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