Aceh Versus The Civil War

I entered into a Twitter argument the other day that highlighted a number of issues due to the lack of critical thinking and gross generalizations.

The fellow posted a video showing an Indonesia woman and man being flogged.  Not only did he not know the story behind the video, he extrapolated this behavior to an entire nation without any comprehension of the social and political currents behind it.  Indeed, my correspondent didn't even know why the folks in the video were being flogged.

He lamented that all of Indonesia condoned such behavior.  I pointed out that the incident took place in Aceh, which is a small region at the far northwestern tip of Sumatera, which is semi-autonomous and ruled by Islamic fundamentalists.  I said that public flogging is not condoned or practiced anywhere else in the country, and that if the government attempted to force the region to stop shari'a practices, it would likely cause riots and secession, which would spread through the rest of the country.

The fellow's response was, suppose the Northern states had not stopped slavery in the South.

In the space of a couple of brief text messages, this individual had displayed a profound ignorance of history, politics and human behavior.

To begin with, Indonesia and the US share many traits.  Indonesia is about the same size as the continental US, with roughly the same population and both have religious majorities that spend an inordinate amount of time trying to force everyone else to adopt their values.

Indonesia is composed of more than 300 tribes, each with unique cultures and histories, bound into a loose confederation.  Indonesia's motto, "Bhinneka tunggal ika," is the Sanskrit equivalent of "E pluribus unum," or "one out of many" in English.  Both countries adopt the eagle as their national symbols, and both are republics that constantly promote democracy (they are mutually exclusive terms and ideologies).

On scale, Aceh is roughly equal to the Seattle-Tacoma metroplex, though wildly different in context.  After the 2004 quake and tsunami, Aceh has virtually returned to a medieval state, with all the attendant theocratic allusions that come with that statement.

Of all the regions in the vast sprawling archipelago known as Indonesia, Aceh is the closest to an absolute theocracy under shari'a, or religious law, and like most theocracies, it chooses some of the worst aspects of shari'a to enforce.

The primary issue is that if the central government attempted to stop Aceh from its practices, it would risk having the Islamic majority in the country rally around Aceh, and likely spark national riots and possibly secession movements across the country, especially in Papua where the Christian majority has long sought to extract itself from the rest of the nation, taking its vast mineral wealth with it.

When my Twitter correspondent casually waved the US Civil War comment at the situation, I was triggered.  The two situations were/are not remotely equivalent, and to so blithely conflate the two was more than I could bear.

The US Civil War had almost zero to do with ending slavery.  It was all about northern bankers and industry trying to keep the costs of raw materials from the south as low as possible.  The southern states, wanting to increase profits, were competing in open markets and getting higher prices in Europe.  The morthern interests blockaded southern ports to shut down the South's markets, and levied exorbitant tariffs on exports to effectively steal profits from the south, while leaving the finished goods from the north untouched.

The Confederacy, after secession, was de jure and de facto a separate and independent nation and blockades against it were in fact acts of war by the same reasoning and international law used by the colonists in their fight for independence from England.  Only in the tiniest of factions in the Civil War was ending slavery and issue, and folks on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line wanted the practice ended.

The US Civil War was about economics and the right of people to throw off tyrannical government in favor of something more to their liking.

In Aceh, the situation is only vaguely analogous to the US Civil War, in that a dictatorial effort by the central government to change the local regime would be disastrous and likely lead to mass death and destruction.

The fact is that the people of Aceh submit to the theocracy of their own choice.  They can easily walk or take the bus south to other regions of Sumatera, or even leave the island altogether for greener pastures elsewhere.  That the young man and woman in the video allowed themselves to be flogged was their own choice.

Unlike the US Civil War, there is no economic component.  No outside force is trying to starve out competition and effectively enslave an entire nation.  The people of Aceh willingly choose to live under such conditions because they have convinced themselves that this is a viable and virtuous way to live.

In other words, what my Twitter correspondent was proposing is tyranny by a central power over a group of people who voluntarily choose to live as they see fit.  From the outside, we can abhor and condemn the practice of flogging.  We can offer aid and shelter to anyone escaping such practices.  But we cannot mandate our values on those folks by force.  That would effectively be as immoral as the practices we condemn.

In a republic, as Indonesia and the US nominally are, the fundamental rights of the minority are protected against the tyranny of the majority.  Among those fundamental rights in both countries is religious freedom.  It would be no more moral and ethical for Indonesia to force Aceh to adopt a different culture, than it would be for Aceh to force the rest of the nation to adopt shari'a (or at least its interpretation of it).

It is also wildly fallacious to draw parallels between they US Civil War and the situation in Aceh, other than to say that if the central government forced Aceh to change, then it would be the moral equivalent of what the Union did to the Confederacy.  In both cases, internal forces will eventually overcome habit and tradition, and reform will come of its own accord.

It is important to note that Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation was not aimed at the Union, where slavery persisted quite some time after that war, nor was it legally binding on the Confederacy, which was a wholly different jurisdiction and not subject to US law.  It was nothing more than a propaganda tool to undermine the Confederate economy at its weakest point.

The people of Aceh have a choice to stay or move to other parts of the same country with widely varying social and political customs and laws.  They are not prevented by the nation's laws from moving elsewhere, with lawful employment and residency throughout the country.  Those who stay and submit to public floggings for being alone with their paramours without supervision do so of their own accord.

This Twitter-vation also highlights the dire need of folks to educate themselves on real history, and not the propagandistic efforts to justify immoral acts foisted on them by vested interests.

Apotheosis A La Mode

The Buddha used sea foam as a metaphor for the Universe.  All existing things rise like a bubble through the water, float for a time on the surface, then subside back into the Great Medium.  Nothing, he posited, was ever "created" or "destroyed," it simply changed into different states of existence.

I tell to agree with this view and find that quantum physics particularly confirms this idea.  I further add to the quantum view the Electric Universe hypothesis that the Universe is suffused with and operates via an all-pervasive and infinite electro-magnetic force.  Since the Universe appears to have rules and follow certain formulae, I conclude that the Universe is on the whole a Rational Individual, which some may choose to call God or Allah or the Great Nothingness.  All things exist because the Universe's rules make them not only possible, but probable.

Life exists because the Universe exists.  Life is sentient because the Universe is sentient.  Life is self-aware because the Universe is self-aware.  In a sense, there is no "individual," there is only the Universe extant in various forms that are created by the rules.

What gets me on this track is the rather large number of articles, discoveries and inspirations of late that seem to be infusing all media.  There appears, to my mind at least, a growing awareness of something much larger than our comparatively minuscule existence.

It is not so much of a single idea or discovery that is changing things, as much as it is an overall adjustment to the Collective Point Of View.  From the individual up to the global, we all seem to be changing perspectives, particularly about what we find important and meaningful.

This Change is currently showing up in our common culture as a Populist Wave, aided and abetted by what appears to be a substantial change in the revelation of scientific discovery.  I choose the word "revelation" advisedly, since I firmly believe that much of what is leaking into the Popular Mind has been known at some level for a long time, not the least of which was Buddha's ancient observations.

One should note that I am not talking about shifts between political or religious ideologies.  Rather, I am referring to the Common Culture rising above those ideologies to something more profound and...well, Universal.

People are not usually aware of great changes when they are in the midst of them.  We generally recognize the profundity of events after they have passed and we can assess the effect they have had on the future.  I would say, though, that most people are aware of something big when it happens, though we are generally incapable of knowing just how big they are without perspective.

What I perceive is a collective move away from "leaders" and "authority," to a more holistic definition of "freedom" and "liberty."

When I watch the videos of Social Justice Warriors (SJW), I sense that these are people incapable of dealing with personal freedom and liberty.  They have a burning desire to follow, and to force others to do the same.  They have herd minds and are horrified at the idea of being a herd of one.  If every individual is a "leader" and "authority," they panic because they don't know whom to follow.  To them, a world of individuals is unacceptable chaos and they are truly terrified by the prospect.

We see the same phenomenon on large scales, too.  I believe that the current lashing-out of Islam, among others, is similar on a group scale to the angry, wailing SJW.  Not only is the institution of Islam itself afraid to give up control, its adherents are afraid to be uncontrolled.  The violent reaction is an attempt to re-establish authority because both the group and the individuals define themselves by controlling and being controlled.

I only single out Islam because it is the most visible.  The Vatican has been trying to reassert itself and people like Vladimir Putin has been trying to regain control for the Orthodoxy.

Governments, too, have been desperately raking followers back into the fold.  The EU and US have been in desperation mode, trying to lock down control over their perceived empires.  China is in a sheer panic because its entire raison d'être is in danger of collapsing.

What is happening - and has been for centuries - is an apotheosis.  Individuals are slowly realizing that God is not "out there" with a set of codified "Thou Shants" that control our every movement.  Rather, we exist as constructs of Universe's Rules.  We are not separate; we are manifestations.  There is no God "out there; we and all we perceive are God.

Granted, this process of apotheosis has been long and arduous.  It is a clash of the most fundamental aspects of Weltanschauungs.  It is an ultimate battle between Esoteric and Exoteric forces.  It is the collision of Gnostic and Agnostic.  The division is so profound, so fundamental, that it is now beginning to affect macroscopic organizations across the planet.

This concept is so large that I am only beginning to express it as more than just a feeling.  I can now see large-scale effects in the global society, as I think most people can now do.  The Populist Wave is not a new form of "leadership" or "authority," it is a complete rejection of those concepts and a desire to pursue one's own direction.

We now have the most powerful tool ever devised by our species at our fingertips.  We have the collected sum of Humanity's experiences and ideas within seconds of having a thought or idea.  We can instantly connect with about half of the human species in moments, and the number is growing daily.  From Buddha to Berdyaev, we can each stand on the shoulders of giants while moving little more than our fingers and eyeballs.

The question is not whether this movement will fail.  It is far too late for that.  Rather, how fast will it begin to move?  It is quite obvious that the Controllers and the Authorities are losing, and the pace is rapidly accelerating.  It's as if Humanity is stepping into the daylight after years of living in a prison of our own making.

What will we do with our freedom?

Permission To Be Free

The SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the US) struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, which said that marriage is defined as being between one man and one woman only.  Well, that got a lot of people jumping up and down on both sides of the issue.  Naturally, we here and the Far Side have a slightly different take on things.

Here's the problem: when people turn to government to define something as intensely personal as who you can call 'spouse', then you get what you get.  Either you have the Defense of Marriage Act, which said that same-sex couples can't be married, or you don't have it, which means government can define marriage any way it wants to.  In other words, when you accept that government can 'license' marriage and say who gets insurance and pension benefits, then believe me, the issue will become a political one with the scum class (politicians) falling all over themselves to define marriage whichever way gets them the most money and votes.

As proof, just look at old Bill Clinton (don't you miss him about now?).  He signed the Defense of Marriage Act into law back in the 90s, because it was politically expedient at the time.  Yesterday, when SCOTUS cut it down, old Billy was jumping up and down praising the court's decision.  Excuse me?  Doesn't that sound like playing both hands of a two-handed poker game?

As it stands now, folks can marry their cattle or pet dog or whatever the government will issue a 'license' for.  It's the government's decision, since the people allow it the power to decide. The court's decision is a victory for the Mormans, at any rate, since they can now have multiple wives.  After all, marriage is not limited to one man/one woman, right?  Not that it's really all that shocking.  I know lots of folks here with multiple wives (at the same time).

Here's where everything is bass-ackwards.  My spouse and I should be the ones who determine the definition of marriage, and we shouldn't need a license from government, we should just tell them who we married, if we damn well feel like it.  Marriage is, at most, a religious issue, but at minimum a ritual between two (or more) people who declare themselves married in front of their friends and family.  The government should be giving the benefits to whomever I tell them to, not telling me.

Even more to the point, government shouldn't be handing out benefits to anyone.  I should be making my own retirement and insurance decisions for my family and leaving whatever is left to whomever I decide is my family when I shed this mortal coil.

If you are Muslim in Indonesia, you just show up to a mosque, get the imam to mumble a few words and sign the register.  POOF, you're married.  You can do that up to four times (simultaneously), but then no one really keeps track, so you can have a dozen wives if you want.

Of course, if you are a member of any of the other three 'official' religions (those recognized by the Constitution - Christian, Hindu and Buddhist), you need a license and have to jump through a bunch of bureaucratic hoops to register your marriage.  Oh yeah, and mixed-faith marriages are not allowed, so God help you if your intended spouse is a tree-worshipper.  Nothing like equal rights, eh?  Whether the law discriminates on the basis of gender or faith of the couple, it's all the same in the end.

The point is, government has no right being involved in anyone's personal life under any circumstances.  Since when did the government become an intermediary with God?  After all, don't we say, "Whatever God has joined together, let no man put assunder"?  Apparently, God requires licenses to join people together.

Frankly, I don't give a damn who you or anyone else calls "spouse".  If you're happy, then good on ya.  If that means the third baboon from the left at the local zoo, fine.  Just don't invite me to afternoon tea because I don't think your baboon can make a decent cucumber sandwich.

I also happen to think that one wife is more than enough trouble.  Why would any sane man need more than that?  But if you want (and can afford) seven wives, then get busy, boy.  You've got a lot of work to support that many credit cards.

The problem here is not just defining marriage.  It is that people turn to government to do it.  The way it's supposed to work is that people tell government what they want, and the government's job is to protect those decisions.  How people come to those decisions is called the democratic process, which is itself a function of culture.

Once people turn to government to define what they believe, well...all bets are off.  You end up with the peculiar flavor of fascism that is currently sweeping the US and Europe.  These kinds of issues are for each community to define.  If I don't like the way my community defines something, then I can move somewhere more amenable.

More precisely, families should determine who will be allowed into their fold, not government.  After all, under the Defense of Marriage Act, how would the government deal with an hermaphrodite marrying my son?  Technically, the hermaphrodite is neither male nor female, and both at the same time.  Does that fit under the one man/one woman definition?  It should be my decision to bless the marriage or not, but certainly not the government's decision in any case.  In fact, marrying an hermaphrodite would make one a polygamist, homosexual and traditionalist all at the same time.  Hmmm...interesting.

What entertains me the most is that a lot of the folks getting steamed over the 'traditional' marriage issue are the same ones getting all lathered up about government snooping and curtailing liberty.  If you are one of them, then perhaps you need to do some intense meditation on what you consider liberty and freedom.  Allowing government to define who I can marry is both snooping (entering my bedroom) and curtailing liberty (telling how I can pursue Happiness).

Come to think of it, SCOTUS needs to get its proverbial shit together, as well, since on the one hand, they take away liberty with decisions about warrantless searches and no right to remain silent, and on the other hand get all worked up about people being free to marry whomever they want.  That's more of less defining freedom as having the choice between two brands of mustard when you only like mayonnaise.

When it comes to liberty and freedom, I don't have to like your choices, but I have to support your right to make them so that you will support mine.  In any case, the government doesn't belong anywhere in the equation, except as arbiter in disputes.

The next time you think, "There oughtta be a law," remember that someone else is thinking the same thing about your liberty.

Join The Club

Groucho Marx famously quipped in his autobiography, with regard to a social club that had made him an honorary member, "Please accept my resignation.  I don't want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as members."

This is rather apropos, since our topic today is exactly that of belonging to clubs and resigning from them.

Suppose you found a club whose stated goals were business networking and mutual support.  You found this a worthwhile cause and paid your dues and got accepted to the membership.  For the first few years, it was peachy keen.  You made a lot of new contacts, and the time you had some legal issues, the members who were adept at such things were able to help you out of a jam free of charge, because you were a fellow member.

The dues were a bit high, but you gladly paid them because you received benefit from the club.  Even when the leadership changed some of the bylaws in ways that you thought were a bit out of line, you continued to be a member, thinking that the next round of would see more level-headed officers sworn in who would fix the offending rules.  Besides, you still received a benefit from membership in the connections and assistance you received from fellow members.  So all was well.  At the same time, the various outreach programs were being cut.

The club used to gather once a month to clean up various neighborhoods as a public service.  You thought that was a great idea and even got the wife and kids involved on those weekends.  Now those kind of things were becoming less and less frequent.

After the next round of officers were seated, things got worse.  They started allowing less desirable folks join without vetting.  Dues started going up exponentially  though there was no increase in benefits.  In fact, the only thing you could see was that the board kept hiking their stipends for sitting on the steering committee.

The sub-committee that was in charge of collecting dues and disbursing funds got taken over by a bunch of unsavory types.  After a while, they simply became a gang of thugs whose job it was to extort dues from members, along with "protection insurance".  If you didn't pay the insurance, bad things mysteriously happened to your business: fires, burglaries, customers getting roughed up.  It didn't take long for your customers to go away when they saw the club's emblem on your business.

Now, instead of fostering business, the club was causing your business to decline.  The dues were becoming outrageous and if you didn't pay, you got hurt...one way or another.  The folks that used to offer business advice were now nothing more than a gang of blackmailers who investigated members to find dirt on them, and then use it to leverage members for more money and to coerce votes when it came time to elect a new board.

Some of your long-term fellow members were still uncorrupted.  You all began talking quietly about the current situation.  You had to go to great pains to keep your meetings out of sight of the club leaders, or they'd suspect you of undermining the club and come around with thugs to beat the crap out of you.  One member got careless and sent an email to several others grousing about the problems within the club leadership.  He was sent to the hospital and everyone else on the address list was suddenly under being followed everywhere.  They were terrified lest they make some small infraction and be beaten to a pulp, as well.

Finally, you decided that the costs were too high, the benefits too few, and the fear of reprisal for the least little comment was more than you were willing to accept.  You decided to quit the club and look for greener pastures.

You tendered your resignation stating that your years of membership in the club had been wonderful and that you had made some great friends there, but it was time to make a change and try some new things.  Well, that didn't sit well with the leadership.  If they let you go peacefully, then they knew that all the other members would get encouraged and start leaving in droves, and that would end the gravy train for the leaders who had gotten so much money for doing nothing all those years.

You didn't receive an immediate response from the membership sub-committee, so you went about your business thinking everything was alright.  That month, you didn't send in your dues and you stopped going to meetings.  You even scraped the club's emblem off your office door.  You had washed your hands of the matter.

Then one evening, as you locked up and were heading home, you turned to face a group of the meanest, ugliest, nastiest thugs you had ever seen.  They were wearing their nifty club uniforms with club patches all over them, as when you turned, they all pulled their jackets back to reveal their guns.

You looked around and saw that you were at the top of the stair leading into the parking lot, which gave you the high ground.  You felt your belt and found that you had your gun with you, as well.  But, there were six of them and your only had seven shots, so the margin of error was razor thin.  You had to decide if being right was worth the fight, even though you knew that if you capitulated, they were still going to put you in the hospital...or worse.

Being a member of a club normally implies that you have the right to quit the club at any time and for any reason.  It's your right to associate with whoever you choose.  When a club, that you joined freely, no longer serves your needs, you should be able to quit and move on to other things.

Nations are clubs.  Groups of people with cultural ties or similar interests join those clubs and pay dues (taxes) because they think membership will offer them things they couldn't have otherwise, or would come at a cost they couldn't pay unless they shared it with other members.  As with all human endeavors, though, sometimes the leadership of those clubs get complacent and enjoy the perks they give themselves at the expense of the members.  As they get more and more corrupt, the members want to leave, but the lost of dues will negatively impact all the goodies the leadership has enjoyed for doing nothing.

Often times, the clubs will start passing bylaws to protect their positions that are painful to the members, whether physically or financially.  As Mel Brooks said in "History of the World Part 1", "It's good ta be da king!"

To protect their privileged
ged positions, the leadership will stop at nothing to prevent the members from leaving.  They will say it's illegal.  They will threaten, and in many cases initiate physical violence.  They will do whatever it takes to continue taking money from your pocket to finance their perks and privileges.

None of that invalidates the right of members to quit any time they choose.  The right of free association means that the members can keep company with whomever they please.  It's a very old and well established concept.  If you can freely join a group, then you can just as easily leave.  It is a well-established fact that contracts can be cancelled if one party is not receiving the promised performance.  To say that a state can not secede is saying that an abused spouse can not leave the abuser and dissolve the marriage.

There are many groups of people around the world who no longer feel they are receiving a benefit, or worse are being abused, by a relationship with a given government.  Maybe they are being taxed into poverty without any return benefits, or they are being physically assaulted by goons and thugs, or they simply feel no philosophical or emotional bond with the other groups in the club.  They have every right to leave unharassed and unmolested.  At some future point, they may feel like it is to their benefit to re-join.  At that point, the other members can decide whether to allow them back in.  That's a risk any secessionists face.  But just as divorced spouses are free to remarry if they so choose, so to are nations and peoples.

In 1989, the Soviet Union flew apart in a surprisingly fast dissolution of a 75-year long shotgun marriage, yet 20 years on, the former members seem to get along (for the most part) just fine.  Just because somethng ain't what it used to be doesn't mean it can't be something better in a new form.

Any group that feels strongly enough to want to go it alone should be allowed to with minimal fuss.  Sure, it should be a fair and equitable split, but why should they be forced to stay in a rotten marriage?  If later they decide they made a mistake, the other spouse may have found something better and moved on, in which case, tough luck.  That the risk they take.

Parts of the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, and most other places around the globe want to go it alone.  Why are those people abused and slaughtered for wanting to follow their own dreams?  After all, don't we all have the right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, even if that involves going your own way in life?

Let them all go.  The only reason to keep them corralled is because the club leadership is living high on the hog on their nickel.  It's exactly the same as if a lazy husband beats his wife senseless because she wants to leave him, but then he'd have to find gainful employment or someone else to suck off of.  Does that make the wife wrong for wanting out?

Let them go.  There is no moral reason to stop groups who want to secede, and there are only immoral and unethical reasons to make them stay.

Let them go.

Where's Your Pair?

Thomas Jefferson

Wasn't all that long ago that someone was crazy as a loon if they spouted off about the coming martial law in America.  Now they've got armed TnA agents frisking old ladies at the Social Security office.  And that's OK.

Not even a decade ago, you were a tin foiler if you dared to mention the evil black helicopters.  I was, even though I had a sworn statement from an air traffic controller at Miami-Dade who had seen them and knew that they had the required N-numbers painted in IR paint on the tails.  Now there's black helicopters in the movies and drones over the house.  And that's OK.

It was just a while back that a guy was completely 'round the bend for suggesting the US government was building stalags all over the freakin' place.  I even had photos of one in Hockley, TX that I posted on the internet.  But I was half-a-dozen sandwiches short of a picnic.  Now they're posting bid tenders on fed websites for vendors to build and staff them in five regions around the country.  And that's OK.

Chemtrails?  No problem.  Police gunning down grade schoolers?  Go for it.  Assassinating American citizens without trial or conviction?  Yee-haw!  Indefinite detention because they don't like the way you smile and kiss ass?  Yeah baby!  That's the way I like it!  Waco?  Love it!  Ruby Ridge?  More more!  Elian Gonzales?  He deserved it!  Murder...mayhem...utter disregard for the rule of law and centuries of jurisprudence?  YES YES YES!!!

I wasn't the only one out there blowing the whistle on this stuff.  There were thousands of us.  We wrote.  We protested.  We fought in court.  We went to jail.  A lot.  Think Steve McQueen in The Great Escape.

Jesse Ventura's gone to Mexico, along with a lot of other folks I know.  Several people have moved to Panama.  I'm in Indonesia.  Others are scattered across the globe.  We gave up and got out.

After they impoverish you, destroy your family, kill your wife, and shit-can anything that's left, ain't no use sticking around.  All those good folks who laughed and ridiculed and ostracized...now they are the ones complaining.  No sympathy here, folks.  Sorry.

This is what people do when they are serious about changing things.  They fight.  I don't mean shooting, I mean filing paper, running the courts in circles.  Making them fight for ever inch they take.  You sandbag.  You drag your heels.  You absolutely wear them out with passive resistance.  It's called, "herding cats."

I went to jail for contempt of court because I brought my copy of Civil Procedures and dared to tell the judge she was wrong and show her the proof.  I went to jail for refusing to follow unconstitutional laws (see Thomas Jefferson).  I went to jail for exercising my rights, as clearly defined and delineated in the Texas and US Code (they call it a Code because you aren't supposed to figure it out).  I went to jail for refusing to identify myself to cops when I was in my house doing dishes and not bothering a soul.  They were illegally sweeping for warrants and I turned the tables on them.

I filed lawsuits.  I demanded they follow their own laws and regulations.  I filed aggravated kidnapping charges for false arrest.

This is what people do when they are serious about defending their freedom and their country from invasion, whether internal or external.

Living in fear, hoping you won't draw their attention, is the coward's way out.  Eventually, they come after you, no matter what.  Not fighting for your family and your freedom because you might miss the playoffs is the slave's chorus.  Not fighting because you don't know the law is the lazy man's excuse.  It's all at your fingertips right here on the internet.

I know guys who will invest inordinate numbers of hours studying stats for their favorite steroid abusers.  They'll spend their bottom dollar on a bigger TeeVee, but not a penny for their right to free information to watch on it.  Some guys will spend half their life buying, pimping and caring for their car, but not one second on learning that they don't have to have a license, or inspection, or insurance, or plates.  They know their car inside and out, but they don't know the law regarding travel and transportation.

American definition of freedom

What are your afraid of?  Losing your stuff?  It's not yours to begin with.  You just rent it from the government, and in any event, it's gone when you die.  You afraid of being uncomfortable, or spending a night in jail, or talking back to a judge who bought the chair?  Think of what the people did who bought your freedom.  What did they lose so you could sit on your ass and watch mindless garbage for a third of your life?

Everything costs something.  It's a fact of life.  Freedom has a cost too.  You can't skate through life stuffing your face, swilling beer and watching football without paying some price for the freedom to make those choices.

Americans have become a race of 'free lunchers.'  They want all the cream and none of the teat-squeezing.

You want the right to privacy?  Then learn where that concept comes from.  How did it appear in our law?  How can you defend it by investing a few hours each week to keep and expand it?

You like the freedom to travel?  Then learn the difference between travel and transport, between a car and a vehicle, between going about your business on your roads, and engaging in commerce on them.

You want free speach?  Then start speaking freely.  You want to keep and bear arms?  Then start keepng AND bearing them.  You want a free press?  Then stop watching the freaking mass media and start supporting real, steely-eyed reporting.

Most of all, don't ever be afraid to go to jail for what's right.  It makes the right all the sweeter when you fight for it, and it makes you a real soldier.  You are on the front lines of the War on Liberty.  You can hold your head up and say you've fought for your family, like a real man does.

Men used to say, "It's better to die standing than live on my knees."  Now they just say, "Honey, bring me another beer wouldja?  I don't wanna miss this play."

Real men in the Ukraine

What have you achieved with your life?  What have you done that will outlive you, besides breed?  What have you taught your children about the world and how to keep their rights?

If you have to think about it, then the answer is, "Not much."

Want to change the world?  Then start with yourself.  Get over your fear and stop cowering.  Then stand up like a real man and defend your family.  You don't have to fire a shot, or even throw a punch.  This war is for the mind.  It's a battle of wits and their only weapons are shadows and fog.

Learn.  Grow.  Fight.  Educate.  And for God's sake, turn off the TeeVee!

If Thine Eye Offends Thee

Yup, still here, just as I suspected.  But that only means we dodged the collision bullet.  Still plenty of fun to be had right here on good ol' Earth.

Today was interesting in that the Asian markets were hammered.  The Hang Seng lost 5.25% alone.  At the same time, Europe was all green.  Now go figure that?  Europe is falling into a black hole of debt, while Asia is doing fair to middlin', and our markets get trashed.  When I looked, US futures were up near 100, which puts a little cream on the burn yesterday, but the underlying infection ain't going away until we do some serious surgery.

With the demise of Libya, the number of countries with natural resources that don't bow to the fascist empire is dwindling fast.  Still have little ol' Cuba and North Korea.  Cuba doesn't appear to be in any immediate threat, since all they have is good cigars, rum and a submerged ancient city off the coast.  North Korea is fine, as long as they don't try to join the nuclear club.  That's a position only doled out to court jesters at the Vatican.

Iran, of course, is in major danger.  The Saudi king, who owes his wealth and priviledge to Lawrence of Arabia and his kow-towing to THEY, wants to put the kaibosh on Iran because it makes them look bad.  

The left-over Nazis, aka Israel, don't want ANY challenge to their nuclear hegemony in the Middle East.  They want to have one-button veto over everything that happens in the region.  Considering the way they treat anyone and everyone around them, can't says i blame 'em.  If I were the neighborhood bully, I'd want the biggest stick on the block, too.  I just wish they'd quit calling themselves Jews.  Makes it sound like they have some morals, which quite obviously they don't.

But why all this debt?  How did/do the banksters manage to get everyone in debt without anyone questioning it?  Today is not new.  They've been doing it, at least in Europe, for centuries  Eventually, folks wake up and lamp-post the whole damn lot of 'em, but for some reason, neither side ever learns.  Obviously, there's some deep trigger THEY use to fool people into buying into the Ponzi scheme again and again and again...

What could possibly be buried in the psyches of masses of people, that crosses all cultural barriers, and fosters a mind-set of debt, slavery and master worship?

Could it be...religion?  Hmmm...let's see.

First, you teach everyone that God is this hateful, vengeful being who demands utter obedience or He will torture and burn you in Hell for all eternity.  But He loves you.  Then you teach everyone that because some mythical ancestor ate an apple, we owe a huge, unpayable debt to this God.  We are to spend our entire lives lamenting and supplicating ourselves to this God for the apple-eating incident.  Furthermore, we are to offer the blood of goats and sheep to keep this God from getting angry and wiping us all out for what the mythical ancestors did under the apple tree that day.

That's right, this God loves the smell of death and burning flesh.  Cain's fruits and veggies just piss Him off.  He needs real death and destruction to make Him feel happy and needed.

All this blood and death was enough to create a story about the Son of this God, who comes around to teach us that we should love and share and that He will die to pay the debt, so we don't have to keep doing all this killing to make God happy.  Yup, that's right.  God Himself is the only Being capable of paying off the debt we owe for eating apples!  So now, we humans have to slaughter our own God and hang Him on a tree to pay off this debt.

But what happened?  To hear the Catholic church tell it, we still owe a debt!  We are born in Original Sin and baptism cleans that mess up, but we STILL owe a debt, because (God forbid) someone might masturbate, or not finish her Wheaties, or tell his wife she looks great when her belly is hanging over the waistband.  We are hopeless, corrupt, worthless sinners who can never repent enough to make God happy, even though He supposedly created us in His Own Image.

Wait a minute.  If we are in His Own Image, then killing, lusting, destroying, and masturbating are all good things, right?  After all, He does it!  He knocked up Mary without marriage ceremonies or anything.  He even abandoned her as soon as she got knocked up, which means He owes back support, doesn't it?  OK, so it was Gabriel who did the deed, but still...

Here we have slavery, debt and bloodlust, sewn into our collective psyches from birth, etched into our culture and civilization, and what do we get?  Empire, slavery, debt, bloodlust, war...everything we see God doing in The Book!  In fact, we can pretty much blame God for all the war and misery on Earth today!

So where did Christianity go astray?  After all, the central message is peace, love and no debt, right?  Instead, we ritually slaughter God every Sunday and eat His Flesh and drink His Blood.  And this is a good example for a bunch of unruly creations?  It would seem we got completely derailed!

And it's not the first time.  The Aztecs had a God of peace and love, but He was kicked out by a demon, and the Aztecs actually called him that, and started human sacrifice in order to what?  Why, pay a debt of course. The Maya did the same thing.  The Hindu had it for a long time, but then Buddha came along and reformed it. Makes it one of the few religions without debt and bloodlust at the heart of its philosophy.

We just had Idul Adha here, and across the Muslim world.  Guess what?  The Day of Atonement (debt) is marked by none other than slaughtering goats and cows.  The Zionists (note I didn't say Jews) have their Day of Atonement, in which they go out and slaughter their neighboring countries to atone for all the evil they bring into the world.

With all these fundamental beliefs at the cores of our societies, is it any wonder that banksters enslave us with debt, governments become tyrannical and churches dole out guilt and low self-esteem?  The whole damn thing is based on a fundamentally flawed and perverted view of the world, and that view is institutionalized at the deepest levels of our societies.

We are worthless, wretched sinners who need caretakers to whip us into shape and make us work our tails off in order to repay an unpayable debt to a murderous and evil God who loves the smell of burning flesh.

You see, the problem here is not the banksters (OWS), and it's not governments (Tea Baggers), it's the churches.  They are preaching hate and death and debt to us from the minute we spring into the world all steaming fresh.  They have so perverted what amounts to a Buddhist message from some guy named Jesus that was trying to reform Judaism and all the other debt-based, brutal religions of the day.

This problem is like a mesquite tree.  You can whack that booger right down flish with the dirt, and in three months you'll have a bigger mesquite tree.  This will continue to go one until you drag out the chain, hook it to the tractor, and yank the damn root ball out and burn it (preferably in a slow-cooker with some tender aged beef).  We will never free ourselves until we see what the real problem is, and fix it.

We can tear down the banks, revoke corporate licenses, erase all the police state apparatus, but as long as we believe in this religious guilt, slavery and debt, we will never be free.  All that will happen is that it grows back bigger, stronger and with nastier thorns, until the root is dug up and utterly destroyed.

Honestly, for all we know, Lucifer really is the Light Bearer, but we've been so snowed by BS that we can't see it anymore.  And don't get your religious panties all in a bunch, I'm just making the point that we have been so throroughly bamboozled that we have to assume everythng is a lie, at this point.  In other words...

The Matrix

Really, it's time for people to start taking a fresh and honest look at what they believe and where those beliefs come from.  We can no longer take anything for granted.  Our entire civilization and all our future generations depend on it.  But we need to move fast.

We are all Winston Smiths.  We are all the last of those who remember, and who can remember.  Our kids have been so thoroughly TeeVeed and public schooled that they wouldn't know there was something else to think and believe, much less where to find it.  Our parents helped create this empire of blood, and through our sloth and thoughtlessness, we have allowed it to continue.  It's up to us to clean it up, or it may be centuries before the next opportunity comes.

Start bartering and stop using the slave bux.  Pay off your debt and get free of it.  And for God's sake, stop going to the mega-churches and giving them money.  Starve all the Beasts at once.  Get out of banks and find alternative forms of payment wherever possible.  This is not something that needs to be gotten around to, it is an immediate and desperate need.  Gold and silver are one means, but not the only one.

Most importantly, question everything.  Harbor no sacred cows.  Open you mind to everything.  The Truth is always apparent, when you hear it.  Remember what Jesus said, "If your eye offends you, pluck it out.  If your hand is false, cut it off."  We have to be willing to jettison everything false and untrue, which is the meaning of that statement, no matter how dear and sacred it is to us.

Truth demands nothing less, and the reward is real, blissful and lasting freedom...of the heart, the mind and the soul.

Our children deserve nothing less.

The unanimous Declaration of the fifty disunited States of Amerika,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for a people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with a governmental paradigm, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all humans are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain innate Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these States; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present Executive of the Federal Government is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Congress and Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together secret assemblies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has ignored Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of TSA Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Crimes which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas (Guantanamo, et al.) to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these States:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty; and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on trumped up Charges to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Mexican drug-lord Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the Servant of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Federal servants. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their controllers to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of Amerika, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these States, solemnly publish and declare, That these United States are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the Federal Government, and that all political connection between them and the District of Columbia, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
------------------
If you see somewhere in these words, a justification to throw off the yoke of bankster tyranny and to assume your sovereign and individual right to be free and to answer to the Creator for your actions, then perhaps the time has come for action.


The men who wrote this document (with some minor changes to update it) were protesting a 3% tax, among other grievences.  How much is stolen from you at gun point, I mean in taxes?


Happy Fourth.

A Note From Dreamtime

Good evening, my fellow Americans.

By the grace of God, I come before you tonight as you newly elected President, and it is with God's blessing that I will outline to you the following actions and policies which I have initiated today as my first acts in office. Be aware that any one of the steps I have taken today is enough to get me killed. To that end, I have received a thorough medical examination, and I have posted the results on the White House website. As you will see, I am in good physical health with no obvious reason to expect that I should suffer any condition that will impede my ability to serve out my term in office. Be assured that if I die in office, for any reason at all, it will be murder, plain and simple.

At this moment, you may be asking yourself why I would make such a statement. During my campaign, I outlined a set of policies that I would follow, if elected, and I intend to do exactly what I promised you. By some miracle, I was allowed to come this far, so I will not stop now.

What I am about to outline to you will involve some pain on the part of every man, woman and child in this country, but whatever the cost, it will be far less than what we face in the alternative. these are the only possible actions that will save our great nation from sure destruction at the hands of a shadowy cabal, called by my predecesor, Dwight D. Eisenhauer, the Military-Industrial compl\ex. To his statement I would add banking, as well. Our Founders took very careful steps to avoid allowing these groups to have 'undue influence' over the national life of this country, and I intend, beginning tonight, to cure the cancer that has eaten the heart out of our nation and our people by compromising our health, destroying our money, stealing our wealth and compromising our dreams and ambitions.

By electing me, you have shown the world that 'we the people' still have power and the strength of will to exercise it in the face of great adverity. You have clearly announced your desire to return to the rule of Law and the Constitution as our founding principles. My election to office is the sound of your voice being heard. Rest assured that I will answer that call without hesitation or reservation.

In the last 100 days, I convened a federal Grand Jury to review the actions of my predecessors, of whom five survive. Three days ago, that Grand Jury handed down sealed indictments against James Carter, Geore H. W. Bush, Willian Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barak Obama. Those indictments are being posted on the Department of Justice website at this moment. Because of Texas' unique status under international law and the unquestionable loyalty of the Texas Rangers, I have instructed them to serve arrest warrants on those five men. At this moment, three are in custody, however the Bush family has escaped to Paraguay. We are initiating extradition hearings with Paraguay as of this morning.

My next act was to sign these papers in front of me. They are an Executive Order, a Presidential Directive and General Orders for the military, hereby cancelling all previous orders and directives. An ongoing state of emergency, which has led to decades of abuses of power by the federal government, is now cancelled, and all powers granted to the Executive Branch under the Emergency Powers Act are no longer in force.

In the past 100 days, I appointed a group of trusted individuals to find an elite corps of soldiers, both active and retired, who are still loyal to their oaths and to the Constitution. This morning I ordered those men to surround the Federal Researve buildings in New York and here in Washington D.C., and to hold all the occupants and records as evidence of treason and other serious crimes. The Chairman and the Board are currently under arrest and being held over for trial at the soonest possible time.

I have instructed my new Treasury Secretary to take a full and open accounting of all precious metal holdings by the federal government, and to begin issuring gold and silver coins and Treasury certificates as the lawful currency of these united States. As of this moment, the federal government will no longer pay nor receive in payment Federal Reserve Notes of any denomination. I have also directed the Treasury Secretary to repudiate any and all debt to the Federal Reserve as being unconstitutional and treasonous, including any and all interest on that debt.

I wish to assure our allies and trading partners that all Treasury bonds and certificates will be honored at full face value, backed by the full faith and credit of these united States.

As Commander-in-Chief of our Armed Forces, I have recalled all of our troops from overseas, to be repositioned on our southern border immediately to secure our nation against its most dire threat. That order was issued last month, and already 38% of our men and women in uniform have been mobilized. We have currently secured the California and Arizona borders, while citizen militias have been deputized in New Mexico and Texas to serve until such time as we can reposition our troops.

As of yesterday morning, I have given notice to all federal employees who work in unconstitutional agencies that they have 30 days to organize and catalogue everything under their control and then clear their personal belongings to begin an indefinite furlough pending Constitutional review of their positions. This includes, but is not limited to, the FBI, CIA, NSA, NRO, DHS, TSA,and ICE. I have ordered the Department of Justice to investigate any and all reports of abuses by agents of these organizations, and to personally prosecute all complaints of merit.

I have ordered the dismantling of all apparati, including visual, audio and digital surveillance being used against any and all citizens of these united States. We will no longer treat the citizens of this nation as enemies of the state, nor will any agency of the federal government be responsible for impinging on the natural rights of human beings, especially those who are citizens of this great nation. Security functions are in the process of being turned over to the States, where they rightfully belong, and where abuses can be better controlled by the citizenry of the States.

Because my predecessor was unable or unwilling to prove his lawful citizenship and ability to serve in this office, I am declaring any and all laws, regulations, decisions, and orders issued under his administration unconstitutional and invalid.

I have ordered the declassification of any and all documents, materials and objects held by the federal government, and I have ordered the GAO to begin accepting applications from academics, researchers and the press to enter the archives and restricted areas anywhere in these united States for the purposes of releasing any and all information held within. Teams of journalists and researchers have already been allowed into Area 51, the National Archives and White Sands, and others are being approved at this time. All public information belongs to the public and will be made available in the most expedient and organized fashion possible. The priority of this office will be to review the certification and adoption of certain Constitutional Amendments related to the Federal Reserve, the Internal Revenue Service and the income tax, and to the election of Senators. Any irregularity in the ratification process will be grounds for eliminating those amendments.

I have ordered the Justice Department to immediately cease enforcement of any and all federal firearms laws related to the private sale, ownership and use of firearms by American citizens. Related to this, I have ordered all the agents involved with Waco and Ruby Ridge to be arrested and held pending a full investigation of those inciedents.

I have already selected and empowered a new commission to investigate the 9/11 attacks. They will hold hearings in full public view and all credible witnesses, researchers and evidence will be brought forth, so that the American people will know the full truth of those events.

I have directed the Secretary of State to contact the Canadian and Mexican governments and notify them that these united States will no longer honor the NAFTA and GATT agreements, and all activities related to and coming from those agreements will halt immediately. I have also directed the State Department to begin proceedings to withdraw these united States from the United Nations and to review all treaties currently in effect for any usurpations of our precious Constitution and national sovereignty.

Furthmore, I am ordering the State Department to formally notify the nations of the world that these united States are adopting a neutral position with regards to any and all regional conflicts. We will be happy to assume a role as neutral party in any negotiations, however we will no longer take sides or offer the precious lives of our sons and daughters to defend foreign langs and peoples. We were warned by our first president to avoid entangling ties with foreign powers and it is the intention of this administration to return to that wise admonition.

My fellow Americans, I have outlined only the broadest actions undertaken by my administration tonight, but I assure you that there are many others in process now. For too long, we have suffered under the yoke of secretive powers who have sucked the life-blood out of our people, and it is time to take back what is rightfully ours, and ensure that it doesn't happen again.

The work of reversing decades of abuse will be a long and painful one, but in the end, we will hand to our children the rich bounty that our land has to offer. We will ensure their rights and futures unbound by the mistakes of the past and guarantee their ability to pursue life, liberty and happiness.

I am reminded of the admonition of Jesus Christ in the New Testament, "If your right eye offends you, pluck it out and put it away from you." This will not be easy nor will it happen overnight. We are correcting a long line usurpations beginning with such notable people as John Adams and Abraham Lincoln, but it can and must be done, or our precious sons and daughters, and theirs, will become slaves on the land that our forefathers fought so fiercely to bequeath to us.

I implore each of you to remain calm and to bear the inconveniences that will surely follow. Remember what we are trying to achieve and that any pain we feel is not from our actions, but from those who would enslave us. This is a powerful moment in history. We are the last great hope for all the peoples of the Earth. The world looks to America for leadership and opportunity, and we will provide it. We will demonstrate once again, as our foregathers did, that liberty and freedom create properity and wealth for all, not just the few who see us as useless eaters.

We are all products of the One Creator, who has made us in His image, and who has empowered us individually with value and sacred purpose.

Tonight, we embark once again on a great adventure, no less momentous than any of Mankind's greatest achievements. Do not allow anyone to divide us in our purpose, either race against race, religion against religion, or cause against cause, for that is the secret power of evil. Tonight we stand united as one people with one purpose: Liberty. There is no greater purpose. Future generations will look back at this moment and praise us for setting them free.

Let us not tolerate unfounded conspiracy theories, because there are enough real ones to fight, and we have taken the first steps in that momentous effort.

Through it all, I Jesse Ventura, will be your humble servant in office, but let no one mistake my service for weakness. There is no fear but what we imagine in our nightmares, and the nightmare is almost over. Real security, real prosperity and real happiness are within our grasp now. Be steadfast and resolute, and we will win this fight.

Good night and God bless.

The Root Of All Evil

Aristotle gave us the Golden Mean:

"All things in moderation."

The Wizard of Id gave us the Golden Rule:

"He who has the gold makes the rules."

There is a cancer that is eating the soul out of Humanity. The time of its inception can be traced to the Knights Templar in the Middle Ages of Europe. The very date of its metastasis can be pin-pointed on December 24, 1913, with the late-night passage of the Federal Reserve Act and the subsequent creation of the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Income Tax. At the moment, the disease became fatal.

Way back in the time of the Crusades, the Knights Templar reportedly discovered 'something' beneath the ruins of Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem that gave them remarkable power. Because of 'it,' they created a tight network, based in the Netherlands, that was the seedling of our modern banking system, whereby they issued certificates that allowed someone to travel safely to other countries and later trade in the certificates for the denominated amount of gold at the destination. Thus, they single-handedly created paper money in the West (China is credited with creating the concept of "flying money"). This allowed merchants to travel great distances without fear of being robbed of all their earnings. It also gave the Knights vast wealth and power, as they now had access to large amounts of gold and the fees they charged for the service.

Because of this network, they discovered that at any given time, only a portion of the gold was demanded for withdrawl. Therefore, they could lend portions of their reserve with interest and make even more money. They also had a secure and well-connected network that gave them the most precious commodity of all...information.

A rather infamous example of that network in action was the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo. The Baron von Rothschild, titular head of the modern Templars, received word of Wellington's victory hours before the general public. He spread the rumor that Napoleon had won and the markets in London crashed. He was able to buy up vast sums of securities at deep discounts, and when news of the victory hit the general population, he was able to sell at astronomical profits.

In fact, the telescope, which Galileo later turned to the Heavens, was invented by Dutch bankers in order to see returning merchant ships before anyone else, and thus use the information to their profitable advantage.

The Templars, and their modern equivalents, also lent money to monarchs across Europe. In times of war, they would fund both sides, so that no matter who won, the Knights would profit. Later, as the network grew in power and wealth, they were able to manipulate outcomes and entire countries by having the monarchs indebted to them. Their power became so fiercsome that the Cathoic Chruch and the French royals routed the Templars and hunted them mercilessly for years, a period of history that gave us the Inquisition and Friday the 13th.

The spirtual heirs to the Templars are the current central banks, and indeed, the entire global banking cabal. For the past 200 years, the bankers (now commonly known as the banksters) have used the wealth of nations against the people, using their network for insider trading and manipulating information, wars and economies to their advantage. They have created laws which treat soulless corporations as 'legal persons,' thus giving things the same status and rights as living beings. They then use the collective wealth of these 'persons' to manipulate media and information, election outcomes and virtually every aspect of modern life.

Like a festering rot, this cancer has grown and spread throughout the world, slowly but surely confiscating the wealth of nations and installing minute control over real, flesh-and-blood human beings.

This cabal has successfully misdirected people, first by sacrificing Jews, then Communists, then Freemasons, and dozen of other groups. They have kept aware people so befuddled and crasing their own tails that they are ineffectual at routing out the true evil. They further foster racial tensions and xenophobia to keep us fighting among ourselves and distrustful of each other. Thus we are distracted from the real culprit and waste our energies on useless, and ultimately profitable (for them) conflicts and wars.

Their one true weakness is that in order to make the final move, they must drop their disguise and reveal themselves as our supposed masters as part of the endgame. Their hope is that we, the people, will be so befuddled by flouride and anti-depressants that we won't recognize that moment.

Even now, one can perceive the cloak is slipping and revelations are piling up. The question is, how aware and mentally capable are we to recognize this fact?

They are making their final play now. The TSA gropings, the wats in the Middle East, the Chinese rivalry, the economic collapse of America and Europe are all playing cards in their deck. The problem is that we, the people, haven't figured out that there is a very simple and elegant solution: stop playing their game.

Of course, there will be consequences. There will be consequences if we continue. By slowly weaning ourselves from the banking system and moving to barter and gold/silver based trade, we can utter crush this evil within a year. However, you must conquer your fear of doing something new, and everyone must stand in fearless solidarity against whatever they will throw at us.

It will not be pretty. The banksters will throw up a huge fuss. They will conjure ghosts and phoantoms to scare us into submission. They will pull out all the stops to frighten us back into the corral. They will bomb and kill and maim without mercy, and we must prepare for it by keeping a clear image of our goal: freedom from oppression. Imagine a 3-year-old child who is spoiled and over-coddled when it is told to take a nap. Now imagine that child with bombs and diseases and armies ready to do its every bidding. As any parent knows, the only way to break an unruly child's tantrums is to ignore them, and that is what we must do now to the banksters.

The only reason they have power is because WE GIVE IT TO THEM.

So, here's our choice: we continue using banks and supplying the lifeblood that is killing all of humankind, or we simply walk away and start trading amongst ourselves again. It must be a mass movement and it must be done with resolve, no matter what boogey men they throw up at us. They will try to conscript our organic networks with their artificial beings (corporations). They will put up Judas goats to lead us back to the fold (Sarah Palin). They will present us with all sorts of false choices (Republican/Democrat). They will tease us with toys and gee-gaws and sparklie things. We must walk away forever. There is no choice. To give them an inch is to give them our lives. They are spoiled children hooked on our money and labor, and we must starve the Beast of both until it is thoroughly and completely dead, no matter what the pain or sacrifice.

It's the only way.

As Jesus famously said, "If your left eye offends you, pluck it out." Well, that's what we must do now. People can only be lead if they choose to be lead. In order to be corralled, you must freely walk into it.

Put down the remore, unplug the TV and turn off the video games. Those are the tools of submission. Instead, form a neighborhood co-op, plant a garden, sew clothes, creat something! Then, trade it for other goods and services, or accept gold and silver coins instead of the cancerous paper notes that have enslaved us. Form networks of real human beings. Pay off your house and car notes and get out of debt. It's not too late...yet.

But, stell yourself. People will die. Terror strikes will increase. Ghosts will pop up everywhere. Remember, it's not real. It is manufactured to herd you. Oh, sure, the bodies are real, but we must be prepared to die in order to save our children from this curse. It is the only way.

They can ticket some girls for selling illegal cupcakes, but they can't put 100,000 people in jail. Sure, they will try. They will do anything and stop at nothing to protect their empire of lies. All you have to do is ignore it, no matter what the pain is. It will end at some point, you just have to prepare yourself to go through with it. Remember, when you set a broken bone, you must yank the limb and reset the bone in place. It hurts like hell, both for the victim and for the person doing it, but it is the only way.

It's our choice now. We allowed this evil cancer to grow by conforming to their rules, but we can kill it just as easily. We gave them the power and we can take it back. Stop following and leaders perish.

IT WILL HURT, BUT IT MUST BE DONE!

Imagine how good life feels when it's free and liberty is the norm. We haven't been slaves forever, and we can be emancipated soon.

It's up to you.