Free-Man's Perspective

Could You Do This for Just One Day?

A point I’ve made several times in our subscription newsletter is that most people give their attention to the negative things in the world and pass right over the good things. If you think about that for just a moment, it’s easy to understand why people are more disturbed and unhappy than they need to be.

In other words, we make ourselves far more miserable than is justified by the actual facts.

So, I have a challenge for you (one that I make to myself from time to time as well): Go through a day – one day only – and pay attention to all the good things you see.

I am quite sure that ignoring every bad thing for just one day won’t kill you. After all, you give those things your full attention every other day.

So, I challenge you to spend just one day looking at the good and looking past the bad.

Some Help Getting Started

To help you get into the right frame of mind, here’s a short clip from the movie Love Actually. Please take the one minute or so required to watch it.

Love actually IS all around. We see it every day. The problem is that we don’t focus on it.

Cooperation is even more common. Think about how few auto accidents there are. With all those thousands of cars driving at high speeds, stopping, starting, and changing lanes, it’s rather miraculous that there aren’t many more accidents. And the reason that there aren’t is that nearly all of us cooperate really well, nearly all of the time.

Think about the things we usually complain about. They are times when cooperation or some other type of basic goodness breaks down.

We expect cooperation, consideration, and basic responsibility so much that we half freak out when it fails.

If You Try…

If you try to see the good, you’ll find it everywhere.

I drive by a homeless man who goes out of his way to help other homeless guys and to feed animals. I know a businessman who goes far out of his way to help friends, not wishing any kind of repayment. I know many women who are pleased to help their families, many men who are pleased to stop and help someone in trouble, and so on.

If you look for it, goodness and decency are actually everywhere.

So, for just one day, I challenge you to go out and see the good in the world. Pick your day, watch that clip again, then go out and focus your eyes on the good.

I think you’ll get a lot out of it.

Paul Rosenberg
FreemansPerspective.com

The Earth Belongs to the Living, Not to the Dead

What if your grandfather had gone on a wild spending binge, long before you were born, and put himself millions of dollars in debt to people who knew he could never pay? Would it be your obligation to work double-shifts all your life to pay that debt back? And if you died before paying it off, would it become your baby’s obligation?

I think most of us would answer those questions with a resounding “No way!” As well we should. We are not and should not be slaves to the past – slaves to actions we never took and for which we had no possible means of consent.

On September 6th, 1789, in the very first year of the US Constitution, Thomas Jefferson endorsed precisely this conclusion in a letter he wrote to James Madison:

I say, the earth belongs to each of these generations during its course, fully and in its own right. The second generation receives it clear of the debts and encumbrances of the first, the third of the second, and so on.

For if the first could charge it with a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead and not to the living generation.

He wrote the same thing to John Wayles Eppes twenty-four years later, in June of 1813:

The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.

To lay debt upon the unborn is thoroughly immoral. To try to enforce such a debt is thoroughly criminal.

Your Child or Grandchild

This conversation is critically important, because each child born in the US is born massively indebted. Using $200 trillion to represent the promises already made to people now living (some estimates are higher) and assuming a population of 310 million, that comes to $645,161 of debt, by the time your child reaches his cradle. If you expect your child to become a productive person, his or her share will be roughly twice that amount, or approximately $1.3 million.

(The US government is not unique in this regard, by the way. I use the US example, because it’s easier and because most of my readers seem to be Americans.)

Would you sign papers loading your baby with such a debt?

I am stating these facts in personal terms to cut through the usual BS that passes for public discourse. I am also using the voices of “founding fathers,” partly because it undercuts the fraudulent government story that “we’re following the wisdom of the founders.” Beside, we’re talking about real persons here. Making it personal is not manipulative, but accurate. To make it amorphous would be manipulative.

And while I’m on the subject of founding fathers, here’s something George Washington wrote in a letter to James Madison, also in 1789:

No generation has a right to contract debts greater than can be paid off during the course of its own existence.

I think that’s a very clear and very moral expression. It is not, however, what has been done.

A group formed recently under the phrase, “Not our debt.” I know nothing about the group, but their phrase is entirely correct. The debt of the US government does not belong to us, and we have no moral obligation to repay it.

Most of us do pay something toward that debt (which grows exponentially, just the same), but we should stay very clear as to why we pay. That reason, of course, is naked force, as in coercion and violence. There is no morality to it, except the morality that some people might invent, either to salve their consciences or as sycophants to power. (Though most just do what everyone else does, never considering why.)

My advice is this: Do whatever you want as far as paying under threat, but don’t ever be confused about the morality of this situation. This is a swindle of gargantuan proportions. And that’s precisely what Thomas Jefferson believed. You can see this in a letter he wrote to John Taylor, dated May 28, 1816:

The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling posterity on a large scale.

Do what you need to do, but don’t ever think you have a moral responsibility to pay that kind of debt.

Paul Rosenberg
FreemansPerspective.com

Why the Founding Fathers Made Their Own Money

It is an interesting historical fact that people who take part in rebellions tend to coin their own money – not when the rebellion concludes, but as it starts.

There is good evidence that silver half shekels, like the one pictured above, were actually minted on the Temple Mount during the Jewish Rebellion against Rome in 66-70 AD. (The wonderful Biblical Archaeology Review ran an article on the subject.)

And this case is hardly unique; there have been many rebellions that promptly issued their own currency. Here is Massachusetts currency from 1776, issued early in the American Revolutionary War:

The primary reason that rebels create their own currency is that monetary control is far more of a force than people realize. Baron Rothschild was not being overly flamboyant when he said, “Give me control over a nation’s money supply, and I care not who makes its laws.” Being able to manipulate a money supply is a fantastic power, affecting every part of an economy. If you know in advance that the money supply will go up (diluting its value) or contract (concentrating its value), you immediately gain a massive advantage over everyone else – and you can target this advantage to help or hurt almost any group you choose.

Because of this, a rebel group that is tied to their opponent’s money has nearly lost before the battles begin. Serious rebels learn this quickly.

The Modern Rebellion

The rebellion that we’re all part of is not an armed rebellion, but a moral rebellion. And, interestingly enough, our rebellion understood very early on that money was a primary factor in our enslavement.

The roots of our rebellion go back as far as the first oppressed man or woman who thought clearly about morality, whenever that was. In modern times, however, we can trace our rebellion back to the 1940s – a time in which Mises had already been examining the foundations of money, Hayek was interested in competing currencies, and Rand was examining the morality of money.

(I’m passing over very many good people in the above paragraph. May they forgive my brevity.)

In our lifetimes, we’ve had David Chaum’s work on digital cash, Orlin Grabbe’s work (both theoretical and practical), e-gold, Pecunix, networks of exchangers, subsidiary services, and, most recently, crypto-currencies, beginning with Bitcoin. Our moral rebellion is not slowing down.

What matters about all of these currencies (and many more I haven’t mentioned) is that they are all rebel currencies. Sure, a few criminals and Ponzi operators have made use of our technologies, but that’s simply unavoidable. How many crooks use government money? (Answer: all of them.)

Rebel Morality

I think it’s important to make a few points about this moral rebellion of ours:

This is not about attacking anyone or even attacking the current systems of oppression. Yes, every individual has the right to self-defense, but what we’re after here is not to lord it over anyone else, but being left alone to live as we wish.
We must treat our fellow men and women with respect, even if they are wrong. If they want to be ruled by a state, that’s their choice, and we have no right to rip it away from them. (If it crashes without our coerced “support,” that’s not our problem.) If we think that people are being stupid to choose state serfdom, we should convince them that other ways are better, but we cannot force them to live our way and still call ourselves moral.

Our rebellion money has actually done a fine job of supporting these two moral points. The supposed failures of these currencies were primarily that they couldn’t withstand coercive and violent attacks. In other words, they worked very well; their “problems” were attacks from the status quo: a system of coercion and violence, masquerading as justice.

What we are now seeing is a moral awakening. Young people are questioning the systems that supposedly sustain them but actually use them as slaves.

When people begin to see the world in moral terms, they quickly perceive the deep immorality of the status quo – a system that is utterly dependent upon coercion and deception. If there is a root to the continuance and success of honest, rebel money, this is it.

In the end, our battle is this: morality versus coercion and deception.

Paul Rosenberg
FreemansPerspective.com

A Report from Middle America

I was recently involved in a day of meetings with small business owners in the American Midwest. It was both encouraging and sad at the same time.

What I Found First

Overall, I found a large room full of productive human beings. It was uplifting. Most of these people were between thirty and seventy years old, more men than women, and they were all productive people, the kind who get up early every day, make sure that complex systems are producing properly, fix anything that is broken or near breaking, plan for the future, cooperate with large numbers of other people, and then go home at the end of the day and love their families.

If all the world lived like these people, we’d be halfway to a paradise by now. And that was a thought that made me sad.

Why? Because these people – by any standard of decency – should be left alone to create their better world. But instead, they are forcibly tied to wasteful, parasitic, and destructive systems. Half or more of their earnings are taken from them every year. Their actions are restricted by their moral inferiors. They live less than half the rewarding lives they should be enjoying, and for no defensible reason.

The Other Things

Beyond my overall happy/sad impressions, I found quite a few particular things:

These people would have preferred to discuss the practical particulars of their businesses – tools, materials, technical obstacles and solutions, and so on. But instead, they were forced to discuss government compliance. Almost every subject discussed from the front of the room dealt with government regulations. Most of the subjects discussed on the sides involved tools, equipment, business strategies and so on.
Dealing with employees is a major issue, especially involving the immigration police. These people are justifiably concerned with fines and indictments, just from hiring employees who are clearly long-time Americans. (That is, not Hispanics or other recent immigrants.) A few of the comments I heard:

“Good luck trying to explain that to an ICE agent.”

“Do NOT waive the 72 hour waiting period.”

“Do NOT allow them to enter your facility or inspect anything without authorization from counsel.”

Nearly all of these people agreed that government in America is out of control, abusive, and oppositional to their happiness. I think that’s a positive opinion, since it reflects reality, meaning that they have stopped looking at the world through myth-colored glasses. The sad part of that is…
These (good) people don’t know what to do about it. The system they grew up believing was their friend has turned against them. They’ve gathered the considerable courage required to face that, but they don’t know what to do next. They are working within the system as they can, trying to avoid its hazards, but don’t see any clear alternative – and no path of escape. They’d like to do other things, but they also need to feed their kids, and don’t know what to do about it all.
Bitcoin is spreading everywhere. One of these business owners, in a very rural area, has built a Bitcoin mining operation. And not only Bitcoin, he is also mining for the other cryptocurrencies. And, he’s telling everyone else about it. I was surprised (and pleased) by this, since this meeting had absolutely nothing to do with computers, economics, or anything else that usually connects to cryptocurrencies. This man simply saw a great opportunity and jumped on it.

All In All

All in all, I came away from the day more confident in the future than I had been the day before.

We are exposed to so many horror stories every day. The images thrust upon us show a world filled with danger and discouragement. The reality, however – once you remove yourself from the newsfeed – is that there are a lot of very decent people who are generally doing the right things.

Our job now is to define newer and better ways to live and to spread that information to as many good people as we can. And to remind them they DO have the right to live good, happy, prosperous lives.

Please do everything you can along these lines. Thanks.

Paul Rosenberg
FreemansPerspective.com

The Unstable Element that Messes Up the Inflation/Deflation Debate

I was recently asked to sit on an expert panel, analyzing an inflation/deflation debate between Harry Dent and Peter Schiff. Sitting with me on the panel were Doug Casey, Chris Mayer, and Karim Rahemtulla, as well as Messrs Dent and Schiff.

All of these guys spend prodigious amounts of time on financial analysis, and I don’t, so I wondered what I could bring to the party.

As I ran the subject through my mind, however, I realized something important had been left out of the analysis – something that I added to the panel and which I’d like to explain here. It was…

The Black Box

Without question, the central player in US markets (even world markets) is the Federal Reserve Bank. Every serious financial analysis concerns itself with Ben Bernanke and his successor Janet Yellen; indeed they have to, as the Federal Reserve single-handedly holds up the US stock and housing markets.

But when we talk about the Federal Reserve (or “the Fed,” for short), we are overlooking something very important:

Bernanke and Yellen are mere employees of the Federal Reserve, not the owners. And we don’t know who the owners are.

If you’re new to this subject, that may sound ridiculous, and I can’t blame you for thinking so. But, the fact is, we really don’t know. The US government doesn’t own it and isn’t telling who does.

We do know that the Fed is a private banking group that has been given a monopoly on the creation of US currency, and the list of its owners is a closely held secret.

The true owners are almost certainly reflected in the roster of Primary Dealers who skim from US dollars (actually Federal Reserve Notes) as they are being made, but we really don’t know much more than that. There was a list that circulated in about 1930, but that was a long time ago.

So…

Who are the people that Bernanke and Yellen take orders from? We don’t know.

What do these people want? We don’t know.

What are their long-term asset positions? We don’t know.

Who might they protect, aside from themselves? We don’t know.

If things get rough, will they obey politicians? Probably not, but we don’t know.

Our closest view of these people came from Professor Carroll Quigley, who said that he was given access to their records in the early 1960s. This is what he wrote in his book, Tragedy & Hope:

It must not be felt that the heads of the world’s chief central banks were themselves substantive powers in world finance. They were not. Rather they were the technicians and agents of the dominant investment bankers of their own countries, who had raised them up, and who were perfectly capable of throwing them down. The substantive financial powers of the world were in the hands of these investment bankers who remained largely behind the scenes in their own unincorporated private banks. These formed a system of international cooperation and national dominance which was more private, more powerful, and more secret than that of their agents in the central banks.

In another passage, he writes:

The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole… Each central bank sought to dominate its government by its ability to control treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence co-operative politicians by subsequent rewards in the business world.

So, was Quigley telling the truth? I don’t really know, but Quigley maintained an excellent reputation. This wasn’t a man given to wild stories.

And if Quigley did tell the truth in 1966, is it still true?

I don’t know that either, and that’s the point!

There’s a fundamental factor in our financial analysis that is completely unknown to us.

Presuming…

Okay, presuming that Quigley was telling the truth and that his information remains close to true… and presuming that when push comes to shove, the Fed will ignore politicians… it seems likely that the Fed (who is buying up the rights to lots of real estate at the moment) will pull the plug at some point.

The purpose of pulling the plug will be two-fold: To reset an untenable economic system and to consolidate their position in a deflation. (Deflation, with its flood of loan defaults, transfers assets from borrowers to lenders.)

After that, and with some friendly legislation, they can print with abandon (“$10,000 checks for everyone!”) and reset their system.

Presuming, of course, that the suckers (that’s you and me) keep obeying the rules of their rigged game.

So…

This was my contribution to the great inflation/deflation debate.

There is excellent financial analysis being done by bright, competent, and brave men and women. But we must also remember that a large black box sits in the center of our analysis, and we don’t know what’s happening inside of it.

The people who can see inside of that black box – and there are some, whose secrecy is protected at the highest levels – have a gigantic advantage over all other investors and analysts. And so long as the inside of that box cannot be seen, the insiders will maintain that advantage.

This doesn’t make financial analysis pointless, of course, but it does leave it with a large “unknown” factor.

Paul Rosenberg
FreemansPerspective.com

Get Ready for Adversity Now

Adversity is coming. Get ready for it now.

I’m not pessimistic about the future, mind you, I’m optimistic. Once we get through the present transition (and presuming the world doesn’t descend into deep darkness), human life will massively improve. Our descendants will look back at our time as “the dark ages.”

All in all, things are going fairly well for us at the moment. The decade of government worship is falling behind us, the Internet remains, the NSA has been exposed as a criminal hacker collective, and Bitcoin has burst onto the scene.

Sure, there are the usual petty squabbles and distractions, but the younger crowd is learning to ignore them and to keep moving forward.

But adversity is coming. In situations like this, it always does. Forks off the main cultural line – which is what we are – are accompanied by problems from without and problems from within.

We’ve all seen libertarian movements and projects that shot themselves in the foot. For whatever reasons, that’s just part of the current landscape. We’ll see more of it.

We’ve had attacks from the outside also. And while the state is generally declining in potency, they still have millions of employees who are willing to authorize and/or use violence on their behalf.

Learn to Take the Blows

There will be blows, and they will hurt. I wish I could assure you that all will be sweetness and light, but I’d be lying.

The first big blow is rough. It leaves you questioning what you really believed. It may also leave you afraid for your own reputation, and even your safety. Probably the deepest issue is shame: a dread of people ridiculing you and casting you out.

I’m sorry that these things are so painful. None of them will be as bad as the first big blow, but we live in a screwed-up world at the moment, and these things happen.

Such things also happen to people who hide in the corner, obsessing over every rule and assuring their rulers that they love them. The difference is that they are given crowds to hide in – we stand by ourselves.

Then What?

Once you’ve taken your first big blow, you are left with a choice: What to do next.

You’ll have to make your own choices, of course, but I know I didn’t start caring about liberty because I was hoping to get rich out of it or to find the easiest path through life. I was interested because it was good and true. I wanted to learn and to grow.

So, if liberty is the better way, what else is there for us to do? Shall we try to forget everything we learned and recondition ourselves to passive state worship? Shall we go back to believing lies and repeating vapid slogans for the rest of our lives? Could we, really?

We are building a better world, person by person, piece by piece. What else is there for us to do? Should we deny our own minds because people think we’re weird? Should we disregard the value of lives because people are terrified of ideas that lack an official stamp?

Liberty requires you to value yourself. Shall we pretend that this is a bad thing?

Huge numbers of people are sure that leaving the approved path will call punishment down upon them. They are terrified of being different and doubly terrified of being different and better. Bad new ideas may bother them, but when a clearly better new idea comes along, they fall into an existential panic.

Jesus wasn’t killed for being a bad man, after all. He was killed for being better.

In the end, this is about living and thriving. Everything else is merely a means to that end. We’ve chosen life, and if we occasionally suffer for it, our only real alternative is to walk away from ourselves.

I leave you with one of my favorite quotes, from Helen Keller. These are true words, and worthy of your consideration:

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.

To Freedom in 2014!

Paul Rosenberg
FreemansPerspective.com

Are You a Gorilla or a God?

Humanity stands about halfway between gorillas and gods. The great question that looms over us, is this: “Which will we incorporate into our lives? Gorilla things or God things?”

The choice is ours. Yes, various choices are thrust upon us all our lives, accompanied with various levels of intimidation and threat, but at some point, all of us find ourselves able to choose freely. And it is then that we go in one direction or the other. We are able to change directions of course, but every time we choose, we move a step in one direction or the other.

What We Are

Please understand that I am not endorsing any specific theories here – religious, scientific, or otherwise. I’m merely describing the situation in which humanity finds itself. We are halfway between gorillas and gods: The worst things we do are gorilla-like, and the best things we do are god-like. Either direction is open to us.

Strange as it may seem, we are a lot like apes. Our bodies are built in the same ways, our body chemistry is nearly identical, and the worst aspects of human nature are essentially the same as the worst aspects of primate behavior.

We are also a lot like gods. We transcend entropy; we create. We can touch the soul in others, and the best aspects of human nature are essentially the same as the best characteristics attributed to the gods.

This is not what we can be; this is what we are. What we become in the future depends on whether we choose gorilla things or god things, here and now.

What Are Gorilla and God Things?

Gorilla things are those which operate on a dominant/submissive model. Hierarchy (high-level individuals controlling lower-level individuals) is the blueprint of the gorilla world. Dominant gorillas seek status and the power to control others. The submissive apes seek to pass along their pain to the apes below them (females, juveniles, etc.) and to avoid punishment. They are servile toward the dominants and cruel toward those they are able to dominate. Females trade sex for favors.

God things operate on a creative model. Blessing is the blueprint of the god world: distributing love, honesty, courage, kindness, blessing, awe, gratitude, and respect into the world and to other humans.

Gorilla things are these:

The desire to rule.
The desire to show superiority and status.
Servility.
Avoidance of responsibility.
Reflexive criticism of anything new.
Abuse of the weak or the outsider (women, children, Gypsies, Jews, immigrants, homosexuals, etc.).

God things are these:

Producing things that preserve or enhance life.
Invention and creativity.
Expressing gratitude and appreciation.
Experiencing awe and transcendence.
Adaptability and openness.
Improving yourself and others.

The Two Wolves

You’ve probably heard the old story of the two wolves: A young boy becomes angry and violent, and then feels guilty about his violence. He goes to his grandfather for advice. The old man says, “You have two wolves inside you: one of them is nice, the other is dangerous, and they’re fighting inside of you.”

The boy then asks his grandfather, “Which one will win?” The old man replies, wisely, “Whichever one you feed.”

In the same way, humanity becomes like gorillas or gods depending on whether we put gorilla things or god things into our lives.

I’m not going to tell you this is always easy, but the difficulty hardly matters: Somehow, we’ve been given a choice between becoming gorillas or becoming gods. No other creatures in this world have been given such a choice.

Bring god things into your life, and reject gorilla things. It doesn’t matter if these things are hard – you are defining your own nature between two wildly different options, every day.

Leave gorilla stuff to the gorillas.

Building god stuff into your life is your job, my job, everyone’s job.

Paul Rosenberg
FreemansPerspective.com

Is Bitcoin More Dangerous than “Cartel Money”?

I’m going to use a couple of passages from the Bible (the original set of moral standards for our Western civilization), followed by an examination of both Bitcoin and cartel money, to see how they hold up in comparison.

As for my use of the term “cartel money,” it’s the best short description I know for the dollars, euros, yen (and so on) that we use in our daily commerce. They are produced by secretive and monopolistic groups of private banks. That rather precisely matches the definition of cartel.

Principle #1: For wherein you judge another, you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things.

I think by now we have all heard the big accusation against Bitcoin – that it is used for “money laundering” – made especially by the money cartels (the European Central Bank first).

First off, that doesn’t make sense to me. A currency is supposed to be neutral – that is its purpose. So, accusing a currency of money laundering is like jailing a knife for murder. But, that’s not precisely the point we’re addressing here.

Rather, the question is: do the cartels do the same thing that they condemn?

You bet they do!

Read this story on HSBC. Then read this one on Wachovia. These banks laundered hundreds of billions of dollars – knowingly – for violent drug lords. And it gets worse: No one from either bank went to jail. Neither bank was shut down. Neither bank suffered more than a minor fine.

So, how much of a concern can money laundering really be to the cartels and their politician partners? Clearly none, or very close to none.

And, since the cartels accuse Bitcoin of being used for bad things, let’s be clear about the situation: Every mafioso on the planet uses cartel money. So do all the drug smugglers, terrorists, and pornographers.

Does Bitcoin accuse the money cartels? Nope. Bitcoin has no official operators to speak for it at all.

It is true that many Bitcoin users accuse the cartels of being manipulators, but, at least for now, there is no Bitcoin cartel that is even capable of manipulating the currency.

So, round one goes to Bitcoin: The cartels very clearly condemn themselves, and Bitcoin clearly does not.

Principle #2: Everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does what is true comes to the light.

When Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto posted his Bitcoin paper in 2008, he laid everything open for all to see. Then he wrote the Bitcoin program and left it “open source,” so anyone could see the programming.

The process of creating cartel money, on the other hand, is mostly hidden, purposely confused, and isn’t even taught to most Econ majors. And if you think that’s just my opinion, here’s one from the esteemed economist John Kenneth Galbraith:

The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it.

The argument is made, of course, that the process of creating dollars, etc. is very complicated, and that people don’t understand it because of that.

I don’t think that’s true, but even so, let’s compare it to Bitcoin: Making bitcoins is also complex, but Bitcoin enthusiasts have been working night and day to explain their new currency and how it works. I’ve seen them cornering people at birthday parties, trying to make them understand.

Round two goes to Bitcoin also. Bitcoin wants to be seen and known, and the cartels surely do not.

It all comes down to the reason “why.”

Satoshi Nakamoto began the original Bitcoin document by saying that he wanted to, “allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.” He goes on to say that he was creating,

an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party.

In other words, Satoshi wanted to remove the necessity of one man ruling another in the area of money. Furthermore, he did it, then went away.

As for the motives of the cartel, we can’t really tell. The visible heads of the Federal Reserve are certainly not the owners of the Federal Reserve, and the US government refuses to reveal the names of the owners.

Perhaps the closest real examination of their motives comes from a renowned professor who worked for them for a few years. Professor Carroll Quigley of Georgetown – and a major influence on none other than Bill Clinton, wrote this in his book Tragedy & Hope:

The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basle, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world’s central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank… sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent rewards in the business world.

So, was Quigley right? I have no solid proof that he is, but he would be an awfully hard witness to impeach. One substantiation that comes to mind is a recent comment by Illinois Senator Dick Durbin. In the midst of a political fight, he complained, “The banks own the Senate.”

That’s not really proof either, but it is interesting.

You can make up your own mind on the banks, but Satoshi’s motives are fairly well beyond question.

I think it is clear that from a moral standpoint, Bitcoin is far, far better than cartel money. (As are silver and gold.)

So, the next time you hear someone calling Bitcoin dangerous and evil, don’t let them get away with it!

Paul Rosenberg
FreemansPerspective.com

The Forgotten Holocaust

The Armenian Genocide was a systematic extermination that occurred during World War One, mostly in 1915. The killers were Ottoman Turks: agents and soldiers of that government, as well as eager civilians.

The slaughter took place in two phases. First was the wholesale killing of able-bodied Armenian males through massacre and forced labor. Afterward came the deportation of women, children, the elderly and the infirm, on death marches into the Syrian Desert.

All told, perhaps 1.5 million people were killed. The vast majority of these were Armenians, but the Turks also killed large numbers of Assyrian Christians, Greeks, and other minority groups. In many ways – including that of medical experiments on victims – the Armenian Genocide was the direct forerunner of the Nazi Genocide against the Jews.

Here is one miniscule part of the slaughter – a photo taken by an American diplomat, to which he added a commentary:

Source: Wikipedia

“Scenes like this were common all over the Armenian provinces, in the spring and summer months of 1915. Death in its several forms—massacre, starvation, exhaustion—destroyed the larger part of the refugees. The Turkish policy was that of extermination under the guise of deportation.”

The Test

The test, believe it or not, is whether people will acknowledge this as a genocide or not.

We live, as I have complained many times, in an age where institutions not only reign over money and lands, but also over men’s minds. And, as it turns out, Armenia is not big enough or threatening enough to matter. And so, the institutional line – world-over and even in some shocking places – has been that “we don’t talk about it.”

The Turkish government, desperate to protect its image, has battled long and hard to explain it all away, and to prevent the word “genocide” from being used. Many, many institutions – tossing aside truth for political expediency – have parroted the Turkish line.

A Turkish official, tormenting starving Armenian children with a piece of bread. (Wikipedia)

The Two Biggest Flunkees

Not everyone has flunked the test. Several European nations have made official statements on the Armenian Genocide, as have a few nations on every continent. Wikipedia lists 22 nations in all (out of 200).

What I want to focus on here, however, are the two big failures… places that are supposedly dedicated to an ancient philosophy that would instantly and irrevocably condemn the Armenian Genocide as a top-tier evil.

The first failure is the United States.

In an article I wrote earlier this year, I told how my editor (I was then writing for a major publisher) was made to change history textbooks to cut coverage of this story down to just a couple of paragraphs. The US State Department told him to do so because “we need to keep the Turks happy.” My editor’s bosses sided with the government – as people with government contracts nearly always do. Thus the truth, again, became a casualty to institutions.

The one US President to use the word “genocide” was Ronald Reagan, in a speech he made on April 22, 1981. The current US President, Barack Obama, used the word while a candidate for the presidency, but has repetitively refused to use it since. Again, truth dies where institutions reign.

It is of some interest that Reagan, who was a plebeian – not of the elite – was the one exception. Whatever the man’s virtues or vices, he was far less an institution man than presidents of more recent years.

The second flunkee is Israel. That the victims of the signature genocide would fail to recognize the one just before theirs is nothing short of tragic.

Certainly many Israeli and Jewish groups do acknowledge the Armenian Genocide (such as the Union for Reform Judaism), but the Knesset (the Israeli legislature) decided that recognition of this as a genocide would jeopardize relations with the Turks and the Azerbaijanis.

The reason I call this “tragic” is that by refusing to say “genocide,” the ruling Israeli institution turned its back on the great principle that the Hebrews gifted to the world several millennia ago: The enthroning of justice above rulership.

While many individual Israelis are good and decent people, the rulership of the Israeli state has turned away from the original Jewish principle.

Never Forget

As Adolf Hitler was starting his aggression against the Poles, the London Times quoted him as saying this:

Go, kill without mercy. After all, who remembers the Armenians?

For the sake of decency and for the sake of the future, remember the Armenians.

Also remember that justice stands above institutions and rulers.

Paul Rosenberg
FreemansPerspective.com

Embracing Adventure and Danger

One of the worst things that has been done to children over the past generation or two has been insulating them from anything that could possibly have any danger attached. Parents keeping their children under permanent watch has become “what people do.” And it’s a BIG mistake.

I know why the parents have done this, of course – we live in a fear-based culture, and it has rubbed off on them. But the reason they have caved in to fear is not important – what matters is that they have harmed their children.

Children – at some point in their upbringing – need to confront danger; they need to explore; they need adventures.

At one time, parents knew this. It wasn’t too many years ago when parents let their kids go off into the woods by themselves, with rifles. If that was really so horribly dangerous, half of us wouldn’t be here.

Is it scary to watch your children walk into a subway station? Or out into the woods? You bet it is! But you have to do it anyway. Calculate the risks, pick your times, pick your spots, watch them from a distance if you must, but let them go out and face the world.

Remember, fear is merely an impulse, and it can be based on lies, distortions, or even on nothing at all. It’s a crazy thing on which to base your children’s lives.

A new German study shows clearly that adventure shapes the individual. As one of the researchers concluded, “Living our lives makes us who we are.” Your children need to live, and not merely exist inside of a fear-inspired bubble. The study also indicates that exploration and adventure not only affect personality development, but also brain growth.

I’m not alone in this opinion, of course. Here are two quotes from John Taylor Gatto, a home school advocate and one of the finest teachers of modern times (one of the most awarded too, ironically enough):

Sensible children do not wish to be incomplete human beings. And so, when you impose a stage theory of human development upon them, you are, in effect, tormenting them; you’re limiting their opportunity… Don’t be your kid’s enemy, because that’s not a kid, that’s your fellow human being. Be a partner, and enlarge their opportunities.

The easiest way to turn your kids into geniuses, by the time they’re seven, is just to front-load huge amounts of experience, including dangerous experience.

Like Gatto, I believe that the real dangers for your children lie in government schools, and even in private schools that function on the same model. Here’s what Gatto says on the subject:

Growth and mastery come only to those who vigorously self-direct. Initiating, creating, doing, reflecting, freely associating, enjoying privacy—these are precisely what the structures of schooling are set up to prevent, on one pretext or another.

Yes, I understand that people are pushed, economically, to put their children into public schools. If you feel like you’re in that position, make sure that you tell your children how the system is set up to condition them. Teach them that understanding is far more important than memorizing. Back them up if the teachers give them grief. Let people talk about you.

Your children should understand, very clearly, that teachers and principals are just average people doing particular jobs; that they are merely another neighbor to the people on their street. Some of them are good people, others are bad people, and a title is just a title – it means nothing more.

Teach your children to be bold, let them learn how to fall and rise again. Of course you want to let them encounter dangers slowly, and you’d never put them in positions to get truly hurt, but you should be nothing like the über-parents who surveil their children’s every move, in terror that poor little Johnny will encounter something that hasn’t been sanitized for his protection.

I’ll leave you with one last quote from John Taylor Gatto: something that applies both to schooling and the larger world:

After a long life, and thirty years in the public school trenches, I’ve concluded that genius is as common as dirt. We suppress our genius only because we haven’t yet figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women. The solution, I think, is simple and glorious. Let them manage themselves.

Resist the fear, my friends.

Paul Rosenberg
FreemansPerspective.com