Friday, January 24, 2014

January 24, 2014

I grew up in an America with cops in the background. Most people – being not criminals – had almost no interaction with them and when they did it was generally civil and far more important, almost always on equal terms – with the cop respectful of the citizen.
It goes without saying that’s all gone now. Cops are a menacing omnipresence – and when they deal with us, it is usually order barking Command Voice style. You do not discuss, much less dispute. You Submit and Obey. Or else.The least recalcitrance – merely to question anything – is often sufficient to bring down a Fallujah-style escalation. People are routinely dragged out of their cars, roughly thrown to the ground, pummeled, kicked – and much worse than that. Often, over trivial things. Police even in small towns have become indistinguishable from soldiers.
It is out of hand – obviously so – and if left unchecked will grow much worse, much sooner as the vortex picks up speed. What was inconceivable 20 years ago is routine today. What will be routine 20 years from today?
We face a choice: Either we accept being treated as “indigs” by an army of occupation that accepts no limits to its authority and which regards us as disposable as themselves as untouchable. Or we step back from the abyss before it’s too late. We recover our senses. We no longer accept the unacceptable.
Here’s how, in a few simple steps:
* Cops must be bound by the law -
As citizens, we are told that ignorance of the law is no excuse. That it is our obligation to know the law. Surely, the same ought to apply to those charged with enforcing it. Yet cops routinely ignore the law, even when it is pointed out to them in literal black and white. Many states, for example, have open carry laws. It is legal to wear a gun in plain view in public. Yet cops will often waylay at gunpoint, detain, disarm and question individuals who have done nothing in violation of any law – who are merely open carrying in full compliance with the letter of the law. They will justify this illegal assault by referencing “concerns” – either their own or those expressed by some unnamed person who “called in.”

Similarly, cops now routinely abuse people for lawfully taking video/audio in public. They will back each other up, too.
A cop must be as willing to defend legal action as he is prepared to defend against illegal action. This includes intervening against fellow officers when he knows they’vecommitted a crime or are acting in a way that does not comport with the law. If it is intolerable for a citizen to break the law, it is doubly so when a cop does – because he may do so with relative impunity.
Until the doctrine is established and respected that the law applies equally to everyone, including cops, there will be increasingly less and less respect for cops – who increasingly hold themselves above the law.
And us in contempt.
* The Right to Resist -
Self-defense is perhaps the most basic human right, without which other rights are largely meaningless. One of the worst abuses of our era is the denial of this elemental right when a physical assault is perpetrated by a person acting under color of law. If a cop does not have the legal right to lay hands on a citizen, to violate his personal space (including his personal property) then the citizen has every ethical right to resist. To walk away – and to defend himself against aggression if he is aggressed against.
His legal right to resist must be acknowledged in law.

That means if a SWAT team got the wrong house number and executes a no-knock raid in the middle of the night, the sleeping (and innocent) citizen should be considered within his rights to defend his home and himself, even if it results in the unfortunate death of a cop.
The burden is on the cops who got it wrong – not the citizen who acted out of justifiable fear for his life.

Read the rest of the article

The Best of Eric Peters

Thursday, January 16, 2014

Fire and Ice: Inflation and Deflation by Gary Christenson

Fire and Ice: Inflation and Deflation
Gary Christenson

Fractional reserve banking and central banking began their reign of destruction upon our financial world a few centuries ago.

Politician's greed and need for control over people have been ever present.

Their mutual interests created an unholy union from which were born two progeny. Call them Fire and Ice. Call them Inflation and Deflation.

This is their story – simplified and sanitized.

FRACTIONAL reserve banking allowed banks to loan out considerably more currency than was received from depositors – this increased the supply of currency in circulation. If demand for currency did not increase proportionally, then each currency unit was devalued and prices increased. The first child born of the unholy union – Fire – destroyed the purchasing power of the currencies in the world financial systems. (Inflation was created via fractional reserve banking instead of the usual debasing coinage or printing paper.)

Do you remember gasoline selling for $0.15 per gallon? Why does it cost 20 times as much now? The fires of inflation have destroyed most of the value of the currency unit – each dollar in circulation.

Because of government greed, its need for power over people, and every politician's desire to meddle and spend, government granted bankers the power to create and control currency, monetize debt, fix interest rates, and so much more. Central Banking was born. In return, government could spend in excess, borrow from bankers, members of the legislature collected handsomely from the banking community, national debts expanded, and interest expense paid on those debts grew to outrageous levels. Politicians, their friends, favored industries, and bankers won, while most others lost.

For a personal perspective, how much interest have you earned on your savings since 2008? Does it seem like you lost and bankers won? Have your after-tax wages increased proportionally with your expenses since 2008, since 2000, since 1971? Probably not!

But it gets worse. After Fire – Inflation – has burned through the purchasing power of the currency units, then Ice – Deflation – the second child, destroys most of the remaining debt-based assets. Ice is cold; he contracts monetary systems. Ice – deflation – creates central banker nightmares and becomes the second phase of financial destruction for the people.

If you loan me $1,000,000, then you believe you have an asset – my debt to you. But if I can't or won't pay, what is that asset worth? Probably close to zero. The monetary system and your assets have deflated by approximately $1,000,000. Bankers inflated the quantity of currency in the system while Fire consumed much of its value; but, when the reckoning occurs, most of the remaining debt-based assets must be revalued down. Ice finished the destruction.

Fire and Ice: Inflation and Deflation!

If a government owes $17 Trillion to various people, other governments, agencies, pension plans, and corporations, and that government must borrow merely to pay the interest on the $17 Trillion, some might call that government insolvent. Ponzi finance will not continue forever.

From a brilliant essay by Jeff Nielson: When Deflation Becomes Hyperinflation:

"As the debts go higher and higher (which can only end in a deflationary crash); we see the money-printing accelerating at least as quickly, if not faster (which can only end in hyperinflation)."

If the $17 Trillion in debt grows to say $50 Trillion in debt, is it still "all good"? What about $170 Trillion in debt? And while the debt is growing, Fire is consuming much of the purchasing power of the currency. Inflation grows until the forces of Ice overwhelm the system and the $17 Trillion or $170 Trillion in debt is revalued. Perhaps the inevitable deflation pushed the value down to a much lower value or perhaps to zero. How much are $17 Trillion in bonds and notes worth if interest rates triple? How much is it worth in real purchasing power if it can't be repaid without "printing" the dollars for repayment?

Eventually we arrive at economic depression – when the economic sins of the past are realized, when debts are paid or defaulted, when the reckoning occurs. Central bankers, politicians, and owners of debt-based assets HOPE the reckoning will be delayed a little longer. But the day of reckoning does come. Enron, MFGlobal, Zimbabwe, Weimar Germany, Argentina, and 100 other collapses and hyperinflations are NOT exceptions.

Fire and Ice. Inflation and Deflation. Inflationary depression, deflationary depression, one before the other, or simultaneously?

Will we burn in the Fire of inflation or freeze in an Icy deflationary depression? Or will our politicians make it "all good" forever?

The Case for Fire – Inflationary Depression:

Inflation is built into our financial system.
Gasoline no longer costs $0.15 per gallon. One million other examples are available.
The Fed has expanded their balance sheet by $3 Trillion and counting. Japan is "printing" even more rapidly.
The Fed has created an additional $16 Trillion or so (per audit) in extra "deflation fighting" loans, gifts, swaps, repurchases, etc.
The U. S. national debt exceeds $17 Trillion and is increasing exponentially.
Central banks create more Dollars, Euros, Yuan, and Yen to stimulate inflation and "fight deflation." More QE, helicopter drops, and checks to everyone are always possible. Central banks even tell us they are "printing" to create inflation and avoid the nightmare of deflation.
It will continue until a crisis forces change.

Jeff Nielson: "…we have the hyperinflationary spiral, as exponential money-printing inevitably leads to the only mathematically possible outcome. Any item produced in infinite quantities, and at zero cost must be worthless, as an elementary proposition of logic/arithmetic."

The Case for Ice – Deflationary Depression:

If the governments of the world can't repay their debts, how much is their debt truly worth?
If the debt isn't marked down substantially, then the value of the currency (think currency war – a race to debase) used to pay the debt must be drastically reduced. Either way the purchasing power of the repaid debt is likely to evaporate.
There is always a day of reckoning. How much of the debt will survive the reckoning?

Jeff Nielson: "…hyperinflationary money-printing cannot prevent a debt-default implosion. If this was true; then we would have never seen any sovereign nation go bankrupt. Deadbeat nations would simply keep printing, and printing, and printing their worthless paper until they became 'solvent.’"

Our monetary systems and our personal assets are besieged by both Fire and Ice.

Jeff Nielson: "The hyperinflationary depression first predicted by John Williams is not merely a plausible scenario. It is an absolutely inevitable fate."

OR, DON'T PLAY THE GAME IN A WORLD OF FIRE AND ICE!

You decide what your future will include. Gold and silver have been a store of value for 5,000 years. Call them real money, or a store of value, or monetary energy, or safety, or insurance.

The Chinese, Indians, Russians, and many others are choosing gold and silver instead of paper. They fear both Fire and Ice. The western world depends upon paper assets as we pretend Fire and Ice are under control, while we ship massive quantities of western gold to the east where it is better understood and appreciated.

Fire and Ice have little impact upon gold and silver. Gold and silver were money long before the unholy union of fractional reserve banking and government unleashed Fire and Ice upon our world through inflating paper currencies and deflating debt. It is time to protect our financial future with gold and silver – Fire and Ice resistant assets.

Suggested Reading:

Jeff Nielson	When Deflation Becomes Hyperinflation
Gary North	Inflation: The Economics of Addiction
David Schectman	The Fed Has All the Markets in Lockdown
Darryl Robert Schoon	2014 The End of the Beginning
The DI	Created Currencies … Are NOT Gold!

GE Christenson
aka Deviant Investor

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Watch the Movie before it's filmed by Jeff Thomas

Reprinted w permission from www.silverbearcafe.com

silverbearcafe.com

Watch the Movie Before it is Filmed
Jeff Thomas

Most people tend to wait for occurrences, then react to them. However, some people choose instead to anticipate possible occurrences, plan for them, and if they have been correct in their predictions, avoid calamity and even prosper.

At the present time, the world is passing through a period of major change. As the Great Unravelling unfolds, contrarians who have, for many years, projected how it will play out, are today attracting a larger audience, as so many of the predictions are coming to pass, more or less as projected.

Although contrarian thinking is uncommon, it is not rocket science. As we have said repeatedly over the years, the future may be fairly accurately predicted by consistently following some simple steps:

Study the evolution of nations and empires of the past

Take note of the patterns that political leaders repeatedly follow

Examine what stage a given country has presently reached in its evolution

Project future events based on what has not yet transpired in the pattern

This process is particularly useful in predicting political events. But, in addition, it is effective in helping to predict social and economic events, as they are so heavily impacted by political events.

We often refer to the decline and fall of Rome, Spain, England, etc., but there are more current examples. Argentina offers tremendous information to us, as it is several steps ahead of the EU and US in its decline.

But, to my mind, no country in the world is more fascinating at present than Venezuela in offering a "pre-screening" of the movie that is to play out in the EU and US.

Venezuela has had a rather dodgy past, but the reign of Hugo Chávez was particularly instructive. In his presidency, he increased governmental control over his people dramatically, whilst milking them for all they were worth. He did this by being a populist, offering promises that could best be described as an "entitlement Ponzi scheme." The average citizen so wanted to believe that Mister Chávez could continue to deliver ever- more generous largesse from the government coffers that they continued to re-elect him. He was beloved by many, right until his death. When he knew his death was imminent, he set the stage for his understudy, Nicolás Maduro, to take over.

But the stage was already beginning to collapse as Mister Maduro took over. The cost of a massive government, which provided the entitlements, had caused inflation that exceeded 50%. Mister Maduro's popularity sank significantly.

But the Chávez/ Maduro government had an ace in the hole. They had, in the past, repeatedly regained lost popularity by coming down hard on the "greedy capitalists" who owned the factories that produced goods for Venezuela.

Whenever governmental regulatory edicts caused a further rise in the cost of producing goods, the people howled. The government's reaction was a classic Perónist one—to introduce price controls.

Not surprisingly, if a factory finds that it costs more to produce a product than the government will allow it to be sold for, it is no longer worth producing, and this led to the "toilet paper crisis," in which toilet paper and similar goods were under-produced and were becoming less available. Ironically, Mister Maduro first reacted by stating that the economy was so good that the people were eating much more food and therefore needed more toilet paper. However, he soon returned to a more traditional political approach and ordered the takeover of private sector factories to enforce increased production.

It is important to note that, as ridiculous as this solution is seen to be by reasonable people, it was considered a Godsend by the average citizen of Venezuela. They were only interested in receiving more toilet paper; they were not interested in the process by which they received it. Therefore, the majority of Venezuelans praised Mister Maduro.

Of course, as this did not solve the overall inflationary trend, prices rose and the citizenry once again howled. But they now wanted even more. If prices were controllable—if they could be stabilized so easily by their leader—could they not also be driven down? Well… yes, they could. Mister Maduro boldly set prices of goods in stores. The military was called in to take command of the Daka electronics stores. Lower prices were ordered and joyous shoppersran from the stores with flat screen televisions, refrigerators, etc. at prices that were significantly lower than they had been.

Mister Maduro re-gained popularity for this move, as he showed his support for the little man by protecting him from the greedy store owners. "This is for the good of the nation," he said. "Leave nothing on the shelves, nothing in the warehouses… Let nothing remain in stock!"

However, in classical economic terms, this act, like those before it, had the effect of filling the veins of an addict with even more heroin.

Clearly, the legislative process had become so cumbersome that Mister Maduro was unable to react with more heroin as quickly as it was now becoming necessary. It was decided that the solution would be governing by decree. The legislature voted to grant Mister Maduro the ability to govern by decree, without needing to seek parliamentary approval.

Although the world in general has not yet taken note, henceforth, Venezuela will be run by full dictatorship.

Although the above description of events is very simplified, it shows the process by which decline takes place, along with the justifications used at the time. Although no one (save the political leaders themselves) ever sets out to create a dictatorship, destructive governmental largesse that pleased the voters at the time, led to major problems downstream. The government reacted to these problems with knee-jerk "solutions," which only served to increase the problems, followed by more knee-jerk solutions and so on, until the logical outcome of dictatorship was reached.

This is a pattern that has repeated over the millennia. Along the way, there have always been those sensible people who have said, "But surely, they will stop before it gets too bad and will reverse the process."

Unfortunately, no. Once the decline really sets in, almost invariably, the government in question rides the problem into the ground.

Once a government has applied force and the force has failed in its objective, the government almost invariably reacts by applying more force—more of what caused the problem in the first place. The importance of this tendency cannot be overstated. Almost invariably, what does happen is that greater force is applied. Greater, more reckless and more irrational force.

So, what is to be learned from the above?

Those who live in a country that has reached the decline stage may reason, "My country is following a similar pattern to that of Venezuela, so I should face the fact that, soon, I can expect the pattern to complete itself. I should anticipate the price controls, takeover of private sector factories, etc., and finally, governing by decree."

Today, through the internet, we have the wonderful luxury of pre-screening the collapse of the present empire. We can view the movie even before it has been filmed.

When it becomes plain that the road up ahead is washed out, the most irrational decision would be to hope that it magically will repair itself before we reach the washout. Once we understand that the road ahead is indeed washed out, the rational decision would be to look for the nearest off-ramp.

Editor's Note: Internationalization is your ultimate insurance plan. It is a time-tested strategy to diversify the political risk to your savings and yourself of being tied completely to one—potentially desperate—country. You can find Casey Research's A-Z guide on this critically important topic here.

Jeff Thomas is British and resides in the Caribbean. The son of an economist and historian, he learned early to be distrustful of governments as a general principle. Although he spent his career creating and developing businesses, for eight years, he penned a weekly newspaper column on the theme of limiting government.

He began his study of economics around 1990, learning initially from Sir John Templeton, then Harry Schulz and Doug Casey and later others of an Austrian persuasion.

www.internationalman.com

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

So you say you want a revolution? by John Whitehead songs by the Liberty Bard

Reprinted w permission from www.lewrockwell.com

Government of the Rich, by the Rich and for the Rich: It’s Time for ‘Militant Nonviolent Resistance’

By John W. Whitehead

The Rutherford Institute

January 14, 2014

“[E]verywhere, “time is winding up,” in the words of one of our spirituals, “corruption in the land, people take a stand, time is winding up.”—Martin Luther King Jr.We now live in a two-tiered system of governance. There are two sets of laws: one set for the government and its corporate allies, and another set for you and me.
The laws which apply to the majority of the population allow the government to do things like sending SWAT teams crashing through your door in the middle of the night, rectally probing you during a roadside stop, or listening in on your phone calls and reading all of your email messages, confiscating your property, or indefinitely detaining you in a military holding cell. These are the laws which are executed every single day against a population which has up until now been blissfully ignorant of the radical shift taking place in American government.
Then there are the laws constructed for the elite, which allow bankers who crash the economy to walk free. They’re the laws which allow police officers to avoid prosecution when they shoot unarmed citizens, strip search non-violent criminals, or taser pregnant women on the side of the road, or pepper spray peaceful protestors. These are the laws of the new age we are entering, an age of neo-feudalism, in which corporate-state rulers dominate the rest of us, where the elite create the laws which can result in a person being jailed for possessing a small amount of marijuana while bankers that launder money for drug cartels walk free. In other words, we have moved into an age where we are the slaves and they are the rulers.
Unfortunately, this two-tiered system of government has been a long time coming. As I detail in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, the march toward an imperial presidency, to congressional intransigence and impotence, to a corporate takeover of the mechanisms of government, and the division of America into haves and have nots has been building for years.
Thus we now find ourselves at a point where, for the first time in history, Congress is dominated by a majority of millionaires who are, on average, 14 times wealthier than the average American. Making matters worse, as the Center for Responsive Politics reports, “at a time when lawmakers are debating issues like unemployment benefits, food stamps and the minimum wage, which affect people with far fewer resources, as well as considering an overhaul of the tax code,” our so-called representatives are completely out of touch with the daily struggles of most Americans–those who live from paycheck to paycheck and are caught in the exhausting struggle to survive on a day-to-day basis.
Indeed, although America is supposed to be a representative republic, these people– who earn six-figure salaries and inhabit a world exempt from parking tickets, where gym membership is free and health care is second-to-none, where you only have to work two, maybe three days a week and get 32 fully reimbursed road trips home a year, travel to foreign lands, discounts in Capitol Hill tax-free shops and restaurants, free reserved parking at Washington National Airport, free fresh-cut flowers from the Botanic Gardens, and free assistance in the preparation of income taxes–neither represent nor serve the American people. They have instead appointed themselves our masters.
While Congress should be America’s representative body, too many of its members bear little resemblance to those they have been elected to represent. As Dan Eggen reports for The Washington Post: “The new figures underscore a long-standing trend of wealth accumulation in Congress, which is populated overwhelmingly with millionaires and near-millionaires who often own multiple homes and other assets out of reach for most of the voters they represent.”
Many of our politicians live like kings. Chauffeured around in limousines, flying in private jets and eating gourmet meals, all paid for by the American taxpayer, they are far removed from those they are supposed to represent. Such a luxurious lifestyle makes it difficult to identify with the “little guy”–the roofers, plumbers and blue-collar workers who live from paycheck to paycheck and keep the country running with their hard-earned dollars and the sweat of their brows.
The unfortunate but simple fact is that the rich sit perched at the top of the government. As Joseph Stiglitz writes for Vanity Fair:

Virtually all U.S. senators, and most of the representatives in the House, are members of the top 1 percent when they arrive, are kept in office by money from the top 1 percent, and know that if they serve the top 1 percent well they will be rewarded by the top 1 percent when they leave office. By and large, the key executive-branch policymakers on trade and economic policy also come from the top 1 percent. When pharmaceutical companies receive a trillion-dollar gift–through legislation prohibiting the government, the largest buyer of drugs, from bargaining over price–it should not come as cause for wonder. It should not make jaws drop that a tax bill cannot emerge from Congress unless big tax cuts are put in place for the wealthy. Given the power of the top 1 percent, this is the way you would expect the system to work.

Sadly, electoral politics have been so thoroughly corrupted by corporate money that there is little chance, even for a well-meaning person, to affect any real change through Congress. Whether it be the Oval Office or the halls of Congress, the road to the ballot box is an expensive one, and only the wealthy, or those supported by the wealthy, are even able to get to the starting line.
Just consider the 2012 presidential election cycle. Both parties spent $1 billion each attempting to get their candidate elected to the presidency. This money came from rich donors and corporate sponsors, intent on getting their candidate in office. Once in office, these already privileged wealthy bureaucrats enter into a life of even greater privilege, unfortunately at the expense of the American taxpayer. It doesn’t even seem to matter whether they’re Democrats or Republicans–they all take full advantage of what one news report described as “a mountain of perks that most Fortune 500 companies couldn’t begin to rival.”
Even President Obama’s closest advisers are millionaires, including those on his 15-member cabinet. It is not unusual for some of them to own vacation homes, such as Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services, who owns a “summer home worth more than a million dollars.”
And then there are the lobbyists, the source of much corruption and exchanging of money in Washington. With an estimated 26 lobbyists per congressman, it should come as no surprise that once elected, even those with the best of intentions seem to find it hard to resist the lure of lobbyist dollars, of which there are plenty to go around.
This lobbying is in turn buoyed by a congressional lifestyle which demands that our representatives spend the majority of their time fund raising for campaigns, rather than responding to the needs of their constituents. In November 2012, the Democratic House leadership offered a model daily schedule to newly elected Democrats which suggests a ten-hour day, five hours of which are dominated by “call time” and “strategic outreach,” including fund raisers and correspondence with potential donors. Three or four hours are for actually doing the job they were elected to do, such as attending committee meetings, voting on legislation, and interacting with constituents.
When half of one’s time is devoted to asking for money from rich individuals and special interests, there is no way that he can respond to the problems which pervade the country. Even well-meaning Congressmen face a Catch-22 where they are pushed to fundraise to secure their seats, but then once in office, it is basically impossible for them to do their jobs. The full ramifications of this are laid out by Rep. Brad Miller (D-NC):

Any member who follows that schedule will be completely controlled by their staff, handed statements that their staff prepared, speaking from talking points they get emailed from leadership… It really does affect how members of Congress behave if the most important thing they think about is fundraising. You end up being nice to people that probably somebody needs to be questioning skeptically… You won’t ask tough questions in hearings that might displease potential contributors, won’t support amendments that might anger them, will tend to vote the way contributors want you to vote.

What we are faced with is a government by oligarchy–in other words, one that is of the rich, by the rich and for the rich. Yet the Constitution’s Preamble states that it is “we the people” who are supposed to be running things. If our so-called “representative government” is to survive, we must first wrest control of our government from the wealthy elite who run it. That is a problem with no easy solutions, and voting is the least of what we should be doing.
“What they don’t want,” noted comedian George Carlin, is “a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests.”
A population of citizens capable of critical thinking? That’s a good place to start, and it’s a sure-fire way to jumpstart a revolution. As Abraham Lincoln said, “Wise men established these great self-evident truths, that when in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men, were entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity should look up again at the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began.”
Inspiring words, but what do they really mean for those of us laboring under the weight of an overreaching, militarized, corrupt government that grows increasingly so with each passing day?
How can we change this state of affairs? The government is too big, too powerful, and its overlords too entrenched to willingly give up any of its power or wealth. The wisest option is to employ the tactics of past protest movements such as the Bonus Army, the Civil Rights Movement, and the 1960s anti-war movement, all of which used sleep-ins, sit-ins and marches to oppose government policies, counter injustice and bring about meaningful change.
For example, in May of 1932, more than 43,000 people, dubbed the Bonus Army—World War I veterans and their families—marched on Washington. Out of work, destitute and with families to feed, more than 10,000 veterans set up tent cities in the nation’s capital and refused to leave until the government agreed to pay the bonuses they had been promised as a reward for their services. The Senate voted against paying them immediately, but the protesters didn’t budge. Congress adjourned for the summer, and still the protesters remained encamped. Finally, on July 28, under orders from President Herbert Hoover, the military descended with tanks and cavalry, beating some protesters senseless and setting their makeshift camps on fire. Still, the protesters returned the following year, and eventually their efforts not only succeeded in securing payment of the bonuses but contributed to the passage of the G.I. Bill of Rights.
Similarly, the Civil Rights Movement mobilized hundreds of thousands of people to strike at the core of an unjust and discriminatory society. Likewise, while the 1960s anti-war movement began with a few thousand perceived radicals, it ended with hundreds of thousands of protesters, spanning all walks of life, demanding the end of American military aggression abroad.
What these movements had was a coherent message, the mass mobilization of a large cross section of American society, what Martin Luther King Jr. called a philosophy of “militant nonviolent resistance” and an eventual convergence on the nation’s seat of power—Washington, DC—the staging ground for the corporate coup, where the shady deals are cut, where lobbyists and politicians meet, and where corporate interests are considered above all else.
It is no coincidence that just prior to his assassination in April 1968, King was plotting “to build a shantytown in Washington, patterned after the bonus marches of the thirties, to dramatize how many people have to live in slums in our nation.”
King’s advice still rings true: “We need to put pressure on Congress to get things done. We will do this with First Amendment activity. If Congress is unresponsive, we’ll have to escalate in order to keep the issue alive and before it. This action may take on disruptive dimensions, but not violent in the sense of destroying life or property: it will be militant nonviolence.”
The balance of power that was once a hallmark of our republic no longer exists. James Madison’s warning that “the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elected, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny” has, regrettably come to pass.
Clearly, it’s time for a mass movement dedicated to change through “militant nonviolence.” If not, the shadow of tyranny that now hangs over us will eventually destroy every last semblance of freedom.
“We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor,” Martin Luther King Jr. warned in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” “It must be demanded by the oppressed.”

Monday, January 13, 2014

The Tree of Liberty

Reposted w permission from www.theburningplatform.com

TREE OF LIBERTY

Posted on 12th January 2014 by Administrator in Economy |Politics |Social Issues

Thomas Jefferson, tree of liberty

“I do not know whether it is to yourself or Mr. Adams I am to give my thanks for the copy of the new constitution. I beg leave through you to place them where due. It will be yet three weeks before I shall receive them from America. There are very good articles in it: and very bad. I do not know which preponderate. What we have lately read in the history of Holland, in the chapter on the Stadtholder, would have sufficed to set me against a Chief magistrate eligible for a long duration, if I had ever been disposed towards one: and what we have always read of the elections of Polish kings should have forever excluded the idea of one continuable for life. Wonderful is the effect of impudent and persevering lying. The British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat and model into every form lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them, the ministers themselves have come to believe them, and what is more wonderful, we have believed them ourselves. Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusets? And can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it’s motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20. years without such a rebellion.^[1] The people can not be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13. states independant 11. years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each state. What country ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure. Our Convention has been too much impressed by the insurrection of Massachusets: and in the spur of the moment they are setting up a kite to keep the hen yard in order. I hope in god this article will be rectified before the new constitution is accepted.” – Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, Paris, 13 Nov. 1787^[2]

Footnotes

↑ This sentence has possibly been misquoted as “every generation needs a new revolution.”
↑ PTJ 12:356-7. Letterpress copy at the Library of Congress. A transcription of this letter from Ford is available online as well.

Thursday, January 9, 2014

More Elections in 2014? More Statist Dogs Chasing Their Tails? by Scott Lazarowitz

More Elections in 2014? More Statist Dogs Chasing Their Tails?

Thursday, 09 January 2014 06:53 Scott Lazarowitz

This article was written by Scott Lazarowitz and originally published at ScottLarowitz.org
As I wrote in 2010, each election has been a progressively worse rearranging of deck chairs. This coming year’s elections will be no different. ”Reforming” an inherently flawed system is impossible, and to me each election reminds me of a helpless dog chasing after its own tail.
America was supposed to be a society of freedom, which goes with the ideas of self-ownership and private property. Instead, we have democracy, which is majority rule at freedom’s expense.

A society in which 51% of the people can vote to impose their will on the other 49%, and steal their stuff. That’s democracy, in a nutshell.

As I mentioned in recent articles, it’s hard to get people to understand these things.
The older people have grown (or regressed) to accept the statism that is imposed on them at the expense of freedom and prosperity.
And the younger people are born into the society in which “normal” to them is their enslavement by the State to serve the State, and for the benefit of those who are employed by the State or who are the immediate recipients of forcibly redistributed wealth.
Some people have a problem with my calling things as they are, such as how our current system of statism is one of institutionalized criminality.

Well, the people really had better snap out of it, and it would help if they actually understood why our current system is one of institutionalized criminality and certainly not one of freedom.

Our current system is one of rule by the State – federal, state, and local governments, especially federal — in which its rule is compulsory on the people within the territory. The State’s rule is enforced by those employees who have been given artificial authority over others.

However, while the State and all its “officials” do not own the territory over which they rule and wield power, such an ownership is nevertheless implied in the officials’ imposition of their authority without such authority’s legitimacy being questioned by those who are ruled.
But in reality, while such assertions sound absurd to most people, these State employees essentially own your property, they own your home, and they really own your life. Asserting your own rights and independence, and especially questioning the State’s authority, is a no-no.
So as our society has regressed, the people not only don’t protect their rights, their property or their lives and children from the predations of the State, they submit to such enslavement willfully.
I wish that more people could understand the difference between our current system of statism and a society of freedom in which all human interaction must be voluntary.
For example, many people are uncomfortable with questioning the legitimacy of Social Security (and Medicare). They feel that so much of their earnings have been taken from them, they genuinely hope (and pray) to get it back during their retirement.
It’s very upsetting to someone who doesn’t have much in savings to hear that she won’t get back what was allegedly promised.
But what is Social Security, really? The government compels you to have to participate in this one government-run retirement scheme, whether you like it or not. It is not a voluntary contract.
Right there, we see that such a scheme and such a system of compulsion is immoral from the very beginning. It has also been a fraudulent scheme from the very beginning, in which many people are misled to believe that earnings taken from them will be placed into some kind of “insurance account,” and then returned to them later on.
That is not the truth. The truth is, the earnings which are taken from you are put into the federal government’s general treasury and Congress spends it in real time along with all other revenue which is illicitly taken from the people. So the whole thing is a scam, a criminal racket from beginning to end. But so many people just don’t want to hear that.
Are there any politicians who propose to abolish Social Security and the IRS and restore the people’s freedom to plan their own retirements and savings as they see fit? (I didn’t think so.)
Another racket is the State’s usurpation of community security and policing, now known as “law enforcement.”
As I wrote previously regarding our current police socialism, government bureaucrats have usurped and monopolized the production of security, which includes the legal restriction against the people’s 2nd Amendment-protected attempts to protect themselves from threats against their lives and property.
And the federal government’s monopoly in “national security” is also a scam, a criminal racket. Generations of Americans have been fooled into believing that empowering central planners in Washington will “protect” them from foreign aggression. When in fact, such an empowerment has done nothing but enable and encourage the central planning bureaucrats to act belligerently against foreigners, starting wars of aggression or entering other countries’ wars for no good reason.
The national bamboozlers did a wonderful job convincing the American people that had our government and military not entered World War II, “we’d all be speaking German.” Now, do you really believe that Hitler and his military could have come across the ocean and successfully invaded, occupied and taken over America?
And then there was the Cold War with Russia.
And now the Cold War’s replacement the War on Terrorism. If there has ever been a statist dog chasing its own tail, it is our “national security” bureaucrats, some of whom have been duped into really believing they are going after terrorists.
Sadly, these terror warriors and their neocon supporters have become a fanatical jihad in their warrior idiocy.
So we have an NSA and an FBI who spy on their fellow Americans, clearing the way for intimidation, suppression of political dissent and blackmail.
And we have an FBI that concocts terrorist plots out of thin air so it can then thwart them, a TSA that engages in criminal molesting and raping of innocent civilians yet never finding one terrorist since 9/11, and a CIA drone-murder-of-innocent-civilians program that does nothing but further motivate foreigners to want to kill Americans.
And these Rulers of ours know full well that the real way to prevent terrorism is to stop invading other countries that were of no threat to us, stop occupying their lands and stop murdering their people and destroying their countries.
In other words, you will stop causing foreign terrorism against your fellow Americans by stopping provoking foreigners. Duh.
So the system of government monopoly in “national security” we currently have in place is a scam, a criminal protection racket.
The real way for the people to protect themselves from foreign aggression is recognized by the 2nd Amendment, by the way. Putting armaments in the hands of government bureaucrats has been a self-destructive act, which several of the early Americans such as James Madison warned against as well.
So, there’s the fraudulent Social Security scam, the local police and national security monopoly rackets, and the list never ends. Just look at this ObamaCare stuff. Talk about a criminal racket. What’s worse is these schemers’ real intentions, single payer and in fact complete government control over everyone’s private medical matters.
And with the extremely cold weather we have been having, a further exposé of fraudsters is the global warming scam. When they call people “deniers,” the global warming crowd are like flat-earthers, and going on witch hunts, while it is they, these crazy people who are the real “deniers.”

And speaking of terrorists, how about all those years during the 2000s that the warmists shoved their scare-mongering films and so forth into the public schools, terrorizing the kids into having nightmares?

People believed all the studies “proving” the human-caused global warming theories based more likely than not on flawed studies, whose “scientists” depended largely on government grants (i.e. receiving loot stolen from others via taxation-thefts).

And the reason for that stuff and replacing our light bulbs with poisonous ones isn’t out of love for the environment either – it is out of love for government, as the goal of the crackpots is to enlarge and empower the government and its bureaucrats to, right with the “national security” fanatics, create a Total State with politicians and activists having complete control over the whole society.

So, with the 2014 elections will conservatives continue their blind faith in Republicans such as Mitch McConjob and John Boehner Keynes the anti-Tea Party speaker?

Do the “progressives” really believe that they’ll get a politician elected who will actually protect our civil liberties and end the wars? Do you believe in the tooth fairy as well?

For those who want to live in a genuinely free, peaceful and prosperous society, you’ll have to accept the fact that the idea of “government as a necessary evil” is a myth. I know it’s an old cliché by now, but democracy really is “the god that failed,” for sure.

Any institution and its agents who claim some authority over your life, the power to order you to do this or that, the power to force you to do extra labor to serve their needs, and the power to arrest and detain you for engaging in peaceful behaviors which harm no one, is an evil, criminal institution.

In conclusion, when considering further rearranging of deck chairs in November 2014, please reconsider!

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

They thought they were free by Bill Bonner

The Slow March to Ruin

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by Bill Bonner.

Posted Jan 8, 2014.

As many as 50,000 stray dogs roam the streets and vacant homes of bankrupt Detroit, replacing residents, menacing humans who remain, and overwhelming the city’s ability to find them homes or peaceful deaths.
They are among the victims of a historic financial and political collapse.
Detroit, a former auto-manufacturing powerhouse, declared the largest U.S. municipal bankruptcy on July 18, after years of decline. The city had more than $18 billion in long-term debt and had piled up an operating deficit of close to $400 million. Falling revenue forced cutbacks in police, firefighting… and dog control.

Gradually, in imperceptible baby steps, what was once preposterous and odious becomes normal and acceptable.

Hey. Dogs don’t vote. They don’t make campaign contributions. They don’t have any lobbyists in Washington. To hell with them.
You don’t find Department of Defense staffers wandering the empty slums of a bankrupt city.
Witness one of the wonders of modern imperial democracy. In its effort to enrich the defense industry, not only is the U.S. free to engage in all the “wars of choice” it chooses, but it also is free to choose which side it supports. Minding its own business seems to be out of the question.
So in Egypt, the U.S. is free to choose. Will it go for those who claim to represent the forces of democracy, light, justice, and progress? Or will it throw its immense weight behind the side that promises law, order, and a reliable treaty with Israel?
Frankly, we don’t give a damn. But we will let dear readers get exercised on the issue, if they choose.
Here is The Wall Street Journal, naturally, telling its readers that it is “Time to Choose Sides in Egypt.”
And here is John Bolton arguing, naturally, for a policy of unrestraint:

“Discrete crises in collapsing Middle Eastern and African countries are giving way to broader regional chaos, which is now a geostrategic factor…”

Blah. Blah. Blah.
Is there a bigger jackass than John Bolton?
He makes no mention of his own role in causing the regional chaos in the Middle East. He was a major warmonger — arguing for the invasion of Iraq, which is now on track to cost the U.S. more than $5 trillion. And who gained? Only Islamic terrorists… and the defense industry.
Now Bolton says we should go into Egypt on the side of the military.

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Why?
He doesn’t like the Muslim Brotherhood. How many brothers has he met? We don’t know, but he gives the impression that he thinks they are bad people.
Facing off against him in the Journal is Elliott Abrams. We couldn’t make much sense of Mr. Abrams’ argument other than that he thinks the military rulers are bad people. We were going to quote a passage of it for you, but we couldn’t find anything worth retyping.
Several editorials urge the U.S. to back the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, as one put it, if we are really “believers in democracy.”
Well, that leaves us out!
What’s really interesting is how the defense industry, the meddlers, and the warmongers have put themselves in a winning situation.
Nobody knows which side God is on. Nobody knows what will happen if one side wins or the other loses. All we know with reasonable certainty is that the more meddling we do in the affairs of others, the more enemies we make… and the more of the national treasure is transferred to the zombies in the defense industry.
But that’s how it goes. Gradually, in imperceptible baby steps, what was once preposterous and odious becomes normal and acceptable. And then you wake up and realize that things have gone too far… and there’s no turning back.
Here’s something to chew over from They Thought They Were Free, by Milton Mayer, in which Germans recall how life changed, little by little, from 1933-45:

“To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it — please try to believe me — unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop.
“Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained, or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic German’ could resent must someday lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.”

Zombies. Debt. Meddling in the economy by the feds. Meddling in other people’s business by the Pentagon.
Americans are already in it way over their heads.
Regards,
Bill Bonner
for The Daily Reckoning
Ed. Note: Even though many Americans are “in it way over their heads” as Bill points out, there are a few who’ve made it their mission to see above the crowds. And you can stand on their shoulders. Sign up for the Laissez Faire Today email edition to learn how.
Original article posted on Laissez Faire Today

Since founding Agora Inc. in 1979, Bill Bonner has found success and garnered camaraderie in numerous communities and industries. A man of many talents, his entrepreneurial savvy, unique writings, philanthropic undertakings, and preservationist activities have all been recognized and awarded by some of America's most respected authorities. Along with Addison Wiggin, his friend and colleague, Bill has written two New York Times best-selling books, Financial Reckoning Day and Empire of Debt. Both works have been critically acclaimed internationally. With political journalist Lila Rajiva, he wrote his third New York Times best-selling book, Mobs, Messiahs and Markets, which offers concrete advice on how to avoid the public spectacle of modern finance. Since 1999, Bill has been a daily contributor and the driving force behind The Daily Reckoning. Dice Have No Memory: Big Bets & Bad Economics from Paris to the Pampas, the newest book from Bill Bonner, is the definitive compendium of Bill's daily reckonings from more than a decade: 1999-2010.

Secrets of Govt by Andy Sirkis

I've Got A Secret

By Andy Sirkis

January 8, 2014

Reprinted with permission from http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/01/andy-sirkis/kafka-statism/

In early December of 2013, Japan’s ruling party bosses in the Diet (Japan’s Parliament) rammed through a new law that will give high ranking government officials the power to declare anything to be a state secret by decree and to hide details of that secret for up to 60 years. There are also several ill defined categories, such as “important information to be defined by government ordinances,” that can be kept secret forever, with all records of such secrets being destroyed instead of released.
Under the Kafkaesque law, reporters who encourage or solicit a leak using “grossly inappropriate means” could be locked up for up to 5 years. This is true, despite the fact that a reporter could neither know whether the means they use to encourage a leak would be acceptable, nor whether a leak they encouraged or solicited was related to a secretly declared secret. Why? Well that information is a secret. Further, any citizen who asks about something that was secretly declared a state secret could also be deemed a “reporter” and sent away to pound rocks with chopsticks.
At one point in the midst of the brouhaha over the law, Japan’s ruling Liberal Democrat Party (LDP) Secretary General, Shigeru Ishiba, threatened to have reporters imprisoned under the new law. He also referred to Japanese citizens who were protesting the Stalinist style law as “terrorists.”   Of course, we all know what happens to terrorists. Japan’s [sic] Justice Minister (Attorney General), Sadakazu Tanigaki, refused to rule out police raids of newspapers suspected of breaking the law.
The amateur logician inside me insists that I point out something: if a reporter is charged with committing the crime of encouraging a leak of a state secret, the prosecutor filing the charges would have to declare that the leak in question was a secret. Such a declaration itself, logically speaking, would constitute the crime of disclosing a secret, which is punishable by ten years in the hoosegow. Have you ever heard of a politician who was a professional logician prior to taking office? I didn’t think so.
Ostensibly, state secrets would only be declared in cases involving national defense, diplomacy, counter-terrorism, and counter-espionage. In typical tyrannical fashion, the definition of these terms is so loose as to effectively permit the Prime Minister and his stooges to declare anything a state secret.   For example, Masako Mori, the state minister in charge of the bill, said the law could be applied to Japan’s nuclear power industry, because it might be a target for terrorists.   That would be very convenient for the incompetent bozos at Japan’s nuclear regulatory agency who aided and abetted the building of nuclear power plants on the coast of Fukushima Prefecture, an area known for massive tsunamis.
Supporters of this monstrous law tell us not to worry because the Prime Minister is going to appoint a committee to oversee things and make sure that frivolous matters, such as his and his party member’s crimes and dalliances, will not be covered up.    In response, those of us who oppose the state secrets law think everyone should laugh in the faces of Prime Minister Abe and his corrupt flunkies. Certainly, Abe will hand pick the committee members and you would have to be insanely naive to believe that the drones he selects would be effective in preventing abuse of the new law.
Why would the Japanese Prime Minister force through this unpopular measure, opposed by 80% of Japanese citizens? One need only take a whiff in the direction of the locus of all the evil in the world, the United States government (USG) and its embassy in Tokyo where the current Ambassador, Caroline Kennedy, resides. “Qualified” because of her family connections and for having raised bribe money campaign contributions for President Obama, she voiced support for the state secrets measure that the USG had been pressuring on its lap dog, Japan. Jailing reporters must be something they teach at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Like criminals everywhere, government boss-type people always want to hide their crimes and you have to wonder what sort of criminal plans the USG and its gang have planned.
Prime Minister Abe’s motivations most likely include his desire to trample Japan’s “Peace Constitution” which prohibits militarism. What better way to violate a constitution than to secretly re-interpret it and then keep the fact of the re-interpretation secret?   Further, Article 41 of the constitution says: “The Diet shall be the highest organ of state power, and shall be the sole lawmaking organ of the State” yet the new law leaves the Diet powerless to know about or control anything that the Prime Minister and his gang deem to be a state secret. To Abe and other control freak politicians, a constitution is just a goddamned piece of paper that can readily be ignored while the rights of the people are violated.
Call me a skeptic, but I don’t believe that the state secrets law is needed so that heavily armed troops can hand out candy bars at disaster relief efforts. Given Japan’s pre WWII history of attacking its neighbors, you can’t blame Chinese and Korean officials for being concerned that Japan is secretly plotting crimes against their countries. According to this expert on international military affairs, Abe’s nefarious motives were revealed as soon as the state secrets law was forced through, as he simultaneously established an American style National Security Council and revised Japan’s military defense strategy. Minutes from this new war council will be kept secret and his new strategy calls for a more aggressive use of the military for non self-defense reasons, probably based on a secret re-interpretation of the constitution.
On the bright side, this new law was very publicly railroaded through in a ham handed way, putting everyone on notice that abuses will occur. People will be expecting and looking for those abuses and the subsequent leaks. Most importantly, everyone will assume that high-ranking government officials are simply lying when they speak, either out of fear that they might disclose a secret or more likely, intentionally covering up some hidden crime or outrage.
In the USA, government bosses testify at public hearings and are presented by the compliant media as if the truth was being told to the gullible booboise. From now on in Japan, there will be no such “kabuki theater” pretense that a Japanese government poo-bah testifying under oath is being honest.
Japan’s ruling party bosses will certainly become much more aggressive in the arrogant belief that they can hide anything they want. I believe that there will be leaks. From my experiences living in Japan, I can say with 100% certainty that normal Japanese people, unlike politicians, are typically very honest and concerned about taking responsibility, even for things they are not necessarily directly responsible for. Given the high-tech nature of modern Japan, the means of privately leaking are available to a tech savvy person who has witnessed a crime or scandal that needs to be made public.
Let’s hope that a heroic Japanese Edward Snowden, E-do-wa-do Su-no-den as we say over here, takes a stand and strikes a blow against the arrogant ruling party elites.
Thanks to Mike “in Tokyo” Rogers for editing my work .

The Liberty Bard