Original Gangstas

Defending the Homeland, thousands of miles from home.

Thank Goodness I Live in a Free Country

An essay of thankfulness, by Don Cooper. Yes, our public servants do serve, and serve well. Thanks and praise to them, and to the leaders and masters who make it possible. What ever would we do without them? Aside from making our own choices and living our own lives, of course.

Stealing From The Government

Harold Crick: It says, in the file, that you only paid part of your taxes for last year.
Ana Pascal: That's right.
Harold Crick: Looks like only 78 percent.
Ana Pascal: Yep.
Harold Crick: So you did it on purpose?
Ana Pascal: Yep.
Harold Crick: So you must've been expecting an audit.
Ana Pascal: Um, I was expecting a fine, or a sharp reprimand.
Harold Crick: A reprimand? This isn't boarding school, Miss Pascal. You stole from the government.
Ana Pascal: No I didn't steal from the government. I just didn't pay you entirely.
Stranger Than Fiction, 2006

The idea of stealing from the government presents a discrepancy, and if thought about too deeply could result in the discomfort of cognitive dissonance. Of course, everyone knows stealing from the government is bad. It's worse than stealing from a regular person. If you steal cash out of a purse at the mall, you might get in some trouble and have to wear an orange vest and clean up a little trash along the highway, but try sneaking a book of stamps at the Post Office and you've really crossed the line. You stole from the government. Those were The People's Stamps, and you selfishly tried to make them your own. The cash was just from some lady—an individual—but the stamps, those belong to the people. Until an individual buys them, but whatever.

The government (technically multiple governments, but there's only one Capital G Government, because they all answer to, and beg money from, the federal one) has lots of property, and you can't steal any of it. Cars, trucks, buildings, land, anything really. Sometimes it's even called public land, but the public (that's us) has to ask permission to use it, and even then it can only be used in a very limited manner (unless the particular member of the public has tons of money, and then it's different). The big question is where does the government get all of this stuff? Does land automatically just belong to the government? How do they buy those fleets of vehicles? Well, the government is rich, right? It can just buy whatever it needs. Sort of.

Anyone who has ever paid taxes has helped the government acquire all of that stuff. Actually, some people who haven't paid taxes yet, and maybe aren't even born yet, will, in some distant future, be paying for the stuff the government has right now. Maybe you didn't know this, but the government, with the help of the non-government Federal Reserve, borrows more money than you can imagine. The government is not rich, the government has a huge credit card. So either way, whatever the government claims it owns, was actually paid for, or will be paid for, by the subjects it disingenuously calls citizens.

That begs the question, is it possible to steal from the government? The government (meaning, of course, the state, but that's a different topic) has forcibly* extracted money from everyone in the form of taxes, including the sneaky tax of inflation, in order to get whatever it is it needed to continue, in a less efficient and more brutal manner, to extract increasing amounts of money from the same everyone. If a private sector thief takes your property are you justified in trying to retrieve it? "Hey, that's my TV, give it back!" Seems legit. Try getting a TV back from the local TSA office. Even though he had an enormous mustache, Friedrich Nietzsche was right when he said, "Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen." If the state hasn't stolen everything it has, then why is there a need for an armed collection agency? Why are people coerced** into filing tax returns every year? If given a choice, we wouldn't buy the things the government buys, so they have to take it with threats of violence. Can you really claim to own something you bought with stolen money? Can you really be angry when someone steals what you stole first?

You can be prosecuted and punished for taking something the government claims to own, but is it stealing? Maybe, maybe not. You can be prosecuted and punished for not paying taxes—they call it stealing—but is it stealing? They are stealing it from you, not the other way around.

*Yes, forcibly. Just call the IRS and tell them you're never paying any taxes again and see what happens. They have guns.

**Watch this hilarious video of Harry Reid claiming the opposite.

Patriot Watch List

I got an idea from Liberranter about requesting to be on the Southern Poverty Law Center's patriot watch list. Here is the request I sent them:

I was just wondering if I could be on your "Meet the Patriots" watch list. I'm not really a leader of anything, and I haven't done anything infamous or dastardly, but I do harbor a lot of those so-called anti-government sentiments. I hope for the dissolution of the IRS, CIA, FBI, DHS, as well as the Departments of Education, Energy, Justice, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, and Veterans Affairs. I'm also not so impressed with Treasury and Defense, so those could go too, but at least the DoD could change it's name back to Department of War, right? That would make more sense. Or maybe Department of Offense would be more fitting. The State Department can stick around because someone has to be the official greeter for visiting dignitaries. I mean, I'm not totally unreasonable.

And another thing that's ticking me off is that Janet Napolitano sounds like a dude, but Tim Geithner comes off like a sissy. Obama, make Tim eat some meat once in a while! Toughen that guy up.

Here's another thing that might make me worthy of a watch list. I don't care about global warming, or climate change as they're calling it now. It's probably a big lie, but even if it isn't, the morons who are freaking out about it are just using it as another reason to regulate and control everything. Like Al Gore gives a rip about carbon emissions? Please!

Which leads me to another thing. I hate the UN. It would be great if the UN was just a collection of worthless money wasting blowhards, but they're worse than worthless, they're detrimental to civilization. They must think people are stupid, because they constantly send out "peace keeping" forces, but these "peace keepers" are riding around in tanks. And remember that one time when they helped the Hutus kill a bunch of Tutsis? Jerks.

And what about the Federal Reserve? I don't have time to explain how much I hate that whole corporatist swindle.

I could go on about things the government does that suck, but you'd be bored, I'm sure. If you want a more complete list, let me know. If it would help, I can try to organize a militia or something, but don't bother sending infiltrators. I can sniff those suckers out pretty easy.

Thanks a million and let me know what you think.

Sic Semper Tyrannis,
Isaac Stanfield

Do The Collapse

"Only government can break the vicious cycles that are crippling our economy -- where a lack of spending leads to lost jobs which leads to even less spending; where an inability to lend and borrow stops growth and leads to even less credit."
Barack Obama

A person's last resort tends to be their most powerful god. A lifelong agnostic, hanging from a cliff by his fingernails, just might become less skeptical and try praying, just this once. So what happens when a nation's (or the world, but whatever) economy begins a downward spiral? Where do people turn? Barack Obama turns to government.* Only government can break this cycle (never mind that government intervention created the cycle in the first place). Only government is big enough, and powerful enough. Only government can raise taxes, redistribute wealth, regulate, legislate, and rescue industries in a way that would fix whatever problems ail us. In fact, one of the few moments of outright honesty since Obama's campaign started getting national attention came with an admission of that concept. The monopoly on violence government claims ensures the continuation of various attempts at rescuing the common folks from all manner of horrible and uncomfortable states of being. The federal government, being the largest and best armed, is the boss government, all others submitting to it.

If Obama (and Bush, and Cheney, and Romney, and all the rest of them) turns to government to cure our national ills, where do we turn? How do we display our faith? Who do we trust with the most important aspects of our civilization? Of course we don't trust our children to the government, that would be foolish. No, we raise our own children. Except for the 180 days a year of six (not including homework) hour days spent in government run schools, for thirteen of the first 17 or 18 years of their lives. Certainly not our homes, which belong to us, and are a sacred sanctuary from the world. Except government instructs us on how and where we are permitted to build (building permit, get it?), what materials we can use, how much we have to pay to keep it (property taxes), and the various agencies that can demand inspections and remove our children on the slightest whim, not mention the TV and radio—controlled by the government via regulation of radio and airwaves, among other methods—that are omnipresent within our homes. OK, fine, but not our personal safety. We can take care of ourselves! Except for guns, because the federal government needs to make sure that only safe people own guns, for our own safety. And knives. Some knives we can't have. And metal plates of a certain thickness. But other than that, it's just the taxes that are distributed (redistributed? Shock!) to the military for our national security. And to the intelligence agencies. And to the programs to connect the military, intelligence agencies, state police, and local police, for our own safety. Other than that, no way do we let the feds control our personal safety. I could go on about every aspect of modern life, but hopefully you get the point. I covered life, liberty, and property, so that should suffice.

What would we do without the federal government? What would happen if every person and every corporation stopped paying the extortion fee we call income tax? The federal government would collapse, right?** (Assuming they would run out of money, which they wouldn't because the Federal Reserve can print or "create" as much as it want, whenever it wants, without asking you, which it does on a regular basis.) And then what? Would the interstate highways crumble to dust due to neglect? Would communication break down and isolate us from distant populations? Maybe mobs would rampage through the streets, looting and pillaging, and warlords would conquer your neighborhood. There would be no food in the stores, because everyone knows that only the federal government can authorize food in the stores. Can you imagine the chaos if government appendages like the Department of Education ceased to exist? Who would educate the children? And the local favorite, the Department of Energy, what would we do then? Get the candles! Man the bicycle-driven generators! To assume that all of this flows from the federal government, or is in some way bestowed on us or allowed by it, is to assume that people aren't capable of doing these things themselves. That would be the same people who do it everyday, themselves, right now. Do power plant operators need a government agent to stand behind them everyday and convince them not to push the self-destruct button? Do they need the federal government at any point in their education, training, or career to be able to do what they do? Does any occupation? Dispelling the myth that we need federal agencies to guide every aspect of our lives only requires a little logic. So here it comes.

Pretend you somehow overcame the licensing and regulatory hurdles and you now own a dairy farm. What is your goal? To make money. How do you make money? People give it to you. Why do they give you money? Because you give them dairy products. So far so good. Everyone is happy. But wait, how can we be sure your milk isn't poisoned? Because we all know that people who are just out to make money are soulless vampires hellbent on ravaging the general population. We learned that in college. But that doesn't account for the fact that a dairy farmer can't make money if all of his customers are sick or dead. Even if a small percentage of people get violently ill from his products, people will hear about it, and then he's in big trouble. It's in the farmer's best interest to put out the best product he can, and for the best price he can afford. If slick marketing gets him a better price, good for him. So where does federal regulation need to come in? At what point do we need federal agents enforcing price controls? If one farmer can sell milk for $1 a gallon, fine. If we're so stupid that we pay $10 a gallon for a different brand, that's our problem. I don't see how it's the federales business what goes on with milk.

How about the aforementioned energy production? Would energy companies wantonly dump waste into rivers if not for government saving the day? Again, it doesn't make sense for a company that needs to make money to kill or harm those who will give it money. Only when government comes in and sets guidelines (and who can doubt that federal regulators are always experts in their fields and have only the best interest of the people in mind?) for who can do what and when that the minimum guidelines are met, absolving companies of any liability beyond that. Apply this to the banking industry, clothing, cars, computers, books, TV, all manner of agriculture, medicine, pharmaceuticals, money, etc, and you might begin to see that the federal government has its boundless nose where it doesn't belong in every situation.

Economically, the situation is simple. If Uncle Sam has to rob—I mean tax—Peter to pay Paul, that seems simple enough. But when he goes to pay Paul, there isn't enough. Uncle Sam had to take his cut, so now Paul is short. But look! There's James, rob—I mean tax—him too! It becomes an untenable situation because more than one person has to be robbed—I mean taxed—to pay just one person. Soon Uncle Sam will run out of persons to rob—I mean tax—with no shortage of people to pay. The numbers don't add up. The moral of this story is that whenever government invests in something, it isn't really an investment. Opportunity cost kicks in, and whatever opportunity Peter had to invest his money is now lost. Maybe he would have invested in Paul's enterprise, or helped James buy a new fishing boat in return for a percentage of the profit. But now he can't, because his capital is gone. He ended up "investing" involuntarily in Uncle Sam, who will use his cut to buy himself better guns with which to rob everyone else and fortify his position as the baddest bandit in the land. So every time something is heavily controlled and regulated (a redundancy, sure, but some people might be slow on the uptake) by the government, we can be sure that there were many more opportunities lost than there were created. I know what you're asking now, so I'll get to that.

"What about things that are just so important that the government has to do them?" you may be asking. "All of those national labs are working on such important stuff, we can't just leave it to chance." If these projects were so important, wouldn't they be undertaken by someone anyway? If there is an opportunity to profit from innovation, wouldn't someone take it on? If profit were the goal, wouldn't these projects be done on a budget and in as short of period of time as possible? History says yes. No one forced Rockefeller to revolutionize the petroleum industry. No one had to regulate Henry Ford into developing a faster way to build a cheaper car. No one legislated the light bulb into existence. And if there is no use for these government mandated projects, perhaps the harsh truth is that they aren't needed at all.

If you find yourself thinking that the most important things should be done under the direction of the most corrupt and inefficient entity known to human kind, then maybe you should think about it a little longer. And if you find yourself thinking that the most important aspects of modern life can only be saved by government, maybe you should examine who and what you put your faith in, and who you look to for salvation when it really matters.




*Just for clarity, government means that entity which claims control over the population of a certain geographical area. I've dispensed with the notion that "the people" are the government, because that doesn't really seem to be the case, with ample evidence available on the web. It's a whole different topic, so just go with it.

**To make it easy, I'm not going into how tenaciously the federal parasites would hang on to their hosts, and what means they would use to keep their power.

In order to give credit where credit is due, I should note that Do the Collapse is the name of an album by Guided By Voices.

The Emporer's New Clothes

I heard an astonished fake-news reporter on the radio the other day—this was the day the stock market was losing a billion points or something (suckers!) and cops in Greece were whacking people with sticks (perhaps they had just returned from a training session in the US)—commenting that the dirty little secret in the whole mess was that "the world has no money, and the emperor has no clothes." Take heart and join the club, Court Stenographer, we already knew that.

So as I was laughing at this poor sap who had lived his whole life without realizing that Wall Street and it's companion wretched hive of scum and villainy, Washington, DC, were absolutely not real and also totally fake, I started to think about this whole naked emperor scenario. Of course everyone knows the story (if you don't, please immediately chastise your parents—if you know at least one—for not caring about you and depriving you of useful fables during your obviously intellectually and culturally impoverished childhood). The emperor is afraid of looking foolish and low class, and the high class people of the court are afraid of falling out of favor with the emperor. The regular folks are somehow intimidated into pretending to see what the high class types saw, probably due to the effects of some variation of the corporatist system of bribery, extortion, and general corruption which was no doubt ravaging the economy of this allegorical empire, and which is also now extant in every corner of the actual world we live in. But anyway, in a high school English class way, who is supposed to be what? Is it generally assumed that the emperor is a stand in for real world royal types, and the peasantry is supposed to be us, the everyday people who can recognize the nonsense of the royalty* but don't? Is the little boy who has the courage (or total lack of awareness of appropriate public behavior) supposed to be those who are willing to "speak truth to power?" (as the smart folks are saying these days.)

Maybe. When this yahoo started practically sobbing about the stock market drop—which I assume he was worried about because his stupid pension and/or 401(k) is wrapped up in it—I started thinking that the emperor was us. We're the ones using phony fiat dollars everyday, pretending they're so valuable. We're the ones who have been duped by the cunning weavers into this whole program of trading valuable capital (labor, time, ingenuity, etc) for Federal Reserve Notes (FRNs). The weavers, by the way, would be the Federal Reserve System and the nefarious banks behind it, whichever those might be, and good luck finding out. We are also the ones who insist that the peasantry recognize our fine fabric as something other than the auto-delusional farce that it is (see how that works out? Because FRNs are made of a fabric/paper material. See?). Remember that one time when Iran said they wanted to stop using FRNs as the default currency for trading oil? And remember when the US started threatening Iran right after that? "See my fine clothes, wretched villain! Glory in the majesty of my extravagant finery!" We're the emperor, because he was so easily duped in his pride, arrogance, and ignorance, and because we persist in forcing our non-existent non-money on the world. True, they wanted it while the illusion held, but now that the intrinsic value of the dollar is being noticed, the masters of the system are reluctant to let go. Don't you hate being the emperor? I hate being the emperor. I think the emperor should have executed the weavers and tossed their bodies into the ocean for the crabs to eat, or at least shooed them away with a stern look. That seems to be the only sensible thing to do.

By the way, Ron Paul is the young boy in the crowd who dared to proclaim the nakedness of the emperor. Who else?





*I'm including elected officials here because let's face it, they really are. Don't try to argue against this.

Not Funny, Pennsylvania. Not Funny.

Trusting the Government

Name one thing the government* doesn't lie about.





*Government meaning elected and non-elected officials and the various bureaucratic appendages thereof, not "The People" so often spoken of but so seldom seen.

Eastern Washington

So Washington has a budget deficit. This is not my fault. I don't imagine it's your fault either. The state legislature, because they don't have the, uh, ability to print currency like the feds do, have to resort to something other than printing monopoly money to pay for their re-election schemes. So they recently repealed (I mean temporarily suspended. It's just a temporary measure, of course) the requirement for a two-thirds vote in order to raise taxes or create new ones, and straightaway started the process of instituting an income tax. While I could go on about the ridiculousness of taxes, which are only theft under a different name, I won't. Secession is a much better topic.

Usually talk of secession conjures images of rabid antebellum slave owners and off-kilter Texans, but this is a bit different. What if, instead of Washington seceding from the United State [sic], the eastern half of Washington formed it's own state? Let Olympia build as many stupid light rails as they want, let them restore their own rivers to a pristine and dam-free natural state, let them legislate their way to clean air, and let us live how we want to live without interference from the west side. It's something I've been thinking of for a few years now, but it seems like this might be a good time to get serious about it.

People have a right to be governed in the way they want to be governed. This is not a right bestowed by the state (because that wouldn't make much sense, would it?). Jefferson wrote it in the declaration of independence—governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. So it stands to reason that when the consent of the governed is withdrawn, the power is also gone.

What do the two halves have in common? Geography? No. Look at a map and you'll see a pretty distinct dividing line between green and brown. This geographic and climate difference necessarily leads to a cultural difference. I hardly need to spell this out. How many times has the utopia envisioned by west siders been scuttled by uncouth rednecks from the east side? How many times have the earth savers from the west side tried to save fish, dismantle dams, restrict water use, and otherwise save the ignorant farmers from themselves? Why do they bother trying to control a population they have a general disdain for, and nothing in common with? Why is Olympia our capitol? It has nothing to do with us.

The great part about this idea is that if enough people latch on to it, and if enough counties get together and decide to exert their sovereignty, there isn't anything anyone can do to stop it. If Olympia doesn't like it what will they do, punish us with more taxes? Guess what, we don't have to pay them, we're our own state! Will they refuse to maintain our roads? Big deal, we're our own state! Maybe they won't let us on their new billion dollar light rail. Watch us cry, we're our own state! They might have tech companies and billionaires, but we have agriculture, we have hydro and nuclear power, and we also have way more guns than they do. I'm just sayin'.

So seriously, this needs to happen. I'll post more info as I get it, but for now I have to work on some bumper stickers.


View Larger Map

______ Control

The hubbub over Starbucks refusing to ban guns in their stores has got me thinking. Some people are upset by the fact that any old gun owner can wander in to Starbucks with their piece (that's macho lingo for a handgun), thereby disturbing the serene and tranquil paradise of nonviolence and slightly pretentious sophistication. But the gun issue is not my focus. There are other dangerous things out in the world. I recently learned about one. Let me tell you about it.

This particular dangerous item is a versatile explosive. In the standard liquid form it can cover a surface before it's ignited, or it can be poured under a door, which obviously causes problems when running away from bad guys. It can be added to other materials in a container and then ignited under pressure, which increases it's deadly capabilities. It can be easily transported in any type of container to avoid detection. Dangerous stuff, huh? But here's the crazy part: this stuff is readily available, no license or permit required. No background check or waiting period, no training certificate needed. All you need to have is the money to buy it. To buy a gun you have to have a background check (and that costs money, which increases the price of guns) and then wait five days, unless you have a concealed carry permit (which costs money and depends on the whims of the authorities), and then you only get to waive the waiting period—you still have to go through an up to date background check. We even have to be licensed to drive a car, but there isn't a restriction on buying this dangerous explosive? How did this slip through the legislative and regulatory cracks? How much danger are we in? Any random person can buy this explosive at any time. Readily available to the general public. Terrorists can buy this stuff. Seditious white supremacist groups can buy it. Tenth amendment sympathizers can buy it, and then they'll probably secede after they explode the entire country. Even Democrats can get it. This is totally insane.

So some of you may be wondering where you can get a hold of some of this stuff we should call "The Terrorist's Dream Come True." Well, even though it might expose me to some sort of liability or lawsuit or whatever, I'll tell you. You get it at the gas station. It's gas. Gasoline, petrol, aliphatic hydrocarbons. Every time you fill up you're putting the equivalent of three sticks of dynamite in your car, which, by the way, can also be a dangerous weapon in the hands of a raging terrorist. Terrorists!

So I'm calling for a crackdown on this threat to liberty. A strict permitting process must be established, and licensing instituted, with guidelines and requirements scrupulously adhered to. Maybe a dedicated agency set up to watch over things, and probably a hefty tax to prevent just any unserious or dangerous person from getting a hold of it. The survival of this nation could depend on it. If we don't control this threat, the terrorists win. We have to destroy our gasoline supply in order to save it. You're either with gasoline or against it. The government has got to do something, because only the government is big enough to handle this problem. If any country is harboring gasoline reserves, it is harboring the equivalent number of dynamite sticks as the number of gallons they are harboring, divided by five. This is terrorism, clearly. There should be a law.

On Food Storage

I recommend this blog post from Alan Rock Waterman. I really enjoyed it, and it never hurts to get a reminder about what your priorities are and what they should be. I am now officially convinced that I should focus less on guns and ammo and more on food and water, although I still think about getting a slew of Mosin-Nagants at least once a day. But doesn't everyone?

Where I'm Coming From

[A continuation of a discussion on government, war, &c]

I think the main problem here is that it's difficult to communicate through the barrier of such vastly different premises. Your premise, apparently, is trust in "leaders" or "the authorities" or some such thing, and my premise is that they're lying so the truth must be something other than whatever it is they've said. That difference is simple enough to understand. Truth is not subjective, and morals are not situational. So where do we get truth and morals? Some people get the truth from Fox News (they report, we decide, because they're fair and balanced), some from CNN, some from the Pope, some from a psychic, etc. Some people get their morals from national pride or from whatever they think their best interest is. Some people get their morals from religion. I decided to base my opinions on actual truth, from sources that have proven to be worthy, so when, just for example, D&C says—as I quoted above—that we shouldn't go to war unless directed by the Lord, and then we should follow specific steps to ensure the validity of our cause, I take that very literally. That's really what I believe, so why shouldn't I follow it? At that point I don't care what Ahmadinawhat says, or Limbaugh, or Beck, or Bush, Cheney, Obama, or whoever. I'm looking for the one trustable source to give the say-so.

On that note, the same source of truth tells me that the constitution was established for our benefit, and so no matter what the circumstance—the expediency of instantaneous bombings sans legitimate declaration of war, capturing terrible terrorists and giving them the whatfor, fast highways, "safe" food—I look for government to follow what I believe is the established and proper law. And even though the Rockwell anarcho-capitalists have extremely convincing arguments, I can't give in to that argument either, because the ultimate trump card is right there in the scriptures. The truth. When government doesn't follow that established law, I see it as a rejection not only of individual liberty but of the Lord's will as well. Because it is, isn't it? No argument from the previously stated list of pundits and charlatans can convince me otherwise, because their arguments can't compete with the truth. Why would I give up my agency—the use of which is the very purpose of mortal life—to follow a government that is clearly violating every tenet in what should be the established law? There is no logic in doing that.

Another big piece of the puzzle also comes from the scriptures (I remind you that this is an explanation of how and why I think what I think about things—the basis of my opinions). We are warned many times of secret combinations. In fact, the entire Book of Mormon was meant as a warning to those who read it. You can look that one up, it's in the front. Moroni tells us that secret combinations destroy societies when the people tolerate and eventually support and embrace them. Uphold is the word Moroni uses. And what are these secret combinations? "That I may murder and get gain," Cain said. It's a very simple formula. When you see the exchange of life for property, that's a big clue that something has gone wrong. One of the most important things a person can realize is that their government is conspiratorial. There is a conspiracy against freedom. If you don't believe that then you don't believe the correctness of the Book of Mormon (the reference is Ether 8:25 if you want to check). Do politicians not conspire to legislate themselves and their benefactors the property of the rest of us? When a priesthood holder attempts to exercise unrighteous dominion, his priesthood is lost until he repents. When a government violates every principle of it's founding does it not also lose legitimacy? Any more or less than the constitution comes from evil. Evil can't be good. We shouldn't follow evil.

For a lengthy exposition on the exchange of life and liberty for property and power, read this article, not from Lew Rockwell. Start at the subheading "Empire and Economics" if you want to skip ahead.

As far as Bush meaning well, so what? The guy in the Old Testament who tried to right the ark also meant well, but he still died. Don't touch the ark. He touched the ark. He died. Intentions don't matter, right and wrong matter. I don't think they had good intentions, but my opinion doesn't matter. They were horribly wrong at the expense of millions of lives. Intentions don't matter. If you read that article, you'll see what I mean. The Federal Reserve controls the interest rate and supply of the default world currency, and has extreme influence on world economies. The IMF/World Bank come to a country to help save it by loaning it billions of dollars (yours, by the way) for infrastructure improvements, but the contracts go to companies like Bechtel and CH2M-Hill. The money flows out of the country, but the country is left to repay the loan. When the loan comes due and it can't be paid, favors are demanded. Who controls the IMF and World Bank? They're both headquartered in DC. The president of the World Bank is appointed by the president of the United States. Lives are destroyed, resources exploited, money is made, and power is retained. It's a great system if you're in the loop.

So now you know where I'm coming from. Ayn Rand said in one of her books, "Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong." You should try it sometime.