Category Archives: Pols and Pundits

Pettis Versus Grantham on the commodity cycle

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Greenworld Investor has a piece on the debate between Michael Pettis and Jeremy Grantham on where we are in the commodity cycle:

“Two of the most respected market analysts have radically opposite positions on where the commodity cycle is right now. While Michael Pettis thinks that the commodity cycle has peaked and hard commodities will crash by 2015, Grantham thinks there has been a paradigm change in commodities which will keep on increasing in price.

Pettis’s Arguments are based on:

a) First, during the last decade commodity producers were caught by surprise by the surge in demand. Their belated response was to ramp up production dramatically, but since there is a long lead-time between intention and supply, for the next several years we will continue to experience rapid growth in supply.

b) Second, almost all the increase in demand in the past twenty years, which in practice occurred mostly in the past decade, can be explained as the consequence of the incredibly unbalanced growth process in China.

c) Third, and more importantly, as China’s economy re-balances towards a much more sustainable form of growth, this will automatically make Chinese growth much less commodity intensive

d) Surging Chinese hard commodity purchases in the past few years supplied, not just growing domestic needs but also rapidly growing inventory.

Grantham Thesis on Commodities

Global Commodity Parabolic Price Rise Bubble or Real- Is it Really Different This Time

The rise in global commodity prices is fueling inflation everywhere particularly in developing countries where food and energy forms a major percentage of the inflation basket. This has forced countries like India and China to accelerate interest rate hikes to cool down inflation. Rising Food Prices has caused distress in a number of places leading to food riots in Africa and have been said to be a leading cause of the revolutions in the Middle East. Oil Prices continues to increase unabated as dollar decreases with US Money Printing. Commodities are touching new all time peaks as rising global demand, finite resources, money printing by developed countries fuel price hikes. Silver has been increasing in a parabolic manner with other commodities too showing heart-stopping jumps in prices. The rise in global wheat,rice prices has been at a record as well. Almost all commodities have seen sharp prices increase.

Grantham has made a famous call

The rise in commodities is not a cyclical phenomenon but a secular long term one. He says that the rise in commodity prices is different from the past. Note Grantham has done an extensive study of bubbles and is one of the leading minds in the investment community. While every time in the past, the statement “this time is different” has led to a crash, Grantham’s call cannot be taken lightly. He says that the rise in population, shortage of resources, the growing consumption power of massive chunks of prosperous citizens in India and China will lead to a continued surge. Note commodity prices have declined secularly in the last century and since 2000 have managed to erase all their losses to form new peaks. Grantham also says there is a possibility of a massive short term decline which will give a historic opportunity to load on commodities. Jim Rogers is the most famous commodity bull and now Grantham has joined him.”

Joshua Holland on the myths behind Romney’s “47%”

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Joshua Holland at Alternet has a thoughtful piece on the intellectual fudging behind  Romney’s  “47%” who allegedly don’t pay taxes, don’t have skin in the game, and feel both entitled and victimized.

This notion of a non-paying half of the population omits a fact that the right usually understands – that these sorts of figures are not set in stone.

47% is a figure that represents mobile segments of the population.

That is, the people who are in the non-paying 47% in one year are in the paying 53%  in the next.

For instance, included in the non-payers are students, who eventually do pay taxes.

Furthermore, there are plenty of wealthy households that don’t pay taxes.

In fact, if Romney wants to find entitled people who cry victim at the drop of a hat, feel the government owes them bail-outs, contribute nothing and steal whatever isn’t actually nailed down, maybe he should check out some of his colleagues in the financial industry.

Joshua Holland writes:

“More than a fifth of households that pay no federal income taxes are elderly. This is a group that should feel entitled. They paid into Social Security and Medicare during their working years, and are now in retirement. Many are struggling to get by .

There are a good number of rich people among the 47 percent of households that pay no federal income taxes. According to the Tax Policy Center, 18,000 households with incomes over $500,000 – and 4,000 households bringing in over $1 million – paid no federal income taxes in 2011.

Because there is no discrete group of Americans who routinely pay no income taxes year in and year out, it’s impossible to say for sure what their partisan loyalties might be, but it’s highly likely that a majority of them are Republicans. Around four out of 10 of those households are divided between demographics that lean towards the Dems – students, the poor – and those that lean toward the Republicans – the elderly, disabled veterans. But a majority of that group – six in 10 – are just lower income working families whose incomes fell below a certain threshhold in a given year. And this is where they live:

Click to enlarge.

The Romney campaign is reportedly going to run with this narrative in the coming weeks. The problem is that it only resonates with a minority of hard-right voters who aren’t up for grabs anyway. Most Americans understand that half the country isn’t indolent and doesn’t see themselves of victims of anything but the depression in which we find ourselves today. And that’s why, according to a Gallup poll released on Wednesday , only 20 percent of registered voters say that Romney’s sneering remarks make them more likely to vote for him, while 36 percent say they’re turned of by them.”

The delusional nature of Romney’s math is matched by the delusional nature of his philosophy.

He was born with no silver spoon, he claims, except the silver spoon of being born in America.

Well, being born in America is surely an enormous advantage.

But consider what Mr. Romney does NOT consider a silver spoon:

“Romney was the son of a governor and an auto executive who gave him a wealth of connections, a private education, college tuition, a stock portfolio that he lived on while in graduate school, help buying a first house.”

Apparently, Romney thinks that had he been born Hispanic, his life would have been much easier.

Oh boo-hoo.

Last I looked, the financial industry, not noticeably underpaid, was filled with while males who are NOT Hispanic.

And their high incomes seem to have reflected no great competence on their part.

Indeed, the high incomes seem to have gone hand-in-hand  with extraordinary levels of incompetence and criminality.

Mossad agents pose as American spies, recruit for war on Iran

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Christopher Bollyn (who increasingly proves his reliability as a researcher):

“A series of CIA memos describes how Israeli Mossad agents posed as American spies to recruit members of the terrorist organization Jundallah to fight their covert war against Iran.

Buried deep in the archives of America’s intelligence services are a series of memos, written during the last years of President George W. Bush’s administration, that describe how Israeli Mossad officers recruited operatives belonging to the terrorist group Jundallah by passing themselves off as American agents. According to two U.S. intelligence officials, the Israelis, flush with American dollars and toting U.S. passports, posed as CIA officers in recruiting Jundallah operatives — what is commonly referred to as a “false flag” operation.
– “False Flag” by Mark Perry, Foreign Policy, 13 January 2012

When we looked back at all the things that had happened we felt that two things were unclear. First, if they are from NATO, why did they not meet with us in Afghanistan where they have bases and where they can contact us in a much more easy and secure manner. The second issue was that the first time they informed us that NATO forces wanted to meet with us we thought they were going to speak about eastern parts of Iran, because NATO forces are stationed in Afghanistan. But they insisted that we should transfer our operations from the eastern border region to the capital. We thought that this was very strange. When we thought about it we came to the conclusion that they are either Americans acting under NATO cover — or Israelis.
– Abdolmalek Rigi (1983 – 2010), founder of Jundallah in interview with Press TV (Iran)

Extracts from the article ‘Israeli Mossad agents posed as CIA spies to recruit terrorists to fight against Iran’ in Ha’aretz (Israel), 13 January 2012:

Israeli Mossad agents posed as CIA officers in order to recruit members of a Pakistani terror group to carry out assassinations and attacks against the regime in Iran, Foreign Policy revealed on Friday, quoting U.S. intelligence memos. Foreign Policy’s Mark Perry reported that the Mossad operation was carried out in 2007-2008, behind the back of the U.S. government, and infuriated then U.S. President George W. Bush.

According to a currently serving U.S. intelligence officer, Perry reports, when Bush was briefed on the information he “went absolutely ballistic.”

Perry quotes a number of American intelligence officials and claims that the Mossad agents used American dollars and U.S. passports to pose as CIA spies to try to recruit members of Jundallah, a Pakistan-based Sunni extremist organization that has carried out a series of attacks in Iran and assassinations of government officials.

According to the report, Israel’s recruitment attempts took place mostly in London, right under the nose of U.S. intelligence officials. “It’s amazing what the Israelis thought they could get away with,” Foreign Policy quoted an intelligence officer as saying. “Their recruitment activities were nearly in the open. They apparently didn’t give a damn what we thought.”

“The report sparked White House concerns that Israel’s program was putting Americans at risk,” the intelligence officer told Perry. “There’s no question that the U.S. has cooperated with Israel in intelligence-gathering operations against the Iranians, but this was different. No matter what anyone thinks, we’re not in the business of assassinating Iranian officials or killing Iranian civilians.”

The intelligence officer said that the Bush administration continued to deal with the affair until the end of his term. He noted that Israel’s operation jeopardized the U.S. administration’s fragile relationship with Pakistan, which was under immense pressure from Iran to crack down on Jundallah.

According to the intelligence officer, a senior administration official vowed to “take the gloves off” with Israel, but ultimately the U.S. did nothing.

“Israel is supposed to be working with us, not against us,” Foreign Policy quoted an intelligence officer as saying. “If they want to shed blood, it would help a lot if it was their blood and not ours. You know, they’re supposed to be a strategic asset. Well, guess what? There are a lot of people now, important people, who just don’t think that’s true.”

The following video by Russia Today features a 2010 interview with Webster Tarpley about the Iranian capture of Abdolmalek Rigi, the founder and former commander-in-chief of the terrorist group Jundallah. As one might expect, Tarpley does not even mention Israel or Israelis as he blames the CIA and NATO for being behind the terror attacks of Jundallah (basing his claims on Seymour Hersh and ABC News, no less).  This is typical Tarpley, who protects the Zionist state by consistently ignoring evidence of Israeli involvement in acts of false-flag terrorism – like 9/11.  To understand what’s behind Tarpley’s pro-Israel bias, see my article “Webster Tarpley’s Disinfo” from January 2010.”

Martha Nussbaum defends burqa against French neocons (Updated)

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Update (Sept 10)

Another thought occurs to me.  What level of brainwashing does it take to lecture the Islamic world for its “medieval” and “degrading” attitude toward women,  when the most popular book in the west today  is”Fifty Shades of Grey”). No individualists have said a word negative about this book, which describes how wonderful it is to be tied up and have steel balls pushed up your vagina by a controlling man who feeds you, dresses you, and employs you, while whipping you on your genitals and beating you until you cry.

Or, to take another case, what level of self-delusion does it take  to lecture extremely poor people in Asia, recovering from multiple centuries of enslavement and starvation, under a succession of empires, about physical dirt, while refusing to acknowledge a different kind of filth, which is perhaps more deadly. I am talking about the saturation of popular culture with perversions as disordered as cannibalism, sadism, coprophagia and necrophilia?

(Search the “Go Ask Alice” website at Columbia University, where these things are treated almost neutrally).

ORIGINAL POST

Martha Nussbaum brilliantly demolishes a series of justifications for banning the burqa, a costume not too different from the garb of nuns during the period of history that gave France some of its great cultural treasures.

I confess that I used to support a ban on burqas, from the point of view of security and civility, with the idea that it would enable natives to see Muslim immigrants as more human and akin to them.

But Nussbaum’s comprehensive essay has made me rethink that position.

Having grown up in a town in India where 30% of the population is Muslim and where most of the Muslims on the street wear Burqa all the time, in temperatures over 45 degrees celsius, I can tell you that the women I saw wearing them seemed quite happy with their choice.

Covering up the limbs and face preserves the skin from coarsening and burning, so it actually makes sense in very hot countries, especially for women.

No Florida “alligator” skin and rooster necks.  No discoloration spots and skin cancer.

It also makes sense to cover up in very crowded countries, where women are forced to rub up against strange men because of the crowds.

Covering up protects women against molestation. It carves out a sphere of dignity for a woman and protects her from violations of her personal space and modesty.

It prevents a women becoming a piece of meat on the market, which is often what happens in the West.

I felt noticeably more comfortable in the Muslim countries in which I’ve traveled alone, than anywhere in the West or in India.

The West can be terrifying for a single foreign women.  That has been my experience.  There is verbal intimidation, sexual assault, and vulgarity directed toward vulnerable women, especially divorced women, who are seen as fair targets for workplace slander and harassment.

In India, since the liberalization of the economy, the situation has also become difficult for women on the street. I know many foreign women, very good travelers, understanding of Indian culture,  who tell me they have been repeatedly pestered and molested since the l990s. American women have told me they’ve been assaulted in such porn-friendly cities as Buenos Aires.

[I should clarify: This may have less to do with porn as it has to do with the fact that they’re foreigners and blondes, at that. Blondes, I’ve observed, tend to have a harder time in Latin countries.  The woman who told me this said she’d been quite safe traveling alone in Thailand.]

Muslim countries I’ve visited were easily the most “women-friendly” for a single woman,

Nussbaum’s arguments about these matters, and many others, make a convincing case why the burqa ban is fundamentally anti-liberal and discriminatory.

First is the argument from security: it holds that security requires people to show their face when appearing in public places. A second, closely related, argument, which I shall treat together with it, says that the kind of transparency and reciprocity proper to relations between citizens is impeded by covering part of the face.

What is wrong with both of these arguments is that they are applied inconsistently. It gets very cold where I live in Chicago. Along the streets we walk, hats pulled down over ears and brows, scarves wound tightly around noses and mouths. No problem of either transparency or security is thought to exist, nor are we forbidden to enter public buildings so insulated.

Moreover, many beloved and trusted professionals cover their faces all year round: surgeons, dentists, skiers and skaters. The latter typically wear a full – face covering with slits only for the eyes, similar to a niqab. Some are even more covered than the typical burqa wearer. In general, then, what inspires fear and mistrust in Europe, and, to some extent, in the United States, is not covering per se, but Muslim covering.

So, what to do about the threat that all bulky and non-revealing clothing creates? Airline security does a lot, with metal detectors, body imaging, pat-downs, and so on (one very nice system is at work in India, where all passengers get a full manual pat-down, but in a curtained booth by a member of the same sex who is clearly trained to be courteous and respectful). Sport stadiums search all bags (though more to check for beer than for explosives, thus protecting the interests of in-stadium vendors). Retailers or other organizations who feel that bulky clothing is a threat (whether of shoplifting or terrorism or both) could institute a non-discriminatory rule banning; They could even have a body scanner at the door, but they don’t, presumably preferring customer friendliness to the extra margin of safety…….

…A third argument, very prominent today, is that the burqa is a symbol of male domination that symbolizes the objectification of women: it encourages people to think of and treat a woman as a mere object. A Catalonian legislator recently called the burqa a “degrading prison.” President Sarkozy said the same thing.

[Lila: Please note that certain libertarian outfits that would never speak out against the objectification of women in the dangerous practices of the global porn trade nonetheless come out with the same memes that neoconservatives used to justify the invasion of Iraq – the liberation of women – a meme thoroughly discredited and debunked by third-world and post-colonial critics and even by some more thoughtful liberal feminists like Nussbaum.

It hardly needs to be said that the people who make this argument typically don’t know much about Islam and would have a hard time saying what symbolizes what in that religion. But the more glaring flaw in the argument is that society is suffused with symbols of male supremacy that treat women as objects.

Sex magazines, pornography, nude photos, tight jeans, transparent or revealing clothing – all of these products, arguably, treat women as objects, as do so many aspects of our media culture. Women are encouraged to market themselves for male objectification in this way, and it has long been observed that this is a way of robbing women of both agency and individuality, reducing them to objects or commodities.

And what about the “degrading prison” of plastic surgery? Every time I undress in the locker room of my gym, I see women bearing the scars of liposuction, tummy tucks, breast implants. Isn’t much of this done in order to conform to a male norm of female beauty that casts women as sex objects?

……Respect is for the person, and is fully compatible with intensely disliking many things that many people do. So in a society dedicated to equal liberty people remain perfectly free to think and to say that the burqa is an objectionable garment because of the way in which it symbolizes the objectification of women…….

Myself, I think that a burqa is not a symbol of hatred, and thus not something that it would be reasonable to find deeply hateful. It is more like the boys and their tzizit, something I may feel out of tune with, but which it is probably nosy to denounce unless a friend has asked my opinion. Still, if someone else wants to say that it is deeply objectionable, and that she does not respect it, that does not in any way disagree with the principles I am defending here.

What respect for persons requires is that people have equal space to exercise their conscientious commitments, not that others like or even respect what they do in that space. Furthermore, equal respect for persons is compatible with limiting religious freedom in the case of a “compelling state interest………Which brings me to my next point.

Argument 4: Coercion

A fourth argument holds that women wear the burqa only because they are coerced. This is a rather implausible argument to make across the board, and it is typically made by people who have no idea what the circumstances of this or that individual woman are.

We should reply that of course all forms of violence and physical coercion in the home are illegal already, and laws against domestic violence and abuse should be enforced much more zealously than they are. Do the arguers really believe that domestic violence is a peculiarly Muslim problem? If they do, they are dead wrong.

According to the United States Bureau of Justice Statistics, intimate partner violence made up 20% of all nonfatal violent crime experienced by women in 2001. The National Violence Against Women Survey reports that 52% of surveyed women said they were physically assaulted as a child by an adult caretaker and/or as an adult by any type of perpetrator.

There is no evidence that Muslim families have a disproportionate amount of such violence. Indeed, given the strong association between domestic violence and the abuse of alcohol, it seems at least plausible that observant Muslim families will turn out to have less of it…….

College fraternities are very strongly associated with violence against women, and some universities have made all or some fraternities move off campus as a result. But private institutions are entitled to make such regulations about what can occur on their premises; public universities are entitled to limit the types of activities that will get public money, particularly when they involve illegality (underage drinking). But a total governmental ban on the male drinking club (or on other places where men get drunk, such as soccer matches) would certainly be a bizarre restriction of associational liberty.

One thing that we have long known to be strongly associated with coercion and violence against women is alcohol. The Amendment to the United States Constitution banning alcohol was motivated by exactly this concern. It was on dubious footing in terms of liberty: why should law-abiding people suffer for the crimes of abusers? But what was more obvious was that Prohibition was a total disaster politically and practically. It increased crime and it did not stop violence against women……..

So, where should government and law step in? Certainly it should step in where physical and/or sexual abuse is going on, which is very often. Where religious mandates are concerned, intervention would be justified, similarly, where the behaviour either constitutes a gross risk to bodily health and safety (as with Jehovah’s Witness children being forbidden to have a life-saving blood transfusion), or impairs some major functioning.

Thus, I think that female genital mutilation practiced on minors should be illegal if it is a form that impairs sexual pleasure or other bodily functions. Male circumcision seems to me all right, however, because there is no evidence that it interferes with adult sexual functioning; indeed it is now known to reduce susceptibility to HIV/AIDS.

[Lila: Here, I think Nussbaum is mistaken. There is plenty of evidence that removal of the foreskin does affect male pleasure.  And there may be many other side-effects that haven’t been fully studied yet.]

….The burqa (for minors) is not in the same class as genital mutilation, since it is not irreversible and does not engender health or impair other bodily functions – not nearly so much as high-heeled shoes. If it is imposed by physical or sexual violence, that violence ought to be legally punished.

[Lila: Brilliant. There are far more crippling and unhygienic forms of clothing popular in the West, from thongs (which are gross and unhygienic!) to nylon stockings (itchy, and they constrict the blood vessels), crotchless panties (unhygienic and infectious), flimsy bras (lead to sagging breasts), baggy pants (can trip you up); tight skirts (prevent normal movements), low-cut blouses (ruin delicate breast and neck skin), deodorant (stops perspiration and lets toxicity build up in the body), shampoo (makes your hair thin and go grey prematurely).]

…. If people think that women only wear the burqa because of coercive pressure, let them create ample opportunities for them, and then see what they actually do.………

Argument 5: Health Risk

Finally, one frequently hears the argument that the burqa is per se unhealthy, because it is hot and uncomfortable. I have heard this argument often in Europe, particularly in Spain. This is perhaps the silliest of the arguments.

Clothing that covers the body can be comfortable or uncomfortable, depending on the fabric. In India I typically wear a full salwaar kameez of cotton, because it is superbly comfortable, and full covering keeps dust off one’s limbs and at least diminishes the risk of skin cancer. It is surely far from clear that the amount of skin displayed in typical Spanish female dress would meet with a dermatologist’s approval.

But more pointedly, would the arguer really seek to ban all uncomfortable and possibly unhealthy female clothing? Wouldn’t we have to begin with high heels, delicious as they are? But no, high heels are associated with majority norms (and are a major Spanish export), so they draw no ire.t harmful chemicals, and that other gross health risks are avoided. But on the whole women in particular area allowed and even encouraged to wear clothing that could plausibly be argued to create health risks, whether through tendon shortening or through exposure to the sun….

….The burqa is not even in the category of the corset. As many readers pointed out, it is sensible dress in a hot climate where skin easily becomes worn by sun and dust. What does seem to pose a risk to health is wearing synthetic fabrics in a hot climate, but nobody is talking about that.

The Burqa and the Limits of Laicite

All five arguments are discriminatory. We don’t even need to reach the delicate issue of religiously grounded accommodation to see that they are utterly unacceptable in a society committed to equal liberty. Equal respect for conscience requires us to reject them.

Let us now consider more closely the special case of France. Unlike other European nations, France is consistent – up to a point. Given its history of anticlericalism and the strong commitment to laicite, religion is not to set its mark upon the public realm, and the public realm is permitted to disfavour religion by contrast to non-religion. This commitment leads to restrictions on a wide range of religious manifestations, all in the name of a total separation of church and state. But if one looks closely, the restrictions are unequal and discriminatory. The school dress code forbids the Muslim headscarf and the Jewish yarmulke, along with “large” Christian crosses.

But this is a totally unequal burden, because the first two items of clothing are religiously obligatory for observant members of those religions, and the third is not: Christians are under no religious obligation to wear any cross, much less a “large” one. So there is discrimination inherent in the French system…….

Let’s now consider the language of the law banning the burqa. It prohibits “wearing attire designed to hide the face” (porter une tenue detinee a dissimuler son visage) – and then there is a long list of exceptions:

“The prohibition described in Article 1 does not apply if the attire is prescribed or authorized by legislative or regulatory dispensation, if it is justified for reasons of health or professional motives, or if it is adopted in the context of athletic practices, festivals, or artistic or traditional performances.”…….

Does the application of the ban to all religions mean that the ban, unlike the school dress code, is truly neutral? Well of course, although the word burqa does not occur in the legislation, we understand perfectly well that this is what it is all about. And the fact that they are so generous with other cultural and professional exemptions shows that they are not terribly worried about the practice as such – only when it is a religious manifestation. But still, isn’t that a consistent and, up to a point, neutral application of the polity of laicite?

The difficulty we have here is that no other religion has a custom of precisely that sort. So what the law has done is to single out something that is of central importance to one religion and to apply a very heavy burden to it, without similarly burdening the central and cherished practices of other religions. Indeed, it seems clear that one would not be fined for making the sign of the cross over oneself in a public place, for singing a religious hymn as one walked down the street, or for wearing any type of religious apparel other than the burqa: cassocks, nuns’ habits, Hasidic dress, the saffron garb of the Hindu priest – all of these remain unburdened. So it is neutral in one sense, but not at all neutral in another.

At this point, defenders of the ban will typically allude to one of the other arguments, saying that the burqa, unlike these other forms of clothing, is a security risk, an impediment to normal relations among citizens, and so on. But the fact that the government does not credit these rationales is clear from the fact that they permit so many exceptions to the ban. Even a public masquerade, at which hundreds of people cover their faces, received explicit defence in the statute.

So it’s clear that the government does not think that security provides a compelling interest in favour of the restriction: it’s trumped routinely by very weak and even frivolous interests.

So I conclude that the French ban is not truly neutral, any more than the school dress code. Besides the obvious objection that French secularism does not allow sufficiently ample freedom for religious observance, we may add the objection of bias.

***

Philosophical principles shape constitutional traditions and the shape of political cultures. I have tried to articulate some important principles behind traditions of religious liberty and equality in both the United States and Europe.

Today, a climate of fear and suspicion, directed primarily against Muslims, threatens to derail these admirable commitments. But if we articulate them clearly and see the reasons for them, this may help us oppose these ominous developments.

Excerpted from The New Religious Intolerance: Overcoming the Politics of Fear in an Anxious Age by Martha C. Nussbaum, Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright 2012 by Martha C. Nussbaum. Used by permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.

Martha Nussbaum is the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics in the Philosophy Department, Law School and Divinity School at the University of Chicago. You can listen to her in conversation with Andrew West on Radio National’s Religion and Ethics Report.”

Rousas Rushdoony: What Jesus taught about taxes

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Rousas Rushdoony gives the traditional Christian understanding of the great subversive parable of Jesus, regarding the payment of tribute to Caesar, notwithstanding the attempt by some to use Jesus to support libertarian beliefs.

Rushdoony’s understanding is supported by the readings of others (per Wikipedia):

Mennonite Dale Glass-Hess wrote:

It is inconceivable to me that Jesus would teach that some spheres of human activity lie outside the authority of God. Are we to heed Caesar when he says to go to war or support war-making when Jesus says in other places that we shall not kill? No! My perception of this incident is that Jesus does not answer the question about the morality of paying taxes to Caesar, but that he throws it back on the people to decide. When the Jews produce a denarius at Jesus’ request, they demonstrate that they are already doing business with Caesar on Caesar’s terms. I read Jesus’ statement, “Give to Caesar…” as meaning “Have you incurred a debt in regard to Caesar! Then you better pay it off.” The Jews had already compromised themselves. Likewise for us: we may refuse to serve Caesar as soldiers and even try to resist paying for Caesar’s army. But the fact is that by our lifestyles we’ve run up a debt with Caesar, who has felt constrained to defend the interests that support our lifestyles. Now he wants paid back, and it’s a little late to say that we don’t owe anything. We’ve already compromised ourselves. If we’re going to play Caesar’s games, then we should expect to have to pay for the pleasure of their enjoyment. But if we are determined to avoid those games, then we should be able to avoid paying for them.[13]

Mohandas K. Gandhi shared this perspective. He wrote:

Jesus evaded the direct question put to him because it was a trap. He was in no way bound to answer it. He therefore asked to see the coin for taxes. And then said with withering scorn, “How can you who traffic in Caesar’s coins and thus receive what to you are benefits of Caesar’s rule refuse to pay taxes?”

At the same time, Gandhi, certainly saw that Jesus would have supported non-cooperation and civil resistance through non payment of taxes:

“Jesus’ whole preaching and practice point unmistakably to noncooperation, which necessarily includes nonpayment of taxes.[14]

In Rushdooney’s reading,  Jesus’ teaching is more submissive than it is in Gandhi’s. But it is submissive in a subversive way, similar to the reading of Jacques Ellul:

“Render unto Caesar…” in no way divides the exercise of authority into two realms….They were said in response to another matter: the payment of taxes, and the coin. The mark on the coin is that of Caesar; it is the mark of his property. Therefore give Caesar this money; it is his. It is not a question of legitimizing taxes! It means that Caesar, having created money, is its master. That’s all. Let us not forget that money, for Jesus, is the domain of Mammon, a satanic domain!
My sense is that Jesus’ parables should not be taken out of context to support a dogmatic and anachronistic reading. They should be read in the general spirit of his other teachings.
Elsewhere, Jesus taught that worldly power and wealth were obstacles to the soul. This is hardly the same as libertarian anti-state ideology, but it is subversive and unworldly.
Rousas Rushdoony:

“6. The Tribute Money

One of the best-known stories of the New Testament is the one con­cerning the tribute money question: “Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar or not?” Christ’s answer, “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are Gods” (Matt. 22:15-22; Mark 12:13-17; Luke 20:20-26), is one of the most familiar sentences of Scripture. The general implications have long been recognized; in the specific application, there has been much variation.

The purpose of the Pharisees is again to “entangle him in his talk” (Matt. 22:15); Luke is more specific, “And they watched him, and sent forth spies, which should feign themselves just men, that they might take hold of his words, that so they might deliver him unto the power and authority of the governor” (Luke 20:20-26). The Roman governor was meant. Apparently the expectation was that Jesus, in faithfulness to the law, would declare that only a theocracy was valid in Israel, not Roman rule and law. Behind this strategy were the Phari­sees and the Herodians (Matt. 22:16; Mark 12:13), a minor, political, non-religious party of the day. The Herodians favored the Roman tax and the Herodian dynasty, which they regarded as preferable to direct Roman rule. The Pharisees were normally hostile to the Herodians, but they joined forces in hostility to Jesus. If Jesus opposed the tax, He could be denounced and delivered to the Roman authorities for arrest and trial.

The question was prefaced with fulsome flattery; the questioners asked as if motivated by a tender conscience rather than a desire to entrap. They attempted to push Jesus into an answer heedless of con­sequences by asserting that “thou art true, and carest for no man; for thou regardest not the person of men, but teachest the way of God in truth” (Mark 12:14). Such an integrity, they hoped, would compel Him to deny the legitimacy of the Roman tax. “Is it lawful for us to give tribute unto Caesar, or no?” (Luke 20:22).

The Greek text makes clear that the tax was a “capitation tax,” not an indirect tax.[1] “Luke uses phoros, the wider word for ‘tribute’ as it is paid by one nation to another; Matthew and Mark use the more specific kenos or poll tax that is levied upon every individual for his own person and is thus especially galling as a mark of servitude to the Roman power.”[2]

Israel already had a poll tax, that required by God’s law in Exodus 30:11-16. Its purpose was to provide for civil atonement, i.e., the covering or protection of civil government. Every male twenty years old or older was required to pay this tax to be protected by God the King in His theocratic government of Israel. This tax was thus a civil and religious duty (but not an ecclesiastical one).

There was thus a particular aggravation in the fact that Rome also required a poll or head tax. The Roman Empire and emperor were progressively assuming divine roles, requiring religious assent, and claiming priority over religion. The poll tax was thus a particularly offensive tax, in that it seemed to require a polytheistic faith, the worship of a god other than the true God. Moreover, the Herodian tax was so heavy that twice the imperial government compelled Herod to reduce his tax demands in order to avoid serious trouble. Judas Galilaeus had earlier presented himself as the messiah and had summoned Israel, in the name of God and Scripture, to refuse to pay the tax. The Romans were merciless in putting down the rebellion (Acts 5:37).

The matter had been aggravated as early as A.D. 29 by Pilate, who for a time issued coinage “bearing the lituus, the priest’s staff, or the patera, the sacrificial bowl-two symbols of the imperial philosophy which were bound to be obnoxious to the people.”[3]These coins were later withdrawn, but they did serve to underscore the fact that their bondage to Rome had religious overtones.

The right to issue coins had religious overtones for Israel as I Maccabees 15:6 implies, and it was thus important to them. “‘Coin’ and ‘power’ were regarded as synonyms, so that the coin was the symbol of the ruler’s dominance.”[4] In the second century A.D., Bar Kochba, the false messiah, replaced Roman coinage with his own coins as a means of asserting his power. To give tribute to Caesar thus meant to acknowledge Caesar’s power; to approve of giving tribute to Caesar was to acknowledge the legitimacy of Caesar’s power. The question implicit, in the Herodian’s statement was whether any government other than God’s has any legitimacy. Christ’s assertion of His messiahship was seen by his accusers as a denial of Caesar’s right to tax (Luke 23:2), since the Messiah as King had to have exclusive sovereignty, in their perspective. For Jesus to have denied Caesar’s right to tax Israel was a mark of insurrection and would make Him liable to arrest. For Jesus to have affirmed Caesar’s right to tax would have been, in the eyes of the people, a denial of His messiahship.

The answer of Jesus was to ask for a denarius; He asked it of His questioners. As Stauffer, whose chapter on “The Story of the Tribute Money” is very important, has written:

Jesus asked for a penny, a denarius. Why? There were a great many coins in the wide Roman empire which passed as legal cur­rency, old and new, large and small, imperial and local, gold, silver, copper, bronze and brass. In no country did so many different kinds of money circulate as in Palestine. But the prescribed coin for taxation purposes throughout the empire was the denarius, a little silver coin of about the worth of a shilling. (It can only be the sil­ver denarius which is intended in Mark 12:16, Luke 20:24 and Matt. 22:19, not a gold coin as Titian supposed, in his representa­tion of the tribute scene, nor a Herodian coin, as is often asserted; for the Herodian coins were not called denarii and were not tribute coins, but were local copper coins.) Jesus knew this, and so He asked for the silver imperial tax coin, using the Latin word, the Roman technical expression, which had become current in Palestine along with the coin itself. Bring me a denarius, He said. He did not produce one from His own pocket. Why not? The point now is not whether Jesus had such a coin in His pocket but whether His opponents had. With Socratic irony, he added: “That I may see it?” Why? He had the maieutic purpose with his questioners, He wanted to deliver them, in the Socratic manner, not a priori, but a posteriori. Not their logical or moral sense, but their historical situation and attitude would bring the truth to light. Something is to be seen, and deduced, from the denarius itself.[5]

When the coin was handed to Jesus, He did not yet answer their question, “Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar, or not?” Instead, He asked another question: “Whose is this image and superscription?” (Matt. 22:20; Mark 12:16; Luke 20:24). The answer was, of course, “Cae­sar’s.” According to Geldenhuys,

After their acknowledgment that it is Caesar’s, the following two facts are vividly brought to light through Jesus’ masterly handling of the situation:

(1) Coins with Caesar’s image and superscription are in use among the Jews.
(2) The coins are evidently the property of Caesar, otherwise they would not have borne his image and superscription.
From these two facts it thus follows that the Jews had accepted the imperial rule as a practical reality, for it was the generally current view that a ruler’s power extended as far as his coins were in use.[6]

The practical reality was thus made clear. These men used the coins of Tiberius which carried a “bust of Tiberius in Olympian nakedness, adorned with the laurel wreath, the sign of divinity.” The inscription read, “Emperor Tiberius August Son of the August God,” on the one side, and “Pontifex Maximus” or “High Priest” on the other. The symbols also included the emperor’s mother, Julia Augusta (Livia) sitting on the throne of the gods, holding the Olympian sceptre in her right hand, and, in her left, the olive branch to signify that “she was the earthly incarnation of the heavenly Pax.”[7] The Coins thus had a re­ligious significance. Israel was in a certain sense serving other gods by being subject to Rome and to Roman currency. The point made by implication by His enemies, that tribute to Caesar had religious over­tones, was almost confirmed by Jesus, even as He proved their own submission to Caesar.

Then came His great answer: Render to Caesar the things that are Caesars [sic], and to God the things that are God’s (Mark 12:17). Ac­cording to Stauffer, render here means “give back.” “That is the first great surprise in this verse, and its meaning is: the payment of tribute to Caesar is not only your unquestioned obligation; it is also your moral duty.”[8] St. Paul used the same term in Romans 13:7, “Render to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom. . . .”

Judea was living within the Roman Empire, gaining military and economic benefits from that empire whether it wanted them or not. Even if the benefits of the empire were outweighed by its liabilities, the people were still to render Caesar his due.

The fact still remained that two poll taxes stood in opposition, one paid to the emperor, the other to God. The imperial tax provided “for the daily sacrifice for the welfare of the Roman emperor”; it maintained the empire as a religious entity.[9] The other tax, called then the temple tax, was God’s tax for maintaining His holy order. How could both taxes be paid? According to Stauffer, “He affirmed the symbolism of power, but He rejected the symbolism of worship. But this reservation was not made as a negative statement, but rather as a positive command. ‘Render to God what is God’s’ “[10] Stauffer is right in asserting that, ac­cording to Numbers 8:13 ff., this means that “Everything belongs to God.”[11] At the time that Jesus spoke, the Biblical poll tax was being collected in the spring, in the month of Adar. More specifically, Jesus asked that Caesar’s tax be rendered to Caesar, and God’s tax be rendered to God. The early church was apparently aware of this fact. Jerome, commenting on Matthew 22:21, declared, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, namely, coins, tribute, money; and to God the things that are God’s, namely, tithes, first-fruits, vows, sacrifices.”[12] Israel’s departure from God’s rule and law had placed them under Roman rule and law; they owed to Rome the tribute due to Rome. Rome did not serve God, but neither did Israel. Obedience is due to all authorities under who we find ourselves (Rom. 13:1-7). Rome was now their master, and Rome had to be obeyed. Obedience to God requires obedience to all those whom we find ourselves in subjection to. In the temptation in the wilderness, Satan had tempted Jesus to follow a way of empire: give the people bread and miracles; enable them to walk by sight. Now, through other tempters, the temptation was offered of rejecting all empires, all earthly powers.

Christ conquered this temptation afresh with His words about the double duty of obedience to the way and to the goal of history, to the kingdom of the world and to the kingdom of God. Mark 12:17 is spoken by Christ in conspectu mortis, in the sight of the messianic death. Holy Week is the existential exegesis of His words: submission to the dominion of Caesar, submission to the dominion of God — united in the acceptance of that monstrous judicial murder by which Caesar’s most wretched creature fulfils sub contrario the work of God (Matt. 26:52 ff.; John 19:11)[13]

Let us return to St. Jerome’s words. Two kinds of taxation exist, and Christ requires our obedience to both. The world of Caesar seeks to create a new world without God, and without regeneration; it exacts a heavy tax and accomplishes little or nothing. We are, as sinners, geared by our fallen nature to seeking Caesar’s answer. We pay tribute to Caesar thus, in our faith and with our money. The answer to Caesar’s world is not civil disobedience, the final implication of which is revolution. This is Caesar’s way, the belief that man’s effort by works of law can remake man and the world.

The answer rather is to obey all due authorities and to pay tribute, custom, and honor to whom these things are due. This is the minor aspect of our duty. More important, we must render, give back to God what is His due, our tithes, first-fruits, vows, and sacrifices. The re­generate man begins by acknowledging God, the author and Redeemer of his life, as his lord and savior, his King. At every point in his life, he renders to God His due service, thanksgiving, praise, and tithe. His salvation is God’s gift; the bounty he enjoys is God’s gift and providence; the regenerate man therefore renders, gives back to God, God’s appointed share of all things.

The way of resistance to Rome chosen by Judea led to the world’s worst war and to the death of the nation. Neither the Roman imperial answer nor the Judean revolutionary answer offered anything but death and disaster. Self-consciously, the Christians followed their Lord. Justin Martyr wrote:

And everywhere we, more readily than all men, endeavour to pay to those appointed by you the taxes both ordinary and extraordinary, as we have been taught by Him; for at that time some came to Him and asked Him, if one ought to pay tribute to Caesar; and He answered, “Tell me, whose image does this coin bear?” And they said, “Caesar’s”; And again He answered them, “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” Whence to God alone we render worship, but in other things we gladly serve you, acknowledging you as kings and rulers of men, and praying that with your kingly power you be found to possess also sound judgment. But if you pay no regard to our prayers and frank explanations, we shall suffer no loss, since we believe (or rather, indeed, are persuaded) that every man will suffer punishment in eternal fire according to the merit of his deed, and will render account according to the power he has received from God, as Christ intimated when He said, “To whom God has given more, of him shall more be required.”[14]

Christ’s answer did not prevent His enemies from charging Him with “perverting the nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Caesar” (Luke 23:2). His answer in reality had demolished all grounds for any accusation against Him.

Their duty, Jesus had declared, was “to render back” “to pay what is owing”[15] to Caesar and to God. What is due to Caesar is due to Caesar only by the providence, purpose, and counsel of God. What is due to God, what all men owe Him, is everything. Jesus set forth “God’s absolute and peculiar right in respect of every man individually and of all men collectively-an exclusive and paramount right possessed by God alone.”[16]

Those who reduce this great sentence of Christ’s to a declaration about church and state have missed the point of the incident.

[1] Plummer, Luke, p.465.[2] Lenski, Luke, p.988.

[3] Ethelbert Stauffer, Christ and the Caesars (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1955), p. 119.

[4] Ibid., p. 125.

[5] Ibid., p.122 f

[6] Geldenhuys, Luke, p.504.

[7] Stauffer, op. cit., p. 124f.

[8] Ibid., p. 129.

[9] Ibid., p.131.

[10] Ibid., p.132.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid., p. 135.

[14] Justin Martyr, First Apology, chap. XVII.

[15] Geldenhuys, op. cit., p.507.

[16] Ibid., p.508.

Jesus and the Tax Revolt – The Chalcedon Foundation – Faith for All of LifeRender Unto Caesar

US is the mother of all police states

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Glen Ford at The Black Agenda Report:

“When U.S. corporate media operatives use the term “police state,” they invariably mean some other country. Even the so-called “liberal” media, from Democracy Now to the MSNBC menagerie, cannot bring themselves to say “police state” and the “United States” without putting the qualifying words “like” or “becoming” in the middle. The U.S. is behaving “like” a police state, they say, or the U.S. is in danger of “becoming” a police state. But it is never a police state. Since these privileged speakers and writers are not themselves in prison – because what they write and say represents no actual danger to the state – they conclude that a U.S. police state does not, at this time, exist.

[Lila: Please note that line –  US activists are usually not put in jail because their activism is NO THREAT  to the state, but, as is quite obvious, a quite lucrative industry encouraged BY the state, to channel  discontent, mark the boundaries of dissent, hide or obscure more effective dissent, and to lend credibility to the “freedoms” of the police state.]

Considering the sheer size and social penetration of its police and imprisonment apparatus, the United States is not only a police state, but the biggest police state in the world, by far: the police state against whose dimensions all other police systems on Earth must be measured.

By now, even the most insulated, xenophobic resident of the Nebraska farm belt knows that the U.S. incarcerates more people than any country in the world. He might not know that 25 percent of prison inmates in the world are locked up in the U.S., or that African Americans comprise one out of every eight of the planet’s prisoners. But, that Nebraska farmer is probably aware that America is number one in the prisons business. He probably approves. God bless the police state.

For the American media, including lots of media that claim to be of the Left, it is axiomatic that China is a police state. And maybe, by some standards, it is. But, according to United Nations figures, China is 87th in the world in the proportion of its people who are imprisoned. China is a billion people bigger than the United States – more than four times the population – yet U.S. prisons house in excess of 600,000 more people than China does. The Chinese prison population is just 70 percent of the American Gulag. That’s quite interesting because, non-whites make up about 70 percent of U.S. prisons. That means, the Black, brown, yellow and red populations of U.S. prisons number roughly the same as all of China’s incarcerated persons. Let me emphasize that: The American People of Color Gulag is as large as the entire prison population of China, a country of nearly 1.4 billion people.”

Source and full piece: Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report, 28 August 2012

Ford Foundation: Funding Espionage & Subversion In India

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Haindava Keralam reports on the Ford Foundation’s multi-year funding of research in support of policy-making by Indian parliamentarians, via The Institute for Policy Research. Apparently, the researchers were using their work as an excuse to access Indian government files. The Ford Foundation has also been funding Teesta Setalvad, a notoriously  unethical and anti-Hindu journalist and faux secularist.

“Ford Foundation , an International NGO hit the news other day following their interference in policy making of Indian MP’s. To provide assistance to MP’s in ‘Research and Analysis’ , The Institute for Policy Research Studies applied for approval to Home Ministry to receive US $8,55,000 (around `4,70,25,000) from Ford Foundation under this project. The project drew flak when the Institute’s staffers started accessing Government files under the garb of providing assistance to MPs. These “researchers” had free access to Parliament Library and been sourcing crucial documents for the last six years under this project.

This very same Ford Foundation based in US was also behind funding huge funds to Sabrang – An NGO Ran by notorious Teesta Setalvad. Ford Foundation. The Foundation was created by Edsel and Henry Ford , pioneers in car manufacturing. In 2009 Ford foundation has donated $250,000 to feed Teesta’s mouth which in turn have used to propagate Anti Hindu propagandas and to target Narendra Modi personally.

Zerohedge: Party Time Over, Fight Club Time Begins

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“Water, even when it’s polluted, is the source of life; blood, even when it’s carelessly spilled, is the symbol of life being fully lived. To put his point simply: it’s better to be wet than dry.”

—   Richard Schickel about “Fight Club”

Tyler Durden at Zerohedge says it’s time for the Paul grass-roots to grow out of politics and take their fire to the real world and the real fight: time to become self-sufficient, time to gain financial independence,  time to develop powerful networks, diversify your assets, travel or relocate abroad, if necessary, develop alternative currencies, new trading systems, new banks; counter-economics:

“It has become clear that Benton and others have been “handling” Ron Paul for a considerable portion of his campaign and attempting to divorce him from the elements of the movement which are seen as “extreme” or anti-establishment, even though these are the same elements that catapulted Ron Paul into the minds of average Americans.  My impression is that they have been targeted for surgical removal because they are impossible to co-opt for the purposes of diplomacy (submission) with the Neo-Con elites running the GOP carnival.

Rand Paul’s recent endorsement of Mitt Romney is not surprising given the parasitic nature of particular campaign organizers who buzz about him, including Benton.  The bottom line is that some people in the movement are not in it to fight for freedom, or to ensure a brighter and more Constitutional Republic.  Some are in the movement to further their political careers and ambitions, and are perfectly willing to use the energy of popular candidates to carry them to success.

Sadly, this is the ultimate weakness of the political ideal; regardless of how honest and forthright a candidate is, even a principled luminary like Ron Paul can be undermined by those closest to him if he is not careful.  Millions of people relying solely on the tenuous chance of victory of a single man in a single rigged contest is NEVER a recipe for liberty…..

Stewart Rhodes’ speech at Paulfest was the most shocking for many of the political Paulers, as well as the most necessary.  He removed the kid gloves completely as well as any feel-good rhetoric, stating that the GOP as a party was dead, and deserved to be, letting the Paul folks know that any further strategy of attempting to “infiltrate” the Republican establishment and turn it over to the side of good was a waste of time.  He also stated that it is no longer enough for the movement to play around as “intellectual warriors”, they might soon have to become real warriors.  I agree.

In my speech, I gave clear cut and tangible solutions to Paulfest attendees, including alternative markets and barter networks, commodity based currencies, micro industries and localized business models, useful trade skills, off-grid living, preparedness, and if all else fails, real revolution.  Not idealized intellectual activism under the catchy label of revolution, but fists in the air and rifles in hand revolution.  The kind that scares the crap out of most, not because of its danger, but because of its finality of purpose.  The will to fight, really fight, is frightening, especially to those who cling to the belief that one can reason with his opponents.  The cold hard fact is; some men are not men.  Some men are monsters, and reason is the last thing that will ever sway them…”

Assange & Anonymous: Sock-Puppet Rebels..

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Willy Loman has an impassioned plea to forget the “dissent-chiefs” and official revolutionaries on the left (Greenwald, Ellsberg, Hedges, Cole, Chomsky, Goodman, Assange, Anonymous etc.) and on the right (Ron Paul, Alex Jones, Doug Casey, etc.).

Take what’s good in them, but go beyond.

They are reliable on past conspiracies.  Don’t believe them on present ones, unless confirmed by your own analysis. (Hint: If they support Assange and Anonymous, or keep pointing to the approved activists, think twice).

Light your own fire. Think your own thoughts.

And, follow the facts, not the leader.

Willy Loman::

“The rolling psyop known as Julian Assange is not done with us just yet.

After serving as the CIA’s front-man for the distribution of phony intel for a couple years (and getting paid well for it) and then living like a king in an English mansion under “house arrest” for 500 days (while the patsy Bradley Manning is in lock down 24/7), now Julian is getting his very own interview based TV show…….

..Julian Assange lives with a globalist billionaire in the heart of the new imperialist England and he’s going to tell us 99%ers what we should be doing and which “politicians, revolutionaries, intellectuals, artists and visionaries” we should trust and follow.

Anyone else see an inherent problem with that?

With yet another economic collapse just off the horizon and the Occupy Spring taking shape and the entire European continent rioting, you don’t think steering the boiling over dissident movement would be something that the CIA, NSA, and the State Department would be interested in, do you?

If a psyop gets any more obvious than Julian Assange, I haven’t seen it……..

Unfortunately as you know there will be those on the dissident left and right who buy into this shit, believe it or not. Let’s see how our old friend Glenn Greenwald writes about it.

“A WikiLeaks press release states, “‘The World Tomorrow’ is a collection of twelve interviews featuring an eclectic range of guests, who are stamping their mark on the future: politicians, revolutionaries, intellectuals, artists and visionaries. The world’s last five years have been marked by an unrelenting series of economic crises and political upheavals. But they have also given rise to the eruption of revolutionary ferment in the Middle East and to the emergence of new protest movements in the Euro-American world. In Julian’s words, the aim of the show is ‘to capture and present some of this revolutionary spirit to a global audience.’””  RT

[Lila: This is exactly what this Peter Dale Scott article at Lew Rockwell is about. It too lists the activists you should pay attention to.  That’s just what prizes are intended to do – focus your eyes on what the globalists want you to focus on. That is how revolution has been co-opted from the start of scientific state propaganda.]

“Does anyone remember how much we trusted al Jazeera English after their great coverage of the Egyptian protests? Anyone getting the feeling that Russia Today is headed down the same path AJ took right after they earned our trust?

The RT article announcing this weekly psyop is hinting that the proven NSA asset “Anonymous” may be one of his first interviews.

The guest list has not been revealed, but it has been hinted that the first guest will be someone controversial. A tweet from the WikiLeaks account asks provocatively, “Any bets on who The World Tomorrow’s first mystery guest(s) are?” It then adds the hashtag “#ExpectAssange” — a play on the Anonymous slogan, “Expect us.” RT

“For those of you who don’t understand how these games are played, I’ll give you an example. If a law enforcement agency wants to get a new man on the inside of an organization, say a mob organization, what they do is they have someone who is already on the inside vouch for him. Someone with “street cred” so to speak. This is the same thing they do when trying to influence movements of different types.

Take for instance the Truth Movement (or what’s left of it). You have a fake “truther” named Jon Gold. His idea of the “truth” of 9/11 is whatever George Bush and Dick Cheney told us… plus.. “foreknowledge”… well, foreknowledge minus insider trading which he doesn’t think took place. Well, you have that guy (which no real Truth advocate believes for a second) write a book and then you get Sibel Edmunds of Boiling Frogs to stand beside him claiming he is the real deal. Then Gold promotes Sibel’s LIHOPy book and BINGO… you have the APPEARANCE of a consensus in the hijacked movement.

See how that works? One fake vouches for another fake. Jon and Sibel = Julian and “Anonymous”

[Lila: To give Sibel Edmonds credit, she is a lot more credible to me than the others. She is after all a brave person and a whistle-blower who has called out a lot of the lazy activism of another very well-heeled, “comfortable” group, Antiwar. Edmonds seems to be reliable until she gets to 9/11 and she falls silent about Hank Greenberg, as do most Republican activists. But other than that, I don’t feel she belongs in this group. I feel she’s been forced to join them.]

In the world of organized crime, this kind of game can be a bit dangerous. In the world of crime fighting this can be very very dangerous. But in the world of dissident movements, what’s the risk? Remember that guy who was busted infiltrating that movement down in New Orleans? What happened to him? Nothing. He went on after he was exposed to start some new assignment and that was the end of it. What happened to Nurse Nariah (whatever her name was) or that guy who pretended to be the “Gay Girl from Damascus” or “Syrian Danny” once they were all exposed?

This is how they work.

Right now we are on the edge of a massive popular uprising and it just so happens that their two most successful psyops are about to go on one of the most respected news outlets left to us to tell us what to do.

Get it?

Assange himself says in the trailer for the show, “Today we’re on a quest for revolutionary ideas that can change the world tomorrow.” RT

oooooo…. Julian himself tells us what to do…. oh I can’t wait… and “Anonymous” will be there too? And it’s on RT? Well hell, that must be legit.

If you notice though, at the end of the RT article, they seem to be presenting a little disclaimer. Turns out RT didn’t produce this CIA/State Department psyop… some “independent” company out of London produced it. I wonder if it is owned by the same globalist billionaire who is letting Julian live in his mansion while under “house arrest”

“A press release for the show, however, emphasizes that it was put together by an independent UK producer and that RT is merely serving as the initial broadcaster. Negotiations are presently underway with other possible licensees, who might broadcast longer versions of the same interviews.” RT

Seems like RT is already making sure they can distance themselves from this psyop even before it launches it’s first installment……

John Young of Cryptome said years ago that he knew Assange and Wikileaks was a CIA honeypot from the start and he was correct.

Now they are trying to cash in on his “street cred”, street cred that was given (“given”.. not earned) him by the likes of Amy Goodman, Glenn Greenwald, and Daniel Ellsberg.If you still that that is a group of true dissidents, I can’t help you.

[Lila: So what does that make Peter Dale Scott who points to the dissent-chiefs?]

All I can say about this State Department infomercial is: Don’t believe it folks and don’t watch it.

Let them know via their own ratings tools that we can’t be fooled by their Disneyesque smoke and mirrors.

The PR and influence peddling institutions think they’re the real power behind this country and time and time again they’re proven wrong but they just keep plugging away telling themselves they are smarter than all of us. They’re not.

If you don’t take the hint from me, take a cue from the RT article… there’s a REASON they posted the disclaimer in their press announcement and the article about the show. RT is trying to tell you something. The reason is… it’s BULLSHIT.

Don’t watch the show. Tell others its bullshit. Make sure Julian and his NSA handlers get the rotten tomatoes ratings they deserve.

No more Syrian Danny no more Gay Girl no more Julian of the Mansion. We’ve outgrown it. We’re tired of the bullshit. That’s it.

This is going to be our revolution and NOTHING they do is going to hijack it.

Whomever he puts on that fraud of a show of his is suspect. Whoever is on that show of his is just as much of a fraud as he is.

We saw through Invisible Children and Kony 2012 in record time (less than a day I believe) and we will see.. through.. this.. too.

No prepackaged heroes, no ready-made leaders. It’s ham-handed and obvious and we are too tired and angry to fall for this shit.”

Paul-Lehrman Connection Meaningless, Says Daily Bell (Corrections Added)

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Update: Subsequent to my posting this, the Agora disinfo agent/troll/paid basher Ryals reposts Amberger’s comments to him (rather than Amberger’s blog posts about Agora), simultaneously discrediting and neutralizing Amberger by an unsubstantiated smear (Nazi Stasi), just as he posts any substantial criticism of Agora, ALWAYS with slurs about the critics and always with OLD NEWS about Agora, usually attributing criminal behavior to the critics, for which he gives not a shred of proof.

His response fails to mention the people who really are responsible for Agora’s marketing and selling today – Myles Norin (CEO), Matthew Turner (counsel), Addison Wiggin (chief of Agora Financial, its flagship subsidiary, and also heavily involved in Oxford Group, Michael Masterson (Mark Ford), Byron King, Alexander Greene, Mike Ward, Julia Guth, and many others, whose border-line promotions were all deconstructed by Christoph Amberger. Instead, Ryals tries to discredit Amberger’s whistle-blowing. No question Ryals has some kind of tie to Agora.

To make things clearer, Agora is not solely Bonner’s company but owned by several people, some of whom no doubt have axes to grind with others. Bonner himself might have enemies within the company, for partisan, financial or personal reasons.

Notice how Ryals only focuses on the Republicans in the group, like Bonner, presumably Casey, and Robert Bauman, who specializes in the admirable field of asset protection. Now, unlike the state-worshipping fraud Ryals,  I would love to believe Bob Bauman is a really good asset protector (aka money-launderer), but, alas, if he is not what he seems (and I haven’t seen anything concrete to suggest that), he is much more likely to be an IRS/DOJ honey-pot, if I know how these things work.

That’s what I believe large parts of the  asset-protection racket really is about, when it’s not about espionage and government-related money-laundering.

That might include the over-hyped Simon Black, who also seems to be a part of the LRC-Agora crew and constantly tells people that Singapore is a great place for financial security, when anyone who even researches the matter in a skimpy way will figure out that Singapore is crawling with Mossad and CIA.

NWO resistance indeed.

Anyone boosting simplistic asset protection, or simplistic encryption like Tor (heavens!) is simply pushing people into US govt supervised encryption. But, then, maybe that’s the idea.

ORIGINAL POST

The Daily Bell argues that the Ron Paul-Lewis Lehrman connection is meaningless (links to follow):

“Worse, in our humble opinion, whenever such issues arise these days, the dissemblers come out in force to attack the world’s only apparently honest politician, US Congressman Ron Paul, for working with Lewis Lehrman.

It is true that when Ron Paul and Lewis Lehrman served (with many others) on a US Gold Commission during the Reagan years they wrote a minority report recommending a return to some sort of gold standard.

But Ron Paul certainly didn’t seek Lehrman out to write the report. He wrote it with Lehrman because Lehrman was on the committee. Ron Paul, of course, went on to call for a regime of competing currencies, which is something we’re partial to.”

Comment:

This would be a whole lot more credible if  The Daily Bell itself didn’t call out people on just as tenuous evidence, in much more black and white terms than I have ever done.

It also doesn’t help that the Bell dismisses critics of Paul as dissemblers.

Why?

What’s wrong with criticizing a politician who’s set up as the sole spokesman for libertarian issues?

Why would anti-state capitalists focus on a politician as their spokesman, in the first place?

What sense does that make?

Especially, when just a few days ago, the Bell raised no objection at all, when, in an interview on their site, Gerald Celente claimed Paul was “not a fighter” and had failed because he was not a fighter.

If that is the opinion of Paul’s friends, isn’t it natural that people on the paper-money team or outside the binary altogether (like me) would reach even more devastating conclusions?

I don’t believe most Paul critics are dissembling. I think they are genuinely disappointed and suspicious. I am too.

Three. The Bell loses credibility when it claims Paul is the “only honest politician in the world.”

That’s pure hyperbole.

I’m sure the Daily Bell doesn’t know “all the politicians in the world.” And Paul isn’t perfectly clean. There was rampant nepotism during his campaign. There was the alleged double-billing. There were other mis-steps.

They might all be minor. And the Lehrman connection might be innocuous too, but it’s not the only troubling thing that comes to mind.

Which brings me to my fourth point.

Paul has a long-standing relationship via Murray Rothbard with Agora Inc. and its founder, James Dale Davidson, about which I blogged in July (the first person to pull that little nugget up, I do believe….although, as soon as I say that, I’m sure a dozen quicky sites will pop up with the same information on them).

This is a very troubling connection, in my opinion.

The Agora Inc. network has  ties to Rockefeller-related groups, like the Peterson Institute. I blogged about that in 2009, January.

Now, I myself have once cited research produced by the Peterson.

[It’s in my piece on Krugman, at LRC, and the researcher was Anders Aslund, who was one of the advocates of privatization in the Soviet Union. Aslund was wrong about that,  although not the only one wrong, and certainly not the main one.]

But I post research from all over the place, and that is not an endorsement of the authors’ other works or of the websites carrying the research.

Agora’s ties to the Peterson Institute, however, are a bit more relevant and important than my posting or quoting someone once, casually.

The I.O.U.S.A film (a spin-off from Agora’ “Empire of Debt,” Wiley, 2005) was promoted nationally by the Peterson Institute. Some of the positions Agora supports are consonant with Pete Peterson’s interests, although I do believe most people at Agora are anti-state libertarians, whereas Peterson is no more than a  crony capitalist.

This is what I wrote in my 2009 blog post  about the Peterson connection:

“Assembling this bipartisan group of prominent enablers/theorists of empire over the last twenty years lets IOUSA claim it goes beyond partisanship. In reality it does no such thing. Omitting a context for its arguments, the film actually lends itself to being interpreted in ways quite contradictory to the tenor of the original work. At times it even subverts the book thoroughly.

IOUSA lends itself to a very anti-libertarian, statist moralizing of the debt issue: thus, spendthrift population needs to be forced to save by government. Now that really alarms me. Watch out – forced savings accounts ahead!”

Agora also promotes things like “peak oil,” which I don’t find persuasive, being a long-time believer in the abiotic origin of oil.

These positions are  accompanied by promotions throughout its marketing network from which it stands to gain financially, either directly or indirectly.

That surely calls into question the credibility of the positions of anyone deeply connected to them.

Is Paul connected to them in a serious way?

{Added, August 25: Obviously, Agora has also supported anti-war positions that have not won it popularity, so I should give them credit for that and I do.

But I also recognize that the “anti-war” position has a place in the permissible range of public opinion, as long as on crucial issues and events  antiwar advocates develop laryngitis. This strategy, devised by the intelligence services, ensures that there is “cognitive diversity” among critics of war and the police state that gives the appearance of a “liberal” political culture, while actually permitting them little impact.  It siphons off the energy, time, money, and ambition of perhaps 95% of activists and effectively marginalizes the rest. Zahir Ebrahim has written extensively about this at his depressing but honest website, Project HumanBeingsFirst.]

Besides the tie-in to the establishment via Peterson/Rockefeller and besides the commercial imperative which undermines the sincerity of its positions, there are also Rothschild connections to Agora.

First, Rothschild interests are now directly connected to Rockefeller interests, by a recent merger (which I’ve blogged a couple of times).

Second, there are also direct connections between the Rothschilds and Agora.

I wasn’t sure about some of those, a couple of years ago.

In fact, I thought the allegation that Agora was a Rothschild front was only innuendo concocted at Executive Intelligence Review by ex-Larouchite, Bill Engdahl, who often doesn’t cite his sources and has once picked up leads from me without acknowledgement, likely because I come from the right

That’s why, even though I was disillusioned with Ron Paul by then, I didn’t place much stock in the Engdahl charge, especially when it was picked up on Jennifer Lake’s blog (see this blog post of March 10 2010) and then embellished with a lot of strange errors.  I felt the whole thing had to be some kind of disinformation. I certainly didn’t make any connection to Paul.  I thought it was a ploy to muddy more concrete legal issues. One can’t be prosecuted for being a Rothschild front, after all, but one can discredit one’s detractors by posing as one, since the whole Rothschild conspiracy is beyond the pale for mainstream analysts and writers. In fact, Lake’s silly comments, which I was forced to address because they libeled me, actually damaged the very thing she –  with typical arrogance – thought she was assisting – the public interest. In short, she forced me to state things that tipped off the very people she claimed I was covering for.

That’s why I even thought Agora itself was encouraging the story, a view shared by at least one other credible journalist. For the same reason, I suspect that Tony Ryals, the cyberbully behind all the negative postings about me, isn’t half as insane as he pretends to be. In fact, I think he has indirect ties to Agora himself, since he never mentions the people there who have actual legal responsibility there, like CEO Myles Norin, or their attorney, Matt Turner, or Agora Financial chief, Addison Wiggin, or some of their star traders, like Alan Knuckman.

[Sept 6 – this morning, I checked to find that Ryals’ posts referencing these comments of mine and thus referencing these individuals had been deleted or “disappeared.” Of course, just to make me a liar,  they might pop back. But it’s interesting that it’s impossible to stop Ryals’s libels, when it’s someone like me (or others, who aren’t in charge at Agora or whose crimes, if they committed any, are beyond the statute of limitations, but it’s easy enough to get him to remove comments about the people still there.]

Funnier still, Ryals never mentions a former senior employee, Christoph Amberger, whose blog about the company’s shenanigans (cons would be a better word from what I read) was shut down in 2011. Reportedly, this was after he was paid to keep his silence, that is, hold to a non-disclosure agreement under threat of litigation. All traces of his blog about the company’s marketing deceptions (GreenLaserReviews) were wiped off the net in a matter of days.

Instead of mentioning all this, Ryals, who even corresponded with Amberger (who smacked him down for the troll he is) waffles on about Davidson, who is safely beyond reach of prosecution, and, in any case, seems to have more than paid for any sins by his investigations into the Clinton mafia and his insights into the manipulation of the stock markets; Bonner, who probably has no legal liability, as he’s not an officer of the company, and is too wealthy, too cautious, too smart, and too well-connected to get into trouble anyway; and Stansberry, who is already damaged goods and unlikely to get hurt any worse by innuendo.

But leaving aside intriguing theories about the cyber-underworld in which Ryals and his rants reside, I’m still not sure what the Rothschild connections to Agora really amount to.  The best I can say is I’m much more willing to believe some people there profit from them.

Why did it take me so long to get to that point?

Because it’s only recently (over the last year) that I’ve had the time to dig around and find any kind of credible accounting of how the Rothschild family might be the financial juggernaut they are said to be on conspiracy sites.

[I got there by adding material posted at Project Humanbeingsfirst  to my own research into BCCI (via Engdahl, Skolnik, DeepBlackLies, Yamaguchi.com, Forbes.com, LBMA website and other material.]

Now that I’ve come to think the whole “Rothschild” conspiracy  is something more than fiction, I’ve also begun to look at Ron Paul with a more critical eye.

So that’s where I come from on that.

Now, for my own credibility on the subject, given that I too have a connection to Agora.

This is what I have to say.

Except for the attacks following my pieces on Assange (by an attention-seeking Assange groupie, Tom Usher at RealLiberalChristian) and a legal threat at DailyBell by another fanboy and blatant troll, calling himself Al Kyder, and a couple of other things), one hundred percent of  the negative posts about me on the net stem from this one supposedly crazy person, who seems to have an indirect connection to Agora.

And all the rest of the monitoring/hacking I’ve experienced stem from my fall-out with Agora too.

What was the monitoring/hacking about? Simple.

In 2008, I gave whatever information I had  about certain sensitive issues to responsible journalists and investigators.

There you have it. That’s why their campaign against me didn’t end with the resolution of my IP issues with the company.  In fact,  it’s the reason why the IP issue keeps festering.

Who likes to be joined at the hip to someone who’s outed them? Who likes to know that someone knows what they are capable of?

That is why they are so bent on isolating me, stirring up third parties against me, and minimizing my influence in every way possible.

Since then, I’ve been warned by good people to “leave it alone” or possibly become even more of a target.  And that’s what I’ve tried to do, but it’s not because I’m interested in covering up anything for anyone.

It’s because I see no reason to second-guess the integrity, good faith, and sound judgment of what I’ve been told but take it as solid advice from people who know better than me. And  it’s because I believe more evil than good will come from ignoring that advice.

Especially as there’s another layer of complexity to this story.

Agora Inc. was also the last business association of former CIA director, William Colby, who  seemingly committed suicide some twenty years ago.

I say seemingly, because the suicide theory has been peddled only recently, and only by one of Colby’s sons. No one else believes it and there’s not much evidence for it.

Thus far, the official story has been  that it was an accident.

That sounds just as unlikely to me, as I blogged earlier.

Note: Ryals not only filched the Davidson-Chomsky-Rothbard connection from my blog (posted on July 20), as well as the information about Rees-Mogg’s and Colby’s Le Cercle and Pilgrim connections (which I got by discovering and researching the ISGP.EU site in detail),** he failed to link the post and then tried to pretend that I was covering up something about the Colby killing, when I’d  blogged about it as a murder, long ago, in 2010, and before that, in 2009. In fact, I’d been researching Mockingbird, MKUltra, mind-control, and sex-trauma as early as 2004, for my first book, where I have a couple of chapters on the material.

In 2005 I wrote a piece about former CIA director Stansfield Turner and Operation Gladio. It was around then that I also first heard about about Colby.

The fact that I ended up in the company where Colby once worked is one of those strange coincidences that “intention” pulls out of the universe.

And, far from covering up any of this, I’ve blogged repeatedly about it.

For instance, here’s my comment on an interview of Rees-Mogg there:

Posted by Lila Rajiva on 06/05/10 11:59 AM

Sorry. Colby was Cercle and apparently also Opus Dei …

Posted by Lila Rajiva on 06/05/10 11:55 AM

Rees-Mogg is reportedly a member of Le Cercle and the Pilgrim’s Society, as well as the exclusive Roxburghe club – supposedly a very influential part of the Anglo-American establishment. He was backed by speculator and corporate raider, James Goldsmith, relative and close associate of the Rothschilds.

Allegations are made on the left that Rees-Mogg is closely associated with Richard Mellon Scaife. Rees-Mogg is also closely tied to James Davidson, Bill Bonner, and Agora, through the Strategic Investment newsletter and other publications.

Through SI, he’s also linked to William Colby, ex CIA chief, also a Pilgrim Society member, if I’m not mistaken.

By link, I just mean there exists a relationship. It’s by no means clear how that actually plays out, if at all.

Colby was murdered (?) early 1990s. My best guess is it was related to the opening of CIA files with the Church Committee (much earlier)….and inter departmental fighting that resulted; there’s also a connection to a White House- related paedophilia scandal in Nebraska that got hushed up in a hurry. Some have linked that scandal to CIA mind-control operations but I haven’t seen anything conclusive about it. “

It always seemed plausible to me that Colby’s death was a political assassination, given his involvement in Operation Phoenix and Project Mockingbird, his testimony at the Church Committee hearings, his interest in the Nebraska pedophile ring, and his work for the intelligence-affiliated Nugan Hand bank (which had ties to BCCI).

I learned about Le Cercle and the Pilgrim’s Circle from ISGP.eu, and passed that onto the Bell, as well.

I posted the link to ISGP.eu at the Bell below a July 8, 2010 article

Posted by Lila Rajiva on 07/09/10 12:28 PM

Sorry. Two careless mistakes.

@John Treichler (not Treicher, as posted before).

The site is the Institute for the Study of Globalization and Covert Politics (ISGP.eu not ISGPU, as I wrote in a hurry). Written from a very left-wing perspective. Meticulously compiled.

[Note: ISGP eu was up when I posted the link, but googling for it today, I find that the domain is for sale and I find a post at Cryptogon, dating back to January of the same year (2010), saying that the site had disappeared, but that the writer at Cryptogon had saved the information from the google cache in the form of a zip file. However the link he had posted didn’t open to the ISGP.eu file at all. He claimed he had given it to Wikileaks for safe-keeping. I later found it at wikispooks.]

So, that’s my explanation of why the Bell’s dismissal of the Lehrman link isn’t quite enough; why there are other reasons to worry about Paul, such as his connections to Agora; why I was slow to start looking at Paul critically; what Agora’s ties to the Rothschilds might be; and what my connection to the whole business amounts to.

There’s one other thing. The Bell is also a part of the same Agora network to which Paul seems to have ties.

You won’t hear that from them, though.  It’s one of those little omissions that are troubling,  like the repositioning and revisionism that goes on on the site, at times.

For instance, in the same piece on the Lehrman tie, Wile writes that he knew Assange was disinformation right away.

Not so. He got that from me (see these comments below a piece at Infowars.com

as well as these comments below another piece there.

I was perhaps the only rightist anti-neocon to criticize Assange.

Other debunkers were Wayne Madsen (the first on the case) and Bill Engdahl, both on the left.

Neither of those two, by the way, assembled nearly as comprehensive a critique of Wikileaks as I did.

And I know that research had an impact, because  the Guardian ran a piece derived from it shortly after (picking up on the John Shipton lead) and an Australian academic wrote a paper repositioning the cypherpunk association (deconstructed in my pieces) into a narrative more favorable to their man.

Wile relied on that research, as well as material on Gordon Duff’s site, in changing his opinion. Then he exaggerated and ended up with a kind of parody of my criticism of Assange.

This he tends to do, which allows an opening to people like Fed regulator, William Black, whom Wile once made the mistake of criticizing. Black reacted with a petty and surprisingly  personal attack, but, when you distort people’s positions, you have to expect vehement reactions.

Wile’s subtle perception management has even caught the attention of many contributors to the Bell, including pro-Paulian goldbugs like Bionic Mosquito and Leonardo Pisano, as well as paper-money anti-Paulians like FauxCapitalist and Memehunter.

Why does he do it? Most likely as a way for the site to stay viable on the net, while conspiracy mongering, or perhaps, as a way to manage the reactions of readers and associates. Nothing wrong with that, but, still, it’s unsettling and tends to make people suspicious.

It’s why I stopped posting on their forum, despite my gratitude to them. for providing a useful and unusual venue for discussions.

I also do respect Wile’s courage in tackling material people usually avoid for fear of losing their credibility.

So the Bell does get a lot of props from me for bravery and unique content, yes, but I also see them as compromised by their financial ties. The same goes for some other libertarian sites I still read.

Other pluses: Wile is almost always polite and he is not as Eurocentric in his thinking as some others.

I should add that I’m not one of those who think he’s running a limited hang-out himself.  Or, at least, he is doing it less than most.

Some final thoughts:

First, about Colby and Agora.

Colby had so many enemies that it would be hard to narrow down who murdered him, if he was murdered, without a lot more evidence being uncovered. But no one in officialdom or intelligence is likely to want to do that. And only a fool or a martyr would venture into that territory alone.

About the Agora connection (and, through them, to Paul):

Colby’s name appeared on Agora’s long-running Strategic Investments newsletter, with which the Rothschild-related Rees Mogg is/was affiliated, along with long-time anti-tax advocate, electronic counterfeiting (anti-Naked Short Selling) critic, and Forbes/Scaife protege, James Dale Davidson.

Davidson, Rothbard, and Chomsky all worked together in the 1970s, in antiwar activism, which by itself means little or nothing. Many ideological foes make common cause on single issues.

But, it was not “by itself,” as the evidence shows.

At least one of Paul’s writers (the guy who wrote the race realist pamphlets) is directly tied to Agora.

Paul himself has been incessantly promoted by Agora, until very recently, when affiliates and associates began promoting a few anti-Paul libertarians, like Wendy McElroy, N. Stephen Kinsella, and even Stephan Molyneux, who appeared briefly on the Doug Casey website, and then was pushed out.

It was also from Agora Inc. that I first heard of Ron Paul.

Casey, like Jeff Berwick and what looks like a majority of the hard-money community, is himself closely tied to the Agora network by business affiliation.

So also, as I said earlier,  the Daily Bell, with its multiple banking and gold community associations.

These ties may or may not mean anything nefarious, but they would certainly limit what the Bell, or any other libertarian writer in this circle, would be willing or able to say publicly.

Which means I really can’t trust someone in that circle to be too forthcoming about Paul, since they all share business networks.

That is simply common-sense.

Even I have had a hard time writing about Agora’s network, even though all I did was write and do some research there, and the only person I really worked with was Bill Bonner.

To put it as simply as possible for all the trolls who still can’t read my actual words, let alone between my words:

It is difficult to write critically about people with whom you have had personal and professional relationships; who have accessed your personal and business records (illegally).

It is even more difficult when their employees work and live close to where you work and live and they are native-born, while you are an immigrant.

It becomes impossible when the political and economic context is a multi-front global military and economic war, in which your motherland is also involved, and not always as an ally; when the legal and media environment of your adopted country is totalitarian; when your family lives abroad and you are self-employed and modestly well-off, while they have tens of millions of dollars behind them, are connected to intelligence and financial elites, have thousands, if not millions, of subscribers and friends to whom they can outsource their efforts, and when they are marketing, financial, and political players on a global scale.

If that is true of me, how much more is it true of the hard-money community, which is completely encompassed by the Agora network?

I don’t expect any of them to pipe up with anything but support for Ron Paul. They will alienate their business associates, otherwise.

I hope that explains why I don’t think the Bell’s dismissal of the Lehrman tie is sufficient by itself.

I say this as someone who took a long time to open their eyes about Paul.

Which person likes to think they’ve been had? Or, that establishment critics mightn’t be entirely off-base in their criticism of Paul?

As far back as 2008, I heard some mutterings from loyal fans of Paul but said nothing, hoping it was all minor or a mistake.

I even took the part of the LRC crowd against the WSJ in a lengthy blog post.

[As far as that WSJ incident goes, I still stand by the piece ]

In 2010 I spoke up about my dissatisfaction with Paul’s positions at the Daily Bell forum.

I didn’t want to, because I knew Paul supporters would get annoyed by it, but credibility is very important to anyone writing about politics. It should be more important than pleasing the team.

Then, a few people who’ve wanted to discredit me for supporting libertarian positions(albeit nuanced and rather more conservative ones than that of the anarcho-caps), or for criticizing Assange (albeit in a most circumspect and balanced way than his other detractors), or for deconstructing Ron Paul and his libertarian promoters (albeit factually and with respect), have tried to claim that I’m covering up for this or that person.

The truth is exactly the opposite. I’ve been libeled, monitored, and undermined covertly, almost continuously since 2007.  I’ve also been plagiarized repeatedly and marginalized.

I don’t really believe the government was behind any of that, except maybe at a very low level, in so far as some petty operatives might have been employed by my enemies to do the dirty work.

So, there is no cover up on my part. Or paranoia.  What I say is not a lie. It’s not propaganda. It’s not a smear or anything but the most truth it is possible, helpful, and advisable for anyone in my position to speak.

For the umpteenth time, I’m not RAW, nor CIA, nor Jihadi, nor Hindu fascist. I’m just a writer, with a lot of interests, an eclectic background, and too much curiosity and impetuosity for her own good.

It was a meaningful synchronicity that I got involved in the whole business. I don’t say that to promote myself,  create a mystery, or confuse the situation. I say it because that is really how it happened.

There are mysteries of “intention,” “attraction,” and the cycles of time.  And they have nothing to do with “dissembling”, “disinformation,” or “RAW”.

The innuendos by Jennifer Lake, Tony Ryals, and Tom Usher are simply smears, even if they are understandable smears.

There really are more things in earth and heaven, Horatio…

[Added: August 5, 2017, I deleted the link on this page to http://occultview.com/category/astrology because my security software sent me a malware alert for it. You can google the site directly.]