John Galt and Going Private, Part I

Barring any major shift in the awareness of fellow citizens, you can assume that the republic will remain dead and that fascists will continue to tighten their grip on the serfs. Perhaps, the drone serfs will wake up and revolt, but that would be in the future and be part of a survey course on human history, more of the same. Mobs, soldiers, kings, tyrants, mobs.  Without an enlightened republic it will be the same old cycle:

There won't be a new republic in America, as in the old days, as that requires a natural intelligence and morality. These are qualities mocked today. The spread of weak minds is beyond the tipping point.

Last week, the Pretender to the U.S. Presidency told people in Norther Ireland that Catholic schools are the problem. They interfere with diversity. Of course, the ruling class just says things that help their agenda, but people have become stupid and selfish, not intelligent and moral. Their was no reaction, though media rarely reports anything negative, a sign of stupidity. People accept the dull tones of alleged news.

The "hispanics," an absurd word claimed to be "racial," but especially especially absurd to describe Mexican illegal aliens, who wear their Christianity on their sleeves; they love their families, bla, bla, and so on. Yet, they support a party that favors blending a long-term embryo and tossing it in the garbage, a man who hates Catholics, some of those bible thumping people with guns in their pick ups.

Nancy Pelosi rebuffed a question about her views on abortion two weeks ago by claiming she is a practicing Catholic and, essentially, she knows morality and how dare you ask the question!  Breathtaking arrogance content that the audience is stupid. She is right and, for my part, I no longer attempt point out to people that they are stupid; I merely say I intend to protect myself against them.

The stupidity about us is a tsunami that washes away reason. One does not stop a tsunami. You prepare and survive; you go out to sea and ride above it.  It it time to join John Galt at sea. The link, just before, takes you to his famous radio speech in Atlas Shrugged.

If you read no more, here, listen to the philosophy that is the Tao. It is reason and the only way to find freedom. The link is the first You Tube part of several. Forget about the novel, philosophy, and all the crap you learned in high school.  Listen with awareness.  I say no more.

As few of us can just disappear, lets start to fade away. Here is a start:

1.  Browser: How about a browser that forgets what you were looking at:  Firefox Private Browsing (a plug in.)   

You want no tracks to trace, no Google like guessing about you. Cookies the eat you.

Google Chrome has "Incognito," that supposedly does the same thing, but even if your browser is safe, you are still using Google and lies and checks in with the fascist government, of which it a part. It openly announces it wants to tell you what you want, which is what you really are asking for.  I was an earlier adopter of Google, one time shame on you.... 

That is all I know about. Let me know if there are others. I see there is Browzar.  Worth a look.


2.  Search Engine: How about a search engine that respects your privacy:  I use ixquick. ixquick has a sister company that uses Google as a source; you can find it readily.  I avoid that, but it is likely better.  The European company does not keep records and your searches are encrypted, as far as that goes. 

There is also DuckDuckGo.  Check out the increase in their use, thanks to Mr. Snowden:

A "John Galt" can change history merely by acting in a way to protect his or her rational self interest.  Notice the jump in use. This is how we create change, not by asking government to increase government control.

Google has been running a cute little blurb on their front page about stopping Big Brother, cute CCTV cartoon included. We tend to trust people, but once the lie is clear, only stupid people fall for more lies from the same outfit.

BTW:  Stupid, by Webster:

a.  slow of mind: obtuse
b.  given to unintelligent decision or acts....
c.  lacking in intelligence or reason

I am not calling anyone a bad name, just identifying stupid people as stupid. They will make irrational decisions that injure themselves. Forget about them being part of a sane community or republic.  They generally work, if at all, for government and schools, as no one really expects reason there.

I know many people who have not really complete high school who make complete sense. If they hear, for example, their Internet activity is bugged, they will react. So, you can judge your friends and family by whether they even see a problem with state driven data collection of all that they do. Amazingly, many will just shrug or stare.

John Galt has to stop permitting stupid people the space to screw things up.

Snowden, Liars, Hegel, Substance

I have long understood the volume of data in our lives overwhelms the ability to discern substantive information, even among those who pay attention to words and logic.  I suppose this is at the heart of

the theme of this blog.

Hegel spoke of the inverse ration between quality and quantity.  We are so deep in quantity, today, that few of us remember the old days when quality was discernible.

For example, we are daily inundated with lies from the government - all levels, all parties.  Not spin, rather in-your-face lies and the average person, including those in important positions, do not even pay much attention, let alone storm Washington, D.C. The media never questions press releases.  All is a spin to control the people. Yes, including Fox.

Nixon lied about covering up Watergate and the Republicans demanded his resignation. Bush I was crucified for promising, "No new taxes." Bush II was excoriated for saying the mission in Iraq was finished (one phase, actually, was.) Now, the current administration lies about everything, all-the-time, including the nationality of its leader. The attorney general stares down the cowardly Congress with obvious lies. Any rational republic would impeach him for lying.  (PS, for those who missed it, Obama is still an Indonesian and Brit who was required to reject joint citizenship upon maturity to remain an American, and has not.  Unless, that is a secret.)

The Executive officials lie to Congress, to the camera, to foreign leaders.  Congress lies to the people. We have been programmed to ignore it and scandal is treated like a sporting contest, not a moral outrage. It is as if the game is to see if you can actually get the opponent in some board game.  The media, in all its guises, acts like a troupe of cheerleaders.

Anyway, and I hope I have been on message; below is an excerpt from the Manchester Guardian I came across on Drudge.  Yeah, yeah the paper is low-class, but it is the one who published Snowden's exhibits. The acceptable papers are part of the ruling class.  It is the easy gambit to shrug off the Guardian's reports, but that does not negate actual documents.

Read through this section which is lifted from a report about British spying:

...UK officials could also claim GCHQ "produces larger amounts of metadata than NSA". (Metadata describes basic information on who has been contacting whom, without detailing the content.) 

By May last year 300 analysts from GCHQ, and 250 from the NSA, had been assigned to sift through the flood of data 

The Americans were given guidelines for its use, but were told in legal briefings by GCHQ lawyers: "We have a light oversight regime compared with the US".
When it came to judging the necessity and proportionality of what they were allowed to look for, would-be American users were told it was "your call". 

The Guardian understands that a total of 850,000 NSA employees and US private contractors with top secret clearance had access to GCHQdatabases. 

The documents reveal that by last year GCHQ was handling 600m "telephone events" each day, had tapped more than 200 fibre-optic cables and was able to process data from at least 46 of them at a time.

The England is married to Big Brother.  They love their secrets.  In the U.S. the governments are at least being sneaky and lie to cover what they, obviously, know is an invasion of people's rights. There, the tech-spooks are illegally (is it?) taping lines.  I would expect they have collectors at nodes, but who knows.

Notice the last section:  850,000 NSA employees and agents have access to Britain's data base.  Start with that number:  850,000 people with the minimal "top secret" clearance.  There are roughly 230,000,000 adults in the U.S.!

The unofficial number of NSA employees, however, is given as 60,000!  This is an estimate based upon the alleged budget of the NSA, which, of course, is an open lie, a new form of double speak.  There is never any analysis that is finite regarding the government; one only learns to distrust anything these people claim. This is part of the disconnect the people have from their government. The remedy is, in theory, an election, but we are given McCain and Romney as an alternative!  The GOP has to go, either from within or without. Both parties want low voter interest, except for those getting free money.

The article excerpt mentions a comment that the British data, which the NSA has, now, is far more extensive than what the U.S. would allow!  This includes U.S. data ostensibly illegal for the NSA to have. On top of this, think what this means.  The spies are controlled only by what they can get away with. If one is not caught, the argument extends, then all is fair.

 The NSA recently reported only a few, certain people have the access Snowden claims to have had and they deny he had such access.  In the middle of this never-ending lying, the NSA ignores the fact that Snowden had documents. You would think a journalist may have raised that odd contradiction. So, either the talking heads at the NSA are lying, again, are incompetent beyond any comfort level, or there is a conspiracy inside the NSA to feed documents to Snowden.  All of the above are plausible.

The volume of ancillary data that floods our lives is a distraction in themselves, but in the hands of professional liars, they work magic. After mishandling a response to the Snowden release, there was a buzz about his true salary (overlooking overtime) and his education. The true believers look for any hook to hang their preconceptions and look no further. Obviously, the messenger has been killed, so there is no message.  There are no documents.

True Believers also love to claim:  So, Bush did the same thing!

Yeah, so?

AMTRAK: the Baby Huey of the Federal Government

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Coming Soon: Dark Ages II

I try to avoid contemplating the end of the most unusual reality this world has seen, as the U.S. devolves away from a moral republic and joins the endless cycle of tyrants, serfdom, fascism, and chaos the rest of the world seems to wish upon us. Misery loves company, I suppose.  Tyrants don't like republics. They prefer to sap the energy of the drones, like the humans in The Matrix.

The subversives have won; There is no Coolidge around to save us. So rather than watch the sad demise of all that our forefathers lived and died to create, I took up some light reading, the Lost Empire of Atlantis, a new book revealing the recent, unfolding information about Crete. In many ways, the Minoan culture was like that of America as it was unique, rich, and without strife.

The Minoan civilization was the great world culture for thousands of years before Christ. Then, it wasn't. Plato talked about the civilization, offering a tale about what happened to it. History has come to call the Minoan civilization the lost civilization of "Atlantis." Plato's description seems, with current knowledge, dead on.

In 1450 B.C. (B.C.E. is more political silliness) the Minoans on Crete and Thera were at the height of their culture, which was vastly superior to that of Egypt and centuries before Greece and Rome assembled cultures. Crete was a center of commerce, being a source of husbanded olive oil, pottery, metal work (yes, metal work that Egyptians likely bought to shape rocks). It had five story buildings, protected ports, and a population of pretty good looking people, if you go by their superior art.  They liked jumping over bulls, as you recall.

The king swapped gifts with the Pharaoh. Minoan jewelry and art work were vastly superior to any other in the world, none of the crudeness common to early artisans. There were no feudal states, but there were fleets of ocean going vessels. Indeed, on the northern shores of Lake Superior one can find Minoan DNA among the indigenous folk. The king actually did have a labyrinth below his castle. 

Around 1450 B.C the culture was already over 1,500 years old. All cultures were friendly with the Minoans, who traded with and learned from many other cultures.  The sun was warm and life was idyllic.

Then, one day, the largest volcanic eruption known to scientists exploded. The islands were on an active fault line, the ash providing incredibly fertile land. The people were familiar with eruptions; houses were fairly high above the sea level and were on the safe side of the islands. They were not ready for this eruption.

Within minutes of the eruption a wall of water, estimated at 100 feet high, swept away Thera and Crete. The highest buildings were below the wave, thus, nothing remained. Today, scientists find sea shells meshed into the ground. some 100 feet above sea level. 

Nothing could remain. Evidence of the civilization was buried and its location was lost to fable.

There were Minoans all about the world and at sea, so one can assume much of the culture found new homes. Perhaps, it was the Minoans who were the white skinned men who visited South America in ancient times. Perhaps, they brought an understanding of time and astronomy.

In any event, thousands of years of learning and growth ceased in a few moments. The premier culture was lost. This is a sobering notion. No warning - just gone. So, this story makes me feel better.  We have some warning and our tsunami is one that was called The Nothing in the movie The Never Ending Story. 

It seems to me that we should organize centers of culture and learning about the world and on the Internet.  We can expurgate European notions of top-down government, fascism, and the like. We could create iMonasteries where wisdom can be guarded until the sociopaths die out.

The attempt to save what has become a nest of corruption and a home for sociopaths is pointless. At least, on an emotional level. Sure, go vote in primaries in favor of the quaint, old Constitution, but there is no point is waring against the rabble. Withdraw from the dance.

We will all become boring and uninterested in attempting innovation. The new serfdom. Those who see the danger of The Nothing can hop a hairy dog and flee. 

The tsunami only takes those who were not expecting it, so off you go to some high ground, now, in some place that you can afford to live and be surrounded by civilized people.  Once there, you can link up with others of the same mind, buy encryption software, use false URLs, and develop code words, get a rifle, and keep in touch.

In the meantime, join me in putting things in perspective. 

Seriously, you can find perspective by not dancing with evil and just stand with children and sing to joy.

One Picture Is Worth Five Years of Words

One Voter Interested In Amnesty

Send Around

What PRISM Collects (now)

Snowden: Turn Key Tyranny

At least, the drip, drip of tyranny is making the news:

...WND has received an unclassified NOTAM (Notice to Airmen) that warns airmen not to look at news stories related to the data-mining scandal. 

The notice applies to users of the Air Force NIPRNET (Non-classified Internet Protocol Router Network), which is the only way that many troops stationed overseas and on bases in the U.S. are able to access the Internet 

The last line of the executive summary states 

“Users are not to use AF NIPRNET systems to access the Verizon phone records collection and other related news stories because the action could constitute a Classified Message Incident.”...
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/06/military-told-not-to-read-obama-scandal-news/#VfGUb2Giov3r6ISG.99 

The problem is, of course, we do not, yet, have the totalitarian control to prevent free speech and access. One presumes Air Force personnel can read about Edward Snowden, the CIA contractor who revealed the NSA's violation of the Constitution. Snowden is, of course, guilty of sins against the state, much like those who signed the Declaration of Independence.  By being so public, he has extended his life, but, make no mistake, he has marked himself.  The "assets," he mentioned about his own future are automatons.

Once people begin to stand and speak, tyranny looses its grip. The government is now talking about balancing security with rights, with having proper controls.  No one believes this con. The system is the most dangerous terrorist organization in history.

I am sure many readers still roll their eyes when I relate the conspiracy against our Constitutional protections and the prevalence of Big Brother.  It has been years, though, that I get that in person.  To my surprise, InfoWars turns out to be one of the only news source still reporting what is happening.  Below is an excerpt from the National Post (Canada) which I recommend.  Read the entire article.

I have no reason why the headline is cut off and do not care.

I will be leaving Blogger soon. It is part

of the Google syndicate. The founder of Google, as you will find in the National Post of a few days ago, stated clearly that he (and he is a fascist working with Obama) knows exactly where you are down to feet, knows what you buy, read, do, and will soon be able to know your next thought.

He stated simply that people really do not want to find answers, as in Google, but they WANT TO BE TOLD WHAT TO DO.

I know what to do, thanks for the insight.

As the article, below, points out, we all know that Big Brother can track us, but we still use Google, Facebook, etc. You hear the low-brow argument that "I got nothing to hide...."  It is the profound stupidity, using the word as it is meant, that terrifies me. Its like the story of the NAZIs coming for the Jews and the person says, "So, I am not a Jew."

Here is the argument:  When you used any of the major services, regardless of you apparent good behavior, you are supporting an evil beyond understanding except to, perhaps, George Orwell. You are in the back of the sheep pen enjoying your free food. Then, one day, they come for you. You have the freedom to protect yourself, why not use it? Assume your dignity. Otherwise, get a tattoo and wait.

I am methodically ending my relationship with all things intentionally evil. I have not cancelled my Facebook as it is archived, anyway, but never use it and warn others to stop. I will eventually see if it is possible to remove the page but not until I use it to warn people to get off.

If you use it, you are feeding the beast - not with paying for a service or product, but by selling you privacy. You are selling the privacy and dignity of your friends, as well. You are arming the beast. So going forward, I suggest, it is stupid to feed the beast.  As Stalin commented, the Americans will sell you the rope that is used to hang them.

I will close this Blog with a listing of things you can do, as I learn more.  If you have any ideas, let me know.  For example, I found an email service out of Europe (fastmail) that encrypts you stored emails (I think.)  I use the browser IXQUICK.com as it is totally without records (I think.)  It is too bad that I will not use the many good services of Google, but the price is too high.

I watch British TV on Netflix and see the same theme: use of CCTV to track down anyone. In 2008 there was one mini-series, The Last Enemy, that showed where this intrusion leads. It does not lead to the star saving England. We only defeat aliens and Germans. I recommend finding this. I believe it is available to watch on the Internet outside of Netflix.  Then, there is M5 which is a show that is neutral in watching how M-5 uses CCTV.

Never forget, that the billions spent on these things find next to no one. There have been 21 recent terrorist plots in the US that were broken up. Seventeen were traps run by the FBI.  One resulted in the first explosion at the World Trade Center! The FBI built the bomb. Three other plots private citizens broke up before the event (I walked past the car bomb in NYC two years ago!)  The police are essentially useless except after the fact, so why are they watching you?  Why are you paying for that wonderful surveillance.

Write up a big Post It and put it on your TV:  DEFEND YOUR DIGNITY

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• HOMEstarting to realize their paranoid fantasies about government surveillance have come true

Adam Geller, Associated Press | 13/06/08 2:41 PM ET
More from Associated Press

AP Photo/Reed Saxon/FilesIn a 2011 U.S. poll, 54% of those surveyed felt protecting citizens' rights and freedoms should be a higher priority for the government than keeping people safe from terrorists. While, 64% said it was sometimes necessary to sacrifice some rights and freedoms to fight terrorism.

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NEW YORK — For more than a decade now, Americans have made peace with the uneasy knowledge that someone — government, business or both — might be watching.

We knew that the technology was there. We knew that the law might allow it. As we stood under a security camera at a street corner, connected with friends online or talked on a smart phone equipped with GPS, we knew, too, it was conceivable that we might be monitored.

‘You are already a suspect’: Surveillance becoming ‘routine’ as it evolves into a social media pastime

Making sense of this stylistic shift in surveillance, from top-down secret observation by authorities to “lateral surveillance” of the people by the people, requires a refreshed perspective, according to David Lyon, professor of sociology and director of the Surveillance Studies Centre at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont.

In a plenary lecture for this week’s Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences in Victoria — known as the Learneds — he calls it the shift from “fear” to “fun,” from surveillance as a security tool to a social media pastime.

Continue reading …

Now, though, paranoid fantasies have come face to face with modern reality: The government IS collecting our phone records. The technological marvels of our age have opened the door to the National Security Agency’s sweeping surveillance of Americans’ calls.

Torn between our desires for privacy and protection, we’re now forced to decide what we really want.

“We are living in an age of surveillance,” said Neil Richards, a professor at Washington University’s School of Law in St. Louis who studies privacy law and civil liberties. “There’s much more watching and much more monitoring, and I think we have a series of important choices to make as a society — about how much watching we want.”

But the only way to make those choices meaningful, he and others said, is to lift the secrecy shrouding the watchers.

“I don’t think that people routinely accept the idea that government should be able to do what it wants to do,” said Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. “It’s not just about privacy. It’s about responsibility … and you only get to evaluate that when government is more public about its conduct.”

Related

• Fresh revelations about the scale of U.S. surveillance programs reveal Barack Obama's broken promises
• I think we got balance right, Obama claims as furor intensifies over massive spy programs
• White House confirms classified program to secretly gather private web data from foreigners and U.S. citizens
• Obama administration secretly collects millions of Verizon phone records on ‘daily basis,’ report reveals

The Eve of De$truction

If you happen to believe news reports, all is well  Inflation is under control, so those Social Security benefits do not go up, and the jobless rate is just great, if you are still in the job market in North Dakota. Below is useful bit of news from Porter Stanserry's recent appearance:

...In December 2008, I began warning about the risk that the U.S. could lose its "world reserve currency status," something I termed the "End of America." It's worth looking at what I wrote almost five years ago because so much of what I feared would happen has come true... you should go read that essay.  

...The Fed went on to print and spend more than $3 trillion. The prices of stocks and commodities soared. The dollar fell versus sound currencies around the world. And the prices of U.S. goods and services, even domestically made products, soared.
Now, some folks who have followed my research from the beginning might point out that I predicted the U.S. would begin suffering from severe inflation as early as 2009. With the consumer price index hovering around 1%, isn't that inflation overdue?

That is the set up, continue on:

If you look beyond the government's manipulated numbers and focus on the real prices people are paying… you'll see price inflation is here and getting worse… 

As I've written extensively… inflation is found everywhere in our economy, except in the government's statistics. Corn, the most important food crop in America, is up 75% since 2008. Gasoline is up from $2.25 a gallon to more than $3 a gallon – an increase of more than 30%. The nationwide minimum wage is up by 40%. Rents are up by 25% nationwide and up 40% in most urban markets. 

And my favorite example, the base price of a Ford F-150, the best-selling passenger vehicle in America, has gone from $18,225 to $23,670 – a 30% increase. That's a domestically sourced and manufactured product… its price is completely dominated by the value of the U.S. dollar. 

Meanwhile… the government says there is no inflation… and that continuing to print $85 billion to buy government and mortgage debt is merely "interest-rate policy by other means." What could go wrong?

Buffett:

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett has sagely warned that buying all of those bonds and manipulating interest rates to stupidly low levels will prove to be much easier than selling them. The fact is, the moment our central bank begins to sell U.S. Treasury bonds, the whole world will follow. After all, our dollars aren't needed in trade for most of the big commodity countries. So the free ride will be over. All the traders ...will surely change course the moment it starts to sell.

The New America = The Old Europe

And what, you might wonder, have our noble leaders done with all the money and credit they've created? 

Mostly, they have expanded the welfare state at the fastest pace in history, creating more dependency in your fellow citizens than has ever existed before in the history of our country. There are now almost 100 million people collecting food stamps, disability, or long-term unemployment. Barely 60% of the adult population of America bothers to go to work, even on a part-time basis. 

On the backs of the poor schleps in America who paid their mortgages and still go to work, a gargantuan pile of debts and obligations have been piled higher and higher over the last five years. Total debt now approaches $60 trillion. Federal debt has nearly doubled in the last five years, from $9 trillion to $17 trillion. And our governments (state, local, and federal) continue to take up more and more of our economy – comprising more than 40% of our roughly $15 trillion gross domestic product (GDP) today....

I have long argued that the collapse of the currency and economy is a planned event.  It is supported by the childlike minds of those who confuse academic hopiness with reality.  The tsunami is not a projection, it is only far off shore.  You cannot stop a tsunami, you can only protect yourself and get away from the all the excitement of the beach.  Most people understand there is something seriously wrong:

Gun ownership in America now stands at 47% of all adults – that's near the highest percentage ever recorded by Gallup...The percentage of self-described liberals who own guns has grown from 30% to 40% in that period. So even folks who don't believe you should own a gun have been buying them... 

....And that's why… despite the central banks' efforts to manipulate the paper price of gold down… there are never any gold coins left to buy. That's why the price of farmland has soared (as I predicted it would). That's why more and more wealthy people are leaving America. And that's why… I firmly believe… this ongoing bull market will end very, very badly.

*   so far this year, more than 40% of the exchanges involved the euro. Only 33% involved the dollar.


If you This is the key: there are not many places to put money for safte keeping.  The US Dollar has been OK because Europe is on the front line of collapse. Our system is based upon banking logic, not a real economy. One day traders will wake up and see others selling off out Treasury debt because it is a bad investement. Why?  Because the Fed has been creating money to buy the debt and has decided it better start selling off trillions of dollars of debt

The market becomes flooded and an old fashion run accelerates causing the wave of panic to back upon itself. The film Margin Call gives you a good idea how this works.  Or, Its a Wonderful Life.

Don't be on the beach.