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Welcome To Vilcabamba
"The Sacred Valley of Longevity"


This Is A Privately Circulated Blog, scribbled exclusively for Friends & Familiars, that peers into and pontificates about Expat life in the hinterlands of South America. If your eyesight is less than optimal (like mine), then just click the type size up a notch on your browser..


Here you will find a series of curmudgeonly commentaries that I've posted from atop my rickety old soapbox for the past few years. And yes, there are indeed political rantings, so place your seats in the upright position and fasten your seat belts .... it may be a bumpy ride.






3/20/17

What's Being Missed Here



Something that everyone is missing about the most recent Wikileaks download bombshell about the CIA is that this information completely nullifies that portion of the Deep State that has been spying on international corporate entities. Corporations! Think about that for a moment.

At least for those business concerns that take appropriate measures, as discussed in the Wikileaks disclosures, their businesses can more or less protect themselves from the federal snoops. This in itself is a game- changer that has profound implications in helping international corporations guard their proprietary secrets.

And then too there’s long-term business plans that these businesses need to keep secret. All of this has been scooped up in the past by the NSA and other national security agencies, for what reasons nobody knows. Remember, not all business proprietary information is guarded by patents.

3/14/17

I Hate To Admit Being Wrong



I really hate being wrong about something, but fair-is-fair and I must admit that I was mistake. In an earlier post something was written that indicated that the MSNBC commentator/anchor, shown above, was nothing but a highly paid shill for the democatic party. However, I've since discovered that she is actually a holding-feet-to-the-fire critic of the henchmen of Donald Trump's inner circle, along with being someone who holds a decidedly liberal bias. Without any doubt, Rachel Maddow delivers the 'news' in a style and tone unlike any other MSM commentator.

The more I watch her show on cable news, the more I have come to appreciate her unique method of reporting. She has proven to be a well-informed news anchor, part of which is perhaps due to her academic doctorate in politics from the University of Oxford in England as a Rhodes Scholar. Her show made Maddow the first openly lesbian host of a prime-time news program in the United States.

All this despite the over-hyped and vastly under-delivered so called "truth bomb" that Ms. Maddow breathlessly proclaimed about Donald Trump's tax returns for 2005 being a political disaster for the new president. That one set her back a bit from her lofty perch as a major news reporter on television.

So for the moment I take back my original critical review and suggest instead that the readers of this blog give the Rachel Maddow Show a look-see and make up your own minds.

3/6/17

One of The Most Dangerous People In The World





She's dead now, but in her prime she was a polarizing figure in the world of philosophy and economics. Ayn Rand was her name and such luminaries as Alan Greenspan was one of her disciples. I first read her work in my early youth, when still forming my view of the world. The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged quickly became my two favorite explanations for the way in which understanding of capitalism was considered.

The bold, handsome visage of the woman shown above shocked many a lad and lass in my youth with her uncompromising thoughts, and continues to do so even today. Want a taste? Well try this:

"Money is the tool of men who have reached a high level of productivity and a long-range control over their lives. Money of not merely a tool of exchange: much more importantly, it is a tool of saving, which permits delayed consumption and buys time for future production. To fulfill this requirement, money has to be some material commodity which is imperishable, rare, homogenous, easily stored, not subject to wide fluctuations of value, and always in demand amount those you trade with. This leads you to the decision to use gold as money, Gold money is a tangible value in itself and a token of wealth actually produced." (Ayn Rand, "Egalitarianism and Inflation").

Chairman Greenspan, despite his sixteen years of heading the Federal Reserve Bank, still believes what she said today. Shouldn't you?