Politicians’ class-privilege: armed security

A winding circus tour through the ever-popular gun issue

Logic, polemic, non-sequiturs, popcorn, and burning-ass syndrome

If you can’t have guns, you can have mind control

Who is the ‘we’ in ‘we have to stop killing each other’

by Jon Rappoport

January 18, 2016

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“After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.” (William Burroughs, Grand Street no. 37, 1992)

Let me state, for the record, that I’m not in favor of selling guns at 7-Elevens or from street vending machines. There are, however, a few nagging questions about gun ownership I want to scratch, claw, and flagellate, so follow along as I try to take apart a weird, wacky, and wonderful subject.

We’ve all heard this one: if a politician wants to disarm the public, he should give up his own security protection. See how he likes it.

What is it about politicians that gives them a special right to have armed professionals stalk their perimeter and mumble into their collars?

I can think of two reasons. One, pols are important. We need them. We need them more than we need, say, electricians or plumbers or pizza delivery boys or dentists.

I fail to admire the class distinction. And that’s putting it generously. In the overwhelming number of cases, the wounding or killing of a politician would result in another pol, very much like him, moving in to take his place. The new entry would vote along party lines, at the instruction of his superiors. He would commit the same unconscionable actions. He would display the same level of incompetence. Or, if you believe politicians are honorable and even insightful, then surely a pol who is taken out of action could be replaced by another who is endowed with the same admirable qualities.

The second reason: top-tier politicians are very visible. They’re widely known. They’re celebrities. As such, they attract crazies. Therefore, they need security.

Ah, but wait. It starts to get tricky here. What about famous actors and athletes? They, too, have many fans, a small percentage of whom are nuts. These private-sector celebs hire their own guards. They can afford to.

But…many politicians don’t have that kind of money. Therefore, they need government to pay for the hired guns, who are other government employees.

So follow this…if money, no-money is the only distinction here, then rich politicians should certainly pay for their own private guards.

In which case, government regulations should be issued that spell out the level of wealth, the demarcation line. A politician who has at least X assets to his name must hire his own protection. Anything below that and he can avail himself of government help. That makes sense, or am I missing something?

I’d like to see John Heinz Kerry sweep into town with his own private muscle. You know, guys with heavy auto-weapons held across their black undershirts. Maybe a band, too, blasting a Springsteen cover. Just for show. Hillary, on the other hand, could go with an all-girl phalanx of Amazons packing sawed offs. With a few drones overhead. I suspect the President has enough cash stashed away by now to afford his own security. He could go straight Sinaloa, or maybe he’d do a mix of cartel soldiers and Syrian “moderate rebels.”

Of course, there’s always the argument that politicians are under extraordinary threat from foreign enemies, and that’s why they require the kind of government protection plain citizens don’t need. As a counter to that, I would simply offer the gun-violence statistics of America. For some esoteric reason, it turns out that people no one has ever heard of are most likely to become shooting victims.

In any case, no one is supposed to protect himself. That’s for sure. It would be vile, ugly. We expect criminals to shoot people. We’re ready for that. But if a law-biding citizen suddenly fires a weapon, in order, for example, to stay alive, it’s an offense to our sensibilities. It looks bad. He could have been shooting bullets for the wrong reason, and even though he wasn’t, the mere suggestion of it is enough to disturb us. We’ve been “triggered,” psychologically. We are the victims. And we must demand justice.

Sidebar: Maybe celebrity actors should have Secret Service protection. Turn the tables. Just for fun, award the actor with the highest grossing film of the year Secret Service minders. Throw in a few Seals and Deltas for good measure. Army Rangers live in a house next to his house. Marines do double shifts at the local Whole Foods. A bad review of his next movie, and a CIA media specialist places a call to the newspaper’s publisher.

Here’s something that would highlight a point. Choose one of the adamant reporters or columnists who want to disarm all private citizens everywhere, and set him up in a small apartment in a high-crime area. Let him test the response time of the local police. Just a random idea.

Sidebar: How about this? The President and his cabinet, armed to the teeth, guard LeBron James night and day.

I know I’m wandering off-subject a bit, but possibilities are blooming. For example, instead of an actual (phony) Presidency, make the Office into a blockbuster movie, and in the movie the commander-in-chief has a bevy of film tough guys at his beck and call. Jason Statham, Stallone, The Arnold. Now you can have assassination attempts, attacks on the White House, bombs exploding, and car chases. Show some serious action. It’s what the people want.

Or in real life, just go straight for the throat. Declare a national state of emergency, forbid anyone from going outside after 6pm, require all Americans, at the age of 18, to serve seven years in militarized police forces across the land. Do ongoing house to house searches, remove all guns. Close gun shops. Shut down weapons manufacturers. Only the cops and the military have guns. Well, the criminals do, too, but we need them to justify the existence of the expanded national police.

So at the age of ten, all boys and girls take a special exam, and those who qualify are shunted into a government school to train as future thieves and killers. That works.

Keep the borders open. It maintains a roiling pot.

The White House? Transfer it to a one-bedroom apartment on the South Side of Chicago. No security.

I’m feeling my way along here, but I believe I’m starting to sketch in a reasonable picture of the next phase of America.

We have to get rid of our abstract ideals. We need to give more people real experience on the ground.

In fact, reality TV shows are in order. 24/7 video tracking. 18 fully armed libertarians move to Detroit. 18 devoted liberals without weapons move to Ferguson. 18 gang members from South Central move to Chevy Chase. Mix and match. Dream up new combinations. 200 federally backed ISIS members take up residence in Atlanta. Maybe 50 Crips members go to work for the NRA. As we know, it’s the separation of different groups that’s destroying America. Take a thousand college students who are screeching about Privilege and move them from their lovely privileged campuses to buildings on the mean streets of Baltimore. After six months, gather them all in a hall and leave one gun on the podium and see what happens. Might be interesting.

Now we come to the cure for all gun violence: psychiatry. The nation’s chief expert on the subject, Barack Obama, decided in the wake of Sandy Hook he would command the creation of a string of mental-health clinics across the land. Catch the lunatics early and treat them before they open fire on innocent citizens. This is its own reality show, because, you see, the very drugs often prescribed to patients (SSRI antidepressants like Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft) push some of them into committing violence (suicide, homicide). More drugs equal more shootings—and no one knows where and when the next patient will go off. It’s a Powerball lottery. Or you could call it a Trojan Horse. I see it as a Johnny Appleseed operation. Sprinkle the drugs throughout society and watch madness and violence bloom.

Tell me psychiatry as a cure for gun violence is any less bizarre than Crips going to work for the NRA or sending college students to live in a high-crime area.

The most bizarre thing of all is trying to ban law-biding citizens from defending themselves.

When you actually think about it.

“Sir, we realize you aren’t going to go out and shoot someone. Yes. We know you’ll only fire your weapon if someone tries to harm you. Right. But you see, not all people are like you. And those people ruin things for everybody. It’s like the classroom where two or three bad apples talk out of turn and disrupt learning. Sometimes the teacher has to say, ‘The next student who interrupts me, and I’ll make the whole class stay after school.’ Well, that’s what’s happening with guns. Now, if you don’t give us yours, you have symptoms of Oppositional Defiance Disorder and ADHD, you’re mentally ill, and mentally ill people can’t own guns. It’s logical.”

Speaking of logical and bizarre, try this one on for size:

“I’m well aware that this [guns] is a hot political subject. And again, I will speak out no matter what role I find myself in. [Ahem, a role like President, or President, or possibly even President.] But I believe that we need a more thoughtful conversation. We cannot let a minority of people – and it’s, that’s what it is, it is a minority of people – hold a viewpoint that terrorizes the majority of people.” (Hillary Clinton, CNN town hall meeting, June 17, 2014)

Who knew that gun ownership was more than just an ordinary crime? It’s also a “viewpoint crime.” It’s a form of terrorism. People speaking out in favor of private citizens owning guns are their own ISIS. What a revelation.

Hmm. Let me think about this for a minute.

Wow.

I wasn’t going to vote for Hillary…but dammit. Suddenly…

She’s innovative. She’s cutting edge. She can see that exercising 1st Amendment rights impairs a proper understanding of the 2nd Amendment. She’s a dot connector.

Hell, as our next President…

Yes, I can see she should probably have all the protection she needs. Secret Service, NSA, the Armed Forces, the CIA, the FBI, and so on. Of course, she wants, in turn, to protect all women (her sisters). What better way than by disarming them, so when men break into their houses, they don’t confuse their pretty little heads and fire a weapon and hit themselves in the leg.

Politicians are special people, after all. They aren’t like the rest of us.

They need big-time security. I knew if I kept writing long enough, I’d get to the truth.

—Sidebar: we’re dealing with a case of national schizophrenia. There are people out there who are very comfortable with the police and the military having all the guns. These same people criticize the government for spying on everybody, for going to war at the drop of a hat, for launching drone strikes on a regular basis, for torturing untried terror suspects, for arranging elaborate stings that trap low-level criminals and turn them into terrorists, for weaponizing police forces with military equipment beyond any reasonable need, for cooking and corrupting evidence in criminal prosecutions, for enabling mega-corporations who pillage and plunder in foreign lands, for making numerous false arrests, for killing innocent suspects.

But this kind of government should have all the guns. That would be fine. There is no hint of contradiction here. All would be well. As the years and the decades pass, government would certainly not trample (further) on the freedom of its own citizens. To imagine such a thing would be a gross symptom of paranoia.

Don’t worry, be happy. Somebody just won the billion-dollar Powerball.

(To read about Jon’s collection, Power Outside The Matrix, click here.)

As George Carlin wrote about fairy tales, “Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man — living in the sky — who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever ’til the end of time! But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money!”

If you see any parallel between that formulation and government, you’re ill. You’re misguided. You need to enroll in the special schizophrenia curriculum, where you’ll learn how to compartmentalize. “The government performs the following terrible actions. But the government loves you. Therefore, let it take all the guns.”

No unfortunate consequence could possibly come to pass.

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29^th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

Official science: the grand illusion

Jan14

Official science: the grand illusion

by Jon Rappoport

January 14, 2016

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, Power Outside The Matrix, click here.)

“Government science exists because it is a fine weapon to use, in order to force an agenda of control over the population. We aren’t talking about knowledge here. Knowledge is irrelevant. What counts is: ‘How can we fabricate something that looks like the truth?’ I keep pointing this out: we’re dealing with reality builders. In this case, they make their roads and fences out of data, and they massage and invent the data out of thin air to suit their purposes. After all, they also invent money out of thin air.” (The Underground, Jon Rappoport)

Introduction: Since 1987, one of my goals as a reporter has been to educate the public about false science.

Between then and now, I have found that, with remarkably few exceptions, mainstream reporters are studiously indifferent to false science.

They shy away from it. They pretend “it couldn’t be.” They refuse to consider facts. They and their editors parrot “the experts.”

Official science has a stranglehold on major media. It has the force of a State religion. When you stop and think about it, official science is, in a significant sense, a holy church. Therefore, it is no surprise that the church’s spokespeople would wield power over major information outlets.

These prelates invent, guard, and dispense “what is known.” That was precisely the role of the Roman Church in times past. And those professionals within the modern Church of Science are severely punished when they leave the fold and accuse their former masters of lies and crimes. They are blackballed, discredited, and stripped of their licenses. At the very least.

Totalitarian science lets you know you’re living in a totalitarian society.

The government, the press, the mega-corporations, the prestigious foundations, the academic institutions, the “humanitarian” organizations say:

“This is the disease. This is its name. This is what causes it. This is the drug that treats it. This is the vaccine that prevents it.”

“This is how accurate diagnosis is done. These are the tests. These are the possible results and what they mean.”

“Here are the genes. This is what they do. This is how they can be changed and substituted and manipulated. These are the outcomes.”

“These are the data and the statistics. They are correct. There can be no argument about them.”

“This is life. These are the components of life. All change and improvement result from our management of the components.”

“This is the path. It is governed by truth which our science reveals. Walk the path. We will inform you when you stray. We will report new improvements.”

“This is the end. You can go no farther. You must give up the ghost. We will remember you.”

We are now witnessing the acceleration of Official Science. Of course, that term is an internal contradiction. But the State shrugs and moves forward.

The notion that the State can put its seal on favored science, enforce it, and punish its competitors, is anathema to a free society.

For example: declaring that psychiatrists can appear in court as expert witnesses, when none of the so-called mental disorders listed in the psychiatric literature are diagnosed by laboratory tests.

For example: stating that vaccination is mandatory, in order to protect the vaccinated (who are supposed to be immune) from the unvaccinated. An absurdity on its face.

For example: announcing that the science of climate change is “settled,” when there are, in fact, huge numbers of researchers who disagree. —And then, drafting legislation and issuing executive orders based on the decidedly unsettled science.

For example: officially approving the release and sale of medical drugs (“safe and effective”) which go on to kill, at a conservative estimate, 100,000 Americans every year. And then refusing to investigate or punish the purveyors of these drug approvals (the FDA).

For example: permitting the widespread use of genetically modified food crops, based on no long-term studies of their impact on human health. And then, arbitrarily announcing that the herbicide, Roundup, for which many of these crops are specifically designed, is non-toxic.

For example: declaring and promoting the existence of various epidemics, when the viruses purportedly causing them are not proven to exist and/or not proven to cause human illness (Ebola, SARS, West Nile, Swine Flu, etc.)

A few of you reading this have been with me since 1988, when I published my first book, AIDS INC., Scandal of the Century. Among other conclusions, I pointed out that HIV had never been shown to cause human illness; the front-line drug given to AIDS patients, AZT, was overwhelmingly toxic; and what was being called AIDS was actually a diverse number immune-suppressing conditions.

Others of you have found my work more recently. I always return to the subject of false science, because it is the most powerful long-term instrument for repression, political control, and destruction of human life.

As I’ve stated on many occasions, medical science is ideal for mounting and launching covert ops aimed at populations—because it appears to be politically neutral, without any allegiance to State interests.

Unfortunately, medical science, on many fronts, has been hijacked and taken over. The profit motive is one objective, but beyond that, there is a more embracing goal:

Totalitarian control.

On the issue of vaccines, I’ve written much about their dangers and ineffectiveness. But also consider this: the push for mandatory vaccination goes a long way toward creating a herd effect—which is really a social construction.

In other words, parents are propagandized to think of themselves a kind of synthetic artificial “community.”

“Here we are. We are the fathers and mothers. We must all protect our children against the outliers, the rebels, the defectors, the crazy ones who refuse to vaccinate their own children. We are all in this together. They are the threat. The enemy. We are good. We know the truth. They are evil.”

This “community of the willing” are dedicated to what the government tells them. They are crusaders imbued with group-think. They run around promoting “safety and protection.” This group consciousness is entirely an artifact, propelled by “official science.”

The crusaders are, in effect, agents of the State.

They are created by the State.

Androids.

They live in an absurd Twilight Zone where fear of germs (the tiny invisible terrorists) demands coercive action against the individuals who see through the whole illusion.

This is what official science can achieve. This is how it can enlist obedient foot soldiers and spies who don’t have the faintest idea about how they’re being used.

This is a variant on Orwell’s 1984. The citizens are owned by the all-embracing State, but they aren’t even aware of it.

That’s quite a trick.

One of my favorite examples of double-think or reverse-think is the antibody test. It is given to diagnosis diseases. Antibodies are immune-system scouts sent out to identify germ-intruders, which can then be wiped out by other immune-system troops.

Prior to 1985, the prevailing view of a positive test was: the patient is doing well; his body detected the germ and dispensed with it. After 1985, the view was suddenly: this is bad news; the patient is sick or he is on the verge of getting sick; he has the germ in his body; it does harm.

Within the medical community, no one (with very few exceptions) raised hell over this massive switch. It was accepted. It was actually good for business. Now, many more people could be labeled “needs treatment,” whereas before, they would have been labeled “healthy.”

While I was writing my first book, AIDS INC., in 1987-8, I wrote the FDA asking about a possible AIDS vaccine. I was told the following: every person given such a vaccine would, of course, produce antibodies against HIV. That is the whole purpose of a vaccine: to produce antibodies.

However, I was informed, patients receiving this vaccine would be given a letter to carry with them, in case they were ever tested for HIV and came up positive. The letter would explain that the antibodies causing the positive test were the result of the vaccine, not the result of “natural” action inside the patient’s body.

In other words, the very same antibodies were either protective against AIDS (good) or indicative of deadly disease (bad).

This was the contradictory and ridiculous and extraordinary pronouncement of official science.

It carries over into every disease for which an antibody test is administered. If a vaccine against disease X is given, it delivers immunity, because it produces antibodies. But if a diagnostic test for disease X reveals the presence of the same antibodies, this is taken a sign of illness.

Extrapolated to a more general level, the Word is: synthetic medical treatment is good; the action of the body to heal itself is incompetent.

This is a type of superstition that would astonish even the most “primitive” societies.

It no longer astonishes me. I see it everywhere in official science.

From the medical establishment’s point of view, being alive is a medical condition.

We are now living in a society where an incurable itch to meddle everywhere and at all times is the standard.

A new definition of Reality emerges: “that which needs to be monitored and surveilled.”

Jon Rappoport

If Capitalism is dead, this is why

Jan5

If Capitalism is dead, this is why

by Jon Rappoport

January 5, 2016

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)

“An era of corruption is built for those who lead corrupt lives. They revel in the era. They belong. They are home. They don’t care what you call the prevailing system, they’ll find their way, because they know the unspoken rules and how things actually work. Naïve idealists and academic hair-splitters? The corrupt eat them for breakfast.” (The Underground, Jon Rappoport)

The recent acceleration of attacks on capitalism leaves no ground un-scorched. Whatever capitalism is, it’s all bad. It needs to be banned. A wiser and saner alternative must be found—and naturally that alternative will be handed down from Above, where wondrous altruists in government can point us toward the Promised Land.

For the sake of humanity, they will assume the reins of power. They’ll organize businesses and companies and corporations under the umbrella of government, and all will be well.

Forget the fact that they cooperate and collude and conspire and commit crimes with their erstwhile corporate and banking partners. That’s a minor footnote.

Merriam-Webster defines capitalism as: “an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market.”

Boiling it down further: you start a company; you own the company; you make a product and you sell it at a price you determine. People buy the product if they choose to.

This arrangement is not evil. You could turn it into a criminal enterprise, if you wanted to. For example, you could make a product that is poison, advertise it as medicine, and pay off those who might expose your ruse. But in that case, you’ve perverted the primary capitalist arrangement.

You would be prosecuted, if discovered. Well, you would be, if law-enforcement personnel were honest. If they weren’t, you could get away with murder.

Now, suppose there are 10,000 companies who do get away with murder. Suppose, to take things further, there are governments who collude with some of these companies and go to war, against other nations, so the companies can obtain access to raw materials they want, in order to manufacture their products.

Is this conspiracy an intrinsic part of capitalism? Is it? Or is it a perversion of the basic capitalist arrangement?

Some would argue that capitalism naturally breeds this perversion, and therefore it is an evil system. But that argument has a flaw. In order to propose it, you need to assume there are a fairly large number of people, in significant positions, who will commit crimes and enable crimes, on an ongoing basis.

And if so, those criminals will pervert any economic system in which they participate. Socialism, Communism, Fascism, State Corporatism, and so on. Therefore, any economic system will turn out to be evil.

Those “idealists” who rail against capitalism are, at best, railing against criminals. They tend to ignore the fact that law-enforcement personnel fail to punish criminals. This is, and always was, the problem.

Capitalism isn’t the problem.

For example, in the early days of the American Republic, state legislatures, fearing the power of corporations, adopted stringent rules: every corporation doing business in a state had to be charted by the legislature; and any corporation doing harm to the public would have its charter yanked. It would be kicked out of the state.

But this state system was eventually swallowed up by corrupt legislators, judges, and corporate criminals.

Do you really want to believe that these states, if they adopted socialism, would have eliminated those criminals?

I’m not even bothering to make the argument that capitalism fosters greater achievement and freedom than socialism. I’m just talking about criminals.

A society in which a large number of people were awake, intelligent, and courageous would directly face the question: what do we do about criminals? How do we ferret them out, how do we prosecute them, how do we keep them from being protected, how do we keep them from gaining too much power?

Abject failure in that regard guarantees the corruption of any political and economic system. Only addled fools would assume that “a more just system” would correct the underlying problem.

When I say “criminal,” in this context, I’m talking about Wall Street thieves; makers of harmful products; bureaucrats who protect harmful products and their producers; legislators who bring pork to their districts; bankers who invent money out of thin air; corporate monopolists who crush their competition; corporate leaders who promote, through their government cronies, wars and invasions; academics and researchers who lie about science in order to elevate corporate profits; egregious polluters; government/corporate partners who destroy jobs at home and set up shop in foreign lands, where slaves work in unconscionable conditions; governments that expand the bloat of their work-forces for no good reason…and so forth and so on.

The levels and extent of corruption are extraordinary, yes. Because, over a very long period of time, criminals have been nurtured, protected, aided, and secretly declared immune from prosecution.

This is not capitalism. This is endemic corruption, and if you need an example from the annals of socialism, examine the old USSR.

It’s all too easy to say there is no solution and the human race is doomed. I’ve known many such critics, and they all exhibit a grim passivity coated with self-serving cynicism. Under cover of “knowing the score,” they’re making excuses for their own misery.

The answer lies in raising children who are honest; who are smart; who are genuinely educated; who are beyond the fatal flaw of buying into the latest flimsy fly-by-night idiot’s-delight idealism; who will stand up for their principles; who believe in individual power and responsibility; who don’t see the benefit of turning into chronic low-level liars; who are liberated from whining and moaning; who refuse to go along with the crowd; who mix and mingle with enough life-as-it-is to avoid becoming androids and robots; who can spot con artists and shuck-and-jive altruists at a thousand yards; who see what criminals at all levels are doing to those around them; who have the imagination to envision a different world…

And that takes a certain kind of parent.

That is not the responsibility of the State. It doesn’t take a village. It doesn’t take a politician with “a better answer.” It doesn’t take paralyzing fear. Or surrender. Or fairy tales and rainbows.

It takes individuals. Each one unique. Each one alive and awake. Each one rejecting the decaying nature of criminals. Criminals in the street, criminals in the halls of government, criminals in the boardrooms.

No excuses. No rationalizations.

Claim what I’m suggesting is impossible, if you want to. Say it can’t be done. But time is long, civilizations and societies come and go, and after the last corrupt society falls there is always another chance.

History is full of events that never could have happened, but did. If overarching power were always an irresistible force, we would not be where we are now. We would all be gibbering biological machines, unable to even read or comprehend a single cogent thought.

No moment or period of time is All One Thing. The juvenile mind cannot understand this. It seeks the simplest characterization. It demands supreme heaven or final hell. But freedom hasn’t been defeated.

The freedom-impulse is still here. Not because it drips and slides down from mass consciousness, but because individuals still exist.

Perhaps you are one of those.

Jon Rappoport

Congressional lunatics on the march

Dec23

How to spend $1 trillion in the dark

Congressional lunatics on the march

Rand Paul: nobody read the $1.1 trillion bill before passing it

The House of Shadows

by Jon Rappoport

December 23, 2015

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)

“Congressman, the American people are in an uproar. This is serious. I can’t begin to imagine what penalties you’re going to face. Possibly your ice cream after supper will be cancelled.” (The Underground, Jon Rappoport)

Congress just passed a $1.1 trillion budget bill. Here, from The Hill (“Paul: Nobody read the $1.1 trillion omnibus bill”), is what Senator Rand Paul has to say about it:

“It was over a trillion dollars, it [the bill] was all lumped together, 2,242 pages, nobody read it, so frankly my biggest complaint is that I have no idea what kind of things they stuck in the bill…We were given it yesterday or the day before the bill came forward, and so this is not a way to run government. It’s a part of the reason why government is broke.”

Paul went to say that no Democrat or Republican in the House or Senate read the bill before voting on it.

But of course the US federal government is not out of control. Perish the thought. The elected representatives are doing exactly what they’re supposed to do: spend money. It doesn’t matter where the money goes or how much of it there it is. These are minor points.

Borrow the money, tax the population in order to get it, invent it out of nothing—whatever it takes.

There is an obvious corollary here, which nobody talks about: if the crazed Congress can just flip a trillion bucks as if it were spare change, what guarantee is there that the money will go to the places where it’s designated?

You might recall that, in 2001, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced the Pentagon was unable to account for $2.3 trillion of its budget:

“The technology revolution has transformed organizations across the private sector, but not ours, not fully, not yet. We are, as they say, tangled in our anchor chain. Our financial systems are decades old. According to some estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions. We cannot share information from floor to floor in this building because it’s stored on dozens of technological systems that are inaccessible or incompatible…”

Consider that possibly $2 trillion has been spent, since 1966, on the war on poverty. Much of this money was earmarked to improve the standard of living in inner cities. How does that appear to have worked out? I find no evidence that the federal government has ever done a comprehensive investigation of where the money actually went or how it was used.

But don’t worry. Things are under control.

Want to contemplate the enormous sums the government has forked out in foreign aid over the past 30 years? Care to look for a detailed report on where all that money actually went and how it was used? Want to factor in all wars the US has fought during that period, and try to track those funds? Good luck.

If you couldn’t quite balance your yearly books and ended up with a hundred dollars you couldn’t account for, nobody would be upset. But if in the course of the past 30 years, you couldn’t show where 10 or 15 trillion dollars went, I assure you people wouldn’t just suspect you of incompetence. No. They’d be smelling grand, grand theft. And RICO crimes. Why wouldn’t they?

How about the recent agreements at the international climate summit in Paris? Richer nations have pledged billions to poorer nations as a kind of reparation “for destroying their way of life.” We’ll leave the merit of that idea for another time and another discussion, but exactly where will all this money go? Into whose bank accounts, over the next 20 years? Who are the signatories on those accounts?

Remember the federal bailout of 2008, in the wake of the financial meltdown? Here is a quote from Forbes (“The Fed’s $16 Trillion Bailouts Under-Reported”, 9/20/11):

“The media’s inscrutable brush-off of the Government Accounting Office’s recently released [superficial] audit of the Federal Reserve has raised many questions about the Fed’s goings-on since the financial crisis began in 2008… The findings verify that over $16 trillion was allocated to corporations and banks internationally, purportedly for ‘financial assistance’ during and after the 2008 fiscal crisis… However, the audit’s findings were almost completely overlooked, even with a number as high as $16 trillion staring all of us in the face.”

Sixteen trillion dollars. No problem. Just another exercise in spending, and that’s what the government does.

Show me the full and final and very specific accounting of what those bailed-out banks and corporations did with the $16 trillion. Just joking.

When people talk about massive black-budget operations taking place out of public view, others “refute” the possibility by asserting that government funds are closely monitored. Sure they are. And ants are piloting space ships to the edge of the space-time continuum.

Money is actually funny money, at the level of government and the Federal Reserve. Numbers concocted out of the void. In Location A, twelve seconds ago, there was nothing. Now there are 100 billion dollars. Easy as pie. Stage magic.

The sheer fakery of US Senators and Representatives voting for a bill that spurts a trillion dollars out of a spigot is matched and exceeded by the fakery of inventing the 1 trillion.

For this reason, and in the service of honesty, I recommend that some Senator or Representative stand up on the floor of his august chamber and say the following:

“Look, we don’t even know what the federal debt is. Face it. It could be anymore between 13 trillion and 210 trillion. Let’s admit we don’t care. Nor do we care how big a budget we vote for every year. And I think you’ll all agree, because the evidence is clear, we don’t care where we allocate the money. Goodness knows, nobody reads the budget bills. Are you catching my drift? Why do we spend time and energy arguing over the budget? Because we want to impart the impression that there’s a significant difference between our two political parties. However, there are easy and effortless ways to achieve this. For one week, every year, we could designate a time and place for budget debate. Three or four brain-addled representatives from each party would read opposing scripted arguments. And then we’re done. We all convene and vote in favor of the budget bill, as we always do. And we go home early for vacation. No fuss, no muss. Do you think anyone would object or take notice? I don’t…”

Oh wait. This is pretty much what’s happening now.

Given the predominance of funny money, in the not-too-distant future you’re going to be hearing serious people making serious arguments for basic government “citizen-control.”

The story-line will go something like this:

“If people want to keep receiving federal money, they have to conform to certain standards of behavior, speech, and thought. It’s a simple give and take.”

New sets of rules and regulations will apply to the population, in return for what is granted to them.

“Citizen Jones, I have your behavioral dossier in front of me. I want to discuss it with you. You’ve made a number of statements and committed a number of actions which could result in expulsion from the federal universal welfare plan. Do you realize what we’re giving you every month? Do you really think it’s wise to bite the hand that feeds you?”

“What are you talking about? That time I rode my Department of Commerce bike without a helmet?”

“No. I’m talking about the time you uttered a forbidden slur while you were watching a rerun of Friends.”

There is a principle that applies to funny money. It flows like water and it eventually finds its way into all the cracks. It’s used to promote compliance and obedience.

And then it stops being funny.

If you think this is an exaggeration, read up on the recent Australian law that makes childhood vaccinations mandatory. Families who refuse to have their children jabbed will be cut off from certain federal welfare programs. No jab, no funny money.

“Mr. Daddy and Mrs. Mommy, we invented a pile of money to help you survive. Did you think we’d never ask for a piece of your body, mind, and soul in return? That day has come. We’re here to collect. We own you. That was always the idea. Get it?”

How about banks who suddenly foreclose on homeowners who didn’t have a magnifying glass big enough to read the fine print in their mortgage contracts?

“Mr. and Mrs. Smith, we invented money so we could give you a home. Now we’re back to shut you down. Nothing’s forever. Get used to it.”

Consider thousands of colleges that exist on federal funds. Some professor at one of these “higher institutions” suddenly gets it in his head to make a corrosive and devastating critique of the government. Do you suppose the higher-ups at the college start quaking in their boots, as they envision possible consequences?

“Find a way to close out that crazy professor. Right away. What kind of racket does he think we’re running here? One of those ‘free-speech’ campuses? Show him we mean business. His salary is being paid with government funny money. Educate him. Make him see the light. Or toss him out on the street.”

Possibly you’ve heard of something called the military industrial complex. Government does some serious money-out-of-thin-air inventing to keep those defense corporations going. How can this Niagara of cash be justified without wars to fight?

“Of course we’re going to attack…what’s the name of that country again? Doesn’t matter. Get planes in the air. Put boots on the ground. How would it look if we kept doling out trillions of dollars for peace? Are you kidding?”

This is the sort of thing that’s happening whenever our august federal legislators get together and rubber-stamp a budget bill. They’re as dumb as wood, as corrupt as bankers, as venal as the mafia, as crazy as naked drunks running down the street in the rain.

The 1976 film, All the President’s Men, invoked the phrase, “Follow the money.” Thereafter, it became a popular guideline for investigative reporters. On one level it works, yes. But when you can’t follow the money, when nobody can, when you’re looking at governments who are inventing money all the time making deals with each other based on loans, debts, interest, default, and refinance, then you know you’re in The Deep. This is cosmic money. It begins as a blip in darkness, rises to a blinding glare, explodes, dies out, and then appears again in another quadrant of space. It makes quantum leaps and it entangles untold trillions and septillions and vigintillions.

It’s whatever-money. Whatever you need, however you need it, however you want to hide it.

Historically, bankers figured out the game. They didn’t have to be very smart. They just had to keep abstracting the idea of money, until it became a shadow.

Then they took up residence in the shadows.

Jon Rappoport

Hello, world: is your government driving you crazy?

Dec19

Politics, the god Hermes, and the big joke

Suppose, against all odds, enlightenment is funny and funny works like magic because it is magic

by Jon Rappoport

December 19, 2015

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Note: If, as you read this article, you think I’m saying ‘don’t worry, be happy’ or ‘just laugh it off’ or ‘forget all the suffering in the world,’ you’re viewing it from the wrong angle. The 1968 riot at the Democratic National Convention was very serious, and it did nothing to shorten the war in Vietnam. It might have prolonged it. In this article, I’m talking about a basic psychological and spiritual inhibition that keeps people from a kind of mass reaction they believe is unthinkable—but a reaction that would change reality in a revolutionary fashion, if it came from their deepest core…

I could write a few thousand pages as a mere introduction—but I want to focus on one factor: what people project into their leaders.

Yes, I know, that sounds a bit odd. But stay with me. I’ll make it pay off.

For example, in the US, Republican voters and supporters project a huge amount of faith and energy into their Republican leaders. If you could see this, you would be watching a stunning “light show.” I’m talking about streamers and arrows and rays of energy.

And in this particular light show, there are messages: defund Planned Parenthood; cut off money for massive migration programs; stop Obamacare funding; don’t give money to the climate change payout program; stop bankrolling sanctuary cities.

That’s what these Republicans want from their leaders. That’s what they’re projecting with great insistence.

And this isn’t some kind of misplaced crazy light show, because guess what? Republicans control the US House of Representatives by a wide margin. Republicans: 246. Democrats: 188.

So when a massive federal spending bill ($1.1 trillion) comes up for a vote, as it just has, Republican Congress members can call the shots. They can respond to all those light rays being projected at them by their supporters all over the land. They can do it in a second. No problem. They can make their people happy. They can carry out their people’s wishes.

But…they didn’t. In fact, they just voted to fund all those programs I just mentioned. They pulled a vast switch. That’s right. That would be like all those Stars Wars characters, with their light sabers, suddenly projecting them through the movie screen right back at their adoring audience in the theater and burning them. What a message that would be.

Has your government ever done something like this in your country? I bet they have.

When it happens, the people, the voters, the supporters, who were sure their leaders would respond to them…well, to say they’re shocked would be a vast understatement.

However, scanning the newspapers and news broadcasts in America today, so far I find no reports of massive Republican demonstrations in the streets. Millions marching on Washington DC? Thousands? Hundreds? Dozens? Four? Two?

One guy in a Star Wars costume with a light saber trying to stop traffic on Pennsylvania Avenue?

Try to imagine the amount of energy and faith Republicans in America have been expending and projecting at their leaders—with this Big Switch as the result.

And then consider this: the Republicans in the US House of Representatives—many of them—never intended to go to war over this massive budget bill. It was never in the cards. They wear special shields, and the shields ward off all the projected rays coming at them from their faithful flock.

It’s not just the Republicans, in case you think I’m taking sides. What about the huge Democratic support for the invasion of Iraq under George W Bush? Did you see a few million Democrats in the streets right after the nearly unanimous Congressional vote to launch the planes and send the troops?

Wherever you live in the world, I’m sure you’ve seen this sort of thing. “Vote for Joe. He’ll do this and that.” Joe wins, and then doesn’t do either this or that. He was never going to. He was always wearing one of those shields that protected him from what his supporters were projecting at him.

This is called a joke.

That’s right. It may be a painful, repellent, nasty, killer joke with horrendous consequences, but it’s a joke.

The structure that is supposed to yield up “what the people want” is actually another structure whose features are unreported.

And the joke is, the people fall for it. Not just once, but over and over, on and on, year after year, decade after decade. It doesn’t matter what the evidence says. They fall for it.

And then, as another punchline, when some of those people stop falling for it and defect from the structure, they’re called strange and odd and weird and possibly dangerous.

“Don’t you get it, you strange person? You’re in a stage play. And your role involves going along with the charade. The real machinations are occurring behind the stage, and they’re not part of the play at all, but we don’t think about that. We keep projecting our energy and desires and faith into our purported leaders. Haven’t you read the script? The play falls apart if we don’t do that. It makes no sense if we don’t do that. A leader isn’t a leader if he doesn’t have adoring supporters who project their hopes and fears and desires and energy into him. That’s the way it works. So get with it.”

Now, possibly you think, when I talk about “projecting energy,” this is just a metaphor. I have news. It isn’t. This is as real as waves breaking on a beach. It’s happening all the time. People are doing it. They don’t want to stop doing it. It’s a habit that, for them, is harder to break than a heroin addiction.

One way or another, everybody is projecting energy. Of course, if they know that, they can decide where and how. They can, as individuals, create those projections in connection with achieving their deepest desires and dreams. In which case, there is a very good chance this would be a better world.

On the other hand, if they remain in the stage play and accept their assigned roles, they get jokes. And they’re the target of those massive jokes. And they don’t laugh. Generally, they go into a state of psychic paralysis, because they can’t figure out what just happened.

They might consult the news to find answers. That’s another joke. In the case of the $1.1 trillion budget bill that just passed the House in the US, they would encounter this: well, you see, the Republicans were trying to show support for their new Speaker, Paul Ryan, who is in favor of the bill, and if they didn’t vote for the bill the federal government would have to shut down because it would have no money for operational expenses, and the bill does allow the US to export crude oil, which is very important.

These are the added punchlines, which ought to send any sane person rolling on the floor with laughter.

You can laugh or cry, it’s your choice. But keep in mind that this joke really belongs to the people who launch it, and they don’t care which way you respond. To them, it’s still hilarious. And when they think about the millions of people who still vote for them, they put in a call for medical staff, because they’re going to laugh so hard they might need oxygen.

Sure, they leave Washington for a while, to “spend time with their families over the holidays,” just in case there is some nasty pushback from loyal voters, but they’re having a very merry Xmas, in part because they’re still chuckling and chortling about what they just put over.

George Burns once said: “In acting, sincerity is everything. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”

In politics, the launching and projecting of the joke is handled by the politicians and the media. They work hand in hand to conceal the fact that it is a joke—which is what makes it so funny to all of them.

I can take this out much farther. Consensus reality, which is the lowest possible common denominator to which the planet can be reduced, in order to suck in the faith and projections of the largest number of people, is its own kind of joke. You can find such an awareness at least as far back as ancient Greece, in the person of Hermes, the trickster god.

Hermes, among his other duties, was the protector of wit. He was the upsetter of apple carts, the vast joker who, in his own way, if you read between the lines, was trying to show people they were living inside a continuum of the big con, the big hustle. He was, you could say, the grand defector. He moved among various realities. He knew the world was a badly written stage play that, on the heels of honest reviews, would have closed down after opening night.

Hermes’ powers were formidable. He had the juice to become king of Mt. Olympus, but he never wanted that job. Instead, he flew hither and yon, tearing holes in consensus reality, for his own amusement, but also to wake people up.

He was not always popular with leaders of the day.

If he were alive in our time, what might he do? I can imagine him trying to engineer, at a State of the Union Address, or during a Presidential debate, a massive amount of laughter from the live audience. Yes, he might attempt to promote a trick like that. All of sudden, out of nowhere, in a trickle, a little stream, then a river, people are laughing. It builds to an oceanic roar. It spills over to the television audience. No one is sure why, but they’re laughing at the President and candidates, and they’re having the time of their lives. On some level of happiness and joy, they’re finally responding to the joke. At last.

They get it.

Hence the old phrase, “He was laughed off the stage.”

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, Exit From The Matrix, click here.)

And that’s exactly what happens. The leaders are laughed and ridiculed into oblivion. And so is the old consensus itself.

“You know, people have been telling that joke ever since I don’t when, and I never understood it, but now all of a sudden I do. And what makes it keep paying off, those leaders who are stage-center are so serious…wow, they’re killing me.”

Yes, that’s right. Well, they were killing you. It’s not quite the same anymore.

It turns out that, while we thought we were watching (and acting in) one kind of stage play, on a subconscious level we were all sitting in an audience, for the past ten thousand years, watching a tireless comedian doing variations on a cosmic joke, on and on, and there were zero laughs, zero, and nevertheless he kept going—and voila, the place finally exploded.

We had every reason not to laugh. All the suffering and the pain—but when we did connect with the joke, it proved to be enormously effective, beyond anything we could predicted.

Our core NATURAL response, beyond all “common sense,” from the depths of our NATURAL being, repressed for centuries, was titanic laughter, and it sent our esteemed leaders straight to the Outer Darkness.

Who knew? Go figure.

Bam. Pow.

The world starts over.

Jon Rappoport

Official science: the grand illusion for all robots

Nov2

Official science: the grand illusion for all robots

by Jon Rappoport

November 2, 2015