OneBornfree's Mythbusters Blog

Obama's FEMA Camps

2011-12-23T01:49:00.000-08:00

Obama's FEMA Camps and the Deaths of Vaclav Havel and Kim Jong-Il

by Scott Lazarowitz [N.B. internal links of the original article are not posted here but can be seen in original- please see link at bottom of this page- onebornfree]

"According to this article and this article, Obama’s FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) is getting camps ready for not only the post-economic collapse, but for political dissidents and critics of government criminality. This will be made possible by Congress’s just having codified into law Obama’s dictatorship by giving him the power to treasonously turn the military against the American people. Thanks to the imbeciles and criminals of Congress, Obama can have anyone apprehended and detained indefinitely, merely by labeling someone a "terrorist," at his discretion, without any evidence presented against the accused, without any charges or trial.

Now, those two linked articles go to Infowars.com. Some people have smeared Infowars as a "conspiracy theory" website, but Alex Jones and his crew are very responsible and conscientious researchers and reporters, and they present and link to information that documents and gives evidence to their assertions of government "conspiracies." So, they are not ‘theorists," they are conspiracy factualists. And you can see various things by Gov. Jesse Ventura as well. While Ventura actually calls his show "Conspiracy Theory," he goes out on location and investigates such theories and allegations of possible government wrongdoing, and, especially from this unbelievable video posted just recently (especially starting at about 25 minutes into it), you can decide for yourself whether Ventura is just a "theorist" or a factualist.

In that linked video, Ventura exposes a large "residential" center, with locked front doors and surrounded by high fences with barbed wire facing inward. While it looks exactly like a prison, there were children playing on swings in one area within the grounds. Thanks to the emotionally frantic, post-9/11 dupes for the Bush/Obama’s police state, we seem to be on the road to Soviet-Nazi tyranny — unless someone actually takes action such as arresting Obama and those aforementioned senators and congressmen and charging these government officials with treason.

Yes, I know there are many people who are in denial, and so trusting of their beloved government, especially their federal government, regardless of how much the government abuses them. "They would never do anything of a criminal nature to us." But just look at Katrina, and the BP-government police state with that oil spill last year. Look at what our military people have done to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, and Pakistan. As I pointed out in this article, look at what our military people have been doing to their own fellow comrades. Being in denial will not help you when you are a target of military aggression, let alone a target of your local police.

Jacob Hornberger noted here and here how dangerous a government’s military could be.

And, regarding this new law codifying Obama’s dictatorship and his merely labeling someone a "terrorist" without evidence shown, only someone extremely naive could think that Obama or any political ruler or prospective one such as Romney wouldn’t have his goons nab someone who challenges their power grabs and who openly presents views that could convince others to withdraw support of the Regime.

Unfortunately, the naive and gullible dupes for police statism cry,"But we have to allow officials to sweep up those ‘terrorists’ based on the judgment of military personnel or police (and without evidence) because we can’t wait for the process of a trial with a jury to prove someone’s guilt and then imprison him, we have to risk rounding up innocents!"

One thing that Gov. Ventura noted in the video was that, with all this stuff, we’re headed for either tyranny or liberty.

Interestingly, there were two deaths this week of two world leaders who contrasted one another in that liberty-tyranny fork in the road: Kim Jong-Il, the crazy dictator from North Korea; and Vaclav Havel, the sensible political dissident who opposed communist Soviet rule and worked for freedom in his country of the Czech Republic (formerly a merged Czech and Slovak Czechoslovakia).

According to Wikipedia, Havel, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, "was a founding signatory of the Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism, that proposed the establishment of the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism. He also received the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Philadelphia Liberty Medal, the Order of Canada, the freedom medal of the Four Freedoms Award, the Ambassador of Conscience Award and several other distinctions." (Need I say, beyond what I’ve exhaustively already written, what Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama has done?)

While still in Czechoslovakia under Soviet dictatorial rule, Havel founded the Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Prosecuted, whose main goal was to educate the population about the persecution of dissidents, people who disagree with government policy and either withdraw their consent and/or openly and actively work to make changes. Yes, the U.S. has the American Civil Liberties Union, and other similar organizations, but it seems that, especially with the latest acts of Congress and Obama and their implicit threats to jail American dissidents, "civil liberties" organizations in the U.S. seem as powerless as they seemed to be in the Soviet Union until the late 1980s.

One of Havel’s first acts as President of Czechoslovakia, before it split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, was to give amnesty to and release the country’s political prisoners. Can we possibly expect any U.S. president to do the same here? Particularly with the War on Drugs, which imprisons a much higher proportion of inner-city minorities than others amongst the general population. But what exactly will Obama, the military and FEMA (and Obama’s ACORN and Obama’s obedient union militants) do to political dissidents in the U.S., especially if there is to be economic collapse, civil unrest, looting and so forth?

And, in contrast to Vaclav Havel and all his work toward greater freedom and individual liberty, what did Kim Jong-Il do? According to Human Rights Watch,

"Kim Jong-Il exercised total control for 17 years over one of the world’s most closed and repressive governments. He was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands, and perhaps millions, of North Koreans through widespread preventable starvation, horrendous prisons and forced labor camps, and public executions. Kim family rule, starting with his father, Kim Il-Sung in 1948, is projected to continue with Kim Jong-Il’s son, Kim Jong-Un…

"Kim Jong-Il’s legacy includes the fate of the tens of thousands who have died in the kwanliso camps for alleged enemies of the state, where today an estimated 200,000 North Koreans continue to work and die in conditions of near starvation and brutal abuse. In this system, the sins of one member of the family condemn an entire generation to imprisonment. A steady stream of former prisoners who escaped North Korea have testified to Human Rights Watch and other organizations how even children born inside such camps grow up to inherit their parents’ prisoner status.

"Leaving the country without official permission is considered an act of treason, punishable by torture and imprisonment, yet tens of thousands have fled in the last two decades, and thousands more continue to risk their lives every year to escape."

The way that Jesse Ventura described those "residential" facilities with barbed wire run by FEMA and Homeland Security, it would seem like Dick Cheney, Obama and Janet Napolitano are learning about government-civilian relations more from Kim Jong-Il than from Vaclav Havel.

One wonders about what kind of country America has become when we have the choice between Statist A or Statist B, the Affirmative Action President Obama who collects Spider Man and Conan the Barbarian comics, or Romney who put his dog on the roof of the car for a long trip. (Who would do that?)

And in the current Obama Administration, we have the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs chief Cass Sunstein, who wants to "cognitively infiltrate" Internet websites and social networking sites, and we have an Obama Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan who said that freedom of speech "depends upon a categorical balancing of the value of the speech against its societal costs" (i.e. government-approved speech).

And a "science czar," John Holdren, who believes that a born human infant "will ultimately develop into a human being," but believes that trees should have rights to sue in court. And Obama’s former health care czar and current director of the National Institute of Health bioethics (sic) department, Dr. Zeke Emanuel, believes the government should have the power and control to allocate and ration health care, not the doctors and patients.

Why does it seem that so many people in government are just plain nuts?

As the Economic Collapse Blog noted in this article, the legacy of Kim Jong-Il and his North Korean regime is one of "weirdness," just plain crazy yet frightening stuff. The writer concludes, "Please do not let that happen to America." I think it already is happening, and we have good reason to believe that. Just where are the Vaclav Havels of our time? (I think we know the answer to that question!)

The real crimes in America are not being committed by or planned by private civilians who believe in personal and economic freedom, private property and the philosophy of Live and Let Live, and who want to speak out against intrusions and threats posed by those with armed, compulsory government legal authority and power.

No, the real crimes are those of our government officials who are extremely clueless about liberty and who are totally drunk with power grabs. Seizing and detaining innocent civilians? Suppressing speech and political dissent? "Emergency" camps? Government degenerates and outlaws have become the most dangerous amongst our increasingly vulnerable population under centralized rule.

Scott Lazarowitz is a commentator and cartoonist, visit his blog.

[original article with many internal linkshere ]
Copyright © 2011 by LewRockwell.com.

You Might Be a Zombie If...

2011-10-25T15:11:00.000-07:00

The top ten signs that you might be a zombie
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

(NaturalNews) If you burn your yard rather than mow it, you might be a redneck, says comedian Jeff Foxworthy. But how might you realize you're a zombie? Here are the top ten signs that you just might be a zombie...

Sign #1: If you routinely take flu shot vaccines and then wonder why you still catch the flu every winter, you might be a zombie
Annual flu shots are "medicines for the mindless." Even according to the medical scientists who are pro-vaccine, flu shots simply don't work on 99 out of 100 people (http://www.naturalnews.com/029641_v...). So if you find yourself standing in line at the pharmacy waiting to get a flu shot, think to yourself, "Whoa! I might be a zombie!"

Sign #2: If you find yourself watching mainstream media news, but still can't make sense of world events, you might be a zombie
The purpose of the mainstream media is not to keep you informed, but to make you obedient. (http://www.naturalnews.com/033893_m...) Mainstream news stories are chosen to promote a corporate agenda, not to bring you accurate information about events that might impact your life in meaningful ways. Those who watch mainstream news television quickly become zombies and then go on to succumb to vaccines and other brain poisons such as fluoride in the water (see below).

Sign #3: If you find yourself mindlessly following your doctor's advice even while your sickness gets increasingly worse, you might be a zombie.
Conscious people realize that if what they are doing isn't working, they need to change what they are doing! But zombies keep doing the same thing over and over again, all while wondering why they keep getting the same results. And doctors promote it with weird zombie logic such as: if that last round of antibiotics was useless, let's try another round of antibiotics and hope for a different outcome!

Sign #4: If you automatically do what you're told by police officers and "authorities," you might be a zombie.
A police officer shows up at your doorsteps and politely asks, "May I come in?" A zombie says, "Sure!" and mindlessly opens the door. But an intelligent, conscious person knows this is a zombie mind trick that allows law enforcement officers to testify that you gave them consent to search your entire home. When a police officer asks to enter your home, they are not being polite. They are asking you to surrender your Fourth Amendment rights, and they are using clever social contracts to manipulate you into giving up those rights without you noticing. Don't be a zombie! Know your rights! Learn more at: www.FlexYourRights.org

Sign #5: If you only read the front of food packages -- and not the back -- you might be a zombie
While shopping at the local grocery store, you notice a package of cereal that claims to be "all natural" and says it may "lower cholesterol," too. The back of the cereal, however, may reveal that the ingredients are not organic, meaning they're made with pesticides and GMOs (http://www.naturalnews.com/033838_b...). Zombies only read the marketing claims on food products. Conscious people read the ingredients and learn how to see beyond the marketing hype of dishonest food companies.

Sign #6: If all your savings are currently held in U.S. dollars, you are almost certainly an economic zombie
Thanks to the inflationary actions of the Federal Reserve, the U.S. dollar is losing value with each passing day. Before long, it will likely collapse in value. As that happens, all the people left holding useless dollars (both physical ones or electronic ones in your bank account) will discover they have been acting like "economic zombies" because they put all their currency eggs in the same basket. Conscious people diversify their savings into land, real estate, gold, non-U.S. currencies, corporate stocks and even barter items like silver dimes, storable foods, salt, sugar or common ammunition.

Sign #7: If you believe what you were taught in public school, you are definitely a zombie
American scientists developed the nuclear bombs dropped in World War II, right? Wrong. It was Nazi scientists who processed the nuclear fuel and designed those first two bombs. (Read Rise of the Fourth Reich by Jim Marrs.)

Columbus treated the indigenous Indians with great friendship, right? Not exactly: He and his crews raped the female Indians, then tortured and murdered many of the males. To celebrate "Columbus Day" is to celebrate a mass murderer. (No wonder all the government workers get the day off!)

The federal government exists to protect the rights of the People, right? C'mon -- today's government goes out of its way to violate the Bill of Rights, violate federal law and destroy the very Constitution it was sworn to protect. For example, did you know the Obama administration runs a secret "kill list" of Americans to murder without any trial or due process? This has now been openly admitted and confirmed by the White House. (http://www.naturalnews.com/033835_W...)

Sign #8: If you drink fluoridated tap water, you are a fluoridated zombie (which is, of course, the whole point of fluoride)
The Nazi war machine used fluoride as a mind-numbing agent to keep its population under control while it committed genocidal murder. Have you ever wondered for what purpose the U.S., Canada, Australia and other countries are now using the same chemical cocktail in the water supply?

The medical fiction that "fluoride prevents cavities" is a complete quack science hoax. Fluoride is actually a highly corrosive toxic industrial chemical, as revealed in this hidden camera footage: http://www.naturalnews.com/033753_w...

Sign #9: If you find yourself rooting for any presidential candidate other than Ron Paul, you're probably a political zombie
Ron Paul is the only Presidential candidate who has offered a genuine balanced budget (all the other candidates want to keep spending us into financial oblivion). Ron Paul is the only Presidential candidate who stands firmly for health freedom, ending prohibition against medical marijuana, legalizing the farming of industrial hemp, and allowing nutritional supplement companies to make accurate, scientifically-validated health claims for their products. All the other candidates are just corporate puppets who have nothing to offer America other than a continuation of the problems that have driven our nation into economic and political turmoil.

To vote for Romney, Perry, Cain or even Obama is to mindlessly vote for continuing the same broken system of puppet Presidents who answer to their corporate globalist masters (just like Bush).

Sign #10: If you think that Bigger Government is the way to solve the problems that have already been caused by Big Government, you might be a zombie
Irrational faith in government is a sure sign of cognitive zombie-ism. As government itself is the cause of most of society's problems -- financial bankruptcy, political corruption, the waste of taxpayer money, the promotion of a culture of criminality, deadly health care monopolies and so on -- it is completely irrational to think that MORE government can solve the very problems it has created!

• Zombie Obamanomics, for example, is the practice of spending more government money to eliminate government debt -- also known as "Zombienomics."

• Obamacare, also known as "Zombiecare," is the practice of treating the health of the population with the very same medications and surgery that only "manage" disease symptoms rather than curing disease.

• "Zombocracy" is what I call a government run by zombie politicians who are voted into office by zombie voters.

• "Zombiflation" is the creeping upwards of prices on everyday goods at a pace too slow to be readily noticed by the zombie population. The Federal Reserve is constantly trying to create new money to expand the money supply at precisely the outer limit of Zombiflation.

• "Zombruptcy" is what happens when zombie consumers go bankrupt and can't pay their home mortgages anymore, at which point zombie banks take them over and try to sell them at reduced prices to other zombies.

• "Zombie elections" are contests between two or more globalist zombies who compete to receive the highest number of votes from a mass of zombie voters, none of which have any real knowledge about the character or voting records of the zombie candidates they are electing into office. Zombie voters tend to vote for people based on what they look like. "We need a black President because skin color is what matters!" Or better yet, "We need a fat President, because he looks like the rest of the zombie Americans!"

What about this instead? "We need a President who defends the Constitution and wants to stop the Federal Reserve from stealing more of our money!"

You can be a zombie for Halloween, but don't be one in real life
This Halloween, I was thinking of walking around wearing a mask of Anderson Cooper, because I can't think of a more frightening image of corporate-controlled zombie mindlessness. I could carry a microphone with the letters ZNN -- Zombie News Network -- and do interviews with "zombies on the street."

Hey there, parents, did you know the high fructose corn syrup in the candies your children are sucking down tonight is made from genetically modified corn? Did you know the chocolate in those name-brand candies was harvested from cacao plantations using child labor? Did you know the artificial food coloring chemicals in the candy promotes symptoms of hyperactivity and ADD?

Ah, but you see, the parents don't want to hear that, because they too are zombies. Who else lets their kids run around and collect bags full of mystery foods from the houses of total strangers?

By the way, it's okay to appear as a zombie for Halloween if you want. Just don't run around acting like a zombie in real life. Use your brain for a change... a global change!

Think about what you're doing, who you're supporting, what you're buying, where you're getting your information and what you choose to believe. Don't be a sucker for mainstream news fictions, pharmaceutical propaganda, medical system quackery and political hucksterism. Always ask skeptical questions; always demand accountability; and if you catch yourself in one of the top ten zombie situations described here, get out and take back your brain as quickly as possible!

Obama and His Family Tied to CIA for Years

2010-09-06T08:04:00.000-07:00

Onebornfree comment: why does this NOT surprise me?

Regards, onebornfree

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Obama and His Family Tied to CIA for Years

Original article here.

by Sherwood Ross

President Obama – as well as his mother, father, step-father and grandmother – all were connected to the Central Intelligence Agency – possibly explaining why the President praises the “Agency” and declines to prosecute its officials for their crimes.

According to a published report in the September Rock Creek Free Press of Washington, D.C., investigative reporter Wayne Madsen says Obama’s mother Ann Dunham worked “on behalf of a number of CIA front operations, including the East-West Center at the University of Hawaii, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Ford Foundation.” The East-West Center had long been affiliated with CIA activities in the Asia-Pacific region, Madsen says.

What’s more, Obama’s father, Barack Obama Sr., arrived in Hawaii from Kenya as part of a CIA program to identify and train Africans who would be useful to the Agency in its Cold War operations against the Soviets, Madsen says. Obama Sr. divorced Ms. Dunham in 1964.

Ms. Dunham married Lolo Soetoro the following year, a man Madsen says assisted in the violent CIA coup against Indonesian President Sukarno that claimed a million lives. Obama’s mother taught English for USAID, “which was a major cover for CIA activities in Indonesia and throughout Southeast Asia,” Madsen reports. That USAID was a cover for CIA covert operations in Laos was admitted by its administrator Dr. John Hannah on Metromedia News. Madsen says the organization was also a cover for the CIA in Indonesia.

Ms. Dunham worked in Indonesia at a time when Midwest Universities Consortium for International Activities(MUCIA) – a group that included the University of Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan State, Minnesota and Indiana – was accused of being a front for CIA activities in Indonesia and elsewhere. Ms. Dunham traveled to Ghana, Nepal, Bangladesh, India and Thailand “working on micro-financing projects” for the CIA, Madsen reports.

And Ms. Dunham’s mother, Madelyn Dunham – who raised Obama while his mother was on assignment in Indonesia – acted as vice president of the Bank of Hawaii in Honolulu, which Madsen says was used by various CIA front entities. She handled escrow accounts used to make CIA payments “to U.S.-supported Asian dictators” including Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, South Vietnamese President Nguyen van Thieu, and President Suharto in Indonesia, Madsen says.

“In effect, the bank was engaged in money laundering for the CIA to prop up covertly its favored leaders in the Asia-Pacific region,” Madsen writes. “It is clear that Dunham Soetoro and her Indonesian husband, President Obama’s step-father, were closely involved in the CIA’s operations to steer Indonesia away from the Sino-Soviet orbit after the overthrow of Sukarno.”

“President Obama’s own work in 1983 for Business International Corporation, a CIA front that conducted seminars with the world’s most powerful leaders and used journalists as agents abroad, dovetails with CIA espionage activities conducted by his mother,” Madsen says. “There are volumes of written material on the CIA backgrounds of George H.W. Bush and CIA-related activities by his father and children, including former President George W. Bush. Barack Obama, on the other hand, cleverly masked his own CIA connections as well as those of his mother, father, step-father, and grandmother,” Madsen points out.

A review of the influence on the Oval Office by the CIA, particularly since the presidency of Bush Sr., a former director of the Agency, it becomes apparent the Agency has played a major role in the shaping of U.S. foreign policy – a role that has been largely kept secret from the American public and one which most Americans would not have approved. The CIA’s overthrow of the democratic government of Iran in 1953 is an example. The overthrow occurred after the Iranian government nationalized the oil industry following alleged cheating on payments by contractor British Petroleum, then known as Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. For another, the CIA’s widespread use of illegal rendition and torture of suspects is repugnant to Americans who still believe in their Constitution.

September 6, 2010

Sherwood Ross has worked for major dailies and wire services and served in an executive capacity in the U.S. civil rights movement. He currently is active in the anti-war movement and operates a public relations firm for good causes.

The Maximizing State- Anthony de Jasay

2010-09-01T10:15:00.000-07:00

Onebornfree commentary: An excellent essay by one of my favorite writers and thinkers, Anthony de Jasay , author of "The State", one of my favorite books on political theory.

The entire essay appears in the July 2010 issue of "The Independent Review"

Regards, onebornfree.

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History seems to demonstrate that a society of perfect freedom, immune from the habit of collective choice, perdures only for small and very poor societies of simple design in relative geographical remoteness that isolates them from other societies. Other than in such increasingly rare conditions, perfect freedom survives only in shreds and fragments in states in which ad hoc or rule-following collective choice predominates. It would be rash to conclude that this transformation is a necessary consequence of some omnipresent cause, an incontrovertible corollary of the human condition, or the nature of any social organization. It would be better theory to propose more modestly with Hume that the transformation is a matter of "constant conjunction" that has always occurred but may or may not occur again in the future.

We need not decide whether collective choice comes to prevail because ordered anarchy is an intrinsically weak structure or because the state is an inherently strong one. A case can be made for either view. In this article, I lay out the factors that always have and presumably always will make the transformation from ordered anarchy to state highly probable.

The State as Unitary Actor

My 1985 book The State has been fairly widely criticized on the ground that it is an unwarranted anthropomorphism to treat the state as a unitary actor making decisions the way a person does, selecting them in its calculating mind with reference to its preferences and the conditions that it encounters or expects to prevail. The critics have pointed out reasonably enough that the state is a very complicated and opaque set of bodies and persons loosely connected by some common interests but also separated by conflicting ones, bound by some common rules but also following particular ones of their own and pursuing objectives that pull them in various directions at once. The critique was deserved in the sense that I should have anticipated and met it explicitly rather than take for granted that readers will see the advantage of imagining the state as a unitary actor about whose decisions certain predictions can be made, instead of treating it more realistically as a chaotic and largely unpredictable witches' cauldron that at best can be described but that defies theory.

An analogy from economics may not disarm the critique but may explain why I believe that it ought to be firmly resisted.

A firm, especially a corporation of a certain size, is a hierarchical organization that functions, as does the state, by command and obedience. Final command rests with the owners and cascades downward by delegation; disobedience of varying degrees is sanctioned by punishments of varying gravity. Within this top-down assembly, a number of subassemblies have some autonomy without which they can function only poorly or not at all. Thus, production, purchasing, design, maintenance, marketing, personnel, and finance, to mention only the principal ones, have a certain latitude to make their own decisions; defend and expand their "turf" and "pull the blanket over themselves"; secure easy objectives, higher capital budgets, greater influence, and more consideration for their activity at top management level; and so forth. In the limit, each of these "subassemblies" may be pulling the firm in a different direction. It would be hard to make a case that the firm is more like a unitary actor than the state.

Nevertheless, despite sporadic attempts to deal with the firm purely descriptively or a little more ambitiously, imputing to it some behavioral regularity ("firms add a normal margin to cost and sell what they can at that price")--attempts that have born little fruit--economics has by and large adhered to the theory of the firm that treats it as a unitary actor and imputes to it a single maximand, profit, that is the only point of having a firm at all, any other objective ("market share," "longevity," or "monopoly power") being potentially rational only if it is at least consistent with profit maximization. This theory of the firm, in increasingly sophisticated guises, has done great service both in promoting rigorous thinking and in helping us to understand reality, and economics would be poorer if it were discarded on the ground that no real-life firm is in fact a unitary actor and that none can ever be "proven" to maximize profit. (Proof is the more awkward to find because the rational maximand is the present value of all expected future profits, expectations of the future are not uniform in their level and time pattern, and management may well be more sanguine than the marginal shareholder--hence, the alleged conflict between short and long term.)

I contend that just as no particular firm can be proven to maximize profit, but the behavior of firms in general can be best predicted by assuming that they strive to do so, so the behavior of states can be best understood and predicted by imputing to them a single maximand. Sporadically in history and political theory, potential candidates for the role of maximand have cropped up. Territory, power, tax revenue, and dynastic security of tenure have been mentioned, although not systematically developed. I maintain that the point of sovereign command, of being the state at all, is to have power one can use at one's discretion. (1)

The distinction between power tout court and discretionary power is crucial. All other things being equal, power reduces to the capacity to have at least some of one's commands obeyed by a relevant population (or, probabilistically, by some portion of it). However, some commands may merely serve to bring about the very obedience that they demand. The state may order its subjects to pay taxes for the maintenance of judiciary and police apparatus designed to intimidate the population into obeying the order to pay these taxes. Alternatively, the state may order people to shore up a dam to protect their own village from being flooded. Obeying this command is in the villagers' own interest. Had the command been instead to join a mass demonstration for world peace and human rights, they might not have obeyed unless the state had driven them or was able to rely on their abundant loyalty. Having one's command of the latter sort obeyed or collecting more taxes than are needed to secure continuing taxpayer obedience and to ensure that the same tax will be raised the next time around is having discretionary power. Such power enables the state to realize objectives that are not instruments for reproducing power. Promotion of a supreme value, patronage of the arts, and establishment of a firmly based kleptocracy are plausible examples of discretionary objectives, among many others.

The Machinery of Maximization

The state's power is exercised by the government as plenipotentiary agent. We may say that for most purposes the government is the personified state. One difficulty about this usage is that whereas the state is best understood as an abstract entity, the government is both abstract and physically existent, consisting of real persons, some of whom can be more completely identified with the government than others. However, theory must live with this awkwardness of reality as it does with so many other things.

Discretionary power is power not required for its own reproduction or maintenance; power is the property of commands being obeyed; and obedience (to the government) is a function of intimidation and allegiance.

In seeking to maximize its discretionary power, the government schematically must "feed" the two "ingredients," intimidation and allegiance, into a kind of machinery where they mix and move along until they "come out" as obedience; obedience, in turn, procures the wherewithal for the intimidation and allegiance to be fed into the machine.

Several processes may lend themselves to turning intimidation and allegiance into obedience and obedience into intimidation and allegiance. The most obvious and in our time the most widely used is, of course, taxation. Using taxes to acquire resources both for maintaining a repressive apparatus that will intimidate people into paying taxes and for other purposes leaves some of the latter resources available to be used for buying allegiance. If judiciously targeted, the granting of material privileges to some and the redistribution of the resources of some for the benefit of others will create more allegiance and readier obedience to the government than they will cause alienation among the victims of redistribution. (2)

The use of resources merely to generate the obedience that allows the raising of resources of the same magnitude, leaving nothing over for discretionary purposes, is a break-even exercise, an altogether futile drudgery. Although such a futile result is indeed the probable but unintended outcome of attempts to solicit greater allegiance, "break even" is not the aim of running the machinery of maximization, but rather the eventual self-destruction of the aim. Without the ability to yield power that can be employed at discretion for any purpose short of the absurd, being a state is a pointless exercise.

The idea of the minimal state that imposes collective choice over only a severely restricted domain and exercises self-denial by not using power to generate discretionary power seems to upset this conclusion. In fact, the minimal state, if it existed, would be an antistate actor whose rational purpose would be the opposite of that of the state, preempting the place that a state can otherwise take and expand in.

Although obedience may yield discretionary power, it is quite unlikely to do so as if the latter were a linear function of the former, increasing in the same proportion as intimidation and allegiance increase. It is a plausible conjecture that beyond a certain degree of required obedience, diminishing returns set in, and more intimidation, combined with more redistribution or not, not only fails to raise discretionary power, but actually decreases it. Discretionary power is maximized when its (rising) marginal cost is equal to its marginal increment, both measured in resources. Naturally, one cannot find this point by calculation. It can be identified more or less successfully only with the antennae of instinctive statesmanship. Taxation, I suspect, may be foolishly excessive, and dictatorship overdone for its own good. Discretionary power is more likely to be maximized with discretion.

Inadvertent Surrender: Social Contract and Conquest

Hardly any other cliche or allegory keeps as strong a grip on the mind of both the political philosopher and the ordinary man as the social contract. The reason seems straightforward: social contract theory flatters us into believing that we have conjured up the state not as a matter of misguided, absent-minded, and inadvertent surrender, but of our own clear-sighted will. There is no call to be either rebellious or rueful about it. People had ample reason for entering into it and for honoring its terms. We need not feel a little foolish or ashamed that we could not fail to honor it if perchance we should like to do so, because the contract has turned out to be irrevocable and permanent, admitting neither breach nor renegotiation.

We are not dealing here with the early form of the contract, the one between God and the monarch under which the latter, in exchange for the power granted to him, binds himself to rule in conformity to his divine mandate. Nor do we mean the quasi-social contract by which the monarch consents to a constitution, and in return his people consent to obey him but retain the material means to disobey (refuse to pay taxes, meet force with three, depose the monarch).

The social contract as tacitly understood in contemporary usage is that of Thomas Hobbes ([1651] 1968), by which the people contract among themselves to create Leviathan, who is not a party to the contract but who has the sword to enforce the "covenant," or that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a much less solid construction in which the people conceive of the General Will, agree to submit to it, and have no temptation to disobey because recognition of the General Will tells them that they have no interest to do so (it is better to fell and share the stag than to run off and chase the hare).

It is perhaps needless to spell out that the idea of a whole people's unanimously concluding a contract obliging it to anything at all, let alone to surrender to and obey a superior power, is at best an allegory. To suppose that the people should do so and irrevocably commit all future generations to it, having calculating the expected advantages it will bring, is to impute to the people either a reckless acceptance of a great risk or a failure to see that risk at all.

The state, however, has a more down-to-earth genesis by contractual means in which the parties are unaware that by making what may seem to be innocuous agreements, they are creating the viable embryo of a state. The agreements concern the organization of what Robert Nozick calls "protective agencies" specializing in the enforcement of the conventions that hitherto were being enforced by social sanctions (exclusion of the deviant from the benefits of the convention as well as other punishments administered by the plaintiffs and other parties interested in protecting that convention). Many or most people may have incurred enforcement costs involved in punishing deviants, be it no more than boycotting cheats, watching one's property, mending one's fences, and helping neighbors and peers protect their own and the public order. For some, such activities may actually be a source of satisfaction and self-esteem, but others would resent them as a cost and might well welcome an opportunity to unload the duty of rule enforcement on a specialized agency equipped to discharge it. For many, doing so would feel like taking a free ride because they may not realize that in one way or another they have to bear some of the agency's cost. Others may have the illusion that they can escape these costs altogether or bear a smaller amount of them than the benefit they derive from a third party's enforcement of the rules. On these grounds, the scenario of piecemeal surrender of some of the enforcement function to specialized agencies is as plausible as that of the social contract is implausible. The rest follows not as a matter of inexorable logic, but as a matter of great plausibility, from the "slippery slope" argument. Specialized enforcement agencies merge into a single agency that holds sway over a population delineated by ethnic or geographic features. The agency gradually arms itself and disarms the population, arguments of efficiency in enforcement furnishing an adequate excuse for establishing a monopoly position, which is obviously of paramount importance for an embryonic state. The final stage in this scenario of the birth of the state is a move from the agency's protecting the people's property to its protecting their property from all except itself. In this stage, the agency no longer confines itself to obliging the population to cover its costs of enforcing the rules. Instead, it uses its power to extort from society a volume of resources far greater than mere rule enforcement costs and uses part of the surplus to buy the support of selected segments of society to deter any attempts at resistance by other segments. Henceforward, the mechanism of redistribution is in place and available for maintaining society in a situation of surrender and the state in power, with the ultimate objective of maximizing the state's discretionary power.

Pressed into a nutshell, this account of the state's emergence suggests that the free-rider temptation is the Achilles heel of "perfect freedom." This temptation is not a necessary condition of the state's emergence, but it comes close to being a sufficient condition for it. Another such account, likewise very close to being sufficient though not necessary, is that of the territorial conquest of one ethnic group or otherwise distinct population by another. David Hume ([1777] 1986) states categorically that nearly all past and present governments originated in usurpation and conquest. It is difficult to find in history many states of which this claim is not true. It is certainly true of the most outstanding specimens of statehood. The Trojans subjugated the Latins and made Rome. The Franks conquered Gaul and laid the foundations of France. Scandinavian trader-warriors along the route from the Baltic to the Black Sea took the Slavs into their service and established Kiev and other principalities that in due course formed Russia. The Normans vanquished the Saxons and created a united England. The resulting societies were from the outset neatly divided along ethnic lines into conquerors and conquered, governors and governed, a division that provided an outline for the feudal system of control and almost automatically answered any subsequent question of who would command and who would obey. For centuries, the conquered ethnic group surrendered to the conqueror, until the clear dividing line was gradually washed out, and other divisions took over its founding functions.

Ruling by the Rule

We are in the habit of classifying types of government according to the group in society that exercises political power. Thus, we distinguish theocracy, monarchy, oligarchy, plutocracy, and democracy, to mention only some basic types. Another frequently made classification has only a binary alternative: dictatorship and democracy. However, a more fundamental distinction is between a society in which "the king decrees" and one in which "the king in his council decrees." In the latter alternative, the validity of the king's decision is subject to a formal requirement, an embryo of a rule that constrains rule making.

Self-Imposed Constraints

Kenneth Arrow calls a social (his term for collective) choice rule a "constitution," and Thomas Schelling calls a constitution a vow. Much past and present misunderstanding in political thought might be dissipated by keeping firmly in mind the word vow and with it the state's own role in binding collective choice by rules.

When collective choices are made ad hoc as the occasion demands, the state relies on the sufficiency of its power to get the decision obeyed. It seeks neither to spare certain individuals' preferences nor to allow for all of the likely consequences of overriding them. However, it is perfectly possible that the overriding of individual preferences, though quite feasible, costs more in terms of the power that needs to be used and tied up to deter resistance than it accrues advantages to the state from being carried out rather than some alternative.

The economy in the utilization of power that arises from sparing individual choices on some ad hoc occasion without prejudging the likelihood of overriding them on a future occasion is, however, only one part of the gain the state may expect from "self-denial," and it is independent of such self-denial's taking the form of an explicit, declared "vow," a self-imposed rule to govern collective choice. The latter, removing arbitrariness and imparting a certain limited predictability, should further enhance the economy of power. (3) Moreover, because collective choices to conform to a rule or rules are repetitive, obedience to them is apt to become habitual, and hence resistance tends to become eroded. This catalog of the potential advantages of constrained collective choice applies to the case of the constraint's being unilaterally adopted by the state as a matter of prudential calculation, a case known in history as the absolute monarch's "granting a constitution" to subjects whose role is limited to showing greater willingness to obey in return for diminished arbitrariness. A somewhat different case is that of a constitution as an explicitly negotiated bargain between a monarch and the people, governors and the governed, that should further enhance political obedience, albeit at the cost of a more stringent "vow" on the state's part. Imposing greater restraint would induce a loss from forgone collective choices than is greater than the gain from a further reduction in the use of coercive power. The reverse would, of course, be the case if the state imposed less restraint on its exercise of collective choice. The "secret" (a secret because it is not shared with the governed) is to formulate the rule-making rule under which the state can expect to secure the best trade-off between power saved and desired objectives forgone ("forgone" because they would become "unconstitutional")--the maximizing rule of rule making. The constraints must be incorporated in a master rule, or rule of rule making, that provides for mandating the government (and eventually its recall) and delineates the areas in which collective choice may be exercised and individual choices overridden. Perhaps the most prominent element of any rule of rule making is the specification of the manner in which a rule must be made (for example, by the king's decreeing it in his council or by the majority's voting for it under universal franchise)--what Herbert Hart calls "the rule of recognition" that characterized Venice as a plutocracy and earns most modern Western states the name of "representative democracy."

What is the best rule of rule making for a state? We obviously cannot give a specific answer to this question, any more than we can to a question about a firm's ideal business plan. However, a wholly formal statement of what is best may not be completely useless. By "best," we continue to mean the one most likely to maximize the state's discretionary power. Assuming that greater constitutional constraints yield both diminishing returns in terms of the saving of the power needed to secure obedience and increasing costs in terms of forgone collective choices, discretionary power will rise as long as the saving of power is greater than the opportunity cost of forgoing more and more collective choices. The favorable balance between the two will go on increasing, but at a diminishing rate. Maximum discretionary power will be reached as the power saved by ever-stricter self-imposed constraints no longer exceeds the worth of the lost opportunity of making certain collective choices. Needless to say, this point cannot be found by using calculus, although perhaps clever politicians with "feel" for what "pays" can approximate the formal optimum.

As a practical matter, a constitution that it "pays" to adopt is one that appears to bind the government's hands more than it really does or in ways that matter more to the governed than to the government. For example, a constitution might grant habeas corpus and concessions on other "civil rights" even while maintaining the rule of collective choice over individuals' material resources--the rule of rule making that places no explicit restraint on the taxation of income or wealth. History abounds in real-life constitutional examples of this kind.

Paradoxes of the Rule-Making Rule

In a truly rule-bound system of rules, every rule must be the product of the proper observance of some antecedent rule. Ordinary rules of "must" and "must not" have to be made by following the rule of rule making (including, of course, rule change). That rule, however, fails to be rule bound unless it, too, is made by observing a higher-order rule of making rules of rule making, and the latter must be made by following a rule of yet another order higher. A truly rule-bound system is therefore an infinite regress of ever higher orders of rules. This property may or may not be a genuine paradox. (4) In any event, it casts serious doubt on the possibility of legitimate birth of constitutions. Constituent assemblies are organs of collective choice through which collective choice legitimizes itself. This procedure is tantamount to collective choice's vesting in itself the power to override individual choice and laying down the limits or conditions under which such overriding is to be regarded as legitimate. Awareness of this circularity presumably induces many political theorists to embrace the fiction that constitutions are really adopted by unanimity or "practical unanimity," in which case collective choice does not legitimize itself; but individual choice does so.

The other major paradox, apparent or genuine but in any case the source of serious preoccupation, concerns the internal logic or structure of the rule of rule making. Like every rule that regulates behavior and the distribution of benefits and burdens, the rule must provide for both sanctions to punish its breach and the enforcement of these sanctions. Consider the following: "The king has ruled that he (in his council) may decide all things except a certain thing. If he decides that thing, the king must punish the king. If the king fails to punish him, the king must punish the king, and so forth." A quasi-legal construction in which enforcement of sanctions for a breach of the rule rests with the rule breaker himself clearly contains a flaw.

"Separation of powers" reputedly provides a remedy for this rather conspicuous flaw. It is a pity that Montesquieu's text that immortalized this idea does not distinguish sharply enough between the separation of three basic functions of the state, so that the legislative, executive, and judicial functions are carried out by three distinct institutions motivated by different interests. Moreover, the state's power to enforce the decisions taken by these institutions and to protect them, but not also to carry out any of these functions, is in no meaningful sense separated into parts to match the separate functions. If it were, civil war would probably be an endemic condition. The separation of functions has done honorable service in the United States, as has most of the rest of the U.S. Constitution. (5) One wonders, however, how such separation would perform in the wildly counterfactual case of the Congress's severely limiting its own authority to impose taxes or the Supreme Court's denying Congress's authority to vote taxes and the executive's entitlement to collect them.

In sum, we must be soberly skeptical of the very logic of a rule of rule making--its ultimate claim to legitimacy and enforceability. In most cases, constitutions seem to "work" principally because they are not tested and are not designed to provoke severe tests or to settle severe conflicts between state and society. Most of their practical effect pertains to the regulation of how governments may obtain power and how their tenure may be terminated. Only in a very idealized sense do they "safeguard liberty"; more precisely, the liberties they safeguard are those that the state is fairly willing to remove from the competence of collective choice because doing so permits a more economical use of power spent on staying in power and is thus conducive to maximizing the residue, discretionary power.

Shrinking Freedom

I find it deeply objectionable to speak, along with John Ravels, of "basic" freedoms, a usage that suggests both that some freedoms are "basic," hence important, and others "nonbasic," hence not very important or perhaps even negligible, and also, more insidiously, to say that someone, perhaps the speaker or perhaps "society" speaking through some authority., is entitled to say which freedoms are "basic" and which are not. I find it equally objectionable to dismiss the presumption of liberty on the grounds, put forward by Joseph Raz (1986, 8-14), that it fails to discriminate in favor of the more important liberties. Setting up a rank order of liberties, some more basic than others and more deserving of protection under the presumption of liberty, is too close to arrogance to be seemly.

Nevertheless, it is a matter of common perception that some curtailments of freedom have a greater impact on an individual's life and that some have an impact on more individuals than do others. It is therefore not good enough simply to observe that "our freedom is shrinking by the day." We need to spell out which of our freedoms are being shrunk. It might be desirable, in addition, to find an objective measure of the shrinkage.

The prohibition of smoking on public premises is one of the most often cited deprivations of liberty. It seems particularly irritating to smokers (and to a sprinkling of high-principled nonsmokers), perhaps because it is recent and the freedom it suppresses is still fresh in the memory. However, it arguably affects only smokers adversely and even them only when they are on public premises. The excuse offered for the interdiction--that smoking exerts a dangerous negative externality on nonsmokers--may or may not be accepted by smokers as relevant and as justification for the violation of one of their freedoms. But even if it is rejected, the loss of the freedom in question is more significant as a precedent than as an actual deprivation.

The shrinking, by various forms of taxation, of a vast array of freedoms--feasible acts offending against no rule--is best considered in this perspective. The acts in question depend on the use or disposal of material resources--opportunities offered by the possession of wealth and the spending of income--that the state preempts. It is as if the act that depends on the resources subject to preemption had been moved from one side of the fence of rules to the other side, from the "may" to the "must not" category. The upheaval is massive, given that many modern states preempt 50 and even 55 percent of their gross national product and that few preempt anything less than 40 percent, if central and local government spending and compulsory social insurance are added up.

To appreciate the peculiar relationship between the state and property (what current usage persists in calling "property rights," which are derivative forms of property and evoke wrong legal connotations), one must revert to its conventional roots in such behavioral equilibria as "first come first served," "finders keepers," and perhaps also queuing. This trace leads to the Humean conception of first possession, its stability, and its "transference by consent," all antecedent to any sort of state. There is logically a presumption of property--that is, of possession signaling good title in the absence of sufficient reason to challenge it.

States at least implicitly undertake to protect property from everyone except themselves. All but fully socialist ones recognize the inviolability of property as wealth (subject to expropriation under "due process" or "due compensation"). Only a tiny minority of states tax wealth, although most tax inheritance. Somewhat oddly, none recognizes the inviolability of property in the form of income, and, as noted earlier, no rule of rule making so much as mentions constraints on collective choice in the matter of writing tax codes (though a couple make pious references to just taxation). Some apologists of the strange asymmetry between the treatment of wealth and the treatment of income contend that pretax income is not property. No one seeks to find good cause in justice for the numerous other forms of taxation. Consumption, sales, and value-added taxes and excise duties pass without questions of legitimacy and the immense restriction of freedoms they represent.

The tax take is "returned" to society in natura as publicly provided goods and services. (There are two exceptions: transfer payments that are returned as cash and the state's discretionary spending permitted by its discretionary power.) Nominal national income is almost unaffected, but real national income falls, perhaps substantially. A basket of goods and services made up of health care, education, pensions, and other entitlements is at best worth its money cost to the recipient if by a fluke he would have chosen the same basket had he been free to do so. In all other cases, though, it is worth less to him than the basket he would have freely chosen. However, although the fact of a decline in real income seems to be a necessary truth subject only to minor qualifications, we cannot put even a rough a number on it. In any event, we should perhaps not commingle questions of riches with questions of freedom at given levels of riches.

The shrinkage of freedom due to taxation, however, is clearly massive, and we can put a number on it. In modern states, as noted earlier, between 40 and 55 percent of what is produced by the efforts of individuals under the division of labor is preempted and disposed of by collective choice that is endowed with the power to override individual choices. We may well grant that not all liberties require the use of material resources for their exercise. Some authors on the political left enjoy mocking the liberties that do so, calling them liberties to choose between flavors of ice cream. The metaphor is preposterous. Without setting up a hierarchy of noble, less noble, and ignoble freedoms, we may safely contend that the ones that depend on material resources are immensely important, and if half of all riches is removed from the grasp of individuals, the resulting shrinkage of freedom is immensely important, too.

Another Inadvertent Surrender

For as long as states have existed, their rulers and governments have been buying the support of one part of society--initially a small part--by extorting the purchase price from other parts. At the outset, they would buy the close councilors, courtesans, Praetorian guards, mameluks, bishops, abbots and other spiritual guides of the people, territorial administrators, and tax collectors. The base on which states relied for support, using redistribution in the widest sense to obtain it, was progressively broadened. In medieval and early-modern Europe, it was not unusual for the state to seek the alliance of an entire class, the better to deter another class from disobedience. Alliances between the king and the towns against the nobility were common. The ally was remunerated by tilting economic policy, such as it was, in the ally's favor and by making classes other than the merchants and artisans bear the main burden of wars.

In buying support with the redistribution of privileges, benefits, and burdens to and from selected groups in society, the state was "using power to stay in power." Using power to raise and move material resources and handing them out as bribes in exchange for support formed a more sophisticated manner of proceeding than deterring disobedience and breach of rules by intimidation. This conduct became an ingrained habit. It has also inadvertently led to the surrender of the state's ultima ratio, its discretionary power.

In part for reasons lodged in the history of political thought and particularly the Enlightenment, early in the nineteenth century egalitarian principles began to make their way into the advanced countries' rules of rule making. Competition between political rivals contributed to an evolution in which the granting or termination of the mandate to govern became the privilege of a gradually broadening part of the governed until it finally settled down at what we now consider its terminal form--namely, simple majority voting in anonymity under universal suffrage.

Under this system, assuming that voters cast their ballots exclusively to promote their own ascertainable material interests (an obvious simplification whose saving virtue is that it is not very conducive to woolly verbiage), a sufficient condition for a person or group to gain or retain the mandate to govern the state is the formation of a decisive coalition more interested in voting for him, her, or it (let it be "it"). A voting coalition cannot be beaten by a rival coalition if the former consists of the majority of all voters and no anonymous member of it can be tempted to desert it and join the rival. (Under anonymity, no bribe can be credibly offered to a voter to join a coalition unless the same bribe is offered to all of its members. If anybody can be the median voter, it is impossible to buy the median voter without offering the same price to all voters in the coalition.)

Recall that the offer made to members of a potential coalition is redistributive--that is, that the winning coalition is to be rewarded out of resources taken from the losing coalition(s). A coalition cannot be beaten if no other coalition can offer more to the average member of a simple majority. This condition will be the case if the winning coalition undertakes to tax the richer half of society (minus one person) up to its taxable capacity and distribute the proceeds to the poorer half of society (plus one person). Note that a coalition greater than the simple majority can be beaten by one having merely a simple majority because the latter can dispose of the taxable resources of a larger losing minority.

It is obvious that any number of potential coalitions can make the same unbeatable offer, each proposing to reward the same poorer half of society with the resources that can be taken from the same richer half, and each limiting its offer only to the members of a bare majority because any larger majority will have to make do with the spoils taken from a smaller minority.

Therefore, if this situation is recognized by at least two of the rivals partaking in the auction to win the mandate to govern, at least two identical electoral programs will be put forward, and the outcome will depend on some random variable, the toss of a coin. (Some modern electoral contests with convergent programs and very close results do resemble this idealized result.)

Conclusion

Conducted on a somewhat abstract level, nay analysis suggests that in a condition of perfect liberty where all rules emerge as spontaneous behavioral equilibria, individuals will either abandon this freedom without fully realizing that they are doing so (and entrust power to a rule-enforcing agency) or will be made to do so by foreign conquerors to whom they yield. Either way, they bow to collective choice, surrendering freedom rather inadvertently. They gain a measure of what Arnold Toynbee called "security of maintenance." Only a few would rather undo this bargain and seek liberty in ordered anarchy.

The state, personified in the government, seems no more successful than the individual in consciously pursuing an objective rather than inadvertently allowing outcomes to happen to it. Logically, it would seek to maximize the discretionary power that it could devote to purposes of its own instead of solely to those of its supporters, but it ends up by dissipating all of its discretionary power in political competition of its own making. It inadvertently surrenders the potential its initial endowment of power provides. In the process of becoming a redistributive drudge, it is spreading wider as the sphere of freedoms shrinks. Like the firm in the perfectly competitive industry that makes no profit, the state ultimately achieves only its own survival, and no one is satisfied by this relatively pointless result.

References

Brennan, H. G., and J. M. Buchanan. 1999. The Power to Tax." Analytical Foundations of a Fiscal Constitution. Indianapolis, Ind.: Liberty Press.

De Jasay, Anthony. 1985. The State. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Hobbes, T. [1651] 1968. Leviathan. Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin.

Hume, D. [1777] 1985. Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary. Edited by Eugene F. Miller. Indianapolis, Ind.: Liberty Press.

Mueller, D. C. 2003. Public Choice III. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.

Ostrom, V. [1971] 1987. The Political Theory of a Compound Republic: Designing the American Experiment. 2d ed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Raz, Joseph. 1986. The Morality of Freedom. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press.

Stasavage, D. 2003. Public Debt and the Birth of the Democratic State: France and Great Britain, 1688-1789. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.

Suber, P. 1990. The Paradox of Self-Amendment: A Study of Logic, Law, Omnipotence, and Change. New York: Peter Lang.

(1.) Geoffrey Brennan and James Buchanan [1980] (1999) frame the state as a unitary actor maximizing taxes, rather than discretionary power.

(2.) For the public-choice background, see Mueller 2003.

(3.) On the enhancement of credit, see Stasavage 2003.

(4.) Related paradoxes are discussed in Suber 1990.

(5.) One might refer here as well to the originally Dutch idea of a compound republic that became so important in theories of federalism in America; see Ostrom [1971] 1987.

Anthony de Jasay is an independent scholar and author living in Paluel, France.

9/11 Video & Victim Fakery,The Matrix, Governments vs.Your Freedom- A "No-Planer's" Essay

2010-08-14T06:45:00.000-07:00

9/11 Video and Victim Fakery, The Matrix, Governments vs.Your Freedom- A "No-Planer's" Essay

A newly re-edited, updated version of my 911 essay written especially for those among us who, like myself, are poor, demented souls calling themselves "9/11 no-planers" or similar because they believe that the network videos of the events of 9/11 were mostly faked, can be viewed here:

http://www.beyondpoliticsand911.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=395

Regards, onebornfree

All My Music Videos Have Been Moved!

2010-07-29T09:11:00.000-07:00

N.B. All Fake Eye-D music videos previously at this address have been moved to: http://fake-eye-d.blogspot.com/

Regards, onebornfree.

Nullifying the Bill of Rights-The 1789 Judiciary Act Scam

2010-05-17T15:37:00.000-07:00

Many freedom seekers suffer under the illusion that the Constitution and Bill of Rights are not, and never were, open to free interpretation by the Federal judiciary and its Supreme Court, and thus waste much valuable time and resources fighting the system "for their rights" etc. [See also my previous blog "You've Never Had Any Rights: Three Good Reasons Why The US Constitution and Bill of Rights are Not Worth the Paper They Were Written On" ]

The article linked to here["1789" by Jim Davies] shows how wrong they are and explains how the Bill of Rights, which , by itself would have effectively limited the scope of the federal courts entirely to the two crimes listed in the constitution itself, [piracy and treason],leaving all other criminal prosecutions to individual states, was effectively gotten around [i.e subverted] by the exact same persons who drafted the Bill of Rights.

Important Chronology

The Judiciary Act of 1789 was signed into law on Sept.24th. 1789, while the Bill of Rights did not leave congress until the next day,Sept 25th 1789.

Keep in mind that the same people who passed the Judiciary Act into immediate law of the land status, were, at the exact same time busy putting the final touches on a document [the Bill of Rights] which they knew had to be ratified by the individual states before it ever [if ever!]became law . That ratification of the Bill of Rights took almost 2 years.

That means that for almost two years before the Bill of Rights ever went into effect, a Federal law was in operation that already, pre-emptively, granted "supreme" power to the Supreme court to ultimately decide what both it and the constitution actually "meant". [ And who decides who sits on the Supreme court?].

Also,bear in mind that the Judiciary Act accomplished the exact opposite of the intent of the Bill of Rights,most of which was concerned with placing severe limitations on the jurisdiction of federal courts and the evidentiary procedures that could be used to prosecute the only two constitutionally specified federal crimes - treason and piracy.

Section 25 of the Judiciary Act of 1789 granted overriding power to the Supreme Court to ultimately"interpret" the Constitution and Bill of Rights, deciding what they meant on a case by case basis, effectively filling in the huge gaps in Article 3 of the Constitution itself, where , despite what most today imagine, no overriding,specific authority for the Federal judiciary to decide/interpret the "law of the land" was ever actually granted {except in cases of piracy or treason}

You have to hand it to them- one hell of an "end run" around the supposed "constitutional limits" and the far more restrictive language of the Bill of Rights!

- Regards, onebornfree.

Link to article by JimDavies: "1789"

More Film Fakery-The Faked Zapruder Movie of The JFK Assassination

2010-04-10T15:06:00.000-07:00

[Onebornfree comment : As well as 9/11 video fakery previously examined here, here is part of an excellent article by Professor Jim Fetzer outlining the blatant fakery that has come to light in the famous [amateur] "Zapruder" home video of the JFK assassination in Dallas in November 1963 which was "only" released by the F.B.I. some 10 years [?] after the event [if that was not suspicious enough by itself! And lets not even get into the purported Apollo moon landings!]

US government official: JFK cover-up, film fabrication
By Jim Fetzer
Online Journal Guest Writer

Apr 7, 2010, 00:19

Excerpt:

"MADISON, Wisconsin -- Douglas Horne, who served as the Senior Analyst for Military Affairs of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), has now published INSIDE THE ARRB (2009), a five-volume study of the efforts of the board to declassify documents and records held by the CIA, the FBI, the Secret Service, and other government organizations related to the assassination of JFK.

As a former government official, historian, and author, he is speaking out to disabuse the public of any lingering belief that THE WARREN REPORT (1964), THE HSCA FINAL REPORT (1979), Gerald Posner’s CASE CLOSED (1963), or Vincent Bugliosi’s RECLAIMING HISTORY (2007) represent the truth about what is known about the assassination of our 35th president, even remotely! Indeed, in relation to a new article, “Birds of a Feather: Subverting the Constitution at Harvard Law”, Horne has made a forceful declaration to set the record straight:

I know, from my former role as a government official on the staff of the ARRB (from 1995-1998), that there is overwhelming evidence of a government-directed medical cover-up in the death of JFK, and of wholesale destruction of autopsy photographs, autopsy x-rays, early versions of the autopsy report, and biological materials associated with the autopsy. Furthermore, dishonest autopsy photographs were created; skull x-rays were altered; the contents of the autopsy report changed over time as different versions were produced; and the brain photographs in the National Archives cannot be photographs of President Kennedy’s brain -- they are fraudulent, substitute images of someone else’s brain.

Over and beyond the medical evidence, however, Horne -- in Vol. IV of INSIDE THE ARRB (2009), has also demonstrated that the home movie of the assassination known as “the Zapruder film” -- and others that correspond to it, such as the Nix and Muchmore films -- have been massively edited to remove indications of Secret Service complicity in the crime and to add other events to these films in order to sow confusion and conceal evidence of the true causes of death of John F. Kennedy.

There are many proofs that the film has been fabricated—including that the driver brought the limo to a halt to make sure he would be killed; that his brains were blown out to the left-rear; and that a motorcycle patrolman accompanying the limo rode forward at the time of the stop to inform Dallas Chief of Police Jessie Curry that the president had been hit. But none of these events appears in the extant version of the film, which has been massively edited. That these events occurred has been established by more than 60 witness reports of the limo stop, where the wound to the back of his head was confirmed by 40 witnesses, including virtually all the physicians at Parkland Hospital, who described cerebellum as well as cerebral tissue extruding from the wound. The blow-out to the right-front, as seen in the film, therefore, is not authentic.

Indeed, in an appendix to Vol. IV, Horne explains that a copy of the film has now been studied by Hollywood exerts, who found that the blow-out to the back of his head had been painted over in black in an amateurish effort to obfuscate the blow out, which can actually be seen in a few later frames, including 372 and 374. Those who have persisted in defense of the authenticity of the film have offered three major arguments -- (1) that the features of the extant film correspond to those of the original processed in Dallas, (2) that there was an unbroken chain of custody, which precluded the film be changed; and (3) that the Dealey Plaza films are not only consistent with themselves but with one another, where the Zapruder could only have been faked if the others had been as well.

The following extracts from INSIDE THE ARRB (2009), Vol. IV, demonstrate that all three arguments are fallacious: (1) there are five features of the extant film that differ from those of the original and (2) that different films were brought to the NPIC on consecutive days, which vitiates the chain-of-custody argument. The consistency of the films with one another (3) turns out to be an interesting question, since they all seem to have been edited to remove the turn of the presidential limousine from Houston onto Elm. More significantly, there are subtle inconsistencies between the films and, most importantly, the Zapruder film is not even consistent with itself, which proves that it cannot possibly be authentic! Horne’s new studies thus confirm the previous research that has previously been reported in THE GREAT ZAPRUDER FILM HOAX (2003), “New Proof of JFK Film Fakery” (2007), and “Zapruder JFK Film impeached by Moorman JFK Polaroid” (2008), where these two articles are on-line........"

For rest of article , go here

"The 9/11 Hoax: Pondering Questions of Strategy & Opportunity"

2010-01-28T17:57:00.000-08:00

[some more 911"Food for thought" enjoy!- onebornfree]

"The 9/11 Hoax: Pondering Questions of Strategy & Opportunity"

By Simon Shack, January 11, 2010

One question which naturally emerges from the study of the 9/11 memorials is : “Even if many ‘victims’ identities appear to be entirely made up by a computer database, could it still mean that a number of real people were killed on 9/11?"

Or did 9/11 claim no victims at all?

If we are to apply a logical thought-process to this particular issue, we need to look at questions of strategy and opportunity which the perpetrators must have prefigured. Surely, any sensible investigation must start by defining the type of crime that is being investigated. By defining the scope and the objectives of the crime, we should be able to rule out what the perpetrators themselves would have ruled out, in terms of unnecessary risks and liabilites. Was 9/11 designed as a barbaric murdering spree or was it more of a gigantic bank robbery? Let us make an’ educated guess’ and say that the latter is the case.

Bank robberies are considered terrible failures by the robbers themselves in the event of any bystander, guard/police officer getting killed; the sole objective of a bank assault is that of stealing money – never that of commiting murder. The penal aggravations of manslaughter is most unwelcome to any professional gangster – a grave mistake to be carefully avoided.
To be sure, there was no ‘added-value’ for the 9/11 perpetrators to commit a mass murder of some 3,000, mostly white-collar professionals. As we have seen, a large amount of alleged “victims” appear to be mock-up identities. Of course, precisely how many remains to be verified. Yet, consider this: if 300 deposit-boxes are emptied by a gang of bank robbers and fingerprints are found in just thirty boxes, would they be suspected only for robbing those thirty? Or would a court of law assume that they also robbed the other 270?

The idea that nobody was killed on 9/11 is, usually and predictably, rejected offhand by many folks as ‘outrageous’ or ‘unbelievable’. Others will accept that some simulation took place - but that a number of real people must have died. So let us imagine an ’intermediate’ scenario of, say, 1000 people being killed that day. If this were true, an immediate problem emerges: what if those 1000 families, at some stage, discovered that the other 2000 families were untraceable/non-existent? It is quite unlikely that the 9/11 planners would have run the risk of such a dire, worst-case scenario: Imagine a horde of angry families filing an avalanche of executive court orders, all demanding access to public records and official verifications! Truly a recipe for disaster… Surely, the 9/11 plotters didn’t want any of that? Thus, we may reasonably assume that every precaution was taken to ensure that NO civilian lawsuits might ‘spoil the show’; in all logic, the assassination of any number of people on 9/11 was a definite no-no, a stupid and senseless aggravation to be avoided at all costs. The chief directive of the Grand 9/11 Deception plan may well have been: “Zero casualties”.

“TOO MANY” PEOPLE INVOLVED ?

The almost unlimited resources of the 9/11 planners allowed for a multifaceted simulation which certainly involved a great many people by any conspiracy standards – only a few of which needed to be fully briefed about all details of the plan. A recurring objection skeptics keep raising is that “too many people had to be involved, therefore it would have been impossible to keep them all quiet.” Not so. Allow me to set forth a brief personal perspective on this issue: As the son of an idealist Norwegian sociologist who pluckily ‘fought’ the Sicilian Mafia with a typewriter, I often like to remind people of the concept of “omertà”; in Sicily, tens of thousands of honest citizens know perfectly well the names and whereabouts of the Mafia bosses – yet they are kept silent for decades with bribes and fear. Historically – and this is a nigh but undeniable fact - cold cash and hot threats have never failed to put a lid on people’s mouths.

A limited number of people were needed to pull off the 9/11 hoax – a hoax which relied on an incalculably larger budget than any smalltown Mafia hit. Needless to say, the US executive branch also firmly controls all key government-appointed agencies, an asset no criminal organization could ever dream of. Most importantly, every single major news corporation has been, in the last 50 years or so, thoroughly infiltrated and co-opted by the higher echelons of power. Today, their globalized monopoly of world news makes them the single most powerful persuasion-machine ever known to mankind. In fact, their unchallenged control of information was a crucial player in the 9/11 plan: Most lower-level operatives involved in the execution of the plan were induced - much as the average ‘Joe Public’ - to believe in the televised version of the events.

Hence, the “too-many–people-involved” argument fails on two counts:

1: It is effectively disproved by historical precedents.
2: It does not account for the wide, unprecedented range of assets available to the 9/11 planners.

Simon Shack, January 11, 2010

[ N.B.please also see article "The Memorial Scams"under heading "Main Articles", at:http://www.septemberclues.info/

Regards, onebornfree.

9/11: "False In One- False in All"

2010-01-04T05:58:00.000-08:00

Elaine to Jerry: "Fake, Fake, Fake!"

Yes, I agree with Mr Shack.[see previous post"Deconstructing the Grand Deception"]

After at first appearing patently absurd,thanks to his unrelenting work it now seems to me to be very obvious , that most, if not all of the footage aired by the media on 9/11 was faked on computers, as were all "amateur" videos showing aircraft [regardless of actual airspeed capabilties at 700 feet above sea level], magically penetrating buildings in one piece without slowing down, and without any parts whatsoever [let alone most!], shearing off at impact :-) ; as was all media footage showing two 1300 feet high, 500,000 ton steel and concrete buildings magically collapsing from top to bottom in 10- 17 seconds [depending on which "live"collapse version you happen to time], and as was [by logical extension] all of the footage of WTC building 7's collapse later that day.

Furthermore, all supposed "live" broadcast network imagery of the Pentagon [i.e. post- "terrorist attack" ], also appears to have been fake imagery generated by computers, as Mr Shacks close analysis appears to show.

And if that was not enough, it now it looks highly likely that many, if not all, of the supposed tower victims names were faked on computers as well, along with their alleged photographic likenesses.

As the female lead, in "Seinfeld", Elaine, tells Jerry when discussing her supposed orgasms with her former lover: "Fake, fake , fake, fake!"

In other words, fake plane into building videos, fake collapse videos, and now, fake victim lists.

Heh!

The Predicable Reaction- "It's a threat To our movement!"

At the same time, the reality is that the typical, violently negative reactions to even considering this type of information as valid,[Mr Shack's video presentation is available for viewing and consideration here : http://www.septemberclues.info/ ], is wholly predictable , given that the reality of ALL movements, regardless of whether it be the "Ron Paul movement", the "libertarian movement", the "911 truth movement [eg the "loose change/prison planet crowd"] or something else entirely [i.e any other political or quasi- political "movement you care to name - take your pick!], ALWAYS end working actively to suppress information that is seen as a threat to that "movement" .

A true search for truth becomes secondary and eventually counterproductive and therefor subordinate to the furtherance of the group agenda [usually political in nature] .

Therefor, more than likely, for political[i.e group] reasons, Mr Shacks research will continue be rejected and/or suppressed within the "Ron Paul movement", the "Libertarian movement", the "Austro- Anarcho- Capitalist" movement, the "911 Truth movement", etc. etc. as well as elsewhere, even, dare I say it, within any future so-called "September Clues Truth Movement" that might come into existence "down the road" :-)

However, all of those predictable "foaming at the mouth"and accompanying verbal and "logical" contortions/denials etc. of Mr Shack's work ARE highly amusing, to say the least! :-)

P.S. THE "FALSE IN ONE-FALSE IN ALL" LEGAL PRINCIPLE VERSUS "CORRECT" SCIENTIFIC ANALYSIS AND PROCEDURE:

For those that do not know, there is a simple legal principle named "false in one false in all"[try "googling" that phrase], whereby a judge may instruct a trial jury that should they find that any part of a witness/entities testimony to be false then they have the incontestable right to discount all "evidence" provided by that person/entity.

Therefor,and according to that principle, and since we each have to be both judge and jury at this stage, should any of us find any one part of the government/media 911 story to be false, then it is perfectly acceptable for that person to then conclude that all "evidence" supplied by the government/media and/or "witnesses", is either knowingly false, or simply to be distrusted, until definitively proven otherwise.

Attention: Jim Fetzer/ Loose Change/Prison Planet/ Ace Baker/ Judy Woods/ Morgan Reynolds! Etc.

This judge to jury instruction would seem to be particularly relevant for the supporters of the 911 theories of "Loose Change" and "PrisonPlanet",website , as well as for the Jim Fetzer/Ace Baker/ Morgan Reynolds /Judy Woods supporters .

All of those researchers/scientists, and more besides, at this time continue to believe that it is acceptable, logical and procedurally correct [both scientifically and legally] to automatically assume the truth and veracity of certain sequences of media video footage [e.g the building collapse sequences], without definitive proof, , while rejecting other sequences as fake, possibly because it continues to suit their present agendas.

Regards, onebornfree.

9/11- "Deconstructing the Grand Deception"

2010-01-02T15:44:00.000-08:00

Deconstructing the Grand Deception by Simon Shack - December 31, 2009

THE RATIONALE OF THE 9/11 HOAX

If you have come to terms with the fact that 9/11 was a massive money-making scheme and - of course - a pretext to wage hugely profitable wars, the basic rationale behind this Grand Deception should, hopefully, become clearer. It is essential to consider all the variables which such an audacious false-flag operation would entail and what precautions its plotters must have observed: The Grand Deception plan was undoubtedly meant to be foolproof and, ideally, free of unnecessary elements of risk and opposition. There was simply no rationale for the 9/11 plotters to commit a mass murder of some 3,000, mostly white-collar professionals (brokers, bankers, financial analysts, etc.) whose families would likely have access to first-rate, ‘uptown’ legal assistance. Surely, killing that many people would have been an utterly senseless, self-inflicted aggravation on the part of the perpetrators. Since they could reliably rely on the fully compliant ‘top-brass’ of the mainstream media, they would have used this unique, exclusive asset to its full potential. Ever since day one, the major hurdle for many people to even start considering 9/11 being an ‘inside job’ has been: “I can’t believe my own government would murder 3000 of their own people”. Once that psychological obstacle is removed, it should become apparent that the whole operation consisted essentially of a covert demolition of a redundant, asbestos-filled building complex. To kill thousands of people in the process never was an envisaged proposition as it would have encountered severe resistance among the insiders involved. The second objective was to blame this destruction on a foreign enemy; an outlandish tale involving hijacked airliners used as missiles was orchestrated, supported by digital imagery and special movie effects. How this was done is thoroughly illustrated in my September Clues video analyses.

WHAT DIDN’T HAPPEN ON 9/11 ( the deceptive imagery )

No unauthorized, private imagery was captured on September 11, 2001. Most - if not all - of the imagery we have of that morning’s events is prefabricated and/or manipulated. The September Clues video research – and many similar independent studies - have amply demonstrated the mainstream media’s unfettered complicity – insofar as the live TV broadcasts are concerned. The 9/11 morning broadcasts were, by and large, digital computer-animations and all successive, so-called “amateur” video snippets (featuring crashing planes or collapsing towers) have likewise been methodically exposed as a series of poorly crafted forgeries. The defining, real-life ‘action shots’ (fake plane crashes and real tower collapses) of the day were simply not meant to be captured on film - much less aired on television: As it is, no real footage of those crucial time windows is to be found. To be sure, the existence of specific, military-grade technology able to achieve this precise aim is well documented. In all likelihood, electromagnetic weaponry (EMP/HERF) routinely employed in war zones was employed, causing the temporary jamming of all unshielded camera equipment *. With no real footage being captured, the TV networks could ‘safely’ broadcast their substitute, artificial imagery of the morning’s events.
* (see : http://www.septemberclues.info/visual_control.htm )

WHAT DID HAPPEN ON 9/11 (the tower collapses)

The ‘ground operations’ in Lower Manhattan called for a coordinated demolition of the entire WTC complex (9 buildings in all). Just what type of explosive forces caused this destruction is hotly debated among scientists galore – yet it is but a secondary and ultimately doomed endeavor - since there is no certifiably authentic rubble nor any authentic imagery to examine. We may however assume (as of the events’ timeline) that the demolition process started a full hour after the alleged “plane strikes”, leaving plenty of time to evacuate the area. The briskly displaced bystanders – as well as more distant eyewitnesses - would have had very slim chances to make out the precise dynamics of the collapses as, most plausibly, smokescreens (military obscurants) started blocking the WTC from view. The time-window of the Lower Manhattan evacuation was “filled in” with two convenient, yet blatantly phony “Distraction Dramas” : The Pentagon and Shanksville mock-events. These two diversions also helped sway the attention away from the absurd absence of helicopter rescues at the WTC. As it is, the improbable tale of 3,000 souls trapped for up to 100 minutes in the WTC top floors (with no rooftop rescues - “due to locked access doors”) may have a simple explanation: The WTC towers were empty. To be sure, all photographs and video snippets depicting people (or silhouettes thereof) falling down the side of the WTC’s have also been comprehensively exposed as digital forgeries. Only time will tell whether any people really were killed on 9/11 - and under what circumstances - but, as things stand, the bulk of available evidence suggests otherwise.

HOW MANY DIED ON 9/11?

Perhaps – and probably - none. A ‘fanciful’ contention? No. Not if measured against the thoroughly fanciful, grotesquely contrived and conflicting 9/11 ‘victim memorials’. A close scrutiny of the numerous available listings of alleged 9/11 victims provides countless indications that they are, by and large, outright fabrications. Most of them are still easily accessible on the internet by the general public – yet some have been (‘mysteriously’) shut down. Of course, if it’s true that the WTC was fully evacuated, thus follows that the many memorials listing the 9/11 victims must, in turn, be fabricated too. As elaborated below, that is precisely what they appear to be. The 9/11 victim memorials simply do not stand up to scrutiny and comparison. The sheer bulk of inconsistencies and absurdities pervasive in those unseemly listings unveils their true nature : Just another piece of the Grand Deception. Let us see why, point by point :

MEMORIAL PROBLEMS(1): The totals’ nonsense

At a first glance at the various 9/11 memorials, we see that each and every one reports a different casualty toll. Here’s a selection of total figures, all ostensibly meant to represent official and definitive listings of all victims of 9/11 for WTC, Pentagon and “4 flights”- (minus the “19 hijackers”) :

SEPT11th memorial: “3.181”
http://www.sept11thmemorial.com/all_names.asp

CNN memorial: “2.985”
http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/memor...name/index.html

FOX News: “2812”
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,62779,00.html
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,62151,00.html (full list)

La Repubblica ( Sept11,’09 ): “2.752”
http://www.repubblica.it/2009/09/sezioni/e...embre-2009.html

America Forever memorial: “2.467”
http://www.freewebs.com/god_bless_america/page10.htm

As absurd as this may seem, it is a fact that more than 8 years after 9/11, there is still no consensus whatsoever on the total death toll. Indeed, the first and last of the above-listed memorials show a discrepancy of a full 714 names! These are entirely verifiable figures – in full public view. Of course, even a discrepancy of only 2 or 3 victims should be considered unacceptable at this time. Let’s hope that the National 9/11 Memorial, currently under construction in Manhattan will finally reveal to the world the exact number of the 9/11 victims... Whatever that figure will be (and which names will be retained or discarded), the fact remains that for all of 8 years virtually all memorials have displayed wildly conflicting casualty tolls.

Most will remember that, in the days, weeks if not months following 9/11, the news media kept reporting what, admittedly, were speculative casualty figures ( the “20,000 victims” soon became “10,000”). Yet the first, official casualty toll was still a hefty “6,729” (New York Times). Then, a full 12 days after the event, Major Giuliani went on record with an “estimated 6,333 victims ”, a figure which was touted for some time before gradually - and inexplicably - dwindling to less than half that figure. How, one must ask, could it possibly take weeks to obtain reasonably accurate figures of the WTC tenants’ missing employees? Now, this was no tsunami sweeping unfathomably populated coastlines of Indonesia, Thailand or Sri Lanka; these were two confined building-collapses in civilized Manhattan! Undeniably, in the shocked post-disaster climate, the inflated death tolls effectively boosted the drama and the public outrage over the “murderous Binladen attacks”. However, as weeks went by, Mayor Giuliani’s “6,333” estimate started raising a few eyebrows. In time, the news media came up with a ‘shocking news story’ : As the tale went, a horde of greedy, despicable fraudsters were usurping the 9/11 compensation funds claiming the loss of “non-existing, totally made-up relatives”…
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/31/nyregion...&pagewanted=all

A long string of such scams were reported - & denounced with righteous outrage – for weeks on end. Ultimately, even though a whopping total of 400 such “callous con men schemes” were reported, it did little to account for – or even remotely explain – Giuliani’s previous “6,333”estimate (of September23, 2001). The Grand Deception was already creaking and - unbeknown to most – initiating its own, inevitable collapse.
Now, some people will argue that these wild inaccuracies were brought about by “the havoc and confusion” surrounding the 9/11 events. Fine. Let us not argue about it - and agree for now on at least one incontrovertible fact: Between the first official NYT death toll figure (6729) and the figure found on, for instance, the “America Forever” memorial (2467), we have a discrepancy/margin of error of 4262 ‘units’. These are plain and simple arithmetics. Lastly, let it be said that the vast majority of "9/11 victims" are NOT listed in the SSDI (Social Security Death Index). The few that ARE to be found listed on the SSDI are usually names that have been cited in the press, i.e. more 'prominent' and 'public' victims...

MEMORIAL PROBLEMS(2): The ghost names nonsense

So, how do these conflicting death tolls translate as one takes a close look at the various memorials? Does that mean we may find random, ‘ghost’ victims listed on some memorials, complete with tributes and obituaries, who are simply missing on others? Yes. Is there a significant amount of such nonsensical examples, such as to rule out ‘innocent sloppiness’ on the part of the various memorial curators? Yes. Let’s take a look, for instance, at the “Wall of Americans” memorial. At the very top of letter “A”, we find two people named “AALYIGH”.

user posted image

Inexplicably, the two “AALYIGH”s (as indeed many other names) are found only in some memorials and are absent from others (such as CNN’s). Now, imagine for a minute that your surname is “Aalyigh”. Would you not try contacting (in over 8 years) the ‘offending’ 9/11 memorials and have them correct their listings? Who are the “Aalyigh’s”? Or perhaps we should ask : why are the “Aalyigh’s” to be found only in selected memorials? Is there indeed anyone called “Aalyigh” on this planet apart from Diana Aalyigh (Die-In-A-Lie?) and Justin Aalyigh (Just- In-A-Lie?). One may be tempted to surmise that some brave whistleblower was trying to tell us some truth about 9/11: “it’s all AALYIGH”.
Interestingly, the Wall of Americans memorial has now been shut down. This is the message we may find on the blank internet page which ‘explains’ its sudden closure:

user posted image

Then, staying with letter “A”, there is the case of Mrs. “Cici AADA”, another of the many ‘ghost names’ to be found bouncing around the various 9/11 memorials. Now, if you google “AADA” you will bump right into the “American Academy of Dramatic Arts”. http://www.aada.org/home/home.html
A coincidence, perhaps. However, since a great deal of characters rotating within the 9/11 saga (Mark Humphrey, Gary Welz, et al) have been exposed as professional actors, one may reasonably wonder whether this also could be the work of a heroic whistleblower. The fact remains that “Cici (See-See?) AADA” and both the “AALYIGH’s” are only to be found on a few 9/11 memorials – and are simply missing on others (most notably the CNN memorial).

There are plenty more examples of ‘ghost names’ appearing only in selected 9/11 memorials. To list them all in this article (with comprehensive cross-comparisons between all the lists) is not realistic and would surely be a tedious read. So let’s just compare three alphabetical groups (Q, X, Y, Z) which contain moderate amounts of names (so that the reader may easily check out these facts personally).Below is a list of 9/11 memorials; for each one we have the number of people listed under the surname initials “Q”, “X”, “Y” & “Z”:

CNN memorial : http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/memorial/...name/index.html
Q:8 X:0 Y:20 Z:24

VOICES OF SEPTEMBER11 : http://voicesofsept11.org/dev/memorial_fam...tocitems=1,6,13
Q:8 X:0 Y:20 Z:25

IN MEMORIAM ONLINE : http://inmemoriamonline.net/List_WTC-Q.html
Q:7 X:0 Y:15 Z:19

SEPTEMBER 11TH MEMORIAL : http://www.sept11thmemorial.com/all_names.asp
Q:16 X:0 Y:25 Z:26

FOX memorial : http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,62151,00.html
Q:9 X:0 Y:21 Z:24

CYPRESS TIMES http://www.thecypresstimes.com/article/New...9_11_2001/24432
Q:9 X:0 Y:13 Z:23

PRAYERS FOR PEACE http://www.prayersforpeace.org/wall.shtml
Q:11 X:4 Y:24 Z:26

MEMORIAL PROBLEMS(3): The prosaic nonsense

A common aspect of the various 9/11 memorials are the consistently sappy and contrived tributes supposedly posted by families, co-workers and friends. We are talking about thousands of brief writings which, of course, require some steady patience to sift through. However, and for what it’s worth, I can personally testify that it’s hard to find any 9/11 tribute graced with any ring of authenticity. The prevalent impression is that they are written by the same person – or at best – by a gang of bored, unimaginative novelists. Naturally, some will retort that this is a ‘subjective’, personal interpretation; I can only encourage everyone to spend some time reading those tributes for themselves. Taken together, those tributes read like an endlessly reshuffled concoction of mawkish and tear-jerking rhetoric. I’m confident that anyone armed with a critical mind – and a healthy sense of humor - will actually enjoy sifting through these tributes as an eye-opening, entertaining and slightly surreal experience. Best of all, this ‘enjoyment’ comes with an odd sense of relief and appeasment as one gradually comes to realize that:
1. The 9/11 memorials are all in conflict with each other.
2. The 9/11 memorials are anything but credible tributes to real victims of a real terror attack.
3. Perhaps, in the light of these facts, few - or nobody - died in the “9/11 attacks”.

(Author’s appeal: I welcome anyone asserting to be a family member of a 9/11 victim to come forward with documentation – such as would be admissible in a court of law - of their loved one’s existence and passing. I can be reached on my private e-mail posted here: http://www.septemberclues.info ).

MEMORIAL PROBLEMS(4): The portrait-morphing evidence
Three main observations can be drawn from a methodical cross-scrutiny of the many 9/11 memorials which feature portraits of the “victims” – henceforth referred to as “entities”:

1: Most of the “entities” found in the memorials are represented with two - and no more than two apparently different portraits.

2: When two seemingly different portraits of a given entity are compared, they reveal more often than not striking similarities in facial expression, pose, angle/perspective, lighting, reflections.

3. Striking similarities are also observed between separate, often alphabetically adjacent entities of same or different sex. While a few such cases might be expected in a list of 2500+ portraits, the sheer frequency of such instances featuring seemingly ‘cloned’ facial attributes cannot reasonably (in a statistical sense) be ascribed to ‘coincidence’ or ‘happenstance’.

Obviously, this topic needs to be visualized by the reader since it deals with photographic issues. Please look up this illustrated article for image-supported descriptions of this issue:
http://www.septemberclues.info/vicsims_photo-analyses.htm
(Other interesting issues related to the metadata - or ‘exif’ data - embedded in all the “.jpg” picture files will, in time, be comprehensively expounded and added to this article.)
For a comprehensive study of the 9/11 memorials, please read the “Vicsim Report” by Hoi Polloi:
http://www.septemberclues.info/vicsims/9-1...im%20Report.pdf

MEMORIAL PROBLEMS(5): The “VIP” Vicsims
Some of the more prominent ‘casualties’ of 9/11 - such as “Flight93-hero Todd M. Beamer”- have long been exposed as stolen identities from previously deceased namesakes . The Barbara Olson story also turned out to be a fraud when Ted Olson (George W. Bush’s solicitor general) was caught altering 3 times his tale of her alleged phone calls from “Flight77”. Similarly, “the 9/11 victim number 0001”, Father Mychal Judge, was another faith-based saga for devout believers: At least three different versions of the causes/circumstances of his death were published by the news media – and the evacuation of his corpse from the WTC has also been exposed as another staged photo-op. In other words, the stories surrounding the 9/11 “VIP” casualties are riddled with so many questions as to be divested of any sort of credibility. With such an abundance of deceptive, media-promoted bunkum, it is perfectly reasonable to question every single official newsstory to emerge from the events of September 11, 2001.

http://www.septemberclues.info/

Article originally appeared here, about 1/3rd of the way down the page.

--------------------

9/11 Video Fakery, Governments,"The Matrix", and Your Freedom

2009-11-08T05:39:00.000-08:00

August 2010 essay update is here:

Regards, onebornfree.

Client Questions on Credit Union Safety, Interest Rate Rises, Inflation

2009-10-16T11:47:00.000-07:00

To view go here to my Financial Safety blog :http://www.onebornfreesfinancialsafetyreports.blogspot.com/

Dr Reynolds and The "Vulcan Plane/Building Meld"

2009-09-14T08:55:00.000-07:00

Dr Reynolds and The "Vulcan Plane/Building Meld", or, 2nd Strike WTC Crash Videos versus Elementary Laws of Physics

Dr Morgan Reynolds claims [as do I and others] that the physics represented in the alleged plane crash videos [mostly "2nd strike" videos of alleged UA flight 175 hitting the south tower] are not real world [i.e they defy known laws of physics] - and that therefor those allaged plane crash videos must be fakes.

Here is a famous, primary example ,variously referred to as the "knife through butter " shot ,"The Vulcan Plane/Building Meld", the "Ghost Plane sequence" "The Self- Healing Building shot" etc.- for what Dr Reynolds and myself would say are obvious reasons, specifically:

the video apparently depicts a large airliner [140 odd tons of hollow, aluminum tubing with a plastic nose-cone] completely disappearing inside a 500,000 ton steel and concrete building with no visible slowing down at impact, and without losing any parts [eg wings, tailsection]on the outside on the shock of the initial impact, to the degree that even the wingtips cut completely through many, massive steel girders and steel floor pans and disappear completely inside the building.

[Also, in higher resolution versions, the wall of WTC 2 can be seen to "self heal" [i.e. become whole again ]after a wing has passed through/ into it , hence the " magic, self-healing building" term ] :

Building Moves- Plane Stationary-Further Video Analysis Dr Reynolds May or May Not Have Seen

Below is an analysis [by "teardrop"] of the last few frames of the same video, that Dr Reynolds may or may not be aware of at this time.

Notice that the tail of the plane remains exactly centered in the frame [red line] and that in reality, it is the building that moves towards the plane , and not the plane towards the building as it should be:

Professor Explains 9/11 "No Planes" ,"No standard Demolitions"

2009-09-11T05:56:00.000-07:00

The scientific [i.e. physical and mathematical] impossibility of the "planes into buildings"on 9/11 myth , plus the impossibility of the employment of standard demolition procedures, is explained in fairly good detail by Austrian economics professor, Mount Pelerin Society member, adjunct scholar with the Ludwig von Mises Institute and Lewrockwell.com contributor Dr. Morgan Reynolds, in a radio interview here: http://truther9.blip.tv/file/2551353/

WARNING! : This information is highly controversial and revolutionary in its implications.

P.S. Dr. Reynolds interview also covers the Federal Reserve, Ron Pauls "End the Fed" proposals etc. etc.

About Dr Morgan Reynolds :

" Morgan O. Reynolds, Ph.D., currently is Professor emeritus, economics, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas. He is a former Chief Economist at the U.S. Department of Labor 2001-2002, and he also served as the Director of the Criminal Justice Center and Senior Fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, headquartered in Dallas, Texas. Professor Reynolds is the author or co-author of six books, including Public Expenditures, Taxes, and the Distribution of Income (1977), Power and Privilege: Labor Unions in America (1984), Crime by Choice (1985), and Economics of Labor (1995). He has published over 50 articles in refereed academic journals, including the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy and Journal of Labor Research. He has authored or co-authored dozens of policy studies for organizations like the Joint Economic Committee of the United States Congress and the National Center for Policy Analysis. He has written dozens of op-eds for Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, Investor’s Business Daily, Fortune, National Review, Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle, The Washington Times, LewRockwell.com, and other popular outlets. Dr. Reynolds has frequently testified before congressional committees and appeared on many television and radio news programs, including The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, the PBS program DebatesDebates, CNN, and the Fox News Channel. Dr. Reynolds’ research and publication interests have ranged over a wide variety of labor market issues, including income inequality, trade union behavior, and labor regulation, as well as the economics of crime and punishment. Over the last few years he has served as a consultant and researcher for the National Correctional Industries Association, an industry trade group for attracting and administering paid job opportunities within-prison-walls for inmates. Reynolds received his Ph.D. in economics in 1971 from the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He has taught and done research at several universities including the Poverty Institute at the University of Wisconsin, the University of California and Texas A&M. He serves on the board of editors at the Journal of Labor Research, the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, and the Journal of Libertarian Studies. In 1993-4 Reynolds was visiting scholar at the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress. He has been an adjunct scholar with the Cato Institute and currently is an adjunct scholar with the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama. Among other professional affiliations, Dr. Reynolds is a member of the Mont Pelerin Society, an international society of free-market economists, scholars and policy advocates."

Dr. Reynolds's website is: http://www.nomoregames.net

Inflation Myths,The Federal Reserve,The Consumer Price Index 1913-2000, and How to Profit From Renewed Inflation

2009-09-01T18:24:00.000-07:00

Click on this link to read "Inflation Myths,The Federal Reserve,The Consumer Price Index 1913-2000, and How to Profit From Renewed Inflation"

Nation Ready To Be Lied To About Economy Again

2009-05-04T13:09:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON—After nearly four months of frank, honest, and open dialogue about the failing economy, a weary U.S. populace announced this week that it is once again ready to be lied to about the current state of the financial system.

Tired of hearing the grim truth about their economic future, Americans demanded that the bald-faced lies resume immediately, particularly whenever politicians feel the need to divulge another terrifying problem with Wall Street, the housing market, or any one of a hundred other ticking time bombs everyone was better off not knowing about.

In addition, citizens are requesting that the phrase, "It will only get worse before it gets better," be permanently replaced with, "Things are going great. Enjoy yourselves."

"I thought I wanted a new era of transparency and accountability, but honestly, I just can't handle it," Ohio resident Nathan Pletcher said. "All I ever hear about now is how my retirement has been pushed back 15 years and how I won't be able to afford my daughter's tuition when she grows up."

"From now on, just tell me the bullshit I want to hear," Pletcher added. "Tell me my savings are okay, everybody has a job, and we're No. 1 again. Please, just lie to my face.........." Source:

Financial Safety Rule #1

2009-05-02T15:44:00.000-07:00

Click here for: Financial Safety Rule #1

Or copy/paste this link into your browser:

http://onebornfreesfinancialsafetyreports.blogspot.com/2009/05/financial-safety-rule-1.html

Swine Flu? Whatever You Do Don't Get Vaccinated

2009-04-30T07:21:00.000-07:00

Swine Flu? Whatever You Do Don't Get Vaccinated

Preparation for Swine or Avian Flu

A Natural Therapy for self-protection and treating influenza

Several years ago, various U.S. and U.N. agencies and the Council on Foreign Relations were spreading the word that the Avian Influenza could be as severe as the worldwide Spanish Influenza epidemic of 1918, and predicted hundreds of millions of deaths worldwide. Fortunately, that outbreak did not come to pass.

This year, however, a severely debilitating swine flu has already stricken more than a thousand people in Mexico and killed as many as 68, with 20 confirmed (as of April 25, 2009). The U.S. has already declared a health emergency.

For people who have weakened immunity and are vitamin C deficient, this influenza can kill its victims by rapidly depleting ascorbate (vitamin C) stores in the body, inducing scurvy and collapse of the arterial blood supply, causing internal hemorrhaging of the lungs and sinus cavities.

Most people today have barely enough vitamin C in their bodies (typically 60 mg per day) to prevent scurvy under normal living conditions, and are not prepared for this kind of illness. (Vitamin C deficiency is the root cause of high infant mortality and many childhood deaths worldwide; it is the root cause of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome - SIDS.)

The way to prepare yourself and protect your family from this influenza is not a vaccine or anti-viral drug. I strongly recommend that if vaccines and/or anti-viral drugs are offered to you, that you refuse them. These actually reduce your immunity; vaccines contain many toxic components, such as aluminum, mercury, and solvents, and anti-viral drugs interfere with critical body processes. Historical evidence of vaccinations has shown that they actually increase the chances of becoming severely ill. Influenza vaccines in particular are notoriously ineffective and have harmed thousands of people, and there is evidence already that Tamiflu, now being stockpiled for a possible epidemic, is useless against influenza. The best way to prepare for influenza is by enhancing your immune system and increasing the amount of vitamin C in your body.......

For complete article click here.

The F.D.I.C., or “Fantasy Deposit Assurance Corporation”

2009-03-30T09:46:00.000-07:00

The F.D.I.C., or “Fantasy Deposit Assurance Corporation”

This post at my new blog, " Onebornfree's Financial Safety Reports".

U.B.S., a "Swiss Bank" in Name Only

2009-02-21T09:58:00.000-08:00

U.B.S., a "Swiss Bank" in Name Only

This post has been re-edited and moved to my new blog, " Onebornfree's Financial Safety Reports" here

The Psychology of 9/11 Video Fakery Denial

2009-02-21T09:13:00.000-08:00

The Psychology of 9/11 Video Fakery Denial

[From a 911 Discussion forum] : "A while ago we were deeply discussing the no plane theory - well, I said I didn't think it was possible to do such C.G.I. in 2001 "

My reply :It appears to me that there is a simple choice involved here. You can choose to believe either:

[1] that CGI [i.e. computer generated imagery] was physically and technically impossible in 2001 and that therefore, large airliners _could_ fly whole inside and through 500,000 ton steel and concrete buildings with no on-film evidence of them either breaking up or even slowing down outside the buildings upon initial impact, while leaving almost perfect cookie-cutter holes documenting their passage in [but not out!],

or,

[2] that large airliners cannot fly through buildings in one piece [even in 2001 !] , it is physically impossible for them to do so, and that therefore CGI _had_ to be possible back then.

A simple process of deductive reasoning with two choices, each choice with two , black vs white [ie no grey areas] "a" vs."b", "impossible"vs "possible" scenarios to weigh/consider before reaching a conclusion, it seems to me.

That is, the physical [a] "impossibility" or [b]"possibility" of CGI technology being in use in 2001,
weighed against the physical [a]"impossibility" vs [b] "possibility" of airliners fully entering 500,000 ton steel and concrete buildings in one piece without slowing down, while creating "Roadrunner" style entry holes at alleged entry points into those buildings.

How one arrives at choosing the a's and b's of what is and is not possible here, at least in your case, appears to be a result not of starting from the crucial and necessary position [ for honest scientific review] of complete neutrality in reviewing all evidence before reaching a conclusion based on neutral review of that evidence; but starting instead from a pronounced, consistent, pre-bias towards the evidence presented by both the government, and by the largely government funded "scientific" and "journalistic" community that supports them and is in turn supported by them [hows that for impartiality?], with the result being your eagerness to consistently ignore what are generally accepted as immutable principles of [i] basic scientific research procedure [ie purposely ignoring one's own pre-bias in all assessments of evidence untill all evidence is collected/reviewed from a position of impartiality], and [ii] supposedly immutable, widely accepted laws of high school physics such as Newton's 3rd law of motion, in order to either consider or claim that CGI technology was not around and usable in 2001.

To summarize, to avoid mental discomfort , [i.e. you are employing a psychological defense mechanism], and therefor merely out of convenience, you are choosing to seriously consider/believe that CGI technology was not possible in 2001, in order to to be able to continue to believe that it was [and presumably still is] possible for airliners to defy fundamental laws of physics and crash into and through steel and concrete in the manner depicted in the videos [ i.e choice [1] ].

It would seem that the opposite conclusion [i.e. choice[2] no planes into buildings -faked videos] is simply too much for you to handle. Psychologically speaking,I understand your need for convenience. After all, most people would rather continue in denial of the truths and inevitable conclusions which must be drawn from choice [2]- it is simply to much for both their ego's, and their world view.

The mental gymnastics and contortions of both procedural and evidentiary denial such as you consistently display here are far from uncommon, and actually the norm, just basic ,self reinforcing,defensive "grasping at straws" such as a proposed "impossibility of CGI in 2001" issue in order to evade having to change one's hastily drawn conclusions and to continue to support your ego's pre-existing world view .

In short, it is impossible for you to conclude anything other than what you have-your ego and its belief system demands defense when threatened by uncomfortable facts, and will use any excuse [i.e choice [1] ] it can come up with to reinforce itself and carry on in the manner it is accustomed to.

[Another all too common example of "grasping at straws" would be the "what about the plane witnesses" defense, when any average fairly honest cop will admit that eye-witness testimony is almost completely unreliable to the point that in cases brought to trial it is almost inevitably disregarded as being a reliable verification of anything, one way or another.]

Although your average , cartoon and movie-watching , non-critical thinking troglodyte may well believe that airliners are fully capable of behaving in the manner depicted for fl.175 in the "amateur" videos when confronted with 500,000 tons of steel and concrete, you have no such excuse, given your claimed background.
e.g. please see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwzDzX4XP7E

Still, I' m constantly fascinated by the denial mechanism at work from whatever source -thank you for your entertaining ,transparent denial [ie choice [1] ] - you rational, unbiased, "scientifically- minded" person, you!

For the original comment thread, click here.

9/11 Video Fakery, Government, The Matrix and Your Freedom

2008-12-21T08:55:00.000-08:00

ESSAY UPDATED: 9/11 Video and Victim Fakery, The Matrix, Governments vs.Your Freedom- A "No-Planer's" Essay

A newly re-edited, updated version of my 911 essay written especially for those among us who, like myself, are poor, demented souls calling themselves "9/11 no-planers" or similar because they believe that the network videos of the events of 9/11 were mostly faked, can be viewed here:

http://www.beyondpoliticsand911.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=395

Regards, onebornfree

Why Dr Judy Wood Is Probably Mistaken About Hurricane Erin and 9/11-Part 3

2008-10-25T07:52:00.000-07:00

Part 3-Why Dr Judy Wood Is Probably Mistaken About Hurricane Erin and 9/11

[Or: "Dr Judy Woods 9/11 Research- The Good , The Bad and the Ugly"]

N.B. This article is in 3 sections [1]: "The Good", and [2] "The Bad", are in the preceeding blog post.

Part 3 : "The Ugly"

Anyhoo, enough of time discrepancies, I believe that there is a far more serious omission of information regarding Dr Wood's claim that Erin was artificially controlled on 9/11.

As I said earlier, Dr Woods' claims about Erin originally interested me because I live on the SE coast of the US where hurricanes hit or pass by fairly frequently, and have lived here for 20+ years, and so have a fair amount of experience with and interest in the need to track hurricanes accurately.

Another , Less Well Known But Directly Related Natural Phenomena Occurrence on 9/11?

I was fairly sure [from memory] of one very important [for hurricane trackers] natural occurrence influencing the weather on the East coast that day , and was interested to see whether or not Dr Wood had considered it/ included it or accounted for it in her research.

What Important Naturally Occurring Phenomena Was Omitted From Dr Wood's Research on Erin's Movements?

Five words: "eastward traveling, humongous cold front"!

That is, a large mass of cold, dry air [i.e. a high pressure system] moving in the opposite direction to the hurricane[ i.e. West to East].

A Regular, Fall U.S. Weather Pattern

In the US in the fall, these large masses of high pressure, cold dry air typically originate over Western Canada, and then spill down East of the Rocky mountains and usually move West to East across the US, often traversing the entire continent in a few days as they typically reach further and further South while traveling East.

This pattern of cold air movement is a regular part of the annual fall weather scenario for the continental US.

Check For Yourself

You can review the regularity of this September through October weather pattern for yourself for any year 2001- through '08 here:http://www.hpc.ncep.noaa.gov/noaa/noaa_archive.php

Any Experienced Hurricane Watcher Knows About The Effect on Hurricane Systems of Large Masses of Cold Air!

Any intelligent , experienced private hurricane watcher [e.g coastal inhabitants of SE US and the gulf regions], knows just through prior personal experience that a large, steadily moving mass of high pressure, cooler dry air traveling West to East in the US will start to influence any hurricane approaching the US from the East [i.e. traveling approximately East to West towards the East coast of the US] speed and direction sooner or later - and in fact , that the hurricane will always be deflected away from the cold front as long as it [the cold dry air] continues to advance Eastward.

Was a Large Mass of Eastward - Moving Cold Air Present on 9/11?

As a matter of fact, yes. And there was even another one that immediately preceded it.

Archive For 09/04/01

[click on image to enlarge]

If you take a look at the national weather archives starting 09/04/01 above, you will see a large mass of cold air starting to form in Western Canada. This is the mass we will be following [ direction, development ] over the next few days, through am 09/11/01. Also notice 2 other high pressure areas and cold fronts to the East of the most westerly one we will be mostly watching.

Archive For 09/05/01

[click on image to enlarge]

Now take a look at the map for the next day 09/05/01 above, and you see that the most Westerly cold air mass over Canada has straightened out a little and now runs at an approximate 20 degree angle upwards across Canada. Meanwhile, another large mass of cold air is pushing South down the East coast. [but its the most Westerly cold front you need to watch!]

Archive For 09/06/01

[click on image to enlarge]

Next, above is the archive map for 09/06/01. You can see that the cold front that started high up and to the West has now spilled down East of the rockies into the US and has started to move Eastward, pushing a large mass of moist, warm air [outlined in yellow] ahead of it. Meanwhile the other mass of cold air already over the East coast has pushed down and offshore. [This other front would probably have already been influencing Erin's speed and direction to some degree.]

Archive For 09/07/01

[click on image to enlarge]

Above is the archive for 09/07/01. Here we see the huge mass of cold air has extended both Eastwards and further South, and that the warmer moist air [low pressure,large yellow outline + smaller red outline for severe thunderstorms] being pushed ahead of it is has increased in size as well .

N.B. Archives For the Next Two Days [09/08/01 and 09/09/01] Are Missing From Source Site.

Unfortunately the archives for the next 2 days [8th and 9th] are missing from the archives and so we must now skip ahead to the archive for 09/10/01.
[you can check availability for yourself at: http://www.hpc.ncep.noaa.gov/noaa/noaa_archive.php ]

Archive For 09/10/01

[click on image to enlarge]

This one [above] dramatically shows how far, and how fast this HUGE air mass had traveled over the previous two days, and how deep [i.e how far South], it had penetrated by the 10th . As you can see, on the morning of 09/10/01[i.e.about 24 hours prior to the events of 911] it extended all the way up the Eastern seaboard into Canada , and all the way down into the Gulf of Mexico and beyond, and that it at this point covered most of the US , East to West.

Two Questions

At This Point , 2 Questions For You :

[1] based on prior performance, where do you think this huge mass of cold dry, high pressure air was going to be the very next day, on the morning of 911?
Please consider both its prior speed, and prior direction.

[2] What do you think such a vast mass of cold dry air will do to a hurricane moving in almost the exact opposite direction, when "push comes to shove" given how it is already seen to be treating the warm, moist air just in front of it?.

As I said before, any reasonably intelligent hurricane watcher knows for a fact that given a continuation of the cold air mass' direction , that in this scenario it is hurricane Erin that would have to give way, as other hurricanes preceding it always have done under similar circumstances, and as other hurricanes in the future always will. Its inevitable.

And Don't Forget The Other,Previous Large Cold Air Mass- a "Double Whammy"

And , don't forget that Erin more than likely had already been somewhat influenced [i.e. slowed, changed direction] by the cold air mass that immediately preceded the even larger cold air mass that followed,and which we have mostly concentrated on here.[Nature's equivalent of a left jab followed by a knockout, right cross?]

09/11/01 Archive

[click on image to enlarge]

So here we are on the morning of 911. notice that the cold air mass has now moved entirely offshore from North Carolina on up. {My only problem with this archive is that it does not show the blue line extending southwards into South Carolina and Georgia [where I live] when I know for a fact that we experienced exactly the same conditions, that morning as the majority of the East coast i.e. cold dry air, crystal clear blue skies].

My Conclusion: Erin's Directional Change Is a Natural Event-No Mystery

It seems logical to me that Erin's directional change is very easy to explain - it was changed via a very powerful natural phenomena, that is, an extremely large mass of cold dry air steadily moving from West to East, and not by any mysterious, artificial means that were somehow directly related to the deliberate demolition of WTC 1 and 2, as Dr Wood has claimed.

For myself, and others who watch hurricanes closely merely because of survival instincts, there is absolutely no mystery about Erin's change in direction from predominantly NNE to NNW during the early morning [around 2am] of 09/11/01; any intelligent east coast inhabitant, and more importantly, any weather professional or even a lowly weather bureaucrat could reasonably conclude well ahead of time, and with almost no shadow of a doubt, exactly how Erin would perform on the morning of 9/11.

Erin - An Assured Fate

As Dr Wood's own data shows [fig.7, in part 2 above], and as the NOAA data displayed in this java plot reveals : http://weather.terrapin.com/wx/DisplayStorm.jsp?STORM=01279&dtype=JAVA

at 2 am on the morning of 09/11/01 Erin's virtually assured fate was finally confirmed as it, after coming to an almost complete stop in the cooler waters of the NE, and after also being slowed/ affected by a previous cold front, was finally forced/bounced/deflected away from NYC in an NNE direction [a 45 degree change in direction ], by a much larger, still steadily advancing , much colder , much dryer naturally-occurring, high pressure air system , which had over 6 previous days made its way across almost the entire US.

Why Dr Judy Wood Is Probably Mistaken About Hurricane Erin and 9/11-parts1&2

2008-10-25T07:04:00.000-07:00

Why Dr Judy Wood Is Probably Mistaken About Hurricane Erin and 9/11

[Or: "Dr Judy Woods 9/11 Research- The Good , The Bad and the Ugly"]

N.B. This article is in 3 sections [1]: "The Good", [2] "The Bad", [3] "The Ugly"

Part [1] :The Good: Logic, Procedure, [Initial] Open Mindedness.

I first came across Dr Wood's research via a book:" The 9/11 Conspiracy - The Scamming of America" edited by J. Fetzer.

After then reviewing the abundant wealth of information she presented at her excellent website , I became open to the idea that some type of secret military technology may well have destroyed the 2 main WTC towers.

An Adherence To The Main Principles of Scientific Investigation [unlike other "scientists" involved in 9/11 research]

What impressed me most about her work at the time was her seeming refusal to draw premature conclusions, but instead to gather, and continue to gather, as much evidence as possible of many different types, even including evidence of post destruction preparations for new construction, and even post 9/11 construction results - i.e. strange things that have since happened to both old and new structures [unexplained fires, steel girders prematurely rusting, paint bubbling etc.]

As a non-scientist[ unless you wish to include the science of human action-or "praxeology", a social science], I found her early scientific methodology and adherence to principle very refreshing - something she appears to have abandoned to a small degree, at least as far as her research and conclusions about Hurricane Erin's involvement on 9/11 go- which is why I have written these two [overlong] articles dedicated to analyzing Dr Wood's Erin research methodology.

However, disregarding her conclusions about Erin, to this day I remain very open to the idea that direct energy weapons [D.E.W.] may well have brought down the 2 towers. Based on my limited knowledge, and given all of the many strange anomalies, her proposal _still_ makes the most sense to date.

And regardless, to this day ,her website: http://www.drjudywood.com/ to me has some of the best, most thought provoking photos, research and theories available on the internet.

Troubling Questions: Pre-Testing? Where?

The biggest question I have regarding the use of D.E.W. on 9/11 would be this:

The perpetrators had to be absolutely sure that D.E.W.'s]would do the job .

Unlike video fakery, which could be tested and retested until it looked right, the demolition of the 2 towers was to happen in real time and therefor mistakes could not be made.

Surely they would have to have done a significant amount of testing somewhere, on something similar to WTC 1 &2, to ensure that the weapon would actually do the job that morning?

So where were the tests carried out- and on what?

At this time I have no idea, [do you?] but in any case, it is time to move on to part [2], what I see as " The Bad"[and then finally, in a separate blog, to part[3] "The Ugly"] in Dr Wood's 9/11research.

************************************************************************

Part 2: The "Bad"- Hurricane Erin Time Inaccuracies and Discrepancies

[By the way, both part [2]"Bad" and part [3]"Ugly" labels apply _only_ to Dr Wood's claims about the direct involvement of the natural phenomena named Hurricane Erin, they in no way apply to her earlier research and work on D.E.W. and 9/11 in general.]

I initially considered Dr Wood's claim that hurricane Erin was directly involved in the events of 9/11 from the viewpoint of a 20 + year inhabitant of the S.E. coast of the U.S..

Hurricanes pass close by almost annually and so one naturally becomes hyper-aware of both the storms themselves, and of the types of natural conditions that are needed to prevent them from endangering my approximate area.

So in reviewing Dr Wood's claims, I was very interested to see if she had considered/allowed for the one natural event which both myself and any other experienced hurricane watcher knows will stop a hurricane dead in its tracks, and which will cause a significant change in direction, if not destroy it. [She did not, and has not to date- this is what I call part [3] :"the Ugly" here below - it comprises the last part of this article]. In the meanwhile,.....back to Part 2.

Radio Interviews

After initially only glancing through Dr Wood's website claims concerning Hurricane Erin's connection to the events of 09/11/01, I came across 2 archived radio interviews at her site [both with Andrew Johnson on Jim Fetzer's "Dynamic duo" show,] which further piqued my interest, inspiring me to go back and take a closer look at the relevant pages on her website [Erin 1 through 10] .

Those radio interviews [ with Mr Andrew Johnson] can be heard here:

[1] http://www.drjudywood.com/media/080730_Wood_Johnson_Erin_DD.mp3

[2] http://www.drjudywood.com/media/080731_Wood_Johnson_Erin_DD.mp3

Dr. Wood Says: Erin Closest at Around 8am EDT on 9/11

In the first of those 2 interviews Dr Woods said that Erin was :

"closest to NYC on the morning of 911, around 8am. And then it just stopped, it didn't keep going East, or West, it just stopped and then it turned around and started heading back out"

In those 2 interviews Dr Wood made other, related comments/claims regarding Erin's position and behavior , including claims that Erin's behavior on 911, as revealed by her own graph [ fig 7 at: http://www.drjudywood.com/articles/erin/erin10.html ] revealed classic signs of it being an artificially controlled environment.

Dr Wood's Own Data Refutes Her Claim About Erin's Eye Being Closest at around 8am on 9/11

Here below is fig 7 below , taken from : http://www.drjudywood.com/articles/erin/erin10.html

[Click on illustration to enlarge]

As you can see,the bottom , blue line above indicates the distance for Erin's eye from NYC, based on NOAA data. The lighter blue points along that line indicate times for those distance readings given in Eastern Daylight Time[ EDT] .

Here is a close up of the relevant part of the bottom, blue line that represents position of Erin's eye relative to NYC on 9/11:

Notice how the purple line above the blue plot line gives a 2am EDT reading [although the number"2" has been partly obscured by my image crop], that lines up with the unlabeled light blue plot point on the blue line directly below it, making that blue point below also a 2 am EDT point.

Also notice the 2 upward steps in the blue line [look closely now!] between the first unlabeled [2am] light blue plot point and the 8am EDT plot point directly to its right.

Notice how this blue plot line continues at an increasing upward angle as it moves to the right of the graph and as Erin's eye continued to move further away from NYC.

It seems clear to me that the NOAA data that Dr Wood's has used in her graph[ fig7.] clearly shows [IF you look closely!], that Erin's eye was in fact at its closest to NYC at around 2am EDT on 911, a full 6 hours before Dr Wood claims it that was closest, and that by 8 am EDT it was actually already moving away from NYC in a new, NNE direction. This movement away by 8am can be seen in the graph above taken from her website: http://www.drjudywood.com/articles/erin/erin10.html.

A Minor Point- An Insignificant Difference?

If you believe that what I show above is an insignificant [ a couple of millimeters ?] difference between the height above the baseline of 2am plot point versus the 8am one, all I can tell you is that it is inevitable that it looks this way, given the format that the data was entered into.

Best View

The best view for actual position would be shown in a pictorial that plots NOAA data for actual times and positions looking down on Erin's path.

I found many, unclear, confusing depictions of such information at Dr Wood's site , most of which are for _predicted_, as opposed to actual path taken.

Where actual path was plotted, time and position points often blur/overlap to make then almost useless for close analysis.

Best Plot For Erin?

The best, clearest plot of Erin's actual path, based on NOAA data, I found not at Dr Wood's site, but here:

http://weather.terrapin.com/wx/DisplayStorm.jsp?STORM=01279&dtype=JAVA

This is an animated Java plot that, if you are fast with a mouse or trackpad, can be stopped at various time and position points along the route. Sometimes the site does not work properly, you have to fiddle with it a little and click "reload" sometimes to get it to play.

The Graph Confirms Erin Was Closest at 2am

This plot also shows Erin to be closest at 2am on the morning of 9/11, at which time it turned to the right, and that it had already moved a significant distance away from NYC by 8am.

N.B. "The Ugly"- PART 3 of "Why Dr Judy Wood Is Probably Mistaken About Hurricane Erin and 9/11"- Dr Judy Woods 9/11 Research- The Good , The Bad and the Ugly" follows in the next blog entry.

Air versus Skyscraper"-The Shortest, Simplest, Most Devastating, Most Subversive 911 Truth Video?

2008-10-16T06:25:00.000-07:00

" Air versus Skyscraper"-The Shortest, Simplest, Most Subversive 911 Truth Video?

For my money,this video analysis, by "Killtown", of a purported "amateur" video shot on 09/11/01, of flight 175 magically disappearing whole into the South tower at the WTC, has to be the shortest, simplest, and therefor the most subversive analysis of one of the main events of that day vis a vis the official story and similar "truther" stories which refuse to question both the validity and authenticity of the media broadcasts for that morning.

K.I.S.S.

"K.I.S.S." ["Keep It Simple, Stupid"] is the acronym that comes to mind here. This analysis works so well simply because it is _so_ simple, short, and therefor so powerful - my initial reaction upon viewing was [while slapping palm against forehead], " Of course! How could I have been so stupid as to NOT see this?".

Maybe your reaction will be similar.Enjoy!

9/11- Most Likely-No Planes, and No Standard Demolitions

2008-09-11T10:07:00.000-07:00

9/11- Most Likely-No Planes, and No Standard Demolitions

Introduction

Knowledge is Finite

First of all, I think that is worth mentioning that regardless of what you or I believe happened on 911, as always, knowledge is finite. This is an unavoidable fact of life that we all must deal with on a daily basis. Or, you can simply try to ignore it and go nuts in the process!

There are many who freely choose that route!

Reality- Nobody [except the perpetrators] Really Knows What Happened With Absolute Certainty

Fact: unfortunately, neither you or I, or anyone else, has absolute perfect knowledge of the truth about what happened that day- and, it is impossible for any one person to have access to all of that information, particularly in light of the fact that much information is yet to be discovered, as always.

Always Remain Open To New Possibilities

Because of my understanding of this principle [knowledge is always finite], I have always tried to remain open to new explanations as to what might have happened, and have therefor tried to remain flexible to new possibilities as new information came to light, rather than just painting my self into a corner of supposed "absolute truth", a habit which seems common even among those gifted individuals whose research I mention below, and also among the all too numerous "others" as well.

As a result of my deliberately open policy, my own ideas have been through numerous changes since 911, and will probably change again in the future, given the nature of the immutable laws of reality and of individual finite knowledge for any one point in time.

This is why I use the phrase " most likely" or similar on a regular basis!

Having said that, the views expressed below about the events of 09/11/01 are, to the best of my current knowledge "true".

N.B. "Ridiculous", "Impossible" etc. ?

The research sighted below will appear "ridiculous", "impossible", or even worse to some who read it. I understand- not so long ago I would have reacted the same way, and it has taken me a lot of time and thought to reach the seemingly ridiculous [to some] positions outlined below.

Nevertheless, these positions make up the main core of my current views about the events of 911. Remember, knowledge is finite, so if you have not been exposed to the evidence given below before the views expressed below might seem outrageous.

If the information is new to you, I ask only that you attempt to honestly suspend all pre-judgement, and to merely look at and then thoroughly analyze the evidence presented to support my perhaps ridiculous conclusions on the events of 911.

******************************
Main Article: 9/11- No Planes, and No Standard Demolitions

1] No Planes?

Most likely, on 09/11/01 there were no planes,only faked "live" footage on time delay of from about 3 to 17 seconds.

See:"September Clues Part 1"

and: "September Clues Part 2"

2] Impossible Impact Speeds?

No planes were flying at 550mph at 600ft above sea level. 550mph is a cruising speed for large airliners at 35,000ft, where the air is much thinner. Because of air density, the same speed is impossible for them at 600 ft. above sea level. Maximum sustainable speed at 600 ft for a large Boeing, according to Boeing? -around 220mph.

See:"Flight 175- Impossible Speed"

3] Pencils Through Wire Screens?

Also, aluminum skinned planes with plastic nose cones traveling at a max speed of around 220mph , or even at the impossible speed of 525 mph!] cannot fly almost completely through [disappearing inside in one piece no less!] 500,000 ton buildings made of steel girders and reinforced concrete, and all without slowing down visibly at impact, with no parts [e.g. engines, wings, tail] falling off at impact, with no engine sound prior to impact,[i.e flight 175] and with no actual discernable impact sound at impact

See: "Flight 175, Stabilized"

4]No Conventional Explosives Used For [Unconventional]Tower Demolitions?

Most likely, no explosives were used to demolish the twin towers [ possible exception of WTC7] .

Unfortunately for the "demolition brought them down" crowd, the majority of both collapse and post collapse photographic and seismic evidence simply does not support the use of standard demolition procedures.

See: http://www.drjudywood.com/

5]Steel Girders Turned To Dust?

Also, conventional demolitions do not and cannot literally turn steel girders to dust in mid air, within seconds. See:http://www.drjudywood.com/articles/DEW/dewpics/Image42.jpg

Neither could conventional demolitions of 1300ft high buildings occur at freefall or greater,speeds,[e.g 8 seconds from start to finish ]despite what the "pre-planted demolition charges" crowd would have you believe. See:
http://www.drjudywood.com/articles/BBE/BilliardBalls.html

6]Holes in Towers Made By Missiles or Explosives?

Most likely, explosives _ were_ used to make wing shapes in towers after either [a] a missile made the main "entry" hole, _or_,[b] the initial hole was also made with explosive charges.

This can be seen clearly here, as the wing shapes do not appear until a full 6 seconds after the main "entry" hole in the buildings' side, appears, and the plane, wings and all, has supposedly already completely disappeared inside in one piece!

See: "Amateur part 2"

9/11 Mythbusting Videos: September Clues- No Planes on 911

2008-08-08T06:09:00.000-07:00

Mythbusting Videos: September Clues- No Planes on 911-

Here is a link to the "September Clues" video, an extremely well researched 9 part series of 10 minute videos, by "Social Service", which prove beyond any shadow of doubt, merely by close analysis of archived "live" footage taken from the main networks [i.e. Fox, CNN, ABC, NBC], that no planes hit the twin towers on 09/11/01

And be sure not to miss "911 Amateur Video", parts 1,2 and 3, which shows that the Naudet Brothers live video of the first strike on the North tower at 8am, is also a fake.

To view all of "Social Service's" videos, click here.

The IndyMac Bank Bailout-Federal Reserve "Hush Money"

2008-07-27T05:50:00.000-07:00

Article: The IndyMac Bank Bailout-Federal Reserve "Hush Money"

The article states: "The $4 billion that the FDIC will pay to a handful of depositors at IndyMac is hush money. It is paid to them to silence every other depositor in the country. "Don’t spread rumors about any insolvent bank." Why not? "Because, in a fractionally reserved system, all of them are technically insolvent." They are all borrowed short and lent long....." To read rest of article go to: http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north642.html

My Comments

Mr North's article points out/explains why the IndyMac bank failed ,and the inherent problems of the US banking system in general, which is good ,as far as it goes. That inherent instability is something you need to be aware of, in my opinion.

Mr North's + Others Predictions vs Your Own, and Suggested Protections

However, whether you believe the entire US banking system is headed for imminent collapse or not, [ Mr North does not] , or, like Mr North you believe that _more _ banks will fail in the near future, possibly including your own, I would like to say that as a financial safety advisor I know of several simple ways of protecting yourself against either events, without any drastic changes in either your lifestyle or in you banking habits, and without relying on dubious FDIC "insurance" either.

Good News:

Briefly, I can show you how to protect yourself against either a total or partial banking system collapse , so that in the future you do not have to worried about the accuracy or inaccuracy of Mr North's or others predictions of impending doom, or of general prosperity.

Bad News:

This information is not cheap, that is unless you value safety _and_ piece of mind!

Mr North's Other Predictions

Outside of banking system issues, Mr North makes 2 other main predictions:

[1] that inflation [i.e. a continued decline in the per unit purchasing power of the US $] will continue: "This could be a year away. This could be a month away. All we know is this: when the Federal Reserve system runs out of Treasury debt to sell, its purchase of all assets will be inflationary. The banking system as a whole is protected. What is not protected is the purchasing power of the dollar. .."

[2] Higher Interest Rates :

"What is likely in a scenario of failing banks is the increasing loss of public confidence in the private capital markets. When that happens, the rush to buy Treasury debt, which means the rush to hand over our economic future is to the United States Congress, will lead to the de-capitalization of the private companies that increase our standard of living..."

So he is saying that there will be a flight to short term government debt [i.e 90 T-bills] and a flight _from_ privately issued debt instruments, [corporate bonds etc], which will put an upward pressure on interest rates as businesses compete with the government and other businesses , by offering higher rates of return than their competitors [i.e. at the extreme: "junk" bond offerings] :

My Predictions.

I don't make predictions about the certainty or uncertainty of future economic events, whether they be for inflation,deflation, bank crisis or economic booms ahead, simply because I do not believe that I, or anyone else, including Mr North, can accurately forecast these or other events with any consistency.

FACT: Do not fool yourself. It is impossible to predict either future inflation, or deflation, or anything else, for any market, ever. Don't even try- unless you are gambling with money you can afford to lose. But for long term savings- forget it. And don't be foolish enough to believe any "advisor" or "economic forecaster" either, when it comes to betting with money you cannot afford to lose!

To do so is to be suffering under delusions of grandeur, as far as I'm concerned, or you are choosing to be lulled into a false sense of security regarding some "experts" supposed infallible prediction record.

In Mr North's particular case , as far as I can see his attraction to the field of economic forecasting is also the direct result of fatal misunderstandings or ignorance of certain principles of both general Austrian Human Action theory and of Austrian economic and monetary theory in particular, as I understand them, and of which, like myself he is a supposedly a student of.

[ I _will_ predict that, based both on his past record of so doing, and on his general psychology/belief system, Mr North will continue to make predictions like these .]

Your Choice

So if you freely choose to believe Mr North, or someone else's predictions for banks, the economy, inflation or for anything else, bet with money you can afford to lose, should you be lucky enough to have any.

The Big Secret-Simple, General Protection From Mr North's and Others Gloomy [or Sunny]Predictions is Available For You!.

GOOD NEWS!:

The big secret that investment advisors do not want you to know is that it is not necessary to have to predict _any_future economic events in order for your long-term savings to safely grow. You do not have make predictions yourself, nor do you need rely on the supposed forecasting abilities of any "investment advisor" ever again!

Simple,Self- Managed, Self- Insured Protection For Your Money

I can show you a simple, self-managed, self-insured protection plan with a 30 year + established success record, for your savings to be made safe from these types of supposed impending financial catastrophe, and from others unseen at this time, allowing you more free time to persue activities you really enjoy,[eg movies, reading, sex, fishing etc.] and removing the time and worry of the impossible, never ending game of "what is happening and what is going to happen to the economy, and how will it effect me according to Mr. so and so" .

Bad News: as I mentioned with regard to banking protection information:"this information is not cheap, that is unless you value safety _and_ piece of mind!

So if you believe more free time and a lot less worrying about the future of your bank or of the economy are items worth having, contact me via the comments section of this blog, or e-mail me at : onebornfree@yahoo.com and leave me your e-mail address so that I may get back into you ASAP.

100% Money back guarantee on all services offered!

9/11- No Planes Hit WTC 1& 2, or The Pentagon, and Most Likely, Explosives Did Not Bring Down the Towers

2008-07-19T07:31:00.000-07:00

9/11- No Planes Hit WTC 1& 2, or The Pentagon, and Most Likely, Explosives Did Not Bring Down the Towers

No Planes?

Since around 2002 I've known that no plastic nosed, aluminum skin plane is capable of hitting the Pentagon and puncturing a series of holes through 3-5 concentric rings of concrete, each ring with 5 feet thick reinforced concrete walls - or how ever many rings and walls it is claimed were penetrated by said plane.

Since early 2007, based on review of the photographic evidence of the post event damage, I've known that explosives detonations such as thermite or thermate in no way explain the many highly unusual types of post collapse damage on record, and are no more than a convenient explanation for those unwilling to try to investigate and account for this unusual damage to the buildings themselves, and cars, trucks, etc. in the vicinity.

And around three months ago, after a lot of photo examination and thought, I've reached , I suppose ,the inevitable conclusion that no planes hit the WTC 1+2 buildings either.

Planes Through Buildings- Scientifically Impossible

Briefly, no planes hit the 2 towers, It is scientifically impossible for a plastic nose plane with a thin aluminum skin, traveling at a maximum possible speed of 250mph**, to literally cut through a 500.000 ton building made of reinforced concrete and steel to the point that the whole plane disappears inside the building in one piece, without parts[ e.g. engine, wings, tail], falling off at the moment of impact and then falling to the ground directly below the so-called entry hole.

** [half the speed given in the official US govmt. 911 report, by the way- 747's and similar can only fly at 550mph at 35,000 feet, where the air is much thinner, at 600 ft, the wings would be blown off by the air pressure at anything above around 250mph.
See:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2upl977dsY
], ]

Fake Videos

The famous video of the whole plane [flight 175] hitting WTC 2 and disappearing inside the building in one piece is therefor a fake. [ It was never aired live, contrary to what you might think, but came on the air at least 7 minutes after the supposed 2nd. strike].

This also means that the famous Naudet brothers video, which was not aired until the 12th Sept. is also a fake, as it to shows an entire plane [or more accurately, a "plane like object"] disappearing in one piece inside WTC1.

Fake Plane Entry Holes

Judging by the damage to the remaining girders within the 2 "entry" holes circumferences [e.g. steel girders cut straight through, girders bent outwards, lack of plane parts etc.], explosives were probably used to make the fake "plane- entry" holes in both WTC1 & 2.

Towers Brought Down With Direct Energy Weapons[DEW]?

Based on the evidence available [ collapse time, top to bottom collapse sequence, and most importantly ,post collapse damage to remaining building parts, damage to surrounding ground , damage to automobiles etc.], what probably brought the 2 main WTC buildings down was something called "Direct Energy Weapons" [DEW], which can reduce both concrete and steel to dust.

These types of weapons leave a very definite signature when used, a signature which is found time and time again within the debris of the WTC and surrounding area.

The unusual types of damage are simply not consistent with the use of explosives as far as I'm aware.

Links:

No planes : http://nomoregames.net/

http://www.checktheevidence.co.uk/cms/

Fake Plane Videos: http://911logic.blogspot.com/

Video "September Clues" part 1: http://www.livevideo.com/socialservice/

http://www.checktheevidence.co.uk/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=163&Itemid=60

Direct Energy Weapons : http://drjudywood.com/

[Types of] Damage Anomalies at the WTC: http://drjudywood.com/articles/JJ/

A Bright Shiny Lesson in Government Theft: How the Feds Seized My Silver Dollars

2007-12-02T06:52:00.000-08:00

A Bright Shiny Lesson in Government Theft:
How the Feds Seized My Silver Dollars - story here :

Comments: From where I stand this whole affair merely underscores the fact that it is somewhat dangerous to keep any assets in the US, at least if one keeps them all in one place. The whole thing is nothing more than a good old fashioned "shakedown" in my opinion.

Just one of those things that all governments do- simply because they can. Its a safe bet that this will never change- regardless of who runs the show, and even if you don't believe that, if money/investments that you cannot afford to lose are at stake,it is best to be prepared for the worst in case you are wrong.

No different than with any other investment, if this guy had held all of his silver investments within the US , it was naive to keep them all within place [i.e one holding company like Liberty silver] if he in fact did that.

There are other companies producing silver coins that were not raided - meaning that if he'd "spread it around " a little he would be losing only a small part of his silver investment as opposed to all of it.[again, assuming for the sake of argument that that's what he did] .

Also he could have kept some silver close at hand at a secret location known only to him [maybe he did, who knows?], to prevent a total loss.

And pursuing a case against the feds after the fact is probably a complete waste of time unless you have a lot of money to spend and powerful political connections, and could take years to resolve.

In the meanwhile he would still be out of his entire "investment", with absolutely no guarantee that he'd ever get his silver back or be compensated for the loss of investment profits or opportunity to sell and reinvest elsewhere, or even for his legal expenditures.

Better , for peace of mind, to attempt to avoid the situation from happening to you, ahead of time, through proper diversification and through [ideally] keeping important assets [i.e. investments you cannot afford to lose] outside of the US as far as possible.

The Lying, Criminal, State

2007-10-11T09:31:00.000-07:00

The Lying, Criminal, State

{Because all government programs, from war to welfare, must fail in their stated objectives, [because they are all paid for with stolen/counterfeit "money"] all Governments must lie to stay in power to further the myth of their own neccessity- therefor it is impossible for an organization funded solely by theft [i.e. taxation] and counterfeiting [i.e. exclusive "private" monopoly fractional reserve banking- AKA the Federal Reserve], to do anything but lie most of the time, except when it is to its own advantage to tell truth- once in a blue moon. Below, an essay by someone else who figured this out, quite a a while ago, the great
Mr A.J.Nock. P.S. I have blogged parts of this essay before, but I think it stands up to a repeat "run."

The lesson?- Personal Secession is the Only Way Out for Individuals

The lesson here is that should you come to believe myself and people like Mr Nock , given the natural, inbuilt criminality of all states everywhere, that it is useless to engage in political action [i.e voting, donating money to political causes etc.] to either change or fight "the system" [i.e _any_ political system].

Do Violent Revolutions and Terrorism Work?

Violent revolutions or terrorism to overthrow a system and to then replace it with a new "more just" system is likewise just as useless and a waste of time as is voting to elect "more honest, less corrupt" individuals or political parties- it [revolution/terrorism] , just like voting, must, given the fundamental criminal nature of all states, always result in producing the very same thing fought against [i.e. just another variation of the criminal state ].

Quiet, Peaceful, Personal Secession

The only way out that I can see is to accept everything as it is [i.e forget changing the world] and then to focus all of one's available energies entirely on looking for ways to to personally secede and withdraw support from "the system" to whatever degree individually possible, peacefully, quietly and without any fanfare or public announcement to that effect[which only brings you unwanted "attention". ]

And by the way, a fairly good understanding of the philosophical principles of internal martial arts such as Aikido, Tai Chi etc. does not hurt.

That is where I might help- or not. Have a nice life. Onebornfree }

The Criminal State
by Albert Jay Nock

As well as I can judge, the general attitude of Americans who are at all interested in foreign affairs is one of astonishment, coupled with distaste, displeasure, or horror, according to the individual observer's capacity for emotional excitement. Perhaps I ought to shade this statement a little in order to keep on the safe side, and say that this is the most generally-expressed attitude.

All our institutional voices – the press, pulpit, forum – are pitched to the note of amazed indignation at one or another phase of the current goings-on in Europe and Asia. This leads me to believe that our people generally are viewing with wonder as well as repugnance certain conspicuous actions of various foreign States; for instance, the barbarous behavior of the German State towards some of its own citizens; the merciless despotism of the Soviet Russian State; the ruthless imperialism of the Italian State; the "betrayal of Czecho-Slovakia" by the British and French States; the savagery of the Japanese State; the brutishness of the Chinese State's mercenaries; and so on, here or there, all over the globe – this sort of thing is showing itself to be against our people's grain, and they are speaking out about it in wrathful surprise.

I am cordially with them on every point but one. I am with them in repugnance, horror, indignation, disgust, but not in astonishment. The history of the State being what it is, and its testimony being as invariable and eloquent as it is, I am obliged to say that the naive tone of surprise wherewith our people complain of these matters strikes me as a pretty sad reflection on their intelligence. Suppose someone were impolite enough to ask them the gruff question, "Well, what do you expect?" – what rational answer could they give? I know of none.

Polite or impolite, that is just the question which ought to be put everytime a story of State villainy appears in the news. It ought to be thrown at our public day after day, from every newspaper, periodical, lecture-platform, and radio station in the land; and it ought to be backed up by a simple appeal to history, a simple invitation to look at the record. The British State has sold the Czech State down the river by a despicable trick; very well, be as disgusted and angry as you like, but don't be astonished; what would you expect? – just take a look at the British State's record! The German State is persecuting great masses of its people, the Russian State is holding a purge, the Italian State is grabbing territory, the Japanese State is buccaneering along the Asiatic Coast; horrible, yes, but for Heaven's sake don't lose your head over it, for what would expect? – look at the record!

No State Excepted

That is how every public presentation of these facts ought to run if Americans are ever going to grow up into an adult attitude towards them. Also, in order to keep down the great American sin of self-righteousness, every public presentation ought to draw the deadly parallel with the record of the American State. The German State is persecuting a minority, just as the American State did after 1776; the Italian State breaks into Ethiopia, just as the American State broke into Mexico; the Japanese State kills off the Manchurian tribes in wholesale lots, just as the American State did the Indian tribes; the British State practices largescale carpet-baggery, like the American State after 1864; the imperialist French State massacres native civilians on their own soil, as the American State did in pursuit of its imperialistic policies in the Pacific, and so on.

In this way, perhaps, our people might get into their heads some glimmering of the fact that the State's criminality is nothing new and nothing to be wondered at. It began when the first predatory group of men clustered together and formed the State, and it will continue as long as the State exists in the world, because the State is fundamentally an anti-social institution, fundamentally criminal. The idea that the State originated to serve any kind of social purpose is completely unhistorical. It originated in conquest and confiscation – that is to say, in crime. It originated for the purpose of maintaining the division of society into an owning-and-exploiting class and a propertyless dependent class – that is, for a criminal purpose.

No State known to history originated in any other manner, or for any other purpose. Like all predatory or parasitic institutions, its first instinct is that of self-preservation. All its enterprises are directed first towards preserving its own life, and, second, towards increasing its own power and enlarging the scope of its own activity. For the sake of this it will, and regularly does, commit any crime which circumstances make expedient. In the last analysis, what is the German, Italian, French, or British State now actually doing? It is ruining its own people in order to preserve itself, to enhance its own power and prestige, and extend its own authority; and the American State is doing the same thing to the utmost of its opportunities.

A Scrap of Paper

What, then, is a little matter like a treaty to the French or British State? Merely a scrap of paper – Bethmann-Hollweg described it exactly. Why be astonished when the German or Russian State murders its citizens? The American State would do the same thing under the same circumstances. In fact, eighty years ago it did murder a great many of them for no other crime in the world but that they did not wish to live under its rule any longer; and if that is a crime, then the colonists led by G. Washington were hardened criminals and the Fourth of July is nothing but a cutthroat's holiday.

The weaker the State is, the less power it has to commit crime. Where in Europe today does the State have the best criminal record? Where it is weakest: in Switzerland, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Sweden, Monaco, Andorra. Yet when the Dutch State, for instance, was strong, its criminality was appalling; in Java it massacred 9000 persons in one morning which is considerably ahead of Hitler's record or Stalin's. It would not do the like today, for it could not; the Dutch people do not give it that much power, and would not stand for such conduct. When the Swedish State was a great empire, its record, say from 1660 to 1670, was fearful. What does all this mean but that if you do not want the State to act like a criminal, you must disarm it as you would a criminal; you must keep it weak. The State will always be criminal in proportion to its strength; a weak State will always be as criminal as it can be, or dare be, but if it is kept down to the proper limit of weakness – which, by the way, is a vast deal lower limit than people are led to believe – its criminality may be safely got on with.

So it strikes me that instead of sweating blood over the iniquity of foreign States, my fellow-citizens would do a great deal better by themselves to make sure that the American State is not strong enough to carry out the like iniquities here. The stronger the American State is allowed to grow, the higher its record of criminality will grow, according to its opportunities and temptations. If, then, instead of devoting energy, time, and money to warding off wholly imaginary and fanciful dangers from criminals thousands of miles away, our people turn their patriotic fervor loose on the only source from which danger can proceed, they will be doing their full duty by their country.

Two able and sensible American publicists – Isabel Paterson, of the New York Herald Tribune, and W.J. Cameron, of the Ford Motor Company – have lately called our public's attention to the great truth that if you give the State power to do something FOR you, you give it an exact equivalent of power to do something TO you. I wish every editor, publicist, teacher, preacher, and lecturer would keep hammering that truth into American heads until they get it nailed fast there, never to come loose. The State was organized in this country with power to do all kinds of things FOR the people, and the people in their short-sighted stupidity, have been adding to that power ever since. After 1789, John Adams said that, so far from being a democracy of a democratic republic, the political organization of the country was that of "a monarchical republic, or, if you will, a limited monarchy"; the powers of its President were far greater than those of "an avoyer, a consul, a podesta, a doge, a stadtholder; nay, than a king of Poland; nay, than a king of Sparta." If all that was true in 1789 – and it was true – what is to be said of the American State at the present time, after a century and a half of steady centralization and continuous increments of power?

Power Corrupts

Power, for instance, to "help business" by auctioning off concessions, subsidies, tariffs, land-grants, franchises; power to help business by ever encroaching regulations, supervisions, various forms of control. All this power was freely given; it carried with it the equivalent power to do things TO business; and see what a banditti of sharking political careerists are doing to business now! Power to afford "relief" to proletarians; and see what the State has done to those proletarians now in the way of systematic debauchery of whatever self-respect and self-reliance they may have had! Power this way, power that way; and all ultimately used AGAINST the interests of the people who surrendered that power on the pretext that it was to be used FOR those interests.

Many now believe that with the rise of the "totalitarian" State the world has entered upon a new era of barbarism. It has not. The totalitarian State is only the State; the kind of thing it does is only what the State has always done with unfailing regularity, if it had the power to do it, wherever and whenever its own aggrandizement made that kind of thing expedient. Give any State like power hereafter, and put it in like circumstances, and it will do precisely the same kind of thing. The State will unfailingly aggrandize itself, if only it has the power, first at the expense of its own citizens, and then at the expense of anyone else in sight. It has always done so, and always will.

The idea that the State is a social institution, and that with a fine upright man like Mr. Chamberlain at the head of it, or a charming person like Mr. Roosevelt, there can be no question about its being honorably and nobly managed – all this is just so much sticky fly-paper. Men in that position usually make a good deal of their honor, and some of them indeed may have some (though if they had any I cannot understand their letting themselves be put in that position) but the machine they are running will run on rails which are laid only one way, which is from crime to crime. In the old days, the partition of Czecho-Slovakia or the taking-over of Austria would have been arranged by rigmarole among a few highly polished gentlemen in stiff shirts ornamented with fine ribbons. Hitler simply arranged it the way old Frederick arranged his share in the first partition of Poland; he arranged the annexation of Austria the way Louis XIV arranged that of Alsace. There is more or less of a fashion, perhaps, in the way these things are done, but the point is that they always come out exactly the same in the end.

Furthermore, the idea that the procedure of the "democratic" State is any less criminal than that of the State under any other fancy name, is rubbish. The country is now being surfeited with journalistic garbage about our great sister-democracy, England, its fine democratic government, its vast beneficent gift for ruling subject peoples, and so on; but does anyone ever look up the criminal record of the British State? The bombardment of Copenhagen; the Boer War; the Sepoy Rebellion; the starvation of Germans by the post-Armistice blockade; the massacre of natives in India, Afghanistan, Jamaica; the employment of Hessians to kill off American colonists. What is the difference, moral or actual, between Kichener's democratic concentration camps and the totalitarian concentration camps maintained by Herr Hitler? The totalitarian general Badoglio is a pretty hard-boiled brother, if you like, but how about the democratic general O'Dwyer and Governor Eyre? Any of the three stands up pretty well beside our own democratic virtuoso, Hell-roaring Jake Smith, in his treatment of the Filipinos; and you can't say fairer than that.

The British State

As for the British State's talent for a kindly and generous colonial administration, I shall not rake up old scores by citing the bill of particulars set forth in the Declaration of Independence; I shall consider India only, not even going into matters like the Kaffir war or the Wairau incident in New Zealand. Our democratic British cousins in India in the Eighteenth Century must have learned their trade from Pizarro and Cortez. Edmund Burke called them "birds of prey and passage." Even the directors of the East India Company admitted that "the vast fortunes acquired in the inland trade have been obtained by a scene of the most tyrannical and oppressive conduct that was ever known in any age or country." Describing a journey, Warren Hastings wrote that "most of the petty towns and serais were deserted at our approach"; the people ran off into the woods at the mere sight of a white man. There was the iniquitous salt-monopoly; there was extortion everywhere, practiced by enterprising rascals in league with a corrupt police; there was taxation which confiscated almost half the products of the soil.

If it be said that Britain was not a sister-democracy in those days, and has since reformed, one might well ask how much of the reformation is due to circumstances, and how much to a change of heart. Besides, the Black-and-Tans were in our day; so was the post-Armistice blockade; General O'Dwyer's massacre was not more than a dozen years ago; and there are plenty alive who remember Kitchener's concentration camps.

No, "democratic" State practice is nothing more or less than State practice. It does not differ from Marxist State practice, Fascist State practice, or any other.

Here is the Golden Rule of sound citizenship, the first and greatest lesson in the study of politics:

You get the same order of criminality from any State to which you give power to exercise it; and whatever power you give the State to do things FOR you carries with it the equivalent power to do things TO you.

A citizenry which has learned that one short lesson has but little more left to learn. Stripping the American State of the enormous power it has acquired is a full-time job for our citizens and a stirring one; and if they attend to it properly they will have no energy to spare for fighting communism, or for hating Hitler, or for worrying about South America or Spain, or for anything whatever, except what goes on right here in the United States."

The article was originally published in H.L. Mencken's American Mercury, March, 1939. Albert J. Nock was a regular contributor to the publication under Mencken.

Words That Can Help Increase Your Freedom

2007-08-18T09:40:00.000-07:00

WORDS THAT MAKE YOU FREE

[from the Hawaii Observer}]: "What if I told you that every danger you might worry about - poverty, drugs, crime, war, terror, the Devil himself - is possibly fake?

To clarify this, I need to explain a new concept to you, called protection fraud. Protection fraud happens when a criminal collects a fee for pretending to "protect" the victims from an evil which he in fact secretly creates. It’s the second oldest profession in the world. Running uninterrupted for the last 3400 years, protection fraud is a $16 trillion global industry today.

4 significant conclusions.

1.) Every major cause the "authorities" tried, over the ages, to justify their rule with - God’s mandate to fight Evil, providing defense, upholding law and order, subsidizing the poor, etc. - is a fraud.

2.) Every fraud cycle is the same old fraud, with a new "evil" tacked on when the old evil doesn’t produce enough revenue anymore. Could such a fraud be just a "honest mistake"? Not 12 times in a row.

3.) The public uncovers each successive fraud cycle faster. From the initial 3300 years the "war on devil" was believed by a majority, to 5 years the majority saw through the "war on terror", a healthy percentage knows already that the authorities’ next claim will be a fraud too. Good going.

4.) An "authority" with a track record of continuous criminal racketeering of 6 billion and the premeditated murder of 200 million victims over a period of 3400 years has no legal, moral, or other standing whatsoever to rule, control or manage society; to determine right and wrong; or to enforce it........"

rest of article here:
http://www.hawaiistories.com/george/2007/08/17/the-words-that-make-you-free/

Why You Should Never Believe any Aspiring,Unelected, or Elected Politician

2007-03-04T10:29:00.000-08:00

Why You Should Never Believe any Aspiring,Unelected, or Elected Politician

To continue with the theme of the previous post, below is a link to an overlong but illuminating article [if you have the time/patience], exposing the naivete of those who seek so-called " limited government".

To cut a long story short, all he really needed to point out is the fact that all governments are criminal enterprises, funded as they are by direct theft [taxation] , and counterfeiting [so called monetizing of the governments debt via a government -run centralized banking system.

He does eventually make that point [governments are criminal], but then only really applies it to "The Myth of Checks and Balances", when it it has far broader implications which demolish not only the arguments of all "limited government" proponents [whether they call them selves libertarian, conservative or liberal], but also the world-changing aspirations of advocates of _every_ political party everywhere, and of _anyone_ who runs for office, regardless of whether we are talking about a Hillary Clinton, an Obama, a McCain, John Edwards or Ron Paul.

Here are my 3 easy to understand reasons:

Point [1] [The most important point]

As I previously stated, [and as he does] all governments are criminal enterprises, funded as they are, and it is impossible to change that core nature as long as they are funded in the manner they are. Once a criminal organization, always a criminal organization.

Point [2] [Regarding outsiders seeking to join government to produce change via their election etc.]

Fact: Anyone outside of government who joins it/gets elected, is becoming a part of a criminal organization whose only collective motive is to continue doing what it already does [ i.e. direct theft, counterfeiting]. They [the outsiders] or their party are not going to ever change that collective motive or even limit it to areas they and their supporters are in favor of it being limited to. [It should be fairly obvious that theft cannot be "legally" limited by the organization "legally" carrying out the theft in the first place!].

They [outsiders who join] will become absorbed/ assimilated by the criminal organization they have joined, and that organization will [must] continue its operations as before regardless. This is imperative for its survival ; theft is its highest priority, to be achieved BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY. And what it cannot steal, it MUST counterfeit.

Incentives For Those Newly Joining

And don't forget ,the incentive to lie by those who wish to join/get elected is possibly even greater than for those already inside, simply because, up to a point, the bigger the lie, the more chance there is of getting elected, and then being on the free lunch gravy train of stolen/"legally" counterfeited "money".

Lesson: Believing the promises of those seeking to join governments "to change them/ make them work better", "change society" etc. is a mugs game, exceeded in naivete only by those who believe the promises of those already on the inside and "working" for that organization:

Point [3] [Regarding Insiders - i .e those already elected and benefitting from stolen money/counterfeiting].

My question : If a politician/bureaucrat/ employee [i.e. a member of a well established criminal organization] tells you/ promises you something, WHY ON EARTH WOULD YOU BELIEVE HIM/HER? Are you in the habit of believing the word of other, non-governmental criminals?

Lesson: Anyone who believes the word of an established criminal or group of criminals is an even bigger mug that those who believe the word of those seeking to join said criminal organization to supposedly " make it work more efficiently", or for any other reason ["change society" etc. etc.], as described in point [2] above.

This [point[3]] is a point the author does not even get into. Instead he refuses to follow through on his observation that we are dealing with a criminal organization, run by necessarily habitual liars, which leads him to make the fatal error in logic at the end of his article of demanding that "aspiring nation builders" draft "constitutions predicated on a system that truly separates the powers – free market anarchism.", when in reality, his "free market anarchism" already exists in all of its glory, everywhere, [you just have to look for it- but really , its staring us all right in the face], and already existing without any so-called help from "aspiring nation builders" whatsoever, outside, indeed , _despite_ , and _because_ of, all of them.

Oh my. He just don't git it, do he? And I suspect, he's far from alone

.
Main article: "The Myth of Checks and Balances"

The Inherent Criminality of All Governments

2007-01-01T08:28:00.000-08:00

The Inherent Criminality of All Governments, Everywhere

[This 1939 essay by AJ nock is as relevant today, if not more so, than when it was written. I can identify particularly well with his statement:"I am cordially with them on every point but one. I am with them in repugnance, horror, indignation, disgust, but not in astonishment."

Like Nock, I'm more amazed by the naivete and ignorance of those who ignore the historical record of governments worldwide, and continue to expect governments to do "good things" in areas such as "justice", the environment, the monetary system, "equality", taxation, invasion of other countries, or whatever else tickles the naive proletariat[s] fancy, regardless of whether they call themselves democrats, republicans, libertarians, or of any other nit-picking, meaningless, imaginary subclassification of the pro-state persuasion.

As Nock says:"what would you expect? – look at the record! "

THE BIG QUESTION [?] :

If you agree with Nock and myself, your question would be: "Given the inherent criminality of all governments, what can I as an individual do about it?" As a problem solver, that is where I might help, so contact me via this blog's comment facility if interested. ]

[Excerpt] : " As well as I can judge, the general attitude of Americans who are at all interested in foreign affairs is one of astonishment, coupled with distaste, displeasure, or horror, according to the individual observer's capacity for emotional excitement. Perhaps I ought to shade this statement a little in order to keep on the safe side, and say that this is the most generally expressed attitude.

All our institutional voices – the press, pulpit, forum – are pitched to the note of amazed indignation at one or another phase of the current goings-on in Europe and Asia. This leads me to believe that our people generally are viewing with wonder as well as repugnance certain conspicuous actions of various foreign States; for instance, the barbarous behavior of the German State towards some of its own citizens; the merciless despotism of the Soviet Russian State; the ruthless imperialism of the Italian State; the "betrayal of CzechoSlovakia" by the British and French States; the savagery of the Japanese State; the brutishness of the Chinese State's mercenaries; and so on, here or there, all over the globe – this sort of thing is showing itself to be against our people's grain, and they are speaking out about it in wrathful surprise.

I am cordially with them on every point but one. I am with them in repugnance, horror, indignation, disgust, but not in astonishment. The history of the State being what it is, and its testimony being as invariable and eloquent as it is, I am obliged to say that the naive tone of surprise wherewith our people complain of these matters strikes me as a pretty sad reflection on their intelligence. Suppose someone were impolite enough to ask them the gruff question, "Well, what do you expect?" – what rational answer could they give? I know of none.

Polite or impolite, that is just the question which ought to be put every time a story of State villainy appears in the news. It ought to be thrown at our public day after day, from every newspaper, periodical, lecture platform, and radio station in the land; and it ought to be backed up by a simple appeal to history, a simple invitation to look at the record. The British State has sold the Czech State down the river by a despicable trick; very well, be as disgusted and angry as you like, but don't be astonished; what would you expect? – just take a look at the British State's record! The German State is persecuting great masses of its people, the Russian State is holding a purge, the Italian State is grabbing territory, the Japanese State is buccaneering along the Asiatic Coast; horrible, yes, but for Heaven's sake don't lose your head over it, for what would you expect? – look at the record! ...."

Click here for complete essay

CNN's "The New Rules For Real Estate", Versus Reality, A.K.A. Investment Rule Number 1

2006-11-05T07:47:00.000-08:00

CNN's "The New Rules For Real Estate", Versus Reality, A.K.A. Investment Rule Number 1

Recently brought to my attention : CNN's investment/real estate "experts" claim to be able to predict future nationwide areas of growth,no growth etc. etc. in the real estate markets:

CNN article here:

My comments: It is a myth that the future performance of ANY market can be accurately predicted. Investment rule number 1[which applies to all investing, in all areas] is that the future is unknowable- so any free CNN article by "experts", like the one linked to [or even one written by the author of say, a $1000 per year financial newsletter], and that claims to know in advance which areas of the country will be growth and which no growth for real -estate [ it might just as easily be about stocks, bonds, or commodities etc.] is completely out of touch with the reality of rule number one. Simply put, its garbage.

Sensible real-world saving and investing for the future _must_ start with an admission of the reality of rule number 1 and an allowance for the consequences of that reality, otherwise, you are speculating with your money[ie gambling], not investing.

It is easy to set up a simple, balanced plan for long-term savings that is is immune to unpredictable future economic events such as inflation, deflation and recession, while managing to average gains of between 7-9% over the rate of inflation, and which needs no monitoring on your part , apart from a once per year re-adjustment of percentage allocations per investment catagory. This plan has been used successfully for 20 years. If you would like more information and a chart of the plans 20 year plus results, please go here:
http://www.onebornfree.com/longtermsavingsplan.htm

"What's a good homeschooling family to do?"

2006-10-28T06:29:00.000-07:00

What's a good homeschooling family to do?

Question:

"As our individual liberties continue to erode and the ever growing central government continues to dominate more and more facets of our daily life, with an upcoming election my family has to look at where each party stands with regard to homeschooling.

I know the libertarians support homeschooling but they have no chance to win and their base in state politics is centered in Atlanta.
I know the Republicans SAY they support homeschooling but they lie so often who can trust them?

I know the Democrats are so cozy with the NEA and GAE that they are loath to offend them...and both groups vehemently oppose anything but state run education/indoctrination camps.

So what to do?

Frankly the Dems seem to be my worst choice as they are predisposed to being hostile to homeschooling- because of their relationship with NEA/GAE and also their predilection with the nanny/welfare state.

Of the two major parties the Dems seem most likely to make homeschooling difficult or illegal....all in the name of the "children's welfare" of course.....which is the same reason Hitler's Germany outlawed home education in 1938.

Hard call to make....both major parties seem to favor making our current socialist republic empire into an ever growing totalitarian state. However, the Repubs do talk a good game....even if they clearly are the best bait and switchers in the 2 party biz.

Hmm.

What's a good homeschooling family to do?"

My reply:

The first thing to do is to erase all thoughts about voting, and who to vote for- its a complete waste of your valuable time. Its far safer and more immediately practical to assume that nothings going to change- ever; regardless of which gang of crooks gets elected [that's "the system" after all], and proceed accordingly from there.

You must instead focus ALL of your time and attentions on your own individual situation vis a vis the issue at hand- this is crucial,if you do not do this you are most likely doomed to failure in any attempts you might make to solve your problem.

The only way out of doing this[focusing] is if you hire someone else to focus all _their_ attentions on your particular problem instead [ as a "problem solver" I can perhaps do this, perhaps not].

Once you have focused- or hired someone else to do so, your or their basic choices are:

[1] look for legal ways to get around the laws - usually not as hard as it would first appear _if_ you focus 100%, adopt an open mind and use your imagination [now hopefully newly uncluttered by ridiculous thoughts/fantasies about which gang of criminals to vote for] and start to "read between the lines" of laws, or,

[2] disregard the laws if and where you feel comfortable in so doing, keep your mouth shut and don't attract attention [ including not joining any homeschooling freedom groups or such like] and generally try to keep a low profile in this area of your life. [Another hint: being a member of a pro-homeschooling political party such as the Libertarian party is a bad idea attention wise- like a dope smoker having a subscription to "High Times" or similar and expecting to not get busted.]

Most important with either approach- stop complaining about the system, or fantasizing about "change", keep your damn mouth shut- then, "Just Do It!"!

You've Never Had Any Rights: Three Good Reasons Why The US Constitution and Bill of Rights are Not Worth the Paper They Were Written On

2006-09-23T07:03:00.000-07:00

Newsflash! You've Never Had Any Rights: Three Good Reasons Why The US Constitution and Bill of Rights are Not Worth the Paper They Were Written On

(c)onebornfree.com2005

Libertarians and limited government proponents etc. generally share one similar belief, or assumption - that is, broadly stated : that the government should only do the things they believe it should - based on a particular idea of what the constitution and bill of rights actually "means", and was "originally supposed to mean".

And in actuality, even many outside of the limited government movement , such as modern "liberals" or "conservatives" , often seem to have fairly fixed ideas about what " it" all means.

I see two big problems with this idea [i.e. that it meant one thing, and one thing only]. The first is philosophical, the second, historically factual.

Trouble Comes in Three's

And then, no doubt because bad news and trouble traditionally comes in three's, there is a third problem which I shall briefly call attention to at the end of my article.

Problem [1]: Subjective Value [ "Human Action"] Theory

Human action theory [which many libertarians claim to believe], tells us that each of us is a unique individual, with our own tastes, values, preferences and life experiences- and, as we grow and experience new things in life, our values change - they are not set in stone. http://www.mises.org/humanaction/chap2sec4.asp

These individually subjective value interpretations are just as true of the interpretation of words we read as of actual "real life" events; meaning that any collection of words on a piece of paper, including laws and constitutions, is going to be subjectively interpreted per individual - inevitably meaning that what Jefferson may have thought the constitution "meant" was entirely different from what Madison thought it meant , and that what Hamilton Washington or Adams et al thought it "meant" was also bound to be different.

And further, that what they thought it actually meant at any one point in time was bound to change over time according to their own newer prejudices and life experiences.

As the arguments of the founders are a matter of historical record, this point is of course widely known, even in "the mainstream", although the inevitable conclusions I have drawn here via human action theory are just as widely ignored.

Then and Now

To me, the principles of applied human action theory must inevitably also apply to federal or state judges either then or now, or to any member of the government, living or dead. [ A great book on this, covering the individual economic prejudices of the founders, was written by the somewhat left-wing economic historian Charles Beard- e.g. see his "Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States" http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0029024803/lewrockwell/002-1812875-5295257

A Real World "Bottom Line"

The bottom line here is : even if it were possible for the constitution and Bill of Rights to be written to mean one thing and one thing only, as libertarians and others argue via "original intent" arguments e.g.: http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north150.html

or,http://harrybrowne.org/articles/PrivacyRight.htm

the plain fact of the matter is that in the real world, they are _still_ going to be subjectively interpreted by individuals both inside or outside of the government and judiciary, who have their own, constantly changing and evolving value systems, experiences, biases, agendas etc. ,

This is inevitable, according to the very philosophy that supposedly underpins much of libertarian thought [i.e. subjective valuation and "Human Action theory"]

Problem [2] The Historical Record

Problem 2 is historically and factually a little more obscure to most libertarians I know, and starts with the anti-federalist arguments.

The anti-federalists, as you know, successfully argued that the constitution should _not_ be passed , simply _because_ it was a ridiculously open-ended document which would bring tyranny [e.g. see http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0451625250/002-1812875-5295257?v=glance ].

Intentionally Open -Ended

The bald truth, as Brutus and the other anti-federalists pointed out, is that the constitution was intentionally, a totally open ended document. [ Also see the Pennsylvania Minority's writings, as with Brutus, included in Ralph Ketchum's "Anti-Federalist Papers" : http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0451625250/002-1812875-5295257?v=glance

and : "The Secret Proceedings and Debates of The Convention To Form the US Constitution" by Yates, a convention delegate: http://lists.washlaw.edu/pipermail/marketing/Week-of-Mon-20040209/000643.html

Madison's Promise- the "Bait and Switch"

As you might know, the anti-federalist arguments at that time led to Madison's promised concession of the addition of a Bill of Rights, to further supposedly "define" constitutional limits, IF and WHEN the constitution was ratified [i.e. a political "bait and switch"].

Of course, this brilliant political move by Madison , second only to naming his side "Federalists" - when in fact the anti-federalists were the true "federalist"[!], pulled any remaining rug out from under the feet of the so-called "anti-federalists", and the constitution effectively became law when New Hampshire, the 9th colony, ratified on June 21st. 1788 , although it is not "officially" in effect until March 4th 1789.

What You Are Probably Not Aware Of - The Judiciary Act of 1789............

What few are aware of is the historical fact that the day before the new congress signed the Bill of Rights, to be returned for review and approval or rejection by individual states before becoming law, it passed the Judiciary Act of 1789, which was not subject to review by any of those same states.

To learn exactly how the Judiciary Act of 1789 guarantees the destruction of the rights you think you might have [or had!] under the 10 ammendments of the Bill of Rights , please ask here in the comments section and I will get back to you ASAP!
....

ARTICLE EDIT/UPDATE 01/24/11: click here to learn about the Judiciary Act of 1789

You vs The World-19 False Assumptions

2006-08-15T09:04:00.000-07:00

YOUR 19 FALSE ASSUMPTIONS?

Here are, for your edification, abuse, and ridicule, are 19 poorly thought out false assumptions that will hopefully prevent you from living a better life. Enjoy!

YOU AND SOCIETY

False Assumption : that you should be someone other than yourself.

False Assumption : that others will do things the way you would, or be like you.

False Assumption : that your emotions should/can/ will conform to an intellectually preconceived standard, as should others emotions.

False assumption : that you can control others.

False assumption : that others should respect you

YOU AND MORALITY

False Assumption : that you must obey a moral code created by someone/anyone else.

False Assumption : that you must put the happiness of others ahead of your own.

False Assumption : that anyone can speak on behalf of another.

YOU AND YOUR POLITICS AND FREEDOM

False Assumption : that other people can prevent you from being free.

False Assumption : that your [political] rights will make you free.

False Assumption : that you must create better conditions in society before you can be free, and that therefore, there are compelling social issues that require your participation.

YOU AND YOUR DECISION MAKING

False Assumption : that you can make important decisions when you’re feeling strong emotions.

False Assumption : that time, effort, and money spent in the past must be considered when making a decision in the present.

False Assumption : that the cost of getting out of a bad situation is too high to ever consider.

False Assumption : [when making an important decision], that your information is 100% certain.

YOU AND GOVERNMENTS

False Assumption : that governments perform socially useful functions that deserve your support.

False Assumption : that you have a duty to obey laws.

False Assumption : that the government can be counted upon to carry out a social reform you favor.

False Assumption : that the government is so powerful that it can prevent you from doing what you want with your life.

War Is the State: Myths about Memorial Day, Governments and War.

2006-05-29T11:41:00.000-07:00

Myths about Memorial Day, Governments and War.

War is the State

Another Memorial day, and the country is divided into at least 3 camps and possibly more:

1] the pro war establishment [those who want government and wars, and believe them justified and therefor celebrate wildly ]

2] the anti-war establishment [ those who believe in governments but are usually against war, or are suprised/enraged/horrified when they occur],

3] the "don't know don't care lets just have a party" crowd.

My comments here address only those in catagory [2].

War Is the State

An early to mid 20th century US historian , Randolph Bourne, famously quipped "war is the health of the State".

Myself, I believe it is more accurate to say:"War _Is_ the State".

To believe in the institution of governments and at the same time expect them not to start wars is futile- after all, war is the primary business of all governments everywhere.

War [regardless of whether a particular war is considered "just" or "unjust"]is one of the many inevitable , [although perhaps unforseen by some] consequences of having a government in the first place.

You want government , you will get wars.Get used to it

Quit wasting your time complaining about wars started/perpetuated by your government and the people in group [1] , i.e. the flag-waving "patritioc" types who madly celebrate, quit voting for candidates who promise to end a war [if they do, they'll start another], quit demonstrating against wars etc, etc; instead concentrate ALL OF YOUR TIME AND ENERGY on minimising your own risk to your governments primary business; that is engaging in wars against [a] its own citizens,[b] engaging in wars against the government and citizens of other countries.

Look for ways of avoiding the ensuing wild celebrations of the state, its wars and its minions on days such as today, and for ways which might work even better in the future.

Most importantly,forget about trying to change the rest of the world, or even a majority, into peace lovers via outreach and demonstrations, letters to the editor etc.- instead, "button your lips",get out of the way, and learn to concentrate on finding ways to associate as far as possible in your own life only with those who already hold similar views to yourself, and for ways to avoid the effects of governments and their wars, and of funding them, via legal, or possibly illegal methods, depending on your personal morality and where you choose to draw your own lines,as in reality the terms "legal" and "illegal" are always subjectively interpreted, and also subject to change at any time.

And never forget- war _is_ the state.

13 Common Myths About Governments- part 2

2006-05-10T15:39:00.000-07:00

Part [2] 13 Common Myths About Governments

[13 Common Myths About Governments That I Run Into In Everyday Life and Which I Believe Will Inhibit Your Own Personal Freedom and Growth Potential. ]

Myth [1]: The government can stop you from being free and from living a free life.

{For many, this is perhaps the most damaging belief that they can hold. It is also the one that , as personal freedom consultant, I run into the most often}.

Reality: the only thing that stops you living your life in the way you want is you and your assumptions and beliefs, particularly those concerning governments and their power over your life and the lives of others. Outside the obvious situation of a person already physically life - imprisoned by the government, the prison you are actually in right now, if you believe the myth {that the government can stop you from being free}, is one entirely of your own making.

Nothing, including the government, or even your mother in law or your ex, can stop you living the life you want to live.

The Government’s Interest

Of course, you also need to understand that it is not in the government’s interest for you to discover this reality, and so it must “invest” large amounts of its revenues {partly taken from you, of course} in attempting to convince you otherwise, through its schools, books and media outlets etc.

More Hollywood Inspiration

I know it is only a movie, based on an entirely fictional book by Stephen King, but the movie “The Shawshank Redemption” starring Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman, is a classic, and very inspiring movie about overcoming both “the system”, and the idea that governments can stop you from living a free life – while simultaneously showing that its no picnic to do so either.

Myth [2]: government is a beneficial, benevolent entity.

Reality: when all is said and done, the only single defining characteristic that all government actions { laws, proclamations, ordinances, "advisories" etc.} and all governments share, besides the unintended consequences of their actions, is the threat of the use of violence {ultimate force} against those who try to resist its laws, proclamations, ordinances, "advisories" etc.

The true, core nature of every single action of all governments, all the way down to the most innocent sounding local proclamation or ordinance, is violent coercion for disobedience, whether we like to admit that or not.

Government is merely a "socially approved" institution solely dependent on robbery and violent threats and coercion to achieve any and all of its objectives, or, as Harry Browne famously said “ the government is just the Mafia with flags outside its offices”, or words to that effect.

The Inherent Corruption of All Government Funding -“If Pigs Could Fly”

Hand in hand with this is the assumption that any government, or any part of it, or any person in it, can be uncorrupted or incorruptible.

All governments are funded by “legal” theft- so it is extremely unrealistic to expect anything other than 100% corruption, 100% of the time, from an institution founded and funded almost exclusively on the “principle” and practice of “legal” extortion in order to maintain its own existence.

I am continually amazed by people who acknowledge the truth of how government revenues are acquired, yet still persist in the fantasy of expecting any good deeds from governments- or a similar fantasy that any bad acts they are aware of can be corrected just by electing the “right people”. The lack of consistency of thought in this area truly boggles my mind. {“If pigs could fly”, and all that jazz}:

Myth [3]: The government can create wealth.

Reality: The only thing government can do is take money by force from one group and give it to another group. This is not creating wealth but merely moving money around via force, benefiting some at the expense of others.

Myth [4]: You can become freer by voting for _any_ political party.

Reality: voting for your freedom is a complete waste of your time - regardless of whom the candidate might be. Disregarding myth [3] for right now, the only person who can free you to your own standards is you – because you, and you alone, hold those exact standards.

I suspect that one of the main reasons that people delude themselves into expecting social change via voting is that it is attractive { although self-delusional } to think that the easier alternative { i.e. voting by pulling a lever}, as opposed to actually making the effort to change your own life, can actually work.

The temptation to try to affect social change through politics is great, and therefore difficult to overcome, but I feel that it is vital for you to overcome this almost reflexive instinct in order to achieve greater freedom.

Internet “Dating”

The same principles { ease, laziness} appear to me to be involved in the fantasy of "internet dating”, another waste of your time that makes a lot of money by catering to people who live in a fantasy world where every thing happens magically “by computer”, “at the push of a button”, such as at: http://www.match.com

{ Go to the above link to “meet” a lot of other people who also live in a fantasy world where every thing happens magically “by computer”, “at the push of a button” } .

Myth [5]: you can free others if your party gets elected.

There are no major differences between any political parties, despite appearances to the contrary. For the record I’m including Democrats, Republicans, Conservatives “Libertarians”, Greens “independents”, fascists, socialists and communists of all stripes.

All share far more similarities than their superficial differences can possibly hide. All are [inevitably] pro- state, even so -called parties for "limited government", or "constitutional government". { If it interests you, I’m an ex “hard-core” constitutionally limited government anarcho- libertarian myself – but then I woke up.}

Voting to force everyone to "be free" to _your _ standards is a complete waste of your time, as is giving money to those who would claim to do so, because government cannot and does not work as a means of social change. Meaningful social changes must happen despite governments, as and when people see, on a personal level, such changes as benefiting themselves, regardless of the supposed benefits to the rest of society.

The only reason I can see to vote is because you might be able to skew things your way - e.g. make more money by restricting competition, imports or whatever, benefit from increased subsidies etc. , but even then, the chance that your one vote will actually make a difference to the outcome is statistically, highly unlikely.

Myth [6]: That you can vote for others to shrink government to your own preferences, or only get involved in the areas your political party approves of.

Reality: the only person who can shrink government is you - via your own direct attempts to avoid paying it anything, and by general avoidance of using its "services" to any degree that you can. Expecting to be able to force others to do what you think is right via your elected agent of change is futile.

Myth [7]: Government Programs Achieve Their Publicly Stated Objectives:

Reality: government programs cause the exact opposite of their announced intention{eg a government "war on poverty", illegal immigration, abortion, smoking or a "war on drugs”, or you name it, automatically increases poverty and / or drug use, smoking, immigration etc., or at best, makes absolutely no difference.}

This is unavoidable, simply because of the reality of the true nature of governments [2], i.e. that all government action is based on the principle of violent coercion, and so people sooner or later just find ways to avoid that coercion in their own lives, whereas outside of government, the market’s “programs” work because of voluntary, cooperative actions between buyer and seller, each acting in his / her own self - interest, so the threat of violence is unnecessary, and inevitably counterproductive.

Take Your Pick

And if you need further convincing, just take a close look at the reality of ANY government program.

Myth [8]: the government “justice system” "works", or can “work”.

Reality: As an extension of myth [7] above, the “justice system”, as the quintessential and therefore supposedly ultimately necessary government program { i.e. the usual justification given for governments existence in the first place }, is essentially no different from any other failed government program; it cannot work { and just as inevitably, large amounts of revenues must be spent to promote the exact opposite idea}.

As all government programs must fail, the justice system works no better than any of its other more recent social programs. This goes for the FBI and all other federal, state and local agencies, the police, the sheriffs’ depts. the court system, the judiciary etc. etc.

Expecting "justice" from this system either for yourself or others is a big mistake. It is always safer to assume the exact opposite will occur, and then every now and then { once every 20 years? }, to be pleasantly surprised.

This leaves aside the whole question of whether or not it is “moral” for one group of humans to serve judgment on other individuals- no matter how egregious that persons "crimes" are deemed to be, by any group of so-called "justice seekers", and regardless, corrupt persons {government} judging others as criminals is an obvious hypocrisy, at least to me.

A rule I follow is: NEVER expect “justice” from the government and its “justice system”! {Expect injustice- you will not be disappointed.}

Myth [9]: the government defense system "works", or can be made to "work".

Another supposedly quintessential and necessary government program,
The reality is somewhat different: see [2], [7] and [8]. It cannot work, it does not work, The army, the navy, the air force, the Pentagon, it’s all a scam. Enough said.

Myth [10]: The government keeps you free and guarantees your rights.

Reality: The government has no interest in keeping you free. Its interest is only in making you believe that you are free and protected by it so that it can justify both its existence, and the removal of more money from yours and everyone else’s pockets - despite the fact that it can, and often does, take that money regardless of any such justification. However, too much of this [blatant extortion] results in social unrest and revolution, and then government revenues will drop to zero. {Not good }.

Myth [11]: The US constitution and Bill of Rights will protect your freedom.

Reality: The US constitution and Bill of Rights { or any other written law in any society, and no differently from any book or movie you read or see } is inevitably, a subjectively interpreted document, and can never mean anything concrete that is agreed on by all.

It will therefore be interpreted at the convenience of the person reading it, even more so if that person is in power and in need of appearing to favor the groups that represent and pay for him / her.

What in your opinion, the government should do to protect yours and others “freedom” is inevitably going to be different from what others think it should, or can do.

Myth [12] : Governments can be limited to certain functions.

Just as damaging as the above myth [11], and usually appearing hand in hand with it, is the assumption { i.e. myth} that a government, once formed, actually can be limited to certain functions.

Reality: This is always no more than a “selling point” offered by those vying for power in order to gain that power over others - a deception, a fantasy a lie. {No! Say it isn’t so!}

If you want my advice { few do]} don’t waste your precious time on this earth complaining about any government’s “unconstitutional” actions, { its all “constitutional”!}, or in trying to return it to supposed constitutional limits. As I said at [11]]: the constitution and bill of rights “will {therefore} be interpreted at the convenience of the person reading it, even more so if that person is in power and in need of appearing to favor the groups that represent and pay for him / her.”

Myth [13]: The US constitution was originally written to limit the scope of federal government interference in your life.

Reality: If you believe that , just take a good look around ! The evidence would appear to be overwhelmingly to the contrary.

As I point out in [11], the government and the supreme court ultimately determine what “it” all "means", and thus “it” always "means" what they say “it” means, even if what they now say it means is the complete opposite of what they said before.

“What it is, is what it is”

Even more importantly, beyond the whole subjective value issue raised at [11] and [12], that is exactly the way it was intended, as far as I can see, { see the illuminating writings of "Brutus" the anti-federalist, included in "The Anti-Federalist Papers and the Constitutional Debates" by Ralph Ketcham,

plus: "The Secret Proceedings and Debates of The Convention To Form the US Constitution" by Robert Yates, a convention delegate:

Reality: The way it was set up was intentional, meaning that where we are now { on the verge of fascism} is exactly where we are supposed to be, according to the original grand design. As the famous singing philosopher, James Brown once yelled {screamed?}: “What it is, is what it is.”

More Historical Evidence: What You Probably Don’t Know - The Judiciary Act of 1789

Just in case you still have any doubts about my outrageous assertion, consider that the Judiciary Act of September 24th 1789, was signed into law by our supposedly freedom loving founders in Congress, the day before they passed the Bill of Rights {September 25th 1789}, and that obviously, at that stage of the game, the contents of both bills were undoubtedly very familiar to all present in Congress, and, that section 25 of the Judiciary Act specifically authorizes the Supreme court to interpret _all_ state law, { if nothing else, directly negating the provisions of the 9th and 10th amendments before they ever even get a chance to be ratified by the states}.

It pays to remember that the Judiciary Act became law almost immediately, yet the persons who signed the Bill of Rights the very next day knew that its 10 provisions had, like the constitution itself, to be returned to the states for individual ratification before it {the Bill of Rights} would ever become law, and that in fact it took more than two years for the Bill of Rights to become law, and also that when it did finally become law, the provisions of the Judiciary Act had already been in effect for most of those two years prior to the states approval of the Bill of Rights. Genius! Talk about an “end run”!

The Constitution and Bill of Rights is, as far as I’m concerned, another shameless political scam, or as Albert J. Nock has commented, a "coup d'etat", { see chapter 1, section 2 of above link} designed to fool the masses and to quietly usurp and replace the common law systems of the various states with a civil law system, whereby all power ultimately resides at the federal {supreme court} level- completely undermining any supposed common law judicial independence of any member state, {again, as noted by the anti-federalists "Brutus", and the “Pennsylvania Minority” even before the constitution itself was ratified.}

Forget Your “Rights” , Get Some Sleep

So forget your “lost rights”, you cannot lose what you never had - the Bill of Rights was an after -the -fact political "bone" thrown to the gullible after their fate has already been sealed within the main body of both the constitution and the Judiciary Act of 1789.

Don't lose any sleep over imagined "constitutional violations!"- remember, in the end it's all "constitutional!"

Until the next time, “beam me up Scotty!” -

Financial Safety Services, and Onebornfree Personal Freedom Services.
www.onebornfree.com

13 Commonly Held Beliefs [Myths] About Governments- part 1

2006-05-10T15:35:00.000-07:00

[part 1] 13 Commonly Held Beliefs [Myths] About Governments

Or, Beam Me Up , Scotty” or, “I’m From Another Planet and I’m Here To Help You”

Have you ever got involved in a conversation with another person, only to find that they share virtually none of the same beliefs and assumptions about the world that you customarily operate under?

For me, this happens a lot, {as you can no doubt imagine}. In fact, I've become so used to this “from another planet” feeling these days, that more often than not when introducing myself to others, I preface any remarks I am going to make – assuming I have been unable to limit conversation to “how’s the weather?” or “nice shoes”, with the announcement that I am indeed from" a galaxy far, far away" {a quote originally from the movie "Star Wars", but used to great effect by Linda Fiorentino's character Bridget, aka Wendy Kroy, in John Dahl's classic ‘90's noir movie " The Last Seduction"- which also happens to be my favorite movie of all time}.

“Beam Me Up Scotty”

Yet another “take” on that “from another planet” feeling is expressed succinctly via the popular bumper-sticker: “ Beam me up Scotty, there is no intelligent life down here!” a quote alluding to the popular ‘60’s and early ‘70’s TV series “Star Trek” – although I’m unsure as to whether any of the main characters on that show ever actually uttered that exact phrase, now immortalized in popular culture. No matter, it makes the point.

With those two phrases in mind, this blog entry is devoted to a brief look at 13 common beliefs I don’t hold, and which cause me to experience - on essentially a minute by minute basis, that all too familiar, “yes indeedy, I'm from another planet " feeling.

I originally had intended to cover at least four major areas here, but I soon realized that I have way too much material, so what I propose to do here is to cover two related areas { freedom and government myths}, subtly blended by yours truly into one vast, shapeless mass {as these issues overlap considerably}, and to leave other myths { investments, economics} perhaps for another day.

My Evil Plan:

Just to be clear, the reason I've decided to list these , what I consider to be myths, is to provoke thought, discussion, argument, ridicule, accusations, threatening letters, etc. etc; and not to try to help anyone to live freer lives, as might first appear to be the case.

{It's what I do best, after all: provoke argument, ridicule, accusations, cancellations etc.}

Yelling and Shouting for Fun and Profit

Consequently, as part of my evil plan, much of what I list here is done in the manner of bald assertions, with only brief explanations, if any. This is after all, the popular style these days in both the press and on US TV – i.e. bald assertions backed up with righteous indignation / arrogance, {“hey, he must be right, he’s shouting louder than the other guy”!}.

I figure if it works for the O’Reilly’s, Limbaugh’s, Michael Savages and all of the other morons of the world, let alone for those in political power, then it can work for me too!

N.B. Nothing here should be construed as a political manifesto, or as being "pro-anarchism", “anti- government” etc.

I am neither for, nor against anything governments do or don’t do, { they are going to do “it” or not do "it", anyway}, nor "pro" or "anti" anarchism ["anarchy" defined as a complete absence of government ]. I'm merely interested in telling the truth as I see it, and then possibly, teaching others to accept and adapt to these agreed truths as discovered - for suitably large fees, of course.

Nothing here should be construed as being a call for either social {i.e. political} or personal change of any description – nor should it be construed as being opposed to any such changes- I don’t care what happens or which way the wind blows, as always, and just like you in your own way, I will merely try to adapt to or avoid whatever “comes down the pike” next, as best I know how.

Because of posting difficulties, the 13 beliefs themselves will be posted as part [2] in the next blog, to follow immediately...

Attention I.D Changers and Illegal Immigrants!

2006-03-19T05:17:00.000-08:00

Attention I.D Changers and Illegal Immigrants!

May I draw your attention to an interesting article in the March 15 '06 edition of USA Today concerning US drivers licenses.

The original print version contained a handy little diagram/map showing the 10 states where it is still NOT required to show proof of US citizenship in order to get a drivers license.

According to the article, these 10 states are currently : Washington, Oregon, Utah, New Mexico, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Maine, Michigan, and Maryland.

The article goes into how these 10 states must comply, by May 2008 with the Real ID Act.

Below is the entire article [online version without map].

P.S. If you are an ID changer or illegal immigrant and you think the world is going to end because of this new law, then I have some encouraging news /comments to make. Please contact me via my website: http://www.onebornfree.com or just leave a question /comment here.

Getting a driver's license to get harder
By Charisse Jones, USA TODAY
The cost of obtaining a driver's license could double, and renewing a license by mail would end by 2008, according to state officials responsible for enforcing a federal law aimed at thwarting terrorists and discouraging illegal immigration.

The Real ID Act, approved by Congress in May and scheduled to take effect in May 2008, requires people seeking a license to prove that they are in the USA legally.

State officials from California to Maine fear that they don't have the technology, staff or money to meet the new law's requirements.

"Many are reacting negatively to it," Matt Sundeen of the National Conference of State Legislatures says of state lawmakers. "Real ID ... will have significant fiscal implications for the states."

The USA has about 240 million licensed drivers, and roughly 12 million have state-issued identification cards, says Jarret Egan, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security.

Real ID sets federal rules for obtaining and renewing licenses and state identification cards. Residents of states that don't comply with the law will not be able to use their licenses for official federal purposes such as boarding a plane or entering a federal courthouse.

"It's disappointing to hear from some (states) that it's inconvenient or too difficult to implement," says Jeff Lungren, spokesman for the House Judiciary Committee, whose chairman, Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., sponsored the law.

"The 9/11 hijackers used multiple driver's licenses and birth certificates ... to live openly in the United States while they planned their deadly attacks. Real ID is an effort to prevent that from ever occurring again. We gave (states) three years. This is a priority, and it needs to be treated as such," he says.

After Sept. 11, many states began giving greater scrutiny to applicants for licenses and identification cards.

Only 10 states don't require proof that an applicant is legally in the USA in order to drive, Sundeen says. States typically require new drivers to produce proof of age and one or two other forms of ID, usually including a photo.

Under Real ID, applicants would have to show proof of a Social Security number or why they don't have one, plus documents bearing their name, address and birth date.

The law's requirements for verifying such documents and features to make counterfeiting licenses more difficult will force states to make changes.

"Even though some states believe that they already comply with the Real ID act, in actuality none of them do," says Jonathan Frenkel, a director in the law enforcement division of the Department of Homeland Security.

State officials are asking, for example, how they will verify records of people whose birthplaces no longer exist, like East Germany; how states, required to share information through a database, can prevent identity theft; and how much the new rules will cost.

"What do you do with people on the Gulf Coast, where so many records were lost?" asks Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap, who says 85% of his state's vital records are scattered among libraries, museums and town offices.

"We have no argument with the intent of Real ID. Our concern is what (it) is going to force us to do. ... Is it really going to do what it's intended to do, improving national security and preventing identity theft?"

Congress has appropriated $40 million to the states to comply with the act.

Kentucky and New Hampshire have received $3 million each for pilot projects. State officials have estimated that annual costs could reach tens of millions of dollars.

Among states' concerns:

• The workforce at California motor vehicle offices would increase by 500 employees, or roughly 10%, says State Sen. Michael Machado, a Democrat representing the Central Valley. The $26 fee to renew a license could more than double, and the state's 23 million drivers who renew by mail or the Internet no longer will be able to do so, he says.

• In Maine, where driver's license fees have been used to fix bridges and build roads, "we'd go from being a revenue generator to a drain on our state highway fund," Dunlap says.

• New Jersey began upgrading procedures in 2003, including verifying Social Security numbers with the Social Security Administration.

"In a lot of respects, we're well placed," says David Weinstein, spokesman for the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission. "But like most of the other states, we're concerned we're not going to get direction in enough time to meet the (effective) date."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-03-14-drivers-licenses_x.htm

The State of the World- What is to be Done?

2006-01-23T08:28:00.000-08:00

What is to be Done"?

Here is a good article posted at: www.lewrockwell.com entitled "What is to be Done?', which pretty much reflects my own attitude about the world.

What he advise people to do, instead of complaining or trying to get governments to do what you think is right[ i.e shrink,grow, fund, not fund, bomb, not bomb, invade, uninvade etc.], is pretty much what I attempt to help people accomplish- its nice to read something that is a little closer to the way I think than I'm used to seeing.

article at: http://www.lewrockwell.com/latulippe/latulippe63.html

Investing versus Speculating: Continued.

2006-01-23T07:38:00.000-08:00

Investing versus Speculating: Continued.

To follow up on my blog of 15/01/06 "Investing versus Speculating" , here is a good example of financial "experts" who claim to be able to predict future economic events. This time, the subject is the current yield inversion in the bond markets, supposedly an indicator of a coming economic recession. [If you don't know what a yield curve is, just read the article, as one thing it does accomplish is to explain the idea reasonably clearly.]

Onebornfree's Commentary [followed by article]:

This is just another attempt to predict future economic events. Although yield inversions have a fair record, they are not foolproof predictors of recessions. A properly balanced long term savings plan which allows for losses occurring via unforseen recessions [ the event supposedly predicted via bond yield inversons], and other unforseeable economic events , although not 100% infallible, has to be a lot safer bet than simply speculating on a recession by throwing all of your savings into 90 day t-bills or AA+ rated corporate bonds[ or whatever] for the duration.

If you believe a recession is imminent [for whatever reason] place your bet with money you can afford to lose, if you have any.

The article, from the Sovereign Society's [ http://www.sovereignsociety.com/ ] free email advisory named "The A-Letter":

"Dangers of Bond Market Inversion in 2006

Today's guest comment is by Eric Roseman, a member of the Sovereign Society Council of Experts and editor of Renegade Investor.

Dear A-Letter Reader:

Over the last two years, investors have barely kept pace with inflation in benchmark intermediate term US Treasury bonds. After enjoying a massive rally since 2000, bond yields hit a 40 year low in 2003 at 3.3%. Despite thirteen Federal Reserve rate hikes since June 2004, bond yields have actually declined twenty basis points (0.20%), a worrisome signal Chairman Greenspan called a "conundrum" last fall. Yield curve inversion is a dangerous anomaly because it portends to economic weakness; the last three inversions all resulted in economic recessions.

Indeed, the bond market might be signaling big trouble for the US economy in 2006. The benchmark yield curve, or the difference between the two-year and ten-year Treasury yields, inverted in late December. An inverted yield curve occurs when short-term interest rates yield more than long-term interest rates. This phenomenon is a rarity in bond markets and typically indicates that bond investors think the US Federal Reserve is tightening the monetary screws too aggressively. If this is the case, then there is a good chance that the United States might suffer a recession later this year, especially if the yield curve stays inverted.

Historically, US Treasury bonds have positively correlated to common stocks. In market history, that relationship did sever during the Great Depression as stocks collapsed from 1929 to 1932 while bonds surged. Another break in that relationship developed in the post 1997 era as the Asian economic crisis and the near demise of hedge fund Long Term Capital Management drove investors into Treasury bonds en masse. In fact, since 1997, every time the stock market has corrected sharply, Treasury bonds have provided a negative correlation to equities. This means that T-bonds potentially serve as an ideal asset allocation tool amid market mayhem, protecting portfolios.

If yield curve inversion continues through the first quarter of 2006, investors would be well advised to purchase long-term Treasury bonds. An inverted yield curve spells big trouble for corporate earnings; an investment allocation to bonds would offset any stock market losses ahead of a major economic downturn or bear market.

Bonds did a great job protecting capital during the last bear market from 2000 to 2002. I expect this relationship will repeat itself this year if yield curve inversion continues.

ERIC N. ROSEMAN, Montreal, Quebec
Editor, Renegade Investor
E-mail: enr@qc.aibn.com
Web site: http://www.eas.ca" [end of article]

Sinus Infections

2006-01-15T10:23:00.000-08:00

SINUS INFECTIONS

Q: "This is only like the 2nd time I have ever had one and its driving me insane!! I have a prescription from the doctor to help it, but good grief, this is the 3rd week I have had it!! Headache...OMG!!

What does everyone do for this? Im using the shower ( steam ), drinking fluids ( lake Mayer is down 4 feet from me ), advil.......any other ideas? I see the doc again on the 24th. Do I truly have to wait to feel better? Do they normally last this long? Thanks.

Edited to add this...the prescription is NOT an antibiotic. Its to dry it up.

Onebornfree: "I've used both something called Colloidal Silver [best one I found is by a co. called "Source Naturals], and a product called [if I remember correctly] "Nettipot" which is an all in one sinus rinse kit available from health food stores like Brighter Day, as is colloidal silver.

Like Nettipots system, colloidal silver liquid is inserted into the sinus cavities [ say half a dropper full in each nostril, with head tilted back - retain for approx. 5 minutes or as long as is comfortable.

It's amazing what gets kicked out from the sinus cavities when you do either of these [green stuff!].

Drugs just mask the symptoms, which are often caused by food allergies, lack of stomach HCL, air born pollutants etc."

ps The New York Times had a good article on colloidal silver recently:

Investing versus Speculating- Financial Safety and You-part 1 of 2

2006-01-15T10:16:00.000-08:00

Investing versus Speculating- Financial Safety and You

For most of us, the biggest threat to our own financial safety is not the Government, liberals or neo-cons, George Bush, or even the Chinese, but our own beliefs and superstitions about economics, investing and saving.

Danger- False Assumptions!

False assumptions about investments and markets, and yours or someone else's "infallible" ability to predict their future performance, will cause you a lot of financial pain, sooner or later.

Investment Fallacy Number One

As far as financial safety goes, the single most damaging belief that you can have is the one that says the future performance of markets is knowable and predictable.

Reality Bites

In reality, the only thing that we can predict about the future is this: that it will be entirely unpredictable.

What This Means For Your Long Term Savings

As the future of all markets is entirely unpredictable, what this unfortunately means is that if you "invest" money you cannot afford to lose [ie long term savings] in any particular market , or group of markets, based on the predictions of future events, regardless of whether they are predictions from a highly respected investment advisor or economist, a "hard money analyst", the government, the Federal Reserve, your Auntie Mable who is "good with stocks", a "technical analyst", a "fundamental analyst", a tea-leaf reader or "Uncle Tom Cobley and all", you are not investing, but speculating [gambling], with money that you cannot afford to lose [i.e. your long term savings.]

Not that there is anything wrong with speculating [gambling]- the problem is that for most of us, when we believe we are investing for our future we are actually taking dangerous speculative risks, simply because we assume that "financial experts etc." can indeed predict the future performance of markets.

Investment Sanity- 4 Steps

The First Step

The first step towards investment sanity simply involves humility, a humility that leads to your own admission of your own inability to regularly predict the future performance of any market.

The Second Step

The second step involves an admission that no-one else can predict the future performance of any market either - that all of the so-called experts are just as stupid/blind as the rest of us !

The Third Step

The third step is to start thinking seriously about how to construct a long term savings plan that does not rely on _anyone's_ supposed ability to predict future economic events.

The Fourth Step

Review the information at my website under financial safety [www.onebornfree.com] then get in contact with me at: myquestions@onebornfree.com

Free Yourself From From Christmas?

2005-12-23T11:34:00.000-08:00

Freedom From Christmas

Sleazons Greedings! [ as an old girlfriend of mine used to say.]

If you celebrate Christmas, ultimately, as with everything else in your life, it is because you choose to.

No-one forces you to buy, or even accept presents, visit relatives, send cards, attend office parties etc etc., you do it because you want to - based on what you [possibly mistakenly] see the consequences of not going along with the crowd amounting to.

My own life has improved dramatically [despite the difficulty this year in finding non-christmassy things to do and folks to associate with]since I stopped going along with the whole deal, because I made a decision based on my own values, which is not the same as saying that you should/could do what I did, because you are a unique individual with your own value system.

In order to stop, its "only" necessary to realistically assess the true costs [ie the over all price, consisting of elements such as alienation from friends, relatives and aquaintances, loss of prestige at work etc.], versus the true gains[ no more worry over christmas card lists and presents, no more re-gifting, no more pretense, monetary savings, possible new friends who admire your new found honesty and independence, etc. etc. ], and if the gains outweigh the losses, to go ahead and take drastic action -now.

So it is important to get an accurate picture of the losses and gains before you make a decision, no different than with any other area of your life, and then take action based on what the scales of your own personal value system tell you after your close analysis.

2005-12-17T08:02:00.000-08:00

Hello, good evening and welcome! I'm just finally getting this blog thing up and running today [12/17/05], after making drastic changes to my website front page. To see the links that were used in the original stories that I loaded from my old front page and blogged here in the previous post just to get something up to start, please go to: http://www.onebornfree.com/pre-blogcomment.htm

I'll be right back- promise!

Don't Support the Troops?

2005-11-07T15:11:00.000-08:00

08/2705 Don't Support the Troops?: Quite frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn one way or the other whether you support the troops or not, as, unlike the author of the article in question I am not trying to save the world , or to get others to agree with me. I'm only out to save myself from the state- [and possibly you, provided you are willing to pay me/trade out enough to make it in my interest do so!] My FREE advice: forget the troops and who does, or does not, support them, forget all politics and world changing, focus on YOU , and what you can do for yourself TODAY, while accepting the world as it is, that is ,chock full of fools, liars, hypocrits, thieves and murderers.

08/13/05 Tax Protestors-Stupid is as Stupid Does Commentary from Onebornfree. Methinks somebody needs a quick "boot to the head" here, metaphorically speaking. After all, you have to be pretty dumb to know that "the federal government is a criminal organization that illegally extracts taxes " , [1 out of 10 for observation] and then challenge said criminal organization in its own courts, themselves funded by the very thing you are protesting about [taxes], and where it makes and breaks all of the rules, or "interprets" them for its own convenience; then somehow expect "justice" or "fairness", but that's exactly what these clowns, and others like them, do on a regular basis. Oh well, it makes for good entertainment, if nothing else,and lord knows, we all need some of that.

08/02/05 The Truth About All States: An insightful article from Mr. Michael S. Rozeff that lists a few of the many arguments against the state as a useful form of social organization . I'll overlook his implication that states can be limited in any way - to me that is a dangerous delusion - the idea is plain wrong and inevitably leads to the forming of "limited" new states or governments, and of continuing old ones. Part of the attraction of the state [and one this article does not list] is the fallacy that governments can be limited - disproved here. ]

07/21/05- The Truth About Suicide Bombers:Butler Shaffer."The suicide-bomber is but the full extension of what is implicit in politics: institutionalized violence..." ........and that is all you really need to know. However, if you can spare an hour to wade through the rest of Mr. Shaffer's article [my, he does go on], be my guest! Does Butler need a "boot to the head" in the interests of brevity? Maybe!

The Supreme Court Scam : Joe Sobran . An excellent article - as far as it goes. One slight criticism- even though I wrote to him years ago and pointed out the historical fact that theConstitution andBill of Rights was completely subverted via the 1789 Judiciary Act, [see esp. section 25] ,before it {the BOR} ever went into effect in 1791, Joe still does not quite "get it", although, to be fair, he has come a long way.] My free advice? Joe, forget the Constitution and Supreme Court, its a criminal scam, always has been always will be - just like the rest of government. Does Joe still need a quick"boot to the head"? Do you?