Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - They Walk in Darkness

 

"And the judgement is this, that God’s light has come into the world, but people love the darkness more than the light when their actions are evil. For those who do evil hate the light and refuse to come into it for fear that their lawlessness will be revealed. But those who live in the truth come into the light, so that it can be seen that they are doing God's will."

John 3:19-21

“If we go as far as we can into the darkness, regardless of the consequences, I believe a midnight truth will free us from our bondage to violence and bring us to the light of peace.”

James W. Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable

"Everywhere there was civil order, for the arm of the Roman law was long. Everywhere there was stability, in government and in society, for the centurions saw that it was so. But everywhere there was something else, too. There was oppression — for those who were not the friends of Tiberius Caesar. There was the tax gatherer to take the grain from the fields and the flax from the spindle to feed the legions or to fill the hungry treasury from which divine Caesar gave largess to the people. There was the impressor to find recruits for the circuses.  There were executioners to quiet those whom the Emperor proscribed. What was a man for but to serve Caesar?

There was the persecution of men who dared think differently, who heard strange voices or read strange manuscripts. There was enslavement of men whose tribes came not from Rome, disdain for those who did not have the familiar visage. And most of all, there was everywhere a contempt for human life. What, to the strong, was one man more or less in a crowded world?

Then, of a sudden, there was a light in the world, and a man from Galilee saying, Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's. And the voice from Galilee, which would defy Caesar, offered a new Kingdom in which each man could walk upright and bow to none but his God. Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. And he sent this gospel of the Kingdom of Man into the uttermost ends of the earth.  So the light came into the world and the men who lived in darkness were afraid, and they tried to lower a curtain so that man would still believe salvation lay with the leaders.

But it came to pass for a while in divers places that the truth did set man free, although the men of darkness were offended and they tried to put out the light. The voice said, Haste ye. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness come upon you, for he that walks in darkness knows not whither he goes.

Along the road to Damascus the light shone brightly. But afterward Paul of Tarsus, too, was sore afraid. He feared that other Caesars, other prophets, might one day persuade men that man was nothing save a servant unto them, that men might yield up their birthright from God for pottage and walk no more in freedom.

Then might it come to pass that darkness would settle again over the lands and there would be a burning of books and men would think only of what they should eat and what they should wear, and would give heed only to new Caesars and to false prophets. Then might it come to pass that men would not look upward to see even a winter's star in the East, and once more, there would be no light at all in the darkness."

Vermont C. Royster, In Hoc Anno Domini, December 24, 1949

"At first, the love of money, and then that of power began to prevail, and these became, as it were, the sources of every evil.   For avarice subverted honesty, integrity and other honorable principles and, in their stead, inculcated pride, inhumanity, contempt of religion and general venality.  Ambition prompted many to become deceitful; to keep one thing concealed in the breast and another ready on the tongue; to estimate friendships and enmities, not by their worth, but according to interest; and to carry rather a specious countenance than an honest heart.  These vices first advanced but slowly, and were sometimes restrained by correction; but afterward, when their infection had spread like a pestilence, the state was entirely changed, and the government, from being the most equitable and praiseworthy, became the most rapacious and insupportable."

Sallust, Conspiracy of Cataline


Trading volume was very light today as most of the adults left by noon, if they bothered coming in at all.

Gold and silver fell back a bit.

The Dollar moved higher.

VIX fell to its near term low.

The US markets will be closed tomorrow in observance of the Thanksgiving holiday.

The markets will be open until 1 PM on Friday.   

Trading should be very light excepting some exogenous event.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Dark Silence

 

"I've seen something wondrous peering through my joy in the beautiful, a sense of its creator.   Only people can be truly ugly, because they have free will to separate themselves from this song of praise.  It often seems they will drown out this hymn with cannon thunder, curses, and blasphemy.   But I have realized they will not succeed.  And so I want to throw myself on the side of the victor.”

Sophie Scholl

“During the Cold War this country has become frankly a warfare state built on affluence, a power structure in which the interests of big business, the obsessions of the military, and the phobias of political extremists both dominate and dictate our national policy.  It also seems that the people of the country are by and large reduced to passivity, confusion, resentment, frustration, thoughtlessness and ignorance, so that they blindly follow any line that is unraveled for them by the mass media.”

Thomas Merton, Cold War Letters, 1968

"What is unrecognized about JFK's presidency, which then makes his assas­sination a false mystery, is that he was locked in a struggle with his national security state. That state had higher values than obedience to the orders of a president who wanted peace.

There is nothing so threatening to systemic evil as those willing to stand against it regardless of the consequences. It’s unbelievable— or we’re supposed to think it is— that a president was murdered by our own government agencies because he was seeking a more stable peace than relying on nuclear weapons.  It’s unspeakable. 

Our collective denial of the obvious, in the setting up of Oswald and his transparent silencing by Ruby, made possible the Dallas cover-up.  The success of the cover-up was the indispensable foundation for the subsequent murders of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy by the same forces at work in our government—and in ourselves.  The unspeakable is not far away."

James Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable

"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."

Ephesians 6:12

"Those who dared to break the conspiracy of silence risked consequences more severe than the assassination of one’s character.  Dr. Crenshaw said he 'reasoned that anyone who would go so far as to eliminate the President of the United States would surely not hesitate to kill a doctor.'”

Charles A. Crenshaw, with Hansen and Shaw, JFK: Conspiracy of Silence, 1992


What, indeed, would they not be willing to do, how many innocents would they not be willing to sacrifice, what hapless and gullible nations would they not be willing to seduce and plunder, given the heady opiates of power and money and winning, in their Faustian bargain with the rulers of darkness of this world?  

And when they stand before the risen Christ, and He shows them the blood of His lambs,  and His own holy wounds, will they say, 'It was nothing personal.  We did what had to be done. Everyone was doing it. It was strictly business.'

Stocks managed to rise again in complacent holiday week trading.

VIX declined.

The Dollar declined.

Gold and silver struggled but in the end showed only a small decline.

The US markets will be closed on Thursday for the Thanksgiving holiday.

They will be nominally open for a half day on Friday, with all the adults on holiday.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - As the Blood Flows - Madness for Your Minds and Hearts

Atë, Goddess of Delusion and Ruin, daughter of Strife and Zeus

"The mood among Germans is really bad.  There is a lot of frustration and verrohung. The common people work and can hardly make ends meet. Envy and resentment are widely spread in Germany.  When both the global financial crisis and the euro disaster come back with a vengeance, things will get pretty nasty.  You don't have to be a prophet to make that prediction. 

You just have to extrapolate the current mood in this relatively crisis-free period. Aside from the old and the dying, most Germans today have never experienced any real crisis."

Lars Schall, To Marshall Auerback on His Essay on German Voters


"Administration and Main Stream Media (MSM) say 'booming', much faster GDP and jobs growth than previous decade, but the reality is an occasional 1 or 2 quarter surge but baseline 2% growth rate trends remain unchanged.

Only growth in the stock market, other Fed inflated assets, and debt. Maybe we should ask MSM what is 'booming'. Official jobs numbers obscure 1/3 of labor force without jobs and not job seeking; job holders are a mix of full and part time; average hourly wages are rising because 'supervisors' (managers) wages are rising but flat for 90%.

Flawed startup jobs guesses (Birth Death Model) added to lift feeble  jobs created.  Payroll tax receipts are falling—  could the tax receipts decline be explained by tax cuts?

Tax cuts have primarily assisted corporations. They have had a negligible effect on payrolls taxes. Weak withholding receipts reflects continuing rise in part time workers and low wage substituting for full time workers.

And keep in mind the little growth that did take place was debt driven. Despite all the 'booming economy' cheerleading, the data shows a flat trajectory for growth at around 2% for the last decade, despite mountains of 'stimulus'.

A chart of the Dow looks rather different, suggesting all the stimulus went into the stock market instead.

The US economy is not booming. It has begun gradual slowdown. Housing and autos slump is just the most visible indicator of broad based downturn-"

Harold Malmgren

And into the pockets of the one percent.  QED

Trump was on the TV after the close, emphasizing that there is indeed a crisis on our border, even though the imminent threat of the caravan is laughable, and easily shown to be made up spin for the election.  They want to scare you into obedience for their own benefit.

He led off his speech this afternoon with the notion that unworthy immigrants are flooding into our country, and straining our resources, greedily and ungratefully taking things that should be used by honest hard-working and law-abiding people.   They are obviously parasites, bringing disease and crime and drugs.

This is the same argument, and similar imagery, that was widely used to prepare the German people for the detention and eventual holocaust of the disabled, and the different, and political opponents, and the Jews.   They were literally depicted as rats, overrunning the productive economy, and draining and poisoning it for those who are worthy.

Most will write this off as nonsense from unscrupulous politicians and their enablers ahead of the mid-term elections.   And that may very well be the case.  Trump is as changeable as the wind in his lying.  And a liar he is, from the beginning.

But like my German friend whom I quote above, there is concern that this penchant for unreasoned anger and accommodating retreat into the lies will lead to much worse things, and likely, blood in the streets, when the next crisis comes.

Glenn Greenwald just delivered a warning about this 'fire in men's minds' from Brazil.

Those who have been looting and rigging the economy for years are backing a campaign to create distractions and set up scapegoats.  Ask yourselves, who benefits from all this?  Who is ending up with most of the money and assets, and dishing out the lies and the pain and division for everyone else?

We in America are insular, and are accustomed to looking down our noses at the problems in the rest of the world, and thanking God for our exceptionalism and national virtue.

Let us be reminded that here, already, because of this filthy hate and these endless lies, we have just witnessed the worst incident of antisemitic murder in the history of this nation. 

And that it was perpetrated by a man who allowed his mind to be poisoned by this filthy rubbish from the alt-media, nurtured in a bed of lies, and stoked to a white hot fire of hate in online commentary.

Let that sink in.   The murders have begun.  Sociopaths may welcome this.   You will not.

This is not who we are.

Pray for the faith and the strength to shun the lies, and remain standing until the end.  And don't spend your time worrying about the speck in your neighbor's eye and their shortcomings;  tend to yourself, and you will have more than enough to do.

If you think you have already reached perfection, pray to God to show you your sins, so that you may repent of them here and now.  And that will keep you busy for the rest of your life.

And in this lies your hope, and a light worth following. 

Need little, want less, love more.  For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.

Remembering the 50th Anniversary of the Execution of Martin Luther King

"And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak.  We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak."

Martin Luther King, A Time to Break the Silence, Riverside Church, 4 April 1967


"It is a dark day in our nation when high-level authorities will seek to use every method to silence dissent.  But something is happening, and people are not going to be silenced."

Martin Luther King, 'Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam',  Riverside Church, 30 April 1967


"But if not, I will not bow, and God grant that we will never bow, before the gods of evil."

Martin Luther King,  But If Not, Ebenezer Baptist Church,  5 November 1967


"We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop.  And I don't mind.  Like anybody, I would like to live a long life — longevity has its place.

But I'm not concerned about that now.  I just want to do God's will.  And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain.  And I've looked over, and I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you.  But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land.

So I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything, I'm not fearing any man.  Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."

Martin Luther King, Last Public Statement, 3 April 1968

The next day Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered in Memphis, Tennessee, 4 April 1968, exactly one year to the day after speaking out against the Vietnam War in his sermon, A Time To Break the Silence.

This was not an isolated action—  this was a message, and one that presidential candidate Robert Kennedy refused to obey.  And it has had a transforming effect on American political consciousness.

"He’s afraid of what happened to Martin Luther King Jr. And I know from a good friend who was there when it happened, that at a small dinner with progressive supporters – after these progressive supporters were banging on Obama before the election, 'Why don’t you do the things we thought you stood for?' 

Obama turned sharply and said, 'Don’t you remember what happened to Martin Luther King Jr.?' That’s a quote, and that’s a very revealing quote."

Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst for Russian affairs


"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."

Ephesians 6:12

Are we not exceptional?   Are you not entertained?

"Those who are at present so eager to be reconciled with the world at any price must take care not to be reconciled with it under this particular aspect: as the nest of The Unspeakable. This is what too few are willing to see….

Shall this be the substance of your message?  Be human in this most inhuman of ages; guard the image of man for it is the image of God.  You agree?  Good. Then go with my blessing. But I warn you, do not expect to make many friends."

Thomas Merton, Raids on the Unspeakable


"Do you think he is so unskillful in his craft, as to ask you openly and plainly to join him in his warfare against the truth? No; he offers you baits to tempt you... This is the way in which he conceals from you the kind of work to which he is putting you; he promises you illumination, he offers you knowledge, science, philosophy, enlargement of mind.  He scoffs at times gone by; he scoffs at every institution which reveres them.

He prompts you what to say, and then listens to you, and praises you, and encourages you. He bids you mount aloft. He shows you how to become as gods. Then he laughs and jokes with you, and gets intimate with you; he takes your hand, and gets his fingers between yours, and grasps them, and then you are his."

J.H.Newman, The Antichrist

I will not bow, and God grant that we will never bow, before the gods of evil.

Willing Blindness and the Gradual Seduction of Evil

"I was satisfied that I wasn't personally to blame and that I hadn't known about those things. I wasn't aware of the extent of the crimes.

But one day I went past the memorial plaque which had been put up for Sophie Scholl in Franz Josef Strasse, and I saw that she was born the same year as me, and she was executed the same year I started working for Hitler.

And at that moment I actually sensed that it was no excuse to be young, and that it would have been possible to find things out."

Traudl Junge, Hitler's Secretary

What is surprising is not that we are called to do so much, but rather, so little.   And so often we grudgingly fail to do even that, or do something else in the way that we please and call it a sacrifice.

Love and be grateful to God, treat people as you would like to be treated with respect, kindness, mercy and forgiveness.  Do not lie or steal or cheat,  do not be proud and look down on your fellow creatures, and act with honor and respect for the gifts of His creation. 

And when we fail through weakness, we are readily forgiven if we are but genuinely repentant for our misdeeds, by action or omission.

But all too often we bargain away our souls, one piece at a time, rebelling from even these small and reasonable requests to goodness—  and for relatively so little in return.   A little more money, some prestige and recognition from the worldly, and a feeling of being superior to the rest of humanity.  They are fools, but I am smart, and fully deserve everything that we have been given, owing nothing to anyone, including God. 

And we may hold on to that poisonous bargain out of stiff-necked, stubborn pride and a willful blindness refusing to repent and admit our errors, until we fall into the abyss.  Misery loves company, and the sinful insulate themselves from a recognition of the foulness of their hearts by attempting to convert those around them to the same wickedness.

You will serve what you love the most, and sacrifice for the love of what you serve.  Whether it be God, a political ideology, yourself, or some other idol of the world.  No one can serve two masters.

But I do strongly fear that we are once again fallen into a time of general apostasy from those things that make and keep us fully human.   And I am afraid that most will be deceived, even among the faithful.

"Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their riches and splendors.  ‘All this I will give you,’ he said, ‘if you will bow down and worship me.’"

For what does it profit a man, to gain the whole world, but lose his soul.

The White Rose
Second Leaflet
Munich, 1942

We will not be silent.

It is impossible to engage in intellectual discourse with National Socialist philosophy, for if there were such an entity, one would have to try by means of analysis and discussion either to prove its validity or to combat it. In actuality, however, we face a totally different situation.

At its very inception this movement depended on the deception and betrayal of one's fellow man; even at that time it was inwardly corrupt and could support itself only by constant lies. After all, Hitler states in an early edition of "his" book (a book written in the worst German I have ever read, in spite of the fact that it has been elevated to the position of the Bible in this nation of poets and thinkers): "It is unbelievable, to what extent one must betray a people in order to rule it."

If at the start this cancerous growth in the nation was not particularly noticeable, it was only because there were still enough forces at work that operated for the good, so that it was kept under control. As it grew larger, however, and finally in an ultimate spurt of growth attained ruling power, the tumor broke open, as it were, and infected the whole body.

The greater part of its former opponents went into hiding. The German intellectuals fled to their cellars, there, like plants struggling in the dark, away from light and sun, gradually to choke to death.

Now the end is at hand. Now it is our task to find one another again, to spread information from person to person, to keep a steady purpose, and to allow ourselves no rest until the last man is persuaded of the urgent need of his struggle against this system. When thus a wave of unrest goes through the land, when "it is in the air," when many join the cause, then in a great final effort this system can be shaken off.

After all, an end in terror is preferable to terror without end.

We are not in a position to draw up a final judgment about the meaning of our history. But if this catastrophe can be used to further the public welfare, it will be only by virtue of the fact that we are cleansed by suffering; that we yearn for the light in the midst of deepest night, summon our strength, and finally help in shaking off the yoke which weighs on our world.

We do not want to discuss here the question of the Jews, nor do we want in this leaflet to compose a defense or apology. No, only by way of example do we want to cite the fact that since the conquest of Poland three hundred thousand Jews have been murdered in this country in the most bestial way.

Here we see the most frightful crime against human dignity, a crime that is unparalleled in the whole of history. For Jews, too, are human beings - no matter what position we take with respect to the Jewish question - and a crime of this dimension has been perpetrated against human beings.

Someone may say that the Jews deserve their fate. This assertion would be a monstrous impertinence; but let us assume that someone said this - what position has he then taken toward the fact that the entire Polish aristocratic youth is being annihilated? (May God grant that this program has not yet fully achieved its aim as yet!)

All male offspring of the houses of the nobility between the ages of fifteen and twenty were transported to concentration camps in Germany and sentenced to forced labor, and all the girls of this age group were sent to Norway, into the bordellos of the SS!

Why tell you these things, since you are fully aware of them - or if not of these, then of other equally grave crimes committed by this frightful sub- humanity? Because here we touch on a problem which involves us deeply and forces us all to take thought.

Why do German people behave so apathetically in the face of all these abominable crimes, crimes so unworthy of the human race? Hardly anyone thinks about that.

It is accepted as fact and put out of mind. The German people slumber on in their dull, stupid sleep and encourage these fascist criminals; they give them the opportunity to carry on their depredations; and of course they do so.

Is this a sign that the Germans are brutalized in their simplest human feelings, that no chord within them cries out at the sight of such deeds, that they have sunk into a fatal consciencelessness from which they will never, never awake?

It seems to be so, and will certainly be so, if the German does not at last start up out of his stupor, if he does not protest wherever and whenever he can against this clique of criminals, if he shows no sympathy for these hundreds of thousands of victims. He must evidence not only sympathy; no, much more: a sense of complicity in guilt.

For through his apathetic behavior he gives these evil men the opportunity to act as they do; he tolerates this "government" which has taken upon itself such an infinitely great burden of guilt; indeed, he himself is to blame for the fact that it came about at all...

Please make as many copies of this leaflet as you can and distribute them.

Thomas Frank: Pity the Billionaires, Marxism for the Master Class

“Ayn Rand's 'philosophy' is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society....to justify and extol human greed and egotism.”

Gore Vidal


"It is not Man but nature that raises into one class those who are chiefly intellectual, in another those who are marked by muscular strength and temperament, and in a third those who are distinguished in neither one way or the other, but show only mediocrity -- the last-named represents the great majority, and the first two the select. The superior caste -- I call it the fewest -- has, as the most perfect, the privileges of the few...

The order of castes, the order of rank, simply formulates the supreme law of life itself; the separation of the three types is necessary to the maintenance of society, and to the evolution of higher types, and the highest types -- the inequality of rights is essential to the existence of any rights at all. A right is a privilege. Everyone enjoys the privileges that accord with his state of existence.

Wrong never lies in unequal rights; it lies in the assertion of equal rights."

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Der AntiChrist

In light of the recent outcries by billionaire Tom Perkins for fair and loving treatment, I thought it might be interesting to explore the mindset that pictures the doyens of Wall Street, and those who have taken fortunes out of the dot.com and housing bubbles, as the real victims of the financial collapse and The Recovery™.

I think that part of this comes from the phenomenon that for some people, gratitude is their natural response to good fortune, even if it has come from hard work. Whereas others are possessed by a restlessness, an insatiable spirit, and their response to everything is 'I deserve more!.' 

Tom Perkins not only wishes his wealth, and his banal collection of toys, but he wishes to have public adulation as well, or at least the power to compel people to defer to him.

Mr. Frank thinks that this time around the cultural response to a Great Depression is 'backwards,' as compared to that of the 1930's, and one might tend to agree. There certainly has not been the rising of a national sympathy for victims, or a proper outrage at the arrogance and excesses of the financiers.

But this might overlook the fact that the US was a bit of an outlier back then, as only a few countries turned towards progressive reforms, while other developed nations embraced the hardness of totalitarianism, and even went so far as systematically murdering the weak.

But it is a mistake that the US is some sort of paragon, if one recalls John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. The allure of selfishness and evil is a natural tendency that we overlook in our economic models, among other things. And we certainly ought not overlook the consecration of the country to the principle that 'greed is good,' or more plainly to Mammon, in the latter part of the last century.

I agree with him that Obama has been a pivotal disappointment, and I was interested to hear the reasons why he thought this was so.  Overall I found his perspective to be interesting, as though he was not an American historian and journalist, but some foreign observer sharing an exterior perspective of wonderment.

I have started the tape beyond the introductory remarks and welcomes at this talk he gave in Seattle.

"Do you think he is so unskillful in his craft, as to ask you openly and plainly to join him in his warfare against the truth? No; he offers you baits to tempt you. He promises you civil liberty; he promises you equality; he promises you trade and wealth; he promises you a remission of taxes; he promises you reform.

This is the way in which he conceals from you the kind of work to which he is putting you; he tempts you to rail against your rulers and superiors; he does so himself, and induces you to imitate him; or he promises you illumination, he offers you knowledge, science, philosophy, enlargement of mind. He scoffs at times gone by; he scoffs at every institution which reveres them.

He prompts you what to say, and then listens to you, and praises you, and encourages you. He bids you mount aloft. He shows you how to become as gods. Then he laughs and jokes with you, and gets intimate with you; he takes your hand, and gets his fingers between yours, and grasps them, and then you are his."

J.H.Newman, The Times of Antichrist

The Secret State and the Tyranny of the Faceless and the Lifeless

“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself.

For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist.”

Marcus Tullius Cicero


"Corporations have neither bodies to be punished, nor souls to be condemned, they therefore do as they like."

Edward Thurlow, Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England

Golem XIV, aka David Malone, highlights a lesser understood aspect of the corporatism that seems to be taking the developed nations by storm.

The recent moves by the Supreme Court and the Congress to extend personhood and the rights of individuals to corporations as 'super people' are more dangerous than most realize.

All individuals are not equal in terms of influence and power. And if organizations such as corporations can become 'individuals,' that Frankenstein monster will be able to dominate as effectively as any tyrants in history.

The cure is transparency and accountability, and the recognition that the human individual alone is uniquely protected by the Bill of Rights. Corporations are not asked and expected to fight and die for the benefit of the State. They do not suffer and bleed, nor stay awake at night in worry about their children and their care. Corporations are lifeless.

The Sarbanes-Oxley law was designed to give the people who use corporations as their instruments no place to hide. But as we have seen, it is a law rarely used, and itself under determined resistance to be overturned as was Glass-Steagall.

"Every thing secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity."

John Dalberg Lord Acton

Corporations are but the artificial constructions of men, often designed to eliminate individual risk and accountability. When things go wrong, no one seems to know what happened. Money just vaporizes away. When recklessness leads to horrific accidents such as Bhopal, the corporation retreats into the aether of words and corporate laws, often held in disinterested foreign hands.

The modern Corporation aspires to the power of the unaccountable State.

Corporations are without sin, no matter what actions or even atrocities they may as a collective commit in pursuit of profits, because they are lifeless. They do nothing, really, except to hide and often excuse the actions of real men and women. Corporations live only in the courts. It is all upside.

And it is the great irony of our time that the platforms and agendas of the Tea Party reformers and the Christian Right  have been perverted by their representatives and their money men to become the proponents of the anti-human, the corporate ascendancy over human rights and individual life.  And that the elected reformers of the progressive left have largely sold themselves to Wall Street since the 1990's.

The definition of 'individual' as a living being with a soul thereby granting them inalienable rights, which is at the very heart of the American experience, is under determined assault by the power of the global monied interests, not from some godless enemy, but most effectively from the corruption of power within.

Secret State
By Golem XIV
June 19, 2012

"...We are all now sadly familiar with the role of Off-shore tax havens. They allow companies to avoid having to pay tax. They also allow companies to hide any dealings they may not want scrutinized by prying regulatory authorities. Tax havens are, as Nicholas Shaxson in his wonderful book Treasure Islands has suggested, better thought of as ‘secrecy jurisdictions’. They are purpose built for shrouding in impenetrable and legally protected secrecy any morally dubious financial arrangements which might be embarrassing or costly if revealed to regulators or governments. The world of Off-shore provides a legal and moral nul-space in where most things can be arranged for a price.

But that nul-space is growing and more than simply growing it is maturing.

Recently Off-shore havens have added to financial secrecy another valuable service – data and communications secrecy. There are now companies based in off-shore havens which offer to protect emails and data caches from prying regulatory or legal scrutiny...

Suddenly not only is it possible for corporate finances to be moved beyond the reach of national oversight and regulation, but now corporate emails and other data can also be removed from national democratic and legal oversight. Corporation can now operate within any nation, making their profits there. but without the elected government, the tax officials, financial regulators, courts or police having any power to see what the corporation is doing. The police could not force the disclosure of emails because those emails would not be under UK jurisdiction. It would be entirely possible for a company to be breaking the law, exactly as News International did, but now most if not all (depending on how careful they were) the evidence required to bring their illegal activities to light, would be beyond the reach of any authority in this country...

I look at it and think to myself – so now we have vast financial power shielded from any national, democratic regulation or legal oversight. We have data similarly hidden away from the pesky prying eyes of civilian democratic and legal accountability and we now also have the parts of the global military that routinely operate outside of democratic oversight and who regularly break the most fundamental national and international laws, being organized to operate together under an aspiring supra-national command...

In the week of May 21st of this year in Tampa Florida, Special Operations Forces from 90 countries got together at a Special Forces Convention. You can see a video of what they got up to here.

The purpose of convention, which is a regular thing now, is (from their web site):

The International Conference objective will be that U.S. and International SOF leaders recognize USSOCOM as a Global Command and gain a better understanding on how to become active partners in that partnership.

Who is USSOCOM? It is the umbrella US military command for all US Special forces. So here we have a programme the purpose of which is to integrate the operations and even the command structure with the US at the top, for the Special Forces of 90 nations. Is this anything to be concerned about? Well on one level, if you have Special forces why not have them work together well? Seems sensible. Except that Special Forces are by design the part of any nation’s armed forces which operate routinely and as a matter of course, outside of the law and beyond democratic oversight...

What this this and other documents now clearly indicate is that through this command and others the US can now commit troops to hostile actions without the Congress having to give its consent or even be informed. Now of course we all know this happens. SO what is new. In a sense nothing. In another sense it clearly shows how our governments, or at least elements within them, are keen to follow global finance’s lead in being able to operate outside of democratic oversight, outside its own laws and outside of any democratic accountability. This I think is, if not a new desire, a new maturation of the capability.

There is a clear disdain for democracy being voiced among those who run and own global finance, who make up the supra-national world of the IMF, the WTO and other non-national, non-democratic global technocratic bodies. We all know what disdain the global financial and media companies have for the laws which ‘regulate them’. We know how far outside their own laws and international law our governments have gone in rendition and torture of civilians.

It seems to me you don’t have to subscribe to any conspiracy theory to find this enough to worry about.

Read the entire article here.

The Times of Antichrist

"...Surely, there is at this day a confederacy of evil, marshalling its hosts from all parts of the world, organizing itself, taking its measures, enclosing the church of Christ as in a net, and preparing the way for a general apostasy from it. Whether this very apostasy is to give birth to Antichrist, or whether he is still to be delayed, we cannot know; but at any rate this apostasy, and all its tokens, and instruments, are of the Evil One and saviour of death.

Far be it from any of us to be of those simple ones, who are taken in that snare which is circling around us! Far be it from us to be seduced with the fair promises in which Satan is sure to hide his poison!

Do you think he is so unskillful in his craft, as to ask you openly and plainly to join him in his warfare against the truth? No; he offers you baits to tempt you. He promises you civil liberty; he promises you equality; he promises you trade and wealth; he promises you a remission of taxes; he promises you reform...

He shows you how to become as gods. Then he laughs and jokes with you, and gets intimate with you; he takes your hand, and gets his fingers between yours, and grasps them, and then you are his."

J.H.Newman, The Times of Antichrist