The Pressure Is On

We are all aware of the big issues like trade, questionable foreign wars, intelligence hacking and many more than I sadly care to recount. But the little issues that harass our daily lives as globalist control moves forward are what is annoying most people. This response, often described in the liberal media as ignorant fear by deplorable people, seems a natural and perceptive awareness. I have experienced this many times.

I was recently barred from Facebook because of alleged malware unless I downloaded Trend Micro Home Call. So I ran several malware programs that found nothing. Several chat rooms informed me that many others had the exact experience, and that it’s a scam to revive a second rate software. Informed sources told me that my AVG would be deactivated and my vulnerability increased. So I could download Trend Micro and then ease that and reload AVG. Or I could open a new Facebook account under an assumed identity. With either option I could get flagged again and be back to square one. Facebook’s scam is wrong and possibly illegal. But like the forced downloads of Windows 10 for future monthly fees, and Obama’s surrender of internet control, our major communications channels are narrowing for the globalist few. Free movement and transportation are also affected.

With family in Chicago I often travel there.  A few years ago I easily pre-purchased a bus/rail pass over the Internet. For my next visit I found myself having to open up a whole new account with MasterCard Ventra to buy a transit pass (incidentally, that account recorded every bus and train trip I made). This account's opening cost was $5, refundable with the following month’s pass purchase. But for visitors, it was a steep 25% surcharge on a $20 pass. It was like the Dark Ages or early Middle Ages fees paid to the nobility when the few controlled the many. With an upcoming visit, I may have to pay a $5 dormant account fee before buying another pass. So we ordinary people are now subsidizing the globalist goal of eliminating cash that they can’t control. In addition to this, it discourages transit ridership requiring more subsidies, thus adding to the tax burden of an already functionally bankrupt city and state.

This upcoming trip also required accommodations. One hotel refused to take my reservations because I couldn’t supply a cell phone number. So it has begun, and will probably grow in adoption, that you must buy a tracking device for the National Security Agency to always know your whereabouts. iPhones vary in price from $400 to almost $800, plus the considerable monthly fees.  It also represents the iron law of wages formulated by British economist David Ricardo. He said that incomes will always remain a bit above subsistence. So we have cell phones, cable or satellite TV, etc just to be ordinary people. We may live well, but the seemingly necessary accoutrements preclude tuning our historically high incomes into wealth, and therefore, power. Ricardo was reminding us that it’s all a façade.  Many endeavors are like that, including inquiry for the public good that is only available to a select few.

Scholars receive government grants to conduct research. The results are generally published in academic journals. But this information, created with our tax dollars, belongs to an organization named JSTOR. Unless you pay them money, or are privileged university faculty, access is denied. That’s prevented me from reading articles academic friends have recommended, and has also dead ended many research projects. Curious individuals and citizen journalists be dammed.  Naming my blog, "Outside the Ivory Tower", is neither a coincidence, nor a metaphor.

The young genius who had invented the RSS feed, Aaron Swartz, hacked JSTOR. He committed civil disobedience in the tradition of Rosa Parks as articulated in his 2008 “Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto”. This was his “‘moral imperative’ to share scholarship locked behind exorbitant subscription walls…(and) viewed in some quarters as a greedy gatekeeper, constricting the pursuit of knowledge”, reported the Boston Globe. But challenging those who seek to control knowledge and seemingly want to return us to the serfdom of the Middle Ages has consequences. Attorney General Eric Holder threatened Aaron Swartz with 50 years in prison. Angered by an online petition questioning his judgment, Holder kept the pressure on. Aaron Swartz committed suicide. His case was never heard, the legal issues he (and we) could have won on where never given the light of day. Many were outraged, from the left wing Huffington Post to conservative Congressional members such as Darrell Issa and John Cornyn. This was another clear we the people versus the globalists issue.

These policies and programs, and many more like them, negatively impact our daily lives. While not as important as war vs. peace or depression vs. prosperity these situations and the awareness they engender inform us of transformations consuming us. These are changes we never asked for. Who benefits the most from this? It’s neither you, nor I.

I often wonder if anything ever really changes. In a previous post, I mentioned my participation in the Sacramento Valley (Amtrak) Depot Stakeholders group in reference to the decision of not allowing Greyhound into their bus terminal to not mix their passengers with the new green commuters. In contrast to 50 or more years ago, there were many black people in the stakeholders group. But it was okay for everyone, black and white, to make fun of the Sikh cab drivers. To even mention bringing in the casino buses that catered to Chinese people was a forbidden topic.

For many years in modern Israel the largest crime was illegal foreign currency transactions. Men would crowd the streets and engage visitors. How is this different than Matthew 21:12 “…Jesus went into the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers…”?  So while the story hasn’t changed, the cast has. We win some and we lose some.

Locally, we now have a restrictive globalist General Plan. You can now choose your town center, but you can’t choose to build your home elsewhere. The freedoms most of us thought were our birthright have slipped away.  A well-financed contingent seized the planning process from the beginning and assigned us, in the name of saving the environment, our limited role in the new world order. Despite the years of pain ahead, some still complaint that the General Plan isn’t restrictive enough. Only total victory will satisfy them.

In 1828, the opposition press called Andrew Jackson’s wife a whore. While that maybe a tame accusation in our current election, none of the media banter should fog over a clear choice. The noose is tightening, and Hillary Clinton is one of those pulling the rope the hardest.

Copyright 2016, Mark L. Bennett