Random Thoughts of Mine...

America: Freedom to Fascism is a compelling and troubling account of how the wealth of our nation was silently passed from its citizens to a handful of powerful bankers in 1913. That's the year the Federal Reserve Act and the 16th Amendment were introduced, giving a privately held corporation the means to control our finances while ensuring its interest payments through the strong arms of the newly-formed Internal Revenue Service. Ever since then, Russo suggests, Americans have been gradually conditioned to accept fewer freedoms and a lower standard of living... all the while considering debt and servitude as distinctly American values.

Russo's first and most cogent point is simple: Americans are not required to pay a federal income tax. That's a bold statement to make, as few people believe that such a fraud could be perpetrated for so long. My father, himself an accountant, insists that the income tax is a very real thing. Russo takes that same belief to IRS employees and simply asks them to cite where it says an unapportioned income tax is required of us all. Guess what? They can't. In a telling segment Sheldon Cohen, former commissioner of the IRS, goes so far as to reject Supreme Court rulings and the Constitution as benchmarks over what is legal with regards to taxation. Russo also interviews members of the tax honesty movement as well as disenfranchised IRS agents who agree that no law on the books conjures up a requirement to send the government part of one's hard-earned paycheck. Russo then showcases court cases where those accused of tax evasion have won precisely because the prosecution cannot provide evidence of a legal federal income tax law.

It's shocking to have it hammered into your head over and over that you've thrown your money away for nothing, but repetition is good; it helps knock loose the deeply entrenched belief that we owe a portion of our livelihood to our government.

As science and religion often spar over issues of physics and faith, there's a great deal of physical evidence that shows how the history of life may have evolved quite differently than generally accepted anthropological and geological theories have described.


The examples of artifacts that describe various oddities of science collected in this interesting About.com article will, no doubt, amaze you. What follows is a sampling of these wonderful archeological finds.

As your interest grows, click on the link below for the entire list.
A battery found in Baghdad that's at least 2,000 years old.
Ceremonial burial stones as much as 1,500 years old that display etchings of dinosaurs and, even more strangely, open-heart surgery.
Artifacts from Central America and ancient Egypt that look like modern airplanes.
The discovery of hundreds of stone disks made as long as 12,000 years ago that resemble ancient vinyl records, complete with spiral grooves.