America R.I.P.

During the second half of the 20th century the United States was an opportunity society. The ladders of upward mobility were plentiful, and the middle class expanded. Incomes rose, and ordinary people were able to achieve old-age security.

In the 21st century the opportunity society has disappeared. Middle class jobs are scarce. Indeed, jobs of any kind are scarce. To stay even with population growth from 2002 through 2011, the economy needed about 14 million new jobs. However, at the end of 2011 there were only 1 million more jobs than in 2002. http://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cesbtab1.htm 

Only 426,000 of these jobs are in the private sector. The bulk of the net new jobs consist of waitresses and bartenders and health care and social assistance. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, over the 9 years, employment for waitresses and bartenders increased by 1,188,000. Employment in health care and social assistance increased 3,087,000. These two categories accounted for 1,000% of the net private sector job growth.

As for manufacturing jobs, they not only did not grow with the population but declined absolutely. During these nine years, 3.5 million middle class manufacturing jobs were lost.

Over the entire nine years, only 48,000 new jobs were created for architects and engineers.

In the 21st century the US economy has been able to create only a few new jobs and these are in lowly paid domestic services that cannot be offshored, such as waitresses and bartenders.

The lack of jobs, especially high value-added, high productivity jobs, is the reason real median household income has declined and the distribution of income has worsened. Without rising real household income, there cannot be a consumer economy.

In the early years of the 21st century, the Federal Reserve substituted a rise in consumer debt to drive the economy in place of the missing rise in consumer incomes. Low interest rates drove up housing prices, and people refinanced their mortgages and spent the equity. The Federal Reserve kept the economy alive by loading up consumers with debt that housing prices and consumer incomes would soon be unable to support.

When debt and real estate prices reached unsustainable levels, the bubble popped, and the ongoing financial crisis was upon us.

The cause of all of the problems is the offshoring of Americans’ jobs. When jobs are moved offshore, consumers’ careers and incomes, and the GDP and payroll and income tax base associated with those jobs, go with them. When the goods and services produced for American markets by offshored labor are brought into the US to be sold, the trade deficit rises, and downward pressure is put on the dollar, pushing up domestic inflation. (On October 12, statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com) reported that “third-quarter wholesale inflation jumped to an annualized 6.2%.”)

Jobs offshoring is driven by Wall Street, “shareholder advocates,” the threat of takeovers, and by large retailers, such as Walmart. By cutting labor costs, profits go up.It is that simple. However, as a result of sending American jobs to cheap labor countries, US consumer incomes go down. The end result is to destroy the domestic consumer market. What would have been US consumer income growth becomes instead profit growth for US corporations.

Keynesian economists use in their textbooks the example of how the aggregate effect of individual saving could be the opposite of the effect intended by the individuals. Whereas each saver seeks to improve his position by building wealth, in the aggregate saving could exceed investment, resulting in a decline in aggregate demand and a fall in income for all. Offshoring has the same logic. Each corporation can expect to gain more profits from moving US jobs offshore, but the aggregate effect is a fall in American consumer incomes and a reduction in the American consumer market.

I have told this story many times. But policymakers, the media, and economists seem unable to connect the dots.

Jobs offshoring has substantial implications for Social Security and Medicare. The US has the least adequate social safety net of any developed country. The two major components of the US social safety net are Social Security and Medicare for the elderly. Social Security and Medicare are financed by a payroll tax. The combined tax is 15.3% of payrolls. For the past quarter of a century the Social Security portion of the payroll tax has built up a surplus of over $2 trillion. Recently, the Medicare portion began running in the red.

Right-wing Republicans, free market ideologues, and the left-wing have all indoctrinated themselves with incorrect beliefs about Social Security and Medicare. The right-wing claims that a safety net financed with 15.3% of payrolls is a “Ponzi scheme” and an “unfunded liability.” If that is the case, then so are veterans benefits, military pensions, and federal pensions, all of which are financed by the income tax, the basis for the payroll tax.

The left-wing claims that the rich do not pay high enough payroll taxes, because the income subject to Social Security payroll tax is capped at about $110,000. But the benefits are also capped. Social Security is not supposed to be an income redistribution scheme from rich to poor, and it is not supposed to be a pension system for the rich. The pension paid is supposed to correlate with the pre-retirement income level of the retiree. Those who had higher wages or salaries and consequently paid more in payroll taxes receive a larger Social Security check than those who had lower wages and salaries and paid less payroll taxes, although there is favoritism toward the lower income earners who receive proportionally more in respect to their payroll taxes than higher income earners.

There is no cap on income subject to the Medicare portion of the payroll tax. Moreover, Medicare charges a Medicare Part B premium that is deducted from the Social Security monthly check. In addition, there is a further Part B premium based on retirement age income. For example, someone working beyond retirement age and making $250,000 per year pays about $3,800 in Medicare Part B premium in addition to the Medicare portion of the payroll tax of about $7,500. The annual premium he pays for his “free” Medicare for which he has paid all his working life with a payroll tax is about $11,300.

Moreover, Medicare by itself is insufficient coverage. To actually have medical coverage, those covered by Medicare have to purchase a supplementary private policy to cover the large gaps in Medicare. Depending on the range of coverage, a supplementary policy costs approximately $100 to $300 per month.

As the person making $250,000 per year is likely to go for the most coverage, he will be paying about $14,900 (excluding deductions and co-payments) per year for his “free” Medicare. This is despite having paid the Medicare payroll tax each year of his working life. A person who made $250,000 in taxable income per year for 30 years would have paid $217,500 into Medicare at the current Medicare payroll tax rate.

The right-wing’s notion that Social Security and Medicare are handouts, part of the welfare state’s bread and circuses, and the left-wing’s idea that the rich get a free ride are equally untrue.

(Note: $250,000 is the politicians’ dividing line between the rich and the rest of us. For a person making $50,000 a year, an income five times larger can seem rich. However, a $250,000 annual income leaves a family or person far distant from the lifestyle of the rich. Upper middle class incomes are generally associated with high-tax, high-cost urban areas in states with high income taxes. After federal income and payroll taxes, state income and sales taxes, and property taxes, what appears to many as a large income disappears. In New York City, the federal income tax will take about 25% of the $250,000, New York state will take about 9%, and New York City will take about 3.65%. The combined city and state sales tax is 8.875%. The property tax is high. The conclusion is that in New York City a $250,000 income is reduced to $125,000 or thereabouts. Those who claim “the rich don’t pay taxes” are not talking about $250,000 incomes.)

Social Security and Medicare have served the country well. They protect the individual from his own mistakes, from crooked and incompetent money managers, and from financial crises, and they protect society from the moral dilemma of confronting large numbers of fellow citizens who through fault or no fault of their own cannot provide for their livelihood and medical care. After the financial scandals and crisis of the past five years, it is a stretch to believe that any but the astute can manage their personal wealth, whether small or large, in today’s situation of unregulated financial markets, zero interest rates, currency uncertainty, and highly complex investment instruments with computers programmed with mathematical models dominating equity trades.

The argument that conceptually a person could do better by investing his payroll taxes in the stock market is a poor basis for old age security policy. The person can do better as long as he or she doesn’t fall into the hands of a Bernie Madoff or a Goldman Sachs, doesn’t receive zero interest on his bonds because the Federal Reserve has to bail out the “too big to fail banks,” doesn’t experience a decline in currency value due to monetization of enormous federal deficits, and doesn’t experience a bear market as he approaches retirement.

The right-wing ideologues who try to scare old age security out of existence go on and on about rising medical costs, about an aging population living longer, declining birthrates and a worsening ratio of workers to retirees, about people learning to rely on handouts rather than their own means, and about Washington’s rising unfunded liabilities.

Scare projections are designed to scare, and most are untenable. For example, longevity was a product of rising incomes, good diet, and antibiotics. Today only the upper crust have rising incomes. Antibiotics are wearing out from abuse and rising immunity of bacteria. Diet is compromised in ways still poorly understood as a result of GMOs, pesticides, herbicides, pumping chicken, pork, and beef full of antibiotics and hormones and feeding the animals GMO grains and also possibly infected animal byproducts, and pumping our water full of fluoride. A variety of destructive activities and behaviors are causing ecological damage. Longevity might have been a short-term benefit of irreproducible conditions considering the mounting ecological damage and the rise of superbugs, stress, and tainted food and water production.

The projection of an aging population might also be wrong. Clearly, the post-World War II baby boomers are aging, but do the projections take into account the legislated 1965 immigration increases plus the illegal influx from Mexico and points south of young people with high birth rates? How can it be that a country with allegedly 30 million illegal immigrants, whose children born in the US are citizens, has a declining birth rate? How do we know that the illegal population will not continue to increase?

There are so many Spanish speaking people in the US today that if a person calls any of his utility companies, whether telephone, Internet, water, electricity, TV, or any of his credit card companies, or his bank, he has to select English or Spanish. Obviously, as
anti-immigration sites make clear, the US population is changing in its national origin, and there appears to be no sign of an aging Hispanic population. How many old Spanish speaking people do you see in the US compared to the young?

When confronted with this apparent fact, the response is: “why will the Hispanics pay for the aging white population?” The answer is: because they are in the same payroll tax system and the taxes will be withheld from their wages and salaries just as they are from everyone else’s.

It is possible that if Hispanics in the US have suffered years of hostility, accusations, and hatred from “the ice people,” once Hispanics are sufficiently numerous to control the legislature, assuming one still exists, or to take over the executive branch, the only seat of power, they may in retribution cut off the aging whites. But if so, the whites will have brought it on themselves.

Whatever the scare projections that are mustered to undermine the public provision of old age security, the real financial danger is never mentioned. The only significant financial danger to Social Security and Medicare is the offshoring of American jobs and GDP. A country without a job base is without a payroll tax base. If the only jobs that the 21st century “world’s only superpower” economy can create are for waitresses, bartenders, and health care and social assistance (hospital orderlies and practical nurses), payroll tax revenues will be less than if the US still had 20 million workers and rising in well-paid manufacturing jobs instead of 11 million.

Regardless of Medicare’s financing, the death knell for the elderly was the legality of abortion. If the yet to be born are an insufferable burden, imagine the cost of the elderly. As far as the state is concerned, once you stop producing income and payroll tax revenues for the state, it is time for you to die. Washington would rather enact euthanasia than to pay back the $2+ trillion in the Social Security trust fund that Washington spent, leaving only non-marketable IOUs in the account.

Readers might think that Americans would never stand for death by injection for the elderly once the qualified age is reached. But why would they not? They have accepted millions of aborted babies, and Americans, including the elderly, have stood for Washington’s murder, maiming and displacement of millions of Muslim men, women, and children in 7 countries over the past 11 years and are yet to show any signs of remorse for their complicity in mass murder. Next month tens of millions of Americans will vote for Mitt Romney who believes Obama isn’t killing Muslims fast enough.

The new “Obamneycare” health legislation does have “death panels.” They are not called that, and they do not make formal decisions to terminate lives. But it comes to almost the same thing. Various panels, committees, or bureaucratic departments are empowered to make decisions about “effective care.” It has long been known that most health care costs are associated with the last year of life. Cost and age will be elements in determining standards of care. The greater the weight assigned to cost, the more care will be withheld. In effect, the “effective care” panel is a “death panel.”

Prior to the advent of the new “health care” system, Medicare and or hospitals are already shifting costs to Medicare patients. To avoid penalties and fraud allegations for “medically unnecessary hospitalizations,” rather than formally admit Medicare patients as inpatients, hospital administrators classify them as outpatients “under observation.”
According to a Brown University analysis of Medicare records in 2007, 2008, and 2009, the ratio of Medicare observation patients to those admitted as inpatients rose by 34 percent.

Being classified an outpatient under observation eliminates medicare coverages, especially for post-operative or post-accident rehabilitation care, leaving Medicare patients with bills in the tens of thousands of dollars (AARP Bulletin, October 2012).

Other costs are being shifted to doctors and to hospitals. Medicare pays fixed prices for each covered procedure or test, and these prices can be as low as half of the billed prices. During a period when costs incurred by providers of health care have been rising, Medicare has been cutting the amounts it pays providers.

As the payroll tax is commingled with general tax revenues, Social Security and Medicare payroll tax collections can be diverted to other purposes and, thus, are always subject to competing budgetary demands, such as the previous 11 years of gratuitous wars and the bailouts of “banks too big to fail,” or to deficit reduction demands as the government consistently overspends all revenue sources.

A national health service is the only way to control health costs and provide the population with health care coverage. A national health system takes the many levels of profits out of the system and also reams of compliance and liability costs. A national health system can coexist with a private system for those who can afford it or whose employers are sufficiently profitable to provide it.

As Jarad Diamond reveals in his book, , societies fail, if not because of their moral bankruptcy, then because their rulers are only capable of short-term thinking. The future is beyond their interest. The US offshored its economy, because it worked short-term for corporate executives (rewarded with multi-million dollar performance bonuses), Wall Street (rewarded with profits), shareholders (rewarded with capital gains), and politicians (rewarded with corporate and Wall Street campaign contributions).

Incompetent free market economists confused jobs offshoring with free trade. They said the country would and was benefiting by giving its manufacturing, industrial, and tradable professional service jobs to China and India, that the US was ridding itself of “dirty fingernail jobs” and would soon be flush with highly paid high-tech jobs and highly paid financial service jobs.

None of these promises or predictions were true. Nowhere in the government’s jobs statistics are there any of these promised replacement jobs. The economists who provided cover for the destruction of the US economy were rewarded by the corporations with speaking fees, grants for their university departments, and newspaper columns paid for by corporate advertisers. Those few who told the truth were expelled from the corporate media that Bill and Hilary Clinton allowed to be monopolized (for campaign contributions, of course).

The future of old age security in the United States has been lost, because the job base has been given away to foreigners in order to maximize incomes in the short-run for the few decision-makers.

The misrepresentation of jobs offshoring as free trade has destroyed the prospects of cities, counties, and states along with those of unions and millions of Americans who once had a secure future. It has destroyed the prospects of class after class of university graduates burdened with student loans who expected to step into the jobs that have been offshored or filled by H-1B visa holders from abroad.

The American work force has been forsaken by the corporations and by Washington, and this means that Social Security and Medicare have also been forsaken.

As I predicted in the early years of this new century, “the United States will be a third world country in 20 years.” We might get there even sooner as Washington exhausts what little is left of American wealth in gratuitous wars in service to Israel and the US Military/Security Complex, in unaffordable military buildups in futile hopes of establishing hegemony over China and Russia, and in negative interest rates from the Federal Reserve’s effort to drive up the book value of debt instruments on the balance sheets of financial institutions.

In 1817 Percy Bysshe Shelly forecast America’s future:

“I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stampt on these lifeless things,
The hand that mockt them and the heart that fed:
On the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Writing in the October 15 online CounterPunch, John V. Walsh, relying on charts prepared by economics professor Mark J. Perry at the University of Michigan and blogger John Hunter, concludes that it is a myth that US manufacturing is in decline.

Walsh says that the loss of US manufacturing jobs is due to automation, not to offshoring. Think about this for a moment. Perry’s graph on which Walsh relies shows the sharp drop in US manufacturing employment to be a 21st century experience. However, automation has been around for a long time. The notion that its effect on employment only showed up recently needs an explanation that is not provided. The steep drop in US manufacturing employment that began in 2000 does correspond with the date at which jobs offshoring began to bite hard.

Why does automation not also affect Chinese manufacturing, especially as most of the Chinese manufacturing technology came from the US as US corporations offshored their production for the US market? If Chinese manufacturing is not up to date with automation, like the US is assumed to be, how do the Chinese, even with cheap labor, undersell US automated factories? How did Chinese manufacturing employment increase in a mere four years by an amount equal to the total manufacturing employment in the US?

The US Bureau of Economic Analysis shows only 11.2 million full time US manufacturing jobs in 2010. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics shows 11.7 million US manufacturing jobs in 2011, down from 15.3 million in 2002.

In contrast, China, an industrial and manufacturing backwater for most of my life, had 112 million manufacturing jobs in 2006. In a mere four years (2002-2006), the increase in China’s manufacturing employment was as large as today’s total employment in US manufacturing. As long ago as 2006, China’s manufacturing employment was about 10 times the current US manufacturing employment. The Chinese population is about 4 times larger than the US population, but China’s manufacturing population is proportionately greater–10 times larger. Indeed, Chinese manufacturing employees almost equal the total number of employees in all occupations in the US (Manufacturing and Technology News, December 15, 2009).

Obviously, something is wrong with Walsh’s article or the graphs on which he relied.

America’s manufacturing prowess cannot be found in the statistical data. The US is primarily an exporter of Agricultural commodities. The US imports almost twice the amount of manufactured goods as it exports. Indeed, according to the US Census Bureau Statistical Abstract of the US http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s1308.pdf US imports of manufactured goods are 5.5 times larger than US imports of crude oil and 4 times larger than all imports of mineral fuel. Yet, we hear about energy dependency, not manufacturing dependency.

As of 2010 the “superpower” US economy still had a trade surplus in airplanes and airplane parts and a small $6 billion surplus in scientific instruments, but that is about all.

In ADP equipment and office machinery, the US exported $22.2 billion in 2010 (latest information at time of writing), down from $44.6 billion in 2000. US imports in 2010 of ADP equipment and office machinery were $113.5 billion, or 5.1 times exports.

The US cannot even make its own clothes and shoes. In 2010 footwear imports are 28.7 times exports. Clothing imports are 24.6 times exports.

Electrical machinery exports were $77 billion; imports were $120 billion.

Exports of power generating machinery were $33 billion; imports were $42 billion.

Exports of television, VCRs were $21.5 billion; imports were $137 billion.

US exports of vehicles was $88 billion; imports were $179 billion.

US news reports of thousands upon thousands of discharged US workers never cite their replacement by automation. The news story is always that the plant is being closed and the jobs moved abroad. Any review of America’s former manufacturing centers verifies this. Boarded up plants and cities and towns in decline are the remains of America’s formerly world dominant manufacturing economy.

The loss of the US post-war trade surplus in manufacturing has left the US with a huge trade deficit. The charts on which Walsh relied left him unaware of the fact that China has a large trade surplus with the US, and the US has a large trade deficit not only with China but with the world.

The fact that the US has to import not only manufactured goods, but also high-technology products from China, an inconceivable outcome during the second half of the 20th century, is powerful testimony to the decline of the US as a manufacturing powerhouse.

It took some doing to obscure the facts and to present the US as a rival to China in manufacturing prowess. How did it happen?

The fault might lie in the way statistical information is collected and presented. Apple, for example, is a US corporation. It reports its worldwide earnings to the IRS. Its manufacturing is counted as US manufacturing as it is a US corporation. However, Apple doesn’t produce a single computer in the US. They are produced in China. The employment that Apple reports is in China. The Chinese are employed by an American company, but they are not Americans. The Chinese incomes that Apple provides do not support the American consumer market or provide the tax base for cities and states. The Chinese incomes do not provide ladders of upward mobility or careers for Americans.

The wages Apple pays are in China. The consumer incomes and GDP that it generates are in China. When Apple’s computers come back to America to be sold they come in as imports. But Apple’s manufacturing and employment are reported as the output and employment of an American company.

When statistics and the methods by which they are compiled were put into effect, countries did not offshore their production for their domestic markets. Foreign investments were made for selling abroad, not for selling in the home market. With the advent of offshoring, counting the employment and output of US firms that are producing abroad for their domestic market as an indication of the strength of US manufacturing is very misleading. Apple, for example, has done more to boost China’s GDP than to boost America’s GDP. This is true of every US corporation that offshores its production for US consumers.

In recent years the percentage of the work forces of large US corporations that is foreign sourced has risen rapidly. Some of the overseas hiring reflects traditional foreign investment in which a company builds abroad in order to sell abroad, but much of the hiring reflects offshored production for US markets.

The US has been able to survive the large trade deficits produced by jobs offshoring, because the US dollar is the world reserve currency. Being the world reserve currency, the US does not have to earn foreign currencies with exports in order to pay for its imports. However, as these trade deficits persist and the buildup of foreign holdings of dollar paper assets rises, there is a diminishing willingness of foreigners to trade real goods and services for financial assets denominated in a fiat currency whose value is diminishing with the ever-growing supply.

Thus, the basic notion of globalism–that a country’s corporations can produce goods and services in any country for home markets–is false.

Walsh is correct that China is not to blame for the decline in US manufacturing. Offshoring is to blame, and, thus, the blame lies with US corporations, policymakers, and the economists and financial media who shill for “globalism.” The decision was made to sacrifice the US economy to the short-term profits of the few. A country so poorly led can do nothing but decline.

Source: Paul Craig Roberts

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

This Is Insanity!

I believe Albert Einstein is credited with saying, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Using that definition, it would appear that many of our so-called “conservative” friends are insane. Every four years, they accept a phony conservative Presidential candidate and expect somehow that they are going to achieve a different result. They never do. Either the phony conservative loses because he is virtually indistinguishable from his Democrat opponent (i.e., John McCain), or after being elected while campaigning as a true conservative, he governs as a big-government neocon, and the course of the country changes not one iota (i.e., George W. Bush). This election year is no exception.

The GOP has nominated a man who has governed as a big-government liberal in one of the most liberal (if not the most liberal) states in the union: Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts. Furthermore, on virtually every issue one can think of, Governor Romney has flip-flopped more often than a fish that just landed in the bottom of a boat. To get a feel for just how often Romney changes his positions, watch this video:

If Mitt Romney has proven anything, it is that his word means absolutely nothing. Nothing! Romney is an opportunistic chameleon who will say anything or do anything to get elected. Yet, this is the man whom conservatives trumpet as the savior of America! Why? He is a Republican, and, therefore, he must be better than the Democrat. In short, Mitt Romney is the lesser of two evils. But is he really?

First, the short-sighted, narrow-minded thinking of party loyalists (Republican and Democrat) demonstrates what can only be regarded as a slave mentality. People who vote nothing but party label are in truth already slaves. They are slaves to an elitist establishment that uses the machinery of the two major parties (at the national level) to advance a diabolical globalist agenda. That’s why it doesn’t matter to a tinker’s dam whether it’s Bill Clinton or G.W. Bush–or Barack Obama or Mitt Romney–who is elected President: nothing changes the march towards globalism and oppression. At the top, both major parties are controlled by globalists.

For the sake of those who truly respect America’s founders and the principles upon which this nation was founded, I would encourage readers to familiarize themselves with George Washington’s Farewell Address. In my opinion, Washington’s Farewell Address is the greatest political speech ever delivered in US history. It literally shaped the course and direction of the country for decades, perhaps even a century. It really was not until the Twentieth Century, when presidents such as Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt came along, that America started steering a course in direct opposition to the principles laid forth in Washington’s Farewell Address. Since then, the vast majority of presidents, Republican and Democrat, have almost universally ignored the sagacity of Washington’s Farewell Address, which is why nothing has changed regardless of which party gains the White House.

In his Farewell Address, George Washington said, “I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.

“This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.

“The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.

“Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.

“It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.

“There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the government and serve to keep alive the spirit of liberty. This within certain limits is probably true; and in governments of a monarchical cast, patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.”

Notice that George Washington said the “spirit of party” has “baneful effects” upon the country; it is our “worst enemy”; it is a “frightful despotism”; it prevails on the “ruins of public liberty”; it “foments riot and insurrection”; it “opens the door to foreign influence and corruption”; people should “discourage and restrain it”; it “agitates… false alarms”; and, like a fire, if it is not quenched, it will “consume.”

Are we not seeing, and have we not seen, the veracity of Washington’s warnings? People who only see and vote for a party label are more responsible for the demise and deterioration of our liberties than any foreign enemy. For them to accept and support any candidate, as long as they wear the party label regardless how unethical, dishonest, duplicitous, and insensitive to constitutional government they might be, is what has brought America to the precipice of destruction over which she now teeters.

Second, how can a person who has succumbed to evil have the discernment to say which evil is greater? When people consciously surrender the spirit of virtue and integrity by deliberately supporting a candidate they know has a track record that is antithetical to the principles of liberty, how are they qualified to judge what is good and what is evil? By knowingly rejecting truth and a good conscience, they have already accepted the spirit of evil in their hearts. Such people are in no condition to make moral judgments regarding good and evil!

In fact, one could make a darn good argument (and many have) that a phony conservative Republican is a worse evil than a true liberal Democrat. I, for one, share that position. I think only the most biased historian would dare to say that the eight years of Bill Clinton were worse than the eight years of George W. Bush.

One reason why phony conservative Republicans are so dangerous to our liberties is because most conservatives, Christians, and constitutionalists refuse to resist and challenge a Republican President when he abandons the principles of constitutional government. Since he is a Republican, he gets a free pass.

At this juncture, I invite readers to watch the following summary of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney by Dr. Alan Keyes. Having received a Ph.D. from Harvard University and having served as Ambassador to the United Nations under President Ronald Reagan, Keyes is no slouch. Without a doubt, Alan Keyes has one of the sharpest minds and most articulate tongues in the entire country. Listen to his response to the question, “Will you support Mitt Romney?” See the video at:

On virtually every salient issue, the differences between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama are miniscule. They both supported TARP; they both supported Obama’s economic stimulus package; they both supported so-called assault weapons bans and other gun control measures; they both supported the bailout of the auto industry; neither of them supports immediately balancing the federal budget; they both have a track record of being big spenders; they both fully support the Federal Reserve; they both oppose a full audit of the Fed; they are both supporters of universal health care; both men are showered with campaign contributions from Wall Street; neither of them wants to eliminate the IRS or the direct income tax; both men are on record as saying the TSA is doing a “great job”; they both supported the NDAA, including the indefinite detention of American citizens without due process of law; they both supported the renewal of the Patriot Act; they both support the “free trade” agenda of the global elite; they are both soft on illegal immigration; they both have a history of appointing liberal judges; they both believe the President has the authority to take the nation to war without the approval of Congress; and neither of them has any qualms about running up more public debt to the already gargantuan debt of 16 trillion dollars.

Read this report on InfoWars.com

http://tinyurl.com/9boov42

Tell me again why Romney is better than Obama!

There are even some party slaves who are so brazen as to suggest that if we do not vote for the phony conservative Mitt Romney it means that we are harming true conservatives at the local and State levels. This has to be one of the most ridiculous assertions I have ever heard! What these people don’t understand (because they are themselves slaves to a political party) is that most honest constitutionalists vote for the PERSON, not the party. We recognize that parties are not going to make a difference; PEOPLE are going to make a difference!

Therefore, if I lived in the Houston, Texas, area, I would vote for Republican US House candidate Steve Stockman; and if I lived in the Nashville, Tennessee, area, I would vote for Democrat US Senate candidate Mark Clayton. And since I live in the Flathead Valley of Montana, I am supporting Republican State Representative candidate Timothy Baldwin (yes, he is my youngest son); and if he were running again, I would support former Constitution Party State House member Rick Jore.

If anything, Mitt Romney will have the most deleterious impact upon conservative Republican candidates around the country, as they will be thrust into the big-government shadow of their party’s standard bearer. Republican landslides came in 1980 when a perceived strong conservative (Ronald Reagan) carried the GOP torch for President and in 1994 when the GOP promoted (but later failed to deliver) a strong conservative congressional agenda. It is when Republicans nominate known pseudo-conservatives, such as John McCain (and now Mitt Romney), that they fail to achieve sizeable victories nationwide. So, even if Romney wins, he will provide no coattails for his fellow Republicans around the country.

And by the way, neither will Obama provide any coattails for his fellow Democrats should he win. By continuing and expanding Bush’s wars in the Middle East (among other things), Obama has turned off millions of independents and constitutionally-minded Democrats. It is literally an every-man-for-himself election year.

It’s too bad that Ron Paul is not running as an Independent. It would be a tremendously interesting election if he were.

So, here we are again: conservatives keep doing the same thing over and over (supporting a pseudo-conservative for President) and keep expecting a different result. Einstein was right: this is insanity!

Decentralize or Die!

The single most often broached argument that Liberty Movement writers, analysts, and strategists are confronted with by skeptics alongside well meaning but cynical newcomers is the assertion that while we happen to be very effective at pointing out the dangers of globalism and centralization, we rarely seem to take the initiative to offer “solutions” to the problem.  This same argument is also used by establishment shills as a way to distract the public’s attentions from the very real despotic enterprises of their elitist employers.  It is an often used disinformation tactic; demand that those who expose the truth of a criminal enterprise also offer an all encompassing solution to the complex dilemma.  When the truth-tellers cannot present a neatly packaged miracle on a gold plated platter, the shills claim that their exposures of wrongdoing are meaningless, because they can do nothing about it anyway.  And thus, the cycle continues…

In reality, the contention that the Liberty Movement offers no solutions is entirely false.  We have constructed many.  The problem is that these solutions are not the kind that the general American public wants to entertain.  The average person desires a “silver bullet” answer to every crisis.  They want quick, they want easy, and most of all, they want to sit back and relax while this silver bullet is set in motion by someone other than themselves.

The best and most practical solutions are almost never easy.  They require time, overwhelming effort, and painful sacrifice.  It is a law of nature; the weight of an obstacle must be met with equal or greater energy to be removed.  The greater the enemy, the greater the cost.  There is no such thing as a “silver bullet” or an easy way out.  Yes, the Liberty Movement offers answers, but many people refuse to hear them.

When it comes to violent centralization and collectivism in the form of totalitarian rule, our options are indeed limited.  The masses often pursue politics first, because it is much easier to hand one’s responsibility and vigilance over to a leader instead of taking on the monster alone.  It is much easier to “hope” for “change”, rather than take matters into our own hands and struggle through the mire and pitch of our thoroughly corrupt system.  Of course, politics is a game, a game that can be controlled by the very same despicable men we wish to dethrone.

Next is civil disobedience, which is useful to a point, as long as the offending government deems it necessary to APPEAR fair and just.  When the oligarchy no longer needs to play good cop, simple protest and activism falls apart.  In the face of unrelenting malice and destructive subjugation, waving signs and chanting phrases is utterly senseless.

In the year of 2012, America is on the very cusp of such tyranny.  The legal and political framework has been put into place through bills and presidential directives like the Patriot Act, the FISA domestic surveillance bill, Presidential Directive 51 (the martial law and continuity of government EO established by George W. Bush that not even members of Congress are allowed to read), the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, the National Defense Resource Preparedness EO, etc.  Simultaneously we have seen unprecedented special orders for ammunition by DHS and other government agencies (including the Social Security Administration) numbering in the realm of 1.4 billion rounds (such large orders that the DHS is now attempting to redact and hide these numbers from public record)!

The common debate theme from the establishment is “hey, these laws and directives exist, but they aren’t being implemented, so stop being paranoid”.  First of all, many of these laws ARE being implemented, just not on a large scale yet.  My response is; when has any government, especially one disposed to corruption, ever created a law it did not intend to use or assert a right of authority that it ever gave back?  The fact is, our government fully plans to exercise their newfound powers of oppression.  They only require a particular set of circumstances to give them the rationalization.

Economic disaster is the most imminent and obvious catalyst.  When a population is hungry, desperate, and internally conflicted, almost any action on the part of leadership can be made “acceptable”.  And, if it is not accepted immediately, they can simply rewrite the history books later.

With the announcement of the private Federal Reserve’s open ended (infinite) QE3 stimulus package, the European Central Bank’s print and buy bond scheme, along with Japan’s own QE initiative, what we are faced with is a spectacular global race to the bottom.  A battle of currency devaluation is about to ensue, and the first casualties will be everyday citizens whose cost of living is soon to skyrocket even further than it already has in the past four years.

In the U.S. in particular, all that is required is for the dollar to lose its coveted world reserve status, which would destroy its credibility as a safe haven investment and annihilate its purchasing power in one fell swoop.  This would cause an inflationary environment that many in this country are completely unequipped to handle.

The conditions today are ripe for disaster as well as dictatorship.

The bottom line is that there is little time left for top-down political fairytale dreams, and little utility left in standard street actions.  The real solutions require blood, sweat, and tears, starting with a method I have discussed for quite some time:  Decentralization.

In order for a Collectivist system to prevail, its controllers MUST convince the masses that people need the system to survive.  Elitists deliberately deny or forcefully remove options and choices from the public view, until we are led to believe that there is only one way to live.  Only one way to subsist.  Only one path to security.  Collectivists must condition the populace to believe that the machine is indispensible to their prosperity, even if that same machine is actually bringing about their downfall.

Decentralization is essentially any action which removes you from dependence on the establishment.  Meaning, Americans must fight back by first being able to provide for themselves the necessities of economy and of life.  Any counter-movement to tyranny that thinks it can combat the system while being completely dependent on the system is wholeheartedly fooling itself.  There will be no infiltration and conversion, as the Ron Paul Movement can now attest.

The concept of decentralization is often confused with so-called “isolationism” by those heavily conditioned with globalist rhetoric.  What they fail to grasp is that collectivist constructs are inherently flawed.  As we have seen in regions such as the European Union as well as most of the economic world overall, interdependency, especially engineered interdependency, destroys redundancy.  Globalization has made us WEAK, not strong.  It has tied nations together artificially, not to make them safer, but to make them unsustainable and easily toppled.  Centralization removes individual imperative.  It causes cultures to sacrifice their ability to self-heal.  It creates incontinent invalid alzheimers societies, incapable of standing on their own two feet.

People who promote globalism unknowingly (useful idiots) are often dumbstruck by the idea that anyone would actually want to walk away from the collective entirely.  They have so embraced their servitude to the con of the “greater good” that they are incapable of imagining any other alternatives.  They therefore see any person who separates from the hive in any way as an immediately outlandish threat; an “isolationist”, which is just another term for “selfish hoarder”.

One can form or be a part of a community that does not require him to cast aside his individualism or sovereignty.  “Community” does NOT necessarily denote “communism” as long as it respects the pursuit of independence by its members.  There is such a thing as voluntary compassion, charity, mutual aid, and industry.  Societies have in the past functioned quite well without overt government administration and mandatory participation.  The suggestion that mankind cannot survive without being told how by some faceless bureaucracy is absurd, not to mention historically inaccurate.

Decentralization and voluntary community go hand in hand.  In order to defeat a collectivist system which seeks to dissolve individual liberties and focus social power, we must build communities outside of the mainstream that foster individual liberty and disperse social power.  This begins with personal sustainability, or what some of us call “prepping”.  Each and every Liberty Movement proponent can and should distance himself from the globalist construct.  This takes time, and planning.  It requires us to learn useful skills, to produce many of our own goods, and to eventually form legitimate face-to-face networks which localize businesses and services.

International corporate chains and banks siphon wealth away from communities in exchange for a limited number of low-wage service sector jobs.  This trade is highly uneven.  These entities will continue to hold sway over our towns and cities as long as we continue to give them all our business.  Our first goal, then, should be to remove them from the picture.  By forming our own markets, whether through barter or through alternative currencies (as long as those currencies are backed by something tangible), Americans can break the false paradigm of the consumerist cycle, and support themselves and each other while keeping wealth steadily flowing within a region.

The method here is obvious; make the corrupt system obsolete by building a better one ourselves.  It is, however, not simple, or easy.  I do not deny that the government as it exists now would use force to ensure that the public conforms to centralization.  That is a given.  But, I will say that decentralization makes resistance possible.  The Founding Fathers of our nation took steps to decentralize economically from Great Britain long before they ever fired a shot against them.  The advantage of walking away from the chessboard should be clear; when the enemy pulls out his gun in order to make you play the game, he loses all semblance of the moral high ground.  Spectators who once sat on the fence finally discover the true nature of their rulers, and are forced by conscience to pick a side.  The activists then control the pace and the tone of the conflict, rather than the elites.  All honorable revolutions begin with decentralization.

Decentralization breeds redundancy and strength within local economies.  It makes citizens more independent and able to cope with disaster.  And, it forms real, meaningful community, an advantage that has been all but lost in this country for generations.  Its most fantastic advantage, though, is that it removes any excuse the government could use to convince the public and the military that martial law and executive dominance is needed.  If towns, counties, and states all over America are decentralized and self-sustaining, they will not need federal help regardless of the calamity.  The argument for government intervention becomes moot.

The urgency of this situation cannot be misunderstood.  Those who do not decentralize here in America right now will not survive.  The scale of fiscal disaster on the horizon is immense.  There is no question, no debate.  There is only life, and death.  Decentralization, or apathy and indecision.  Either we decentralize, or, we cease to be.

Source: Brandon Smith | Alt-Market

How to Correct the Course of America

For every person, answering the question how to correct the course for America, there is a personal viewpoint that often varies upon circumstance. However, the underlying premise is that something is wrong that needs fixing. The couch potatoes drift through life voluntarily removing their involvement from the political process as much as possible. All one needs to upset this tranquility is to strike up a conversation with a stranger and dare bring up any political or social issue and ask for their opinion. Most seldom reflect upon specifics and even fewer are able to lay out a sound and cogent thought for righting the ship of state. Moreover, to the horror of any intelligent citizen, a very significant segment of the public is content with the status quo and sees no reason to change anything.

Those cretins of complacency will not be concerned with civic activism or communal discourse. They are the end product of a controlled culture of mind manipulation and consumerism docility. These dimwitted domestic Jacobins support and fly the flag of the imperial empire. Looking to this faction of the populace for solutions is as if asking a robber to make change, while he is stealing you blind.

Thankfully, the remnant of the old Republic understands the futility of the national electoral process and the phony political party system. The scars of pounding your head against a brick wall allow the luxury of going in a different direction. The country is vast and diverse. Consensus is rare, but not impossible. The secular dominate culture is not very sophisticated nor does the average person aspire to become an avid political prophet. Most, just want a decent chance of having a good life. Putting on the armor of a patriotic warrior is foreign to the majority.

So how can there be any possibility of positively affecting the course of America? Loyal readers of BATR know that its dialogues are a comprehensive view on the human condition. The underlying premise of any persuasive endeavor rests on the premise that change is possible, when the will is strong and a constructive direction is knowable.

The forces of the New World Order and the globalist cabal are powerful and worldwide. A universal frustration and a feeling of despair cry out for an alternative to the sins of the political class. Public opinion is important and can be decisive. Candidly, political revolutions are based upon ideas not voting blocks. America desperately needs a fundamental purging of the social order.

How can such a transformation be realized when the differences are so pronounced among citizens? Usually columns seldom offer solutions, since so very few exist. Nevertheless, the threat of the Globalist juggernaut is so immediate; a heroic attempt to forge a nationwide accord deserves a comprehensive dissecting.

The two greatest dangers that impact every American stems from the economic & banking system and the threats coming out of a foreign policy in a hostile world. For the purpose of evaluation, put aside all other differences and concentrate on the magnitude and scope of instituting truly meaning change.

Abolish Central Banking and the Federal Reserve

The enslavement precepts that are intrinsic in the evil central banking, debt created monetary system are the root cause of all the economic ills. A cultural revolt against legal tender laws that coerces every resident into a fatal spiral of currency devaluation is the intellectually dominant issue of our economic wellbeing. As the country verges on a disastrous acceleration of the ongoing depression, the prospects of hyperinflation loom with every influx of quantitative easing.

Careerist politicians will never stand-up to the Wall Street banksters and legislate the demise of the Federal Reserve System. In recent years, the powers of the Fed have been greatly expanded. The only alternative that the beleaguered taxpayer has to combat the nefarious scheme to keep the public in interminable debt is to withdraw from the banking system.

Until a nationwide consensus is built that forces critical mass for the elimination of debt created money obligations, none of the other financial offenses can be cured. Individual States need to develop financial instruments that replace the counterfeit Federal Reserve notes that sadly pass as the U.S. Dollar. States should use Nullification as a means to renounce unconstitutional money.

The federal government needs to be compelled to issue Treasury “Green Backs” as a successor to the current funny money that enriches the controllers of the Federal Reserve.

Pressure and non-compliance are the necessary methods, which must be used to collapse the debt-ridden behemoth of the central banksters. The current debt should be repudiated and written off the books of the Treasury. The ill-gotten treasure stolen from the American public by the usurpers of a genuine free enterprise economy, need to be clawed back as restitution.

The private Federal Reserve Central Bank must be forced into bankruptcy and the assets liquidated. Remember that these tactics can only be practically implemented after a national revolt against the fraudulent financial system is recognized as the reason for the collapse of the economy.

Abandon a Global Empire and Re-establish an American First Foreign Policy

The false and failed foreign policy of internationalism has resulted in a national captivity of insecurity and permanent and perpetual war. The waste of treasure and blood on foreign soil to expand an imperium that serves the corporatists and banksters is a negation of the founding principles of our nation.

Until the public confronts their childish version of supporting the troops, right or wrong; the vicious interventionists, will continue to export their hubris version, of American despotism abroad. The insecurity of domestic borders is a conscious result of global garrison intrusion.

The deceitful and faux “War on Terror” is based upon a false premise and rests upon lies, deception and fabrication. The notion that dissent, stops at the water’s edge, is nothing more than an excuse to allow the transnational corporatists to dictate where the military will next stomp their boots on the ground of a foreign country. The idealism of Wilsonian internationalist doctrine has become the dread of continuous body bags. Since the “Big Stick” of Teddy Roosevelt, the country speaks with dire intimidation, deadly threats and bombs from the sky. It comes as no surprise, when the blowback comes home, from overseas wounded, who are simple collateral damage to the State Department.

The decline of the American Republic can be traced directly to the sorry record of foreign involvements. The realm of repression originates in the dominance of alien lands. The seeds of globalism could not take hold, without mercenary troops deployed worldwide, to enforce the Free Trade hoax, which only benefits the same international thieves, who extort your wellbeing and pocketbook.

As long as the public tolerate the destruction of our true self-interest and allows the wasting of additional generations of youth for the advancement and maintenance of the military-industrial-security complex, the country is doomed. Only a total renunciation of the immoral Amerikan Empire can restore an authentic national defense that really protects the nation.

Can anything be done to correct the course of America?

No doubt, many will disagree with the brief description of the two most important revisions to the current failed system. The establishment goes to war against enemy combatants as a rule of course for much lesser transgressions. Domestically, the despotism that is the new normal – coerces compliance under the real consequence from the agencies of the federal government goon squads.

KISS (keep it simple stupid) is the standard that most citizens operate under. That is why only a tightly crafted national issue that incorporates a compendium of related and complimentary restructuring has even a modest chance for traction.

The political class will fight to their authoritarian death to prevent a massive uprising from the decaying city street or the rural backwaters. Yet without a national revolt against the establishment dictators and their corrupt institutions of command and control, is there any chance to correct the course of the country.

As any regular reader will attest, the prospects for the public to rally to this cause are minimal. Apathy is the national pastime. Simply blaming the “couch potato” culture for lack of will avoids the valid criticism that true national leadership to frame the essential debate, has been absent for decades. Notwithstanding, the Paulian message from this presidential election season is too frightening for the average consumer to get off their behind and get angry.

A critical mass of rebellion is the only chance for a profound confrontation with the governance hacks, which serve the interests of the elites that restrain the debate to meaningless subjects. Distraction from essential elements for reclamation of our birthrights is the master component used by the power cabal to keep people entertained in their self-induced stupor.

The will to engage in courageous action is the missing ingredient that the public needs to find within themselves. For most, adding to their waistline dimensions is more rewarding than to seek the dignity of an independent and honest citizen.

The Republican Convention and the Ron Paul Revolution

The Grand Old Party produced a scripted appeal to the faithful. The 2012 Republican Party convention in Tampa, designed to sell a filtered image of a country club version of conservatism, begs the historic substance of a traditional embodiment of true timeless values. Hitting a range of obligatory themes is not equivalent to standing for the principles of a constitutional republic. Appealing to the estranged elements of the GOP needs more than words to restore faith and hope. Reasoned policy stands require a refutation of the failure of the Neoconservative agenda. So do not be duped by the language in the platform.

The indomitable Phyllis Schlafly loves the planks, in the article: Republican Party platform best yet.

“It rejects a long list of United Nations treaties, including the treaty on women’s rights, the treaty on the rights of the child, the treaty on persons with disabilities, the arms trade treaty and the Law of the Sea treaty. The platform also rejects Agenda 21, including its proposal for a global tax and various U.N. declarations on the environment.

Altogether, the 2012 Republican Platform is an excellent document written by grass-roots conservatives. It is a true reflection of American values.”

Now how can any red blooded conservative disagree with a political party that rejects the globalism of the United Nations? Well, our distinguished champion at the Eagle Forum engages in wishful thinking, if she believes that the platform is anything more than tomorrows fish wrapper paper.

 

For a concise analysis of the irrelevance of the planks in the platform, view the  video. In politics, deeds count, while rhetoric blows away with the wind.

Judge a campaign by the political handlers and their records. Examine the viewpoints that the political endorsers are committed to their core. The notion expressed by the New York Times in Platform’s Sharp Turn to Right Has Conservatives Cheering may give temporary joy, but the ugly underbelly of the NeoCon purity sect is at work to purge the party of the residual of real conservatives.

You can trust such social outcasts as the John Birch Society, when their columnist, Joe Wolverton II reveals what really transpired at the convention in the article, RNC, Romney Combine to Quiet Ron Paul and his Delegates.

“As we have reported, on August 24 the RNC voted to rob Ron Paul of half of Ryan’s fellow Maine delegates won by the iconic Texas congressman at that state’s Republican convention held in May.

Later that same day the RNC  granting the ruling cabal — and by extension their candidate, Mitt Romney — unchecked power to change the party’s rules.Does the RNC believe that such effrontery will somehow convince the Ron Paul delegates to quietly consent to the coronation of Mitt Romney? Perhaps they believe that flexing their manipulative muscle will pressure Dr. Paul to endorse Romney’s run for the White House.”

The irony of the name of our publication site, Breaking All The Rules, should not be misconstrued as support for the criminal corporatist methods of crushing the grass root activists within the Republican Party. Quite to the contrary, the Ron Paul militants are the essence of the Tea Party revolt. So when the armchair convention watcher settles into their recliner to catch the victory melody for the Amerikan hegemony, as the speakers sing the glory of military superiority to expand the empire, all loyal nationalists hit the mute button. Keep the visuals on in the background so you know whom not to trust.

The exact extent of the methods used to beat down the legitimate Paulist delegates, not reported in the mass media, is appalling. Consider these exerts from a message of a Ron Paul activist, David Andrew Gay, attending the GOP convention:

“Properly elected Ron Paul delegates were stripped from us. And when a motion was made to amend the Credentials Committee Report, it was ignored.

Morton Blackwell, a longtime conservative activist and RNC Rules Committee expert, found himself indefinitely detained – along with the rest of the Virginia delegation.

The RNC’s bus driver responsible for transporting delegates somehow “got lost” for well over an hour until a critical Rules Committee meeting adjourned.

Blackwell and the Virginia delegation were heading up the efforts to defeat new RNC rules proposed by Washington, D.C.-based insider attorneys.

These rules are designed to turn the Republican Party into a top-down organization and strip power away from state parties and grassroots activists of every stripe.”

So much for the “Big Tent” of the Romney GOP, that has all those resurrected Rockefeller Republicans intoxicated from drinking the toxic NeoCon kool-aid. There is a reason why the NeoCons are former Trotskyists.

Note the frustration from Justin Phillips of Tea Party Nation in the YouTube, . It is obvious that Romney is an establishment insider anointed to continue the global governance and has little tolerance for anyone who rejects and challenges the phony conservative pleading.

The magnitude of eradicating Ron Paul supporters and grassroots Tea Party proponents from representation in a possible Romney administration, forecasts a repeat of the 2008 Senator John McCain debacle. The same warmongering support for the rogue Israeli Zionists is a central part of a Romney capitulation to the dark side. Worry not about the oblique Mormon cult influence, when you have the real deal in the likes of NeoCon cultists like Connie Rice conning the nation once again.

Even if you wish to ignore the monumental topic of fostering an American First foreign policy, what would Romney do to restrain the inexplicable power of the Federal Reserve? If the GOP standard-bearer seriously wanted to reconstruct the economy, the most significant step would be to offer the chairmanship of the Fed to Ron Paul. The idea of reappointing Ben Shalom Bernanke to a third term would allow “Helicopter Ben” to become the “manna from heaven” idol of the New World Order.

The prospects of giving the keys to the kingdom to Ron Paul; with the instructions to transition into a debtless created currency, would prove Romney’s credentials as an authentic patriot. Of course, the reality that this would happen is on the same level as enacting the other planks of the platform.

The Irrelevance of the Republican Party, demonstrated at this establishment-orchestrated convention is building a backlash. The social network is abuzz with a call to action. The accomplished cartoonist Kevin George Tuma leads the charge with a posting of a public event on Facebook: .

“A special invitation to members of the Ron Paul Revolution, libertarians, and real conservatives who are fed up with the shady dealings of the Republican Party and its failed and useless ‘Socialist Party B’ ways. Boycott the Republican Party and vote Third party!”

Now for Republican “True Believers” such a movement will be condemned as an endorsement for a second Obama term. Only the meatheads that keep voting for the lesser of two evils, and believe they are making a difference will be sucked, again into the aiding and abetting the global governance of another Republican enabler administration.

When will the public accept that: “Since national elections have proved to be irrelevant,tweedledum and tweedledee charades, what’s the point in getting worked up over the next cycle?” If you doubt the wisdom in this conclusion, join either one of the branded political parties and work on the local level to affect party policy. During this election year, that is exactly what the Ron Paul supporters attempted to accomplish.

How did that turn out?

Until a nationwide movement for a third party coalition is agreed upon as the only plausible option to beat back the corporate controlled media propaganda machine, will the voice of patriotic dissent be heard. This billion dollar presidential campaign changes nothing significant in the consolidation of the financial global gulag.

As fundamentalists pray for a Romney triumph over the diabolical Obama puppet, they will need to obtain their salvation without the Ron Paul loyalists. Would a Romney regime be better than a second Obama term? Well, let us hope so; but that answer ignores the fact that essential and bold re-institution of constitutional and bill of right precepts no longer are part of the Republican hierarchy agenda.

If a mercenary army of a despotic political party can impose a tyrannical security around their GOP convention, why will the same political elites not demand that troops be deployed to close down our open and undefended borders?

Mitt Romney is John McCain lite. The Republican Party power structure will not accept a Ron Paul partisan to gain any significant position of authority. The money interests that control both heads of the two party fake rivalries are unwilling to allow a restoration of the vision for the original Republic.

Unfortunately, Rand Paul still needs to learn this lesson. Now that Ron Paul is ending his term in Congress, the prospect for passing the torch awaits a new champion of liberty.

Syria And Iran Dominos Lead To World War

Almost three years ago I wrote an analytical piece on the concept of deliberately engineered wars, big and small, by elitists to distract the masses away from particular global developments that work to the benefit of the establishment power structure.  That article was entitled ‘Will The Globalists Trigger Yet Another World War?’:

http://www.alt-market.com/neithercorp/press/2010/01/will-globalists-trigger-yet-another-world-war/

In that analysis, I concluded that since at least 2008, the power’s that be (whether posing as Republicans or Democrats) had set in a motion a series of events that revolved around Iran, and most disturbingly, Syria, which could be used to trigger a vast global war scenario.  Today, unfortunately, it seems my concerns were more than valid, and circumstances evolving in that particular region are dire indeed.

Now, some may argue that circumstances in the Middle East have always been “dire” and that it does not take much to predict a renewal of chaos.  Admittedly, for the past six years alone the American public has been treated to one propaganda campaign after the other testing the social waters to see if a sizable majority of the citizenry could be convinced to support strikes against Iran.  The U.S. and Israeli governments have come very close on several occasions in rhetoric and in the build up of arms, to just such an event.  However, I would submit that the previous threats of war that came and went are absolutely nothing in comparison to the danger today.

Syria’s civil war has developed into something quite frightening, well beyond the blind insurrections of the so-called “Arab Spring”.  So many outside interests (especially U.S. interests) are involved in the conflict it is impossible to tell whether there are actually any real revolutionaries in Syria anymore.  This unsettling of the country’s foundation has taken a turn which I warned about recently, namely, the removal of UN monitors from the area, which was announced only days ago:

http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/08/16/syria-crisis-idINL6E8JGDXH20120816

The removal of UN monitors is a sign that some kind of strike is near the horizon.

Accusations of potential “chemical weapons stores” in Syria are being floated by the Department of Defense as a clear cut rationale for invasion, and Israel has essentially admitted that an attack on Iran is not only on the table but beyond planning stages into near implementation.  Even Israeli citizens are openly worried that their government is “serious” this time in its calls for preemptive attack, stockpiling gas masks and even protesting against the policy:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-14/israel-plans-for-iran-strike-as-citizens-say-government-serious.html 

The tension of the atmosphere surrounding this crisis is unlike anything the Middle East has seen in decades, and that includes the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

But before we can understand the true gravity of this situation, we must first confront some misconceptions…

Firstly, I realize that there are many people out there who have natural and conditioned inclinations towards the hatred of Muslim nations.  There are also just as many people out there who are inclined to distrust the intentions of the government of Israel.  Both sides make good points on occasion, and both sides also have a tendency to get lazy, painting with a ridiculously broad brush and blaming all the woes of the world on one side or the other so that they don’t have to think through the complexities of globalism and the one world technocratic club, or accept that “Al-Qaeda” is not the biggest threat to peace and stability.  It’s much easier to convict an entire race, or an entire religion, than it is to comprehend the mechanizations of an elite minority that plays both sides off each other.

Whatever side you may favor, simply know that in the end the sides are irrelevant.  We could argue for months about who is just, who is right, who was there first, etc.  Again, it’s irrelevant.  What does matter, though, are the potential consequences of an exponential conflict in the region, which no one can afford.

Sadly, there are still plenty of Americans out there that believe the U.S. is the “richest nation on the globe” and has finances beyond reckoning with which to wage endless wars.

Here are the facts.  Here is exactly what will happen if the U.S., NATO, or Israel, enter into a hot war with either Iran or Syria, and the results are not optimistic:

1)  Syria And Iran Will Join Forces

In 2006, Iran and Syria signed a mutual defense treaty in response to the growing possibility of conflict with the West.  Both countries are highly inclined to fulfill this treaty, and it would seem that Iran is already doing so, at least financially, as Syria spirals into civil war.  In fact, the U.S. supported insurgency in Syria was likely developed in order to strain or test the mutual aid treaty.  Given that the CFR is now applauding Al-Qaeda for its efforts in destabilizing the country, I hardly find it outlandish to suggest that the entire rebellion is being at least loosely organized by NATO interests to either draw Iran into open military support of Assad and a weakening proxy war, or to remove Syria from the equation in preparation for a strike on Iran itself (take notice that whenever the mainstream media shows images of Syrian rebels, they are always smiling or looking valiant with guns held high; a typical subliminal tactic used to paint them as “the good guys”):

http://www.cfr.org/syria/al-qaedas-specter-syria/p28782 

2)  Iran Will Shut Down The Strait Of Hormuz 

With all the grandstanding at the Department of Defense, you would think that the Hormuz is a non-issue.  This is a mistake.  The strait is around 21 miles wide at its narrowest point which lays right off the coast of Iran, however, of that 21 miles only two safe shipping lanes are available, each measuring a miniscule 2 miles across.  Hormuz is one of two of the most vital oil transit checkpoints in the world, and approximately 20% of all oil produced passes through it.  The logistics for blocking the two working shipping lanes on the strait are simple given the existence of the new Ghader Missile System, which Iran tested successfully this year.  The weapon is specifically designed as a “ship-killer” with the ability to travel at Mach 3, and evade most known radar methods:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/story/2012-01-01/iran-missile-test/52318422/1

In the tightly boxed in waterways of the Hormuz, a large scale and difficult to track missile attack would be devastating to any Navy present, and would turn the sea lanes into a junk yard impossible to navigate for oil tankers.  Result?  A catastrophic inflationary event in oil around the world, making gasoline unaffordable for most people and most uses.  The EU’s recent move to stockpile oil in preparation for an Iran strike reveals the seriousness of the situation:

http://www.euractiv.com/energy/europe-starts-piling-oil-iran-wa-news-514340

3)  Israeli Action Will Draw In The U.S. 

Forget what the U.S. Joint Chief of Staff General Martin Dempsey says; the U.S. will absolutely involve itself militarily in Iran or Syria following an Israeli strike.  To begin with, there is no way around a supporting or primary role, especially when Iran closes the Strait of Hormuz.  With 20% of the world’s oil supply on hiatus, at least half of the American populace will be crying out for U.S. military involvement.  Guaranteed.  Dempsey’s claim that Israel may not get American support is simply a charade meant to infer that the subversion of Syria and Iran is not necessarily a joint venture, which it absolutely is.  There is zero chance that an Israeli strike will not be met with frantic calls by the Pentagon and the White House to open the floodgates of U.S. military might and protect one of our few “democratic allies” in the Middle East.

4)  Syria Will Receive Support From Russia And China

The Russian government has clearly stated on numerous occasions that they will not step back during a strike against Syria, and has even begun positioning naval ships and extra troops at is permanent base off the coast of Tartus, a development which I have been warning about for years:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/03/us-syria-russia-navy-idUSBRE8720AO20120803

Tartus is Russia’s only naval base outside the periphery of its borders, and is strategically imperative to the nation.  Action by the U.S. or Israel against Syria would invariably elicit, at the very least, economic retaliation, and at the most, Russian military involvement and possible widespread war.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/21/us-syria-crisis-idUSBRE8610SH20120821 

China, on the other hand, will likely respond with full scale financial retaliation, up to and including a dump of U.S. Treasury Bonds (a move which they have been preparing for since 2005 anyway).  With oil prices skyrocketing due to increased Middle Eastern distress, multiple countries including the BRIC trading bloc nations and most of the ASEAN trading bloc will have the perfect excuse to dump the dollar, allowing for the introduction of the IMF’s newly revamped SDR (Special Drawing Rights) global currency mechanism to take hold.

Syria is the key to what I believe will be an attempt on the part of globalists within our government to actually coax a volatile conflict into being, a conflict that will create ample cover for the final push towards global currency, and eventually, global governance.

5)  Economic Implosion Will Become “Secondary”…To The Banksters’ Benefit 

In the minds of the general public, the economic distress that we will soon face regardless of whether or not there is ever a war with Iran and Syria will be an afterthought, at least for a time, if the threat of global combat becomes reality.  The fog of war is a fantastic cover for all kind of crime, most especially the economic kind.  Sizable wars naturally inhibit markets and cause erratic flux in capital flows.  Anything, and I mean anything, can be blamed on a war, even the destruction of the U.S. economy and the dollar.  Of course, the real culprits (international and central banks) which have been corrupting and dismantling the American fiscal structure for decades will benefit most from the distraction.

Syria and Iran are, in a way, the first dominos in a long chain of terrible events.  This chain, as chaotic as it seems, leads to only one end result:  Third world status for almost every country on the planet, including the U.S., leaving the financial institutions, like monetary grim reapers, to swoop in and gather up the pieces that remain to be fashioned into a kind of Frankenstein economy.  A fiscal golem.  A global monstrosity that removes all sovereignty whether real or imagined and centralizes the decision making processes of humanity into the hands of a morally bankrupt few.

For those on the side of Israel, the U.S., and NATO, and for those on the side of the Middle East, Russia China, etc., the bottom line is, there will be no winners.  There is no “best case scenario”.  There will be no victory parade, for anyone.  There will be no great reformation or peace in the cradle of civilization.  The only people celebrating at the end of the calamitous hostilities will be the hyper-moneyed power addicted .01%, who will celebrate their global coup in private, laughing as the rest of the world burns itself out, and comes begging them for help.

Source: Brandon Smith | Alt-Market

Parking Offshore Profits Hurt The Domestic Economy

Conducting commerce internationally is not a crime. However, the lack of reinvesting domestically provides an inevitable drag on a viable internal economy. Publically traded companies operate under a set of rules that confuse the average investor. Most privately owned businesses are well aware that paying taxes on profits is the price paid to transact trade. Transnational corporations park extraordinary sums of money offshore to avoid a tax rate that most ordinary businesses pay routinely. Such discrepancies act as negative incentives that plague a feeble employment record.

Bloomberg makes the following points in the article, Repatriation Bill to Tax Overseas Profit at 8.75 Percent.

“Corporate repatriation legislation proposed by Senators Kay Hagan and John McCain would let U.S. businesses bring home offshore profits at an 8.75 percent tax rate.

The rate on repatriated profits would drop to 5.25 percent if a company’s payroll expanded during 2012, according to a summary of the bill released by Hagan’s office. The current top corporate rate is 35 percent.

Independent studies showed that when a tax holiday was last offered, in 2004, the lower tax rate for returning profits spurred little hiring or domestic investment. Most of the money was used to buy back stock. Democrats have said they are concerned that could happen again with a tax holiday.

Under the Hagan-McCain proposal, if a company repatriates profits and then reduces its staff, it would be required to add $75,000 to its gross income for every position eliminated.”

The apparent question is why these domestically chartered companies are not paying a uniformed tax. The U.S. has long taxed the individual on worldwide income. Why enable foreign branches avoidance loopholes to keep huge caches of liquidity overseas? Forbes provides this analysis in, Bringing Overseas Corporate Profits Back To US Not Necessarily A Job Booster.

“All of Western Europe allows for its multinationals to repatriate billions of dollars back home without paying the statutory corporate income tax rate. They enjoy a much lower rate, in the single digits in countries like Japan and UK, where corporate tax rates are similar to that in the U.S., with American companies falling in the middle of the two. In theory, the tax break avoids double taxation on corporate profits filed in other countries, but the trouble with that is that a portion of those profits are being booked in tax havens that have no income tax.

In many cases, these corporations have already accrued profits tax-free using techniques that shift reported income to tax havens anyway, like Google, to avoid an enormous amount of tax.”

Both of the Bloomberg and Forbes accounts see little expansion in domestic jobs just because a conglomerate might get a tax break to bring the money home. While all taxation is punitive and a caustic burden on commerce, the sophisticated tax dodging available to accounting departments of mega-corporations offer some strange strategies.

America is GE’s tax haven author David Cay Johnston provides an example of a different experience.

“GE’s disclosures show that over the last decade it paid much lower tax rates in America than offshore, just the opposite of the Washington political mantra. Even more puzzling, the U.S. corporate giant chooses to take more of its profits in other lands despite the higher tax rates there.

Given that GE has a roughly 1,000-person tax department dedicated to paying as little as possible in taxes, what the disclosures show is that something other than tax policy is driving GE’s business decisions.

The law gives companies a great deal of latitude in deciding how to arrange where they report profits from multinational transactions. GE won’t elaborate on why it takes so much of its profit in higher tax jurisdictions offshore.”

Even the fable king of the corporate cult plays tax games. How Apple’s Phantom Taxes Hide Billions in Profit illustrates stashing money offshore is a trend here to stay.

“On Tuesday, Apple is set to report financial results for the second quarter. Analysts are expecting net income of $9.8 billion. But whatever figure Apple reports won’t reflect its true profit, because the company hides some of it with an unusual tax maneuver.

And just like other corporations, Apple leaves cash overseas. If it brought it home to the U.S., it would have to pay federal income taxes on the money (though it would get a credit for foreign taxes already paid). In Apple’s case, those overseas accounts have grown to a staggering $74 billion – equal to the market value of Citigroup Inc.”

Off-shoring business activity, a cannon of operation for the internationalist multinational, is deleterious to the domestic economy. Keeping after tax profits in foreign banks virtually guarantees that future expansion or acquisitions will be seeded in overseas jurisdictions.

Now many proponents of globalism will defend this practice. However, the harsh reality is that the American market is systematically being dismantled. The motivation behind stripping away an independent industrial based economy is to make domestic consumption reliant upon foreign supplies. This fact is indisputable and, arguably sinister.

Rational protective tariffs are demonized as anti free trade. Yet all that the destructive free trade scheme has produced is widespread poverty within our own borders. Creating the incentive to abandon the domestic manufacturing domicile is tragic. The importing of products or services priced to reflect slave labor costs or deferred before tax capital, is suicidal.

Accumulating huge profits offshore on sales within foreign lands may be more palatable. But allowing domestically incorporated companies to conduct trade under the auspices of U.S. law should demand a legitimate price to be paid for that protection. The trade game, as it currently plays out, is a license to steal from the domestic consumer, while the corporate lobbyist bribe officials and game the system for favorable tax considerations.

Repatriation of profits stored in offshore banks is secondary to re-establishing domestic employment. The link between selling the products and services within a market where they are made, requires a balance and synergism that does not currently exist. This standard certainly applies to the rebuilding of American industry. The tax and duty laws need to correct the methodical destruction of the domestic economy.

Licensing regulations tied to employment requirements are a positive technique to compel transnational companies to fulfill their civic responsibility for the opportunity to operate in the United States. International trade can be beneficial, but a sound domestic economy secures survivability.

Luciferian Technocrats Rule The New World Order

The condition of the state of the world is bleak. All signs point to a catastrophic day of reckoning. The worldview that places God as the creator of the universe is routinely dismissed as a myth or superstition. The adoration of scientific theory void of metaphysical presence is the Holy Grail for a culture of technocrats that manage the institutional components of a global order that places little value on life and individual Inherent Autonomy. Orderly obedience to the dictates of elitist secret societies is deemed the orthodox standard to manage a controlled chaos for the masses. By denying God and His sovereignty over man, the appeal of a Luciferian devotion immerges as the ultimate destiny for perfecting the evil nature of aspiring totalitarians.

Is there really a religion where adoration of the devil is professed? Some may conclude that Beelzebub is no more real than Jehovah. Others may say that in an agnostic world, judgments of good and evil are minor detours in the escalation of technocratic advancement. Essentially the New World Order is the concentration of power into the hands of a vertically top down authoritarian structure. Such a system cannot exist without the administrative functions of the technocrats.

Yet much of inquiry and research into the complexity of the NWO investigates the diverse, but associated and connected, branches of the organization that prepares for total domination. Is there a head to this beast or are all the arms and legs mere factions vying for more influence? One way to look at all the cabals is put forth by Al Cronkrite in Stop The Tyranny Of World Government. He poses a celestial issue and provides a salvation answer.

“Are we the victims of a conspiracy? Yes, we are. Were our Founders victims of nefarious influences from Europe? Yes, they were. Are Talmudist Jews seeking to destroy Christian America? Yes, they are. Is Judaism at war with Christianity? Yes, it is. Has our government been bought and paid for by forces that seek to weaken it and meld it into world tyranny. Yes, it has. Is “Illuminati” an apt description of this world’s encompassing evil? Yes, it is. Do bankers like David Rockefeller and the European Rothschild families conspire for world domination? Yes, they do. Can we indict the Vatican for contributing to the world’s evils? Yes, we can.

President Obama is not the problem. The government is not the problem. The Council of Foreign Relations is not the problem. The Rockefeller and Rothschild families are not the problem. The Jews are not the problem. The Vatican is not the problem. The Bilderbergers, the Club of Rome, the Illuminati, and the other power center groups are not the problem. The problem is that we have forsaken the Creator of the Universe and replaced Him with humanist groups that are attempting to rule His creation. The problem is our relationship with the sovereign God Who created the world and everything in it.”

The contestants in the timeless world domination game reject this traditional conclusion. Kneeling to Lucifer is a small price to pay, if losing your eternal soul, is the only price to pay for global power. No need for a congregational ceremony, when human death sacrifices and eugenics is the sacrament practiced. Notwithstanding, the homicidal beliefs of the extreme Luciferian worshipers, the ritual drill depends upon the underling technocrats caring out the demented compliance that have the world posed for full-blown destruction.

The pattern of subversive submission, based upon the usual suspect organizations, ceaselessly advances. The establishment system protects and expands a perverse culture that repudiates the most sacred tenants of Western Civilization. The facilitators and enablers of the New World Order, willingly accept their technocrat function. For them it is a normal requirement for recognition and reward, from the very structure that is designed to eliminate expendable inhabitants. Being an obedient servant is no guarantee of surviving the cut.

Sherry Shriner in Hey Stupid, The New World Order IS About Religion, has a most definite viewpoint.

Those in the New World Order who are in control of most of the governments of the world already today declare that to become a citizen of this order will require a Luciferian oath.

Accordingly, those in the implementation stages proclaim:

“No one will enter the New World Order unless he or she will make a pledge to worship Lucifer. No one will enter the New Age unless he will take a Luciferian Initiation.”

—David Spangler, Director of Planetary Initiative, United Nations

Amongst all the global governing changes and wars that are taking place to accommodate this New World Order many are overlooking the most dominant aspect of it, its religious and occultic nature.

Irregular Times questions the validity of this quote and Mr. Spangler’s role with the UN. “The Findhorn Foundation, with which he (Mr. Spangler) had some involvement three decades ago, proclaims that it has been an officially recognized United Nations nongovernmental organization.”

Please note that association of NGOs with DPI does not constitute their incorporation into the United Nations system, nor does it entitle associated organizations or their staff to any kind of privileges, immunities or special status.

 

How The U.S. Dollar Will Be Replaced

After being immersed in the world of alternative economic analysis for several years, it sometimes becomes easy to forget that most people do not track forex markets, or debt to GDP ratio, or true unemployment, or hunch over IMF white-papers highlighting subsections which expose the trappings of the globalist ideology.  Sometimes, you just assume the average person knows what the heck you are talking about.  This is, of course, a mistake.  However, it is a mistake that is borne from the inadequacy of our age and our culture, and is not necessarily a product of weak character, either of the analyst, or the casual reader.

The great frustration of being actively involved in the Liberty Movement is the fact that many people are rarely on the same page (or even the same book) during political and economic discussion.  Where we see the nature of the false left/right paradigm, they see “free democracy”.  Where we see a tidal wave of destructive debt, they see a “responsible government” printing and spending in order to protect our “best interests”.  Where we see totalitarianism, they see “safety”.  Where we see dollar devaluation, they see dollar strength and longevity.  Ultimately, because the average unaware citizen is stricken by the disease of normalcy bias and living within the doldrums of a statistical fantasy world, they simply have no point of reference by which to grasp the truth when exposed to it.  It’s like trying to explain the concept of ‘color’ to a man who has been blind since birth.

Americans in particular are prone to reactionary dismissal when exposed to facts that disrupt their misconceptions.  Our culture has experienced a particularly prosperous age, not necessarily free from all trouble, but generally spared from widespread mass tragedy for a generous length of time.  This tends to breed within societies an overt and unreasonable expectation of ease.  It generates apathy, and laziness.  A crushing blubberous slothful cynicism subservient to the establishment and the status quo.  Even the most striking of truths struggle to penetrate this smoky forcefield of duplicitous funk.

In recent articles, I have outlined the very immediate dangers of several potential economic events that are likely to take place this year, including the exit of peripheral countries from the European Union, the conflict between austerity and socialist spending in France and Germany, the developing bilateral trade agreements between China and numerous other countries which cut out their reliance on the U.S. dollar, and the likelihood that the Federal Reserve will announce QE3 before the end of 2012.  All of these elements are leading in one very particular direction:  the end of the Greenback as the world reserve currency.

In response to these assertions I have received letters from some people (some of them indignant) questioning how it would be even remotely possible that the dollar could be replaced at all.  The concept is so outside their narrow world view that many cannot fathom it.

To be sure, the question is a viable one.  How could the dollar be unseated?  That said, a few hours of light research would easily produce the answer, but this tends to be too much work for the fly-by-night financial skeptic.  Sometimes, the job of the alternative analyst is to make the obvious even more obvious.

So, let’s begin…

The Dollar A Safe Haven?

This ongoing lunacy is based on multiple biases.  For some, the dollar represents America, and a collapse of the currency would suggest a failure of the republic, and thus, a failure by them as individual Americans who live vicariously through the exploits of their government.  By extension, it becomes “patriotic” to defend the dollar’s honor and deny any information that might suggest it is on a downward spiral.

Others see how the investment world clings to the dollar as a kind of panic room; a protected place where one’s saving will be insulated from crisis.  However, just because a majority of day trading investors are gullible enough to overlook the Greenback’s pitfalls does not mean those dangerous weaknesses disappear.

There is only one factor that shields the dollar from implosion, and that is its position as the world reserve currency.  Without this exalted status, the currency’s value vanishes.  Backed by nothing but massive and unpayable debt, it sits frighteningly idle, like a time bomb, waiting for the moment of ignition.

The horrifying nature of the dollar is that it is only valuable so long as foreign investors believe that we will pay back the considerable debts that we (the American taxpayer at the behest of our criminally run Treasury) owe, and that we will not hyperinflate in the process.  If they EVER begin to see their purchases of dollars and treasuries as a gamble instead of an investment, the façade falls away.  Yet again this year Congress and the Executive Branch are “at odds” over the expansion of the debt ceiling, which has been raised to levels beyond the 100% of GDP mark:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/17/us/politics/obama-presses-congress-to-act-on-his-priorities.html 

Barack Obama has made claims that increases in the debt ceiling are “normal”, and that most presidents are prone to hiking the barrier every once in a while.  Yet, back in 2006, when George W. Bush increased debt limits, Obama had this to say:

“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills…Instead of reducing the deficit, as some people claimed, the fiscal policies of this administration and its allies in Congress will add more than $600 million in debt for each of the next five years…Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here.’ Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.”

For once, Barack and I agree on something.  Too bad the man changes his rhetoric whenever it’s to his advantage.

Today, Obama now asserts that raising the debt ceiling is not an opening for more government spending, but an allowance for the government to pay bills it has already accrued.  This is disingenuous and hypocritical prattle.  Obama is well aware as are many in Congress that as long as the Federal Government is able to raise the debt ceiling whenever it suits them, they can increase spending with wild abandon.  It’s like handing someone a credit card with no maximum limit.  For most men, the temptation would be irresistible.  Therefore, one can predict with 100% certainty that U.S. spending will never truly be reduced, and that our national debt will mount in tandem until we self destruct.

How has this trend been able to continue for so long?  Our private central bank has created the fiat machine by which all economic depravity is possible.  Currently, the Federal Reserve is the number one holder of U.S. debt.  The Federal Reserve creates its own capital.  It prints its wealth from thin air.  The dollar, thus, has become its own lynchpin.  The secretive institution which has never been subject to a full audit is now monetizing endless debt mechanisms with paper promises.  What value would any intelligent investor put on such a fraudulent economic system?

The epic dysfunction of the dollar is rooted in its reliance on perception rather than tangible wealth or strong fundamentals.  It is, indeed, like any other fiat unit, with all the inevitable pitfalls built into its structure.

Ironically, the value of the Dollar Index is measured not by its intrinsic buying power, or its historical buying power, but its arbitrary buying power in comparison with other collapsing fiat currencies.

The argument I hear most often when pointing out the calamitous path of the dollar is that it is the go-to safe haven in response to the crisis in Europe.  What the financially inept don’t seem to grasp is that the shifting of savings back and forth between the euro and the dollar is just as irrelevant to our currency’s survival as it is to Europe’s.  BOTH currencies are in decline, and this is evident by the growing inflationary pressures on both sides of the Atlantic.  Ask any consumer in Greece, Spain, France, or the UK how shelf prices have changed in the past four years, and they will say the exact same thing as any consumer in the U.S.; costs have gone way up.  Therefore, it makes sense to compare the dollar’s value not to the euro, or to the Yen, but something more practical, like the dollar of the past….

In 1972, just as Nixon was removing the dollar from the last vestiges of the gold standard, a new car cost an average of $4500.  A home cost around $40,000.  A gallon of gas was .36 cents.  A loaf of bread was .25 cents.  A visit to the doctor’s office was $25.  Wages were certainly lower, but they kept much better pace with the prices of the era.  Today, the gap between wages and inflation is insurmountable.  The average family is unable to keep up with the flashflood of rising prices.

According to the historic buying power of the dollar, the currency is a poor safe haven investment.  With the advent of bailout efforts and debt monetization through quantitative easing, its devaluation has been expedited dramatically.  The Fed has left the door open for what I believe will be a final destructive round of publicly announced QE, weakening the dollar to near death:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/16/us-usa-fed-idUSBRE84F12320120516 

The question then arises; why do foreign countries continue to buy in on the greenback?

The Dollar Dump Has Already Begun

One of my favorite arguments by those defending the dollar is the assertion that no foreign country would dare to dump the currency because they are all too dependent on U.S. trade.  To answer the question above, the reality is that foreign countries ARE already calmly and quietly dumping the dollar as a global trade instrument.

To those people who consistently claim that the dollar will never be dropped, my response is, it already has been dropped!  China, in tandem with other BRIC nations, has been covertly removing the greenback as the primary trade unit through bilateral deals since 2010.  First with Russia, and now with the whole of the ASEAN trading bloc and numerous other markets, including Japan.  China in particular has been preparing for this eventuality since 2005, when they introduced the first Yuan denominated bonds.  The bonds were considered a strange novelty back then, especially because China had so much surplus savings that it seemed outlandish for them to take on treasury debt.  Today, the move makes a whole lot more sense.  China and the BRIC nations today openly call for a worldwide shift away from the dollar:

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/indepth/2011-08/06/c_131032986.htm 

With the global proliferation of the Yuan, and the conversion of the Chinese economy away from dependence on exports (especially to the West) towards a more consumer based system, the Chinese have effectively decoupled from their reliance on U.S. markets.  Would a collapse in the U.S. hurt China’s economy?  Yes.  Would they still survive?  Oh yes.  Far better than America would, at least…

In 2008, I warned of this development and was attacked on all sides by more mainstream economists and Keynesian proponents who stated that such a development was impossible.  Today, it’s common knowledge that our primary creditors are “diversifying” away from the dollar, though MSM talking heads and those who parrot them still claim that this is not a threat to our economy.

To be clear, the true threat to the dollar’s supremacy is not only due to the constant printing by the private Federal Reserve (though that is a nightmare in the making), but the loss of faith in our currency as a whole.  The Fed does not need to throw dollars from helicopters to annihilate our currency; all they have to do is create doubt in its viability.

The bottom line?  A dollar collapse is not “theory” but undeniable fact in motion at this moment, driven by concrete actions on the part of the very nations that have until recently propped up our debt obligations.  It is only a matter of time before the dollar diminishes and fades away.  All signs point to a loss of reserve status in the near term.

What Will Replace The Dollar?

My next favorite argument in defense of the Greenback is the assertion that there is “no currency in a position to take the dollar’s place if it falls”.  First of all, this is based on a very naïve assumption that the dollar will not fall unless there is another currency to replace it.  I’m not sure who made that rule up, but the dollar is perfectly able to be flushed without a replacement in the wings.  Economic collapse does not follow logical guidelines or the personal pet peeves of random man-child economists.

Though, to be fair, and to educate those unaware, there IS a replacement already conveniently ready to roll forward.  The IMF has for a couple of years now openly called for the retirement of the dollar as the world reserve currency, to be supplanted by the elitist organization’s very own “Special Drawing Rights” (SDR’s):

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/feb/10/imf-boss-calls-for-world-currency 

The SDR is a paper mechanism created in the early 1970’s to replace gold as the primary means of international trade between foreign governments.  Today, it has morphed into a basket of currencies which is recognized by almost every country in the world and is in a prime position to take the dollar’s place in the event that it loses reserve status.  This is not theory.  This is cold hard reality.  For those who claim that the SDR is not considered a “real currency”, they should probably warn the U.S. Post Office, which now uses conversion tables that denominate costs in SDR’s:

http://pe.usps.com/text/imm/immc3_007.htm 

So, now that we know a replacement for the dollar is ready to go, the next obvious question would be:

Why would global elites destroy a useful monetary tool like the dollar?  Why kill the goose that “lays the golden eggs”?

People who ask this question are simply unable to see outside the fiscal box they have been placed in.  For global bankers, a paper currency is not important.  It is expendable. Like a layer of snake skin; as the snake grows, it sheds the old and dawns the new.

At bottom, men who promote the philosophies of globalization greatly desire the exaltation of a global currency.  The dollar, though a creation of a central bank, is still a semi-sovereign monetary unit.  It is an element that is getting in the way of the application of the global currency dynamic.  I find it rather convenient (at least for those who subscribe too globalism) that the dollar is now in the midst of a perfect storm of decline just as the IMF is ready to introduce its latest fiat concoction in the form of the SDR.  I find the blind faith in the dollar’s lifespan to be rife with delusion.  It is not a matter of opinion or desire, but a matter of fact that currencies in such tenuous positions fall, and are in the end replaced.   I believe that the evidence shows that this is not random chance, but a deliberate process, leading towards the globalist ideal; total centralization of the world under an unaccountable governing body which operates a global monetary system utterly devoid of transparency and responsibility.

The dollar was a median step towards a newer and more corrupt ideal.  Its time is nearly over.  This is open, it is admitted, and it is being activated as you read this.  The speed at which this disaster occurs is really dependent on the speed at which our government along with our central bank decides to expedite doubt.  Doubt in a currency is a furious omen, costing not just investors, but an entire society.  America is at the very edge of such a moment.  The naysayers can scratch and bark all they like, but the financial life of a country serves no person’s emphatic hope.  It burns like a fire.  Left unwatched and unchecked, it grows uncontrollable and wild, until finally, there is nothing left to fuel its hunger, and it finally chokes in a haze of confusion and dread…

Source: Brandon Smith | Alt-Market

The New World Order: Paranoia or Reality?

The phrase “New World Order” is so loaded with explosive assumptions and perceptions that its very usage has become a kind of journalistic landmine.  Many analysts (some in the mainstream) have attempted to write about and discuss this very real sociopolitical ideology in a plain and exploratory manner, using a fair hand and supporting data, only to be attacked, ridiculed, or completely ignored before they get a chance to put forward their work.  The reason is quite simple; much of the general public has been mentally inoculated against even the whisper of the terminology.  That is to say, they have been conditioned to exhibit a negative reaction to such discussion instinctively without even knowing why.

Some of this conditioning is accomplished through the stereotyping of New World Order researchers as “conspiracy theorists” (another term for loony) grasping at fantasies in a desperate bid for “attention”, or, as confused individuals who attempt to apply creative logic to a mad chaotic world swirling on the periphery of a great void of coincidence and chance.  I know this because I used to be one amongst the naive herd of “rationalists”, and I and many I knew used the same shallow arguments to dismiss every cold hard fact on the NWO that we happened upon.  After seeing the conspiracy crowd made iconic and ridiculous in hundreds if not thousands of books, movies, TV shows, commercials, and news specials, it becomes difficult for many to enter into the topic without a severe bias already implanted in their heads.

Another circumstance that leads to the immediate dismissal of NWO research is, ironically, the lack of open discussion on the subject.  Yes, it’s a chicken and egg sort of thing.  If more people were less afraid to shine a floodlight on the truth of the matter, more people, in turn, would be more willing to absorb it.  And, if more unaware people were willing to listen to the information with an open mind, more people with knowledge would be willing to share it.  The psychological barrier to the information, therefore, is not based on any legitimate argument against the existence of the NWO.  Instead, people refuse to listen because they fear to embrace concepts personally that they believe are not yet embraced by the majority.

It is a sad fact of society that most men and women gravitate towards the life of the follower, and not of the leader.  Only through great hardship and trauma do some plant their feet solidly in the Earth, and find the strength to break free from the collectivist mindset.

Elitist think-tanks and propaganda machines like the Southern Poverty Law Center take full advantage of the hive mentality by attacking Liberty Movement proponents and NWO researchers in light of the populace’s lack of background knowledge.  A perfect example of this was the SPLC’s latest hit-piece on an Oath Keepers article dealing with the exposure of a Department of Defense program designed to import and train Russian soldiers on U.S. soil.  Because the article dares to mention the “NWO”, the SPLC jumps to the vapid conclusion that Oath Keepers are “paranoid”:

http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2012/04/27/the-russians-are-coming-patriot-paranoia-run-amok/

The poorly written diatribe is little more than an Ad Hominem stab by an ankle biting author, but I felt it did hold a certain value as a test case of the strategic exploitation of uneducated mass opinion.  Without the ignorance of a sizable portion of the American public, yellow journalism like the kind peddled by the SPLC would be relegated to the great dustbin of history…

If a man is able to get past his negative preconceptions on the matter, the next step is to ask a relatively straightforward question; what is the New World Order?  What is the foundation of the philosophy that drives it?  What are its origins?  This is something mainstream pundits never explore.  They simply take for granted that we in the Liberty Movement somehow made the whole thing up for our own entertainment.  In reality, the phrase New World Order made its public debut early in the 20th Century, and it was expounded by numerous political and business elites decades before there was such a thing as “conspiracy theorists”.

The Liberty Movement has always defined the NWO as a concerted effort by elitist organizations using political manipulation, economic subversion, and even war, to centralize global power into the hands of an unelected and unaccountable governing body.  The goal; to one day completely dismantle individual, state, and national sovereignty.  However, what I and many others hold as fact on the New World Order is not enough.  We must examine the original source and how we came to our mutual conclusions.

I have in numerous articles outlined the irrefutable data surrounding the directed efforts of corporate globalization and the deliberate strategies of central banks in the co-option of financial control over nations.  But, to solidify our understanding of what the most financially and politically powerful men on Earth and their cheerleaders believe the NWO is, why not go straight to the horse’s mouth:

“It is the system of nationalist individualism that has to go….We are living in the end of the sovereign states….In the great struggle to evoke a Westernized World Socialism, contemporary governments may vanish….Countless people…will hate the new world order….and will die protesting against it.” H.G. Wells, in his book, “The New World Order”, 1940

“Some even believe we (the Rockefeller family) are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”
- David Rockefeller, Memoirs, page 405

“In the next century, nations as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority. National sovereignty wasn’t such a great idea after all.”
- Strobe Talbot, President Clinton’s Deputy Secretary of State, Time Magazine, July 20th, 1992

“There does exist, and has existed for a generation, an international anglophile network which operates, to some extent, in the way the radical Right believes the Communists act. In fact, this network, which we may identify as the Round Table Groups, has no aversion to cooperating with the communists, or any other group, and frequently does so. I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960s, to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments … I have objected both in the past and recently, to a few of its policies … but in general my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known … The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) … the American Branch of a society which originated in England … believes national boundaries should be obliterated and [a] one-world rule established.”
Prof. Carroll Quigley, mentor to Bill Clinton, from his book ‘Tragedy and Hope‘

“Ultimately, our objective is to welcome the Soviet Union back into the world order. Perhaps the world order of the future will truly be a family of nations.” 
President George Bush at Texas A&M University 1989

“We will succeed in the Gulf. And when we do, the world community will have sent an enduring warning to any dictator or despot, present or future, who contemplates outlaw aggression. The world can therefore seize this opportunity to fufill the long-held promise of a new world order – where brutality will go unrewarded, and aggression will meet collective resistance.” 
President George Bush State of the Union Address 1991

“The Final Act of the Uruguay Round, marking the conclusion of the most ambitious trade negotiation of our century, will give birth – in Morocco – to the World Trade Organization, the third pillar of the New World Order, along with the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund.” 
Part of full-page advertisement by the government of Morocco in The New York Times (April 1994)

“To keep global resource use within prudent limits while the poor raise their living standards, affluent societies need to consume less.  Population, consumption, technology, development, and the environment are linked in complex relationships that bear closely on human welfare in the global neighborhood. Their effective and equitable management calls for a systemic, long-term, global approach guided by the principle of sustainable development, which has been the central lesson from the mounting ecological dangers of recent times. Its universal application is a priority among the tasks of global governance.” 
United Nations Our Global Neighborhood 1995

“What Congress will have before it is not a conventional trade agreement but the architecture of a new international system…a first step toward a new world order.”
Henry Kissinger on NAFTA, Los Angeles Times

“All these new challenges are bringing together about the biggest restructuring we’ve ever seen not just of the global economy but global order as a whole. And two hundred years ago, a famous British foreign secretary said that the new world had been called into existence to address the balance of the old. In 1989 another world war ended dominated by the cold war and people talked then in 1990 of the new world order. What they meant then was a new political order. And what was not foreseen then but is obvious now, from everything that we see and do, what we experience every day of our life is the sheer scale and speed and scope of globalization…”
Prime Minister Gordon Brown, CBI Speech 2007

“The New World Order will have to be built from the bottom up rather than from the top down…but in the end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece will accomplish much more than the old fashioned frontal assault.”
CFR member Richard Gardner, writing in the April 1974 issue of the CFR’s journal, Foreign Affairs

As we can see quite clearly from the direct quotes above, the New World Order, and its pursuit of global government, is not some “delusion” built upon exaggerated claims or impractical fears.  It is, in fact, a very OPEN and freely admitted sociopolitical ideology held by a select and decidedly influential group of people.  To label it “conspiracy theory” is absurd.

Are capitalist and socialist organizations “conspiracy theory”?  Are political parties “conspiracy theories”?  Is Greenpeace a paranoid figment of our imagination?  What about corporate lobbyists?  Was the purge of Stalinist Russia a fable?  Did the Nazi party not actually seek to rule the world?  Obviously, these have all been substantial forces in the making of our current era.

Throughout history, very real organizations of people with specific and directed beliefs have sought to guide the course of our cultural progression according to their personal values, sometimes using coordinated and underhanded means.  The New World Order is no different in this regard.  Its uniqueness lay only in the insidious nature of its methods and the complexity of its structure.  In fact, I would have to question the sanity of anyone who DOESN’T believe that conspiracies are a constant and concrete reality.  Secretive groups of men have always sought power over others and have always cloaked their thirst in the auspices of patriotism and rationalism.

Another issue which average Americans stumble over is the fraudulent notion of the left/right paradigm.  For those within the ranks of the New World Order, “left” and “right”, Democrat and Republican, are ultimately meaningless terms.  This is undeniable after one realizes that the leadership on both sides of the aisle exhibit almost identical policy initiatives and voting records.  When the two primary political entities of a system differ only in rhetoric but not in action, one has to question whether they are separate parties at all:

When a liberty minded network like Oath Keepers points out the underlying New World Order-ness of a DoD program to train Russian soldiers on U.S. soil, they are referring to the centralizing nature of the procedure, and they are quite correct.  The problem is that those without any context or background knowledge are completely unequipped to understand the significance of the danger.  If only they knew about programs like the Security and Prosperity Partnership agreement between Canada, the U.S., and Mexico, constructed to dissolve sovereign military and economic functions between the three countries:

http://www.hudson.org/files/pdf_upload/HudsonNegotiatingNorthAmericaadvanceproof2.pdf

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/story.html?id=403d90d6-7a61-41ac-8cef-902a1d14879d

What is to stop this trend of military homogenization with neighboring foreign countries from spreading around the world, enabling corrupt governments stocked with proponents of globalism to use not only a country’s own troops domestically, but the troops of other nations?

As the SPLC points out in an attempt to be clever; this intermingling has been going on for quite some time.  What they fail to mention is the terrible track record these operations have amassed.  The ‘School Of The Americas’, for example, used the same rhetoric of “international cooperation” and the spreading of “democracy” as a fair trade when training foreign troops on U.S. soil, yet, all the school seemed to produce were tyrannical despots and mass murderers:

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2097124,00.html 

Or, how about the recent training of the Iranian dissident group Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) at a secretive Department of Energy site in Nevada:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/04/mek.html

Are we supposed to believe that the training of Russian troops within our border will produce better results?

These activities on the part of our government, in the end, do not serve the best interests of the American people in the slightest, but what they do serve, are the ideological addictions of the global elite.  That is to say, they further the interests of the New World Order.

As researchers and web journalists, we are supposed to be afraid to mention the NWO.  We are supposed to refrain from using certain vocabulary exactly because portions of the public are unfamiliar with it.  To be honest, I have to laugh at this dynamic.  I think it far better to embrace the truth of a matter, along with its dialogue.  To be unashamed and unabashed in the exposition of the facts regardless of the ignorance of those around us.  The New World Order is a definable and quantifiable political movement.  Elitists who praise it in public are showered with accolades while citizens who oppose it in public are accused of paranoid ramblings.  The less we care about what others might think, the more dedicated we can be to the truth.  At bottom, when it comes to matters of survival and principle, it is a far better thing to be “crazy” and right, than “sane” and wrong.

Source: Brandon Smith | Alt-Market

A Different Philosophy of Civil Disobedience

Conventional civil disobedience usually engages localized agencies and domestic government. Redress of grievances, constitutionally protected under law is a myth in practice. The courts operate as protectors of state authority, while crushing the safeguards of individual natural rights. Petition to elected officials for recourse resembles begging for sustenance. Allegiance to country is confused with deference to decadent dictates. Conscience and moral imperatives draw sincere and aware citizens to resort to necessary measures of dissent. The question is what kind of civil disobedience is appropriate and effective?

The conventional interruption of the principle of civil disobedience usually citesThoreau, Gandhi and King. Most students of history are familiar with their significance and writings. However, less well known are John Rawls and Howard Zinn. A review of their viewpoints is helpful to understand the nature of civil disobedience. However, in an age of globalism, the sovereign state has less importance because the transnational community of nations is implementing a tyrannical New World Order.

Stephen Grant argues that John Rawls identifies eight criteria for identifying an act as one of civil disobedience.

1) There must be clear injustice.

2) The law must be broken. A key factor which distinguishes civil disobedience from protest is the brute fact that the actions undertaken are illegal.

3) The law which is to be overturned need not be the one which is broken.

4) It must be a public act. One essential feature of civil disobedience is that it tries to communicate to the wider community the injustice of a particular law.

5) It must be non-violent and non-threatening. The civil disobedient is attempting to appeal to the “sense of justice” of the majority.

6) The perpetrator accepts the penalties for her illegal actions. Although civil disobedience involves breaking the law, it is done for moral rather than selfish reasons, and the willingness to accept arrest is proof of the integrity of the act.

7) The actions must not threaten the stability of the state. Rawls emphasises that the context in which civil disobedience is morally permissible is one where there is a limited number of unjust laws which are the focus of opposition, but where there is a fundamentally just set of principles against which those laws can be deemed to be unjust.

8 ) The actions are carried out within “fidelity to the law”. The civil disobedient does not object to the rule of law as such, and may well accept as just the great majority of laws to which she is subject.

The Brotherhood of The Free

One of my all-time favorite pieces of literature is this section from Friedrich Schiller’s William Tell:

“By this fair light which greeteth us, before
Those other nations, that, beneath us far,
In noisome cities pent, draw painful breath,
Swear we the oath of our confederacy!
A band of brothers true we swear to be,
Never to part in danger or in death!

“We swear we will be free as were our sires,
And sooner die than live in slavery!

“We swear, to put our trust in God Most High,
And not to quail before the might of man!”

Another personal favorite is the St. Crispin’s Day speech from Shakespeare’s Henry V:

“This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered.

“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother, be he ne’er so vile.
This day shall gentle his condition.

“And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.”

Schiller and Shakespeare called it “Band of Brothers.” The Apostle Peter called it “Brotherhood.” (I Peter 2:17) Call it what you will: without it, no cause will prevail. And that is one of the biggest problems we face in America today: there is very little brotherhood among brothers.

No, not all brothers are part of the brotherhood. The Scripture acknowledges this in Proverbs 18:24, “There is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.” And again in Proverbs 27:10, “Better is a neighbor that is near than a brother afar off.” A brother that doesn’t “stick close” is certainly not part of the brotherhood. Neither is a brother that is “afar off.”

The sad truth is, even in the vast majority of churches, brotherhood is virtually unknown. Sitting in a church congregation is no more indicative of brotherhood than sitting in a crowded football stadium. In fact, there might even be MORE brotherhood at a football game than there is in the average church today.

Churches today are literally eaten up with malice, jealousy, gossip, slander, backbiting, faultfinding, ad infinitum. (But the same is true with other establishment organizations as well.) For all intents and purposes, today’s churches make a mockery of all that Jesus taught regarding Christian love and brotherhood. On the whole, it simply does not exist today.

This past Sunday, I delivered a message simply entitled, “Brotherhood.” I encourage readers to watch or download this message at:

http://chuckbaldwinlive.com/redirection2/go2/?WPNTHJ

For the sake of this column, and for the freedom movement especially, let me issue a clarion call for all of us who call ourselves Patriots. It is absolutely critical that we recognize The Brotherhood of the Free.

After signing the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Franklin said, “We must hang together, or we most assuredly will hang separately.” How right he was!

Our patriot-forebears, this “Band of Brothers,” were as diverse a group of men as would ever be found. They represented virtually every Christian denomination that existed in Colonial America. They also included men who identified with no Christian church or denomination. While most of our Founding Fathers were Christians, not all of them were. But they all joined shoulder-to-shoulder in the fight for liberty and independence. Christians were fighting for the freedom to worship God as they pleased, and non-Christians were fighting for the freedom to not worship God if they pleased. But both fought side-by-side for freedom. Why do Christians today have such a blind spot in this regard?

It doesn’t matter that Mitt Romney is a Mormon, or that Newt Gingrich is a Catholic, or that Rick Santorum is a Catholic. What matters is that not one of them is part of The Brotherhood of the Free. Not one of them has a clue as to what the real principles of liberty and constitutional government are all about. Not one of them recognizes the New World Order, the emerging police state, or the foolhardiness of perpetual war–whatever church they attend notwithstanding!

And that’s the problem with most of our Christian “brothers”: They just don’t get it! And when push comes to shove, most of them will join with the forces of darkness in persecuting real Patriots and freedom lovers. Don’t believe it? Look at how they are treating Ron Paul.

Say what you want about Ron Paul, he is an elder statesman in The Brotherhood of the Free. Ron Paul is in the Brotherhood. He knows what’s going on. He sees the danger. He cares about liberty. He understands the Constitution. He is my brother in the fight!

Do I agree with Dr. Paul about every issue? No! We will never agree with our fellow Patriots about every single issue–neither should we have to. We agree on the basics. We each love liberty and independence. We believe in constitutional government. We despise globalism, corporatism, socialism, and fascism. We recognize a police state when we see it. We recognize the right of free moral beings to make their own personal moral choices. As Christians, we know that only Christ can change the hearts (and thereby, the conduct) of men–NOT GOVERNMENT!

Does anyone find it more than interesting that men such as John Adams, Sam Adams, and George Washington joined with Benjamin Franklin in signing the Declaration of Independence? The Adams boys and Mr. Washington were well known far and wide as men of intense piety and personal morality, while Mr. Franklin was known by everyone to be an incurable ladies man–even in his old age. If John and Sam and George would have behaved as so-called Christians do today, they would have said, “If Ben is signing this document, count me out!” But there they were, side-by-side, shoulder-to-shoulder, fighting for liberty and independence.

I, too, will gladly stand with my fellows in The Brotherhood of the Free. It doesn’t mean that I approve of all that they do. It doesn’t mean that I believe all that they believe. But it does mean as long as they are part of the Brotherhood and are willing to fight for the principles of liberty, I will stand with them!

Joining Ron Paul are thousands of men and women who should be recognized as part of this noble Brotherhood. As did our Founding Fathers, we come from varied walks of life, varied religious persuasions, varied belief systems, etc., but we all share a love of liberty and independence that burns deeply in our breasts.

Accordingly, I am glad to stand with (and to have stood with) Patriots such as Montana State Legislator Rick Jore, John McManus, Dr. Stan Montieth, Howard Phillips, Larry Pratt, Paul Walter, Herb Titus, Bill Olson, Ed Vieira, Judge Darrell White, Judge Andrew Napolitano, Pat Buchanan, Chelene Nightingale, Charley Reese, Scott Bradley, Joel Skousen, Tom DeWeese, Ezola Foster, Sheriff Richard Mack, Alex Jones, Governor Jesse Ventura, Sam Bushman, the late Congresswoman Helen Chenoweth-Hage, the late William Shearer, the late Joseph Sobran, the late George Putnam, and thousands like them.

My dear fellow Patriots, we are part of a Brotherhood. As Franklin said, “We must hang together.” If we do, the cause of liberty will prevail. If we do not, the cause of liberty will most assuredly perish.

“It’s Going To Take ‘We The People’”

Writing for World Net Daily, Bob Unruh reports a refreshing story of how individual sovereign states are beginning to push back against federal overreach. Unruh writes, “State and local officials in surging numbers are telling Washington they simply won’t cooperate with any plans to detain Americans the federal government may choose to describe as ‘belligerents.’

“The issue centers on provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, signed by President Obama, for the indefinite and rights-free detention of those Washington cites as belligerents, whether American citizens or not.

“WND reported when Rep. Daniel P. Gordon Jr. immediately drafted a resolution in the Rhode Island legislature to express opposition to the sections of the NDAA ‘that suspend habeas corpus and civil liberties.’

“Now the Tenth Amendment Center confirms that the resistance to the federal bureaucracy is catching on.”

Unruh continues, “‘Sources close to the Tenth Amendment Center say as many as 10 states will consider legislation or resolutions in response to the detention provisions in section 1021 and 1022 of the NDAA,’ the organization is reporting. ‘Lawmakers in Rhode Island and Washington will likely introduce resolutions authored by the Rhode Island Liberty Coalition within the next week. Additionally, local governments, including Fremont County, Colo. and El Paso County, Colo., have passed resolution condemning the detention provisions.’

“Tenth Amendment Center executive director Michael Boldin commented that ‘federal politicians never seem to repeal federal law.

“‘It’s going to take “We the People” in our states to stand up and say, “No!” to this unconstitutional monster,’ he said.”

Unruh goes on to report, “Already, Virginia Delegate Bob Marshall, R-Manassas, has introduced HB 1160, which would prevent ‘any agency, political subdivision, employee, or member of the military of Virginia from assisting an agency or the armed forces of the United States in the investigation, prosecution, or detainment of a United States citizen in violation of the Constitution of Virginia.’”

“Mike Maharrey, communications director for the TAC, said the fight is shaping up like the conflict in the 1850s when northern states refused to cooperated with fugitive slave laws that required them to capture and return escaping slaves.

“‘It is clear to me, and I am far from alone in this view, that the detention provisions in the NDAA are vague, overbroad and open to interpretation,’ he said. ‘That leaves me to trust in the good character and moral clarity of Barack Obama, Rick Santorum or whoever happens to reside at the White House, to protect me and my fellow Americans from abuse of his power. No thanks.’

“Maharrey noted that during the latter days of slavery, ‘state and local governments in northern states stepped in and thwarted the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Acts, which allowed the federal government to arrest and detain black people, and send them back into slavery with little or no due process.

“‘We laud these men and women as heroes,’ he said. ‘I have no doubt that history will prove equally kind to those standing up for the most basic rights of Americans today.’”

See Bob Unruh’s report at:

http://www.wnd.com:80/2012/02/states-prepare-brakes-on-citizen-detention-option/

As I have said repeatedly in this column, the only hope for the preservation of liberty and freedom in America is for individual sovereign states to do what they were created to do: protect the rights and liberties of the citizens of their states from the overreach and despotic propensities of those miscreants in Washington, D.C. If freedom-loving people in the body politic truly intend to see to it that their rights and liberties are preserved, they will pay much more attention–and be much more attuned–to electing State governors, legislators, attorney generals, etc., than they are electing US congressmen, senators, and even electing the President.

With the exception of Ron Paul, there is not a major party Presidential candidate who will make a dime’s worth of difference in protecting the liberties and freedoms of the American citizenry. Both Republicans and Democrats in Washington, D.C., are all about empire-building, foreign interventionism, and expanding the Welfare and Warfare states. Furthermore, none of them (with the exception of Ron Paul) would do anything to thwart or reverse the burgeoning police state that is currently being rapidly constructed in this country. That means, as Michael Boldin said, “It’s going to take ‘We the People’ in our states to stand up and say, ‘No!’”

And quite frankly, that’s about the only thing that the power-elite in Washington, D.C., are worried about. They aren’t worried about Afghanistan, Iraq, or Iran. Those are all orchestrated conflicts to keep our troops fighting endless wars, to have an excuse to print more and more fiat currency, to satisfy the international bankers who are making trillions of dollars off the military-industrial complex, and to give them an excuse of “national security” in order to strip away more and more freedoms from the American citizenry. But State governors, legislators, and attorney generals who actually believe the Constitution and who have the courage to defend it, now THAT scares them to death! Why? Because they know that the real power in this country rests with “We the People” who, through their state governments, have the ability to actually stop their quest for globalism and feudalism.

America’s Founding Fathers clearly understood that the states are the ultimate guardians of the peoples’ liberties. James Madison (and even Alexander Hamilton) spoke to this eloquently in the Federalist Papers.

In Federalist #46, Madison said, “Were it admitted, however, that the Federal government may feel an equal disposition with the State governments to extend its power beyond the due limits, the [states] would still have the advantage in the means of DEFEATING SUCH ENCROACHMENTS” (emphasis added). By “defeating such encroachments,” Madison included “opposition,” “refusal to cooperate,” “frowns of the [State] executive,” “obstructions,” and “plans of resistance.”

Did you see that? America’s fourth President and Father of the Constitution said that it was the duty of the states to obstruct, oppose, resist, and otherwise refuse to cooperate with any federal policy or mandate that runs counter to the principles of liberty. And, remember, this is from the man who authored the so-called “supremacy clause” of the US Constitution!

In Federalist #45, Madison said, “Thus, each of the principal branches of the federal government will owe its existence more or less to the favor of the State governments, and must consequently feel a dependence, which is much more likely to beget a disposition too obsequious than too overbearing towards them. On the other side, the component parts of the State governments will in no instance be indebted for their appointment to the direct agency of the federal government, and very little, if at all, to the local influence of its members.”

Did you get that? In the mind of America’s founders, the federal government would be dependent upon the State governments, not the other way around! But what do we hear today? Even these so-called “conservative” politicos and talking heads say just the opposite. They keep insisting that the states are dependent upon, and subservient to, the federal government.

Even the colonists’ biggest proponent of central government, Alexander Hamilton, had it right on the power of the states to resist federal encroachment. In Federalist #26, Hamilton said, “Independent of … the national legislature itself … the State legislatures, who will always be not only vigilant but suspicious and jealous guardians of the rights of the citizens against encroachments from the federal government, will constantly have their attention awake to the conduct of the national rulers, and will be ready enough, if any thing improper appears, to sound the alarm to the people, and not only to be the voice, but, if necessary, the arm of their discontent.”

Wow! Did you catch that? Hamilton said that the states held the right and duty to resist federal encroachment with their “voice” and with their “arm.”

Does any of this sound like America’s Founding Fathers expected the states to be lap dogs for federal usurpation of power? They fully recognized that it would take the individual states standing against any potential federal overreach to protect and secure the rights and liberties of the American people.

I will say it again: it is far more important who is elected as your governor than who is elected President. It is far more important who is elected as your State attorney general than who is appointed US attorney general. It is far more important who is elected to your State legislature than who is elected to the US House and Senate. It is far more important who is elected as your sheriff than who is appointed as the Director of the FBI. But if all you watch is FOX News, CNN, NBC, CBS, and ABC, you will be mesmerized with national politics, and you will forget about that which is the most important defender of our liberties: our individual state governments. In fact, in many cases today, our State and local governments are as abusive of our liberties as is the federal government. This is mainly due to the inattention and misunderstanding of the People as to the importance of electing local and State leaders who will accept, as their first responsibility, the maintenance of liberty for the people they represent. And by nature, that means being a faithful watchdog to the incursions of the federal government against our freedoms.

It is encouraging to read that at least ten states are pushing back against the monstrously unconstitutional NDAA. If all fifty states would act as courageously as these tenacious ten–and not just against the NDAA, but also against EVERY assault of the federal government against our liberties–America could be restored to the “land of the free” very quickly. As it is, however, the protectors and guardians of our liberties (our State leaders and county sheriffs) are being bribed, coerced, cajoled, harangued, and intimidated into cowardly submission by these belligerent bullies in Washington, D.C.

Thank you Representative Daniel P. Gordon, Jr. of Rhode Island. Thank you Delegate Bob Marshall of Virginia. Thank you to all of you State legislators, State senators, and county sheriffs across our great land who truly understand the oath you took to the Constitution and who are willing to stand as the watchdogs of our liberties. It is a truism that if your tribe does not increase, our freedoms are surely lost.

The DHS Defends Globalism, Not America

The Department Of Homeland Security is the very epitome of unnecessary bureaucracy.  Its formation was predicated on the existence of terrorist threats, many of which the U.S. government and orbiting alphabet agencies either created through acts of war, or fabricated out of thin air.  Its policies of centralization were sold to the public as necessary to prevent systemic “miscommunications” that never actually took place.  Throughout our history, it has been a rare occasion indeed when an attack falls upon American infrastructure or interests that was not influenced, directly or indirectly, by the actions of agencies which were supposedly employed to prevent such events from ever occurring.  Whether through ‘blowback’, or through ‘false flag’, frankly, most of the harm that comes to our nation is perpetrated by the guiding hand of our inexorably corrupt government.

Knowing that the DHS was established on false pretenses forces us to question the agency’s true intentions, especially when a professional fear-monger like Secretary Janet Napolitano announces that the globalization of the world economy falls within her jurisdiction:

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2012/01/27/the-urgent-need-to-protect-the-global-supply-chain/

Average citizens would assume that the DHS is a U.S.-centric institution, and regardless of its Orwellian behavior, is at the very least a distinctly American brand of tyranny.  However, under encroaching strategies enforced since 2006 through the National Infrastructure Protection Plan (NIPP), it is becoming very apparent that the Department Of Homeland Security is quickly taking on an “all-of-nation” role, most prominently in the defense of globalization:

http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/NIPP_Plan.pdf

In her most recent op-ed / propaganda piece published by Reuters, Napolitano makes it clear that the business of the DHS is lately focused on what she calls “global supply chain security”.  This by itself could be seen as a perfectly logical extension of the DHS mandate to protect America.  Unfortunately, the situation is not that simple.  A few talking points and guidelines within the NIPP platform are rather disturbing, and create an open door for the internationalization of the DHS.

Ironically, Napolitano sets the stage first by pointing out the brittle nature of globalization, along with its numerous vulnerabilities:

“A vulnerability or gap in any part of the world has the ability to affect the flow of goods and people thousands of miles away. For instance, just three days after the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear tragedies struck Japan last March, U.S. automakers began cutting shifts and idling some plants at home. In the days that followed, they did the same at their factories in more than 10 countries around the world…”

As I have pointed out many times in the past, the utter lack of redundancy within our globalized system makes it the most impractical and downright destructive economic model in history.  Janet Napolitano seems to agree at least in part on this point.  The problem is that the weaknesses of globalization are not a mistake; they are a deliberate and useful tool for further centralization of once sovereign economies.  Instead of addressing the obvious concern that globalization does not work, Napolitano, like every other globalist in our government, claims that it must be propped up at all costs for the “greater good”:

“Because protecting the global supply chain is inherently an international challenge, it will take an international effort to meet it. The tremendous benefits we all reap from an interdependent global economy means that we are all stakeholders in the security of that system…”

“…we will continue to think globally, enhancing our coordination with the international community and international stakeholders who have key supply chain roles and responsibilities. We will seek to develop and implement global standards, strengthen detection, interdiction, and information-sharing capabilities, and promote end-to-end supply chain security efforts with the international community.”

What “benefits” are we “reaping” from globalization?  I haven’t the foggiest idea.  The internationalization of banking and finance has led to the creation and subsequent implosion of the world’s largest debt bubble and further devaluation of many of the world’s currencies.  Centralized and corporatized food production has led to a complete lack of self reliance within our society, contributed to food scarcity, not abundance, and opened our means of sustenance to the mad-science and genetic criminality of monstrous entities like Monsanto.  The globalization of law through treaty has supplanted the U.S. Constitution, fed the growth of unaccountable and unelected councils and committees, and stricken our country with policy initiatives that weren’t even written by officials that live here.  There are absolutely no substantial benefits to globalization that outweigh its considerable detriments, unless, of course, you are one of the elite few who stand at the helm of the machine.

At the Davos Economic Summit which took place in the final week of January, Napolitano announced a program called the “National Strategy For Global Supply Chain Security”:

Within this plan, the DHS seeks to unite with international corporate interests in an effort to ensure the dominance of the globalist ideal of centralized economy.  The collectivist rhetoric inherent within the document above is apparent.  Napolitano summarizes it well when she states:

“As globalization brings nations closer together, we need to jointly disprove and leave behind the notion that security and efficiency cannot coexist, and together build a security architecture that better uses information to assess risk. By taking a coordinated, strategic and thoughtful approach, we can expedite legitimate commerce while focusing our attention on that much smaller portion that poses harm. Security and confidence in the global supply chain enhance our collective economic strength, rather than impeding progress.”

Napolitano treats globalism as an inevitability; a future without recourse and without option.  A smart person might ask; “What business is it of Janet Napolitano to comment on the global economic model, let alone utilize DHS resources in its defense!”  But look at it this way; by using the failings of globalization and the spectral boogie-man of terrorism as a rationale, the DHS has created a grey area in which the U.S. government can be more fully integrated into the global corporate dynamic, which furthers the disintegration of American sovereignty.

The global supply chain encompasses everything!  It is a vast artificial international construct.  For the DHS to truly “defend” its integrity, it will be REQUIRED to sacrifice the specific and sovereign interests of the U.S.  In a globalized trade system, every economy is important, as long as it does not compete with any other economy.  The U.S. economy is no exception.  Harmonization diminishes the wealth of more successful nations and transfers it to less successful nations.  This transfer of wealth does, in a sense, create equality; it makes everyone equally poor.  By becoming the militant hand of globalization, the DHS is put in the position of hurting America in order to “save” America.

The National Strategy For Global Supply Chain Security document is extraordinarily vague when it comes to the manner in which the DHS will implement defense directives.  More DHS agents at shipping ports?  Of course.  More DHS involvement in airline cargo centers?  Certainly.  But what about DHS agents overseeing trucking and freight, or even stationed at highway checkpoints (remember, the TSA is an agency under the direct authority of the DHS)?  What about DHS agents acting as permanent corporate liaisons?  Will corporations decide who is a threat to the global supply chain and who isn’t?  What about the usage of copyrighted materials on the internet?  Is this a disruption of global trade?  How does the DHS actually plan to return a disrupted supply line to normal efficiency?  The DHS has no production capacity, and would have to TAKE (possibly by force) a supply from somewhere in order to reinstitute it elsewhere.  What about communities, states, or countries which refuse to participate in globalization?  What about those who choose to decentralize?  Could this not be labeled as an attempt to derail the global system, and thus be interpreted as an act of terrorism?

Under any collectivist society, the act of non-participation is always painted as an attack on the group.  In a fully interdependent system, refusing to contribute automatically hurts others, and therefore, makes you a criminal by default.  These systems are built this way deliberately, in order to control a population by exploiting their sense of innate guilt.  The DHS may claim a limited involvement in globalization, restricted to security issues, but the very process of integration with the international corporate framework as well as foreign institutions makes the agency a catalyst for forced collectivism.  Bombs in shipping containers (the bombs we’re supposed to believe are everywhere), do not warrant the massive shift of our security apparatus into a policy of global centralization.  In the end, this move on the part of the DHS has nothing to do with security, and everything to do with manipulating the attitude of the general public towards globalization.  It is much more difficult to challenge a methodology when that methodology is suddenly treated as a national security issue, and is defended by an army of bureaucrats and blue-shirted thugs.  When a world view is made violently essential to the very survival of a people, defiance is held tantamount to treason, and change, no matter how wise, becomes impossible.

Source: Brandon Smith | Alt-Market

How To Avoid Voting For A Globalist Puppet

Only a few days ago I attended a community meeting here in the Flathead Valley of Montana which revolved around the first of a series of gubernatorial debates covered by webcast across the state.  The number of Republican candidates vying in the primaries of this election is a bit absurd, and after witnessing the half-hearted or outright fake performances by most of them, I can see quite clearly that the state of Montana is being targeted by Neo-Con interests posing as Constitutionalists in an attempt to neutralize the extraordinary advance of the Liberty Movement here.  What struck me most sharply was  the fact that almost every candidate competing for the governor’s slot had taken on elements of the Liberty Movement philosophy.  The elections of 2012 and the immense success of the Ron Paul campaign have so far proven without a doubt that the anti-globalist, anti-totalitarian, anti-collectivist stance is now part of a growing majority in America.  Just as we have forced Neo-Con candidates in the Presidential primaries to at least pretend that they care about freedom (quite a change from the Bush years), so too are Republican impostors forced to mimic us in the battle for state offices.

With so many political candidates now at the very least paying lip-service to the concepts of Constitutional freedoms, limited Federal influence, and State’s rights, it may become increasingly difficult for voters to discern who is a snake-oil peddler and who is the real deal.  Many who supported the rise of the Tea Party (originally launched by Ron Paul back in 2007-2008), suddenly found their efforts for a free America being hijacked by establishment fakes in 2010.  Out of nowhere, gutter dwelling pro-globalist imposters like Rick Santorum could be found headlining forums at Constitutional rallies, and even veteran globalists like Newt Gingrich have tried to jump on the bandwagon.

The light at the end of the tunnel, though, is ironically visible in the destructive nature of these candidates.

The NDAA, despite the inherent horror of its provisions, has been a spectacular litmus test for traitorous politicians. Self-styled liberty candidates like Allen West of Florida, winning with Tea Party support, have been exposed because of their backing of the NDAA.  Shockingly, West not only voted for the NDAA, but helped to COMPOSE the bill!  Now, due to a growing public outcry over the rendition and indefinite detention provisions of the NDAA, legislators like West are scrambling to cover their own asses by knowingly misinterpreting the bill’s language and denying it applies to American citizens:

Three amendments to the NDAA were put forward by senators Udall, Paul, and Feinstein, specifically designed to ensure that American citizens would be protected from the draconian detainment provisions of the NDAA, and all three were struck down.  Yet, Allen West and others continue to perpetuate the lie that Americans are safe from such tyranny.

Exposure after the fact is better than nothing, but these difficult days require more vigilance.  How can the people of this country avoid making the mistake of voting for such disingenuous candidates when they seem so adept at telling us what we want to hear until they are comfortably in office?

The key is to stop listening to what they SAY, and start looking closely at what they DO.  We must ignore their rhetoric, their speeches written by proxy, and their bad jokes slapped together by hired staff, and begin examining their actions and their backgrounds.  Because the Liberty Movement has gained so much influence and so much voice over the past four years, it is time that we start setting some ground rules for political candidates we will accept, and those we will not accept, to represent us.

We need to ask ourselves, and them, some very pointed questions.  How have they consistently voted in the past?  Are they truly protecting our rights as Americans and as a human beings as described in the Constitution and the Bill Of Rights?  Have they done anything to stall or dismantle corruption in the government and in the banking industry?  Or, have every one of their propositions and “solutions” involved the continuation of destabilizing policies designed to aid an elite few at the expense of average Americans?   The following is a list of warning signs that can help you, your family, and your friends, no matter what their party affiliation, in determining if a favorite politician is a legitimate statesman, or a puppet bought and paid for by global corporate interests…

1)  Have They Ever Promised To Investigate, Audit, Or Dissolve The Private Federal Reserve Bank?

The Federal Reserve is the primary culprit in the creation of the derivatives and credit bubble.  Its use of artificially low interest rates inflated the housing market and by extension the U.S. economy, energizing international banking fraud and producing perhaps the greatest financial black hole in history.  It is currently staving off the effects of this collapse through the constant printing of fiat money from thin air, setting up the U.S. for a currency implosion of epic proportions.

If your candidate has never made more than a passing sound bite comment on the Federal Reserve and what they plan to do about the poisonous debt and dollar devaluation that the private central bank has generated, then it is likely they are either too ignorant to understand how the institution operates, or, they know full well the problem, and plan to do nothing about it.  Ask directly any politician you plan to vote for; will they promise to fully audit and or shut down the Federal Reserve, especially if foul play or corruption is discovered?  If they defend the Fed, or dance around the question, then they are not on your side, nor on the side of true free markets and a stable economy.

2)  Did They Vote For The Banker Bailouts?  Do They Continue To Defend Them?

If a candidate or representative voted for or openly supports the continuance of bailout measures for international banks which taxpayers must eventually cover, then this politician is not for you.  The bailouts have accomplished nothing that was promised by the Bush Administration, the Obama Administration, or state representatives who gave a platform for their passage.  Credit markets have not been unfrozen, the housing market has not stopped its endless decline, and consumer activity has not returned to levels anywhere near those of 2006.  Nearly 80% of Americans on both sides of our twisted two party spectrum voiced opposition to the bailouts and have continued to fight against quantitative easing measures on the part of the Federal Reserve.  This is not a case of our government knowing better for us than we do for ourselves.  This is a case of the government ignoring the will of the people and serving the interests of select elites.  If you plan to support a man or woman running for elected office, make absolutely sure they are not proponents of further bailouts and inflationary printing for the sake of propping up big banks, foreign institutions, and the highly manipulated stock market.

3)  Do They Support The Domestic Spying Measures Of The FISA Act And The Dissolution Of The 4th Amendment?

Any politician who has the audacity to argue that you must sacrifice your privacy and your liberty for “safety” is not on your side, or the side of the Constitution.  The 4th Amendment strictly prohibits illegal search and seizure of a citizen’s property without a warrant and without probable cause, and this includes your personal information and communications.  However, over time, the protections of the 4th Amendment have been slowly eroded away.  Today, almost every aspect of our lives is an open book for the government to peruse at their slightest convenience.

With the advent of new measures executed through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, no electronic transfer of data is safe, and corporate entities which handle these communications are completely immune from civil suits involved in the release of private information.  Under FISA, and under any act which authorizes mass surveillance of the public, every citizen is treated as guilty until proven innocent.  This is not Constitutional.  If your candidate has his hands into FISA or other pieces of legislation that open the door to domestic spying, drop them like a bad habit, or find yourself in deep regret later down the road.

4)  Do They Support The NDAA, SOPA, PIPA, The AUMF, The Expatriation Act, Etc.?

The fascinating thing about the response by legislators to the fury over the NDAA is that they now refuse to acknowledge that the bill actually pertains to American citizens.  This tells me they are afraid to confront those opposed to the bill on the grounds that indefinite detention and suspension of Habeas Corpus is necessary.  Arguments from men like Allen West (or Denny Rehberg here in Montana) revolve around one line in the bill from Sec. 1022 which they use completely out of context:

1) UNITED STATES CITIZENS- The requirement to detain a person in military custody under this section does not extend to citizens of the United States.

What they consistently refuse to explain is the word “requirement” in this line.  If they were to place the line in the context of all the provisions involving indefinite detainment, the word “requirement” pertains to foreign prisoners that fall under the definition of “covered persons” in Sec. 1021 (a covered person could essentially be anyone the government decides to accuse of being a terrorist).  So, to put this as simply as possible; the government and the U.S. military is “required” under the NDAA to indefinitely detain without jury trial those foreign prisoners designated as enemy combatants or terrorists.  The government is NOT required to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens under the NDAA, but THEY CAN IF THEY WANT TO!  This precedent was set by the passage of the Authorization For The Use Of Military Force (AUMF), and was further strengthened (not obstructed as some propagandists claim) by the Supreme  Court’s decision in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld.  The NDAA gives the highly unconstitutional practice the Congressional stamp of approval.

With the NDAA, Americans must adopt a scorched earth policy before it is too late.  Every single sitting legislator that supports this bill must be removed from office.  Every political candidate running this year who proclaims support for the NDAA should be avoided like a plague ridden corpse.  SOPA, PIPA, the Expatriation Act, and other pieces of legislation operate on the same principle as the NDAA; they create a grey area within the law that allows government to accuse any person of a crime without evidence and inflict punishment without due process.  If we allow political vampires who nurture these measures into seats of power, then America ceases to be.  Without our liberties and the means to protect them, our country becomes nothing more than a doomed land mass devoid of principles or honor.

5)  Do They Have Overt Ties To The Military Industrial Complex?

The last thing this nation needs is another ‘chicken hawk’ candidate thirsty for war in far off lands as long as he doesn’t ever have to do any of the actual fighting.  However, what we need even less are candidates who have made their livings and their careers dispensing war for quick cash.  In Montana, it is disconcerting to be confronted with the likes of Neil Livingstone, who gave audiences a brief chuckle when he claimed that he would like to reintroduce the gray wolf to Washington D.C. instead of Montana to see how they liked it.  Very funny, but if the audience really knew Livingstone’s history, they wouldn’t be laughing.

Livingstone’s background in private mercenary warfare and Blackwater-like businesses leaves a bad smell in the air, not to mention his attempt to lobby for Gaddafi and make a buck or two (or ten million) off the NATO debacle unleashed in Libya:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2063465/Revealed-How-US-mercenaries-offered-Gaddafi-10m-deal-flee-Libya.html

All that aside though, this “terrorism expert” suddenly decides to move back to Montana just last year, taking a break from his lucrative war driven wheeling and dealing, to enter the race for governor?  Should I not be at least a little suspicious?  In the meantime, his running mate, Ryan Zinke, a former Navy SEAL whose unit purportedly went on to “kill Bin Laden”, is now visiting Montana election meet-ups dressed in the most insincere cowboy costume I have ever laid eyes on complete with ten-gallon hat and giant gold belt buckle with “Montana” etched in bold letters, as if to say “hey ya’ll, I’m just like you!”  At the end of the meeting I attended, Zinke suggested that Montana solve its employment issues with “predator drone factories” (of course).  As he left, he actually exclaimed “go predator drones!”

Bottom line, whether you are dealing with presidential candidates, or state candidates, a record of getting into bed (and into business) with the military industrial complex is probably not a good sign that the representative will respect civilian rights or the Constitution.  Certainly, he will say that he loves liberty, but by being instrumental in the spread of globalism, he has proven otherwise, and is not to be trusted.

6)  Does It Feel Like They Are Just Telling You What You Want To Hear?

Every candidate at the first gubernatorial debates in Montana was quick to use the words “states rights”, at least when it came to the EPA and resource development.  Livingstone even served up a vague threat of arresting federal representatives who cross into Montana (which, oddly, doesn’t seem to have the same bite after learning his background).  However, only one candidate, Bob Fanning (and running mate Chuck Baldwin) was willing to put himself on the line, promising to nullify federal incursions into Montana, protect medical marijuana, build a state sponsored militia (as the Constitution demands), deny the socialist doctrines of Obamacare, and insulate Montana’s economy using decentralized methods and legitimate free markets.

The difference between Fanning and the other candidates was evident after hearing his goals and solutions.  Their plans were broad, and dubious.  His were direct and decisively outlined.  Their stances against Federal encroachment felt hollow, or deceitful, while Fanning’s resolve was absolute.  Sometimes, intuition is as good a measure of a candidate as factual research.  If your gut is telling you the man in front of you is a fake, it may be wise to ponder the thought for a moment.

7)  Where Are They Getting Their Money From?

In the 2012 presidential elections, only one candidate is raising the majority of his funds from average citizens instead of corporate backers.  Only one candidate has received a majority support from active serving military.  Only one candidate has done all of this through grassroots methods, despite being relentlessly attacked or ignored by the mainstream media.  Of course, I’m talking about Ron Paul.

If global banking interests are pumping their donations into a particular candidate’s campaign, that candidate should be automatically categorized as unelectable.  Sadly, this is not how our world works right now.  “Follow the money” should be the first rule of the American voter.  If Mitt Romney, for instance, is being backed by the exact same corporate financiers as Barack Obama, then one should be led to question whether or not there is absolutely any difference between them.  Apparently, global banks don’t seem to think so, so why should you?

If elitists refuse to spend a single penny on a specific candidate, then it is a sure bet that candidate is a threat to the status quo, and therefore, should be on the top of your list as a potential representative.

In the end, it will be difficult if not impossible to change this country in the midst of the current political climate.  This means that the climate must evolve or be done away with completely.  I believe 2012 may be our last chance to establish a governmental environment conducive to freedom.  If we fail to educate ourselves and others on the warning signs listed above, then political options will disappear.  We will be left with no other choice but a violent and prolonged conflict with those who would demolish American Constitutionalism.  Perhaps this is inevitable regardless of election results, but the fact remains that we must try every other available avenue first.

I have never been a fan of politics, but I know that this is only because the system now in place is constructed to discourage me, and everyone else, from trying to make a difference.  Playing by the rules of the establishment system is useless, but there are other roads we might take.  We can, indeed, make our own rules, and start a new game on more even ground, as long as we find the right candidates, cast off agents of distraction, and at the very least, attack the issues at a local level with every ounce of strength we have.  Putting a Constitutional candidate like Ron Paul into the Oval Office, though excitingly possible, will not be enough.  We must also pursue the same standards in our states, and draw a line in the sand around our respective communities.

Even with rigged electronic voting, media manipulation, and political co-option, I feel our efforts this year will resonate for many decades to come.  Whether we are able to take back social power for regular citizens is not as important as making them aware that they have allowed themselves to lose that power in the first place.  The elections of 2012, ultimately, should be treated as a vehicle for enlightenment, and this enlightenment begins when we are able to recognize the lies we live, and the men who sell them to us…

 

Source: Brandon Smith | Alt-Market

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