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Saturday, July 7, 2012
Concrete Means For Ending IP Regime
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Posted in Free Market Violence, intellectual property, law by John Wiley Spiers | 0 comments
Friday, July 6, 2012
Coca Cola & Genocide
Darwin specifically taught, later in his career, in order to clear up any doubt, that the negro and aborigine were marked for, well you read it....
At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.
That is some seriously loose talk. Is that permission to "hurry the inevitable?" I met people who believe it does. A Coca Cola insider tells us:
Putman, whose positions at Coca-Cola included U.S. head of marketing for carbonated drinks, said in the interview that among his achievements was tailoring the company’s national advertising campaigns to specific groups. The approach helped Coca-Cola intensify marketing to target audiences such as African Americans and Hispanics.
I don't drink coca cola products because they are nasty. Beer is my soft drink, and I raised my daughters to drink beer and wine as a beverage. OK, mostly clean water and juices, but we did not do soft drinks and I never minded if they drank alcohol, like the Italians. Anyway, I digress.
Are americans with some african ancestry targets for genocide? Clearly. What to do about it? Well, shun companies that target americans with some african ancestry. That is necessary. That is sufficient. If we just stop targeting americans with some african ancestry, they will do just fine, like anyone else.
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Posted in racism by John Wiley Spiers | 0 comments
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Then Do you Agree with This?
In contrast to what we see around us, as well as within ourselves, stands St. Thomas Aquinas' doctrine of the Common Good, a vision of a society where the good of each member is bound to the good of the whole in the service of God.
To this end, we advocate:
--Personalism, a philosophy which regards the freedom and dignity of each person as the basis, focus and goal of all metaphysics and morals. In following such wisdom, we move away from a self-centered individualism toward the good of the other. This is to be done by taking personal responsibility for changing conditions, rather than looking to the state or other institutions to provide impersonal "charity." We pray for a Church renewed by this philosophy and for a time when all those who feel excluded from participation are welcomed with love, drawn by the gentle personalism Peter Maurin taught.
--A decentralized society, in contrast to the present bigness of government, industry, education, health care and agriculture. We encourage efforts such as family farms, rural and urban land trusts, worker ownership and management of small factories, homesteading projects, food, housing and other cooperatives--any effort in which money can once more become merely a medium of exchange, and human beings are no longer commodities.
--A "green revolution," so that it is possible to rediscover the proper meaning of our labor and our true bonds with the land; a distributist communitarianism, self-sufficient through farming, crafting and appropriate technology; a radically new society where people will rely on the fruits of their own toil and labor; associations of mutuality, and a sense of fairness to resolve conflicts.
It all comes from the anarchist group Catholic Workers. I will address some of these points....
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by John Wiley Spiers | 1 comments
Can You Agree With These Premises?
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Posted in anarchy, argument by John Wiley Spiers | 0 comments
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
Gott mit uns
Gott mit uns |
The Catholic bishops are asking for money this weekend for vocations to the military chaplains.
"Freedom always comes at a high price. It requires a generous heart, ready for sacrifice. . . We cannot excuse ourselves from our own personal responsibility for freedom. There is no such thing as freedom without sacrifice." -Pope John Paul II
I doubt the pope said that, or if he did, that he meant it in relation to war. I asked the people who made the website to cite the source, no word back yet.
The website goes on:
There are few who comprehend the ideals of sacrifice and selfless service that form the bedrock of priestly ministry better than those in the United States Military, for whom service and sacrifice are a way of life. Nearly ten percent of men ordained priests in the United States every year have prior military service, and another ten percent grew up in military households. The life as a priest chaplain, ministering to the spiritual and sacramental needs of those in the United States Armed Forces is a natural vocation for a man of prior military experience, and one that the Church and the military desperately need answered.
Really? So 90% of the non-veteran priests do not quite "get it?" Being a soldier is a superior path to priesthood? Certainly St. Ignatius was at one time was a soldier, but he repented of that to follow Jesus.
Today the Catholic heirarchy takes great pains to promote and recruit from the military. One new Catholic college is putting heavy emphasis on Marines making the school a better place. I thought the marines were Naval ground assault forces, not Catholic school pacifiers.
David was not allowed to build the Temple, because he was a soldier, with blood on his hands. Reading the Bible, it seems if you do want to build God's Temple, avoid war at all costs. And if not, get married, because God might allow your children to build the temple.
The Bishops are finishing their fortnight for freedom, a two-week push to get an exemption to Obamacare. Their Catholic supreme court justice threw the vote and it is over. The push centers on 4th of july, an event inspired by resistance to authority.
The US military is actively involved in resistance to authority around the world. It overthrows authority around the world. Catholic politicians call for murder, not a matter of prudential judgement. They find no challenge.
How is it different when Americans do it? Well, God is on our side.
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Posted in election fraud, law, lifestyle by John Wiley Spiers | 0 comments
If You Abhor IPR, You Must Secure Your Own
To destroy the IPR system, we must enter it and infect it with freedom and bring it down. Gain all IPR all the time and then open source your IPR, trademarks, patents and copyrights. Or else...
Fritz Eichenberg used to make his art work available free to any Catholic Worker publication when he was alive. Since he has passed on, his artistic estate is being managed by an intellectual property firm named VAGA: Visual Artists and Galleries Association, Inc. They do not share Eichenberg's philosophy and will charge you an arm and a leg to reproduce his work if you decide to contact them — even for nonprofit, non-commercial use. It's sad, really, and we would hope that some generous benefactor would buy the rights to Eichenberg's Catholic Worker pieces and donate them to the Catholic Worker Archives so that they might be publicly and freely available for non-commercial use as he had intended.
Far from protecting his rights, VAGA is suppressing Fritz's art. As Dorothy Day said, "Our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy rotten system"
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Posted in intellectual property by John Wiley Spiers | 1 comments
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Why Gold May Jump
…if it happens, it will be an important step toward the re-monetisation of gold. Gold would be able to compete on a level playing field with government bonds. While the playing field could be levelled in this way, there would be a gross mismatch on the pitch. On the one hand, you have unbacked government bonds, issued by overindebted governments, yielding less than zero in inflation- adjusted terms. On the other, you have gold, the historical preserver of purchasing power par excellence. [1]
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Posted in Islamic finance by John Wiley Spiers | 0 comments
Retiring Overseas?
i made it to ireland but the travelling was very rough. ... on top of that, apparently there are some irish who really really do not like americans. the customs agent went on a rant about how a US immigration officer would treat an irish man trying to go into the US to study. and then he started giving me a spiel about how they treat Mexicans going into the US. Then I said it was completely beside the point and he said i need to put more thought into my travelling arrangements. Finally I showed him my return ticket and got through, but after a day of sick travel i was rather pissed off.
What the customs agent did not realize is all Americans are treated like "Mexicans" even when travelling from Chicago to New York, on a plane. The Irish customs agent is comparing how civilized Europeans treat each other and how Americans treat each other, and expecting us to be civilized.
That is not to say Americans like it. Why, now that the state treats whites too like it used to treat just Mexicans and Americans with some African ancestry, whole resistance movements have risen up, like the tea party.
In any event, what goes around comes around. USA policy may be a wonderful benefit to banks and warmongers, but it is harsh on people overseas. And regimes see how the USA regime treat Americans, and they get the bright idea they can be as abusive as USA. It is called policy-laundering.
The USA social security scheme and medicare are quite generous for people who elect to retire overseas. But expensive. And who is easiest to abuse when it comes to cutting back, but those living overseas? The British are feeling this overseas.
And if you don't get trapped in political cutbacks, then you have the enmity of say Greeks who live in poverty while they serve you on their sunny Isles as you collect your pension. Not a good situation.
About twenty years ago I mentioned unfunded pension liabilities in a class, and an older gentlemen who was starting up a business came to me and said he had started 30 years earlier in the HR department of (I think he said Xerox) working on the pension plans. Early on he realized the actuarial tables were deeply flawed, and there was no way Xerox(?) would fund those pensions. His boss agreed, but orders were orders. This fellow saved and lived as though he had no pension coming, and he was not disappointed.
If you think you can escape what is coming by retiring overseas, it may be that overseas is the last place an American wants to be, dependent on the State.
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Posted in free market, globalisation, lifestyle by John Wiley Spiers | 0 comments
Banks Cash In On Anti-terror Rules
Here is the xe exchange rate -
750.00 CAD | = | 737.287 USD |
Canadian Dollar | ↔ | US Dollar |
1 CAD = 0.983049 USD | 1 USD = 1.01724 CAD |
My bank gave me .9269. or $695.19. Nearly $40 in fees to fight terror. the banks do not care if tedious rules and regs are made for you and me, they just add fees to jack up income to cover their time spent. We just lose more and more. And the terrorists keep winning.
The world has always been a dangerous place. Once upon a time we knew how to behave. Not any more. I'll spend money I make in Canada in Canada from now on, it's not worth it to bring it home.
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FDA Goes After Supplements
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Posted in medicine by John Wiley Spiers | 0 comments
Blame The Catholics
R: If it weren't for the Irish Catholics, we wouldn't need any cops.
So goes the old joke.
If we look at who fronts the financial services for the powers that be, and see Jews overwhelmingly represented, when we look at law enforcement (the arm of the state as defined as a monopoly on violence) and we see Catholics overwhelmingly represent. We are a big number to begin with, but we are five of the supreme court justices, countless generals, cops and prosecutors. Legislators and governors abound.
The bishops have spent 100 years trying to get what we call Obamacare passed. Now they've got it, but it is not quite what they hoped for. One thing the bishops can count on from all of these Catholics in the commanding heights of law enforcement when it comes to doing the right thing is absolutely nothing. In spite of having several leading law schools, the catholics are not contributing much in the way of the rule of law, but plenty in the way of violence.
The Church/King - Church/State pas de deux has gone on since Pilate interviewed Jesus. The Church has never quite got it right, and has not now. It is coming apart right now. Pope John Paul II had to order priests worldwide to stay out of state offices. A pope cannot tell catholics to do so, but popes have certainly noted a preference for those who start their own businesses.
Perhaps catholics ought to begin to take their faith as seriously as say, orthodox Jews, and withdraw their consent to be governed by the state, and certainly refuse to serve the state.
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Posted in election fraud, Radical small business by John Wiley Spiers | 0 comments
Monday, July 2, 2012
First Eliminate the Paid Fire Fighters
But the economic destruction of USA will speed up, because there is no way this can be affordable, and it also forbids innovation and price reduction. So the time to look at rebuilding society from the ashes is now, and a good learning experience would be for cities to eliminate all paid firefighters.
There is probably no group of city workers more loved than firefighters, which is a tribute to social conditioning. So if we can prove we do not need paid fire fighters, then what city services do we need? Of course, none, and people will know we can do quite well without city governments when we have no city governments.
Someone joked the USA is the only place in the world where if your house is on fire a truckload of millionaires will show up and put it out. Witty. But that is city firefighters, they who retire with pensions and bennies which constitute millionaire-grade personal wealth. It is the city firefighters who are paid. 70% of the firefighters in USA are volunteer, which means they are not paid. They are every bit as well trained and equipped as any paid fire-fighter, they just volunteer to help their neighbors. Glad to do it without pay.
Last Saturday night I had a conversation with a volunteer firefighter from connecticut, a strapping young man with shoulder length hair. He added a few points I had not considered. First he brought me up short on the question of why firefighters are paid. I was wandering in the labor theory argument when he cut me off with "cities pay firefighters because they have money."
Max Whittaker for The New York Times |
But the fact is the volunteer fire fighter is right. Cities have a captive audience, which they tax. Now they have money. What to spend it on? How about art, playgrounds, firefighters, whatever. Nothing necessary. It does not matter what they spend it on, it just matters that they collect and spend it, and keep some for themselves. Since cities have money, they spend it. The money comes from force and fraud, you will be crushed if you do not pay the taxes, the money is not spent as you think it is. It does not cost that much to suppress fires in a city, we just spend that much.
It does not cost that much to produce new drugs, we just spend that much.
It does not cost that much to defend America, we just spend that much.
See how it goes?
Then there was another interesting observation. In his small town when the alarm goes out thirty guys with axes and gear show up. Fires are put out quickly. Then it is Miller time. In cities Firefighters are paid. Maybe twelve people show up, no more. How come? Because lavishing so much money on so few, and having a public union to keep people from fighting fires, the result is city fires have less crews fighting them than town fires. Since cities pay firefighters, they cannot afford better coverage. This would make an interesting study. Come up with a gauge that reads how many BTUs a fire is giving off when the first firefighters arrive, and how long it ties to end the fire. Then compare paid firefighters to volunteer firefighters. I bet we'd find that volunteer fire fighters put out fires faster than the paid fire fighters. But "unfair!" you say, there are more volunteer fire fighters attacking a fire. Exactly!
He had another sidelight. In his town they got rid of the police department. Now no town in USA is allowed to have no cops, so towns must contract with county or state police to be the state presence of the monopoly on violence which defines the state, if they do not have their own cops.
Although he has met the cops, he could could not recall if they were state or county since he saw them so rarely, but he told a story. The outside cop working evenings made his first task to meet the volunteer firefighters. How come? In case of trouble, the cop needed back-up. The volunteer fire fighters being local, most likely knew everyone. he recalled how once an outraged dad was threatening a cop for hauling his drunk-driver son away. Police back-up was scarce, so the deputy called the volunteer firefighters. Within minutes a dozen men with axes were on the scene, who in turned calmed down the outraged father. No swat teams, no killings. Only a drunk driver went to jail.
None of these make for ideal circumstances, but they are better ways. People should not see the end of this country as we experience it and have fear. What we are losing we don't need anyway. We can test out living in freedom by eliminating paid city firefighters. Then we will all see that one of our cherished conceits was all a sham anyway.
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Posted in Exceptional Wealth, free market, insurance, radical nonviolence by John Wiley Spiers | 2 comments
Sunday, July 1, 2012
Health Care My Mother
The first couple of years were as advertised, but lonely for my mom inasmuch as once esconsced, the most vociferous of her children urging her commitment to the home began to find less opportunity to visit. Further, all old folks all the time can be pretty dreadful, even if you are one yourself.
What few sociology courses I took for my masters degree detailed how intergenerational interaction is crucial to raising the well-rounded person, and elders live longer and better if they are in inter-generational settings. We deny our young the opportunity to be all they can be if we ship our elders off to concentration centers, and we deny our elders the best situation at the same time. We may have the power to violate these human standards, but not the right.
The facilities were superb and the staff the best in the business. I am not being coy when I say the orderlies who actually do the heavy lifting etc are interesting people from far off lands. What I liked is they seemed genuinely to respect and care for my mother, something I doubt would be much present among my countrymen doing the work.
After a couple of years her health deteriorated and I came back from a trip to find she had been committed to the hospital part of the home, which is often a one way trip. I was astonished at how far she had declined in what was less than a week. She was in and out of consciousness and the first thing she said when she did recognize me was "thirsty..." My mom was fading fast. Much worse off than when she was brought in. She had no appetite, extensive bruising, and of course thirsty.
I spent a lot of time the next few days finding out what happened, but the problem is what with the state rules on medical records, one cannot know what is going on with mom. Now let me pause and note, that even in the very best of facilities, there is only so many people to deal with so much need. If no one cares about the old folk, then neither can the staff, much. Once I had showed up, and begin making firm inquiries and attending to my mother myself (she was always thirsty) the staff responded with far more attention. I and a brother formed a sort of tag team.
My mom began to rally, and I took a few moments when she was clear and rational to make an end run around the system and have my mom get her medical records in front of her for me to read. There was terror in the management's eyes, but resolve in mine. They had to give in (although I was reported to my siblings.)
I can see why it is in the state's best interest to keep anyone from seeing your medical records. It has nothing to do with privacy and everything to do with complacency and complicity. My mother was being loaded up with Aricept, a taxpayer-funded anti-alzheimers drug.
Now this was curious. My mother worked in the medical labs at the University of Washington for years, doing science. So in the mid-1970s a call for volunteers for a cohort study of alzheimers was made, my mom signed up. Twice a year she would meet the doctors who put her and her cohort through tests to look for alzheimers symptoms. To the day she died, never a symptom.
So I inquired as to how come she was being given Aricept when she did not have Alzheimers. "O, we do not know if anyone has alzheimers truly until after they are dead and we can autopsy the brain to find the disease." Very good. But if she had no symptoms of Alzheimers, why was she being given a drug to treat the symptoms of Alzheimers? "O, alzheimers shows a collection of symptoms that can be different from person to person, so we never really know." OK, but if for forty years she has been examined by the leading alzheimers doctors in the world and never showed any symptoms of alzheimers, why was this being prescribed? This was a trickier question for them. The Aricept dosing stopped immediately. My mother recovered her appetite quickly. She was strong enough to get her own water. The bruises went away. The side effects of Aricept are lack of appetite and widespread bruising. If you do not eat and are denied water, you slip into a painful unconsciousness.
The thirsty part is just from lack of giving water. Withholding water is specifically called for in the legally approved "care"protocols. I fast and know that after day three hunger goes away so to die of hunger is not really painful, but it can take a month. But to die of thirst is quite horrible and only takes a few days. Withholding water is a critical part of euthanasia, and in practice it takes about a day and a half to finish off someone who is very ill. In the UK it kills about 130.000 people a year.
You do realize that if I had not asked that 2nd and 3rd question, the Aricept would have continued. And no doubt it does, all over the country, right now, for people who have no Alzheimers.
And of course, while all this is going on, we taxpayers pay for state workers who show up and "inspect" the records and patients to assure nothing untoward is going on. Inspectors inspect what the state calls "health care" and finds nothing amiss in that regard.
For the years afterwards, my mother and I would have long conversation on many topics, she filling me in on strategies for dealing with and economic crisis and depression, meaning of life and suffering, and tales of long ago. I found her counsel terribly useful. She also developed some insights that were astonishingly clever. My mother changed more in those last few years than in her previous entire lifetime. It was fascinating to watch. I won't criticize my mom, but I'll just share a quick clip from a man whose work she previously found delightful.
When she was on the receiving end, she had reason to rethink some of her tastes. Her generation loved the plays that supported this man's views.
If anyone is going into such care, and again no one has the right to require or volunteer for such "care," just make sure lots of family is around with lots of attention to signal this parent is not here to be killed.
No doubt plenty of people will find this offensive. But I find euthanasia offensive, and the truth ought never be offensive and euthanasia ought always be. To say there are some circumstances when it is necessary to place a person in such intensive care is a false dilemma. First hard cases make bad law. Second, there is nothing wrong with an elder, or anyone, dying at home, as part of life.
But there is a business opportunity, the point of this blog, coming up. But first, let's note we are all (except me, because I am exempt) now in the system for which my mom volunteered. The republicans will never repeal this law, any more than Obama would ever end the wars. Let's look at the first line in the Obamacare act, which the Bishops generally support. The first sentence is a lie.
This Act puts individuals, families and small business owners in control of their health care.
You have no control when anything is mandated. We are born with control over our health care, which is diet and exercise. But the act is using health care to mean medicine, and on two levels this is a lie: one is you cannot pick what medicine you want from whom you want, nor have USA citizens been able to do so for about a century, since the state has taken over the definition of medicine. Second, what the state now calls medicine is no such thing. Aricept is good medicine to the state. The state gradually eroded peoples control over healthcare, and the act ended it. I find the farther from state control, the better the medicine, and happily I can still go overseas if I want good medicine.
So what is the business business opportunity? Most wealth in the United States is concentrated in the hands of women, because they outlive their husbands. As women age, and they live in larger houses, someone should set up a website to match elderly women with young families. The young families move into the home of the elderly women, and for free rent integrate the elderly women into the family life. Mom lives better longer, the kids get intergenerational benefits, and the young family is motivated to keep mom as hale as long as possible to keep the benefit of the arrangement in place. It is also a sort of benign redistribution of wealth as the equity in mom's house is in effect to some degree transferred to the young couple who is saving money while living free with mom.
The Catholic bishops are worried about their "rights" and missing the point that what they support is not medicine. But as the Vatican keeps telling US Catholics, "You are on your own." And helpfully they list small business on par with hospitals and schools in doing good in society. So solve this crisis with a small business matching mom and young families.
I was the last person to talk to my mom, and the last person to see her alive. She was scheduled to be moved the next day to the brand new retirement home highrise with a view of the bay, something she was promised when she signed up, a fabulous state of the art facility. I was flying to Hawaii the next day. We chatted about her big move and how in the morning we'd both be in paradise.
When I landed at Kona I got a call from my sister mom had died. Funny, that last conversation.
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Posted in argument, Exceptional Wealth, medicine, New Business Opportunities / Trade Leads by John Wiley Spiers | 0 comments