8 Facts About American Inequality

“…that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”

– James Truslow Adams, The Epic of America (1931)

The American Dream has been defined many ways by writers of both poetic and prosaic bent, but its essentials tend to involve life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (or property, depending on your source).

The Declaration of Independence, upon which an entire nation was radically brought into existence, asserts that not only are all men created equal but that this is a “self-evident” truth. By this “unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,” a contract was agreed to, that their union would be founded on this principle. Thus, America was endowed with its dream at the moment of its conception: the freedom to succeed.

The United States has promoted a self-congratulating exceptionalism for decades, waving its Declaration and Constitution in the faces of other sovereign nations as if the latter had never considered such concepts. Our capital F “Freedom” sets us apart from the rest of the world, as the political rhetoric has repeated ad nauseam, no matter the freedoms enjoyed by democracies on almost every continent. And yet our basic freedom, the freedom to succeed, America’s contractual promise, has been shrinking for thirty years.

The freedom to succeed transcends economic systems but it is most potently expressed by capitalist gains. The ability to go “from rags to riches” is ingrained in this nation’s ethos and there is nothing intrinsically immoral about that goal. However, the current state of American inequality reveals a very real and expanding gap between the rich and poor that betrays the foundational endowment of this Union. When the freedom to succeed is denied every citizen, their equality is equally denied.

Recently, the Pew Research Center released a poll on what international citizens consider the greatest threat to the planet. Conducted between March 17 and June 5 of this year, the survey received answers from 48,643 respondents in 44 countries. In the U.S. and Europe, the growing gap between the rich and the poor was overwhelmingly considered the greatest danger to world prosperity. Over a quarter of Americans ranked “Inequality” as number one, above Religious & ethnic hatred, Pollution, Nuclear weapons and Infectious diseases.

This is hardly startling news considering that the median net worth of American households fell by 35 percent ($106,591 to $68,839) between 2005 and 2011, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. It is, however, disturbing that inequality remains so prevalent five years after the Great Recession.

Capitalism is not the problem. The problem is that we have let inequality advance in this country so gradually that its obviousness is masked by its familiarity. Below, I outline eight facts about inequality in America that every American should know.

1) 400 Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined. This ratio has been verified by Politifact and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich. To put it into context, last year the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that there were over 316 million people living in the United States. That means 400 Americans have more money than over 158 million of their fellow citizens. Their net worth is over$2 trillion, which is approximate to the Gross Domestic Product of Russia.

One explanation for the vast discrepancy in wealth is the definition of “worth,” which includes everything a person or household owns. This means savings and property but also mortgages, bills and debt. Poorer households can owe so much in debt that they possess a negative net worth.

2) America has the second-highest level of income inequality, after Chile. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development studies thirty-four developed countries and ranks them both before and after taxes and government transfers take effect (government transfers include Social Security, income tax credit and unemployment insurance). Before taxes and government transfers, America ranks tenth in income inequality. After taxes and transfers, it ranks second. Whereas its developed peers reduce inequality through government programs, the United States’ government exacerbates it.

3) The current state of inequality can be traced back to 1979. After the Stock Market Crash of 1929, the gap between the rich and the poor began to narrow. For fifty years, wages differed between the upper- and working-classes, but a robust middle-class took shape and there remained ample opportunity for working-class individuals to ascend.

In his book, “The Great Divergence,” journalist Timothy Noah traced today’s inequality to the beginning of the 1980s and the widening gap between the middle- and upper-classes. This gap was influenced by the following factors: the failure of American schools to prepare students for new technology; poor immigration policies that favor unskilled workers and drive down the price of already low-income labor; federally-mandated minimum wage that has failed to keep pace with inflation; and the decline of labor unions.

4) Non-union wages are also affected by the decline of unions. The Economic Policy Institute claims that 20 percent of the growth in the wage gap between high-school-educated and college-educated men can be attributed to deunionization.

Between 1978 and 2011, union representation for blue-collar and high-school educated workers declined by more than half. This has also diminished the “union wage effect,” whereby the existence of unions (more than 40 percent of blue-collar workers were union members in 1978) was enough to boost wages in non-union jobs – in high school graduates by as much as 8.2 percent. Not only did unions protect lower- and middle-class workers from unfair wages, they also established norms and practices that were then adopted by non-union employers. Two prime examples are employee pensions and healthcare.

Today, about 13 percent of workers belong to unions, which has reduced their bargaining power and influence.

5) There is less opportunity for intergenerational mobility. In December 2011, President Obama spoke at Osawatomie High School in Kansas. He was very clear about the prospects of the poor in today’s United States:

“[O]ver the last few decades, the rungs on the ladder of opportunity have grown farther and farther apart, and the middle class has shrunk. You know, a few years after World War II, a child who was born into poverty had a slightly better than 50-50 chance of becoming middle class as an adult. By 1980, that chance had fallen to around 40 percent. And if the trend of rising inequality over the last few decades continues, it’s estimated that a child born today will only have a one-in-three chance of making it to the middle class – 33 percent.”

As refreshing as that honesty is, Obama promised no fix beyond $1 trillion in spending cuts and a need to work toward an “innovation economy.”

In a speech one month later, Obama’s Chairman of Economic Advisers, Alan Krueger, elaborated on the dire state of America’s shrinking middle-class. The contraction, he stated, could partially be attributed to “skill-biased technical change”: work activities that have become automated over time, reducing the need for unskilled labor and favoring those with analytical training. He also highlighted the 50 year decline in tax rates for the top 0.1 percent, increased competition from overseas workers, and a lack of educational equality for children. Poor children are denied the private tutors, college prep and business network of family and friends available to their wealthier peers, which locks them into the class they are born into.

6) Tax cuts to the wealthiest have not improved the economy or created more jobs. Krueger also revealed that the tax cuts of the 2000s for top earners did not improve the economy any better than they did in the 1990s (meanwhile, income growth was stronger for lower- and middle-class families in the 1990s than in the last forty years).

Tax rates for the top income earners in America peaked in 1945 at 66.4 percent. Following decades of gradual reductions, they have since been cut in half. During the same time, the payroll tax has increased since the 1950s and individual income tax has bounced between 40-50 percent through the present day. Conversely, corporate tax declined from above 30 percent in the 1950s to under 10 percent in 2011.

All of these tax cuts are made ostensibly to improve the economy and create jobs. However, the National Bureau of Economic Research has concluded that it is young companies, “regardless of their size,” that are the real job creators in America. Tax cuts to the wealthiest do not create jobs.

7) Incomes for the top 1% have increased (but the top 0.01% make even more). Between 1979 and 2007, the average incomes of the 1 percent increased 241 percent. Compare that to 19 percent growth for the middle fifth of America and 11 percent for the bottom fifth. Put another way, in 1980 the average American CEO earned forty-two times as much as his average worker. In 2001, he earned 531 times as much.

Average income across the 1 percent is actually stratified into widely disparate echelons. Compare the $29,840 average income for the bottom 90 percent to the $161,139 of the top 10 percent. Compare the $1 million average income of the top 1 percent to the $2.8 million of the top 0.1 percent. Yet both still pale beside the $23 million average income of the top 0.01 percent.

If those numbers seem a bit overwhelming, Politizane has created a video that illustrates this staggering inequality:

8) The majority of Congress does not feel your pain. Empowered by the Constitution to represent their constituents, United States Congress members are, for the first time in history, mostly millionaires. The 2012 financial disclosure information of the 534 current Congress men and women reveals that over half of them have a net worth of $1 million or more.

After the past seven facts it is difficult to read this last one and believe that these 268 legislators have the best interests of the remaining 99 percent at heart. But if that is too presumptuous a leap, it is not too bold to say that wealthier donors, lobbyists and special interest groups enjoy greater access to these lawmakers than the average American.

In January, Congress failed to extend emergency benefits for unemployment, leaving 1.3 million people without federal aid. Congress then went on a weeklong recess that kept them from debating the issue until the end of the month. The bill was too divisive for Republicans and Democrats to reach an agreement on, though unemployment was then above 7 percent nationally.

Thankfully, the unemployed have their Congress working for them. And at $174,000 annual pay, those representatives are sure to return from their vacations committed to fresh solutions.

The Islamist State

You can’t believe a word the United States or its mainstream media say about the current conflict involving The Islamic State (ISIS).

You can’t believe a word France or the United Kingdom say about ISIS.

You can’t believe a word Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan, or the United Arab Emirates say about ISIS. Can you say for sure which side of the conflict any of these mideast countries actually finances, arms, or trains, if in fact it’s only one side? Why do they allow their angry young men to join Islamic extremists? Why has NATO-member Turkey allowed so many Islamic extremists to cross into Syria? Is Turkey more concerned with wiping out the Islamic State or the Kurds under siege by ISIS? Are these countries, or the Western powers, more concerned with overthrowing ISIS or overthrowing the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad?

You can’t believe the so-called “moderate” Syrian rebels. You can’t even believe that they are moderate. They have their hands in everything, and everyone has their hands in them.

Iran, Hezbollah and Syria have been fighting ISIS or its precursors for years, but the United States refuses to join forces with any of these entities in the struggle. Nor does Washington impose sanctions on any country for supporting ISIS as it quickly did against Russia for its alleged role in Ukraine.

The groundwork for this awful mess of political and religious horrors sweeping through the Middle East was laid – laid deeply – by the United States during 35 years (1979-2014) of overthrowing the secular governments of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. (Adding to the mess in the same period we should not forget the US endlessly bombing Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.) You cannot destroy modern, relatively developed and educated societies, ripping apart the social, political, economic and legal fabric, torturing thousands, killing millions, and expect civilization and human decency to survive.

Particularly crucial in this groundwork was the US decision to essentially throw 400,000 Iraqis with military training, including a full officer corps, out onto the streets of its cities, jobless. It was a formula for creating an insurgency. Humiliated and embittered, some of those men would later join various resistance groups operating against the American military occupation. It’s safe to say that the majority of armored vehicles, weapons, ammunition, and explosives taking lives every minute in the Middle East are stamped “Made in USA”.

And all of Washington’s horses, all of Washington’s men, cannot put this world back together again. The world now knows these places as “failed states”.

Meanwhile, the United States bombs Syria daily, ostensibly because the US is at war with ISIS, but at the same time seriously damaging the oil capacity of the country (a third of the Syrian government’s budget), the government’s military capabilities, its infrastructure, even its granaries, taking countless innocent lives, destroying ancient sites; all making the recovery of an Assad-led Syria, or any Syria, highly unlikely. Washington is undoubtedly looking for ways to devastate Iran as well under the cover of fighting ISIS.

Nothing good can be said about this whole beastly situation. All the options are awful. All the participants, on all sides, are very suspect, if not criminally insane. It may be the end of the world. To which I say … Good riddance. Nice try, humans; in fact, GREAT TRY … but good riddance. ISIS … Ebola … Climate Change … nuclear radiation … The Empire … Which one will do us in first? … Have a nice day.

Is the world actually so much more evil and scary today than it was in the 1950s of my upbringing, for which I grow more nostalgic with each new horror? Or is it that the horrors of today are so much better reported, as we swim in a sea of news and videos?

After seeing several ISIS videos on the Internet, filled with the most disgusting scenes, particularly against women, my thought is this: Give them their own country; everyone who’s in that place now who wants to leave, will be helped to do so; everyone from all over the world who wants to go there will be helped to get there. Once they’re there, they can all do whatever they want, but they can’t leave without going through a rigorous interview at a neighboring border to ascertain whether they’ve recovered their attachment to humanity. However, since very few women, presumably, would go there, the country would not last very long.

The Berlin Wall – Another Cold War Myth

November 9 will mark the 25th anniversary of the tearing down of the Berlin Wall. The extravagant hoopla began months ago in Berlin. In the United States we can expect all the Cold War clichés about The Free World vs. Communist Tyranny to be trotted out and the simple tale of how the wall came to be will be repeated: In 1961, the East Berlin communists built a wall to keep their oppressed citizens from escaping to West Berlin and freedom. Why? Because commies don’t like people to be free, to learn the “truth”. What other reason could there have been?

First of all, before the wall went up in 1961 thousands of East Germans had been commuting to the West for jobs each day and then returning to the East in the evening; many others went back and forth for shopping or other reasons. So they were clearly not being held in the East against their will. Why then was the wall built? There were two major reasons:

1) The West was bedeviling the East with a vigorous campaign of recruiting East German professionals and skilled workers, who had been educated at the expense of the Communist government. This eventually led to a serious labor and production crisis in the East. As one indication of this, the New York Times reported in 1963: “West Berlin suffered economically from the wall by the loss of about 60,000 skilled workmen who had commuted daily from their homes in East Berlin to their places of work in West Berlin.”

It should be noted that in 1999, USA Today reported: “When the Berlin Wall crumbled [1989], East Germans imagined a life of freedom where consumer goods were abundant and hardships would fade. Ten years later, a remarkable 51% say they were happier with communism.” Earlier polls would likely have shown even more than 51% expressing such a sentiment, for in the ten years many of those who remembered life in East Germany with some fondness had passed away; although even 10 years later, in 2009, the Washington Post could report: “Westerners [in Berlin] say they are fed up with the tendency of their eastern counterparts to wax nostalgic about communist times.”

It was in the post-unification period that a new Russian and eastern Europe proverb was born: “Everything the Communists said about Communism was a lie, but everything they said about capitalism turned out to be the truth.”

It should be further noted that the division of Germany into two states in 1949 – setting the stage for 40 years of Cold War hostility – was an American decision, not a Soviet one.

2) During the 1950s, American coldwarriors in West Germany instituted a crude campaign of sabotage and subversion against East Germany designed to throw that country’s economic and administrative machinery out of gear. The CIA and other US intelligence and military services recruited, equipped, trained and financed German activist groups and individuals, of West and East, to carry out actions which ran the spectrum from juvenile delinquency to terrorism; anything to make life difficult for the East German people and weaken their support of the government; anything to make the commies look bad.

It was a remarkable undertaking. The United States and its agents used explosives, arson, short circuiting, and other methods to damage power stations, shipyards, canals, docks, public buildings, gas stations, public transportation, bridges, etc; they derailed freight trains, seriously injuring workers; burned 12 cars of a freight train and destroyed air pressure hoses of others; used acids to damage vital factory machinery; put sand in the turbine of a factory, bringing it to a standstill; set fire to a tile-producing factory; promoted work slow-downs in factories; killed 7,000 cows of a co-operative dairy through poisoning; added soap to powdered milk destined for East German schools; were in possession, when arrested, of a large quantity of the poison cantharidin with which it was planned to produce poisoned cigarettes to kill leading East Germans; set off stink bombs to disrupt political meetings; attempted to disrupt the World Youth Festival in East Berlin by sending out forged invitations, false promises of free bed and board, false notices of cancellations, etc.; carried out attacks on participants with explosives, firebombs, and tire-puncturing equipment; forged and distributed large quantities of food ration cards to cause confusion, shortages and resentment; sent out forged tax notices and other government directives and documents to foster disorganization and inefficiency within industry and unions … all this and much more.

The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, of Washington, DC, conservative coldwarriors, in one of their Cold War International History Project Working Papers (#58, p.9) states: “The open border in Berlin exposed the GDR [East Germany] to massive espionage and subversion and, as the two documents in the appendices show, its closure gave the Communist state greater security.”

Throughout the 1950s, the East Germans and the Soviet Union repeatedly lodged complaints with the Soviets’ erstwhile allies in the West and with the United Nations about specific sabotage and espionage activities and called for the closure of the offices in West Germany they claimed were responsible, and for which they provided names and addresses. Their complaints fell on deaf ears. Inevitably, the East Germans began to tighten up entry into the country from the West, leading eventually to the infamous wall. However, even after the wall was built there was regular, albeit limited, legal emigration from east to west. In 1984, for example, East Germany allowed 40,000 people to leave. In 1985, East German newspapers claimed that more than 20,000 former citizens who had settled in the West wanted to return home after becoming disillusioned with the capitalist system. The West German government said that 14,300 East Germans had gone back over the previous 10 years.

Let’s also not forget that while East Germany completely denazified, in West Germany for more than a decade after the war, the highest government positions in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches contained numerous former and “former” Nazis.

Finally, it must be remembered, that Eastern Europe became communist because Hitler, with the approval of the West, used it as a highway to reach the Soviet Union to wipe out Bolshevism forever, and that the Russians in World War I and II, lost about 40 million people because the West had used this highway to invade Russia. It should not be surprising that after World War II the Soviet Union was determined to close down the highway.

For an additional and very interesting view of the Berlin Wall anniversary, see the article “Humpty Dumpty and the Fall of Berlin’s Wall” by Victor Grossman. Grossman (née Steve Wechsler) fled the US Army in Germany under pressure from McCarthy-era threats and became a journalist and author during his years in the (East) German Democratic Republic. He still lives in Berlin and mails out his “Berlin Bulletin” on German developments on an irregular basis. You can subscribe to it at. His autobiography: “Crossing the River: a Memoir of the American Left, the Cold War and Life in East Germany” was published by University of Massachusetts Press. He claims to be the only person in the world with diplomas from both Harvard University and Karl Marx University in Leipzig.

Al Franken, the liberal’s darling

I receive a continuous stream of emails from “progressive” organizations asking me to vote for Senator Franken or contribute to his re-election campaign this November, and I don’t even live in Minnesota. Even if I could vote for him, I wouldn’t. No one who was a supporter of the war in Iraq will get my vote unless they unequivocally renounce that support. And I don’t mean renounce it like Hillary Clinton’s nonsense about not having known enough.

Franken, the former Saturday Night Live comedian, would like you to believe that he’s been against the war in Iraq since it began. But he went to Iraq at least four times to entertain the troops. Does that make sense? Why does the military bring entertainers to soldiers? To lift the soldiers’ spirits of course. And why does the military want to lift the soldiers’ spirits? Because a happier soldier does his job better. And what is the soldier’s job? All the charming war crimes and human-rights violations that I and others have documented in great detail for many years. Doesn’t Franken know what American soldiers do for a living?

A year after the US invasion in 2003, Franken criticized the Bush administration because they “failed to send enough troops to do the job right.” What “job” did the man think the troops were sent to do that had not been performed to his standards because of lack of manpower? Did he want them to be more efficient at killing Iraqis who resisted the occupation? The volunteer American troops in Iraq did not even have the defense of having been drafted against their wishes.

Franken has been lifting soldiers’ spirits for a long time. In 2009 he was honored by the United Service Organization (USO) for his ten years of entertaining troops abroad. That includes Kosovo in 1999, as imperialist an occupation as you’ll want to see. He called his USO experience “one of the best things I’ve ever done.” Franken has also spoken at West Point (2005), encouraging the next generation of imperialist warriors. Is this a man to challenge the militarization of America at home and abroad? No more so than Barack Obama.

Tom Hayden wrote this about Franken in 2005 when Franken had a regular program on the Air America radio network: “Is anyone else disappointed with Al Franken’s daily defense of the continued war in Iraq? Not Bush’s version of the war, because that would undermine Air America’s laudable purpose of rallying an anti-Bush audience. But, well, Kerry’s version of the war, one that can be better managed and won, somehow with better body armor and fewer torture cells.”

While in Iraq to entertain the troops, Franken declared that the Bush administration “blew the diplomacy so we didn’t have a real coalition,” then failed to send enough troops to do the job right. “Out of sheer hubris, they have put the lives of these guys in jeopardy.”

Franken was implying that if the United States had been more successful in bribing and threatening other countries to lend their name to the coalition fighting the war in Iraq the United States would have had a better chance of WINNING the war.

Is this the sentiment of someone opposed to the war? Or in support of it? It is the mind of an American liberal in all its beautiful mushiness.

Notes

1. Derived from William Astore, “Investing in Junk Armies”, TomDispatch, October 14, 2014
2. New York Times, June 27, 1963, p.12
3. USA Today, October 11, 1999, p.1
4. Washington Post, May 12, 2009; see a similar story November 5, 2009
5. Carolyn Eisenberg, “Drawing the Line: The American Decision to Divide Germany, 1944-1949” (1996); or see a concise review of this book by Kai Bird in The Nation, December 16, 1996
6. See William Blum, “Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II”, p.400, note 8, for a list of sources for the details of the sabotage and subversion.
7. The Guardian (London), March 7, 1985
8. Washington Post, February 16, 2004
9. Star Tribune, Minneapolis, March 26, 2009
10. Huffington Post, June 2005
11. Washington Post, February 16, 2004

The Power Barons: Humanism’s Deities

A recent study by Harvard Business School found that United States corporate executives make over 300 times as much as the average worker.  Based on a $30,000 annual worker income and a 40 hour week the CEO gets $4326.00 an hour while the worker gets $14.42.

In the mid-thirties during the depth of a serious depression executives at General Motors were making 200 times as much as their workers. It was this disparity that helped set the stage for a power shift from the corporate moguls to John L .Lewis  and his CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations).  John L. Lewis and hundreds of thousands of disgruntled workers succeeded in forcing well-armed and well connected corporate executives to allow collective bargaining which ultimately unionized large portions of the U. S work force.

It was a struggle of epic proportions that bared the fangs of the power elite against the will and leadership of the workers.  It began at the Chevrolet Body Plant in Cleveland, Ohio and spread to Flint, Michigan then to Atlanta, Kansas City, Pontiac, and finally to Detroit itself.  Nearly half a million workers were involved.  At Flint they staged a sit in where the workers sat at their stations day and night.  Machine guns were brought in.  The courts got involved. Finally an injunction was issued.

The strike began on December 28, 1936.  The edict ordered prison sentences and million dollar fines if the strike was not stopped by February 3rd.  Governor Frank Murphy of Michigan called out the National Guard who along with strike breakers armed with clubs and crowbars surround the Flint Plant.

According to William Manchester’s account in “The Glory and the Dream” Governor Murphy was ready to send the bayonets of the National Guard against the workers when at the last moment he called John L. Lewis asking what he should do. Lewis replied, “You want my answer, sir?  I shall personally enter General Motors Chevrolet Plant Number Four.  I shall order the men to disregard your order, to stand fast.  I shall walk up to the largest window in the plant, open it, divest myself of my outer raiment, remove my shirt and bare my bosom.  Then when you order your troops to fire, mine will be the first breast that those bullets will strike.  And as my body falls to the ground, you will listen to the voice of your grandfather as he whispers in your ear, ‘Frank, are you sure you are doing the right thing?’” (Murphy’s grandfather had been hanged in an Irish uprising.)

Fourteen strikers were wounded during the night but Murphy backed down and finally ordered GM not to prevent the strikers from carrying food to the sitting strikers.  With President Roosevelt silent and Governor Murphy aiding the strikers the corporate elites succumbed, signing contracts for collective bargaining.  Unionization spread rapidly into other big corporations.

Globalization was anathema to union workers.  When the rape of United States markets was set in place by our elected officials through ratification of international trade legislation a great burden was placed on unions.  The rush to be competitive in world markets was diametrical to unionism.

Justice is a prerequisite to peace.  When human power is concentrated and not prescribed ghastly actions often result.  God’s overarching legal system provides perfect justice and a necessary restraint; when it is cast off the power swings that marked unions and management replace it.

In our time a more insidious power structure threatens our well-being. For at least a century a systematic plan has been in place to bring the nations of the world under international law.  Nation after nation has been subverted by monstrous, opaque centralized power.  Every major nation of the Western world has been subjected to stealth control. Debt is the weapon.  Since Islam forbids most debt, Muslim nations are harder to conquer.   Military force is necessary and the United States is being used as an instrument of conquest.

Corporate mergers have created behemoths that have little competition and are tyrannical in their own rite. The furtive power seekers are not planning a free society.  Their vision appears to be a controlled environment similar to China.  As economic pressure drains wealth from the United States and oppression ramps up, our standard of living falls, eventually bringing us to par with third world labor.  It is like a 007 movie where James Bond has accepted a bribe to join Blofeld.

Globalization is marred by the illegal procedures used to bring it about.  Wealthy and powerful men and women conspired to burglarize, undermine, and tyrannize the entire population of the world. Their methods are bribery and intimidation and the results of their evil intentions are apparent around the globe.

One wonders if an honest, forthright free-will proposition had been presented to the people of Western Civilization they might have voluntarily participated in bringing the Far Eastern Nations into their economic circle and endorsed an international legal code that would guide global trade.  Conspiracies are sometimes successful but they are wicked and harsh.

Recently, the National Press Club between Bruce Fein, a Ron Paul adviser and resident scholar at the Turkish Coalition of America, and John Yoo,  a wily Korean born Constitutional Lawyer and prominent Bush II adviser. C-Span carried the debate.  Yoo maintained that the increase in the power of the Executive Branch of our government was a result of congressional acquiescence and Fein maintained that it is up to the people to elect officials that will abide by the Constitution.

The contending positons were logical and convincing but as with all of public discourse the core issues were evaded.  No one mentioned the fact the incumbent elected official have the political clout to codify unconstitutional and tyrannical law while continuing to garner enough votes to stay in office.  Yoo claimed that congressional leaders are regularly consulted on Executive Orders and other major closed sessions; no one mentioned that this plotting is inimical to the well-being and health of the nation.

Consider the repercussions if a nuclear bomb had been dropped on the city of Detroit!   Legislation passed by our elected officials has caused similar damage.  In a recent interview a Detroit official said that there are 80,000 derelict homes in the city. They are being demolished in a process that is similar to cleaning up after a major attack.  The destruction of this once great city is a result of the heretical actions of our own government and it has been done without as much as a whimper from our citizens.

Fein was right when he placed responsibility with the people but at this point the statement was mute for not only has the damage been done but our people are still inert and deluded. Because we have forsaken the Creator and cleaved to the creature our delusion has allowed us to sink so far into the quicksand that escape seems improbable.

Rousas Rushdoony writes “To control the god of any system is to control the men within it. The long battle between church and state has this fact at its roots.  Orthodox Christianity gives us a God who is beyond the control of church and state alike.  Hence the God of Scripture has been resented by civil governments, and attempts to subvert orthodox Christianity and its churches have been legion.  The church too often has been restless under so sovereign a God; churchmen too prefer a god who can be put into man’s pocket.”

The citizens of the United States of America worship humanistic gods.  Our deities are designed and controlled by human beings.  These gods, created in human minds, have been in place for most of United States history.

Now the chickens have come home to roost!

Human beings were not created to govern themselves and when the anarchy of human opinion gains leverage over society, absurdity, chaos, and tyranny soon follow.

In the Harvard survey U. S. citizens guessed that corporate executives were making about 30 times the average worker’s wage.   Citizens in other nations made similar errors in estimates.

It is readily apparent that the captain of the ship fills a more important role than a kitchen worker but to accurately measure and quantify that difference is difficult.

What is interesting, however, is that the U. S. tops the world in the size of its wage inequity.  Switzerland is 2nd and Germany is 3rd, both have disparities of about 150 times the average worker or half that of the U. S. Wage inequity is not the only area in which our nation excels:  We incarcerate the larger percentage of our citizens than any other nation in the world (including China and Russia); we have the world’s largest army.  We had the world’s largest economy before the power barons began to dismantle it.  We are probably the most violent nation.  Violence brought the United States independence, violence freed the slaves and preserved the nation, violence conquered the West, it was the instrument of land acquisition, and of efforts to subdue rebels.  Now it is being used to subdue the Muslim world.

When we are too lethargic to stop voting in elections that are rigged and too lazy to verify that our news is mostly propaganda and lies, we have no chance of helping to bring our profligate nation back under the sovereignty of the One True God.

God’s Law provides perfect justice.  Peace is impossible without justice.  When injustice becomes ingrained in a society that society comes under judgment and God’s judgment can be grueling.  If Bruce Fein’s charge to U. S. citizens ever finds fertile ground it must start with Christians.  Christians are required to be the light of the world.  Light reveals what darkness hides.  It is long past time for Christians to discern and reveal the evil that confronts us.

America, For Sale Cheap: $2 Billion Oughta Do It

With election time almost upon us, here’s a rather sobering thought:  By spending as little as a mere two billion dollars, anyone with that amount of money can now afford to buy an entire American election — Congress, the White House, governorships and all.

“But Jane,” you might ask, “why would anyone even want to do that?”  Why?  Just look at all the immense amount of loot you can score with just this tiny investment.  Access to national park land, bank deregulation, profits from weapons production, corporate monopoly status, pro-pollution laws, judges’ rulings in your favor…need I go on?

For instance, eleven trillion dollars has been recently spent on escalating and pursuing fake wars.  So if you “invest” in American elections and still only receive, say, just ten percent of those eleven trillion singles for your weapons-manufacturing services or whatever the heck else companies like Halliburton do, you still have just grown your measly two-billion-buck investment at least a thousand times over.  Forever War really pays off!

Or if you are guys like Obama, Bush and Cheney — and can’t resist playing with war toys?  Then you get to buy your very own wars!  Lots and lots of wars.  You get to play with actual life-sized GI Joe dolls and call yourself “Commander in Chief”.  You get to bomb Libya and Ukraine and Iraq and Syria.  What fun!  Two billion dollars can buy you a hecka lot of war toys — eleven trillion dollars worth to be exact.

“Who’s your daddy, ISIS?”

Or let’s say that your net worth is approximately 100 billion dollars, like, say, the Koch brothers’ worth is.  You spend less than three percent of that money on buying elections — and voila!  You too get over a thousand percent return on every dollar you spend.  What kind of crazy-good investment is that!

Or let’s say you are a member of the notorious WalMart family, worth hundreds of billions of dollars.  You spend just a few paltry billion on election buyouts — and suddenly us taxpayers are paying for all of your employees’ healthcare.  And we’re throwing food stamps into the bargain too.  Brilliant idea!

Or what if you own a giant coal company, oil company, car company, power company or some other major polluter?  Common sense tells us voters that we need to cut down on polluting the atmosphere so as to avoid drastic climate change that even now threatens to kill off the whole human race.

We could have been using solar power all this time for instance — and also cleaned up our rivers and even eliminated the need for fossil fuel.  But no.  For a few (billion) dollars more at election time, you can potentially doom the entire human race.  America, are we having fun yet?

Or let’s say for instance that you are AIPAC, that Israeli political action committee.  Spend just two billion dollars to buy every election in America — up to and including the dog catcher?  What a deal!  And since Israel is already receiving three billion dollars every year from America, guaranteed, voted by Congress, you don’t even have to risk using your own moolah.  You can use ours.  Fabulous investment. 

Plus you also get permission to bomb Gaza, take over the West Bank, design America’s stupid “Bomb Syria” policy, have red-carpet access to the entire Middle East (as in red carpets of blood) and get away with committing all kinds of other violations of the Nuremberg precedents and Geneva war crime conventions too.  

According to Middle East expert Paul Larudee, “Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu infamously bragged that ‘America is a thing you can move very easily’.”  Apparently all you need is just two billion bucks.   Hell, Attila the Hun never even had that kind of power.  Or even Josef Stalin.  All he ever got out his American investments was the freaking Cold War.

But don’t worry, Josef!  The Cold War is about to heat up again, thanks to AIPAC.  Hell, now AIPAC is even an unofficial member of NATO (and apparently its most influential member too).  And, as such, Israeli war hawks seem hell-bent on fomenting World War III.  Does the American public really want to go there?  I think not.

Or you could invest your capital in running America’s prison-industrial complex?  Just think of all the cheap labor you’ll get!  For much less than two billion in folding money, you don’t even have to ship your goods over from China any more.  Plus you get to have them stamped “Made in America” too.  Definitely a win-win for you.

Or what if you are Monsanto or Big Pharma or Bank of America or CitiCorp or Goldman Sachs or General Electric?  For far less than two billion dollars, you can get rid of unions, create your own monopolies, write your own “regulations”, appoint your own “regulators” and rake in the profits.  And if you are Big Media, our publicly-owned airwaves now belong to you.  Think Rupert Murdock.  Or net neutrality up in smoke.  Think AT&T.  Boo-yah!

Yep, America is for sale for really cheap these days.  The total assets of the United States of America is currently 188 trillion dollars.  And just think.  For just a mere two billion simoleons, all that can be yours!  Buy a little false advertizing, do a bit of voter-suppression, get your hands on a few electronic voting machines, tell a few lies on Fox News and CNN and, boom shake the room, you can own all of that.  All $188,000,000,000,000.00 worth.  “Worth playing for?”  Yeah.

My country these days has become like some aging cheap whore, selling herself on street corners to the first two-bit John who comes along and offers her a couple of dollars.

America these days isn’t even a high-priced call girl any more.

The Monopoly of the Government Education Cartel

Learning is a noble pursuit, but the ancient Greek text is one of the few places where the Socratic Method survives. Sanctioned political doctrine of required thinking is the mainstay in today’s august temples of purification. Forget about a classroom, the curriculum core of New Age studies has no room for the classics, much less instructions into the process of thinking itself. Except, of course for the need to electronically check off the loan applications and assign grants to the business office. In the end, university is big business and developing intelligent graduates happens as an afterthought, if at all.

College Education Economics has become a black hole for most students. Even wealthy families bear a heavy burden to ship their offspring to an experience that continually produces diminished cash flow benefits to offset the costs. Parents know there is a profound disconnect. However, when attempts for making significant changes to the way the higher learning cartel does business, the usual suspects ride to the rescue of the established order.

Jordan Weissmann in a Slate article, Smash the System?, slams Senator Mike Lee for proposing “A dangerous plan to make college cheaper by busting “the college cartel.” What else would you expect from a DC Metro and Associate Editor at The Atlantic? Nothing is more important than defending a failed system and attacking innovative ideas on how to re-create a viable and relevant education model. Quoting Mr. Weissmann,

“In January, Lee introduced legislation that would give states a major role in the accreditation process. The bill has nods of approval from potential presidential contenders Marco Rubio, who has his own proposal on the issue, and Paul Ryan, who dedicated a little-discussed section of his anti-poverty plan to “shaking up the accreditation status quo.”

The hope is that once Washington breaks the hold of today’s accrediting agencies, new, high-tech approaches to education can flourish.”

Nor dare challenge the sacred philistines of detached inculcation, might be a more appropriate title.

Over a year ago, the Washington Examiner looked at the Higher education is a government-created cartel and focused upon how the Federal Government exerts dominance over the accreditation process.

“The Department of Education has deputized eight regional accreditation entities that serve as gate keepers for the entire higher education industry. If you are not approved by one of the Department of Education approved eight regional accreditation agencies, then none of your students can qualify for Pell grants or federally subsidized student loans. With the federal government alone pumping almost $30 billion into higher education every year, if a school is not approved by a regional accreditor, it is essentially dead.”

Why is the issue and control of accreditation of such importance? Even the most naive believer in the ritual of dunking your sheep into the college culture wants to obtain some kind of gradation certification, in the end when the money runs out. Accordingly, the Federal Government uses their time test method of bribes and sanction to shape the kind of education expected from the degree mill. Inducements of low cost loans to the students and embargos to any institution of higher learning, who dares waver from the accepted low standards of fleecing enrollees.

Debating if it is worth the investment to jump through the hoops of perpetual financial indebtedness, for the implied promise that future earning power will be the reward has certainly come into doubt in the last few decades.

Going back twenty-five years, Professor Thomas J. DiLorenzo wrote the Americas OPEC: The Public School Cartel, which describes the monopoly of state and local public school districts. When he cites a case in point of how the public schools have been a cartel designed primarily to benefit the public school bureaucracy, not the public; he could substitute the corporate trust of allied Association of American Colleges and Universities in place of public schools. The primary difference is that government schools primarily operates for the benefit of teachers unions, while a federation of colleges and universities lobby for their own profit advantages in complete cooperation with the federal government.The parents and students are stuck with the bill, just as the property owner gets to pay their school tax. The only saving difference is that attending higher learning sessions are voluntary, if you have the courage to ignore all the guilt-ridden advertisement that pushes ill equipped and confused students into financial ruin, paying for overpriced and useless schooling.

The cartel of higher learning has infected the minds of “PC” conditioned meatheads. Government bureaucrats love pushing innocent adolescents into circumstance of useless education so the acclimation process adapts them to working their lives at minimum wage.

It is crucial to separate the academia component of an educational school with their financial planning and business operations. Courses vary in content and quality depending on the skills and dedication of the instructors. However, the fiscal stability and future expansion opportunities often depend upon perpetuating the myth of the indispensible necessity of becoming an alumnus.

More families become aware of this hoax and start searching for other alternatives. Teaching, once was the staple and primary purpose of renowned traditions, now are shifting towards research as reported in the UK, Universities putting research before teaching. Major US research institutions grow into closer associations with government projects and their accompanying budgets. Distinction between the gift of teaching falls short to the science of commercialization or defense.As long as the student loan bubble keeps expanding, the windbags in the liberal press will keep defending the inept higher education establishment. The true accreditation one seeks to learn comes from the success from your own learning experience, not from some, hand- picked government board that has a budget increase when additional student loans are booked.

If cartels are bad in business, they are even worse when run as a tag team effort between universities and government. Accreditation is a state matter and the federal government has no lawful authority to curtail competition in higher learning.

What Putin Knows

Putin Knows What Happened to MH17, But He’s Not Saying — Yet…

“We have repeatedly called on all parties to immediately stop the bloodshed and sit down at the negotiating table. We strongly believe that if military action in the East of Ukraine had not been renewed on the 28th of June, this tragedy wouldn’t have happened. However, no one has the right to use this tragedy to pursue their own political aims. Such events should unite and not divide people.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin, Official statement on the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight 17

“Lets be clear, both Russia and the US know what happened. They’d have to. Their intelligence and orbital systems saw it all…. They’d have to know.”

Omen 4, comments line Zero Hedge

Washington’s plan to “pivot” to Asia by establishing a beachhead in Ukraine and sabotaging trade relations between Europe and Russia, entered a new phase last Thursday when Malaysia Airlines flight 17 was shot down by a surface-to-air missile launched from east Ukraine. Since then, the western media and prominent members of the US political establishment have used the incident to attack Russia mercilessly and to hold Russian President Vladimir Putin personally responsible for the deaths of the 295 passengers.

On Sunday, the Obama administration launched its most impressive propaganda blitz to date, scheduling appearances for  US Secretary of State John Kerry  on all five Sunday morning talk shows where he made unsubstantiated claims that MH17 was shot down by Russia-backed rebels in east Ukraine.  According to Kerry, Russia has not only “supported, armed and trained” the separatists, but also provided them with the missile system (BUK) which was used to bring down the jetliner.

On CBS’s  “Face the Nation”, Kerry said:

“We know for certain that the separatists have a proficiency that they’ve gained by training from Russians as to how to use these sophisticated SA-11 systems….. there’s enormous amount of evidence, even more evidence than I just documented, that points to the involvement of Russia in providing these system, training the people on them.” (“Kerry Says Russia Trained Separatists to Use Antiaircraft Missiles”, New York Times)

Amazingly, Kerry’s claims don’t square with those of his boss, President Barack Obama who admitted on Friday that he didn’t know who shot down MH17 or why. He said, “I think it’s too early for us to be able to guess what intentions those who might have launched the surface-to-air missile might have had… In terms of identifying specifically what individual or group of individuals, you know, personnel ordered the strike, how it came about—those are things that I think are going to be subject to additional information that we’re going to be gathering.”

The fact that neither the contents of the black boxes or the cockpit recordings have yet been revealed didn’t deter Kerry from making accusations and possibly tainting the investigation. Nor did Kerry mention the fact that the Ukrainian military –who also had BUK missile systems in the area–may have mistakenly taken down the airliner. None of the five hosts challenged Kerry on any of his claims. He was able to provide the state’s view of the incident without challenge or debate, just as one would expect in a dictatorship where information is carefully monitored.

And Kerry didn’t stop there either. He went on to claim that Moscow had sent “a convoy several weeks ago of about 150 vehicles with armored personnel carriers, multiple rocket launchers, tanks, artillery, all of which crossed over from Russia into the eastern part of Ukraine and was turned over to the separatists.”

Needless to say, none of the major media or respective Intel agencies (who closely follow activities on the border) have uttered a word about Kerry’s phantom convoy. Without satellite imagery or some other proof, we must assume that Kerry’s claim is about as reliable as his bogus 4-page “White Paper” that pinned the use of sarin gas on the Syrian government, a charge that was designed to escalate US involvement in the Syrian war and–as journalist Robert Parry says, “spur President Obama into a quick decision to bomb Syrian government targets.”

It’s also worth noting that the journalist who co-authored Sunday’s piece on Kerry in the New York Times was none other than Michael R. Gordon. In 2002 Gordon co-wrote a piece about aluminum tubes with Judith Miller which was intended to scare readers “with images of mushroom clouds” into supporting the war in Iraq.   The story turned out to be complete baloney, but it helped to pave the way for the US invasion as it was intended to do.   Gordon escaped blame for the article, while the discredited  Miller was released.

Now the politicians and the media are at it again; trying to whip up war fever to get the public on board for another bloody intervention. Only this time, the target audience is not really the American people as much as it is Europeans. The real objective here, is to build support for additional economic sanctions as well as a deployment of NATO troops to Russia’s western border. Washington want to sabotage further economic integration between the EU and Russia so that it can control  the flow of vital resources to the EU, crash the Russian economy, and establish a tollbooth between the continents. It’s all part of Washington’s “pivot” strategy that is critical to maintaining global hegemony throughout the 21st century. This is from the NY Times:

“If investigators are able to confirm suspicions that the Malaysia Airlines jet was brought down by a surface-to-air missile fired by pro-Russian rebels who mistook it for a military aircraft, American officials expressed hope that the tragedy will underscore their case that Moscow has been violating Ukrainian sovereignty. While Mr. Obama imposed new sanctions on Russia just a day before, Europeans refused to adopt measures as stringent out of fear of jeopardizing their own economic ties….

The Obama administration already has additional sanctions prepared that could be put into effect quickly if Mr. Obama so chooses. “The question is does this finally move the Europeans across that threshold,” said a senior administration official, who insisted on anonymity to speak more candidly. “I don’t know, but how could it not?”

European officials were cautious in their initial reactions, seeking time and information before jumping to possible consequences, and were reluctant to assign blame. But most of the passengers were Europeans. The majority of them, 154 in all, were from the Netherlands, where the flight originated, which could increase pressure on European governments to respond….Some analysts said the disaster would invariably lead to a re-evaluation of Europe’s approach to Russia.

“Ultimately this is going to ratchet up pressure within Europe to do what they should have done a long time ago,” said John E. Herbst, a former American ambassador to Ukraine now at the Atlantic Council in Washington. “The strength of the opposition to firm steps remains strong, and so it’s not going to go away. It’s just that their position just took a serious hit and it should lead to a stronger set of European sanctions.”…

While Mr. Obama did not articulate such a position, his former secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, gave voice publicly to what administration officials were saying privately….“Europeans have to be the ones to take the lead on this. It was a flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur over European territory. There should be outrage in European capitals.”

Can you see what’s going on? Washington doesn’t care about the facts. What matters to Obama and Co. is getting the Europeans on board (“ratcheting up pressure within Europe”) so they can gin up the sanctions, shut off  Russian gas, deprive Putin of a vital source of revenue, and set up shop (NATO bases) in Eurasia.” Whether US Intel agencies were involved in the missile attack or not doesn’t change the fact that Washington clearly benefits from the tragedy.

Keep in mind, that the reason Putin hasn’t deployed Russian troops to stop the violence in east Ukraine is because the EU is his biggest trading partner and he doesn’t want to do anything that will put the kibosh on their business dealings.  Russia needs Europe just like Europe needs Russia. They’re a perfect fit, which is why Washington has concocted this goofy plan to throw a wrench in the works. It’s because Washington wants to be the Kingfish in Eurasia and control the continents’ resources as well as the growth of regional economies. To achieve that objective, they need to convince EU leaders and people that Putin is a reckless aggressor who can’t be trusted. That’s why Kiev has launched one provocation after another since the legitimate Ukrainian government (Viktor Yanukovych) was ousted in late February and replaced with by a US-backed junta government. Most of the provocations have gone unreported in the western media, although they have regularly involved violations of international law and crimes against humanity, like the use of incendiary “phosphorous” ordnance on June, 12 in Slavyansk,    or the bombing of a kindergarten in Slavyansk  or the deliberate bombing of hospitals in east Ukraine,  or the killing of journalists  or the firing of mortar rounds across the border into Russia  or the massacre at Odessa where 42 people were burned to death in a fire at the Trade Unions Building that was started by pro-junta hooligans and neo Nazis. None of these were reported in the western media where the coverage is tailored to advance the corporate-state agenda.

All of these incidents were concocted with one goal in mind; to provoke Putin into sending in the tanks thus providing the media with the opportunity to demonize him as the new Hitler. Putin has wisely avoided that trap deciding instead to work collaboratively with EU leaders Merkel and  Hollande to try to persuade Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko to stop the bombardment in the east and agree to an immediate ceasefire.

Poroshenko, however, who takes his orders from Washington, has refused to end the violence. In fact, on Monday the “chocolate king” launched a massive attack on the city of Donetsk, home to nearly one million civilians. Here’s a clip from a report from RT on Monday July 21:

“A heavy firefight is underway in a section of the city of Donetsk, with cannonade heard downtown. Self-defense reports of pro-Kiev armored vehicles and infantry trying to cut through defenses next to the central railway terminal.

Ukrainian troops equipped with tanks and armored vehicles are making an attempt to break into Donetsk, a city of approximately 950,000 people, an official of the rebels’ self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, Sergey Kavtaradze, informed Reuters.” (“Kiev forces attack city of Donetsk, civilian casualties reported“, RT)

Poroshenko has no intention of complying with a ceasefire, because a ceasefire does not achieve the Obama administration’s objective, which is to lure Putin into a bloody and protracted guerilla war. This is what makes the downing of MH17 so suspicious, because it could very well be a false flag operation intended to hurl more mud on Putin.

In any event, the fate of MH17 isn’t going to be a secret for long. As journalist Pepe Escobar points out in a recent piece in the Asia Times,  Russian intelligence has collected tons of data that will help connect the dots. Here’s a clip from Escobar’s latest titled “It was Putin’s missile?”:

“Russian intelligence (has)  been surveilling/tracking everything that happens in Ukraine 24/7. In the next 72 hours, after poring over a lot of tracking data, using telemetry, radar and satellite tracking, they will know which type of missile was launched, from where, and even produce communications from the battery that launched it. And they will have access to forensic evidence.” (“It was Putin’s missile?” Pepe Escobar, Asia Times)

So, one way or another, we’re going to know what happened.  The US and Russia have the data they need to figure out where the missile was launched and who launched it. They probably even have recordings of  communications between Air Traffic Tower and the airliner. They know it all, but they’ll probably be cautious about what they reveal and when they reveal it.

My guess, is that Putin will drag his feet to see whether the investigation is thorough, transparent and even-handed or an elaborate hoax used to discredit him in the eyes of his trading partners.

Clearly, the Obama team see this as an opportunity to do a number on Putin, so they could be tempted to use fake evidence like the grainy photos that popped up in the New York Times some months ago that were supposed to prove that Russian military experts were secretly directing the rebellion in east Ukraine. (The photos were fake.) If they try a stunt like that this time around, Putin will be ready for them. And, of course, if he has solid proof that the plane was blown up by Poroshenko’s henchmen, then there could be hell to pay. In fact, it might just bring Obama’s proxy war to a screeching halt.

One can only hope.

Standard Procedure

Origin of the Master Model

The master plan for world domination we see playing out today was first proposed to the US at the end of World War I. However, there were no takers. People were too war weary. However, when the plan was again proposed at the end of World War II, it was accepted. Consequently, World War II quietly transitioned into the secret “war” to set up what has become known as the “new world order” — an absolute dictatorship over the entire planet.

The United States set up the School of the Americas to train future dictators and terrorists who would be sent out into the world to destroy sovereign nations and place them under US domination by installing puppet governments obedient to the United States. Many conquests were made quietly using clever economic tricks [2]. However, leaders who refused to submit quietly would see their entire country reduced to rubble and the land rendered unlivable by uranium dust scattered by US bombs. The message was clear: Submit to the United States or face total destruction.

A social model based upon the assumption that cleverness and power automatically convey the right to take anything desired from those who are less adept and unable to resist is not a sustainable model for harmonious social interactions. However, this is the chosen model. The mantra for this model, “A man’s true worth is measured by the amount of other peoples’ happiness that he can possess and destroy” [1], is essentially a call for a class war between the greedy elite and the innocent masses of the world who simply desire a peaceful existence.

Acquisitions

The United States looks at the rest of the world as a “resource”. If a country has something — oil, gold, minerals, etc. — that the US covets, it believes it has the right to take those things by whatever means necessary. In many cases the coveted resource is human slave labor. Let’s look at some representative examples:

Guatemala: The Banana Wars

With the cooperation of the dictator, United Fruit Company (US) owned almost half of the country and used the locals as slaves to harvest its Chiquita brand bananas. However, during the period from 1945-1954 new leaders made changes. They helped the poor and set up social security and health care. Then they took land away from United Fruit and gave it to the local people. United fruit complained to the CIA that its business interests were being interfered with by the “communist” government. Any government which shows kindness to the poor and weak is called communist by the US. The US attacked Guatemala — killed the elected leaders and many thousands of citizens — and established a puppet dictatorship which would obey the will of United Fruit. The people were returned to a state of slavery. The CIA trained death squads to make sure the people were crushed into submission.

Strip Mining in Africa [4]

In Africa, the International Monetary Fund — a puppet of the US — destroys a country with strip mining. The original country was self sustaining. People were able to grow lots of food and hunt animals. However, once the land was ruined by US corporations, it was unusable to plant crops and the native animals died. The people had to buy food from other countries with money loaned to them by the IMF which they could never hope to repay. Therefore, a once free and self supporting people were made debt slaves of the IMF. Once all the natural resources have been stolen, the corporations will simply pack up and leave the indigenous people to starve and die.

Countries Used as Trash Dumps [5]

Used computers and associated items are dumped in poor countries where starving barefoot children sift through the mess of hazardous waste and broken obsolete glass computer monitors hoping to find something they can sell to get enough money to stay alive another day. Property stickers show the waste is mainly from the US government and various US state governments.

Corruption of Trusted Sources

Reporters and News Organizations

The masses are conditioned to believe news they receive from establishment sources. In the earlier times, this assumption was often correct. It was considered so important by the founding fathers that freedom of the press was enshrined in the US constitution. However, times have changed.

Walter Cronkite was known as the “trusted voice”. No one knew he was also the official announcer at the secret Bohemian Grove meetings. The leaders of the world’s news organizations also attend this event. That is why, even though the meetings began over one hundred years ago, until recently no one knew this group even existed. President George W. Bush may have set a new record for bribing journalists to allow their trusted name to be used as the author of material actually written by government propaganda experts. Apparently, everyone has a price and the government, of course, has no problem when it comes to money.

When Ronald Reagan reportedly ordered the death of investigative reporter Jessica Savitch [6], the message to independent journalists was clear: Go against the official party line an you’re done!

Today, dedicated journalists face mysterious deaths and strange single car accidents but a few survive long enough to give us a glimpse of truths we would otherwise never know. They are true heroes.

Churches

Churches are everywhere. Unfortunately, legitimate Spiritual teachers are not. People look at churches either as harmless or with some sort of conditioned hypnotic respect. Churches send out “missionaries”. However, the “mission” of these missionaries may not be so clear. If you wanted to infiltrate a foreign country, these people would be an ideal asset.

Churches are not Spiritual centers. At best, all they want is your money. At worst, they are Satanic and you are in severe Spiritual danger if you come under their influence and control.

The Catholic Church has been a trusted asset of the US intelligence community for quite some time. Significant information obtained by priests during confessions is routinely passed on to the government.

This agreement predates the internet by many years. Because the church has branches in almost every country, it has great potential for covert activities. For example, if you need to get an operative who is in danger out of a country, they can go to a Catholic church for “confession”. Once the door is closed, they can exit through a secret passage, be disguised in robes and spirited safely out of the country. Church secrecy is at least on a par with US secrecy. Also, the Catholic church and the US shadow government share the same Satanic value system and engage in child rape and ritual killings.

Doctors and the Medical Industry

Medicine in the United States is an industry. It is no longer a profession. Its corporate model puts profit above all else. If some patients accidentally benefit they are the lucky ones.

The medical community has a rigid hierarchical structure and effective mechanisms for enforcing secrecy. Essentially, its model closely resembles the military chain of command structure. This makes it a perfect partner for the government in the area of secret human experiments.

For example, when the government was doing radiation experiments on humans, a doctor or someone dressed as a doctor would just walk up to unsuspecting patients and inject them with radioactive material. They were then secretly followed for years to see what would happen. Eventually, some of those who survived were told the truth. Most people used in the MK Ultra and subsequent secret projects were never notified.

Hospitals are set up to protect themselves. Staff may appear to be dedicated, smiling people who truly care about you. However, they are basically prostitutes who are being nice because you are worth money to them. When they make mistakes they have a “loss prevention” department staffed by clever lawyers who are trained to protect the financial interests of the hospital by denying everything and fabricating believable coverups. They are trained to do whatever is necessary. The staff will all agree to support whatever lies are needed. They know their job and their financial future depends upon maintaining strict secrecy.

The only people who receive legitimate medical care are the select elite cleared to accesstop secret medicine. These people always get excellent care because the doctors work for the shadow government and mistakes on their part are simply not tolerated.

Infiltrations

Countries which have the resources to sustain an intelligence community generally try to get operatives (spies) into other countries so they can directly observe activities. When real people gather intelligence, this is called human intelligence or HUMINT. The US, of course, does this too. However, you may not be aware of the extent to which the US also infiltrates itself. The central government really does not trust anyone.

Essentially all local police departments, state offices and state governors have a covert federal agent working close by pretending to be just another employee. Also, every US neighborhood has an informer who reports to the federal government. Large corporations, which tend to behave like “mini governments”, need to be infiltrated and kept under observation. Colleges and universities are also monitored.

Here is how this spy network operates: The NSA likes to recruit young kids right out of college. When they are hired and sworn to secrecy they still do not know what their assignment will be. They must agree to do this assignment without first being told what it is.

Some agents, like John Perkins [2], are assigned to work in other countries. However, others are assigned to work inside the US. Their assignment could be to go to some state and apply to join the local police department. They would pretend to be just a regular person looking for a job. They would take the necessary training and spend their life as a local policeman so they could directly observe other local police from the inside and report to the NSA. Since they are actually an employee of the NSA, presumably they get to keep both salaries and, eventually, both retirements. All significant local police forces in the US are infiltrated this way.

Additionally, some agents will be assigned to get a job on the state governor’s staff as well as in major local state agencies. A CIA or NSA agent is always on the staff at major colleges and universities. The same goes for major corporations.

Senior level agents are allowed to have special TV receivers in their homes linked to the secret government TV network. This way everyone stays on the same page. The channels on this network actually broadcast the truth. TV channels available to ordinary people contain only government approved propaganda mixed with “bread and circuses” presentations to make sure the sheeple stay asleep and content.

Fronts

The US government is involved in illegal activities internationally and domestically. If it performed these activities overtly in the name of the United States, there would be serious consequences under both international and local laws. To avoid this situation, the US government operates thousands of “front organizations” which appear to be private but are actually shadow operatives of the US.

For example, John Perkins [2] explained that he was recruited, hired and trained by the NSA. He was an NSA agent. However, for his cover as an economic hit man, he “officially” worked for a “private” company called Charles T. Main. This company was a government front to shield the US because the activities the NSA trained Perkins to do were illegal.

This is standard operating procedure for the US as well as other countries and many corporations. It shields them from legal recourse by providing deniability for the crimes they actually direct and commit.

Generally, when the US wants to influence other sovereign countries, it creates harmless looking NGO’s which appear to be independent but are actually fronts for covert activities.

Domestically, colleges and universities — especially those with associated medical schools and hospitals — are great places to conceal a variety of covert projects such as the MK Ultra series of human experiments which, reportedly, continue today using new cover names. The US also likes to create non-profit corporations which exist only to provide classified services to the United States. A good example would be the Institutes for Defense Analysis (IDA). The US, reportedly, is its only client.

Programming

Mass media “programming” is actually programming you. It has developed into a subtle form of mind control. Before radio and television, special interests recognized that motion pictures could be used to alter public opinion in their favor. Perhaps, for example, you wanted to attack labor unions. When radio and later television came along providing access to national and international audiences, the temptation to exploit these technologies became irresistible. Originally, the US government recognized this and set up fairness rules to prevent monopolies from taking over the broadcast media and blocking opposing viewpoints. All this ended, unfortunately, when Ronald Regan canceled all the fairness regulations. Today, a handful of powerful corporations own and control essentially all content delivered by radio and television.

Television is the main vehicle for mass indoctrination. It is said that people watching TV actually fall into a light hypnotic trance. The “entertainment” you see on TV does not “just happen to be there”. It is very carefully planned and timed to attract and influence targeted audiences. It is said that if some event were to somehow shut down all television broadcasts the government would experience a severe crisis because it would lose control over the minds of the masses.

TV creates sort of a “hive mind” among the masses and keeps everyone coordinated and tuned into the official party line. Without this, people would have no choice but to start thinking for themselves and forming independent opinions. Clearly, this would be a disaster.

The radio broadcast of “War of the Worlds” and the later movie “The Day the Earth Stood Still” are said to be CIA psychological experiments to judge how the general public would react to some type of ET contact.

Today, broadcasting is not just a one way event. Because people react to events and use social media to express these reactions, the effect of specific propaganda can be analyzed in real time. Since the government now intercepts all electronic communications, it is able to see general opinions and then tweak algorithms to maximize the desired effect of propaganda. This ability makes TV a two-way communications system although most people, of course, do not realize this and have no concept of the level of sophistication these technologies have reached.

Information Theory

Information Theory is the name of a relatively new branch of science which became popular in the 1960′s. It covers a broad range of technologies. Basically, it is the science of the flow of information and how that flow can be selectively controlled so that information flows only in desired pathways. As you may have already guessed, governments love this sort of stuff.

ECM

ECM stands for Electronic Counter Measures. In general, these are techniques to disable other electronic devices. Basically, it is electronic warfare. When the secret service is active in an area, for example, they will selectively jam all radio frequencies except for the specific frequencies they are using so that no one else can communicate.

World leaders, who are generally terrified of “threats” materializing from practically anywhere, like to travel with ECM generators running just in case “someone” from “somewhere” was trying to target them for “some reason”. Basically, they are paranoid whack jobs.

People familiar with aviation tell the story of how Tony Blair, while traveling to or near a commercial airport, reportedly caused a commercial jet to crash because all the ECM garbage he was transmitting jammed the plane’s navigation system. Of course, the British government would never admit this.

Secure Communication With Submarines

Since submarines were invented, communicating with them has been a problem because conventional radio waves will not travel underwater. Therefore, early submarines had to get close enough to the surface to put up some kind of antenna in the air to send or receive radio messages. Obviously, this could pose a problem if you did not wish to be discovered and located. After all, the motivation to create submarines in the first place was the feeling that they would be able to move about the planet secretly. However, newer technologies now make this impossible.

To solve the problem of reliable secure communication without the need to surface, scientists learned that sea water was essentially transparent to a special type of Argon laser. To set up the current communications network, it was decided to use several satellites with each satellite sending only part of an encrypted communication signal. The complete signal could only be received at a specific point underwater where all the laser beams intersected. Intercepting only one or two beams would prove useless. This communications system is considered to be impossible to intercept.

Quantum Entanglement

Returning to the submarine issue for a moment, before modern communications were perfected, there was a search for some reliable method to send a signal to a submerged submarine that could not be detected. This was considered necessary in a war situation to secretly transmit an attack command. What they originally did was to locate a couple of people who could communicate telepathically. One would be at the command base and the other on the submarine. Doing a bit more research, it was determined that this type of communication is instantaneous and somehow operated outside of time. Radio waves travel at the speed of light.

Quantum entanglement is a process which uses technology to send and receive signals outside of space-time. Now, why would you possibly want to do this? Well, if you had a base or a colony on a planet in some other solar system light years away, you would not want to wait years for messages to be received. Following this thread — and adding some basic common sense — why would you want to dedicate resources to search for habitable planets in distant solar systems when you had already “proven” it would be impossible to ever get there? Could it just be that someone is not coming clean with whole story?

The Separation Barrier

This is a model of the separation barrier which insulates the ruling class from the slave class. It is essentially “intellectual apartheid”. The question is, why is it there. It takes considerable effort, money and manpower to maintain this artificial barrier. What is the reasoning behind not having a level playing field for everyone? Why does this idea absolutely terrify the elite? What are they afraid of?

The Pirate Story

This is a summary of a story told years ago on a radio broadcast most likely by Paul Harvey:

Ordinary people were afraid. The Earth was flat so they dare not venture far from home. Periodically, a pirate ship would come. They did not know how it got there or from where it came. It brought treasures they had never seen. The Chief Pirate would encourage the young men to study and specialize in specific skills. He wanted them to become educated but only in one narrow area. The Chief Pirate knew the world was not flat and how to navigate to other lands. However, this knowledge was never discussed. This “top secret” knowledge or the “big picture of the known world” would only be given to the Chief Pirate’s son who would inherit his title and someday become the Chief Pirate.

This story is about the origin of the concept we call compartmentalization — the process of controlling the slave masses by only allowing them to know specific bits of the truth while the leaders are allowed to know total truth.

ELITE RULING CLASS SECURITY CLEARANCES SECRET POLICE ASSASSINS SURVEILLANCE — SIGINT HUMINT COMINT SPY SATELLITES SPY DRONES SMART ELECTRIC METERS INTERNET SURVEILLANCE NEIGHBORHOOD SPIES PLENTIFUL STREET DRUGS PSYCHIATRIC FORCED DRUGGING GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOOD FLUORIDATED WATER COORDINATED TELEVISION PROPAGANDA DEGRADED PUBLIC EDUCATION LOCAL MILITARIZED POLICE SLAVE CLASS

Leaders can only maintain their status if there are slaves. Otherwise, everyone would be equal and operate on a level playing field. This means “leaders” would have to pull their own weight like everyone else. Clearly, this would be intolerable. Leaders love beautiful and exotic things but don’t want to do the work needed to create these things. They probably could not even plant a garden much less build the various “ivory towers” where they like to live surrounded by servants. If left on their own they would very likely starve. This is why it is so important to create and maintain the complex separation barrier.

Why don’t people who live above the separation barrier ever “come down” and talk to the people below the barrier? Well, other than the obvious fact that they would likely be killed or jailed for espionage or treason, there is another, simpler, reason.

Would you like to spend your days sitting in an open field with kindergarten kids looking for four leaf clovers? Probably not. You have progressed beyond that. The slaves below the separation barrier cannot even imagine the world of those who live above the barrier. In fact, the elite do not even consider the slaves human. They call them “disposable biological units”. The United Nations prefers the slang term “the herd”. Slaves can be easily bred in quantities needed and programmed to do desired tasks. Then, they can be easily disposed of when no longer useful. That’s how they look at you. So, why would they want to make friends with you?

The Mars Example

There is an interesting event playing out today that you may have noticed. This concerns the recruitment and selection of people to be sent to Mars. There are simulation projects where volunteers are locked away to imitate the long voyage to Mars. They are being told that this is a one way trip and they can never hope to return to Earth.

What you are witnessing is the selection process for the “seed people” who will be used to breed the future slave class on Mars. In a situation similar to the period when most believed the Earth was flat and you would fall off if you tried to go to sea, these people are convinced that the only way to get to mars is to ride a rocket on a perilous journey taking years. Because they truly believe this, when they get to Mars, they will teach this crap to their kids along with other misconceptions like it is impossible to go faster than the speed of light and other associated obsolete scientific principles. They will have no
desire to ever return to Earth or go anywhere else because they truly believe it is not possible. They will be contented slaves.

Of course the truth is that there are already secret colonies on Mars. It is not that hard to get there using antigravity and other secret propulsion methods and it is quite likely possible to simply walk through some kind of wormhole device and come out on Mars.

However, the slaves will never know this. Just as it is done on Earth, there will be an artificial separation barrier. The insiders will know the truth and will be physically hidden from the slaves. There will be secret police and other methods — the same as are used on Earth — to make sure no slave ever escapes from the “information prison”. Business as usual will continue.

Reinforcement of Ignorance

Governments and their oligarchs love to keep their subjects in a cloud of ignorance. Back in the days when people believed the Earth was flat, the inner circle ruling class knew it was round. Maintaining the deception was convenient because it kept the slaves from developing any desire to travel far from home.

Nothing has changed all that much today. Consider, for example, all the fuss over the missing MH370 plane. You are being played for a sucker. It is impossible for that plane to have “disappeared”.

The US DoD spy satellite system reportedly consists of ten constellations of satellites. Each constellation has over seven thousand satellites. They see and record everything that happens on this planet. The floor of the oceans can be seen just as clearly as the land areas. The resolution of the system is better than one square millimeter. Also, everything is recorded so you can go back in time and play past images.

This is a picture of a common electric lamp. Take this lamp and throw it in the ocean — any ocean anywhere on this planet. The spy satellite system will locate it, give you the coordinates and give you a photo at least as good as the one above. That is the capability of the system. So, clearly, it is impossible not to know the location of something as large as a Boeing 777 plane. All the TV publicity is a choreographed play. You are being scammed and you need to wake up and realize this fact.

Murders and Assassinations

To ensure a strong empire, dissent must be crushed. The United States trains assassins and carries out both domestic and foreign murders and assassinations on a regular basis. You may be familiar with the classic movie scenes where a black limousine with tinted windows drives by a target with thugs shooting machine guns. Although this would accomplish the task, it is a bit too obvious in a country that advertises itself to be a free, civilized democracy. Someone might catch on and begin to doubt the party line. Consequently, these things must be done quietly.

Inside the US, murders are reportedly carried out by a group known as “FBI Division Five”. Other agencies likely have the responsibility for foreign assassinations. However, the basic techniques used would be similar.

Typically, an agent would wake up every day and connect to the top secret internet to see who he was assigned to kill that day. There would be several options. If it was important to eliminate the target immediately, a fast acting chemical agent would be selected which, for example, would cause the target to die within a few hours of a “natural” heart attack.

However, if time was not critical and the government just wanted the target out of the way, you might want to select one of the cancer causing agents such as those likely used to eliminate Hugo Chavez and Senator Ted Kennedy.

There is also a third possibility. This involves character assassination instead of actual murder. Consider, for example, a person who has gained a lot of public recognition talking about, say, free energy. If you simply kill the person, there could be blowback and talk that he was silenced by the government. In such cases, it is easier to use a chemical agent designed not to kill but, rather, to cause states of mental confusion resulting in obviously strange behavior. This would be coordinated with the government controlled mainstream press to make sure everyone became convinced the person was a nut and would therefore ignore anything said without regard to the truth or validity of the message.

Once the appropriate chemical has been selected, you need to load it into the secret delivery system and locate your target. To find your target you will connect to the top secret internet and pinpoint the location of the target through their cell phone. You can also activate all the cameras and microphones in electronic gadgets connected to the internet associated with the target in case you wish to look around the target’s home and hear in real time what is taking place.

Of course, this will not help you locate the target when it is time to actually do the hit. So, you need to get the top secret profile data which will show any predictable habits of the target. Everyone is constantly tracked through their cell phones and profiles are logged and stored. In this case, the profile shows that the target has a favorite restaurant and goes there for lunch every day around 11:30. Now, you know exactly what to do. You go to the restaurant, hang out until you see your target, and get in line behind the target. Now, all you need to do is slightly bump into the target to deliver the chemical. Generally, the targets never even notice.

This mission is now complete. If it is early enough, you can check back in to the top secret system to see who you are supposed to kill next. Just another day. Just a routine job.

Money

Money is an imaginary force. It is used to motivate and control slaves. Real forces effect all life forms. However, only people respond to money. The only reason they do is because they have been artificially programmed to do so.

Money can be created in unlimited quantities by those adept in the use of this force. The physical world is finite, however the world of imagination is not. There is no limit to the quantity of money that can be imagined into existence. Money can also be imagined out of existence.

Let’s assume that one day the entire financial system simply disappeared. If you lived in a rural area and had a nice veggie garden, some friendly chickens, collection facilities for rain water and a few photocells for electricity, you would not notice this. The veggies would continue to grow. Rain would periodically fall. The chickens would lay eggs as usual. The sun would continue to shine. However, if you lived in a city environment, you would be devastated.

Before money, people lived in small hunter-gatherer groups. The concept of ownership did not exist. People worked and survived as a group. Men and women were equal. Everyone contributed to the community. Resources were shared equally. The concept of “mine” and “yours” did not exist. Women generally became pregnant only once about every three years although there was no birth control. Later, when the concept of money entered the consciousness, women were seen as having less value because men were paid for work but women were not paid to raise and care for kids. Society has changed, however, the downgraded status of women has not.

Money systems have always been manipulated by clever people. When gold was used as money, people learned they could dilute pure gold with silver or maybe even lead to come up with something that looked like pure gold and had the correct weight but was a fraud. A king suspected he was being scammed but had no way to prove it. He called on the great minds of the time for help. This led to what is known as the Archimedes’ principle which is better known today as “specific gravity”. This principle made it possible to compare a sample known to be pure gold to a questionable sample and prove the unknown sample was not pure gold. Likely, some clever crook lost his head once this test became known.

There is a general belief that gold is the ultimate reference for all money. However, secrets concerning the exact quantity of gold make this a perilous assumption. Reportedly, the United States stole a tremendous quantity of physical gold from Japan towards the end of World War II. This gold exists off the books. To make matters worse, Japan was not all that concerned. Japan had been using gold bars as ballast on its ships because they were compact and heavy. They thought nothing of throwing the bars overboard as necessary. Japan used platinum as a money reference and the US never got that. This should make one rethink all the hype about the value of gold. It may be a lot more plentiful than we have been led to believe. Also, the secret off the books stashes of gold would allow its relative value to be manipulated at will just like other commodity markets.

The Financial Axis of Evil [3]

This is the model of the financial axis of evil which rules this planet. It consists of three main branches as shown above. Collectively, they are known as “The Empire of the City”. Briefly, here is how this system operates:

The London financial district is in London, Washington D.C. is in the United States and the Vatican is in Italy. However, these three places are not part of the countries where they exist. They are independent “city states” and have their own laws and constitution. They are, effectively, “mini countries” inside of other countries and fly their own flags. The city state of London is a private corporation and pays no taxes to actual London or to Britain. The city state of London is the master power center and is controlled by the Rothschild family which considers itself to be the legal owner of this planet. The Vatican is the largest private land owner in the world and the first true multinational corporation with installations (churches) and secret agents (The Knights of Malta) everywhere. They control through the power of fear of the unknown and practice black magic. Washington D.C. relies upon brute military force. All three closely cooperate combining their specialties of financial trickery, witchcraft and military might. Of course, all three worship Satan as their Master.

Slavery

Slavery is alive and well throughout the world. The US constitution prohibits slavery, however, most americans live in slave-like conditions.

It is said that it will take the average college student until age fifty to pay back their student loan.

The constitutional amendment prohibiting slavery addressed the concept of physically owning another person. However, it did not address the issue of holding another person in bondage as a debt slave. It also did not consider the concept of private for profit prisons who force inmates to work as slaves. These systems exist today and are perfectly legal.

Actually, a recent report from prestigious Princeton University has reclassified the US government as an oligarchy — a country run by and for the rich elite. Former US President Carter has stated that the United States “no longer has a functioning democracy”. So much for the Founding Father’s dream. Speaking of dreams, check out the free you tube video titled “The American Dream”.

Other forms of slavery are illegal but still flourish. Sex slaves are always in demand. Traffickers are sometimes caught but you need to realize that your leaders use sex slaves and also routinely abuse young girls and boys. Sometimes they are also killed during occult rituals. No one ever talks about this and these people are never punished. This has been the normal way of life for Satan worshipers for many years and nothing has changed or is likely to ever change in the future. Stanley Kubrick’s last movie, Eyes Wide Shut, covers this subject. Some believe this intense dramatization of how the elite really live may have cost him his life.

People still have some rights left in the United States but other countries are a different story. Qatar is doing construction for the World Cup. The event is not scheduled until the year 2022, however they have already killed 1200 slaves [7] by working them to death. People are lured from poor countries with the promise of jobs and money. When they arrive, their passports are confiscated and they are forced to work until they literally drop dead. If the World Cup is actually held in Qatar in 2022, there will be glamorous TV coverage and no one will remember or care about all the dead slaves. The show must go on.

Qatar, incidentally, sponsors Al Jazeera TV network.

Adaptation Techniques

The status quo of today will never change because the people who created it will never die. Because of top secret medicine, when men like Henry Kissinger, who heads the Bilderberg Group’s steering committee, get too feeble to function, they will simply go to one of the secret locations and use the temporal reversal device to regress back to about twenty years old. Their memories will be unaffected. Then they will get new identities and continue on. This process can be repeated indefinitely.

Because you can never change the status quo, your best hope for a lifetime of reasonable quality is to find clever ways to live in this world with as much independence as possible.

One method of adaptation is autonomous and semi-autonomous communities. If the community is registered as a religious institution it is automatically shielded from most government interference by the US constitution. It pays no taxes and can pretty much write its own rules by simply calling whatever it wants to do “religious doctrine”. Many small semi-autonomous groups exist where people who share a common set of values find ways to quietly live out their lives pretty much on their own terms. The government does not seem interested in bothering these smaller groups as long as they live peacefully and are not doing anything that the government perceives to be a threat.

The Amish people are a good example of an autonomous group. You would probably not want to live as they do, however, before you completely dismiss them, you may want to look at some definite advantages in their chosen lifestyle.

Remember, these are the people who reject technology. They just might have made the correct choice. Technology, at first, seemed like a good idea. However, now that people are addicted to technology they are also enslaved by technology. Everything they do is monitored and recorded by the government. Privacy no longer exists. It did not have to be this way.

Technology, in itself, is not evil. However, it can be quite evil if you live under a government run by sociopathic control freaks which, unfortunately, you do. In the Amish world, electronic surveillance does not exist because electronic devices do not exist. The constant propaganda from TV has no effect on people who do not have TV. A horse does not report its position to a GPS satellite and is not controlled by a computer.

Also, the people are generally healthy and do not suffer from many diseases common to the mainstream population. They are not being poisoned by fluorinated water or additives found in processed food because they don’t use these things. Also, they get lots of physical exercise.

Without totally withdrawing from the world, there are some positive steps you can take. By now you know never to drink fluorinated water or use any personal product containing fluoride such as many brands of toothpaste. To minimize harmful food additives, look for Kosher food which is marked with either the encircled “K” or “U” (Ultra Kosher). These foods have less or no harmful additives. The Jewish community is very protective of its people and the Mossad is widely considered to be the best intelligence service in the world. Therefore, they would have the inside scoop on everything including food and do not want to see their people harmed.

Whatever you decide to do, you definitely do not want to be part of so called mainstream society. These people are doomed. They are sheep (sheeple) slowly walking to the slaughter house. Don’t go there!

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references and credits

[1] DVD “The American Ruling Class”. ASIN: B001HM2CE2.

[2] John Perkins. Book: Confessions of an Econemic Hit Man; DVD (free on you tube): “Apology of an Economic Hit Man”; RT interviews.

[3] See the free you tube videos titled “The Red Shield”.

[4] DVD: “The Wages of Debt”, RT Intl. Also available for purchase.

[5] DVD “Terra Blight”, RT Intl. Also available for purchase.

[6] Interview with John Judge of Veterans Against Military Psychiatry.

[7] Also search using the phrase “qatar slaves world cup”.

© 2014 W C Vetsch. All rights reserved.

Source: Walter C. Vetsch  |  3108.info | War Is Crime

The Ukraine In Turmoil

Imagine: you are dressed up for a night on Broadway, but your neighbours are involved in a vicious quarrel, and you have to gun up and deal with the trouble instead of enjoying a show, and a dinner, and perhaps a date. This was Putin’s position regarding the Ukrainian turmoil.

The Russians have readjusted their sights, but they do not intend to bring their troops into the two rebel republics, unless dramatic developments should force them.

It is not much fun to be in Kiev these days. The revolutionary excitement is over, and hopes for new faces, the end of corruption and economic improvement have withered. The Maidan street revolt and the subsequent coup just reshuffled the same marked deck of cards, forever rotating in power.

The new acting President has been an acting prime minister, and a KGB (called “SBU” in Ukrainian) supremo. The new acting prime minister has been a foreign minister. The oligarch most likely to be “elected” President in a few days has been a foreign minister, the head of the state bank, and personal treasurer of two coups, in 2004 (installing Yushchenko) and in 2014 (installing himself). His main competitor, Mme Timoshenko, served as a prime minister for years, until electoral defeat in 2010.

These people had brought Ukraine to its present abject state. In 1991, the Ukraine was richer than Russia, today it is three times poorer because of these people’s mismanagement and theft. Now they plan an old trick: to take loans in Ukraine’s name, pocket the cash and leave the country indebted. They sell state assets to Western companies and ask for NATO to come in and protect the investment.

They play a hard game, brass knuckles and all. The Black Guard, a new SS-like armed force of the neo-nazi Right Sector, prowls the land. They arrest or kill dissidents, activists, journalists. Hundreds of American soldiers, belonging to the “private” company Academi (formerly Blackwater) are spread out in Novorossia, the pro-Russian provinces in the East and South-East. IMF–dictated reforms slashed pensions by half and doubled the housing rents. In the market, US Army rations took the place of local food.

The new Kiev regime had dropped the last pretence of democracy by expelling the Communists from the parliament. This should endear them to the US even more. Expel Communists, apply for NATO, condemn Russia, arrange a gay parade and you may do anything at all, even fry dozens of citizens alive. And so they did.

The harshest repressions were unleashed on industrial Novorossia, as its working class loathes the whole lot of oligarchs and ultra-nationalists. After the blazing inferno of Odessa and a wanton shooting on the streets of Melitopol the two rebellious provinces of Donetsk and Lugansk took up arms and declared their independence from the Kiev regime. They came under fire, but did not surrender. The other six Russian-speaking industrial provinces of Novorossia were quickly cowed. Dnepropetrovsk and Odessa were terrorised by personal army of Mr Kolomoysky; Kharkov was misled by its tricky governor.

Russia did not interfere and did not support the rebellion, to the great distress of Russian nationalists in Ukraine and Russia who mutter about “betrayal”. So much for the warlike rhetoric of McCain and Brzezinski.

Putin’s respect for others’ sovereignty is exasperating. I understand this sounds like a joke, — you hear so much about Putin as a “new Hitler”. As a matter of fact, Putin had legal training before joining the Secret Service. He is a stickler for international law. His Russia has interfered with other states much less than France or England, let alone the US. I asked his senior adviser, Mr Alexei Pushkov, why Russia did not try to influence Ukrainian minds while Kiev buzzed with American and European officials. “We think it is wrong to interfere”, he replied like a good Sunday schoolboy. It is rather likely Putin’s advisors misjudged public sentiment. « The majority of Novorossia’s population does not like the new Kiev regime, but being politically passive and conservative, will submit to its rule”, they estimated. “The rebels are a small bunch of firebrands without mass support, and they can’t be relied upon”, was their view. Accordingly, Putin advised the rebels to postpone the referendum indefinitely, a polite way of saying “drop it”.

They disregarded his request with considerable sang froid and convincingly voted en masse for secession from a collapsing Ukraine. The turnout was much higher than expected, the support for the move near total. As I was told by a Kremlin insider, this development was not foreseen by Putin’s advisers.

Perhaps the advisors had read it right, but three developments had changed the voters’ minds and had sent this placid people to the barricades and the voting booths:

1. The first one was the fiery holocaust of Odessa, where the peaceful and carelessly unarmed demonstrating workers were suddenly attacked by regime’s thugs (the Ukrainian equivalent of Mubarak’s shabab) and corralled into the Trade Unions Headquarters. The building was set on fire, and the far-right pro-regime Black Guard positioned snipers to efficiently pick off would-be escapees. Some fifty, mainly elderly, Russian-speaking workers were burned alive or shot as they rushed for the windows and the doors. This dreadful event was turned into an occasion of merriment and joy by Ukrainian nationalists who referred to their slain compatriots as “fried beetles”. (It is being said that this auto-da-fé was organised by the shock troops of Jewish oligarch and strongman Kolomoysky, who coveted the port of Odessa. Despite his cuddly bear appearance, he is pugnacious and violent person, who offered ten thousand dollars for a captive Russian, dead or alive, and proposed a cool million dollars for the head of Mr Tsarev, a Member of Parliament from Donetsk.)

2. The second was the Mariupol attack on May 9, 2014. This day is commemorated as V-day in Russia and Ukraine (while the West celebrates it on May 8). The Kiev regime forbade all V-day celebrations. In Mariupol, the Black Guard attacked the peaceful and weaponless town, burning down the police headquarters and killing local policemen who had refused to suppress the festive march. Afterwards, Black Guard thugs unleashed armoured vehicles on the streets, killing citizens and destroying property.

The West did not voice any protest; Nuland and Merkel weren’t horrified by this mass murder, as they were by Yanukovich’s timid attempts to control crowds.

The people of these two provinces felt abandoned; they understood that nobody was going to protect and save them but themselves, and went off to vote.

3. The third development was, bizarrely, the Eurovision jury choice of Austrian transvestite Conchita Wurst for a winner of its song contest.

 

The sound-minded Novorossians decided they want no part of such a Europe.

Actually, the people of Europe do not want it either:

It transpired that the majority of British viewers preferred a Polish duo, Donatan & Cleo, with its We Are Slavic. Donatan is half Russian, and has courted controversy in the past extolling the virtues of pan-Slavism and the achievements of the Red Army, says the Independent.

The politically correct judges of the jury preferred to “celebrate tolerance”, the dominant paradigm imposed upon Europe.

This is the second transvestite to win this very political contest; the first one was Israeli singer Dana International.

Such obsession with re-gendering did not go down well with Russians and/or Ukrainians.

The Russians have readjusted their sights, but they do not intend to bring their troops into the two rebel republics, unless dramatic developments should force them.

RUSSIAN PLANS

Imagine: you are dressed up for a night on Broadway, but your neighbours are involved in a vicious quarrel, and you have to gun up and deal with the trouble instead of enjoying a show, and a dinner, and perhaps a date. This was Putin’s position regarding the Ukrainian turmoil.

A few months ago, Russia had made a huge effort to become, and to be seen as, a very civilized European state of the first magnitude. This was the message of the Sochi Olympic games: to re-brand, even re-invent Russia, just as Peter the Great once had, as part of the First World; an amazing country of strong European tradition, of Leo Tolstoy and Malevich, of Tchaikovsky and Diaghilev, the land of arts, of daring social reform, of technical achievements, of modernity and beyond — the Russia of Natasha Rostova riding a Sikorsky ‘copter. Putin spent $60 billion to broadcast this image.

The old fox Henry Kissinger wisely :

Putin spent $60 billion on the Olympics. They had opening and closing ceremonies, trying to show Russia as a normal progressive state. So it isn’t possible that he, three days later, would voluntarily start an assault on Ukraine. There is no doubt that… at all times he wanted Ukraine in a subordinate position. And at all times, every senior Russian that I’ve ever met, including dissidents like Solzhenitsyn and Brodsky, looked at Ukraine as part of the Russian heritage. But I don’t think he had planned to bring it to a head now.

However, Washington hawks decided to do whatever it takes to keep Russia out in the cold. They were afraid of this image of “a normal progressive state” as such Russia would render NATO irrelevant and undermine European dependence on the US. They were adamant about retaining their hegemony, shattered as it was by the Syrian confrontation. They attacked Russian positions in the Ukraine and arranged a violent coup, installing a viciously anti-Russian regime supported by football fans and neo-Nazis, paid for by Jewish oligarchs and American taxpayers. The victors banned the Russian language and prepared to void treaties with Russia regarding its Crimean naval base at Sebastopol on the Black Sea. This base was to become a great new NATO base, controlling the Black Sea and threatening Russia.

Putin had to deal quickly and so he did, by accepting the Crimean people’s request to join Russian Federation. This dealt with the immediate problem of the base, but the problem of Ukraine remained.

The Ukraine is not a foreign entity to Russians, it is the western half of Russia. It was artificially separated from the rest in 1991, at the collapse of the USSR. The people of the two parts are interconnected by family, culture and blood ties; their economies are intricately connected. While a separate viable Ukrainian state is a possibility, an “independent” Ukrainian state hostile to Russia is not viable and can’t be tolerated by any Russian ruler. And this for military as well as for cultural reasons: if Hitler had begun the war against Russia from its present border, he would have taken Stalingrad in two days and would have destroyed Russia in a week.

A more pro-active Russian ruler would have sent troops to Kiev a long time ago. Thus did Czar Alexis when the Poles, Cossacks and Tatars argued for it in 17^th century. So also did Czar Peter the Great, when the Swedes occupied it in the 18^th century. So did Lenin, when the Germans set up the Protectorate of Ukraine (he called its establishment “the obscene peace”). So did Stalin, when the Germans occupied the Ukraine in 1941.

Putin still hopes to settle the problem by peaceful means, relying upon the popular support of the Ukrainian people. Actually, before the Crimean takeover, the majority of Ukrainians (and near all Novorossians) overwhelmingly supported some sort of union with Russia. Otherwise, the Kiev coup would not have been necessary. The forced Crimean takeover seriously undermined Russian appeal. The people of Ukraine did not like it. This was foreseen by the Kremlin, but they had to accept Crimea for a few reasons. Firstly, a loss of Sevastopol naval base to NATO was a too horrible of an alternative to contemplate. Secondly, the Russian people would not understand if Putin were to refuse the suit of the Crimeans.

The Washington hawks still hope to force Putin to intervene militarily, as it would give them the opportunity to isolate Russia, turn it into a monster pariah state, beef up defence spending and set Europe and Russia against each other. They do not care about Ukraine and Ukrainians, but use them as pretext to attain geopolitical goals.

The Europeans would like to fleece Ukraine; to import its men as “illegal” workers and its women as prostitutes, to strip assets, to colonise. They did it with Moldova, a little sister of Ukraine, the most miserable ex-Soviet Republic. As for Russia, the EU would not mind taking it down a notch, so they would not act so grandly. But the EU is not fervent about it. Hence, the difference in attitudes.

Putin would prefer to continue with his modernisation of Russia. The country needs it badly. The infrastructure lags twenty or thirty years behind the West. Tired by this backwardness, young Russians often prefer to move to the West, and this brain drain causes much damage to Russia while enriching the West. Even Google is a result of this brain drain, for Sergey Brin is a Russian immigrant as well. So are hundreds of thousands of Russian scientists and artists manning every Western lab, theatre and orchestra. Political liberalisation is not enough: the young people want good roads, good schools and a quality of life comparable to the West. This is what Putin intends to deliver.

He is doing a fine job of it. Moscow now has free bikes and Wi-Fi in the parks like every Western European city. Trains have been upgraded. Hundreds of thousands of apartments are being built, even more than during the Soviet era. Salaries and pensions have increased seven-to-tenfold in the past decade. Russia is still shabby, but it is on the right track. Putin wants to continue this modernisation.

As for the Ukraine and other ex-Soviet states, Putin would prefer they retain their independence, be friendly and work at a leisurely pace towards integration a la the European Union.

He does not dream of a new empire. He would reject such a proposal, as it would delay his modernisation plans.

If the beastly neocons would not have forced his hand by expelling the legitimate president of Ukraine and installing their puppets, the world might have enjoyed a long spell of peace.

But then the western military alliance under the US leadership would fall into abeyance, US military industries would lose out, and US hegemony would evaporate. Peace is not good for the US military and hegemony-creating media machine. So dreams of peace in our lifetime are likely to remain just dreams.

What will Putin do?

Putin will try to avoid sending in troops as long as possible. He will have to protect the two splinter provinces, but this can be done with remote support, the way the US supports the rebels in Syria, without ‘boots on the ground’. Unless serious bloodshed on a large scale should occur, Russian troops will just stand by, staring down the Black Guard and other pro-regime forces.

Putin will try to find an arrangement with the West for sharing authority, influence and economic involvement in the failed state. This can be done through federalisation, or by means of coalition government, or even partition. The Russian-speaking provinces of Novorossia are those of Kharkov (industry), Nikolayev (ship-building), Odessa (harbour), Donetsk and Lugansk (mines and industry), Dnepropetrovsk (missiles and high-tech), Zaporozhe (steel), Kherson (water for Crimea and ship-building), all of them established, built and populated by Russians. They could secede from Ukraine and form an independent Novorossia, a mid-sized state, but still bigger than some neighbouring states. This state could join the Union State of Russia and Belarus, and/or the Customs Union led by Russia. The rump Ukraine could manage as it sees fit until it decides whether or not to join its Slavic sisters in the East. Such a set up would produce two rather cohesive and homogeneous states.

Another possibility (much less likely at this moment) is a three-way division of the failed Ukraine: Novorossia, Ukraine proper, and Galicia&Volyn. In such a case, Novorossia would be strongly pro-Russian, Ukraine would be neutral, and Galicia strongly pro-Western.

The EU could accept this, but the US probably would not agree to any power-sharing in the Ukraine. In the ensuing tug-of-war, one of two winners will emerge. If Europe and the US drift apart, Russia wins. If Russia accepts a pro-Western positioning of practically all of Ukraine, the US wins. The tug-of-war could snap and cause all-out war, with many participants and a possible use of nuclear weapons. This is a game of chicken; the one with stronger nerves and less imagination will remain on the track.

Pro and Contra

It is too early to predict who will win in the forthcoming confrontation. For the Russian president, it is extremely tempting to take all of Ukraine or at least Novorossia, but it is not an easy task, and one likely to cause much hostility from the Western powers. With Ukraine incorporated, Russian recovery from 1991 would be completed, its strength doubled, its security ensured and a grave danger removed. Russia would become great again. People would venerate Putin as Gatherer of Russian Lands.

However, Russian efforts to appear as a modern peaceful progressive state would have been wasted; it would be seen as an aggressor and expelled from international bodies. Sanctions will bite; high tech imports may be banned, as in the Soviet days. The Russian elites are reluctant to jeopardize their good life. The Russian military just recently began its modernization and is not keen to fight yet, perhaps not for another ten years.

But if they feel cornered, if NATO moves into Eastern Ukraine, they will fight all the same.

Some Russian politicians and observers believe that Ukraine is a basket case; its problems would be too expensive to fix. This assessment has a ‘sour grapes’ aftertaste, but it is widespread. An interesting new voice on the web, The Saker, promotes this view. “Let the EU and the US provide for the Ukrainians, they will come back to Mother Russia when hungry”, he says. The problem is, they will not be allowed to reconsider. The junta did not seize power violently in order to lose it at the ballot box.

Besides, Ukraine is not in such bad shape as some people claim. Yes, it would cost trillions to turn it into a Germany or France, but that’s not necessary. Ukraine can reach the Russian level of development very quickly –- in union with Russia. Under the EC-IMF-NATO, Ukraine will become a basket case, if it’s not already. The same is true for all East European ex-Soviet states: they can modestly prosper with Russia, as Belarus and Finland do, or suffer depopulation, unemployment, poverty with Europe and NATO and against Russia, vide Latvia, Hungary, Moldova, Georgia. It is in Ukrainian interests to join Russia in some framework; Ukrainians understand that; for this reason they will not be allowed to have democratic elections.

Simmering Novorossia has a potential to change the game. If Russian troops don’t come in, Novorossian rebels may beat off the Kiev offensive and embark on a counter-offensive to regain the whole of the country, despite Putin’s pacifying entreaties. Then, in a full-blown civil war, the Ukraine will hammer out its destiny.

On a personal level, Putin faces a hard choice. Russian nationalists will not forgive him if he surrenders Ukraine without a fight. The US and EU threaten the very life of the Russian president, as their sanctions are hurting Putin’s close associates, encouraging them to get rid of or even assassinate the President and improve their relations with the mighty West. War may come at any time, as it came twice during the last century – though Russia tried to avoid it both times. Putin wants to postpone it, at the very least, but not at any price.

His is not an easy choice. As Russia procrastinates, as the US doubles the risks, the world draws nearer to the nuclear abyss. Who will chicken out?

(Language editing by Ken Freeland)

False Flag In Odessa: Pathetic U.S. Media Coverage

“According to the evidence that I’ve seen …Odessa was a giant false flag operation. It… was one of those staged massacres that the pro-Western forces from Bosnia to Kosovo, now Ukraine, excel at staging, intended to draw Russia to overreact and commit military forces … I believe that the fact that they are willing to stage such a horrendous atrocity shows the depth of their desperation at this point.”

– Nebojsa Malic, political analyst, Russia Today

“Not under foreign skies
Nor under foreign wings protected –
I shared all this with my own people
There, where misfortune had abandoned us.”

– “Requiem” – Anna Akhmatova

Photos of the victims of the Odessa fire which have been circulating on theInternet have cast doubt on the official version of events. It’s now clear that many of the anti-junta activists who occupied the Trade Unions House were neither burned to death nor died of smoke inhalation, but were savagely shot at point-blank range by agents and thugs who had infiltrated the building to kill as many of the occupants as possible, burn the corpses, and then slip away without notice. Some of the victims–like a young woman who was eight months pregnant –were strangled with an electrical chord and left slumped backwards over her desk in a room that shows no sign of fire or smoke damage. In another case, a woman was stripped naked from the waste down, raped, killed, and set ablaze.

In still other cases, victims with bullet-holes through their skulls, had flammable fluid dumped on their heads and were incinerated, leaving a charred head atop a corpse whose clothes were untouched by fire. The sloppily-executed killing-spree proves that the fire was not the result of a spontaneous clash between pro and anti-Kiev demonstrators, but a carefully planned black-op that likely involved foreign Intel agencies working hand-in-hand with the fascist junta government in Kiev. Did we mention that the CIA has taken up residence in the Ukrainian capital? Here’s the scoop from the AFP:

“Dozens of specialists from the US Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation are advising the Ukrainian government … helping Kiev end the rebellion in the east of Ukraine and set up a functioning security structure…” (: report, AFP)

We all know about the CIA’s energetic efforts to create a “functioning security structure” in nations around the world. The CIA’s presence in Ukraine suggests that the US was either actively involved in the Odessa incident or knows who was. Either way, there should be an independent investigation before the case is referred to the ICC for prosecution.

The rampage in Odessa is part a broader strategy to provoke Moscow into a military confrontation. US war planners want to draw Putin into a conflict to justify NATO expansion, block further EU-Russian economic integration, and facilitate the “pivot to Asia.” The victims in this tragedy were sacrificed to advance Washington’s imperial ambitions and to establish US global hegemony. Obama has repeatedly reiterated his unwavering support for the crackdown on dissidents in the east. In a Rose Garden press conference just days ago, the president applauded the military attack on civilians saying, “The Ukrainian government has shown remarkable restraint throughout this whole process.”

Indeed, the Odessa graveyards are now full of people who can attest to the great restraint of the junta government that Obama so admires.

The coverage of the Odessa massacre by the western media is as bad as any in recent memory. The giant news conglomerates no longer make any attempt to pretend they’re anything other propaganda organs for the State. Even by that low standard, the coverage has been abysmal. Here’s a typical summary from an article on the liberal website, Huffington Post.

“Police said the deadly fire broke out in a trade union building, but did not give details on how it started. Earlier, police said at least three people had died in a clash between the two sides in the city of 1 million.

According to Ukrainian news reports, the pro-Kiev demonstrators broke up an encampment of Moscow supporters outside the trade union building. The latter took refuge in the building, which then caught fire.
Odessa police spokesman Volodymyr Shasbliyenko told AP the fire apparently was caused by Molotov cocktails. He had no further details or identities of the victims.” (Odessa Building Fire Kills Dozens, AP)

The author deliberately misleads his readers about what really took place. The fire did not “break out” in a trade union building. It was started. There’s no debate about this. There’s video footage of the whole incident and tons of eyewitness reports. Right sector goons started the fire by throwing Molotov cocktails through the windows. It’s all on tape.

Second, the “pro-Kiev demonstrators” (did not) “break up an encampment of Moscow supporters outside the trade union building…which then caught fire.” This is nonsense. The fascist extremists burned down the tent city, chased the activists into the building, barricaded the exits, and then set the building on fire with the obvious intention of killing the people inside. Again, there is no debate about this. It’s all on video. The US media is involved in a massive cover up, mainly because a investigation would undoubtedly point to US involvement. This is why none of the major news organizations are covering an incident which would normally be headline news. Odessa is unique blend of Waco and Columbine, a combo that editors typically use to boost sagging ratings by exploiting public empathy and outrage. Only this time, the media has minimized its coverage and refused to report on a story that would probably lead straight to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

While the New York Times has been widely criticized for publishing fake photos of Russian soldiers in Ukraine, the Wall Street Journal wins the trophy for absolute worst coverage. In a piece titled “Deadly Ukraine Fire Likely Sparked by Rebels, Government Says”, the WSJ pushes the improbable theory that the anti-coup activists inside the building actually burned the building down themselves, a pathetic attempt to blame the victims of a ruthless government crackdown. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

“The fire began from the roof. There were extremists there, we found casings and firearms,” Mr. Chebotar said. “But something unexpected happened; their Molotov cocktails fell, and ignited the higher floors of the building.” (Deadly Ukraine Fire Likely Sparked by Rebels, Wall Street Journal)

Utterly ridiculous. Are the editors of the WSJ aware of the fact that footage of the Neo Nazis throwing Molotov cocktails at the building are all over the Internet?

The article, of course, fails to explain how many of the people inside the building were either shot or strangled to death. Nor does the author speculate on why the police stood by while people hurled themselves from windows to escape the fire or were savagely beaten by right wing extremists on the pavement in front of the building. Instead, the WSJ tries to provide a plausible excuse for the one part of the story it chooses to focus on as if “who started the fire” can be separated from other important details. The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the 40 victims of the incident were killed in a homicidal rampage that was perpetrated by Obama’s new friends in Kiev. No amount of whitewash is going to hide that one glaring fact. Here’s how Serbian historian and political analyst, Nebosja Malic, summed it up:

“According to all the evidence that I have seen, the entire thing in Odessa was a giant false flag operation. It was a provocation, it was one of those stage massacres that the pro-Western forces from Bosnia to Kosovo, now Ukraine excel at staging, intended to draw Russia to overreact…

“We have proof that the West is instigating this. And just the other day, Catherine Ashton, the EU’s commissioner for foreign policy, pretty much gave a green light to the extremists from Kiev. She pretty much said they had a right to establish law and order within the borders of the country. I would say that the EU has blood on its hands, especially Catherine Ashton. It’s the same thing they did in Yugoslavia in the 90s, when they started encouraging radicals, extremists, secessionists.” (Interview with Nebosja Malic, RT)

It’s true that Washington supports Neo-Nazi extremists who burned down the Odessa Trade Unions House. If that wasn’t the case, then Obama would have spoken out forcefully against the action, which he has not. That implies that things are going according to plan. Malic is also correct when he says the fire was a “giant false flag operation” which refers to a covert military operation where agents disguise themselves as members of their adversary’s group to initiate a provocation that will then be blamed on the other side. In this case, pro-regime fascists (and probably agents from the Security Services) disguised themselves as Kiev regime opponents, in order to throw bricks and stones at the police and Right Sector goons. This was the flashpoint that started the melee that ended in a massacre.

Videos on Russia Today show the agents in red arm bands mingled with the pro-Russia activists, initiated a confrontation with the cops, and then quickly switched sides when the fighting broke out. This is classic false flag operation. The police were obviously in on the scam, as they immediately opened their ranks to let the imposters slip by when the street-scrum began. These same imposters were later filmed shooting handguns and automatic weapons in the direction of the building just minutes after they had switched sides. (Take a look at this video from 3:30 minutes to the 6 minute-point and decide for yourself whether this was a false flag operation or not.)

Bottom line: There was nothing spontaneous about the clash that led to the catastrophic fire that killed 40 people in the Trade Unions House. It was a carefully planned and executed operation designed to shock Moscow into sending troops to protect ethnic Russians in Ukraine. If the CIA is working in Kiev –as it is–there is no doubt that they either knew or actively assisted the operation.

In related news: Moscow has announced it will “deploy additional forces in Crimea as part of beefing up the Black Sea fleet…before year’s end”. According to RT: “The fleet will receive new submarines and surface ships of new generation this year.”

The Kremlin is responding to the buildup of NATO forces in Eastern Europe and the Black Sea where additional aircraft, warships and ground troops have been deployed in case war breaks out. Also, according to RT:

“NATO’s three-week ‘Spring Storm’ drills, involving a record-breaking number of 6,000 troops, have begun in Estonia….(bringing) together a record number of allied troops.” (Also) around 150 personnel of the US airborne division arrived in a military transport aircraft to Amari airbase (while) the UK and France deployed eight fighter jets to Lithuania and Poland to strengthen NATO air defense over the Baltic regions.” (NATO’s record 6,000-strong drills kick off in Estonia amid Ukraine tensions, RT)

So while the death toll mounts, the slide to war continues to gain momentum. Odessa was supposed to be the tipping point, the “catalyzing event” that would draw Putin into the fighting. But it hasn’t worked out that way. Putin has stayed on the sidelines and refused to take the bait. That means there’ll be more provocations to come; more false flags, more bloodshed, more stage-managed terror disguised as civil unrest. Eventually, people will see who’s behind all the trouble. But how many will have died by then?

Note: Here’s a  on Obama’s fascist friends in Ukraine. Listen to the last minute of the video to hear neocon Victoria Nuland praise Ukraine’s development of “democratic skills and institutions” with the appropriate backdrop of balaclava-clad Nazis and brightly colored swastikas.

Institutionalized Tyranny

What happens when an institution becomes more important than the cause for which the institution was formed? How long should people who believe in the cause remain loyal to such an institution? And at what point does loyalty to such an institution comprise an abandonment of the cause itself?

I’m afraid the majority of Americans have been institutionalized in a manner not unlike the way prisoners are institutionalized after a long period of confinement. After a point, a prisoner is so conditioned to accepting the circumstances of his confinement that, should he be released from confinement, he truly would be unable to cope. Such seems to be the mentality of a majority of us today.

Christians have been institutionalized. The reason and purpose of the church or Christian organization is no longer relevant. Generations have grown up reciting the same liturgies, regurgitating the same prayers, and rehearsing the same programs until the reason for it all doesn’t even matter. But take the institution away from them, and they would not be able to cope.

The Pharisees despised the Lord Jesus because He challenged the religious institutions that had come to govern people’s lives. I am convinced if Jesus came to America today, He would be just as despised by the vast majority of our religious leaders as He was by the Pharisees.

The Church that Jesus built in the Book of Acts owned no buildings, was indebted to no lenders, took no tax benefits from the civil government, had no denominational hierarchy, and identified itself with no ecclesiastical brand. And the Church was just as persecuted by the religious establishment as Christ was.

One of the reasons one may know that the modern church is so unlike Christ and the apostles is by the persecution that it never experiences. Just as the Pharisees were bosom buddies with the Roman Empire’s governing elite, so are our religious leaders today. Caesar was very generous in sharing the fruit of his tyrannically-extracted bounty with his allies in the Jewish Sanhedrin. And they were happy to return the favor by insisting that the Hebrew people submit to Caesar’s harsh rule over their lives.

The Pharisees also enjoyed a cozy relationship with the moneychangers. The moneychangers were descended from a long line of corrupt banking interests that dated all the way back to the Edomites. We are not talking about your friendly local banker here. These were highly organized, well-positioned money-manipulators. Jesus was so incensed with their manipulation and theft within in the Temple that he used physical violence to remove them from the property. He is recorded as doing this twice in the Gospel narratives. Note that after the second time in which it is recorded that He drove out the moneychangers (with a whip, no less), the Pharisees soon had Jesus crucified. There is no question that one of the reasons Pilate ordered Jesus to be scourged with a whip was in direct retaliation for the manner in which Jesus whipped the moneychangers. Remember, the moneychangers were from a very well-ensconced, elitist national (and even international) organization.

And lest you think all of this is irrelevant to today, the moneychangers are still very much with us. The Rothschilds, Rockefellers, and other members of the international banking elite, are the direct descendants of the moneychangers of Jesus’ day. And if you ever have an opportunity to ask one of them about it, they will proudly admit it.

Yes, the Pharisees institutionalized religion. This accomplished two things: 1) it helped enslave the people, 2) it helped make them rich. The institutionalized church is accomplishing much the same things today.

The establishment church is doing as much to enslave people as any other institution in the world. Our political institutions and educational institutions have nothing on the church for making good little subjects and serfs to the all-powerful state. And if you don’t think that a host of church leaders are not reaping the spoils from assisting our taskmasters, you’re not paying attention.

Many, if not most, of these big-name TV evangelists have as many houses and yachts and Swiss bank accounts as any big-name Hollywood actor or politician. In some cases, more. Most of these big-church pastors are bathing in luxury. Many of them take the kinds of vacations that only CEOs of the biggest corporations or presidents could afford. Do you really think that the IRS rules and regulations governing these non-profit corporations, called churches, really bother these church leaders? Get real!

No wonder all of these “successful” preachers are constantly teaching their congregations to always submit to the government. No wonder they have no interest in abandoning their 501c3 tax-exempt status. They are in the exact same position as were the Pharisees of old. And they are just as effective in helping to enslave people today as were the Pharisees.

The institution of the church–along with its programs, formalities, buildings, rituals, etc.,–has become more important than the purpose for which the church was created. Instead of preaching the liberating message of the Cross, which frees men from the fetters of sin–and that includes sinful political and financial fetters–the church is preaching a message of subjugation and enslavement. It is teaching people to submit to all kinds of oppression, including religious oppression.

Some of the most oppressed and subjugated people in the world are religious people. There are churches and Christian colleges that are every bit as tyrannical as anything coming out of East-bloc or Muslim countries. About the only thing missing is physical torture and execution. Spiritually, however, the oppression is the same.

How could real men who love the liberty they have in Christ allow themselves–and especially their wives–to be told how to dress, how to wear their hair, what kind of music to listen to, what kind of vacations to take, what restaurants they may or may not eat at, what forms of entertainment they may or may not participate in, etc., etc., ad infinitum?

I tell you the truth: many Christians in America are already slaves. To talk to them about freedom is a complete waste of time. The chains of tyranny are already clamped around their hearts. Why should it matter to them if chains are clamped around their necks? When they talk about “defending the faith,” they are talking about defending the institution. They are slaves to the institution. And the same is true for many unchurched Americans.

What is more important: liberty, or the government that is supposed to secure liberty? To a sizeable number of Americans today, it is more important to preserve the institution than the freedoms that the institution was created to protect.

Our Declaration of Independence states, “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [the God-given rights of life, liberty, etc.], it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Did you see that: “any form of government”? ANY FORM. The form of government is only as good as its ability to secure liberty.

I hear a lot of politicians and media personalities talking about “American exceptionalism.” This is a potentially dangerous mindset. If one means that America is exceptional in our history and the manner in which our Constitution and Bill of Rights were established to protect liberty, well and good. But if it means that America has carte-blanche to do anything it wants–no matter how unconstitutional or tyrannical–because it is “exceptional,” it is a bunch of hooey.

What difference does it make if we have a 50-State Union or not? There is a bill in the California legislature that would divide that State into six states. Five counties in Western Maryland are trying to secede from Baltimore. Ten northern counties in Colorado are trying to secede from Denver. If a State refuses to secure the liberties of the people of that State, they have every right under God to separate. The State is not nearly as important as the liberties of the people within the State.

The spirit of secession is actually growing like wildfire all over the world. In recent history, Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Kosovo all separated from Yugoslavia. Transnistria broke free from Moldova. Abkhazia and South Ossetia fought free from Georgia. The Slovaks seceded from Czechoslovakia. And now Crimea is separating from Ukraine.

To be sure, not every country that secedes from another country is motivated purely by the love of liberty. But for those of us in America, the issue that has propelled the desire to separate from one country or one State has always been liberty. It was the love of liberty that created the United States and that created the free and independent states of Maine, Vermont, Kentucky, and West Virginia–all of which seceded from existing U.S. states.

Furthermore, what difference does it make if Washington, D.C., is our federal capital, or, if say, Helena, Montana, would become the federal capital of a mountain state confederation of Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Northern Colorado, eastern Washington and Oregon, the Dakotas, Alberta and British Columbia, Canada, and Alaska? Or if Austin was the federal capital of an independent Republic of Texas? Preserving some sort of political union (especially if it is a forced and coerced union) is not nearly as important as preserving liberty.

Again, it is not the political institution that is important. What is important is the liberty that the political institution is supposed to secure.

Many great minds in this country are already philosophizing over the possibility that secession is an idea whose time has come–again. A few years ago, Walter Williams wrote, “Like a marriage that has gone bad, I believe there are enough irreconcilable differences between those who want to control and those want to be left alone that divorce is the only peaceable alternative. Just as in a marriage, where vows are broken, our human rights protections guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution have been grossly violated by a government instituted to protect them. Americans who are responsible for and support constitutional abrogation have no intention of mending their ways.

“Americans who wish to live free have two options: We can resist, fight and risk bloodshed to force America’s tyrants to respect our liberties and human rights, or we can seek a peaceful resolution of our irreconcilable differences by separating. That can be done by peopling several states, say Texas and Louisiana, control their legislatures and then issue a unilateral declaration of independence just as the Founders did in 1776. You say, ‘Williams, nobody has to go that far, just get involved in the political process and vote for the right person.’ That’s nonsense. Liberty shouldn’t require a vote. It’s a God-given or natural right.

“Some independence or secessionists movements, such as our 1776 war with England and our 1861 War Between the States, have been violent, but they need not be. In 1905, Norway seceded from Sweden, Panama seceded from Columbia (1903), and West Virginia from Virginia (1863). Nonetheless, violent secession can lead to great friendships. England is probably our greatest ally and we have fought three major wars together. There is no reason why Texiana (Texas and Louisiana) couldn’t peaceably secede, be an ally, and have strong economic ties with United States.

“The bottom line question for all of us is should we part company or continue trying to forcibly impose our wills on one another?”

See William’s column here:

Hear! Hear!

In the eyes of God, marriage is the most sacred of all unions. It is far more sacred than any political union. If our Creator has authorized the separation of a husband and wife under certain circumstances in which one party violated the sacred terms of the holy contract (and He has), who among us has the audacity to say that political unions may not be abandoned when government commits political adultery by forsaking its oath to the people?

Again, are we more interested in preserving an institution or the liberty that the institution is supposed to secure?

As an institution, the Church at large is apostate. Yet, millions of Christians continue to prop up an institution that has abandoned the purpose for which it was created. They are more interested in preserving the forms and liturgies and tapestries and buildings of the institution. And, all the while, they are being spiritually enslaved by the very institution they are helping to prop up.

And as an institution, the U.S. federal government is apostate. Yet, millions of citizens continue to make excuses for it, justify it, and condone it. They are more interested in preserving the agencies and entities and power of the institution. Yet, all the while, they are being enslaved by the very institution they are helping to prop up.

What happens when an institution becomes more important than the cause for which the institution was formed? When the institution is civil government and the cause is liberty, tyranny is what happens.

Government Schools Common Core Indoctrination

Over the last half century, the public school establishment in America has achieved enormous results, if the intention was to dumb down the population. The term public is archaic, since the current age promotes an internationalist interdependency culture, where the state defines institutional roles and sanctions accepted standards. The public plays virtually no effective role in this process. For this reason the proper term to use is government indoctrination centers. Bringing back the McGuffey Readers as the alternative to the state syllabus of common core is a step in the right direction.Our Dysfunctional Public Education Is No Accident essay lays out the correct standard.

“Education needs to be about teaching the tools, methods and process of “How To Think”. The mission of the instructor is one of developing the intuitive nature of inquiry that is natural in every person. Training the intrinsic urge of curiosity as the means of discriminating and rational thought is the prime goal for the educator. But to achieve this level of tutoring the teacher must be founded in their own understand in logic and analytical thinking. In today’s classroom, social engineering has replaced Aristotle, Locke and Kant with the latest celebrity of multiculturalism.”

The Common Core site attempts to outline the purpose and worthiness of their education standards. Sounds like a noble goal; however, what is the reality?

“As a natural outgrowth of meeting the charge to define college and career readiness, the Standards also lay out a vision of what it means to be a literate person in the twenty-first century. Indeed, the skills and understandings students are expected to demonstrate have wide applicability outside the classroom or workplace. Students who meet the Standards readily undertake the close, attentive reading that is at the heart of understanding and enjoying complex works of literature. They habitually perform the critical reading necessary to pick carefully through the staggering amount of information available today in print and digitally. They actively seek the wide, deep, and thoughtful engagement with high-quality literary and informational texts that builds knowledge, enlarges experience, and broadens worldviews. They reflexively demonstrate the cogent reasoning and use of evidence that is essential to both private deliberation and responsible citizenship in a democratic republic. In short, students who meet the Standards develop the skills in reading, writing, speaking, and listening that are the foundation for any creative and purposeful expression in language.”

Dr. Susan Berry presents a wealth of information and resource links in her article, Common Core Rooted In Math Class Social Justice Indoctrination “While proponents of the Common Core claim that the new standards are focused on “college and career readiness,” more evidence is surfacing that a central purpose of the initiative is social justice and income redistribution indoctrination.” This one example sums up the dilemma.

“Radical Math boasts over 700 lesson plans, articles, charts, books, and websites that cover a wide range of socio-political issues including redistribution of wealth, discrimination against the poor by whites, corporations, banks, etc., and the message that widespread racism against blacks continues in the United States today.”

Now compare this critical appraisal to the lofty mission of math back in the Common Core mission statement. How can this statement below square with the above practice?

“For over a decade, research studies of mathematics education in high-performing countries have pointed to the conclusion that the mathematics curriculum in the United States must become substantially more focused and coherent in order to improve mathematics achievement in this country. To deliver on the promise of common standards, the standards must address the problem of a curriculum that is “a mile wide and an inch deep.” These Standards are a substantial answer to that challenge.”

Integration into a 21th century business and social model is the ultimate intent of the common core objective. Nowhere is there a debate of what kind of future mankind wants or the kind of reality that all human beings are intrinsically part of. Those questions require the study in humanity education and liberal arts training that are quite different from the instruction in algorithm programming.

The world view of this common core inculcation presupposes that society accepts their premises as a fait accompli. Their technocrat approach to instruction demands that authentic education must be marginalized if not outright eliminated. The traditional Christian cosmology has no place in this brave new world. In the article, Common Core’s Negative Impact on Education and Biblical Literacy, explains the destructive nature of this dehumanizing standardization.

“The central organizing theme of the Common Core ELA standards is that study of creative literature must be diminished in favor of nonfiction “informational texts.” The idea is that students should be drilled in the types of documents they are more likely to encounter in their entry-level jobs (and make no mistake, Common Core is a workforce-development model, not an education model).

The fundamental problem with the Common Core approach is that, to achieve its job-training goals, it recognizes no difference between one “complex” text and another “complex” text. A great work of literature has value far beyond the complexity of the words used – it allows students to understand the eternal human condition; it allows them to confront human challenges that recur throughout the ages; it teaches empathy, prudence, forgiveness; it transports the readers to places and times not their own. The Common Core ELA standards are, quite simply, indifferent to this type of education. Training, not educating, is their goal. They are not interested in helping students become the people God created them to be; they are interested in creating workers.”

You can just hear the profane condemnation from the American Federation of Teacher and the National Education Association opposing the mere mention of God in their secular temples of perdition. Irony excluded how biblical revelation dare be debated in a non-judgmental culture of relativism. At the heart of the government school establishment is an unending choir of fallen angels that preach their vision of paradise, while demanding ever higher budgets and far greater control over the indoctrination of their impressionable guinea pigs.

America is now a country stuck on stupid, greatly because of this unholy and apocalyptic system that dooms our society. Gee, moving to a common core curriculum has the intent to eliminate the last remnants of independent school boards. Home Schooling is also threatened as the article, What Homeschool Parents Need to Know about the Common Core argues.

“One factor is the century-long effort to nationalize and standardize American education. The standardization efforts have their roots in Dewey, Cubberley, and the schools of education at Stanford and Columbia. They picked up steam in the 1960s and 1970s as the national teachers’ unions gained more power. They strengthened more when President Jimmy Carter fulfilled a promise to the NEA by creating a separate, cabinet-level Department of Education.

The educrats dream of a day when every student in America will receive exactly the same education, using the same textbooks and lesson plans. Those textbooks and lesson plans will, of course, be developed by the best and the brightest, who will pass them down on tablets of stone. The worker bees and drones will be programmed to follow them exactly. This is a nightmare scenario, one which anyone who believes in individual rights, local control, and federalism should oppose at every opportunity. The Common Core Standards become dangerous when they form a stepping stone which helps to move the educrats’ vision forward.”

Top down control always is intended to eradicate the voice of the individual. Under a national coordinated imposition of federal funding, local school districts have become dependent upon the conditional requirements of conformity to keep the money flowing.

So what is the solution? From the Dysfunctional Public Education Is No Accident article.

“Reform is no long possible. A Federal Department of Education hastens central controls for social compliance. At this point, an education free from public schools, has more value than going through the disinformation that is currently being taught. The errors that are learned in childhood are more difficult to overturn, then if they were never acquired in the first place. So what exactly is the advantage in an education under government approved instructors? If you want to reverse the decay in moral aptitude, you must find alternatives for the education of your children.”

Common Core pronouncements sound so nice. In spite of this, the key question is whether their program of study teaches the principles of developing good citizens. Lest we forget, a good citizen is an independent thinking and rationally responsible trained advocate of liberty and moral values. Maintaining and expanding a structure of mindless and obedient state compliance is ridiculous.

Our founding fathers were distinguished, well spoken and skilled in the understanding of human nature. Today’s specimens, hatched from government schools, are chicken-livered dimwits that aspire to the lowest paradigm that a common core can establish. The miserable failure of the taxpayer collective education system is undeniable by any judicious measure. RIP before the entire nation dies.

Divided We Stand: A Traditionalist Manifesto

Conservatives are generally very nice people — who never saw a culture war they couldn’t lose. That is to say, we often hear cracks about how Barack Obama and his ilk may “evolve” on issues, but conservatives exhibit that tendency, too, and their evolution goes something like this:

“Marriage is between one man and one woman, period!”

Five years later…

“I can accept civil unions, but marriage shouldn’t be redefined.”

After five years more:

“The states can do whatever they want, just keep the feds out of it.”

And 10 years further on:

“People can do what they want. How does faux marriage affect me, anyway?” (This is the point British “conservatives” have reached.)

And at an even later juncture it’s, “Why shouldn’t homosexuals have the right to ‘marry’? It’s a matter of equality.” (Just ask some “conservatives” in Sweden.)

Oh, this isn’t limited to marriage or anything else some dismiss as “social issues.” Conservatives were against Social Security (in FDR’s time) before they tolerated it before they were for it before they demanded it. And they are against socialized medicine. But should it endure for 15 years, their children will tolerate it and then accept it and then expect it — as today’s conservatives do in Western Europe.

This gets at the only consistent definition of conservatism: a desire to “conserve,” to preserve the status quo. This is why while 1950s conservatives in the US were staunchly anti-communist, conservatives in the USSRwere communist. As the status quo changes, so does the nature of the prevailing conservatism. And it is liberals, as the agents of change (without the hope), who shape tomorrow’s status quo.

Here’s how it works: the liberals come to the bargaining table demanding a change. The conservatives don’t like it, but being “reasonable” they give the other side some part of what they want. And it doesn’t matter if it amounts to 50 percent, 30, 15 or just 1 percent.

Because the libs will be back, next year, next election cycle, next decade.

Again and again and again.

And each time the cons will get conned, giving the libs a few more slices, until the left has the whole loaf and those ideological loafers, conservatives, are left with crumbs and a crumbled culture.

In a word, today’s conservatives are generally people who have assimilated into yesterday’s liberals’ culture. And every time we compromise — on civil unions, big-government programs or whatever it may be — we assimilate further. And what is the nature of this evolution?

It is nothing less than a superior culture being subsumed by an inferior one.

Now, all this perhaps sounds hopeless. Are we damned to inexorable and irrevocable movement toward the “left,” at least until the complete collapse of civilization is wrought? Well, there is an alternative to assimilation.

Separation.

There has been some talk of secession lately. But note that there is a prerequisite for political separation: cultural separation. Serbia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Slovenia didn’t become their own nations because they suddenly thought the name Yugoslavia was no longer cool, but because of profound cultural differences. And Catalans in Spain some time back empowered parties that have called for an independence referendum this year because of cultural differences. Make the cultural differences great enough, and separation (assuming you can avoid bondage via a governmental iron fist, which is the other possibility) is a natural by-product.

But a key to increasing that cultural divide is avoiding assimilation. Did you ever hear of an Ainu (Japan’s original people) independence movement in Japan? No, because they’ve been largely absorbed by the wider culture, sort of how traditionalists get absorbed by our modernistic culture and end up having, at best, children who’ll reflect today’s liberals and be called tomorrow’s conservatives. So how can further assimilation be avoided?

We only need to look at how it’s done all over the world. And there are two ways. To illustrate the first, consider how ardent Muslims avoid being subsumed. They don’t view fellow citizens in a host nation as national brothers.

But as the “other.”

Oh, the others may occupy the same borders, but they are as alien as anyone outside them. Their culture is to be rejected not just because it’s decadent and despicable — and our liberal-created variety is certainly those things — but because it is of the other. So it is with the others’ laws, social codes, and traditions, too: they are born of an infidel, alien culture and are to be viewed with extreme suspicion if not hostility.

And this is precisely how leftists should be viewed.

For this to work, our instincts must be thus: If liberals say left, we go right. If they say down, we say up. If they scream “Change!” we shout all the louder “Tradition!” and then push for our own change — tradition’s restoration.

Note here that I’m not speaking of a cold intellectual understanding of the issues, which, don’t get me wrong, is important. But just as it is passion that makes a man fight for a woman, it is passion that makes you fight for a cause. Loathe what the liberals stand for, meet their agenda with animosity, cultivate a visceral desire to wipe it from the face of the Earth. Hate, hate, hate it with the fires of a thousand burning suns.

One drawback to this tactic for division, however, is that it constitutes a blind defiance that could conceivably reject virtue along with vice. An example of this is when elements of the black community dismiss education, Christianity and higher culture because they view embracing them as “acting white.” Yet since liberals are right only about 0.4 percent of the time (and I’m perhaps being generous), this isn’t the greatest of dangers at the moment. Nonetheless, this brings us to the ideal method for separation.

G.K. Chesterton once said, “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.” A good example of love-driven separation is the Amish. They do try to avoid hating anyone (although I suspect they hate certain ideas), yet their love for their culture is so great that they remain a people apart. Of course, where they fall short is that they won’t fight at all, even politically. And this philosophy will not yield separation on a wide scale because the left simply won’t allow millions of people to live “off the grid.” Someone has to fund the nanny state, after all.

But the proper combination is obvious. We need sort of an Amish jihad, a deep love of the good and hatred of the evil that translates into action. But there is a prerequisite for this, and it brings us to something both the Amish and Muslim jihadists have in common.

They believe in Truth.

Sure, the Muslims may call it the will of Allah; the Amish, God’s law. But the point is that they aren’t awash in a relativism that, amounting to the Protagorean notion that “man is the measure of all things,” is unduly influenced by man. They don’t see a large number of people lobbying for some loony social innovation and figure that, with man as arbiter, they have to “get with the times.” Rooted to what they see as eternal, they don’t bend to the ephemeral.

Quite the opposite of G.W. Bush, I’m a divider — not a uniter. If this sounds bad, note that Jesus himself said He had not come to unite the world but as a sword to divide brother against brother. And while I certainly don’t claim to be God or even godly, I do know that tolerance of evil in unity’s name is a vice — and blessed division a virtue.

We can hate what is in front of us, love what is behind us, or both. But if we’re sheep and not soldiers, compromisers and not crusaders, Western civilization’s days will be behind us — and in front, perhaps, a thousand years of darkness.

The Sharing Economy: An Introduction To Its Political Evolution

Can the sharing economy movement address the root causes of the world’s converging crises? Unless the sharing of resources is promoted in relation to human rights and concerns for equity, democracy, social justice and sustainability, then such claims are without substantiation – although there are many hopeful signs that the conversation is slowly moving in the right direction. 

In recent years, the concept and practice of sharing resources is fast becoming a mainstream phenomenon across North America, Western Europe and other world regions. The internet is awash with articles and websites that celebrate the vast potential of sharing human and physical assets, in everything from cars and bicycles to housing, workplaces, food, household items, and even time or expertise. According to most general definitions that are widely available online, the sharing economy leverages information technology to empower individuals or organisations to distribute, share and re-use excess capacity in goods and services. The business icons of the new sharing economy include the likes of Airbnb, Zipcar, Lyft, Taskrabbit and Poshmark, although  for-profit as well as non-profit organisations are associated with this burgeoning movement that is predicated, in one way or another, on the age-old principle of sharing.

As the sharing economy receives increasing attention from the media, a debate is beginning to emerge around its overall importance and future direction. There is no doubt that the emergent paradigm of sharing resources is set to expand and further flourish in coming years, especially in the face of continuing economic recession, government austerity and environmental concerns. As a result of the concerted advocacy work and mobilisation of sharing groups in the US, fifteen city mayors have now signed the  in which they officially recognise the importance of economic sharing for both the public and private sectors. Seoul in South Korea has also adopted a city-funded project called  in which it plans to expand its ‘sharing infrastructure’, promote existing sharing enterprises and incubate sharing economy start-ups as a partial solution to problems in housing, transportation, job creation and community cohesion. Furthermore, Medellin in Colombia is embracing transport-sharing schemes and reimagining the use of its shared public spaces, while Ecuador is the first country in the world to commit itself to becoming a ‘shared knowledge’-based society, under an  named ‘buen saber’.

Many proponents of the sharing economy therefore have  for a future based on sharing as the new modus operandi. Almost everyone recognises that drastic change is needed in the wake of a collapsed economy and an overstretched planet, and the old idea of the American dream – in which a culture that promotes excessive consumerism and commercialisation leads us to see the ‘good life’ as the ‘goods life’, as described by the  – is no longer tenable in a world of rising affluence among possibly 9.6 billion people by 2050. Hence more and more people are rejecting the materialistic attitudes that defined recent decades, and are gradually shifting towards a different way of living that is based on connectedness and sharing rather than ownership and conspicuous consumption. ‘Sharing more and owning less’ is the ethic that underlies a discernible change in attitudes among affluent society that is being led by today’s young, tech-savvy generation known as Generation Y or the Millennials.

However, many entrepreneurial sharing pioneers also profess a big picture vision of what sharing can achieve in relation to the world’s most pressing issues, such as population growth, environmental degradation and . As  posits, for example, a network of cities that embrace the sharing economy could mount up into a Sharing Regions Network, then Sharing Nations, and finally a Sharing World: “A globally networked sharing economy would be a whole new paradigm, a game-changer for humanity and the planet”. Neal Gorenflo, the co-founder and publisher of Shareable, also argues that peer-to-peer collaboration can form the basis of a new social contract, with an extensive sharing movement acting as the that can address the root causes of both poverty and climate change. Or to quote the words of Benita Matofska, founder of The People Who Share, we are going to have to “” if we want to face up to a sustainable future. In such a light, it behoves us all to investigate the potential of sharing to effect a social and economic transformation that is sufficient to meet the grave challenges of the 21st century.

Two sides of a debate on sharing

There is no doubt that sharing resources can contribute to the greater good in a number of ways, from economic as well as environmental and social perspectives. A number of studies show the environmental benefits that are common to many sharing schemes, such as the resource efficiency and potential energy savings that could result from  and  in cities. Almost all forms of localised sharing are economical, and can lead to  for individuals and enterprises. In terms of subjective well-being and social impacts, common experience demonstrates how sharing can also help us to feel connected to neighbours or co-workers, and even build community and .

Few could disagree on these beneficial aspects of sharing resources within communities or across municipalities, but some controversy surrounds the broader vision of how the sharing economy movement can contribute to a fair and sustainable world. For many advocates of the burgeoning trend towards economic sharing in modern cities, it is about much more than couch-surfing, car sharing or tool libraries, and holds the potential to disrupt the individualist and materialistic assumptions of neoliberal capitalism. For example, Juliet Schor in her book  perceives that a new economics based on sharing could be an antidote to the hyper-individualised, hyper-consumer culture of today, and could help rebuild the social ties that have been lost through market culture. Annie Leonard of the Story of Stuff project, in her  on how to move society in an environmentally sustainable and just direction, also considers sharing as a key ‘game changing’ solution that could help to transform the basic goals of the economy.

Many  see the sharing economy as a path towards achieving widespread prosperity within the earth’s natural limits, and an essential first step on the road to more localised economies and egalitarian societies. But far from everyone perceives that participating in the sharing economy, at least in its existing form and praxis, is a ‘political act’ that can realistically challenge consumption-driven economics and the culture of individualism – a question that is raised (although not yet comprehensively answered) in a  from Friends of the Earth, as discussed further below. Various commentators argue that the proliferation of new business ventures under the umbrella of sharing are nothing more than “supply and demand continuing its perpetual adjustment to new technologies and fresh opportunities”, and that the concept of the sharing economy is being  – a debate that was given impetus when the car sharing pioneers, Zipcar, were bought up by the established rental firm Avis.

Recently,  business and economics correspondent controversially reiterated the observation that making money from new modes of consumption is not really ‘sharing’ per se, asserting that the sharing economy is therefore a “dumb term” that “deserves to die”. Other journalists have criticised the superficial treatment that the sharing economy typically receives from financial pundits and tech reporters, especially the claims that small business start-ups based on monetised forms of sharing are a  – regardless of drastic cutbacks in welfare and public services, unprecedented rates of income inequality, and the . The author Evgeny Morozov, writing an , has gone as far as saying that the sharing economy is having a pernicious effect on equality and basic working conditions, in that it is fully compliant with market logic, is far from valuing human relationships over profit, and is even amplifying the worst excesses of the dominant economic model. In the context of the erosion of full-time employment, the assault on trade unions and the disappearance of healthcare and insurance benefits, he argues that the sharing economy is accelerating the transformation of workers into “always-on self-employed entrepreneurs who must think like brands”, leading him to dub it “neoliberalism on steroids”.

Problems of definition

Although it is impossible to reconcile these polarised views, part of the problem in assessing the true potential of economic sharing is one of vagueness in definition and wide differences in understanding. The conventional interpretation of the sharing economy is at present focused on its financial and commercial aspects, with continuous news reports proclaiming its  and potential as a “co-commerce revolution”. Rachel Botsman, a leading entrepreneurial thinker on the potential of collaboration and sharing through digital technologies to change our lives, has attempted to clarify what the sharing economy actually is in order to prevent further confusion over the different terms in general use. In her , she notes how the term ‘sharing economy’ is often muddled with other new ideas and is in fact a subset of ‘collaborative consumption’ within the entire ‘collaborative economy’ movement, and has a rather restricted meaning in terms of “sharing underutilized assets from spaces to skills to stuff for monetary or non-monetary benefits” [see  of the presentation]. This interpretation of changing consumer behaviours and lifestyles revolves around the “maximum utilization of assets through efficient models of redistribution and shared access”, which isn’t necessarily predicated on an ethic of ‘sharing’ by any strict definition.

Other interpretations of the sharing economy are far broader and less constrained by capitalistic assumptions, as demonstrated in the Friends of the Earth briefing paper on  written by Professor Julian Agyeman et al. In their estimation, what’s missing from most of these current definitions and categorisations of economic sharing is a consideration of “the communal, collective production that characterises the collective commons”. A broadened ‘sharing spectrum’ that they propose therefore not only focuses on goods and services within the mainstream economy (which is almost always considered in relation to affluent, middle-class lifestyles), but also includes the non-material or intangible aspects of sharing such as well-being and capability [see  of the brief]. From this wider perspective, they assert that the cutting edge of the sharing economy is often not commercial and includes informal behaviours like the unpaid care, support and nurturing that we provide for one another, as well as the shared use of infrastructure and shared public services.

This sheds a new light on governments as the “”, and suggests that the history of the welfare state in Europe and other forms of social protection is, in fact, also integral to the evolution of shared resources in cities and within different countries. Yet an understanding of sharing from this more holistic viewpoint doesn’t have to be limited to the state provision of healthcare, education, and other public services. As Agyeman et al elucidate, cooperatives of all kinds (from worker to housing to retailer and consumer co-ops) also offer alternative models for shared service provision and a different perspective on economic sharing, one in which equity and collective ownership is prioritised. Access to natural common resources such as air and water can also be understood in terms of sharing, which may then prioritise the common good of all people over commercial or private interests and market mechanisms. This would include controversial issues of land ownership and land use, raising questions over how best to share land and urban space more equitably – such as through community land trusts, or through new policies and incentives such as land value taxation.

The politics of sharing

Furthermore, Agyeman et al argue that an understanding of sharing in relation to the collective commons gives rise to explicitly political questions concerning the shared public realm and participatory democracy. This is central to the many countercultural movements of recent years (such as the Occupy movement and Middle East protests since 2011, and the Taksim Gezi Park protests in 2013) that have reclaimed public space to symbolically challenge unjust power dynamics and the increasing trend toward privatisation that is central to neoliberal hegemony. Sharing is also directly related to the functioning of a healthy democracy, the authors reason, in that a vibrant sharing economy (when interpreted in this light) can counter the political apathy that characterises modern consumer society. By reinforcing values of community and collaboration over the individualism and consumerism that defines our present-day cultures and identities, they argue that participation in sharing could ultimately be reflected in the political domain. They also argue that a shared public realm is essential for the expression of participatory democracy and the development of a good society, not least as this provides a necessary venue for popular debate and public reasoning that can influence political decisions. Indeed the “emerging shareability paradigm”, as they describe it, is said to reflect the basic tenets of the  (RTTC) – an international urban movement that fights for democracy, justice and sustainability in cities and mobilises against the privatisation of common goods and public spaces.

The intention in briefly outlining some of these differing interpretations of sharing is to demonstrate how considerations of politics, justice, ethics and sustainability are slowly being allied with the sharing economy concept. A paramount example is the Friends of the Earth briefing paper outlined above, which was written as part of FOEI’s  series on cities that promoted sharing as “a political force to be reckoned with” and a “”. Yet many further examples could also be mentioned, such as the New Economics Foundation’s ‘’ which promotes the old-fashioned ethic of sharing as part of a new way of living to replace the collapsed model of debt-fuelled overconsumption. There are also signs that many influential proponents of the sharing economy – as generally understood today in terms of new economic models driven by peer-to-peer technology that enable access to rather than ownership of resources – are beginning to query the commercial direction that the movement is taking, and are instead promoting more politicised forms of social change that are not merely based on micro-enterprise or the monetisation/branding of high-tech innovations.

Janelle Orsi, a California-based ‘sharing lawyer’ and author of , is particularly inspirational in this regard; for her, the sharing economy encompasses such a broad range of activities that it is hard to define, although she suggests that all its activities are tied together in how they harness the existing resources of a community and grow its wealth. This is in contradistinction to the mainstream economy that mostly generates wealth for people outside of people’s communities, and inherently generates extreme inequalities and ecological destruction – which Orsi contends that the sharing economy can help reverse. The problem she recognises is that the so-called sharing economy we usually hear about in the media is built upon a business-as-usual foundation, which is privately owned and often funded by venture capital (as is the case with Airbnb, Lyft, Zipcar, Taskrabbit et cetera). As a result, the same business structures that created the economic problems of today are buying up new sharing economy companies and turning them into ever larger, more centralised enterprises that are not concerned about people’s well-being, community cohesion, local economic diversity, sustainable job creation and so on (not to mention the risk of re-creating stock valuation bubbles that overshadowed the earlier generation of  enterprises). The only way to ensure that new sharing economy companies fulfil their potential to create economic empowerment for users and their communities, Orsi argues, is through cooperative conversion – and she makes a  for the democratic, non-exploitative, redistributive and truly ‘sharing’ potential of worker and consumer cooperatives in all their guises.

Sharing as a path to systemic change

There are important reasons to query which direction this emerging movement for sharing will take in the years ahead. As prominent supporters of the sharing economy recognise, like Janelle Orsi and Juliet Schor, it offers both opportunities and reasons for optimism as well as pitfalls and some serious concerns. On the one hand, it reflects a growing shift in our values and social identities as ‘citizens vs consumers’, and is helping us to rethink notions of ownership and prosperity in a world of finite resources, scandalous waste and massive wealth disparities. Perhaps its many proponents are right, and the sharing economy represents the first step towards transitioning away from the over-consumptive, materially-intense and hoarding lifestyles of North American, Western European and other rich societies. Perhaps sharing really is fast becoming a counter-cultural movement that can help us to value relationships more than things, and offer us the possibility of re-imagining politics and constructing a more participative democracy, which could ultimately pose a challenge to the global capitalist/consumerist model of development that is built on private interests and debt at the cost of shared interests and true wealth.

On the other hand, critics are right to point out that the sharing economy in its present form is hardly a threat to existing power structures or a movement that represents the kind of radical changes we need to make the world a better place. Far from reorienting the economy towards greater equity and a better quality of life, as proposed by writers such as Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, Tim Jackson, Herman Daly and John Cobb, it is arguable that most forms of sharing via peer-to-peer networks are at risk of being subverted by conventional business practices. There is a perverse irony in trying to imagine the logical conclusion of these trends: new models of collaborative consumption and co-production that are co-opted by private interests and venture capitalists, and increasingly geared towards affluent middle-class types or so-called bourgeois bohemians (the ‘bobos’), to the exclusion of those on low incomes and therefore to the detriment of a more equal society. Or new sharing technology platforms that enable governments and corporations to collaborate in pursuing more intrusive controls over and greater surveillance of citizens. Or new social relationships based on sharing in the context of increasingly privatised and enclosed public spaces, such as gated communities within which private facilities and resources are shared.

This is by no means an inevitable outcome, but what is clear from this brief analysis is that the commercialisation and depoliticisation of economic sharing poses risks and contradictions that call into question its potential to transform society for the benefit of everyone. Unless the sharing of resources is promoted in relation to human rights and concerns for equity, democracy, social justice and sound environmental stewardship, then the various claims that sharing is a new paradigm that can address the world’s interrelated crises is indeed empty rhetoric or utopian thinking without any substantiation. Sharing our skills through Hackerspaces, our unused stuff through GoodShuffle or a community potluck through mealshare is, in and of itself, a generally positive phenomenon that deserves to be enjoyed and fully participated in, but let’s not pretend that car shares, clothes swaps, co-housing, shared vacation homes and so on are going to seriously address economic and climate chaos, unjust power dynamics or inequitable wealth distribution.

Sharing from the local to the global

If we look at sharing through the lens of , however, as civil society organisations and others are now beginning to do, then the true possibilities of sharing resources within and among the world’s nations are vast and all-encompassing: to enhance equity, rebuild community, improve well-being, democratise national and global governance, defend and promote the global commons, even to point the way towards a  to replace the present stage of competitive neoliberal globalisation. We are not there yet, of course, and the popular understanding of economic sharing today is clearly focused on the more personal forms of giving and exchange among individuals or through online business ventures, which is mainly for the benefit of high-income groups in the world’s most economically advanced nations. But the fact that this conversation is now being broadened to include the role of governments in sharing public infrastructure, political power and economic resources within countries is a hopeful indication that the emerging sharing movement is slowly moving in the right direction.

Already, questions are being raised as to what sharing resources means for the poorest people in the developing world, and how a revival of economic sharing in the richest countries can be spread globally as a solution to converging crises. It may not be long until the idea of  – driven by an awareness of impending ecological catastrophe, life-threatening extremes of inequality, and escalating conflict over natural resources – is the subject of every dinner party and kitchen table conversation.

References:

Agyeman, Julian, Duncan McLaren and Adrianne Schaefer-Borrego, , Friends of the Earth briefing paper, September 2013.

Agyeman, Julian, , , 21st September 2012.

Bollier, David, , 20th September 2013, 

Botsman, Rachel, , , 21st November 2013.

Botsman, Rachel, , Collaborative Lab on , 19th November 2013.

Childs, Mike, , Shareable.net, 5th November 2013.

Collaborativeconsumption.com, , 26th June 2013.

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Eberlein, Sven, , Shareable.net, 20th February 2013.

Enright, Michael in interview with Benita Matofska and Aidan Enns, , CBC Radio, 16th December 2012.

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Gaskins, Kim, , Latitude, 1st June 2010.

Gorenflo, Neal, , Shareable.net, 31st July 2013.

Grahl, Jodi (trans.), , International Alliance of Inhabitants et al, May 2005.

Griffiths, Rachel, , Co-operatives UK, London UK, 2011.

Grigg, Kat, , The Solutions Journal, 20th September 2013.

Heinberg, Richard, , Post Carbon Institute, 12th November 2013.

Herbst, Moira, , The Guardian, 7th January 2014.

Jackson, Tim, Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet, Routeledge, 2011.

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Kasser, Tim, The High Price of Materialism, MIT Press, 2003.

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Matofska, Benita, , Friends of the Earth blog, 4th January 2013.

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Olson. Michael J. and Andrew D. Connor, , Piper Jaffray, November 2013.

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Orsi, Janelle and Doskow, Emily, The Sharing Solution: How to Save Money, Simplify Your Life and Build Community, Nolo, May 2009.

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The Left After The Failure of Obamacare

It’s satisfying to watch rats flee a sinking ship.  This is because onlookers knew the ship was doomed long ago, and swimming rats signify that the drawn-out tragedy is nearing an end.  A collective sense of relief is a natural response.

The rats who propped up the broken boat of Obamacare are a collection of liberal and labor groups who frittered away their group’s resources—and integrity— to sell a crappy product to the American people.

Those in the deepest denial went “all in” for Obamacare— such as some unions and groups like Moveon.org— while the more conniving groups and individuals—like Michael Moore— playacted “critical” of Obamacare, while nevertheless declaring it “progressive”, in effect adding crucial political support to a project that deserved none.

But of course Obamacare was always more barrier than progress: we’ve wasted the last several years planning, debating, and reconstructing the national health care system, all the while going in the wrong direction— into the pockets of the insurance mega corporations.    A couple of progressive patches on the sails won’t keep her afloat.  It’s shipbuilding time.

It was painful to watch otherwise intelligent people lend support to something that’s such an obviously bad idea.  So it’s with immense relief that liberals like Michael Moore, labor groups, and others are finally distancing themselves from Obamacare’s Titanic failure.   Now these individuals and groups can stop living in denial and the rest of us can proceed towards a rational discussion about a real health care solution.

The inevitable failure of Obamacare is not due to a bad website, but deeper issues.   The hammering of the nails in the coffin has begun:  millions of young people are suddenly realizing that Obamacare does not offer affordable health care.  It’s a lie, and they aren’t buying it, literally.

The system depends on sufficient young people to opt in and purchase plans, in order to offset the costs of the older, higher-needs population.    Poor young people with zero disposable income are being asked to pay monthly premiums of $150 and more, and they’re opting out, inevitably sinking Obamacare in the process.

Those young people who actually do buy Obamacare plans—to avoid the “mandate” fine— will be further enraged when they attempt to actually use their “insurance”.   Many of the cheapest plans—the obvious choice for most young people— have $5,000 deductibles before the insurance will pay for anything.   For poor young people this is no insurance at all, but a form of extortion.

At the same time millions of union members are being punished under Obamacare: those with decent insurance plans will suffer the “Cadillac” tax, which will push up the cost of their healthcare plans, and employers are already demanding concessions from union members in the form of higher health care premiums, co-pays, deductibles, etc.

Lower paid union workers will suffer as well.  Those who are part of the Taft Hartley insurance plans will be pressured to leave the plans and buy their own insurance, since they cannot keep their plans and get the subsidy that the lowest income workers get.   This has the potential to bust the whole Taft Hartley health care system that millions of union members benefit from, which is one of the reasons that labor leaders suddenly became outraged at Obamacare, after having wasted millions of union member’s dollars propping it up.

 Ultimately, the American working class will collectively cheer Obamacare’s demise.   They just need labor and other lefties to cheer lead its destruction a little more fiercely.

 Surprisingly, most of the rats are still clinging to Obama’s hopeless vessel, frantically bailing water.  Sure they’ve put on their life preservers and anxiously eyeing the lifeboats, but they’re also preaching about how to re-align the deckchairs.

For example, in his “critical” New York Times op-ed piece, Michael Moore called Obamacare “awful”, but also called it a “godsend”, singing his same tired tune.   Part of Moore’s solution for Obamacare—which was cheered on in the Daily Kos— is equally ludicrous, and follows his consistently flawed logic that Obamacare is worth saving, since its “progress” that we can build on.  Moore writes:

“Those who live in red [Republican dominated] states need the benefit of Medicaid expansion [a provision of Obamacare]…. In blue [Democrat dominated] states, let’s lobby for a public option on the insurance exchange — a health plan run by the state government, rather than a private insurer.”

This is Moore at his absolute worst.  He’s neck deep in the flooded hull of the U.S.S Obamacare and giving us advice on how to tread water.

Of course Moore doesn’t criticize the heart of Obamacare, the individual mandate, the most hated component.

 Moore also relies on the trump card argument of the pro-Obamacare liberals: there are progressive aspects to the scheme—such as the expansion of Medicaid— and therefore the whole system is worth saving.

 Of course it’s untrue that we need Obamacare to expand Medicaid.  In fact, the expansion of Medicaid acted more as a Trojan horse to introduce the pro-corporate heart of the system; a horse that Moore and other liberals nauseatingly continue to ride on.

But Moore’s sneakiest argument is his advice to blue states to  “…lobby for a public option on the insurance exchange…”

Again, Moore implies that it’s ok if we are “mandated” to buy health insurance, so long is there is a public option.  But that aside, the deeper scheme here is that Moore wants us to further waste our energy “reforming” Obamacare, rather than driving it to the bottom of the sea.

Moore surely knows that very few people are going to march in the streets demanding a public option at this point; he therefore knows that even this tiny reform of the system is unachievable. He’s wasting our time.  Real change only happens in politics when there is a surge of energy among large sections of the population, and it’s extremely unlikely that more than a handful of people are going to be active towards “fixing” Obamacare— they want to drown it.

Moore’s attempt to funnel people’s outrage at Obamacare towards a “public option” falls laughably short, and this is likely his intention, since his ongoing piecemeal “criticisms” of the system have only served to salvage a sunken ship.

Instead of wasting energy trying to pry Obamacare out of the grip of the corporations, Moore would be better served to focus exclusive energy towards expanding the movement for Medicare For All, which he claims that he also supports, while maintaining that somehow Obamacare will evolve into Single Payer system.

Most developed nations have achieved universal health care through a single payer system, which in the United States can be easily achieved by expanding Medicare to everybody.  Once the realities of Obamacare directly affect the majority of the population and exacerbates the crisis of U.S. healthcare, people will inevitably choose to support the movement of Medicare for All, the only real option for a sane health care system.

Education In A Free Society

Proposed solutions have included greater funding, a longer academic year, national standards, measures to reduce school violence, and educational vouchers. The only proper solution is to completely separate state and school thereby permitting education to be purchased and sold through the free market system. Consumer-financed education must replace tax-based funding of education. We need to dissolve public schools and replace them with educational businesses. By de-monopolizing public schools, we would raise standards, better motivate teachers and students, allow greater innovation, bring costs down, and meet the particularized needs of our children.

Public education is inconsistent with freedom and responsibility. Public education erodes personal freedom and thus should be replaced with parental choice, competition, and market solutions. Parents are responsible for the education of their children. Under a free market, families would decide which are the best educational vehicles for each of their children.

State schools are based on the assumptions that the government is sovereign in education that people are morally and legally obligated to fund the public school system, and that state schools can, and should, teach neutral values. Government policy imposes strict rules and regulations and a directive to use education to engineer political and social outcomes. Public education is a collectivist welfare program in which people are coerced to participate. Not only is political consensus substituted for private individual decisions, the benefits of public education are not commensurate with its costs and its subsidized prices distort individual decision-making.

In the past, families, religious groups, and private schools dominated education, but today the state is in charge. We need to eliminate state involvement in education.

A person should be free to pay for a child’s education if he wanted to. Today, people are forced to pay for schools imparting ideas that they would not voluntarily support. Freed of their educational tax burden, individuals would have the funds to pay for private education. In addition, competition would raise school quality and would make private education more affordable and available.

Totally separating education from the state means abolishing school taxes and compulsory school attendance. By divorcing education from political power, parents and their children will be free to pursue education the best serves their needs.

History and Philosophy of Public Education 

Rousseau, like Plato before him and Mann and Dewey after him, believed in the perfectibility of man provided that he was educated so that he could not want to do evil. According to Rousseau, there exists a “general will” over and above wills of individuals. He taught that there is an intellectual elite who is able to discern the commands of the general will and, because of that knowledge, have the authority to implement those commands. The existence and authority of the general will is the cornerstone of Rousseau’s philosophy of education.

In Emile, Rousseau portrays the ideal education in the story of a child, who, free from the restrictions of an adult’s will, is able to study nature and thus learn what he needs to know. However, Emile has an enlightened tutor, whose purpose is to secretly manufacture the conditions under which nature will teach the student what the tutor wants the student to learn. Through the tutor’s disguised intentions, the student, by equating his own will with the will of his tutor, is conditioned to identity his own will with the general will.

German thinkers from Luther to Fichte to the Prussian monarchs developed theories of compulsory state education. Hegel viewed the state, through which the general will found expression, as the supreme earthly manifestation of the Absolute and as the embodiment of ethics. People found freedom when they recognized the state’s exalted status and accepted the state’s objectives as their own objectives. This view ultimately gave rise to American nationalism and the movement toward universal education.

For the first two hundred years in America, from the early 1600s to the early 1800s, public schools were virtually non-existent. Before the 1830s, education was primarily an informal local activity. Private education in early America included the home, church, Catholic and Protestant schools, charity schools for the poor, apprenticeships, private study, and circulating libraries. With the variety of educational systems available to our forefathers, tax-financed schools did not receive much support. For many years, the only strong advocates of state schools in the U.S. were Boston Unitarians who denied Christian teachings and accepted Rousseau’s ideas that negative behavior was the result of mis-education rather than due to man’s fallen nature.

Although tax-financed common schools existed by the 18305, most parents continued to send their children to private schools. However, the public school agenda of the Unitarians and other elites began to advance with urgency as Catholic immigration, especially from Ireland and Germany, soared in the 18405 and 18505. Protestants began to fear that Catholic immigrants and the poor would become an unassimilated mass.

Horace Mann, a Unitarian lawyer and legislator, had been appointed secretary of the newly created Massachusetts Board of Education in 1837, the first state board of education in the U.S. During his12 years as its head, Mann created a unified system of common schools including teacher-training initiatives and dedication to a Utopian vision of perfecting the moral character of the nation’s youths. Mann was a die-hard Unitarian moralist who perceived the public school as the cure for social ills and exhibited faith in human goodness given the right education and environment. Mann, an admirer of the Prussian approach to public education, said that closing down prisons would be possible, given a generation of schools according to his prescriptions.

Mann’s goal was to establish mechanisms of social control. He advocated a standard curriculum, centralization of public funds, a strongly moral character of instruction, and state leadership in training teachers dedicated to the common school agenda. Mann and his fellow reformers sought to use the state’s authority and resources to impose a single ethos on every school in the name of enlightenment and social unity.

Originally, many Protestants criticized the peculiar religious character of the common public school. Mann’s religion without salvation was attractive to an elite who was confident of its own success and of the country’s inevitable progress. Protestant critics feared that the schools’ espoused non-denominational neutrality was the same as the institution of secularism through the public schools.

However, the large influx of Catholic immigrants who tended to establish their own schools, was thought by many to be a threat to Protestantism. Encouraged by the Unitarians, many Protestants began to embrace the state school concept. Since the establishment of Protestantism as the American national church was impossible due to the nation’s emphasis on religious tolerance, it was thought the public school could perhaps become an acceptable substitute mechanism to control religion. The public school was thus seen by Protestants as a potential mechanism for instilling the true faith.

Mann’s non-denominational approach did incorporate Bible reading (the King James version), daily prayer, and hymns into its activities. Of course, as America became more secularized so did the public schools. Public education in America really began to boom after the Civil War, as government- controlled and funded schools replaced the earlier private education system. The biggest boost for state schools came when states began to enact laws of compulsory attendance.

Catholics felt left out of the public school system. As a consequence, the Catholic parochial school system was established in 1874. Catholics, like the Protestants, Unitarians, and others realized that whoever controls the schools controls the upcoming generation.

By altering and connecting Rousseau’s ideas of an independently existing general will with the principle of majority rule, 19th century American intellectuals thought that the “will of the majority” as interpreted by themselves, provided a unique source of beneficence and wisdom. Education controlled by that “will” would foster the public good.

John Dewey’s progressive model of active learning or pragmatism promoted a revolt against abstract learning and attempted to make education an effective tool for integrating culture and vocation. Dewey was responsible for developing a philosophical approach to education called “experimentalism” which saw education as the basis for democracy. His goal was to turn public schools into indoctrination centers to develop a socialized population that could adapt to an egalitarian state operated by an intellectual elite.

Thinking for Dewey was a collective phenomenon. Disavowing the role of the individual mind in achieving technological and social progress, Dewey promoted the group, rather than the teacher, as the main source of social control in the schools. Denying the ideas of universal principles, natural law, and natural rights, Dewey emphasized social values and taught that life adjustment is more important than academic skills.

Dewey explained that the subject matter and moral lessons in the traditional curricula were meant to teach and inspire but were irrelevant to the students’ immediate action experiences. The contradiction between the students’ real interests and those of the traditional school alienated students from their schoolwork. School-age children were caught between the opposing forces of immature, undeveloped beings and the values, meanings, and aims of subject matter constructed by a mature adult. Dewey believed that students’ energy, talent, and potential could not be realized within the structure of an archaic school system.

Dewey and other members of the Progressive movement wanted a predictable method for providing a common culture and of instilling Americans with democratic values. As a result, by the end of the 19th century, a centrally-controlled, monopolistic, comprehensive, and bureaucratic public education system was deemed to be essential for America’s future.

During the 20th century, the job of public education was expanded to inculcating moral values, providing nutrition and health, protecting children from psychological and physical abuse, and combating crime and delinquency. Later, additional social and political goals such as racial integration, democratic participation, environmental awareness and activism, and social tolerance were added.

The Nature of Public Education 

Public schools are coercive political monopolies that are funded through compulsory taxation and that have a captive audience of pupils through mandatory attendance laws. People must pay for the school system even if they do not use public schools or are not satisfied with them. The state uses its coercive taxing power to take money from some, even individuals who do not have children, to fund the education of others. Since most people cannot afford to pay private tuition after bearing their school tax burden the market for private schools is artificially restrained. There would be many more, and a larger variety, of private schools in the absence of a tax-supported system. In fact, the bankruptcy of some private schools can be attributed to unfair competition from the public system.

Decisions are made from the top-down. Small groups of elected or appointed state officials ignore market forces and make decisions regarding teaching methods, curricula, textbooks, class size, teacher qualifications, etc. Public education is designed to serve the state and its ruling elite who endeavor to create a one size fits all education for a population of diverse children.

Public education views children as property of the state, undermines parents’ moral authority and responsibility, and stifles the entrepreneurial spirit. A system of force and compulsion replaces education with indoctrination. Students learn officially approved state doctrine from state-approved teachers using state-approved texts. Public schools promote agendas that conflict with parents’ rights to shape the values and beliefs of their children.

Opponents of free market education believe that only public education can impart the skills, values, knowledge, and attitudes needed for good citizenship. Political correctness and outcome-based education result from public educators’ attempts to socialize the young to make society in their own egalitarian image through the use of compulsory state education. Public education thus tends to be more formative and indoctrinating than it is informative.

Parents have been denied the right to choose the type of education they want for their children. Children do not learn in the same way, at the same rate, by the same methods, or under the same conditions. Parents are in the best position to take into account the relevant differences in their individual children and should be permitted to select the appropriate education for each of them. Not all parents want their children educated in the same way. The superior performance of home-schooled children testifies to the ability of parents compared to that of state-certified teachers.

Public educators want uniformity in the schools since in their minds there would be social inequality if everyone did not have the same education. However, specialized schools which vary in their methods, goals, materials, and assessment methods would better cater to the diversity of human beings.

Public schools do impart values, but they are the values of conformity and docility. Public schooling suppresses the individuality, initiative, and creativity of students. In its efforts to stay ideologically independent, public education is likely to sacrifice intellectual and character development. The idea has caught on that every individual has a right and a duty to be educated and that society through the government has the obligation to fund the education of its citizens. Supporters of public schooling have maintained that many children will go uneducated if education were not compulsory and if the state did not deliver it. The state assumes that parents are irresponsible and must be forced to do what they should do. Parents are not free to ignore school attendance by their children and are not free to ignore tuition payments through taxation. By avowing the legitimacy of public education, voters try to transfer their responsibility for educating their children to the state. However, parental moral responsibility for their child’s education cannot be shifted to anyone else.

Public schools get their customers through compulsory attendance laws. Public education is based on the prison concept. Tax-funded schools have coercion as part of their culture. As wards of the state, children are jailed with a mandatory sentence until they are 16. The state removes children from parents assumed to be incompetent in order to keep them from being anti-social and to make them into complacent workers and citizens.

When schooling is mandated by law, the sense of opportunity that accompanies free choice is missing. If education is not compulsory, then students are perceiving education as an opportunity rather than as a requirement. In the absence of compulsory education, students would no longer be captive to ideological and political brainwashing on the part of teachers and administrators.

Most Americans accept the propriety of forcibly taking some people’s money in order to educate other people’s children. Students are thus taught by example that they are entitled to government “gifts” and that it is proper to obtain an end through organized force. State education teaches that there are a multitude of good ends that can be attained by the state taking wealth to pay for them in the same manner as it pays for students’ educations. If children are led to believe that they are owed benefits from the government without any work or its product being exchanged, they tend to think that it is not necessary for them to perform work to obtain any of their desired possessions.

Compulsion negatively affects attitudes and poor attitudes obstruct education. Compulsory education has drawn some children into classes who do not want to be there thereby lowering the quality of education as standards are reduced to meet the lowest common denominator. Some students just don’t belong in school, but the government not only forces their attendance, it also compels those who do belong and want to be there to associate with delinquents and the uneducable. Of course, due to self interest, only a few would go uneducated if education were noncompulsory. Attendees would have a financial incentive to get the most out of their education.

When the state provides a “free education” the value of the education is decreased in the minds of parents as well as in the minds of students. Parents will not be as interested in ensuring their children’s attendance when schools are free. In addition, parents will not demand much from their children or the schools when education does not cost them anything. Quality declines when the connection between service and payments is severed. Public education breaks the link between consumers’ demands for education and their ability to control their own resources in voicing that demand.

Public education continues because it is funded through compulsory tax payments. Because public schools are guaranteed revenue, there is no incentive to strive for excellence. When a school has monopoly control over students, the motivation to produce successful students is lacking. Public education deprives parents of their right to select the kind of schooling that is best for their children. The state taxes away parents’ income and permits public bureaucrats to run the school system as they see fit.

Public schools are insulated from failure and protected from competition. Consequently, it is safe for them to ignore their customers. Public educators have little incentive to provide quality, to respect and please their customers, to pursue innovations, to produce results, to be efficient, or to control their costs.

Politicians push for higher taxes to foster their political images by exhibiting their concern for improving public schools. In addition, school administrators do not try to be efficient or cut cost because such behavior would lead to a reduced budget. This helps to explain why the U.S. spends more per student per year than any other major nation. At the same time, student performance has not kept par with the increase in resources devoted to public schooling.

Public school systems lack the entrepreneurial ingredient. The educational bureaucracy is unable to calculate net income or net loss, has no way of using cost-benefit analysis to see if expenditures were appropriately applied, and do not know if they are using taxpayers’ money to accurately respond to consumer demand.

Public education uses taxation to evade market prices. There is an immense difference between government paying for education and the parent paying for it in a free market situation. When public education is financed by the state, the real price to taxpayers is much greater than the price perceived by the consumers. The family of a student only pays part of the cost of a state-financed education with the rest of the cost being transferred to taxpayers with no or fewer children than the particular family has.

Vouchers and Other Pseudo-Reforms 

Proponents of educational choice have proposed educational vouchers, charter schools, and tax deductions for private educational expenditures. The fundamental problem, public funding of education, remains under each of these alternatives. There are always strings attached when state funds are provided. Government intrusion always follows government funding.

With respect to educational vouchers, publicly-funded vouchers would be issued to parents of school-age children to spend at the government-approved school of their choice. Parents would be given a voucher worth a precise amount of public tax money. The parent would have the state-granted right to choose from among the local schools that meet the state’s standards. Vouchers are based on the assumption that the state, rather than the parents, is sovereign over education. Parents’ choices will be restricted by controlling school eligibility for reimbursement through vouchers. The state, the source of educational funding, retains its sanctioning authority under the voucher system.

Every private school that accepts a voucher payment is subject to local, state, and/or federal rules and regulations. Private enterprises cease to be private with the introduction of public funds. Since state funds support private schools in a voucher system, if follows that private schools will be accountable to the government if they are to succeed. For example, public educational officials could require open admissions, insist that a private school’s student population reflect the community it serves including proper quotas of minority students, require that vouchers must be accepted as full payment even if they are of less value than the school’s tuition, demand that voucher money not be used to finance religious education, etc. A voucher system could also be used to exclude schools that teach “politically incorrect” ideas or that employ teaching methods contrary to the prevailing orthodox methods championed by public education bureaucrats.

As long as an education is publicly funded, decisions regarding educational policy will be politically made. Under the voucher system, voucher-supported private schools become part of the state’s monopoly on education. The voucher system creates an illusion of parental authority without the substance of such authority. A voucher program violates the principle that parents are morally and financially responsible for their children’s education. In a voucher system, coercive taxation remains the source of education funding. A cosmetic change at best, a voucher program gives the appearance that parents are exercising choice, while, at the same time, transferring the evils of the public system to private schools.

Vouchers will lure students back into publicly-financed education. Currently, many parents remove their children from public education as a matter of principle. The voucher system will entice parents since its benefits will only be received if parents enroll their children in state-approved schools. Vouchers will lessen the demand for private education that is outside the taxpayer financed; education system. Parents who want to keep their children out of government-run schools will have to say no to free education in a state school, turn down vouchers for government licensed schools, and then pay additional funds to send their children to an authentically independent school! In essence, these parents will be paying for education three times while their children only receive one education each.

A charter school is a partially autonomous publicly-financed school that is operated by a group of community members, teachers, and/or parents. It operates under a charter with a local school district board of education or sometimes with an outside agency such as an institution of higher learning. Charter schools are free to a certain degree, but, like the voucher system, charters will corrupt such schools. Restrictions confronting charter schools include the source of its funding, regulations stemming from government control, and such schools’ lack of market feedback and accountability.

Some advocate private educational expense deductions for federal income tax purposes. Pre-tax dollars would be used to finance children’s education under this approval. Less beneficial than a tax credit, such a deduction would only ameliorate one’s tax penalty. In addition the main problem will still be that the educational “benefit” originates in the political order and must be utilized within the political framework.

The Educational Freedom 

The best school choice plan is the free market. Education should be bought and sold through free market processes. The separation of state and education would restore intellectual freedom, academic integrity, and individual achievement. The private market can best provide high quality and efficient education services. Private educational institutions can supply a superior educational product but currently, because of subsidized tuition at public schools, most students select the lower-priced option. When a child attends a private school, the family must pay taxes to subsidize the cost of students in public education and pay the whole cost of education at a private school.

Education is an economic commodity to be purchased in the marketplace according to the preferences and valuations of education consumers. In a free education market parents and students would decide based on the perceived costs and benefits of each option. In essence, the procurement of an educational service does not differ from the acquisition of any other private good.

Outcomes in a consumer-funded education market would be the result of voluntary purchases by educational consumers. The best schools would earn the most income. Profit calculations would permit schools to gauge their performance according to customer evaluations. Parents would choose schools based on performance and reputation. Paying customers value and select competent schools and teachers. Thus, it follows that the consumers of education should be the payers.

Market-based schools have incentives to furnish quality education at a competitive price. Competition would drive poor schools from the market. Market mechanisms would provide the most efficient allocation of resources. Schools would compete for the best students and students would compete for the best teachers and schools. Teachers’ salaries would be determined by market competition. Schools would provide instruction at a variety of locations with varying philosophies, specialization areas, and costs. Schools would arise to meet the demands of various students’ abilities and needs. Where the demand for a specific type of education arises, an entrepreneur would form the desired institution of learning. With the diversity that exists among individuals, a variety of schools would appear to meet individual educational needs.

It is critical that parents purchase education directly, when, and only for as long as, they believe their children require it. Only the total separation of state and school can re-institute parental responsibility, protect parents’ rights, and allow students, schools, and teachers to flourish in a free educational environment. Parents have moral authority over, and responsibility for, their own children.

If school taxes are abolished, parents will benefit by keeping their own money. The money belongs to the parents, not the government. They would then be free to choose their own children’s schools. For example, if parents want their children to have prayer, then they would send them to a school that has prayers. If they don’t want their children to have prayer, then they would send them to a school that has no prayer. Parents should be free to send their children to religious schools, progressive schools, trade schools, home school, or even no school at all. Of course, it is likely that the pursuit of happiness will supply enough incentive for people to want their children to improve educationally. Schools privately funded and freely selected would be mediating associations like churches, corporations, and unions, and would foster a true sense of belonging and identity.

In private schools in a free market, failure to provide the promised results would lead to declining enrollments, and financial losses. Competition breeds quality. For example, the free market would encourage teachers to improve their skills and would attract others into the teaching profession. Good teachers would be rewarded and poor teachers would be forced to select other careers. The market would also indicate which teaching approaches worked best in given situations and would stimulate creative individuals to produce and market learning materials. True educational businesses would evaluate teachers and their instructional operations to determine whether or not the customers are satisfied and getting their money’s worth of education.

Educational competition would result in the lowering of costs. Competition would make private education more affordable and widely available. This means that poor families would be more able to afford the cost of financing their children’s educations. In addition, if the poor are excused from the numerous education taxes that currently exist, then they would have the funds to pay for private education. It is also likely that private scholarships and charitable assistance will be available for lower income families, especially when the person or organization funding the scholarship knows that he is paying for a superior educational product.

In a free market, consumer demand and choice would determine which schools survive and prosper. A private, non-compulsory educational system would be better able to provide for diverse student needs, backgrounds, interests, goals, and preferences. A system of voluntary, unsubsidized education means rescinding government compelled financing, attendance, credentialing, accreditation, and curriculum. It means the full separation of school and state.

Source: Dr. Edward Younkins | quebecoislibre.org

Dissecting U.S. Elections – The People vs. The Politicians

The establishment has an entrenched interest in convincing the public that their vote in elections actually decides who is selected for public office. That same power elite runs and controls both Republican and Democratic political parties. Only a neophyte or a delusional idealist believes that the voting cycle reflects the will of the people. When reform candidates engage in the primary process, hoping to win the nomination from either of the two major parties, they face the stark reality that playing ball with the money bundlers means obeying the directives of masters of the universe. These overlords own politicians, especially those who continue in office by winning predetermined elections.

Democracy as expressed by the ballot box is a fairy tale. Anyone with experience within the Tweedledum and Tweedledee party organizations, understands that the comic book characters, who populate the ranks of politics just want to become a Mini-Me version of “Boss” Tweed.

Dispensing the fruits of power and patronage, while fostering the crony corporatist culture, is integral to maintaining the levers of political administration over a society of inconsequential serfs. When people’s frustration mounts, and party leadership blocks even modest attempts of populist reform, voting participation declines.

The GOP once was described, as Rockefeller or Country Club Republicans, is really a deranged asylum of NeoCons whose primary purpose is to purge genuine conservatives and libertarians from their ranks. A party that would nominate a John McCain for President and continue to support him in Senate elections is not worthy of trust. Written in 2004, John McCain: The Man Who Would Be President sums up the dilemma.

“McCain’s a full fledged phony without an ounce of conservative values running in his veins. Bush has proven himself to be a fraud and the tool of the NeoCons. This election is a charade of a sham called democracy. There are no surprises left, only the substitution of a name; while the same policies remain. Spell it Bush or McCain; but don’t use the designation conservative. Kerry is Bush’s brother, in the only society that selects those who are granted the nominations. McCain can only settle for second place, in service of the powers, that host the parlor game – picking a President.”

Now that the New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is the toast of the town, the praises and speculation begins. Chris Christie landslide: Template for a Republican presidential win in 2016? “The governor won an impressive 57 percent of women and took a majority of Latino voters. He even garnered 21 percent of black voters – a significant inroad for a Republican. He also won nearly half of union voters and those under the age of 30.”

The press would have you believe that the next Republican candidate for President needs to adopt a “political correctness” love fest to be elected. Please . . . dump on the Tea Party and disparage traditional conservatives is no formula for any politicians who deserves support.

That Republican 2010 Landslide and What It Means concludes.”The Republican Party’s attempt to co-opt the spontaneous spirit of the Tea Party geneses illustrates the panic that both entrenched parties have from a true populist movement. The mind dead voters who continually vote for the lesser of two evils, or adhere to the squishy William Buckley rule guarantee perpetual servitude. “The Buckley Rule is, ostensibly, that you vote for the most electable conservative option (in the primary) against a Democrat in November”.

The quest for that illusory electability is the trouble with every recent election. When will a true conservative/libertarian populist win the nomination? The apparent answer is never in a party of RINO’s and establishment gatekeepers.

Where can a true believer turn? That leaves Hillary Clinton as the apparent frontrunner nominee for the Democrats. The problem with that presumption is that she got the cold shoulder in 2008 in favor of Barry Soetoro, the CIA’s Manchurian Candidate. The Republicans are supposed to be the party of next in line Presidential torch carriers.

So why would the Democrats want HilLAIRy as their, Woman of the Year, or is it? The obvious appeal does not go unnoticed. “All you have to do is look under the dress and you will find the stuff that dreams are made from. Hillary is a man’s woman that appeals to the trendy tender gender on both coasts. She’s has a lock on the fear factor and will be the survivor of all the village people.”What better way to succeed Obama, the beyond race President, with a legendary bisexual voice, who will distribute her racism against white rural America as a condition of perpetuating the multicultural collectivism, which is so necessary for the total destruction of traditional values.

Just how well did all those underprivileged minorities do under Barack Hussein Obama? Surely, a first female President Clinton would add to such striking gains in the quality of life and standard of government dependency income.

All this Great Society II would make the LBJ administration look like spendthrifts.

The people, all the people no matter their race, ethnicity or social identity are not benefiting from a New World Order economy and political authoritarianism. Yet, with each election cycle the grip of both outlaw parties continue to expand their extortion policies. Every ten years the gerrymandering of redistricting divides the territory so that the spoils will continue to be shared.

How dumb are the electorate to allow this corrupt process to continue? Inevitably, stupidity knows no bounds. The Meaning of Third Parties in America describes the dilemma.

“If elections are an expression of consent, why is turn out so low for Third Parties? And if discontent was heightened, why are there not more Third Parties? The answer lies in the election returns. The fact that a majority of eligible voters no long take part in the process speaks volumes of their support. The public is stating their choice loud and clear: “NONE of the ABOVE”. This is the Third Party that wins the election. When the public deems that there is no ‘real’ difference between the two parties and that their self-interests cannot be furthered with their vote, the electoral system breaks down. Yes, the public is frustrated; but they conclude that their vote will never, effectively, change the status quo among the choices that are available. Their lack of participation, should not be misread as satisfaction for the current condition.”

The misuse of power by both parties illustrates the breakdown in the two tier party system. Having twins with different spots only means that the look of the predator will camouflage their direction for the kill. The Third Parties segment on “Dueling Twins” reminds the nature of the feeding frenzy.

“The duopoly rivalry that emerged over the centuries, grew from the reality of being ‘in or out’ of power, more than deep seeded ideological principles. For in its bare raw brute reality, politics is about power. How you get it, what you do when you have it, and how you keep it.”

When the Obama administration targets conservative Christian groups with IRS retribution, progressive ideologues remain silent. Protecting civil liberties only apply for the faithful of the congregation of state worship.

In addition, when the RINO’s mark patriotic groups and activist individuals for banishment from the ranks of the loyal opposition within their own party, they serve the masters of the same establishment that want a pervasive police state.

U.S. Elections are all too often a joke. The election commissions that administer the ballot process are nothing but extensions of the two corrupt parties.

What if a real grassroots national movement emerged that supersedes all ideology with a singular purpose – remove all careerist “pols” from office. Forget about the phony No Labels effort to diffuse popular disgust. The solution is to attract the very citizens who NEVER vote in elections.A national campaign – No Confidence – would be the clear message that the arrogant confidence game crooks could understand.

Term limits will never be voted upon much less adopted until the entire nation strikes against the establishment with a unified proclamation of revolt.

The organization Grassfire urges that people need to confront the system. Time is short and if the following scandals are allowed to be swept under the rug, the candidates in 2014 and 2016 will just continue with their lying ways.

1. “Fast and Furious”

2. The deadly Benghazi attacks

3. The IRS targeting of Tea Party Americans

4. The NSA security breaches

5. The truth about ObamaCare

Populism requires citizen involvement. Elections are meaningless without active accountability.

With the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision, corporations and labor unions can spend as much as they want to convince people to vote for or against a candidate. With all this money going into media campaigns between sibling spotted leopards, the public never gets to choose honest and transformational constitutional candidates. A vote for a Third Party aspirant is never a waste. Consent for RepubliCANTS and DemocRATS is idiotic.

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