Conspiracies! Conspiracies!

"Conspiracy theorist" is an interesting term, wouldn't you say? It carries a certain message: Crank! Lunatic Fringe! Ignore! Ignore! and suchlike. It is a term of dismissal; just a conspiracy theorist. The fact that this conspiracy theorist has probably scoured through endless data and gathered information that can be supported with hard evidence doesn't even come into it. He or she is just a conspiracy theorist.

How about a new term? How about Coincidence Theorist for those who maintain that there is no link between this piece of evidence and that piece of evidence even though it may appear so, due largely to the fact that they fit together like a fucking jigsaw. The 'Simply-say-it-is-not-so' brigade. By what criteria does a version of events so full of holes it's pathetic earn more credibility than a studied report supported by evidence?

We're barking up the wrong tree with our obsession with evidence. It isn't about proving that corruptions of law and justice are taking place and it isn't even about who is guilty. We are all guilty. Guilty for standing by and watching as they built a system of governance as corruption-friendly as it is possible to be. Then we gasp in horror when we find out that they are dealing in corruption. I mean... if you saw your ten-year old son enter the hen house... carrying an axe... and he closes the door behind him... well, aren't you going to feel a little more comfortable if you knew exactly what was going on? Wouldn't you want to... you know... keep an eye on the situation?

Forget evidence. Just assume that they are guilty. If we jump to the wrong assumption, well, no harm's done. This isn't a court house. The point is: can they? The answer to that is, of course: yes. The whole system has been designed so that they can milk it for all it's worth because it was designed by the very people who stood to gain the most from a secretive and opaque system that had plenty of scope for corruption.

So why do we have corrupt governments?

Well, excuse me... but who was it who effectively said: "We want you to be our leader. We have absolutely no idea what that job entails so you can make it up as you go. We don't care how you do it just as long as the fridge works, the TV works and the paychecks keep coming in"?

We give them the power to control our lives completely. And do you know what they have that gives them the power? What gives them the power to manipulate the economy so your company can no longer afford you and you lose your job and the banks foreclose on your house and suddenly everything you had now belongs to the banks that created the whole mess? What do they have that gives them such awesome power?

Your consent.

Yeah sure. They're wealthy... but only because they say so. Look, if I gave you a piece of paper with five dollars written on it and asked if you could change it, would you say yes or no? Obviously, that would depend on whether or not the piece of paper is something that you have been conditioned to recognise as an item of value. But what is its value? Who decides that? The banks. And what does its value actually mean? What is a 'dollar'? Or a 'pound'? What does it mean? It means nothing. It means that you are legally entitled to exchange this for a loaf of bread. I know... you're thinking Five dollars for a loaf of bread??? but I'm thinking ahead. One day, people will read this and say A loaf of bread for just five bucks!!!??? Which brings us to another irritating little characteristic which can only be enjoyed and exploited by the mega-rich: money kind of inflates. So the price of a loaf of bread today is several times the price it was ten years ago. Has the value of a loaf of bread changed? No. Of course not. A loaf that will feed twelve people is the same value as a loaf that would feed twelve 100 years ago...1,000 years ago. Value is stable because it is based on reality.

Price is based on fiction. What is it about a dollar bill that makes its value a dollar? It isn't the object itself because to make an identical copy would not produce a dollar. It would produce a forgery,which, no matter how good, would not have the face value of a dollar... although, as artwork, it may be worth more. J.S.G. Boggs, an American artist who draws banknotes, actually spends his creations... quite legally. He will buy a meal and give the Maitre'd the option of accepting the actual banknote or the subtly changed, hand drawn copy. Unsurprisingly, most choose the copy, recognising it as a piece of artwork. It's the ones who don't that are interesting. Boggs' work, although having no face value as currency, has an intrinsic value as artwork.

Now here is the interesting dilemma: Boggs' work is real artwork because it is hand drawn and beautifully executed. A such, it is valuable. People pay a lot for his work (unless you're a lucky maitre'd). But it is not real money. Real money has no intrinsic value and an abstract value is assigned to it. That value is a fiction. It is an invented representation of value. All money provides is a benchmark against which we can measure value. Because the value of money is a fiction, it is highly volatile. Fictional values can be manipulated and are constantly adjusted against stock prices so that fiscal values are constantly on the move. So, for money to be real, its value must be fake. For a Boggs original artwork to be real, the object itself must be fake. No wonder the FBI don't like him.

You see the whole money con? We are told that the value of money is subject to something called 'market forces'. Although a dollar is always a dollar, what it will buy fluctuates. What causes this fluctuation? Decisions. (A) will decide that he will pay no more than (B) for the commodity, (C) and (X) will accept no less than (Y) for his (Z). Numbers are being made up and manipulated and the price of stock either expands or contracts. The 'value' of the dollar is adjusted accordingly. None of this is real! Price is nothing more than a hypothetical value. We are, in effect, pretending that a dollar bill and a dollar's worth of sugar are of equal value. In reality, the sugar is worth far more than the intrinsic value of a dollar bill. So, for 'Face Value', read 'pretend value'.

Everyone will agree that gold is more valuable than iron. Why? Because gold is scarce and it costs more money. Being scarce doesn't make anything better than if it were not scarce so this is an artificial value. To make a rough assessment of comparitive intrinsic values, let's try to imagine what would happen if iron suddenly ceased to exist and everything made of iron disappeared. Buildings would crash, people would be lost at sea or falling from the sky... our civilisation would fall apart. Now imagine if it were gold that ceased to exist: the fillings would fall out of my teeth. Which is the greatest value to our society?

Fiscal value is the biggest lie of all. It is the lie with which the maximum number of people can be manipulated and controlled to the maximum level with the minimum of effort. Create a form of litter called money. Control what this litter will allow them to have by fluctuating its fictitious value. Then, when everyone's convinced that the lie must be the truth because it apears to work, you can then buy into the same illusion and live a life of excess and indulgence simply by accumulating lots of your own litter.

It is not the responsibility of them to not take full advantage of the fertile bed of corruption you have allowed them to assemble, it's your responsibility to do something about it. We keep demanding that they do something about it so they do this or that, which has a negligible effect because it isn't in their interests to change it.... and, by the way, only they have the power and authority to conduct an investigation into their actions in the event of strenuous demands for an investigation.

We're kind of asking the vandals to do something about the vandalism. It isn't going to happen. We are hoodwinked into believing that the only people who have the right to even decide whether or not an investigation takes place and the authority to effectively dictate the findings are the very people we want to investigate. It is no good waiting for a change in the law that would enable us to truly hold those in power accountable (notice the term is always in power. Never in service). We try. It fails. We try. It fails. How long is it going to take a chicken farmer to realise that training a fox to watch over the chickens was not a smart move? How many times is he going to repeat "Well, maybe this time..."? before it occurs to him that maybe it wasn't the fox's fault... well, not entirely?

So the question always comes back. What are we going to do? Jefferson said: "When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty". The fact that they have covered their asses by making any effective way of withdrawing consent for the leader's authority illegal also relies on your recognition of of such a law. They may say "Because I say so" but the reason the status quo is as it is is (are there too many 'is's there? No? OK) because you accept what they say. The commander gives the order to fire but the choice always rests with the infantryman. He is responsible for pulling the trigger and he does so because he chooses to do so. He thinks he has no choice. He thinks he is pulling the trigger because he was told to do so. He is pulling the trigger because he has surrendered his conscience, his right to question, his right to judge and any accountability to the hands of those he thinks are in control. He chooses to acknowledge the authority of another to demand that he commit acts that are repugnant to him and he chooses not to acknowledge his right to say 'No'.

We made this mess.... and we choose not to clear it up.