Please, no comments about how stupid I am from those of you who can't tell a real news report from a parody...
Monday, January 31, 2011
More from Thomas Jefferson...
Thomas Jefferson's Top 10 Quotes On Money And Banking
"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."
"I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale." --Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1816.
"Everything predicted by the enemies of banks, in the beginning, is now coming to pass. We are to be ruined now by the deluge of bank paper. It is cruel that such revolutions in private fortunes should be at the mercy of avaricious adventurers, who, instead of employing their capital, if any they have, in manufactures, commerce, and other useful pursuits, make it an instrument to burden all the interchanges of property with their swindling profits, profits which are the price of no useful industry of theirs." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Cooper, 1814.
"The art and mystery of banks... is established on the principle that 'private debts are a public blessing.' That the evidences of those private debts, called bank notes, become active capital, and aliment the whole commerce, manufactures, and agriculture of the United States. Here are a set of people, for instance, who have bestowed on us the great blessing of running in our debt about two hundred millions of dollars, without our knowing who they are, where they are, or what property they have to pay this debt when called on."
"The treasury, lacking confidence in the country, delivered itself bound hand and foot to bold and bankrupt adventurers and bankers pretending to have money, whom it could have crushed at any moment…These jugglers were at the feet of government. For it was not, any confidence in their frothy bubbles, but the lack of all other money, which induced…people to take their paper" -- Thomas Jefferson, October 1815 letter to (former) Treasury Secretary, Albert Gallatin.
"I own it to be my opinion, that good will arise from the destruction of our credit. I see nothing else which can restrain our disposition to luxury, and to the change of those manners which alone can preserve republican government. As it is impossible to prevent credit, the best way would be to cure its ill effects by giving an instantaneous recovery to the creditor. This would be reducing purchases on credit to purchases for ready money. A man would then see a prison painted on everything he wished, but had not ready money to pay for." --Thomas Jefferson to Archibald Stuart, 1786.
"If the debt which the banking companies owe be a blessing to anybody, it is to themselves alone, who are realizing a solid interest of eight or ten per cent on it. As to the public, these companies have banished all our gold and silver medium, which, before their institution, we had without interest, which never could have perished in our hands, and would have been our salvation now in the hour of war; instead of which they have given us two hundred million of froth and bubble, on which we are to pay them heavy interest, until it shall vanish into air... We are warranted, then, in affirming that this parody on the principle of 'a public debt being a public blessing,' and its mutation into the blessing of private instead of public debts, is as ridiculous as the original principle itself. In both cases, the truth is, that capital may be produced by industry, and accumulated by economy; but jugglers only will propose to create it by legerdemain tricks with paper." --Thomas Jefferson to John W. Eppes, 1813.
"The Bank of the United States is one of the most deadly hostilities existing, against the principles and form of our Constitution. An institution like this, penetrating by its branches every part of the Union, acting by command and in phalanx, may, in a critical moment, upset the government. I deem no government safe which is under the vassalage of any self-constituted authorities, or any other authority than that of the nation, or its regular functionaries. What an obstruction could not this bank of the United States, with all its branch banks, be in time of war! It might dictate to us the peace we should accept, or withdraw its aids. Ought we then to give further growth to an institution so powerful, so hostile?" --Thomas Jefferson to Albert Gallatin, 1803.
Regulating Banking Institutions
"The principle of rotation... in the body of [bank] directors... breaks in upon the espirit de corps so apt to prevail in permanent bodies; it gives a chance for the public eye penetrating into the sanctuary of those proceedings and practices, which the avarice of the directors may introduce for their personal emolument, and which the resentments of excluded directors, or the honesty of those duly admitted, might betray to the public; and it gives an opportunity at the end of the year, or at other periods, of correcting a choice, which on trial, proves to have been unfortunate." --Thomas Jefferson to Albert Gallatin, 1803.
Paper Speculation
"A spirit... of gambling in our public paper has seized on too many of our citizens, and we fear it will check our commerce, arts, manufactures, and agriculture, unless stopped." --Thomas Jefferson to William Carmichael, 1791.
"Our public credit is good, but the abundance of paper has produced a spirit of gambling in the funds, which has laid up our ships at the wharves as too slow instruments of profit, and has even disarmed the hand of the tailor of his needle and thimble. They say the evil will cure itself. I wish it may; but I have rarely seen a gamester cured, even by the disasters of his vocation." --Thomas Jefferson to Gouverneur Morris, 1791.
Read more:
http://dailybail.com/home/can-we-party-like-its-1776-and-just-start-over-thomas-jeffer.html
"#9 Even as the rest of the country struggled with a deep recession, U.S. health insurance companies increased their profits by 56 percent during 2009 alone."
#1 According to a report published in The American Journal of Medicine, medical bills cause more than 60 percent of the personal bankruptcies in the United States.
#2 According to that same study, approximately three-fourths of those that do go bankrupt because of medical bills actually do have health insurance.
#3 If you have an illness that requires intensive care for an extended period of time, it is really easy to rack up medical bills that total over 1 million dollars.
#4 It is estimated that hospitals overcharge Americans by about 10 billion dollars every single year.
#5 One trained medical billing advocate says that over 90 percent of the medical bills that she has audited contain "gross overcharges".
#6 It is not uncommon for insurance companies to get hospitals to knock their bills down by up to 95 percent, but if you are uninsured or you don't know how the system works then you are out of luck.
#7 One study found that approximately 41 percent of working age Americans either have medical bill problems or are currently paying off medical debt.
#8 Health insurance premiums for small employers in the United States increased 180% between 1999 and 2009.
#9 Even as the rest of the country struggled with a deep recession, U.S. health insurance companies increased their profits by 56 percent during 2009 alone.
#10 Between 2000 and 2006, wages in the United States increased by 3.8%, but health care premiums increased by 87%.
#11 According to a report by Health Care for America Now, America's five biggest for-profit health insurance companies ended 2009 with a combined profit of $12.2 billion.
#12 The top executives at the five largest for-profit health insurance companies in the United States received nearly $200 million in total compensation in 2009.
#13 Health insurance premiums are once again soaring in 2011. Blue Shield of California recently announced plans to raise health insurance rates by an average of 30% to 35% this year, and some individual policy holders could actually see their health insurance premiums rise by a whopping 59 percent.
#14 There were more than two dozen pharmaceutical companies that made over a billion dollars in profits in 2008.
#15 According to one doctor interviewed by Fox News, "a gunshot wound to the head, chest or abdomen" will cost $13,000 at his hospital the moment the victim comes in the door, and then there will be significant additional charges depending on how bad the wound is.
#16 Lawyers are certainly doing their part to contribute to soaring health care costs. According to one recent study, the medical liability system in the United States added approximately $55.6 billion to the cost of health care in 2008.
#17 According to a recent report, Americans spend about twice as much as residents of other developed countries on health care, but they receive much lower quality and far less efficiency in return.
#18 Approximately 46 million Americans do not currently have any health insurance at all. That means that 46 million Americans are just one really bad day away from financial ruin without any protection whatsoever.
Read more:
http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/18-ridiculous-statistics-about-medical-bills-medical-debt-and-the-health-care-industry-that-will-make-you-so-mad-you-will-want-to-tear-your-hair-out
Nothing needs to be said...
A snow storm of "historic proportions" will cover 3/4 of the United States this week, with snowfall hitting from New Mexico to New England, according to CNN.
The snow, expected to start falling on Tuesday, will drop as much as a foot of snow in Missouri and Illinois.
Link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/31/snow-storm-will-cover-34-_n_816351.html
Why would anyone drink this shit? I see high school kids drink this stuff first thing in the morning...
FRANCE and DENMARK have just prohibited it as a cocktail of death, due to its vitamin components mixed with GLUCURONOLACTONE’ , a highly dangerous chemical, which was developed by the United States Department of Defense during the sixties to stimulate the moral of the troops based in VIETNAM, which acted like a hallucinogenic drug that calmed the stress of the war…
But their effects in the organism were so devastating, that it was discontinued, because of the high index of cases of migraines, cerebral tumors and diseases of the liver that was evident in the soldiers who consumed it.
And in spite of it, in the can of RED BULL you can still find as one of its components: GLUCURONOLACTONE, categorized medically as a stimulant.. But what it does not say on the can of, RED BULL are the consequences of its consumption, and that has forced us to place a series of WARNINGS:
1. It is dangerous to take it if you do not engage in physical exercise afterwards, since its energizing function accelerates the heart rate and can cause a sudden attack.
2. You run the risk of undergoing a cerebral hemorrhage, because RED BULL contains components that dilute the blood so that the heart utilizes less energy to pump the blood, and thus be able to deliver physical force with less effort being exerted.
3. It is prohibited to mix RED BULL with alcohol, because the mixture turns the drink into a ” Deadly Bomb ” that attacks the liver directly, causing the affected area never to regenerate anymore.
4. One of the main components of RED BULL is the B12 vitamin, used in medicine to recover patients who are in a coma; from here the hypertension and the state of excitement which is experienced after taking it, as if you were in a drunken state.
5. The regular consumption of RED BULL triggers off symptoms in the form of a series of irreversible nervous and neuronal diseases.
CONCLUSION: It is a drink that should be prohibited in the entire world as when it is mixed with alcohol it creates a TIME BOMB for the human body, mainly between innocent adolescents and adults with little experience.
Read more:
http://first-news.blogspot.com/2011/01/is-red-bull-bad-for-your-health.html
If this doesn't make you vomit...
Former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld will be honored with the "Defender of the Constitution Award" at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), an annual event attended by numerous conservative activists, journalists, and politicians...
In 2005, he was sued by the American Civil Liberties Union for authorizing the torture and abuse of detainees at facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan. The ACLU claimed that the Constitution prohibited the Secretary of Defense from adopting or permitting policies of cruelty against civilians in US military custody, but Rumsfeld claimed he could not be held legally liable for the torture.
Read more if you can stand it:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/01/rumsfeld-receive-defender-constitution-award-cpac/
Unfortunately, Jacob, most students don't care or know about what is going on in Egypt. It's sad, but true....
But they can tell you all about Justin Bieber's haircut...
U.S.-Supported Tyranny in Egypt
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Among the people who might be most disturbed about the popular revolts in the Middle East are public schoolteachers across America. No, not because they necessarily oppose popular uprisings against brutal dictatorships but rather because they’re likely to be hit by an uncomfortable question from their students.
“Ever since the first grade, we’ve been taught that the U.S. government is exceptional because it is a democracy-lover and a democracy-spreader. Now, all we’re seeing on television, the newspaper, and the Internet is that the U.S. government is the world’s most ardent supporter of dictatorships in the Middle East. Who is lying — our teachers or the press?”
The truthful answer would be: It’s the state that’s been lying. The popular revolts in the Middle East are exposing the lies, myths, and delusions that have long characterized U.S. foreign policy.
By now, everyone knows that the Egyptian people have been suffering under a brutal unelected dictatorship for some 30 years.
How has that dictatorship maintained its grip on power? Through its military, one of the largest in the world.
How did it build up its large military? Through U.S. military aid, paid for by money extracted by the IRS from American taxpayers.
If the revolt against the Egyptian dictatorship is violently suppressed by the Egyptian military, the tanks, bullets, tear gas, jet planes, bombs, and military personnel carriers used to do the killing will all have stamped on them “Made in the USA.”
One Egyptian citizen, Gamal Mohamed Manshawi, expressed it succinctly when he showed a Washington Post reporter smashed gas canisters and rubber bullets that had been fired by Egyptian police against the protestors:
“You see,” the 50-year-old lawyer said, displaying the items. On the bottom of each were the words, “Made in the USA.” “They are attacking us with American weapons,” he yelled as men gathered around him.
According to the New York Times, “Since the 1978 Camp David accords, the United States has given Egypt $35 billion in military aid, making it the largest recipient of conventional American military and economic aid after Israel.”
As Peter Bouckaert of Human Rights Watch pointed out, “Egypt has been a police state for 30 years.” As the New York Times stated, “The officer corps of Egypt’s powerful military has been educated at defense colleges in the United States for 30 years. The Egyptian armed forces have about 1,000 American M1A1 Abrams tanks, which the United States allows to be built on Egyptian soil.”
It wasn’t a coincidence that when the protests broke out in Egypt, two dozen senior Egyptian military officials were visiting their counterparts in the Pentagon. The standing armies of the United States and Egypt have been closely working together for decades.
The American people are not only receiving a lesson in the realities of U.S. foreign policy in Egypt, they might also have the chance of seeing why America’s very own Founding Fathers opposed standing armies. The Founding Fathers understood that standing armies are the means by which tyrannical governments maintain ultimate control over the citizenry, especially when the economic situation turns sour owing to governmental policies. (Gun control is another method.) If the citizens protest what the government is doing to them, the government simply has the military kill them until the people quiet down. Just ask the Chinese people or the Iranian people.
In fact, Iranians know about this sort of thing first hand. In 1953, the CIA secretly engineered a coup that ousted their democratically elected prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, a man who was widely respected in the country and who had been named Time magazine’s Man of the Year. The CIA installed the Shah of Iran into power, who proceeded to rule the country with the same brutality and terror with which the U.S. –supported Egyptian dictator, Hosni Mubarak, has been ruling Egypt for the past 30 years. Torture. Indefinite detention. No elections. No dissent. Secret police. Centrally planned and controlled economy. High taxation and regulation. And all fully supported by the U.S. government.
That’s the way the U.S. Empire works and has worked for the past many decades. It supports brutal dictators who agree to do the bidding of the Empire in the international arena. If the United States needs votes in the United Nations, for example as part of a coalition of the willing to attack some Third World country, it knows it can count on the members of the Empire to deliver them. Or if it needs a prisoner to be tortured, it can count on its loyal dictators to do the torturing for it. Or if it needs to establish a secret dungeon to keep or even execute prisoners, it can call on one of its favorite dictatorial regimes. That’s why, in fact, U.S. officials love military dictators. The military types are much less squeamish about doing the nasty things that need to be done, and they’re much more willing to use force to maintain “order and stability” within the country.
Do you recall those CIA agents who were recently convicted in Italy for kidnapping a man in Milan? Guess where they took the kidnap victim to be tortured. You guessed right: Egypt. The CIA knows that Egypt’s police state has some of the best torturers and torture facilities in the world and officials who are eager to perform whatever torture services the Empire requests of them.
What does the dictator get out of this? He gets to stay in power, where he and his compatriots get to live lives of plenty with the plunder and loot that is extracted from the citizenry.
In 1979, after suffering 25 years of dictatorship under the Shah, much to the chagrin and anger of U.S. officials the Iranian people revolted against their U.S.-supported dictator, much as the Egyptians are now revolting against their U.S.-supported dictator.
U.S. officials are saying that the Egyptian people should not resort to violence. Why not? Isn’t that what the Declaration of Independence, which U.S. officials purport to uphold, states — that people have a right to resort to force to overthrow a tyrannical regime and institute new government? Why should the victims of tyranny have to continue having to submit to the torture, rapes, execution, dungeons, unreasonable searches, indefinite detentions, centrally planned economies, and high taxation and regulation that come with a police state? Why shouldn’t they resort to violence to resist tyranny? Isn’t that what British citizens did in 1776?
Link:
http://www.fff.org/blog/index.asp
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Among the people who might be most disturbed about the popular revolts in the Middle East are public schoolteachers across America. No, not because they necessarily oppose popular uprisings against brutal dictatorships but rather because they’re likely to be hit by an uncomfortable question from their students.
“Ever since the first grade, we’ve been taught that the U.S. government is exceptional because it is a democracy-lover and a democracy-spreader. Now, all we’re seeing on television, the newspaper, and the Internet is that the U.S. government is the world’s most ardent supporter of dictatorships in the Middle East. Who is lying — our teachers or the press?”
The truthful answer would be: It’s the state that’s been lying. The popular revolts in the Middle East are exposing the lies, myths, and delusions that have long characterized U.S. foreign policy.
By now, everyone knows that the Egyptian people have been suffering under a brutal unelected dictatorship for some 30 years.
How has that dictatorship maintained its grip on power? Through its military, one of the largest in the world.
How did it build up its large military? Through U.S. military aid, paid for by money extracted by the IRS from American taxpayers.
If the revolt against the Egyptian dictatorship is violently suppressed by the Egyptian military, the tanks, bullets, tear gas, jet planes, bombs, and military personnel carriers used to do the killing will all have stamped on them “Made in the USA.”
One Egyptian citizen, Gamal Mohamed Manshawi, expressed it succinctly when he showed a Washington Post reporter smashed gas canisters and rubber bullets that had been fired by Egyptian police against the protestors:
“You see,” the 50-year-old lawyer said, displaying the items. On the bottom of each were the words, “Made in the USA.” “They are attacking us with American weapons,” he yelled as men gathered around him.
According to the New York Times, “Since the 1978 Camp David accords, the United States has given Egypt $35 billion in military aid, making it the largest recipient of conventional American military and economic aid after Israel.”
As Peter Bouckaert of Human Rights Watch pointed out, “Egypt has been a police state for 30 years.” As the New York Times stated, “The officer corps of Egypt’s powerful military has been educated at defense colleges in the United States for 30 years. The Egyptian armed forces have about 1,000 American M1A1 Abrams tanks, which the United States allows to be built on Egyptian soil.”
It wasn’t a coincidence that when the protests broke out in Egypt, two dozen senior Egyptian military officials were visiting their counterparts in the Pentagon. The standing armies of the United States and Egypt have been closely working together for decades.
The American people are not only receiving a lesson in the realities of U.S. foreign policy in Egypt, they might also have the chance of seeing why America’s very own Founding Fathers opposed standing armies. The Founding Fathers understood that standing armies are the means by which tyrannical governments maintain ultimate control over the citizenry, especially when the economic situation turns sour owing to governmental policies. (Gun control is another method.) If the citizens protest what the government is doing to them, the government simply has the military kill them until the people quiet down. Just ask the Chinese people or the Iranian people.
In fact, Iranians know about this sort of thing first hand. In 1953, the CIA secretly engineered a coup that ousted their democratically elected prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, a man who was widely respected in the country and who had been named Time magazine’s Man of the Year. The CIA installed the Shah of Iran into power, who proceeded to rule the country with the same brutality and terror with which the U.S. –supported Egyptian dictator, Hosni Mubarak, has been ruling Egypt for the past 30 years. Torture. Indefinite detention. No elections. No dissent. Secret police. Centrally planned and controlled economy. High taxation and regulation. And all fully supported by the U.S. government.
That’s the way the U.S. Empire works and has worked for the past many decades. It supports brutal dictators who agree to do the bidding of the Empire in the international arena. If the United States needs votes in the United Nations, for example as part of a coalition of the willing to attack some Third World country, it knows it can count on the members of the Empire to deliver them. Or if it needs a prisoner to be tortured, it can count on its loyal dictators to do the torturing for it. Or if it needs to establish a secret dungeon to keep or even execute prisoners, it can call on one of its favorite dictatorial regimes. That’s why, in fact, U.S. officials love military dictators. The military types are much less squeamish about doing the nasty things that need to be done, and they’re much more willing to use force to maintain “order and stability” within the country.
Do you recall those CIA agents who were recently convicted in Italy for kidnapping a man in Milan? Guess where they took the kidnap victim to be tortured. You guessed right: Egypt. The CIA knows that Egypt’s police state has some of the best torturers and torture facilities in the world and officials who are eager to perform whatever torture services the Empire requests of them.
What does the dictator get out of this? He gets to stay in power, where he and his compatriots get to live lives of plenty with the plunder and loot that is extracted from the citizenry.
In 1979, after suffering 25 years of dictatorship under the Shah, much to the chagrin and anger of U.S. officials the Iranian people revolted against their U.S.-supported dictator, much as the Egyptians are now revolting against their U.S.-supported dictator.
U.S. officials are saying that the Egyptian people should not resort to violence. Why not? Isn’t that what the Declaration of Independence, which U.S. officials purport to uphold, states — that people have a right to resort to force to overthrow a tyrannical regime and institute new government? Why should the victims of tyranny have to continue having to submit to the torture, rapes, execution, dungeons, unreasonable searches, indefinite detentions, centrally planned economies, and high taxation and regulation that come with a police state? Why shouldn’t they resort to violence to resist tyranny? Isn’t that what British citizens did in 1776?
Link:
http://www.fff.org/blog/index.asp
"In what I see as a sick joke mouthed by sick individuals in our government, the call has gone out to “buy local! Know your farmer!” I know the farmers in this area but they are being regulated and pressured out of business with the passage of the fake food safety bill in the senate."
Marti Oakley
Buy local? Ok! I will do that! Wait . . . this says product of China, product of Brazil, product of Mexico, product of Egypt, Guatemala, Argentina . . . where is the stuff produced in the US? How am I supposed to buy local to support my local economy when there is nothing here that was produced locally or even in the United States? And this stuff over here? It just says “distributed by” a company in the US and I have no idea where the heck it came from.
In what I see as a sick joke mouthed by sick individuals in our government, the call has gone out to “buy local! Know your farmer!” I know the farmers in this area but they are being regulated and pressured out of business with the passage of the fake food safety bill in the senate. Maybe I should say by one senator…..”Dirty Harry” Reid. It was his one, unanimous vote in an empty senate chamber that broke the back of independent agriculture in the US.
Food riots coming to a town near you! Or maybe even yours.
By now we have all heard of the massive riots in Egypt. Previously, Tunisia’s government was overthrown and the riots in Greece and Italy and India against rising taxes, food prices, and corrupt governments comprised of self-entitled elitists, is growing. The so-called global economy promoted as some perverted form of capitalism and riddled with jingoistic terms like “free trade”, is destroying one economy after another. Face it: A global economy as it is practiced is not only economically disastrous, but also is the tool used to destroy nations. In that sense, it is working.
At the core of most of the revolts is food, or more accurately, food prices. There is not, in my opinion, a food shortage. There is however a shortage of food that is not controlled by some government agency somewhere, and in many cases based around the world are USDA and FDA offices that work in tandem with the US central offices to manipulate and control food prices. It appears that tremendous efforts have been put forward to ensure food shortages in several third world locations where population levels are higher than the controllers of the world would like to see them. The problem with this is; now they are setting their sites on us, right here at home.
Most people have the idea that food in our grocery stores just magically appears; maybe it just pops up out of the floors or drops down from secret store rooms in the ceilings. Even with the 60% rise in food costs over the last six months, most shoppers have done little other than grumble as they went through the check out. Most of these people are totally unaware that everything in that store would last twelve to twenty-four hours at most in the event of an emergency and these same people have done nothing to prepare themselves for the planned shortage of food here in the US.
This shortage will not be because the crops didn’t grow, or the livestock didn’t procreate or were sick, or one area got flooded while the other had drought; it will be because everything our family and independent farmers and ranchers produce will be forced into the export market and shipped out of the country to some other country willing to pay a few dollars more. Our independent farmers and ranchers will have to participate in exporting if they are to remain viable. Those that refuse the export market and choose to remain as local suppliers will simply be regulated and harassed out of business by the FDA and or USDA or by extension through their state agricultural agencies which will be contracting with USDA/FDA against the public and in favor of corporations who can keep them flooded with funds at least until the takeover of agriculture is complete.
Read more:
http://www.activistpost.com/2011/01/i-cant-buy-local-i-dont-live-in-china.html
"National security is the protection of the corporate federal government, and by extension multi-national corporations that benefit from their unfettered access to the government, from the people of the (50) sovereign but united states."
Marti Oakley
National security; this term has come to mean the terrorizing of legal US citizens by our own government. Any one or all of several spy agencies supposedly existing to protect us from terrorists, have made it evident that, “we the people” are the focus of their efforts. When speaking of national security I believe it is imperative to understand what that term in reality means:
National security is the protection of the corporate federal government, and by extension multi-national corporations that benefit from their unfettered access to the government, from the people of the (50) sovereign but united states. We the people are viewed as the greatest threat to a malevolent government and its partnering corporations and the expansion of what is becoming a full blown police state. The security the government desires is not from foreign terrorists, but rather, from us.
By now, any hopes any of us had that Obama was going to turn the tide, make things better for the country, or, that he would reverse the egregious laws passed by the neo-cons and executive orders issued by Bush the Dolt, have dissipated. Not only has Obama not undone the damage, he has carried it forward and continues the programs and plans unlawfully put in place by the previous administration and started a few of his own. We are in the end phase of a twenty year cycle of systematic deconstruction of the united States.
Laying the groundwork for programs to come was of course, the Bush 1 Executive Order of 1992, #12803. This executive order put the infrastructure of the states up for sale to anyone and everyone and began the wholesale selling off of our lands and structures to non-US interests.
While we are threatened continually with another possible 9/11 attack if we don’t accept the assaults on our liberty perpetrated by our own government under the pretense of national security, our southern border remains unsecured allowing millions to enter the country at will. At the same time and since 1990 with the creation of free trade zones, what can only be estimated at hundreds of thousands if not millions, of foreign nationals are transplanted into the US under the EB-5 visa program.
Quietly, out of sight of most of the public, the deconstruction of the sovereign United States is underway. Already at work was the Security & Prosperity Partnership begun by Bush which creates the North American Union and obliterates our borders with Canada and Mexico for the free movement of goods and people (referred to as “human capital”) to benefit corporate business. It is this agreement that stands in the way of our southern border being secured. The S&PP is still rolling on out of the public’s eye as working groups continue planning the evisceration of the US for corporate interests.
Read more:
http://www.activistpost.com/2011/01/deconstructing-sovereign-united-states.html#more
WTF is going on in Canada?
By Matthew Lasar
Metered Internet usage (also called "Usage-Based Billing") is coming to Canada, and it's going to cost Internet users. While an advance guard of Canadians are expressing creative outrage at the prospect of having to pay inflated prices for Internet use charged by the gigabyte, the consequences probably haven't set in for most consumers. Now, however, independent Canadian ISPs are publishing their revised data plans, and they aren't pretty.
"Like our customers, and Canadian internet users everywhere, we are not happy with this new development," wrote the Ontario-based indie ISP TekSavvy in a recent e-mail message to its subscribers.
But like it or not, the Canadian Radio-Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) approved UBB for the incumbent carrier Bell Canada in September. Competitive ISPs, which connect to Canada's top telco for last-mile copper connections to customers, will also be metered by Bell. Even though the CRTC gave these ISPs a 15 percent discount this month (TekSavvy asked for 50 percent), it's still going to mean a real adjustment for consumers.
This is going to hurt
Starting on March 1, Ontario TekSavvy members who subscribed to the 5Mbps plan have a new usage cap of 25GB, "substantially down from the 200GB or unlimited deals TekSavvy was able to offer before the CRTC's decision to impose usage based billing," the message added.
By way of comparison, Comcast here in the United States has a 250GB data cap. Looks like lots of Canadians can kiss that kind of high ceiling goodbye. And going over will cost you: according to TekSavvy, the CRTC put data overage rates at CAN $1.90 per gigabyte for most of Canada, and $2.35 for the country's French-speaking region.
Bottom line: no more unlimited buffet. TekSavvy users who bought the "High Speed Internet Premium" plan at $31.95 now get 175GB less per month.
"Extensive web surfing, sharing music, video streaming, downloading and playing games, online shopping and email," could put users over the 25GB cap, TekSavvy warns. Also, watch out "power users that use multiple computers, smartphones, and game consoles at the same time."
Read more:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/01/canada-gets-first-bitter-dose-of-metered-internet-billing.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss
This is funny and true...
5 Terrifying Online Trends (Invented By the News Media)
By John Cheese
A year ago, 22-year-old Kwame Dancy was shot and killed. The headline: "Twitter Argument Leads to Alleged Murder." The story even quotes his poor mother as saying, "... that's crazy. I don't know what's going on with that Twitter thing."
What's going on with that Twitter thing is this: The news media always need a bogeyman.
When I was a teenager, it was metal music or gangster rap -- after the Columbine shootings, the first theory was that the shooters had been brainwashed by Marilyn Manson. Then there was a brief period a few years ago when it was Grand Theft Auto, complete with implied causation headlines like, "Teen Shoots Three After Playing Violent Video Game."
Today, the bogeyman is the Internet. If there's a story involving crime or violence against a child that has even the most remote connection to some kind of networked technology, the technology itself becomes the center of the story. The stories follow the same template as when they were blaming music or games, and they're equally rock-fuck stupid.
#5.
The Internet Makes People Fly Into Irrational Violence!
Here's a typical headline: "Halloween Argument Leads Teens to Online Harassment." The content of that report is exactly this and no more: 14-year-old boy pushes a teenage girl, then talks shit on MySpace. And that event got a headline.
The report comes from York, Maine, which has a population of a little over 12,000 people. That's a small town, but that excuses nothing. I come from a town one-third that size, and even the dipshit hicks around here wouldn't run a story about a scuffle between 14-year-olds, even if the only other headline was, "Nothing New Happened Today; Please Enjoy Dilbert." No, this is a headline for one reason and one reason only: "online harassment." Without those two words, the event wouldn't even rate middle school lunchroom small talk.
It's all over the place. Austin TV station KXAN felt that the public needed to know about how six teens sent text messages that the sheriff described as "obscene, vulgar, threatening to some degree" to another teen. Hey! That's cyberbullying, kind of! It's not a bullshit dispute among teenagers, it's a scary new national trend that we all must stop and address!
In reality, the whole incident was a group of football players talking shit to a rival player before their next game. That was it. And that made headlines in Austin, a city of three-quarters of a million people.
In real life, if some high school dudes yell, "I'm gonna tear you limb from fucking limb" across a football field, the ref probably wouldn't throw a flag. Hell, the ref probably wouldn't hear it over all the grown-ups in the stands yelling equally violent threats at the opposing players. That kind of thing is said verbally, from one high school male to another, while in striking distance, on a weekly basis. But take those exact same words and transmit them electronically via a new technology, and it's a goddamned crisis.
We could also write that one off as a slow news day, but two months later, they ran a fucking follow-up report. Why? Because "cyberbullying" is everywhere! "Hide your children, lest the demonic spirit of cyberbullying ingest their innocent, untarnished souls! What is it about these new devil devices that makes our teenage boys act ... exactly the way they did before?"
You can see what's happening here -- "cyberbullying" has become what the news media love most: a buzzword that scares old people into tuning in.
It's easy to forget that there is a whole world of middle-aged and elderly people out there who have at best a basic understanding of what the Internet even is. If you're selling news, you'll find out pretty fast that there is much more profit in keeping people scared of whatever they're already scared of. It works very well, whether it's communists or gang members or heavy metal devil-worship music...
Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_18982_5-terrifying-online-trends-invented-by-news-media.html#ixzz1CdtNpNy2
This revolution has already been hijacked by the global elites...
Paul Joseph Watson
Zbigniew Brzezinski has called for Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to step down as globalist stooge Mohammed ElBaradei prepares to act as the pied piper for a revolution that has been hijacked by the global elite.
Speaking with fellow CFR member Christiane Amanpour, Brzezinski told ABC News’ This Week that Mubarak must be convinced by “outside advice” that “It is in his interest as well as in Egypt’s interest that he goes and that he sets in motion a process which facilitates that.”
Although Brzezinski warned of a “global political awakening” during a CFR meeting last year that threatened to topple the existing international order, it is unsurprising that Brzezinski is calling for the ousting of Mubarak despite the fact that he has been a dutiful servant to the new world order elite.
It became known in Brzezinski’s globalist circles at least three years ago that Egypt was teetering on the edge of revolt and that another political entity would fill the inevitable vacuum of power if the elite didn’t get ahead of the game.
That’s why the American Embassy trained rebel leaders to infiltrate opposition groups from the very beginning, as the Telegraph revealed on Saturday.
The geopolitical maneuverings of the US military-industrial complex don’t take away from the fact that the revolt in Egypt is driven by genuine grievances relating to spiraling food prices, high unemployment, policy brutality and the grass-roots drive to unseat a 30 year dictatorship.
However, if they allow globalist carpetbagger Mohammed ElBaradei to seize power, demonstrators are ensuring that their actions are in vain and ultimately worthless.
Addressing protesters in Cairo yesterday, ElBaradei demanded Mubarak step down and promised “change within days”.
“You are the owners of this revolution. You are the future,” ElBaradei declared. “Our essential demand is the departure of the regime and the beginning of a new Egypt in which each Egyptian lives in virtue, freedom and dignity.”
Egyptians may be the owners of the revolution, but the owners of ElBaradei himself are busy hijacking that revolution by installing a puppet that will be just as compliant with Egypt continuing as a globalist client state as Mubarak has been for the past 30 years. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss...
Read more:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/globalist-stooge-elbaradei-prepares-to-hijack-egyptian-revolution.html
Silver prices set to take off?
A strange start to the year and a strange end to a volatile week, so we take a whiz across the air waves in order to get a ‘feel’ of whats going on, so this will be a mixed bag of data. The first eye catcher is this:
Eric Sprott - Expect $50 Silver, Gold Possibly $2,150 by Spring.
What follows is brief summary of an interview that he gave to King World News.
Eric Sprott recently launched a silver fund and so entered the market to acquire 15 million ounces of physical silver, to his surprise it wasn’t readily available and in fact it took 10 weeks to get his order filled. Another order placed for 1 million ounces has been given a delivery period of around 2 months. The silver that he received looks to have come directly from the refiners as it is so new. This again tells us that that the supply side is indeed very tight. On the subject of China Eric drew the listeners attention to this interesting dynamic; In 2005 China exported 100 million ounces of silver, fast forward to 2010 and China imported 100 million ounces of silver, thats a 200 million ounce turnaround in an 800 million ounce market.
Other influential factors included:
One of China’s major banks has offered their customers a facility whereby they can save a portion of their savings in gold, they then had to open one million accounts which required 10 tones of gold to satisfy the demand. He then ponders the outcome if this idea were to spread throughout China and further afield, say to India. What is the effect if we get an extension to QE2 or even a QE3? The current meeting at Davos were the possibility of a 100 trillion dollar fund is being considered. The UK, where economic confidence remains rather weak. (The Bank of England supremo, Mervyn King talks of the UK being in a depression.) Over in the United States the social security department has announced a 45 billion dollar overspend for 2011.
There appears to no hiding place as the currencies via for pole position in a race to the bottom. Rallies are no longer based on an individual currencies merits, but rather just how slowly the other fiat currencies are falling apart.
In India,China, Asia and many other countries throughout the world the concept of receiving money for doing nothing is laughable. For the western world to remain remotely competitive, welfare, social security, bailouts, handouts, freebie benefits are existing on borrowed time, you have been warned. Securing your own financial independence has now reached a critical stage, think, plan and implement new ways to supplement your income.
Read more:
http://beforeitsnews.com/story/385/842/Gold_and_Silver_are_on_the_starting_blocks.html
"The real enemy is the US/Western...economic system that enriches the few and impoverishes the majority because it is all about private profit, and increasingly elite private profit."
by Finian Cunningham
Right now, the streets of Cairo, Tunis and elsewhere look like battlefields. But the biggest battlefield yet to come will be in the US. And quite fittingly so. As the executive power upholding the capitalist order that has for decades spawned wars, violence, injustice, corruption and fascism around the world to achieve its undemocratic ends, the US is the primary site of struggle for democracy, not just in the US, but also for the rest of the world.
In past decades, the battle lines were obscured by lack of communications and propaganda diversions (the ‘evil Soviet empire, Vietnam, Latin American subversion, war on drugs, and, latterly, this phony war on terror, etc). But with mounting and unrelenting poverty across the US (and Europe), and global communications, the battle lines are now becoming apparent. The real enemy is the US/Western diktat of capitalism – the economic system that enriches the few and impoverishes the majority because it is all about private profit, and increasingly elite private profit.
The people of the US and Europe are not mere observers to some kind of removed spectacle. They are intimately involved in this struggle. It is their governments that have already taken sides in this struggle. It is their governments that have sparked the revolution by creating these regimes in the first place.
It is their governments that form and inform the policies of these regimes. Because they are the very same policies of anti-democracy that are also being forced – and all too painfully being forced – on the people of the US and Europe: autocratic political monopoly under two- or three-party systems of servility, economic injustice, elite embezzlement, financial oligarchy, erosion of human rights, police state powers. It’s a sliding scale of fascism that has as its epicentre Western capitals, and in particular Washington. The struggle for democracy is not just being fought for in the streets of the Middle East and North Africa. The struggle is on every US and European street too – albeit latent and partially obscured for now. In this struggle, we are no longer Americans, European, Africans or Asians – the elites long ago gave up their pretense of patriotism in their quest for profits. We are people of the world who demand democracy – real, sustainable democracy that can not be delivered by Global capitalism.
The world is witnessing a world revolution. Its origins, of course, go back a long time to the tyrannies of Europe. But its latest phase began in the US. There, it will have to be finished. It is a vital task. Onerous yet potentially glorious for the sake of democracy, justice and peace in the world.
Read more:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=23022
Now if they only passed a bill to mandate educators to question the official version of what happened on 9/11 we'd be getting somewhere...
Educators in Oklahoma would be forced to openly question in their classes the legitimacy of the scientific theory of evolution should a new bill become state law.
“It’s a simple fact that the presentation of some issues in science classes can lead to controversy, which can discourage teachers from engaging students in an open discussion of the issues,” state Rep. Sally Kern, a Republican, said in defense of the bill she filed recently.
The legislation (HB 1551) titled the “Scientific Education and Academic Freedom Act” singled out “biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning” as topics that are controversial and thus questionable.
It is the second of such anti-evolution proposals in Oklahoma and the fourth filed nationwide so far this year.
In response to a similar bill that died in committee in 2009, Oklahomans for Excellence in Science Education called any claims that evolution is controversial as “just plain dishonest,” adding that they are "phony fabrications, invented and promoted by people who don’t like evolution.’
Read more:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/01/oklahoma-bill-would-mandate-educators-question-evolution-in-classes/
"Despite claims to the contrary, in recent years, global temperatures stopped warming. Even Phil Jones of the UK Climate Research Unit after Climategate admitted there has been no statistically significant warming since 1995 (15 years) and between 2002 and 2009, the global temperatures had declined 0.12C (0.22F)."
By Joseph D’Aleo
Both NOAA and NASA this month announced that 2010 was tied for the warmest year. The UK Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University proclaimed 2010 the second warmest year since 1850.
But after the incredibly cold and snowy winters in 2008/09 and 2009/10 and so far in 2010/11, those claims are falling on increasingly deaf ears. The public doubt about global warming has been increasing given the Climategate disclosures suggesting scientists have been ‘cooking the books’, especially when earlier promises of warm, snowless mid-latitude winters failed miserably.
Back on March 20, 2000, The Independent, a British newspaper, reported Dr. David Viner’s of the UK's Climate Research Unit warning that within a few years snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event.” Indeed, Viner opined, “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.”
Similarly, David Parker, at the UK’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, said that eventually British children could have only “virtual” experience of snow via movies and the Internet.
The last three winters in the UK were forecast by the UK Met Office to be mild and snowless. Instead, brutal cold and snow in the UK has the UK Met Office on their heels. Indeed the cold and snow was a throwback to the age of Dickens in the early 1800s. UK MPs called for Official Parliamentary Probe into whether the UKMO reliance on their ideology and CO2 models had biased their predictions.
In the United States, NOAA echoing the UN IPCC, claimed snow would retreat north with the storm tracks and major cities would get more rain and mild winters. The Union of Concerned Scientists said in 2004 scientists claim winters were becoming warmer and less snowy. In 2008, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. bemoaned that children would be robbed of the childhood joys of sledding and skiing in the DC area due to global warming. A year later, the area set a new seasonal snowfall record with 5 to 6 feet of snow and sleds and skis were the only way to get around.
The winter of 2009/10 was the coldest ever in parts of the southeast, and in parts of Siberia and the coldest since 1977/78 or 1962/63 in many parts of the United States, Europe and Asia.
The spirits of alarmists and their cheerleaders in the media were buoyed by the hot summer in the eastern United States and western Russia even though that is the normal result when a strong La Nina follows on the heels of a strong El Nino winter. But as is usually the case in La Ninas, global cooling usually follows within 6 months. Indeed, temperatures plunged as winter approached and this past December (2010) was the second coldest in the entire Central England Temperature record extending back to 1659. It was the coldest ever December in diverse locations like Ireland, Sweden, and Florida.
Reluctantly, alarmists and their cheerleaders in the media changed their tune and the promise of warm and snowless winters with ‘global warming’ morphed into global warming means cold and snowy winters. ABC News even said cold and snowy winters would be the new norm because of global warming. Non sequiturs like that have sadly become ‘the new norm’ in the wacky world of the mainstream media.
In Australia, the government’s Bureau of Meteorology and university alarmist scientists promised major drought and blocked dams and flood mitigation projects, but when devastating floods occurred this summer, they blamed that on global warming and again enviros and government agencies escaped the blame. Other scientists had warned that changes in the Pacific would lead to a return of the flood years like 1974, but they were ignored by agenda driven, green leaning government.
In fact environmentalists and alarmist scientists have reinvented global warming and now attribute all weather to global warming – cold, warm, drought and flood. They call it ‘climate disruption’. But the climate has not been cooperating in a way that is convincing the public they have to sacrifice even more to stop a problem they don’t sense is real. Just imagine if they knew how much they really would cost (trillions – several thousands of dollars per year per family) and how little these deep sacrifices would change the climate (not measureable).
Despite claims to the contrary, in recent years, global temperatures stopped warming. Even Phil Jones of the UK Climate Research Unit after Climategate admitted there has been no statistically significant warming since 1995 (15 years) and between 2002 and 2009, the global temperatures had declined 0.12C (0.22F).
To try and stop the bleeding, NOAA and NASA took steps to reduce or eliminate the cooling.
Read more:
http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm/6440/Is-It-Really-The-Warmest-Ever
Keeping the 9/11 myth alive...
The truth about 9/11 is slowly gaining the status of common knowledge, but it's been a real and frustrating decade-long struggle to set the historical record straight. The are still many people who can't believe that the Bush administration, and powerful decision-makers in the U.S. security apparatus could, first of all, pull off such a treacherous fraud, and second, that they were able to keep it a secret from other members of the U.S. government, the media, the American people, and the world for such a long period of time. Such a denial of the truth about the 9/11 attacks can't be attributed to blindness, or the cowardly avoidance of reality, but an underestimation of the power of myths in shaping our lives and our thoughts, and influencing the way we register facts and events in our world.
People who still believe the official 9/11 story often make the mistake in thinking that if the Bush administration really did 9/11 then there would be leaks, or government officials would come forward and speak to the media. Former CIA officer Valerie Plame expressed the widely shared view that 9/11 couldn't be a big lie because the American government can't keep a secret when she was asked at a recent public event in the University of Florida about supporting a new 9/11 investigation. The Gainesville Sun's Nathan Crabbe reported:
Several 9-11 truthers — who believe the fall of the World Trade Towers was a conspiracy — questioned Wilson about whether she supported a new investigation into the event. She dismissed the idea that such a conspiracy could be kept under wraps.
"Having worked for the government, I know it's really, really hard to keep a secret," she said.
The view that America's secretive government can't keep a secret is wrong for so many reasons, especially considering the fact that an even more secretive and criminal cabal is working within the government, doing everything in their power to misinform and bamboozle the American people. Their ability to keep secrets among themselves is well proven. If it wasn't for the courageous and truth-seeking Tillman family and others, we would've never known the truth about the death of Pat Tillman. Top military officials deliberately lied, and kept the truth hidden in order to sell a public myth about Tillman.
This "government can't keep a secret" view overlooks the reality that the Bush administration operated more like a gang than a government. In truth, the U.S. government as we know it didn't attack America and then lie to the world about the event. Instead, 9/11 was done by a few, well-organized individuals who hijacked the White House in 2000, and abused the machinery of government to promote their own evil ends. This small, tight-knit group that was involved in the planning and execution of 9/11 are not interested in revealing the truth, but in keeping secrets. Why would they leak secrets? If they spilled their guts about how they caused and covered up the greatest crime of the century they would be charged, and most likely found guilty, and then killed and/or imprisoned for life.
Individuals who lend their support to heinous and immoral acts like 9/11 most likely believe that such violence and deception is necessary and justifiable in the grand scheme of things. They believe that rulers have god-like status and can kill innocent people. Such violence is committed for a greater purpose in their minds, and to achieve many new changes that previously would've been resisted by both members of the government and the public . The new changes that 9/11 caused is obvious, they include: 1) public support for a global war on terror, and American wars in the Middle East; 2) the acceleration of the destruction of America's constitutional government and the further rise and influence of the National Security State; 3) profit for a few connected corporations and individuals that are close to the military-industrial complex; 4) the creation of new federal departments like Homeland Security that are unconstitutional and function as a police state to repress the American people and keep them from making serious political change; and, 5) 9/11 caused a deep psychological change in the people, making them fear that "terrorism" presents an existential threat to their personal safety, and the safety of their country.
Read more:
http://disquietreservations.blogspot.com/2011/01/terrorizing-truth-about-911-its-not.html
Silencing the voice of the people...
This past week was a perfect example of how the "Internet kill switch" is rapidly becoming one of the favorite new tools of tyrannical governments all over the globe. Once upon a time, the Internet was a bastion of liberty and freedom, but now nation after nation is cracking down on it. In fact, legislation has been introduced once again in Congress that would give the president of the United States an "Internet kill switch" that he would be able to use in the event of war or emergency. Of course there would be a whole lot of wiggle room in determining what actually constitutes a true "emergency". The members of Congress that are pushing this "Internet kill switch" bill want the U.S. to become more like China in this regard. In China, the Internet is highly controlled, highly regulated and highly censored. In fact, China has shut down the Internet in entire regions when they have felt it necessary. So what Egypt did in shutting down the Internet this past week is not unprecedented - but it was quite shocking.
Organizers of the protests in Egypt had been using the #Jan25 hashtag on Twitter and had been communicating with each other via Facebook, and so the Mubarak regime thought that they could significantly derail the protest movement by shutting down the Internet.
It has been widely reported that approximately 88 percent of the Internet in Egypt was shut down at one point. Jim Cowie, the chief technology officer of an Internet monitoring firm known as Renesys, described on his blog just how complete and total this Internet shutdown in Egypt actually was....
"Every Egyptian provider, every business, bank, Internet cafe, website, school, embassy, and government office that relied on the big four Egyptian ISPs for their Internet connectivity is now cut off from the rest of the world."
So how was this all done? How could such a large section of the Internet be taken offline so rapidly? Well, a recent article on MSNBC described how it works....
According to David Clark, an MIT computer scientist whose research focuses on Internet architecture and development, a government's ability to control the Internet depends on its control of Internet Service Providers (ISPs), the private sector companies that grant Internet access to customers.
"ISPs have direct control of the Internet, so what happens in any country depends on the control that the state has over those ISPs," Clark told Life's Little Mysteries in an e-mail. "Some countries regulate the ISPs much more heavily. China has in the past 'turned off' the Internet in various regions."
Whenever the subject of Internet censorship comes up, China always seems to be involved in the conversation. China has more Internet users than anyone else in the world, but they also have the tightest controls.
The Chinese government is absolutely obsessed with "maintaining order" and it has shown that it will go to extreme lengths to quell dissent.
For example, the government of China cut off the entire Xinjiang region from the Internet for nearly a year after civil unrest erupted there in 2009.
The Chinese government is so sensitive to political dissent that they even began censoring the word "Egypt" on a number of micro-blogging websites this past week.
Read more:
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/the-internet-kill-switch-one-of-the-favorite-new-tools-of-tyrannical-governments-all-over-the-globe
"Senator Susan Collins, a co-sponsor of the bill, said that unlike in Egypt, where the government was using its powers to quell dissent by shutting down the internet, it would not." BULLSHIT!!!!
As Egypt's government attempts to crackdown on street protests by shutting down internet and mobile phone services, the US is preparing to reintroduce a bill that could be used to shut down the internet.
The legislation, which would grant US President Barack Obama powers to seize control of and even shut down the internet, would soon be reintroduced to a senate committee, Wired.com reported.
It was initially introduced last year but expired with a new Congress.
Senator Susan Collins, a co-sponsor of the bill, said that unlike in Egypt, where the government was using its powers to quell dissent by shutting down the internet, it would not.
“My legislation would provide a mechanism for the government to work with the private sector in the event of a true cyber emergency,” Collins said in an emailed statement to Wired. “It would give our nation the best tools available to swiftly respond to a significant threat.”
The proposed legislation, introduced into the US Senate by independent senator Joe Lieberman, who is chairman of the US Homeland Security committee, seeks to grant the President broad emergency powers over the internet in times of national emergency.
Read more:
http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/as-egypt-goes-offline-us-gets-internet-kill-switch-bill-ready-20110131-1aah3.html
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Lessons for the United States for when our time comes...
In a previous article, I detailed some of the things that all of us can do to get prepared for the collapse of society. Unfortunately many Americans will never start to prepare until it is far too late.
But for the rest of us that are willing to learn, there are some things that have happened during these Egypt riots that are important lessons for all of us....
#1 When society breaks down, people look for whatever weapons they can find. Over this past week, abandoned police stations throughout Egypt have been stripped of their arsenals by looters.
#2 When society breaks down, nobody is safe. Average Egyptians "armed with sticks and razors" have formed vigilante groups to protect their homes from the crazed looters that have emerged during the rioting.
#3 When society breaks down, you better protect your women and children. At least 60 rapes have been officially reported since the rioting began. The unofficial number is surely far higher than that.
#4 When society breaks down, criminals do not fear the law. There are reports that at least 4 prisons have been attacked and that thousands of convicts have escaped into the streets.
#5 When society breaks down, authoritarian governments begin hoarding food. The Telegraph is reporting that governments throughout the Middle East and North Africa have started stockpiling huge amounts of food in response to all the rioting that has been going on.
#6 When society breaks down, food shortages can happen shockingly fast. As commerce has been brought to a standstill in Egypt, serious shortages of some of the most important basic food staples are starting to be reported. Many families in Egypt only have enough food to be able to survive for a couple more days.
#7 When society breaks down, respect for personal property goes out the window. All over Egypt shops and businesses are being broken into and totally looted.
#8 When society breaks down, mobs will start doing some of the most stupid things imaginable. According to Egypt's top archaeologist, Zahi Hawass, looters broke into the Egyptian Museum during the rioting "and destroyed two pharaonic mummies".
#9 When society breaks down, it always creates a "power void". The Obama administration is calling for an "orderly transition of power" in Egypt, but there is absolutely no guarantee that is going to happen - especially in a nation that has no history of legitimate democracy.
#10 When society breaks down, often outside influences are involved. The individual being touted as the new "leader" of the protest movement in Egypt is Mohamed ElBaradei.
So exactly who is Mohamed ElBaradei?
Well, Paul Joseph Watson of prisonplanet.com describes him this way....
ElBaradei serves on the Board of Trustees of the International Crisis Group, who today issued a press release protesting the decision on behalf of Egyptian authorities to place ElBaradei under house arrest.
International Crisis Group is a shadowy NGO (non-governmental organization) that enjoys an annual budget of over $15 million and is bankrolled by the likes of Carnegie, the Ford Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as George Soros’ Open Society Institute. Soros himself serves as a member of the organization’s Executive Committee. In other words, this is a major geopolitical steering group for the global elite.
Well isn't that convenient?
Let us hope that the protests in Egypt result in some positive changes being made for the Egyptian people. But let us also understand that those with their hands on the levers of global power are going to try to direct events in a way that benefits them.
Read more:
http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/10-things-that-the-egypt-riots-can-teach-us-about-what-happens-when-society-breaks-down
Well, this certainly didn't take long...
Connecticut National Guard Detachment 2, Company I, 185th Aviation Regiment of Groton has mobilized and will deploy to the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt, to support the Multinational Force and Observers.
The unit left Connecticut Jan. 15 for Fort Benning, Ga., for further training and validation. The unit operates C-23C Sherpa aircraft and has deployed three times in the last seven years in support of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The unit will provide an on-demand aviation asset to the Multinational Force and Observers commander to support its mission of supervising the security provisions of the Egypt/ Israel Peace Treaty.
Link:
http://www.theday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=%2F20110124%2FNWS09%2F301249955%2F-1%2Fnws
Chris Hedges: The Death of the Liberal Class
If you haven't read the book, or even if you have, Hedges gives a devastating critique of our nation and the failure of liberal institutions and the liberal establishment - the press, liberal religious institutions, labor unions, universities and the Democratic Party, in representing and supporting the ideas they claim they represent...
Man charged with terrorism for posssesing M-80s in mosque parking lot...
People like this guy are either complete idiots or pawns of those who want to promote fear for the purposes of denying our liberties. Of course when something like this happens, the media acts as if the guy had a WMD and vomits out the official propaganda about domestic terrorism which furthers the agenda of the fascists who are stealing our country right before our eyes...
Roger Stockham Arrested With Explosives Outside Major U.S. Mosque
A 63-year-old Southern California man who had explosives in his vehicle was arrested outside one of the nation's largest mosques in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, authorities in Michigan said.
Dearborn police said Roger Stockham was arraigned Wednesday on one count of making a false report or threat of terrorism and one count of possessing explosives with an unlawful intent. Stockham had a large but undisclosed quantity of class-C fireworks including M-80s, which are outlawed in Michigan, Chief Ronald Haddad said.
"I was comfortable with the fact that we had taken him off the street – he isn't going anywhere," Haddad told The Associated Press Sunday afternoon. "I think the society he wanted to impact is safe."
Haddad said Stockham was arrested Monday evening without incident in the parking lot of Islamic Center of America, while a large group was gathered inside. He said police received a 911 call from a resident.
Haddad said authorities believe Stockham was acting alone but still take him "very seriously." He said Stockham has "a long history of anti-government activities," though he declined to elaborate.
Stockham remained jailed Sunday on a $500,000 bond. A preliminary examination is scheduled for Friday.
Police didn't know whether Stockham had an attorney. A public records search did not turn up a listed number for Stockham, though Haddad said he lives in Imperial Beach, near San Diego.
Dearborn, located about 10 miles west of Detroit, is the capital of the Detroit area's Arab-American community, which is one of the largest in the U.S.
Link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/30/roger-stockham-arrested-explosives_n_815984.html
Roger Stockham Arrested With Explosives Outside Major U.S. Mosque
A 63-year-old Southern California man who had explosives in his vehicle was arrested outside one of the nation's largest mosques in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, authorities in Michigan said.
Dearborn police said Roger Stockham was arraigned Wednesday on one count of making a false report or threat of terrorism and one count of possessing explosives with an unlawful intent. Stockham had a large but undisclosed quantity of class-C fireworks including M-80s, which are outlawed in Michigan, Chief Ronald Haddad said.
"I was comfortable with the fact that we had taken him off the street – he isn't going anywhere," Haddad told The Associated Press Sunday afternoon. "I think the society he wanted to impact is safe."
Haddad said Stockham was arrested Monday evening without incident in the parking lot of Islamic Center of America, while a large group was gathered inside. He said police received a 911 call from a resident.
Haddad said authorities believe Stockham was acting alone but still take him "very seriously." He said Stockham has "a long history of anti-government activities," though he declined to elaborate.
Stockham remained jailed Sunday on a $500,000 bond. A preliminary examination is scheduled for Friday.
Police didn't know whether Stockham had an attorney. A public records search did not turn up a listed number for Stockham, though Haddad said he lives in Imperial Beach, near San Diego.
Dearborn, located about 10 miles west of Detroit, is the capital of the Detroit area's Arab-American community, which is one of the largest in the U.S.
Link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/30/roger-stockham-arrested-explosives_n_815984.html
If you think prices for items like fuel and food are high now, wait until this happens...
The U.S. dollar's role as a reserve currency will diminish in the coming years as Asian economies like China grow and countries seek to diversify their monetary holdings, policymakers said on Friday.
The U.S. Federal Reserve's policy of quantitative easing -- essentially printing money -- and a call by France to look at ways to wean the world off the dollar as the sole reserve money have put the U.S. currency in the spotlight.
"I'm more optimistic about the euro gaining strength as a potential reserve currency," Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer said during a panel discussion at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
"We ourselves are diversifying into currencies which we would never have put in the reserves before, including the Australian dollar and so forth," he added. "I think people will diversify their reserves."
French President Nicolas Sarkozy is trying to rally the Group of 20 powers to the idea of a more varied monetary system after decades of the dollar being the world's reserve currency and a major unit of international trade settlement.
The dollar debate comes at a time when many countries are tempted to let their currency drop to promote exports and growth after the worst downturn since World War Two, even if that can be at each others' expense.
Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney and Fischer anticipated that, in the long run, Asian monies would have a greater role as reserve currencies.
"I agree with Stan (Fischer) that over time there will be more of a multi-polar system. Other currencies will play a central role in reserves," he said. "The (Chinese) renminbi, over time, should have a role as a reserve currency."
Turkish Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek saw the United States' quantitative easing policy leading to a diversification of reserve holdings.
"If the U.S. continues the way it is ... certainly countries will look for alternatives because you can't print so much money and expect no consequences," he said
"Ultimately the center of gravity is shifting toward the East," Simsek added. "Certainly, 10 years from now there could be a very different landscape."
Link:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/28/us-davos-dollar-idUSTRE70R3ZN20110128
Do you feel safer yet? Maybe they should spend more time looking for hockey pucks....
The FBI disclosed to a presidential board that it was involved in nearly 800 violations of laws, regulations or policies governing national-security investigations from 2001 to 2008, but the government won't provide details or say whether anyone was disciplined, according to a report by a privacy-watchdog group.
The San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation sued under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain about 2,500 documents the FBI submitted to the President's Intelligence Oversight Board.
The board was created in 1976 to monitor U.S. intelligence gathering.
Intelligence agencies are required to submit reports to the board about suspected violations of civil-rights-related laws or presidential orders.
The nonprofit foundation said it obtained documents from a variety of intelligence agencies, but most of the records were so heavily censored they couldn't be properly evaluated.
The FBI provided the most substantive disclosures, although the documents were redacted to withhold names, exact dates and other identifying details, and they don't say what action was taken to remedy or punish the violations.
Nevertheless, the documents "constitute the most complete picture of post- 9/11 FBI intelligence abuses available to the public," says the report, which is to be released Monday but was obtained in advance by the Tribune Washington Bureau.
"The documents suggest," the report says, "that FBI intelligence investigations have compromised the civil liberties of American citizens far more frequently, and to a greater extent, than was previously assumed."
The new disclosures come as the Patriot Act is up for renewal in Congress before it expires in February.
Link:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2014078300_violations30.html
The dead guy enjoys our passiveness and destruction of our freedoms...
By Mike M. Ahlers and Jeanne Meserve
A program that allows airports to replace government screeners with private screeners is being brought to a standstill, just a month after the Transportation Security Administration said it was "neutral" on the program.
TSA chief John Pistole said Friday he has decided not to expand the program beyond the current 16 airports, saying he does not see any advantage to it.
Though little known, the Screening Partnership Program allowed airports to replace government screeners with private contractors who wear TSA-like uniforms, meet TSA standards and work under TSA oversight. Among the airports that have "opted out" of government screening are San Francisco and Kansas City.
Read more:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/TRAVEL/01/29/tsa.private/index.html?hpt=T2
This could never happen here...right?
The scale of Egypt's crackdown on the Internet and mobile phones amid deadly protests against the rule of President Hosni Mubarak is unprecedented in the history of the web, experts said.
US President Barack Obama, social networking sites and rights groups around the world all condemned the moves by Egyptian authorities to stop activists using cellphones and cyber technology to organise rallies.
"It's a first in the history of the Internet," Rik Ferguson, an expert for Trend Micro, the world's third biggest computer security firm, told AFP.
Julien Coulon, co-founder of Cedexis, a French Internet performance monitoring and traffic management system, added: "In 24 hours we have lost 97 percent of Egyptian Internet traffic.
According to Renesys, a US Internet monitoring company, Egypt's four main Internet service providers cut off international access to their customers in a near simultaneous move at 2234 GMT on Thursday.
Around 23 million Egyptians have either regular or occasional access to the Internet, according to official figures, more than a quarter of the population.
"In an action unprecedented in Internet history, the Egyptian government appears to have ordered service providers to shut down all international connections to the Internet," James Cowie of Renesys said in a blog post.
Link Egypt, Vodafone/Raya, Telecom Egypt and Etisalat Misr were all off air but Cowie said one exception was the Noor Group, which still has 83 live routes to its Egyptian customers.
He said it was not clear why the Noor Group was apparently unaffected "but we observe that the Egyptian Stock Exchange (www.egyptse.com) is still alive at a Noor address."
Mobile telephone networks were also severely disrupted in the country on Friday. Phone signals were patchy and text messages inoperative.
British-based Vodafone said all mobile operators in Egypt had been "instructed" Friday to suspend services in some areas amid spiralling unrest, adding that under Egyptian law it was "obliged" to comply with the order.
Egyptian operator ECMS, linked to France's Telecom-Orange, said the authorities had ordered them to shut them off late Thursday.
"We had no warning, it was quite sudden," a spokesman for Telecom-Orange told AFP in France.
The shutdown in Egypt is the most comprehensive official electronic blackout of its kind, experts said.
Links to the web were were cut for only a few days during a wave of protests against Myanmar's ruling military junta in 2007, while demonstrations against the re-election of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009 specifically targeted Twitter and Facebook.
Egypt -- like Tunisia where mass popular unrest drove out Zine El Abidine Ben Ali earlier this month -- is on a list of 13 countries classed as "enemies of the Internet" by media rights group Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
"So far there has been no systematic filtering by Egyptian authorities -- they have completely controlled the whole Internet," said Soazig Dollet, the Middle East and North Africa specialist for RSF.
Condemnation of Egypt's Internet crackdown has been widespread.
Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on Cairo to restore the Internet and social networking sites.
Facebook, the world's largest social network with nearly 600 million members, and Twitter also weighed in.
"Although the turmoil in Egypt is a matter for the Egyptian people and their government to resolve, limiting Internet access for millions of people is a matter of concern for the global community," said Andrew Noyes, a Facebook spokesman.
Twitter, which has more than 175 million registered users, said of efforts to block the service in Egypt: "We believe that the open exchange of info & views benefits societies & helps govts better connect w/ their people."
US digital rights groups also criticised the Egyptian government.
"This action is inconsistent with all international human rights norms, and is unprecedented in Internet history," said Leslie Harris, president of the Center for Democracy and Technology in the United States.
Link:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110129/tc_afp/egyptpoliticsunrestitinternettelecoms
This is great news for all those new Obamaville developments popping up around the country...
By Pat Shannan
A recent Morgan Stanley finance report cited by financial analyst Jeff Adams warns that a huge “shadow inventory” of homes with delinquent mortgages, which has yet to move through the foreclosure process, would take 47 months to clear at the current market sales rate.
While realtors and bankers claim—or at least want the American people to believe—that the real estate market is “turning around,” Adams reports that Americans are not being told of this “shadow inventory” amid the rising tide of residential foreclosures that continues to paralyze prices and hamper housing market recovery. It appears this second foreclosure wave is about to arrive.
More than 10 percent of all mortgage borrowers in the U.S. are seriously delinquent, and the shadow inventory riding that new tidal wave totals around 8 million. While there are no exact numbers on the extent of the nation’s growing shadow inventory, Morgan Stanley is telling its investors to slow down and not jump too soon, Adams adds.
People in Florida and California, particularly, have watched helplessly as the real estate crisis has pushed their home values to as little as 25 percent of what they paid for them less than a decade ago.
The report continued, “Given the sheer number of potential homes for sale and the weak pace at which demand is trending, the bottom of the housing market may last another three to four years, during which annual appreciation may reach only as high as inflation or income growth, meaning real asset values will remain unchanged or lower throughout this period.”
Read more:
http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/foreclosure_crisis_worsen_256.html
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