Painting. Oil.

Title: Have You Any

Medium: Oil on canvas

Size: 10 in. x 8 in.

Photo blurred left side

5B

 

5B

Still Life - Painting

Title: Still Life with Yam, Garlic and piece of Onion

Medium: Oil on canvas

Size: 11 in. x 14 in.

5B

5B and 3H

So then

So then, the fact of the existence of usury, and the fact that usury can really exist, goes to prove that money is a law of man, to be centrally created and regulated; for if money was anything other than a law of man, then making money from money would not be evil.

So then, today the creation of money and making money from money have been joined into one unit. This fusion by which money is made into a cancerous, life-sucking stream, rather than a blood stream, is made allowable by the government forfeiting its constitutional money-creating and regulating rights to private banks, who issue the bulk of the money supply as an interest-bearing debt.

The creation of the units of debt is the creation of the money. The debt and the money are one. Thus if the debt were paid off using the same debt-money system (which is an impossibility) there would be no money in existence. To be in debt is to be at minus. To pay off the debt is to arrive back at zero. The debt must increase in order for that debt-money system to keep going. To decrease the national debt (using the same system) is to decrease the money supply.

So then, think about what decreasing the money supply in that system would mean. To decrease the money supply in a system in which the money must be ever more increased for that system to sustain itself means not simple decrease, but cataclysmic, unremitting, grinding impoverishment and consequential enslavement. For the debt must ever increase for such a system to keep going, and the money is the debt.

So then, all what the banks need to do is refuse to issue more loans, and you will see who has the power.

So then, this is why there is a national deficit. Thus "fractional reserve lending" is, as Karl Denninger says, kind of a misleading phrase. For what the banks do is outright counterfeiting; something that if you or I tried we would be arrested and jailed.

The only difference, of course, is that simple counterfeiting would only cause simple inflation. What the banks do is counterfeiting as debt.

So then, this right of money creation and regulation is only a sovereign right of a government in the public interest.

So then, the creation of money and regulating the value thereof (controlling the quantity) by the government in the public interest is not something the government can profit from in the sense of usurious gain and consequent enslavement.

So then, taxation is a two-way street: in a system in which the government would be the creator, issuer and regulator of money (and also in which the government was outlawed from borrowing), taxation is a kind of litmus test by which people can immediately gauge how benevolent or how corrupt that government is, and by which the government must deal with the public.

So then, the ultimate sense in which money is to be understood is that it is incentive-forwarding rather than seeing it as value-backed. When people start to seek for ways in which money will be value-backed they are inherently saying that we must serve money, rather than money serving us.

So then, money properly understood is the "life blood" by which we freely get to build and grow an economy - without anyone forcing himself or others.

So then, economic reform is really quite simple, and all the economic gibberish is nothing but highly funded propaganda to keep people confused.

So then, the bogeyman of simple inflation in a debt-free system, which is what we do not have today, would be a hundred times better than what we have today.

So then, simple inflation in a debt-free system is easily and simply avoided by quantity control, as is presently done on the Island of Guernsey. If you can create the money you sure as hell can regulate its quantity.

So then, the present hyper-inflation due to money-as-debt is the example of what happens when you leave the money issue to private institutions.

So then, the gold standard is a planned economy in the worst possible sense of the words; unyielding, yet totally at the whims set by those who own the gold. Government creation of debt-free money and regulating the value thereof is to issue the "life blood" by which people can freely grow an economy according to their greatly varied talents, incentives and so forth, whereas the gold standard is just that - a standard artificially fixed for a planned economy to make richer those who are rich, at the expense of making poorer those who are poor and those who are middle class and even those who are very well-to-do. Absolutely stable for those who are rich, the gold standard is a planned economy of steeply vertical top-down control, and for who the lower class serfs must strenuously and artificially align all their labours and productions according to the value set by rich people on a metal that is dug out of the ground.

So then, people like Alex Jones, Max Keiser, Mike Maloney and so forth are total shills and perfect examples of how you can know and yet not know; of how you can know so much and yet be totally wrong.

Yawn quote for the year

For the anniversary of Copernicus's birthday some charming person left this comment (now deleted) at one of my music posts in which I posted Gorecki's The Copernican:

"Copernicus is great example of how religion opposed science and progress. Religelous [sic] lords were happy propagating their fairy tales, keeping people in dark and controlling them by indoctrinating fear of imaginary sky daddy in people. It was great people like copernicus, [sic] Galileo, Newton who paved the way for science and progress of humanity. But no one remembers scientists but will pray some fake god men/profits or will die for cinema stars. Humans enjoy benefits of science but never recognise [sic] its true worth______"

Anyone wishing to answer that statement in the comment box is more than welcome.



But if you're up for something else, then listen to Gorecki's awesome 2nd symphony, The Copernican:



 


 


 


 

Max Monday

Large Still Life with Fish, by Max Beckmann

Stillleben mit Fischen, by Max Beckmann

Aquarium, by Max Beckmann

Sleeping Woman with Fish Bowl, by Max Beckmann

Landscape Painting

Title: Hilltop Llamas

Medium: Oil on canvas

Size: 24 in. x 20 in.

Not quite complete

2H and B









2H and B




 



2H and B

Misc.

The Buddhist monks who practiced Sokushinbutsu, mummifying their own bodies as they approached death, and by which means they brought on their death, being virtual suicide, provide a clear picture of the austere counterfeiting of the total extravagance and lavishness with which God preserves various saints incorrupt in death.

The same counterfeiting preservation of their own bodies is also a kind of picture of man's modern day obsession with austerity.

Simply put, I think people have a desire for ashes.

I think people have an unholy penchant for the austere, and I think our age is a perverse example of a weird, comfort-dualist rejection of God the Father's riches. We reject His eternal wealth in favour of austerity. I'm not talking about the stereotypical religious "repressed".

Picture a child refusing, out of his own strength, a gift from a parent. What a wretched child who thinks he'll come to terms with things on his own. How wretched the too adept child.

What an offense we are to God who are so confident in our strengths, and beside which the gifts, graces, mercies of God go unnoticed to us as though we were wealthy and were are our own wealth providers, who are so viciously proud under our social constructs that we've wretchedly adapted ourselves to, stretching ourselves in every capacity to be acclimated to the glamour and vanity of this world, and hardly giving one iota to conforming ourselves to God's will; so utterly poor underneath and so utterly weak in our strength that we refuse His most tender mercy.

Think about how God's mercy must come to us. If God is infinitely powerful, is eternally pure act, then don't you think the diffusion of His mercy would be in proportion to this; that it would be to us as something practically imperceptible?

We're like stone.

Behind every sin indulged is a tight grip, an unyielding "vice" grip of austerity by which the sinner will not let it go. And the adept are the most lost. People today love austerity. They're obsessed with it. They lap up bullcrap about "austerity" for the economy, as though it's going to do anything.

They come to a Mass of non-obligation in droves, because of the ashes, but other Masses of non-obligation, like various great feast days, aren't even thought about.

Easier to pound sand than to try the waves.

Easier to believe in Gaia (who commands unyielding austerity) than to believe in the Trinity.

Easier to be a Libertarian than to seek true freedom.

The sights around us tell us that people today love austerity and make it their daily bread.


*


Rats are more in the news concerning Alberta.

Uh oh. Isn't that like finding a bed bug in The Empress or something?

Er, uh, something like that.

Seriously though, rat extermination is serious and should be fully funded and kept up.

Ever hear of the plague?

I wish B.C. was rat-free. That would be a harder deal to keep up.


*


Went to Mass this morning at the mega parish. The parking lot was so full I had to park on the side of the road.

Came out after Mass and saw that someone had smacked the front fender of my car, leaving no note of contact, no nothing.

So there I was, driving home and thinking the kinds of thoughts that a person thinks to himself after confession and communion, like, "Yeah, it was probably someone from the parish", and such nice thoughts, and I get home, and there where I park my car are pieces of the plastic from under the wheel well.

"Oh! So it was smacked here, and I was just so asleep when I came out to the car that I didn't see it!" I said.


*


Terry at Abbey Roads:

"God is good.  The Holy Spirit always reminds us that our stability here on earth is in Christ and His Church."

I agree.


Fr. Angelo at Mary Victrix:

"As pope he is acting in the interests of preserving and promoting the ministry he has exercised so well."

I agree.


Christopher Ferrara at The Remnant:

"All of this, of course, is speculation."

Yep, you got that damn right.

Painting

Title: Tree in Meadow

Medium: Oil on canvas paper

Size: 16 in. x 12 in.

King of the Hill

Steven Soderbergh's 1993 film came to mind one night out of the blue; perhaps as a result of thinking about economic things, since it is a "depression era film". I had watched it back in the late 90's and remembered that the film had a certain haunting vividness about that era, through the structure of the film itself and its central character, rather than through setting or costume (or Mise en scène); a memoir realness, like you had entered into the memory of someone else, or like catching the sudden breath of another person's memory; something about that era evoked from the inside out, unlike any other film with that type of setting.

Of Mice and Men, Cinderella Man, Places in the Heart, O Brother Where Art Thou?, The Color Purple, Fried Green Tomatoes...and on and on: some are really good at it, but all of them wear the "depression era" like a well-worn vocabulary. None of them has the touch that King of the Hill has, which, by the looks of it, did not have a lavish production, and again, certainly does not rely on the trappings of that era for expressing the feeling of that era.

I'm glad that it did come to mind, because I searched for it on youtube and found it in full. I watched it and was amazed at how good the film is. I also was not surprised to learn that the film is indeed based on someone's memoirs of that era as a child: those of writer A.E. Hotchner, whose memoir of his friendship with Hemingway I remember reading.

Aaron is a very smart boy who does wily things and lies (to avoid the humiliation of his position) and steals (the sandwich of a rich fat kid during lunch at school); but his heart is larger. He uses the precious coins he's earned to buy a kitten for the sick girl in the room down the hall. He is a kid in the midst of a million lives in harsh transition, and whenever is this not the case in every age? His tale brings one to the conclusion we must all draw: everything is going to pass away - riches, monuments, everything; and the things that are eternally substantial, that are immutable, that will count for anything, are our acts of love.

I highly recommend watching it. Part 1 of the youtube film can be found here.

Oil Painting - Still Life

Title: Still Life with apple, oranges, lemons and water

Medium: Oil on masonite

Size: 24 in. x 18 in.

B and 2H 

2H and HB 

HB

Painting

Title: Death in the morning 

Medium: Oil on canvas board 

 Size: 18 in. x 14 in.

Live birth abortion in Canada

I think hospitals and abortion clinics should at least be honest and leave live-birth babies outside on the steps of the buildings in which they were due to be terminated as a "woman's right to choose". If you're going to be murdered by exposure, then at least do it openly, you know, like in ancient Rome?

And like in those times, we should have open pits, on the vestiges of cities, and just call them human dumps, and they can be filled with the babies left to die and the euthanized.

Ah, but those pesky Christians would then be snatching those babies away and actually feeding and clothing them and those babies would grow into adults. Can't have that.

I guess the "free press" is sort of like the "free market", ain't it?

No interest is moral. Usury. Church Teaching.

Time stamped:





"...origination fees are a one-time charge, not interest."


"So that's the Christian take on usury: no interest is moral."


Uh oh. How about that?


Too bad.

Volume Control

If controlling the volume of money is what controls the value of money, then what we mean by the value of money is only relative to the principles - or lack thereof - that man enacts towards that volume control.

Money - the paper and metal circles - in and of itself is valueless, and is supposed to be. The only thing that makes them different from any other piece of paper or any other piece of metal is that they are made/printed/minted by the passing of the law - or, in the case of today, the passing of the law being forfeited to private banks. Either way, money happens through the passing of the law.

There is no other way that money happens: it always happens from some form of central governance. If that central governance (the privilege of printing money being the inherent right of a government) is forfeited to private institutions and this forfeiting called "private regulation" or "leaving it to the free market" or whatever terms you want to use, then you have not decentralized a damn thing. You have just made central power beyond the reach of the public domain and have enslaved the public. Goodbye common good. Hello plutocracy.

Realize where central governance has its proper place.

The paper and metal circles do not gain an inherent value at any point in time, though at points in time they are traded as commodities in the market place (and a money's tradeability only means the economy that the money serves is doing well - or, in the case of today, doing better than another); but they can be traded for all manner of things in the market place. That is what the passing of the law did when it made the money. One can use money to buy gold, or one can use money to buy licorice root. The seller receives the money knowing he can in turn use it to buy all manner of things in the market place.

When this principle of money is not corrupted, it not only works, but it works very well. England flourished using mere sticks of wood.

When we say that a money has become devalued due to, for instance, a counterfeiting inflation of the volume, it is not the superfluity itself that has devalued the money, as though its opposite scarcity would then imbue it with value. It is the disproportion of the volume of the money to the productivity, population, labours, gross domestic product, and so forth, of man.

Thus when the volume is inflated disproportionately, that means that the activities of man must make an unnatural strenuous effort to keep the money's commensurate purpose going, rather than the money easing the activities of man; again, not because the money itself has become valueless as though it had inherent value before, but because the money's commensurate purpose has then become redundant.

Likewise, the same for contraction, or disproportionate deflation. That is when the money's commensurate purpose is, of course, inoperative, because the volume of the money is rendered scarce rather than plentiful. And then people suffer in the midst of plenty, as they did during the depression of the thirties, during which time the money volume was contracted more and more, year by year, and then further, by being put on the gold standard.

So this is what is meant by saying the money is valuable or is devalued.

In other words, the better that money serves man, the more value it has. When money becomes devalued, it means that the money is no longer serving man, but that man must serve the money.

Pencil 6B 

6B and H pencils

Still Life

Title: Still Life with Potatoes and Garlic

Medium: Oil on canvas board

Size: 18 in. x 24 in.

Apologies for the glare.

2B, 2H and 6B pencils