As we’ve seen this week, more and more things are happening around the world – things that should not make us feel particulary comfortable.

The US and the UK have embarked on another major offensive in Afghanistan, with Britain announcing the loss of the highest ranking officer killed in action since the Falklands War.

Meanwhile as bank doors closed across America yesterday night for the fourth of July holiday weekend, the FDIC got busy.  Founders Bank of Worth, IL, was the seventh US bank to be shut down last night, the 52nd this year. Earlier in the night the FDIC had already closed down Millenium State Bank of Texas, First National Bank of Danville, Elizabeth State Bank, Rock River Bank, First State Bank of Winchester, and John Warner Bank. BankImplode.com has the details.

Also this week Feds arrested the founders of Liberty Dollar, a currency they alleged set out to ‘compete’ with the lawful currency of the USA.

Whilst the above certainly doesn’t reinforce confidence in any talk of ‘green shoots’ or even of the survival of the dollar in the short to medium term, at least we can take comfort in the fact that it’s not just the USA that’s against currency competition… China too officially banned this week the use of so-called virtual currency for real world transactions. The Register has the full details of that one. China, of course, controls the US dollar anyway.

The Register has some well-informed readers and the comments section at the bottom of that article is worth reading. We like this comment, simple and to the point:  “All money is virtual, a concept that too few people understand.”  Another reader is “surprised they [the Chinese government] are being quite so restrained over it all. Liberty Dollar and eGold have been raided (the former loosing lots of precious metal to the feds in the process) and criminal charges brought against their owners in the US for daring to offer a stable alternative to fiat national currencies.”

Meanwhile you’ve got to admire the brass of our public health officials who all gathered in Cancun this week to talk about Swine flu. According to a Yahoo news article filed by Associated Press World Health Officials Tackle Swine Flu Challenges, “Mexican officials wanted the meeting held in the Caribbean resort city of Cancun – where tourism has plunged – to highlight the country’s success in controlling its epidemic with a five-day national shutdown of schools and businesses in May.”

The UK, according to the above article, is expecting to have 100,000 cases of Swine flu daily by the end of August, though they admit that many of the people who are infected won’t even know it.  “It seems like a lot of mathematical modeling and not too much common sense,” said John Oxford, a professor of virology at St. Bart’s and Royal London Hospital, is quoted as saying in the Yahoo/AP article. Still, it’s enough justification for the UK to buy 60 million doses of Tamiflu with taxpayers’ money.

With that, we will leave our American cousins with best wishes for their holiday weekend and try to forget about economic woes to enjoy a few days with family. And belated greetings for Canada Day!

PT privacy thinkers, wealth creators and offshore philosophers like us are constantly amazed by the bizarre and insane things happening in the world. We only need to turn on CNN, BBC or Fox News to be amazed.

Amazement, I believe, is a source of infinite richness. When we were children, we could easily be amazed at all the things the world had to offer. It’s something that we lose as we grow up, unfortunately. “I’ve seen it all before,” is a typical attitude.

The thing these days is that I am amazed not so much by what the world has to offer (a lot) but by how stupid some – dare I say most – of its inhabitants are.

Fortunately, readers of The Q Wealth Report can sit back with a certain smugness and quiet inner confidence because we know what’s going on. Well, sort of.

We can laugh, for example, about the swine flu saga, which officially passed off the radar a few days ago and is now a non-issue. I don’t normally have time for internet jokes but I saw a great internet floater yesterday with some real and photoshopped images of face masks making fun of the whole swine flu fiasco. I can send it to anyone who is interested.

But what was behind Swine flu? A huge transfer of wealth, that’s what. Some people lost (small Mexican restaurant owners), some people (those selling snake oil, vaccines, face masks and state health services for example) certainly gained. More than that, I don’t know. I don’t get in to conspiracy theories. Or as libertarian writer H.L. Mencken said,

“The fact that I have no remedy for all the sorrows of the world is no reason for my accepting yours. It simply supports the strong probability that yours is a fake.”

On that note, here are a few more thoughts from Mencken for the weekend. Mencken, for those who don’t know him, was an American journalist and newspaper man known as the Sage of Baltimore. Wikipedia calls him “one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the first half of the 20th century.”

Mencken On Taxes

Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.

Mencken On Change

The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth – that the error and the truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it is cure of one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one.

Mencken On Democracy

[Democracy is] based upon propositions that are palpably not true and what is not true, as everyone knows, is always immensely more fascinating and satisfying to the vast majority of men than what is true. They turn, in all the great emergencies of life, to the ancient promises, transparently false but immensely comforting, and of all those ancient promises there is none more comforting than the one to the effect that the lowly shall inherit the earth.

Mencken On God:

It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods. If such a board actually exists it operates precisely like the board of a corporation that is losing money.

We’ve talked plenty about how governments use fear to control the masses. Peter Macfarlane, joint editor of The Q Wealth Report and offshore banking and asset protection consultant, talks here about the latest example – the wave of fear sweeping the world – the Swine Flu Pandemic.

I could hardly believe the news about swine flu ‘pandemic’ today. But then again, I shouldn’t be surprised, should I? The last few entries here at the Q Wealth blog focused on how governments, politicians and major corporations (like drug companies, ahem) seek to control the masses using fear. We have talked about the fear of Islamic terrorism in the UK, and of right wing terrorists having tea parties in the USA. Here, with the fear of a swine flu pandemic, we have another prime example of this ‘fear factor’ being used to control the masses.

What surprised me the most was a White House spokesperson on TV announcing that a State of Emergency had been declared in the USA. 11 cases of the supposedly deadly Swine Flu from Mexico had been identified in the USA. Then, came a little tidbit of information that was almost lost in the news hype. Of those 11 cases, only one needed hospital treatment… and that one person had made a full recovery. Really? Ten people home with flu is a national emergency?

Since I watched that TV interview the number of cases in the USA has risen to twenty, reports Reuters.

Mexico did not raise its death count over the weekend, but there were worries that fatalities could surface elsewhere.

“I do fear that we will have deaths,” the CDC’s Dr. Anne Schuchat said. She told reporters officials were preparing for the illness’ possible spread beyond the 20 cases confirmed in the United States.

Let’s examine that. Since the epidemic as announced in Mexico, the death count has not risen. Indeed, in another Reuters article that is entitled World Flu Epidemic Fear Rises, it is reported that actually most of the people affected in Mexico have been given a ‘clean bill of health.’ Why that good news should give rise to fear, I don’t know.

20 people are ill in the USA. Yet government officials are raising the fear factor by talking of deaths.

The factas as I see it: Apparently, there is some quite nasty flu going around. It doesn’t respond to treatment, but then again neither do most flus. There is, in fact, no cure for flu and never has been. Just like centuries ago, if you have flu you have to sweat it out, and let your immune system do the work. Some people have weak immune systems, and they can die from flu. It is not out of the ordinary. Fortunately, there are a lot of easy steps we can take to boost our own immune systems… like eating a balanced diet, getting enough sleep, and reducing stress. We can also take steps to avoid contagious diseases like flu, and the advice being put out by the powers that be is fine in this regard. These are all things we know anyway, but it doesn’t hurt repeating them.

In fact, somebody actually took the time to research it better than I did. According to an article at Rotting Nation entitled Swine Flu Fearmongering Center for Disease Control figures show 36,000 people die every year from regular flu in the United States alone. Maybe 81 in Mexico is really not such a high number? And there is even a video going around on Youtube of TV commercials warning of a Swine flu epidemic from 1976.

The point of this article, however, is not the flu. It is the fear factor. The fear factor that governments are using to control the masses.

The Mexican health services have, according to reports, been aware of this strain of flu for several weeks, and have been criticized for taking action too late. Actually, their action was precipitated by the USA. In other words, the Mexican government appear to have been forced into action by the United States government. The measures being imposed in Mexico now are draconian, to say the least. Unfortunately, the Mexican government tend to do pretty much what the USA tells them to do.

I should stress that we at Q Wealth are not conspiracy theorists. For the record I don’t think this is all a test run from some one world government, or that swine flu was deliberately created in a lab, or even that the fear is being deliberately propogated by the drug companies that manufacture flu vaccines.  But pf course the mainstream media is trying to increase ratings by using fear. And politicians are trying to benefit from this wave of publicity.

The fear factor is very effective at getting people to do things. Maybe one could, at a push, justify the use of fear to persuade people to do things that are in their best interests. You would have to take the view that people are too stupid to look after themselves, and that they need the government to protect them. That is not a view we subscribe to – quite the opposite in fact. We and our individual, freedom-loving readers believe that the best person to protect you is yourself.

Flu vaccines are highly controversial. I take vaccines for most things, but not to flu. After one year when we vaccinated our two kids against influenza and they had flu most of the winter, we stopped giving our kids flu vaccines even though the government tells us it would be good for us. Anecdotal evidence from other friends around the world, including friends who are medical professionals, seems to suggest the same. Flu vaccines don’t work. This of course is a personal decision with no scientific basis – but we must all exercise the rights to take decisions for our families.

The sad thing about the use of the fear factor is it is so destructive in other areas. In this case, how much heartache and stress is it causing? Even a circular I received about this flu from the US embassy a couple of days ago urged me, amongst other things, to ‘manage my stress’ as a means of boosting the immune system and warding off the flu. So how much stress are they causing by panicking the whole world?

I don’t claim to completely understand the world we live in. I know there are lots of factors at play, things going on behind the scenes in the corridors of power that we don’t know about. I don’t know why they are doing this to us. But there is no question that the government is out to control us. While we are all distracted by the flu pandemic, who knows what unpopular measures our ‘leaders’ will be hard at work on? Well there’s one I can tell you about right away – a new UK bill to boost government surveillance.

The only thing to do is to soldier on, and live the Sovereign Individual lifestyle we talk about so much. Health is the most important part of Wealth. (Our definition of Wealth, including how it includes health, can be found here). Only you can protect your health. Only you can protect your wealth and your monetary assets. Only by being aware of means of mass control, will you have the ability to keep your freedom, your liberty, and your wealth.

Fortunately, Q Wealth Report is here to help you achieve freedom, wealth and privacy. If you haven’t yet read our free five part course “Secrets of the Super Rich” I urge you to do so today. It’s free of charge and delivered by e-mail. This course will open your eyes to new ways you can achieve personal and financial freedom, and avoid mass control by governments. It will start you on a road of discovery that will leave you in full control of your life so you do not have to live in fear or under stress. Sign up for it today!