State Domination

State Domination

By Robert Higgs
Lew Rockwell.com
April 30, 2014

Familiarity may indeed, as the saying goes, breed contempt,
but it also breeds a sort of somnolence.

People who have never known anything other than a certain
state of affairs, even an extraordinarily problematic state of
affairs, have a tendency not to notice it at all, to relate it,
so to speak, as if they were sleepwalking through it.

Such is the situation of modern people in relation to the state.

They have always known it, and they take it completely for
granted, regarding it as one might regard the weather: whether
it brings rain or sunshine, lightning bolts or soothing spring
breezes, it is always there, an aspect of nature itself.

Even when it proves destructive, its destruction still qualifies
as something akin to “acts of God.”

We relate to the state in this sleepwalking fashion, however,
not because doing so is hardwired in our genes, but because
our conditions of life and our long historical accommodation
to living under the state’s domination predispose us to react
to it in this oblivious manner.

People who have lived in other circumstances, however,
have reacted quite differently.

Only when human populations adopted settled agriculture
did they prove amenable to state domination.

During the vastly longer epoch of human existence in small hunting
and gathering bands, the state was impossible: people had few if
any nonperishable stores of wealth to be plundered, and if someone
attempted to impose state-like domination on a band, its members
simply ran away, putting as much distance between themselves and
the exploiters as necessary to escape the would-be state’s
predation.

For the past 5,000 to 10,000 years, however, ultimately for nearly
all of the world’s people, the state has existed as an ever present
predator and all around abuser of human rights, its power to
dominate and plunder propped up by its adroit exploitation of
people’s fears, many of which have been of the state itself, others
of external threats to life and limb from which the state purported
to protect its subjects.

In any event, nearly everyone eventually became incapable
of even imagining social life without a state.

For the few who have succeeded in wrenching themselves out
of this dreamlike condition in relation to the state, however,
two main questions come rushing to mind:

(1) Who do these people—that is, the state’s kingpins, Praetorian
guards, bootlickers, and key private-sector supporters, think they
are to treat us as they do?

(2) Why do nearly all of us put up with the state’s outrageous
treatment?

These questions can easily form, and indeed already have
formed the core of countless books, articles, and manifestos.

Although nothing even approaching a consensus has emerged, it
seems fairly clear that the answers to question (1) have much to
do with the widespread prevalence of wicked, arrogant people
with a comparative advantage in violence and the bamboozlement
of their victims.

Faced with the fundamental choice between what Franz
Oppenheimer called the economic means of getting wealth (by
production and exchange) and the political means (by robbery
and extortion), members of the ruling classes have opted
decisively for the latter.

Pope Gregory VII (1071-85), the leader of the momentous Papal
Revolution that began during his papacy and ran its course over
a span of nearly fifty years (even longer in England), minced no
words when he wrote (as quoted by Harold Berman):

“Who does not know that kings and princes derive their origin from
men ignorant of God who raised themselves above their fellows by
pride, plunder, treachery, murder, in short by every kind of crime,
at the instigation of the Devil, the prince of this world, men blind
with greed and intolerable in their audacity.”

It is possible, of course, that some political leaders have sincerely
believed that they had a just basis for their domination of their
fellows nowadays especially the belief that an electoral victory is
equivalent to divine anointment seems to have many under its
spell, but such self-deception does nothing to alter the realities of
their situation.

As for why we submit to the state’s outrages, the most persuasive
answers have to do with fear of the state (and nowadays, for many,
fear of self-responsibility as well), with apprehension about sticking
one’s neck out when other victims may fail to join forces with those
who resist first and, probably most important, with the ideological
“hypnosis” (as Leo Tolstoy characterized it) that keeps most people
from being able to imagine life without the state or to understand
why the state’s claim to intrinsic immunity from the morality that
binds all other human beings is the purest bunk.

If an ordinary individual may not morally commit murder, or
steal, neither may the individuals who compose the state; and,
of course, private individuals may not delegate their rights to
rob or murder to the state because they have no such rights in
the first place.

Like Tolstoy, many writers have recognized that the ruling
classes work very hard to imbue their victims with an
ideology that sanctifies the state and its criminal actions.

In this regard, one feels compelled to agree that many states
historically have been amazingly successful in this quest.

Thus, under the Nazis, ordinary Germans thought they were
free, just as today ordinary Americans think they are free.

The capacity of ideology to blind people and incline them
toward the Stockholm Syndrome seems to have few limits,
although a regime such as that of the USSR, which locked
the mass of the people in persistent poverty, may find that
its attempts to produce ideological enchantment in its
subject victims eventually produce progressively diminishing
returns.

Thus, an astute, if ever shifting, combination of arrogant force
and impudent fraud may be seen as the prime ingredients the
state employs in its multifaceted efforts to induce somnolence
in its subject victims.

Of course, a certain amount of cooptation adds essential spice
to the mix, and so all states make some efforts to give back to
their victims a morsel of the bread it has snatched from them.

For this gracious gift, they are generally ever so grateful.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/04/robert-higgs/state-
domination

War Head

War Head

By Otep
April 29, 2014

Revolution

Why?

The King Of Lies Is Alive

Look Around, Look Inside

Infidel

Infidel

It Begins Here

It Ends Now

The Prince Must Pay

His Head Or The Crown

Rob The Poor

Slaughter The Weak

Distort The Law

Perfect Deceit

Do I Need A Gas Mask?

Should I Get Inoculated?

Will This War Last?

Will We Be Incinerated?

False Gods

Death Squads

Blind

This Is A Catastrophe

Weapon Systems Activated

Puritans Have Invaded

This Is A Catastrophe

To Protect Against The Threat

Order Must Be Kept

Do I Need A Gas Mask?

Should I Get Inoculated?

Will This War Last?

Will We Be Incinerated?

False Gods

Death Squads

Blind

The Elephants March To War

Concede

Conform

Concede

Conform

Deny The Big Lie

My Tribe

Join Me

An Alliance Of Defiance

In The Warhead

All Are Welcome Here

Give Me Your Tired

Give Me Your Sick

Give Me Indulgence And Decadence

He lied, They Died

Keep The Peasants Terrified

This Is A Catastrophe

You Must Lead, If They Get Me

On My Command,

Break Free

Born In The U.S.A.

Born In The U.S.A.

By Anon
Via-Evolefest
April 25, 2014

Your Birth Certificate Bond Is Worth Billions

When your birth certificate was monetized and converted into
a UNITED STATES Government Bond shortly after your birth
by your Mother, your net worth became unlimited, into Billions
of Dollars, without your, nor your Mother’s, and Father’s,
knowledge.

When the UNITED STATES declared bankruptcy in 1933 under
the bankruptcy (Straw man) law known as HJR 192, pledged
all Americans as collateral (debt slaves) against the
national debt to the International Bankers; gave all the
land to the international bankers (Federal Reserve
Corporation); and confiscated and outlawed all the gold
except for one ounce for each person; thus, eliminating the
lawful means (Gold and Silver Coins) by which you could
legally pay your debt, the UNITED STATES also assumed legal
responsibility for providing a new way for you to pay.

In 1933, the UNITED STATES Government declared that they would
pay all of YOUR debts with the money they receive from your labor,
birth certificate, and Social Security registered number by what is
known as your Reserve Account worth Billions!

The UNITED STATES Corporation Government did that by
providing what is known as the Exemption Account.

The bankers loan credit and not money, because there has
not been any lawful money since 5 June 1933.

The Exemption Account is your exemption from having to
pay for anything.

In practical terms, though, this meant giving each American
something to pay with, and that something is your credit.

This secret has been hidden for over 79 years.

Your value to society was then and is still calculated using
actuarial tables.

At birth, average value bonds were created from your birth
certificate.

I understand that this is currently between one and two
million dollars at your birth when your mother unknowingly
gave her baby, you, away to the UNITED STATES Government.

These birth certificate bonds were collateralized by your birth
certificate and your mother’s maiden name under an Act of
Congress in 1921.

Then your birth certificate bond became a negotiable instrument
just like any security instrument under UCC Article 3, code of
commercial law in which the world trade falls under.

The bonds are hypothecated and traded on the stock market
until their value is unlimited for all intents and purposes.

People all over the world buy and sell your bond every day
over the stock markets as investments.

All that credit created is technically, and rightfully, yours.

In point of fact, you should be able to go into any store in
America and buy anything and everything in sight, telling
the clerk to charge it to your Exemption Account, which is
identified by a nine-digit number that you will recognize as
your Social Security number, without the dashes.

It is your EIN, which stands for Exemption Identification Number
from the UNITED STATES CORPORATION of America."

~ Anon

http://educationcenter2000.com/take_back_your_strawman.html

"Why Does Obama Suck?"

"Why Does Obama Suck?"

Via - Robert Steven Knight
Santiago, Chile
Wednesday, April 23, 2014

"Why does Obama suck?"

If you're not sure, ask Google.

It seems that millions of Americans already have asked this
question, along with:

"Why does the government want to kill us?", and

"Can the government take your gold?"

These are among the jewels of Google autocomplete-- instantly displaying results from the most popular searches.

Try it yourself. The results vary slightly based on geography,
but if you type, for example, "Obama is ", I get the following:

Not exactly the hope and change he was looking for I suppose.

(Canadians and Brits, don't feel left out. Google tells us that
Stephen Harper is, "the anti-christ" and David Cameron is, "a
lizard".)

While I'm sure we can all appreciate the humor, the reason these
searches show up instantly in Google is because so many people
are looking.

For example, when I type "Is America", Google completes it with
the most popular hit-- "Is America doomed"...

Typing in "Why does the government" conjures all sorts of
interesting queries, ranging from:

- need to collect taxes?
- want to kill us?
- lie?
- restrict seditious speech?

Or, typing "Why does the Federal Reserve. . . ", Google asks,
"still exist?" Good question.

On the topic of the dollar, Google tells us "the dollar is" collapsing,
dead, crashing, dying, devalued, not backed by gold, losing value,
etc.

Apparently more and more people are starting to question the
value and worth of their currency.

They're starting to have second thoughts about a system in which
we award a tiny banking elite with totalitarian control of the money
supply.

And they're starting to realize that that their government is
corrupt, far too powerful, and overrun with liars and thieves.

In fact, for proof, I typed "does homeland s", and Google completes
with:

"Does Homeland Security pay well?" - and -
"Does Homeland Security hire felons?"

So it seems that convicted felons are looking for highly paid
government employment.

Perfect.

This is rather fitting given that typing "Will Ob" (not even the
full word) returns "Will Obama declare martial law?"

People are certainly wondering.

Getting to this point of mistrust has taken years
of endless warfare.

The embarrassing failures of Obamacare.

NSA and IRS scandals.

Constant stories of police brutality.

Higher taxes. Higher consumer prices.

It didn't happen overnight. But over time, people have
lost confidence not only in individual politicians, but in
the system itself.

The institution of government is now viewed as the problem,
not the solution.

And this represents a complete breakdown in the social
contract.

From the Romans to the Ottoman Empire to the Venetians,
history is full of examples which show that once societies
lose confidence in the system, substantial change and turmoil
often follows.

I suspect that if Google had been around in the mid-1780s,
autocomplete would probably tell us things like "Why does the
King Louis" suck? And, "Will France" collapse?

It did.

And when the French stormed the Bastille in 1789, they entered
a 26-year period of revolution, civil war, hyperinflation, and
genocide.

I'm not suggesting that we're in for exactly the same fate.

But we would be foolish to presume that this lost confidence
and mistrust is a consequence-free environment.

Until tomorrow,

Simon Black

America’s Mad Dash To Oligarchy

America’s Mad Dash To Oligarchy

By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
Consortiumnews.com
Monday, April 21, 2014

The evidence of income inequality just keeps mounting.

According to “Working for the Few,” a recent briefing paper from
Oxfam, “In the US, the wealthiest one percent captured 95 percent
of post-financial crisis growth since 2009, while the bottom 90
percent became poorer.”

Our now infamous one percent own more than 35 percent of
the nation’s wealth.

Meanwhile, the bottom 40 percent of the country is in debt.

Just this past Tuesday, the 15th of April, Tax Day, the AFL-CIO
reported that last year the chief executive officers of 350 top
American corporations were paid 331 times more money than
the average U.S. worker.

Those executives made an average of $11.7 million dollars
compared to the average worker who earned $35,239 dollars.

As that analysis circulated on Tax Day, the economic analyst
Robert Reich, reminded us that in addition to getting the
largest percent of total national income in nearly a century,
many in the one percent are paying a lower federal tax rate
than a lot of people in the middle class.

You may remember that an obliging Congress, of both parties,
allows high rollers of finance the privilege of, “Carried
Interest,” a tax rate below that of their secretaries and clerks.

And at state and local levels, while the poorest fifth of Americans
pay an average tax rate of over 11 percent, the richest one percent
of the country pay, are you ready for this? Half that rate.

Now, neither Nature nor Nature’s God drew up our tax codes; that’s
the work of legislators, politicians, and it’s one way they have, as
Chief Justice John Roberts might put it, of expressing gratitude to
their donors:

“Oh, Mr. Adelson, we so appreciate your generosity that we cut
your estate taxes so you can give $8 billion as a tax-free payment
to your heirs, even though down the road the public will have to
put up $2.8 billion to compensate for the loss in tax revenue.”

All of which makes truly repugnant the argument, heard so often
from courtiers of the rich, that inequality doesn’t matter.

Of course it matters.

Inequality is what has turned Washington into a protection racket
for the one percent.

It buys all those goodies from government:

Tax breaks. Tax havens (which allow corporations and the rich to
park their money in a no-tax zone). Loopholes. Favors like carried
interest. And so on.

As Paul Krugman writes in his New York Review of Books essay
on Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century, “We
now know both that the United States has a much more unequal
distribution of income than other advanced countries and that
much of this difference in outcomes can be attributed directly
to government action.”

Recently, researchers at Connecticut’s Trinity College plowed
through the data and concluded that the U.S. Senate is responsive
to the policy preferences of the rich, ignoring the poor.

And now there’s that big study coming out in the fall from scholars
at Princeton and Northwestern universities, based on data collected
between 1981 and 2002. Their conclusion:

“America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously
threatened. … The preferences of the average American appear
to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant
impact upon public policy.” Instead, policy tends “to tilt towards
the wishes of corporations and business and professional associations.”

Last month, Matea Gold of The Washington Post reported on a
pair of political science graduate students who released a study
confirming that money does equal access in Washington.

Joshua Kalla and David Broockman drafted two form letters asking
191 members of Congress for a meeting to discuss a certain piece
of legislation.

One email said “active political donors” would be present; the
second email said only that a group of “local constituents” would
be at the meeting.

One guess as to which emails got the most response.

Yes, more than five times as many legislators, or their chiefs
of staff, offered to set up meetings with active donors, than
with local constituents.

Why is it not corruption when the selling of access to our public
officials upends the very core of representative government?

When money talks and you have none, how can you believe in
democracy?

Sad, that it’s come to this.

The drift toward oligarchy that Thomas Piketty describes in
his formidable new book on capital has become a mad dash.

It will overrun us, unless we stop it.



Bill Moyers is Managing Editor and Michael Winship, is Senior Writer
of the weekly public affairs program, Moyers & Company, airing on
public television.

http://consortiumnews.com/2014/04/21/americas-mad-dash-
to-oligarchy

Misunderstanding Jesus’s Execution

Misunderstanding Jesus’s Execution

Over the centuries as Christianity bent to the interests of the rich
and powerful, the story of Jesus’s fateful week in Jerusalem was
reshaped to minimize its pivotal event, overturning the Temple’s
money tables, a challenge to religious and political power, says
Rev. Howard Bess.

By Rev. Howard Bess
Consortiumnews.com
Friday, April 18, 2014

Christians have special celebrations for the key events of Holy
Week, but they often overlook one of the most important.

Palm Sunday celebrates the entry of Jesus into the city of
Jerusalem.

Maunday Thursday is a solemn replay of his last meal with
his disciples.

Good Friday takes us through his mock trial and his death
of horror on a Roman Cross.

Easter is the Christians’ triumphant celebration of Jesus’s
resurrection from the dead.

But there is a missing piece.

The incident that gives sense to the week’s climactic events
is Jesus’s overturning of the money tables at the temple.

Tradition says that the incident was a ceremonial cleansing of the
temple of its commercial enterprises because those in charge of the
temple had turned a house of worship into a commercial enterprise.

Jesus disrupted the commercial operation by upsetting the
tables where the temple lackeys sold required animals for
sacrifice.

However, modern scholarship is putting an emphasis
on understanding this historical incident in context.

The first piece of the puzzle is the temple itself.

For nearly half a century, including the time of Jesus’s birth,
Herod the Great had ruled Palestine as an ambitious king
appointed by Rome’s Caesar.

Herod was of mixed racial background and claimed some
Jewish blood.

He wanted to be known as King of the Jews, but acceptance
by the Jews was difficult to attain.

Herod the Great also was a builder.

Under his reign, he built civic buildings and ports, but his greatest
building project was the rebuilding, expansion and refurbishing of
the Jewish temple in Jerusalem.

It was known as Herod’s temple or is sometimes referenced
as the Third Temple.

Because of that history, the reign of Herod and the operation
of the temple were linked and locked.

It was the near inseparable joining of government and religion.

To offend one was to offend both.

Herod the Great died in 4 CE, when Jesus was still a child.

During the years of Jesus’s teaching ministry, Herod’s son,
Herod Antipas, was the ruler.

The joining of kingdom and temple continued.

Jesus grew up and taught in a rural area 70 miles north of
Jerusalem.

His faith was shaped, not by Jerusalem and the temple, but by
weekly gatherings of the community elders as they read Torah
(Jewish law) and discussed its meaning.

Jesus and his followers had limited contact with Jerusalem’s social,
political, and religious leaders, mostly through the retainers,
(enforcers) of Herod’s Roman rule who also represented the
Jerusalem temple.

Retainers made regular trips into the rural north to collect
tithes and taxes.

To understand Jesus, one must realize the depth of his contempt
for both the rule of Herod and the religious rulers of the temple.

To further understand Jesus and the last week of his life, the
student needs to realize that the Old Testament contains not
one religious tradition, but two.

One is called the great tradition; the other is called the small
(or lesser) tradition.

The great tradition is the definition of society laid down by
those who rule and enforced by their retainers.

The great tradition is centered in cities in which the controlling
institutions are located.

For Jesus, that place was Jerusalem.

There is no evidence that Jesus ever visited Jerusalem as an
adult before the last week of his life.

The small tradition is a critiquing and competing interpretation
of life.

It almost always arises with devout believers who have escaped
the burden of the great tradition and its demand for conformity.

Northern Palestine, 70 miles removed from Jerusalem,
was a hotbed for the small tradition.

The leaders of the small tradition found heroes in Isaiah, Jeremiah,
Amos, Micah and other Old Testament prophets. Almost every one
of the Old Testament prophets was a critic of those who controlled
the temple in Jerusalem.

John the Baptizer was the first of the little tradition
prophets presented in the Gospel narratives.

His harsh criticism of rulers led to his death.

Jesus took up the mantle.

As modern New Testament scholars have reconstructed the context
in which Jesus lived and taught, they have realized that Jesus was
not simply a religious figure.

He was a severe critic of those who controlled the temple, those
who controlled the empire, and those who controlled the economic
systems that starved and robbed the poor, and left the orphan, and
the widow, to fend for themselves.

To Jesus, these issues were all tied together.

Jesus was a largely unknown and harmless critic as
long as he remained in his northern rural setting.

He was clearly an apocalyptic preacher.

He advocated overthrow of a corrupt system.

He believed the days of the oppressors were numbered.

But he believed the overthrow could be accomplished
by love, mercy, and kindness.

Jesus took his apocalyptic message to Jerusalem.

However, to call his arrival a triumphal entry is
to miss the point completely.

He chose to enter Jerusalem riding on a donkey
as mockery of the ruler’s horse.

It was an ancient form of street theatre that Jesus
and his followers used to make their point.

The great tradition that was accepted by Jerusalem’s masses
was being publicly taunted by a figure of the small tradition.

But the critical point of Jesus’s visit to Jerusalem came
when he visited the temple.

In no sense had he come to worship and make sacrifice.

He came to disrupt and to make pronouncements about
the judgment of God on the whole operation.

Jesus did not go to the temple to cleanse.

He came to the temple to announce the destruction of
a whole way of life.

Those who operated the temple had no power to silence
Jesus and put him to death.

Those powers were held by the Roman retainers.

The charges that were leveled against him can be
summed up as insurrection.

There were three specific charges: encouraging non-payment of
taxes, threatening to destroy property (the temple), and claiming
to be a king.

It was the temple incident that took Jesus from being an irritating,
but harmless country rebel from the rural north to a nuisance in a
city that controlled the great tradition.

Rome’s retainers killed him on a cross.

The theological meaning of the series of events remains in our own hands.



However, the key to understanding the week of Jesus’s crucifixion
is the incident at the temple.

Rev. Howard Bess is a retired American Baptist minister, who lives
in Palmer, Alaska.

http://consortiumnews.com/2014/04/13/misunderstanding-jesuss-execution-2/

Spiritual Warrior

Spiritual Warrior

Life offers us the opportunity to become a Spiritual Warrior.

A warrior is one who bravely goes into those dark areas within
themselves to ferret out the Truth of their being.

It takes great courage, stamina and endurance to become a
Spiritual Warrior.

The path is narrow, the terrain rough and rocky.

You will walk alone: through the dark caves, up those steep
climbs and through the dense thick forest.

You will meet your dark side. The faces of fear, deceit,
and sadness, all await your arrival.

No one can take this journey but you.

There comes a time, in each of our lives, when we are
given the choice to follow this path.

Should we decide to embark on this journey, we can never
turn back....

Our lives are changed forever On this journey, there are
many different places we can choose to slip into and hide.

But the path goes on.

The Spiritual Warrior stays the course, wounded at times,
exhausted and out of energy.

Many times, the Warrior will struggle back to their feet
to take only a few steps before falling again.

Rested, they forge on, continuing the treacherous path.

The journey continues. The Spiritual Warrior stays the
course. Weakened, but never broken.

One day, the battle, loneliness and desperate fights are
over.

The sun breaks through the clouds; the birds begin to sing
their sweet melodies. There is a change in the energy.

A deep change within the self.

The warrior has fought the courageous fight.

The battle of the dark night of the soul is won.

New energy now fills the Warrior.

A new path is now laid before them.

A gentler path filled with the inner-knowing of one who
has personal empowerment.

With their personal battle won, they are filled with joy.

A new awareness that they are one with the Spirit beams
as they go forth to show others the way.

They are not permitted to walk the path for others.

They can only love, guide and be a living example of the
Truth of their being.

~Author Unknown~

http://www.overhillcherokee.com/spwarrior.htm

Falling Down

Falling Down

By David Glenn Cox
The Smirking Chimp
April 11, 2014

The media call this the Great Recession, like calling the
Titanic disaster a boating accident.

More appropriately, it should be called, The Second Great
Depression.

In a recession, the economy contracts for two or more fiscal
quarters and unemployment rises.

The effects of an economic Depression are similar, only more
extreme and prolonged.

A recession is like a head cold or the flu; but an economic
Depression is a cancer.

In a Depression, there is a disruption of credit or some other
banking crisis.

Due to high unemployment, there is also shortage of purchasing
power, which only makes the situation worse.

A recession is a cough; a Depression is choking to death on jaw
breaker, a systemic failure of the economy.

Hand wringing, prayer shawls or duct tape won’t do the trick,
something must be done, our economy has fallen and can’t get
up.

If you’re in your fifties, you probably remember learning about the
Great Depression from school or hearing, first-hand accounts about
it, from relatives.

If you were born in 1990, you probably have no recollection of
America at peace.

You have no recollection of the Cold War or when good jobs were
plentiful. No memory of big Christmases or that Uncle, who bought
a new Buick every two years.

“It’s so much darker when a light goes out than it would
have been if it had never shone.” ~ John Steinbeck

If you’re in your fifties and looking for a job, you know
what he’s talking about.

If you’re in your fifties you understand that difference.

We are the first digital generation and the last analog generation,
we remember available employment.

In 1977, I was looking for a job and buddy gave me a ride to apply
for one.

I filled out the one-page application and was hired on the spot, as I
was leaving the boss says, “Tell your friend he can have a job too,
if he can be here tomorrow at eight o’clock.”

Today its credit checks, drug tests, and “War & Peace”
job applications.

Jumping those hurdles gets you to the first interview, and then
they go talk about you among themselves for a while, before going
home to sleep on it.

If you passed that test, they call you back for a second interview;
the second interview is much like the first, only it’s the playoffs,
with much more riding on it.

The human resources department calls it, the hiring process,
I call it economic terrorism.

It isn’t you’re qualifications or abilities they question; it’s you as
a person!

They have something very rare and precious to share and they’re
not sure if you’re good enough.

If you’re in your fifties and looking for a job, you have decades of
experience.

In many cases, more than the person interviewing you and don’t
think they don’t know it. We are over-qualified in an under-
qualified job market.

Your years of experience have taught you the primary difference
between excrement and shoe polish.

But that’s unacceptable here at Tachametchi industries, a wholly
owned American subsidiary and a division of Szechwan Heavy
Industries Limited, LLC.

You think too much and that’s dangerous.

You remember when people who did a good job got raises; you
remember prosperity and might pass on that forbidden knowledge
to the young droids in sector seven, who’ve never heard of it.

You think outside the box, if Fed-X can’t pick it up today, then
call UPS, “No, you see, we have a contract with Fed X.”

Customer service is gone with the rotary dial; it’s policy
and procedure manuals now.

Article Seven, Chapter three: If the customer complains:
explain, “You’re very sorry, but it’s company policy.

Article Seven, Chapter four: If the customer complains:
about your attitude, (See Chapter three).

Can you begin to see now, just how radically dangerous we’ve
become?

Employment has moved from “I’m the boss and we all work here
together at the Acme Widget Company,” to “I’m the boss, shut up
and do as your told or else.”

There are only two options to escape from economic Depression,
either create more jobs or eliminate workers.

The second option seems to be the one chosen by the Obama
administration.

Since 2007, the suicide rate for Americans (45 to 65) has risen
dramatically, in 2010 to the highest rate among all categories.

A recession is where you lose your job and have a hard time finding
another.

A Depression is where you lose everything from a lifetime of work
and then kill yourself.

This isn’t debate about partisan politics or economic theories; it’s
a matter of life and death.

Extending long-term unemployment benefits will save lives and
families, pulling people back from the brink, instead pushing them
of over it.

This country needs a new public works project; and we need to
allow older worker’s the option of collecting full Social Security
benefits at 62 with partial benefits at 55.

Either way, it’s going to cost us, but until we deal with the crisis
of older workers, there will be no improvement.

Moving older workers out of the work force was the original
inspiration for Social Security, allowing seniors to retire with
a guaranteed income.

It was an attempt to free us from economic terrorism and a
way to give the next generation a chance to move up.

More than anything else a recession passes away, but a
Depression, defines a generation.

It changes how we think about prosperity, government and life.

It is a crisis, no less than Pearl Harbor or 9-11, leaving millions
living in a slow motion tragedy.

Millions of Americans living wounded hungry and cold, Americans
living in desperate straits, while Congress and the Administration
fail them, by looking away.

How we deal with this crisis will define us as a nation, the first
Great Depression ended in seven years, while we’re moving into
year six of the Second Great Depression, with no improvement in
sight.

“The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times
of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.” ~ John F. Kennedy

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/daveparts/55232/falling-
down

Dismantling The Corporate State

Dismantling The Corporate State

By Reginald Johnson
OpEdNews.com
April 9, 2014

America has slid into a form of "corporate totalitarianism" where
basic rights and freedoms outlined in our Constitution have been
wiped away.

The only thing that will restore our rights will be a mass movement,
similar to the labor movement and civil-rights movements of years
past, where people defy the government and engage in acts of civil
disobedience.

That's the view of one of America's leading intellectuals,
Chris Hedges, the author of numerous books on America's
social condition and a former reporter for The New York
Times.

Speaking at a recent conference on civil liberties at Central
Connecticut State University, Hedges said the establishment of
a mass surveillance system, repressive new laws and corporate
power have made democracy in the United States "a fiction."

There is only one way to turn it around.

"Reform will only come through building mass movements and
alternative centers of power that can overthrow -- let me repeat
that word for Homeland Security -- overthrow the corporate state,"
he said.

Hedges was the keynote speaker at the conference sponsored
by the Connecticut Coalition to Stop Indefinite Detention.

The gathering also featured workshops and panel discussions
on issues related to prisoners, discrimination against Muslims,
deportations, drones, unlawful detentions, and other civil-
liberties subjects.

A 20-year foreign correspondent who reported in East Germany and
Czechoslovakia under communist rule, as well as in El Salvador and
Guatemala during the civil wars in the 1980s, Hedges said the
United States is taking on many of the characteristics of the
dictatorial regimes he once covered.

Under the guise of fighting terrorism, a vast surveillance apparatus
has been set up through the National Security Agency and the FBI,
which allows the government to learn everything about you, who
you are communicating with, what your views are, what your
activities are, where you travel, and if you've had any personal
issues or problems in the past.

As whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed, the NSA sweeps up
phone calling "metadata" of all Americans as well as their emails.

The FBI, through legislation passed after 911, can secretly obtain
your personal information by issuing warrantless National Security
Letters to anyone, your employer, your bank, your doctor, your
friends, or a library, Hedges said.

They also have the technical capabilities through cell phones
and GPS systems to track your geographical movements.

Moreover, "they will store this information for perpetuity in
government computers," he said.

Additionally, under the Section 1021 provision of the National
Defense Authorization Act, the government now has the power to
arrest an American citizen simply on the basis that they might be
linked to terrorists, place them in jail, and hold them indefinitely,
without due process.

And, as has happened under Barack Obama, the President can
order the assassination of American citizens, if it is determined
such individuals are terrorists.

Hedges said that those who try to expose illegal behavior by
the government are "hunted down" and pay a heavy price.

He pointed to Chelsea Manning, an Army officer who released
military files to divulge war crimes by U.S. soldiers, and then
was tried on espionage charges; and Snowden, who released
classified files to reveal the unconstitutional NSA-spying
program, and then had to flee the country to avoid prosecution.

"This is always the way totalitarian secret-police forces work,
the SS, the KGB, the East German Stasi," said Hedges.

"Dissent is criminalized, truth is hidden."

As the laws were passed and court decisions handed down that
enabled the surveillance state, constitutional provisions such
as the 4th Amendment and its guarantee of privacy have been
shredded, Hedges said.

Hedges said many people in the legal profession should have
spoken up during this period of constitutional erosion, but
did not.

"Where are the judges, the deans of law schools, the nation's
1 million lawyers?" he asked.

"Why do they refuse to defend the Constitution?"

"They have become valued partners, along with a bankrupt press,
in a campaign to eradicate our most basic civil liberties."

While the 'war on terrorism' and 'national security' are always cited
as the reasons for the passage of the laws and judicial decisions
curbing civil liberties, Hedges sees another reason behind the
repression: Corporate Influence.

In These times of economic distress and widening inequality, the
elites in the corporate world fear potential unrest and seek control,
Hedges said.

A mass-surveillance system serves their interests.

"Totalitarianism no longer comes through communism or fascism;
it comes now from corporations," Hedges said.

"And these corporations fear those who think, write and speak out
and those who form relationships freely. Individual freedom
impedes their power and their profit."

Hedges, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the author of a dozen
books, including "Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt" and "Death
of the Liberal Class," dismissed the idea that reform of our
government and repealing anti-democratic laws will somehow
come from elected officials like Obama or members of Congress.

About the recent proposal by Obama to restrict NSA's metadata
collection, in the wake of Snowden's revelations, Hedges said at
first it seems good, "until you look at the details."

Then he said, "I ask you, how many times does Barack Obama
have to lie to you before you get it?"

He said Obama had broken a number of pledges concerning civil
liberties and constitutional matters, including the promise to close
the Guantanamo Bay prison; a pledge to revisit the Patriot Act; the
promise to shut down our "black sites"; and the promise to reverse
unconstitutional executive decisions by his predecessor, former
President George Bush.

"We got none of this. We got more untruths," Hedges said.

To restore our liberties, Hedges said, the American people
cannot look to government officials.

"It means refusing to trust in their cosmetic reforms."

"Reforms will never come from those complicit in crimes."

In the end, it will be the people who will have to bring
about change.

"We can only save ourselves. We are the people we have
been waiting for," he said.

"We must find, like Snowden, the physical and moral courage
to tear down the structures that enslave us," he said.



Reginald Johnson is a free-lance writer based in Bridgeport, Ct.
His work has appeared in The New York Times, BBC-Online, the
Connecticut Post, his web magazine, The Pequonnock, and Reading
Between the Lines, a web magazine affiliated with the Between the
Lines radio program.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Dismantling-the-Corporate-by-
Reginald-Johnson-Corporate-Rule_Corporate-Spying_Democracy_Dissent-140409-920.html

The Secret State

What if Secrecy Trumps the Constitution?

By Andrew P. Napolitano
Lew Rockwell.com
April 7, 2014

What if the National Security Agency (NSA) knows it is violating
the Constitution by spying on all Americans without showing a
judge probable cause of wrongdoing or identifying the persons
it wishes to spy upon, as the Constitution requires?

What if this massive spying has come about because the NSA
found it too difficult to follow the Constitution?

What if the Constitution was written to keep the government
off the people’s backs, but the NSA and the president and
some members of Congress have put the NSA not only on our
backs, but in our bedrooms, kitchens, telephones and computers?

What if when you look at your computer screen, the NSA is
looking right back at you?

What if the NSA really thought it could keep the fact that it is
spying on all Americans and many others throughout the world
secret from American voters?

What if Congress enacted laws that actually delegate some
congressional powers to elite congressional committees,
one in the Senate and one in the House?

What if this delegation of power is unconstitutional because the
Constitution gives all legislative powers to Congress as a whole
and Congress itself is powerless to give some of its power away
to two of its secret committees?

What if the members of these elite committees who hear
and see secrets from the NSA, the CIA and other federal
intelligence agencies are themselves sworn to secrecy?

What if the secrets they hear are so terrifying that some of
these members of Congress don’t know what to do about it?

What if the secrecy prohibits these congressional committee
members from telling anyone what they know and seeking advice
about these awful truths?

What if they can’t tell a spouse at home, a lawyer in her office,
a priest in confessional, a judge when under oath in a courtroom,
other members of Congress or the voters who sent them to Congress?

What if this system of secrets, with its promises not to reveal
them, has led to a government whose spies have intimidated
and terrified some members of Congress?

What if one member of Congress Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a Democrat
from West Virginia, wrote to then-Vice President Dick Cheney and
voiced fears that totalitarianism is creeping into our democracy?

What if he wrote that letter in his own hand because he feared he
might be prosecuted if he dictated it to a secretary or gave it to his
secretary for typing?

What if he was terrified to learn what the spies told him because
he knew he could not share it with anyone or do anything about it?

What if the NSA’s chief apologist in Congress Sen. Dianne
Feinstein, a Democrat from California, took to the only safe
place in the world where she could reveal what she learned
from the spies and not be prosecuted for violating her oath
of secrecy and there revealed a secret?

What if that place is the Senate floor, and what if, while there, she
revealed that she approved of the NSA spying on all Americans but
disapproved of the CIA spying on her staff?

What if it is unlawful and unconstitutional for the CIA to spy on
anyone in the United States, whether private citizen, illegal alien
or member of a Senate staff?

What if the equality of the branches of government is destroyed
when one of them spies on the other?

What kind of a president spies on Congress?

What kind of members of Congress sit back and let themselves
become victims of spying?

What if Congress could stop all spying on all Americans by a
simple vote?

What if Congress could stop the president from spying on its
own members with a simple vote?

What if Congress is afraid to take these votes?

What if secret government is unaccountable precisely because
it is secret?

What if the people’s representatives in government have a moral
obligation to reveal to their constituents that the president’s spies
are spying on all of us, and they, members of Congress, have not
lifted a finger to stop it?

Would we all vote differently if we knew the secrets the
government has shared with a select few but kept from
the rest of us?

What if your own representatives in the House and the Senate are
lying to you because of fear of the consequences of revealing secrets?

What if the NSA chief claimed to a congressional committee, one
of those with which he secretly shares secrets, that all this spying
has stopped 57 terror plots?

What if the next day he changed that number to three plots?

What if he has declined to say what those three plots were?

What if a federal judge found that all this spying has not prevented
any identifiable plots?

What if all this spying doesn’t work?

What if the NSA has too much data about all of us?

What if the president knowingly declined to uphold the Constitution
and instructed his spies to do the same?

What if the NSA is so accustomed to spying on all of us all the time
that it lacks the ability to obtain probable cause and to identify the
persons upon whom it needs to spy?

What if the government’s culture of secrecy and spying
has taken on a life of its own?

What if even those who started it are afraid to stop it?

What if the NSA missed the shoe bomber, the underwear bomber,
the Ft. Hood massacre, the Times Square bomber, the Boston
Marathon bombers, the coup in Kiev and the Russian invasion
of Ukraine?

What if the NSA wasted its time spying on Aunt Tillie in Des Moines
and the Pope in Rome and Chancellor Merkel in Berlin, instead of
Vladimir Putin in Moscow?

What if secrecy has replaced the rule of law?

What if that replacement has left us in the dark about
what the government knows and what it is doing?

What if few in government believe in transparency?

What if few in government believe in the Constitution?

What do we do about it?



Andrew P. Napolitano is a former New Jersey Superior Court Judge.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/04/andrew-p-napolitano/the-secret-state

The Republic For The United States Of America

The Republic For The United States Of America

By Republic For The united States of America.org
April 4, 2014

The United States exists in two forms:

The original united States that was in operation until 1860;
a collection of sovereign Republics in the union.

Under the original Constitution the States controlled the Federal
Government; the Federal Government did not control the States
and had limited authority.

The original united States of America has been usurped by a
separate and different United States Corporation formed in 1871,
which only controls the District of Columbia and it’s territories,
and which is actually a corporation (the United States Corporation)
that acts as our current government.

The United States Corporation operates under Corporate/
Commercial Law rather than Common/Private Law.

In the original Constitution and Declaration of Independence,
it refers to “these united States”.

The word “united” was an adjective describing the noun States.

That is why the lower case on united.

When the United States Corporation was formed in 1871, the united
was changed to United because the United States as a corporation
was now a noun.

The original Constitution was never removed; it has simply been
dormant since 1871.

It is still intact to this day.

This fact was made clear by Supreme Court Justice Marshall Harlan
(Downes v. Bidwell, 182, U.S. 244 1901) by giving the following
dissenting opinion:

“Two national governments exist; one to be maintained
under the Constitution, with all its restrictions;
the other to be maintained by Congress outside and
Independently of that Instrument.”

The Restore America Plan reclaimed the de jure institutions
of government of the 50 State Republics in order to restore
Common Law that represents the voice of the people and
ends Corporate Law that ignores the voice of the people
while operating under Maritime/Admiralty/International Law.

This occurred when warrants were delivered to
all 50 Governors on March 30, 2010.

The Governors refused to return to the de jure
Constitutional Republican form of governance.

We the People then elected officers and legislators
to fill the vacant seats that were abandoned in 1871.

The rewritten 1871 Constitution of the UNITED STATES
CORPORATION bypasses the original Constitution for
the United States of America, which explains why
our Congressmen and Senators don’t abide by it, and
the President (CEO) can write Executive Orders to do
whatever he/she wants.

They are following corporate laws that completely strip
sovereigns of their God given unalienable rights.

Corporate/Commercial Law is not sovereign (private),
as it is an agreement between two or more parties under
contract.

Common Law (which sovereigns operate under) is not
Commercial Law; it is personal and private.

http://www.republicoftheunitedstates.org/what-is-the-republic
/history