GfS: Thank you for those very kind remarks.

That last post of yours was well-written and I agree with most of it. The one area we take differing views is the attribution of motive to posters here. Most are Americans, and they love their country as do you. Any informed people are aware that banks, the manufacturing complex and multinationals have have gained tremendous influence in Washington. There is an old rule with money. You owe the banks 10,000 and they own you. Owe the bank 100,000,000 and you own them.

People who dislike Obama will make much of his use of Executive Privilege to stop the release of documents to do with the Mexican gun fiasco--if the deaths of so many people may be called a fiasco--but I will not. There likely are security concerns that make that a good decision. But that is small potatoes when compared with the over-all state of security that can easily be used against citizens with no need for a warrant. Example: in Canada, one of our prime ministers said, "The government has no business in the bedrooms of Canadian people" (words to that effect). As the law is to do with surveillance, it is necessary that Congress get a better handle on it all than was provided by the Supreme Court. In fairness, the Supremes may only rule on the case brought before it, even when they see the pitfalls of the way the petition for redress of a wrong is worded poorly.

The la-di-da of the American people really puzzles me. I have seen people--very intelligent people on this forum--shut down statements of opinion with 'wear your tinfoil hat' or 'another conspiracy theory'. Shit. You have to be mildly brainwashed in the first place to think like that. Noticing when big money is influencing political decisions is NOT conspiracy theory. It's fucking fact!But some attitudes suggest that hope triumphs over experience so often, and I think it's doing so in this case.

Beyond all that stuff, I say this: I truly hope that you and I have our heads where the sun don't shine on these issues. I hope we're damned fools and that people laugh at us with gusto when we are proved to be wrong. (They always were strange and different.) Unfortunately, I don't see that ending in the cards.

Regardless, it is important that we all decide how best to counter government until such time as there is no recourse but rebellion or civil war. To do otherwise is nothing short of stupid and nothing less than treason. This is the type of infighting that has screwed so many resistance movements. Thermopylae, Masada, Warsaw Ghetto are examples of what happens when factions cannot agree how best to fight an enemy. We have to keep in mind that although we are pretty certain we're correct, we could be wrong. And lest we forget, we could be right.