On one hand, the sinister forces in the political realms have clinched their iron fist so many times that their velvet glove is worn to shreds, leaving who they are and what they are doing exposed for all to see.

The "Shock and Awe" of perpetual wars for imaginary and feigned purposes, save obscene profit, are unconscionable to those with a conscience. Random incarceration and torture of anyone, anywhere, who meets the vague definition of "detainee," begs the question: "Who’s next?"

Terror, terror, terror is the axle upon which the wheels of media and government turn. This old twist of manufactured allegiance should have worn its bearings beyond repair. But our ignorance of history keeps us riding this same track.

An epidemic of police tasering and shootings prompt us to ask, "Rule of what? Surely not ‘law.’"

The lawlessness of the judicial-prosecutorial realms exact harsh punishment on citizens for "violation" of provably non-crimes, while the capital felonies of government agents go on and on, without even investigation.

The halls of congress churn out more layers of legislation, each one building an empire of unlawful, unaccountable and reckless authority, fueled by more graft and corruption than the General Accounting Office and an army of reporters can keep up with.

What are the results of this delinquency? An Internet search shows Bush’s approval rating continues to reach new "record lows." The October American Research Group poll gives Bush a 25 percent approval rating with 34 percent of polled Americans thinking he should be impeached. Cheney has a 43 percent "yes" to impeachment rating.

A recent Reuters/Zogby poll gave Bush a 24 percent approval rating, dropping five points from last month. Not to be outdone, Congress has an 11 percent approval rating in the same poll. Only 26 percent believe the country is headed in the right direction, 18 percent approve of our foreign policy and 26 percent rate U.S. economic policy positively—all dropping significantly in the last month.

How do such polls relate to our lawless, reckless, unaccountable, war and torture-based U.S. Empire? Even such regimes as ours must function by consent and approval, however tacitly (or coerced) it is obtained. Just look at the media manipulations to create and maintain our consent and the percentage of the Pentagon’s budget that is dedicated to psychological warfare in any given theater of operations.

There is a war on for our minds. They know they must win that war—for our consent and approval—if they are to continue.

Why? In order for an elite to operate an empire, they must build a substantial infrastructure. They cannot operate it themselves. They must have many minions in the middle and below, functioning under their orders and control. What does that take? Consent, approval and participation.

How is consent most easily obtained? The same Zogby poll reports a majority of Americans still rate their personal financial situation as excellent or good—54 percent, declining only slightly over the last few months. In simplistic and blunt terms, America’s consent, approval and participation, in both the foreign and domestic atrocities of the Empire, are the result of being bought off with abundant goods, services, entertainment and indulgences. As long as the live-well-by-endless-credit system of wealth in America continues, consent, approval and participation in the Empire is also likely to continue.

But can the Empire continue to maintain the minions in the manner to which they have become accustomed? Will the estimated one out of three workers who work for some element of government continue to show up for work if the U.S. Treasury, or other subdivision of the Empire, can no longer cut them a check every pay period? If the welfare class is cut off from their benefits, will they take to the streets?

If the "fake-believe" economic system we live under fails to be believable, can the Empire continue? Hold on to your front-row seat.

Not only is our consent paramount to their purposes. When the masses take to the streets and riot—either as a protest over principles and ideals, or in demand for more self-indulgence, goods and services—a police state will be necessary to suppress the rebellion.

What will the Empire do if their method of payment to their police state actors is in a form that no longer holds any useful value? How will they enforce their Empire if they are unable to pay for it with their fake-believe dollars?

The "dollar," or more properly, the Federal Reserve Accounting Unit Dollar (FRAUD) is in a meltdown, which history hath shown is inevitable for all fiat monetary systems. At this point it remains in a slow melt—manageable but concerning. Gold, silver, oil, gas, food, cars and the other commodities of life appear to be increasing in value relative to the "dollar," but a more proper perspective would show them holding their actual value relative to a devaluing FRAUD.

An easy way to understand where the dollar is going is to put on your best dyslexic perspective and take a graph of a given commodity’s (presently rising) value in dollars. Imagine it, as if it were printed on a clear page. Now turn the image upside down and read the now declining graph through the clear page in your mind. You now have a picture of the declining FRAUD dollar. Repeat the same process with the other important commodities in your life, graph them collectively, and develop a mean average. You will then have a real-world picture of the "dollar" and its present slow melt.

This exercise is valuable to see where we have been, but what precipitous conditions are looming? The FED continues to try and print their way out of trouble, as the Chinese, Venezuelans, Saudis, Iranians and many others do the dollar dump dance. And worse, our primary benefactors, the nations like China who buy our Treasury paper, have said they are no longer going to buy our nation’s notes.

This deficit borrowing has allowed the Congress to spend into the stratosphere. Can you imagine a Congress that will no longer be able to wildly appropriate; that has to live within a budget; the end of pork?

Speaking recently on the Alex Jones Show, Paul Craig Roberts cautioned that "The loss in value of the dollar is becoming so rapid it’s alarming....we’ve got unmanageable trade deficits, budget deficits; the economy is set for recession, the wars show no end.

"At some point the foreigners will stop financing our budget and trade deficits—then we’re going to have a massive crisis the likes of which we’ve not experienced.... if you’re totally dependent on imports of manufactured goods and you can’t pay for them, what do you do?" asked Roberts, explaining that the only recourse would be to print more money, pushing the dollar down even further.

Roberts, the father of Reagonomics and former Wall Street Journal editor, warned that the collapsing dollar will eventually cripple the European economy and may even return the world economy to a barter system as financial chaos ensues.

As gold reached its recent record high peak of around $840/ounce, Julian D.W. Phillips of www.goldforecaster.com wrote:

But is this "dark future" really all that dark? The global elite have established their Empire primarily by converting the world to their fiat economic systems. Nearly every nation on the globe has succumbed to a totally fiat operation. Through the mechanism of fake-believe fiat financing, the governments of the world have become corrupted and empowered to act against the best interests of their citizens. Economic slavery through fictitious wealth creation and metering, taxation and regulation, and theft by inflation and collateral absorption are the hallmarks of the fiat system.

Short term, the financial chaos of a global fiat system meltdown may be a dark time for humanity, but long term, will it be a dark future or the light at the end of the fiat slavery tunnel?

Almost everything we eat, use, wear or do has a UPC code and fiat currency value attached to it. A barter system is where people relate directly to each other again; where real things are produced and traded for actual value; where humanity has an opportunity to flourish, absent the controls of overbearing government and institutional commerce.

The outcome of such a scenario is subject to the many variables present in the vortex of possibilities. Even guessing where we will be five years from now is impossible. But we, the people of this world, do have our own "nuclear option:" The three percent solution.

It is well known that less than three percent of the FED money supply is in the form of actual printed "cash." The bulk of FED money is "held" in the ledgers and accounts of Federal Reserve member Banks—it doesn’t physically exist. This gives the people of the world a unique option. Since many of the realistic financial prognosticators predict a collapse of the global fiat economy, a dark time, and a return to the barter system, do we wish to be the cause of this transition or merely subject to its effect?

Similar to how one man took an idea from a chat room, created a web site for a total cost of $10 and helped raise $4.2 million for the Ron Paul campaign on one day, setting a record for fundraising in the process, we the people could terminate the FED and its domination of our world.

How? We simply withdraw our consent, approval and participation—literally. If three percent of Americans with average means were to coordinate, through the Internet and other alternate forms of communication, a mass withdrawal of their bank accounts, in "cash," on a specific given morning, the FED would be forced to cease operations and their fake-believe economy would be revealed. That would put a whole new spin on the vortex of possibilities.

There are four possible responses by the FED to combat the three percent solution:

1. Pre-emptively close all banks to prevent the application of the three percent solution. This will swell the ranks of the three percenters, making any reopening of the banks nearly impossible. A run will be guaranteed as the FED fraud becomes obvious to all. They can’t allow that.

2. They can remain open, presuming the three percent solution will fail. If it succeeds as it likely will with adequate promotion, banks will be out of cash, permanently, well before noon. The first wave of three percenters and the news of their success, will create a second wave of everyone else and they can’t allow that.

3. The banks could remain open but ration the cash with limited withdrawals. This would create multiple waves of "ration" customers, even encampments, terminating public confidence, future deposits and a slightly slower end to the FED. They can’t allow that.

4. It could be declared that making withdrawals from a bank is an act of terrorism; the military could be brought in to prevent customers from accessing their accounts and the FED would abruptly end. They can’t allow that.

This is the Achilles heel of the FED. They are already 97 percent plus cashless. Container ship loads of cash from our outsourced U.S. Mint printing presses in Malaysia and South Korea won’t reach our shores in time to re-supply the FED and their attempt to feign recovery from a bank run. Additionally, there may not be enough paper and printing presses in the world to satisfy the demands of cash-in-hand-only consumers after the three percent solution becomes a run on the global economy.

Do we have any teenagers who want freedom from economic slavery, know how to build a website and have a spare 10 bucks for a domain?

The vortex of possibilities awaits the ambitious and innovative.

The theft-by-government of the Liberty Dollar presents another interesting look into our times. The details of this crime are not fully revealed so we can’t yet draw any final conclusions, but the preliminary facts are simple:

Allegedly and interestingly, while every "thing" ever used in the production and promotion of the Liberty Dollar was taken, and an informant had been infiltrating the organization for over two years, as of this writing, no arrests have been made. If there were "criminal" activities going on at Liberty Dollar and an informant knew of them for over two years, why were there no arrests? Will every RCO, Liberty Merchant, Liberty Associate, the workers at the Sunshine Mint and every person who ever spent a Liberty Dollar eventually be arrested? That is the scope of the alleged "crime." What is really going on here?

This attack on the Liberty Dollar is a vortice whose velocity has only begun to spin. Will it be the death of the Liberty Dollar or one of the biggest bungles the FBI has ever wrapped itself in? Was there any definable crime committed by the Liberty Dollar organization? Can it be proven? Will the final outcome expose the motive and opportunity of the FBI criminals and the FED counterfeiters? The blowback could give birth to real liberty and a real dollar. They’re messin’ with our money and some of it was Ron Paul Dollars.

All the machinations of the political realms are under control. Or are they?

Partisan manipulations and media mind control bring forth the acceptable players for the next election. Stalin’s famous quote that it only matters who counts the vote is fulfilled by the techno-age, as 30-35 percent of elections are controlled by corrupted electronic vote counting systems such as those operated by Diebold. But will it be enough for the entrenched politicos to maintain their grip on the White House?

Can they stop the Ron Paul Revolution? Every attempt at suppression only exhibits their feeble misconduct and manipulation, and spreads his message. Giving Dr. Paul airtime only breeds more interest because people can sense his honest presentation and real answers. They are flocking to it. And the undoctored, real-time statistics and polls show he may have enough margin of popularity to overcome even the corrupted voting system.

Another twist in the vortex of possibilities.

Following in the trail of the PATRIOT Acts, the Homeland Security Agency amalgamation legislation, the Military Commissions Act and the John Warner Defense Authorization Act, comes now the "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007," HR 1955. Passed by the House last October 23, it’s now in a Senate committee.

Kurt Nimmo of Truth News reported: "HR 1955 is scary because it does not target actual terrorists but rather ‘extremist belief systems’ and ‘is not necessarily about violence’ but rather the potential ‘use, planned use, or threatened use, of force or violence,’ according to Alejandro Queral, executive director of the Northwest Constitutional Rights Center who asks, ‘What is an extremist belief system? Who defines this? These are broad definitions that encompass so much. It is criminalizing thought and ideology.’"

HR 1955 is a "form of prior restraint," explains David Price, a professor of anthropology at St. Martin’s University who studies government surveillance and harassment of dissident scholars. "It will prevent people from petitioning the government, lest they find themselves equated with terrorists."

HR 1955 might be better titled the "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Promotion by Blowback from Suppressed Liberties Act."

Government’s expressed intentions usually produce an opposite result. Will activists and members of the independent media soon be made into violent radicals and homegrown terrorists with the passage of this Act?

The vortex of possibilities is still open on this one. Contact your Senators now! [see Don Harkins' letter to the Idaho delegation this month]

The vortex is not only spinning around government. Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and other "conservative" icons in the media have begun to openly call for the U.S. military to be used to suppress freedom of speech; arrest 9-11 truth tellers as terrorists and have even gone so far as to label Ron Paul supporters as insurgents and terrorists. To advocate the return to the constitution is portrayed as a crime by these media minions.

But the spin is not going their way. These desperate acts of these media despots are sucking them down the vortice of their demise. Their web sites are receiving less hits. Listenership is dropping off. The print press is also losing revenue and readership. Independent media and the internet are becoming a serious challenge to mainstream media, and they know it.

Donald Graham, CEO of The Washington Post, admits his own uncertainty. "I don’t know what the newspaper business is going to be like 20 years from now."

He answered, "I really don’t know whether we’ll be printing the Times in five years, and you know what? I don’t care either."

Online readership is overtaking the print media and Sulzberger is focusing on how to best manage the transition from print to Internet. Sulzberger says The New York Times is on a journey that will conclude the day the company decides to stop printing the paper. That will mark the end of the transition.

Will the "fist" and its treason against the Constitution result in impeachment, indictment and possibly execution for capital crimes? Will the population as a whole continue to give their consent and approval to the atrocities by being bought off with a fake-believe dollar that is on the burner in a global meltdown? Are we facing dark times or a new age of enlightenment; a renaissance of human potential unfettered by government and commercial collusion and control?

Can we apply the solutions, stop theft-by-government, and throw sand in the gears before we all become homegrown terrorists and are sent off to the Haliburton camps?

The old paradigms are desperately fading. Left and Right, liberal and conservative no longer hold any real meaning. They are being exposed for what they are: cages for our minds. Left and Right, is how we march in lockstep.

Subconsciously, if not consciously, the masses are feeling the change upon us. The vortex of possibilities is churning. The outcome will be determined by how we choose to let it spin. These are interesting times.