After nearly 20 years of opining in these pages, I am going to try a shock-and-awe approach to informing. Hopefully readers will be either inspired or outraged, or at least curious enough to pursue the topics here, and to not just verify but also to help better connect relevant dots, adding substantially to the scope of knowledge required to effect real change.

For instance, did you know that when you purchase stocks and bonds in today's market, you don't actually own them? Instead, you are only purchasing beneficiary rights that come with each unit. The real owner of your stocks and bonds is the little known Cede & Company, a division of the Depository Trust Company (DTC), which handles 99 percent of all securities trades in the United States and the majority of trades abroad. In other words, this privately held corporation (approximately 35 percent of which is owned by the New York Stock Exchange), which is actually a division of the Federal Reserve System, processes all book-entry securities transactions for every bank and brokerage firm in the United States. According to Wikipedia, in 2011, the DTC held approximately $1.7 quadrillion of the world's wealth, with many of the rights of legal ownership, if not the benefits derived therefrom, accruing to it via modern digital transactions replacing the traditional certificate system.

Twice at the Iowa GOP state convention, efforts were made to restrict any criticism of a Republican from anyone holding an elected state-party position. Twice those efforts failed, thankfully. The insularity that the big-government, war-mongering Republicans want to impose on their fellow Republicans is stifling.

It's no secret that 23 of 28 non-bound voting delegates from Iowa at the Republican National Convention in Tampa in August are Ron Paul loyalists or supporters - including new Iowa party chair A.J. Spiker, who was formerly a Ron Paul paid staffer. The Ron Paulistas, as some refer to them, have taken over the Republican Party of Iowa, and nothing was more evidence of this than the peaceful, professional, and controversy-free manner in which last Saturday's statewide convention played out.

The new meme cheerfully propagated by the mainstream media (MSM) is the 1-percent-versus-the-99-percent conflict, which fits perfectly into its strategy for maintaining strict political divisions of Left versus Right. This bipartisan strategy is absolutely critical for advancing the agenda of the "1 percent," which, simply stated, is to own and/or control the world's natural and economic resources, including land and mineral rights, water sources, food and energy production, transportation, money supply, and most important of all labor.

Glaringly absent from this current meme is a proper definition by the MSM of exactly who composes the 1 percent. This, too, is absolutely essential, because if the 1 percent is actually identified, broad-based consensus is achievable and solutions can begin. Instead, the 1 percent is left to the imaginations of the 99 percent, allowing for a wide variety of culprits responsible for society's woes, and no possible consensus - hence no solutions, either.

If you pay attention, you'll find that solutions are never proffered in any of the MSM's endless dialogue permeating the broadcasts, and rarely in print. The very last thing the 1 percent wants are viable solutions emerging to upset the status quo.

So who is the 1 percent?

(Editor's note: This is one of three articles on Ron Paul in the December 8 issue of the River Cities' Reader. The package also includes Dave Trotter's "Electability: Ron Paul Soundly Defeats Obama for These 11 Reasons" cover story and Todd McGreevy's "Media Manipulation and Ron Paul.")

Participants at the Iowa Straw Poll in Ames, Iowa, in August 2011. Photo by Jesse Anderson.How curious is it that both liberal and conservative media have so obviously colluded in blacking out meaningful coverage of GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul? Add to this phenomenon that when coverage is unavoidable, it is heavily biased against Dr. Paul. This blanket policy by the mainstream media (MSM) toward this single candidate begs the question: Why is Ron Paul such a threat to both parties, so much so that the MSM has orders from on high to label him as "unelectable" but offers very little in terms of rationale for why it deems him so?

Voters' curiosity should be piqued over this blatant dismissal of the candidacy of such a highly respected member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Texas voters have elected Dr. Paul 12 times as a Republican, and his base has grown exponentially since he became a national candidate, attracting conservative Republicans, moderate Democrats, and independents alike because his message has remained steadfastly constitutional in all things, no exceptions.

One dictionary defines "incompetent" as "inadequate to or unsuitable for a particular purpose" and "lacking the qualities needed for effective action." I'd say this perfectly describes the political spectrum currently tasked with the leadership of America. Let's throw the mainstream media in with this bunch for good measure.

Most Americans are grossly uninformed. Between the federally controlled curriculum of public education and the woeful malfeasance of the dominating media, corrupt politicians, agency bureaucrats, industry leaders, union bosses, and foundation heads all get a free pass.

Where is the outrage that should accompany the serious breaches of public trust? Exactly what will it take to convince you it is time to take an active role in your city, county, state, and country? Pick one and get involved. You might find you actually enjoy it; working to make a difference is rejuvenating.

On June 9, President Barack Obama signed his 86th executive order, and almost nobody noticed.

Executive Order 13575 is designed to begin taking control of almost all aspects of the lives of 16 percent of the American people. Why didn't we notice it? Weinergate. In the middle of the Anthony Weiner scandal, as the press and most of the American people were distracted, Obama created something called the White House Rural Council (WHRC).

Section One of 13575 states the following: "Sixteen percent of the American population lives in rural counties. Strong, sustainable rural communities are essential to winning the future and ensuring American competitiveness in the years ahead. These communities supply our food, fiber, and energy, safeguard our natural resources, and are essential in the development of science and innovation. Though rural communities face numerous challenges, they also present enormous economic potential. The Federal Government has an important role to play in order to expand access to the capital necessary for economic growth, promote innovation, improve access to health care and education, and expand outdoor recreational activities on public lands."

Warning bells should have been sounding all across rural America when the phrase "sustainable rural communities" came up. As we know from researching the UN plan for "sustainable development" known as Agenda 21, these are code words for the true, fundamental transformation of America.

I am aware of how difficult it is to accept certain truths of our times. Doing so requires letting go of deeply held norms that provide us with perceived security. Refusing gives each of us plausible deniability as truant citizens when it comes to our individual civic duty to remain vigilant. Unfortunately, freedom does not protect itself.

Americans refuse to admit that our governance is not what we think, that there is a terrible underlying fraud afoot, and that we are manipulated on a daily basis by powerful forces working in tandem to keep us uninformed: the two political parties - Democrats and Republicans - and the mainstream media.

All the mainstream news is choreographed to keep us in one camp or the other, and by doing so, the illusion is maintained that we are politically participating on an informed basis. When critics of the two parties' ideologies, policies, etc. surface, the media is able to squelch it by declaring such critics as kooks and extremists as a means of marginalizing the data and keeping it from us.

All year long, the mainstream media systematically deliver sanitized but highly divisive information specifically designed to drive our opinions in one narrow political direction or another, depending upon which broadcasters you patronize, whether watching, listening, or reading.

It is the proverbial easy button. It keeps us anesthetized to the slow creep of authority over our daily lives, to the dual legal system fraudulently operating under our very noses, and to the abdication of the U.S. Constitution in favor of United Nations dictates and global governance via such organizations as the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and the G20.

How's this for a conspiracy theory? A global agenda, unveiled in 1992 during the United Nations Conference on Environment & Development (UNCED, also known as the Rio Earth Summit), that is being progressively implemented in every level of government in America through a United Nations (UN) initiative called Sustainable Development Agenda 21. Agenda 21, as it is referred to in the UN's own documentation (UN.org/esa/sustdev/documents/agenda21), is "a comprehensive plan of action to be taken globally, nationally, and locally by organizations of the United Nations System, Governments, and Major Groups in every area in which human impacts [sic] on the environment."

Its purpose: to centrally own and control the planet's resources under the guise of "smart planning" and "sustainable development." In fact, for most UN-accredited non-governmental organizations (NGOs), Agenda 21 is synonymous with sustainable development.

The two primary goals of Agenda 21 are to (1) decrease the world population to "sustainable" levels as a means to effectively control labor, the planet's number-one resource, and (2) eradicate individual property rights via comprehensive land-use planning that dictates land use according to a global master plan that includes control of everything from food to health to energy to security, and the list goes on.

Locally, in Scott County, the slow incremental steps of this globalist agenda are wide open for all to see. On February 3, the Scott County Board of Supervisors voted 5-0 to adopt the state of Iowa's "Smart Planning Principles" as part of its Comprehensive Plan. The language of such principles sounds laudable on the surface: collaboration, efficiency, diversity, revitalization. Who could not be for these principles?

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