A Toast To Your Health

What with the US Congressional battle heating up over the so-called "Obamacare" debacle, now is as good a time as any to attack the entire concept of socialized healthcare.  The entire notion of government running anything, much less something as intimate and important as healthcare, is about as insane as it gets.  Furthermore, healthcare is not a right, it is a commodity that can be purchased based on one's needs and desires.

Over the past half-century or so, it has become almost axiomatic that individuals have a "right" to healthcare.  You don't.  You have a right to access and purchase any product or commodity you deem appropriate to your health and happiness, but it is not a right, as such.

The first thing wrong with socialized healthcare is that it places in the hands of government the decision on who gets how much of what healthcare.  Not only is this situation completely anathema to a "right," it allows government to determine what constitutes "healthcare" and how much of what treatments and cures one can receive.  In other words, it makes healthcare a privilege apportioned by a remote and faceless bureaucracy, not a right.

Socialized healthcare forces every individual to pay for every other individual's healthcare.  I chose to smoke and drink alcohol despite the copious warnings about the health risks because I deem the activities a necessary part of my pursuit of happiness.  It is my right to do so and I exercise it at every opportunity.  By the same token, I do not have a right to force anyone else to pay for the health consequences, should there be any.

I have knowingly accepted certain risks in order to obtain enjoyment.  If I should develop lung disease or liver cirrhosis, that is my responsibility and the treatments - should I choose to accept them - are my expense and no one else's.  By extension, I also have the choice of what treatments I seek and how much I am willing to pay for them.  However, none of these personal choices implies the responsibility of anyone else to help cover the cost, nor does it give the right to anyone else to choose the treatments for me.  Nor do I have the right to expect anyone else to cover my costs for treatment.

Let's take cancer as an example.  If I develop the disease, there are many types of treatment available, such as Chemo-Radiation, Herbal, Homeopathic, Acupuncture, etc.  Because I have been forced by law into a government-controlled healthcare program that only allows and will pay for Chemo-Radiation treatment (because some lobbyists paid-off a bunch of legislators), my right to choose is immediately withdrawn.  This is not to mention the fact that my payments into the system were extracted from me at the point of a gun in the first place.

Exactly where in the above scenario does my right to healthcare come in?  I was forced to pay into the system, forced to choose only one of several treatment options, and in many cases, I can be forced to take the treatment even if I opt to just die rather than go through the horrors of Chemo-Radiation.

At no point in all of this have I exercised a right.  I have either been granted a privilege, or forced to accept a product I don't want.  Thus, the whole concept of a "right" to healthcare is completely null and void, since a right invokes a choice on the part of the individual.

Arguing further into this problem, suppose I am a gang-banger on the mean streets of Chicago.  I have chosen, as is my right, to engage in a lifestyle that has a high mortality rate.  I know this; you know this.

One night, I am involved in an altercation with other gang-bangers and I get shot.  Do I have a right to force you to pay for my lifestyle choice that led directly to my getting shot?  By the same token, if I have the right to force you to pay, then don't you have the right to force me to choose another lifestyle in order to save your out-of-pocket expenses for my care?  Once force enters any part of the equation, we are no longer discussing rights.

Ultimately, this discussion strikes at the root.  So much of what we call modern society does not involve rights.  It is symptomatic of the century-long effort to remove personal responsibility from the free individual.  Frighteningly, many individuals willingly surrender their rights because they don't want personal responsibility.  They would rather remain child-like their entire lives, free of long-term ownership of their choices and actions.

As part of my right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, I have the right to smoke and drink to my heart's content, but if I develop lung disease or liver cirrhosis, then I must also be willing to accept responsibility for that outcome.  This goes for any personal choice.

If I choose to surrender my personal freedom to a remote faceless bureaucracy in order to remove my personal responsibility, then so be it.  But I should not be forced to participate in that system if I so choose.  At the core of this argument is the fact that much of what we consider society is compulsory adherence to someone else's idea of what I should be doing.

I have no problem with a government-administered healthcare program that is voluntary, like any insurance scheme.  Anyone who wants to join it may do so, and they can share the costs of every other member's stupidity.  But do not force me to join the scheme, nor force me to join any other scheme.  If I die in the gutter of cirrhosis because I don't have a health plan or a family that cares for me, then that is the result of my choices and I take full responsibility for it.

Related to that, if I gather 100 people who contract with each other to pay into a fund each month, and we establish a Board of Directors and a set of rules for payout, why should I have to license or register this private fund with any government entity?

Additionally, if I choose to combat a cancer by smoking big-ass hog-leg joints of weed, sucking down herbal potions and sticking needles in my nerves, what the hell business is it of anyone else to tell me I can't?  My medical situation is a direct result of my actions, and the treatment and costs should also be my choice.

As the new US Congress get down to fisticuffs and name-calling, which is the modus operandi of US politics, one can hope that they opt for individual freedom and responsibility.  I have no problem with Obamacare per se.  Anyone who trusts government enough to administer their money and healthcare should be free to sign up, but for god's sake, leave me out of it.  I don't want it.  I don't trust it.  And I sure as hell don't want to pay for anyone else's lifestyle choices, nor do I expect anyone else to pay for mine.

Most of all, the best thing the Congress could do is get the hell out of everyone's lives, legalize and deregulate all herbs and remedies, and let people make their own choices.  Sure, a lot of people will scream and holler.  These are the people who want to remain child-like the rest of their lives and nothing short of round-the-clock coddling and cradle-to-grave Big Mommy will make them happy - may, not even that will be enough.  Let them form their own corporate entity and pay for their own "security."

This problem and a vast number of other societal ills are all related to an out-of-control System that we have argued many times needs to be completely dismantled - lock, stock and two smoking barrels.
There is no repairing this mess because the underlying assumptions are themselves faulty.  Any attempt to do repair a faulty system will only make it worse.  The ony real solution is personal freedom of choice and personal responsibility for those choices.  Period.

BTW, do a google for "images healthcare."  When, exactly, did the color blue become the "official" color for healthcare?  Every single damn image is blue!

Participating In Your Own Demise

A THOUGHT: How about a mass movement to rescind Obama's Peace Prize?  Might send a pretty loud message!  Something to consider...

Back in my idealistic youth, when I used to think it was worth fighting 'the system', I was arrested a lot for exercising my right to travel.  Didn't matter, since I always won in court, but it did give me quite an insight into the world of the police state.

Back then, in the early 1990s, I was being transported from one jail to another (just to give the lazy bastards something to do).  The cop drove most of the way at 90+ miles per hour down city streets, and at a red light that he couldn't run, he spotted an attractive young woman in the car next to us.  He delayed a bit at the green light and typed her license plate into his on-board computer, getting her vital stats and home address, among other things.

Supposedly, this type of thing was supposed to be illegal.  But so was careening at high speed down city streets when there was no emergency.  He did it because he could.  He had power, and who was going to do anything about it?  His colleagues who were doing the same thing?

You see, that's the thing about having power - the temptation to use it is overwhelming.  Especially when the only people who can stop you are doing the same thing.

When the NSA was given the power to spy on everyone, foreign and domestic, all that did was legally sanction what they had been doing for decades.  Snooping on people's private lives is what the CIA and NSA were designed to do from the get-go.  The FBI was doing it on American citizens since it was founded.  That agency was used by presidents to keep tabs on various critics and J. Edgar Hoover's files have been 'discovered' many times over the years.

It all started with drivers' licenses.  That one item allowed state governments to build databases of photos, vital stats, home addresses, and signatures.  Those files were appended with any notes and records the state cared to keep on you.  Then a law back in the 80s authorized the states to share that information with each other and the feral gummint in the name of catching 'deadbeat dads'.

They always couch these things in terms of a greater good: licensed drivers (safe roads), deadbeat dads (The Children), mass shootings (gun control), terrorism (snooping).  And it doesn't matter the original intent.  It only matters that they have the information and can use it with impunity for any purpose.

What's more, the NSA and its ilk have all the latest high-tech stuff, including super-computers and massive backbone internet lines.  If Goldman Sachs has the ability to front-run stock market trades, then you can bet the NSA has it.  In fact, it was probably developed for the government's crash prevention efforts, but with that kind of power lying around, who needs Iran-Contra to fund your black projects?  Just play the market for a day or two and *POOF*, you have tons of money to fund coups, secret incursions and any other hobbies you have picked up over the years.

Just like the cop I saw illegally getting information on a private citizen just because he took a liking to her, being able to manipulate markets for personal and departmental profit, not to mention just for the hell of it, would be a rather tough temptation to resist.  If you could push a button and make the stocks in your 401(k) skyrocket, would you think to yourself, "No, that wouldn't be ethical, even though all my co-workers are doing it and getting rich."

The fact is that ANY power in the hands of government is destined to be abused, as history shows.  Things as innocuous as census questionnaires and passports are being used to delve into people's personal lives and track/control their movements.  No amount of power is without the risk of abuse by government, any more than it is safe in the hands of individuals.  All power is subject to abuse, and greater power is subject to greater abuse, to paraphrase Baron Acton.  The most frightening abuses come when power is centralized, as it has been over the past century in the US.

The only solution is the complete dissolution of large, centralized governments, but that hardly seems likely.  Concerted efforts on the part of people to regain their power and rights might work for a time, but governments thus denuded will begin almost immediately retaking the same ground.  A neo-Luddite solution is also doomed to fail, as folks like their gee-gaws.

The only realistic solution is for people to stop participating in their own enslavement.  Let you driver's license expire and don't renew it.  Stop using taxpayer numbers for any reason.  Stop filling out the census questionnaires.  Don't use real names or data on any social media or electronic devices.  Try using hushmail.com or following some of these suggestions.

Whatever you do, spend at least some part of each day throwing as many monkey wrenches into the works as you can.  It is our civic and spiritual duty to start unraveling this mess.  After all, we are at least partly responsible for allowing it to happen.

As a vast number of people are starting to realize, freedom is something that is earned each day and in each generation.  We can not trust ANY government to protect our rights, no matter how benign it may seem or how many flowery words are written into the law.  All governments are enemies of peace and freedom by their very natures.  Don't they enforce their existence with guns?  It is the threat of violence that keeps people in line, so what's to stop them from taking more and more power from the same people at whom they point guns?

Governments are like unruly chidren: they will continue to misbehave until they find the limits of tolerance.  As long as we allow government to ride rough-shod over us, it will continue to increase the abuse until we finally put a stop to it.

The problem is, once genies are out of the bottle, they can be awful difficult to stuff back in.

Paying Through The Nose

What do you get from government?  I mean, in real unvarnished unblinking terms, what do you get for all the taxes you pay?

Most folks in most countries pay around half of their income in taxes, if you add up all the income tax, fees, sales tax, etc.  Half or more.  All that hard work and money you could be using to improve your family's life right now being sucked out of your pocket for...what exactly?

Most people might answer, "Safety, security, protection."

So, did all that safety, security and protection do any good during the Boston bombing or the Texas fertilizer explosion (bullshit bombing) or the Alabama fuel fire?  Did it protect anyone from riots in Greece and Spain, or school knifings in China?  Did it save all the folks who died in the ferocious winter storms this past season?  Did it stop the landslides in Indonesia?  Or the typhoons in the Philippines?  Or the earthquakes in Iran, China and Japan?  In fact, did a single penny/farthing/kroene/franc/yuan/rupiah save a single life of anyone you know?

On the other hand, how much of your tax money bought war planes and ships, weapons and armor, ammunition and nuclear fuel?  How much of your money paid for military and drones and bases and housing?  How much paid salaries and benefits for government officials?  How much paid for securing and maintaining government infrastructure?  How much paid for police that protect the government from you, not you from thieves/robbers/natural disasters/property loss?

And since governments are usually the ones starting wars either by policies or direct action, can it really be said that the militaries of the world protect anyone, since the need for them is caused by their existence?

How much of your tax money went towards protecting your investments when the stock market turned?  How much help did you really receive when your house was destroyed by fire/hurricane/earthquake?  How much security did all those tax dollars really buy?

The answer: None.  The extended answer: It caused more problems than it solved.

Governments and taxes serve only one purpose: to protect and enrich an elite at the expense of the labor and investments of the rest of humanity.

If, in fact, we receive no benefit and experience only loss from supporting government and paying taxes, then why do we continue to do it?  What does it possibly profit us to continue to support this system?

Promises.  That's all.  We get promises.  The only real security we receive...the only real service we receive from the layers upon layers of government we support and piles upon piles of tax money we surrender at the threat of bodily harm is the promise that someone will do something when some threat or real event may harm our lives or property.  That's it.  A promise.  And one that is rarely fulfilled, at that.

So why do we continue to serve this leviathan that we have created?  It's safe to say that the majority of people disagree with most of what their governments do with taxes, yet most of us continue to pay for and rally behind the single most perilous threat to our well-being that most of us will face in our lifetimes.  A few of us may end up in a position where we need a promise - unemployment insurance, disaster relief, etc. - but the reality is that those services are grossly overrated, when anyone actually receives them.

Unemployment insurance hardly covers all the expenses we have to avail ourselves of the necessities of modern life.  Most unemployment checks won't cover rent/mortgage, lights/gas/water bills, internet, car fuel and maintenance, and all the rest (not to mention food).  The ridiculous part of this is that we need power and internet to file and receive unemployment insurance.  We need transportation to seek new jobs.  We need a permanent address in order to get unemployment insurance and apply for jobs.  We need the utility bills to prove residence in many cases.  In other words, the whole thing is a complete circle jerk.  You need all these things in order to get the 'promise' and the new job, but the 'promise' doesn't pay enough to afford the things you need to receive it all.  Catch-23.

Ask victims of any natural disaster, or wars of profit, or NGOs how much benefit they received in relation to the taxes they paid for promises.

In the alternative, if governments only received taxes from import/export duties, how much more motivated would they be to improve business relations with other countries, and to keep jobs at home?  And if you were able to keep the 50% of your income that is appropriated for promises, how much more would you be able to secure your family and save for a rainy day?  If your money wasn't squandered on useless 'public education', how much better schools could you choose from for your children?  How much more money would you have to buy goods and services that improve the economy rather than destroy it?

And how much better would life be if your hard work wasn't supporting banksters, multi-national corporations and political elite who provide absolutely nothing of value to the local economy while gulping down large helpings of your tax dollars and paying little or nothing themselves?

When it comes right down to it, what's more important: the welfare of your family or the vacant promises of 'security' and 'safety'?  In nearly every single case, could you provide more safety and security for your family using all of your income, rather than just half?

Does paying for licenses, inspections and plates make the roads any safer, or are you just as likely to get into an accident at any given time?  After all, licenses are handed out to just about anyone, so how does that make driving any safer?  And does paying all that money every year provide security for you?  Does it reimburse you a single penny/farthing/crown/shilling/yuan/rupiah if your automobile is damaged in an accident that is not your fault - especially if it is caused by the infrastructure promised by the government?

And if any of the promises made to you in exchange for your taxes fail when you need them, do you get a refund?  If I buy something at the store and it doesn't perform as promised, I get a refund, or at least an exchange.

So the question is, what exactly are you supporting with all that money?  Is it just a promise of safety and security?  Does it materialize when you need that service?  If, after a number of years, you haven't accessed any of the services, do you get a refund?

On the flip-side, how much money has your country paid to banksters in bailouts?  How much tax do the multi-national corporations pay that are exploiting your country's labor and raw materials?  Are your children receiving a quality education for the money, or are they regurgitating slogans and putting condoms on cucumbers while being trained to rat out their families?

Suppose on January 1st of next year, all people everywhere decided to stop paying taxes at the same time?  Suppose we called it "Global Liberation Day?"

How much better would the world be at that moment?

The Danger At Hand

Obama Wants To Map The Human Brain

“[I]t is much safer to be feared than loved because ...love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails.” 
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

Yes, it's true.  The government near you is doing everything it can to make you afraid, despite any and all rhetoric to the contrary.

Oh, sure, the so-called leaders pose and puff about 'safety' and 'security', but if they actually delivered on it, they would, according to Machiavelli, lose power.

All power is based on fear.  The power of religion is that it promises a way to not get thrown in Hell.  The power of government is that it promises to not let boogie men harm you and your family.  By extension, both must conjure up those things which are most feared in order to demonstrate their power to protect us.

Religions practice exorcism.  They create demons out of common afflictions and then 'cure' us of the demons through magic incantations and arcane rituals.  In reality though, it is all pomp and circumstance to produce fear.

By the same token, governments conjure up threats, whether they are physical or, as in the case of the US in the 50s, just imaginary bugaboos hiding under every rock.  Nowadays, it's not the Commies, but the Jihadists.  If that doesn't work, there are more esoteric threats, such as comets and meteors or alien invasions.

Regardless of what the perceived threat is, the whole thing is a Theater of Fear.  It is all a giant, real-life horror movie in which you never really see the monster, it's all just shadows and sounds and scary music.

"A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people."
-- John F. Kennedy

It has been my experience that people who seek political power are insecure little weasels who are so terrified that their beliefs are wrong that they must impose them on everyone in order to feel secure.  In other words, governments are not about making us feel secure, they are about making the power-mongers feel safe.  These small little minds are so paranoid that they must make the entire society equally as paranoid to alleviate their fear that they are abnormal.  Think about it...it's true.

Don't we all seek people of like mind in order to make ourselves feel secure in our beliefs and mind-sets?  Politicians are the same as you and me, with one important difference - they want to create fearful, paranoid, insecure people in order to justify their own fears.  And in creating them, they grant themselves the power to lead all the loonies in the booby hatch.

Since the readers of this site are highly intelligent and self-motivated, we should ask ourselves, "What does government really do for us?"

Think about all the tax money stolen from your productive labor.  In most cases, a full third to half of the income earned by each person reading this column is vanished into a bureaucratic black hole.  And what do you get in return?  Brain mapping projects, militaries and more politicians.

And what does all that achieve?  Paranoia, enemies and more fear.

In other words, we are forced at gun point and by threat of imprisonment to pay for systems that do nothing more than create the environments that justify the existence of governments.  It is a closed loop of fear that keeps us in line through the use of fear to protect us from fear.  Makes perfect sense, right?

Think about it: behind every issue in the public discourse that the government offers a 'solution' to, and behind it you will find fear.  Fear of the unknown, strangers, pain, attack, poverty, and most especially death.  It is all fear.

Governments exploit fear in order to keep us in line.  The ultimate absurdity is that governments say they will protect us from fear, but then use fear to keep us in line.  If we don't follow the rigid guidelines set out for us by our 'leaders', then be afraid of retaliation in the form of incarceration, impoverishment and death.  In other words, we have another causal loop: using fear to make us believe that we can be protected from fear.

Perhaps Franklin D. Roosevelt said it best, "We have nothing to fear, but fear itself."  Ironic words coming from a man who used fear to remake an entire society from independent and self-reliant, to government slaves and dependents.

At the base of all power is the fear of death.  It is only by eliminating this fear that we can truly be free.  That is the ultimate message of all true religions: there is no death and so nothing to fear.  Though certainly that message has been obfuscated by the invention of eternal damnation and shadowy demons.  They need fear to keep the tithes coming, after all.

It is the elimination of the fear of death that governments and power-seekers fear the most.  Without that fear, we the people are ungovernable.  They have no tools to control us.  This is the motivation behind mapping the human brain, or the war on drugs/terror/poverty/etc.  'They' must keep us afraid or face their own worst fear: lack of control over their environment.

In the end, we can conquer the PTB by simply seeing them for what they are: small, fearful minds who seek to bring us all down to their level in order to justify their own fears.

And we can conquer all fear by simply realizing that we are immortal beings, in one form or another.  On the most basic level, the laws of physics demand that the matter and energy that defines our selves must go one forever.  On a higher level, consciousness is something far greater than the sum of our three-dimensional, physical world.

In either case, we have already conquered death.  Now it remains to conquer the fear and remove the means by which we are enslaved.

Map way, Big O.

Fear Begets Fear

READER NOTE: The first installment of Radio Far Side will be up this week.  Keep checking back...

Si Pitung

Here's the thing: ALL governments everywhere and at all times have been, are and shall ever be corrupt.  Period.

We have spent the past 5,000 years of documented history trying one form or another of government, only to watch it completely turn on us and eat us alive until we rise up in bloody indignation and slaughter the beast we created.  Then we turn right around and create more governments.

Why is it, in 5,000 years, no one has ever questioned the underlying assumption that we need governments at all?  I suppose we are all eternal optimists who while away our lives hoping and praying that THIS king's inbred progeny will be good, or the NEXT elected leader will have principles and integrity.

Whatever the cause, we haven't learned in all this time that concentrating power of any kind and amount will only attract megalomaniacs and psychopaths whose sole aim is to accumulate more power and protect it with the military might of the nation.

In America, no one seems to get that Homeland Security has nothing to do with Joe the Plumber.  The bespoke 'homeland' is THEIR power base, and the 'security' is for THEM, not us.  We are the threat from which THEY need to secure themselves.

You will notice that the US Constitution begins with three simple words: We the People.  Most folks don't stop to consider that in the English language, upper case letters only precede first words in sentences, proper nouns, and words with special definitions within the context of the document in which they are used.  Of those options, only the last one explains the capital 'P' in "People".  That means the word is not the common one used in daily speech, but a specially defined term.  In this case, it refers to the 55 men that met in secret to create the document.

The American federation is no more viable or special than any other attempt to force diverse people into a single cubby hole.  Other notable examples include the EU, the Venetian mercantile state, the Holy Roman Empire, the UK's colonies, or any of several dozen other examples.

Robin Hood

What we really should do is create a special, cordoned off area somewhere on Earth, preferably the Gobi desert, and anyone who thinks they have the moral authority to rule or judge other people should be sent there, where they can rule over and judge each other to their heart's delight.  The only rule is that they can never leave that area, since thoughts like those never go away.  It's a fault of their genetic make-up.

In this way, the rest of us can get on with our lives in peace, without governments, taxes, militaries, or corporate persons.  And without fear.

At their most basic levels, all governments operate on one basic principle: Fear.  Fear of boogymen.  Fear of the unknown.  Fear of the government itself.  It's all based on fear.  They create fear, thrive on fear and manipulate fear symbols.

Any student of the human condition knows that people instinctively rally when threatened.  It's not difficult to use this instinct to create and centralize power.  Almost every meme propagated by government-controlled media involves fear.  Whether it is fear of personal crime to justify police forces, or fear of outside attack to justify militaries, in the end, the fear is used to create and maintain control systems that ultimately work against the very people who pay for the supposed protection.

What's interesting to note is that folk heroes usually represent anarchy and the impulse to throw off fear and the control structure.  Look at Robin Hood, or the pirate legends, or the gangsters of the 1930s America, or Si Pitung here in Indonesia.  All of these romanticized characters share the common notion that the protectors of the common man fight power and control structures.  They represent our basic desire for freedom, not only from control structures, but from fear itself.

Ultimately, we must realize that no outside control will ever truly save us from outside threats.  We have police, but still have crime.  We have the military, but still get attached.  We have laws, but still have corruption.  We have to come to grips with the fact that we are no worse off, and in many cases are better off, without government.  In most countries, government sucks better than half of the wealth and labor of their subjects into slush funds that are used to propagate more government, which sucks more wealth and labor until the subjects are either destitute or rise up and slaughter the controllers.

This cycle hasn't changed for thousands of years, and obviously is not changing now.  If anything, the only outcome is greater and greater centralization of power and force.

History proves two things, greater centralization of power always ends in disaster, while those times when individuals controlled their own lives and destinies exhibited the greatest levels of peace and industriousness.  The more we pay for government, regardless of the perceived benefit, the more that government will turn on us and become the enemy from which we thought it was supposed to protect us.

As ever major philosophy has taught, the beginning of wisdom and the liberation of Self begins with the conquering of Fear.  Once we have liberated ourselves from Fear, there is no need for government.  We realize that nothing can protect us from the unknown and unexpected, except our prepared minds and willingness to work on our own behalf.

Death ultimately takes us all.  The measure of the life that precedes it is the degree of fear with which we face that simple truth.  Death is the root of all fear, and by coming to grips with it, we conquer fear and no longer require protectors.  If we don't need protectors, there is no justification for government.  And without government, we are free individuals able to pursue our best course in life.

In the end, anarchy works because most people are busily pursuing their lives.  They instinctively know that chaos serves no good purpose, and so don't create any and actively rebel against it.  In fact, chaos only reigns when fear takes large groups of people, who then react without reason or conscious thought.  Once again, fear is the root cause.

Blackbeard

Consolidation of wealth and power is the cause of corruption.  Governments, by their very nature, is consolidation, and thus are always corrupt.  We create government to protect us from the unknown.  Because of corruption, governments always end up protecting themselves, and thus become the cause of the unknown.  Conquering our fear of the unknown negates the need for government, and thus there is no consolidation of wealth and power, thus no corruption.  Therefore, anarchy is the best and most natural state of being, and rather than being chaos, is in fact based on the lack of fear.  So it stands to reason that only through enlightened self-interest can we hope to be free of corruption, coercion and force.

Our fear drives us to create governments.  The governments ultimately turn on us and become the cause of fear.  It is a vicious circle and one that has plagued humanity for all of its recorded history.  Until we change ourselves, we can not hope to change the world.

Floating Lead Balloons

THEY are beating a dead horse.

I love that metaphor. When you visualize it, it not only brings pity for the horse, but makes the beater look like a jack-ass.

Think about it, THEY created a situation in which THEY could do nothing more tthehan print paper with pretty pictures, then convince everyone to accept it in trade for real wealth, like gold, silver and land. On top of that, THEY legitimize it with the color of law by buying off the government with...wait for it...more paper and pretty pictures!

It's really quite a scan. That it has lasted so long is pretty amazing, in itself. That we haven't woken up to it is even more amazing. Every minute of every year for the past 100 years, THEY have been slowly leaching our wealth and mortgaging our futures in order to end up the game with the biggest, and probably the only pile of wealth in the world.

The really interesting part is what will THEY do when THEY own it all? I mean, if you or I cornered the market in plasma TVs, what would happen? Wouldn't folks just find something else? The problem is, what stores wealth better than gold? And if THEY own all the land, where else could we live?

Since we currently only have one planet, and THEY end up cornering the market in wealth, could THEY hide from billions of angry people? Are we all really such sheep that we wouldn't finally stand up at some point?

These are all valid questions and call into discussion the effects and strength of mind-control. That we are all mind-controlled is without question. After all, why do you have a driver's license? Why do you pay taxes? Why do you obey ridiculous and even obscene laws? Because you want to, that's why.

If everyone simple stopped, what would THEY do? Ten, a hundred, even a thousand people could be shot and/or jailed. But millions? If even 100,000 people openly defied the PTB/W, what could THEY do?

This brings up yet another point. All government, throughout all history, has always been by force. All of it. Everywhere. In every form. It all came from the point of a sword/gun. There has never been a government that existed without force.

When you think to yourself, "There ought to be a law," what you are really thinking is that you want to hold someone at the point of a gun, threaten their life, and force them to comply. It's that simple.

You must get licenses to travel on God's green Earth...or THEY kill you. You must pay taxes...or THEY kill you. You must obey the speed limit...or THEY kill you. It's at the base of every law, covering every subject, ever instituted.

When you support a war and I don't, you are telling me that you will incarcerate, beat and even kill me if I don't pay up. When you tell someone they must get a permit/license/pay a tax, you are saying that you want to kill me if I don't get/pay it. When you use my money to build a road that I don't use, then you are threatening my life to build it.

So what it all boils down to, is that a cabal of private interests (known as THEY) convinced our government (us) to accept THEIR paper and pretty pictures for our wealth. If we didn't accept, then the government (us) had to kill each other to make THEM happy.

Insane, isn't it?

So, what does all this have to do with beating dead horses? Well, THEY pretty much own all of it now, the gold, the land and our lives. THEY have slowly but surely leached it all out from under us while we happily bounded along like spring lambs to the slaughter. We bought the whole thing, hook, line and sinker. And in the process, we held our fellow man at the point of a gun to force them to go along with us.

After all, who wants to go to slaughter alone, right?

How many smart people I know, who have bought the ruling paradigm and couldn't crack the blindfold just a little to see that there might be another way. It brings to mind the bit of front-porch wisdom that I like to live by: When you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always gotten.

It's a functional definition of insanity. A simple study of history, even of only the past 100 years, would show beyotnd the shadow of a doubt that the most deadly weapon of mass destruction is government itself. How many lives have been taken by the likes of Stalin, Lenin, Pol Pot, Mao Tse Tung, Hitler, Idi Amin, Bush (Jr and Sr), and Obama? How many of them have you supported/voted for? And that's just the short list.

Isn't it time to sit back and take stock? Isn't there another way? The easiest way to stop the PTB/W in THEIR tracks is to simply stop following THEM. It's that easy.

The thing is, THEIR ownership of everything of value is only on paper, just like THEIR money. If everyone stopped following THEM, there is not a damn thing THEY can do about it. Oh sure, THEY'LL make a show of it. THEY'LL rant and rave and talk about 'the law,' as if THEY pay the least bit of attention to it.

Indonesia is a case in point. The only reason the House passes laws here is to give folks something to ignore. The bureauocracy is so corrupt that the people figure why should they follow the law? Everyone is on the take here, from top to bottom, yet somehow it all holds together. It shows that anarchy does work, if for no other reason that people's vested self-interests.

However, it is no more tenable than any other system. It must eventually implode, just like everything before it. The problem is that people will again try to build the same house that just fell down, only change the position of the furniture.

All of it must collapse. All of it is collapsing. The question is, what will we do when it's gone? The collapse is inevitable, as 6,000 years of recorded history graphically demonstrates. There is no time like the present to start thinking about replacement paradigms.

Hitler's big fault was not being a fascist, or taking over Europe, or even killing millions of people. The PTB/W love that sort of thing, and even helped Hitler to power just for that reason (see Prescott Bush, among many others). Hitler's Big Crime was that he created a currency that was based on the labor, goods and services of the country. It wasn't owned by the banksters and THEY couldn't profit from it. Just like John Kennedy wanting to re-issue silver-backed currency in the US. They both ended up dead for presuming to take money out of THEIR pockets. You see, there's only one criminal class that will be tolerated, just like only one mafia family can be on top, and all others mu

st pay fealty. Even if another family topples the first and takes over, they simply continue the same practices with different bag men.

There's an obvious wave of revolt sweeping the globe. Plenty of ruling families are nervous. The problem, none of the revolutionaries have thought past the end of their noses. If they are successful, they simply become the new THEY. Sometimes it's a little bettern but usually it's worse. The USofA was the most redical departure from 'normal' ever seen. It created the most powerful and free nation on Earth. Then THEY took over and recreated it in THEIR own image.

Our lesson for today is that the root of all evil is paper money, and the most evil people on Earth are the ones who force us at the point of a gun to take it in exchange for making us slaves. If we are smart, we will finally notice this simple lesson of history and start figuring out a way to change it.

All things come to an end. It is the way of all things in the Universe. Your local governing rifle-barrel is no different. The best time to make a plan is when you don't need it. The time will come for that.

In the alternative, the basketball playoffs start soon and American Idol has yet another poor, hapless soul to humiliate on global TV.

Go back to sleep. You don't really care about your children or theirs, right?