Reason, Tradition and Liberty

A Message for Occupiers and Tea Partiers - The Most Important Consideration Today Is To Stop The War With Iran

2012-01-17T17:20:00.000-06:00

The last ten years have been terrible insofar as American citizens have lost many of their rights and their standard of living. But these years have been much worse for the many thousands of people who have lost their lives in America's insane wars of opportunity.

Those wars and the powers that benefit from them are the drivers behind every other loss that Americans and people from many other nations suffer. SOPA would never happen without the bogus threat of danger caused by America's wars of choice. The NDAA would never threaten Americans with perpetual detainment without trial if it were not justified by the stupid wars of opportunity.

The heart of the problem is the focus of the US government on war. War is now pursued on all continents. War and threat of war are the first tools that we reach for to promote our foreign policy. But war is bankrupting America economically and morally. War is not the solution to any of our problems because it is the *cause* of most of our problems.

We still have troops in Iraq. We are still at war in Afghanistan. This is a war that even the US Intelligence community sees as unwinnable, that the best outcome would be a stalemate. We are now actively promoting war in the Horn of Africa, in Central Africa, in the Sudan and we just finished a war of opportunity in north Africa. We have clandestine forces killing people all over the world. The US war machine is out of control.

And now the US, along with its partner Israel, is inciting war in Iran. Everything that has happened in the last ten years has been disastrous to human life, American law and the economy, but it is trivial compared to what a war with Iran will produce if we allow this tragedy to occur. Read what retired CIA officer Phil Giraldi says are probable consequences of the really bad idea that is war with Iran. In the late '30s the US put embargoes on Japan, cut off their supply of oil and rubber and absconded with their foreign reserves, thereby purposely forcing Japan into war. Today we are doing the exact same thing with Iran. And we are playing with global economic collapse and nuclear war! And we are doing it for the damned 0.01%! Who benefits by war with Iran? Not you, that much is for certain. But the big banks will write a lot of loans that will be guaranteed by the government, the arms manufacturers will haul in the dough and the media conglomerates will see their ratings triple. Congressmen and spies and bureaucrats and every other type of parasitic Washington vermin will puff out their chests and be "serious" on TV, thereby garnering national recognition.

If the occupy movement means anything and can accomplish anything, it had better concentrate on first things first. There is no sense going after Wall Street criminality if we enter into a major war with Iran. No one will care.

Likewise the Tea Party movement's laudable goals of lower taxes, lower Federal spending and an end to deficits will be shot as dead as most of the Iranians in fast attack boats that get close to a US aircraft carrier. The money will vomit forth from Washington in torrents, the Fed will print like never before, new taxes will be imposed and existing taxes will be raised. That is one of the things that always happen in a major war.

So the first thing to do for anyone who is not part of the 0.1% Washington/NYC elite is to stop the coming war before it starts. Be brave enough to speak out against Israel and its program of assassinations that are not aimed at stopping Iran's nuclear weapons program, but are executed in order to prod Iran into an attack that can be used, "like Pearl Harbor", as the *casus belli* that will justify a massive bombing campaign. The bombing campaign will be countered by asymmetrical actions such as Hezbollah firing massive numbers of missiles into Israel. The first acts of hostility will start a series of actions leading to the disaster that is global war, a tragedy the world has not seen in 67 years.

So as a human being, a concerned American, I beg all of you well-meaning, politically active people that read this pathetic blog from time to time to concentrate ALL of your efforts on stopping the rush to war. Call your Congressmen. Educate yourselves (r/EndlessWar is a good place to start) and tell everyone you know that nothing is as important right now as stopping the Iran War before it starts.

Peace

Who's the crazy one?

2012-01-17T16:52:00.001-06:00

The War Prayer by Mark Twain

2011-12-19T14:04:00.000-06:00

It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and spluttering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fulttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory with stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener.
It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety's sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.
Sunday morning came -- next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams -- visions of the stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender!
Then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag, or, failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation:

God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest,
Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!

Then came the "long" prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory --
An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher's side and stood there waiting. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, "Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord and God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!"
The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside -- which the startled minister did -- and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said:
"I come from the Throne -- bearing a message from Almighty God!" The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. "He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd, and will grant it if such be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import -- that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of -- excpet he pause and think. "God's servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two -- one uttered, and the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this -- keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon your neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain on your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse on some neighbor's crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.
"You have heard your servant's prayer -- the uttered part of it. I am commissioned by God to put into words the other part of it -- that part which the pastor -- and also you in your hearts -- fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard the words 'Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!' That is sufficient. The whole of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory -- must follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!

"Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth into battle -- be Thou near them! With them -- in spirit -- we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended in the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames in summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it --
For our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimmage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!
We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

(After a pause.) "Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits."

…

It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.

Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party need to come together

2011-12-07T15:52:00.001-06:00

This little graphic seems too simple to be ignored. How could it be that the neither the readers of Newsmax, nor the readers of Mother Jones see the obvious area of convergence where the goals of regular people, both from the left and the right come together.

It is instructive that the mainstream media does its best to keep the two groups separate and at each others throats. Who benefits when the Tea Partiers and the Occupiers blame each other and sling invectives across the divide? "Stupid teabaggers", "Dirty hippy, communists", etc....

And all the while, Jamie Dimon and John McCain and Barack Obama are laughing their asses off. It is time that Americans realize that in the higher reaches of the power elites, the distinctions between left and right are meaningless. Among the elites, what matters is that corporations can use the government to make money and government can use corporations to maintain power.

Ron Paul should come out ferociously in favor of investigations and prosecutions of the 1000s of cases of fraud committed during the banking fiasco.

2011-11-07T15:35:00.000-06:00

The Occupy movement is an organically assembled group of Americans that are truly pissed off. And they have every reason to be angry. The United States has become the dominion of the 1% and the rest of us are taking it on the chin. The government pays no attention to the electorate. For instance, the great majority of Americans were against each of the various the bailouts of the banks both nationally and even more, internationally. But the government and the Fed simply don't care. They do what they please. And what the government pleases, is whatever the big international banks want. What the big banks have wanted is lots of cheap money, so the Fed doubled the money supply after 2003 and it keeps pumping more new money into the economy today.

That easy money did what unlimited easy money always does. It led to malinvestment and fraud. The frauds led to the collapse of the financial system and to a serious recession in the real economy. Thanks to that criminal behavior and irresponsibility, the unemployment rate is way over 10%, the real value of wages is going down and the cost of living is going up. At the same time, the income of people that work in "Financial Industry" has multiplied. This is all the result of the meltdown caused by easy money from the bankers over the last 15 years.

The good people on the streets demonstrating as part of the OWS movement, see the effects of the criminal rackets, ie: the Primary Dealer banks, but they don't seem to see that it only happens because the banks are protected by the very government that is supposed to regulate them. The OWS are confused as to what needs to be done, they think that empowering the government that protects the banks and giving that government new regulatory powers will rein in the criminal activity. That's crazy. Ron Paul should show the OWS people that regulation and bureacracy are not the answer, what is missing is the rule of law. This is an opportunity to use populism as it should be used, to promote real and positive change. Let's put the criminals in jail! If Ron shares this message his support will grow.

He should show that the Too-Big-To-Fail banks' entire business plan is based on fraud. For instance, JC Morgan has a big stack of silver ingots that it has bought as the manager of the SLV etf. You buy shares in SLV and Morgan buys more silver. But Morgan uses that same stack of silver to short silver in the futures market, driving the price down and ripping off their own customers in SLV. That is a crime. Millions of crimes have gone unpunished. They haven't even been investigated! Another for instance: Goldman and others built CDOs and other mortgage backed securities with what they called "dog vomit", sold them as AAA bonds and then bought Credit Default Swaps betting against their own products and made billions. That is fraud. Fraud is crime. The bankers are criminals.

If Paul would go to the Wall Street and speak to the OWS crowd and tell them that regulation is NOT the answer, but hiring Bill Black and 1000 assistants to investigate corporate crime IS the answer, he would get a huge boost in support and publicity. And once elected it is what he should do! What's to lose? I don't see that the Wall Street bankers are going to be voting for Dr. Paul anyway.

Please write the Paul campaign and suggest that he makes this an issue. Post this (http://bit.ly/sJTUgf) on twitter. Send the link to Jack Hunter on twitter. This is a great opportunity for the good doctor.

Bill Black, interviewed at Occupy Wall Street

Bill Black, interviewed by Bill Moyers in 2009

Executive Order to Steal Americans' Property Under Threat and Promise of Violence

2011-11-04T16:37:00.000-05:00

Ron Paul: The Only One We Can Trust

2011-09-24T21:56:00.000-05:00

Mutually Assured Destruction vs Mutually Assured Respect

2011-09-15T23:03:00.001-05:00

This old man is shaping his ideas into a whole new paradigm for America and the world. We have tried war and debt. Every President since Coolidge has been a war President. Every one has added debt.

It is time to try peace and sound economics. It is time to give this old man a shot.

If We Are To Be An Empire, Then Let’s Do It Right

2011-09-15T07:19:00.002-05:00

The US Empire embarkedon another Imperial war for oil five months ago and the Empire botched the jobagain, just like it botched the job in Iraq. The Imperial legates and ourclient Principalities couldn't finish the job, even with unlimited resourcesand unchallenged air power. Mr. Gaddafi is still with us and seems to bereorganizing. He has made it clear that he will now target ports and oilfacilities. So, Libya is going to go up in flames again as Gaddafi loyaliststurn into the resistance, and the Empire's associate petroleum companies maynot be able to abscond with the oil for months or even years.

Why do our wars costso much and produce so little benefit? It is because the Empire insists onpretending that it is not after resources, that it is not an Empire. The Empireseems to believe its own lies, that it is motivated by humanitarian concerns.But if the ruling elites in the Empire believe their own lies, they are alonein that belief. No one else with any idea of what is going on believes theEmpire’s lies. Outside of the USA, it is clear to everyone that the Empire isafter resources and is intent on controlling the Muslim world through clientkings and bases for the legions from Carthage to Memphis and from Tyre toBactria.

But all this war andconniving drains the Imperial Treasury of great torrents of wealth thatpurchase weapons systems that serve no function in these wars, in maintaininggarrisons that do not pacify the natives, but rather sharpen their resolve tofight back. This Empire is bleeding to death as the wealth of the productivepart drains into the Bactrian sands. That is not the way to go about Empire.Empire is not supposed to produce debt and poverty for the victors. It issupposed to amass wealth for the conqueror. It is not supposed to leave theconqueror bankrupt. If you're going to be an Empire, be proud to be Empire, beproud to plunder under the Eagles!

So, I just wish thatthe powers-that-be would be honest about their intentions. If they were honestimperialists, at least they might not drive us to economic ruin. If the goal isto go steal the oil, just say so and go steal the damn oil! If Muammar and hispeople don’t like it, crucify a couple thousand of them along the Libyan coastroad the way that Crassus did on the road to Rome. Do you think that Trajansuccessfully marched through the Parthian Empire to the Persian Gulf tellingreporters that he was there to "protect civilians"? No, he was clearand direct. He was there to conquer! Did Caesar incorporate Gaul into theEmpire by spending too much money and housing his legions in air-conditionedtents? No, his legions were expected to fight and kill and work and sweat andonly get paid if they captured enough slaves and loot for Caesar to pay them!Did Gaius Verres make sure to spread Imperial Treasure among all the Siciliansso that they would accept the Roman presence? Heck no! He stole everything thatwasn’t bolted to the floor. (Well, not exactly. He stole the stuff that wasbolted down too.)

If we are to be anEmpire we need to change a few things:

- 1. Go after theresources openly so that all Imperial citizens can benefit. Make sure that asubstantial part of the loot gets paid into the Treasury.

- 2. Eliminate localresistance with proven methods such as putting entire cities to the sword ormass crucifixions. Caesar’s innovation of cutting the hands off of all the menin a Gallic city that defied Roman domination and then spreading these cripplesto all parts of Gaul was quite effective in curbing resistance.

- 3. Immediately uponpacification, send in the tax collectors and squeeze the people till they bleed.We want loot. Pay up or die.

That Roman form ofEmpire is actually more honest than what the US Empire is doing, and it wouldbenefit most Americans. The US Empire as it is today only benefits a tiny elitepower group in the USA while it kills hundreds of thousands of innocent peopleand beggars everyone else. And this happens in a democracy! That just showsthat a democracy made up of mostly ignorant, brainwashed voters is one of theworst forms of government imaginable. The current Empire is bankrupting the USA,destroying the economy and engendering global resentment, while making billionsof dollars for a few, well-connected companies and individuals. That’s crazy.

If we’re going tosurvive as an Empire, we’d better learn to make it pay. If we can’t stomach theviolence and immorality of that, if we can’t rein in the security stateparasites and steal resources for all Americans, then we have no businesscomporting ourselves as an Empire. In that case we need to deconstruct theSecurity State (empire), cut the Federal Budget by 60% and decentralize the USof A into small enough polities for the citizens to be able to overpower thespecial interests.

Peter Schiff educates a House economic panel

2011-09-14T22:11:00.002-05:00

From 37 Banks to 4 in 20 years

2011-09-11T11:53:00.003-05:00

Click on the chart for a bigger image.

If we have banking regulators, why do they allow the banks to consolidate to the point where they are "too big to fail"?

Banking regulation no longer works because the Federal government has been completely captured by a small number of hyper-large corporations. This explains why these banks were all bailed out against the wishes of more than 55% of Americans. It explains why we continue to make incredibly expensive weapons systems that are designed for the Cold War, which has been over for twenty years. It explains why our government coerces other countries to legalize GMO seeds, leading to thousands of deaths by suicide.

The giant corporations in cahoots with the giant Federal government is a recipe for economic collapse and the loss of individual liberty. We have to change the American mentality. The answer is very small government and very little regulation. The Federal government is too large to respond to the American people. And there is no way that will change. The only hope for freedom and sanity is to dismember the Federal government, rescind the 17th amendment and give power back to the States. Then we need to start eliminating regulations on everything.

Forget what you have been trained to believe. Regulations do not "level the playing field", instead regulations always benefit the largest corporation and punish the small. In fact many regulations are written by the large corporations that were supposedly going to be regulated. That is the case of the Dodd Frank bill which was supposed to clean up banking and Wall street, but has been used to protect the big banks because it was written by them and they know how to operate all the loopholes. America's Safe Food legislation was written by Monsanto's chief attorney. FDA regulations are written by ex-drug company attorneys and scientists.

More regulations is NOT the answer. Less government IS the answer

The Big Gangster and the Little Gangster — Gaddafi and NATO

2011-09-04T14:51:00.004-05:00

Written by Michael S. Rozeff

There is more and more explicit news showing that Gaddafi worked closely with the CIA from 2002 onwards. Gaddafi — the little gangster — blundered by letting the U.S. — the big gangster — get too close. The U.S. had been keeping the pressure on Gaddafi for decades. He wanted out from that pressure. Being a long-lived ruler, a socialist, a nationalist, an African, and reaching an older age, he actually wanted, in his own dominating way, to do some good for Libyans, and he had to get out from under U.S. pressure to do that. He renounced nuclear ambitions and got into bed with the CIA. This he calculated would help him control Libya and keep the lid on the jihad-minded groups that wanted to overthrow him.

Gaddafi blundered. Such benevolence toward Libyans and independence from the West, and ideas of raising Libya's share of oil revenues, and ideas of pan-African unity and currency (even golden), and ideas of closer ties with non-western nations, didn't sit well with the Big Gangster and its NATO clique of satellite gangsters who always had painted him as a dangerous clown and resented his presence. The West requires conformity. It gets very uncomfortable with independent visions, independent visionaries, neutrals, and political systems, persons, and groups that do not link into and fall under its control system and alliances. The Arab Spring provided the opportunity for the Western gangsters to disgrace themselves fully and publicly and dislodge Gaddafi.

All the little gangsters of this world are taking note. Chavez is bringing his gold back home. Others will be far more wary of letting assets pile up in Western banks where they can be frozen and stolen. The other bigger gangsters of this world like Russia, India, and China will not fail to draw the appropriate lessons from this episode either, inasmuch as it occurred under a Democrat and follows hard upon the heels of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan instigated by Republicans and supported by both parties.

Thanks to http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/ for this precise little article.

Edit: There is another article about Libya that I find very interesting. This article is very much longer and is written by an African from an African perspective. It reflects a Muammar Gaddafi that is very different from the Gaddafi that is portrayed in the Western press. Here is the article:

Why the West Want the Fall of Muammar Gaddafi…Analysis by Jean-Paul Pougala

As long as we are looking into Gaddafi, Libya, Al Qaeda and NATO please watch this interview of Pepe Escobar from the Asia Times as he talks about the reality in Libya. Pepe is interviewed by Alex Jones, who is not otherwise given space on this blog, but what Pepe has to say is important

What if?

2011-09-01T07:13:00.002-05:00

Speech before the US House of Representatives, 02/12/09

Madame Speaker,

I have a few questions for my colleagues.

What if we wake up one day and realize that the terrorist threat is a predictable consequence of our meddling in the affairs of others?

What if propping up repressive regimes in the Middle East endangers both the United States and Israel?

What if occupying countries like Iraq and Afghanistan - and bombing Pakistan - is directly related to the hatred directed toward us and has nothing to do with being free and prosperous?

What if someday it dawns on us that losing over 5,000 American military personnel in the Middle East since 9/11 is not a fair trade-off for the loss of nearly 3,000 American citizens, no matter how many Iraqi, Pakistani, and Afghan people are killed or displaced?

What if we finally decide that torture, even if called enhanced interrogation techniques, is self-destructive and produces no useful information - and that contracting it out to a third world nation is just as evil?

What if it is finally realized that war and military spending is always destructive to the economy?

What if all wartime spending is paid for through the deceitful and evil process of inflating and borrowing?

What if we finally see that wartime conditions always undermine personal liberty?

What if conservatives, who preach small government, wake up and realize that our interventionist foreign policy provides the greatest incentive to expand the government?

What if conservatives understood once again that their only logical position is to reject military intervention and managing an empire throughout the world?

What if the American people woke up and understood that the official reasons for going to war are almost always based on lies and promoted by war propaganda in order to serve special interests?

What if we as a nation came to realize that the quest for empire eventually destroys all great nations?

What if Obama has no intention of leaving Iraq?

What if a military draft is being planned for the wars that will spread if our foreign policy is not changed?

What if the American people learn the truth: that our foreign policy has nothing to do with national security and that it never changes from one administration to the next?

What if war and preparation for war is a racket serving the special interests?

What if President Obama is completely wrong about Afghanistan and it turns out worse than Iraq and Vietnam put together?

What if Christianity actually teaches peace and not preventive wars of aggression?

What if diplomacy is found to be superior to bombs and bribes in protecting America?

What happens if my concerns are completely unfounded - nothing!

What happens if my concerns are justified and ignored - nothing good!

Letter to the editor on the tenth anniversary of the beginning of the Endless War

2011-08-29T13:41:00.004-05:00

A friend and I edit a news aggregator/discussion site called EndlessWar at reddit.com. One of the site's participants, Mr. blobbohen commented that we need to do more than grumble about the NeedlessWars and do something. He wrote the letter that you see below.

Why don't you copy this letter onto Word, edit it to your liking, print and sign it, put it in a stamped envelope, write the address of your local paper's letters to the editor on the front of the envelope and send it in. How many letters can we get printed in one weekend?

Please let us know if you get this letter (with or without your edits) published and send us the link if you do.

Thanks

Chris Ferrell

September 4th 2011

To the Editor

Memory fades. The September 11th attacks will be a decade old next week, but they continue to affect the fate of the United States to this very day. The wars of the United States continue to rage on in Afghanistan and Iraq, and they appear to have left the minds of most Americans. I rarely hear of anyone my age (or any age for that matter) speak of our presence in our Middle Eastern wars. This letter seeks to break the current attitude of indifference that now spans this country regarding its foreign occupations.

The United States government, pondering to stay in Iraq possibly beyond 2011 and in Afghanistan as long as 2024, appears poised to fulfill in an even greater capacity the role of a military industrial complex, a vast system grimly warned of by Eisenhower in his final address. It is at this point that certain questions beg to be asked: can our country afford this? Can we rationally put more money and soldiers' lives into two wars without any clear sign of an end? These are the kind of questions that matter when you are talking about something like the debt ceiling. These are the kind of questions you ask when you're talking about what kind of country you live in: one that cares about where it's money is going and what kind of danger that its soldiers face, or a country that is indifferent and disinterested about both subjects. Which one are we supposed to be?

I am not concerned about sounding depressing or unpatriotic because those are accusations that are to be leveled at the apathetic and politically oblivious. From what I understand of this country's history there was a time when, during the Vietnam War, there were body counts on the news every night. We were very aware of the death that was occurring where the gunfire was, with protests against being drafted and jail-time for those that refused to go when their number was up. But that is not the case now. We are at war, one of which is the longest war we have ever waged in our entire history, and absolutely no one is talking about it- outside of government officials, anyway. That is not an unfair generalization because it is true. Bleakly true.

Countries like Egypt and Tunisia have shown that they can liberate themselves. So I know where I stand on these issues of war: the combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan must end, now and in full. Ignoring our military is the best way to demoralize it- so I refrain from doing that. I support soldiers by demanding that they be brought home.

Our country is broke and bankrupt of innovation whether you blame Obama, Bush, or Congress as a whole. But it is not beyond redemption. Endless war need not exist if this country does not want it to.

Sincerely

Jon Stewart Comments on the Media's Attempts To Make Ron Paul Invisible

2011-08-16T01:19:00.008-05:00

It is truly incredible how the mainstream media has decided en masse to completely ignore and marginalize Ron Paul. Watch Stewart rip the media to shreds. And donate to Paul's campaign, because he certainly can't count on the media to spread his message of fiscal responsibility, non-interventionist foreign policy, sound money and personal liberty.

Here is Dr. Paul's new campaign ad. Your donations will put this on TV around the country.

Update - Has the Media Suppressed Ron Paul's Coverage?

Immediately after her noteworthy victory in the Iowa Presidential Straw Poll August 13, Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann managed to book herself on all five major Sunday national television political talk shows. But Ron Paul, who finished in a virtual statistical tie with Bachmann — just 152 votes and less than a one-percent difference — was booked on none of them. Zero.

Then there was the Politico.com headline on the straw-poll results that — when moved over to blogrunner.com — became this: "Michele Bachmann wins Ames Straw Poll, Tim Pawlenty gets third."

Umm, isn't something missing there?

Read the rest of the article

Each one of us is a perfect creation

2011-08-15T08:31:00.000-05:00

"God beholds you individually, whoever you are. He calls you by your name. He sees you and understands you, as He made you. He knows what is in you, all your own peculiar feelings and thoughts, your dispositions and likings, your strength, your weakness.

He views you in your day of rejoicing, and your day of sorrow. He sympathises in your hopes and your temptations. He interests Himself in all your anxieties and remembrances, all the rising and failings of your spirit. He has numbered the very hairs of your head and the height of your stature.

He compasses you round and bears you in His arms; He takes you up and sets you down. He notes your very countenance, whether smiling or in tears, whether healthful or sickly. He looks tenderly upon your hands and your feet; He hears your voice, the beating of your heart, and your very breathing.

You do not love yourself better than He loves you. You cannot shrink from pain more than He dislikes your bearing it; and if He puts it on you, it is as you would put it on yourself, if you would be wise, for a greater good afterwards....

God has created you to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to you which He has not committed to another. You have your mission -- you may never know it in this life but you shall be told it in the next.

You are a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created you for naught. You shall do good, you shall do His work. You shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in your own place while not intending it if you do but keep His commandments.

Therefore I will trust Him. Whatever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him. If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me -- still He knows what He is about.

May the Lord support us all the day long, till the shades lengthen and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done.

Then in His mercy may He give us a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last."

John Henry Newman

Eisenhower and Petraeus and Butler

2011-07-16T17:56:00.007-05:00

General Smedley Butler

General Dwight Eisenhower

General David Petraeus

What differentiates the images of these three generals? And what does it have to say about modesty and real character? Which of these three men would you NOT want to put in charge of a secret, shadow army?

Careful With THE REASON

2011-07-15T20:37:00.007-05:00

I always try to caution anyone looking for the reason behind any Federal policy or program. The Federal government acts outwardly like an empire, but the machinations behind closed doors in the Imperial capitol are much more complex than the will of Caesar. But, every day I read the reason behind something at least once. It is often amplified by writing the real reason. The articles that pretend to uncover the real reason usually touch one of many forces behind some asinine governmental action. But in order for there to be single, hidden reason behind Obamacare, or the Global War On Terror™, or the bank bailouts there would have to be an incredible behind-the-scenes organization of thousands that is capable of maintaining its deliberations and communication perfectly secret. That is but the most obvious of the reasons (small r) that THE REASON is a truly stupid notion.

As designed, the American political process is complex, in practice in the 21st century it is infinitely more complex than designed. The President does not rule by decree. As Ludwig von Mises explains in "Human Action", even a dictator rules only with the consent of the governed. And the President is, even today, somewhat constrained by the Constitution to make laws and obtain funding through the Congress. Nor is the President's rule simply a question of getting a majority of Congress behind him. The President must align divers powerful interests before he ever goes to Congress, or decides that he has enough power to ignore Congress.

In the American power structure there are legal, institutional interests, such as the Congress, court system, state legislatures and the Departments of the administration. We can know some of what they do. We know the legislation that they are discussing, we can see some of the court cases that are being adjudicated. We can read the reports that are published by all the different Departments and Offices and Administrations within the Federal leviathan.

There are also semi-legal institutions such as registered lobbies. The lobbies write many more laws than do the Congress because the lobbies have more resources, more professionals and more motivation to write good laws. (good for them, that is). The lobbies control the money that Congressmen and especially Senators need to be re-elected. The lobbies have become the real constituency of the US Senate. The lobbiest-Congressman conversations are not transparent. We the people have no idea what is talked about there.

Then there are extra-legal powerful interests. The most important extra-legal power groups are the big corporations acting through public employees. Americans are much more constrained and manipulated by regulations than by laws. Those regulations are written by bureaucrats who are frequently eyeing a lucrative job with one of the biggest corporations in the field that the bureaucrat is entrusted to regulate. But bureaucrats don't just write regulations, they also have great influence over law. When politicians decide to make a new law and they do not enlist a lobby to write it, then the politicians usually must count on bureaucrats to give them the data that will inform the new law. Bureaucrats can determine the nature of the law by carefully selecting the information that they provide or conceal. They have tremendous influence over the actions of government.

The media is another extra-legal source of real political power. The larger the medium, the more its opinions and desires are taken into consideration. FOX News has more weight in Washington than does antiwar.com (unfortunately). Editorials in important papers can change the course of what the government does. But media does not only influence government, it also aids the government by being its propagandists. The mainstream American media never challenges the primary precepts of the status quo in American government, and they actively broadcast lies designed to confuse and frighten Americans into malleability.

All this mess is woven together in an extremely complicated, dynamic and treacherous network. Decisions are only enacted when enough actors with enough influence push in the same direction. This does not mean that these interests are aligned on other issues, or that their motives to align on the issue in question are similar. But the interests that always seem to be pushing away from the consensus get marginalized and their power wanes. Power in Washington comes through networking and from making successful accords and partnerships. The art of the deal is the ability to align enough interests to get your agenda moving.

A small fraction of this network or matrix is visible. Congress holds some public discussions. The President announces his ideas for the future. Political pundits pontificate in the media. But most of the application of power and influence happens out of the public eye. For instance, we will never hear the discussions between Pfizer and upper level civil "servants" at the FDA, although these discussions are key to how drugs are regulated in America. The Secretary of Labor may suggest in a cabinet meeting that unemployment will spike if we end the wars, but we won't know that until years later when someone writes a memoir. The general that writes papers about possible alternative military strategies for the White House is counting on a job from Lockheed when he retires, but only he knows that the position is already waiting for him. AIPAC representatives dine with a Congressman and offer money and veiled threats for her support. These are examples to show that the hidden applications of influence are probably more powerful than the visible ones.

So there is no ONE REASON behind anything that happens in DC. I think that one of the reasons that so many people believe in THE REASON is that they can only see a fraction of the myriad deals and interchanges of support that impel government action. The reasons that are given to the public through spokesmen and through the media to explain government actions are often clearly untrue or just absurd. That leads to the search for THE REAL REASON. But its just not that simple.

One thing is certain, if we are to have any control over government, it needs to be more transparent. But that will not happen by working through the system. The system is designed by the powerful to keep us out of the loop. And that's why we all need to support these wonderful people.

Panqueques de Papas

2011-07-13T19:58:00.005-05:00

In honor of Rachel Corrie and all brave antiwar activists.

The key to this recipe is to have potatoes with a relatively low water content. Most American potatoes are irrigated and are full of water. They suck. If you're in the USA, try the gold or yukon gold variety. They aren't so watery.

5 medium potatoes
2 eggs, beaten
less than 1/4 cup of flour
salt and pepper to taste
10 grams of butter
5 ml. cooking oil

lots of homemade plum jam

Peel and coarsely grate 5 medium sized potatoes into a colander. Pour cold water over the grated potato to rinse off the starch. Now squeeze as much water out of the grated potatoes as possible.

Transfer potatoes to a bowl and add the beaten eggs, the flour and the salt and pepper. Let sit for 5 minutes.

Heat a heavy sauté pan and put in half of the oil and butter. Spoon the potato mixture into the hot pan on medium heat. Each pancake should be the diameter of the palm of your hand. Flatten the pancakes with the back of the spoon to about 1.5 cm. thick. Let them brown slowly about 3 or 4 minutes, turn and brown the other side.

Serve hot with homemade jam. Spread lots of jam on the pancakes, especially if the jam is good.

We usually serve the pancakes on a summer weekend with the doors and windows open to hear the chucao call from the woods and see the trees revel in the morning sun.

Eat these pancakes with fried eggs from country (free-range) hens. Factory eggs are watery and the taste bad. Find a farmer whose hens wander around and eat grass and bugs like they should. The yolks will be a deep yellow and the whites will be firm. Don't cook them too long! The yolks have to be runny to mix in with the pancakes.

For Everyone Else, There's Wikileaks

2011-07-01T10:16:00.004-05:00

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free,
it expects what never was and never will be...
Thomas Jefferson

What Does it Cost to Change the World? from Wikileaks

Liberty and secrecy do not co-exist. When governments hold information secret from the electorate, liberty and Constitutional government are in jeopardy. When governments discuss and craft policy in secret from the electorate, liberty and Constitutional government are already on the run. When governments constrain our representatives from telling us what they know, liberty and Constitutional government have been truncated. When laws are made that are secret from the people, then liberty and Constitutional government are already dead. All that is left are institutions that maintain a pretext of government by the people. Remember that after Octavian made himself Juilius Caesar Augustus and ruled by decree, that the institutions of the Senate and the Tribunes were still in place, however they were only for show. Our Congress also exists for show, all important decisions are made by the unitary President and unelected bureaucrats. We are not privy to the conversations that lead to those decisions.

In order to recover liberty we must stop the secrecy under which our government operates. According to the Christian Science Monitor, the Federal government is generating around 560 million pages of documents marked secret or above every year! It is ridiculous to think that we can control OUR government if we have no idea what it is doing and what it knows. Free society must operate without secrets.

Since the Federal government (or the Empire, if you prefer) will not allow us "consumers" access to the information that it uses to make decisions on war, spending, regulations, dirty tricks or selling guns to the Mexican drugs mafia, we are blind and dependent on the US media which has been shown to cooperate with the government to keep the electorate in the dark.

But this is true in every country where the government rules without citizen participation in the decision making process. The Egyptians knew, viscerally, that Mubarak and his minions were as corrupt as Papa Doc Duvalier, but they didn't have any concrete evidence and they were afraid to organize. Those who complained too much went to jail. The same was true in Tunisia under Mr. Ben Ali and in every other country in the mideast and many other places as well. But a ray of truth broke through the cloud cover of secrecy when the hero, Bradley Manning copied some 600,000 secret US State Dept. files onto a Lady Gaga CD and posted those files onto the Wikileaks confidential upload site.

The Arab spring is an avalanche which was set into motion when Tunisians, Egyptians, Jordanians and their neighbors began to read documents that confirmed their suspicions. They read those documents on Wikileaks. Information is freedom. The US government does not want you to have information, therefore the US government does not want you to be free. Period. Full stop.

Support Wikileaks with money and with pressure on the government to abandon its persecution of Julian Assange.

And support Bradley Manning who opened the curtain a tiny bit and gave us a glimpse of the cynical men and women who decide your destiny in secret.

Freedom is singular and it means liberty, freedoms are a list of government authorized prerogatives

2011-05-17T21:02:00.002-05:00

I have had the advantage of spending most of twenty years outside the USA from 1987 until the end of 2005. I still spend half of the year outside of the States, but during the 90s and the first half of the 00s, I only came to the States for a week or two each year. So I saw the transformations that the USA has undergone like a disjointed slide show rather than a continuous movie. Perhaps that is why so many things that the rest of my countrymen accept without question seem alien to me.

For instance, when I left the States to live in South America, most of the cars on the road were used. Shiny new cars made up a small percentage of the vehicles that one saw around town or on the freeway, and then in stagger steps, due to my periodic trips north, I saw the mix of vehicles change. It was very noticeable from my perspective. In steps I saw old cars disappear and ever bigger, ever shinier and more expensive and newer cars outnumbered older, used cars. After a couple more stagger steps there were almost no older, used cars at all.

I thought, what does this mean? Are people really making that much more money? Is this really the age of prosperity for everyone? But I noticed another trend in stagger steps on my periodic short trips back to the land where I was born. My slide show view of America revealed that credit scores had become almost a definition of net worth, or even a definition of personal merit. How and why did credit scores get to be so important all of a sudden? Well, given that the importance of credit scores and the percentage of new cars dovetailed perfectly, the conclusion was pretty obvious: people were not necessarily making any more money, they were just all going into debt, and what mattered to them was their ability to take on even more debt.

From my viewpoint, a number of transformations to the American panorama look very surprising, but the Americans haven’t had my slide show view and don’t seem to notice the changes. One transformation that drives me crazy is the change in number of that essential American word: Freedom. Throughout the history of America, freedom has always been expressed in the singular.

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Mr. Lincoln did not speak of freedoms. He spoke of freedom.

Freedom can be preserved only if it is treated as a supreme principle, which must not be sacrificed for particular advantages.
FRIEDRICH HAYEK

Mr. Hayek, who certainly understood the topic, did not speak of freedoms. He used the singular.

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.
RONALD REAGAN

Perhaps, Mr. Reagan, we didn’t manage to pass freedom on to the next generation because over the last twenty years, freedom has been replaced with freedoms. Freedoms imply something very different than freedom. George Dubya Bush spoke of freedoms almost daily, although he couldn’t pronounce the word very well. When he said it, it came out sounding like freedomsh. So what’s the difference between freedom and freedoms?

Freedom is an overarching state of being. It is a natural God-given right to owe no homage to any man or to any government. Under freedom every man is a king and no man is a king. Under freedom the government fears and obeys the voters, when freedom is in wane, the voters learn to fear and obey the government. Freedom touches and encompasses everything. It applies to our ability to move about the city, state and country. It informs our ability to do business as we wish, where we wish and with whom we wish. Freedom gives us the right to live as we will without having to comply with any codes of conduct. The only caveat to our freedom is that our actions cannot impinge on the freedom of others. As a free man I can do what I will, as long as it does not harm or restrain any of my fellows.

Freedoms, on the other hand, are enumerated rights. Freedoms are granted by the government and each is limited in scope and easily revoked upon the whim of the government. When the President speaks of defending our freedoms, what does he mean? Does he want to defend my natural right to do what I will as long as it doesn’t harm others? Apparently not, because if what I want to do is to smoke a marijuana cigarette, the presidents laws will threaten me with violence and lock me up. If I care to build a restaurant on a second floor balcony over looking the street that does not have an elevator, than the government will close it because I have violated the freedoms of a person who cannot walk up the stairs. Apparently the freedoms of that person trump mine, and the state uses violence or its threat to take away my freedom so that another may decide what I do with my property. That’s not freedom. Its freedoms.

As a country we now exercise one of our freedoms to go and kill people on the other side of the world who never did anything to us and never could. And we are told that defends our freedoms. In order for our freedoms to be properly defended we do have to give up the right to habeus corpus, we also have to give up the right to have private conversations, we have to give up the right to have our property inviolate without a court order. It seems to me that while I was in Chile, Americans traded in their freedom for a short list of freedoms.

The Biggest Threat To Freedom is War

2011-05-14T22:36:00.003-05:00

"Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."

James Madison

Stop the wars! Close the foreign bases!

The threats to America are not solved by the wars and the overseas military presence, they are caused by the wars and the overseas military presence.

What did Smedley Butler, America's greatest war hero, have to say about war? He said "War is a racket"

If you value freedom, if you want government to stop the fraud and live within its means, then this election cycle vote for an antiwar candidate. So far only two antiwar candidates have announced: Gary Johnson, ex-governor of New Mexico and Ron Paul, the champion of the Constitution.

Donate to one of these men. Get off your butt and volunteer to work in their campaigns. Get the word out that our freedom depends on ending the Endless War.

And God bless you all.

Ron Paul 2012: In Defense of Liberty

2011-04-30T16:20:00.002-05:00

Doctor Paul needs to be careful. As he gets closer to winning the election I fear for his safety and for the future of our Republic.

Tom Woods says at 2:50 of this video "This is just going to shake the establishment. They do not want this guy running for President". Its funny now, but honestly if it looks like Dr. Paul is going to win the Republican Primary, I think that his life will be in danger. And the assassin will not be a nutcase like John Hinkley, but rather a CIA or contract murderer.

Maybe that sounds paranoid, but think about this, will the defense contractors, the generals waiting to retire to big bucks in Washington think tanks, the CIA and NSA just quietly let Dr. Paul disassemble the Empire?

Watch your back old man. May God protect you from all harm. May His mantle cover you and keep you safe from the enemies of freedom.

War Is Nothing But Hate And Death And Suffering.

2011-04-28T22:12:00.001-05:00

God Damn the war makers.

Jack Hunter and Judge Napolitano: The similarity between neocons like Bill Kristol and liberal internationalists like Obama and Hillary Clinton

2011-04-02T17:36:00.006-05:00

Here's what I think. A lot of America's conservatives aren't very bright. They are easily led around by anyone who can use the right symbols and key words. I mean politicians like the team of McCain/Palin that ran for the White House against the Peace Laureate, and their followers. They have good intentions. They know that they want small government and individual liberty but they have been sold the patently absurd notion that America faces multiple existential dangers from around the world that require half of all the world's expenditure on war and intelligence. Its absurd. Ridiculous. Suicide terrorists do not and could not ever pose an existential danger to the USA even if they were armed with an atomic weapon, which could never happen anyway.

The USA also faces no existential danger from any organized military in the world and could not even if American expenditures dropped to $100 Billion a year on defense/intelligence. We have an ocean to the east and the west, Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. We have aircraft, missiles, ships, submarines and satellites that can see any incursion into our territory and blow it out of the sky or the water long before it reaches our country. (Not our Homeland. We are not Nazis for goodness sakes).

So the conservatives have been snowed into a militaristic orthodoxy against their best interests. Who has done this? Two parties have done this. From the practical, financial side it has been the Military Industrial Complex that Eisenhower warned us about. But the MIC was missing something important, and that was the intellectual angle. There needed to be intellectual support for the Permanent War State. And that was provided by the Straussian neocons.

The neoconservative movement was initiated by men who purposely and consciously abandoned leftist, socialist policies to convince America's conservatives that had already been softened up by the pro-CIA Bill Buckley, that what was needed was a big military and a worldwide presence. They invented the dangers posed by the collapsing Soviet Empire in the '80s that convinced the US to support and arm the mujehaddin that then became the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Now they continue to point out terrible existential dangers posed by bearded men in turbans. Bill Kristol is the dean of this group and he continues to convince conservatives to support unlimited war and unlimited war spending.

_____________________________________________________________

So what does this rant have to do with the video that I hope you watched? It is this: no one should be surprised that Bill Kristol, Hillary and Barack are all on the same page. They come from the same place. All three are statists. All three believe in big government. Bill Kristol has identified himself as a big-government conservative, which is an oxymoron. Anyone who thinks Kristol is any kind of conservative is just a regular moron without the oxy.

It is natural for people who believe that the state is a force for good to desire to apply the force of the state to any and all problems. The progressive pragmatists in this administration want to solve problems, and not just our own problems. They want to solve everybody's problems and that leads them to use force. It leads them to kill people for their own good. And, not surprisingly, it leads them into perfect alignment with Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer and Dick Cheney. They have the same world-view and they are natural allies.

The real right, that is what intellectuals are still left after the pogroms of the last twenty years, needs to use this budding alliance between Kristol and the administration - between neocons and progressives - to show that the Permanent War State is NOT conservative and must be abandoned.

Mensaje de Bienvenido a Obama

2011-03-21T15:42:00.002-05:00

Bienvenido asesino

Snatched From The Jaws Of The Mighty Puelo - Update

2011-02-01T14:02:00.008-06:00

Following is a link to an update of the post about saving our cabin from the fury of the mighty Puelo. Before going on I would like to mention with great sadness that the Puelo River recently killed another two people in December. Víctor Alegría and Patricio Vera left Puerto Urrutía on the Puelo to return home to Segundo Corral in early December. There are no roads for motor vehicles, so these experienced cowboys headed home to Segundo Corral on horseback, but something happened when they crossed the Ventisquero branch of the Puelo and they were lost. The crossing is only about two miles from our cabin. Alegría and Vera's horses showed up at a neighbor's house later that day and people began to search for the two men. The police arrived the next day and then the Navy, both with divers. Mr. Vera's body was found the next day in the Ventisquero, but Mr. Alegría's body wasn't found for another two weeks. By that time the government had given up and private divers found Mr. Alegría. Please say a prayer for these two fine, innocent men.

I personally know eleven people that have died in the Puelo River. The river and its valley are beautiful beyond description. At least in part that is because the river and valley are untamed. They are as free as the people who live in its valley. Freedom is not without danger. The reaction of the "civilized" is to tame that which is dangerous, but that leaves us without freedom. Freedom requires us to take care of ourselves and sometimes we fail to do so. The consequences can be fatal. I'll take freedom anyway, and so did Alegría and Vera, may they rest in peace.

_______________________________

Here is La Salavada with my family, a cousin, a neighbor and the workmen that helped us rebuild. Here's the link to the update.

War - Edwin Starr

2011-01-09T18:14:00.002-06:00

Where are the protests against war today? What has happened to our musicians and artists?

The Only Threats Have Come From International Travel, So What Is DHS Doing?

2010-12-21T10:34:00.003-06:00

Grandmas do not get frisked outside the USA

I’m an American...still. I live part of the year in the USA but most of the year in Chile. I travel a lot on business, throughout the US when I’m there and throughout Latin America when I’m home. I have to go through airport security between thirty and forty times a year, divided more or less evenly between Latin America and US security procedures. The comparison between the two is interesting. The comparison between the two shows that all the American security theatre is a waste of time and money and a completely useless imposition on American travelers.

Before continuing on, I need to make an important point that is ignored by American mainstream media. The hijacking of 4 airliners on 9/11 was a perfect failure of American intelligence. It was not a failure of airport security, it was an astronomical lack of foresight and communication between different branches of the government. The intelligence agencies knew that there was a plot to hijack airliners and use them as bombs against important American buildings, including the World Trade Center. But the CIA and the FBI never communicated with the FAA in order to change airline crew procedures in the case of hijacking. The airline crews on 9/11 did what they were trained to do. They put up no resistance to the hijackers and gave them control of the airplanes. 9/11 would not have happened if it were not for the ponderous size and culture of secrecy in the US government. If the FBI and CIA had published the Yousef plan of using airliners as bombs, 9/11 would not have, could not have happened. If they had talked to the FAA it could not have happened. Our stupid rules and stupid inter-agency secrecy were used against us.

The crimes of 9/11 were planned by Ramsey Yousef, the planner of the first World Trade Center bombing, in the early 1990s. The CIA and FBI had those plans as early as 1994. They knew that Khalid Sheik Mohammed was associated with Yousef and that he was involved in the planning to hijack airliners and use them as bombs to destroy targets in America. They knew that Osama bin Laden was associated with Khalid Sheik Mohammed. Given that Yousef was involved in the first World Trade Center bombing, it would make sense that the airliner plan was going to target the WTC again. Take a look at Peter Lance’s very complete “Terror Time Line” scroll down to 16 September 1994. Also read James Bamford’s “The Shadow Factory” that shows how totally pathetic the American Intelligence operations were in the run-up to 9/11. Here’s an interview with Bamford in which he details some of the criminally pathetic failings of American intelligence that made 9/11 possible. Security procedures were not the problem. The problem was airline crew procedures and the lack of a stout door on airliners. Given the intelligence that the government had and the money that they spend, those errors are almost unexplainable.

So 9/11 was NOT caused by faulty security procedures, it was caused by perfectly incompetent intelligence, communication and FAA mandated procedures. And since 9/11, every single terrorist threat involving airliners has come from a flight that originated outside the USA. Richard Reed, the shoe bomber, boarded American Airlines flight 63 in Paris with destination in Miami. The underwear bomber boarded Northwest Flight 253 in Amsterdam destined for Detroit. The 2006 liquid bomb plot was planned to board ten airliners in the UK, destined for the USA. The recent toner bomb attempt was an air cargo placed onboard an airliner in Yemen with destination in the USA. None of the incidents of possible airliner terrorism since 9/11 have been attempted on flights that originated in the USA.

So if 9/11 was an intelligence and governmental communications failure, and if all subsequent airline terrorism attempts were initiated outside the USA, why has the DHS spent so much money irritating so many Americans in American airports? Is that same level of scrutiny being applied to travelers that initiate their flights outside the USA? Here I will speak from my own experience. In the last twelve months I have flown internationally out of Lima, Peru - Santiago de Chile - Buenos Aires, Argentina - Santa Cruz, Bolivia - La Paz, Bolivia - Quito, Ecuador - Bogotá, Colombia - San José, Costa Rica - Panama City, Panama - Tegucigalpa, Honduras - Ciudad de México, México and Punta Cana, República Dominicana. I have flown out of many of these airports multiple times.

In the twenty-five or thirty international flights out of these airports I have had to remove my shoes once. That was in Punta Cana, which is a tourist town where 95% of the travelers are American or European tourists. I have been asked to take my computer out of my briefcase twice: once in Punta Cana and another time in Lima, although on many other flights out of Lima, I was not requested to remove my computer. I do not remove my belt with its big buckle in Latin American airports, except in Punta Cana, which is basically an extension of the USA. The buckle almost never sets off the metal detector alarm, but on the three occasions that it has (Santiago and Lima) I was cursorily wanded and waved along. At no time did anyone every touch my body. There are no porno scanners in Latin American airports. At no time except in Punta Cana and Ciudad de México did anyone ever look in any of my carry-ons after they were scanned. A travelers tip: watch very closely what the “security agents” in México do with your carry-ons. Briefcases often have the contents checked in México. If they contain anything small and valuable, that may just magically disappear.

Bottom line, I could have carried anything that I wanted on a plane bound for the USA, and the danger to airliners comes from flights that originate outside the USA. The DHS has tried to coerce Latin American countries to apply tougher screening procedures, but they don’t do it. And why should they? The danger is almost non-existent. It is all theatre and the latinos have decided that don’t have any desire to star in those performances. God bless them.

All the airline terrorism incidents have occurred in flights originating outside the USA and security procedures have hardly changed outside the USA, at least in Latin America. So all that the DHS is doing is to feed a pointless, humiliating bureaucracy that violates everyone's Constitutional rights at the cost of the US traveler and taxpayer. DHS security theatre is a performance that is waiting for the final curtain to come down.

Truth Is Treason

2010-12-04T14:01:00.002-06:00

We are blessed to live in interesting times. The most interesting aspect of the multiple crises that we are suffering around the world is the blindness of Americans to the terrible transformation of the USA. Truth has become treason. Please click the link and read the one paragraph entry on Lew Rockwell's blog. Truth Is Treason

And buy at least an ounce of silver this week! Here's where: Apmex

Snatched from the jaws of the mighty Río Puelo

2010-11-22T08:20:00.009-06:00

Please scroll down for the update.

click on the photos for bigger images

Our cabin in Llanada Grande in 2004 or 2005. On the banks of the Puelo River.

One of the last decent places in the world where the state has yet to interfere in the lives of free people.

The Puelo has eaten the porch off the front of the cabin

The rest of the structure is teetering and ready to fall the ten feet down onto the rocks and then into the cold water.

Snatched from the jaws of the mighty river, the cabin was disassembled and in this picture is being rebuilt. It is now designed to be dragged by ox teams back from the river in an operation known as a minga.

UPDATE

Here is the finished cabin, now christened: La Salvada

A view of the kitchen

Terry and Mary Kohler Getting Ready To Christen "La Salvada"

Alan Ferrell Christens "La Salvada" (The Saved One)

The asado to celebrate the new cabin

Los Culpables

Crash JP Morgan, Buy Silver

2010-11-17T13:40:00.003-06:00

Read more at GATA

Read about mad Max Keiser's campaign to crash JP Morgan Chase and stop the manipulation of the precious metals markets.

Think about buying an ounce or two of silver this week I have had excellent service buying silver from APMEX

Remove Ben Bernanke

2010-11-08T06:31:00.002-06:00

Jesse's Café Américain: Sprott Adds 6.5 Million Ounces of Silver to Its Tr...

2010-11-04T10:16:00.000-05:00

Jesse's Café Américain: Sprott Adds 6.5 Million Ounces of Silver to Its Tr...: "It is my understanding that Sprott 'books' the silver when it makes the deal to acquire it, but the actual silver will not be obtained and..."

10 Year Chart of Increasing Lack Of Confidence in the US Dollar

2010-10-08T16:34:00.000-05:00

Arthur Rubenstein plays Edvard Grieg's Piano Concerto in A Minor

2010-09-24T22:05:00.009-05:00

Excuse me for putting a music video on this blog that rambles among libertarian political rants, short stories and political videos. I always meant to include more of the arts, so here is my favorite piece of music.

This piece sounded awkward to me the first time I heard it as a child. I much preferred another work by Grieg, the Pier Gynt Suite. I still like the Pier Gynt Suite, but upon repeated listening to Grieg's Piano Concerto I found that the notes that seemed out of place provide the perfect stroke to lead into the next beautiful stanzas. I found that every time I listen, it seems more beautiful, it seems to be truly blessed by God with a beauty that is beyond human creation.

This recording is of the great Arthur Rubenstein, may he rest in the arms of the Lord.

first movement

second movement

third movement

I find it almost painfully beautiful when the piano begins to play in middle of the the second movement.
For an insightful explanation of this piece that is "too emotional" and "too beautiful", listen to Tom Manoff discuss this incredible work of art. on "All Things Considered" from NPR News

Stealth Monetization in the U.S.A.

2010-09-24T17:59:00.003-05:00

I found Gonzalo Lira a few months ago and he is now one of my favorite bloggers. His pieces on economics are pure genius, or at least they agree completely with my positions. Those two ideas couldn't be mutually exclusive, could they?

So I am going to publish a teaser of his latest article: Stealth Monetization in the U.S.A., that clearly demonstrates how the Federal Reserve Bank is creating vast amounts of new money and seriously endangering the survival of the dollar. Below the teaser is a link to Gonzalo's blog.

Insofar as money is concerned, governments and central banks should be kept as far away from one another as a pedophile from Dakota Fanning. If ever the twain should meet, very bad things would happen. This is because of the disparate natures of government, on the one hand, and the central bank, on the other.

Governments spend money. They spend money on social programs to keep the people docile and happy, wars to keep up the illusion of safety and security, and—almost as an afterthought—infrastructure. Ordinarily, they get the money for all of these things from taxes and other fees that the government collects.

On the other hand, central banks print money. Most of the world’s economies depend on fiat currency—currency that has value because someone says it has value. The person who says it has value is the central bank. They are the custodians of the currency—they take care that it retains its value.

Tons of people say that a fiat currency is unstable, and doomed to fail, and that we will all rue the day that we accepted that abomination into our lives!—and blah-blah-blah, rant-rant-rant.

For the rest of the article click here

Can we climb out of this hole and grow the economy?

2010-09-18T00:21:00.008-05:00

I am not an economist. I am fortunate to never have studied economics in an American University because most of them force young people through incredibly convoluted exercises to try to prove that the patently absurd is true and provable. I admit that perhaps the University of Chicago offers instruction that may apply to the real world, but none of the Ivy League Schools do. At any rate, I have not been indoctrinated in any school of economic theory, but rather have studied on my own. I am not an economist; I am an enthusiast.

So, why do I have the cheek to publicly share my ideas on this arcane subject, otherwise known as the dismal science? I do so because the people that are being listened to, walls plastered with diplomas from Harvard and PhDs from Yale are giving us directions that will lead us directly off of a cliff. These are the same geniuses that did not see the dotcom bubble coming , nor did they see the real-estate bubble coming . They saw no danger in the explosion of derivatives, nor the fact that the Primary Dealer banks practice accounting fraud on a massive scale and are protected from scrutiny by the Secretary of the Treasury.

. They assured us that by hiring nuclear physicists to write complex logarithms that subprime mortgages could be bundled together into AAA rated bonds that would be rock-solid. One of these eminences, in fact, was still assuring people in 2008 that the original culprits, Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac, were still rock solid. Well, maybe not. In fact it now looks like they pose a 5.6 Trillion dollar liability to the American taxpayer.

So, as far as I am concerned the call for enthusuiasts to step back and let the “professionals” work things out sounds pretty stupid. Paul Krugman, Ben Bernake and Alan Greenspan can explain in complicated jargon a lot of gobbledygook but they don’t see the sun in the sky.

With no economics training I was able to predict both the dotcom bubble and the real-estate bubble. I was also able to predict that bailing out the Primary Dealers, and “stimulating” the economy with five or six major regurgitations of printed money would do nothing to get us out of recession and put the economy back on track. The economy is dead and is not going to recover by dumping money out of helicopters. In fact, I will now predict that if we continue along with the plan put forth by Ben Bernanke at the economics summit in Wyoming in August, that the USA will suffer an economic collapse triggered by an attack on Treasury bonds. The effect of forcing an endless river of cheap money into the market will be to erase international confidence in the dollar as a reliable store of wealth. As I write this, the majority of US bonds at auction are being bought directly by the Fed. Japan and China are both looking for a way out of the dollar and Obama and his 535 thieves keep spending money like they had some, but they don’t. It may take a year, maybe two or three, but if we don’t change course our bond market will be attacked and there will be a stampede out of the dollar. John Williams from Shodowstats.com thinks that it will happen in as little as six months . The prescription from both the Democrats in charge and the Republican leadership that is coming in, is to treat the crisis caused by excessive money creation, spending and debt with more money creation, spending and debt. So I’m pretty sure that a collapse is inevitable, but it wouldn’t have to be.

First, before giving my prescription for how to save the economy, let me digress one more time and explain something that confused me for a long time and that is the flations. You’ve got INflation, DEflation and HYPER-INflation. Most economists feel that the end game, if it were to occur would be a hyper-inflationary collapse of the dollar. But the geniuses mentioned above scoff at the idea of hyper-inflation at this point. After all we are in the middle of deflation. Asset values are collapsing, trillions have disappeared, inflation isn't anywhere to be seen. In fact the Fed is doing everything it can to get a little inflation started, so anybody who’s predicting hyperinflation now is just some crazy conspiracy theorist, right? Maybe not.

It seems logical to think that hyper-inflation is just accelerated inflation, you have to ascend through “normal” inflation to get into the destructive feedback loop of hyper-inflation. But lets think about what inflation is: it is when a growing money supply is chasing a stagnant or slower growing supply of goods and services. Things get more expensive as more units of money chase a steady amount of goods and service. (This gets more complicated when you add credit into the mix, so I won’t; this example works well enough). But hyper-inflation does not occur because the money supply is increased. It happens when the supply of goods and services is rapidly and sharply reduced. In these cases (Argentina, Zimbabwe, Weimar Republic), the reason behind the disappearance of goods and services is always the same: a loss of faith in money. When the store owner feels that the money is going to become worthless, he doesn’t want to sell his stock, and if he does he’s going to charge a LOT more than he did yesterday so that he can quickly buy something and not hold onto money.

It is entirely possible to go from deflation directly into hyper-inflation, if something spooks the herd and gets them all going in the same direction, you can have a catastrophe. The Fed and the government have created the conditions for the catastrophe and they are continuing to do the wrong things at higher velocity.

So what can we do to avoid disaster? We can voluntarily accept significant pain RIGHT NOW and reform our government completely in order to create a foundation upon which we can return to strong growth and full employment. There will be pain; that much is guaranteed. If we decide to take it now, we can be prepared and hopefully show solidarity to those who need help to keep themselves fed and warm. After taking the pain required to force all the toxic crap and unpayable debt out of the economy, then we need to recreate the Federal government into a sustainable servant of the People. It can be done and these ideas would work. An analogy to the choice between my program and what is probably going to be done, are the Depressions of 1920-1921 and 1929-1945. What happened in 1920?

“The economic situation in 1920 was grim. By that year unemployment had jumped from 4 percent to nearly 12 percent, and GNP declined 17 percent. No wonder, then, that Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover — falsely characterized as a supporter of laissez-faire economics — urged President Harding to consider an array of interventions to turn the economy around. Hoover was ignored.
Instead of "fiscal stimulus," Harding cut the government's budget nearly in half between 1920 and 1922. The rest of Harding's approach was equally laissez-faire. Tax rates were slashed for all income groups. The national debt was reduced by one-third.” The Depression lasted less than a year and a half. From this article by Tom Woods.

The Great Depression was a very different story because of the way it was handled. Like today, the government frantically tried to stimulate spending and to control prices and to put people to work in pointless projects. The situation got progressively worse and scapegoats were produced. The most important of which being gold money. Roosevelt stole the peoples gold money and started an inflation guaranteed to further impoverish the poor. The Great Depression lasted ten times longer than the Depression of 1920 and it caused immeasurably more suffering. So I suggest that we follow the example of President Harding, rather than the statist demagogues, Roosevelt and Hoover. Let’s cut taxes and spending, force the bad debt out into the open and then rebuild.

So here are the steps:

1.- Cut Federal spending by 40%. This will require: Laying off Federal employees by the busload. Closing the Depts. of Agriculture, Education, Interior, Energy and Labor. Cutting the Defense budget by 50%. In the rest of discretionary spending, each Department must cut costs by 40%. Entitlement Programs will have to: Cut Medicare payments to only include lifesaving care for two years. After that time the program needs to be redesigned. Cut social security payments by 15% and raise the retirement age to 67. The Entitlements have grown way beyond what people paid into the system. They need to be cut to sustainable levels. This is the shock to end the deficit and rebuild international faith in our bonds. This will protect us from an attack on the bond market, as long as it is coordinated with #2.

2.- Force the Fed to raise the Federal Funds rate to 4%. No more Quantitative easing. No more money printing. No more purchases of US Bonds at auction (unless there is no other possibility) With rising interest rates the 40% cut in Federal spending will only be worth 35% as interest payments rise, but our bonds will quickly become more attractive. The Fed will have no need to buy our paper. People will start to save again and capital will begin to be accumulated.

3.- Hire Bill Black and 1000 forensic accountants to investigate the banks and close any that aren’t solvent. As interest rates rise, banks that are fraudulently holding a negative balance sheet will be forced out in the open. They need to be dismantled and their assets sold at auction. If accounting fraud is detected, the administrators need to be prosecuted and sent to prison.

4.- Make it easier for citizens to default on debt. This should be a window of a year or two to let people walk away from their homes, their student loan debt and other debt that keeps the economy from working.

5.- Unilaterally withdraw from all international trade organizations. This is one time when having the world’s largest military will be handy. Other countries may howl, but that’s all they can do.

6.- Erase all existing tariffs, import quotas, restrictions and duties, then impose an across-the-board 12% tariff on all imported goods and services with no exceptions. Remove the possibility that politicians will use trade policy to the advantage of campaign donors.

7.- Throw out the entire, complex US income tax code. Taxes will be paid on all income at the rate of 15%. Every adult will have a $10,000 deductible; every dependent child will have a $5,000 deductible. There will be no other deductions. There will be no capital gains tax. There will be no estate tax.

8.- Rescind the Legal Tender laws to keep the government honest. Allow alternative currencies to compete with the dollar freely. This makes the Fed unnecessary and that leads to the last step.

9.- Close the Federal Reserve System. Without the legal tender laws there is no reason for the Fed to exist.

If we had the courage and vision to follow this plan, in 24 months this country would be working again and our economy would have rebounded. We would once again have the most dynamic economy in the world. That would mean that no one would retaliate against our tariff by anything more than an equal tariff because our market would be too important.
We would end all the pointless wars, close all of our overseas bases and cut the military back to only what is needed to protect America and our territories.

We would end Federal financing of student loans, agribusiness, drug and food regulations and we would work at ending the idea of a government-controlled economy.

The government could not spend money that it didn’t have because of the repeal of the legal tender laws. If they print money, people will simply refuse to accept the government money. A balanced budget amendment can be by-passed, but without a monopoly on money creation, the government cannot spend what it doesn’t have.

This list will not be implemented, not even one part of this will happen. It is too radical, too shocking, but something IS going to happen even more shocking than this list: the collapse of the dollar. So this list may serve for the reconstruction of the country after our collapse.

Victory in Iraq?

2010-09-01T18:25:00.001-05:00

Since we invaded Iraq, somewhere between two hundred thousand and a half million Iraqis are dead, over four million are displaced. All the Iraqi Christians are now either dead or are refugees outside of Iraq. Iraq's infrastructure is destroyed and the country continues to live under a military occupation by 56,000 American troops and a like number of American mercenaries. The skies are are still patrolled by American helicopter gunships and aircraft and Iraqis cower in fear when they pass overhead.

And for all that, what has been accomplished politically? Well, the Sunnis, who had been nationalist, Ba'athists are now leaning towards fundamentalist Islamist groups like al Qaeda for protection from the ascendent Shiites.
And the Si'ites are now all aligned with Iran in one way or another. So we have made Iraq more unstable and more dangerous by leading the two groups of Iraqis to the two Islamic fundamentalist adversaries that we face in the world. If you remember, Saddam was not religious, and certainly was anti-Iranian. Things are considerably worse and potentially more dangerous than they were.

No real Republic has been formed. That is American hubris, only possible because of American myopia. The only thing that most Americans really understand or are capable of seeing is America. When Americans look out from our country, they do so with an American filter that makes it very hard for them to distinguish what they are seeing. They see American motivations where those don't exist. A western style Republic in Iraq can not possibly survive. Sooner or later the state mechanism will be usurped permanently by whoever is the current leadership and then there will be a violent pruning of any people or groups that threaten that leadership. What is even harder for Americans to understand is that the Iraqis WANT a strongman to take over. They see security in a strong permanent government. Democracy is NOT an Iraqi ideal, its what Iraqis say to please Americans.

All the honest reporters in Iraq know that this is true. The State Dept knows that this is true and the general staff in the Pentagon know this is true. But they all pretend that the dream of the Project for a New American Century came true and we converted an Arab dictatorship into a Constitutional Republic. The idea is so pathetic as to be funny if so many people hadn't died in the process.

Why is it taking so long to form a government? Because the Iraqis that might be able to become that strongman all know that this may very well be the last opportunity to obtain national leadership by relatively peaceful methods. Whoever runs the Iraqi security apparatus now will have an overwhelming advantage over any adversaries. They will be able to use the Iraqi army and police to eliminate rivals and secure their power.

The only thing that will keep that coalescence of power from happening is the presence of 50,000 American troops. That might be enough deterrent to prevent the sectarian grapple for power. So do we have stay there forever? Is that victory?

How about our soldiers....Why are so many committing suicide and murder when they come home? Why are so many of these poor guys winding up in prison and homeless shelters? How many can honestly say that they think they helped create a better world?

Bottom line - We have won nothing. We have killed hundreds of thousands of people needlessly. We have destroyed irreplaceable cultural icons, we have destroyed the most culturally developed nation in the Mid East and we have the hubris to say that we have won. We have indebted our children by another trillion dollars for what? The world isn't safer, the Iraqis aren't better off. All we did was guarantee 7 years of impressive profits for military contractors.

Call the Politburo, We're in Trouble - Entering the Soviet Era in America

2010-06-18T10:21:00.002-05:00

Mark it on your calendar. It seems we've finally entered the Soviet era in America.

You remember the Soviet Union, now almost 20 years in its grave. But who gives it a second thought today? Even in its glory years that "evil empire" was sometimes referred to as "the second superpower." In 1991, after seven decades, it suddenly disintegrated and disappeared, leaving the United States -- the "sole superpower," even the "hyperpower," on planet Earth -- surprised but triumphant.

The USSR had been heading for the exits for quite a while, not that official Washington had a clue. At the moment it happened, Soviet "experts" like Secretary of Defense Robert Gates (then director of the CIA) still expected the Cold War to go on and on. In Washington, eyes were trained on the might of the Soviet military, which the Soviet leadership had never stopped feeding, even as its sclerotic bureaucracy was rotting, its economy (which had ceased to grow in the late 1970s) was tanking, budget deficits were soaring, indebtedness to other countries was growing, and social welfare payments were eating into what funds remained. Not even a vigorous, reformist leader like Mikhail Gorbachev could staunch the rot, especially when, in the late 1980s, the price of Russian oil fell drastically.

Looking back, the most distinctive feature of the last years of the Soviet Union may have been the way it continued to pour money into its military -- and its military adventure in Afghanistan -- when it was already going bankrupt and the society it had built was beginning to collapse around it. In the end, its aging leaders made a devastating miscalculation. They mistook military power for power on this planet. Armed to the teeth and possessing a nuclear force capable of destroying the Earth many times over, the Soviets nonetheless remained the vastly poorer, weaker, and (except when it came to the arms race) far less technologically innovative of the two superpowers.

In December 1979, perhaps taking the bait of the Carter administration whose national security advisor was eager to see the Soviets bloodied by a "Vietnam" of their own, the Red Army invaded Afghanistan to support a weak communist government in Kabul. When resistance in the countryside, led by Islamic fundamentalist guerrillas and backed by the other superpower, only grew, the Soviets sent in more troops, launched major offensives, called in air power, and fought on brutally and futilely for a decade until, in 1989, long after they had been whipped, they withdrew in defeat.

Gorbachev had dubbed Afghanistan "the bleeding wound," and when the wounded Red Army finally limped home, it was to a country that would soon cease to exist. For the Soviet Union, Afghanistan had literally proven "the graveyard of empires." If, at the end, its military remained standing, the empire didn't. (And if you don't already find this description just a tad eerie, given the present moment in the U.S., you should.)

Click here for the rest of this fine article

Meltup

2010-05-18T19:48:00.002-05:00

May 14, 2010

NIA Announces Release of 'Meltup'

The National Inflation Association is pleased to announce the release of 'Meltup', a new nearly one-hour documentary about how the U.S. economy is at the beginning stages of a currency crisis that will ultimately lead to hyperinflation.

Meltup features Gerald Celente, Peter Schiff, Ron Paul, Marc Faber, Jim Rogers, Tom Woods, and others. The documentary proves through facts and statistics how hyperinflation in the U.S. is now inevitable and how Americans could soon see the end of entitlement programs they have become dependent on to live and survive.

This is a must watch hour long video from Inflation.us. It is now making the viral rounds, and has already had about a half million views in just four days.
Please forward to your friends and neighbors. Inflationist or deflationist, the facts behind this video are undeniable. It is time for the truth about our economy to break through the propaganda machine.

Third Step Prayer

2010-05-14T11:57:00.004-05:00

This is the prayer that I pray every morning. I find that it is only when I can get out of myself and approach real humility that the blessing of God comes upon me. It is only when I can get out of myself and approach real humility that I can be of service to my fellow man.

"God, I offer myself to Thee--to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love, and Thy Way of life.

May I do Thy will always!"

Proposed 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution

2010-03-30T19:53:00.000-05:00

For too long we have been too complacent about the workings of Congress. Many citizens had no idea that members of Congress could retire with the same pay after only one term, that they didn't pay into Social Security, that they specifically exempted themselves from many of the laws they have passed (such as being exempt from any fear of prosecution for sexual harassment) while ordinary citizens must live under those laws. The latest is to exempt themselves from the Healthcare Reform that is being considered...in all of its forms. Somehow, that doesn't seem logical. We do not have an elite that is above the law. I truly don't care if they are Democrat, Republican, Independent or whatever. The self-serving must stop. This is a good way to do that. It is an idea whose time has come.

Have each person contact a minimum of Twenty people on their Address list, in turn ask each of those to do likewise.

In three days, most people in The United States of America will have the message. This is one proposal that really should be passed around.

Proposed 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution

"Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators and/or Representatives; and, Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators and/or Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States."

La Respuesta del Padre

2010-01-17T13:12:00.002-06:00

Se tirita con el frío
Escondida en el cuarto oscuro
Y llora.
Sus labios y dedos azules
Y su aliento blanco vapor

Un calendario fuera de su año y motas de polvo
Y una ventana negra sin cortina,
Sacudida por rafagas de lluvia hacen el cuarto más vacio
Pero una bolsa de lana de oveja se inclina a la pared
Dejado por la mujer que abandonó el cuarto
Y la niña saca puñados de lana
Para hacerse un nido en el piso

Ella trata de acurrucarse entre la lana suelta
Sus pestañas baten como alitas pequeñas
Pero no logra dormir y los recuerdos dolorosos vienen…
Su padre, ebrio, amenazante "¿Qué haces aquí niña?"
Y él la miraba con ojos de vidrio negro
Libres de la chispa de emoción y consciencia
"¿Por qué vienes aquí niña? Nadie te quiere aquí."
Y la pequeña se levantaba y salió derrotada otra vez
Escondiendo sus lágrimas de él que la engendró

Sopla más fuerte el viento norte sobre los techos de Puerto Montt
El viento encuentra las grietas y agujeros
Y se mete silbando en el cuarto viejo
La niña tirita con frío y con miedo
Y llora sacudiendose el pecho, ya desesperada y completamente sola

Antes del alba ella se pone de pie en sus piernas pequeñas
Y saca los pelos de lana pegados a su ropa vieja
Y sale a la calle
No resiste más a la soledad

El viento corre gritando por la calle
Los techos suenan
Cuando chocan las planchas con los balazos de lluvia
Ella camina entumida, cuesta abajo hacia el Puerto
Sus manos y pies le arden con el frío
Y la lluvia le empapa la ropa

Se detiene frente a la entrada de una tienda
Se pone debajo del alero de su techo
Y ella llora otra vez
Su pecho sacude con el llanto
"¿Qué sería de mi?"
Y mira arriba, su cara blanca del frío, empapada de lluvia y lágrimas
"Diosito, ¿no me quieres? Estoy tan solita Señor…."

Y baja la cara,
Derrotada se sienta en el escalón de la entrada de la tienda
Pierde el sentido en las manos y piensa de morirse…
"Por favor Señor, por favor Señor"
Alguién le toca
Ella abre los ojos y levanta la mirada para ver
Dos ojos cafes, llenos de amor
El perro le lame las lágrimas
Y ella abraza el cuerpo caliente del perro vago
Hasta que aclara el cielo

Do we need a new reserve currency?

2009-12-28T08:08:00.001-06:00

From the Emirates Business 24/7 magazine

By Insead Knowledge on Sunday, December 27, 2009

A new global currency should replace the US dollar as the international reserve currency, as the long-term deterioration of America's economy and the greenback is fuelling a "currency-regime crisis", says Martin Wolf, associate editor and chief economics commentator of the Financial Times.

Wolf, who has honorary doctorates from three universities, bases his argument in part on the Triffin dilemma, an economic paradox named after economist Robert Triffin. The paradox shows that the US dollar's role as a global reserve currency leads to a conflict between US national monetary policy and global monetary policy. It also points to fundamental imbalances in the balance of payments, particularly in the US current account.

Account deficit

Speaking at an event organised by the Singapore Institute of International Affairs, Wolf said Triffin believed that the host nation of a global reserve currency will inevitably run up a huge current account deficit that would consequently undermine the credibility of its currency and adversely impact the global economy. "You can't have an open globalised economy that relies for its ultimate liquidity on the currency of one country. That was his [Triffin's] argument. And, therefore, he said the Bretton Woods system would break, which it did. And exactly the same thing happened with Bretton Woods II, which is the system of pegging.

"So I agree with this. And I'm absolutely convinced now, in a way that I was not three or four years ago, that we cannot continue with a genuinely global economy which relies on national money, and that's not sold by just adding another couple (of currencies). It actually means having a global money."

Indeed, Wolf said he's in complete agreement with China's Central Bank Governor Zhou Xiaochuan, who has argued for a new global currency "most credibly and convincingly".

"On the dollar, there is nothing to support this currency except the Chinese government and a few other governments that are prepared to buy it," said Wolf. "Anybody can look at the arithmetic of the fiscal deficit, the monetary policy, the external balance, which has improved but largely because of the recession, the dollar is not adequately supported." The US currently has a national debt in excess of $12 trillion (Dh44trn) or almost $40,000 per citizen, with a debt to GDP ratio of more than 85 per cent. In the July-September quarter, the US current account deficit rose sharply by 10.3 per cent from the previous quarter to $108bn. In the past year, the US dollar index, which measures the performance of the greenback against a basket of currencies, has also fallen significantly.

Click Here to read the rest of the article

Are you unemployed?

2009-12-05T14:20:00.001-06:00

Free budget software

New Contract for America? Or same old crap again?

2009-12-01T07:49:00.003-06:00

The Republican leadership has come up with a new Contract for America that continues to offer a counterpoint of big government to the Democrats' version of big government. Here are the ten points of the Contract for America drawn up by Dick Army:

BE IT RESOLVED, that the Republican National Committee identifies ten (10) key public policy positions for the 2010 election cycle, which the Republican National Committee expects its public officials and candidates to support:
(1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill;
(2) We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run health care;
(3) We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;
(4) We support workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check;
(5) We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;
(6) We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;
(7) We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat;
(8) We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;
(9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and
(10) We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership.
RESOLVED, that a candidate who disagrees with three or more of the above stated public policy positions of the Republican National Committee, as identified by the voting record, public statements and/or signed questionnaire of the candidate, shall not be eligible for financial support and endorsement by the Republican National Committee.

By including numbers 6 and 7 the Republicans have flatly stated that they will not reduce DoD or intelligence expenditures. The only way that thay can continue to fund two wars and massive presence around the globe is to deal with the Democrats in Congress. That means that the Republicans will not be able to cut any social spending programs and therefore their number 1 point is absolutely impossible.
The rest of the points do not greatly impact the budget and are there mostly to attempt to differentiate mainstream Republicans from Democrats. Some of the points are important, but do not address the existential problem of an out-of-control Federal behemoth. This list of points will result in more unpayable debt and more government, not less.

Now I saw a list on digg.com to replace the list that the Military Industrial Complex wrote for Dick Armey. Here it is:

1. Balanced Budget
2. Tort Reform
3. Repeal the 17th Amendment
4. Term limits
5. End the War on Drugs
6. End all funding of other nations
7. Exit strategy for all miltary involvement overseas
8. Abolish the IRS/Tax code and institute a progressive flat tax for everyone living above poverty level. No exemptions!
9. All congressional salary, benefits require 2/3 vote from public.
10. Any civillian conviction requires dismissal of the Congressman or Senator from Congress

That got me thinking....
I haven't had time to write a list yet, but I might change a couple of Mr. h8f8kes points. In the meantime, what do you think?

Larry Wilkerson Talks About The End Of The American Empire

2009-10-31T14:51:00.005-05:00

Colonel Larry Wilkerson, former assistant to Colin Powell and Pentagon war-planner speaks truth to empire. This half hour video is an intelligent analysis of the future of the USA and its debt-based, militaristic government.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Do Dead Men Make Videotapes?

2009-10-13T09:44:00.007-05:00

There is a question that I have been asking myself for a few years now and I do not understand why this question isn’t asked by someone in media, at last in alternative media.

First I’ll write the question and then the reasoning behind it, then I would like as many people as possible to give their opinions as to which is the right answer.
Here’s the question:
Are the US military and intelligence services totally incompetent or is the CIA producing the Osama bin Laden videos and audio recordings?
A or B. Are we pathetically unable to achieve a relatively simple objective or have we killed the chief terrorist and now cynically make him speak from the tomb in order to justify the endless war?

The reason that this question should be asked is that since the 11th of September of 2001, 24 Osama bin Laden tapes have been released and at least some of the tapes have been confirmed by the CIA as authentic.

We have spent well over a trillion dollars and have killed or been the direct cause of the deaths of somewhere between 150,000 and over a million deaths in our far-ranging War on Terror™. We have overthrown a couple of governments, destabilized a few more and are currently threatening another. We have imprisoned tens of thousands, have tortured hundreds and have had at least one hundred men die in our captivity as a result of torture in order to pursue this “war”.

The goal of the War on Terror™ has been changed over the 8 years since it officially began, but its central tenet has always been the destruction of the international Islamic terrorist organization, Al Qaeda. Although there is considerable doubt in some quarters if the organization has ever really existed, the US and British governments have released thousands of press releases over the last 8 years that, when compiled, identify an incredibly capable and powerful organization determined to bury Western liberal civilization. The Al Qaeda we have come to know in released CIA reports has done its job; it is terrifying.

So if the purpose of our brutal and economically ruinous War on Terror™ is the annihilation of al Qaeda, why haven’t we been able to keep Osama and his handsome sidekick from making all those videos that exhort the faithful to keep killing the infidels? And why have George Bush and Dick Cheney and Robert Gates all said the bin Laden is “irrelevant”? Why do we continue to hear that al Qaeda is the reason for our war from Mr. Obama while at the same time we are told that Mr. bin Laden (the leader of al Qaeda) is irrelevant? It does not make any sense whatsoever to think that an organization is dangerous enough to warrant 8 years of war, but the leaders of that organization are irrelevant. Osama was considered irrelevant in 2002 and he still is today . The war against al Qaeda goes on and on and new bin Laden tapes are still distributed three or four times a year. Can't we find this fellow and end his propaganda campaign?

Please step back, clear your mind and look at this anew. We kill thousands, occupy foreign countries, waste trillions of dollars, to dismantle enemy forces, but the leadership of those enemy forces is considered irrelevant. Every time that enemy leadership releases a video it is immediately front page news around the world. This is absurd. It needs to be questioned. It would be side-splittingly funny if so much death and suffering were not involved.

So are we incapable of using our drones and satellites and eavesdropping equipment and data mining and torture and bribery to find a 6´4” Arab in Pakistan? Is the combined might of the US military machine incapable of shutting down his video production? If so, I submit that all our military is suited to do is to kill and menace civilians (thereby creating an endlss supply of "terrorists") and all our intelligence services are capable of is listening in on Americans’ private phone conversations and cobbing together falsified justifications for war.

On the other hand, Osama might just be dead as Benazhir Bhutto made clear a number of times. . But if Osama is dead, then his videotapes must be made by the CIA. The CIA is reputed to be more skilled in video and digital imaging verification than anyone else in the world. So they could not be fooled by a couple of Arabs with a copy of Macromedia. If they say the tapes are real, they are real or the CIA is lying. Why would they lie? Because they want the tapes to justify the Endless War. And in that case, who made the tapes? The CIA of course.

What do you think? A or B?
A.- The US intelligence services are pathetically incompetent
b.- Osama is as dead as a doornail and his tapes are made by the CIA to keep the Endless War going.

Update: Jan 9th 2010:
The BBC has just written an article with the same theme, that Osama is either:
1.- dead and someone is faking the tapes
or
2.-alive and US Intelligence can't find him

However the BBC fails to come to the obviou conclusions that in case #1, the only possibilty of faked tapes is from the CIA and NSA and that in case #2 that US military and Intelligence have spent trillions and have not found Osama bin Laden. They are therefore incompetent.

The Profile of a Bully - The American Empire

2009-08-19T13:30:00.005-05:00

Last week I had the opportunity to attend a seminar about school age bullying. This has become quite a problem in the modern politically correct school system and we have decided to avoid using the tools that we once had to combat bullying.

But what struck me at the conference was the characteristics of the bully. I can't include the conference here on my blog, so I found a youtube video that describes what I heard at the conference.

The following video was produced by J Richard Knapp to identify the characteristics of the school age bully.
He lists nine characteristics to help us identify bullies. Those characteristsics are:
1.- Extremely Confident
2.- Physically Agressive
3.- Pro-violent Behavior
4.- Hot tempered
5.- Frustrates Easily
6.- Dominate Others
7.- Lack of Empathy
8.- Bigger and Stronger
9.- They Get Into Serious Trouble

I couldn't help but notice that these are exactly the characteristics of the new United State (spelling intentional) of America. In every single one of the nine examples, the personality that is exhibited by the government of our country towards other countries is exactly that of the bully.

We need to be careful with #9. We are already getting into serious trouble by not considering the incredible cost of our bullying. That cost will eventually bring the government down.

Please watch the video and comment if you think that these characteristics apply to the USA.

To learn more about bullies, please read this article

The Power of Nightmares

2009-08-15T11:15:00.005-05:00

This three hour BBC video was produced in 2005 and has never been presented on broadcast TV in the United States. It has the clearest and most honest history of the radical Islamist movement in general and Al Qaeda in particular. The history is not what the American propaganda organs would like us to believe.

The video also describes the origin and development of the neo-conservative imperialist doctrine in America. The juxtaposition of these two nihilistic philosophies is well done and fascinating.

The film is long. Each sgment is almost an hour, but it is well worth it. Take the time an watch a segment now. If you want to see the three section in higher definition then follow these links to the first, second and third parts, otherwise just watch them below.

First Segment
"Baby Its Cold Outside"

Second Segment
"The Phantom Victory"

Third Segment
"The Shadows in the Cave"

Ron Paul defines and names the neocons.

2009-07-25T14:59:00.002-05:00

Do not be fooled that the Israel-first neocons are actually conservatives. They are not in favor of small government or strict adherence to the Constitution. They are not in favor of truly free-market economics. They are the big-government party in favor of global hegemony.

Tell David Frum and Bill Kristol to stop pretending they are conservatives.

Response to Government Motors' Troy Clarke by GM parts supplier, Gregory Knox

2009-06-04T17:17:00.005-05:00

Troy Clarke, government employee

Dear Employees & Suppliers,
Congress and the current Administration will soon determine whether to provide immediate support to the domestic auto industry to help it through one of the most difficult economic times in our nation's history. Your elected officials must hear from all of us now on why this support is critical to our continuing the progress we began prior to the global financial crisis.
As an employee or supplier, you have a lot at stake and continue to be one of our most effective and passionate voices. I know GM can count on you to have your voice heard.
Thank you for your urgent action and ongoing support.
Troy Clarke
President,
General Motors North America

Response from:
Gregory Knox, Pres.
Knox Machinery Company
Franklin , Ohio

Troy Knox, free man and President of Knox Machinery Comp.

Gentlemen:
In response to your request to contact legislators and ask for a bailout for the Big Three automakers please consider the following, and please pass my thoughts on to Troy Clarke, President of General Motors North America.

Politicians and Management of the Big 3 are both infected with the same entitlement mentality that has spread like cancerous germs in UAW halls for the last countless decades, and whose plague is now sweeping this nation, awaiting our new "messiah," President Obama, to wave his magic wand and make all our problems go away, while at the same time allowing our once great nation to keep "living the dream." Believe me folks, The dream is over!

This dream where we can ignore the consumer for years while management myopically focuses on its personal rewards packages at the same time that our factories have been filled with the worlds most overpaid, arrogant, ignorant and laziest entitlement minded "laborers" without paying the price for these atrocities. This dream where you still think the masses will line up to buy our products forever and ever.

Don't even think about telling me I'm wrong. Don't accuse me of not knowing of what I speak. I have called on Ford, GM, Chrysler, TRW, Delphi, Kelsey Hayes, American Axle, and countless other automotive OEM's throughout the Midwest , during the past 30 years and what I've seen over those years in these union shops can only be described as disgusting.
Troy Clarke, President of General Motors North America, states: "There is widespread sentiment throughout this country, and our government, and especially via the news media, that the current crisis is completely the result of bad management which it certainly is not."

You're right Mr. Clarke, it's not JUST management. How about the electricians who walk around the plants like lords in feudal times, making people wait on them for countless hours while they drag ass so they can come in on the weekend and make double and triple time for a job they easily could have done within their normal 40 hour work week. How about the line workers who threaten newbies with all kinds of scare tactics for putting out too many parts on a shift and for being too productive. (We certainly must not expose those lazy bums who have been getting overpaid for decades for their horrific underproduction, must we?!?)

Do you folks really not know about this stuff?!? How about this great sentiment abridged from Mr. Clarke's sad plea: "over the last few years we have closed the quality and efficiency gaps with our competitors." What the hell has Detroit been doing for the last 40 years?!? Did we really JUST wake up to the gaps in quality and efficiency between us and them? The K car vs. the Accord? The Pinto vs. the Civic?!? Do I need to go on? What a joke!

We are living through the inevitable outcome of the actions of the United States auto industry for decades. It's time to pay for your sins, Detroit .

I attended an economic summit last week where brilliant economist, Alan Beaulieu, from the Institute of Trend Research , surprised the crowd when he said he would not have given the banks a penny of "bailout money."

"Yes, he said, this would cause short term problems," but despite what people like politicians and corporate magnates would have us believe, the sun would in fact rise the next day and the following very important thing would happen. Where there had been greedy and sloppy banks, new efficient ones would pop up. That is how a free market system works. It does work if we would only let it work."

But for some nondescript reason we are now deciding that the rest of the world is right and that capitalism doesn't work - that we need the government to step in and "save us". Save us my ass, Hell - we're nationalizing and unfortunately too many of our once fine nation's citizens don't even have a clue that this is what is really happening.

But, they sure can tell you the stats on their favorite sports teams.
Yeah - THAT'S really important, isn't it.

Does it ever occur to ANYONE that the "competition" has been producing vehicles, EXTREMELY PROFITABLY, for decades in this country? How can that be??? Let's see: Fuel efficient; Listening to customers; Investing in the proper tooling and automation for the long haul; Not being too complacent or arrogant to listen to Dr. W Edwards Deming four decades ago when he taught that by adopting appropriate principles of management, organizations could increase quality and simultaneously reduce costs; Ever increased productivity through quality and intelligent planning; Treating vendors like strategic partners, rather than like "the enemy."; Efficient front and back offices; Non union environment.
Again, I could go on and on, but I really wouldn't be telling anyone anything they really don't already know down deep in their hearts.

I have six children, so I am not unfamiliar with the concept of wanting someone to bail you out of a mess that you have gotten yourself into - my children do this on a weekly, if not daily basis, as I did when I was their age. I do for them what my parents did for me (one of their greatest gifts, by the way) - I make them stand on their own two feet and accept the consequences of their actions and work through it. Radical concept, huh? Am I there for them in the wings? Of course, but only until such time as they need to be fully on their own as adults.

I don't want to oversimplify a complex situation, but there certainly are unmistakable parallels here between the proper role of parenting and government. Detroit and the United States need to pay for their sins.
Bad news people - it's coming whether we like it or not. The newly elected Messiah really doesn't have a magic wand big enough to "make it all go away." I laughed as I heard Obama "reeling it back in" almost immediately after the final vote count was tallied. "We really might not do it in a year or in four." Where the Hell was that kind of talk when he was RUNNING for office.

Stop trying to put off the inevitable folks. That house in Florida really isn't worth $750,000. People who jump across a border really don't deserve free health care benefits. That job driving that forklift for the Big 3 really isn't worth $85,000 a year. We really shouldn't allow Wal-Mart to stock their shelves with products acquired from a country that unfairly manipulates their currency and has the most atrocious human rights infractions on the face of the globe. That couple whose combined income is less than $50,000 really shouldn't be living in that $485,000 home.

Let the market correct itself folks - it will... Yes it will be painful, but it's gonna' be painful either way, and the bright side of my proposal is that on the other side of it all, is a nation that appreciates what it has and doesn't live beyond its means and gets back to basics and redevelops the patriotic work ethic that made it the greatest nation in the history of the world and probably turns back to God...

Sorry - don't cut my head off, I'm just the messenger sharing with you the "bad news". I hope you take it to heart..

Gregory J. Knox, President
Knox Machinery, Inc.
Franklin , Ohio 45005

FREE GOVERNMENT MONEY !!

2009-06-03T16:01:00.001-05:00

The Treasury is empty - When do we stop spending?

2009-05-14T22:29:00.000-05:00

We need to listen to this man.

Secession May Be The Peaceful Answer

2009-05-09T15:23:00.002-05:00

Many of us Americans believe that freedom is necessary for us to live happy, fulfilled lives, and we think that our individual freedom and a giant central government are mutually exclusive. So we advocate for smaller government, but the government gets increasingly bigger and more intrusive while Americans' standard of living declines.

It is probably impossible to shrink the Federal government through the legal means available. Given the size that the Federal bureaucracy has attained, it has probably achieved a critical mass where it will only grow larger. Crises will give it the excuse to grab more power that will never be surrendered. We can't even trim one insignificant program.

If our freedom is necessary for our happiness and well-being and if there is no realistic hope of ever recovering our freedom within a monstrous Federal system that controls everything in our lives, then we have to choose between secession and revolution.

Is the GOP Too Conservative?

2009-05-02T22:53:00.002-05:00

The Southern Avenger answers the question being asked in Washington.
Does the terrible polling data indicate that the Republicans have to move to the "center", or does it indicate something completely different?

If the Republicans do not reclaim their role as the Constitutionalist, small government party that advocates for limiting Washington in all things and returning power to the States, then the GOP will continue to be the Democrat Party with a bad attitude. The only difference between the two is that the Republicans advocate war with more enthusiasm.

How Much is Obama's 100 Million Budget Cut?

2009-04-30T21:02:00.000-05:00

The Missing Mea Culpa

2009-04-22T22:31:00.007-05:00

The Republican Party seems to be coming to its senses after the insanity of the Bush years. This moment in history is like one of those mornings when you wake up on a couch somewhere, with a throbbing head and a powder dry mouth, unsteady on your feet, the world reeling around you, with no idea where you are and certain that something terrible happened last night. “How in the world did I end up Here?”

So now in April, three months after George Bush the Lesser slunk out of Washington, the Republicans have staggered out to the street, figured out where they are, caught a bus home and in light of the mess they are in, have decided to turn over a new leaf. “We’re never gonna drink again…..” All of a sudden the Republicans are acting like the Party that they are supposed to be. They are opposing all the insane spending; they are listening to real fiscal conservatives. Ron Paul and Mark Sanford are now in demand as speakers. They are even speaking up against warrantless wiretapping. They are furious to discover that the Dept. of Fatherland Security has been spying on Americans and has written a booklet describing abortion oponents and gun rights activists as “domestic terrrorists”. They are no longer in favor of the Endless War; they don’t even mention it. They glommed onto the Campaign for Liberty’s Tea Party idea and came out en masse to protest runaway taxation and spending. Halellujah! They woke up!

The sentiments of millons have coalesced into a thing that has taken life and everyone can feel it. The ether tingles with energy and emotion. The Republicans are finally motivated to learn and in their polite, suburban fashion they are protesting. The Democrats also sense this awakening and they understand that it threatens what is to be their greatest moment: the comeback of America from the Bush years. The change of atmosphere makes them feel that a thing still unseen looms over them. One can see by their over-reaction to the Tea Parties that they are worried about the expected danger and they are prepared to use the might of the State to protect their turn in charge of things. They are not going to let the Republicans or the economy spoil their day in the sun.

The Republicans who four months ago didn’t have any opinions beyond what Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh said on the TV are beginning to understand that our country is in great danger, not the ludicrous, artificial danger churned out by those propaganda organs of the unfortunate administration that just wasted an eight year opportunity to practise real conservatism, but existential danger to our economy, our money and our civil rights. The scales have fallen from Republicans' eyes and they see that the economy is worse than we are being told. They see the wholesale theft that is funnelling billions to criminals and sticking our next generation with unpayable debt. The Republicans are beginning to think for themselves, perpared to fight back.

Meanwhile the Democrats feel like their precious moment is being stolen before it comes to fruition. They tell us to be patient, to give Mr. Obama time to work his magic as the economic indicators just keeping getting worse. Its not fair, Bush destroyed the economy with out-of-control capitalism and now we have to clean up the mess. And they shovel another 100 Billion dollars of generational debt towards Wall Street. They gleefully pass the Bills they’ve dreamed of: University grants and solar investments and fast rail corridors and embryonic stem cell research, Wow, Far out, its our turn now and we can do things right. But the economy keeps intruding and Iraq and Obama’s refusal to prosecute anybody for torture and Afghanistan and unemployment are all intruding on their dream. “Its not fair” and they are getting angry.

Now I want to talk to the Republicans who are so upset. You have no right to be upset.

None.

You voted for the men and women that spent us into penury. You elected the men and women who facilitated aggressive, unnecassary war, you empowered the men who tortured and jailed innocents for years without a right to face their accusers, and you gave the authority to a spendthrift President to double our national debt and to set precedents for his successor to follow. You gave the power to the President to spy on Americans, to train American soldiers to control crowds of Americans and even to jail Americans as terrorists without access to the legal recourse that our Constitution guarantees.

Now all this government power is going to be harnessed against you. And it’s your fault. I heard the truly vile Mr. O’Rielly still trying to make the case for torture today on a youtube video from yesterday. That power to torture is now in other hands, which may use it in ways that would infuriate you and it’s your fault. You are now angry as you watch America close upon the precipice and you shout in protest, but your protests ring hollow. They clang with the sour peal of mendacity because you carry the burden of guilt for the terrible government of the last eight years.

As a Christian I thank God daily because I can leave my sins behind and start anew. That happens when I acknowledge my sins to God and ask for forgiveness. Then I can walk with my head held high again, if I truly repent for what I did. Before I ask for pardon and before I repent, my advice to others, and all of my works are hollow and false.

The Republicans need to ask forgiveness and they need to repent. You will be not believable until you do.

America needs to hear prominent Republicans vocalize a collective mea culpa. America needs to hear prominent Republicans repent publicly for the disaster that they caused during the Bush years. When America hears prominent Republicans rebuke their big-government mistakes, when we hear a vow to truly follow sound policies that are always in accord with the Constitution then the Republican renascence will be complete.

The Mea Culpa is missing and it is essential for us to confront the real dangers that jeopardize our future.

Why is Washington so corrupt?

2009-04-21T22:36:00.001-05:00

How can we control corruption? By reducing the size of government.

How do we do that, and what are the challenges? Read this.

Drowning in Dept

2009-04-08T17:52:00.002-05:00

The Character of Americans

2009-03-23T12:54:00.007-05:00

Avarice and ambition would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

John Adams

Upon applying Mr. Adams lesson to modern America, it becomes clear why this country no longer works. It becomes clear why our guaranteed liberties have atrophied away to a useless remnant of what they were intended to be. We are no longer a moral or religious people. There is no base of shared values that keeps us from harming each other, instead it is the naked threat of state violence that keeps the populace from open brigandage.

We have become the Roman Empire, and like the Empire, peace can only be achieved by force. The dream of America was realized for a time, but now that aspiration to civility and freedom as symbolized by the flag and the eagle is as false as the Senate that approved Caesar's every dictate.

The Deck Chairs Are Fine Where They Are

2009-03-07T18:27:00.002-06:00

Tom Woods from The Campaign For Liberty talks to a group of real conservatives at CPAC
Please ditch the false conservatism of foreign domination, of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and help save the Republic.

Ron Paul Introduces Bill to Audit the Federal Reserve

2009-02-28T18:46:00.004-06:00

February 26,

2009Madame Speaker,

I rise to introduce the Federal Reserve Transparency Act.
Throughout its nearly 100-year history, the Federal Reserve has presided over the near-complete destruction of the United States dollar. Since 1913 the dollar has lost over 95% of its purchasing power, aided and abetted by the Federal Reserve’s loose monetary policy.

How long will we as a Congress stand idly by while hard-working Americans see their savings eaten away by inflation? Only big-spending politicians and politically favored bankers benefit from inflation.Serious discussion of proposals to oversee the Federal Reserve is long overdue. I have been a longtime proponent of more effective oversight and auditing of the Fed, but I was far from the first Congressman to advocate these types of proposals. Esteemed former members of the Banking Committee such as Chairmen Wright Patman and Henry B. Gonzales were outspoken critics of the Fed and its lack of transparency.

Since its inception, the Federal Reserve has always operated in the shadows, without sufficient scrutiny or oversight of its operations. While the conventional excuse is that this is intended to reduce the Fed’s susceptibility to political pressures, the reality is that the Fed acts as a foil for the government. Whenever you question the Fed about the strength of the dollar, they will refer you to the Treasury, and vice versa. The Federal Reserve has, on the one hand, many of the privileges of government agencies, while retaining benefits of private organizations, such as being insulated from Freedom of Information Act requests.

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Milton Friedman and Phil Donahue in 1979

2009-02-28T15:57:00.002-06:00

Ron Paul - End the Fed

2009-02-25T19:10:00.001-06:00

This is the clearest and most complete explanation of why the Federal Reserve Bank has to go.
Take a look.

An American Miracle

2009-02-23T11:00:00.004-06:00

A friend of mine told me an incredible story that can teach important lessons. I will try to relate it with the same honesty with which it was told to me.

The events in this true story happened in January and February of 1973, shortly after the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade. It is shocking how fast the State took advantage of the new law to advocate and even order the killing of innocent people.

This is the story of a miracle. Like all miracles performed by our God, the non-believer just sees a series of unrelated events. That is because God has decided that He can only be known through our faith in Him. I pray that non-believers have the opportunity to need God so strongly that they let their pride fall away, admit their weakness and ask for new life.

Leanne was the first-born in her family, and she grew up with her stepfather, her mother and 5 or 6 stepbrothers and stepsisters in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Her real father showed her the value of education, and he instilled in her a reverence for books, but she only met him a few times that she can remember. He worked for the railroad and at one point he left Michigan and didn’t go back.

School and church and family gatherings filled Leanne’s childhood. She was always a good student and a devout Catholic like her mother. She would have been happy but for the constant criticism and the meanness of her stepfather. Leanne feared taking her report card home to be signed, not because the grades were bad, but rather because her stepfather felt threatened by Leanne’s love of learning. He would look at her report cards full of As and Bs. “You tink you’re bedder’n the rest of us, doncha?”, and he would toss it on the floor.

He was an abusive man and he would beat Leanne’s mother violently when he was drunk. She was taken to the hospital on many a frozen night, bleeding from the nose and mouth, the car pushing through the drifting snow. The Parish priest spoke with the man and he was always contrite and repentant when sober, but he just got meaner the next time that he was drunk.

Leave it to say that Leanne’s childhood wasn’t sparkling, but she had big plans. She dreamed of studying English at the university. She was going to be a teacher and maybe write a book or two.

Her dreams were not fulfilled. There was no money for college, so she got a job and did what everyone does in the UP. She started to hang out in the bars in the evening although she never drank alcohol. She looked for hope and a future among the denizens of the dead-end world of drunks and their unrealized dreams. She met a man that impressed her and she had two children with him right out of high school.

Because of the terrible abuse that her mother suffered at the hands of her drunken stepfather, Leanne had decided to never marry and she did not marry the father of her two boys. They lived together and she was trying to make a happy home, but he followed in the footsteps of Leanne’s stepfather and drank his way through life, finally disappearing for a couple of days with another woman. Leanne decided that she was not going to repeat her mother’s life and she and the boys moved out.

Work was scarce for a single mother with two kids, and although she made every effort possible, she could not find a job that would either pay for a baby sitter or would allow her to take her kids to work. All she could find was work part-time at a bar. She could not make ends meet. So she went to Michigan Social Services and they helped her sue the dad for child support. They also signed her up for AFDC, At that time the child support checks were paid directly to Social Services and the agency would give the mothers their child support money and money from AFDC each month after they came in for a scheduled interview.

Leanne was living in a cheap apartment over the bar where she worked part-time. One night after the bar closed she was sleeping in her bed with her older son who was four while her one year old was asleep in his crib. A loud knocking came at the door. A voice that she thought she recognized said that it was an emergency and that it was terribly cold outside, please open up. So she unlocked the door and looked to see what was wrong. The man, who was a wealthy businessman from town, was drunk and he slurred that he needed to come in and he just wanted to spend some time with her. She tried to shut the door, but he had his foot in it and he overpowered her. He pushed the door open and came in. She didn’t want to frighten her boys so she didn’t scream. The apartment had no phone and no close neighbors. He sat down at the kitchen table and said something incoherent and then looked around and said he just needed to lay down for a bit. She went to her bedroom and carried her four year old to his bedroom and tucked him into his own bed, then told the drunk to go to sleep in her bed. She figured that he would be passed out soon. It was an uncomfortable event, but no harm done.

She lay down to sleep with her boy and was woken by the drunk. “Come ere. Come on” He took her hand and was pulling her out of her bed. He grabbed her leg and began to haul her physically from the bed. Her son started to awaken. “Either come with me or we’ll do it right here in front of the kids”. She followed the man to the other bedroom. He left before dawn.

The next morning she called a friend who was married to a police officer and the police officer drove over to Leanne’s apartment. Leanne told him what had happened, and said that she wanted to file charges for rape. He listened to her story, then he told her: “Leanne it’ll just be his word against yours. You’ll never make it stick. You’re just gonna have to learn to live with this. Put a chain on your door. I’m sorry, but you won’t win.” That was that, the man raped her and walked away, still a pillar of the community. And there was Leanne; all alone and now she was pregnant again.

One of the questions that Social Services asked her every month was whether she was pregnant, so after being raped and missing her period she told the lady that interviewed her that she was expecting and also told her about what had happened. “Well Leanne, it is too bad what happened to you, but you’re just not going to be able to keep that baby. Now that abortion is finally legal, we have a solution to your problem. You can’t take care of the two that you have, so you are just going to have to have an abortion”. Leanne said that she didn’t want an abortion and she was told that if she didn’t get an abortion she wouldn’t get her monthly check from the state. “But why do I have to have an abortion?” “Because if you don’t the state is going to determine that you are unfit to be a mother and will take your other two boys away from you. Now don’t you worry about this. It will all be paid by Social Services, even your travel”.

Leanne felt completely helpless, trapped like a little mouse in a mousetrap. The lady from Social Services became more insistent. While Leanne was sitting there terrified of losing her children, the lady from Social Services made an appointment at a clinic an hour away in Marquette for Leanne to get an exam prior to her abortion. “You are going to do this Leanne and it is all for the better. You can’t raise another child.” Leanne went home defeated and waited to go get her exam the next day.

Leanne had no idea that the lady from Social Services didn’t have any authority to do or say the things that she was doing. Leanne knew another single mother, also separated from an abusive drunk, who had just been forced to have an abortion because she was taking State aid and according to Social Services she already had too many children. But it never occurred to either Leanne or her friend to doubt whether Social Services really had the authority to force them to kill their unborn babies. Leanne had lived all of her life, like most Americans, with respect for any official of the government. Like most Americans she just did what she was told.

She went home and told a couple of friends. She cried and suffered and finally convinced herself that the State knew what they were doing and that her pregnancy wasn’t really a baby yet, that it was just some tissue that would be discarded, that the Catholic decree against abortion was old fashioned and that she would be forgiven anyway if she confessed her sin. She woke up numb in the morning.

The drive to Marquette, watching the white fields and leafless woodlots slide by, felt distant as though it was happening to someone else. Nothing seemed to matter. Upon arriving in Marquette she was admitted into the clinic and the doctor came in and examined her. He said that her pregnancy was about four weeks along, which coincided with the night that Leanne was raped. The doctor said that everything looked good and he explained that the procedure would be done by vacuum aspiration. He explained that the tiny fetus would be sucked out painlessly and she would be on her feet and back home. He stressed that this was not a baby, just a little mass of tissue. She shouldn’t feel any guilt at all.

But, he said, there were no facilities for the procedure in the UP as yet; she would have to drive down into Lower Michigan to Grand Rapids. Could she do it the next day? Yes, Leanne nodded, let’s get it over with.

Going to Grand Rapids involved an eight hour drive around the north shore of Lake Michigan and then south about two hundred miles. It would have been a lot closer to drive down to Green Bay, but that was Wisconsin, and the State of Michigan was going to pay the bill. Since Social Services was going to pay for the gas, a friend agreed to drive her the next day. She went back to her apartment to spend another horrible night waiting, but by now she felt resigned to her fate. She felt as though she were in a fog and watching uninterested what she herself did.

The next morning long before dawn, Leanne dropped off her boys at the house of another friend. She got in her friend Billy’s car for the long drive. She says that she doesn’t remember anything from the long trip, not even going over the Mackinac Bridge. Some time in the afternoon Billy parked across the street from the abortion clinic. Leanne says that she remembers walking across the street and a little way up the block to where a gate gave entrance to the abortion clinic, hiding back behind a fence of tall steel bars. There was a small group of protestors dressed in white near the fence, but away from the gate. Before she entered, two of them, a man and a woman approached her and asked if they could pray for her. She was so numb that without even thinking about it she nodded and they took her hands and said a short prayer.

This was early February in Michigan. It was not terribly overcast, but the day was cold, freezing cold. Leanne says that when she opened the door to the abortion clinic instead of feeling the blast of warmth that one expects when entering a building in winter, she suddenly felt a deadly chill. She says that she still remembers the shock of that cold that entered deep into her body upon entering the building. As she walked into the clinic her numbness began to recede. It was as though she were slowly waking from a dream. She began to see clearly again.

The waiting room was large with four or five sofas upon which waited a number of women and two young teenagers that were there with their mothers. There was only one man in the waiting room; he was accompanying a young woman. There was a very heavy air to the room. No one looked up. No one spoke. Each was an island floating in her own misery.

Leanne made her way to the reception window and gave her name to the nurse. She was told that they had been waiting for her; please take a seat. The heavy, cold feeling deepened and Leanne’s numbness began to change to fear and revulsion.

The nurse called and Leanne got up and followed her down a long hall with four recovery rooms on the right, in each of which she a saw dour-faced woman in a hospital gown. None looked up.

After the fourth recovery room the hall turned left and Leanne brushed up against a laundry cart. A towel fell off the mound of linens in the cart and opened as it hit the floor. It was saturated with blood and held a couple of masses of coagulation or tissue. Leanne stopped dead and could not lift her eyes from that towel.

“It hit me at that moment. I saw clearly that here was death. I wanted to run, but I couldn’t, I didn’t know how to stop it. I didn’t have it in me to turn around and walk out of there. So I closed my eyes and prayed to God and asked that He send a miracle to stop this because I couldn’t.”

The nurse led Leanne into the abortion room in which there were a couple of machines and a gynecologist’s table. Now she felt revulsion and panic but she still could not muster the will to walk out. She prayed in her mind’s voice. “Dear God, this is wrong Lord. Forgive me for coming here Lord, but end this Lord. Please end this now.” The nurse had her take off her clothes and put on a gown and Leanne kept praying, praying for a miracle. She was told to lie down on her back on the table and a doctor and two more nurses came in wearing gowns and caps and surgical masks. Leanne remembers thinking “Is that for sanitary reasons or because they don’t want to be seen?” Her mind had cleared, but she still couldn’t sit up and stop the process, so she prayed.

The doctor began by taking the chart that Leanne had brought from her exam the day before in Marquette. He set the chart across her stomach and read it and then kneeled down and examined her. Within a moment he stood up rapidly and spoke with anger. “What the hell is this? This woman has an enlarged uterus already. She is at least eight weeks along, probably more. Dammit.” He looked at a calendar. “The way her uterus is enlarged I’d say that this baby is due around the end of August. Who is this idiot in Marquette anyway? Damn!” He pulled off his gloves made a note on the chart and told the first nurse to get Leanne dressed and take her to the psychiatrist to plan the next step. The doctor and the two masked nurses stomped out.

A tremendous weight evaporated from Leanne and she felt the warm caress of the Holy Spirit. She felt that she would float up off the table. The colors and sounds were crisp and clear. “Thank You Lord, Thank You Lord, Thank You Lord, Thank You Lord,” All she wanted to do was to get out of the horrible abattoir, but the nurse waited for her to dress and told her that she had to see the psychiatrist. She followed the nurse but inside she thought, I don’t care if I lose all the money from the State, I don’t care if I have to work three jobs Lord, I am not going to kill my baby”. The hand of God was upon her and her fear disappeared like the frost when the morning sun hits it directly.

And praying great thanks in her mind she was led into a small office with a desk and couch. She sat in a chair in front of the desk. She sat straight up and looked at this doctor right in the eyes. “Well Leanne, apparently you were wrong about the date that you became pregnant.”

She answered directly, not with sarcasm but completely without fear. “I’m so sorry, but I’m not wrong, as you can see from the chart that I brought from Marquette. Also, I am not going to forget he date when I was raped.”

“Hmmm, well, be that as it may, we are going to have to schedule you for a saline solution abortion, because you are too far along for the suction evacuation. Now listen, you have to follow through, because otherwise you will lose custody of your children” Leanne said nothing but held the psychiatrist’s eyes, so she continued. “We are not equipped for this procedure as yet so you will be sent to New York State.”

“And what is this saline abortion please?” Asked Leanne.

“Well, when the uterus is enlarged the suction method cannot be used, so we inject saline solution into the fetus and then induce labor.” Leanne just looked at her, feeling stronger, feeling more resolve with each moment. The psychiatrist seemed intimidated by Leanne’s gaze and continued. “The baby will have died with the saline solution and will be stillborn. You will recover quickly and go home.”

“I was told that abortion doesn’t kill a baby, that it is just tissue, that it isn’t human and now you are talking about labor and dead babies. I am going now.” Leanne stood up and so did the psychiatrist.

“Leanne if you don’t go through with this you will lose your two children”

“No, I won’t” Leanne opened the door walked out of the abortion clinic a completely different woman than when she had walked in. The afternoon sun shone and the patches of snow sparkled, the wind caressed her face. She walked out of the gate and the two protestors who had prayed with her asked if she was OK.

“I didn’t do it. I still have my baby”

One shouted to the other protestors a ways down the sidewalk, “Hey! She didn’t do it! God be praised!” They all shouted and smiled and hugged each other.

Leanne walked to Billy’s car. “Thank you Lord, Thank you Lord, Thank you Lord, Thank you Lord,” She saw Billy and he came over to her with an inquisitive look on his big face.

“That was pretty quick Leanne”

“They didn’t do it Billy!” He grabbed her in his big doofus arms and spun her around the parking lot. Haleluyah.

The ride back was long but beautiful and Leanne made a promise to her Creator. “I will not abort this baby Lord. I will work all day every day because when I asked for a miracle, you gave me a miracle”

When she got to her friend’s house to pick up her kids she found a group of eight or ten there who whooped and shouted and jumped around when they heard the news They all hugged Leanne and she found out that they had been there all day praying for her and her baby.

A week later she went back to Social Services and abortion was never mentioned again.

Leanne’s third son, who was saved from abortion by Divine intervention, was born on October 11th 1973 and is now a Chief Petty Officer in the US Navy. He won the Bronze Star for saving other sailors’ lives in Iraq. He is happily married and has two beautiful teenage girls..

Question authority, live as virtuously as you can and have faith in God.

Las Desnudas de Carlos Paredes

2009-02-19T09:47:00.008-06:00

Here are a smattering of Carlos' nudes from the last ten years. I will try to add more as I get digital photos.
If you are new to this blog, look at the article below this one first.

Unfortunately the digital images of Carlos' earlier paintings are not in high resolution, in fact the image quality is really bad. Those pictures were converted into food and firewood for the cookstove a long time before any of us had a decent digital camera.

Comments would be highly appreciated.

La Hija Del Dios Danego c. 2000

Angel Guerrera c. 2000

Top_3.jpg c. 2005

LA CRUZ Y LA MARIPOSA...PARTE 1.jpg c. 2007

Belleza Divina c. 2007

bellezas divinas....parte 1.jpg 2008

Construyendo las nuevas Esfinges...parte 1 2009

El Artista, Carlos Paredes Colín

2009-02-09T20:20:00.009-06:00

I am blessed to have a great friend in Puerto Montt Chile who is a true artist. If suffering is a requirement in order to attain the vision and the dissatisfaction with mediocrity that gives a true artist the compulsive need to create, then Carlos has fulfilled the requirement. I have seen him struggle to feed his family for years as his paintings were sold to buy milk and diapers and a chicken for the cazuela. But he hasn't ever given up, he hasn't tossed his brushes and his easel into the trash and taken some mind-numbing job selling cell phones or feeding salmon. He has stuck with it for years and his art has never stultified. It evolves rapidly, organically, shooting off into new directions that Carlos pretends to control, but which surprise him as much as they do anyone else.

Carlos Paredes

I draw and paint because I like to, but I don't pretend to be an artist. Many people learn to paint a certain style that patrons will pay for and they mat consider themselves artists, but their works are only decoration. There are very few artists that actually mix fire and emotions and story and rage into the paints on their palette. But Paredes does, and he even abides by a rule now scoffed at as antiquated and quaint: his paintings are not only powerful and emotive, they are beautiful.

He considers himself a surrealist and can wax eloquent on the theory behind his creations, but I wonder if like many artists, the explanations do not come until after the creation.... Many of his paintings depict dreamings of metaphysical confusion, or the rage of innocent victims at an uncaring and ludicrous divinity. Many of his creations use the visions he has seen in epileptic seizures suffered by him for years. Many paintings are without a direct connection with the reality of the palpable world, but if you stop trying to identify and analyze, you can see the swirling movements and pulsations of the emotions. You can see order strive against chaos and the beauty of both.

Movimiento de la Luz, Primera Parte

Other paintings by Paredes are tremendously realistic, but the other world of mystic chaos always lurks within or around the figures. There is no escape from the dangerous clowns that run the universe that Carlos paints. In all there is lust and riotous life. There is the rapid decay of tropical death with its shiny hues of greens and blues, the recycling of the dead by an explosion of other living matter, be it fungus or bacteria or vines and algae. In Paredes' work nothing is static, nothing is expected to stay as it is, but everything is alive and ready to give birth or to die and transform.

Sirena

I will make a monthly entry of paintings and poetry by Carlos and will post each segment in English and Spanish.
Without much sense of order I am going to present paintings from various periods of Carlos' works. Click here to watch him create the painting "Sirena"

Angel Crucificada

HS 833 - Ron Paul's Bill To Abolish The Federal Reserve

2009-02-06T13:39:00.004-06:00

The revocation of the Fed's authority to manage our economy and issue our money will be the first step towards recovering an economy based on production rather than an economy based on Ponzi scemes.
Only through production is wealth created and only with savings is production possible. This bill will set us back on the road to a sustainable economy. If this passes, there will be pain sooner, but it will not last as long nor hit the poor as badly as what will happen if we let the Fed destroy the dollar.

Please contact your Congressman to support this bill in committee, to co-sponsor this bill and to vote for it on the floor of the House. To write your Congressman follow this link and just type in your State and Zip code.

Here is text that you can copy to request that your Congressman supports Dr. Paul's bill:

Dear ___________

I firmly believe that the irresponsible policies of the Federal Reserve Bank have created the economic disaster that we are facing today. I also believe that in our Constitutional Republic, comprised of free men and women, we cannot have a body that sets economic policy but does not answer to the people or the people's representatives in Washington.
It is wrong that a private bank is making life and death decisions for free American men and women in secret. It is time to abolish the Federal Reserve Bank and give the responsibility of coining our money back to the Congress as is stipulated in the Constitution.
Please support HS 833 that was introduced by Congressman Ron Paul on the 3rd of February. Your support will guarantee my vote.

Thank you,

__________________

Following is the body of this overdue bill.

HR 833 IH

111th CONGRESS

1st Session

H. R. 833

To abolish the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal reserve banks, to repeal the Federal Reserve Act, and for other purposes.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

February 3, 2009

Mr. PAUL introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Financial Services

A BILL

To abolish the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal reserve banks, to repeal the Federal Reserve Act, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the ‘Federal Reserve Board Abolition Act’.

SEC. 2. FEDERAL RESERVE BOARD ABOLISHED.

(a) In General- Effective at the end of the 1-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and each Federal reserve bank are hereby abolished.

(b) Repeal of Federal Reserve Act- Effective at the end of the 1-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act, the Federal Reserve Act is hereby repealed.

(c) Disposition of Affairs-

(1) MANAGEMENT DURING DISSOLUTION PERIOD- During the 1-year period referred to in subsection (a), the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System--

(A) shall, for the sole purpose of winding up the affairs of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal reserve banks--

(i) manage the employees of the Board and each such bank and provide for the payment of compensation and benefits of any such employee which accrue before the position of such employee is abolished; and

(ii) manage the assets and liabilities of the Board and each such bank until such assets and liabilities are liquidated or assumed by the Secretary of the Treasury in accordance with this subsection; and

(B) may take such other action as may be necessary, subject to the approval of the Secretary of the Treasury, to wind up the affairs of the Board and the Federal reserve banks.

(2) LIQUIDATION OF ASSETS-

(A) IN GENERAL- The Director of the Office of Management and Budget shall liquidate all assets of the Board and the Federal reserve banks in an orderly manner so as to achieve as expeditious a liquidation as may be practical while maximizing the return to the Treasury.

(B) TRANSFER TO TREASURY- After satisfying all claims against the Board and any Federal reserve bank which are accepted by the Director of the Office of Management and Budget and redeeming the stock of such banks, the net proceeds of the liquidation under subparagraph (A) shall be transferred to the Secretary of the Treasury and deposited in the General Fund of the Treasury.

(3) ASSUMPTION OF LIABILITIES- All outstanding liabilities of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal reserve banks at the time such entities are abolished, including any liability for retirement and other benefits for former officers and employees of the Board or any such bank in accordance with employee retirement and benefit programs of the Board and any such bank, shall become the liability of the Secretary of the Treasury and shall be paid from amounts deposited in the general fund pursuant to paragraph (2) which are hereby appropriated for such purpose until all such liabilities are satisfied.

(d) Report- At the end of the 18-month period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of the Treasury and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget shall submit a joint report to the Congress containing a detailed description of the actions taken to implement this Act and any actions or issues relating to such implementation that remain uncompleted or unresolved as of the date of the report.

FED UP - The popular uprising against central banking

2009-02-05T13:47:00.001-06:00

Ron Paul introduced HS 833 today. This bill is an act to retract Congressional authorization for the existnce of the Federal Reserve Bank.I will post more about that when I get a copy of the bill itself.But in the meantime ¡Halleluyah! Maybe we have reason to hope!Following is an article from the American Conservative about the growing acceptance of the idea that the Federal Reserve Bank has to go. Check it out.“The Fed simply does not care whether its actions are illegal or not. The Fed is operating under the principle that it’s easier to get forgiveness than permission. And forgiveness is just another means to the desired power grab it is seeking.”

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Maybe Its Time To Open The Fed's Books

2009-02-03T16:53:00.003-06:00

A Freshman Congressman, Alan Grayson, asks "what has the Fed done with 2 Trillion dollars in the last six months?"
He is told that it is none of our business.
Inform yourself about the Federal Reserve Bank. When you do, you will think that you misunderstand because it seems impossible that:
1.- The Federal Reserve Bank is not part of the US government
2.- Although the Chairman of the Federal Reserve is appointed by the President, he is under no obligation to disclose anything that the Fed does.
3.- The Fedral Reserve is a private corporation, and its ownership is secret. We have no idea who owns the Federal Reserve Bank.
4.- The Federal Reserve Bank has the exclusive authority to create new dollars by loaning them at interest. The Fed pays no taxes on that immense income. Actually the Fed pays no taxes at all.

This man, Andrew Jackson, thought that his greatest accomplishment as President was the deconstruction of the American central bank. In fact he wanted it carved on his gravestone. This great American hero is now suffering in his grave as we allow the Fed to destroy our economy through Keynesian manipulation.

Read Edward Griffin's book, "The Creature From Jekyll Island"
Watch this hour and a half long video about monetary economics and the Federal Reserve.
Read Ron Paul's "The Revoultion: A Manifesto"

CBS 60 Minutes, Time Running Out For A Two-State Solution?

2009-02-01T20:42:00.002-06:00

This is an excellent piece of reporting by 60 minutes. This video will help anyone who doesn't understand the Palestinian position learn that there is very good reason to blame Israel for the troubles in this conflict. Watch with an open mind:

Part 1

Part 2

Peace By Theft and Ethnic Cleansing

2009-01-31T20:13:00.006-06:00

January 2009
There is a hopeful trend of thought towards peace and fairness for Israel and Palestine, but that trend is NOT happening in Israel. To the contrary, Israel is turning increasingly towards the One-State ethnically cleansed solution to the Palestine-Israel conundrum.

Today it is unclear if the Palestinians will ever have a country of their own, or even be able to live in peace with a little dignity.

Jimmy Carter has been the wisest, most open and humble voice in the Mid East. He is the only President who managed to negotiate a real peace for Israel. That was with Egypt and he had intentions of completing the negotiations with Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and the PLO but then he was voted out of office. Now Mr. Carter has laid out the three possible denouements of the tragic situation in Palestine.

1.- The Two State Solution, Being a wise man, Jimmy Carter realizes that it will be impossible to dislodge most of the "stubborn" settlers. So his suggestion is to let the majority of the settlements stay, especially those closest to the Israeli border, and then have Israel trade an equal amount of quality land (such as land around Nazereth) to the Palestinians.
Here is a map for reference

2.- The One State Solution that incorporates the Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank. The common understanding in the press and the Foreign Service is that this is the outcome that will transpire if #1 is not achieved soon. Many Palestinians who have given up hope for the Two State Solution favor One State in which both Jews and Arabs would have equal rights. The Israelis fear that they would lose their Jewish State.

3.- The third possible outcome of this long struggle is the One State Solution that does not incorporate the Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank. Personally, I think that this is clearly the goal of the Israeli government and it explains why Israel never really negotiates, but rather just drags things out for years. Years in which the settlements continue to expand ("the number of new structures in the West Bank settlements and outposts increased by 69 percent in 2008, compared to 2007"), years in which more checkpoints are built, more settler only roads cut the West Bank into tiny isolated enclaves.

To achieve this "solution" the Israelis could force a confrontation in the West Bank like what just happened in Gaza, but this time they would force the Palestinians out of the country. The IDF would clean out each Palestinian enclave killing the Palestinians or force-marching them across the river into Jordan. The whole world would scream bloody murder, but by the time anyone would actually organize to do anything the operation would be over. It would be a fait accompli. Once the Palestinians are gone, they will never get back in. Who has the power to force Israel to do what they don’t want to do? Only the United States and the United States won’t do anything. Israel would suffer for a while, but the US will always forgive Israel. The US will pay billions to the homeless Palestinians in Israel's name and gradually the world will forget.

OK, I'm not a mind reader, but I'll bet a month's wages that #3 is the Israeli hard-line plan. They will never accept #1 and certainly not #2

Here’s a little more information that leads me to believe that I am on the right track. Bibi Netanyahu said that he “would let Jewish settlements expand in the West Bank if he’s elected prime minister” will probably win the election. He is definitely not leaning towards peace. In fact today (January 30th) he stated that he would not evacuate any settlers if he is elected next week.

I heard on NPR last week that over a third of the IDF's officer corps now comes from the settler families or the hard-line religious groups. Other articles state that over half of new officers come from the hard-line religious parties. In all probability if the IDF (Israeli “Defense” Force) were to attempt to dislodge a number of settlements, they would see a mutiny in the Officer Corps.

I think that Israel will want to work fast, before Obama can organize world leaders to impose a peace deal. I imagine that they will take advantage of the worldwide economic collapse that will have people’s attention focused away from the Middle East. Expect something very ugly in the next twelve months.

Pray for the Palestinians.

Update March 2010
The Israeli advance towards the third outcome is on schedule. Slowly, inexorably Israel builds more settlements and locks more Palestinians out of their farmland and builds more checkpoints and steals more land.

But what is most shocking to me is that Israel just expropriates land and farms and water rights and homes at gunpoint without even considering paying for what it has taken. That is theft. It is in fact armed robbery.

Israel is rich, partly becuase of its own efforts and partly because of billions in transfer payments from other countries. If the goal is to expropriate all the West Bank and Jerusalem, why don't we ever hear that the Israelis offer to pay for what they grab at gunpoint?

Washington Lobbying Grew to $3.2 Billion Last Year, Despite Economy

2009-01-29T15:28:00.000-06:00

WASHINGTON--While companies across the board were losing record amounts of money and laying off employees last year, at least one industry seemed to weather the recession: lobbying. Special interests paid Washington lobbyists $3.2 billion in 2008, more than any other year on record and a 13.7 percent increase from 2007, the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics has found.

Analyzing 4th Quarter disclosure reports filed Jan. 20, the Center calculated that interest groups spent $17.4 million on lobbying for every day Congress was in session in 2008, or $32,523 per legislator per day.

"In this economy, most industries would have been elated to grow even half as much as the lobbying industry reported growing last year," Center for Responsive Politics Executive Director Sheila Krumholz said. "The federal government is handing out billions of dollars by the day, and that translates into job security for lobbyists who can help companies and industries get a piece of the payout."

Click here to read the rest of this sickening report.

Gaza Horror: Large Photo Gallery of Gaza Massacre

2009-01-27T10:27:00.002-06:00

This link goes to a website full of photos of the Gaza massacre. These pictures are graphic and very disturbing, but all Americans should take a look and see what the weapons that we give Israel do to women and children. America, this blood is on your hands.

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Mr. George Galloway in the House of Commons

2009-01-25T20:01:00.000-06:00

WSJ.com - Opinion: The World Won't Buy Unlimited U.S. Debt

2009-01-23T19:52:00.001-06:00

Peter Schiff writes a great article that asks the question: for how much longer will the rest of the world finance our trillion dollar deficits?When the rest of the world (principally China and Japan) decides that they have better things to with their money, then the gig will be up. US interest rates will spike and the dollar will collapse.But there are a lot of economists telling the junkie to shoot some more dope. Paul Krugman in particular thinks that we need to run a 2.5 trillion dollar deficit this year. He and the rest of the Keynesian idiots don't seem to understand that sooner or later other countries will stop financing our debt. Read the whole article please and comment.

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Map of Jewish owned land in Palestine 1947

2009-01-22T11:57:00.003-06:00

As part of the official mythology of Israel, Americans and Israelis are taught that Jews had bought most of land in what is now Israel before the Nakba (as the 1947 war is known to the Palestinians). As with most of the official mythology of Israel, this is simply not true. Not even close. Click on the map for a large scale view of how little land the Zionists actually owned before they expropriated the rest of the country.
For more detailed information click here.

Desmond Tutu Speaks To The Cowed Americans

2009-01-21T15:39:00.004-06:00

"People are scared in this country [the US], to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful - very powerful. Well, so what? For goodness sake, this is God's world! We live in a moral universe. The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosevic, and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust. Injustice and oppression will never prevail. Those who are powerful have to remember the litmus test that God gives to the powerful: what is your treatment of the poor, the hungry, the voiceless? And on the basis of that, God passes judgment. We should put out a clarion call to the government of the people of Israel, to the Palestinian people and say: peace is possible, peace based on justice is possible. We will do all we can to assist you to achieve this peace, because it is God's dream, and you will be able to live amicably together as sisters and brothers."

(Desmond Tutu, April 2002)

End The War Now!

2009-01-20T19:41:00.001-06:00

Iraqi veterans against the war

Punishing the Palestinians

2009-01-19T17:03:00.000-06:00

by Ralph Nader
Common Dreams
January 19, 2006

In the long sixty-year tortured history of the Palestinian expulsion from their lands, Congress has maintained that it is always the Palestinians, the Palestinian Authority, and now Hamas who are to blame for all hostilities and their consequences with the Israeli government.

There is more dissent against this destruction of Gaza among the Israeli people, the Knesset, the Israeli media, and Jewish-Americans than among the dittoheads on Capitol Hill.

The latest illustration of this Washington puppet show, backed by the most modern weapons and billions of taxpayer dollars annually sent to Israel, was the grotesquely one-sided Resolutions whisked through the Senate and the House of Representatives.

While a massive bombing and invasion of Gaza was underway, the resolution blaming Hamas for all the civilian casualties and devastation-99% of it inflicted on Palestinians-zoomed through the Senate by voice vote and through the House by a vote of 390 to 5 with 22 legislators voting present.

There is more dissent against this destruction of Gaza among the Israeli people, the Knesset, the Israeli media, and Jewish-Americans than among the dittoheads on Capitol Hill.

The reasons for such near-unanimous support for Israeli actions-no matter how often they are condemned by peace advocates such as Bishop Desmond Tutu, United Nations resolutions, the World Court and leading human rights groups inside and outside of Israel, are numerous. The pro-Israeli government lobby, and the right-wing Christian evangelicals, lubricated by campaign money of many Political Action Committees (PACs) certainly are key.

There is also more than a little bigotry in Congress against Arabs and Muslims, reinforced by the mass media yahoos who set new records for biased reporting each time this conflict erupts.

The bias is clear. It is always the Palestinians’ fault. Right-wingers who would never view the U.S. government as perfect see the Israeli government as never doing anything wrong. Liberals who do not hesitate to criticize the U.S. military view all Israeli military attacks, invasions and civilian devastation as heroic manifestations of Israeli defense.

The inversion of history and the scope of amnesia know no limits. What about the fact that the Israeli government drove Palestinians from their lands in 1947-48 with tens of thousands pushed into the Gaza strip. No problem to Congress.

Then the fact that the Israeli government cruelly occupied, in violation of UN resolutions, the West Bank and Gaza in 1967 and only removed its soldiers and colonists from Gaza (1.5 million people in a tiny area twice the size of the District of Columbia) in 2005. To Congress, the Palestinians deserved it.

Then when Hamas was freely elected to run Gaza, the Israeli authorities cut off the tax revenues on imports that belonged to the Gaza government. This threw the Gazans into a fiscal crisis-they were unable to pay their civil servants and police.

In 2006, the Israelis added to their unrelieved control of air, water and land around the open-air prison by establishing a blockade. The natives became restless. Under international law, a blockade is an act of war. Primitive rockets, called by reporters “wildly inaccurate” were fired into Israel. During this same period, Israeli soldiers and artillery and missiles would go into Gaza at will and take far more lives and cause far more injuries than those incurred by those rockets. Civilians-especially children, the infirm and elderly-died or suffered week after week for lack of medicines, medical equipment, food, electricity, fuel and water which were embargoed by the Israelis.

Then the Israeli bombing followed by the invasion during the past three weeks with what prominent Israeli writer Gideon Levy called “a brutal and violent operation…far beyond what was needed for protecting the people in its south.” Mr. Levy observed what the president of the United Nations General Assembly, Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann called a war against “a helpless and defenseless imprisoned population.”

The horror of being trapped from fleeing the torrent of the most modern weapons of war from the land, air and seas is reflected in this passage from Amira Hass, writing in the leading Israeli newspaper Haaretz:

“The earth shaking under your feet, clouds of choking smoke, explosions like a fireworks display, bombs bursting into all-consuming flames that cannot be extinguished with water, mushroom clouds of pinkish-red smoke, suffocating gas, harsh burns on the skin, extraordinary maimed live and dead bodies.”

Ms. Hass is pointing to the use of new anti-civilian weapons used on the Gazan people. So far there have been over 1100 fatalities, many thousands of injuries and the destruction of homes, schools, mosques, hospitals, pharmacies, granaries, farmer’s fields and many critical public facilities. The clearly marked UN headquarters and UN school were smashed, along with stored medicines and food supplies.

Why? The Congressional response: “Hamas terrorists” everywhere. Sure, defending their Palestinian families is called terrorism. The truth is there is no Hamas army, airforce and navy up against the fourth most powerful military in the world. As one Israeli gunner on an armored personnel carrier frankly said to The New York Times: “They are villagers with guns. They don’t even aim when they shoot.”

Injured Gazans are dying in damaged hospital corridors, bleeding to death because rescuers are not permitted to reach them or are endangered themselves. Thousands of units of blood donated by Jordanians are stopped by the Israeli blockade. Israel has kept the international press out of the Gazan killing fields.

What is going on in Gaza is what Bill Moyers called it earlier this month - “state terrorism.” Already about 400 children are known to have died. More will be added who are under the rubble.

Since 2002, more than 50 Arab and Muslim nations have had a standing offer, repeated often, that if Israel obeys several UN resolutions and withdraws to the 1967 borders leaving 22 percent of the original Palestine for an independent Palestinian state, they will open full diplomatic relations and there will be peace. Israel has declined to accept this offer.

None of these and many other aspects of this conflict matter to the Congress. Its members do not want to hear even from the Israeli peace movement, composed of retired generals, security chiefs, mayors, former government ministers, and members of the Knesset. In 60 years these savvy peace advocates have not been able to give one hour of testimony before a Congressional Committee.

Maybe members of Congress may wish to weigh the words of the founder of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, years ago when he said:

“There has been anti-Semitism the Nazis Hitler Auschwitz but was that their [the Palestinian's] fault? They only see one thing: We have come here and stolen their country.”

Doesn’t that observation invite some compassion for the Palestinian people and their right to be free of Israeli occupation, land and water grabs and blockades in the 22 percent left of Palestine?

8.5 Trillion more debt over the last year

2009-01-19T10:10:00.002-06:00

Please clik twice on the image to see the entire chart.
Read it and weep.

Sir Gerald Kaufman speaks out against Israeli barbarity

2009-01-19T09:28:00.001-06:00

All our meddling always blows back in our face

2009-01-17T20:17:00.002-06:00

The wisest man in Washington speaks out against a resolution in support of Israel. His speech is a lesson in intelligent foreign policy for the hired politicians and idiots in Congress.

What has the Fed done with our money?

2009-01-17T17:33:00.003-06:00

What has the Fed done with our money?

Don't ask because they are not going to tell us. The charade of letting private bankers run our Central Bank has to come to an end. Close the Federal Reserve Bank.

Growing outrage at the killings in Gaza

2009-01-16T18:29:00.001-06:00

Letter from 300+ academics condemn Israel's war against the Palestinian people.

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Isolde en Panitao

2008-12-31T10:00:00.001-06:00

Palestine's Guernica and the Myths of Israeli Victimhood

2008-12-31T06:02:00.002-06:00

by Mustafa Barghouti, Secretary General of the Palestinian National Initiative

From Palestinian Think Tank

The Israeli campaign of 'death from above' began around 11 am, on Saturday morning, the 27th of December, and stretched straight through the night into this morning. The massacre continues Sunday as I write these words.

The bloodiest single day in Palestine since the War of 1967 is far from over following on Israel's promised that this is 'only the beginning' of their campaign of state terror. At least 290 people have been murdered thus far, but the body count continues to rise at a dramatic pace as more mutilated bodies are pulled from the rubble, previous victims succumb to their wounds and new casualties are created by the minute.

What has and is occurring is nothing short of a war crime, yet the Israeli public relations machine is in full-swing, churning out lies by the minute.

Once and for all it is time to expose the myths that they have created.

1. Israelis have claimed to have ended the occupation of the Gaza Strip in 2005.

While Israel has indeed removed the settlements from the tiny coastal Strip, they have in no way ended the occupation. They remained in control of the borders, the airspace and the waterways of Gaza, and have carried out frequent raids and targeted assassinations since the disengagement.

Furthermore, since 2006 Israel has imposed a comprehensive siege on the Strip. For over two years, Gazans have lived on the edge of starvation and without the most basic necessities of human life, such as cooking or heating oil and basic medications. This siege has already caused a humanitarian catastrophe which has only been exacerbated by the dramatic increase in Israeli military aggression.

2. Israel claims that Hamas violated the cease-fire and pulled out of it unilaterally.

Hamas indeed respected their side of the ceasefire, except on those occasions early on when Israel carried out major offensives in the West Bank. In the last two months, the ceasefire broke down with Israelis killing several Palestinians and resulting in the response of Hamas. In other words, Hamas has not carried out an unprovoked attack throughout the period of the cease-fire.

Israel, however, did not live up to any of its obligations of ending the siege and allowing vital humanitarian aid to resume in Gaza. Rather than the average of 450 trucks per day being allowed across the border, on the best days, only eighty have been allowed in - with the border remaining hermetically sealed 70% of the time. Throughout the supposed 'cease-fire' Gazans have been forced to live like animals, with a total of 262 dying due to the inaccessibility of proper medical care.

Now after hundreds dead and counting, it is Israel who refuses to re-enter talks over a cease-fire. They are not intent on securing peace as they claim; it is more and more clear that they are seeking regime change - whatever the cost.

3. Israel claims to be pursuing peace with 'peaceful Palestinians'.

Before the on-going massacre in the Gaza Strip, and throughout the entirety of the Annapolis Peace Process, Israel has continued and even intensified its occupation of the West Bank. In 2008, settlement expansion increased by a factor of 38, a further 4,950 Palestinians were arrested - mostly from the West Bank, and checkpoints rose from 521 to 699.

Furthermore, since the onset of the peace talks, Israel has killed 546 Palestinians, among them 76 children. These gruesome statistics are set to rise dramatically now, but previous Israeli transgressions should not be forgotten amidst this most recent horror.

Only this morning, Israel shot and killed a young peaceful protester in the West Bank village of Nihlin, and has injured dozens more over the last few hours. It is certain that they will continue to employ deadly force at non-violent demonstrations and we expect a sizable body count in the West Bank as a result. If Israel is in fact pursuing peace with 'good Palestinians', who are they talking about?

4. Israel is acting in self-defense.

It is difficult to claim self defense in a confrontation which they themselves have sparked, but they are doing it anyway. Self-defense is reactionary, while the actions of Israel over the last two days have been clearly premeditated. Not only did the Israeli press widely report the ongoing public relations campaign being undertaken by Israel to prepare Israeli and international public opinion for the attack, but Israel has also reportedly tried to convince the Palestinians that an attack was not coming by briefly opening crossings and reporting future meetings on the topic. They did so to insure that casualties would be maximized and that the citizens of Gaza would be unprepared for their impending slaughter.

It is also misleading to claim self-defense in a conflict with such an overwhelming asymmetry of power. Israel is the largest military force in the region, and the fifth largest in the world. Furthermore, they are the fourth largest exporter of arms and have a military industrial complex rivaling that of the United States. In other words, Israel has always had a comprehensive monopoly over the use of force, and much like its super power ally, Israel uses war as an advertising showcase of its many instruments of death.

5. Israel claims to have struck military targets only.

Even while image after image of dead and mutilated women and children flash across our televisions, Israel brazenly claims that their munitions expertly struck only military installations. We know this to be false as many other civilian sites have been hit by airstrikes including a hospital and mosque.

In the most densely populated area on the planet, tons upon tons of explosives have been dropped. The first estimates of injured are in the thousands. Israel will claim that these are merely 'collateral damage' or accidental deaths. The sheer ridiculousness and inhumanity of such a claim should sicken the world community.

6. Israel claims that it is attacking Hamas and not the Palestinian people.

First and foremost, missiles do not differentiate people by their political affiliation; they simply kill everyone in their path. Israel knows this, and so do Palestinians. What Israel also knows, but is not saying public ally, is how much their recent actions will actually strengthen Hamas - whose message of resistance and revenge is being echoed by the angry and grieving.

The targets of the strike, police and not Hamas militants, give us some clue as to Israel's mistaken intention. They are hoping to create anarchy in the Strip by removing the pillar of law and order.

7. Israel claims that Palestinians are the source of violence.

Let us be clear and unequivocal. The occupation of Palestine since the War of 1967 has been and remains the root of violence between Israelis and Palestinians. Violence can be ended with the occupation and the granting of Palestine's national and human rights. Hamas does not control the West Bank and yet we remain occupied, our rights violated and our children killed.

With these myths understood, let us ponder the real reasons behind these airstrikes; what we find may be even more disgusting than the act itself.

The leaders Israel are holding press conferences, dressed in black, with sleeves rolled up.

'It's time to fight', they say, 'but it won't be easy.'

To prove just how hard it is, Livni, Olmert and Barak did not even wear make-up to the press conference, and Barak has ended his presidential campaign to focus on the Gaza campaign. What heroes…what leaders…

We all know the truth: the suspension of the electioneering is exactly that - electioneering.

Like John McCain's suspension of his presidential campaign to return to Washington to 'deal with' the financial crisis, this act is little more than a publicity stunt.

The candidates have to appear 'tough enough to lead', and there is seemingly no better way of doing that than bathing in Palestinian blood.

'Look at me,' Livni says in her black suit and unkempt hair, 'I am a warrior. I am strong enough to pull the trigger. Don't you feel more confident about voting for me, now that you know I am as ruthless as Bibi Netanyahu?'

I do not know which is more disturbing, her and Barak, or the constituency they are trying to please.

In the end, this will in no way improve the security of the average Israeli; in fact it can be expected to get much worse in the coming days as the massacre could presumably provoke a new generation of suicide bombers.

It will not undermine Hamas either, and it will not result in the three fools, Barak, Livni and Olmert, looking 'tough'. Their misguided political venture will likely blow up in their faces as did the brutally similar 2006 invasion of Lebanon.

In closing, there is another reason - beyond the internal politics of Israel - why this attack has been allowed to occur: the complicity and silence of the international community.

Israel cannot and would not act against the will of its economic allies in Europe or its military allies in the US. Israel may be pulling the trigger ending hundreds, perhaps even thousands of lives this week, but it is the apathy of the world and the inhumane tolerance of Palestinian suffering which allows this to occur.

'The evil only exists because the good remain silent'

Lee Iacocca Comments On The State Of The Nation

2008-12-31T04:25:00.003-06:00

I receieved the following in an email from my mother the other day.

In a way it is hopeful that Mr. Iacocca is so incensed because it shows that even some traditional leaders of the establishment are opening their eyes. He does not take the next logical step to realize that the entire system has been corrupted, but his rant may indicate that perhaps libertarians are not alone. Maybe there still are other Americans that have not been brain-washed. Maybe some intelligent, independent thinkers like Mr. Iaccoca are also watching the self-destruction of our once noble country, amazed that no-one has noticed that we have separated ourselves from reality.

Remember Lee Iacocca, the VP at Ford credited with the birth of the Mustang, the man who rescued Chrysler Corporation from their death throes, and the owner of the famous quote 'Lead, follow, or get out of the way'? Well, he's back! He has a new book, and here are some excerpts.

Lee Iacocca writes:

'Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, 'Stay the course'

Stay the course? You've got to be kidding. This is America , not the damned 'Titanic' I'll give you a sound bite: 'Throw all the bums out!'

You might think I'm getting senile, that I've gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up. I hardly recognize this country anymore.

The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we're fiddling in Iraq , the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving 'pom-poms' instead of asking hard questions. That's not the promise of the ' America ' my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for. I've had enough. How about you?

I'll go a step further. You can't call yourself a patriot if you're not outraged This is a fight I'm ready and willing to have.

The Biggest 'C' is Crisis !

Leaders are made, not born. Leadership is forged in times of crisis It's easy to sit there with your feet up on the desk and talk theory. Or send someone else's kids off to war when you've never seen a battle field yourself. It's another thing to lead when your world comes tumbling down. George Bush, Dick Cheney and who is this Bozo coming up next? One of the most Liberal Idiots in the U. S. Senate and he is talking about disarming America . I can't believe the American people are seeing what he is about to do to this country. May God have mercy on us all.

On September 11, 2001, we needed a strong leader more than any other time in our history. We needed a steady hand to guide us out of the ashes. A Hell of a Mess. So here's where we stand. We're immersed in a bloody war with no plan for winning and no plan for leaving. We're running the biggest deficit in the history of the country. We're losing the manufacturing edge to Asia , while our once-great Companies are all moving offshore. We're getting slaughtered by health care costs. Gas prices are skyrocketing, and nobody in power has a coherent energy policy. Our schools are the worst in the world. Our borders are like sieves. The middle class is being squeezed every which way. These are times that cry out for leadership and we are getting ready to put the most Liberal Senator in the U. S. Senate in as our next President because we want to be fair and elect someone just because of his race. We don't have time to be fair, we need a strong leader.

But when you look around, you've got to ask: 'Where have all the leaders gone?' Where are the curious, creative communicators? Where are the people of character, courage, conviction, omnipotence, and common sense? I may be a sucker for alliteration, but I hope you get the point.

Name me a leader who has a better idea for homeland security than making us take off our shoes in airports and throw away our shampoo? We've spent billions of dollars building a huge new bureaucracy, and all we know how to do is react to things that have already happened.

Name me one leader who emerged from the crisis of Hurricane Katrina. Congress has yet to spend a single day evaluating the response to the hurricane, or demanding accountability for the decisions that were made in the crucial hours after the storm. Everyone's hunkering down, fingers crossed, hoping it doesn't happen again. Well guess what people? We are having more floods right now. What are we doing to help these people out. Now, that's just crazy. Storms happen. Deal with it. Make a plan Figure out what you're going to do the next time. Why are we allowing people to build in flood plains anyway? If you build in a flood area, expect to be flooded and deal with it. Don't expect the Government to bail you out.

Name me an industry leader who is thinking creatively about how we can restore our competitive edge in manufacturing. All they seem to be thinking now-days is getting themselves bigger salaries and bonuses. Who would have believed that there could ever be a time when 'The Big Three' referred to Japanese car companies? How did this happen, and more important, what are we going to do about it? likely nothing!

Name me a government leader who can articulate a plan for paying down the debt, or solving the energy crisis, or managing the health care problem. The silence is deafening. But these are the crises that are eating away at our country and milking the middle class dry.

I have news for the gang in Congress and the Senate. We didn't elect you to sit on your asses and do nothing and remain silent while our democracy is being hijacked and our greatness is being replaced with mediocrity. What is everybody so afraid of? That some bonehead on Fox News will call them a name? Give me a break Why don't you guys show some spine for a change? I honestly don't think any of you have one!

Had Enough?

Hey, I'm not trying to be the voice of gloom and doom here. I'm trying to light a fire. I'm speaking out because I have hope; I believe in America .... In my lifetime I've had the privilege of living through some of America's greatest moments I've also experienced some of our worst crises: the 'Great D epression', 'World War II', the 'Korean War', the 'Kennedy Assassination', the 'Vietnam War', the 1970s oil crisis, and the struggles of recent years culminating with 9/11. If I've learned one thing, it's this:

'You don't get anywhere by standing on the sidelines waiting for somebody else to take action. Whether it's building a better car or building a better future for our children, we all have a role to play. That's the challenge I'm raising in this book. It's a call to 'Action' for people who, like me, believe in America . It's not too late, but it's getting pretty close. So let's shake off the crap and go to work . Let's tell 'em all we've had 'enough.'

So I'm delighted that Mr. Iacocca is pissed off, but dissapointed that he doesn't see that this transformation has happened because of the marriage of Washington, large corporations and modern technology. With 55,000 registered lobbyists in Washington, with political campaigns that spend a billion dollars, with the concentration of popular media in only six companies who all have vested interests in the War State, with billions spent on spying on Americans we must come to the realization thattweaking the system or hoping for Iacocca's "strong leader" isn't going to make any difference.

In order to stop out careen towards totalitarianism there will have to be terrible pain. The sheep are not going to wake up otherwise and the ubiquitous power of the Corproate State will continue to grow until the only means of change will be violent and deadly revolution.

cf

What Really Happened

2008-12-06T14:22:00.001-06:00

This is a fabulous explanation of the destruction of the American economy. It is easy for anyone to understand. It is not short, but please take the time to read the whole thing.The swindle of the system is simple. The Federal Reserve Bank hires the US Treasury to print up some money. The Federal Reserve only actually pays the treasury for the cost of the printing, they do NOT pay $1 for each 1$ printed. But the Federal Reserve turns around and loans out that money (or credit line) to banks at full face value...

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Greenspan On The Great Depression, Before His Re-education

2008-12-04T10:08:00.003-06:00

When business in the United States underwent a mild contraction in 1927, the Federal Reserve created more paper reserves in the hope of forestalling any possible bank reserve shortage. More disastrous, however, was the Federal Reserve's attempt to assist Great Britain who had been losing gold to us because the Bank of England refused to allow interest rates to rise when market forces dictated (it was politically unpalatable). The reasoning of the authorities involved was as follows: if the Federal Reserve pumped excessive paper reserves into American banks, interest rates in the United States would fall to a level comparable with those in Great Britain; this would act to stop Britain's gold loss and avoid the political embarrassment of having to raise interest rates. The "Fed" succeeded; it stopped the gold loss, but it nearly destroyed the economies of the world, in the process. The excess credit which the Fed pumped into the economy spilled over into the stock market-triggering a fantastic speculative boom. Belatedly, Federal Reserve officials attempted to sop up the excess reserves and finally succeeded in braking the boom. But it was too late: by 1929 the speculative imbalances had become so overwhelming that the attempt precipitated a sharp retrenching and a consequent demoralizing of business confidence. As a result, the American economy collapsed. Great Britain fared even worse, and rather than absorb the full consequences of her previous folly, she abandoned the gold standard completely in 1931, tearing asunder what remained of the fabric of confidence and inducing a world-wide series of bank failures. The world economies plunged into the Great Depression of the 1930's.

Alan Greenspan 1966

So, following his reasonable analysis of the causes of the Great Depression, we find that it was the inflation of the money supply that was the culprit, not the constriction of the money supply as Ben Bernanke seems to think.

The Federal Reserve and our government are doing exactly the wrong things. The dollar is holding its value becuase the big banks are holding their dollars. They will have to start lending massively soon (the Obamites will force them to). At that point the dollar will begin to lose value rapidly. Bernanke will try to leave interest rates low, but he will be forced by the holders of dollars as foreign reserves to try to slow the inflation by raising rates and constricting the money supply.

That will complete the cycle that Greenspan indicated back in 1966.

The Solace Of Beauty

2008-11-23T20:40:00.019-06:00

This blog has veered into politics because of the terrible events that occur with increasing frequency and give clear signal that the world is approaching a tragic change. Freedom and common sense, the natural world and traditional social order, Christian morality and the respect for life are all under attack and reeling. So as the deconstruction of society, the death of tradition and the terrible insecurity of the modern world smash through our little refuges and blast acrid jets of clamorous screeching to deafen us and poison our souls, is there still time to think about beauty?

There must be. If we are to be something more than the manipulators and murderers that rule the world and kill and steal all that is good and noble, then we must look for beauty. We can rip our eyes from the tragedies, turn off the noise and concentrate for now on what is beautiful. It is still there outside the window if we look for it. It is time to repair the soul.

The jungle is disappearing but a chucao still chortles from under the ground cover of the Valdivian forest. The little rayaditos still flit into view and bob around singing among the blossoms on the lumas. In America the song sparrow still heralds spring with his clear beautiful voice and the warblers and cardinals and blue jays and orioles splash beautiful colour through the green woods and cold white snow banks.

Marriages collapse into hatred and vengeance and little girls cry alone in their beds at night. It tears out my heart, but a beetle climbing on a calla lilly or a little honeybee caressing a plum blossom or a sprig of chilco is still beautiful enough to overcome the screeching caustic world of modern man. These gifts of Providence are what we truly need; they lighten our burden like the caress of a mother.

Beauty is not a drug, and it will never dull the mind. I will still know that the little girl cries alone and it will still hurt me, but I will also know that through the pain there is hope. Where reason tells us that all is lost, beauty tells us that there is still hope. The wind stills sighs softly through the pine boughs and a loon calls out on the still water under a silver moon. Beauty still reigns over the heart of those that look for it.

Beauty is not only the work of Providence, but also of Providence’s most troubled creation: man. It is curious that the same creatures that can invent the Guantánamo torture center can also write and perform Mozart’s Requiem Mass. We can kill and torture, cause pain and panic and deadly sorrow, but we can also write music as sad and beautiful as Grieg’s The Death of Ase. We can produce systems of enslavement as hopeless as the Soviet Gulags and blast them open with Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. Humans can create beauty and when we focus on art and the splendor of nature we find a peace that puts the horror and sadness into perspective. Listen to Wishbone Ash play the long, live version of Phoenix and feel the hope return into your heart at least for a moment.

I sat down to write an article about my favorite Spanish painters five hours ago, but this has completely gotten away from me. This thing wrote itself and now I am confronted with links to Velazquez and Goya and Dalí, with self-portraits of these giants and digital images of some of their most powerful works. Each of these men struggled through times and events as ugly as those that stain us today. The enemy reveled among the pain and corruption and carnage then as now. It drove Goya mad, but he was still able to paint with beauty. The crass commercialism distracted Dalí, but he still painted with an eye for the construction of the work that we may not see again. Velazquez had to give up his easel and brushes and deal with the world directly, but he could still enlighten us with a clear honest view into the nature of his subjects. They showed us beauty through the torment and I will write the article about these men sometime.

But for now I am listening to Phillip Glass and contemplating a surrealist vision painted by my friend Carlos Paredes. I am counting the days till I return to my home and my beautiful wife and children. I will hear the chucao soon. I will laugh at the antics of the rayadito and I will watch the little honey bees. The sun will come up over the Andes across the bay and the sea breeze will waft in the front window of our bedroom with cries of gulls, while the call of the chucao comes into the room from the back window. There is hope. Maybe not for long, but there is hope for now. The world is still full of beauty.

World Economic Demand is Collapsing

2008-11-22T23:37:00.001-06:00

Ships all over the world are stacking up in exporting countries, anchored, and not able to sail because they cannot get letters of credit. Hong Kong was mentioned as having rows and rows of loaded but idled ships stuck there. Over 100,000 factories in China are to close by the end of the year. Chinese plant owners are abandoning their plants

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Obama Supporters No Longer Have A Reason To Exist

2008-11-10T20:18:00.000-06:00

Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are

Conservatives Lost More Than An Election

2008-11-07T09:53:00.001-06:00

Conservatives Lost More Than An Election by Chuck Baldwin November 7, 2008 That Barack Obama trounced John McCain last Tuesday should have surprised no one. In fact, in this column, weeks ago, I stated emphatically that John McCain could no more beat Barack Obama than Bob Dole could beat Bill Clinton. He didn't. (Hence a vote for John McCain was a "wasted" vote, was it not?) I also predicted that Obama would win with an electoral landslide. He did. The real story, however, is not how Barack Obama defeated John McCain. The real story is how John McCain defeated America's conservatives.For all intents and purposes, conservatism--as a national movement--is completely and thoroughly dead. Barack Obama did not destroy it, however. It was George W. Bush and John McCain who destroyed conservatism in America.Soon after G.W. Bush was elected, it quickly became obvious he was no conservative. On the contrary, George Bush has forever established himself as a Big-Government, warmongering, internationalist neocon. Making matters worse was the way Bush presented himself as a conservative Christian. In fact, Bush's portrayal of himself as a conservative Christian paved the way for the betrayal and ultimate destruction of conservatism (something I also predicted years ago). And the greatest tragedy of this deception is the way that Christian conservatives so thoroughly (and stupidly) swallowed the whole Bush/McCain neocon agenda.

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Ron Paul at Google in July 2007

2008-11-06T23:59:00.001-06:00

Listen to this man and compare his wisdom with what we heard from Obama and McCain

The Big One Is Nigh (The coming economic earthquake)

2008-11-04T13:56:00.002-06:00

by Srdja Trifkovic

“The global economy is like the St. Andreas Fault: You know that a terminal disaster is inevitable, but you keep your fingers crossed and try not to think about it,” I wrote in the print issue of Chronicles seven months ago (“Waiting for the Big One,” March 2008). “When a tremor occurs, you often fear it could be the Big One and sometimes panic,” I went on, “but then, when the dust settles, you sigh with relief to find yourself alive and the Golden State still above the ocean.” Well, the Big One is nigh; and here’s the rest of that old column in which I argue that, in the end, the meltdown may be all for the best…The fiscal imbalances caused by President Bush’s addiction to deficit spending, by over-indebtedness, by ordinary Americans’ negligible savings, by the huge and growing foreign debt, and by the falling dollar are all still there.

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Political Theory Is Not on One Axis

2008-11-03T16:20:00.001-06:00

The range of political theory does not reside on one axis: "conservative" and "liberal" as Americans are trained to think. Take a look at the Nolan chart for instance. There are two axes, one for social orientation and the other for economic orientation.
Open your minds.....