Greece, Democracy and Magical Thinking

Posted on June 30, 2015 by Charles Hugh Smith

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/06/greece-democracy-and-magical-thinking.html 

What is representative democracy but organized bribery on a mass scale? Politicians seeking control of the spigots of state wealth and power promise endless swag to voters. Those who promise the most swag and do so with the most inspirational Soaring Rhetoric ™ win elections and gain control of the spigots of state wealth and power.
What are promises of endless swag but lies cloaked in magical thinking? The magical thinking has many manifestations: the aptly named Laffer Curve, used to justify cutting taxes to the already-wealthy; entry into the Eurozone, a magical land of unicorns and endless prosperity, based not on hard work and the creation of value, but on membership alone; the blowing of serial asset bubbles in real estate and stocks (works equally well in Asia and the West), and various iterations of Manifest Destiny: it’s our right to grow rich, preferably on the labor and resources of others.
Representative democracy offers choices with no consequences: no matter which politico and party is elected, the promises of endless swag remain unchanged.
In contrast, direct democracy offers choices with consequences: voters make a choice of policies that, whether intended or not, have consequences.
This forces voters to actually ponder consequences rather than indulge politico promises of endless swag in return for supporting a corrupt, predatory, parasitic status quo that benefits the few at the expense of the many.
Even direct democracy is easily corrupted by magical thinking. The actual consequences may be ignored in favor of magical-thinking dreams of only good consequences and no trade-offs or sacrifices, all powered by the magic of debt.
Debt is the ultimate political aphrodisiac, for it enables an orgy of consumption and a bacchanalia of spending on the backs of children and the yet unborn who don’t vote.
The most potent of all political fantasies is that growth will solve every problem, i.e. we can grow our way out of corruption, artifice, lies, kleptocracy and most importantly, out of debt.
And so now, at long last, the Greek people have a direct say on whether they prefer magical thinking (i.e. that a debt-based, Elite-ruled kleptocracy can produce endless swag for all as long as the kleptocracy is within the European Union) or the real world of trade-offs, opportunity costs, sacrifices and broad-based growth that must be earned by producing more than is spent and investing the surplus in productive assets rather than being squandered on interest payments for past consumption.
Direct democracy is anathema to politicos, Elites, state bureaucracies, vested interests and kleptocracies, because the people might refuse to be bribed by magical thinking promises.
Elected representatives and the public can both be bribed or threatened into compliance, but when the promises of endless debt-based swag for all fade, it’s the people who bear the consequences, not the politicos.
There are no guarantees that the people will choose more wisely than their representatives. The masses can choose magical thinking over reality, too. But with direct democracy, at least the people have an opportunity to choose wisely.
Regardless of what the Greek people choose, at least the choice will be theirs, along with the consequences.

The Power of Local Unity: Small US town enacts Free Food Trade

Posted on February 2, 2014

Sedgwick, Maine, the first town in the US to legalize any kind of food transaction as free and legal in order to keep the right to produce raw milk, organic produce, free-range eggs, and more, is revolutionizing the way America keeps its food rights – including saying no to GMOs.

by Christine Sarich
thanks Dagny!
http://news-beacon-ireland.info/?p=16547

Sedgwick, Maine, the first town in the US to legalize any kind of food transaction as free and legal in order to keep the right to produce raw milk, organic produce, free-range eggs, and more, is revolutionizing the way America keeps its food rights – including saying no to GMOs. In other words, it is the first town to declare food sovereignty while opposing both state and federal laws.

The town has passed an ordinance that protects citizens’ rights to “produce, sell, purchase, and consume any food of their choosing.” The ordinance laughs in the face of FDA regulations and their hodge-podge way of giving food a rubber stamp of approval, especially GMO. Three additional towns in Maine are expected to pass similar ordinances as well.

The move is somewhat similar to a move one England town made, where the citizens transformed their entire town’s landscape into a giant food-producing garden. Both are great examples of moving toward food sovereignty.

It isn’t just a declaration on the whim of a few city council members. There is a warrant added: “It shall be unlawful for any law or regulation adopted by the state or federal government to interfere with the rights recognized by this Ordinance.” This means that federal interference is prohibited in our food supply – at least in Maine. If you can’t get Monsanto out of the government, take the government out of your food. It’s a brilliant way around the convoluted system now in place that almost gave Monsanto the right to be exempt from federal prosecution for its poison food and which tries to hoist it upon the whole Nation without consent.

David Gumpert reports:

“What about potential legal liability and state or federal inspections? It’s all up to the seller and buyer to negotiate. “Patrons purchasing food for home consumption may enter into private agreements with those producers or processors of local foods to waive any liability for the consumption of that food. Producers or processors of local foods shall be exempt from licensure and inspection requirements for that food as long as those agreements are in effect.” Imagine that–buyer and seller can agree to cut out the lawyers. That’s almost un-American, isn’t it?”

A simple seller and buyer agreement is entered into where federal regulations can be bypassed by the seller agreeing to consume food grown by their neighbors organically in their garden or by the farm up the street with their own hormone-free dairy cows that customers have known for decades. It takes the feds and their dirty Monsanto money right out of the game. It is commercially grown food that is killing us all, after all - not locally grown food.

For those with their heads in a noodle about bypassing federal laws, the citizens of Maine have stated, “We the radicals who concocted this mutinous act of infamy believe that according to the Home Rule provisions of our State Constitution, the citizens of Sedgwick have the right to enact an ordinance that is “local and municipal in character.”

In Maine, citizens can take advantage of local bounty, seasonal organic crops, and the good-old-fashioned way we used to produce food without Big Ag and commercial interference. Rural America is putting the big city budget of Monsanto to shame with this innovative way of taking down the monopolizing food giant. It’s about time ‘radicals’ in every small town across this nation did the same.

Additional Sources:
SedgwickMaine

“These Programs Were Never About Terrorism: They’re About Economic Spying, Social Control, and Diplomatic Manipulation. They’re About Power”

Posted on December 17, 2013 by WashingtonsBlog

Snowden Gives the Big Picture

Edward Snowden wrote yesterday about mass surveillance by the NSA:

These programs were never about terrorism: they’re about economic spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation. They’re about power.

He’s right.

These Programs Were Never About Terrorism

The NSA started mass spying on Americans before 9/11 … and various excuses have been used over the years.
The NSA was already spying on American Senators and prominent Americans who spoke out against the Vietnam War more than 40 years ago.
The NSA has also been conducting industrial espionage for many decades. 
There is no evidence that mass surveillance has prevented a single terrorist attack. And see this confirming opinion by a federal judge. On the contrary, top counter-terror experts say that mass spying actually hurts U.S. counter-terror efforts (more here and here).
If NSA spying were really focused on terrorism, our allies and companies wouldn’t be fighting back so hard against it.

Economic Spying

The NSA conducts widespread industrial espionage on our allies, such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, United Nations, the Vatican and the Pope, France, the leaders of Germany, Brazil and Mexico, the European Union, the European Parliament, the G20 summit, and at least 35 world leaders.
That has nothing to do with terrorism. Indeed, a confidential government memo admits that the spying didn’t help prevent terrorism:

The memo acknowledges that eavesdropping on the numbers had produced “little reportable intelligence”.

The NSA is also spying on the biggest financial payments systems such as VISA and Swift.
In a slide leaked by Edward Snowden, “economic” was one of the main justifications for spying.
The top U.S. spy’s justification for such financial spying is:

“We collect this information for many important reasons: for one, it could provide the United States and our allies early warning of international financial crises which could negatively impact the global economy. It also could provide insight into other countries’ economic policy or behavior which could affect global markets.”

(Top financial experts say that the NSA and other intelligence agencies are also using the information to profit from this inside information. And the NSA wants to ramp up its spying on Wall Street … to “protect” it.)

Diplomatic Manipulation

Spying on allies such as the United Nations, European Union, the European Parliament, the G20 summit, the Vatican and the Pope, and at least 35 world leaders is obviously at least partially aimed at gaining advantage in diplomatic negotiations.
Indeed, the United States Trade Representative is one of the “customers” of NSA data.

Social Control

History shows that mass spying is always focused on crushing dissent… not on keeping us safe.
High-level American government officials have warned for 40 years that mass surveillance would lead to tyranny.   They’ve warned that the government is using information gained through mass surveillance in order to go after anyone they take a dislike to.
A lieutenant colonel for the Stasi East German’s – based upon his experience – agrees. And German Chancellor Angela Merkel – who grew up in Stasi Germany – says the NSA is exactly the same.  Indeed, top American constitutional experts say that the Obama and Bush administration are not only worse than Nixon … but worse than the Stasi East Germans. They also say that NSA spying is exactly the type of oppression that the Founding Fathers launched the Revolutionary War to stop. And see this.
The NSA tracks users’ porn … to discredit them … just like J. Edgar Hoover did in the bad old days of the FBI.  The NSA shares this information with a host of other agencies, such as the Departments of Justice and Commerce and the Drug Enforcement Administration.
(Indeed – as previously reported – all of the information gained by the NSA through spying is shared with federal, state and local agencies, and they are using that information to prosecute petty crimes such as drugs and taxes. The agencies are instructed to intentionally “launder” the information gained through spying, i.e. to pretend that they got the information in a more legitimate way … and to hide that from defense attorneys and judges.)
TechDirt points out:

It’s important to note here that the “targets” in this case are not US persons, and they all do appear to dislike the US, and some appear to have advocated for jihad against the US. However, as the report notes, most of them are not terrorists or even connected to any terrorist organization. They’re just activists and advocates who have spoken out criticizing the US. In one case, a guy was targeted for claiming that “the U.S. brought the 9/11 attacks upon itself” — an argument that plenty of respectable people have made. The lack of any terrorist connection is actually, stunningly, used against these individuals, as one NSA document notes that since they don’t communicate with terrorists it’s worse because it suggests “that the target audience includes individuals who do not yet hold extremist views but who are susceptible to the extremist message.”

A high-level NSA whistleblower says that the NSA is spying on – and blackmailing – top government officials and military officers, including Supreme Court Justices, high-ranked generals, Colin Powell and other State Department personnel, and many other top officials. And see this:

He says the NSA started spying on President Obama when he was a candidate for Senate:

Another very high-level NSA whistleblower – the head of the NSA’s global intelligence gathering operation – says that the NSA targeted CIA chief Petraeus.
And the main whistleblower on the NSA’s spying 40 years ago thinks that the NSA may be blackmailing its overseers in D.C.

And see this.
The proof is in the pudding: 2 former presidents, a vice president and a judge all warn that NSA spying is tyrannical.

Job site solar power

By Jeffrey Yago, P.E., CEM

Issue #144 • November/December, 2013

Regardless of your favorite brand, standardize all battery-powered tools to use the same battery pack.

If you are planning to live off-grid or are building something in a remote area without grid power, I am sure you are planning to use a generator. While I have also owned generators, I find them temperamental, noisy, and I hate to drag fuel up some mountain trail when I need to power construction tools. To wean myself off the traditional construction site generator, I found an amazing selection of high-quality power tools that operate on battery packs. In addition, if you standardize on the same brand and voltage, the same battery packs will be interchangeable with a wide array of power saws, drills, portable lights, and even radios. Keeping a spare battery pack on charge also allows a quick battery change and continued tool operation without having to wait.
More at -  http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/yago144.html