Category Archives: Essays

How Snowden’s Revelations Have Strengthened the NSA

Posted on by

portallogo3

“A year has gone by, and nothing has changed. This is a grant of legitimacy to the NSA that it did not have before Snowden’s revelations. Before, the NSA worked in secrecy from the public. Now the NSA knows that the worst possible light can be thrown on the NSA’s activities, and nothing is done to roll back the NSA. It has survived Snowden’s revelations, and now it can continue without any major threat to its operations.  I’m glad that Snowden did what he did, because I wanted to hear evidence that backed up what James Bamford wrote about the NSA over two decades ago. But nobody cared about Bamford’s book, and nobody really cares about Snowden’s revelations.”

http://www.garynorth.com/public/12446.cfm

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Wendy McElroy: America’s Electronic Police State

Posted on by

“The fusion centers share many characteristics of a surveillance state with the NSA. These characteristics include a disregard for civil rights, secret records, the use of informants, little to no transparency, the targeting of political opponents, and an ever-expanding mission.  Since Snowden’s revelations, the NSA has been under a spotlight that reduces its ability to hide activities such as the warrantless recording of emails and phone calls. NSA is subjected to public controversy, with civil liberty groups pushing to rein in its power. By contrast, the fusion centers are comparatively invisible, which allows them to operate covertly in a manner more typical of a surveillance state.”

http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/americas-electronic-police-state

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Robert Ringer: When Not to Save Money

Posted on by

rringer-11

“Making money is a direct result of the amount of time spent creating valuable products and figuring out ways to market them.  Marketing is the engine of every successful company, because it leads to sales — and sales lead to profits.  It all gets down to how you spend your time.  Would you rather spend it focusing on problems or opportunities?  Any overhead, no matter how small, is a problem if your income isn’t high enough to cover it.  And, in theory, no amount of overhead is too high if your income is great enough to cover it — preferably many times over.”

http://robertringer.com/when-not-to-save-money/

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Wendy McElroy: First They Came For The Porn Stars…

Posted on by

mcelroy1

“The Department of Justice (DOJ) program is called Operation Choke Point. The choke point is America’s payment infrastructure through which an estimated $5 trillion in consumer purchases flow each year; more than eight million merchants use it to process credit and debit card payments. The DOJ is targeting banks and payment companies, such as PayPal, with a tsunami of subpoenas and other expensive legal demands. The demands go away if the institutions refuse to do business with people whose activities are deemed ‘objectionable’ although they are legal. The DOJ is imposing its own moral criteria on who can participate in the market place.”

http://www.thedailybell.com/editorials/35306/Wendy-McElroy-First-They-Came-For-The-Porn-Stars/

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Why I Sued the U.S. Government 28 Years Ago and What I Learned

Posted on by

“My name is Will Bonner.  In 1986, at the age of seven years old, I took the US Secretary of the Treasury, James A. Baker, to federal court over the US national debt.  When I was seven years old, I took James A Baker, former US Secretary of the Treasury, to court… over the US national debt.  I wasn’t looking for a big cash payday.  I was asking the court to prevent Mr. Baker and the United States Treasury from getting away with the biggest rip-off in history… a policy most people don’t understand or like to talk about… but one that I believed would ruin this country… And I wish I was writing to you to tell you that I had been successful… that I had stopped it.  But it didn’t turn out that way.”

http://pro.bonnerandpartners.com/0514BBWUNSBPP/EBBWQ532

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Bill Bonner: Middle Class? What Middle Class?

Posted on by

Bill-Bonner2

“Want a middle-class lifestyle… with middle-class finances… and middle-class attitudes?  Forget it. Trying to enter the middle class is like trying to get a job as a galley slave. You get chained to an oar. You sit. You row… until you drop dead.  The middle class, as Smith tells it, is desperate to continue its ‘aspirational consumption financed by debt.’ It’s a trap – set for you by the oligarchs and ‘poligarchs’ (people whose votes can be bought cheaply) who control Washington and its major industries.  And if you’re young, you face a lifetime of backache… trying to keep up the pace.  These heavy burdens didn’t ‘just happen.’ They are the result of dirty dealing by America’s goons and poltroons.”

http://www.bonnerandpartners.com/middle-class-what-middle-class/

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Hidden Erosion of Corporate Worth Since U.S. Abandoned Money

Posted on by

“For 173 years, the United States used money as a medium of exchange. In 1965, it switched to using a floating accounting unit. This change coincided with a dramatic yet hidden reversal in the net trend of worth for U.S. corporations.  The shift to fake money in 1965 just happens to coincide with the year that divides the long term trend of corporate worth in the United States from mostly up to mostly down.  This chart reveals the breathtaking rise in total U.S. corporate worth during the money period and exposes the stunning net destruction of U.S. corporate worth since the start of the non-money period.”

http://www.elliottwave.com/freeupdates/archives/2014/05/07/THE-HIDDEN-EROSION-OF-CORPORATE-WORTH-SINCE-THE-GOVERNMENT-ABANDONED-MONEY.aspx

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Glenn Greenwald: from MLK to Anonymous, the state targets dissenters

Posted on by

“It is the nature of authority to equate dissent with wrongdoing, or at least with a threat.  The record is suffused with examples of groups and individuals being placed under government surveillance by virtue of their dissenting views and activism – Martin Luther King, the civil rights movement, anti-war activists, environmentalists. In the eyes of the government and J Edgar Hoover’s FBI, they were all ‘doing something wrong’: political activity that threatened the prevailing order.  The opportunity those in power have to characterise political opponents as ‘national security threats’ or even ‘terrorists’ has repeatedly proven irresistible.”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/13/glenn-greenwald-anonymous-mass-surveillance-governments-nasa-no-place-to-hide

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Robert Ringer: Handling Change

Posted on by

rringer-11

“One of the reasons Murphy’s Law is timeless is because of the annoying reality that life never seems to stay in one place long enough to pin it down.  Like a greased watermelon, just when you think you have it under control, it manages to slip from your grasp.  This phenomenon is underscored by yet another reality:  The one thing in life you can absolutely count on is that circumstances will continually change.  What is unknown is when they will change.  That being the case, it’s dangerous to base your decisions on the assumption that everything is going to continue on as it now is.  It won’t.”

http://robertringer.com/handling-change/

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Robert Ringer: A Tale of Two Winners

Posted on by

rringer-11

“The words on Forrest Gump’s T-shirt put it more bluntly:  ‘S___ happens.’  And it happens so frequently that a rational person has no choice but to recognize it as an integral part of life.  What’s especially irritating about it is that no matter how smart you are, no matter how successful you may be, and no matter how carefully you plan your financial affairs, sooner or later there will likely be unforeseen circumstances that will register 8.4 at your epicenter.  All anyone can do to prepare for a seismic life shock of such a magnitude is to never forget that Fate sits on the other side of the Table of Life, plotting her next move.  Make your financial moves very carefully.”

http://robertringer.com/a-tale-of-two-winners/

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet