Sunday, June 15, 2014

Ten for Orwellistan!

"The legal hallmark of dictatorship has always been Preventative Law -- the concept that a man is guilty until he is proven innocent..." --Ayn Rand
"Bear with us here. We are used to reacting to crime after it happens. Preventing crime before it happens is new to us and we must adapt. Prevention is now our top priority. We're learning with each new incident." --U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, CNBC, October 16, 2001, 12:45:10
Homeland Security moves forward with 'pre-crime' detection --Privacy Inc. - Declan McCullagh CNET News
"This study, just released, reveals that the U.S.government has played a major role in orchestrating most of those (399 U.S. Justice Dept. reported) terrorist plots. 94% of those cases involved pre-emptive prosecutions. That's the practice of targeting those who officials deem predisposed to committing crimes before an actual crime is committed. ...Unless there is a public outcry over government manufactured crimes, that too may become common practice to target anyone." --Marina Portnaya, Headline News, RT, June 13, 2014
There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws." --Atlas Shrugged (1957)
...approximately 40,000 new state laws took effect in the U.S. just at the beginning of 2012 alone. There are so many, even Congress can't figure out how many it passed, let alone all the laws passed by states, counties and municipalities, etc. And the rules, regulations, orders and controls promulgated by bureaucracies at every level. And remember, ignorance of the law is no excuse - - - even when there are millions of them. --But Does Peeping Tom Protect You?, by L. Reichard White
There are 100 million words of binding federal law or regulation... more than any person or business can reasonably expect to comprehend. Only a small fraction of these can be enforced - but which [fraction] changes depending on the whim of the inspector on the scene. --'The Rule of Nobody' - Washington Times
"Even if you're not doing anything wrong, you're being watched and recorded. You simply have to eventually fall under suspicion from somebody, even by a wrong call, and then they can use the system to go back in time and scrutinize every decision you've ever made, every friend you've ever discussed something with." --Whistle blower Edward Snowden: Leak of NSA spy programs "marks my end" - CBS News
Every year, thousands of upstanding, responsible Americans run afoul of some incomprehensible federal law or regulation and end up serving time in federal prison. What is especially disturbing is that it could happen to anyone at all -- and it has.... Federal law in particular now criminalizes entire categories of activities that the average person would never dream would land him in prison. --You're (Probably) a Federal Criminal, Brian Walsh - FOXNews.com, - July 21, 2009
Boston civil-liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate calls his new book "Three Felonies a Day," referring to the number of crimes he estimates the average American now unwittingly commits because of vague laws. ... L. Gordon Crovitz: You Commit Three Felonies a Day - WSJ
JEREMY SCAHILL: …you were one of only half-a-dozen members of Congress - not a single senator - to simply state on the record that American citizens have the right not to be assassinated by their own government without due process.
REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: …it's amazing that we're in an America where we have to defend the rights of Americans to be free from assassination by their own country… How long is it before some local police department uses a drone to intercept and kill a suspect, and when that becomes commonplace? --Jeremy Scahill and Dennis Kucinich: In Obama's 2nd Term, Will Dems Challenge U.S. Drones, Killings?
ALSO OF INTEREST?
"Fiat money: The historical connection to totalitarianism" | L's Little Letters
UNCOMMON SENSE: The FBI's Greatest Hits, February 26, 2012
Who Ya Gonna Call? -- LewRockwell.com
The Handschu Scam: Short & Sweet, By L. Reichard White
Brief History of a Banana Republic, Compiled by L. Reichard White
UNCOMMON SENSE: Orwellistan? Are we there yet mommy??
Bonus Army: US military attacks demonstrating American War Veterans - YouTube
What CAN happen here -- « Antiwar.com Blog
EU funding 'Orwellian' artificial intelligence plan to monitor public for "abnormal behaviour" - Telegraph
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Sunday, October 06, 2013

Freedom and the Indians

"Off goes the head of the king, and tyranny gives way to freedom. ...Then, bit by bit, the face of freedom hardens, and by and by it is the old face of tyranny. Then another cycle, and another. But under the play of all these opposites there is something fundamental and permanent - the basic delusion that men may be governed and yet be free." --H.L. Mencken
"The more I consider the condition of the white men, the more fixed becomes my opinion that, instead of gaining, they have lost much by subjecting themselves to what they call the laws and regulations of civilized societies." --Tomochichi, Creek Chief
"I am convinced that those societies (as the Indians) which live without government enjoy in their general mass an infinitely greater degree of happiness than those who live under the European governments. Among the former, public opinion is in the place of law, & restrains morals as powerfully as laws ever did anywhere. Among the latter, under pretence of governing they have divided their nations into two classes, wolves & sheep. I do not exaggerate." --Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 16 Jan. 1787
"We did not ask you white men to come here. The Great Spirit gave us this country as a home. You had yours. We did not interfere with you. The Great Spirit gave us plenty of land to live on, and buffalo, deer, antelope and other game. But you have come here, you are taking my land from me, you are killing off our game, so it is hard for us to live. Now, you tell us to work for a living, but the Great Spirit did not make us to work, but to live by hunting. You white men can work if you want to. We do not interfere with you, and again you say why do you not become civilized? We do not want your civilization! We would live as our fathers did, and their fathers before them." --Crazy Horse - Sioux
The Great Lie is that this is civilization. It's not civilized. It has literally been the most bloood-thirsty brutalizing system ever imposed upon this planet. ...Or if it does represent civilization, and that is truly what civilization is, then the Great Lie is that civilization is good for us. --John Trudell
Mary Rowlandson was taken captive [by "indians"] ...she rather shrewdly negotiated with her captors, bartered using her knitting needles to get food and ultimately to win their approbation ...And this is not that unusual. There were a number of women captives who either defended themselves, negotiated, or, extraordinarily, about a third of female captives actually chose to stay with their Indian captors, preferred the Indian life. --Author Susan Faludi on "The Terror Dream", Democracy NOW! 
Happiness is more generally and equally diffus'd among Savages than in civilized societies. No European who has tasted savage life can afterwards bear to live in our societies. --Benjmin Franklin, 1770
"We [Indians] have always been freer than the white man, even when he first came here. ...
"The white world puts all the power at the top, Nerburn. ... When your people first came to our land they were trying to get away from those people at the top. But they still thought the same, and soon there were new people at the top in the new country. It is just the way you were taught to think." --Lakota elder Dan, Kent Nerburn, Neither Wolf nor Dog, New World Library, 2002, pg.157
The BIGGER Picture:

1. What well-known institution do other founders -- and well-known personalities throughout history -- warn against? Proof! They've ALWAYS been out to get you. And they did.

2. H.L. Mencken, U.S. founder James Madison, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Henry Kissinger, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, U.S. General Douglas MacArthur, and Prof. Chalmers Johnson all explain the main factor we should fear. Can YOU find the common denominator? The REAL Fear Factor?

For the REALLY big picture, THESE articles.



Good questions, Don!

1. "What is the explanation for the greater technological progress of the less civilized Euros?" --Don Duncan

Trade. The main thing pale-face contributed to the world was the mastery of trade including "money" and double entry bookkeeping which enabled specialization and division of labor, and thus the extremely efficient production of "stuff" as George Carlin was apt to put it.

This didn't come without extreme down-side effects, however.

Also the "scientific method," basically a simple technique for asking questions -- and finding and checking the answers.

2. "Why are native Americans poor, suicide prone, and alcoholic, more than all other ethic groups?" --Don Duncan

I'm not sure "all other ethic groups" applies. As far as "alcholic" apparently there is a genetic predisposition.

As to the rest, more than likely because their basic culture -- the culture of egalitarian hunter-gatherer freedom -- was forcibly replaced with regimented, fenced-in, pale-face hierarchy. Like this:
"The white world puts all the power at the top, Nerburn. ... When your people first came to our land they were trying to get away from those people at the top. But they still thought the same, and soon there were new people at the top in the new country. It is just the way you were taught to think."
"In your churches there is someone at the top. In your schools, too. In your government. In your business. There is always someone at the top and that person has the right to say whether you are good or bad. They own you.
... "When you came among us, you couldn't understand our way. You wanted to find the person at the top. ... Your world was made of cages and you thought ours was, too. Even though you hated your cages you believed in them. ...
"Our old people noticed this from the beginning. They said that the white man lived in a world of cages, and that if we didn't look out, they would make us live in a world of cages, too." --Lakota elder Dan, Kent Nerburn, Neither Wolf nor Dog, New World Library, 2002, pg.157
3. "Why doesn't a freer, happier life translate into material wealth?" --Don Duncan

Well, to a certain extent, that question is backwards. The more important question is, why doesn't "material wealth" translate into a freer happier life?

At what might be called the "spiritual" level, there's a conflict between material goods and freedom. First, producing "stuff" requires self-discipline and takes hours from free spontaneous behavior. Further, a surplus of material goods requires not only time but also stable locations. Farms and factories for example. And then you have to maintain stuff.

Then there are the "addicitve" properties of the newest I-phone, the latest movie, hot showers, etc. which tends to "encourage" folks to spend even more hours of their lives accumulating "stuff." And/or "money" to buy stuff later.

At some point, the production of stuff should be efficient enough to free most people from the necessity of spending much time acquiring even an advanced level of "stuff."

At a talk he called, "I Dreamed I Was A Libertarian In My Maidenform Bra," L. Neil Smith suggested an 8 hour work week -- and that was July 31, 1982, at The Nevada Libertarian Party "CANDIDATE'S CONVENTION" in Las Vegas.

What went wrong? I'm sure you know. On the surface, it was this:
In the 1930s, Lord Keynes predicted that some day everyone would have a four-bedroom house, at which point, the American dream having been fulfilled, people would lose their incentive to work. Keynes believed that peoples' affluence would eventually outstrip their appetites--that their demand for goods and services would reach a plateau, beyond which the amount of money they spent would represent a smaller and smaller percentage of their income. Therefore, he argued, the government would have to adopt fiscal policies designed to keep people from hoarding too much of their income. --Unlimited Wealth by Paul Zane Pilzer, pg. 17
The banksters along with their government-gangster cronies just used that argument as another excuse to loot folks.

That affluence is exactly what's supposed to happen. But as you well know, Don, the "government" -- along with it's brown-nosers, suckups and hangers-on -- particularly the bankers -- have done quite well with adopting "fiscal policies dessigned to keep people from hoarding too much of their income." Translated, that becomss, "steal peoples' money -- and thus the hours of their lives spent earning money -- using taxation and inflation."

L. Neil was right but over-estimated the necessary work week. That difference is what the government/banking axis costs the average "citizen" who buys into the establishment bullshit. Bastiat nailed it:
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." --Frederic Bastiat
There are now two "forces" that I see likely to seriously disrupt the current "order."

1. Income disparity caused by the "Reverse Robin Hood" effect of fiat money and fractional reserve banking, and

2. Increasing automation which will make most jobs obsolete, possibly reaching a tipping point in maybe 10 years according to Pew Research -- and maybe sooner according to gonzo futurist Ray Kurzweil.

And, closely related, will the robot revolution result in R2D2 or Terminator 2?

Your guess is as good as mine as to how this will all turn out.

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Thursday, September 19, 2013

A Confession: What Central Banks are REALLY doing - - -

Ex FEDERAL RESERVE board member Kevin Warsh explains that Central banks increase prices and redistribute wealth to the rich & from the prudent to the imprudent. --CNBC, March 5, 2013 ~1min

That's "What Central Banks are REALLY doing - - -" As a result, progressives such as Robert Reich are beginning to nail the banker/government axis as "reverse Robin Hood." 

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Friday, May 24, 2013

The Federal Reserve's new whiz-bang - - -

"Forward Guidance" is the FED's main new whiz-bang financial manipulation toy. Here's what they themselves say about it - - -

With short-term interest rates at the zero lower bound, forward guidance has become a key tool for central bankers, and yet we know little about its effectiveness. Standard medium-scale ...models tend to grossly overestimate the impact of forward guidance on the macroeconomy -- a phenomenon we call the "forward guidance puzzle." The Forward Guidance Puzzle - Federal Reserve Bank of New York

So, basically, they don't know what the un-fuck they're doing with something that "has become a key tool for central bankers."

"Forward guidance" is just FED spokes-folks publicly explaining what they think they're going to do. Before this, it was unofficial, minor, and called "jawboning." Before that, the FED kept everything hidden as if they were bluffing in a high-stakes poker game.

So the future of the fiat-based world economy hangs on something of which the FED admits, "we know little about its effectiveness," our "models tend to grossly overestimate the impact," and in fact, "forward guidance" is a "puzzle."

(rofl)

I've fallen and I can't get up - - -

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Saturday, May 04, 2013

Where all the inflation has gone - - -

The U.S. Federal Reserve (the FED), in addition to setting interest rates to the lowest in history, is creating $85 billion in money-equivalent every month by buying various bonds. This is all inherently inflationary, but so far, not much inflation is showing up in the U.S. economy. Why not?

Because for the time being, it's going elsewhere - - -
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff criticized U.S. monetary policy saying it has harmed Brazil and other developing countries. Rousseff said the U.S. decision to leave benchmark lending rates near zero has created an overload of speculative money that floods into economies like Brazil.
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Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff: "Such expansionist monetary policies in and of themselves, is isolation, regarding the fiscal policies, ultimately lead to a depreciation in the value of the currencies of developed countries thus impairing growth outlooks in emerging countries." --Democracy NOW! Headlines, Tuesday, April 10, 2012

And here - - -   

Annual [Argentine] inflation, clocked by private analysts at over 20 percent... --Argentine leader's image falls as inflation soars | Reuters

Now we have this logical evolution:

Brazilian authorities are likely to tighten monetary policy faster than expected to combat resurgent inflation ...the central bank's monetary policy committee will hike rates by at least 25 basis points to 7.5% when it meets on Wednesday.
"We have passed the point of no return," said Marcelo Carvalho head of Latin America economic research at BNP Paribas, who predicted a 50 basis point hike. "Inflation has been too high too long and it's time to wake up." Brazil poised to hike rates: analysts | LatinFinance

But hey, what's a little more Krugmanite collateral damage among friends?

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Monday, April 15, 2013

What's with gold? The Bigger Picture - - -

The titular price of gold dropped about $84 dollars on Friday, April 12, 2013 in an obviously unprecedented manner. Yet, at the same time, ABN AMRO, one of the largest banks in Europe, failed to deliver the PHYSICAL gold it had contracted to deliver and defaulted, Venezuela, Germany, and apparently the Netherlands are repatriating their gold from the U.S. Fed -- and the U.S. Mint has periodically suspended sales of precious coins because of a lack of metal to cast them with.

SOMETHING is going on. Maybe it's just a normal trashing of the gold price by the government-banking axis, but to an extreme degree.

The question is, "Why NOW?"

Hopefully the answer is, "Because we've been trying to do this to protect our Keynesian zero-real-interest-rates against gold ever since it hit $1900/oz and threatened them -- and just NOW all the factors were finally right." Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Paul Craig Roberts thinks this is the case.

That's most likely.

BUT if the answer is, "We see a serious ripple in the fiat force, and we're trying to head the disaster off at the pass," they may be right. Worse, their blatantly obvious action against gold may precipitate the very disaster they fear and perhaps are even semi-aware of from history.

In that case, here's what that would likely look like - - - My Blog Former U.S. Under Secretary of Treasury Paul Craig Roberts explains what the bankster-government axis may be worried about.

According to veteran metals trader Andrew McGuire, the western banking-government amalgam, spearheaded as usual by Bankster Goldman Sachs, dumped more than an unheard of 500 tons of PAPER gold on the market late last week. And pimped, cajoled, and forced other weak hands to play along.

What's paper have to do with it? "Paper gold" merely means it was promises to deliver gold, not gold itself. Which is what makes the failure of ABN AMRO to deliver promised gold very interesting indeed.

It's directly analagous to the beginning of an old fashioned run on a bank where the bank was unable to redeem its "Redeemable in Gold on Demand" dollars -- the only Constitutional kind -- because they'd printed those redeemable I.O.U.s for more gold than they actually had. If anyone else had done that, it would be called "counterfeiting."

And because the banks are so interconnected, this isn't just a run on ABN AMRO.

AND maybe the repatriation movement, besides being interesting, is the straw that lit the fuse as Venezuela, Gremany, probably Holland, and perhaps some other countries are repatriating their gold which has been theoretically stored in the valuts beneath the Federal Resreve Bank of New York -- made famous in Die Hard With a Vengeance, the third in the series.

History? That was when France, a few other countries, and most importantly, the markets, called Uncle Scam's Bretton-Woods "London Gold Pool" paper-gold bluff by taking delivery of actual physical gold from the U.S. and its other eight dragooned central banks. In stupidly trying to again raise the market bet and cap the price of gold, Uncle airlifted a bunch of gold to London, ultimately collapsing the floor of one storage vault. But that was all to no avail. Being caught with its counterfeit shorts down, finally, on August 15, 1971, with Executive Order 11615, Nixon "closed the gold window," thus abrogating the international convertibility of the U.S. dollar to gold and finalizing the biggest default in history. So far.

P.S. As of April 14, 2013, 22:57, it looks like Goldman et.al. are still working the plan. Be interesting to see just how far they can go before the markets once again slap them upside the head.


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Thursday, December 06, 2012

The REAL Fear Factor


Can YOU find the common denominator?

Folks including H.L. Mencken, U.S. founder James Madison, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Henry Kissinger, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, U.S. General Douglas MacArthur, and Prof. Chalmers Johnson all explain the main factor we should fear.
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken
"It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad." --James Madison
"Our (U.S.) government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear - kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor - with the cry of grave national emergency ... Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind the exorbitant funds demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real." --US General Douglas MacArthur, Address to the Annual Stockholders Sperry Rand Corporation (30 July 1957)
"Today Americans would be outraged if UN troops entered Los Angeles to restore order; tomorrow, they will be grateful. This is especially true if they were told there is an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being by their world government." --Henry Kissinger, June 8, 1992, Evian, France, Media Protects Bilderberg, Spotlight.org
"It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear. While such an economy may produce a sense of seeming prosperity for the moment, it rests on an illusionary foundation of complete unreliability and renders among our political leaders almost a greater fear of peace than is their fear of war." --U.S. General Douglas MacArthur, Speech to the Michigan legislature, in Lansing, Michigan (15 May 1952).
"The easiest way to gain control of a population is to carry out acts of terror. [The public] will clamor for such laws if their personal security is threatened." --??Josef Stalin
Given this background, it is not surprising that some have seen the US failure to avert the 9/11 attacks as creating an invaluable pretext for attacking Afghanistan in a war that had clearly already been well planned in advance. There is a possible precedent for this. The US national archives reveal that President Roosevelt used exactly this approach in relation to Pearl Harbor on December 7 1941. ... Similarly the PNAC [Project for a New American Century] blueprint of September 2000 states that the process of transforming the US into "tomorrow's dominant force" is likely to be a long one in the absence of "some catastrophic and catalyzing event -like a new Pearl Harbor". This war on terrorism is bogus, Michael Meacher, MP & U.K. environment minister, The Guardian, Saturday September 6, 2003
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
"We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together." --Dwight D. Eisenhower, Military-Industrial Complex Speech, 1961, Public Papers of the Presidents, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1960, p. 1035- 1040
"Barbarian invasions would be superfluous: we are our own Huns." --Bertrand de Jouvenal
"This time his [Prof. Chalmers Johnson] tone was more alarmist, while his focus was on the way an American version of military Keynesianism was failing the country. He feared that the U.S. would be simultaneously overwhelmed by related tides of militarism and bankruptcy. ...and predicted that, in the reasonably near future, the U.S. would have to choose between remaining a democratic society or becoming a military dictatorship." --Chalmers Johnson vs. the Empire by Tom Engelhardt -- Antiwar.com
[Police Chief] Stovall told the group of almost 40 residents that beginning in 2013, the department would deploy a new street crimes unit to high crime areas on foot to take back the streets. "[Police are] going to be in SWAT gear and have AR-15s around their neck," Stovall said. "If you're out walking, we're going to stop you, ask why you're out walking, check for your ID." Arkansas Police chief says citizens could be subject to ID checks
Government officials are quietly installing sophisticated audio surveillance systems on public buses across the country to eavesdrop on passengers, according to documents obtained by The Daily. Plans to implement the technology are under way in cities from San Francisco to Hartford, Conn., and Eugene, Ore., to Columbus, Ohio. ...With the new systems, experts say, transit officials can effectively send an invisible police officer to transcribe the individual conversations of every passenger riding on a public bus. BIG BROTHER'S LISTENING - The Daily
The Pentagon has confirmed plans to deploy hundreds of additional spies overseas as part of an effort to expand its intelligence operations worldwide. The Washington Post reports the Defense Intelligence Agency hopes to use the covert operatives as part of an overall force of some 1,600 officials around the world. The proposed expansion would ultimately result in what the Pentagon aims to be an espionage network rivaling the CIA in size. It would also likely result in an increased number of deadly air strikes and other covert actions that would otherwise be subjected to congressional oversight. --Pentagon to Deploy Hundreds of Spies Worldwide, Democracy Now! December 03, 2012
William Binney, the former chief of research, the National Security Agency's signals intelligence division, describes this situation that we are in now as "turnkey totalitarianism," that the whole system of totalitarianism has been built -- the car, the engine has been built -- and it's just a matter of turning the key. And actually, when we look to see some of the crackdowns on WikiLeaks and the grand jury process and targeted assassinations and so on, actually it's arguable that key has already been partly turned. --Wikileaks' Julian Assange
Talk of imminent threat to our national security through the application of external force is pure nonsense. Our threat is from the insidious forces working from within which have already so drastically altered the character of our free institutions - those institutions we proudly called the American way of life." --General Douglas MacArthur, Speech to the Michigan legislature, in Lansing, Michigan (15 May 1952)

So tell me, what did all these informed folks think the main factor we have to fear is?

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ALSO RELEVANT:

Freedom and the Indians
What the Elders Say
The nature of "reality" via Bohr, Feynman, & Quantum Mechanics
The Essence of Government by Ostensive Definition
Governments don't aid progress, they retard it
UNCOMMON SENSE: The REAL Fear Factor
Franz Oppenheimer, The State [1919], Translator: John Milton Gitterman
The Criminality of the State - Albert Jay Nock - Mises Daily
Silicon Valley Roused by Secession Call - NYTimes.com
The End of the Nation-State? - NYTimes.com
It's not who or what you think - - -

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Tuesday, December 04, 2012

If YOU don't, who will?

We broadcast from the United Nations climate change talks in Doha, Qatar, where expectations for a binding agreement on limiting greenhouse gases are low despite global emissions at a record high. The two-week conference comes at the end of the last year that the binding emissions cuts agreed to under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol are in effect. Despite the Kyoto Protocol, a new scientific report out Sunday found global emissions of carbon dioxide reached a record high in 2011 and are likely to take a similar jump in 2012.

WAEL HMAIDAN: Well, as you mentioned, at the end of the century, we are—might face a 6-degree warming world. There is a wide scientific view that a 4-degree world will mean the collapse of human civilization... If we don’t do rapid action in the coming five to seven years, we are not going to meet our 2-degree target and come closer to a 4-degree world.
  --Climate Cliff: As Global Emissions Peak, Hopes for U.N. Climate Deal in Doha at All-Time Low <http://www.democracynow.org/2012/12/3/as_global_emissions_peak_hopes_for>
If you don't trust political bodies to fix the problem -- since the members need corporate campaign bribes to get elected -- you might consider this: Welcome to Alcohol Can Be a Gas! | Permaculture & Alcohol Can Be A Gas

And for a little more in-depth explanation, NEEDED: Unofficial Global Warming Fix | L's Little Letters

And for a suggestion for that fix, Unofficial Global Warming fix | L's Little Letters


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Thursday, September 27, 2012

Leaders vs. Rulers -- another place "we" went wrong

This is an excerpt from Kent Nerburn's "Neither Wolf nor Dog"  Mr. Nerburn and Dan, thank you!!
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

      "I want you to understand this, Nerburn. I don't think you've got it figured out. Sitting Bull was a leader. He was a real chief. People followed him because he was great. He never won any election or was appointed by any government official. That's not how you get to be a leader."

      "You're saying the policemen didn't have any real authority."

      "That's right. They were policemen because the government told them they were. Gave them uniforms and a job. It didn't have anything to do with the old way, where it was an honor you earned."


200 NEITHER WOLF NOR DOG

      "Unfortunately, that's the way the white system works, I said, though not with conviction.

      "It doesn't work too damn well," he responded. "At least for Indian people. We had a system that worked, then the white man came along with his elections and laws and now we've got one that doesn't. They should have left us alone."

      "So why doesn't it work?"  I asked. I was curious to hear Dan's ideas on government.

      "Aw, it's too complicated to explain," he said. "You've got to know too much about the old days."

      "No. Try me," I said. "I'm interested."

      He heaved a weary sigh and held his two hands up like a man comparing the weights of two different objects.

      "There are leaders and there are rulers. We Indians are used to leaders. When our leaders don't lead, we walk away from them. When they lead well, we stay with them.

      "White people never understood this. Your system makes people rulers by law, even if they are not leaders. We have had to accept your way, because you made us Indians make constitutions and form governments. But we don't like it and we don't think it is right.

      "How can a calendar tell us how long a person is a leader? That's crazy. A leader is a leader as long as the people believe in him and as long as he is the best person to lead us. You can only lead as long as the people will follow.

      In the past when we needed a warrior we made a warrior our leader. But when the war was over and we needed a healer to lead us, he became our leader. Or maybe we needed a great speaker or a deep thinker.

      "The warrior knew his time had passed and he didn't pretend to be our leader beyond the time he was needed. He was proud to serve his people and he knew when it was time to step aside. If he won't step aside, people will just walk away from


201 LEADERS AND RULERS

him. He cannot make himself a leader except by leading people in the way they want to be lead.

      "That's why Sitting Bull was a leader. He was needed by the people and the people followed him. He was brave. He was smart. He knew how to fight when he had to. And he understood what the white man was all about. People saw that he could not be tricked by the white man, so they followed.

      "That's why the U.S. government hated him so much. It wasn't just that he set a trap for Custer. Anyone could have done that. It was because he was a leader and people listened to him, and he wouldn't listen to the U.S. government. He listened to the needs of his people."

      I nodded my assent.

      Dan continued. "If people didn't want to follow his way, that was fine. They could follow another way. That's what happened with Gall. He'd fought with Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse against Custer. But he decided he had to work with the white people if he didn't want all the Indians to be killed. So he left and went his own way. I think he was wrong, but that was his choice. If enough people had decided not to follow Sitting Bull, then he wouldn't have been a leader anymore. But people still followed him, so he stayed a leader."

      "It sounds Utopian," I said.

      Dan looked perplexed. "Perfect," I amended.

      "It wasn't perfect. But it sure as hell worked," he went on. "That was the Indian way. A person wasn't a leader because they got votes. They were a leader because the people would follow them. The same with teachers."

      The example seemed pointed. I imagined he was thinking about me teaching Indian children at Red Lake while I was too obtuse to understand why a hundred-year-old grievance should determine the way you greet a stranger. "A person wasn't a teacher because they had been elected or got a certificate. They


202 NEITHER WOLF NOR DOG

were a teacher because they knew something and were respected. If they didn't know enough, they weren't teachers. Or if we didn't need to know what they knew, we didn't go to them. Now you send us teachers and you tell us to send our children, when we aren't even sure what the teachers know. We don't even know if they are good people who will build up the hearts of our children. All we know is that they are teachers because someone gave them a piece of paper saying they had taken courses about teaching. Do you follow me?"

      "Yes," I said, almost adding, "more than you know."

      "What we want to know is what kind of person they are and what they have in their hearts to share. Telling us they have a paper that lets them teach is like putting a fancy wrapping on a box. We want to know what's in that box. An empty box with a fancy wrapper is still an empty box.

      "We just don't like people standing in front of us and telling us what to do. Teachers, governments, anything else. We will say who our leaders are. They can't make themselves leaders and laws can't make them leaders for us.

      "Those police who shot Sitting Bull, they got scared. They were like little children who were afraid they would be punished if they didn't do what the false leaders said. They thought they wouldn't get food. So they did what the false leaders - the law leaders - said, even though they knew it was wrong.

      "There are all these stories about how the police were crying when they shot Sitting Bull. If they thought it was wrong, they shouldn't have shot him. They should have listened to their real leaders, not to their law leaders. They didn't understand the difference between leaders and rulers."

      As usual, Dan had wound his way through the hills and valleys of his own logic to arrive at a destination.

      "I understand why people followed Sitting Bull," I said. "But he was a chief. Didn't people have to follow a chief?"


203 LEADERS AND RULERS

      "The chiefs weren't like that," Dan answered. "They had to earn their respect. At least with our people. You might be a chief because your father was a chief, but if you were a coward or not a good man, people would just move away from you. You would be a chief only to yourself. To be a chief you had to be a leader.

      "You know, this was a lot of the problem with the treaties. Lots of times our real leaders didn't want to sign the treaties. But your government needed to have a piece of paper, so they found an Indian who would sign a piece of paper and they told him he was a leader. Maybe he was from our tribe, but he wasn't a leader unless we all said he was. He couldn't sign that piece of paper any more than someone down the street can sign a piece of paper giving away your house. These men were false chiefs. They were law chiefs, made up by white people who needed one Indian to speak for everybody.

      "But no real Indian leader would try to speak for everybody before hearing from everybody. He might get the elders together, or the council of chiefs. It depended on the tribe.

      "Then they listened to everyone. Everyone could speak. If someone didn't like the decision that was made, they could leave. If the chief made a decision enough people disagreed with, they could make another chief. All they did was move their tepees near to the new man's, and he was their leader.

      "I would rather we had this old way, where the wisest people got together and discussed. If there was one person in the tribe who knew more than any other, he was raised up.

      "But now you make us do it differently. You tell us we have to elect a leader to represent us, and he has to represent us in everything. He is supposed to be wise about everything because he is responsible for everything. Even if we don't want him to speak for us on some matter, he gets to because it says so in the constitution you made us write.


204 NEITHER WOLF NOR DOG

"That is not the way it should be. Good leaders wait to be called and they give up their power when they are no longer needed. Selfish men and fools put themselves first and keep their power until someone throws them out. It is no good to have a way where selfish men and fools fight with each other to be leaders, while the good ones watch.

      "You made us follow this way, so now we have no government worth the name. Our leaders have no power; our rulers are not leaders.

      "That is why Sitting Bull was great. He did not rule. He led."

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = 

This is an excerpt from Kent Nerburn's "Neither Wolf nor Dog"  Mr. Nerburn and Dan, thank you!!




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Monday, August 20, 2012

The OTHER "Trickle-down" theory

The "trickle-down" theory is that if you reduce taxes on the rich, that money will "trickle down" in the form of jobs to the less rich.  The OTHER "trickle-down" theory is that if you give that tax money to the government, it will "trickle down" to the less rich.  --L. Reichard White, Monday, August 20, 2012 3:45 AM


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Monday, July 23, 2012

Where Wars Do -- and Don't Come From

Where wars DO come from:
Why of course the people don't want war. ... That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along --Head NAZI Hermann Goering

"It is not civilizations that promote clashes. They occur when old-fashioned leaders look for old-fashioned ways to solve problems by rousing their people to armed confrontation." --Kenichi Ohmae, The End Of The Nation State, (New York: The Free Press 1995), p. 11.
Mr. Bertie Felstead: "A German began singing All Through The Night, then more voices joined in and the British troops responded with Good King Wencelas... the next morning, all the soldiers were shouting to one another, "Hello Tommy, Hello Fritz" ... The Germans started it, coming out of their trenches and walking over to us. Nobody decided for us - we just climbed over our parapet and went over to them, we thought nobody would shoot at us if we all mingled together... There wouldn't have been a war if it had been left to the public. We didn't want to fight but we thought we were defending England." England's Oldest Man Remembers The 1915 Christmas Truce
People do not make wars; governments do. --U.S. President Ronald Reagan
President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials... made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. ...an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that ...led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses. --Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith, False Pretenses: Iraq THE WAR CARD Orchestrated Deception on the Path to War, www.publicintegrity.org
Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder. ...The feudal barons of the Middle Ages, the economic predecessors of the capitalists of our day, declared all wars. And their miserable serfs fought all the battles. The poor, ignorant serfs had been taught to revere their masters; to believe that when their masters declared war upon one another, it was their patriotic duty to fall upon one another and to cut one another's throats for the profit and glory of the lords and barons who held them in contempt. And that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose--especially their lives. ...the working class who freely shed their blood and furnish the corpses, have never yet had a voice in either declaring war or making peace. It is the ruling class that invariably does both. They alone declare war and they alone make peace. Yours not to reason why; Yours but to do and die. That is their motto ... The Anti-war Speech That Earned Eugene Debs 10 Years in Prison, Socialist Party convention in Canton, Ohio, 16 June 1918

By contrast, where wars DON'T come from:

...we preferred hunting to a life of idleness on our reservations. At times we did not get enough to eat and we were not allowed to hunt. All we wanted was peace and to be left alone. Soldiers came and destroyed our villages. Then Long Hair (Custer) came...They say we massacred him, but he would have done the same to us. Our first impulse was to escape but we were so hemmed in we had to fight. - Crazy Horse/Tashunkewitko
The Aztec strategy of war was based on the capture of prisoners by individual warriors, not on working as a group to kill the enemy in battle. By the time the Aztecs came to recognize what warfare meant in European terms, it was too late. - Aztec
New England's first Indian war, the Pequot War of 1636-37, provides a case study of the intensified warfare Europeans brought to America. Allied with the Narragansetts, traditional enemies of the Pequots, the colonists attacked at dawn. ... The slaughter shocked the Narragansetts, who had wanted merely to subjugate the Pequots, not exterminate them. The Narragansetts reproached the English for their style of warfare, crying, "It is naught, it is naught, because it is too furious, and slays too many men." In turn, Capt. John Underhill scoffed, saying that the Narragansett style of fighting was "more for pastime, than to conquer and subdue enemies." Underhill's analysis of the role of warfare in Narragansett society was correct, and might accurately be applied to other tribes as well. Through the centuries, whites frequently accused their Native allies of not fighting hard enough. -James W. Loewen, LIES MY TEACHER TOLD ME, (New York, NY: Touchstone 1996), p. 118
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Thursday, July 19, 2012

Which side of the same party will you vote for?

"The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to the doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can 'throw the rascals out' at any election without leading to any profound or extreme shifts in policy." --Carroll Quigley, U.S. President Bill Clinton's mentor, "Tragedy and Hope," pg. 1247, 1966AD
"In the US, there is basically one party -- the business party. It has two factions, called Democrats and Republicans, which are somewhat different but carry out variations on the same policies. By and large, I am opposed to those policies. As is most of the population." --Noam Chomsky


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Wednesday, July 04, 2012

WE'RE NOT CELEBRATING THE U.S. CONSTITUTION

Remember -- WE'RE NOT CELEBRATING THE U.S. CONSTITUTION TODAY, we're celebrating THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.  It was the Declaration, establishing true freedom from King George's repressive tyrannical government that was signed on July 4, 1776.  The U.S. Constitution, establishing a different repressive tyrannical government, wasn't signed until a little over eleven years later on September 17th, 1787.  --L. Reichard White, Wednesday, July 04, 2012 11:52 AM



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Monday, April 23, 2012

Orwellistan? Are we there yet mommy??

Well, are we??

Unfortunately the stuff below only starts with impeccable Democracy Now and from three nearly impeccable guests:
1. William Binney, an NSA whistle blower who worked as a manager there for more than 30 years,
2. Jacob Appelbaum, a TOR and privacy software designer and activist
3. Laura Poitras, an Oscar-nominated anti-war filmmaker intimidated by Uncle ~40 times because she is.
--Whistleblower: The NSA is Lying-U.S. Government Has Copies of Most of Your Emails  http://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/20/whistleblower_the_nsa_is_lying_us
--Exclusive: National Security Agency Whistleblower William Binney on Growing State Surveillance   http://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/20/exclusive_national_security_agency_whistleblower_william
--Detained in the U.S.: Filmmaker Laura Poitras Held, Questioned Some 40 Times at U.S. Airports  http://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/20/detained_in_the_us_filmmaker_laura
--"We Do Not Live in a Free Country": Jacob Appelbaum on Being Target of Widespread Gov’t Surveillance  http://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/20/we_do_not_live_in_a
And another interview with Mr. Binney:
--NSA Whistleblower: U.S. Assembling Information On Every U.S. Citizen

And here's a good measure of just how pervasive Orwellistan U.S.A. has already become:
--Confirmed: New Nationwide "Trapwire" Surveillance System Is Actively Recording, Monitoring Everything

--WIKILEAKS: Surveillance Cameras Around The Country Are Being Used In A Huge Spy Network - Business Insider

Then there are the USA domestic spy-drones:
--These Police Surveillance Drones Could Be Watching You Right Now - Business Insider


And, perhaps, even more "interesting" tools and techniques:

--14 Incredibly Creepy Surveillance Technologies That Big Brother Will Soon Be Using To Spy On You - BlackListedNews.com
Don't even have an appropriate closing.  Maybe - - - 

"Of course you're free. Now shut-up     ---    if you want to stay that way."

r.

P.S. Great weather!  How about those Cubbies!  I think I'll plant zucchinis again this year.  Do you guys like pizza as well as I do?  

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Wednesday, December 21, 2011

The OTHER police state - - -

With the death of Kim Jong Il, everyone was reminded of the North Korean police state. But what about the OTHER police state - - -
Study: One-Third of Young People Will Be Arrested Before Age 23
Another study found about one-third of young people [in the U.S.] will be arrested before they turn 23. The study examined arrests - not including minor traffic violations - for kids ages eight to 23. Researchers said they found between 30.2 percent and 41.4 percent had been arrested. --DemocracyNOW! Headlines for December 20, 2011

And that's BEFORE the indefinite detention of Americans without charges or trial enshrined in the so-called "National Defense Appropriations Act."

That OTHER police state also treats its unjailed kids well - - -
Study Finds 1.6 Million Children Homeless in 2010
In other economic news, a study has found 1.6 million children in the United States - or one in 45 kids - were homeless last year. The National Center on Family Homelessness said its study is a "call to action for all of us to address child homelessness before we lose another generation." The group said the child homelessness rate has jumped 33 percent since 2007. --DemocracyNOW! Headlines for December 20, 2011


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Monday, October 17, 2011

The nature of "reality" via Bohr, Feynman, & Quantum Mechanics

"You decry "states", forgetting that without existing in a "state" you have no existence whatsoever (I am referring here to your earlier comment on how the root word "state" means "static" or unchanging)...that which is not in some recognizable state is an undefined cloud of random nothingness." --Greg

I see where the problem lies.

"States" are never unchanging -- except in someone's imagination. Those Rocky Mountains are slowly weathering away and in the distant future will be old worn down mountains like the Appalachians out east (which, aeons ago, were the tallest mountains in Earth's history), etc. We may, in such cases, ignore the changes which are, none the less, always occuring in everything and ASS-U-ME that the changes don't matter for current purposes -- and hope that assumption is right. None the less, the changes are, as any first year science student should be able to tell you, still occuring whether we like it or not.

And most folks don't like it. It makes them feel insecure. So, many seek the false security of an "unchanging condition" AKA, "state," which simply can't exist. And sometimes that imaginary concept metastasizes into a political "State."

As the Niarga River inexorably eats away at the bedrock beneath, Niagra Falls moves upstream from 3.5 to 7 feet per year. As a result, during its lifetime, the falls has moved about seven miles upstream. That's why it's where it is today. And, unsurprisingly, there is an organization that wants to stop the process. Lots of luck with that.

Like it or not, universal change is solidly based on established principles of Physics -- and is a basic tenet of General Semantics.

The most basic level models we have of "reality," especially quantum mechanics, indeed tell us everything is pretty much "an undefined cloud of random nothingness." Einstein didn't like this a bit. Neither did seminal quantum physicist Neils Bohr.

Which is probably why he quipped, "If you are not surprised by quantum mechanics then you have not understood it." And, further, likely as a result,

"Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future." --Seminal quantum physicist Niels Bohr

Another legendary physicist, Richard Feynman, agrees with Bohr about Quantum Mechanics - - -

"I think I can safely say that nobody understands Quantum Mechanics." --Richard Feynman
Since quantum models show "reality" to be pretty much "random nothingness" -- and have been reluctantly accepted by main-stream physics -- this probably explains another of Feynman's famous quotes - - - 
"I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything"... --Richard Feynman

At this point, either you "get" it or you don't.

It took me six months of intensive discussion with one of my friends before he "got" it. Another read "People in Quandaries" and "got it" pretty much on his own. It's not easy either way.

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Wednesday, October 05, 2011

Fascism = Socialism = Totalitarianism

Socialism, once it gets bigger than face-to-face , gets taken over by those who follow the Golden Rule -- as in "he who has the gold makes the rules." SEE "Capture Theory," for example. Today, the catch-phrase is "public-private enterprise." Normally that morphs into full frontal Fascism (partnership between business & government), as confessed by, among others, the Nazis.

But "NAZI," the acronym for Hitler's so-called fascists, stands for "Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei" or "National Socialist German Workers' Party," defining fascism and national socialism to be one and the same.

These supposedly "fascist" Nazis originated the Volkswagen, translated literally as "People'sWagon," a name one would expect to be more at home with avowed socialists. With an apparent flash of insight, head Nazi Joseph Goebbels, in a letter to a Communist leader, assured him that "Nazism and Communism are really the same thing. You and I are fighting one another, but we are not really enemies," he wrote according to William L. Shirer in his The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, (Greenwich: Fawcett Crest, 1959)

The "same thing" in the case of "Nazism and Communism" is a centralized totalitarian state which, as history proves again and again, results in death, destruction, misery, and disaster for it's citizens no matter which way it starts out.

The common denominator of "socialism" and "fascism" is that once you create a "government" it is eventually taken over by the moneyed interests and those with political influence and hierarchical tendencies -- which guarantees application of The Iron Law of Oligarchy.

These folks don't care what you call them, in fact it often serves them well to pretend "socialism." Being the power whores they are (don't mean to insult sex-workers), they'll take the power and money any which way they can.

As the quip goes, "When you go to bed with government, you get more than a good night's sleep." It doesn't matter too much whether they claim they're socialists or fascists -- invite a government into your bed and you'll likely end up with a seriously painful and persistent case of herpes in undesirable places. And, eventually, totalitarianism.   

ALSO RELEVANT:
What the Elders Say
--L. Reichard White, Wednesday, October 05, 2011 3:52 PM

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Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Nature of the Beast

"In India, the word public is now a Hindi word. It means people. In Hindi, we have sarkar and public, the government and the people. Inherent in this use is the underlying assumption that the government is quite separate from 'the people.' ...Even today, fifty seven years on to the day, the truly vanquished still look upon the government as mai-baap, the parent and provider. The somewhat more radical, those who still have fire in their bellies, see it as chor, the thief, the snatcher-away of all things." --Arundhati Roy, Public Power in the Age of Empire

"I discovered that in our country [Pakistan] there's a tiny elite who has usurped the resources of the whole country. The whole country panders to this tiny elite. By the way, I belong to them. And the rich are getting richer. And the vast majority of people don't even have basic rights.... what is happening is, the elite has basically captured the government. Whether it's one party or the other, basically the interests are the same. And so, they come into government, and they plunder the country. They usurp the resources. And so, common people are deprived of all the basic needs..." --Pakistani Opposition Leader Imran Khan, January 30, 2008

"Government is not eloquence, it is not reason; it is force, and like fire, makes a dangerous servant and a fearful master." --George Washington


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Sunday, February 06, 2011

The revolution HAS been scheduled

It's Februay 6, 2011, Super Bowl Sunday.  The middle-east uprisings are in full swing. Especially in Egypt.

The Egyptians are poorer than we are, had  undergone Mubarak for 30 years, and believed they would never escape the totalitarian yoke. But that was 12 days ago.

In 1987 I was traveling with Monica, a Polish girl from behind the "Iron Curtain...." We had many discussions about the, at the time, Russian "Evil Empire." She believed the hated "soviets" were solidly in control -- and would stay that way for the foreseeable future, perhaps 1,000 years.

I'd read "Can The Soviet Union Survive Until 1984" by a Russian dissident and so I questioned her  assumptions. She held firm.

About two years later in Nov. Dec. 1989, the Germans tore down the most prominent expression of the  "Iron Curtain," the "Berlin Wall." Monica told a lot of her friends about our discussions, and as a result, I got the mostly undeserved reputation among my Polish friends of being a savvy if unconventional social historian.

I just recorded John Kerry, appearing on Meet the Press, trying to explain why the CIA was caught flat-footed in anticipating the timing of the Egyptian uprising. He correctly observed that it's impossible to predict such things.

So, the Second American Revolution HAS been scheduled - - - it's just that no one knows exactly when.



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Monday, January 17, 2011

RE: Revolutions

I've got good news and bad news:

The good news is that revolutions are usually bloody, chaotic events where innocent people die, dreams are smashed, and no one in their right mind wants one.

The bad news is that revolutions are caused by those in power who think of themselves as "governors."
And they quite regularly don't know -- or try to ignore -- this observation:
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." --U.S. President John F. Kennedy
These "governors" finally abuse this power to such an extent that, despite prudence -- and "that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed," mankind finally abolishes them anyway.

More bad news: A new crop of "governors" will immediately try to take over as per
"Good intentions will always be pleaded for any assumption of power. ...There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters." --Daniel Webster
And this - - -
"Within any society, there appears to be a minority that thinks in terms of power and measures the worth of all actions in terms of whether they increase the personal reach of the actors and increase their capacity for control. This is why practically every society of any size is hierarchical, and why hierarchy is never eliminated, only replaced by a different hierarchy -- the same wine in a new bottle."  --Steven Yates, TAKING THE RED PILL, THE REAL MATRIX, PART 3, December 7, 2004, NewsWithViews.com

"The Who" got it exactly right - - - 


For example:
 --Egypt's military keeping repressive practices in place - The Washington Post
and,
I think many people realize that with this election and with this supposed transfer of power, that we still have a long way to go, that the essential institutions of the state have not been reformed whatsoever, that the military has not been reformed, the police, the security and intelligence agencies have not been touched, that really we didn't have regime change in Egypt, we had change within the regime. --Egypt Votes: Sharif Abdel Kouddous Reports from Cairo on Historic Post-Mubarak Election
This will likely continue until we catch on to The Iron Law of Oligarchy.

There IS an answer.
What is it?
Need a hint?
I am convinced that those societies (as the Indians) which live without government enjoy in their general mass an infinitely greater degree of happiness than those who live under the European governments. Among the former, public opinion is in the place of law, and restrains morals as powerfully as laws ever did anywhere. Among the latter, under pretense of governing they have divided their nations into two classes, wolves and sheep. I do not exaggerate. --Thomas Jefferson
And a bit more motivation? 
It's not who or what you think - - -
Ten for Orwellistan!
The REAL Human Condition:.
You're NOT the way they told you you are
Freedom and the Indians
What Went Wrong With the World-wide Socialist Revolutions?
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