When is a Government not a Government? (Part 2 of 2)

     I pointed out in the first part of this series that government is not an objective reality like a table or a hill.  It's a social reality, like a friendship or any other agreement.  It exists only to the degree that people agree that it exists and only as long as people agree that it exists.

     The United States Constitution hasn't been observed in years.  Bit by bit, since the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act in October 2001, the Bill of Rights has been discarded.  On October 27, 2006, habeas corpus was outlawed after it had been the keystone of Western freedom for 794 years.  The same day, posse comitatus was outlawed after it was the law of the land for 128 years.  More recently, acting President Barack Obama taken upon himself the power to indefinitely detain accused Americans even after a jury has found them not guilty.

     The United States government has been usurped by an illegal regime consisting of Wall Street banksters, war profiteers, and their Judases in Congress.  Regardless of who gets elected, policies remain the same or get worse.  Besides, with touch-screen voting machines with easy-to-rig software, we have "elections" without ballots; thus, even legally mandated recounts are impossible, and fraud is difficult to prove.

     The good news is, the money changers who occupy the temple are not all powerful.  They have only two tools at their disposal: lies and violence.  Lies and violence, which are their only strengths, are also their biggest weaknesses; the more they use them, the weaker they get.  The forces of freedom have two tools of non-violence: truth and ideas, which help us to grow stronger the more we exercise them.

     It starts with a few people, such as US Army PFC Bradley Manning, simply saying, “No, I won’t cooperate with this any longer.” (link)    Then non-commissioned officers such as US Army Sgt. Kevin Benderman refuse to cooperate (link). Then officers, such as RAF Flight Lieutenant Malcolm Kendall-Smith (link).  Before long, dozens of others refuse (link).

     Now middle-level officers are refusing to cooperate with illegal wars and other illegalities in the system.  Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin, a decorated US Army doctor who could have retired in two years has refused service in Afghanistan on the grounds that his alleged Commander-in-Chief, Barack Obama, was not legally elected President.  In the following video, corporate media Pharisee Anderson Cooper spouts distortion after distortion in his attempt to badger Dr. Lakin into making statements that might tend to incriminate him.  (video)

     Since the Lakin interview, Mr. Obama has released an electronic image purporting to be a long-form birth certificate.  Retired Major General Paul Vallely is calling the alleged long-form certificate the result of felony fraud, and that the fraud is being covered up by the FBI.  (video)

     (The 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen through illegal vote counts, and the 2008 election was stolen through felony fraud.  The United States has not had a legally elected President since January 20, 2001.) (link)

     The collapse of illegitimate regimes has been compared to the melting of an iceberg.  At first, a little melts here and there.  Then the melting accelerates.  Then, suddenly and unexpectedly, the whole thing collapses into slush. 

     The present attempts to steal the 2012 Republican primaries and caucuses could possibly be the event that causes the regime to collapse, driving the money changers from the temple, restoring the Constitution, and returning lawful government to the American people. (link) and (link)

     Every state in the Union legally mandates ballot recounts under certain conditions.  The trouble is, most American polling places no longer use ballots, so nothing can be recounted, and the accuracy of a computer program’s count can’t be verified.  An election without ballots is invalid.

     What recourse have we?  Consider this: What do people consider news?  What do they forward to others?  Answer: Something that’s current, pertains to their interests, and is visually striking.

     Suppose every supporter of Ron Paul in the primaries (and later, for any third party candidate in the election on the sixth of November) wore something strikingly green when he casts his ballot.  Diebold can lie boldly about how people voted, but they can’t lie about what the voters wear.  (I’ve checked in several different places.  At a given time, only four or five people out of a hundred wear an article of clothing that’s mainly green (and fewer still wear conspicuous green), though I suspect that most people have something green enough in their closets.  What if 15% or even 30% of the primary voters wore something strikingly green?  Visually striking evidence of election fraud could force an honest vote count. Otherwise, the resulting backlash could melt the iceberg and force state and local governments to conduct legal elections in America.

     I select the color green because it has several different meanings depending on the person, and it's usually seen as positive.  Take Ireland during the 1790's, for example.  The English outlawed all things that they took to be symbols of Irish nationalism: St. Patrick's Day commemorations, displays of shamrocks, and even wearing green.  As a consequence, the "wearing of the green" has become a symbol of resistance to oppression. (song) 

     The false witnesses in the corporate-controlled media would be loathe to cover a story of voters wearing green to the polls to show their defiance of both the Democrat and Republican parties.  As the story spread by word of mouth and through the Internet, the corporate-owned media’s already shaky credibility would risk complete collapse.
     Larger numbers of Americans will vote in the presidential election on the sixth of November.  We have more time to get out the word for that election.  Voters in the general election can wear something conspicuously green to show that they're voting for someone other than the Republican or Democratic nominee for President.  I say again, Diebold can lie boldly about how you vote but not about what you wear.  People can thus know if the vote is honestly counted.

     Let me further remind you that the power of the criminal elite comes only from lies and violence.  We have truth and ideas.  We don’t have to fight them.  The criminal elite can use violence to destroy our bodies, but they can’t destroy ideas.  The concept of a government exercising its just powers by the consent of the governed is an unstoppable idea.  If we withdraw our consent, uniting with one another in peace and mutual understanding, we can restore our constitutionally guaranteed liberties.  
     I have no illusions that one campaign of this sort will result in total victory on the sixth of November.  It's at best a beginning.  Conversely, I strongly advise those who believe in the myth of "strategic voting" to shed the illusion that electing the "lesser of two evils" can result in anything other than evil.  (See "The Only Strategic Voting that Works")

REMEMBER the sixth of November.

Wear green when you vote for a third-party candidate  for President.

The Multi-trillion-dollar Embezzlement and Fraud that Wall Street and Washington are Committing

     It is rare for me to reprint articles written by others.  I usually research my articles and cite several useful articles in the process.  The following article, though, deserves to be reprinted in full, with only a few added comments from me.  I've taken the liberty of highlighting important passages.  

US lawmakers are accomplices to financial industry’s immorality

Political ‘donations’ — more appropriately, legalized bribery — are fueling the injustice wrought by financial institutions and their selfish excesses

By Thomas Friedman / NY Times News Service, NEW YORK

(reprinted in the Taipei Times, November 2, 2011)

     Citigroup is lucky that former Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi was [allegedly] killed when he was. His [alleged] death diverted attention from a lethal article involving Citigroup that deserved more attention because it helps to explain why many average Americans have expressed support for the Occupy Wall Street movement. The news was that Citigroup had to pay a US$285 million fine to settle a case in which, with one hand, Citibank sold a package of toxic mortgage-backed securities to unsuspecting customers — securities that it knew were likely to go bust — and, with the other hand, shorted the same securities — that is, bet millions of US dollars that they would go bust.

     It doesn’t get any more immoral than this. As the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) civil complaint noted, in 2007, Citigroup exercised “significant influence” over choosing US$500 million of the US$1 billion worth of assets in the deal and the global bank deliberately chose collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs, built from mortgage loans almost sure to fail.     According to the Wall Street Journal, the SEC complaint quoted one unnamed CDO trader outside Citigroup as describing the portfolio as resembling something your dog leaves on your neighbor’s lawn.

     “The deal became largely worthless within months of its creation,” the Journal added. “As a result, about 15 hedge funds, investment managers and other firms that invested in the deal lost hundreds of millions of US dollars, while Citigroup made US$160 million in fees and trading profits.”

     Citigroup, which is under new and better [better for whom?  Don't forget that this article was written by a hack for the corporate-owned media.] management now, settled the case without admitting or denying any wrongdoing. James Stewart, a business columnist for the Times, wrote Citigroup’s flimflam made “Goldman Sachs mortgage traders look like Boy Scouts. In settling its fraud charges for US$550 million last year, Goldman was accused by the SEC of being the middleman in a similar deal, allowing hedge fund manager John Paulson to help choose the mortgages and then bet against them without disclosing this to the other parties. Citigroup dispensed with a Paulson figure altogether, grabbing those lucrative roles for itself.” 

     (On Thursday, the US District Court judge overseeing the case demanded that the SEC explain how such serious securities fraud could end with the defendant neither admitting nor denying wrongdoing.) [The American Action Report's Realistic Dictionary says that the name Goldman Sachs came from the words gold + man + saxophone.  It's an instrument, mostly brass, so that banksters can have congressmen dance to their tune.]

     This gets to the core of why all the anti-Wall Street groups around the globe are resonating. I was in Tahrir Square in Cairo for the fall of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and one of the most striking things to me about that demonstration was how apolitical it was. 
     [In a large part, that's also true of the Tea Parties and the Occupy Movement.  Pompous asses in the corporate media never seem to tire of ridiculing the protesters for their lack of expertise in economics, business, political science, and other fields.  The protesters do know, however, that they're hurting, where they were kicked, and who kicked them.  Pompous asses like Peter Schiff are telling them, in effect, "Since you're not experts as I am, you must not have a problem.  Go back to sleep."  Hell, the "experts" are the ones who caused the problem!  Oh, one more comment on Schiff's pomposity.  He seemed to be implying that the Wall Street protesters could be part of the 1% like him, if they only followed the "free market system."  The truth is, the Wall Street protesters have no hope or desire to be reincarnated as part of the inbred Schiff, Rothschild, and Warburg families.  Take a look at this marriage announcement from 1916 here. That should reveal the hypocrisy of the Rothschild who has infiltrated Ron Paul's campaign as an adviser.] 
     When I talked to Egyptians, it was clear that what animated their protest, first and foremost, was not a quest for democracy — although that was surely a huge factor. It was a quest for “justice.” Many Egyptians were convinced that they lived in a deeply unjust society where the game had been rigged by the Mubarak family and its crony capitalists. Egypt shows what happens when a country adopts free-market capitalism without developing real rule of law and institutions.

     However, then, what happened to us? Our financial industry has grown so large and rich it has corrupted our real institutions through political donations. As US Senator Dick Durbin bluntly said in a 2009 radio interview, despite having caused this crisis, these same financial firms “are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they, frankly, own the place.”  [No, they share ownership with a criminal syndicate blasphemously calling itself Israel.  The Israeli regime, which has no need of foreign aid, is the world's largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid.  Add to that the trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives America has lost fighting wars under false pretenses, benefiting no one but the Israeli regime.  America's "best friend in the Middle East?  Not hardly.  To read about Israel's covert war against the United States, click here.]

     The US Congress today is a forum for legalized bribery. [That's only the tip of the iceberg.  Those crooks are continuously passing bills that siphon money from the Treasury and into their business interests.] One consumer group using information from Opensecrets.org calculates that the financial services industry, including real estate, spent US$2.3 billion on federal campaign contributions from 1990 to last year, which was more than the healthcare, energy, defense, agriculture and transportation industries combined. Why are there 61 members on the US House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services? So many lawmakers want to be in a position to sell votes to Wall Street.

The US can’t afford this any longer. It needs to focus on four reforms that don’t require new bureaucracies to implement:

1) If a bank is too big to fail, it is too big and needs to be broken up. We can’t risk another trillion-US dollar bailout;

2) If US banks’ deposits are federally insured by US taxpayers, it can’t do any proprietary trading with those deposits — period;

3) Derivatives have to be traded on transparent exchanges where we can see if another AIG is building up enormous risk;

4) Finally, an idea from the blogosphere: US lawmakers should have to dress like NASCAR drivers and wear the logos of all the banks, investment banks, insurance companies and real-estate firms that they’re taking money from. The public needs to know.

     Capitalism and free markets are the best engines for generating growth and relieving poverty — provided they are balanced with meaningful transparency, regulation and oversight. The US lost that balance in the last decade. If it doesn’t get it back — and there is now a tidal wave of money resisting that — it will have another crisis. If that happens, the cry for justice could turn ugly. Free advice to the financial services industry: Stick to being bulls. Stop being pigs.
     [The author of this article is giving Congress too much of a break.  Congressmen are not just accomplices; they're perpetrators.  Take the 2009 Bankster Bailout Bill, for example.  The bailout, which saved no homeowner's home, and for which the banksters lost nothing, was a theft of $700 million.  The bill ended up costing $1.2 billion because congressmen festooned the bill with funds earmarked for investments congressmen had made.  That amounts to a $500 million embezzlement benefiting no one but the congressmen and their cronies.  To see how your congressman voted on this criminal act, click here.]

How Banking Really Works: The Video

     About a year ago, I wrote an article called "How Banking Really Works."  As a companion piece for the article, using all-new material, I'm presenting a video by that name.

      Here is the link to the YouTube video: (link)
    If this video piques your interest, you may like to read the full-length American Action Report article, "How Banking Really Works."

If Being a Muslim were an Impeachable Offense

     If being a Muslim were an impeachable offense, would there be enough evidence against Barack Obama to remove him from office? Let's look at the facts.

     The accusation that Barack Obama is a Muslim takes two forms. The first is simply that Obama is a Muslim. The second is that he is a devout Muslim, which, we are told, is worse. Those who claim that their hatred of Islam is a way of defending Christian civilization are suggesting, then, that lack of religious commitment is more Christian than commitment.

     Just what do Muslims believe that supposedly makes them such horrible people that their enemies are forever demanding their annihilation? To the point, does Barack Obama adhere to those supposedly abominable beliefs?

     The religious laws the Muslims follow—variously called Sharia Law or Koranic Law—was lifted almost verbatim from the Law of Moses; that is, Mosaic Law or the Torah. The Law of Moses is still found in the Christian Bible and the Torah today. Many Jews favor the Talmud, which they generated during the Babylonian Captivity. Many Christians claim that, since they live under Grace and not the law, Old Testament law doesn't count except when it supports the beliefs of their religious denomination.

     With regard to religious practices, the biggest difference between Muslims and the rest of us is that they still follow the Law of Moses. (If you seem to hear strains of “Give Me That Old Time Religion,” you're getting the point.)

     Now let's compare Barack Obama's behavior with what we find in the Koran—or, if you prefer, the Old Testament.     You're well aware that Jews and Muslims don't eat pork. In fact, neither Jews nor Muslims use eating utensils that had touched pork or eat food that has been prepared by hands that may have touched pork during preparation. The Muslim term for ritually "clean" food is halal (lawful); the Jews call it kosher (clean).

     Are you aware that Barack Obama hosted a Hawaiian luau at the White House, and that the customary roast pig was on the menu? (See link.)

     Are you aware that Barack Obama ate a meal at a traditional Southern country restaurant in the Deep South? Since pork was one of the items on the menu, Obama's meal was prepared by hands that had touched pork.

     According to Jewish, Christian, and Muslim beliefs, the husband is supposed to be the religious leader of the family. When Michelle Obama and their two daughters visited Vale, Colorado, Michelle ordered short ribs. Either Mr. Obama fails the test of Muslim manhood by allowing this forbidden practice, or he fails the test of Muslim manhood by not caring.  (See link.)
     Sharia and Mosaic Law also forbid the eating of reptiles and amphibians. In the photo above, you will see Obama eating frog legs. (Link)

     I won't look into the question of whether Obama eats rabbits or non-piscine seafood. Sunni Muslims are allowed to eat those foods.

     Then there's the Muslim prohibition on drinking alcoholic beverages. Not content with merely drinking alcoholic beverages, Obama actually brews beer in the White House.  (Link)
     You may not be aware of this—I certainly wasn't—but Islamic law forbids the keeping of dogs as pets. (Link) Nonetheless, Obama keeps a pure-bred pooch named Bo. (Link)

     If I may digress for a moment for the sake of cultural education, American Presidents are expected to keep pets at the White House. It makes them seem more human to the voters. Even if Mr. Obama isn't legally the President, he's expected to put on a convincing act. We don't know what will happen to Bo when Obama leaves the White House.

     When Bill Clinton entered the White House, he brought a cat called Socks. When he left the White House, he dumped socks on one of his secretaries. She probably was Socks's real owner anyway. One can imagine that Monica Lewinsky may have been turned off if she'd seen cat hairs on Bill Clinton's lap.

     It's against the laws of all three religions for a man to look upon a woman with lust. Here we have pictures of Obama visually appreciating two women's butts, with French President Nicolas Sarkozy looking on with bemused approval.

     Aren't Muslims supposed to be virulently opposed to homosexuality?   Didn't Obama come out in favor of homosexual "marriages"?

     Obama did appoint a supposedly “devout” (there goes that word again) Muslim to a position in America's home-grown Gestapo, the Department of Homeland Security. That one appointment led Islamophobes to wail, gnash their teeth, pour ashes on themselves, and claim that this was proof that Obama was a Muslim. Shoot, man, he appointed 32 dual-citizenship Israelis to higher positions than that, and very few people accused Obama of being Jewish.
     Maybe you've heard of Sharia-compliant banking.  (If not, here's a crash course for you.)  Under Mosaic Law (now known as Sharia Law), dishonest weights and measures are forbidden, and so is usury.  Although these requirements are still in the holy books of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, only the Muslims still take them seriously.

     Under "Western" banking, bankers create "money" out of thin air, agree with other bankers as to how much the notes will be worth, and lend the "money" to innocent "customers."  The "customers" post as collateral something of value so that they can receive this funny money.  The "customers" have to repay the loan, not with "money" that the "customers" have created out of thin air, but with money they've had to earn.  The bankers then receive something for nothing.
     In the meltdown of 2008 through the current date, here's what happened:  The bankers lied to people in order to get them to borrow funny money that they'd never be able to repay with real money.  After the victims defaulted, the bankers took their victims' homes away from them.  The victims lost everything.  The bankers lost nothing and gained people's homes.  It was the bankers who then bribed dishonest congressmen to steal even more money from the taxpayers to "repay" the bankers for their supposed losses.  The bankers were then able to invest real money into still more enterprises, many of which were overseas.

     Under Sharia Law, this travesty would never have occurred.  We would have had honest money and fair banking practices.  If it somehow has occurred, executives for Goldman Sachs and other banksters would have been lucky just to have their hands cut off for stealing or their tongues cut out for lying.  Instead, Obama packed his administration with those crooks.  A Muslim would never have done that.

     Oh, let's not forget: Muslims are supposed to be terrorists, or so we're told. Is there any evidence that Barack Obama supports terrorism?  Well, yes, come to think of it, there sure is.

     Under America's Constitution, the federal budget is proposed by the President. Each year since he has been in office, Obama's budget proposals have included $3 billion to support a terrorist regime. This regime routinely bombs schools and private homes, and they even use white phosphorous against them.

     International law doesn't forbid the use of white phosphorous to illuminate an area at night or for use as a smokescreen. An American general once said that white phosphorous is not useful as a weapon of war because "there are more efficient ways of killing people."  We may take it, then, that white phosphorous is more effective as a weapon of terror. Canadian writer and activist Naomi Klein and others have seen where the terrorist regime that Obama supports had used white phosphorous on grade schools.  (See link.)

     Who are the victims of the terror attacks that Mr. Obama supports with our tax dollars? Who are the terrorists?

     The victims are the Palestinians in Gaza. Yes, the victims are predominantly Muslim. The terrorists are a gang of anti-religious war criminals whose actions make a mockery of the Law of Moses, even as they hijack the biblical name of Israel.

     Yes, Mr. Obama uses American tax dollars to support terrorism, but he's clearly not a Muslim.

How Washington Really Works: Part 5

(This is the last of a five-part series)
The diagram you see above is just a sketch of how power and influence are exchanged in Washington. The exchanges are explained in parts 2-4 in this series, in which iron triangles of power are illustrated. This diagram shows only bilateral relationships that indirectly add up to a power establishment.
The diagram doesn’t show interlocking directorates among businesses and banks or the blurring of distinctions between commercial banks and investment banks. It doesn’t show the investments that individual congressmen or individuals elsewhere on the diagram have in others in the diagram.
As a precaution against tendencies toward monopoly, federal law prohibits banks in the same city from having interlocking directorates. That law was passed in the days of green eye shades and paper ledgers. In the age of Internet and Excel, all banks are virtually in the same city.
In 1933, Congress wisely passed the Glass-Seagall Act, separating commercial banks, investment banks, and insurance companies. For the next 66 years, the Glass-Seagall Act served as a deterrent to some of the worst abuses that had led to the Great Depression. Insurance company representatives could proudly claim that no insurance company in American history ever went bankrupt.
Then, on November 12, 1999, the curtain rang down on sanity and then came Act Two. The ironically titled Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, also known as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (or more formally, (Pub.L. 106-102, 113 Stat. 1338) was passed. Phil Gramm now holds the dubious distinction of being the Father of the Current Financial Crisis.
None of these three perps are still at the scene of the crime. Leach and Bliley dropped out of sight, and Phil Gramm became a lobbyist for malefactors of great wealth. Astonishingly, Gramm was 2008 presidential candidate John McCain’s chief economics adviser. McCain admitted that he didn’t know much about economics, but that was ridiculous. It’s like admitting that you don’t know much about surgery and asking Jack the Ripper to perform an operation on you.
Phil Gramm also holds the dubious distinction of ending insurance company bragging rights about never having experienced bankruptcy. Courtesy of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, American International Group (AIG) became heavily involved in credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations. (Don’t feel embarrassed for not understanding those terms. Fed Chairman Allan Greenspan admitted that he didn’t understand them either but that they must be good for the economy. In 2008, Greenspan was the one who ended up feeling stupid. When McCain picked Gramm to advise him, McCain really was stupid.) Courtesy of Phil Gramm and his unindicted co-conspirators, AIG became the first insurance company in American history to be nationalized to save it from going bankrupt.
You may be wondering if the wheeler dealers in Washington are at least as sophisticated as the average teenage Facebook user. That is, do they, like their pimpled counterparts in cyberspace, do networking or participate in meet-up groups? Well, yes, they have several of them. That’s another phenomenon that the diagrams in this series don’t show; and that will be the subject of a future article.
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How Banking Really Works

(Or Sachs, Lies, and Video Clips)

Henry Ford once said that, if the American people knew how the banking system really worked, there would be a revolution. Let me tell you how the banking system really works.
Most people think that it works pretty much like commerce. In fact, the British use the same word for rent and borrow. They hire a car and hire money. In practice, there’s no comparison.
When you rent a car, the car rental place gives up some of the value of a car (wear and tear on the vehicle) in exchange for your money. Your money has value because of the time and effort you sacrificed to get it.
In short, both you and the car rental place are giving up something of value (cost) to gain something of value (reward.) All commerce is based on the three elements of Social Exchange Theory: cost, trust, and reward.
In banking, the cost is almost entirely one sided. That’s because banks have the power to create money out of thin air. Banks can create “money,” but they can’t create value.
Let’s skip over the history of banking, which, I’m sure, every one of you has heard.
Dollars no longer take the form of silver or gold. They may not even be in the form of something tangible, such as a check. Because of the intangible nature of money these days, bankers can monkey with it in ways that’ll curl your hair.
For every dollar that’s deposited in a bank, the bank can lend thirty dollars or more. The ability to lend more money than they actually have is called fractional lending.
Where do they get these extra dollars? They create them out of thin air, based on the supposed authority granted to them by Federal Reserve Bank (the Fed.) This cartel isn’t federal any more than Federal Express is. It has no reserves, and it’s a privately owned banking cartel rather than a single bank.
Any value assigned to this “money” comes from dollars already in circulation. With each dollar that’s created out of thin air, each dollar already existing becomes worth less until, finally, it becomes worthless. (Compared to the value of the dollar in 1929, today’s dollar is valued at less than four cents.) It’s a form of invisible taxation, and not one American in a thousand is aware of it.
It doesn’t cost a bank any more to lend $30,000 than it does to lend $1,000. By contrast, a car rental place can rent out only one car—not thirty or more—for each car that it has. The car rental place is limited to getting rental fees for each car they have; but banks can gain interest payments on thirty times the amount of money they have on deposit.

Now let’s look at how this applies to the “bailouts” of Goldman Sachs and other banksters. I placed the word bailout in quotes because Goldman Sachs and the other banksters suffered no losses; thus, no losses needed to be covered.
They created money out of thin air (being fiat money, it had no intrinsic value) and loaned it to people to buy houses (which, of course, have value.) The borrowers agreed to repay the fiat money with money they had earned through the sweat of their brow. Thus, they borrowed something with no intrinsic value and agreed to repay it with something that had value—plus interest.
Remember Social Exchange Theory: cost, trust, and reward? Those loans didn’t cost the banks anything, yet they’re expecting value in return.
Goldman Sachs then set up a parallel system in which they made bets that their own system would collapse. So what happened when the system collapsed?
Well, it’s not as if the borrowers never repaid anything. Goldman Sachs and the other banksters did get some money that had value as repayment for money that the banksters had created out of thin air. When the borrowers fell behind in their payments, the banksters also received the houses—which had value—and those who had bet that the system would collapse thus made hefty profits when the system did collapse.

Then Goldman Sachs and the other banksters went crying to congressmen who had received hefty campaign contributions from them. Congress then voted to embezzle trillions of dollars (which have value, as the taxpayers had worked to earn them or must work to repay them) to “compensate” the banksters on their supposed losses.
It’s reasonable to ask, “If all this is true, why did Bear Stearns and other corrupt outfits go bankrupt?” They went bankrupt because even banksters have financial obligations that have to be met with real money. Not everyone can be played for saps. Each time a borrower defaults on a loan, the bankster can expect fewer real dollars to meet his obligations.
Who controls this corrupt system? It’s controlled by the Federal Reserve—the same privately owned banking cartel I mentioned earlier. Under the United States Constitution, the Congress has complete responsibility for coining money, borrowing against the credit of the United States, and paying it back.
In 1913, Congress voted to violate the Constitution by placing this responsibility into the hands of a few large banks. It was about that time that Mark Twain said that congressmen were idiots. Since idiots can’t be trusted to handle money (I’ve often wondered: If a fool and his money are soon parted, how did the fool and his money get together in the first place?) Congress voted to place that responsibility in the hands of bankers.
The rationale for the Federal Reserve System was that bankers’ expertise was needed to avert another crisis like the Panic of 1908. When Congress voted to create the Fed, then Congressman Charles Lindbergh (the father of Lucky Lindy) said, “Now depressions will be scientifically created.”
The Panic of 1908 is largely forgotten, but everyone has heard of the Great Depressions of the 1930’s and the present day.

Maybe it’s a silly question, but, since the Federal Reserve is in control of all of America’s money supply, shouldn’t the Fed be audited once in awhile? Yes, I believe so. That's why HR1207 was introduced. Maybe it’s a sillier question, but, since the Federal Reserve has completely failed in the only purpose given for its existence, do we really need it? Congressman Ron Paul and many others say, “No.”

Recommended reading: The Creature from Jekyll Island. Despite its flippant-sounding title, it’s the most important book pertaining to the Federal Reserve that I’ve ever read. Of necessity, I’ve breezed through a lot of important points concerning the Fed. The Creature from Jekyll Island will fill you in on the details. If you can’t find the book and still can’t trust Internet purchases enough to buy it on line, click here to begin watching the twelve-part You Tube videos by G. Edward Griffin.

Render unto Caesar

Probably no one reading this paper is considering, or ever will consider, declaring himself a sovereign individual—that is, an independent government unto himself. Opponents of the Tea Party Movement, however, are often fond of suggesting that the beliefs and goals of the Tea Partiers and those of the sovereign individualists are the same.
Though the sovereign individualists may be kooks—and dangerous ones at that—the rest of us can learn a few things from them. Dangerous ideas are rarely completely wrong.
To paraphrase the Christian writer C. S. Lewis, wrong can not be wrong in the same way that right is right. If something is right, it’s right because it’s consistent with the natural order of the universe. That which is wrong, of course, can not be consistent with the natural order of some other universe, at least not as far as we can tell. Wrong is wrong because it’s either a denial of something that’s right, or it’s a corruption of something that’s right. Thus, every wrong idea begins with at least a particle of truth; then it corrupts or denies the facts that follow from that truth.
Sovereign individualism proceeds—along a twisted path—from the Social Contract Theory. If government (to quote a subversive document called the Declaration of Independence) “derives its just powers from the consent of the governed,” and if human rights are individual rather than collective (another basic American belief), then it naturally follows that any individual can choose not to give government the consent to govern him.
The sovereign individualists go astray by refusing to accept the whole package. They reject the rule of government, but they insist on receiving the benefits of government.
Let’s cut to the chase.
Sovereign individualists insist that, as sovereign individuals, they can’t be legally compelled to pay taxes. They also go as far as saying that they can’t be legally compelled to get a drivers license.
Jesus was once challenged with that very question. He asked to be shown a coin used to pay taxes, and He asked whose image and name (superscription) was on the coin. When told that they were Caesar’s, He said, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s. Render unto God the things that are God’s.”
That wasn’t just a clever turn of phrase. Jesus was appealing to the basic fact that, if you play the man’s game, you play by the man’s rules. If you choose to use money authorized (however dubiously) by the government, you can use it only under the guidelines set by government.
How does that apply to drivers licenses? The roads don’t belong to sovereign individuals. The roads were built according to the Social Contract between taxpayers and their government. The government, therefore, has the right to make the rules as to how the roads may be used—provided, of course, that those rules enjoy the “consent of the governed.”
To what degree may individuals adjust the Social Contract to meet their individual needs? To some extent, every one of us is a sovereign individual in that we have some freedom to act independently of government.
Every time we use heritage seeds to plant a backyard garden, we’re creating value independently of government, and we don’t have to pay taxes on it. Every time we barter a bag of homegrown carrots for a neighbor’s bag of apples, we’re engaging in commerce independently of government. Unless the law has changed, I don’t think we have to pay taxes on that act of commerce.
Don’t forget that barter need not be limited to goods. We can also barter services.
In Taiwan, groups of people often establish private agreements that serve the purpose of private lending institutions. It’s much less expensive, and much more responsive to customer needs, than banks are. Since it is illegal, both in Taiwan and the United States, I can’t recommend it to you. I mention it only because it works very well.
I’m giving you only the most obvious examples of how we can assert our independence. There’s a term for that kind of behavior; it’s called self sufficiency.
A little earlier in this article, I suggested that money—fiat dollars, actually—have a dubious quality to them. What we call money isn’t really issued by our government. It’s issued by a private banking cartel called the Federal Reserve (the Fed.)
In another article, I’ve explained how the banking system works. (Click here.) Each new dollar the banksters create out of thin air—backed by nothing of value—takes value form existing dollars. In effect, the banksters pull off an invisible form of taxation by inflating the dollar supply.
That’s the form of taxation we should seek to avoid, at least until we can pressure our government to abolish the Fed. By avoiding the use of fiat dollars issued by the Fed, we deny the banksters some of the power they assert over us. In so doing, we also deny the banksters some of the power they unjustly assert over our government and our government officials. We can start to take our country back.
We can draw inspiration from our neighbors south of the border—no, not Mexico—much farther south. I’m talking about Argentina, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Brazil.
During the first decade of the new millennium, Wall Street bankers caused the collapse of the American economy. Using the collapse as a pretext, they got bribed officials in Congress to use the collapse as an excuse to rob the American people of trillions of dollars. If you think that all this was due to a miscalculation on their part, think again.
During the 1990’s, they did exactly the same thing in Venezuela. They did exactly the same thing in Brazil, in Bolivia, and in Argentina.
In all four countries, the pattern was the same. American and international banksters caused economic collapses in all four countries in succession. Then they proposed “rescue packages” to privatize national industries on which the people had come to depend for social services. “Privatization” meant that multinational corporations could buy up these countries’ vital industries at bargain-basement prices and take all the profits out of the country.
Those four scams appeared to have been a trial run for what the same banksters did in the United States between 1999 and 2010. The United States didn’t have nationalized industries to loot, so the banksters arranged for trillions of dollars to be borrowed against the taxpayers, their children, grandchildren, and so on.
What are Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, and Venezuela doing now that we should see as an inspiration? They established a credit system among themselves. Once it was up and running, they told the IMF, the World Bank, and other banksters to stick it. They’ve also arranged a sophisticated “barter” system, in which valuable commodities such as oil and minerals are used as media of exchange. In so doing, they’ve declared their independence from the banksters’ fiat dollars.
These arrangements have yet another benefit for the people of Latin America. Since they all require trade agreements and other treaties, their arrangement has the effect of an alternative to the banksters’ proposed free trade zone.
The banksters are having fits. It’s no wonder, then, that America’s mainstream media frequently call the elected leaders of those four countries—Kirchner (Argentina), Morales (Bolivia), Lulu da Silva (Brazil), and Chavez (Venezuela)—dictators and all-around terrible people. Yeah, right. They’re terrible people because they listen to the voices of their people instead of toeing the line for the IMF, the World Bank, and the Wall Street banksters.
We should follow their example. Each of us can start by checking out our own congressman’s voting record for the bankster embezzlement bills, the confiscation of the auto industry, the sweetheart deal for Big Pharma and the health insurance companies, and many other examples of fraud and theft. (Click here.)
The people of four Latin American countries drove the money changers from their temples. Now it’s our turn.

Join the Rebel Alliance against the Evil Empire

Ordinarily, I don't repost articles from others' sites, but this one came as a special request. Vatic Project has reposted a call to action that I believe we all should heed. Vatic Project was created as a people-to-people, grassroots diplomatic initiative to bypass the government diplomats. Government diplomats often contribute to war mentality by dividing the peoples of various nations (India versus Pakistan, America versus Muslim nations, etc.) against one another.
I started the American Action Report on a smaller scale for more local purposes. The powers-that-be in Manhattan and Washington, DC, also employ a divide-and-conquer strategy on America's national level, pitting conservatives against liberals, Christians against Muslims, blacks against whites, native-born Americans against immigrants, and so on. The American Action Report seeks to bring Americans together for a common purpose: to take our country back from the Evil Empire. No, I don't mean the old Soviet Union. The Evil Empire in this case is the cabal consisting of banksters, the war profiteers, dishonest information media, Big Pharma, and from corrupt congressmen.
The American Action Report focuses on such actions as information sharing and on sweeping the rats out of Congress this November 2. The Vatic Project focuses more on the promotion of understanding between peoples of various nations and, when necessary, Gandhi's strategy of peaceful disobedience. (What if they held a war and nobody came?)
Please read what the author of the article has to say.