Pins And Needles

The line from the great Bob Dylan ballad, Lilly, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts, goes, "anyone with anysense had already left town," and that's where things stand in the Indonesian presidential election on this strangely silent night just hours before the polls open.

For those unfamiliar with the country, DKI Jakarta is an actual province of Indonesia, unlike Washington, D.C., which is a bastard child of Maryland and Virginia.  The city has a mayor and a governor, and is the home base of the president, which makes for fun budget meetings.  This little fact will come in to play in a moment, so keep it aside.

For now, let's meet the cast of characters:

In one corner, we have Prabowo, a former general and son-in-law of Suharto, who was dismissed from the army for his role in kidnapping and torturing a number of pro-democracy activists in 1998, during the fall of his daddy-in-law.  He swears he didn't kill anyone, but several of those activists have never been seen again.  Prabowo spent a decade in exile in Jordan, was refused entry to the US to see his son's graduation, and is widely suspected of having a role in the Timor L'Este massacre and the Bali bombing.

In the other corner is a populist reformer called Jokowi.  This guy was governor of Yogyakarta, then governor of Jakarta and is credited with cleaning up graft and corruption, and stream-lining governments where he has been in charge.  His oratory skills are lacking and he has, in classic political fashion, promised the Moon if elected, but he is known as a man of the people and has often been found with sleeves rolled up down among the people.

And this, as they say, is the choice.  Some background:

First, the election laws were changed a couple of years ago to say that only parties or coalitions that had achieved 20% of the parliamentary vote several months before could field a candidate for president.  Next, the law was recently changed to allow winner take all, rather than having a simple majority.  Finally, only a Muslim is allowed to be president, despite the fact that the Constitution recognizes five religions equally and there is a substantial and growing minority of the other four.

The net result is that we now have the classic left/right horse race that the PTB so enjoy, rather than true democracy.  The need for a run-off has been elminated, making it far easier to steal the election (a time-honored tradition here), and Jokowi's Chinese Christian Vice Governor in both Yogyakarta and late in Jakarta could not be on the same ticket because of his religion.  He is, however, now the first minority governor of Jakarta, which is no small feat.

The reason so many people have left/are leaving is that Prabowo has openly said that if he is not elected, he will burn the country down, if elected he will roll back the Constitution to the 1948 pre-amended version that allowed Suharto to take hold for 30 yeats, and that he doesn't think much of all this Western influence around here, though he sent his son to attend college in the States.  According to his statements, he believes that spending ten billion rupiah alone means he deserves the post, regardless of whether anyone wants him there or not.

So, as we mentioned at the outset, anyone with any sense has already left town.  Folks here are widely anticipating riots if the election doesn't go one way, and a rather dark future for Indonesia if it does go another.  The value of the rupiah has fallen 20% since the beginning of the year.  Foreign investment has beaten a path to the exit.  And local investors have been sitting on their wallets and shopping for real estate in Australia for the past three months.  It appears that not everyone is feeling confident passed today.

Oh, did we mention that Probowo's own brother, a Christian convert, has been speaking out against him and has also stated that he will leave the country if his brother is elected.

Like Janus, we sit here with one face in the future and one in the past, wondering if Indonesia will continue the reforms of the past 15 years, or throw it all out and start from square one.  It would seem that the wildly prosperous new middle class would chose to move forward, but it appears that there is still a strong backlash against just leaving people alone and letting them get about with their lives.  In short, it is a microcosm of the forces at war in the world at large.

One the one hand are the forces of fascism and iron-fisted government, and on the other are those of laissez-faire and freedom to choose one's own path in life.  It would seem that World War III will be a continuation of World War II, which itself was the direct result of World War I.  Perhaps future historians will call this period the Second Hundred Years' War.  Certainly, the Middle East mess, particularly Iraq, is the result of T. E. Lawrence's meddling at the behest of his masters in the West during WW1, and the alignment of parties worldwide is seemingly following those of WW2.  The one hacke in der sacke is the rising affluence of Asia in this sequel.

Indeed, this whole mess sounds like a PTB film franchise with everyone eagerly awaiting the explosive conclusion of the trilogy of films in this particular story arch.

One thing we can say for certain is that the internet around here has been a conplete mess for the past 24 hours, leading one to assume that someone is trying to control the flow of information to and from the outside.  We may bave to crank up TOR just to publish this installment of the Far Side saga.

In any event the results of our election here bear watching even by those with no obvious iron in the fire.  Indonesia has become a powerful force in regional events, and a growing one worldwide.  It makes for a fine canary in the coal mine for those seeking a taste of things to come.  As for us, we are firmly planted and in it for the full ride.  We suggest the proper reaction at this point is malaise-faire.

One need only look closely at the national emblem of Indonesia back at the top.  You may recognize the phoenix, commonly used by countries that are franchises of the PTB.  Further, notice the logo at his feet, which translated from Sanskrit means, "Out of many one," or e pluribus unam.  We further draw your attention to the red and white stripes of the flag, which symbolizes ownership by the British East India Company (look it up...).  That's what we're up again around here.

Perhaps we will take a further clue from Dylan's classic ballad and, "move into the corner, face-down like the Jack of Hearts."

And the winner is...

I See Your AEGIS And Raise You...

Update: I see your Su-24, and raise you a Proton-M with state-of-the-art CommSat.

A funny thing happened on the way to World War.  The bully got his pants handed to him in a most deliberate and quiet way you can imagine.  In fact, the bully was so humiliated that he ran away with his tail between his legs and all his henchmen tendered their resignations.

So what the hell am I talking about, you ask?  Great question!

First, the US Navy's officious version of it says that the USS Donald Cook, an AEGIS-class missile defense frigate, was over-flown no less than 12 times by an unarmed Russian Su-24 bombers in simulated attack runs.  Shortly thereafter, the Cook made a run for Romania and the Navy brashly and bravely called the Russians "unprofessional".

That's one side of the story, and the other side is a bit harder to dig up, but according to this post, the Russian bomber was carrying their latest electronic warfare gear.  As the Su-24 began its first pass, the AEGIS system locked on and started loading targeting information, such as speed, distance, et cetera.

Then suddenly, the screens went black.  The Su-24 wasn't just evading RADAR, it had completely shut down the Navy's star air and missile defense system, and according to some other sources out there, they couldn't reboot or get the multi-billion dollar system to respond in any way.

Seemingly corroborating the story is Zero Hedge's take, saying that the NATO partners are just a bit alarmed that their protection racket ain't worth the money spent on it, especially since it turned tail and ran just half-way into it's "reassurance" mission.

Certainly, in the days since that incident, the US has become quite a bit more subdued in its sabre rattling, as the Masters of War sit in their hidey-holes scratching their highly decorated heads wondering just what the hell happened to their vaunted "defence" system.

You see, the fun in this story is not that the over-priced, over-sold and over-reaching US military got its butt in a sling because of those 'puny backward' Russians.  It's that the Russians have just told the entire Western empire that it can be shut down very easily and within minutes.

Suppose this Russian 'scrambler' technology were mounted on satellites that could whizz by US intel and comm birds and click them off?  Suppose it were quietly set up at key internet backbone sites?  Suppose they could blind the US/NATO war-finance system with the flick of a switch?  How much of this stuff do they have and where is it?

You can just hear the awed silence in the DC and Virginia bunkers as they try to figure out just what exactly they saw happen.

Right on the heels of this incident, Premier Putin signed a bill to establish a financial clearing system completely independent of the Western banking system.  This system would likely serve Russia, China, India, South Africa, and Brazil, the so-called BRICS alliance.  So what, you ask?

Well, one thing the Western empire has had going for it was that it sat atop every international financial transaction everywhere, and they were all denominated in dollars.  Forget petrodollars, this is where the acton was, using high-speed transactions to front-run markets, manipulate FOREX and tinker with LIBOR.  If the most powerful emerging markets in the world were to suddenly yank the plug on dollar trades and clearing...Katie bar the door.

That should happen about July, according to the new Russian law.

When the US leveled sanctions against key banks in Russia, cutting off the credit card accounts of key members of the Russian inner circle, that could only be done because the West holds the keys to the SWIFT system, which handles all MasterCard and VISA transactions, as well as inter-bank and international money movements.  If you've ever transferred money to an overseas account, then you know that you need the receiver's name, bank account number and the bank's SWIFT number to do it.  Think of it as the routing address for money blips on a screen somewhere.

Hell of a lot of power to have in a few hands when you can not only see all the transactions gong on around the world, but stop them on a whim.

Hell of a lot of power you can take away if you can go around that system, too.

Now, not only has Russia shown that it can switch off the SWIFT system by killing a few key satellites and backbone servers with a switch, it has stated quite openly with a public law that it will set up its own clearing and finance system by mid-year.

Oops.

Guess the banksters shouldn't have bet so many cookies on the Ukraine.  Even worse, the oligarchs are over a barrel because the battle can now be taken to the 'high ground' of space communications, which has been the centerpiece of Western hegemony for so long.

The Russians can switch off satellites, the Chinese are releasing half-century old secrets with their little rover on the Moon, and India is going to Mars.  It's the death of a thousand cuts writ large.

The US/NATO bullies are in a position now where they must either reveal one of their secret weapons, too, or face the fact that they are at least a couple of years behind and need to get the lead out or lose their precious strangle-hold on the world.

You might have missed it.  The world changed pretty radically in the past couple of weeks.  That clap of thunder in the distance was the sound of impending doom for the Western oligarchs unless they have some nifty tricks up their sleeves that they are willing to flash now.

The problem is that the US has no manned space program and its heavy lift system is still largely untested.  They are hitching rides to the high ground with Russia, and in fact, Russia and China are the two leading space programs at the moment.  If it doesn't have some amazing technology tucked away in a 'black' closet somewhere (as many suspect), then they are in a precarious spot trying to rule the world without access to the one thing they need to do it.

It's truly amazing what one little unarmed bomber can do flying around the Black Sea on a sunny afternoon.  Hang on, though, the real fireworks should get underway any time now.

The Pyongyang Polka

You'd think that with North Korea being just a couple thousand miles from Indonesia, folks here would be all balled up in fear that at any moment the whole region would get lit up with the glow of nuclear night.

*YAWN!*

Wake me when Kim Jong-un looks serious.

You know what folks around here are really scared of?  They are scared that the US will use N. Korea as an excuse to come in an colonize the region once again.  'Colonize' because the US is a colonial power, though it may refuse to address itself as such.  And 'again' because it has taken over various parts of the South Pacific at least two other times in the past 150 years.

N. Korea is the barest slip of land sandwiched between two massive economic powers.  Because the country is little more than the jewel in the crown of a megalomaniacal family.  Granted they have a couple of nuclear pop guns, but compared to what would be raining down on their heads if they used one, even the Kim family isn't that stupid.

So they much be getting provoked.  In other words, someone is poking a stick in the hornet's nest in order to stir up the critters into a fighting mood.  And right now, there is only one power in the entire world that has shown the willingness and ability to use military might to get what it wants: Washington DC.

Now I use 'Washington DC' as opposed to 'America' because the country is not represented by its government.  The powers that slither through the halls of DC are a rogue bunch of banksters and oligarchs who have little or no connection to the average person in the rest of the country, save for the few that actually buy the propaganda, and they are relatively few.

The US, after World War 2, was the last man standing, based mostly on the fact that it had no land bridge to the rest of the world, and so was protected by the expense of projecting power that far at that time.  To a certain extent, South America enjoyed the same benefit, though it didn't have the technological infrastructure to become a surviving power at the time.

As such, the US felt it had the right of the conqueror, and to some extent the moral responsibility, to rebuild the world in its own image.  This position offered certain advantages in business dealings, which one can hardly blame them for exploiting.  And since America's culture was built on the mass-produced repeatable experience (McDonald's, Holiday Inn, etc.), it was ready-made for export to the prostrate world.  The world accepted with open arms, as something was better than nothing.

As a consequence, the US economy boomed like none before it.  Being fueled with loot and technology captured from Nazi Germany, and fanned by the City of London banksters and ex-colonialists looking to recapture past glory, the US quite easily took over the world, especially since its only major rival was the Soviet Union, whose political system was antithetical to most people's sensibilities.

All was good until the world started to recover.  By the end of the 20th century, a great many nations had grown technologically and economically to the point they were ready to find alternatives to the one-sided trade deals offered by the now-imperialistic US-UK axis.

Groups of nations found it in their interests to trade within their regional groups, thus by-passing the US-UK system of control, which tended to scrape a healthy bit of cream off the top of everything.  Enter trade blocs such as the BRICS now threatening the US-UK hegemony over world affairs.

Thus, a clash of interests.  The US-UK axis built a system in which they pictured themselves atop a global pyramid, while the rest of the world saw themselves as building a bunch of smaller pyramids where more folks could enjoy being on top.

These outsiders had copied and improved on the technology that the US-UK axis had exported when exploiting the cheap labor and lack of regulation in these client states.  As such, they had built themselves into booming economies that were increasingly outside the control of the US-UK colonialists.  Furthermore, these nations were limited by having to deal with each other in dollars, which not only gave the US-UK axis a cut of the pie, but injected control mechanisms into the burgeoning economies.

So they decided to break away and form their own trade blocs.  Perfectly reasonable and sensible under a capitalist system.  One always seeks deals that provide greater benefits to one's self.  This increases profits and overall well-being, which is the centerpiece of capitalism.

But the US-UK axis didn't see things quite that way.  They liked skimming profits from deals they had nothing to do with, and they enjoyed exerting control over nearly every transaction in the world.  Gee, who wouldn't, but that doesn't serve the interests of all parties, which again, is a central part of capitalism.

In order to protect their status, the US-UK axis had to exert force in order to maintain privilege.  Since the instrument of control was increasingly backed by nothing but hot air (i.e., the dollar), the banksters and oligarchs turned to the only tool they had left to maintain dollar hegemony -- the military.  Their chosen means of injecting their military power was to create tensions and conflicts where they didn't exist before in order to justify intervention and re-orientation.

Enter N. Korea.

It is no mistake that this latest flap in Southeast Asia occurs on the heels of the BRICS announcing the formation of a trading bank to compete with the IMF and World Bank, know as the International Development Bank.  It is little mystery that this new international bank will not trade in dollars and will actively seek the membership of as many emerging world economies as possible.

What to do if you are a US-UK bankster facing thsi sort of rebellion to your global system of control?  You could use the Libya/Egypt/Syria option, but Russia, China and India are a bit large and intimidating for that sort of direct interference.

Planted in the heart of the occident is a tailor-made situation.  The N. Korean leadership is...shall we say, unstable?  They have nukes as a result of left-over technology from Japan's WW2 development efforts.  And they have an ongoing war that has never been resolved.

Few folks think about the fact that the Korean War (1950s) never ended.  It was fought to a cease-fire, but neither side surrendered.  Thus, hostilities have simmered for lo these 60-odd years.

Enter the stick in the hornet's nest.

Stir up Pyongyang with covert threats, possibly even actual boots on the ground doing what covert ops do best.  Get Pyongyang to saber-rattle and move toys around in overtly belligerent maneuvers.  Use these events as justification to move your toys into Southeast Asia and position them in ways that would otherwise be roundly castigated.  Finally, use all the bluster and thinly veiled threats to distract attention away from other pursuits, such as, oh you know, setting up rival banks of international development that don't benefit the US-UK axis.

Sure, Kim Jong-un is a wild-eyed lunatic (runs in the family), but even he knows that people who don't eat or have productive labor soon rebel en mass.  He also knows his little firecrackers and underfed army are little match even for his southern neighbors.  The only thing that would provoke his current actions would be a direct threat.

That the aforementioned direct threat serves the purpose of the US-UK axis makes this scenario all the more credible.  There has been a low-level war going on between the US-UK and the BRICS for some time.  They poke and prod each other's defenses and test the sensitive underbellies looking for weaknesses.  N. Korea is just another poke and prod in that effort, but one designed to be a little bit hotter, so as to enable the US-UK to position some hardware in the area and demonstrate their resolve to be the only economic playground in the neighborhood.

What is disturbing about all of this is not whether or when the dollar will be deposed.  That is inevitable.  It is that all these events belie a sort of maneuvering of the global chess board for some major onslaught.  At some point, one side or the other will feel the time is right, or at least won't get better, to strike in open conflict to protect their back board.

If the US-UK axis feels that it is sufficiently losing its control over global trade and economics, it will strike at its best possible opportunity.  If the BRICS or other group grow frustrated enough and feel ready to challenge the existing structure in hot conflict, they will strike.  In the meantime, we will continue to see massive cyber attacks, regional conflicts, saber rattling, and positioning of belligerent hardware in strategic locations.

It is a given that the US-UK axis will not concede quietly.  It is also a given that the rest of the world is ready to stretch and do things their way, for a change.  These two polar opposites cannot co-exist and the boundary between them will continue to shift and change.

When one positions one's self as king of the mountain, whether in a child's game or in geopolitics, one is ripe for challenge.  Ultimately, whether game or global, the king is always toppled and new powers emerge, and they in turn are toppled as new powers emerge.  It is the nature of humanity to want to be on top even though history tells us that the top is the target.

So we close with one final question...

Have you ever noticed that every major city on the face of the planet has a China Town?

Car Wreck In Slow Motion

The smackdown has begun.

If you line up a couple of dozen headlines just right, you can see the Big Showdown coming.  There's increasing polarization along hemispheric and ideological lines.  The players are lining up for the key play that will decide the next 100 years of life (or lack thereof) on this planet.

The role of we, the audience, have been assigned is to choose sides, shut up and stay out of the way until called upon to throw our lives onto the pile.  We're supposed to buy our gee-gaws and banners, sit nicely in the stands and cheer politely for our side.  We have no role in choosing the plays or strategy.  That's beyond our simple minds and capabilities.

For the most part, we are all dead anyway.  The BurP Gulf disaster poisoned the Atlantic, and Fukushima poisoned the Pacific.  It's only a matter of time before we all start dropping like flies from a myriad of diseases and lack of safe food supply.  It's part of the design to cull the herd.  Those who survive the onslaught of environmental death will be deemed evolutionarily strong enough to breed labor stock for the master race.

You can bet that it those were not contrived events, if the master race didn't have a plan to save themselves, then the media would be absolutely beside itself getting us all riled up to fix things.  But since the silent death is their game plan, we hear only silence and condescending coos from the 'adults'.

"There, there, little useless eater.  Don't be afraid.  Just go quietly," they tell us.  Like the scene in "Saving Private Ryan," where the German soldier reassures his victim as he slides the knife between his ribs.

So, it's very easy to say these things, but what proof do we have that the Great Ideology War is coming?

China and Japan, as of today, have linked their currencies in direct trade.  Up to now, both nations have had to convert everything to dollars before paying each other for deals.  Now, the second and third largest economies on Earth have completely by-passed the dollar and started trading with each other using their own currencies.

This is historic on many levels.  China and Japan have a lot of bad blood between them.  Japan invaded China during WWII and took over a significant part of the country.  Even now, they occasionally get into dust-ups over certain chunks of ocean and some islands that have been trading hands for centuries.

This is just one of several examples over the last couple of years of China moving to create its own world order, seperate and apart from the more glitzy and famous New (very old) World Order.  They have done the same currency move with Russia, and have taken steps to cozy up with southern and eastern hemispheric countries.  In other words, China is positioning the yuan to be a world reserve currency, at least within its sphere of influence.

The US is showing its nervousness and displeasure by announcing that it is beefing up its naval presence in the South Pacific.  The US is deeply worried that China is slowly cordoning off the batteries of Western economic growth by wooing Korea, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam.  So far, Singapore is the sole redoubt of Western hegemony in Asia, but the significant Chinese population there could easily sway it the other way, especially if Western economies continue to implode leaving Singapore little choice for survival.

In answer to China's PR campaign, the West has been consolidating its interests in Africa and the Middle East.  Crashing Libya and Egypt were just the beginning.  Iran's closest ally on the Mediterranean is Syria.  There is now an all-out effort to invade and destroy Syria before launching into Iran.  If the West were to go straight into Iran, Syria would open a second front much closer to Israel, and that would be bad.

However, Russia nad China are both lining up on the side of Syria, and both have veto votes on the UN Security Council.  The West is trying hard to get Putin to play ball, but he's not buying it.  The West launched a massive campaign to discredit Putin ahead of the recent elections there, but obviously the Russian people are happy with the direction he is taking things.

Furthermore, China has been making in-roads into the US' traditional ally base with one simple tool...money.  Where the US goes in with strong-arm tactics and makes a few deals with dictators to lock up resources, China goes in with an army of engineers to construct roads and infrastructure, making friends by offering friendship and development, not fear and bombs.  As a consequence, South America and Africa have come increasingly under the sway of China, out of loyalty and respect, rather than fear and loathing.

When you place Fukushima into the context of geo-political maneuvering, it could not have been better timed or placed to undermine eastern economic growth.  Not only did it strike at the heart of any economy - energy - but it has ensured an ongoing poison pill in the heart of an economic engine that has slowly been backing away from its Western masters.

In fact, Japan has been quietly off-shoring its manufacturing and intellectual base.  They have been buying up companies, specifically factories, all over Southeast Asia.  I would not be surprised to learn that Japan has made deals vis-a-vis the 'ghost' cities in China, as part of the recent currency moves.

Interestingly, what seems to be happening at the highest levels is the same game the West used on the Soviet Union.  The USSR, bogged down in Afghanistan for a decade, was hemorrhaging money.  Reagan famously threw into the mix Star Wars and a massive military build-up, causing the USSR to bankrupt itself trying to keep up.

In a twist of fate, the same strategy seems to be in play against the West now.  China is pursuing a massive military build-up, while Russia is supplying Syria and Iran with weapons and political backing.  Concurrently, the US and EU are financially imploding in their attempts to solidify their resource bases in Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.  The tables have been turned, and by all appearances, it is working.

The EU is in complete financial decay.  It is beyond rescuing now.  The end is inevitable, though the exact landing place and time are still matters for bookmakers in Vegas and Fleet Street.  The Swiss are slowly distancing themselves.  The British are trying to cauterize the blood ties to the tumor.  Germany is pulling the drapes closed while trying very hard to appear engaged.  In fact, if you view Germany as the heart of the EU, then the situation looks just like a living organism, in that the extremities are being cast off in a bid to save the trunk.

Meantime, the US is in the midst of a St. Vitus' dance.  As promised, Ben Bernanke is all but literally taking to the skies to dump dollars on the world in a bid to puff up inflation, and thus face value.  Certainly, the dollar has been on the rise of late as the euro crashes and burns.  But this can only last until folks wise up to the fact that there is no carry value in the dollar.  As fast as you can amass them, they become worthless, much like the Mark in the Weimar Republic.

All this sets up a rally in gold, the likes of which no one has ever seen.  At the moment, it may appear counter to trend, but one must keep in mind that the gold market is the oldest shell game on Earth, and prices are being artificially lowered to, 1) prevent folks from seeing the decay in progress, and 2) to give insiders a chance to load up at bargain basement prices.  As prices drop, us little guys panic and sell off.  When the insiders are satisfied that they have a good chunk of our wealth, then they will pump gold up and trash the currencies into which you converted your metals.

In summary, what we are seeing now is the West panicking and falling into defensive mode.  The New (very old) World Order had a time-table for crashing the world and consolidating power, but there were variables that they either didn't plan for, or didn't gave low odds of happening.  They didn't figure on Russia recovering so quickly or so much, by throwing off the Rothschild banks and issuing state-controlled currency.  They didn't expect China to out-maneuver them by hedging the pile of western debt it had amassed.  They didn't expect a serious and concerted effort on the part of major power blocs to link up in a bid to create an anti-NWO, if you will.

The one economic tool left in the US' box is to repudiate the huge mass of gold bonds it has issued, especially in the eastern hemisphere, since the late 1800s.  Many Asian economies are quietly built on these bonds and pulling the plug is a last-ditch effort to let the air out of the balloon.  This is why you occasionally catch news stories about 'counterfeit' bonds being captured in Italy, the Philippines and elsewhere.  By claiming they are fake and forcefully withdrawing them, the US is trying desperately to pull its gold out from under Asia's feet.  Will it work?  Stay tuned...

What we do know, though we have to discern it from carefully stitching together a dozen loose ends, is that a chess game of monsterous proportions is playing out.  At the moment, the West has backed into defense, while the East is launching a major offernsive on the least protected flank.  Armies and navies are being pushed around the map.  Currencies are being deployed.  Propaganda has been ramped up on both sides.

As pawns, it is difficult for us to get a clear view of the board.  We can see those pieces closest to us, but which way they will go, and which ones will be sacrificed, are hard to discern.  All we can do is extrapolate by knowing what has happened, and what the overall goal of the game is.

Needless to say, whoever wins and whatever their long-term goals are, it will not be pleasant for us little folk.  We are tossed around as human resources, deployed to best advantage for the master race.  The only true and effective weapon we have is to walk away and refuse to take part in this charade.  The only way we can do that is to remove ourselves from their economies and turn off the channels of ceaseless mind-control they use to manipulate our thinking.

What have we got to lose?  We're all dead already.  Just a matter of whether we want to go with our boots on, or with bloody knees begging for scraps from their tables.

The beauty of it is, we don't have to fire a single shot or throw a single punch.  Just turn off the TeeVee and start bartering with our neighbors.  We are suffering already doing their bidding, why not chose our suffering for our own ends?

Call is return on investment.