Voter Fraud Inevitable From Digital Elections

Technology changes, while human nature remains constant. Voter fraud is a repetitive part of the election experience. The lack of integrity in voting procedures, and more importantly the ballot counting process, causes the gravest concerns and casts substantial doubt on the legitimacy of the entire political system. Eight years ago in a different presidential cycle, the article 2004 – a time to go fishing, asks why do people tolerate this tainted and pseudo election process.

“So what should we expect for 2004, a presidential election year? First off, the misnomer that presidents are elected must be dispelled. They are selected. Any reasonable and sensible person must conclude that Thomas Jefferson could never win the nomination of a major party.

Political parties have always hated the Republic. Their purpose is to confuse and distort politics in order that their organizations can manage the process of sham elections. The fraud that there is a real difference between the DemocRATS and RepubliCANTS, should be apparent to even the most obsessed party activist. So why do the masses continue to act as asses? Why do they still vote? The only answer that potentially explains this discontent from sane reality is that voters believe they get something out of supporting a politician.”

As the twisted notion, that one’s vote actually alters the establishment status quo, persists in the shallow minds of naive benefit spongers, the harsh facts testify to a different outcome. The essay Fatalistic Reality and Election Futility, laments the actual results.

“After every election, the system continues to grind citizens into the ground. The privileged few continue to accrue their vast sums of booty, as the debt soars to heights that only a super computer can calculate.”

The introductions of marvelous digital ballot computing devices are a programmer’s arena and a politician’s dream. The Daily Kos in the article, ELECTION FRAUD: It’s the Voting Machines, Not the Voters, points the finger at the digital device.

“How can we rely on voting results when the cases of voting machine problems are so hugely widespread?

There are over 200,000,000 million registered voters. It would take a huge amount of voter fraud to tilt an election. However, an entire county’s votes can be compromised by voting machine problems, and they have, many times over.

The GOP is yelling about Voter Fraud, when the real problems are the well-documented problems with voting machines? You never hear them yelling about this reality.”

The political machines of the duality party monopoly work the 0’s and 1’s to game the system. The idea that a true competition exists pushes the limits of reason. The elites behind the current political selection, keep the appearance of a cutthroat race, when the administrators of the vote counting codes program the agreed upon results into the outcome.

Pat Shannan in the American Free Press cites Black Box Election Fraud Alleged in GOP Primaries and introduces the activism of Bev Harris. Her book, Black Box Voting—Ballot Tampering in the 21st Century is now available at no charge at blackboxvoting.org. It details the numerous election computer “breakdowns” that seem to follow almost every questionable situation.In the Post-Election Audits Necessary for Electronic Voting Systems article, Fahmida Y. Rashid argues improvements in the vote counting system.

“The primary way to “safeguard the integrity” of the vote was to mandate statistically meaningful post-election audits, instead of setting security standards for each voting equipment, researchers from California Institute of Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology wrote in the latest Voting Technology Project report.”

The problem with this approach does not secure protection from intentional tampering to the operating system code. Mr. Rashid cites a flagrant example.

“It turned out DREs weren’t all that secure. Several researchers examined the copy of the Diebold voting system software and found “egregious security lapses,” such as incorrect use of encryption, that put it at “high risk of compromise.” If the voting systems had been tampered with before the election to incorrectly record the votes, there was no easy way for election official to verify the votes had been recorded correctly.”

David S. Levine in a column, Can We Trust Voting Machines?, provides evidence of more skepticism.

“Do we want the source code that tells the machine how to register, count, and tabulate votes to be a trade secret such that the public cannot verify that an election has been conducted accurately and fairly without resorting to (ironically) paper verification? Can we trust the private vendors when they assure us that the votes will be assigned to the right candidate and won’t be double-counted or simply disappear, and that the machines can’t be hacked? As a September USA Today editorial described, all of the above have either been proven to be potential risks or have actually happened.”

The thesis against centralization of counting ballots results argues that the method to fix a national election is far greater with the use of electronic voting machines. The expense of a billion dollar campaign is a mere payoff to the media moguls to gain favor in the contorted psychological wasteland of the medium message. Substance and sincere engagement on issues and policy are virtually unknown in the staged combat of diversion and subterfuge.

Voting Fraud in the 2012 Presidential Elections Part 1	Voting Fraud in the 2012 Presidential Elections Part 2

 

In order to gain a keen insight into electronic voting abuses watch the videos.

 Part 1

 Part 2

A key criticism is that any system that consolidates the tallying of votes or presents a surreptitious method of distorting or fixing the results should be discarded. The imperfect paper ballot practice of precinct vote counting had a greater degree of a safeguard then an electronic centralization count.

Nevertheless, the proposition that direct elections can be designed to reflect the reliable will of the electorate is a false objective and a frightful abandonment of the fundamental purpose of America. “The Republic is severely crippled, when direct democracy replaces representation.“The intention to inculcate the vote among (theoretical) equals to affirm the rule of (elite) unequals, is an offense against all humankind. A representative government that excludes political partisan careerists is essential. A populist infusion of citizen responsibility into local civic life is indispensable to a just society. During this latest quadrennial election season, the political foreplay surrounding the coronation of the next tyrant in chief is sickening.

The total ballots recorded for president in the 2008 election was 131,393,990, of which Barack Obama received 69,498,215 votes. The estimated voting age population was 230,872,030. The obvious inference is that any candidate would be a minority president, when selected. The perception that the majority rules America is patently absurd.

A major theme of the “TC” series of essays is that the federal government is illegitimate. During this current electronic pageant “reality show”, the promise of righting the ship of state is an elusive fantasy. The valid replacement political system to the profane oligarchy that subjugates our fellow Americans is the model of The TUN – a true representative council. Read this Inherent Autonomy article for the background and full explanation for real representative republic.

“For those who favor and prompt a state or national constitutional convention, it is necessary to have a true representative alternative to the nuisance of direct democracy or the fascism and cronyism of two-party tag team elections. Is it possible to apply this method through the current political establishment system? Most unlikely; however, the importance of the exercise and future debate is to have an alternative when the current unconstitutional system collapses.”

The most rabid utopian statists want to abolish the Electoral College. Many of these same collectivist egalitarians favor early balloting, internet voting and oppose providing proof of registration before casting a vote. The extent of their ignorance rivals the deceit of the phony party divergence.

The campaign circus hardly fosters confidence in political leadership or honesty. In addition to the partisan torture of countless lies and corrupt tactics, the public is subjugated to the insult of doctoring the ballot count. Over a hundred million of our compatriots will sit on their hands and stay home for this next presidential election. The fictitious claim that the people provide consent to the ruling class is offensive.

After the suffrages are processed, it would come as no surprise if the results exceeded those that were actually cast. When will Americans wake up to the surreal exploitation of their natural rights? The Black Box Voting junto is the new Tammany Hall. This level of corruption brings the greatest insult, The United Nations will monitor election, do you feel 3rd world.

“Is this an imposition on U. S. sovereignty? Do we now trust the United Nations with securing our individual liberty? Is our national government supreme, second only to God, or are we now “earthers”? Have you surrendered being an American?”

So much for the Grand National experiment, RIP for a once great nation.

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

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

Chicago Gangster – Obama the Tyrant

Chicago’s claim of infamy – their gangster culture – deeply embedded in their political style of ruthlessness is exemplified in Barack Obama. Violence, lies, sleaze, extortion and intimidation are the tools of the trade. Politics may appear to be more benign than the Valentine Massacre to the unsophisticated, but the reality is that the government arena is far more corrupt then any of the most egregious deeds of the Chicago Outfit. Brush up on your current events and Chicago history. The laundry list of crooked Ward and Aldermen fit the soldier model of the crime family. The latest Godfather, Rahm Emmanuel is the “Greasy Thumb” Guzik bagman for the Obama syndicate.

Denying the perverse nature of the Obama administration requires a total disconnect from facts and veracity. Yet if one places any credence in political polls, Barry Soetoro may well be voted into office for a second term. Explaining this possibility says more about the dependency culture than about old time morals and values of an independent nation.

Bring back to life, the reliable Cook County voting deceased block, on a national level is a very real prospect, when the gangster machine applies their strong-arm techniques to the ballot box. Not to place much reliance in the electoral process, which is controlled by two branches of the same establishment, the overt fixing of the presidential cycle by the lackeys in the mainstream media is reminiscent of the press coverage given to the Al Capone free soup kitchens.

The Democrat/Republican dialectic political party racket has proven that voters rarely if ever have a true choice on Election Day. The result of this travesty is that successive administrations become engrained in the art of expanding their outlaw enterprises. The crop of Obama confederates includes some well-known names.  provides some individual rap sheets on Valerie Jarrett, Cass Sunstein, Van Jones, David Axelrod, David Wilhelm, William Daley, Marty Nesbitt and Austan Goolsbee. The protection assigned to such offenders of the rule of law, demonstrates that they are part of the real untouchables.When government incorporates and perfects an underworld culture and consorts with such infamous associates as Tony Rezko and Rod Blagojevich, you get the Chicago style dish of political indigestion.

Katie Pavlich writes in Town Hall, Exposing Obama’s Criminal Friends:

“Team Obama has a habit of getting their money from people accused of fraud. Corzine is one, Shervin Neman is another. Neman has visited the White House at least 8 times.

Another Obama bundler, Abake Assongba, is accused of defrauding a businessman out of $657,000. At this point, Assongba has raked in $50,000 for Obama’s re-election campaign.”

Stalin’s Henchmen and key characters at the Court of the Red Tsar – Mikoyan, Kaganovich, Kirov, Yagoda, Molotov, Voroshilov, Sergo – shares the same traits of the enablers of the Soviet despotic regime with the Chicago mobsters. While in some circles, it is not popular to make such comparisons, the actual pattern of deceit and authoritarian brute force is consistent with their methods. The “Reds” loved to paint the American form of governance as a gangster government. Such claims condemned as blatant propaganda, seldom gained traction in the public consciousness. However, upon a detailed examination, the linkage of the “communist cousins” reveals a common birth.It is crucial to discard the canard that totalitarian governments are different because of an appearance of dissimilar rhetoric. Obama is an avowed Marxist, not only in class warfare, but especially in his seizure of the reins of undemocratic power by his actions. The inescapable abuse of executive privilege, favored exemptions and selective application of public policy, demonstrates his affinity with the teachings of his mentor, Frank Marshall Davis.

Niall Kilkenny makes the astounding claim that Davis was not all he seemed to be.

“Sometime between 1927 and 1948, Frank Marshall Davis was recruited as a special agent or informer for the FBI—Federal Bureau of Inquisition. As a newspaperman, Davis had the perfect opportunity to know what was happening in Chicago. As a left wing or “Communist” sympathizer, no one would suspect him of association with the ultra right wing FBI.”

The Telegraph reports in, Frank Marshall Davis, alleged Communist, was early influence on Barack Obama.

“Although identified only as Frank in Mr Obama’s memoir Dreams from My Father, it has now been established that he was Frank Marshall Davis, a radical activist and journalist who had been suspected of being a member of the Communist Party in the 1950s.”

How could such a dramatic seemingly contradiction be reconciled? Dreams from My Real Fatherprovides the following viewpoint.

“The FBI had Davis under investigation or surveillance for 19 years, compiling a 600-page FBI file. He was on the FBI’s ‘Security Index A’, meaning he would be arrested in the event of national emergency.

Frank Marshall Davis joined the Communist Party and began writing for The Chicago Star. He was a colleague of journalist Vernon Jarrett, father-in-law of Obama confidant Valerie Jarrett.

CPUSA assigned Frank Marshall Davis to Honolulu where he began writing for the Communist Newspaper, the Honolulu Record in 1948. In his columns, Davis flawlessly mirrored official Soviet propaganda – he blamed American capitalism for starting World War II, denounced the Marshall Plan, preached wealth redistribution, nationalization of industry and government healthcare, while bashing Wall Street. Davis also helped organize the Communist controlled ILWU (union) in a failed effort to take over the Hawaiian government in 1949. The Hawaii NAACP chapter complained to its national office, “Comrade Frank Marshall Davis suddenly appeared on the scene to propagandize the membership with the purpose of converting it into a front for the Stalinist line.” In 1956, Davis was subpoenaed by the Senate Subcommittee on Un-American Activities and pleaded the fifth.”

The point of Davis’ relationship with the FBI clouds the emphatic influence he had on the political leanings of the future POTUS. Obama has all the signs of being the “Manchurian Candidate” for the ultimate manipulators of the phony Hegelian differences that are at odds between the Communism and Capitalism systems. The literal reality is that both models have become puppets and are under the control of the globalist banksters. This certainty eludes most observers of the power politics charade.

The tyrannical practices of gangsters are common across the planet. The only difference is that the flair of repression shown in the “Windy City” is excused as being home- grown by the guardians of the establishment Wall Street oligarchy. The domestic pressitute media makes Pravda look like the bastion of investigative reporting.

Obama remains unfailing to his African roots. He operates under the Charles Taylor warlord manikin. He seeks to mirror the iron fist rule of Sekou Toure and employs the same oppressive tactics asMobutu Sese Seko. His goal is to turn Amerika into a Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe paradise.Marxists; whether African, Soviet, European or American spawn, all share the same fascist distain for their own citizens. The soaring platitudes of comrade ideology coupled with the brutal coercion of compliance, causes vast worldwide suffering. The Obama version of socialism is nothing but a diversion from the true objective, a complete integration into a global gulag.

The collectivists are essentially gangsters. The “Community Organizer” is fundamentally a tyrant. His mobster origins are on display with every unconstitutional action he takes. He is turning the land of the free into the territory of the damned. With all the ranting and phony rage against the rich, he continues to take his marching orders from the Wall Street crime syndicate commission. Much of the muscle utilized by the titans of finance, comes from the LaSalle branch; namely, the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT).

The American public is so deceived into accepting that State/Capitalism is equivalent with free enterprise that they falsely defend the crimes of international finance. Without intense outrage against the diabolical alliance of the street thugs and the suite robbers, the fate of the country will succumb to the demands of “boss politics”.

Remember that Chicago and Illinois are terminally broke. The kickbacks and bribes paid to grease the palms of the politicos is a framework that will be implemented with even greater intensity in a second Obama administration. Do not hold your breath for a modern day Elliot Ness to bring the bad guys to justice. The courts are all fixed, in the fine tradition of “Beirut by the Lake”. Chi-Town values now apply to the entire political process.

The frustration of voting public must galvanize into a national movement to restore self-respect. The bully campaign that the Obama surrogates spew is only topped with the congenial lies out of the mouth of the arrogant “tinhorn” dictator. Apologies to the “chairman of the board”, Sinatra – sing a different tune.

This is my kind of town, Chicago is

My kind of town, Chicago is

My kind of people, too

Even your “Second City” mob cronies have to have second thoughts about Barack Obama.

Americans Are Being Prepared For Full Spectrum Tyranny

Totalitarian governments, like persistent forms of cancer, have latched onto the long history of man, falling and then reemerging from the deep recesses of our cultural biology to wreak havoc upon one unlucky generation to the next.  The assumption by most is that these unfortunate empires are the product of bureaucracies gone awry; overtaken by the chaotic maddening hunger for wealth and power, and usually manipulated by the singular ambitions of a mesmerizing dictator.  For those of us in the Liberty Movement who are actually educated on the less acknowledged details of history, oligarchy and globalized centralism is much less random than this, and a far more deliberate and devious process than the general unaware public is willing to consider.

Unfortunately, the final truth is very complex, even for us…

One cannot place the blame of despotism entirely on the shoulders of globalists.  Sadly, the crimes of elites are only possible with a certain amount of complicity from subsections of the populace.  Without our penchant for apathy and fear, there can be no control.  That is to say, there is no power over us but that which we give away.  We pave the road to our own catastrophes.

In the end, a tyrant’s primary job is not to crush the masses and rule out of malevolence, but to obtain the voluntary consent of the citizenry, usually through trickery and deceit.  Without the permission of the people, subconscious or otherwise, no tyranny can survive.

As with the oppressive regimes of the past, America has undergone a dramatic transformation, heavy with fear and ignorance.  Our tradition of elections has been corrupted and negated by the false left/right paradigm, and the leaderships of both defunct parties now seek only to elevate a select minority of men bent on globalization.  Our Constitutional liberties have been dismantled by legal chicanery.  Our principles have been diluted by intellectual games of rationalism and moral relativism.  Our country is ripe for conquest.

Americans battle over whose side is most to blame; Democrat or Republican, while ironically being disenchanted with both entities.  For some people, the thought of holding each party equally accountable, or accepting that they are essentially the same animal, never crosses their minds.

While this irrelevant farce of a debate rages on, the true culprits plotting the demise of our Republic gain momentum, and implement policy initiatives that the public should and must take note of.  In the past year alone, many blatant steps towards the Orwellian gulag have been openly administered.  A carnival of peddlers and freaks and greasy popcorn overwhelms our senses, but the stench of this cheap circus still tickles our noses, and if we use our eyes for even a moment, certain dangerous trends reveal themselves.  Here are just a few recent events that bear a dire warning; the ultimate assault on freedom in this nation grows near…

Acclimation To Subservience 

Every totalitarian state worth its salt has its own goon squad.  The Nazi’s had the “Brownshirts”, the Soviets had the “Militsiya” and the “Voluntary People’s Brigade”, the Communist Chinese have the “Chengguan”, etc.  In America, however, all tyrannical measures are given innocuous bureaucratic labels to mislead and distract the masses.  In this country, we have the Transportation Security Administration…

The TSA has become the most hated alphabet agency in the U.S. in perhaps the fastest time on record.  It has violated the personal rights of more people on a daily basis in my view than the IRS, DEA, and the ATF combined.  Clearly, this slobbering demon child of the Department of Homeland Security is being molded for something quite terrible and grand.

When confronted by the public on the use of irradiating and intrusive naked body scanner technology, the agency responded by allowing their blue handed ghoul army to molest our nether-regions.  When confronted by state and local governments on their absurd tactics, the TSA threatened economic blockades and airport shutdowns.  The organization then began expanding its jurisdiction to bus and train stations and even our highways when it introduced the VIPR program and implemented random roadside checkpoints in Tennessee last year.  But, this behavior is nothing compared to what is next on the horizon: a compromise…

Beware of government agencies bearing gifts.  The TSA along with the International Air Transport Association has announced a new methodology of “less intrusive” passenger screening measures, in order to address the concerns of the public over pat downs and irradiating naked body scanners.  This SOUNDS like a step in the right direction, and a proper response to the grievances of the citizenry.  Instead, it turns out to be a refined example of totalitarianism in motion, and a perfect lesson in how the masses can be duped into handing over their inherent freedoms.

Revamped security protocols call for biometric data collection, including fingerprint and retina scans, and a tunnel which combines multiple detection systems into one area (who knows how radioactive this will end up being):

http://travel.usatoday.com/flights/story/2012-06-19/Faster-better-airport-security-checkpoints-not-that-far-off/55693916/1 

The mainstream article above makes this development sound like a win/win scenario for everyone, painting biometric data collection as a matter of convenience, but it also reveals the true design of the system; to illicit voluntary subservience:

“The key to speeding up checkpoints and making security less intrusive will be to identify and assess travelers according to the risks they pose to safety in the skies. The so-called riskiest or unknown passengers would face the toughest scrutiny, including questioning and more sensitive electronic screening. Those who voluntarily provide more information about themselves to the government would be rewarded with faster passage…”

They enforce destructive anti-personal rights policies then pretend to acquiesce by replacing them with a technocratic nightmare grid which requires the cataloging of our very genetic essence in order to function.  The only remaining injustice left would be to apply this grid to the rest of the country outside of the airports and train stations, which I assure you, they plan to do.

Militarization

Last week, I covered the disturbing use of armored vehicles (APC’s or urban tanks) in open training regiments on the streets of St. Louis by the U.S Army, despite the fact that all of their exercises could have easily been accomplished on any number of military bases across the country.  The action is an obvious attempt to condition the American populace to the sight of military units operating in a policing capacity:

http://www.alt-market.com/articles/866-military-tanks-on-st-louis-streetsbut-why

I received multiple letters from current serving military who stated that in all their years in the armed forces they had never seen such a brash mishandling of public relations or an overstepping of bounds when it came to the restrictions of Posse Comitatus.  It was encouraging to hear from military men and women who did not agree with or condone this kind of psyop activity on the part of our government.

Though the St. Louis event is not isolated, I believe it does represent an escalation.

Remember the controversy over the Mayor of Toledo and his refusal to allow 200 Marines to conduct urban combat drills on the public streets of his city in 2008?  The media clamored to crucify this public official; one of the few who had any sense whatsoever in his head:

Or the tactical exercises using helicopters and combat troops over LA and Chicago early this year?

http://www.lapdonline.org/newsroom/news_view/50045

http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2012/04/17/city-black-hawk-helicopter-flights-were-just-a-training-exercise/

During each one of these events, city officials and local media attempted to inoculate the public with claims that they were “simply exercises”.  This argument misses the point entirely.  Whether or not these are “exercises” is not the issue.  The issue is that this training could be done ON BASE.  Using public streets and running drills within cities is absolutely unnecessary given the vast resources already available to the military, unless, of course, the goal is to BE SEEN by the public and to influence them to view the sight of armed troops around them as “normal”.

Add to this the fact that many of these military training exercises are being conducted in tandem with local police departments, and you have a recipe for the utter militarization of our society, turning peace officers into combat soldiers, and combat soldiers into law enforcement mechanisms; a juxtaposition that will soon lead to unmitigated disaster.

Arms Race Against the People?

When a country is quietly preparing for war, the first signs are usually revealed by a disclosure of armaments.  If stockpiling is taking place without a warranted threat present from a legitimate enemy, there is a considerable likelihood of aggression on the part of that nation.  America has gone well beyond the psychological process of militarization and has begun the extensive arming of particular agencies whose primary purpose revolves around the domestic.

The DHS, for instance, placed an order for over 450 million rounds of hollowpoint .40 cal ammunition in April of this year:

http://rt.com/usa/news/dhs-million-point-government-179/

And it placed an order for over 7000 new semi-automatic combat rifles chambered in .223 (5.56 by 45mm NATO) immediately after:

https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=d791b6aa0fd9d3d8833b2efa08300033&tab=core&tabmode=list&=

While local police through federal programs (like the 1033 Program) are being given millions of dollars in free military equipment, including body armor, night vision equipment, APC’s, aircraft, first aid supplies, weapons, surveillance equipment, Kevlar helmets, gas masks and filters, vehicles, etc.:

http://www.ogs.state.sc.us/surplus/SP-1033-index.phtm

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/06/cops-military-gear/all/

All of this equipment, though issued to state agencies, is still heavily tracked and regulated by the federal government, making it clear that these “gifts” come with strings attached:

http://www.newsherald.com/articles/program-103291-state-law.html 

And finally, new FAA regulations will soon allow the dispersion of tens of thousands of predator drones with armament capability in the skies of the U.S. over the course of the next few years:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/feb/7/coming-to-a-sky-near-you/

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/dec/10/nation/la-na-drone-arrest-20111211

Now, anyone with any logic would ask who it is that the government is arming itself and local police to fight against?  Al Qaeda?  Let’s not be naïve…

The passage of the NDAA and its provisions for the indefinite detainment of ANY person, even an American citizen, under the laws of war has ended the debate over government intent in terms of domestic action.  FBI Director Robert Mueller’s admission that he “did not know” if assassination programs would be used against American citizens also heaped evidence on the matter.  The bottom line?  Our government wishes to label and treat citizens as enemy combatants.  Of course they would then organize armaments to follow through on their policy.

Pulling The Trigger 

All despotic systems have another distinct similarity; they each began with a series of trigger events which opened the door to tighter controls over the population.  The most immediate trigger event for the U.S. is the looming peril of a collapsing economy followed by inevitable civil unrest.  With the EU currently in debt shambles, global markets are on the verge of a considerable breakdown.  The Federal Reserve response will be predictable; QE3 and massive stimulus all around to mitigate the crisis.  This time, though, the go-to Keynesian quick fix will not work in the slightest.  In fact, it will make matters more untenable by placing the world reserve status of the dollar at risk.

Everything that has happened so far in the markets this year has been easy to foresee.  Alt-Market predicted the economic slowdown around the world and the collapse of overall demand using the Baltic Dry Index as a gauge back in January:

http://www.alt-market.com/articles/540-baltic-dry-index-signals-renewed-market-collapse

We also predicted the accelerated turmoil in the EU in light of the recent election results in France and Greece:

http://www.alt-market.com/articles/765-economic-alert-if-youre-not-worried-yetyou-should-be

If alternative economic analysts can predict these developments despite the manipulated statistics spewed out by the government every month, then I think the government and our central bank has a tremendously transparent view of what is coming down the road in terms of financial distress.  I believe the establishment is very well aware of a potential crisis event, economic or otherwise, that is barreling down upon the U.S.  I believe the evidence shows that they are preparing for this eventuality in a command and control fashion, without alerting the public to the coming implosion.  I believe they will use the despair that flows forth from the fiscal wreckage as an excuse to institute martial law.

Call it “crazy”.  Call it “conspiracy theory”.  Call it “coincidence”.  Call it “fear mongering”.  Whatever you like.  I find it far more insane to shrug off the strange and twisted behavior of our power structure, and simply hope that it’s all irrelevant to the future.  Whenever I run into starry eyed historical romanticists who look back in astonishment at the tyrannies of the past and wonder out loud, “How could those people have not known where their country was headed?!!”, I think of where we are today.

Source: Brandon Smith | Alt-Market

Defiance: A Lost Virtue?

It was August 19th, 1920.  A military detachment of Red Army soldiers led by Bolshevik authorities steamrolled into the Russian town of Khitrovo to implement a policy known as “Prodrazvyorstka”; resource allocation in the name of national security which led to the confiscation of vital grain supplies and the starvation of millions of peasants.  To be sure, multiple excuses were used to rationalize the program, all in the name of the “greater good”.  But in reality, Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks saw the farming culture of Russia not as human beings, but as mechanisms for feeding city residents and the army; the power centers of the newly formed Communist government.

This attitude of collectivism (and elitism at the highest levels) and the treatment of the food producing subsection of the populace as slaves to the machine predictably generated the desire for civil unrest and even rebellion.  By the time the Red Army had entered Khitrovo, the region was already a tinderbox.  After they had taken everything of value and began to beat elderly men in public view as an example to the rest of the town, a war had ignited.

At the height of what was later called “The Tambov Rebellion”, over 50,000 – 70,000 Russian citizens had taken up arms against their oppressive government, including Red Army soldiers who left their posts to join the cause.  Vastly outnumbered, and technologically outclassed in every way, the guerilla fighters managed to infiltrate multiple levels of Bolshevik society and government, and had struck debilitating hits against Russian infrastructure.  So great was the threat, that Lenin along with Red Army leadership ordered chemical warfare to be used in the forests where guerrillas were thought to be dug in, as well as summary executions of civilians, many of whom were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Concentration camps were built, mostly to house women, children, and elderly people thought to be related to insurgents and to be used as bargaining chips.  Eventually, the rebellion diminished, but not before Lenin was forced to end the policy of Prodrazvyorstka along with many other directives that had angered the Russian public.

The Soviets later attempted to erase all memory of the event, destroying records and removing public figures who might recount what had happened.  However, the fight against collectivist control and state power continued through numerous movements until the break-up of the empire decades after.

Now, many historians and cynics of today would label the Tambov Rebellion an overall failure.  They did not succeed in removing Lenin and the Bolsheviks.  They did not defeat the Red Army.  They did not directly put an end to Prodrazvyorstka, though they did trigger a chain of dominos which forced Lenin’s hand.  There was no glowing victory as there was during the American Revolution centuries before.  The freedom fighters were mostly forgotten until the fall of the Berlin Wall and the release of documentation that had survived the purge.  However, what these men and women did accomplish was to set an example; to remind us of the ongoing and inevitable battle between oppressive establishments and the people they seek to dominate.

Even in the nightmare world of communist Russia, from the conquests of Lenin, to the terrors of Stalin, even in the face of organized and energized tyranny, people decided to fight rather than quietly live in servitude.  The lesson we are taught by the Tambov Rebels is that there is no such thing as unassailable empire, that free thinking people will ALWAYS exist, that the drive for independence is inborn and inherent, and that no oligarchy will stand unopposed for very long.

Another lesson we learn, is that defiance is a virtue unto itself.  It is its own means, and its own end.  Wherever people seek truth, and honor, no consequence is foreboding enough to stop them.  Defiance takes no notice of the threat of death.

Some may question the example of the rebellion described above and its relevance to our times.  “Surely”, they will say, “the days of concentration camps, martial law, food confiscation, and general war against the people by most governments are long gone.”  We are living in more “civilized times”, where technology and reason prevail.  The gullibility of this world view is hard to ignore…

In fact, Americans today may very well bear witness to similar or far worse tragedies in the coming years if current presidential directives and congressional legislation are any indication.  It has become obvious that the Patriot Acts which many in the public rolled over for (under some protest) were a mere warm up to policies like the following:

FISA: An overarching domestic surveillance bill which joins the cooperative efforts of corporations and government agencies.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/07/senate-approv-1/

The John Warner National Defense Authorization Act: A Bush supported action which allows the president to unilaterally declare a “public or national emergency” for any reason he wishes without congressional consent and institute martial law policies aimed at suppression of the populace (the president is requires by the act to “inform” congress of his intentions after 14 days, but does not give congress the power of oversight).  Also solidifies the erasure of Posse Comitatus.

http://www.bordc.org/threats/hr5122.php

Presidential Directive 51: Signed in private by George W. Bush.  Allocates further power to the president to declare a national emergency for any reason he sees fit and to institute Continuity of Government Policies (martial law, among other things).  This directive was only partially released to the public, but the entire document remains classified, even to members of congress!

http://www.scribd.com/doc/7566901/PDD51 

National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA 2012): Incorporates policies outlined in John McCain and Joseph Lieberman’s thoroughly rejected “Enemy Beligerents Act”.  Allows the president along with the Department of Homeland Security to label anyone, even an American citizen, and “enemy combatant” under the laws of war.  Opens the door to the complete dismantling of Habeas Corpus, giving military authorities the ability to arrest U.S. citizens without warrant, without due process, without trial by civilian jury, to be held indefinitely.  In other words, rendition and black-bagging of U.S. citizens regardless of civil liberties or the Constitution.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/environment/la-me-gs-national-defense-authorization-ruling-20120518,0,2046039.story

Assassination Programs: Obama has not only claimed the right to assassinate American citizens, he has executed such orders.  This policy works as an extension of the NDAA, meaning, anyone can be labeled an enemy combatant without trial, and, that person can be detained, or killed, as such.  These actions have been opposed by civil liberties unions and politicians alike, but because they have so far only been used against U.S. citizens working with “Al Qaeda”, the general public remains on the fence or oblivious to the dangerous precedent.  The Constitution specifically outlines what is to be done with Americans who aid the enemy in times of war in the Treason Clause.  The Treason Clause allows NO assassination or detainment without trial.  In fact, it REQUIRES a trial by jury along with two witnesses testifying to the overt criminal act.  The Treason Clause has been utterly ignored by the Obama Administration thus far.

http://www.peoplesworld.org/kucinich-bill-aims-to-stop-assassinations-of-u-s-citizens/

National Defense Resources Preparedness Executive Order: Obama recently signed this executive order which allows the president and the DHS to commandeer or confiscate public and private resources (any resources) in the name of national security, and, even allows for what essentially amounts to forced labor of U.S. citizens in the name of the “national good”.  An almost exact replication of the powers claimed by Lenin and the Bolsheviks that triggered the Tambov uprising.

http://reason.com/archives/2012/04/07/is-serfdom-an-executive-order-away

Internment And Resettlement Operations: A secret Department of Defense document recently leaked to the public outlines extensive planning on the part of the government to use DHS and FEMA to “relocate” U.S. citizens and detainees to internment camps for processing.  Triggers for such a policy could include natural disasters, man-made disasters, and terrorist attacks, among many others.  The document specifically requires “special exceptions” to Posse Comitatus, allowing for military operation of the camps in question.

http://info.publicintelligence.net/USArmy-InternmentResettlement.pdf

The response to many of the disturbing provisions listed above has so far remained in the legal and political realm.  A considerable portion of those aware of the dangerous path our government has taken over the past decade alone is to approach the problem from the top down.  Unfortunately, they don’t seem to realize or understand the greater crisis at work.

As matters stand, there is very little recourse politically outside of full state nullification under the 10th Amendment.  At the pace these executive orders and draconian bills are being churned out and slapped with a stamp of approval, the American people would have to unseat the president, not to mention almost every sitting Senator, and every Congressman, replacing them with true Constitutional statesmen and revamping Washington D.C. in the span of a few years in order to prevent the inevitable totalitarian abuse of the legal powers that now exist.  This is not going to happen.  Given that almost every president and presidential candidate for the last few decades has supported identical policies as far as expanding government power, voting in one party or the other (at least at the national level) does not appear to make much difference anymore.

Legally, every avenue is being explored, but with little progress.  The recent block on the NDAA by 4th District Court Judge Katherine Forrest was a moment of hope amongst anti-NDAA proponents, but the end result was obvious to some of us in the Liberty Movement who know the history of legal action against such legislation.  So far, the Obama Administration has stated that her ruling is basically of no consequence to them, and that they will continue to implement the NDAA as they see fit.  Apparently, the Judicial Branch now only has a say in matters of government when it agrees with the position of the president or DHS.  This shows conclusively that the government intends to ignore court based decisions that are contrary to desired policy, and that while the legal fight should be pursued, we should not expect much in the results department.

So, where does this leave us?  If we cannot redress our grievances through elections, or through the courts, what is there for a freedom loving American to do?  Though the thought causes some to shudder, it is not only logical but imperative that we look at the existing alternatives seriously.  Invariably, if a government was to widely enforce any or all of the policies listed above, the result would be citizen dissent, peaceful and militant.

When a social system becomes so corrupted that its only prerogative is its own survival and self perpetuation, even at the cost of the life and liberty of the people it was originally tasked to defend, the populace has no choice but to question whether that system should continue to exist any longer.  Conflict, is unavoidable.

As clear as this fact is to anyone with any sense, though, I find that many seem to treat the idea of physical action as astonishing, or shocking.  Some even laugh as if the concept is outdated and absurd.  Yet, they never seem to have an answer to the primary underlying question:  What else is there?  If working within the system only results in wasted effort and wasted time, what do the naysayers plan to do?  Curl up in a ball and die?  Or perhaps join the venomous establishment they could not subdue?

As discussed earlier, the Tambov Rebellion and examples like it impress upon the narrow-minded visions of failure.  To them, defiance, real defiance, leads only to death and disaster.  The key to their extraordinary mistake is that they assume that defiance is about the “assurance” of victory.  There are never any assurances.  There were no assurances of victory for the Founding Fathers, there were no assurances for the Tambov Rebels, and there are no assurances for us if we one day have to draw a line in the sand against the very system we were born into.

At bottom, the debate over solutions within the system versus solutions from without is irrelevant.  On our current course, there is no other choice for the average American but to say no, regardless of the law, or the threat of its violent enforcement.  Rebellion, in all its forms, is as natural as the cycles of the Earth.  It reoccurs time and again, sometimes suppressed, but not for long.  The horrors of governments gone rogue are no secret.  We have so many examples in history to draw from it is hard to imagine any crime despots have NOT visited upon innocents.  Frankly, if control thirsty elites can refine tyranny down to a science by examining the mistakes of the past, there is nothing stopping us from refining defiance down to an art form as well.  Again, what other choice do we have, but to take heart in the knowledge that though there is no assurance of victory, there is also no assurance of defeat.

Source: Brandon Smith | Alt-Market

Has America Been Crippled By Intellectual Idiots?

As far back as I can remember, the overarching message of the American social atmosphere has been one of idolization.  Oh to one day join the ranks of the “professional class”; that 5% to 10% of our culture which enjoys unparalleled respect and an assumed position of knowledge, so much so that they are rarely even required to qualify themselves to anyone besides their own compatriots.  The goal of every person I knew during my formative years with a desire to succeed was to one day hold in their hands an official looking embossed document announcing their ascension to the ranks of the intellectually anointed.  I was never so keen on the idea…

The dangers of academic deification are numerous.  Those who dominate the educational language of the times determine the moral compass (or lack of compass) of the curriculum.  They control who is accepted and who is rejected, not by measure of intelligence or skill, but by their willingness to conform to the establishment ideal.  They construct a kind of automaton class, which has been taught not to learn independently, but to parrot propaganda without question.  Simultaneously, those of us who do not “make the grade” are relegated to the role of obliged worshippers; accepting the claims of the professional class as gospel regardless of how incorrect they happen to be.  To put it simply; the whole thing is disgustingly inbred.

Elitism has always lent itself to morbid forms of educational molestation.  This is nothing new, especially within their own limited circles.  However, to have such perversions of logic and reason gutting the minds of entire generations across endless stretches of our country without any counterbalance is a far more heinous state of affairs in the long run.  Ultimately, this highway can only lead to a deterioration of our future, and the death of reason itself.

Recently, I attended a discussion panel on Constitutionalism at a university in Helena, the capital of Montana, and admittedly, was not expecting much insight.  (At the moment of arrival I noticed the buildings had been plastered with Kony 2012 posters.  The campus seemed to be completely unaware that the YouTube film is a George Soros funded ‘Wag the Dog’ farce.)  Even in a fiercely independent region such as the Northern Rockies, the collectivist hardline reigns supreme on most college campuses.  Sadly, very few actual students attended the discussion, and the audience was predominantly made up of local political players, retired legislators, and faculty.  Surprisingly, Stewart Rhodes of Oath Keepers was invited to participate in the discussion, obviously to add at least some semblance of balance or “debate” to an otherwise one-sided affair.  The mix was like oil and water.

The overall tone was weighted with legal drudgery.  Many of the speakers were focused intently on secondary details and banal explorations into individual Constitutional cases without any regard for the bigger picture.  When confronted with questions on the indefinite detainment provisions of the NDAA, government surveillance, or executive ordered assassinations of U.S. citizens, the panelists responded with lukewarm apathy.  The solutions we discuss regularly within the Liberty Movement, such as state nullification based on the 10th Amendment, assertions of local political control through Constitutional Sheriffs, and even civil disobedience, were treated with indignant responses and general confusion.

A consistent theme arose from the academics present, trying to run damage control on Rhodes’ points on federal encroachment and ultimate tyranny.  Their position?  Defiance is unacceptable (or at least, not politically correct…).  Americans have NO recourse against a centralized government.  Not through their state and local representatives, and not through concerted confrontation.  In fact, to even suggest that states act on their own accord without permission is an outlandish idea.  In the end, the only outlet for the public is….to vote.

No one seemed to be able to address the fact that both major parties supported the exact same unconstitutional policies, thus making national level elections an act of pure futility. The point was brushed aside…

Sickly shades of socialism hung heavy in the room.  One speaker even suggested that the states could not possibly survive financially without centralized aid.  He was apparently too ignorant to understand that the federal government itself is bankrupt, incapable of producing true savings, and printing fiat Ad Nauseum just to stay afloat.  Every 30 seconds I heard a statement that made me cringe.

Universities are today’s centers of connection.  They are one of the last vestiges of American tribalism and community in an age of self isolation and artificial technological cultism.  Adults do not meet face to face much anymore to share knowledge, or discuss the troubles of the day.  The academic world provides such opportunity, but at a terrible price.  To connect with the world, students must comply.  To be taken seriously, they must adopt, consciously or unconsciously, the robes of the state.  They must abandon the passions of rebellion and become indifferent to the truth.  All actions and ideas must be embraced by the group, or cast aside.  They must live a life of dependency, breeding a culture of fear, for that which others keep for us, they can easily take away.

How could anyone possibly sustain themselves on a diet of congealing fantasy, and personal inadequacy?  The intellectual life bears other fruits as well.  Where it lacks in substance, it makes up for in ego, proving that being educated is not necessarily the same as being intelligent.  The following is a list of common character traits visible in the average intellectual idiot, a breed that poisons the American well, and is quickly eroding away any chance of Constitutional revival…

1)  An Obsession With The Appearance Of Objectivity 

I say “appearance” of objectivity because the intellectual idiot does indeed take sides on a regular basis, and the side he takes invariably benefits the establishment.  He would never admit to this, though, because he believes it gives him more credibility to at least be thought of as standing outside an issue looking in.  It is not uncommon to find Intellectual Idiots being contrary regardless of your view, even if they would normally agree.  They often try to approach debate with the façade of detachment, as if they do not care one way or the other.  The costume soon wears away, however, when they are faced with an opponent that is not impressed with their educational status.  I have seen lawyers, doctors, engineers, and even politicians devolve into sniveling toddlers when they are derailed by an argument beyond their ability to tap-dance around.  Their middle of the road persona evaporates, and the real person erupts like an ugly pustule…

2)  Clings To Labels And Status

Like anyone else, Intellectual Idiots cradle a philosophy they believe in, or are told to believe in.  But unlike most of us, they see themselves above the scrutiny of those who do not pursue a similar academic path (i.e. only a lawyer should be allowed to debate another lawyer).  The reality is, anyone is privy to the information a proponent of the professional class knows.  With the advent of the internet, it is easier than ever to educate one’s self on multiple subjects without aid if that person has the determination to do so.  Reputation is not earned by shelling out tens of thousands of dollars for university approval.  A Masters Degree or Ph.D is not a get out of logic free card.  In fact, because the Intellectual Idiot often uses his position to avoid true opposition, he tends to become lazy and even more incapable of defending his methodologies when the time comes.

3)  Predominantly Collectivist

The curriculum of the average college is partly to blame for this, and because the Intellectual Idiot is so desperate for acceptance and accolades, they can’t help but fall into the trap.  Collectivism is marked by a distinct attachment to the state as the source of life.  All social and all individual crises thus become a matter of government purview.  Individual self reliance is a terrifying notion to them.  In fact, many Intellectual Idiots have lived on the dole since they were born, moving from their family’s money, to state money through grants and loans.  It is not unheard of for these people to become career students, avoiding work for years, and then moving on to a bureaucratic job when the free money runs out.  They cannot fathom why anyone would rebel against the system, because they are a part of a select group which has always benefited from it.  How could the federal government be bad when it has paid their way for half of their existence?

4)  Disconnection From Reality 

The Intellectual Idiot is not necessarily afraid to acknowledge that the system is troubled.  For them, the federal government is not infallible, even if their favorite party is in office, but, it IS unapproachable.  Academics revel in the disastrous nature of government.  They see political and social catastrophe as a sort of mental gameplay.  An exercise in theoretical structures.  For them, America is not a country built on an enduring set of principles, but a petri dish; an ongoing anthropological experiment that they can watch through a microscope at their leisure.  The idea that the disasters they view from the safety of their sub-cultural bubble might one day come to haunt them is a distant one.

5)  Abhors Those Who Step Out Of Bounds 

Have you ever entertained a view that went against the grain of the mainstream only to be met with accusations of extremism and sneers befitting a leper?  You were probably talking to an intellectual idiot.  The rules, no matter how distasteful or meaningless, hold special power for these people.  They make the system what it is, and when the system is your great provider, you might lean towards defending it, even in the wake of oligarchy and abuse.   This penchant for overt structure for the sake of centralization is especially damaging to our Constitutional rights, because alternative solutions are never treated as viable.  During the panel discussion in Helena, pro-collectivists consistently tried to redirect the conversation away from the 10th Amendment as a method to counter federal overreach.  They did this by bringing up abuses of the states, including slavery and segregation, as if that somehow negated the nightmare of the NDAA.

Ironically, they saw the use of violence by the federal government to push states to recognize civil liberties as perfectly practical.  But, the use of force by states to protect the same civil liberties from Washington D.C.?  That would be lunacy…

6)  Believes Academia To Be Free From Bias

The Intellectual Idiot assimilates every bit of information he is given at the university level without a second look.  He simply assumes it is all true, and if something appears mismatched, it is only because he does not yet fully grasp it.  Very rarely will he go beyond designated source materials to get a different opinion.  This habit is the root of his idiocy.  Being that most universities draw from the same exact materials, and peer reviewed papers are usually tested by those with the exact same underlying educational backgrounds, I can’t see how it is possible for much variety of thought to form.  Whether intentional or not, severe bias cannot be avoided in this kind of environment without considerable strength of heart.

The shock that these people express when faced with Liberty Movement philosophies is quite real.  They have spent the very focus of their future life within the confines of a miniscule spectrum of truth; like seeing technicolor for the first time after a long limited existence in black and white.

It’s hard to say when it all really began, but for decades, Americans have been progressively tuned like pliable radio antenna to the song of the elitist intellectual.  Many of us want to be him.  Others want to follow him, straight to oblivion if need be, as long as they don’t have to blaze their own trail.  This is not to say all professionals are a danger to the Republic.  Some are fantastic proponents of freedom.  But, without a drastic reversal in current educational trends, I see little hope of Constitutional guardians becoming a mainstay of U.S. campuses in the near term.

With mashed potato minds fresh from the psychological Cuisinart of public schools, the next generation in line to inherit the most fantastically schizophrenic nation in history will be like candy for social engineers; utterly unequipped for the mission.  Strangely, the drastic financial slide the elites have also triggered might hold the key to our salvation.  The next batch of would be statist citizens may find themselves so poor that higher educational brainwashing will be impossible to afford, giving them precious time to think for themselves, and come to their own conclusions.   As they say, in all things, there is a silver lining…

Source: Brandon Smith | Alt-Market

The Duty of the Military in a Militarized Empire

Those who serve in the military are in a difficult position. The oath taken by enlistees states, “I, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.” The internal conflict between supporting and defending the Constitution and obeying orders is at the heart of the dilemma of honor and duty. Those who accept that the Presidential chain of command is by nature constitutional; lack a proper understanding of history and professes an even greater ignorance of current affairs.Ever since Congress abrogated their lawful war power authority to declare war, the military industrial complex has embarked on a path of global empire. The consequences of such un-American internationalist imperialism have turned the country into a hollow shell of a once great nation. NeoCons and their liberal cousin counterparts champion perpetual interventionism and continuous oversea deployment, deny this stark reality.

False flag operations used as incessant excuses to expand the permanent war machine, demean and ultimately will destroy the moral purpose of our country. Propaganda and disinformation used to spread the jingoism fever infects the body politics. Those who remember the disgusting treatment, upon the separation from service, of Viet Nam draftees welcome the positive homage of recent military personnel.

However, there is an attitude that challenges all the flag waving and medal awards. Gary D. Barnett presents a viewpoint that is not shared by most military brass. Mr. Barnett writes in Thank You for Your Service? No Thanks!

“What service is actually being praised by those conditioned to say these empty words? Why are they thanking and praising nearly every soldier they see?

Is it because hatred of the U.S. is increasing, and new enemies are being created in the Middle East and all around the rest of the world?

Is it because thousands and thousands of innocent people are being killed now in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and many more are being threatened?

Is it because 20,000,000 to 30,000,000 foreigners, mostly innocent civilians, have died just since World War II due to U.S. interference and war?

Is it because indefinite detention without due process, torture, assassination, and rendition are now common and accepted practices?

Is it because suicide rates among American soldiers have increased 80% since the Iraq War began?

Is it because mental problems now send more military personnel to the hospital than any other cause?

Is it because destruction and separation of military families is rampant?

Is it because civil liberties have all but disappeared due to so-called terrorism legislation? (terror legislation would be more accurate)

Is it because of the creation of the USA PATRIOT Act, Military Commissions Act, NDAA, TSA, and Department of Homeland Security (DHS)?

Is it because of the massive buildup of killer drones abroad and at home?

Is it because the huge deficit spending to support multiple aggressive wars is causing economic chaos?

Is it because of the surging number of double amputees of American soldiers?

Is it because of increasing energy costs due to the United States unwarranted presence in the Middle East region?

Is it because the domestic police have now become a brutal militarized force, bent on controlling the entire population?”

This perspective fundamentally challenges the underlying foreign policy that structures military expenditures to project superpower force at the expense of actual domestic defense. As long as the National Security Council and the State Department pursues the policeman of the world policy, the military will be asked to implement unnecessary austerities that perpetuates the corrupt “world community” dominated by a financial tyranny. No wonder, that the blowback against our real interests is the only sure response that comes from such foreign adventures.

Full Spectrum Dominance is no substitute for true national security.

“The war on terror is an excuse to divert attention from the accelerated loss of rights and freedoms. Each step may seem insignificance and subtle, but the direction is always undeniable. Fear from any foreign threat seldom extends to the measures instituted by the domestic authority. Willingness to forget that legitimacy for your government is based upon your consent is epidemic. People are eager to demonstrate their devotion to the State, as they surrender their birthright as if it meant nothing.”

The source of the scourge that underpins obeying unlawful orders stems from a false obedience. Criminal civilian commands are not legitimate authority. The unconstitutionality of the National Defense Authorization Act is clear. Brian J. Trautman, a military veteran writes on the NDAA,

“This year’s legislation contains highly controversial provisions that empower the Armed Forces to engage in civilian law enforcement and to selectively suspend due process and habeas corpus, as well as other rights guaranteed by the 5th and 6th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, for terror suspects apprehended on U.S. soil. The final version of the bill passed the House on December 14, the Senate the following day (ironically, the 220th birthday of the Bill of Rights). It was signed into law by President Obama on New Year’s Eve. With his signature, for the first time since the Internal Security Act of 1950 and the dark days of the McCarthy era that followed, our government has codified the power of indefinite detention into law.”

 

Nothing new about laws or executive orders that strip constitutional protections, so what can an honest American serving in the military services do in response to their duty? Stewart Rhodes, founder of OathKeepers talks about the NDAA and provides the answer in the video . PFC Bradley Manning comes to mind when an active service personnel reveals the sins and dictates of the foreign policy elites. Kim Zetter reports in Wired,

“Manning is charged with 22 violations of military law for allegedly stealing records and transmitting defense information in violation of the Espionage Act, among other charges, which could get him up to life in prison if he’s convicted. In chat logs, Manning said he leaked the cables because he felt that the world needed to be aware of military activities that he believed were potentially illegal.”

The Bradley Manning media coverage is an essential blackout of the extent that the foreign policy psychopaths, that provides the orders for the military establishment is the cause of the anguish and death that responsible soldiers endure.

The officer corps ultimately bears the heaviest burden for enforcing illegal orders. The basic principle that honorable duty resides in the protection of the nation, should be accepted. However, the practical application falls dramatically short, when the military substitute the office of the Presidency as the essence of the nation. Willingness to follow the commands of a dictator directly leads to the Gary D. Barnett assessment.

Where is the line that needs to be drawn that neutralizes the treason that routinely comes out of the corridors of power? The Pentagon is comprised of careerists that all too often are willing to sacrifice the safety of the American public for their own advancement. War games never take into account that the immediate enemies of our country hold office, administer imperium policies and work for the financial oligarchy.

The globalists are more than plutocrats they are the ultimate and true enemy. The critical duty that military resides in a commitment to a genuine America First foreign policy. The Commander and Chief, no matter who occupies the Oval Office, is a mere selected puppet that is on a short leash.

The military needs to refuse unlawful orders by standing down and stand up for a constitutional republic.

Understanding The Slave Mentality

In the initial stages of nearly every recorded tyranny, the saucer eyed dumbstruck masses exhibit astonishing and masterful skill when denying reality.  The facts behind their dire circumstances and of their antagonistic government become a source of cynical psychological gameplay rather than a source of legitimate concern.  Their desperate need to maintain their normalcy bias creates a memory and observation vacuum in which all that runs counter to their false assumptions and preconceptions disappears forever.  It is as if they truly cannot see the color of the sky, or the boot on their face.  The concrete world of truth becomes a dream, an illusion that can be heeded or completely ignored depending on one’s mood.  For them, life is a constant struggle of dissociation, where the tangible is NOT welcome…

This is the problem that we in the Liberty Movement deal with most often in our writings and films.  Our confrontation with willful ignorance has been epic, even by far reaching historical standards.  The gains in social awareness have been substantial, and yet the obstacles are incredible.  Unprecedented.  As an activist trend, we have an almost obsessive drive to draw back the curtain so that the public has at least the opportunity to see what is on the other side.  Unfortunately, there is another danger that must be taken into account…

It is one thing to bear witness to the rejection of truth in our time and the oblivious attitudes of many towards the growth of totalitarianism.  Eventually, though, a second phase in the development of oligarchy arises.  I am speaking of the point at which tyranny becomes so blatant that the skeptics have to acknowledge its existence, but after doing so, they choose to rationalize it as necessary.  Yes, there are many in this world that will laugh at the prospect of the Orwellian nightmare only to happily embrace it when it arrives in full color.

I was recently looking into the divisive issue of U.S. Marine Sgt. Gary Stein, whose position has come under threat due to his criticisms of Barack Obama and his founding of the ‘Armed Forces Tea Party Facebook Page’.  What I discovered was a large number of Americans in support of Stein’s right to speak as a citizen (even under Marine regulations) against the unconstitutional actions of any president or presidential candidate.  I also discovered a considerable number who wanted to see the soldier dishonorably discharged, or even set upon a noose as punishment.

Now, we all know that the Department of Defense monitors web news and social networking activity, and they have been caught red handed in the past posing as regular citizens with strangely militant pro-authoritarian views (look into their organized propaganda attacks on websites dealing with the levee failures during Katrina, for instance).  It is by no means a stretch to suggest that they would also troll the comments sections of mainstream news articles in an attempt to engineer a fraudulent consensus that Sgt. Stein’s actions have been negatively received by the majority of Americans.  But that aside, the underlings at the DOD are still Americans, and the views they espouse are still expressions of a subsection of this country (a small elitist one).  Also, sadly, there are plenty of non-government-paid people out there who believe exactly as they do.

Surely, we can debate over the details of Marine regulations until our ears bleed, and I could point out several facts that the mainstream media did not cover in their hit pieces on Stein (like the fact that he went to his superiors and asked them to advise him in the handling of his political position long before the present charges against him were ever formulated, and the fact that he followed many of their suggestions…), but ultimately, the regulations of the Marines or the Federal Government are irrelevant.  Such laws are transitory, and are usually written so broadly that the authorities of the day can execute them however they wish to fit their needs at the moment.  The real question here is one of principle, moral compass, and Constitutionality (a document which is a reflection of eternal natural law).  We have to set aside the pointless legalese of defense standards in the case of Sgt. Stein and ask ourselves an important question; do U.S. troops have a right to free speech?

If you believe so, then their rights are not limited or exclusive.  They are free to say whatever any other American has a right to say.  If you believe they do not, then you have relegated the troops to the position of second class citizens, or even property of the state.  There is NO in-between.  Discipline and military coherence be damned.  Either these men and women have First Amendment protections and are full citizens or they are mechanisms of the government whose civil liberties have been erased.

Even though I understand the psychology behind it, I am still shaken with raw electrical astonishment when confronted by those who support the latter notion that American soldiers are indeed property of the state, that their actions must be dictated by the president and not the Constitution, and that this is required for the military to function.

Very few of these absurd multitudes ever ask what “function” such a military, populated by ethical robots who are blindly subservient to the dictates of a single man, would actually serve?

What good is an unprincipled military?  An unprincipled government?  An unprincipled society?  What reason is there for these constructs to exist?  The Nuremberg Trials solidified the reality that soldiers will be held accountable for following criminal orders, and still, there are some who claim that our troops must adopt a shoot first pay later methodology.

I bring up the circumstances of Sgt. Stein to illustrate the situation our nation is currently facing; we are on the threshold of total despotism, where the naysayers who shrugged off the threat of rogue government yesterday suddenly embrace it and support it today.  When Stewart Rhodes first formed the Oath Keepers organization, the same talking point was consistently used in an attempt to derail it; “The orders you would refuse to obey could never occur in this country…”  And yet, many of the warnings of Oath Keepers have come to pass, including the unlawful disarming of peaceful U.S. citizens during the disaster in New Orleans, the institution of government directed assassination programs of U.S. citizens under Bush and Obama, the passing of NDAA legislation which includes provisions for indefinite detainment of Americans without trial, warrantless wiretapping, surveillance, and even home invasion by authorities is becoming common, and the Obama Administration has put into place several executive orders (including the The National Defense Resources Preparedness EO) which pave the way for Martial Law to be declared.

The cold hard reality is, the Oath Keepers were right, and Sgt. Stein is right.

And, now that this is becoming undeniable, the opponents of their tenets are switching gears to fight for the implementation of unconstitutional laws which they used to deny were even possible.  Can this situation be any more insane?  Oh yes…

There are no limits to the surrealist hell that can be unleashed when dealing with what I like to call the “Slave Mentality”.  The slave mentality takes many shapes.  It is pervasive in times of social distress, and, it can be infectious.  The psychologist Carl Jung wrote in his book ‘The Undiscovered Self’ that the cruel sociopathy seen in the populations of Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia is actually latent in many of us.  All it needs is the right set of sociopolitical circumstances and a weak enough will, and the shadows in the hearts of lesser men are given license to come out and play.  This is just as true in America, where people now operated on assumptions that the state is an absolute provider in the event of national calamity.

But what are the signs of this unconscious desire for collectivism and control?  What makes a slave do what he does?  Here are just a handful of explanations to consider…

The True Slave: The true slave is not a person who has been shackled, beaten, tortured, and made to comply under threat of death.  As long as that poor soul has the spirit of rebellion and is ever seeking freedom, they are not imprisoned fully.  The true slave is a person who enjoys their subservience, who is weighted with fear by the very idea of independence from the system, and who would actually fight and die to maintain the establishment which enslaves them.  The true slave is not able to imagine living any other life beyond his micro-managed existence.

The Facts Lose Value: The worst flaw of the slave is not necessarily his ability to overlook the truth, but his ability to see it, comprehend it, and then shrug it off anyway because it is contrary to his mission to fulfill his private delusions.  For the slave, the truth exists, but is no longer useful.  Lies make his universe turn, and facts are a tool to be used or cast aside at his leisure.

The Obsession With The Law: The slave mentality, though illogical and psychotic, still requires a certain foundation to hold it together.  The laws of governments tend to suffice.  These laws may go completely against the force of inherent conscience, but because the slave has already abandoned listening to his inner voice of reason, this does not bother him much.  If you have ever wondered why modern tyrannies always feel the need to put their horrific enforcements in writing first, THIS is why.  Oligarchs understand that the law provides the slave with a means to rationalize his participation in the crimes of the state.  After all, if some gut-bloated bloodthirsty elitists in government etch their mad inbred ramblings into law, then we have no choice but to follow them, right?

The Need To Be Accepted: A slave seeks harmony not within, but without, even when that “harmony” is with a system that is designed to destroy him.  The viciousness of collectivism lay in its ability to comfort converts with atrocity.  As long as the slave feels as though he is a part of the machine, and accepted by the group, he cares not what the machine does to others.  Common arguments include; “We all have to live together, and so we must sacrifice our selfish individualism for the greater good…” or “Governments are here to protect us and we should do everything we can to make their job easier…”  Rarely if ever do they question if the system is legitimately helpful or harmful.  The system just “is”, it fulfills their need to be coddled, and that is good enough for them.  For all their talk of “unity” and the “greater good”, collectivists are for the most part deeply selfish.  They do not support or participate in the collective for the sake of others.  They do it to satiate their personal desires.

The Need For Control: I suppose it’s ironic, but the average slave loves tyranny because it affords him a perceived seat at the table of power, perhaps for the first time in his entire life.  Collectivist slaves are often people who have felt weak and inadequate since childhood.  While honorable human beings fight this personal uncertainty by strengthening themselves physically and mentally, and improving upon their own character, the slave takes the easy route by joining with bureaucracy and living vicariously through its conquests.  Through the state, the hollow, cowardly, and stupid, have the ability to “show the world who’s boss”, and get revenge for a life filled with meaninglessness.

The Need For Structure: An individual takes responsibility for himself, learning over time to provide his own structure which works at his pace and serves his unique needs.  A slave does not have the energy or the drive to do that, and so, he asks the establishment to tell him how he should live.  He will hold at face value the word of nearly anyone in a position of petty authority.  When confronted with those who go their own way, or who rebel against the cookie-cutter template for social participation, the slave sneers in disgust.  Independent rebellion is abhorrent to him, because the system provides him with his very identity.  To insult the fabric of the system is to insult who he is.  It’s pathetic, but common…

The Need For Vindication: Sometimes it is not enough for certain people to have their own world view.  The slave seeks approval for his world view at every turn, even if that world view is twisted by bleary eyed logic, and will go so far as to force others to agree with it so that they can feel safer in their beliefs.  It is natural for people to seek out others with similar views and ideals, but, it is not natural or healthy for those same people to use the government apparatus as a weapon to frighten the rest of us into submission just so they can become more confident in their ludicrous slapdash philosophies.  Slaves want a world without contradiction.  Laughably, everything they do is a contradiction.

What I have seen in a number of the reactions to the honest activism of Sgt. Gary Stein is a knee-jerk bias that reeks of the slave mentality, but it offers us a window in gauging the leanings of the general public.  Now that the once theoretical dangers of federal fascism are breaking the surface of the water and circling the American sinking ship, the great test is to watch closely where the masses place their priorities.  Will they take the path of the individual, admit to the laboratory mutation that our government has become, and try to make things right again?  Or, will they take the path of the slave, forget their past follies and empty arguments, and jump on the totalitarian bandwagon?  Certainly, it is not as if the cheerleaders of the state usually get out of the tumult with all their limbs intact.  In most cases, they are lucky to get out alive once the smoke clears.  One might think that the lessons of history would be guide enough, but then again, the average slave has taken every conceivable measure to ensure that his particular fantasy land is magical enough to withstand substantial examination.  The system is their drug, and the upheaval that free thought brings is such a buzz-kill…

Source: Brandon Smith | Alt-Market

How To Become An American Extremist In Style!

For most of us in America today, childhood was a time of vast and unassailable dreams.  What we could become, what the world could become, was limited only by the strength of spirit setting aloft our ideas, and this strength, as all young people instinctively know, is infinite.  While the possibilities of the future seemed boundless, few of us, including myself, ever considered “political extremism” as a viable lifestyle decision.  Astronaut?  Maybe.  Filmmaker?  Sure.  Enemy Belligerent?  Not so much…

While each of us is ultimately a product of our own decisions and internal choices, even beyond the influences of our environment, the cultural atmosphere of our age certainly determines the manner in which we are able to express our individual character.  The brilliant and talented are sometimes cast into roles of poverty and obscurity.  The obscene and devious often ascend to positions of righteous reverence.  Good men are often painted as villains for centuries, while evil men are regarded as saints for just as long.  The point is, the times in which we live rarely express in an honest way who we really are, unless, of course, we take hold of them tight, and cut out a new path for history to travel…

Those men and women who drive forward without fear or doubt to assert control over their destinies, and force their era to reflect their principles, rather than their principles becoming a side-note to their era, whether honorable or dishonorable, are invariably considered “extreme”.  Most human beings waft about with the tides of time as passengers; spectators watching events unfold from the sidelines.  Those who swim against the currents, or who attempt to change their flow altogether, are usually rare and confounding to the masses.  Therefore, that which the masses consider extremism is often merely that which they consider far outside what they have grown accustomed.

Frankly, history has proven over and over again that the majority is usually wrong about most things.  Groups and collectives do not create, or discover, or advance humanity.  Only individuals are capable of this.  All great concepts begin as seeds within independent people, and then spread like wildfire as they educate others.  A society that strives for artificial normality and collectivist harmonization is a society on the verge of chaos and death.  Only free hearts and minds give man hope of survival.

In my view, that which is extreme is NOT that which violates the boundaries of “normal” society, but which violates the boundaries of inherent truth, and conscience.  In an honest society, an extremist is someone who denies the universal foundations of existence, and tries to play demigod in a fantasy world of moral relativism and rationalized criminality.  A disjointed freak of nature that seeks to impose his twisted will upon others.  Unfortunately, the honest definition of extremism is not the most popular amongst the frothing elitists that reside over the functions of our political structure today.

Life is a bummer like that…

So instead, why not embrace the label that the establishment is so keen to pigeonhole us with, and make it our own?  I have found that the less I care about the critical eye of others, the more free I am to change things for the better.  Certainly, by any standard of our current national leadership and by the throngs that support it, I am an extremist.  Luckily, this does not concern me.  It is not important to be accepted by the mainstream, it is only important to remain objectively correct in one’s position.  In the grand scheme of the world, to be a thorn in the side of so-called “proper society” is a sure fire path to a life without regret.  America was founded by undesirables, and built by non-conformists.  We are a nation whose blood is thick with defiance and outright knock-out revolutionary badass anti-authoritarian hostility.  We cut kings down to size.

At least, we used to…

In modern America, it’s not nice or pleasant or practical to approach political problems with the attitude of a radical.  That puts people off.  And there’s nothing worse than having people not like you, right?  Better to play the game and hope that a better world will simply materialize out of the ether.  Don’t rock the boat, especially when you’re in it…

For those of us in the Liberty Movement, this passive approach just doesn’t satiate our ravenous hunger for the bizarre.  And by “bizarre”, I mean honest.  Our time here is short, and usually ugly, and filled with people and circumstances and disasters and biases and abhorrences and painful moments and sometimes smells that we would much rather not deal with.  The least we can ask for is a little truth.  If I have to be confronted with crusted wheezing gas-bloated nightmare figures like John McCain or Joseph Lieberman, men who would label me a terrorist if they could, then I should be allowed the satisfaction of a concrete fact or two before I am shipped of to the nearest Halliburton run military sanctioned prison facility for re-education and naked dog-piling (which these men seem to particularly enjoy).

The truth is the first and greatest sin in the dark pestilent pit of any active tyranny.  I recommend it highly.  Seek the truth, and ye shall be fined…or jailed.  This is the first step towards a glorious career as an American extremist, and living such a lifestyle can be fun and exciting, if one follows these simple guidelines:

1)  Make A Ruckus 

Identify the imperative issues of the day that most people don’t want to be confronted with……..and then talk about them constantly.  But don’t just talk about them; talk about them intelligently and with an informative stance.  That really drives the willfully ignorant crazy.  Make your position and the facts behind it visible in the mainstream, through writing, videos, protest, graffiti, bumper stickers, tatts, whatever…

The establishment’s first line of defense is not necessarily to suppress the truth, but to keep it on the fringe of society, out of sight of the average citizen.  Your job is to shove the truth in people’s faces, so that they are forced to at least acknowledge that it exists, even if they don’t want to accept it.

2)  Laugh At Petty Authority

Most authority in our modern world is, really, only petty authority.  True authority is fostered by a sense of respect that is earned through leadership by example.  The greatest authorities are those who teach, not those who command, and political governance is null and void if that governance was attained through subversion and lies.

Of course, this view is a proven fast track to the nearest solitary confinement cell, but hey, living such a rock ‘n roll flavored “extreme” existence is not without risks…

Extremists recognize that a dishonest politician is only a conman in a nice suit, and nothing more.  They recognize that a law enforcement official that has no regard for Constitutional liberties, or for human decency, is just a gun toting goon in a badge and costume, and is not due any more respect than a common criminal.  They see alphabet agencies as extensions of a system that no longer holds any principles beyond sustaining its own wretched existence, and rightly look down upon those who would sell out to such cancerous bureaucracies for a paycheck and some undeserved prestige.  They laugh at such people, because in the grand scheme of things, these “great pillars” of our nation are, in fact, tragically ridiculous.

3)  Refuse To Be Pegged With Arbitrary Labels

I once entered into a debate with a long time Democrat over the painfully farcical presidency of Barack Obama.  After discovering that I held the same exact views on George W. Bush, he became frustrated and nearly infuriated, because he could not place me into a preconceived political box.  He complained that my stance could not be readily categorized, and this interfered with his ability to argue with me.

I replied…. “Good!  That’s exactly the way it should be!”

Extremism itself is an arbitrary label, whose definition is shifted by those in power to fit any person or group that happens to get in their way at any particular time.  However, to take this label and make it ours, we definitely can’t allow ourselves to be affiliated with hollow and meaningless political parties like the Democrats or the GOP, not to mention all the prefabricated and shallow philosophical platforms they engender.  Every problem and situation should be approached as new, and should be dealt with using social and legal methods that WORK, as opposed to those that happen to follow a particular party line.  There should be, at bottom, as many political viewpoints as there are individuals, not only two homogenized standards that we are forced to choose from in the hopes that one will be “less destructive” than the other.

4)  Prepare For Life Without Window Shopping

A surefire way to become an extremist today is to suggest preparation for any kind of disaster.  For the average American, there is no such thing as a tomorrow without Happy Meals and Nikes.  To suggest the possibility is akin to dancing naked on the freeway with a Gadsden Flag.  Despite the fact that in countries across the planet setting aside goods for survival is as common as mowing the lawn here in the U.S., many in America can’t fathom adopting such habits.  This is because many still believe that the system will protect them from harm no matter what happens.  The “extremist” thinks differently.

He realizes that there have been too many instances in the past when government was not helpful to those in the midst of catastrophe, and in some cases, was even the cause of greater harm.  He seeks to remove his dependence on this system, and procure the insurance necessary to help himself if the need ever arises.

The Federal Government has seen fit to identify the mere act of prepping as a sign of possible extremism, so, let’s get “extreme”, shall we?  I would rather be extreme and alive, than a non-threatening and law abiding corpse.

5)  Build A Terrifying Gun Collection 

If the contents of your house doesn’t scare the living hell out of your yuppie next door neighbor, then you aren’t an extremist yet.  Time to pay off the layaway on that 50. Cal!

Firearms ownership is a widespread American pastime, and is growing by the month.  However, there seems to be a misconception that this pastime is about our “sportsman’s heritage”, or self defense against local crime.  Nope.  That’s not why the extremist stockpiles an arsenal (an arsenal is defined as however many guns you happen to have when the ATF shows up at your doorstep).  He owns scary guns to defend against rogue governments and the rise of the totalitarian dynamic.  Freaky, I know…

Forget all this sportsman nonsense!  We own weapons to dissuade oligarchy from getting comfortable on our couches!  Our concern is not the wildlife…

6)  Question The Accepted Reality Of Everything

You can’t be an extremist if you believe everything you hear from the TV.  Actually, you can’t be an extremist if you believe ANYTHING you hear on the TV.  An extremist takes absolutely no stock in what the mainstream media says without further investigation, and would rather be caught dead than caught parroting talking points from cable news broadcasts.

Is a certain philosophical or political position suddenly considered “common knowledge”?  Be suspicious.  Is a particular methodology or debate point appearing in every journalistic outlet at the same exact time with the same exact one sided narrative?  Time to pull out the B.S. detector.  Is a politician opening his mouth and talking?  Have a shovel handy…

The extremist’s job is not necessarily to be contradictory just for the sake of contrariness.  It is, though, his job to be critical, discerning, and discriminating against that which doesn’t hold up to the light of candid examination.  While there is always room for a certain amount of “interpretation”, ultimately, if a circumstance rings false, it must be exposed.  Period.

Even if that exposure is harmful to the state of our country or our culture in the short term, deceit left unchecked in the long term is the single greatest destroyer of entire civilizations, and is absolutely unacceptable, especially to the extremist…

I think it is clear that extremists in an environment of despotism are in most cases people who refuse to abandon that which makes humanity whole.  We are, indeed, dangerous, but only to those who would do liberty harm.  A life of conformity is a life wasted, and a life of slavery is no life at all.  Whatever we may be called today, what we leave behind is ultimately what defines us.  Labels are irrelevant.  If I am an “extremist” because I refuse to participate in the delusion that is America in the new millennium, then so be it.  I am more than happy to join the long list of insurrectionaries who inhabit this nation today and who have been the legitimate makers of the world for generations.  Everything in history revolves not around governments, but rule-breakers.  They alone decide whether humanity will live tight in the fist of the authoritarian machine, or live free in the wilds of unbridled independence.

One man with courage is a majority.

Thomas Jefferson

Source: Brandon Smith | Alt-Market

Let Your Life Be A Friction To Stop The Machine

Transcript

Let Your Life Be a Friction to Stop the Machine…

Nightmare and insanity are akin: mysterious and involuntary states that skew and distort objective reality. One wakens from nightmare; from insanity there is no awakening.

Whether Americans live in the one state or the other is the paramount question of this era.

For two hundred years Americans have been indoctrinated with a mythology created, imposed and sustained by a manipulating cabal: the financial elite that built its absolute control on the muscle and blood, good will, ignorance and credulity, of its citizenry.

America began with the invasion of a populated continent and the genocide of its native people. Once solidly established, it grafted enslavement of another race onto that base.

With those two pillars of state firmly in place it declared itself an independent nation in a document that nobly proclaimed the equality of all mankind.

In that act of monumental hypocrisy America’s myth had its beginning.

* * *

A Constitution was written that came to be regarded as American Holy Writ. Its central purposes were to defend private property and suppress mass democracy. It has fulfilled both those mandates beyond the wildest dreams of its creators.

Once the existing oligarchy was secure in law and native people largely exterminated, the ruling class increased its wealth and power fantastically in the 19^th century, using the government as its enabler, exploiting to the limit the device of chartered corporations.

With its phenomenal money power, the financial elite began to use the military to expand its sway beyond the continent. Regions, territories, islands, and whole countries were annexed, invaded, and possessed outright, their peoples crushed, suppressed, and ruled.

Because ordinary Americans, like any people, need to believe that whatever the ruling elite undertakes in their nation’s name must be essentially benevolent, noble in purpose and justified in fact, the myth had to be radically modified for imperial expansion.

The foundational story was that Americans had come to a howling wilderness teeming with godless savages and, through invincible strength of character and purity of purpose, had tamed the land and honorably earned the right to possess their bountiful home.

In the era of extra-territorial expansion that version was polished to justify and ennoble imperialism. The new corollary was that America could not ignore colonialist brutality but was obliged, by the Manifest Destiny that led us to civilize our own continent, to carry our mission into barbaric darkness wherever tyranny created abuse and suffering.

A national myth that absolutely binds the loyalty of a people to its government must be a subtle and powerful elixir that elevates and aggrandizes that people’s self-regard. National policy will then appear to be an extension of its superior citizenry’s inchoate will, and the basis for a justified arrogance toward the lesser world.

The simple, powerful myth of America’s altruistic and heroic benevolence, shaped and maintained by the financial/political power elite, infused Americans with a deep and outrageously hubristic sense of racial superiority that, mobilized behind various imperial enterprises, has given all such adventures the character of a quasi-religious crusade. In this way insatiable imperialism acquires the apparent moral perfection of a syllogism.

* * *

With WWII, the world was reconfigured. American Capitalism emerged supreme from the horror that had virtually wrecked its capitalist partners. The Soviet Union, though, having absorbed by far the greatest devastation from Nazi Germany, had astonishingly risen above its ruin to become the leading challenger to America as a world power.

This challenge was not competitive, it was systemic: Soviet Communism was a direct threat to American hegemony in that it categorically refuted the philosophical basis of Predatory Capitalism. Grounded in Marx and Lenin, it attacked Capitalism’s inherent evils, monstrous inequities and flagrant injustices that, exacerbated by speculation, exploitation and fraud, would destroy it. And it promoted world revolution to that end.

This face-off of giants in the Cold War necessitated further refinement of the American myth. Now, instead of simply intervening in situations where despotism or tyranny required America to forcefully implant our just and ethical democracy, America had to become the shield and bulwark of the sacred capitalist system in which “free enterprise” was magically and increasingly identified with democracy and equally to be defended.

This version prevailed through many surrogate confrontations around the globe in the era of Mutually Assured Destruction and survived even the debacle of Vietnam, lasting until the collapse of the Soviet Union, as the propaganda stream became ever more intense and pervasive. On radio and television Americans were subjected to an unrelenting barrage of hyper-patriotism in which American moral superiority was a given, and America’s self-touted courage, generosity and decency were its unchallengeable proofs.

The implosion of the Soviet Union left America, in its own terminology, the “Sole Superpower in a Unipolar World”. This, however, did not result in diminution of the myth. The practical effect of having no doomsday enemy–China couldn’t plausibly be cast in that role then–was to supercharge it by increasing its element of pure, hubristic ego. America was no longer just called upon to defend the “Free World” from monstrous heresy; it was now, by virtue of its universally acknowledged, beatific “exceptionalism”, required to oversee and police it in the interests, and for the benefit, of lesser nations.

* * *

“Power corrupts”, said Lord Mahan, “and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

When the only rival and counterweight to American power disintegrated there was a sense within the American power elite that the opportunity existed, for the first time in history, for one country to absolutely dominate and effectively control the entire world.

This consensus was expressed in a policy statement composed by a cadre of major right-wing political players representing massive corporate capitalist interests called the Project for a New American Century. This triumphalist manifesto laid out a plan for absolute American access and control of essential resources and raw materials worldwide, to be guaranteed by the military which would enforce Full Spectrum Dominance.

The American Myth, which had seemed to have lost momentum and its animating principle in the totally unexpected so-called Cold War “victory”, was now re-energized with a less defensive and reactive essence, and given the glowing radiance and patina of a true and, for the first time, self-professed and articulated, imperial mission.

The attack on the Towers, an unimaginable provocation, was the trigger mechanism for the explosive launch of the effort to impose that imperial model in practice on the world.

* * *

It has been without question the most spectacular failure in the history of American misadventure. After a decade marked by the waste of trillions of dollars and tens of thousands of American lives, the stunning bankruptcy of our internally burglarized nation, and a consequent recession more fundamentally damaging than the Great One, Imperial America has nothing to show for the botched folly of its arrogant overreach but unequivocal disasters in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, with no end of madness in sight.

An impartial observer would have to say that the hypnotic hold of the American Myth on the loyalty of the people has led only to disgrace and disaster, and set a direct course to inevitable imperial decline and ruin. That would be inarguable on any rational basis, but it entirely mistakes the motive for, and the purpose of, the myth. The American Myth was never intended to serve the interests either of our country or of our people: it was created solely to buttress, shield, and exalt the ruling financial class. It has done that with astonishing and unbroken success that staggers the imagination from our earliest days.

The massive looting of Iraq/Afghanistan/Pakistan war funding to enrich the Corporate Tyranny—for that is what it has become—is on an unique scale of its own, without anything remotely comparable to its flagrant obscenity in the whole long history of war.

Neither the Pentagon nor any branch of the U.S. government can give any accounting whatever of the many billions of tax-generated dollars that have vanished, evaporated. There is no doubt but that beyond the outrageously inflated, no-bid contracts handed to giant corporate favorites with their preposterous guaranteed profits, much of the money was simply stolen in bulk by, through, or in spite of the military, and distributed among thieves and accomplices, some of it on huge pallets… for convenience, presumably.

* * *

While this wholesale robbery was going on under the oversight of the military abroad, the Corporate Tyranny had evolved a whole set of impenetrably complex devices for the generation of money without any economically productive source or result at home.

The sole driving force and purpose of Capitalism is the realization of profit. According to that calculus, reducing production costs increases profit margin. This leads to the obvious conclusion that as production costs near zero, profit is maximized.

There is no provision for social good in Capitalist theory. Corporations, created to optimize business opportunity through efficient specialization, were originally required to operate for public benefit but that provision was quickly finessed and forgotten.

American law courts have always favored corporate concentrations of wealth since they, like the Congress, exist to serve the moneyed interests. The American Myth was created to provide cover for the financial oligarchy to exploit the country and the citizenry, and the judiciary has consistently cooperated in ruling for corporations against the people.

Indeed, without ever considering the question in law, the Supreme Court long ago endowed corporations with “personhood”, that is with all rights of human beings under our Constitution. The way this travesty occurred–the slipshod by-product of an obliquely related case–shows that the court preferred to incorporate this perversion of the plain intent of the 14^th amendment as an unexamined assumption rather than risk an eventual test which would unquestionably have created violent public outrage.

Given the collusion of Congress and the courts in securing legal invulnerability for the Corporate Tyranny and the principle that the only duty of corporations is maximization of profit, it was not surprising that megabanks, huge brokerage houses, giant insurance conglomerates, gilded hedge funds and the credit agencies pretending to certify their work, all engaged in massive and systemic fraud and deception for just that purpose. The result was the crash of ’08, the recession, and the stunning and unprecedented rescue and bailout of the biggest banks, investment houses, and insurance and credit conglomerates with taxpayer dollars. So much for the hallowed Invisible Hand of the Free Market…

* * *

The last decades have seen two related megatrends in American geopolitical mechanics, both with dire effects on the power of the American Myth. First, what belief the world at large had in it has been shattered by a catastrophic series of imbecile and irretrievable military failures and disasters, which has caused erosion of its efficacy at home. Second, in response to this, the State has made increasingly crude efforts to boost the Myth’s waning power by the imposition of totalitarian methods of surveillance, intimidation and coercion on the American people to a degree unprecedented in scope and scale.

The whole clanking, medieval apparatus of Homeland Security that has sprouted like an enormous poison fungus since 9/11 with its brutal police state mindset; the odious Patriot Act with its flagrant subversions of the Bill of Rights; the endless, fantasy-based terror-peddling of the prostitute corporate media with its clowns and harpies churning irrational fear and anger in the uninformed: all this grim, repressive endeavor is a concerted attempt to distract Americans from the real causes of their injury, abuse, and oppression.

And yet, even with the American Myth now totally and irreparably blown full of holes and exposed demonstrably for the tissue of lies, deceptions and frauds that it has always been, it somehow keeps its phenomenal hold on the great mass of the American people. The tragic reality is that, for the majority, their own identities have been so deeply and thoroughly infused with the myth that to disbelieve it is to disbelieve in themselves.

* * *

So the American Myth is dead, and yet it lives on in its deadness, horribly masking our crapshot economy, our bankrupt debtors prison of a society, our Ghost Dance charade of kabuki democracy, while typhoons of impending social, economic and ecological disaster build their enormous, lightning-charged thunderheads above the dark future before us.

And what is it that the dead Myth still imperfectly obscures for Americans? What is outside and beyond the opaque wall of faltering, failing dishonesty and deception? What is the horror that the shoddy, tattered Myth has so long and so effectively concealed?

It is the world that has suffered unrelieved exploitation by the violence of our imperialist mania. It is the many wrecked and pillaged economies financially looted by our imposed predatory capitalist austerity regimes. It is the teeming hundreds of millions of starved, deprived and dying children sacrificed to Wall Street commodities gaming. It is the multitudes of humble, innocent, ignorant people, barely surviving in absolutist and dictatorial regimes propped up in their barbaric cruelty by our military while our banks siphon off the profits left after arming their brutal police and armies and bribing their ruling Kings, Sheikhs or Generals. It is the millions of dead and maimed in the raped populations of simple tribal people whom our indiscriminately murderous juggernaut has left in its bloody wake in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. It is the appalling legacy of hate and repulsion, disdain and fear, that America has earned with its appalling hegemonist villainy in every corner of the world.

And at home, what is it we Americans have been so complicit in hiding from ourselves in our devotion to the perverse legend that has come to inhabit our souls like a succubus?

It is the millions of us with no work and no hope in middle age whose jobs and homes have been devoured by the heartless fraud machine of Wall Street. It is the trashed and demolished weedlots of our major cities eroding in crumbling, fire-gutted ruin. It is the many towns and cities with industries shut down and factories deserted or dismantled and shipped overseas. It is our decaying, disintegrating public schools, our bankrupt states and counties, our overtaxed, antiquated public transportation systems, our obsolete, dissolving infrastructure, our bloated, irrational prisons complex, our punishing and inadequate health care disaster, and over it all, the repressive mechanism of our police state, armed and empowered, ready for use against the American people themselves.

* * *

This is where we are. The great question now is whether we as a nation can awaken from this long historic nightmare and face the terrifying and exhilarating prospect of living in the full light of reality without the false props and dishonest constructs of a hoodwinked, herded and dishonored people or, whether we have internalized the falsity and disease to such an extent that it has become an organic, overmastering form of insanity?

In 1846, Henry David Thoreau, offended to his soul by the injustice of the American government’s invasion of Mexico, protested it and went to jail for his convictions. Later, in his essay On Civil Disobedience, he said this:

“If injustice is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.”

To attempt to break the hold of the American Myth will be a titanic, daunting challenge. To even begin to openly rebel against the might of the National Security State will require the courage to face much more than official disapproval and denunciation. Imperial America will not respond to even the most peaceful and orderly protest with anything less than hard police repression and the level of punishment will rise in relation to the scope and seriousness of the action undertaken.

Small protests will have no effect and will be meaningless. Organized mass events, when they occur, will draw the whole fiercely and brutally motivated National Security State apparatus down upon themselves. Americans, excepting those of our underclass who have felt it, have no experience with violent police or military repression. Those who commit peaceful civil disobedience, a first and innocent tactic of serious protest, will swiftly find out to their cost how it works. In a National Security State that has excised and eradicated all defensive laws and regulations intended to prevent abuse of the public, whatever the State does is legal. To such a pass have we in America come as a result of our long historic indoctrination in serving our financial elite, our Ruling Class.

To achieve any redemption for Americans, to make possible any more just, humane and life-honoring society, will require complete abandonment of the system of Predatory Capitalism. If offers no prospect of reform or improvement and we have all been witness to the idiocy of the so-called “democratic process” in action for generations now.

America is nearing the greatest crisis point in its history and the terrific cataclysm, when it happens, will determine the future our country is to have. If we cannot, in dominating numbers, rise to reject the heartless, mindless, soulless machine of Imperial Predatory Capitalism, we will be condemned to a fascistic command and control horror in which human beings are mere possessions of the State, units of production or service, and then perhaps not even that, as excess population in that brave, new world nay be eliminated.

That end is not inevitable. We are not lost. We are not even defeated because to this moment we have not engaged. We have not honored our responsibility as human beings. We have not risen to defend our humanity. We have let ourselves be ruled.

All around the world the thunder of vast and immeasurable discontent can be heard and felt. In Egypt and Spain, Jordan and Greece, Iraq and Sudan, Afghanistan and Ireland, Latin America, the Far East and Africa, the legitimate anger of humanity is expressing itself against the dead and killing hand of Predatory Capitalism and its agencies of violence. And here, in America, so long trapped and encapsulated, frozen like a fly in amber in a false religion of state idolatry, the anger is deep, widespread, and growing.

It is up to those who know and care to lead. As Thomas Paine said, “These are the times that try men’s souls.” Nothing is guaranteed us. That can’t matter. We cannot be concerned with odds or outcomes. We cannot let the Machine of Injustice grind on. We must oppose it with all the moral force we own. We must act with quiet courage to confront a vicious tyrannical system that is destroying the earth, its life, and its people. We must put our lives on the line to oppose it.

The Nightmare Machine of rapacious exploitation has overthrown humanity’s decency and reason and its bloody inhuman treason flourishes over us. This must be ended.

Let your life be a friction now to stop the Machine.

The Struggle For Leadership Within “Leaderless” Occupy

The current debate that has erupted within Occupy circles was built into this movement’s foundation. It has been sparked by much needed soul searching in the wake of a series of confrontations with the police, most notably in Oakland, that ended disastrously. It should be news to no one that the police easily put down these efforts with gut wrenching brutality. What is surprising is that many of the Occupy participants lead these events into an inevitable military confrontation with the police, as though they could rule the day without the necessary numbers, preparation, or moral authority in the eyes of the 99 percent. Whereas Occupy had previously gained wide support from Main Street, in part, because of their non-violent tactics that relied on collectively standing strong to resist police repression, these actions appeared to be led by a different program with different tactics and a different agenda.

These developments are taking place within the context of a shrinking number of Occupy participants and sympathizers. Occupy is still strong and holds great promise. Such ebbs are natural in the evolution of any movement. However, they also pose great dangers. In the resulting isolation, impatience can take hold and it becomes easier for a relatively few adventurists to dominate proceedings without the corrective of more Main Street participants. The more the movement becomes isolated, the more the participants’ feelings of moral superiority can surge unchecked, which in turn can justify engaging in more radical tactics while condemning the remaining 99 percent for their seeming apathy.

Occupy started out as a tiny effort. The original occupation at Zuccotti Park in New York City was mainly built by members of small left groupings, without any backing from larger organizations of the 99 percent, such as the unions. However, their targeting of Wall Street and their call for mass unity provided a broad-based messaging foundation to reach out to Main Street. Without this approach Occupy would never have blossomed into the Main Street movement it became. Hundreds of thousands of people went further than they ever expected they could go in taking direct political action, including, most significantly, the unions. The mass misery created by the great recession, including the rise in the inequality in wealth, the 1percent’s hijacking of any democratic process that even appeared to provide a voice to the 99 percent, the lack of any serious political response to the loss of jobs, the cuts in education and social services while the banks got bailed out, became the talk of the day. However, even with this transformation, many in the activist core of Occupy had not yet shed the narrow political approaches and organizational prejudices that marked its birth. The contradictions of Occupy being both a marginal and Main Street movement are now re-emerging on a larger more urgent scale.

It is without doubt that the capitalist crisis is creating the conditions for a great social movement to emerge. What is at stake for Occupy is whether it will spearhead this development or be left as a predecessor of it that veered off into a dead end before realizing its promise.

The outcome will be determined by a political struggle for leadership within Occupy. Just because many within Occupy describe it as leaderless, does not make it so, even if leadership only amounts to calling a meeting, proposing an agenda for it, and suggesting a facilitator. Any social movement, any mass collective action, requires leaders, whether acknowledged or not. To counterpose leaders to the rank and file or mass of participants in movement building, as though both are not connected, is a bit like counterposing the front and back wheels of a bicycle, as though both are not necessary for the ride.

It is not difficult to see where this prejudice against leaders comes from. Both in the political arena, and within many of our own organizations, the 99 percent is for the most part dominated by unaccountable leaders who live apart from us and pursue policies against our interests. It is an easy jump to conclude that leadership, in itself, is to be avoided, that all movement building should be done on a strictly horizontal basis. This superficial thinking, however, could not be more harmful for doing what needs to be done to build a movement that can challenge the might of the economic oligarchy and both of their political parties.

What is needed is to build leadership structures where the leaders are under the firm democratic control of the rank and file and replaceable if need be. Maintaining that Occupy is leaderless only leaves its leaders invisible, unaccountable and no matter how well intended, free to push a course that will isolate the movement. Likewise, to argue for rank and file leadership within the unions, as opposed to rank and file control of the leadership, leaves the most conservative bureaucratic elements untouched, unthreatened, and free to do what they want.

Consequently, if the current debates within Occupy are not to result in a further fracturing of the movement, an accountable and transparent leadership should emerge. This leadership should be judged on its ability to create the widest possible unity among all working class and grass roots organizations, not simply build Occupy apart from them. In addition, this unity in action should be built independently of the Democrats and Republicans. While it would be folly for Occupy to insist on organizations such as the unions to break from supporting the Democrats as a precondition for uniting on the issues that are most important to the 99 percent, Occupy must insist on its own independence. In doing so, it will be demonstrating to the unions that more can be accomplished by building a social movement than building an electoral campaign for allegedly worker-friendly Wall Street politicians.

Too many within Occupy fret over being co-opted by the unions. And there are grounds for being cautious. For example, Robert Master, the Northeast political director for the Communications Workers of America, described Labor’s attraction to Occupy in these terms: “I think there are going to be tremendous opportunities for labor and the Occupy movement to work together,” Mr. Master said. “We have different roles— as labor we are much more embedded in mainstream politics. But we understand that without the pressure of more radical direct-action tactics, the debate in this country won’t change substantially.” In other words, labor wants to have a foot in both camps: in the Democratic Party which is controlled above all by the 1 percent and in Occupy, which is trying to defend the 99 percent. Contradictions are unavoidable.
Nevertheless, in the immediate present the greater danger is that Occupy will fail to maintain and increase the support it has gathered from Labor by prioritizing its own organizational interests at the expense of unity.

Occupy’s tactics must be guided by the strategic understanding that, in order to effectively pursue fundamental change, the vast majority of the 99 percent must be united. Therefore, any actions taken must be able to garner the sympathy, if not active support, of most working class people. Small-scale confrontations with, for instance, the police, are counterproductive if they do not have this support. No matter how “militant” appearing, they are as far from revolutionary as shifting into reverse gear is from shifting into overdrive in a car.

Likewise, the demands that Occupy chooses to mobilize around must be capable of building the widest possible unity. If these demands do not correspond with the consciousness of the 99 percent, they will fall on deaf ears no matter how important they might be in the minds of those proposing them. In selecting demands, we must be willing to prioritize what is most immediately important to the vast majority of working people over our own individual opinions. The demands must articulate what people feel is most important but have not yet been able to articulate for themselves. At this point in time, arguing for explicitly anti-capitalist demands when most U.S. workers’ minds are on the need for good jobs, healthcare, taxing the rich, and keeping their homes, is a waste of time.

Currently, one of the obstacles impeding the participation of Main Street today is the process of decision-making. In most Occupy formations, a 90 percent yes vote is needed to pass anything. In addition, it only takes one person to block a vote. The hope behind these measures and others is to encourage the greatest sense of collective cohesion. The reality is, however, that they enable a minority to control proceedings — like what we are trying to fight against in our own “democracy” in the U.S. — and that they unnecessarily bog down the meetings. This does not build collective cohesion as much as it turns away participants. While it is often desirable to reach consensus, this should not be treated as a principle. One person, one vote, with a simple majority to pass proposals after a full and democratic discussion, should be the standard operating procedure.

In addition to this, there are many items discussed at the General Assemblies (GA) that would be better handled by leaving details to be worked out by an elected leadership body, which in turn can work out a proposal for a vote at the next GA.

Spring is approaching and there are high expectations that Occupy will be able to emerge all the stronger from its winter slumbers. It is hoped that this article will contribute towards this end.

The Left – “Useful Idiots” of the Rich

The Left, including the communists have generally served as the useful idiots of international capital … The Left, whether in its Fabian, communist or New Left  varieties has been appropriated by the system it is supposedly exposing.

A self-appointed elite that Huxley called the ‘World Controllers’ and Caroll Quiqley described as ‘an international network’ has for generations been intent on establishing a ‘World State’ (Huxley) or what David Rockefeller calls a ‘World Order’ and and what President George W. Bush and others …call the ‘New World Order.’

In more common parlance it is called ‘globalization’ but it is seldom understood in its wider ramifications, as set forth here, especially by the Left, whose activists support  aspects of the same globalization process: multiculturalism, feminism, marijuana liberalization, abortion rights, open borders, and feel-good causes in the name of democracy and ‘human rights,’  the results of which are further control by the global plutocracy.

The Left, including the communists have generally served as the useful idiots of international capital … The Left, whether in its Fabian, communist or New Left  varieties has been appropriated by the system it is supposedly exposing. A post- New Left has emerged since the dissolution of the Soviet Bloc, and takes the form of the so-called ‘color revolutions’ under the patronage of the Soros network, and others.

The strategy  used by the international oligarchy is the same as that more generally recognized as being a major element in Marxist doctrine; namely dialectics, the conflict of opposing forces that generates a synthesis. This dialecto method is something that Sutton realized when he was trying to understand why the oligarchy so often seems to be backing opposing ideologies, governments, and policies.

The Marxist dialecticians stated that history is engaged in a process towards world communism that would arise out of the conflict of capitalism and socialism. The oligarchs, on the other hand, apparently operate on the dialectical premise that what will result from their “controlled conflict” will be a socialist-capitalist synthesis which we might call the “World Collectivist State;”  a world order that will be Communistic in organization but run by oligarchs rather than commissars. Aaron Russo, after talking with Nick Rockefeller, alluded to this as “selling socialism as capitalism.”

Over the past few generations, the “crises scenarios” used by the oligarchs to sell or impose their plan of a World Collectivist State have included the problems of war, famine, overpopulation, disparity between the wealth of the so-called “North” and “South” , and in our present time “the war on terrorism” (perpetual conflict) and the threat of “global warming.”

In general, it can be stated that many of these problems are the direct result of the debt-finance, trade and economic system that is operated by the oligarchs. Now the oligarchs present themselves as the solvers of the problems of their own making. A global “pincer movement” of agitation from “below” (the “Left”)  and manipulation from “above” (the “oligarchs”) dialectically operates to shift the center of mass political gravity towards an acceptance of, if not support for, a World State to end the crises that have been created by our self-appointed “world saviors.”

—
This is the conclusion of “Revolution From Above” by Kerry Bolton published by Arktos.

Source:  Kerry Bolton | (henrymakow.com)

Decentralization Is The Only Plausible Economic Solution Left

When I first began the process of launching the Alternative Market Project, the idea and scope were rooted in analytical papers I had written years before on aspects of centralization versus decentralization, and globalization versus localization.  Back then, I saw these conflicting economic systems as mutually generative.  That is to say, the further we as a society are pushed towards collectivist or feudalist economic structures, the more we naturally or unconsciously gravitate towards independent and open markets.  The problem today is that independent markets have been artificially and quite deliberately removed from the public view.  As I have said in the past, centralization is a powerful tool for elitists, because it allows them to remove all choice from a system until the only options left to the people are those that the establishment desires.  Though we deeply long for free and vibrant trade unhindered by corporate oligarchy, we are told that such a thing does not exist, and that we must make due with the corrupt ramshackle economy we have been given.  I say, this is simply not so…

The great lie that drives the fiat global financial locomotive forward is the assumption that there is no other way of doing things.  Many in America believe that the U.S. dollar (a paper time-bomb ready to explode) is the only currency we have at our disposal.  Many believe that the corporate trickle down dynamic is the only practical method for creating jobs.  Numerous others have adopted the notion that global interdependency is a natural extension of “progress”, and that anyone who dares to contradict this fallacy is an “isolationist” or “extremist”.  Much of our culture has been conditioned to support and defend centralization as necessary and inevitable primarily because they have never lived under any other system.  Globalism has not made the world smaller; it has made our minds smaller.

By limiting choice, we limit ingenuity and imagination.  By narrowing focus, we lose sight of the much bigger picture.  This is the very purpose of the feudal framework; to erase individual and sovereign strength, stifle all new or honorable philosophies, and ensure the masses remain completely reliant on the establishment for their survival, forever tied to the rotting umbilical cord of a parasitic parent government.

Perhaps the only ray of sunshine to be seen through the storm clouds of the current economic crisis is the exposure of globalism as an inherently flawed methodology.  The ongoing implosion in the EU has reached a tipping point, as far as I am concerned, and the parade of absurdity involved in the unionization and “harmonization” of Europe is now center stage; its full frontal economic nudity under the hot white lights of the unforgiving financial microscope.

With the latest S&P downgrade of multiple EU nations, including France, Italy, Austria, and Spain, there can be no doubt that interdependency has led to ruin.  Despite French president Nicholas Sarkozy’s insistence that the S&P downgrade “changes nothing”, the fact is, the EU has just been dealt a death blow.  Higher borrowing costs tend to spark a violent cycle of credit decay in countries with extreme debt to GDP ratios.  Even if France slides through the barrage relatively unscathed, smaller peripheral countries orbiting the EU will not.  Greece, for instance, has just announced that talks surrounding the repayment of treasury bonds held by starry eyed investors have fallen apart:

http://www.usatoday.com/money/world/story/2012-01-13/greek-debt-talks/52530542/1

This means that instead of the 50% “haircut” which buyers of Greek debt were already facing, markets may instead be saddled with a full-on 100% default.

Other smaller EU nations that have been propped up by the flow of funds from the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) may soon be in for a surprise as well.  S&P has also announced a downgrade of the EFSF itself:

http://www.rferl.org/content/standard_poors_downgrades_eu_bailout_fund/24453842.html 

Only AAA rated countries have the ability to support the fund and its guarantees.  After the downgrades of France and Austria, the number of AAA rated countries in the EU has dwindled to four, led by Germany.  To be clear, Germany does not have the capacity to carry the EFSF and the bailouts of multiple nations upon its shoulders, leaving the fund to flounder, and eventually, self destruct.

The EU experiment is over.  It may take some time for the world to recognize it, but it has indeed failed.

Across the ocean, the situation has not improved.  The news of the European downgrade came right on the heals of an announcement by Barack Obama that the government must raise the U.S. national debt limit yet again, by no less than $1.2 Trillion!   Sadly, the negative effects of America’s own recent credit troubles have only been subdued by the more immediate turmoil in Europe.  It is simply a matter of time before attentions turn back to the frail American debt issue:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/13/us-usa-debt-obama-idUSTRE80B20P20120113

This debt limit increase should be viewed with quite a bit of vitriol by the American public, especially when one understands that a considerable amount of taxpayer dollars (the precise amount is still not fully known) went into bailout funds for the EU which are now in jeopardy of being derailed.  If American taxpayers are going to foot the bill for the corruption of banks and governments, then we might as well foot the bill here at home, however, because of the sick rationale of globalism and interdependency, we are instead paying for the corruption of banks and governments across the Atlantic while our traitorous president demands even more money to be swiftly misallocated.

Madness?  No.  This is not madness.  This is hardcore fraud, and economic subjugation.  This, my friends, is financial warfare, and right now, we are losing…

While some may applaud the fall of the EU as a victory, I would recommend looking a few moves ahead of the game to see where we are really going.  Yes, the EU is a perfect example of the feebleness of centralization, but it is also an expendable piece on the grand globalist chess board, just like the U.S. dollar.  Already, IMF mascots like Christine Lagarde and MSM pundits have begun suggesting that the EU is failing not because of centralization, but because the union is not centralized ENOUGH!  Only a few months ago, Angela Merkel of Germany obstructed the institution of EU Bonds because the move would collectivize the debts of EU members and remove elements of sovereign control.  I guarantee that policies of national sovereignty like those in Germany will soon become the scapegoat for collapse of Europe in the near future.

The purpose behind a European disaster is not to break up the EU, but to consolidate power even further.  Indeed, plans have already been suggested by centralists which involve a “reformation” of more powerful European nations into a tighter and more totalitarian framework.  The Council On Foreign Relations, a globalist think tank and political puppeteer group, of course agrees with this plan, and has promoted the concept on numerous occasions:

The Financial Times’ Wolfgang Münchau argues that the split of the eurozone from the larger EU was inevitable and essential. The summit demonstrated that a “monetary union cannot coexist with a group of permanent non-members in a unified legal framework,” he writes. For the eurozone to survive, the greater EU must be reconstituted or destroyed, Münchau explains. Indeed, Britain’s decision not to take part in the fiscal union is paving the way for a new Europe unhindered by half-hearted British engagement, says Der Spiegel’s Roland Nelles. He contends that Europe is “on the path towards becoming a federal country.” 

http://www.cfr.org/eu/new-fiscal-union-europe/p26731

As we have discussed many times over the years, the subversive and sometimes subtle debasement of the dollar is in fact a deliberate program designed by international financiers to force the American public to accept loss of sovereignty and centralize economic authority into the hands of an elite few.  The situation in Europe is no different in this regard.  Both cultures are being strong-armed through the removal of options and funneled into a waiting net like so much oblivious trout.  So, the question must be asked; how do we fight back?

Could a political groundswell be used to supplant corrupt leadership and stall the coming avalanche?  No.  Even with a clean sweep of all branches of government and the election of a presidential candidate with considerable economic insight (like Ron Paul), the damage has already been done.  Would a complete shutdown of the Federal Reserve and a repudiation of all debts accrued through its underhanded financial practices make a dent?  A good start, but still not enough.  What about a complete reversal of current spend and borrow practices by our government and a fast track plan for the reconstruction of America’s industrial base?  That would be great, but American industry took decades to dismantle, and it will take decades to rebuild, so again, no dice in the short to medium term.

The fact is, the U.S. is going to see some very hard economic years ahead, regardless of any top down political solution.  Those who are waiting and hoping for a knight in shining armor to ride into Washington D.C. and save them are going to be sorely disappointed.  Those who shrug off the threat of fiscal breakdown as a “long term” affair will likely find time quickly slipping away while they clamor for bureaucracy to finally work in their favor.  As a movement keenly aware of the threat at hand and the culprits behind it, the Liberty Movement should be doing far more than it is now to stem the tide, and that work begins with decentralization.

Decentralization is an activist strategy which does not rely on top down intervention, but instead, focuses on concrete bottom up community building and organization without the hindrances of traditional power structures.  In terms of economics, it means a complete break with the corrupt system and the institution of our own free markets.  This process is only as difficult as we make it for ourselves.

The essentials of an independent life are food, water, shelter, property, trade, and safety.  The means to attain these essentials have been relegated to instruments which central banks and other elitist entities administer and control.  However, that control is and always has been an illusion, an illusion we could walk away from anytime we wish.  This is done through localizing the production of essentials.  Changing the way we look at trade is the key.  A few simple rules, if followed in a determined fashion, make this change a reality:

1)  Provide Essentials For Yourself Whenever Possible: Some essentials can be covered even when you are alone.  If you have access to property, can grow your own food, and have water collection capability, then you are far ahead of the average American in many respects.  With modern technology, including space and energy saving methods, self sustainability is possible even in urban surroundings.  The goal here is to do for yourself whatever you can, whenever you can, making you less vulnerable to mainstream economic chaos.  The more insulated you are, the better equipped you will be to help build or participate in an alternative market.

2)  Network Or Die: Some essentials cannot be provided by one’s self.  Organization and networking in order to construct mutually beneficial trade groups is not only necessary, but inevitable in the face of economic collapse.  One way or another, every American who wishes to survive will one day have to get up off their couches, leave their houses, and begin working with other people.  Either they will see the wisdom in preempting collapse and start networking now, or, they will start networking after collapse out of desperation.  Better to start now, and save ourselves the heartache…

3)  Trade Skills, Not Dollars: Use paper currency while it still has some value, but simultaneously, wean yourself off of it through barter of goods and services.  See how many essentials you can fully provide without the use of dollars and without purchases through corporate chains.  Think of this as going financially “off-grid”.  What systems do you depend on that ultimately harm you?  How many of those systems can you decouple from now?  Private trade makes independent living attainable by localizing your means of procurement to your own two hands, instead of to a paycheck doled out by a corporation.

4)  Use Commodities, Dump Dollars: Precious metals are the only practical currency exchange available for broad use in a decentralized market.  Fiat coupons, digital currencies, sticks and shells, etc., will not work.  The inherent rarity of PM’s, combined with their tangibility, and inability to be artificially reproduced, makes them the ideal currency alternative to fiat.  Digital currencies, reliant on an internet which may not exist in the manner we know it today, are a tremendous waste of time.  Any trade dependent on a system outside of local control is not free trade.  Metals place true free trade, at a local level, within reach.  Even in a highly developed barter market, currency will play an important role, and PM’s should not be discounted.

5)  Become Your Own Industry: As decentralization takes root in a local economy, the need for jobs and for goods will not disappear.  In fact, it will become a priority.  Entrepreneurship will be the engine that drives any legitimate resurgence of the U.S. economy, but this business mindset will have to take on a localized focus.  I have heard it argued that America will never be able to rebuild if trade and industry are reduced to local efforts.  On the contrary, thousands of cities and counties acting at a local level to reintroduce micro-industrial economies would far surpass the limited and centralized bumblings of the corporate industrial framework.  The more insulated and self contained each community becomes, the stronger the whole of the country will be in the long term.  The next industrial revolution, if there ever is another, will come about through city, county, and state centric industries designed to feed the prosperity of the residents within those communities, instead of siphoning away wealth and diminishing available essentials as the modern corporate system is engineered to do.

6)  Internalize State Commerce: When enough citizens within each state finally wake up to the dangers of municipal default, federal encroachment on state lands and resources, and the weakness of interdependency on federal subsidies, they will begin to look for ways to plug the fiscal leaks they have ignored for so long.  Decentralization truly finds its home within the structure of the states, and the powers afforded them through the 10th Amendment.  At bottom, states have the ability legally as well as economically to become the ultimate decentralized systems, being that they are Constitutionally mandated to take such measures anyway.  Resource rich states will likely be the first to undertake decentralization in the midst of economic collapse.  Oil, minerals, farm capacity, timber, coal, etc, should be the solid ground upon which states and their citizens set foundation, and states should utilize these resources with the intent to enrich their citizens FIRST, through increased employment and local independent business incentives.  This would be a far cry from the corporate pirate ship plundering that goes on in states today, and far more financially sound.

While there are numerous concerns and great tribulations to be confronted and solved in our age of bedlam, from the rise of police states, to political treason, to expanding wars abroad, first and foremost, we must surmount the problem of economic collapse, or all else will be lost.  Economic collapse is the trigger by which all other tyranny is made viable.  It is the rationalization that will be used to convince the public that the loss of freedom is a “crucial tradeoff” for increased safety.  The more centralized we as a nation become, the more centralized the world becomes, the less likely we will be to weather the tidal wave of collapse.  The more decentralized we become, the more localized and independent our communities, the less we will be affected by destabilization, the more successful we will be as a people, the less rationalization the government will have to diminish our freedoms, and the greater leverage we will have if they try to diminish them anyway.

The path is clear; we decentralize, we localize, and we do it now, or, we lose our country, our cultural identity, and our legacy.  If all other options have been stolen away from us, then we must have the courage to create our own…

Source: Brandon Smith | Alt-Market

New Jersey Will Pay You $1000 To Destroy The 2nd Amendment

There is nothing more disgusting or detestable than a citizen informant.  Without citizen informants, tyrants could never retain the kind of power they wield.  In fact, without citizen informants, totalitarian movements would never gain traction.  This is why EVERY functional oligarchy throughout history has implemented programs designed to encourage the development of common spies, using the promise of monetary reward, or collective recognition.

Sadly, there are many in our society that would gladly sell out their closest friends and family to the tortures of authoritarian bureaucracy for nothing more than a firm pat on the head and a few fiat dollars.  If there was ever a more degraded lot of bottom feeding opportunist scum, the citizen informant is the very epitome.

With the implementation of the “See Something, Say Something” program, and the increasing drive by the White House to institute community watch efforts to route out “extremists”, showcased quite clearly in strategic outlines like the  ‘Empowering Local Partners To Prevent Violent Extremism In The United States’:

The issue of informant networking has come to the forefront in America.  My personal view is that these nauseating and diseased people should be treated as treasonous as any globalist, regardless of stated intention.  That said, in an environment rife with extraneous poverty, informancy cannot be avoided.  Plenty of men and women, stricken with empty wallets and bellies, are extraordinarily prone to betrayal, regardless of their inherent morality.  This is the kind of world we will soon be living in, and this is the kind of environment that corrupt officials like those in New Jersey are prone to exploit.  Pathetic, weak, cowardly, but ultimately dangerous sheep unknowingly serving the very men who would seek to enslave them.

In terms of 2nd Amendment rights, I find the very idea of debate rather pointless.  The logic is undeniable.  If you cannot defend yourself, you are a victim.  Period.  You become food for predators and parasites.  Any state government or national government which actively seeks to disarm its citizens is suspect.  I couldn’t care less about their stated rationalizations or rhetoric.  In New Jersey, in Chicago, in Washington D.C., or anywhere else for that matter, an innocent man who is disarmed by law will always be victimized by an outlaw who armed through criminality.  The concept of reduced crime through gun confiscation is so naïve it warrants considerable analysis.  Through such efforts, good men are left defenseless, while evil men are free to wreak havoc.

The 2nd Amendment is not a negotiable or debatable pillar of the Constitution.  It is absolute in its protection.  Every American, regardless of the temporary circumstances of the times, is free to arm and defend himself from ANY enemy, from average criminals, to government thugs.  The gun confiscation program featured in the video below, and instituted by officials in New Jersey, should not be taken lightly.  The pure idiocy inherent in its premise cannot be ignored.  New Jersey’s willingness to pay off potential informants could very well be a petri dish test for much more expansive programs across the country in the future.  If we cannot stop the corruption and anti-constitutionalism of a pathetic state like New Jersey, then how can we expect to disrupt the same brand of corruption throughout the U.S.?

Guns are simply not the issue.  An armed and educated populace is a populace safe from crime.  This is a fact.  New Jersey’s informant program is a travesty of justice, not only because it encourages American on American treason, but also because it ignores the very purpose behind the Second Amendment; to create a populace free from the fear of tyranny.  If we do not put an end to the anti-gun tides in New Jersey, we should fully expect to see such atrocities against freedom planted at our own front doors in the near future.  There are no exceptions to the Constitution.  New Jersey is not outside of its jurisdiction.  Every person in that state deserves the same protections as anyone else.  We must disrupt the sick and perverted no questions asked buy-off policies now prominent in that region, or be subject to the same in the near future.

Source: Brandon Smith | Alt-Market

Laughing In The Face of Goliath: The Virtue of Fighting Back

With the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act and all the malicious intent contained within its virulent pages, many in the Liberty Movement, once relegated as “extremists” in documents such as the MIAC Report and the Virginia Fusion Center white papers, now find themselves faced with the very real possibility of being targeted as “enemy combatants” in their own country and in their own front yards.  No longer is the fight between globalist and Constitutionalist obscured in the mire of cold war style information drilling and propaganda.  Today, it’s all out in the open, and it’s nothing to be taken lightly.  Unfortunately, however, an incessant belief remains amongst a large subsection of Americans, who assume that there is no need to act, or to choose sides.  Apathy and fear cling to our culture like manure to a new leather shoe.

In my years as an analyst and activist, I cannot possibly estimate how often I have heard cries of nihilism, futility, and submission.  The redirections and rationalizations used by naysayers and quivering weaklings at the onset of any social crisis always carry the taste of logic, but in those of us who have resolved to stand firm in our principles, such excuses elicit reactions of utter disgust.  There is nothing more distasteful to the courageous than being presented with a man who would sell his own soul (or the souls of others) for a few extra minutes of oxygen.

Life is inherently dangerous.  Always has been.  Always will be.  Regardless of the time or place in which we live, the threat of calamity is ever present.  American culture has strained every sinew and burst every blood vessel trying to wrap itself in a bubble of artificial safety…to no avail.  While we live, there is no permanent escape from struggle, beyond increasingly brief moments of calm.  At bottom, those who embrace the reality of danger and conflict, and who have the will to see it through, are the men and women who are most likely to make a difference in this world.  Those who run, hide, or easily surrender, matter little in the grand streams of history.  They become cannon fodder buried in the dreary dust bowl pages of abandoned encyclopedias, and nothing more.

As the preeminence of this cold hard truth dawns on us, we are faced with what amounts to a very simple choice, at least, in my mind.  Terror or valor.  Slavery or freedom.  Obedience or defiance.

The stature and vicious nature of our opponent appears overpowering, just like any other monster worth the effort to slay.  The greatest enemy of the citizenry, though, has never been the leviathans of establishment and oligarchy, but the apprehensions of the people themselves.  Let’s examine this concept more thoroughly by confronting the attitudes of some activists towards the very solutions that could save them and their country if they only had the guts to hold fast…

Organization

In the Liberty Movement, more than any other political and philosophical social shift I can think of, the process of practical organization has been ridiculously subdued.  The alarm that arises over the possibility of being added to multiple arbitrary lists of alphabet agencies from the FBI to the DHS has until recently inspired a sort of proactive paralysis.  In most situations, whether we like it or not, activism involves exposure, and risk.  Sorry folks, that’s just how it goes.  Frankly, if you are not on a government list somewhere, then you probably aren’t much of a threat, and therefore, need to try harder.

Solid organization does not necessarily require centralization or a top down command structure.  In fact, the more decentralized a group or network is, the more flexible and durable it becomes.  What is required, though, are common objectives and consistent leadership through example.  In a movement at odds with itself at the most basic level, the juggernaut of elitism rolls forward unimpeded across lands of ghosts and jello.

Without mutual aid, mutual defense, and synchronous strategies, individual proponents of Constitutional law and transparency will find themselves completely isolated from one another.  Faces in a crowd of destitute and hungry.  Ultimately, what the government does or does not do when it comes to categorizing our movement is not our concern.  Safe haven relocation, barter networking, open protest, neighborhood defense, will attract negative responses from elitists because these strategies WORK.  When faced with the potential of full spectrum national collapse and economic implosion, federal intervention or demonization becomes a rather puny concession in comparison.  Our very first concern should be that of local insulation and survival in the wake of financial Armageddon, not the chest beating of overconfident bureaucrats.

Protest

Protest, for the most part, has become a completely ineffective tactic for legitimate change, not because it is passé, but because the methods used today have not evolved for several decades.  Public demonstrations in modern times in the face of technically advanced media manipulations must assert a specific objective in order to be successful.  The objective could be as simple as refusing to move from a particular place despite the perceived consequences, or preventing an opponent from finishing a task.  Signs and slogans are meaningless compared to the act of drawing a line in the proverbial sand and denying the enemy access.  The problem is, many protest groups in these times are afraid to commit so completely too any redress of grievances.

A peaceful protest requires incredible courage, including the courage to get arrested, or to take a beating.  It demands an unwavering sense of urgency.  That which can be accomplished today MUST be accomplished today, or not at all.  There may not be an opportunity tomorrow.

A protest which melts and cowers in the wake of authoritarian violence will not affect an awakening or a repositioning of the system.  The first protest organization which is willing to take their stand against the elites all the way no matter what hell is unleashed upon them will garner the unerring respect of a majority of the nation and drive the methodology of liberty forward to the point of critical mass.  Only those who are willing to set their consciences and their principles above their own personal safety have the ability to accomplish this.

Political Steadfastness

While top down solutions to the problem of globalist corruption are slim at best, and economic destabilization is a certainty despite the success of any Constitutional candidate, there is still vital utility in political action on the part of the Liberty Movement.  Our brand of politics, however, can have nothing to do with the grandstanding baby kissing propaganda plays of traditional campaigns.  It must abandon the concepts of “moderation” and “bi-partisanship”; both disingenuous phrases that are often misapplied in order to steer public perception.  Our candidates, instead of consistently trying to placate special interest groups and the uninformed, must have the audacity to become totally uncompromising.

Limp-wristed and easily bought politicians are a dime a dozen.  Some of the public may still vote for them because they are ignorant of the false left/right paradigm, but most Americans, I believe, are irrevocably disenchanted with the never ending throng of establishment thespians posing as human beings with beating hearts.  There can be no room given to indecisive or dishonest candidates anymore.  This is why men like Ron Paul have attained so much support despite the ongoing and gleeful sabotage by the mainstream media; he refuses to be deterred, or to sacrifice his original position.  All Liberty Movement candidates should take a page from Paul’s campaign and learn well.  The message, the truth, is more important than winning the game.  Sacrifice the truth, and all subsequent victories become hollow.

Self Defense And Revolution

All predators seek first to hunt prey they think will offer the least amount of resistance.  From wolves to rapists, the meek make irresistible targets.  The point?  Make the predator pay hardily for his pursuit of you and he will think twice before trying again.

The size and strength of an attacker is irrelevant.  His technological superiority and logistical support are irrelevant.  His ferociousness and his veracity are irrelevant.  His numbers are irrelevant.  His lack of moral concern?  Still irrelevant.  In self defense, and in revolution, there is no choice but to stop the aggressor, no matter how long his shadow is cast.  One fights back, or one loses everything.  Period.

In rebellion, there is, of course, a right time and a right place.  Barreling forward like a brainless bull charging the deceptive red cape of the matador is not the way to win back one’s freedoms, but a great way to end up impaled by the weight of one’s own thoughtless force.  Respectively, resorting to random violence, or extraneous acts of revenge against current representatives, no matter how traitorous, would do nothing to alleviate the stresses of our country.  They are mere middle men.  Errand boys for corporate interests.  Sock puppets. They are not the root of the ailment, only a symptom.

If the conflict we are now caught up in reaches the point of no return, and all peaceful methods are exhausted, no citizen spy program, no black boot, no SWAT team, no remote controlled drone should be allowed to overwhelm the resolve of the people.  No one ever said that keeping a free Republic would be easy, but it is, indeed, crucial.

The Wages Of Fear

Being afraid, and living in fear, are two entirely different states of being.  If they are honest, all people will admit they suffer from some measure of uncertainty.  The most impressive of all heroes endure this uncertainty and take action in spite of it.  That is to say, they do not allow themselves to be ruled by it.  Nor do they shirk this responsibility as a lost cause.  Cynicism in the wake of adversity is a familiar disguise for cowardice.

When faced with a menacing giant of mythological proportions, the light footed warrior is not without recourse.  There is no such thing as an invincible enemy.  There is no such thing as an insurmountable obstacle.  In all battle, whether combatants wield ideas or arms, human will is the most important determinant.  The side with the deepest and most sincere internal relationship with its own principles will have an advantage that goes far beyond any military industrial edifice.  Missiles cannot kill honor, or the growing sense of awareness that it inspires.

In the end, true activists for liberty understand that no one lives forever, but legacy is eternal.  What we leave behind here now should be more than footsteps and gravestones.  What we build for the future should be more than structures of wood and stone cutting tall in the fog of distant and terrible fires.  What we have been given, is an infinitely rare opportunity; to defend not only ourselves and our families, but the prosperity of many generations to come.  This challenge is at once startling, horrifying, and in some ways, beautiful.  And, as much as I sometimes dread the dark days ahead of us, I cannot in all honesty think of another moment in history that I would rather be alive.  We have been given a chance to sever the chains of global elitism; perhaps the most overwhelming tyranny of our age, or any other age, and start anew.  When one comes to this realization, walking away or giving in seems like a laughable proposal.

At the edge of this fantastic tempest, we make camp, we warm our hands patiently by the fire, we remain vigilant, and when the time comes, we will not be moved…

Source: Brandon Smith | Alt-Market

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