I WILL NOT CONSUME

From 99 Percent Space,  September 1, 2012

Today Sept 1st will go down in the annals of infamy in Spain as the beginning of the end of the corrupt government and their bankster masters. Today, among a host of “austerity” terrorist policies, the Value Added Tax (in Spanish IVA) goes up to 21%, meaning that more than one cent in every five of EVERY monetary transaction goes directly to the parasite class. Yesterday, the VAT was 18%, so the increase is only of 3 points, but a psychological barrier has been broken and the blowback will be as widespread as the tax itself.

One thing about leeches is they don’t have brains, because a brain offers no competitive advantage in the mindless task of bloodsucking. This is true of human leeches too; they have brains, but as a vestigial organ that is more trouble than it’s worth. Were they capable of firing neurones in sequence, they would already know that raising the VAT causes a global drop in tax revenue as folks respond to the hike by buying less. Thus we have the example of Portugal, which applied a similar rise a year ago and has collected 2 thousand million LESS than foreseen due to a huge drop in consumption in all sectors. Pretty smart, huh? Yeah, between the EU Peen technocrats and the rest of the bankster puppets in power, they got enough grey matter to spread thin on a melba toast.

Of course, it could be argued that this tax hike is not to increase revenue but to get the serfs used to making due with less as part of their evil plan to peenify us all. If this were the case, then it would be equally counterproductive for them: once we come together to fend for ourselves, the parasites will find themselves without anyone to feed off. Better make that half a melba.

One way or another, I’m actively boycotting this tax hike big time. As an independent professional, I not only must eat more VAT on my invoices, but also accomodate the hike in income taxes that start today too, from 15 to 21%. Needless to say, I will do everything in my power to minimize the impact of this theft on my bottom line and implement the principles of conscientious objection against the criminal behaviour of a government that has broken every single social contract with me and my fellow citizens, looting us and leading us into deeper debt slavery to the international bankster cabal.

As soon as the traitor Ratjoy announced the hike in July, I rearranged my payment schedules with my clients and invoiced the next 4 months of work in August under the old tax regime, thus eliminating income under the new regime. With two clients I have arranged a barter system of free exchange with no paperwork involved. I purchase food directly from farmer friends or from the neighbourhood organic cooperative, and if I need some winter gear I’ll buy it at the thrift shop. If I have to go somewhere that requires public transport, I’ll use a bike. If I want to buy music or watch a flick, it’s Spotify and Netflix all the way.

Every second of every day I will search for ways to NOT CONTRIBUTE A SINGLE CENT TO BAIL OUT BANKSTERS AND CORRUPT POLITICOS. I make it my personal objective to turn this tax hike into the single most disastrous event to befall the economy since the crisis began, and be the change I want to see in the world. And most of all I talk to others to ensure they understand how we’re being robbed and that full-out resistence is not an option but a duty.

Deep down I’m grateful to the leeches for making my task so much easier with their ham-fisted policies. After so long shining the spotlight into the darkness, it is finally dawning on people what the darkness was hiding all along. To many it is a shock to realize how deep the depravity goes, and now when I talk the crazy renegade talk, folks are tuning in like never before. If they walk the crazy renegade walk too, we’re going to be seeing a lot of redundant taxmen lining up for dole. And Universe will smile; and it will be good.

Light out.

.

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Art credits:
chrisglass.com/album/2011/03/10/the-deserted-cincinnati-mall/
paperboat.studiopod.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/washington-mall-132.jpg

“It’s Time to Look Forward…” Deconstructing the Latest Orwellian Meme

From Libertyblitzkrieg, September 1, 2012

As of late, I have noticed increased usage of the very dangerous and duplicitous meme “time to look forward.”  This is typically used as a rebuttal to someone questioning past crimes committed by the criminal elite and their henchmen.  The statement seems to work well on the sheeple, as in their minds this sounds reasonable.  That is always how the elite target the sheeple mind.  Say something that sounds good and assume they won’t think too much.  Unfortunately, it usually works.  I mean, why dwell on past mistakes when we have so much work to do to make for a better future!  Of course, this is completely ridiculous.  For one thing, the biggest threat to our future is a lack of confidence and the reason for the lack of confidence is the increasing realization that a criminal oligarchy runs America and is never held accountable for their crimes.  They have total immunity.  So who wants to invest in and participate in such a society?  No one, of course.

However, the meme is even more dangerous on a philosophical level.  By definition the moment after a crime is committed it is immediately “in the past.”  So not dwelling on the past and “looking toward the future” means that you can essentially excuse any crime you want forever.  Not only past crimes but also future crimes since as soon as a crime is committed it will be moved into the category of “the past.” See how these guys operate.  They love semantics to make people think their own servitude “seems reasonable.”  So my advice to everyone is that the minute you hear anyone in a position of power or influence utter this meme you know they are not to be trusted.

In any event, the reason I started thinking about this today is an article I read from Glenn Greenwald on the fact that Holder’s Department of Injustice has decided to give final immunity to all Bush era CIA torturers.  Although even back to June 30, 2011 Holder’s department had decided that in “more than 100 cases the justice department had reviewed, there would be no charges brought in any of them – except two.”

Well they have just decided not to bring charges on those two either, despite the fact that both detainees died in custody.  Here are some key points from the article:

This is so despite the findings of General Antonio Taguba, who investigated the torture regime and said that “there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes” and “the only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.” And it is done even in the face of General Barry McCaffrey’s extraordinary observation that:

“We tortured people unmercifully. We probably murdered dozens of them during the course of that, both the armed forces and the CIA.”

The ACLU’s Jameel Jaffer yesterday said:

“That the justice department will hold no one accountable for the killing of prisoners in CIA custody is nothing short of a scandal … the decision not to file charges against individuals who tortured prisoners to death is yet another entry in what is already a shameful record.”

Beyond the disgust that these events, on their own, should invoke in any decent person, there are two points worth making about all of this which really highlight just how odious all of it is.

First, Obama has shielded Bush torture crimes not only from criminal prosecution, but any and all forms of accountability. Obama himself vigorously opposed and succeeded in killing even a congressional investigation into the torture regime at a time when his party controlled both houses of Congress.

Moreover, notice how Obama’s stance changed as soon as he was elected:

During his 2008 campaign for president, Obama repeatedly vowed that, while he opposed “partisan witch-hunts”, he would instruct his attorney general to “immediately review” the evidence of criminality in these torture programs because “nobody is above the law.” Yet, almost immediately after winning the 2008 election, Obama, before he was even inaugurated, made clear that he was opposed to any such investigations, citing what he called “a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards”.

This is the same line many apologists use to excuse the bankster bailouts.  I bet this defense wouldn’t work for you or me in a court would it?

So what is the main reason Obama isn’t going after anyone for this?  Well it’s simple really.  He doesn’t want to ever be called out for his own criminality.  As Charlie Savage noted in the NY Times:

Because every president eventually leaves office, incoming chief executives have an incentive to quash investigations into their predecessor’s tenure.

This is America folks.  Time to wake up.

Read the full Greenwald article here.

In Liberty,
Mike

The Rulers And The Ruled

From Zero Hedge, 09/02/2012 

From Bill Buckler, author of The Privateer

The Rulers And The Ruled

The truth that without property rights, no other rights are possible has been known for millennia. In the formalised study of politics, it is more than 300 years old, having been articulated with great care by John Locke in the late 17th century. The modern study of economics is well over 200 years old. Adam Smith’s Wealth Of Nations was published in 1776 - the same year as Thomas Jefferson’sDeclaration Of Independence. The great work which finally integrated money with politics and economics celebrates its centennial this year. Ludwig von Mises published his Theory Of Money And Credit in 1912 - the year before the US inaugurated an income tax and a central bank. Ten years after that in 1922, von Mises published Socialism - a book which established beyond refutation the fundamental truth that any form of central planning and/or government control of the means of production cannot work because it makes economic calculation impossible. Picture if you will the state of ANY other branch of human endeavour if ALL the knowledge about it gained over the past three centuries had been summarily dismissed.

Property rights are a prerequisite for any kind of exchange - direct or indirect. The ability to exchange is fundamental to any type of viable economic activity. The efficiency of exchange is fundamental to the success of that economic activity and the resultant prosperity of the nation that engages in it. Indirect exchange using a MEDIUM of exchange or money is hugely more efficient than direct exchange or barter. That makes money the most important economic good in existence. The tragedy of our present global plight is the simple fact that money is also the least understood economic good in existence.

The first pre-requisite of the establishment of a “society” of the rulers and the ruled has always been the same. The rulers must gain control over the medium of exchange. For obvious reasons, no nation can ever progress to a state of advanced economic activity until a medium of exchange is established. Once it is established, there is no going back. An advanced economy cannot operate by means of barter. The problem is that once the government or the rulers gain control of money, it progressively ceases to be a medium of exchange and becomes a medium of control. That impinges on the functioning of markets which in turn impinges on the maintenance of property rights. Thus, we come full circle from a free society to a command society. There has never been any shortage of those who want to rule. The problem has always been with the vast majority who are content to be ruled. Today’s global outcry for the manufacturing of more and more “money” out of thin air is an eloquent testimony. It shows that most people have no understanding of freedom, markets or money. Lacking such understanding - and having no desire to gain it - most people have accepted government as their masters.

As Robert Heinlein stated the problem - it is impossible to free a serf or a slave. He or she must free themselves

Afghanistan and US delusions of empire

From PressTV, Sun Sep 2, 2012 7:50AM GMT 
By Ben Schreiner 

It’s fairly easy to see why the chauvinistic US media has largely ignored the war (in Afghanistan); the US has plainly lost. And the defeat of the celebrated military machine clearly makes for bad copy.” 

Left completely, and rather conspicuously, absent from the democratic charade, which is the US presidential election, has been America’s longest war: Afghanistan. Over a decade of occupation has seemingly left neither of the two presidential candidates, nor the elite media, able to stomach so much as a mere mention of the nation’s latest “forgotten war.” Of course, Afghanistan was long ago cast down that vast American memory hole. 

According to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, a mere two percent of all US press content in 2011 dealt with the war in Afghanistan. Despite 80,000 occupying US troops, a near equal number of US-funded private contractors (i.e. mercenaries), and billions upon billions of taxpayer dollars, the US media devoted the same amount of content to the war last year as to sports. The same amount of content as was devoted to celebrity and entertainment news. (And this, mind you, says nothing of the quality of the coverage.) 

It’s fairly easy to see why the chauvinistic US media has largely ignored the war; the US has plainly lost. And the defeat of the celebrated military machine clearly makes for bad copy. 

In just the latest evidence of America’s defeat, this year has already seen 45 NATO forces gunned down by their Afghan counterparts. In the month of August alone, 15 NATO soldiers-including 12 Americans-were killed in such “green-on-blue” attacks. As a worried New York Times editorial on the precipitous rise of Afghan “turncoats” stated: “American officials are struggling to understand the forces at work.” 

The forces at work are those of imperial defeat. The occupied have begun to shake themselves free from their occupier. A process long since foretold to all those with a rudimentary understanding of Afghan history. 

Indeed, the situation has deteriorated to such an extent for NATO forces that on a mid-August visit to Kabul, US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army General Martin Dempsey, had his idle plane come under enemy shelling. A “lucky shot,” a NATO spokesman would later say. 

Even the battle for the hearts and minds of Afghans has been lost. (A tall order, given the brutality of the Taliban.) The knockout blow perhaps came with the series of revelations earlier this year that US forces appear to busy their time in country burning copies of Holy Qur’ans, pissing on Afghan corpses, and coldly mowing down sleeping villagers in the night. Although to be fair, it’s difficult to imagine exactly how, even absent such atrocities, the US was ever to win over ordinary Afghans with Hellfire missiles. 

The battle within the homeland over the hearts and minds of the imperial subjects is now lost as well. According to a recent Chicago Council of Global Affairs poll, 67 percent of Americans now deem the war to be “not worth fighting.” Seven in ten, moreover, say the war either “made no difference” in US security, or actually made the country “less safe.” 


Faced with defeat on all fronts, Washington planners, nonetheless, continue to uphold the delusional dream of an indefinite US stay in Afghanistan. Imperial dreams die hard. 


Despite President Obama’s pledge to pull out US forces by 2014, the Strategic Partnership agreement signed in May of this year between the US and Afghan governments commits the US to at least another decade of economic and military aid. It also, as the Wall Street Journal reported, “provides for the possibility of US forces in Afghanistan after 2014, for the purposes of training Afghan forces and targeting the remnants of al-Qaeda.” 

Such schemes are evidence that those in Washington remain suspended in an illusion akin to that gripping the party of Big Brother in George Orwell’s 1984. They appear to believe (and have believed for over a decade now) that total victory in Afghanistan is near at hand-perhaps only one decisive battle away. Such, though, is the modern-day imperial orthodoxy permeating the corridors of power in Washington. For as Orwell wrote, “Orthodoxy means not thinking-not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.” 

Predictably, President Obama’s Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, promises to pursue much the same in Afghanistan. As Senator Arthur Vandenberg once remarked, American “politics stops at water’s edge.” Thus with no choice, there is no need for either candidate or the media to even broach the subject of the war. 

In lieu, then, of discussing Afghanistan and US militarism more broadly, the presidential campaign devolves into spectacle and triviality. Substance, where it is to be found, is limited to squabbles over who promises to cut the most from the already gutted American social safety net. The fact that the Pentagon appropriates over half the US budget (52 percent in 2011, according to the War Resisters League) in order to conduct campaigns of misery and terror abroad, leaving the hollow mantra of “shared sacrifice” in its wake at home, is beyond debate-beyond the pale. US militarism is simply an unquestionable pillar of the American way of life. Something the people of the world (from Vietnam to Afghanistan, from Iraq to Korea and beyond) have come to learn firsthand. 

But US imperialism will not-cannot-continue in perpetuity. The determining factor in just how much longer the US power elite shall be able to maintain their imperial delusions in Afghanistan and elsewhere is ultimately dependent on how much longer those forced to bear the costs of Washington’s runaway militarism take it. After all, the domestic and foreign victims of US imperialism alike, as two wise men once wrote, “have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.” 

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Related:

NATO Halting Program to Train Afghan Recruits