Everything is manipulated. Freedom's Phoenix manipulates political thinking by showing a smattering of news that one would not often find in other places. Often the slant on the the FP news in manipulative. You see the headline, you read the little blurb, and you say, "That's outrageous." Then, when you get into the actual news article, you find that there were extenuating circumstances that made the thing not so outrageous after all.

If you were living with your family out in the wilderness, and nobody else was around for a couple hundred miles in any direction, you just might be forced to "manufacture" many of the things you needed to live, on your own, without the help of society. As your kids grew - or if you were a small group - you might get each of them to more or less specialize in certain areas of "manufacture," and barter the product that they specialized it for other products specialized in by some sibling or other member of the group. Yet, there would be certain things that would not be specialized in, and everyone in the group would take part in doing them.

Modern American society lives in highly specialized, major groupings... especially in the big cities. These groupings allow a lot of leisure and enjoyment time for their members, the citizens of the city or area. The process also produces a lot of inter-dependence. YET NONE OF IT IS REQUIRED.

People can split into smaller groups, regulate themselves through inter-group "manufacturing," and gradually separate themselves into smaller communities that are not dependent on gold manipulation. If they do it wisely, they may not be dependent on much of anything else, or on any outside "manufacturing." They may become independent from gold and Bitcoin. The reason that they don't do it is that they DON'T WANT TO GIVE UP THE CONVENIENCES AND PLEASURES OF SOCIETY LIVING.

Anyone who gets to the top of the chain of living in society, manipulates lots of things. So, why would anyone be surprised that gold has been manipulated? Or why might anyone be surprised that now that MtGox has collapsed, the price of Bitcoin has more or less stabilized?

Living with and within the manipulations being done in society just might be a whole lot more favorable than removing yourself and your group from society.

Isn’t Bitcoin just another FIAT currency, with NOTHING backing it, that can be completely overtaken, hijacked, such as via Bitcoin Mining Companies, by TPTB (The-Powers-That-Be)?  (That's a rhetorical question).

Also, as far as USING your gold and silver, in daily commerce - gold and silver "bugs" are not stupid.  They are holding their gold and silver, and continuing to use the FIAT funny-"money" (the US dollar) which they know, is growing increasingly worth-less, by the day.  The also know, that historically, EVERY fiat currency in history, has failed.  The average life-span of a national currency, is 40 years.  The US dollar, or FRN ("Federal" "Reserve" Note), is in it's 43rd year.  (1971, was the year Nixon took the USD off the gold standard).  So, since we KNOW the USD is destined to collapse - and because we know, that the International Central Bankers who own-and-operate our so-called "Federal" "Reserve" System of Banks WANT THE USD to collapse (along with all the other fiat currencies in the world) - WE HANG ONTO OUR PM's, UNTIL SAID CURRENCIES are rendered completely worthless - so, that, when that time comes, we STILL HAVE SOME PM's - something of real value - which we would likely NOT have, had we spent our time, working at our jobb, for  less than the inflation-adjusted minimum wage ($18 per hour, for a single person living in a large city) - tried to live on said sub-inflation-adjusted-minimum wage, in a time of ever-increasing inflation and higher prices, while buying our PM's only to fritter them away, BEFORE they attain something like their TRUE VALUE - which would only become apparent, AFTER the International Central Bankers have lost their grip on controlling the prices of silver and gold.  ONLY when we finally have true market price discovery in PM's - in a free, non-price-suppressed market - will our PM's return the true value of our labor to us.  Before that, you're just selling your gold and / or silver for the current JP Morgan-suppressed price - a price WAY BELOW the true value of both gold and silver.