A Word (or Two or More) on The Supreme Court's Decision to Unfetter the Corporations in Elections
Above: Criss Angel and Lance Burton, Masters of Misdirection

It doesn't really matter. The Corporations already rule this land. There are few politicians who are not already in thrall to them. People elected Democrats last fall expecting robust change. We got a herd of weak-kneed "moderates". The Bush Wars go on. Private Corporate Armies (er, security services) grow like cancer. The banks go unregulated. Real wages fall. Unemployment increases. The People grow in poverty while their money goes to the bankers.

A consistent 60% of the public responded to polls all year supporting a single payer government run health insurance system in this country as the only way to actually gain efficiencies in the huge amount of money (highest per capita in the world) going into paying for American health care. We know much of this money is wasted on executive salaries, bonuses and perquisites, stockholder profits, duplication of services, palatial buildings, byzantine record keeping, gatekeepers whose job it is to prevent you from getting health care, and last but not least, lobbying politicians and hiring them when they retire from Congress. The people clamor not for a government option. Nor do they wail for taxpayer subsidies for the corrupt profit motivated insurance companies to provide a crappy health plan to people without one.

But true reform of the Health Cartel (which would be Government provided insurance as practiced in most of the advanced democracies in the world) was not even discussed in the halls of what Fox News would have you believe to be a Congress controlled by a "liberal" Democratic Party. The "reforms" discussed would have ended up costing more money than the disfunctional system now in effect, involved the government even more in health treatment, and maintained the health insurance establishment as the gatekeepers to health care. Everyone senses that something smells vile in Washington. No one can deny that.

If a supposedly liberal party representing the people with large majorities in Congress and the Presidency cannot truly reform such an obviously corrupt system without introducing more corruption benefiting Corporations, then you know who rules the roost. If the Financial Institutions representing the Super Rich who rule this country are the only interests that receive significant government get-well money after crashing the economy into a tree at the end of a drunken decades long thrill ride (first ensuring that all rules of the road were abolished or ignored and that no police would be on duty to notice the spree) then every politician in Washington is nothing more than a slick gibberish-spouting corporate flack man. (I'm sorry for the long sentences; I really am.)

Corporations were granted person hood status in the United States as a result 1886 Supreme Court Case, Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, 118 U.S. 394. Earlier, in Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 518 (1819), the Supreme Court settled that, for our purposes, corporate contracts were private charters that superseded government attempts to alter or control them as public charters. Corporations were invented to pool capital for a specific purpose. Historically they were strictly controlled by public entities (government) to limit their activities and longevity. In the United States corporations were unleashed by these decisions of a Supreme Court composed predominantly of corporate lawyers. Corporations were granted by their Supreme Court servants all of rights of individuals and very very few of the responsibilities. The road to Fascism was thereby open and the rich have ridden their armored corporate buggies on it ever since. The Corporation became a tool to increase the power and influence of those who already had too much of both; it also shielded these craven creatures from responsibility for the misdeeds, debts and crimes committed by these fictional "persons" for their profit.

Once the corporate culture of irresponsibility was born, the Rollerball world we now endure could built on the Lie that individual freedom depends on greater Corporate Freedom. Corporate freedom and individual freedom are incompatible. Individual freedom is compromised by the unfettered Corporation far more than it is by Big Government. In our case the government has become merely a rump government rubber stamping corporate policy.

The people theoretically have a say in who runs the government in a democracy. Only a few major stockholders have any say in the way corporations are run and how they influence the governments they have corrupted. We know where the government is and we know who runs it; and we know who to pursue in a revolution when that becomes necessary. The families and individual hungry vampires behind Corporate Power are more resourceful, anonymous, amorphous, shape shifting, and ephemeral, therefore, far more dangerous to the people on whom they prey than the pathetic government bureaucrat who is their functionary. The next revolution, before it begins, must learn the lesson of identifying the true enemy and who is to blame for this world of trouble and suffering before the proscription lists are drawn up.

So, this decision to institutionalize corporations as speechifying persons just makes obvious what is already a reality. Perhaps this will make the identities (or at least the tools) of our true masters a little more apparent. Corporations have been successfully promoting "Big Government" as the problem for a long time in a gigantic misdirection campaign worthy of world class illusionists like Criss Angel or Lance Burton. Maybe we will more clearly see who has hijacked "Big Government" and just how feeble "Big Government" has become.

This representative Republic has been totally compromised. If you think electing a Democrat or Republican will improve things you should check your programming. If your enjoyment of freedom is the vicarious enjoyment of observing the antics of the super rich then you have succumbed to the Patty Hearst Syndrome. When the system only serves the needs of those who have no needs, We need a Revolution.

Quotes of the Day

"A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice."- Thomas Paine


Tao Teh Ching
Chapter 53

With but a small understanding
One may follow the Way like a main road,
Fearing only to leave it;
Following a main road is easy,
Yet people delight in difficult paths.

When palaces are kept up
Fields are left to weeds
And granaries empty;
Wearing fine clothes,
Bearing sharp swords,
Glutting with food and drink,
Hoarding wealth and possessions -
These are the ways of theft,
And far from the Way.

Lao Tzu
(tr. Peter A. Merel)

Another translation:

Tao Teh Ching, Chapter 53

If I were suddenly to become known, and put into a position to conduct a government according to the Great Dao,
What I should be most afraid of would be a boastful display.
The great Dao is very level and easy; but people love the by-ways.
Their court yards and buildings shall be well kept,
But their fields shall be ill-cultivated,
And their granaries very empty.
They shall wear elegant and ornamented robes, carry a sharp sword at their girdle,
Pamper themselves in eating and drinking, and have a superabundance of property and wealth;
Such princes may be called robbers and boasters.
This is contrary to the Dao surely!"

Lao Tzu
Translated by James Legge, 1891

"She was a good one all right, she was a good lay but like all lays after the 3rd or 4th night I began to lose interest and didn't go back. But I couldn't help thinking, god, all these mailmen do is drop in their letters and get laid. This is the job for me, oh yes yes yes." -Charles Bukowski, Post Office, 1971

Remembering History, The Treaty of Nanking

"The Emperor of China agrees to pay the sum of 6,000,000 of dollars, as the value of the opium which was delivered up at Canton in the month of March, 1839, as a ransom for the lives of Her Britannic Majesty's Superintendent and subjects, who had been imprisoned and threatened with death by the Chinese High Officers
And it is further stipulated, that interest, at the rate of 5 per cent. per annum, shall be paid by the Government of China on any portion of the above sums that are not punctually discharged at the periods fixed."- THE TREATY OF NANKING Nanking, August 29, 1842 Peace Treaty between the Queen of Great Britain and the Emperor of China

The War For Drugs!

The first Opium War between China and Britain came about when the Emperor of China tried to make opium illegal in his land. British traders had recently flooded the country with the stuff addicting an estimated 10% of the population.
Britain wanted Chinese goods, especially tea. The only thing China, being self sufficient, wanted in return was gold and silver. British traders decided China would need drugs, specifically opium, when they had insufficient precious metals to give for tea. (The British Empire especially lacked silver, the coin of China, which relates to the institution of the gold standard by the City of London in the 19th century previously covered in THIS POST.) This nefarious plan worked wonderfully until the Emperor of China made the drug trade illegal. The Queen's solution: War!
China had no chance against the modern army of the British Empire and promptly lost. China had to compensate, at interest, the Queen for the war, and her protected traders for the confiscation of illegal drugs by Imperial Commissioner Li Zexu. There were no international treaties at the time protecting China. They lost Hong Kong in "perpetuity" to Britain and had to suffer the de facto legalization of opium, which was no where mentioned in the treaty except for the financial compensation for the opium, seized mainly from the Sassoon family. (See the excerpt above.)
In 1844 the United States signed a treaty with China banning the opium trade, but it continued unpunished under the auspices of the British. Many of the most respected and powerful American families we know today made their original fortunes illegally trading opium with China.

Quote of the Day:

"After all, our naval power is so strong that we can tell the Emperor what we mean to hold rather than what he would cede. We must demand the admission of opium into interior China as an article of lawful commerce and increase the indemnity payments and British access to several additional Chinese ports."-British Prime Minister Palmerston writing Crown Commissiner Captain Charles Elliot protesting the treaty because it didn't favor the British enough

Observations...Of a Various and Sundry Sort.
One Step Beyond Common Conclusions
Above, John Newland, "your guide to the Supernatural"

A Magickal Note
Temples concentrate energy, therefore clogging the flow of energy generally.

Mercenaries
Mercenary armies like Blackwater, or whatever they are currently calling themselves, are problematic to the survival of a Republic. Blackwater seems to partly justify itself using the perverse religious theory known as Dominion Theology, which gives the believer a carte blanche of justification for his actions.
What are the problems I associate with Mercenary Armies?
They are in essence, anti-democratic.
The government can avoid responsibility for the irresponsible actions of the mercenaries, all the while enabling them to perform such atrocities.
Many an army in ancient Rome, loyal to a man rather than the state, would sack a Roman city for sympathies to a man who opposed their leader. It is not a long stretch of the imagination to envision a mercenary business, exploiting ancient resentments, using private brigades from the South to inflict violence on and ignore the rights of citizens dwelling in perceived "liberal" areas of the country. (And, of course, the reverse although maybe that is not so likely.)
Corporate Law protects the stockholders from real individual responsibility for illegal and immoral activity of the corporation.
Blackwater tends to suck out of the military its more (financially) ambitious and often competent members after the taxpayers have paid for expensive training. The military is therefore robbed of the experienced cohorts needed to perform its mission and train new recruits. The competence of the force is thereby degraded.
Government protects the private business of mercenaries by deeming their activities classified abusing national security laws.
Military leaders are coaxed with promises of positions after retirement to regard the interests of the Mercenary Corporations with favor.
Reactionary political dogma that government is bad and private business is good is promoted and prolonged once established as policy in unconstitutional areas. National defense is the responsibility of the federal government, not private business. Essentially private armies under the control of generals and consuls destroyed the Roman Republic and led to unfettered Empire and tremendous abuse of power, depending on the whims of the Emperor.
Private business is put into a position to use government to usurp the legitimate activities of government. Government becomes the tool of private interests and pays only lip service to the interests of the people at large.
Defense interests of the government tend to be corrupted by individuals who are put in place to promote business interests which are antithetical to a peace-loving people. War is good for business.
Yes, this is the trail to the F word: Fascism.

Capitalism
Capitalism works to exempt itself from the trials of competition while forcing labor to compete with itself on every level.
This competition of labor among itself has been manifested through such promotions as women put in the workforce, which essentially cheapened labor by doubling the supply of workers.
Illegal immigration has been tolerated with a wink and a nod by corporate interests to further cheapen the cost of labor while cynically throwing the all the blame on progressive and liberal groups. (Who deserve some of it.)
Capitalism uses government to force labor to insure the losses it incurs when it indulges in risky business.
The economy is expanded via a kind of parasitism.
The Sunday blue laws are liquidated to create more work days.
Family shared activities are curtailed.
The consumer culture promoted by the corporatists makes shopping a key activity for people when they do have some time off.
Promotion of consumer debt and lower pay leads to the need for more work which stunts strong family life, cultural activities (except the oxymoronic "consumer culture") and, perhaps most importantly, political involvement.

Update: A Test For Gold Bars To Determine Hidden Tungsten

Back in November the story arose [See previous post HERE] that certain banking institutions had been astonished to discover that what had been thought to be gold bars were actually gold encased tungsten. These bars were difficult to identify as tungsten has an almost identical density as gold. This story seemed to emanate from one source and there has been little confirmation since November from banking institutions. There is no doubt that this fraud happens; we are uncertain about the extent of the fraud. There has been a continued run up in the price of gold and central banks have been adding to gold reserves in recent months. This doesn't contradict the story.
The fact that authorities haven't debunked the rumor by now is interesting.
Very little information has surfaced on this problem since the initial stories. Here is a report of a non-invasive analytical technique that would determine the validity of any gold object. There is little detail and it could be a scam, but here is the LINK.

Quote of the Day

When Kung-hsi Hua was sent on a mission to Ch'i, Master Jan requested (of Confucius who was representing the government, the Ch'i family) an allowance of grain for Hua's mother.
The Master (Confucius) said, "Give her a fu." (cauldron, a nominal amount)
Jan requested more, deeming a fu not enough.
"Then give her a yi," (a measure, more, but still not enough to please Jan) said the Master.
Jan instead gave her five ping. (bundles, ten times what Confucius granted)
The Master observed, "When Ch'ih (Kung-hsi Hua) was proceeding to Ch'i, he had fine fat horses pulling his carriage, and wore shining furs."
"It is said that a gentleman, who is expected to be a superior man, helps the distressed, but does not enable the rich to become richer."

Confucius, The Analects, an amalgam and improvement (I hope) of various translations, primarily Legge and Waley, by John Bonanno