"We have the greatest opportunity the world has ever seen, as long as we remain honest -- which will be as long as we can keep the attention of our people alive. If they once become inattentive to public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, judges and governors would all become wolves."
    -- Thomas Jefferson
Buddy Logan
Free-Range Human
Join Me
Buddy Logan
There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true;
the other is to refuse to believe what is true.
--Divider--
NOTE: Please be a responsible owner and keep all pet assumptions on leash.

"For too long we seem to have surrendered personal excellence and community value in the mere accumulation of material things. Our gross national product now is over 800 billion dollars a year, but... the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play; it does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worth while. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans."

-- Robert Kennedy University of Kansas, in Lawrence, Kansas, on March 18, 1968
60 years is a small blip on the history of human life on this planet. Yet, in that small period of time, we have managed to significantly deplete or degrade most of our natural resources, all but destroy our own cherished political system, placed most of the wealth and power in the hands of a very few elitist greedy bastards, allowed the exponential growth of an international fascist corporate system that holds no allegiance to any moral, ethical or spiritual principals, and let these factors drive our economy from the world's largest creditor to the greatest debtor in history, to a point where we are, today, living off of the health, wealth and prosperity of our grandchildren and their children and their children's children.

Is this moral?

We have, in a very short time, seen such an exponential rise in corporatism that our government, media and industry, as well as our assumptions about life and society are controlled by a few very powerful interests who's only concern is artificial, short-term wealth. There are only two concerns of the corporation: circumstances that are an asset to its ability to capture that artificial wealth and circumstances that may prevent or slow down its ability to do so. Whether the result of this exponential profit is environmental destruction, human injury, disease or even death, the mega-corporation will stop at nothing to eliminate any obstacles it may encounter. Once we understand the end result of this march to destruction, we need to work collectively to deal with these circumstances with virtuous integrity.

The phrase "We the People" really does mean something. At least, it did! How in the hell did we get to a point of demonizing one another because we don't all think the same way? Void of a solidarity of purpose, we are our own worst enemy at a time when our very survival as a species is at stake.

Without an informed public, we do not have a democracy.

This is a do-it-yourself Web site. Hopefully, it is an encouragement to those of you who are sitting on your butts living on assumptions that, when analyzed, don't really make much sense, to take it upon yourself to explore the world around you, and to begin to understand that most of what you "know" is wrong.
Learning is a constant process of updating what you thought you knew. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. This site is about looking for things that DO work rather then accepting, just because they are "status quo", those that do not. I am sharing what I know - or think I know - in the hope that it will inspire thought and personal research on matters extremely important to all of us.

Knowledge is a lot like the raven's description of a "prayer flower" in George McDonald's fantasy, "Lilith":
"That is a prayer-flower," said the raven.

"I never saw such a flower before!" I rejoined.

"There is no other such. Not one prayer-flower is ever quite like another," he returned.

"How do you know it to be a prayer-flower?" I asked.

"By the expression of it," he answered. "More than that I cannot tell you. If you know it, you know it; if you do not, you do not."

"Could you not teach me to know a prayer-flower when I see it?" I said.

"I could not. But if I could, what better would you be? You would not know it of yourself and itself! Why know the name of a thing when the thing itself you do not know? Whose work is it but your own to open your eyes? But indeed the business of the universe is to make such a fool of you that you will know yourself for one, and so begin to be wise!"

We are on the brink of a revolution!

We will either be the victims of this revolution or we will be the perpetrators. Either way, there WILL be a revolution.

The difference will be in what type of revolution it is ... a revolution of profound arrogance, and misguided ideas of social control, or a revolution protecting the freedom, health and individuality of those of us who ascribe to sustainable human values rather than the ignorant destructive and controlling forces of extreme arrogance, self-righteousness, greed, power and exponential corporate profit.

The "Fiscal Armageddon" that could "dwarf 2008" will be intensely personal. Millions of Americans will face the specter of lost incomes;
lost savings;
lost buying power;
lost homes;
lost liberty.
-- Martin D. Weiss, Ph.D. Money and Markets,
March 27th, 2011
We have all been uninformed and misinformed on very important matters that will profoundly affect our ability to survive - as individuals, as a culture and, eventually, as a species. The reasons for this misinformation are manyfold and complex; intentional and unintentional and borne out of misconceptions, denial, fear, greed, domination, selfishness, carelessness, nearsightedness, or just plain ignorance.

Because the majority of us look upon the truth in these matters, if we look upon it at all, with incredulity, the reality does not change toward the positive. It never will.

What that means is unless we educate ourselves to the actual reality of our existance and the forces controlling it, "hell on Earth" will become more than an expression. The destruction has already begun. There are those among us with solid ideas that may lead to practical, life-sustaining solutions. They may struggle in vain unless the majority of us stop confusing common "knowledge" with actual facts, educate ourselves and take positive action.

Truth is not on the left or the right or the middle of the political spectrum. There is nothing political about truth at all.

Before we do a little exploring of our present circumstances, it is important to think about how our perceptions of reality have been distorted by powerful forces who's influence most of us seldom consider. Let's take a minute or two to contemplate this ...

"Truth is treason in the empire of lies." -- Ron Paul
"Apparently, 'conspiracy stuff' is now shorthand for unspeakable truth." -- Gore Vidal
The reason there are so many conspiracy theories today is that far too often, in very important matters, there is a difference between the "official" story and the real story. Camera  [video] (14:17) This promotes an atmosphere of distrust amongst those who notice a separation between fact and fiction. Left unchecked, the realization that we have been lied to by institutions in which we place our trust can lead to varying degrees of paranoia. However, it is extremely important to know the difference between paranoiac extremism and states of heightened consciousness. The difference between the two is awareness of actual facts.

The connect-the-dots philosophers of conspiracy theories are very good at creating mystery and intrigue, but once they have completed their dot connecting, the end result is usually an extremely distorted picture. When the premise is mystery, anything is conceivable, and it does not matter which dots you connect. Connecting the right dots involves logical reasoning based on solid facts. Theory has its place. It is the first step toward discovering the truth. But it is very problematic when the "theorist" cannot distinguish theory from fact. While conspiracies and power mongers certainly exist in the world, most of what is killing us is simple greed and stupidity, best described as "insane madness".

"People desperately want a resolution of the psyop, so they can return to their former continuum. And because they feel desperate, they'll take whatever and whoever you give them. You can say a deer chewed on a power cable and blew out the power for the entire east coast for a week, and they'll believe you."
-- former psyop propagandist
Wild, unsubstantiated conjecture aside, it is important to understand that many bodies of knowledge commonly lumped into the realm of conspiracy "theories" go far beyond the theory stage, providing accumulated and researched factual information - actual data - admissions by those involved, or scientifically derived irrefutable evidence that contradicts commonly held beliefs. Still other bodies of information may support a preponderance of confirmed facts that stand in direct opposition to the accepted myth. Yet, even when a prolific accumulation of contrary data exists, or is discovered to overwhelmingly refute the lie, the majority of the public will still believe in the "official" story, despite the contradiction.

Individuals may express a general distrust in the "official" source, yet they often accept that source's contention of factual reliability simply based on the assumption that the majority of people they communicate with will do the same and, thus, they will not feel uncomfortable by having a contrary opinion. They call this strange mixture of insecure emotions and inaccurate generalizations a "belief" and go on with their day, feeling justified that having an opinion is somehow on a competitive level with actually knowing something.

They don't think about any of this. It just becomes an habitual way of dealing with the massive amount of data our culture stirs up on a daily basis ... most of which is quite non-substantive.

"Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment.
Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions." -- Albert Einstein


Most people think that everything is just what they assume
Manipulation of the masses is easy, as long as the manipulators can speak from an "official" capacity, tell people what they want to hear and cast off the truth as "lunacy" not worthy of practical debate or discussion. If the event is significant enough, then perhaps those in power might instigate a commission, destined, through delegated commissioners assured to support the status quo, limited finances and resources, and/or outright censure, to provide a desirable pre-determined outcome. Such a commission will assure the public by putting the truth to rest - either by ignoring it or discounting the facts through unintended ignorance or deliberate cover-up.
"The President has said only a minority of the commission can see a minority of the documents, and then thy have to clear what they're going to say to the rest of the commission with the White House. They don't want any more eyeballs to see these documents than they can possibly get away with. It's a scam! It's absolutely disgusting!"
-- Max Cleland, U.S. Senator, former Georgia Secretary of State, 9/11 Commission member

Cleland resigned from the 9/11 Commission and stated the Bush Administration was "stonewalling" and blocking the Commission's access to key documents and witnesses. He called the Commission a "national scandal".
"It's been my feeling, from the time that we completed our congressional inquiry, that there were some big unanswered questions."
-- Bob Graham, former Governor of Florida, U.S. Senator, member of the CIA External Advisory Board, co-chair of the Congressional Joint Inquiry into 9/11

Graham has stated he believes the Bush administration purposely withheld information from Congress on 9/11
"At some level of the government, at some point in time ... there was an agreement not to tell the truth about what happened [on 9/11]."
--John Farmer, Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission and Attorney General of New Jersey
"[FBI Director J. Edgar] Hoover lied his eyes out to the [Warren] Commission – on Oswald, on Ruby, on their friends, the bullets, the gun, you name it." -- Hale Boggs, former House Majority Leader and Warren Commission member

Boggs became frustrated with the commission's total reliance on the FBI for information. According to his wife, Lindy Boggs, "Hale felt very, very torn during his work [on the Commission] ... he wished he had never been on it and wished he'd never signed it [the Warren Report]."

Thomas Hale Boggs disappeared while on a campaign flight from Anchorage to Juneau, Alaska, on October 16th, 1972. No bodies were ever found.
The Los Angeles Star, on November 22, 1973, reported that before his death Boggs claimed he had "startling revelations" on Watergate and the assassination of JFK.
Multi-financial-interest international corporate media (the source of most people's information) will usually find it in their best interest to go along with the lie, even when they know better. Sometimes, that is easily accomplished by ignoring the story altogether. It is indicative of the fact that "News" is no longer considered a public service, but a vehicle for the profit of large corporations. The product that produces that profit is the consumer. The news story is just a "come-on". The more viewers, the greater price the corporation can charge for their multi-million dollar advertising slots.

If a story about Justin Bieber getting a haircut is more interesting to a greater number of viewers than congress passing a law that is a flagrant violation of your Constitutional rights, the Bieber-enhanced viewer product gets the revenue-producing air time. If socially divisive discourse, portrayed as intellectual commentary, brings better ratings than a program dedicated to understanding diverse viewpoints, the corporation gains and cultural civility and respect loses.

If you're going to sell a can of soup, you have to know how the majority of the viewers like their soup. If you're going to sell the news to the consumer so you can sell the consumer to the soup maker, you are going to do your best to attract the greatest number of consumers, by knowing who your consumer/viewers are and how they think. You do not endear those viewers by bringing forth information that is contrary to their beliefs. The best road to network profitability is to enforce those beliefs, no matter where they may stand against the truth. As 42-year ABC News veteran Ted Koppel put it, real news has been replaced with "fluff" and opinionated info-tainment.

When profit's hands took the wheel of journalism in this country, newspapers began to fold and network investigative teams were slashed. The corporation DOES NOT CARE about right and wrong. It cares about capital earnings! It is not designed to be concerned about morality, justice or truth unless it is profitable to do so. The only "good" and "bad" a corporation knows is the upside or downside of it's projected earnings. So the integrity-driven pundit and the investigative journalist willing to put his or her life on the line to find the truth at any cost - is an endangered species. Those that are still around are either independent or floundering under budget constraints and pushed to do stories with high interest and low expenditures. From the corporate view, why spend millions on an investigative staff when you can put babble-head divisive commentators behind studio desks, point a camera at them, and produce a higher profit.

The majority of today's social and political media sources - newspapers, magazines, radio, television and publishing houses, are owned by an extremely small number of very large corporations. [MORE INFO] We can talk all day about the causes and vehicles of deliberate deception, but the reasons for the wide acceptance of untruths, in most instances, is plain and simple ... for the media, it's safer and more profitable ... for the viewer, it's easier, and it feels safer. So, if the goal is denial, everybody wins! As long as there is an appearance of maintaining the status quo, to quote Winston Churchill, "When stumbling upon the truth, most people will brush themselves off and continue on as if nothing happened".

Reaction studies of people's perceptions of political and social events show that, rather than seeking the truth, we look for justification of how we feel about a particular subject. Seeing something in print that reinforces our feelings, or hearing it on the news provides us the permission to feel the way we do about the issue, and with most of us, that is all we are concerned about. Studies have also shown that, once we have granted ourselves that permission, we are much less inclined to relinquish it, no matter what comes along to refute our original belief.

Ronald Reagan loved to tell made up stories (such as the welfare recipient with 80 aliases), passing them off as truth to get people riled up about an issue. He knew that, even if proven to be untrue, his stories had already achieved their goal. The number one principle of social engineering is that people want to hear what they want to hear. There is little incentive in the average consciousness to go beyond that point unless they can see, through easily available information, that the issue directly affects them, their family, or their livelihood. Feeling secure in one's convictions becomes just that ... feeling ... it has nothing to do with being confident of any truth upon which those convictions are founded and, usually, very little to do with a true understanding of the subject matter.

Simple Economics

You can ignore reality, but you can’t ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.

"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function."
-- Albert A Bartlett, physicist

The average person has no idea what is going on in the world, or the inevitable grim times ahead, let alone the major lack of foresight, throughout the world, that has catapulted us into the beginning of a modern day "dark age". Very few have any idea what the "exponential function" means, let alone how indisputably it maps the destruction of our society and, perhaps, all of humankind if we do not take a different approach to living on this planet.

What is really important to understand is that exponential growth (or decline) is a compounding factor. When a quantity increases or decreases exponentially, it is said to have a fixed doubling rate (of whatever percentage). That is a fixed time in which the current quantity will double. If the percentage stays the same, it will double again in the same amount of time. This is called "steady" growth. However, it is anything but what you might visualize as steady (or linear) in scale.

Think of doubling the size of a pea ... eh, you have a large pea. Now, think about doubling the size of Mount Danali. Then think of doubling that again. Eventually, with exponential growth, the pea becomes a mountain. Three percent of a pea isn't much. Three percent of a mountain is a sizable mass.

Exponential growth is what most businesses try to achieve. The growth rate may stay at, say, 3%, but the growth in dollar amounts is higher every year because the base that percentage is calculated on has gotten larger. So, each year, the profit margin compounds when compared to the previous year, even though the "steady" growth rate is still only 3%. In this world of corporate business, this kind of exponential growth is demanded by stockholders. Companies are expected to grow, and the winners are those that grow exponentially.

Can this exponential growth continue forever? If there are limits, when will they come into play and how will they affect life on this planet?

Lets take a look at how these corporations maintain this type of growth. In order to achieve exponential growth, the continually successful corporation forces out, or buys out, their competition, and creates more and more goods and more and more markets and more and more consumers, while it exponentially joins in the cumulative global depletion of more and more resources. ("Depletion" means using more of a resource than nature can replenish.) The old standard of building a good product that will stand the test of time is old hat. With the establishment of debt as a personal resource, the new standard is to keep the consumer buying new products and services - either through upgrades or product replacement. When any of the above methods begin to run thin, or get too expensive, they simply reduce the quality of the product and find cheaper labor to produce it. This has little to do with supply and demand and a lot to do with the need for exponential corporate growth. The average product life expectancy today is 6 months, from production to landfill.

What is happening here is industry subsidized by the environment and future generations. The supply of resources is declining exponentially, while the number of people on the planet is growing exponentially and the financial structure, built on gimmicks and slight-of-hand is exponentially requiring more tricks to stay afloat.

In 1965, the world population was 3.3 billion. The current population is over 7 billion. Projections are that the growth rate will increase that figure by another 3 billion over the next 40 years, and before the year 2100, the world population will stand at 15 billion people.

Here's a couple of easy puzzles for you:
1. You place a single bacteria in a jar at 11:00.
At 11:01, the bacteria divides.
At 11:02, the two bacteria divide, making 4 bacteria.
This division continues every minute until, at 11:55, the jar is 3% full.Jar at 3%
Yet, 3 minutes later, the Jar is 25% full.Jar at 1/4
At just one minute before twelve, the jar is half full.Jar at Half
At what point does the bacteria realize it is in trouble?Full Jar


1b. Let's say some smart bacteria realized this problem ahead of time, sent out an exploratory expedition and discovered 3 more jars. How many more minutes will it take before these 3 jars are also full?      Answer: 2 minutes (12:02)

2. Don, Lila, Josh and I have 5 pies each. Together, we own all the pies in the world. (These are special pies made out of golden apples - they never spoil) Don
5
Lila
5
Josh
5
Buddy
5
Since I hung a "Loans" sign on my door, Don comes to me to borrow a pie. I loan Don a pie, for which he has to pay me back in full, including the interest - a quarter of another pie. Don
6
Lila
5
Josh
5
Buddy
4
Don uses the pie to buy a boat from Lila. Don
5
Lila
6
Josh
5
Buddy
4
Josh pays Don, over time, 1 pie for services. Don pays me back, I have 5.25 pies. Don
4.75
Lila
6
Josh
4
Buddy
5.25
Lila wants to buy a car from Josh, so she pays him two pies. Don
4.75
Lila
4
Josh
6
Buddy
5.25
With 6 pies, Josh is feeling richer, so he decides to buy a house from Don for 4 pies. He takes 2 from his pie stash and borrows two from me. (... stay with me ...) Don
8.75
Lila
4
Josh
4
Buddy
3.25
Over time, Lila pays Josh 2 pies for services rendered, Don also pays him 2 pies, and Josh pays me back 2.5 pies, which includes interest. Don
6.75
Lila
2
Josh
5.5
Buddy
5.75
Don decides to go open a store and spends 3.75 of his own pies and borrows 3 from me. He now owes me 3.75 pies. I now have 2.75 pies, Lila has 2, Don has 3 and an investment, and Josh has 5.5. Don
3
Lila
2
Josh
5.5
Buddy
2.75
Lila and Josh will buy from Don's store, and he will, eventually pay me back. Lila will need to borrow pie pieces from me to make ends meet. How long will this go on before I have all (or most) of the pies?

Who's profession is most lucrative - Don's or mine?

Now, when I have the majority of pies, I also gain something else ... it's called POWER! So now, I can raise the interest rates, and when someone borrows a pie from me, I can charge them a pie and 1/2, instead of 1/4.

But there's a problem here ... sure, I'll have more pies faster, but I can only hold on to so many of them or everything will stop.

I know ... I'll just change the rules! Since I always have a lot of pies on hand, and Lila and Don and Josh have me hold their pies when they are not using them, instead of loaning people pies, I'll just write a debt note. So, when Lila buys at Don's store, she can just give him the debt note saying he can come and turn it in for a piece of pie any time he wants. Then I can make as many notes as I want, and just charge people interest on the notes instead of the actual pies. After all, the chances of Lila, Don and Josh all coming in at once and demanding pies for their notes is pretty slim.

This is cool! Now I'm making pieces of pie for doing nothing except signing these debt notes! Except ... humm ... now I have almost all of the pies and people are paying me in debt notes. But that's okay ... it's POWER that matters - not pies! After all, you can only do so much with pies. And the more people are in debt, the more power I have.

So, the rules have changed again. We no longer have a currency built on pies. It is built on debt.
"The hoax is that there is virtually no "real" money in the system, only debts. Except for coins, which are issued by the government and make up only about one one-thousandth of the money supply, the entire U.S. money supply now consists of debt to private banks, for money they created with accounting entries on their books. It is all done by sleight of hand; and like a magician's trick, we have to see it many times before we realize what is going on. But when we do, it changes everything. All of history has to be rewritten."
-- Ellen Hodgson Brown, "The Web of Debt" (Introduction)

Our economic system can be compared to a gasolene engine. If you had a carburetor that did not need to inject fuel into the engine, that engine would run quite well on fumes. That is what the internal combustion engine was designed to do. However, without a supply of gasolene, the fumes will eventually dissipate and the engine will quit running. We have been running on debt. The banksters have all the money and, thus, most of the power in the world. They will not stop until they have full control.
[READ THEIR LIPS]

The "New World Order" is a subject of a multitude of conspiracy theories. The reason for this is that the idea of an elitist one-world government is very real in the minds of the conspirators, and those conspirators wield a lot of power. But, when it comes to this goal, these wealthy oligarchs will become pitiful failures whose ignorant mindset will utterly destroy any chance they may have of achieving their goals. Certainly, however, they will cause a lot of chaos in their attempts to do so.

World Financial Collapse is Imminent!

This is not doom-and-gloom sensationalism. I wish it were. Unfortunately, unless there is a drastic change in the current system very soon, it is inevitable.

My confidence in that statement is built upon an understanding of the exponential factor, history, human nature, politics, physics and bungee jumping. Nothing is being done to solve the problem ... not in Europe ... not in Asia ... and not in the U.S.

When there is a hole in the bottom of the boat, and there is more water coming in than you can possibly bail out, throwing buckets of water overboard is only prolonging the inevitable. More importantly, it is distracting you from developing a survival plan. Eventually, the boat will sink. Eventually, the bungee jumper quits bouncing. It happened in Rome a long time ago, and, more recently, in pre-World-War-II Austria and Germany, and it is happening today in Europe as well as America - the holder of the world's reserve currency.

Weak Dollar
The current world financial system is a house of cards. We have seen some of those cards fall, resulting in severe stress over all. This is nothing compared to what would happen if just one of the cards supporting this structure were to fall. The result would be the collapse of the entire house.

This could happen at any moment, causing a quick spiral. It may be Europe's failure to lend support to Greece, the financial collapse of Ireland, Italy or Spain, investors pulling out of the U.S. Dollar, or one of several other scenarios. Lehman Brothers' failure, three years ago came close to instigating a world financial meltdown. Greece and Italy have five times more debt than Lehman Brothers did.

All this aside, the biggest threat, which really began back in 2005, was kicked into gear in late 2012. No matter what you believe, the fact is that Iraq was taken over because Saddam Hussein quit trading in Petrodollars. The whole thing started several years ago when Richard Nixon (via Henry Kissinger) persuaded Saudi Arabia to trade their oil only in U.S. dollars and to convince OPEC to agree to do the same, in exchange for armaments and logistic defense for the Saudi government. This forced the whole world into trading oil only in U.S. dollars (dubbed "Petrodollars"). To do this, these countries have needed to have large sums of U.S. dollars on hand. These dollars are then invested in U.S. Treasury bills and other interest bearing securities that can be easily converted to purchase dollar-priced commodities like oil. This is what has allowed the U.S. to run up trillions of dollars of debt: the rest of the world simply buys up that debt in the form of U.S. interest bearing securities. This has been a tremendous boon to the American Economy over the last 30 years.

Iran threatened to follow Saddam's move, but has been doing so a little more cautiously. Still, it is not hard to see that the U.S. pressure on Iran is a ruse for the real fear - the crash of the dollar - and it appears our attempt at bullying sanctions is backfiring.

Iran's plan, although it actually began in 2005, has been kicked into high gear. One of the largest crude oil producers in the world, they will be selling that oil to several countries, including Russia, China, Japan and probably India, in other than U.S. dollars. Where the U.S. and Iran are concerned, it is Iran's coup de grâce - far outweighing any possible nuclear threat. The mainstream press isn't talking about this because the financial ramifications - especially if this starts a movement among oil-consuming countries - could devastate the U.S. economy.

As Petrodollar expert William R. Clark puts it, "the upcoming Iran bourse will introduce petrodollar versus petroeuro currency hedging, and fundamentally new dynamics to the biggest market in the world - global oil and gas trades. In essence, the U.S. will no longer be able to effortlessly expand its debt-financing via issuance of U.S. Treasury bills, and the dollar's international demand/liquidity value will fall."

Should we manage to avoid these events (not too likely), other factors are causing a slower erosion. Our industry is gone and our tech jobs are rapidly eroding to cheaper wage scales overseas. America's current value is in it's consumerism and debt instead of the industry that built our wealth over the last 100 years. This is a self-destructive process. You can't have an economy built on consumerism when the consumers (the workers) can no longer afford the goods produced.

The effects of these erosive factors manifest themselves at a slower rate of speed only because the world has been dependant on us - originally due to our superior industrial strength - today, due only to our consumerism and the fact that the dollar is the world's reserve currency. As China builds it's millions of citizens into good consumers, they will no longer need us. Although you are not hearing about it in the U.S. mainstream media, conversation in the rest of the world is toward moving away from the dollar. Even the International Monetary Fund, which is 50% owned by the U.S. Treasury, has hinted toward a world currency. When that happens, we will no longer be able to print virtually worthless money as we please, which is all that is keeping us, once the world's largest creditor and now it's largest debtor, afloat.

"There's nothing I can do about it!"

"From the ashes of a failing and falling system, tremendous opportunity exists to create positive change and a prosperous future. More so than any other nation in modern history that has faced similar circumstances, the United States is also in a unique position to reverse many of the negative trends it now confronts. To do so will require a recapturing of its lost attributes of entrepreneurial spirit, free-thinking, professed morality, civic courage and the "can-do" pioneering zeal that once defined the nation’s spirit."
-- Trends forecaster, Gerald Celente
This page will attempt to explain some of the causes of the coming revolution and why you should choose to be a participant on the positive side, rather than fall prey to situations that will not only affect your health, livelihood and freedom, but that of your children, grandchildren, and their children and grandchildren. There is plenty you can do but it all starts with a real awareness of the situation, which comes from understanding the truth. You have no other choice if you believe in freedom and individualism. You are living in a point of history that will affect generations to come.

This "Revolution" has nothing to do with armaments, violence or bloodshed. We are way beyond that point. Such actions will, most likely, and very sadly, come about. They will only feed the situation, creating more problems, more violence and more bloodshed. They will do nothing to solve the problem. We have to face something much more difficult ... we have to use our intelligence.

Suicide Bankers?

It begins by understanding that the current financial "crisis" is not occurring simply because a bunch of big financial institutions got too greedy. What needs to be understood is the who, what, when, where and WHY of the powers that set the stage to play upon this greed, while in full knowledge of the end result and the inability of those commonly recognized as being in power to do anything about it. Camera  [video] (3:15)

"This crisis is all about fraud!" -- Joseph Stiglitz, former chief financial officer for the World Bank.
Regarding the above statement by Nobel prize winner Stiglitz, I am not being dramatic when I say that the future of the human race revolves around one question; "why?" Suppose I told you there was a plan to dissolve the United States as we know it and reduce the wage scale dramatically. What would you think? No - I'm not asking for your knee-jerk reaction. What would you THINK?

Most people think that everything is just what they assume
Actual thinking is a process whereby we study and weigh known or discovered information and evaluate its validity through a reasonable process. It has little to do with how we feel or what we want to believe, or what we assume to be true. The thinking process is restricted by our individual imagination; you can not come to a valid conclusion about something without first having the ability to imagine that conclusion, no matter what it might be. Even before that, one must be willing to accept the possibility that their current premises may be invalid. Only then is the path to discovery open.

"Please give us a simple answer, so that we don't have to think, because if we think, we might find answers that don't fit the way we want the world to be."
-- Nation by Terry Pratchett


This Web site is the result of many years of research and observation, much of it based on the words and actions of the players themselves. Hopefully, your visit here will lead you on a road to your own discoveries. Although I may sound persuasive, this site is not here to convince you of anything. It is here to help you to think, to seek truth and to avoid being blinded by a false sense of "normalcy" while the foundation of your beliefs and values is being eroded beneath your feet.

DON'T BELIEVE ANYTHING YOU READ HERE until you have researched it yourself. The issues here are far too important to sit around and say "that's a bunch of hogwash" or "well ... may be", or to believe every word just because it "makes sense" to you.

Trust those that are seeking the truth. Be wary of those who say they have found it.

Perhaps, in your research, you will decide that I am wrong. That's fine. You will know the subject matter, and you will recognize the signs when they rear their ugly heads. Just research!

You won't find the real story on the 6 o'clock news!

"Fascism is Corporatism"    - Benito Mussolini

Fascism is the merger of corporations and government. Corporatism has been around since Plato. Definitions are numerous, but all are based on the same set of principles - a society of classes, or corporations, divided into 3 groups; occupational, business and government or, if you will, labor, corporations and government. Modern-day corporatism, where the corporation controls the government and labor, a situation in existance and rapidly growing in power, is nothing short of fascist totalitarianism. Individualism - the right of an individual to make their own decisions - is detrimental to this structure. Through the negligence, ignorance or corruption of our lawmakers Fascism is here today in the good ol' USA, and it has only begun to show its teeth!

If that seems to you to be an offensive statement, RESEARCH IT! Put on your thinking cap and put aside your assumptions. Look around you. There are corporations today who hold more money and power than most of the countries in the world, and their financial status and power over lawmakers, governments and society continues to grow. It is an exponential rise and it is very much getting to the point where the only entity that has control over these corporations is the financial sector, run by the world's banking families. When corporations rule the world, they will be controlled only by the oligarchs who own the life-blood of those corporations - the world's money supply.

Think about life with a corporation making decisions for you .... decisions concerning your family, your income and lifestyle, your freedom and liberty, your privacy and civil rights. The people who founded this country didn't trust the government to do that, let alone a corporation.

But we live in a crazy world, where Black's Law Dictionary describes a "person" as "1. a human being. 2. An entity (such as a corporation) that is recognized by law as having the rights and duties of a human being…"

You could call this "legal fiction", which is also described by Black's as "Assumption of fact made by court as basis for deciding a legal question. A situation contrived by the law to permit a court to dispose of a matter …"

If corporations are to be legally recognized as persons, then we need to recognize that these "persons" are dangerously psychopathic.

Psychopathy: A personality disorder characterized by shallow emotions (in particular reduced fear), stress tolerance, lacking empathy, coldheartedness, lacking guilt, egocentricity, superficial charm, manipulativeness, irresponsibility, impulsivity, and antisocial behaviors.

Corporations are entities designed for power and profit with no conscience!
"They don't distinguish between right and wrong. They only distinguish between profit and deficit. Their motives are not for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but for profit. And if profit becomes the ultimate recipient of protection in this country, it seems inevitable that the rights of the individual will get lost in the balance sheet."
--Sarah Stodola, Nov 2003, The Brooklyn Rail
Why is this important? If people in Congress cannot be bought off with money (one lobbyist, Jack Abramoff is serving time for bribing 20 members of Congress. No members of Congress, with the exception of Robert Ney of Ohio, were charged with a crime.), corporations will simply weigh the profit against the consequences. Members of the corporate team, who would otherwise not make personal decisions that would cause harm or death to other individuals, can justify their part in such actions, and thus feel exonerated, by claiming exemption from personal responsibility.

Corporations as People
To give you just one of an endless stream of examples, drug company GlaxoSmithKline (known as "GSK"), among other crimes, caused heart attacks and/or death in an estimated 50,000 to 100,000 diabetics using the drug Avandia, according to Cleveland Clinic cardiologist Dr. Steven Nissen. This was not a mistake. GSK made fraudulent claims and covered up negative test results. Government investigations proved that the company knew of the potential harm before the drug went on market, but made a corporate decision that, should problems occur, resulting fines and lawsuits could easily be paid with a percentage of the profits. In the past 3 years alone, the company, the fourth largest drug company in the world, has been fined a total of 6.5 billion dollars in charges of fraud, bribery, medicare overcharges and unpaid taxes. Not much console to loved ones of the dead. GSK has forked out millions more in thousands of lawsuit settlements, and they remain a highly profitable corporation. No individuals in this multinational corporation have been charged with any crimes.

As another example, few people know that chemical companies, who make fertilizer as well as other chemicals - some of them extremely toxic - are spreading toxic waste across America's farmlands. Chemicals like cadmium, arsenic and beryllium make their way into the food chain because it is cheaper than having to dispose of these highly toxic chemicals in a toxic waste dump. Said one chemical executive, "[Chemical waste] is poured into the top of the silo, and when it comes out of the bottom, the same material is fertilizer! Don't ask me to make sense of it ... that's the wisdom of the EPA." The EPA at first said it was unaware of the practice, but has done nothing to stop it. (Fateful Harvest - Seattle Times Reporter Duff Wilson)

Through personal investigation, you will learn that these lobbying and corporate-decision crimes are not isolated cases. They have become status-quo.

When negative publicity becomes public, or it is suspected it will, the corporation may create front "public interest" organizations, usually clandestinely founded by public relations firms enlisted by the corporation.
Thus, if Burger King were to report that a Whopper is nutritious, informed consumers would probably shrug in disbelief...And if the Nutrasweet Company were to insist that the artificial sweetener aspartame has no side effects, consumers might not be inclined to believe them, either. But if the 'American Council on Science and Health' and its panel of 200 'expert' scientists reported that Whoppers were not so bad, consumers might actually listen... And if the 'Calorie Control Council' reported that aspartame is not really dangerous, weight-conscious consumers might continue dumping the artificial sweetener in their coffee every morning without concern.
-- Masks of Deception: Corporate Front Groups in America Mark Megalli, Andy Friedman, 1991

Today's media will usually read press releases produced by such organizations without doing any research into their foundation. Indeed those press releases may have been sent down from and be defending the corporation that owns the media organization.

Are you ready to pollute the food you eat and destroy your environment in order that these corporations may have a slightly higher quarterly earnings report? Are you ready to die so that drug and chemical companies can increase their profit margin? Will you willingly take a large cut in pay so that these corporations can thrive and gain more government control? Most likely, not. People would be up in arms over such thoughts. But the public relations machinery is well in gear making heros out of villains and upholding the corporate establishment as savior. Those foolish enough to join the naive majority will do whatever their "saviors" say is necessary. (Sound like weird conspiracy stuff? ... study Hegelian Dialectics. Many of those in positions of power have.)

--Divider--
The current financial fraud crisis did not start with the people writing the loans. It did not start with the banks and lending houses, and it did not start with the CEO's of these organizations. It started at the very top. The astute student will learn who the people "at the top" are, what they believe, why they are the most powerful people in the world, why we are dependant on their philosophies, how distorted those philosophies are, why it is in the interests of these oligarchs to purposely set the stage for a world-wide financial "crisis" and the destruction of America as we know it, why they would want to do that and how they have the means to pull it off.
I think it is extremely important that every American understand the message in this news commentary. Let's watch!
"Steal a little and they throw you in jail
Steal a lot and they make you king"
-- Bob Dylan
While Americans were losing their credit and their homes, the bankers were profiting by packaging and selling bad loans, then turning around and profiting again by betting (through credit default swap derivatives - a market virtually controlled by Citicorp, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo) that these fraudulent securities would not be paid back - a bet they had little chance of losing. Some of these profits went to financing political campaigns. The financial sector was the top political donor in 2008 for both Republicans and Democrats.

Bill Maloni, Fannie Mae's chief lobbyist, said this of Congressional and other critics and the position of being a powerful lobbyist:
"It was always an us against them. If you punch my brother I'll burn down your house. I want to kill them, bury them, and piss on their graves."

Fannie Mae was originally a depression-era government program to help low-income buyers obtain loans. It was spun off, by Lyndon Johnson, into a government-subsidized private corporation which, due to these subsidies, became one of the biggest and most profitable darlings of Wall Street. The subsidies did not help anyone obtain loans, or help to make housing more affordable. They paid salaries to Fannie Mae employees and dividends to its' shareholders.

Thanks to our politicians, Fannie Mae's bad loans, as well as the bad loans of other corporations, are now owned by you and me.

In 1968, there were sixty-two lobbyists in Washington; today there are thirty-four thousand. That's an exponential increase!
"A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on Paul's support." -- George Bernard Shaw
--Divider--

Someone in a terrorized country said "Americans do not know what fear is. Their only fear is inconvenience."

We can expect to be much more than inconvenienced real soon. The only means we have of protecting ourselves, as well as generations to come, is to understand what is happening, why it is happening, and what the outcome will be if we don't do something about it.

If you believe the lie that our economy is recovering, you are in for a rude awakening. The war against your pocketbook and your livelihood has just begun.

Every light you see at the end of the tunnel has the potential of being a freight train coming at you unless you have learned to separate illusion from reality; assumption from actuality. The only efficient means you have of doing that is to use your own intellect, and, in order to do that, you need to have the ability and the desire to reject "common knowledge" and go after the real truth. Unfortunately, most people have the ability, but lack the desire. Instead, they accept anything that is spoon fed to them by what they consider, through naive perception, to be appropriate factual sources, and they base their assumptions of fact on these sources. These properly trained and socialized individuals are ready, at any time, to be led anywhere by those with an agenda bent on exploiting that trust.

As long as we remain inside the mental box, we have no means of understanding what is influencing that box from the outside and we cannot separate the exploiters from the well-intentioned from those who really haven't a clue themselves, but are perfectly willing to promote themselves as "experts" for financial or other gain. Inside the box, we may feel the Earth shake, but we must rely on others to explain the cause when, chances are, they have never been outside the box themselves.

To underline my point, let's listen to sound economist Peter Schiff warn us of the impending disaster we are currently dealing with, long before it happened, while mainstream "experts" laughed him off, time and time again. (Please excuse the poor video quality)

Who is the Enemy?

The enemy is not the individuals who control the corporations that are quickly, through consolidation, eating up every speck of competition around them and spreading their control over an ever-broader spectrum of industries with sometimes extremely conflicting interests, such as food and toxic waste.
It is the singular mindset of a culture where production and profit rule above all else.

It is not our politicians.
It is their ignorance, their fear of losing their position, or, in some cases, their mindless and self-indulgent profiteering.

It is not modern science.
It is the competition for funding, as well as other financial and political result expectations, where the process starts with a desired conclusion, then selects data in order to support the hypothesis, rather than the other way around. Often, it is simply denial of facts for fear of upsetting the status quo.

It is not U.S. regulatory agencies.
It is the constant political manipulation of these agencies, who's employees are either entrenched in the corporate world they are supposed to regulate, are influenced, in one way or another by special interests, or who simply have been raised in an educational system that supports the assumed status quo - right or wrong.

It is not the Government.
It is you and me, who have let ourselves become too busy with our complicated lives that we have no time to truly understand what is going on around us and participate in our republic - a system designed to be run "by the people".

We have met the enemy, and he is us!

Our leaders in this fight against ourselves are a small group of men who believe they have the intelligence and the destiny to make decisions for the rest of us. Their greatest tool, next to their control of the world's financial institutions, is the profound growth of modern-day, fascist-style corporatism - an odd blend of Capitalism and Communism.

We have given them that tool.

The real enemy we must now combat are those who are leading us down this road to containment; this small group of arrogant elitists who have control of the purse strings of the world, and take advantage of all of the above to carry out an agenda that can only be described as world totalitarian control. There is no need for these elitists to micro-manage their plan. The spread of corporatism, the laxity of politicians, the ignorance and ineptitude of public servants, the lack of participation on the part of you and me, the establishment of "free"-trade agreements, and other factors, are playing right into their hands. They just need to give a little nudge here and there - like using their control of the "Federal" Reserve System, the IMF or the World Bank, or spreading propaganda, on the reasons for forming a North American financial union and a one-world government, through the Council on Foreign Relations, an organization with a very strong influence on U.S. Policies.

These are the most powerful men in the world. They are not powerful because they are smarter than anyone else. Quite to the contrary, they live a sheltered existence that has little to do with the world in which the rest of us live. They are rich and powerful simply because we have allowed them to be, while feeding their greed with our hard-earned labor.

We have such a strong need for "experts" that we are willing to accept anyone who will suggest their qualifications in that arena - even if they are crooks ready and willing to rip us off!

These are very real, and very important matters, and the facts are not hard to find. Even if you do not believe there is a major scheme behind it all, the fact is the results are, nevertheless, not hard to see. A minor understanding of what is happening in our world will lead any thinking person to conclude that something needs to be done to reverse this course toward self-destruction. "Stay the course" is not an option!

Lest you think I am a "wild" conspiracy theorist, let me explain something here. This is not a story of a group of elitist oligarchs who sat around and decided they wanted to control the world. It is the story of a mindset. A very dangerous mindset fostered by mostly Northern Hemisphere caucasian (and Japanese) men, wealthy and/or politically powerful, who have a very narrow-minded, short-sighted and, despite their intelligence, ignorant viewpoint on how things should work on planet Earth.

Even James Madison, the leading framer of our Constitution, believed the people should be guided by the "more capable set of men"; men of property in positions of power who would magically be endowed with "pure and noble" intentions. These "enlightened statesmen" and "benevolent philosophers", surely would defend the rights and liberty of "those who will labor over all the hardships of life". A few years later, Madison came to view this philosophy as evasively idealistic.

In the years following the civil war, which fostered the beginning of the military-industrial complex, corporations, formerly chartered under strict control of the individual states, began to gain advantage through the huge profits gained through military procurement contracts, by bribing government officials. In his book "The Robber Barons", Matthew Josephson wrote "The halls of legislation were transformed into a mart where the price of votes was haggled over and laws, made to order, were bought and sold."

This was the era that emblazoned the wealth of people like John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, James Mellon, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Philip Armour, Jay Gould and others. The rules constraining corporate power were re-written virtually by the corporations and wealthy individuals themselves. Wage and hours laws were ruled unconstitutional and the use of juries to decide fault when corporations were to blame for damage, injury or death were eliminated, leaving the decisions to an often corrupt judiciary, under new laws that granted limited liability to corporations.
"The heart of the American economy had been put under one roof, from banking and steel to railroads, urban transit, communications, the merchant marine, insurance, electric utilities, rubber, paper, sugar refining, and assorted other mainstays of the industrial infrastructure."
-- Harvey Wasserman - America, Born and Reborn

Then, in 1886, the U.S. Supreme Court in Santa Clara County vs Southern Pacific Railroad, supposedly ruled that a private corporation is a natural person under the Constitution. At least, this was the conclusion of the court reporter (a former railroad president), in the headnote to the decision of the Court. The Court, in the words of Chief Justice Morrison Waite, "avoided meeting the constitutional question in the decision." Despite the court's avoidance of the issue, and the fact that the Constitution makes no reference to corporations, this insane declaration of a court reporter that "corporations are persons" has been upheld as valid ever since, along with corporate limited liability laws, making the corporation a person with more civil rights and less liability and responsibility than any human. Corporations may kill, but they cannot be put to death. They can only be asked to give the government a share of their profits, in the way of fines, when they misbehave. That is, if the government decides they should be punished at all.

Years later, the "Council on Foreign Relations" grew out of a task force created by Woodrow Wilson to advise the President on U.S. options in the post-war world after World War I. Five years later, this group of elites officially adapted the Council on Foreign Relations title and became a permanent organization. Shortly after the outbreak of World War II, on September 12th, 1939, with funding provided, in part, by the Rockefeller Foundation, members of the Council began to lay out a planning project for the State Department, on problems caused by the war and plans for peace.
"Memorandum E-B34, issued by the Council to the president and the State Department on July 24, 1941, outlined the concept of a "Grand Area". This was the area of the world that the United States would need to dominate economically and militarily to ensure materials for its industries with the "fewest possible stresses". The minimum necessary Grand Area would consist of most of the non-German world. Its preferred scope would consist of the Western Hemisphere, the United Kingdom, the remainder of the British Commonwealth and Empire, the Dutch East Indies, China and Japan. The concept outlined in the memo involved working for economic integration within the largest available core area and then expanding outward to weave other areas into the core, as circumstances allowed."

[Ed: This same memorandum led to the establishment of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank]

"The subsequent U.S. initiative on behalf of economic globalization worked from two basic premises. First, in order to maintain the existing capitalist economic system, the United States must have access to the resources and markets of much of the world so that it could create a sufficient export surplus to maintain full employment at home. Second, by spreading the U.S. economic model throughout the world within a globalized economy, the world would become united in peace and prosperity. Apparently, little note was taken of the evident contradiction that if maintaining the prosperity of a U.S.-style economy required gaining control of most of the world's resources and markets, it would be impossible for other countries to replicate the U.S. experience. Nor is it evident that much thought was given to the contradiction of financing industrial exports to low-income countries with international development loans that could be repaid by these countries only if they developed export surpluses with the countries that had initially extended the loans. If such questions were raised, they were quickly pushed into the background by the urgency of the war effort and the powerful interests the vision served.
-- When Corporations Rule the World - David C. Korten

All of these scenarios, and more, have built the foundation for the power structures that exist today. These structures are neither sane nor rational. They are simply "status-quo" and, thus, acceptable to the majority of individuals who have not considered, through apathy, ignorance, self-interest, or short-sighted vision, the consequences of the self-destructive system we have created. The average American has never even considered it. Because they have not considered it, they do not understand that there is a problem. They simply go along with what appears to them to be the main consensus.

It may be the main consensus but ... that's the problem.
Most people think that everything is just what they assume

Exploration (Do It Yourself!)

Let's do some exploring!

If you are skeptical about this journey, that's good! There are things here you really need to consider - as well as what your current premise and frame of reference is.
Don't trust ME!
Do some RESEARCH!      You can start here.


We're going to go on a little trip. Along the way we may shatter a few myths. If you question anything you see here, GOOD! Research it! Don't think you know the facts unless you do. If you don't do your own research, you don't KNOW shit!
Most people think that everything is just what they assume

If none of this sounds interesting, I can say with full confidence that you have not studied the issues held in these pages, and you have no interest in the forces that affect your life and your livelihood.
(Hopefully, you are on a really heavy spiritual path!)


By the way, most of the detailed information on this journey you will find in little wafers that look like this: [INFO]  Don't be afraid to click on them for detailed information.

If you decide to join me in this exploration, we'll talk, and watch some movies along the way. But there are four I think you should watch right now, as they will give you a little foundation of what we are going to explore on this journey.

For a little background, let me tell you what some folks have said about Gerald Celente, the man featured in the first video:
"When CNN wants to know about the Top Trends, we ask Gerald Celente."—CNN Headline News

"Gerald Celente has a knack for getting the zeitgeist right."—USA Today
(Note: "Zeitgeist" is the general cultural, intellectual, ethical, spiritual, and/or political climate within a nation or within specific groups.)

"There's not a better trend forecaster than Gerald Celente. The man knows what he's talking about."—CNBC

"Those who take their predictions seriously... consider Celente's Trends Research Institute."—The Wall Street Journal
Gerald Celente and Trends Institute: http://www.trendsresearch.com
 
More at The Real News
 


Come along ... we'll see if we can figure out what matters and what doesn't.
--Divider--

The Journey

Oh! Look .... it's Ben Bernanke, the former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman ... He says he has a solution to the financial crisis .... let's listen!

"The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press ... that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost."

Thanks for those inspiring words, Ben.

Really inspiring don't you think? That is, if it inspires you to move to China or somewhere financially safer. You see, that would cause rampant inflation. I'm sure Ben was joking ... wasn't he? The only reason he can say that in the first place is because the dollar is the world standard. But it is probably not going to be much longer. Especially if anyone else around the globe hears him say that.

The truth is, the financial community around the world is quite aware of what the U.S. is doing, most are not very happy about it because their currencies are pegged to the dollar, and it is causing a spat of currency war skirmishes that could easily turn into outright world financial war. With all this talk and action concerning "Quantitative Easing", the goal of which, we are being told, is to stimulate the economy, the actual goal is to devalue the dollar. When paper money is printed with no real value behind it, that is exactly what happens. The problem is that the dollar is the world's standard currency.

Why would we want to devalue our currency? Because it makes U.S. goods cheaper and easier to sell to the rest of the world, and because business and government are being run in this country by international corporations and the banksters that support them.

Oh! .... and there's James Galbraith, son of America's most famous economist, John Kenneth Galbraith. James is a former Executive Director of the Congressional Joint Economic Committee and is now a professor at the University of Texas Department of Government. What do YOU think, James?

"We are left . . . with the thought that the Federal Reserve Board does not know what it is doing. This is the 'Wizard of Oz' theory, in which we pull away the curtains only to find an old man with a wrinkled face, playing with lights and loudspeakers."

Where's your imagination, James? I suppose next you'll tell us there is no tooth fairy!

Now .... where were we .... oh yes ....
Our words for today are "naivety" and "denial". Hold on to them tight, because there are words and thoughts and perceptions here that will try to eat them up!  They'll give you something in return, but if those words have been keeping you warm and fuzzy, maybe you might want to put them back on when we're done, so you'll be more comfortable. ... I understand. Here's a secure bag to keep them in. These bags were donated by Homeland Security, in the interest of preserving these cultural concepts. For our own safety, of course.

Please leave your Real ID behind. If you don't know what a Real ID is, then buckle up boys and girls!  Homeland Security is going to take you on a real BIG ride!  It'll be just as much fun as a cold toilet seat! [INFO]
Oh! Here's a phrase to munch on during the journey;
Institutionalizing conflicting interests
What do you suppose that means? We're about to find out.
Okay .... Ready? Here we go!
See the escalating numbers below? Just look at how fast they climb! That's called debt accumulation. It's called that because it's not money we're spending, it's money that Rocky the squirrel and his friends pull out of their magic hat and loan to us. Soon, we may have to get a bigger box to hold all our numbers!  Recent wars have accumulated as much debt as it took our nation 200 years to accumulate previously. Isn't that amazing!   But don't go away - we've got some much bigger numbers to show you!
Don't worry though - it's not our debt - it's the nations's debt. All YOU have to do is pay the interest. Your grandchildren will pay the rest. Aren't they nice!
Based on congressional appropriations
"How tragic it is to see old men who are unwilling to talk to potential adversaries but seem so ready to dispatch young people to fight and die."
   -- General Wesley K. Clark, former supreme commander of NATO
   Washington Post Sunday, September 16, 2007
"Why should we hear about body bags and deaths and how many, what day it's gonna happen?...It's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"
     -- Barbara Bush, "Good Morning America," the day before the start of the Iraq war
"Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy."
     -- Henry Kissinger (Rocky's friend) Chapter 5 in the "Final Days" by Woodward and Bernstein
[More Inspirational Quotes From Henry]
--Divider--
Fascism (Encyclopedia Britannica): "... militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy and the rule of elites, and the desire to create a Volksgemeinschaft (German: 'people’s community'), in which individual interests would be subordinated to the good of the nation."

Ladies and Gentlemen, you too can experience astounding levels of Fascism right here in your own country!


It's easy!  But don't take my word for it!  Just sit back, relax, and watch it happen!
You don't have to feel responsible. Shucks - you don't even have to get involved until you're forced to!
If your personal freedom is more than just a silly idea to you, click the link below.
Go ahead!  We'll wait.
America - Freedom to Fascism
Camera Get Some Popcorn. Watch the movie! (1:51)
"You must be the change you wish to see in the world." - Mahatma Gandhi
Is the United States Bankrupt?
What a silly question to ask huh!  Let's explore some history and economics. Don't cringe - this is just the surface. You'll have to explore the rest on your own - if you dare to. Besides, this will be fun!  We'll show you a little magic trick and make your tax dollars disappear right behind your back. Watch ...

From the time of George Washington to the beginning of Ronald Reagan's term, the nation had accumulated a national debt amounting to the staggering figure of almost 1 trillion dollars. Today,
, up from the 5.7 trillion dollar figure in place when George Bush took office. We've already promised $34,000,000,000,000.00 (34 trillion) more in Medicare alone. Add in Social Security and other programs and the amount goes up to 58 trillion!

Let me help you get a little bit of a handle on these figures, courtesy of Ross Perot:
If congress put one dollar a second into a special account, it would take over 444,000 years to have enough money to pay off the debt ... If you loaded these bills onto boxcars, the length of the train pulling these boxcars with 14 trillion dollars would be over 2,000 miles long ... If you could take the dollar bills, end on end, from the earth to the moon and back, it would take 2,064 round trips to pay off the debt.

To put it in other terms, if you distributed that debt, it would amount to about $2,000.00 for every man, woman and child on earth.

We have troops in 130 nations and over 700 bases overseas. The military budget for this country is $700 billion. That is more than the military spending of every other nation in the world combined!. Our government and corporations also sell more arms than the rest of the world combined. Sometimes these arms are used against us. But that's okay ... the corporations make a good profit.

"He was worried that priorities are set as to what benefits the corporation as opposed to what benefits the country." -- John McCain, speaking about Dwight Eisenhower
Why is this? Camera  watch this video! (0:10)
--Divider--

Now ... here's the magic trick I promised you. Let's take one of your tax dollars and give it to the government and see what we get back in goods and services.

Oops!  Where'd it go? Did the government get it ... Nooo! ... Can you figure out where it went? I'll give you a little hint ... ask Rocky the squirrel.

The tax money you give the government does not build roads, fund the war, or help to pay the national debt. These are actually covered by a cornucopia of other taxes. Your hard-earned dollars, instead, are paying the interest on the national debt. When all is said and done, 100% of income tax revenues end up filling the pockets of a group of private bankers who own and control the Federal Reserve, or in the coffers of some foreign country. [MORE INFO] No matter what route they take, those dollars may still come to rest in the same hands. That's because the Federal Reserve is owned by international bankers who have their fingers in everyone's economy. Of course, I'm sure they have the best interests of the American people at heart - aren't you?

Did you know the income tax we have today, which required a constitutional amendment (the controversial 16th, which was not legally ratified), was driven by the same forces that instituted the Federal Reserve Act that same year? Do you think that could have anything to do with the fact that the Federal Reserve Act is nothing but a move by a cartel of bankers to make themselves richer by stealing from you and me?

Projections, based on our current path, say that in another 12 years, that interest will quadruple. It doesn't take a mathematician to understand that the American taxpayer cannot pay this debt even if he or she gives 100% of their income to the government. And, keep in mind, this is only the interest we are talking about - not the debt itself.
--Divider--

Field trip time! 
Fort Knox
Now we're off to Fort Knox to look at our gold!  Did you know the United States has a lot more gold than any country in the world? We better go get the Treasury Secretary first, or they won't let us in...

Hmmm - the Treasury Secretary says they won't let him see the gold. I'll bet it's that pesky Rocky Squirrel again!  Don't worry, I'll go over and get Uncle Sam. They can't stop him from getting in! ...

Okay - trip's cancelled!  Uncle Sam says he hocked the gold to Rocky and his friends. Sorry!

Although the facts are a bit muddled in controversy due to incomplete audits, I believe it is fair to assume that our gold is still sitting in the bottom of Fort Knox. At least - most of it, I guess. We haven't really looked at it in over 25 years.

The problem is, the U.S. Treasury no longer legally possesses our gold.

It is held as "collateral" by the Federal Reserve for the money we owe them. The squirrel and his friends say they'll give it back as soon as we pay them what we owe. I'm sorry if this comes as a surprise ... Some surprises are just no fun at all!
"The patient that's on the floor with the cardiac arrest is not Wall Street. It's the American economy."
     -- Warren Buffet, in a recent interview with Charlie Rose
"It's class warfare in the United States, and my class is winning!"
     -- Warren Buffet
Okay - perspective time!  Let's see if we can figure this one out together ... This group of wealthy oligarchs who control our money supply are the ultimate beneficiaries of your hard-earned tax dollars, which go to pay the interest on the money we owe them.

Why do we owe them money? Did we borrow actual money from them?
Nooo .... We owe them money because .... well .... they're the bankers.

What? That doesn't make sense to you? That's okay - It didn't make much sense according to the policies of Woodrow Wilson, either. However, someone convinced him that the Federal Reserve System was a good idea, and he signed the bill into law in 1913.

In his book "The New Freedom", which, despite popular belief, was published earlier the same year (rather than afterward), Wilson stated we have become "a government by the opinion and the duress of small groups of dominant men". Speaking of corporate interests and monopolies, he further stated "Don't you see that they must capture the government in order not to be restrained too much by it? Must capture the government? They have already captured it. Are you going to invite those inside to stay inside? They don't have to get there. They are there." (The New Freedom; Doubleday Page & Company 1913; Pages 201, 202)

Despite his previous statements, the Federal Reserve Act was voted upon while many Congressional representatives were home for Christmas vacation, and Wilson immediately signed the bill. We have been pretending the system makes sense ever since then. I guess so Woodrow wouldn't look stupid.

So we owe these guys a whole bunch of money for, basically, doing little next to nothing except playing Monopoly around the world and, at this point, for encouraging the building of houses of cards that are now all falling apart because they were built on highly fraudulent premises.

They are, basically, a bunch of crooks, but part of the game is we have to pretend that they are highly sophisticated individuals with whom we can place our trust. It's an odd game, but it has been the basis of our economy since 1913, because it has seemed to suit the unlimited spending habits of our politicians and, as long as our roads are paved, we've been pretty content, so no one's really bothered to question it except a few economists who nobody listens to because they are not part of the game.

So, we have this debt with these "highly sophisticated" banksters, and until the principle of the debt that we owe these questionable characters is paid, they get to keep our gold.

Here's a multiple choice question for you ... When do you think this debt will be paid and we can get our gold back? (no peeking!)
  1. Next Week
  2. Next Year
  3. Never
If you answered 1 or 2, I'll give you some time to think about it ... okay?

Where did Rocky and his friends get the money to loan the government that you, the taxpayer, are paying the interest on and that allows them to hold our gold as collateral? That's easy ... they pulled it out of an empty hat that Congress gave them! ... It's magic! [MORE INFO]

Look!  You can see them now! Right at the end of the rainbow with their pot of gold!

These magicians are a small group of banking families who undergo no audits and have diplomatic immunity anywhere in the world. Does this give you any idea just how wealthy and powerful they are?
Why shucks ... they could control the whole world!

Break time! Let's watch a cartoon! Camera  Video - Quantitative Easing Explained (:06)

Do you know how Rocky and his friends want to alter the freedom you now enjoy? Do you think the government is being run by the President and Congress? Have you finished digesting Institutionalizing conflicting interests yet?
Hmmm ... maybe we better take a side trip to the library so you can do some reading. I can't tell you this stuff!  At least, not unless you have some foundation to understand it. You may be thinking, "If this were really happening, I would have heard about it!" If so, you may be depending on the wrong sources for your information and ignoring what you do see. Here - let's take a walk off this cliff!  Trust me - you'll be fine. I've seen it on TV!  Besides, everyone knows it's not really a cliff. Are you ready? ...

You have to find out for yourself. Truth is not TOLD - it is realized. But keep in mind that you cannot realize what you cannot imagine. [HERE'S A CLUE] or, for a better understanding of how all this came about, Camera  watch this video! (0:41)
--Divider--

What do you suppose the total combined income of every working person in the U.S. amounts to? Based on the "Household Income" measurement used by the government and financial institutions, combined with 2006 Census information, that figure is close to 6 trillion dollars! That's about the same amount officially declared to bail out Wall Street. Now, imagine what it would have done for the economy if, instead of bailing out the bankers, the government had taken that money and bailed out the American people, providing each American with a years salary, free and clear. Can you think of a better way to stimulate the economy?

Those interested in contributing to the welfare system could give a donation to Goldman Sachs.... uh .... no, don't bother .... it's already being taken from you.

Bloomberg News writers Mark Pittman and Bob Ivry point out that the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation have lent or spent almost $3 trillion over the past two years and pledged to provide up to $5.7 trillion more if needed. These enormous pledges would almost be enough to pay off every home mortgage loan in the US, calculated at $10.5 trillion by the Federal Reserve.

I said it 7 years ago ("In The News" - "The Bailout Monkey Business"), but it bears repeating. The original $700 billion bailout legislation, the "Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008" was just a down payment that has since mushroomed into over 20 trillion and is resulting in the robbing of America and the American taxpayer, while the press sits on its hands. Section 8 of the original proposal, which was set out by then Treasury Secretary and former Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson and handed to Congress, stated: "Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency." Fortunately, we have a few somewhat aware people in congress who realized it was not such good idea to hand an open checkbook to banksters while, at the same time, placing them above the law. That's like appointing mobsters as prosecutors and judges to clean up organized crime. As a matter of fact, that IS what it is. Retaining that clause in the act would have been an open-ended agreement giving international bankers the means to deplete the resources of the U.S. economy. The language was removed from the final legislation.

The problem is, the robbery took place anyway.

The bailout ended up amounting to over 6 trillion, while an additional 16 Trillion (source: U.S. GAO) - almost 3 times the combined annual income of every wage-earner in America - was secretly doled out to bankers in the U.S., Germany, England, France, Scotland, South Korea and elsewhere. This would have never been known but for the insistence of Bernie Sanders in auditing the Federal Reserve for the first time ever. The report came out in August of 2011. This, however is just a limited Fed audit. Imagine what we would find with a full audit of the Federal Reserve, as Ron Paul has been calling for, and ridiculed for doing so, over the last several years.

Are you learning about this for the first time?
WHERE IS THE NEWS MEDIA?

How can Congress be so inept or corrupt as to allow such robbery? The fact is, the largest contributors to Congressional careers, on both sides of the isle, are Wall Street and big banksters. Secondly, most of Congress has not a clue when it comes to the economy. We have a conflict of interest between the Treasury Department and Wall Street, and they are arguing over how to trim 1.5 trillion dollars over a ten year period while the foundation of our economy is being stolen from beneath their feet.

"The average U.S. family today pays more in federal, state and local taxes than for food, clothing, transportation and housing - combined. No wonder two incomes in a family still cannot do the job one income could in previous generations. This is unacceptable in a free society, both morally and fiscally." -- Steve Forbes 1997

In 1835, President Andrew Jackson declared his disdain for the international bankers:
"You are a den of vipers. I intend to rout you out, and by the Eternal God I will rout you out. If the people only understood the rank injustice of our money and banking system, there would be a revolution before morning."
There followed an (unsuccessful) assassination attempt on President Jackson's life. Jackson had told his vice president, Martin Van Buren, "The bank, Mr. Van Buren, is trying to kill me"

"The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the government since the days of Andrew Jackson."      -- Franklin D. Roosevelt Nov. 21, 1933, in a letter written to Colonel E. Mandell House

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."      -- Thomas Jefferson - 1816

"We don't seem to give a second thought to what this might mean for future generations. They may very well wake up one day to the realization that they don't own their own country anymore. We'll have gone from the richest nation in the world back to being somebody else’s colony."
     -- Lee Iacocca (former president of Ford and Chrysler corporations) [More from Lee]
--Divider--

In 2003, Paul O'Neil, then Secretary of the Treasury, ordered a study of the "fiscal gap" in the U.S. economy. The gap is the difference between a nation's debt and its ability to pay that debt. More precisely, the gap lies between the value of future tax collections and the value of future entitlement payments. O'Neil's study was to appear in the President's fiscal budget for 2004.

Hour Glass
Bringing together a staff of knowledgeable economists, along with the Office of Management and Budget, and the Congressional Budget Office, the study came up with a fiscal gap of $45 trillion. The result of this study was that O'Neil was fired by George Bush, who ordered the report to be censured. According to O'Neil, Dick Cheney commented "Deficits don't matter". The figure, as of January, 2009, is now more than $58 trillion. Coming up with this money, without radical reform of entitlements (an idea our politicians don't want to touch) is unquestionably impossible.

When two of the members of O'Neil's group, Jagadeesh Gokhale, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, and Kent Smetters, Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania, published these findings, both the Treasury and the Bush Administration did what they felt best to prolong the status quo; they lied, stating they had never heard of the study. As usual, the majority of the U.S. media swallowed the "official" story, even though the study, as well as its censure, is a matter of record.

There is much talk in the media today of how deceptive practices on the part of banks, corporations and loan companies have destroyed the economy. Unfortunately, we need to also include Congress and the White House in our Liar's Lair. This deception of the American people began long before George Bush ever even considered the presidency. At this point, it has become disastrously critical.
"We contend that for a nation to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle."
   -- Winston Churchill
"I'm not so cynical about human affairs that I believe that errors must be endlessly repeated."
   -- Lew Rockwell, Jr., President, Ludwig von Mises Institute
Hey! Is that Linus! Oh ... No, it's Barack ... Hi Barack!


Great Recovery


Let's meet David!
David was also an important man in the government. He was hired by Bill, the President, but he remained in office through most of George's administration, because his job is supposed to last 15 years.

David was the Comptroller General of the United States, and head of the Government Accountability Office, which some people call the GAO because it's hard for them to say three big words at once.

In March of 2008, David quit as Comptroller General to become CEO and President of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, in order that he can "...advocate for specific solutions, work proactively with grantees and other partners to build strong coalitions, and encourage and engage in grassroots efforts to bring pressure on Washington to act."

David made the following statements before he resigned from office:
"Every American has an implicit mortgage of over $175,000.00 each. Each household has an additional implicit mortgage of over $400,000.00 each. But, unlike a typical mortgage, there's no house to back this, and, therefore, what we are doing is we're mortgaging the future of our children and grandchildren at an unacceptable rate, and that is not only an issue of fiscal irresponsibility, it's an issue of immorality."

Alfred E Neuman
Speaking on government trust funds, Walker said: "These trust funds - they're not real trust funds - they're 'trust the government' funds. If the private sector had trust funds like the federal government, somebody would be going to jail!" [INFO]

Prior to heading the GAO, David served as a partner and global managing director of Arthur Andersen and in several government leadership positions, including as a Public Trustee for Social Security and Medicare from 1990 to 1995 and as Assistant Secretary of Labor for Pension and Welfare Benefit Programs during the Reagan administration.

However you want to take David Walker's words, one thing you should not do is ignore them!

--Divider--

According to his institute, Rocky's friend, Peter G. Peterson put up $1 billion of his personal funds to educate the American public on our economic situation. A portion of those funds went to fund a video titled I.O.U.S.A. which has been making its rounds, including a spot and discussion on a CNN cable broadcast.
David Rockefeller and Pete Peterson
David Rockefeller
Peter G. Peterson
There is valuable information in this video, but one should be cautious of the intentions and goals of Walker, Peterson and other members of the Institute. These men talk about patriotism while supporting a globalist agenda and Robert A. Pastor's plan for a North American Union. Pastor has stated that NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) is a good foundation for a North American Constitution, replacing the "outdated" constitutions of Canada, the United States and Mexico. Pete Peterson is a former chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, an organization that has a strong influence on the policies of our government, and who's ranking members support an anti-sovereignty agenda. Those who scoff at any of these statements need to do some studying. For your homework, read Pastor's "Three Nations, a Partnership, or a Community" (link above), visit the Peter G. Peterson Web site, and study Council on Foreign Relations' publications.

I leave it up to the reader to research and contemplate these facts and what they mean, but I put this question before you: Is the Peterson Institute's drive to educate the American public so that we will force our government to be more responsible, or is it to make a case for a North American and, eventually, a totalitarian World Union, by informing us that we are in a financial situation we cannot get out of without submitting to the elitists agenda of a global, centrally-controlled currency - a perquisite to a central world government?

If you wonder what I'm talking about, please go back and read the bracketed side notes. Particularly here.
--Divider--

Let's go over here and look at one of these trust funds David Walker was talking about ... the Social Security Trust Fund. There's about 2 trillion dollars in this fund because that's the difference between the amount American workers have paid into the fund and what has been paid out in benefits and the processing of those benefits. But ... wait ... it's EMPTY! Oh ... I forgot ... Congress spent every bit of it on other things. I'm sure they'll pay it back though. Somehow. Won't they? Hummm ... How will they do that? Congress is running a deficit of over $1 billion dollars per day!

Oh yeah - that's right, your children and grandchildren are going to take care of that. Whew! It's so good of them to be so thoughtful!
President Clinton's Office of Management and Budget once explained:
"Balances are available to finance future benefit payments and other Trust Fund expenditures - but only in a bookkeeping sense.... They do not consist of real economic assets that can be drawn down in the future to fund benefits. Instead, they are claims on the Treasury that, when redeemed, will have to be financed by raising taxes, borrowing from the public, or reducing benefits or other expenditures."
In other words, Congress spent OUR money, that we put into the Social Security piggy bank, on other things, and left us an I.O.U., which some members of Congress want to deny even exists!

As of September 30th of 2010, Social Security is putting out more cash than they are taking in. Rather than building even a paperwork surplus, the program is now in the red, and permanently losing money, according to the Social Security Administration's August 5, 2010 Trustee's report. But it's not really losing money. It's just that the money - the 2 trillion dollars - isn't there any more. Not only that, it's not drawing interest into the fund.

Your politicians aren't going to tell the American people these things because it's not going to get them elected, and it's not going to help them spend money that doesn't really exist!

So what do we do? We can't just keep pulling worthless money out of Rocky's magic hat, because its not real money and it decreases the value of the money in your pocket. But Congress keeps spending ...

Hey!  - Somebody came up with another idea!  We can go ask another country if we can borrow some of their money! People like our good friends in China and Saudi Arabia. George Bush borrowed over $1 trillion from foreign governments. What an achievement! That's more than the combined total amount we've borrowed in our entire history!  The only problem is we not only have to pay interest on these loans, but they come with strings attached, such as trade agreements that hurt U.S. industry and the U.S. worker. We usually end up spending most of that money with the borrower, then borrowing more from somewhere else to pay the interest on the loan.

That's crazy!  Why would we do that? Because our politicians are spending money like alcoholics running a brewery, and they don't want to keep raising the price of beer (taxes) because they're afraid you won't vote for them. It's at the point where they are drinking more beer than they are selling, so they're diluting the quality of the beer and borrowing more money to keep the brewery afloat. Eventually, the investors will notice that the beer has greatly decreased in quality (value) and will pull their money out of the brewery.
"Government is like a baby: An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other."
   -- Ronald Reagan
Meanwhile, Rocky and his friends are milking us for most of what we've got and encouraging us to consume and consume and use our credit cards so they can keep us in debt, which gives them reason to pull more paper money out of their magic hat and charge us for it. [MORE INFO]    [Calculate Your Debt]

But something has changed recently. A new strategy is in place.
Do you know what that strategy is? If you don't, you are not alone, as few are privy to the secretive meetings held by the international banking cartel. We can speculate, based on the words spoken by the players themselves, and, most certainly, by their actions. Unless you are entirely self-sufficient, or barter and trade for goods, those actions affect your lifestyle and will do so increasingly in the very near future.

Credit is fundamentally your own ability to convince people that your future earnings have value.
THE EARNINGS OF MOST OF MIDDLE AMERICA NO LONGER HOLD ANY FUTURE VALUE!
[Do Your Future Earnings Have Value?]

Camera  Video - The Card Game (NPR) (:56)
--Divider--
The mainstream media is not going to inform you of dire probabilities or the domination of the military-industrial-banking complex. They are part of that complex. [MORE INFO]

Before the FCC deregulated media ownership in the United States, there were literally thousands of media organizations. Today, this ownership has been consolidated down to nine controlling big-money interests. These media giants are interested in profits - not muckraking or exposing truths outside the status-quo. [MORE INFO] In other words, they're going to tell you what they think you want to hear. For the most part, most Americans do not want to hear the truth. They want to hear that everything is "okay".
Everything is not "okay"!
If you think it is, you need to examine your premises and do some research.

Ben

Q. What is an Economic Stimulus Payment?
A. It is money that the federal government will send to taxpayers.
Q. Where will the government get this money?
A. From taxpayers.
Q. So the government is giving me back my own money?
A. Only a smidgen.
Q. What is the purpose of this payment?
A. The plan is that you will use the money to purchase a high-definition TV set, thus stimulating the economy.
Q. But isn't that stimulating the economy of China?
A. Just shut up and go shopping!
But then, why read a book written by someone who is actually involved in the situation, or a scholar who has studied it when you can get a condensed version all wrapped up in a fast-news sandwich delivered by your stylish TV newscaster? He or she will tell you all you need to know. Certainly, your newscaster has studied this subject in great depth or they wouldn't have a job telling hundreds of thousands of people about it.

Of course, the TV news may not even mention these people or events. But then, if the media doesn't think the subject will bring ratings, and thus profits, to them, it must not be important to you.
Why waste your time?

Besides, if you actually study the subject, and especially if the subject is controversial, you have to spend time and mental energy separating the wheat from the chaff and reading both sides of an issue, instead of just hearing the "fair and balanced" report from the ranks of status-quo talking heads. You would actually have to do a lot more work than they do, and they get paid for it!  I know you're probably way too busy to figure out what's affecting your lifestyle and your future. I understand. It is much easier to just let the chips fall where they may, even if it means that your lifestyle and future may present an entirely different scenario than that which you had intended in your life, or the lives of your children and grandchildren. After all, life is stressful enough these days without having to worry about all that stuff!

What is REALLY going on in the world has little to do with the ingredients in your fast-news sandwich. But don't worry, chomp it down anyway. At least it will make you FEEL you have an idea, and will provide you with various comments and phrases you can repeat thoughtlessly in future conversations on various subjects. If the thought of actually knowing what is going on in the world is just too stressful for you, just close your eyes and don't think about it.
That's what most people do.
They just leave it up to the talking heads of the status quo to keep them informed in little short digestible sound bites. Its kind of like having lunch at McDonald's, except there's no toys for the kids.

Certainly these sources are trustworthy and know what is important to you. I'm sure they are concerned about your well being, just as McDonald's is concerned about your eating nutritiously. I'm confident they will go out of their way to inform you and convey the truth in detail, even if they, themselves, don't understand it.

If you trust in this self-perpetuating myth that permeates the surface of our social reality, then stop! ... don't think ... After all, there are people who are paid to think FOR you ... and certainly you have more important things to do.

Oh! ... Before you go, be sure to finish swallowing Institutionalizing conflicting interests.

All Done?

Good! ... now open your Homeland Security bag and put your naivety and denial back on.

There!  Now the world's all warm and fuzzy again!  That was easy, wasn't it!
Now ... don't read any further. Go visit the Muppets web site. It's lots of fun. Really!  Its one of my favorite sites!  Its one of the places I go when I don't want to think about things.

Whatever you do, don't lose your sense of humor ... it may be the only valuable asset you posess!

The rest of you come with me ... we're not done yet.
--Divider--
We're such grand consumers that we support 3rd world countries by paying them to import the mounds of garbage this consumerism creates. Isn't that great!  We support the economy of one country by buying stuff from them, then, 6 months or a year later, when it is broken, unwanted, or turned to mush, we pay another country to take it off our hands. The Story of Stuff will show you how we accomplish this wonderful wealth sharing.
Story of Stuff
"Depopulation should be the highest priority of foreign policy towards the third world, because the U.S. economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad - especially from less developed countries."      -- Henry Kissinger
We are both the victims and the perpetrators of this mess.

"What did I do", some might ask. The answer is "nothing."

As Albert Einstein said, "The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it."

It is our society. It is also the society our children and their children will inherit. Do you care?

We've talked about the banksters and the government, now let's take a trip out to the country to understand another great debaucher of the morals, integrity and liberty we profess to live by - that once great spearhead of the industrial revolution - the force that, in some minds, made America great - the corporation.

"But Buddy", you might ask, "why would we go to the country to understand corporations? Shouldn't we be going to the city, where all the industry is?" I've got news for you. There's not a lot of industry going on in the cities anymore .... at least, not like it used to be. The steel industry is gone. India, Japan, South Korea, China and Russia all now produce more steel then the U.S. The textile industry has been destroyed here, thanks to international trade agreements. Even newer industries like computer technologies are rapidly going overseas. But industry is growing rapidly outside the cities.

What industry am I talking about? Why, the farming, ranching and chemical industry, of course. We'll talk more about this when I have the time. Right now, let's just watch this here movie, Pard'. Hopefully, you will see a connection with everything we have explored since we started on this journey. Camera  Video - Eat It! (0:15)
--Divider--

Self Destruction?


Some of the greatest fortunes are made by it, and many have died for it. Countries have been destroyed for it, and everyone wants to control it. Some say it's almost gone while others scoff at the thought. Without it, the machinery of the industrialized world would grind to a halt.

By now you've probably guessed that I'm talking about oil. Does all this have to be? Do we need oil and fossil fuels to run the world?

The answer is NO!

30 years ago, a 24-year-old Texas man named Tom Ogle invented a "black box" that completely replaced the carburetor on an internal combustion engine. In qualified and verified tests, Ogle obtained gas milage of 100 to 300 mpg.
Fun Facts
Fun Facts!
In 1960, an ounce of gold would buy you 122 gallons of gas.
Today, it would only take 1/3 ounce. Wow! What a deal huh!
1960 2011
Gas $ .30 $4.00
Gold $36.50 $1,800.00
122 Gal $36.60 $488.00
Gas increase = 1200%.
Gold increase = 4800%.
Value of $1.00 =  -640%
He was offered millions of dollars by big oil companies to sell the rights to his invention, but he turned them down. He was quite aware they had no intention of marketing the unit.

4 years later, after receiving funding from a millionaire investor, Ogle barely survived a shooting by an unknow assailant. A short time later, he was found dead of what was diagnosed as a combination of alcohol and darvon. His patent is in limbo. The Longview, Washington millionaire won't discuss the subject. There are many similar stories.

A combination of magnetism, electrical energy, and gyroscopic technology has produced what some say is a perpetual motion machine - a device that produces more power than it consumes in operating. This concept is impossible, according to modern laws of physics.

What if those laws are wrong?

Two Australian engineers seem to be proving just that. Some say they have. However, the engineers are not so boastful, simply stating they are just using those laws in a different way.

Would you like to meet them? Camera  Video - Power Generator (0:04)
(For more information, look [HERE]).

Other technologies exist, from cold fusion to engines that run on nitrogen or even water, that could reduce or entirely eliminate our use of fossil fuels. There is much evidence that these technologies have been suppressed - through unethical but legal means - such as the buying and subsequent "burying" of invention patents or removal of grant funds, to threats, extortion and even murder. The message is that upsetting the status quo could be extremely hazardous to your health.

For information on cold fusion, the "air" car, and other technologies, see the top menu selection "Other Stuff".
(NOTE: These links are a little outdated. You will find more information on these technologies by simply searching the Web.)
--Divider--
Introductory Quotes to the Next Section
"We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For 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
Video: Camera  John F. Kennedy on Conspiracies (0:02)


"The individual is handicapped when coming face-to-face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists."
  -- J. Edgar Hoover


"Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity."
  -- Marshall McLuhan (Author and analytical media scholar)


"It is the void that contradicts everything that is spoken even before the words are said; the void that gets into the language of public and official declarations at the very moment when they are pronounced, and makes them ring dead with the hollowness of the abyss. It is the void out of which Eichmann drew the punctilious exactitude of his obedience"
  -- Thomas Merton, Catholic monk and author


"The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. Its easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger."
  -- Herman Goehring, Nazi Party - Nuremberg Trials


"We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nation will accept the New World Order."
  -- David Rockefeller


"Today Americans would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order; tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if they were told there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will pledge with world leaders to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will willingly be relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being granted to them by their world government."
  -- Henry Kissinger in an address to the Bilderberg group meeting at Evian, France, on May 21, 1991, as transcribed from a tape recording made by one of the Swiss delegates.


"It is one of those cases where the art of the reasoner should be used rather for the sifting of details than for the acquiring of fresh evidence. The tragedy has been so uncommon, so complete and of such personal importance to so many people that we are suffering from a plethora of surmise, conjecture and hypothesis. The difficulty is to detach the framework of fact - of absolute undeniable fact - from the embellishment of theorists and reporters. Thus, having established ourselves upon this sound basis, it is our duty to see what inferences may be drawn, and what are the special points upon which the whole mystery turns."
  -- Sherlock Holmes
Way down here, near the bottom of the page, is the most shocking story of all. It is precisely because it is so unbelievably shocking that I have put it down here. I didn't want to lose you right off the bat.

Should you venture through this doorway, your life may never be the same. You may begin to wonder if every thing you ever knew is wrong. You may feel a range of emotions; shock; anger; fear. You will be faced with the need to consider whether a sinister conspiracy, far beyond the range of anything you would have previously accepted as even remotely possible, did occur and is continuing to inch toward a goal that will change the world as we know it. You may begin to understand that obvious lies can be perpetrated on the American people, and, indeed, the world at large, and succeed in creating an illusion that is nothing short of a masquerade of reality. Lies that are easy to believe when set against facts that, although obvious, seem so preposterous that they evade rational evaluation when that evaluation threatens the onlooker's system of beliefs.

As our friend Sherlock said, not all of the facts may be obvious and there is good reason to dispute much of the proliferation of theories and conjecture. When the researcher sticks to the hard facts, however, one thing becomes clear - we have been lied to. Thousands of people died in the events centered around this lie. The lie has enabled the passage of legislation and executive orders that provide for the possibility of dictatorial powers, media control, the shredding of the constitution and the loss of free speech in the United States. These laws and executive orders supercede the will of Congress and place unconstitutional powers in the hands of the President. [MORE INFO]
It is half past the 11th hour. Time to wake up. For a very distasteful touch of reality, turn the page and watch Camera  these videos!
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So, How Do We Fix this Mess?

Would George Bush have given up power if the system had not required him to do so? Probably not. The reason is not that he is a sinister, evil villain. The reason is that he, and others like him, know no other course than to use power and intimidation to make others tow the line that they, in their elitist wisdom, have drawn for them. They honestly believe that anyone who can't see things their way is either ignorant or "against us". The Bush types are certain they know best how things should be run when the fact is their view is dangerously self-serving, ignorant, wasteful, arrogant, incredibly short-sighted and costly to human life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The banksters of the world are no different, and it is very clear in what they say and do. John D. Rockefeller, founder of the Rockefeller fortune, was the son of a snake oil salesman. He saw himself as a humble, righteous, religious man and justified the extortion, bribery and industrial espionage that built his empire as his just due as a superior businessman - no doubt, with God on his side. He believed the gains he made from these immoral and sometimes illegal activities were meant to be under his control and were for the betterment of the country. Similarly, the Rockefeller, Rothschild, J.P. Morgan and other banking families and members of the elitist club see themselves as the saviors of the world. To these people, cooperation is where people of one kind get together and decide how they will defeat or control people of another kind. In the present case, it is us against them. "Us" is the majority of Earth's inhabitants, and "them" is the very small group of elitist oligarchs who believe the only salvation for the world is for them to control everything and make the rest of us behave, because they know better. Any means of achieving this goal is what they see as a means to a positive end - where national sovereignty will be a thing of the past, and individuals will be forced to follow strict social communist-style rules for the "betterment of society", and disobedience will not be tolerated. I don't believe these men will succeed in their goal, but surely, if their control is not seriously curbed, they will create great havoc in the years to come. One only needs to look at the failed "poverty reduction" programs of the IMF and the World Bank to realize these people either have no idea what they are doing, or they are executing an organized globalist plan. Whether their lousy results are simply failures of policy or part of a conspiracy to destroy the sovereignty of these countries in favor of international corporate rule, they have failed at either. They have, however, done an excellent job of creating chaos and corrupting heads of state.

Large corporations, as they exist today, are destructive, and self-serving. Anyone who stops and thinks about it for an instant will realize that exponential corporate growth cannot continue forever, yet it is the foundation upon which these institutions sit. It will, eventually, self-destruct, most likely taking life on this planet with it.

There is a difference between economic growth and expansion of debt. Both look the same on the surface - there is a lot of economic activity going on - but one grows from the bottom up, the other goes straight to the top and paints a picture of reality, disguising a non-existent or corrupt core beneath.

Today's corporations remind me of Vacuum Man in the Beatle's movie, Yellow Submarine. If you haven't seen the movie, Vacuum Man (as I call him) is a little creature with a vacuum snout that sucks up everything around him until he is alone on the screen. He then proceeds to suck up the screen frame itself. After a sad look, discovering there is nothing left, the creature finds his own tail and sucks himself into oblivion.

"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." -- Albert Einstein

Individuals, communities and organizations have begun to reverse this trend

throughout the world by creating locally owned "living enterprises" that include environmental consciousness and worker lifestyle in their assessment of wealth. A new breed of co-ops and employee-owned corporations are beginning to rise up providing early models of what, hopefully, will evolve into a new economy based on democratically shared prosperity that will leave a healthy planet for future generations.

As brought out in the movie "The Corporation", international corporations are not created and staffed by demons. They are formed and run by people. It is the nature of the beast - not the beast itself - that is the problem. But in order to change the beast's nature, there must be an informed public, which includes members of these corporations, as well as political leaders throughout the world. We have been operating under a dangerous short-term mindset, empowered by illusions of financial wealth that, in reality do not exist.

Considering the example of the bacteria in a jar, who take 59 minutes to populate the jar to half-full and only one more to fill the jar to capacity, we need to be conscious of the exponential factor and how life on this planet will deal with it. At the present rate of growth, the world population will more than double before the end of the century. I have heard opponents of exponential population growth make statements such as "If you took the entire world's population (7 billion) and stacked them three high (on one another's shoulders) you would cover an area roughly the size of Washington State" or "You could give everyone on the planet their own house and lot and you wouldn't cover the state of Texas." Now, I don't think those two sets of mathematics coincide, but the point they are trying to make is, basically, legitimate. According to Dr Babatunde Osotimehin, chief executive of the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), a body charged with monitoring the world population, if you got the whole world together for a group photo, you would not cover any more territory than the city of Los Angles. "The population question is not about the amount of space people take up," said Osotimehin. "It is about equity, social justice, distribution and consumption."

Corporate exponential growth is happening very rapidly right before our eyes. Surprisingly, most individuals I talk to are either unaware of that fact or do not see it as a problem.

When I worked in the broadcast industry over 20 years ago, there were FCC rules against monopolizing the media in a local area. In the late 90's and early 2000's, most likely due to heavy lobbying from large corporations, the FCC extinguished these rules, sighting "the growth in the number and variety of media outlets in local markets". Since that time, media outlets in the United States have shrunk down to 11 controlling corporations (4 of them minor players) who now control the majority of major newspapers, most of the popular magazines, TV and radio station networks and cable and satellite networks, as well as most of the major publishing houses. Left unchecked, corporations will continue to expand, like Vacuum Man, sucking up everything around them, reducing competition and gaining more power and control. That is how they are designed - to continually produce financial wealth for their stockholders while they destroy real wealth by depleting resources, polluting our air and soil, and marginalizing our standard of living.

These systems we have developed cannot be turned around easily. We need a whole new consciousness throughout the world and we can start it here. The Capitalist system is in need of an overhaul. Once you criticize the hollowed ground of Capitalism, there are many who will immediatly call you a communist or socialist. This is part of the problem in forwarding any significant change. We have to understand the necessity - that we cannot go on as we have been. It makes no sense. Capitalism, after all, is an experiment, run by trial and error. No one has come up with a perfect system yet, but it is time to learn from and change the experiment.

The answer is not in destroying the system, but in applying it practically. Modern economist Milton Friedman believes in the Ayn Rand principle that self-interest in turn benefits the whole of society. According to Rand, it is not only okay to be selfish, but selfishness is a major building block on the road to success and a requirement to maintain that success. There is a certain degree of truth in that philosophy, which Rand carries to an extreme. If one measures success as the acquisition of wealth and power, then selfishness can be carried to whatever extreme one cares to, and that selfishness will only be of value to those who wield that wealth and power. Self interest can only be a detriment to those who do not hold that power, and selfishness is not a prescription for joining the elite. When success is measured in terms of actual material value (healthy living; clean water; fresh air; virtuous relationships; functioning infrastructure; reliance on sustainable industries), then that selfishness is tempered with intelligent perception of how we are affecting the world around us and the effects of our actions on future generations.

There has to be a balance.

In my opinion, the only methods to effect system change must come from the grassroots of America. Organizations like America Speaks, Public Agenda, the Davenport Institute, and the Public Conversation Project are working toward multi-partisan efforts to create dialog on controversial issues and to encourage public influence on government decision making, from the local to national level.

Community and employee-owned corporations are springing up all over the world, providing an alternative to corporations like Wal-Mart that have devastated the economies of many small communities, only to later decide to pack up their bags, leaving behind a big empty building, closed storefronts and an expunged town economy. Organizations like the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, Community Wealth.org, the B Corporation Project, Abacus Wealth Partners have taken the idea of Community Development Corporations, originally designed to bolster the economy of poor urban areas, to a whole new level and a whole new perception of what a corporation can be - to the individual, the community, and the future. Employee-owned corporations are increasingly showing an ability to adapt to the needs of their employees and communities and are increasingly showing up on Fortune magazines top 100.

These are encouraging signs. They also underline the fact that things do not have to be the way they are. They offer hope that this current paradigm could come to an end before it creates hell on earth. But this will not happen in a significant way without an informed populous, committed to act. Corporations, run by local communities for the betterment and well-being of that community's inhabitants make much more sense than international power-hungry corporations wielding that power over nations and showing careless disregard for anything but financial profit. Our concentration needs to be on healthy, nature-balanced systems designed to serve the needs of humanity.

We have accomplished some amazing things in the last 100 years. Let us continue to do so.
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I have been asked several times to provide a list of research material, as I have done on the subject of UFO's. I have refrained from doing that, as I really encourage people to do their own research and make their own discoveries because it is so much more meaningful. However, I have conceded ... somewhat. There are no explanations of the material (other than the titles themselves) and the books and reports are not listed by subject matter. Also, this is by no means an all-inclusive list.

This listing of books does not necessarily infer endorsement or agreement with the opinions and/or conclusions of the authors. All books listed here are recommended reading because they provide excellent reference material, simplified explanation of complex subjects, inspiration for further research, reasons for rejecting subjective common opinion for objective reality, or all of the above.

  • 13 Bankers - Simon Johnson / James Kwak
  • The Age of Reform - Richard Hofstadter
  • Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth - David C Korten
  • America Beyond Capitalism: Reclaiming Our Wealth, Our Liberty, and Our Democracy - Gar Alperovitz
  • The American Establishment - Leonard and Mark Silk
  • Big Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America's Independent Businesses - Stacy Mitchell
  • Clearing the Air - Daniel Schorr
  • The Creature From Jekyll Island - G. Edward Griffin
  • Currency Wars - James Rickards
  • Debt: The first 5,000 years - David Graeber
  • Earth Odyssey - Mark Hertsgaard
  • The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality - Richard Heinberg
  • The End of Progress: How Modern Economics Has Failed Us - Graeme Maxton
  • Fateful Harvest: The True Story of a Small Town, a Global Industry, and a Toxic Secret - Duff Wilson
  • Forbidden Truth - U.S.-Taliban Secret Oil Diplomacy and the Failed Hunt for Bin Laden - Brisard & Dasquie
  • Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation - Joseph J. Ellis
  • Frame-up - Harold Weisberg
  • The Girl On The Stairs: My Search For A Missing Witness To The Assassination Of John F. Kennedy - Barry Ernest
  • The Giza Power Plant - Christopher Dunn
  • The Global 2000 Report to the President - 1980 State Department Report
  • The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order - Michel Chossudovsky
  • Globalization and Its Discontents - Joseph E. Stiglitz
  • Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism - Richard Robbins
  • The Great American Stickup - Robert Sheer
  • The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America - David A. Stockman
  • The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community - David C. Korten
  • Greedy Bastards: How We Can Stop Corporate Communists, Banksters, and Other Vampires from Sucking America Dry - Dylan Ratigan
  • Greenback Planet - H. W. Brands
  • The Gutenberg Galaxy - Marshall McLuhan
  • The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance - Ron Chernow
  • How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes - Peter D. Schiff / Andrew J. Schiff
  • The Limits to Growth - The Club of Rome
  • The Men on the Sixth Floor - Glen Sample
  • The Map and the Territory: Risk, Human Nature and the Future of Forcasting - Alan Greenspan
  • Masks of Deception: Corporate Front Groups in America - Mark Megalli and Andy Friedman
  • Microelectronics and Society, for Better or Worse - Gunter Friedrichs and Adam Schaff
  • Mortgaged and Armed - Peter Hebert
  • Never Again!: The Government Conspiracy in the JFK Assassination - Harold Weisberg
  • Oswald's Tale - Norman Mailer
  • Other People's Money: The Corporate Mugging of America - Nomi Prins
  • Our Media Not Theirs: The Democratic Struggle Against Corporate Media - Robert W. McChesney and John Nichols
  • Owning Our Future: The Emerging Ownership Revolution - Marjorie Kelly
  • Petrodollar Warfare - William R. Clark
  • Post Mortem: JFK Assassination Cover-Up Smashed! - Harold Weisberg
  • Private Interests, Public Policy, and American Agriculture - William P. Browne
  • The Race for What's Left - Michael T. Klare
  • Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives - National Archives
  • Reporting Suspected Research Misconduct in Biomedical and Behavioral Research - Office of Research Integrity
  • The Real Crash: How to Save Yourself and Your Country - Peter D. Schiff
  • Resource Wars and Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet - Michael T. Klare
  • Science in the Private Interest - Sheldon Krimsky
  • Set Up and Sold Out - Holly Swanson
  • Shortchanging the Viewers: Broadcasters Neglect of Public Interest Programming - James P. Donahue
  • The Syndicate: The Story of the Coming World Government - Nicholas Hagger
  • Taking America: How We Got from the First Hostile Takeover to Megamergers, Corporate Raiding and Scandal - Jeffrey G. Madrick
  • The Taking of America 1-2-3 - Richard E. Sprague (out of print - available here:)
  • Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. - Ron Chernow
  • The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed - David A. Stockman
  • UFOs and the National Security State - Richard M Dolan
  • Unjust Deserts: Wealth and Inequality in the Knowledge Economy - Gar Alperovitz
  • Vultures Picnic - Greg Palast
  • The Warburgs: The Twentieth-Century Odyssey of a Remarkable Jewish Family - Ron Chernow
  • The Warren Commission Report - Official - Barnes & Noble
  • The Web of Debt - Ellen Hodgson Brown
  • When Corporations Rule the World - David C Korten
  • When Giants Fall - Michael J. Panzner
  • Whitewash - Harold Weisberg
  • Why a Bankrupt America? - Devvy Kidd
  • World's Wasted Wealth II - J.W. Smith
  • You're Not as Crazy as I Thought (But You're Still Wrong) - Phil Neisser and Jacob Hess
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A growing global alliance of researchers, scholars and experts are beginning to collaborate on content and use new rich-media tools to convey knowledge in innovative and visually astounding ways. Check out The Digital Universe Project
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