect rationale to inject what evolved into a permanent American military presence in the Persian Gulf.

At the time of 9-11 Michael Scheur was the CIA’s foremost expert on Al Qaeda. His writings emphasize that Americans had to take seriously the reasons spelled out by Osama Bin Laden for Al Qaeda’s antagonism toward the U.S. One of those principal motivations was the American military presence in Saudi Arabia during and after Operation Desert Storm. Bin Laden said clearly that the presence of “infidel” troops on sacred Islamic soil was a desecration. Thereafter, all American forces were to be driven from all Islamic lands. The widespread perception in the Muslim world that Americans had defiled the holiest sites of Islam and were exploiting Muslim resources while propping up corrupt dictatorial apostates like the rulers of the Arab Gulf states  contributed to the relative ease with which al Qaeda could recruit new Jihadis to its cause.

Scheur also noted that bin Laden said that the attacks on 9-11 were intended to promote further intervention by Washington in the region and thus promote more of the anti-Americanism that he hoped would fuel his movement. To a great extent American actions have worked almost precisely to Bin Laden’s plan and the current explosion of violence around the world toward the U.S. is a direct outgrowth of the increasing resentment and hatred long stored in memory across the Middle East.  Washington is reaping the violent whirlwind sowed by itself.

The so-called “Arab Spring” represented an upwelling of long-simmering opposition to numerous dictatorships in the region, most of them propped up by Washington with a few exceptions that rankled like Libya and Syria. Though President Obama and Hillary Clinton mouthed piously about popular democracy and the “will of the people,” such didn’t help the hapless residents of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, where instantaneous and brutal repression followed, with mere sighs from Washington. Remember that at first, President Obama supported Hosni Mubarak in Egypt until the intensity of the demonstrations in Cairo forced the U.S to abandon him. But not before the Egyptian military high command stepped up to reassure the State Department that it would take his place. Then they threw Mubarak  “under the bus.” Nevertheless, the sheer pressure of popular demand for a voice necessitated an election. Since the Egyptian Army is financed and armed by Washington, and Egypt receives the second largest sum of foreign aid (after Israel) widespread knowledge that the Egyptian Army is a creature of the U.S. led to victory in the elections by the despised Muslim Brotherhood. After the election the Egyptian courts sought to prevent the seating of this Parliament dominated by the Brotherhood and with representation by the even more vehement Salafists, but the newly seated president of Egypt, Mohammed Morsi, does indeed represent the Brotherhood.  One reason the Army allowed the elections was because its leadership feared that rank and file troops would not support repression in the face of such an uprising from the depths of their own social origins. Morsi is being very careful now. It remains to be seen how the new configuration of power, of Islamists vs. the Army, will evolve.

The killing of the American ambassador and three other Americans in Libya prompted an embittered Secretary Clinton to ask how those who owed their “liberation” to the U.S. could be so ungrateful to their emancipators, thereby confirming how little she understands of the circumstances fostering the Libyan uprising, nor those her government has wrought, or the degree to which the planned outcome of U.S. intervention islikely to fail utterly.  The standard interpretation of what transpired in Libya is that the U.S. and its European allies in NATO conducted a humanitarian intervention to rid Libya of another brutal dictator. It is true that Muammar Qaddaffi ruled autocratically but in this he was supported by a substantial majority at least in western Libya, where traditional tribes were loyal.

Libya came into existence as an independent state only in 1951. Before that it had been an Italian colony, or rather three separate colonies cobbled together and given the name the ancient Romans called most of North Africa. In its efforts to subdue these colonies Italy became the very first European empire to use the airplane in primitive bombing runs on resisting tribes. In this they were soon followed by the French in Syria and Lebanon, and by the British in Iraq and Afghanistan, facts still well remembered in the region. Therefore, like so many nations that acquired independence after World War II, Libya was an artificial construct, merging mutually suspicious or hostile ethnic groups and tribes into a configuration designed by former colonial masters to serve their interests. When Qaddaffi overthrew the corrupt king of Libya in 1969, who made sweetheart deals with western oil companies, and hoarded revenues from Libya’s newly discovered oil, he took over a country already riven with tribal animosities. One of his difficulties was that much of Libya’s oil was in the east, where tribes different from his own loyalists dwelled. He suppressed opposition brutally.

Another problem which Quaddaffi dealt with successfully – and which brought him the unending hostility of the west and led to a deadly cat and mouse game that played out over forty years- were those western oil companies that dominated the industry and reaped the greatest share of profits. Qaddaffi  immediately nationalized oil but allowed some companies to remain. However, he imposed significantly higher taxes and royalties on those, like the American company Occidental, resulting in a considerable increase in revenues available to him but he used these to raise the standard of living substantially, mainly for his loyalists, but also to an extent for the entire population. Whether his example stimulated what followed is unclear but the facts are that numerous other former oil producing colonies of the western powers subsequently initiated their own nationalizations, thereby upsetting longstanding and profitable western arrangements. He also refused to peg the Libyan currency, the dinar, to the International Monetary Fund, and refused to submit to the World Bank and International Bank for Settlements. Qaddaffi also styled himself the champion of pan-Arabism, the movement to unify the entire Arab world and funded many nationalist movements hostile to the west.

During all this time the CIA was actively involved with Qaddaffi’s opponents to find a way to overthrow him. This lethal contest led to mutual terrorism (though most American media and scholarly accounts omit the U.S. actions) and culminating in the atrocity of Lockerbie, followed by the bombing of Libya, including Qaddaffi’s house where his adoptive three year old daughter was killed. Qaddaffi  then intensified efforts to acquire chemical weapons, and even undertook a nuclear program. However sanctions led him to submit the Lockerbie suspects for trial in the UK, and later to give up these WMD programs.  At that point western media reports declared that Qaddaffi had “normalized’” affairs with the west.

Whatever he imagined about his new relations with former enemies, the CIA had other ideas. So when the “Arab Spring” erupted in Tunisia and soon spread across the entire region, many Libyans followed suit and Libya descended into the civil war that Washington and NATO then leapt upon in order to accomplish finally what the western governments and energy corporations had desired all along- the overthrow of Qaddaffi and his replacement with an installed government essentially of handpicked clients who would restore Libyan resources to western corporate domination. In the midst of fighting the private global intelligence company STRATFOR published and circulated a detailed map showing most of Libya’s oil was located in the eastern area of Benghazi. It was also well known that the oil Libya produced was of a type that is refined easily into the gasoline required in European automobiles. South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham waxed  feverishly over  the lure of profits, braying “Let’s get in on the ground. There’s a lot of money to be made in Libya. Lots of oil to be produced. Let’s get on the ground and help the Libyan people establish a democracy and a functioning economy based on free market principles.” Even before the “revolution” had succeeded and a new government was installed, the rebel group claiming authority announced the dissolution of Qaddaffi’s national bank and replaced it with a new central bank tied to international institutions, which, of course, are dominated by the western financial establishment.

As media images showed clearly, Qaddaffi still had enormous support. The “rebels” included eastern tribal members long hostile to rule from western Libya, but also ethnic minorities like the Berbers, but also Libyan members of al Qaeda as well as al Qaeda jihadists from around the Arab and Muslim world. Included in the toxic mix were CIA operatives and covert American Special Forces. Without western arms supplied to Qaddaffi’s opponents, and especially the U.S. led bombing campaign it is likely Qaddaffi would have hung on. The result we see today, however, was utterly predictable.

The so-called government installed in Tripoli, in the west of Libya, has no control over anything, especially in eastern Benghazi. In May the interim prime minister’s offices were attacked with four aides killed. In June a bomb exploded in the same consulate building where Ambassador Stevens was killed. The British ambassador narrowly escaped assassination last spring. The January ransacking of the National Transition Council offices provides evidence that factions in Benghazi want independence, not the unified state. What more would it have taken for Washington to realize that its best laid plans were going awry?  Writing in the Guardian, Benjamin Barber notes that at minimum 100,000 militants of one faction or another, all armed with American and NATO weapons (including the rocket-propelled-grenade launchers used  against the American consulate) continue to wage war or jihad upon each other, and that al Qaeda is as much a home –grown faction as any other. Indeed, al Qaeda raised its flag over the Benghazi courthouse the day after Qaddaffi was killed.

On March 2, 2007 Retired General Wesley Clark, former Supreme Commander of NATO forces, and 2004 Democratic contender for the presidency, appeared on Amy Goodman’s televised program Democracy Now. In the interview he revealed that shortly before the invasion of Iraq a highly placed Pentagon officer divulged a secret plan to him to overthrow the governments of seven countries-Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. Speaking in San Francisco the following October Clark repeated this and added commentary about a conversation he had in 1992 with Paul Wolfowitz, a prime architect of  George W. Bush’s policies, who at the time was number three in the Defense department. Quoting Wolfowitz Clark said: “One thing we learned [in the Persian Gulf War] is that we can use our military in the region- in the Middle East- and the Soviets won’t stop us. And we’ve got five or ten years to clean up those old Soviet regimes – Syria, Iran, Iraq- before the next superpower comes along to stop us.”

The Neo-Conservatives were supposed to have been swept from power by the new Obama Administration, and yet the withdrawal (that is not really a withdrawal) from Iraq was negotiated by Bush, and the “surge” in Afghanistan ordered by Obama out neo-conned the neo-cons, just as the “liberation” of Libya certainly followed their template if not their foolish expectations. Syria awaits our humanitarian ministrations. But that may prove the most disastrous escapade of all.

Source: Paul Atwood | CounterPunch.org

Mr Blowback Rising In Benghazi

“Daddy, what is blowback?”

Here’s a fable to tell our children, by the fire, in a not so-distant post-apocalyptic, dystopian future.

Once upon a time, during George “Dubya” Bush’s “war on terra”, the Forces of Good in Afghanistan captured – and duly tortured – one evil terrorist, Abu Yahya al-Libi.

Abu Yahya al-Libi was, of course, Libyan. He slaved three years in the bowels of Bagram prison near Kabul, but somehow managed to escape that supposedly impregnable fortress in July 2005.

At the time, the Forces of Good were merrily in bed with Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in Libya – whose intelligence services, to the delight of the Bush administration, were doing their nastiest to exterminate or at least isolate al-Qaeda-style Salafi-jihadis of the al-Libi kind.

But, then, in 2011, the Forces of Good, under new administration, decided it was time to bury the oh so passe “war on terra” and dance to a new, more popular groove; humanitarian intervention, also characterized as “kinetic military action”.

So al-Libi was back from the dead – now fighting side by side with the Forces of Good to topple (and eventually snuff out) “evil” Col Gaddafi. Al-Libi had become a “freedom fighter” – even though he was openly calling for Libya to become an Islamic Emirate.

The honeymoon didn’t last long.

In September 2012, for the first time in three months, al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, aka The Surgeon, released a 42-minute video special to “celebrate” the 11th anniversary of 9/11, finally admitting the snuffing out of his number two.

His number two was none other than Abu Yahya al-Libi – targeted by one of US President Barack Obama’s cherished drones in Waziristan on June 4.

An immediate effect of al-Zawahiri’s video was that an angry armed mob, led by Islamist outfit Ansar al Sharia, set fire to the US consulate in Benghazi. The US ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, was killed. It didn’t matter that Stevens happened to be a hero of the “NATO rebels” who had “liberated” Libya – notoriously sprinkled with Salafi-jihadis of the al-Libi kind.

Stevens was rewarded by Washington with the ambassadorial post only after “evil” Gaddafi was finally sodomized, lynched and killed by, what else, an angry mob.

So finally the blowback serpent was able to bite its own tail.

Terra, terra, terra
What happened in Benghazi may have been just an out-of-control protest against a crude, amateur, made-in-California movie produced and directed by an Israeli-American real estate developer and certified Islamophobe (an identity now being reported as a guise), financed with US$5 million from unidentified Jewish donors, depicting Islam “as a cancer” and Prophet Muhammad as a womanizer, a pedophile and most of all, a fraud. The movie was duly promoted by wacko Florida pastor and Koran-burning freak Terry Jones.

Yet the killing of the US ambassador in Libya is just an hors d’oeuvre to what may happen in Syria – where scores of “freedom fighters” supported by the CIA, the Turks and the House of Saud are al-Qaeda-linked, either via the supposedly reformist Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) or acronym-infested subcontracting gangs such as Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) or al-Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM).

So how will Washington “bring the perpetrators to justice” in Libya? After all this is the same gang that was hailed as “heroes” when they sodomized, lynched and snuffed out “evil” Gaddafi.

Asia Times Online has been warning for over a year about blowback in Libya – and potentially in Syria, where medieval Saudi sheikhs frantically issue fatwas legitimating a widespread massacre of “infidel” Alawites. This is all a rerun of the same old 1980s’ Afghan jihad movie; first you call them “freedom fighters”, but when they attack us they revert to being “terrorists”.

Now we have NATO-armed Salafi-jihadis in Libya, and House of Saud-financed and Turkey-based Salafi-jihadis in Syria – deploying “terra” antics such as suicide bombers to bring down the Assad regime – all wired up and ready to roll. It certainly adds a new meaning to Obama’s “kinetic action” gig.

Blowback – as in Afghanistan – might have taken years. This time Mr Blowback reared its ugly head in only a few months. And that’s just the beginning.

So what now? Who’re you gonna bomb? Who’re you gonna drone to death? What about bombing Benghazi a year after condemning Gaddafi to death because he might have threatened to … bomb Benghazi?

Ask US Secretary of State Hillary “We came, he saw, he died” Clinton, who claims to talk on behalf of the “Libyan people”. Maybe she will come up with a policy of retroactively aligning the US with Gaddafi.

And since this is an electoral year, why not ask invisible former president Bush himself? After all, he proclaimed on September 20, 2001 that “either you are with us, or you are with the terra-rists.”

Well, Mr Blowback would say, beware of what you get when you are in bed with the terra-rists.

Source: Pepe Escobar | Asia Times Online

America The Next Lost Atlantis: Geographically, Economically, Politically & Morally

Geographically:  Now that the world’s ocean levels have started rising much faster than predicted, America’s coastal cities may become submerged far sooner than we thought.  And, sooner rather than later, Manhattan stands a very good chance of becoming the next lost Atlantis.

Here’s a cute little video from NASA that describes what’s been happening to our planet’s climate over the last 131 years.  Check it out:  http://www.climatecentral.org/blogs/131-years-of-global-warming-in-26-seconds/  In this video animation, blue represents minus-two degrees Celsius and red represents plus-two degrees Celsius.  That’s only a four-degree variation — but what a variation it is!  At the blue point, ice all over the planet used to be still intact.  At the red point, however, it has melted.  At this rate, San Francisco will soon join Manhattan in its race to become the first lost Atlantis.

But enough said about that. I just hope that you don’t own a condo down in SoHo or beach-front property in Honolulu.  You do?  You’re screwed.

And then there’s Burning Man.  This year Black Rock City was completely engulfed in air-born dust particles and white-out sand storms almost 24/7.   If this drought doesn’t let up, perhaps they ought to change its name to Dust Bowl City.

And also, for the first time in memory, we have gotten a hecka lot of Canada geese hanging around Berkeley this summer instead of just passing by in the spring and the fall.  Guess they don’t have to fly so far south to get warm any more.  No winter vacation in Cancun for them!   And we humans don’t need to fly south to Puerto Vallarta during the winter months any more either.  Last year was the warmest winter in NorCal that I can remember (but I still love Puerto Vallarta).

Morally:  The Republican party (and the huge corporations that now own it) are completely using and abusing their only staunch allies — the older white American males and blind-faith Christians who support them — in order to enact laws and make policies that not only undermine these staunch allies’ beliefs but also their very existence.

Jobs, Social Security, homes, families, medical care, infrastructure, water supplies, energy sources, the very teachings of Christ Himself, you name it — all have been put in grave danger by the very corporate interests that naive older white Americans and gullible Christians have blindly trusted and supported all these years.  It’s just sad to watch these trusting staunch allies of the GOP constantly getting knifed in the back.

Then there are the famous Fetus Wars.  Jesus is being called upon to testify against Planned Parenthood — and yet Jesus isn’t even allowed on the premises when multiple brutal vicious and bloody wars have been declared against millions of innocent children all around the world.  You wanna call yourself a Christian?  Then you gotta act Christ-like!  Duh.

And Repubs are now actually saying that Ted Kennedy originated the War on Women.  Chappaquiddick was a tragic accident.  That’s not the same thing.  But a true war on women appears to be the GOP’s latest favorite game plan — as Repubs happily head down the same path that other “Christians” took back in the European Middle Ages when an estimated nine million women who dared to speak up for themselves, tried to get an education or attempted to practice medicine were burned alive at the stake.

Economically:  Since outsourcing and deregulation has hit America like a category-5 hurricane, our economy has become a disaster area — literally.  So many jobs have fled overseas and so much wealth has fled to the Caymans that many parts of the USA look almost like New Orleans after Katrina.

All the things that we used to make here?  We don’t even know how to make them any more.  And all that knowledge of how to make them has been lost too.

Sometimes I wish that the UN or NATO or whoever — perhaps the war-criminal-trial folks over at the Hague — would sanction America like they are now sanctioning Iran.  Then we would be FORCED to become economically independent again.

Republicans have deliberately created a vast pool of unemployed Americans so that they won’t have to pay us high wages.  Hence the GOP’s refusal to endorse a job program.  Why would they want to do that!

In their haste to make more and more money, large corporations are polluting our water and air and elevating our risk of cancer of course.  But they are also killing off billions of bees.  Good luck with getting our crops in when there is no pollination.  And bye-bye flowers too.  We don’t even have to wait until water drowns out the new American Atlantis to miss our fruit trees and flowers.  Monsanto has already taken care of that.

Politically:  Anyone can buy a seat in Congress these days — or even buy the White House itself or the Supreme Court (especially the Supreme Court).  Who would have ever thought that it would be that way here in the former Land of the Free.  Not since Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall have our public offices been so “For Sale”.  Shame on us for letting this happen.

And remember back in 1999 when we all thought that YK2 was going to be an international disaster?  Well all the computers didn’t crash, but YK2 turned out to be an incredible disaster anyway — when George W. Bush stole the 2000 election and almost NOBODY in America objected or even noticed.  Then Bush allowed 9-11 to happen, followed by the disastrous Afghanistan invasion, the incredibly expensive Iraq invasion and the 2008 economic crash.

Yes, YK2 really was a disaster.

More political immorality:  Who has been a very important ally of corporate-owned Washington in places like Afghanistan, Syria and Libya?  Wait for it.  “Al Qaeda!”  Arming and encouraging the people behind 9-11?  Isn’t that about as politically immoral as you can get?  But Americans seem to accept this hypocrisy without batting an eye.  Go figure.

And what can our bought-and-paid-for politicians possibly be thinking when they systematically alienate huge countries like Russia and China while kissing the booties of their corporate neo-con counterparts in teeny-tiny Israel.  Israel?  The size of New Jersey?  Israel’s neo-con corporatists are gonna save us from the wrath of Russia, China, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and all the other places and countries that our corporate-owned government has thoroughly screwed over the years?  Huh?

And then there’s that cruel joke that used to be America’s legendary and heroic Supreme Court.  No justice at all to be had there these days — if you are merely working class.  Those guys in black robes take their reverse-Robin-Hood roles very seriously.

“Take from the worker bees and give to the drones” should be carved in marble over our corporate-owned government buildings in Washington — just before America, the next lost Atlantis, slowly sinks into the sea.

But you had better get to carving it soon — because there is something in the air in America these days, a sense that nasty undercurrents are moving stealthily toward us from somewhere very deep, somewhere that the average voter isn’t in touch with — except in our guts.

And our guts seem to be telling us that America is now sinking fast.  And that “We the People” have absolutely no life jackets — but that the billionaires who now own our government are already provisioning their yachtshttp://www.smirkingchimp.com/node/45275.

To paraphrase Plato, “…once upon a time your State stayed the course of a mighty host, which, starting from a distant point in the Atlantic ocean, was insolently advancing to attack the whole of Europe, and Asia to boot” — and then their city of Atlantis got all drowned out.

And to paraphrase Ray Bradbury, “Something wicked is definitely coming our way”.

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