Ron Paul's Warning!

All those who didn't take the time to listen to, and investigate Ron Paul during his Presidential run in 2008 will surely come to regret their ignorence!






Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Dear Friends,

Whenever a Great Bipartisan Consensus is announced, and a compliant media assures everyone that the wondrous actions of our wise leaders are being taken for our own good, you can know with absolute certainty that disaster is about to strike.

The events of the past week are no exception.

The bailout package that is about to be rammed down Congress' throat is not just economically foolish. It is downright sinister. It makes a mockery of our Constitution, which our leaders should never again bother pretending is still in effect. It promises the American people a never-ending nightmare of ever-greater debt liabilities they will have to shoulder. Two weeks ago, financial analyst Jim Rogers said the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac made America more communist than China! "This is welfare for the rich," he said. "This is socialism for the rich. It's bailing out the financiers, the banks, the Wall Streeters."

That describes the current bailout package to a T. And we're being told it's unavoidable.

The claim that the market caused all this is so staggeringly foolish that only politicians and the media could pretend to believe it. But that has become the conventional wisdom, with the desired result that those responsible for the credit bubble and its predictable consequences - predictable, that is, to those who understand sound, Austrian economics - are being let off the hook. The Federal Reserve System is actually positioning itself as the savior, rather than the culprit, in this mess!

• The Treasury Secretary is authorized to purchase up to $700 billion in mortgage-related assets at any one time. That means $700 billion is only the very beginning of what will hit us.

• Financial institutions are "designated as financial agents of the Government." This is the New Deal to end all New Deals.

• Then there's this: "Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency." Translation: the Secretary can buy up whatever junk debt he wants to, burden the American people with it, and be subject to no one in the process.

There goes your country.

Even some so-called free-market economists are calling all this "sadly necessary." Sad, yes. Necessary? Don't make me laugh.

Our one-party system is complicit in yet another crime against the American people. The two major party candidates for president themselves initially indicated their strong support for bailouts of this kind - another example of the big choice we're supposedly presented with this November: yes or yes. Now, with a backlash brewing, they're not quite sure what their views are. A sad display, really.

Although the present bailout package is almost certainly not the end of the political atrocities we'll witness in connection with the crisis, time is short. Congress may vote as soon as tomorrow. With a Rasmussen poll finding support for the bailout at an anemic seven percent, some members of Congress are afraid to vote for it. Call them! Let them hear from you! Tell them you will never vote for anyone who supports this atrocity.

The issue boils down to this: do we care about freedom? Do we care about responsibility and accountability? Do we care that our government and media have been bought and paid for? Do we care that average Americans are about to be looted in order to subsidize the fattest of cats on Wall Street and in government? Do we care?

When the chips are down, will we stand up and fight, even if it means standing up against every stripe of fashionable opinion in politics and the media?

Times like these have a way of telling us what kind of a people we are, and what kind of country we shall be.

In liberty,

Ron Paul

The Mysteries Of Mithras

The Mithraic Mysteries or Mysteries of Mithras was a mystery religion practised in the Roman Empire, best attested in Rome and Ostia, Mauretania, Britain and in the provinces along the Rhine and Danube frontier. Today, the beliefs of this cult are also referred to as Mithraism, but this is a recent development.

Romans encountered worship of the deity Mithras as part of Zoroastrianism in the eastern provinces of the empire, particularly in Asia Minor (now modern Turkey).

Mithraism is best documented in the form it had acquired in the later Roman Empire. It was an initiatory 'mystery religion,' passed from initiate to initiate, like the Eleusinian Mysteries. It was not based on a supernaturally revealed body of scripture, and hence very little written documentary evidence survives. Soldiers appeared to be the most plentiful followers of Mithraism, and women were apparently not allowed to join.

Roman worship of Mithras began sometime during the early Roman empire, perhaps during the late first century of the Common Era (hereafter CE), and flourished from the second through the fourth century BCE. during which it came under the influence of Greek and Roman mythologies. The Mithraic cult maintained secrecy. Its teaching were only reveled to initiates.

The evidence for this cult is mostly archaeological, consisting of the remains of mithraic temples, dedicatory inscriptions, and iconographic representations of the god and other aspects of the cult in stone sculpture, sculpted stone relief, wall painting, and mosaic. There is very little literary evidence pertaining to the cult. Remains of Mithraic temples can be found throughout the Roman Empire, from Palestine across north of Africa, and across central Europe to northern England.

For over three hundred years the rulers of the Roman Empire worshipped the god Mithras. In Rome, more than a hundred inscriptions dedicated to Mithras have been found, in addition to 75 sculpture fragments, and aseries of Mithraic temples situated in all parts of the city. One of the largest Mithraic temples built in Italy now lies under the present site of the Church of St. Clemente, near the Colosseum in Rome.


It is known that the center of the cult was the Mithraeum, either an adapted natural cave or cavern, preferably sanctified by previous local religious usage, or an artificial building imitating a cavern. Mithraea were dark and windowless, even if they were not actually in a subterranean space or in a natural cave. When possible, the mithraeum was constructed within or below an existing building. The site of a mithraeum may also be identified by its separate entrance or vestibule, its "cave", called the 'spelaeum' or 'spelunca', with raised benches along the side walls for the ritual meal, and its sanctuary at the far end, often in a recess, before which the pedestal-like altar stood.

Many mithraea that follow this basic plan are scattered over much of the Empire's former area, particularly where the legions were stationed along the frontiers. Others may be recognized by their characteristic layout, even though converted as crypts beneath Christian churches.


In every Mithraic temple, the place of honor was occupied by a representation of Mithras killing a sacred bull, called a tauroctony. It has been more recently proposed that the tauroctony is a symbolic representation of the constellations rather than an originally Iranian animal sacrifice scene.


Mithras is associated with Perseus, whose constellation is above that of the bull. A serpent, a scorpion, a dog, and a raven are present, also thought to represent associated constellations.

From the structure of the mithraea it is possible to surmise that worshippers would have gathered for a common meal along the reclining couches lining the walls. It is worth noting that most temples could hold only thirty or forty individuals.

The members of a mithraeum were divided into seven ranks. All members were apparently expected to progress through the first four ranks, while only a few would go on to the three higher ranks. The first four ranks seem to represent spiritual progress, while the other three appear to have been specialized offices. The seven ranks were:

Corax (raven)
Nymphus (bride)
Miles (soldier)
Leo (lion)
Perses (Persian)
Heliodromus (sun-courier)
Pater (father)

The new initiate became a Corax, while the Leo was an adept. The titles of the first four ranks suggest the possibility that advancement through the ranks was based on introspection and spiritual growth.

In the absence of any Mithraist scripture, all we know about Mithras is what can be deduced from his images in the mithraea that have survived.

Some depictions show Mithras carrying a rock on his back, much as Atlas did, and/or wearing a cape that had the starry sky as its inside lining. A bronze image of Mithras, emerging from an egg-shaped zodiac ring, found associated with a mithraeum along Hadrian's Wall (now at the University of Newcastle), and an inscription from the city of Rome suggest that Mithras may have been seen as the Orphic creator-god Phanes who emerged from the cosmic egg at the beginning of time, bringing the universe into existence. This view is reinforced by a bas-relief at the Estense Museum in Modena, Italy, which shows Phanes coming from an egg, surrounded by the twelve signs of the zodiac, in an image very similar to that at Newcastle.


He is sometimes depicted as a man being born or reborn from a rock (the 'petra genetrix), typically with the snake Ouroboros wrapped around it. It is commonly believed that the cave in Mithraism imagery represents the cosmos, and the rock is the cosmos seen from the outside; hence the description of this god as 'rising from the dead'. According to some accounts, Mithras died, was buried in a cavernous rock tomb, and was resurrected.

Another more widely accepted interpretation takes its clue from the writer Porphyry, who recorded that the cave pictured in the tauroctony was intended to be "an image of the cosmos." According to this view, the cave depicted in that image may represent the "great cave" of the sky. This interpretation was supported by research by K. B. Stark in 1869, with astronomical support by Roger Beck (1984 and 1988), David Ulansey (1989) and Noel Swerdlow (1991). This interpretation is reinforced by the constant presence in Mithraic imagery of heavenly objects - such as stars, the moon, and the sun - and symbols for the signs of the Zodiac.

One of the central motifs of Mithraism is the tauroctony, the myth of sacrifice by Mithra of a sacred bull created by the supreme deity Ahura Mazda, which Mithra stabs to death in the cave, having been instructed to do so by a crow, sent from Ahura Mazda. In this myth, from the body of the dying bull spring plants, animals, and all the beneficial things of the earth. It is thought that the bull represents the constellation of Taurus. However, in the period we are considering, the sun at the Vernal Equinox had left Taurus two thousand years before, and was in the process of moving from Aries to Pisces.

In light of this interpretation, it has been suggested in recent times that the Mithraic religion is somehow connected to the end of the astrological "age of Taurus," and the beginning of the "age of Aries," which took place about the year 2000 BC. It has even been speculated that the religion may have originated at that time (although there is no record of it until the 2nd century BC).

The identification of an "age" with a particular zodiac constellation is based on the sun's position during the vernal equinox. Before 2000 BC, the Sun could have been seen against the stars of the constellation of Taurus at the time of vernal equinox [had there been an eclipse]. Due to the precession of the equinoxes, on average every 2,160 years the Sun appears against the stars of a new constellation at vernal equinox. The current astrological age started when the equinox precessed into the constellation of Pisces, in about the year 150 BC, with the "Age of Aquarius" starting in AD 2600.

Indeed, the constellations common in the sky from about 4000 BC to 2000 BC were Taurus the Bull, Canis Minor the Dog, Hydra the Snake, Corvus the Raven, and Scorpio the Scorpion, all of which may be identified in the fresco from Dura-Europos, a standard Hellenistic iconography. Further support for this theory is the presence of a lion and a cup in some depictions of the tauroctony: indeed Leo (a lion) and Aquarius ("the cup-bearer") were the constellations seen as the northernmost (summer solstice) and southernmost (winter solstice) positions in the sky during the age of Taurus.

The precession of the equinoxes was discovered, or at least publicized, by the Greek astronomer Hipparchus in the 2nd century BC. Whether the phenomenon was known by Mithraists previously is unknown. In any case, Mithras was presumed to be very powerful if he was able to rotate the heavens, and thus 'kill the bull' or displacing Taurus as the reigning image in the heavens.

Some commentators surmise that the Mithraists worshipped Mithras as the mediator between Man and the supreme God of the upper and nether world. Other commentators, inspired by James Frazer's theories, have additionally labeled Mithras a mystery religion with a life-death-rebirth deity, comparable to Isis, the resurrected Jesus or the Persephone/Demeter cult of the Eleusinian Mysteries.

I Monster - "Hey Mrs"

While not a new band per se........I just found out about them recently, so they are new to me, and i think they are simply brilliant!

How We Failed Ourselves!

With much consternation, and hubris, this past week has found our nation literally gob-smacked with the hard truth that our financial institutions, the bedrock of our national and political independence are collapsing around us! But why is this a surprise to any of us? We have been dutifully warned of this impending tragedy for the last forty years by the likes of Pat Buchanan, Ron Paul, and many more astute observers of the declining course of empire. As we have ignorantly looked towards the future as a continued endless source of unfettered growth and financial windfall.....we have fallen for the lies of liberal capitalist government, and the excesses of decadence! We have allowed ourselves to become a nation built on greed and status, where the quest for personal goods, regardless of whether or not we can afford them, has become the order of the day. We have become a nation beyond it's means, beyond it's capacity, and beyond it's morals and values! We have become the source of our own demise! WE HAVE BECOME PARASITES!

The writing has been on the wall since the beginning of World War 1 , when we so carelessly failed to fight and stop a globalist banking administration in Washington from criminally sending our citizens to die in a needless war, and robbing our pockets to pay for it! We gave up our national birthright, so gingerly provided to us by our founding fathers, to the corrupt and sinister brokers of empire, and this set a course of events in motion where in we became pawns and deep cash accounts to the power elite and their sycophantic stormtroopers in Washington. Have we failed to see that the wages of Global Capital are the wages of destruction? Are we unaware that the the misery of millions, here and abroad is paved with dollars robbed from our pockets? Are we so disengaged that we have become passive slaves in the downward spiral of our national and personal decline, and most importantly HAVE WE NOT LEARNED THAT GOVERNMENT DOES NOT SOLVE PROBLEMS.....IT CREATES THEM?

The citizens of this great nation, through the stupifying influence of mass media, has mindlessly nodded their heads in compliance, as one figure head or another tells us that things are ok....to keep spending regardless of how little we make, and how little value our dollar is worth, to not worry about the state of the economy as we watch our neighbors lose their jobs and homes around us, to give up our rights granted to us by the Constitution in favor of false security, to not question the Government in their quest for global empire. WE HAVE BECOME ZOMBIES!

As our nation crumbles around us, and we still blindly look to Washington to save us...... and we have been told today that the solution is to take more and more of our money, to bail out private companies. Not......Mom & Pop stores on Main Street that happen to be on tough times, or hardworking Americans who fell for the lies of Sub Prime Mortgages and are on the verge of losing their homes, no.........the government is going to rob you again to pay for their own continuence of greed by proping up the culprits of the collapse to begin with! And we do nothing! If this nation truly believed in a Free Market........we would simply let these Financial Companies sink or swim according to their own abilities to succeed.......JUST LIKE THEY DO TO US! But no.......unfortunately, and here is the hard truth we need to look directly in the face and confront.........we do not live in democratic free market economy.........we live in a corporatist socialist state where we constantly look to the benevolence of big government to suckle us cradle to grave! And we have allowed ourselves to become slaves.....through media manipulation, prefabricated politicians, status and greed, and the myth of progress being better than anything else life has to offer us! We have failed ourselves and our nation, and our mirrors will never let us forget who is to blame for this mess!

So please........continue to think that the Marxist Barack Obama, or the Neo-Con John McCain will have the answers to our problems, continue to think that you can buy things with other peoples money, continue to think that the media tells you the truth, continue to think that a constant state of War will somehow make you free, and please continue to think that the problems facing the United States, and basically the world at large were not caused by you and me, and our failure to simply take back the control of our national destiny from a ruthless Global cabal of Business Elitist & War Profiteers who's singular goal is to drive our nation into the dustbin of history to ensure their personal profit and global dreams of empire.

Please continue to think that way........it will give you comfort as the walls fall around you! We have simply, and most definitely failed to heed the warnings of history, and have allowed ourselves to become a modern day Rome......complete with a Rise and a Fall! History will not be so kind to us, as we are to ourselves at this moment, and in the ashes of our dreams will be the reality that we simply became to lazy, decadent, fat, and callous to care to do anything about our demise...........JUST LIKE ROME!


I offer you a quote from Pat Buchanan to expound on the clarity of this tragedy......


"An unelected financial elite is now entrusted with the assignment
of getting us out of a disaster into which an unelected financial
elite plunged the nation. We are just spectators."