SovereignLife Freedom Blog

As a result of a few sentences in some of my posts to this blog, I’ve been taken to task for criticising religious fundamentalism – i.e. the literal belief in the written word of God, as interpreted by those who assume the authority to do so.

I’ve stated that Islam is not the only fundamentalist religion to be concerned about – but also Judaism and Christianity. I bestow no favouritism here.

And as proof of my contention that the USA (being one of the most fundamentalist religious nations in the western world, if not the most) is at “war” with Islam precisely because America is Christian (the in-fighting of the monotheist religions who share the same Abrahamic “root”), I offer this short video as proof of my assertion.

It appears that Harry Potter is in league with the devil. Watch for yourself.

Watch it and ask yourself truthfully if such thinking can lead to a free society. Then ask yourself if you’d trust any politician who believed such. Then extrapolate this to include the fact that previous President George Bush believed pretty much as those in the video do.

A recipe for irrational nonsense and global mayhem I would have thought.

And as an antidote to the previous video, I recommend you watch this video – a talk by JK Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series. Then ask yourself which speaker represents your worldview more.

More and more people are awakening to the fraud perpetrated by government fiat money and fractional reserve banking. In the former, the government can literally print money and force people to accept it (legal tender laws). In the latter, banks can leverage their deposits by lending out far more than they have received, thus creating a situation where two people have claims to the same money (the depositor and the borrower).

Goldbugs see a return to gold as money as the solution. Others talk about using a basket of currencies or commodities to hold a new currency together.

However, there is a very simple monetary reform that would not determine any particular financial outcome, but would pave the way for the free market to deliver a money that functions as true money – a money most accepted by the actual market place.

That reform is simply the act of removing from government the right to monopolise the creation of credit and money. Without a monopoly any business could go into the business of issuing money. And the market would decide if such money was worth using.

It could be that a private mint may issue gold or silver coins – or negotiable receipts for such precious metals. Or another company may issue a currency valued against a basket of other commodities.

Either way, the market would be free to seek to compete with government money and people would be free to choose the money that suits them best.

A free market in money would go a long way to curbing the inflationary practices of government monopoly money – and could usher in a truly sound money system that would forever banish the insanity of political control over the money supply.

There is no need to come up with a “master plan” for any alternative to government issued fiat money. Simply remove the state’s monopoly and let other players enter the market.

To state the truth in these days of economic mayhem and madness strikes some as a form of dementia. The MSM (main stream media) waffles on about the impending economic recovery and searches in vain for signs of economic normalcy. But there are prophetic voices out there – those that look behind the nonsensical ramblings of the state-controlled-mouthpieces – voices which see a completely different scenario emerging.

One such voice is Jim Willie of GoldenJackass.com – who has a lot to say about what’s really going on.

His essay – Systemic Failure Approaches – is a powerful opening salvo.

One thing you will not likely read about in your local newspaper is the burgeoning “carry trade” in USD.

Okay, first question: “what is carry trade?”

It’s when you borrow funds in one currency – at low or zero interest – to invest in something else promising much higher returns. A simple example would be to borrow at 0.5% and invest at 4%. I’m sure that you can see the advantage in that! You could literally use borrowed money to make money – without any funds of your own. And that’s called leverage.

Until recently the carry trade currency of choice was the JPY (Japanese yen) – due to its extremely low interest rate (a policy designed to get Japan out of the deflationary recession over many years).

Now the mantle of profitable carry trade has been passed on to the USD – the global reserve currency that is now available for close to zero interest. The temptation is huge – to borrow in USD and use those funds to invest in anything with a definite upside.

Trouble is, this new-found moneymaking benefit of the USD also spells the death knell for the venerable global reserve currency. It sets up the USD for permanent low yield, in order to continue the benefit to those involved in such carry trades. And if the US Federal Reserve were to suddenly raise interest rates a few points, then the global carry trade in USD would begin to unwind – causing major financial collapses around the world. Why? Because this new-found and profitable carry trade in USD is finding its way into the investment strategies not only of individuals, but of major financial institutions – including banks.

The descent of the USD into the carry trade currency of choice is but another imminent sign of its demise as the global reserve currency.

It’s instructive to get inside the minds of those we least understand – and this recent Statement of The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (Taliban), sure puts a different spin on a war that should never have started and bears all the hallmarks of yet another graveyard of empires.

Justin Raimondo of AntiWar.com has written an excellent piece on a new book, Goddess of The Market. Ayn Rand And The American Right, by Jennifer Burns.

Anything about Ayn Rand interests me and I’ll be purchasing this book in due course.

I first came upon Rand’s magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, back in 1982 – an event that transformed my life in many ways. And the following years were most fascinating and instructive. You see, I had previously been a Christian and the reading of “Atlas” created a ravine between my old beliefs and those I was about to adopt.

As is true for many who first read her works, I became intense and rather evangelical about it and started a discussion group on Objectivism – the name Ayn Rand gave her philosophy. It was only later, a few years later, that I realised I had swapped one “belief” for another, in the sense of adopting Objectivism as the “truth”.

So instead of being an irritating fundamentalist Christian, browbeating anyone who stood close enough to me, I became in irritating fundamentalist Objectivist – powered by the nuclear energy of reason!

Anyway, that’s a long and tortuous story and far too long-winded to go into here. Suffice to say that The Fountainhead by Rand is still my favourite novel, and Ayn Rand still my biggest hero – even though I’m not a “card-carrying” Objectivist any more.

Her ideas have changed and will continue to change lives – and perhaps even the course of history.

Read the review. Buy the book.

I used to be a libertarian – someone who believes in limited government. Since 9/11 I’ve had to change my mind, realising that government can’t be limited. Once unleashed, the animal known as “government” can only become more and more powerful and brutal, finally morphing into a full-blown tyrant.

In this 28 minute video – Doug Casey and Thomas Woods make a reasoned and logical case for anarchism – the belief that we don’t need government, that government is the universal problem and certainly not the solution.

Well worth the watch.

P.S. For those interested in exploring the origins and actual nature of the state, I thoroughly recommend reading the essay by Murray Rothbard – The Anatomy of The State.

Recently I’ve been getting a lot of emails from Americans, the general gist of which is: “Seeing as the US tax authorities are aggressively going after Americans who have offshore bank accounts, does it not make acquiring such an account a waste of time, or worse a criminal offence?”

In order to answer that question I first need to clarify something. The US authorities are indeed going after those who have unreported offshore accounts – those who are seeking to hide funds in such accounts.

However, what is vitally important to understand is that offshore bank accounts are not illegal. It’s just that if you’re a US citizen or resident you need to report its existence – if the balance of funds in the account exceeds $10,000.

So if you report it, doesn’t that do away with any of the advantages? Fair question – but the answer is “no”.

Sure, being a US citizen/resident does put you into a class of your own (having to report the existence of offshore accounts), compared to citizens of other nations – but that’s all par for the course these days, as Americans are fast losing their freedoms.

However, there are still a couple of very good reasons why you should still open an offshore bank account – regardless of the requirement to report it.

1. An offshore bank account provides a “safe haven” for your funds – out of reach of the government. Provided you stay “legal” and report, you are perfectly entitled to move all your cash offshore if you want. And the advantage is it will be more secure.

2. With the slow-but-sure slide in value of the USD (a necessary situation given the USA’s indebtedness), you need to diversify out of the $US. And the best way to do this is to open an offshore bank account where you can easily hold funds in multiple foreign currencies. This gives you an opportunity to hedge against the falling dollar by moving your funds into a currency (or currencies) that is doing better.

3. Even though US citizens/residents have to report the existence of such accounts (if over $10K balance), this does not completely obliterate your financial privacy. Once you have funds in such an offshore account, you are able to move it around, pay for stuff, fund a brokerage account and do all sorts of things – without those transactions being known or reportable in your home country.

All in all, my advice to Americans is to take up this legal option – to move funds offshore and into an offshore bank account – while there is still time!

Given the state of the US economy, it’s not inconceivable that in the future moving such funds may become impossible.

And if your second question is “how do I find, choose and fund an offshore account”, then I refer you to my two reports:

The 10 Things You Really Need To Know Before Opening An Offshore Bank Account – an overview of offshore banking and the basics you need to know.

The Ideal Offshore Bank Account – my personal picks for offshore banks, based on my own considerable experience.

I always knew that man-made global warming was a scam – and now the truth is out. For the last 11 years there has been no increase in global temperatures at all. In fact, the warmest year recorded globally was back in 1998! You can read the breaking news from the BBC here: What Happened to Global Warming?

I don’t want to go into why it’s a scam, as there are hundreds of books on this subject – suffice to say that the politicisation of this issue was the vital clue to the nature of the “beast”.

Ever since global warming became news, the “solution” was always at hand. We (mankind) are responsible for global warming, and the solution is a new world order where our “warming” actions are curtailed (read “economic progress”).

It doesn’t take much reading on the issue to conclude that the whole global warming debate and its draconian political solutions are simply the rebirth of Marxist thinking in a new guise. Red turned to Green.

And that was what alerted me to the nature of this scam – the fact it was being pushed as a geopolitical/economic issue, largely by non-scientists, to create a world more to their liking. That more than anything lead to my immediate scepticism.

The idea was to put a stranglehold on the “global warming culprits” (the developed and developing nations) by instigating crazy initiatives like carbon caps and trading schemes – all in an attempt to make it look like a rational response to a supposed imminent danger.

But this is an old ruse. Politicians and the powers-that-be always rely on scare tactics in order to push through their usually hidden agenda.

I can think of a couple of obvious examples:

1. The War on Terror: an oxymoron if ever there was one. You can no more have a war on “terror” than you can have a war on “fear-mongering”. Terrorism is a tactic of war, and one cannot wage war on a tactic of war. No, the so-called war on terror is all about something else entirely – and is Orwellian “newspeak” for a war on freedom – your freedom and my freedom.

2. The Swine Flu Scare: another classic example of  fear mongering on the part of those who govern us. Right from the start it was evident this flu was not much different from ordinary seasonal flu. In fact, apart from targeting the young more than the old , the symptoms appeared less intense than ordinary flu. In other words, medically speaking there is not really any cause for panic at all. But panic suits the “powers that be” precisely because it enables them to herd us into new and more confined “cages” – in this case browbeating us to get vaccinated with something that is likely to cause more deaths than the flu itself!

I’m sure you can think of other examples of the government blowing up the threat of something or other, purely as a tactic for furthering its own agenda of more social control – either as a domestic goal or as part of a movement to more centralised world governance.

As to global warming, it would appear the cat is out of the bag, and a healthy dose of scepticism is now even more in order. Hopefully such information and rational debate will put a stop to the global control schemes being plotted behind closed doors.

Here is an excellent article, by Paul Nathan, on the morality of a gold standard – and why it is a necessary component of a free society. Recommended.

The Gold Standard: A Standard For Freedom