World's Secret Shadow Government: Conspiracy Theory or Frighteningly Real?
By Ekaterina Blinova
Is the famous conspiracy about a secret government that runs the world completely nonsense or does the idea actually have any supporting evidence?
Conspiracy theories — hypotheses claiming that historical events could have occurred due to the nefarious actions by hidden parties — still remain largely neglected by researchers and considered as implausible and irrelevant.
On the other hand, conspiracy theories usually attract a lot of attention from a wide array of people, prompting heated debate on issues ranging from the world’s shadow government to the chances of an alien invasion taking place. While most researchers do not take these theories seriously, some scholars insist that they do deserve attention.
The “cryptocracy,” or shadow government, concept is one of the most popular. According to this belief, real and actual political power does not reside with democratically elected public representatives, but with an elite set of individuals who exercise power behind the scenes. This secret government is not responsible to democratic institutions. Furthermore, according to conspirologists, official governments are subservient to it.
The Bilderberg Group
The shadow government theory supporters point their finger at the Bilderberg Group (Bilderberg Club), a private organization founded in 1954. The Group annually brings together up to 150 political leaders and experts from academia, finance, media and industry in order to discuss the most burning political and economic issues.
“The conference is a forum for informal discussions about megatrends and major issues facing the world. The meetings are held under the Chatham House Rule, which states that participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s) nor of any other participant may be revealed. There is no detailed agenda, no resolutions are proposed, no votes are taken, and no policy statements are issued,” the Bilderberg Meetings official website states.
Madrid-based author and investigative journalist Daniel Estulin is a longtime watcher of the secret group. In one of his books, entitled “The True Story of the Bilderberg Group” (La Verdadera Historia del Club Bilderberg), the author provided a report of the organizations’ purported mission.
According to the investigative journalist, the Group is considering the creation of “a One World Government (World Company) with a single, global marketplace, policed by one world army, and financially regulated by one ‘World (Central) Bank’ using one global currency.”
Estulin believes that among the Group’s major objectives are: centralized control of all foreign and domestic policies; a New World Order with no middle class (just “rulers and servants”); one international identity and one set of “universal” values; “mind control” of the world’s population; imposing a universal legal system; making NATO the world’s military; manufactured crises and perpetual wars etc.
The author points out that the Bilderberg Club is not acting alone. It has influential secret partners — two groups of “global power brokers”: the US-based Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and The Trilateral Commission, founded in 1973 by David Rockefeller, who is at the same time a leading Bilderberger and CFR Chairman Emeritus.
The triple alliance is advocating a global super state with the US and other nations ceding their sovereignty to a global central power.
“Imagine a private club where presidents, prime ministers, international bankers and generals rub shoulders, where gracious royal chaperones ensure everyone gets along, and where the people running the wars, markets, and Europe (and America) say what they never dare say in public,” Estulin underscored.
However, according to other researchers, the Club is unfairly demonized. Regardless of their purported goals, neither the Bilderberg Group nor CFR with the Trilateral Commission have got enough political and economic resources to rule the world, experts say, insisting that evidently “the devil” is not so black as he is painted by conspirologists.
Le Cercle
At the same time, there are analysts who believe that Bilderberg is just the tip of the iceberg and refer to another influential secret group — Le Cercle — also established during the Cold War era.
Le Cercle is not as well-known as the widely discussed Bilderberg Group. It was founded in the early 1950s as an elite clandestine forum targeted against the USSR.
According to investigative journalist David Teacher, the little known but powerful Le Cercle (or Pinay Cercle) has been focused on domestic subversion and has used its network of propagandists and intelligence agents to carry out smear campaigns against progressive European and US politicians in order to promote their favored candidates. Teacher pointed out that the group played a crucial role in the fall of the Iron Curtain and then orchestrated the integration of Eastern Europe into the European Union.
“Amongst Cercle intelligence contacts are former operatives from the American CIA, DIA and INR, Britain’s MI5, MI6 and IRD, France’s SDECE, Germany’s BND, BfV and MAD, Holland’s BVD, Belgium’s Surete de l’Etat, SDRA and PIO, apartheid South Africa’s BOSS, and the Swiss and Saudi intelligence services. Politically, the Cercle complex has interlocked with the whole panoply of international right-wing groups: the Paneuropean Union, the European Movement, CEDl, the Bilderberg Group, WACL, Opus Dei, the Moonies, Western Goals and the Heritage Foundation. Amongst the prominent figures associated with the Cercle Pinay were Antoine Pinay, Konrad Adenauer, Archduke Otto von Habsburg, Franz Josef Strauss, Giulio Andreotti, Paul Vanden Boeynants, John Vorster, General Antonio de Spinola, Manuel Fraga Iribarne, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan,” Teacher wrote in his book “Rogue Agents: Habsburg, Pinay and the Private Cold War 1951-1991.”
For instance, in the late 1970s Le Cercle supported NATO’s decision to station new medium-range nuclear weapons — Cruise and Pershing II missiles — in Britain, Germany, Belgium and Holland targeted against the USSR. Le Cercle helped to discredit the European peace protest movement which emerged against the backdrop of the nuclearization of Europe through aggressive counter-intelligence, provocations and disinformation.
“In contrast to the public conception of “conspiracy theories,” the links uncovered by parapolitical research are rarely lines of command. Parapolitical activity is not pyramidal like a government hierarchy; it is connective, a network of nodes like a circle of friends… and here the Cercle came into its own as a group with a world-wide agenda, connecting and, to some extent coordinating the activities of groups in many different countries,” David Teacher elaborated.
However, analysts should neither exaggerate nor demonize the impact of parapolitical secret entities on history, according to Andrei Fursov, a Russian historian and researcher at the Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS).
The historian insists that there is no such thing as a “shadow government” that rules the world. He warns researchers against making wild claims about the true nature of transnational clandestine groups, stressing that they are “very routine” structures of global financial and political elites. The primary role of these entities is to serve as a platform for coordination and cooperation of the world’s “power-brokers” interrelated competing groups.
The roots of these clandestine forums lie deep in European history and are closely connected with the development of capitalism, according to Fursov. Remarkably, in the 17-18th century European financial moguls used Masonic transnational networks in order to expand their trade connections, evading at the same time government control, the historian noted. In the book “De Conspiratione” (“About Conspiracy”) Fursov analyzed the genesis of European capitalism and provided evidence showing that transnational clandestine organizations are an integral part of the capitalist system.
However, the “secret history” of clandestine organizations remains largely neglected although a lot of information about their activities has recently surfaced.
Referring to this fact, Andrei Fursov cited the Father Brown Stories written by English novelist G. K. Chesterton:
“After the first silence the small man said to the other: “Where does a wise man hide a pebble?” And the tall man answered in a low voice: “on the beach.” The small man nodded, and after a short silence said: “Where does a wise man hide a leaf?” And the other answered: “In the forest.”
Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/08/no_author/secret-world-shadow-governments/
Monday, August 10, 2015
Back in the USSR...
The Assault On Donald Trump Shows That Our 2 Party System Is Really A 1 Party System
Michael Snyder
Were you sickened by the Republican debate the other night? The hype leading up to the debate was unbelievable. Never before had there been so much interest in a debate this early in an election season, and it turned out to be the most watched program on Fox News ever. A record-shattering 24 million Americans tuned in, and what they witnessed was an expertly orchestrated assault on Donald Trump. From the very first moments, every question that was launched at Trump was an “attack question”. And then the laughable “focus group” that followed was specifically designed to show that “ordinary people” were “changing their minds” about Trump. By the end of the evening, it was abundantly clear that Fox News had purposely intended to try to destroy Trump’s candidacy.
And of course Fox News is far from alone. Every mainstream news outlet in the entire country is running anti-Trump news stories every single day. Virtually every other presidential candidate in both parties is attacking him, and virtually every “political expert” from across the political spectrum is trashing his chances of success.
So why is this happening?
Normally, candidates that are not part of the “establishment” do not pose much of a threat. In order to win elections in this country, especially on a national level, you need name recognition and you need lots and lots of money.
Donald Trump has both, and no matter what you may think of him you have to admit that he has star power.
And he was never supposed to run for president. You see, the truth is that only members of “the club” are allowed to play. The elite very carefully groom their candidates, and they are usually able to maintain a very tight grip on both major political parties.
This two-headed abomination that we call a “two party system” is in reality just a one party system. Yes, many Democrats and many Republicans really do hate one another, but at the end of the day there is very little difference between the two parties. That is why nothing ever really seems to change no matter who gets elected. George W. Bush continued almost all of Bill Clinton’s policies, and Barack Obama has continued almost all of George W. Bush’s policies. When they are running for office, they tell us what they think we want to hear, but once they get to D.C. they do exactly what the establishment wants them to do.
Donald Trump, whether you love him or you hate him, is a threat to this system. He is not controlled by the elite, and he does and says all sorts of things that drive the elite absolutely nuts.
If he was polling below 5 percent that wouldn’t be a problem. At first, the mainstream media attempted to portray him as a joke that would never get any real support. But since then, Trump has proven that he is a serious candidate with some very serious ideas about how to fix this country. Now that he is receiving far, far more support than the establishment choice (Jeb Bush), he must be destroyed.
I can promise you right now that the Republican establishment will pull out every dirty trick in the book to keep Donald Trump from getting the Republican nomination.
And if Donald Trump runs as an independent, the elite will move heaven and earth to keep him out of the White House.
This isn’t even just about Trump. If Ben Carson starts getting too much support, he will be destroyed too. This is how presidential elections in America work.
What we witnessed during the Fox News debate the other night was not an accident. The goal was to make Jeb Bush look good and to make Donald Trump look bad. The following comes from Mike Adams…
But the one thing that really stood out was the total fraud of what Fox News pulled off. It was clear from the first five minutes that Fox News had pre-arranged softball questions for Jeb Bush to highlight his “heroic actions” and accomplishments. Meanwhile, the kinds of questions directed to Donald Trump were all thinly veiled accusations and insults, designed to attack Trump on issues that had nothing to do with running the country.
The typical questions went something like this: (paraphrased)
Fox News: “Jeb Bush, how did you get to be such an amazing leader?”
Fox News: “Donald Trump, why do you hate women?”
As if a debate with totally contrived questions wasn’t enough, Fox News also had a pre-arranged assembly of apparently “ordinary citizens” who were asked, after the debate, how many of them now hated Donald Trump.
And even when “the debate” was over, the assault continued. If you have not seen the disgraceful “focus group interview” which Frank Luntz orchestrated, you can check it out below…
I just about fell out of my chair when I saw that.
Virtually everyone in the “focus group” that Frank Luntz put together supposedly had a positive view of Donald Trump before the debate, and then almost every single one of them supposedly become Trump haters during the course of the two hour debate.
I am sure that they were hoping that everybody in the viewing public would “come to their senses” and become Jeb Bush supporters.
But of course post-debate polling shows that is not happening at all.
The Drudge Report conducted a flash poll immediately following the debate, and a whopping 44.67 percent of those that responded said that Trump won the debate.
Ted Cruz was in second place with 14.31 percent.
Jeb Bush got a measly 2.07 percent.
A Newsmax survey came up with similar results…
Donald Trump: 38 percent
Ted Cruz: 15.5 percent
Neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson: 10.2 percent
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio: 9.7 percent
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul: 9.3 percent
Ohio Gov. John Kasich: 4.9 percent
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker: 4.5 percent
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee: 3.5 percent
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush: 2.5 percent
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie: 1.4 percent
And a survey conducted by Time Magazine also produced similar findings. Donald Trump got 47 percent, Ben Carson was in second place with 11 percent, and Jeb Bush got 4 percent.
But Donald Trump is not going to be the Republican nominee.
Unless something goes horribly, horribly wrong for the Republican establishment, Jeb Bush is going to be the nominee.
We have a system that is deeply, deeply broken and that does not reflect the will of the people.
This was illustrated by one of the questions that Trump was asked during the debate…
BAIER: Mr. Trump, it’s not just your past support for single-payer health care. You’ve also supported a host of other liberal policies….You’ve also donated to several Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton included, and Nancy Pelosi. You explained away those donations saying you did that to get business-related favors. And you said recently, quote, “When you give, they do whatever the hell you want them to do.”
TRUMP: You’d better believe it.
BAIER: — they do?
TRUMP: If I ask them, if I need them, you know, most of the people on this stage I’ve given to, just so you understand, a lot of money.
TRUMP: I will tell you that our system is broken. I gave to many people, before this, before two months ago, I was a businessman. I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And do you know what? When I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them, they are there for me. And that’s a broken system.
The really amazing thing is that nobody up on that stage disputed that what Trump was saying was true.
It is very well understood by our politicians that when they get big checks from the elite for their campaigns that certain things are expected from them in return.
Our government does not reflect the will of the people and it hasn’t for a very long time.
Instead, it reflects the will of the elite, and the American people are getting sick and tired of it.
Right now, surveys show that Donald Trump has far more support than any other Republican candidate.
But he is not going to be the Republican nominee. The Republican establishment will make sure of that.
There is still the possibility that Trump could run as an independent. That would be an extremely tough road, but on Sunday he sounded very open to the possibility…
The political hurricane that is Donald Trump didn’t recede over the weekend, even in the face of a rising tide of criticism from Republican rivals about his attack on Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly.
Instead, the celebrity billionaire insisted in a string of interviews on Sunday TV shows that he had done nothing wrong, that “only a deviant” would interpret his words in an offensive way, and that he is leaving open the possibility of running an independent campaign for the White House if the GOP doesn’t treat him “fairly.”
“I do have leverage and I like having leverage,” Trump declared on CBS’ Face the Nation on a morning that also included interviews with ABC’s This Week, CNN’s State of the Union and NBC’s Meet the Press.
This is a scenario that I discussed in my previous article entitled “Republican Operatives Plot To Sabotage Trump – But That Could Turn Him Into Their Worst Nightmare“. Personally, I believe that Donald Trump will decide to run as an independent when it becomes clear to him that the Republican establishment is going to prevent him from winning the nomination at all costs.
But I could be wrong.
So what do you think?
Please feel free to join the discussion by posting a comment below…
Link:
http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/the-assault-on-donald-trump-shows-that-our-2-party-system-is-really-a-1-party-system
Michael Snyder
Were you sickened by the Republican debate the other night? The hype leading up to the debate was unbelievable. Never before had there been so much interest in a debate this early in an election season, and it turned out to be the most watched program on Fox News ever. A record-shattering 24 million Americans tuned in, and what they witnessed was an expertly orchestrated assault on Donald Trump. From the very first moments, every question that was launched at Trump was an “attack question”. And then the laughable “focus group” that followed was specifically designed to show that “ordinary people” were “changing their minds” about Trump. By the end of the evening, it was abundantly clear that Fox News had purposely intended to try to destroy Trump’s candidacy.
And of course Fox News is far from alone. Every mainstream news outlet in the entire country is running anti-Trump news stories every single day. Virtually every other presidential candidate in both parties is attacking him, and virtually every “political expert” from across the political spectrum is trashing his chances of success.
So why is this happening?
Normally, candidates that are not part of the “establishment” do not pose much of a threat. In order to win elections in this country, especially on a national level, you need name recognition and you need lots and lots of money.
Donald Trump has both, and no matter what you may think of him you have to admit that he has star power.
And he was never supposed to run for president. You see, the truth is that only members of “the club” are allowed to play. The elite very carefully groom their candidates, and they are usually able to maintain a very tight grip on both major political parties.
This two-headed abomination that we call a “two party system” is in reality just a one party system. Yes, many Democrats and many Republicans really do hate one another, but at the end of the day there is very little difference between the two parties. That is why nothing ever really seems to change no matter who gets elected. George W. Bush continued almost all of Bill Clinton’s policies, and Barack Obama has continued almost all of George W. Bush’s policies. When they are running for office, they tell us what they think we want to hear, but once they get to D.C. they do exactly what the establishment wants them to do.
Donald Trump, whether you love him or you hate him, is a threat to this system. He is not controlled by the elite, and he does and says all sorts of things that drive the elite absolutely nuts.
If he was polling below 5 percent that wouldn’t be a problem. At first, the mainstream media attempted to portray him as a joke that would never get any real support. But since then, Trump has proven that he is a serious candidate with some very serious ideas about how to fix this country. Now that he is receiving far, far more support than the establishment choice (Jeb Bush), he must be destroyed.
I can promise you right now that the Republican establishment will pull out every dirty trick in the book to keep Donald Trump from getting the Republican nomination.
And if Donald Trump runs as an independent, the elite will move heaven and earth to keep him out of the White House.
This isn’t even just about Trump. If Ben Carson starts getting too much support, he will be destroyed too. This is how presidential elections in America work.
What we witnessed during the Fox News debate the other night was not an accident. The goal was to make Jeb Bush look good and to make Donald Trump look bad. The following comes from Mike Adams…
But the one thing that really stood out was the total fraud of what Fox News pulled off. It was clear from the first five minutes that Fox News had pre-arranged softball questions for Jeb Bush to highlight his “heroic actions” and accomplishments. Meanwhile, the kinds of questions directed to Donald Trump were all thinly veiled accusations and insults, designed to attack Trump on issues that had nothing to do with running the country.
The typical questions went something like this: (paraphrased)
Fox News: “Jeb Bush, how did you get to be such an amazing leader?”
Fox News: “Donald Trump, why do you hate women?”
As if a debate with totally contrived questions wasn’t enough, Fox News also had a pre-arranged assembly of apparently “ordinary citizens” who were asked, after the debate, how many of them now hated Donald Trump.
And even when “the debate” was over, the assault continued. If you have not seen the disgraceful “focus group interview” which Frank Luntz orchestrated, you can check it out below…
I just about fell out of my chair when I saw that.
Virtually everyone in the “focus group” that Frank Luntz put together supposedly had a positive view of Donald Trump before the debate, and then almost every single one of them supposedly become Trump haters during the course of the two hour debate.
I am sure that they were hoping that everybody in the viewing public would “come to their senses” and become Jeb Bush supporters.
But of course post-debate polling shows that is not happening at all.
The Drudge Report conducted a flash poll immediately following the debate, and a whopping 44.67 percent of those that responded said that Trump won the debate.
Ted Cruz was in second place with 14.31 percent.
Jeb Bush got a measly 2.07 percent.
A Newsmax survey came up with similar results…
Donald Trump: 38 percent
Ted Cruz: 15.5 percent
Neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson: 10.2 percent
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio: 9.7 percent
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul: 9.3 percent
Ohio Gov. John Kasich: 4.9 percent
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker: 4.5 percent
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee: 3.5 percent
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush: 2.5 percent
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie: 1.4 percent
And a survey conducted by Time Magazine also produced similar findings. Donald Trump got 47 percent, Ben Carson was in second place with 11 percent, and Jeb Bush got 4 percent.
But Donald Trump is not going to be the Republican nominee.
Unless something goes horribly, horribly wrong for the Republican establishment, Jeb Bush is going to be the nominee.
We have a system that is deeply, deeply broken and that does not reflect the will of the people.
This was illustrated by one of the questions that Trump was asked during the debate…
BAIER: Mr. Trump, it’s not just your past support for single-payer health care. You’ve also supported a host of other liberal policies….You’ve also donated to several Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton included, and Nancy Pelosi. You explained away those donations saying you did that to get business-related favors. And you said recently, quote, “When you give, they do whatever the hell you want them to do.”
TRUMP: You’d better believe it.
BAIER: — they do?
TRUMP: If I ask them, if I need them, you know, most of the people on this stage I’ve given to, just so you understand, a lot of money.
TRUMP: I will tell you that our system is broken. I gave to many people, before this, before two months ago, I was a businessman. I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And do you know what? When I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them, they are there for me. And that’s a broken system.
The really amazing thing is that nobody up on that stage disputed that what Trump was saying was true.
It is very well understood by our politicians that when they get big checks from the elite for their campaigns that certain things are expected from them in return.
Our government does not reflect the will of the people and it hasn’t for a very long time.
Instead, it reflects the will of the elite, and the American people are getting sick and tired of it.
Right now, surveys show that Donald Trump has far more support than any other Republican candidate.
But he is not going to be the Republican nominee. The Republican establishment will make sure of that.
There is still the possibility that Trump could run as an independent. That would be an extremely tough road, but on Sunday he sounded very open to the possibility…
The political hurricane that is Donald Trump didn’t recede over the weekend, even in the face of a rising tide of criticism from Republican rivals about his attack on Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly.
Instead, the celebrity billionaire insisted in a string of interviews on Sunday TV shows that he had done nothing wrong, that “only a deviant” would interpret his words in an offensive way, and that he is leaving open the possibility of running an independent campaign for the White House if the GOP doesn’t treat him “fairly.”
“I do have leverage and I like having leverage,” Trump declared on CBS’ Face the Nation on a morning that also included interviews with ABC’s This Week, CNN’s State of the Union and NBC’s Meet the Press.
This is a scenario that I discussed in my previous article entitled “Republican Operatives Plot To Sabotage Trump – But That Could Turn Him Into Their Worst Nightmare“. Personally, I believe that Donald Trump will decide to run as an independent when it becomes clear to him that the Republican establishment is going to prevent him from winning the nomination at all costs.
But I could be wrong.
So what do you think?
Please feel free to join the discussion by posting a comment below…
Link:
http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/the-assault-on-donald-trump-shows-that-our-2-party-system-is-really-a-1-party-system
I hope you were not too late...
Report: Public Demand For Precious Metals Skyrockets: “The Whole Supply Chain Could Be Cleaned Out”
Mac Slavo
Though we’ve seen a significant drop in precious metals prices over the last several years, new evidence from one of the world’s leading retail brokers further suggests that there is a massive disconnect between the paper price on global exchanges and demand by the general public.
According to a report from Money Metals Exchange, buyers were snapping up everything they could get their hands on over the last 45 days:
Public demand for gold and silver coins, rounds, and bars suddenly skyrocketed since mid-June – particularly among first-time customers – to multiples of earlier demand levels, according to Money Metals Exchange, a national precious metals dealer in the U.S.
From June 16 to July 31, Money Metals Exchange experienced a 135% surge in gold and silver sales over the prior 45-day period (which was representative of the early months of 2015). Since June 16, the number of first-time customers rose even more dramatically, with 365% more new purchasers than the prior period.
“As the Greece default debacle unfolded in late June, something clicked in investors’ minds, and many have since bought whatever physical gold or silver they could get their hands on,” said Stefan Gleason, president of Money Metals Exchange. “In particular, we experienced a dramatic and unprecedented surge in first-time customers clamoring to obtain the financial insurance that gold and silver represent.”
…
Many government and private mints, including the U.S. Mint and the Royal Canadian Mint, have been unable to keep up with demand and have either temporarily halted silver sales or rationed out their insufficient supply of silver coins.
…
“We’re seeing more buying interest than at any time since the 2008 financial crisis. If we see a further spike in demand, the whole supply chain could be cleaned out,” said Gleason. “In that event, customers will face long lead times and limited product choices. Gold supply is showing some signs of strain, but silver could become completely unavailable.”
Full Report and Data Via Money Metals Exchange
And while financial pundits argue that the paper prices are reflective of supply and demand, the reality is that investor demand for the physical assets is starting to overwhelm government mints. Last month the U.S. Mint was forced to suspend salesof Silver Eagles after unprecedented buying.
And soon, as we learned from Money Metals President Stefan Gleason in a follow-up interview, Canada may run out of their famed silver Maple Leafs for similar reasons:
“We just learned that the Royal Canadian Mint is having a severe problem sourcing silver blanks for the Silver Maple program, and they have told wholesalers that all previous commitments as to rationed deliveries may not be possible to fulfill.”
So, despite what we are hearing about a lack of demand for precious metals, the data is crystal clear. Investors are terrified of another economic, financial or monetary crisis, and they are rapidly shifting their assets to real money that they hold in their physical possession.
It seems that physical buyers aren’t the only ones piling into gold and silver. A report from Zero Hedge suggests that the smart money may be getting ready to move back into gold as hedge funds reduce their net short positions.
One thing we can say in the gold bugs’ favor: what had mostly been a headwind for gold for the past decade or so is no longer the case. While it may not make an immediate impact, the “smart money” Commercial Hedgers are now more aligned with them than at any point since the bull market began in 2001.
Commodities, including precious metals, have seen what can only be described as a financial massacre over the last several years. But according to Callinex Mines CEO Max Porterfield, we may soon begin to see demand outpace availability simply because many of the smaller and mid-range firms involved in mining precious and other necessary industrial metals have either pulled back on production due to lower prices or closed up shop entirely.
With the exception of a few companies like Callinex, exploration has almost entirely halted. This will have a decade-long impact on supply lines that touch almost every sector.
Layoffs are happening worldwide and there is blood in the streets.
It’s the savvy investor who understands that now is the time to be acquiring these assets.
Indeed, we’ve all heard the wisdom of buying when the market is at a bottom.
As Portefield notes, this is what blood in the streets looks like from a financial standpoint. Gold is off 40% from it’s highs and silver is down 70%, not to mention other commodities that have taken a significant hit including oil, copper and zinc.
The question now is, should investors continue to put their life savings into tech darlings selling near their all-time highs while their balance sheets bleed out, or is it time to start acquiring physical assets that have been tested time and again throughout history during times of economic and political upheaval?
Link:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/report-public-demand-for-precious-metals-skyrockets-the-whole-supply-chain-could-be-cleaned-out.html
Mac Slavo
Though we’ve seen a significant drop in precious metals prices over the last several years, new evidence from one of the world’s leading retail brokers further suggests that there is a massive disconnect between the paper price on global exchanges and demand by the general public.
According to a report from Money Metals Exchange, buyers were snapping up everything they could get their hands on over the last 45 days:
Public demand for gold and silver coins, rounds, and bars suddenly skyrocketed since mid-June – particularly among first-time customers – to multiples of earlier demand levels, according to Money Metals Exchange, a national precious metals dealer in the U.S.
From June 16 to July 31, Money Metals Exchange experienced a 135% surge in gold and silver sales over the prior 45-day period (which was representative of the early months of 2015). Since June 16, the number of first-time customers rose even more dramatically, with 365% more new purchasers than the prior period.
“As the Greece default debacle unfolded in late June, something clicked in investors’ minds, and many have since bought whatever physical gold or silver they could get their hands on,” said Stefan Gleason, president of Money Metals Exchange. “In particular, we experienced a dramatic and unprecedented surge in first-time customers clamoring to obtain the financial insurance that gold and silver represent.”
…
Many government and private mints, including the U.S. Mint and the Royal Canadian Mint, have been unable to keep up with demand and have either temporarily halted silver sales or rationed out their insufficient supply of silver coins.
…
“We’re seeing more buying interest than at any time since the 2008 financial crisis. If we see a further spike in demand, the whole supply chain could be cleaned out,” said Gleason. “In that event, customers will face long lead times and limited product choices. Gold supply is showing some signs of strain, but silver could become completely unavailable.”
Full Report and Data Via Money Metals Exchange
And while financial pundits argue that the paper prices are reflective of supply and demand, the reality is that investor demand for the physical assets is starting to overwhelm government mints. Last month the U.S. Mint was forced to suspend salesof Silver Eagles after unprecedented buying.
And soon, as we learned from Money Metals President Stefan Gleason in a follow-up interview, Canada may run out of their famed silver Maple Leafs for similar reasons:
“We just learned that the Royal Canadian Mint is having a severe problem sourcing silver blanks for the Silver Maple program, and they have told wholesalers that all previous commitments as to rationed deliveries may not be possible to fulfill.”
So, despite what we are hearing about a lack of demand for precious metals, the data is crystal clear. Investors are terrified of another economic, financial or monetary crisis, and they are rapidly shifting their assets to real money that they hold in their physical possession.
It seems that physical buyers aren’t the only ones piling into gold and silver. A report from Zero Hedge suggests that the smart money may be getting ready to move back into gold as hedge funds reduce their net short positions.
One thing we can say in the gold bugs’ favor: what had mostly been a headwind for gold for the past decade or so is no longer the case. While it may not make an immediate impact, the “smart money” Commercial Hedgers are now more aligned with them than at any point since the bull market began in 2001.
Commodities, including precious metals, have seen what can only be described as a financial massacre over the last several years. But according to Callinex Mines CEO Max Porterfield, we may soon begin to see demand outpace availability simply because many of the smaller and mid-range firms involved in mining precious and other necessary industrial metals have either pulled back on production due to lower prices or closed up shop entirely.
With the exception of a few companies like Callinex, exploration has almost entirely halted. This will have a decade-long impact on supply lines that touch almost every sector.
Layoffs are happening worldwide and there is blood in the streets.
It’s the savvy investor who understands that now is the time to be acquiring these assets.
Indeed, we’ve all heard the wisdom of buying when the market is at a bottom.
As Portefield notes, this is what blood in the streets looks like from a financial standpoint. Gold is off 40% from it’s highs and silver is down 70%, not to mention other commodities that have taken a significant hit including oil, copper and zinc.
The question now is, should investors continue to put their life savings into tech darlings selling near their all-time highs while their balance sheets bleed out, or is it time to start acquiring physical assets that have been tested time and again throughout history during times of economic and political upheaval?
Link:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/report-public-demand-for-precious-metals-skyrockets-the-whole-supply-chain-could-be-cleaned-out.html
Sunday, August 9, 2015
"There is no easy way out of this bad bet for the Saudis. If they continue to pump, prices will likely continue to decline, increasing their deficits. If they restrain production, they will lose market share, giving other members of OPEC the advantage and encouraging American producers to bring their rigs back online."
Saudi Arabia’s Cash Reserves Dwindling, Forcing It to Borrow
Written by Bob Adelmann
In an astonishing admission that the Saudis have gambled with a bet that is now going sour, the Saudi Arabia Monetary Agency (the country’s central bank) reported:
It is becoming apparent that non-OPEC producers [in the United States] are not as responsive to low oil prices as had been thought, at least in the short run.
The main impact has been [for U.S. producers] to cut back on developmental drilling of new oil wells, rather than slowing the flow of oil from existing wells.
This [strategy to break U.S. producers] requires more patience.
But patience will last only as long as their foreign reserves of cash, and Saudi Arabia’s reserves (immense though they be) are dwindling rapidly. They peaked at $737 billion in August of 2014. In May of this year, they were down to $672 billion. With the price of oil at less than $50 a barrel, every barrel the Saudis ship costs them $56. Put another way, the Saudis’ break-even point needed to fund their lavish welfare state is $106 a barrel.
And so the fact that the government borrowed $4 billion from local banks came as a shock to those who still think the Saudis have wealth beyond counting. Even more astonishing was the news that it would be forced to continue to borrow an estimated $5 billion every month from now on just to slow the shrinkage of its foreign reserves.
The gamble by Saudi Arabia to pump immense amounts of oil to depress oil prices was based on a number of assumptions, each one of which is now being questioned. First, lower prices would force U.S. oil and gas producers to lay down rigs until prices went back up. North American rig counts have dropped — from 1,608 in October to 664 — but production rose: to a 43-year high of 9.6 million barrels per day in June.
Shale gas rigs have dropped even more precipitously, from 1,200 in 2009 to just 209 at present, while output has increased by 30 percent!
Apparently, the Saudis miscalculated when they thought they could shut down the United States' oil business, based on the old model of long lead times and highly expensive drilling. Once shut down, rigs would stay down, forcing prices higher.
It seems they didn't have any idea that 1) fracking was so much less capital intensive, and 2) so much more responsive to market prices. Not to mention how aggressive frackers have been in reducing their costs, which has allowed many/most of them to remain profitable even under the falling price scenario.
What the Saudis didn’t count on was American ingenuity. With technological gains, a single surface well in the United States can now drill horizontally in eight or 10 different directions, seeking out favorable formations far below the surface.
Think of traditional oil wells as sitting on a jelly donut, sucking up the good stuff from straight beneath the surface. Think of fracking wells as sitting on a piece of tiramisu, with a single straw descending down miles into the Earth’s surface, and then becoming multiple straws turning at right angles to seek out the oil and gas.
Another calculation the Saudis missed: The cost of a new fracking well is a fraction of what it would take to develop a traditional well, which means that a marginal well can be shuttered and then brought back online within days or weeks when prices justify it. Some developers, in fact, have fracking wells that aren’t producing until prices rise to justify that production. Consider it as manufacturing “inventory," just waiting for more favorable conditions to bring it to market.
With prices nearing $40 a barrel, producers are working to cut costs even further. Variable costs have already been cut in half this year, with another 30 percent available, according to John Hess, head of the Hess Corporation.
And when a new well is developed, the time from start to production has also been cut in half over just the last year. Scott Sheffield, head of Pioneer Natural Resources, asserted, “We have just drilled an 18,000-foot well [that’s nearly three-and-a-half miles] in 16 days in the Permian Basin. Last year it took 30 days.”
The other faulty assumptions informing the Saudis' failing gamble were that China would continue to increase its demand for energy, that Iran would continue to suffer under sanctions, and that other members of the OPEC cartel would restrain their own production. None of these have proven to be accurate, causing deficits in Saudi Arabia to run close to 20 percent of the country’s total GDP. If oil prices drop further (some are estimating a floor at $30), those deficits will increase.
In February Standard & Poor’s lowered its outlook on Saudi Arabia to “negative," explaining, “We view Saudi Arabia’s economy as undiversified and vulnerable to a steep and sustained decline in oil prices.”
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, writing in London’s Telegraph, noted:
In hindsight, it was a strategic error [for the Saudis] to hold prices so high, for so long, allowing shale frackers … to come of age. The genie cannot be put back in the bottle.
There is no easy way out of this bad bet for the Saudis. If they continue to pump, prices will likely continue to decline, increasing their deficits. If they restrain production, they will lose market share, giving other members of OPEC the advantage and encouraging American producers to bring their rigs back online.
At current rates, those healthy foreign reserves could decline to just $200 billion in three years, leaving the Saudis with few options. The country relies on oil for 90 percent of its budget revenues, and has installed a costly welfare state that was just goosed in January with generous bonuses to public-sector workers by King Salman, who apparently was oblivious to the impending implosion, thanks to his country’s bad bet.
The Saudi central bank is right: For the Saudis' strategy to work will require patience. But that patience will expire as its precious foreign currency reserves evaporate, potentially leaving that once-powerful and influential country just as it was before oil was discovered underground: another poor Middle Eastern backwater populated by nomadic tribal societies eking out a marginal existence in an inhospitable desert.
Link:
http://www.thenewamerican.com/economy/markets/item/21372-saudi-arabia-s-oil-reserves-dwindling-forcing-it-to-borrow
Written by Bob Adelmann
In an astonishing admission that the Saudis have gambled with a bet that is now going sour, the Saudi Arabia Monetary Agency (the country’s central bank) reported:
It is becoming apparent that non-OPEC producers [in the United States] are not as responsive to low oil prices as had been thought, at least in the short run.
The main impact has been [for U.S. producers] to cut back on developmental drilling of new oil wells, rather than slowing the flow of oil from existing wells.
This [strategy to break U.S. producers] requires more patience.
But patience will last only as long as their foreign reserves of cash, and Saudi Arabia’s reserves (immense though they be) are dwindling rapidly. They peaked at $737 billion in August of 2014. In May of this year, they were down to $672 billion. With the price of oil at less than $50 a barrel, every barrel the Saudis ship costs them $56. Put another way, the Saudis’ break-even point needed to fund their lavish welfare state is $106 a barrel.
And so the fact that the government borrowed $4 billion from local banks came as a shock to those who still think the Saudis have wealth beyond counting. Even more astonishing was the news that it would be forced to continue to borrow an estimated $5 billion every month from now on just to slow the shrinkage of its foreign reserves.
The gamble by Saudi Arabia to pump immense amounts of oil to depress oil prices was based on a number of assumptions, each one of which is now being questioned. First, lower prices would force U.S. oil and gas producers to lay down rigs until prices went back up. North American rig counts have dropped — from 1,608 in October to 664 — but production rose: to a 43-year high of 9.6 million barrels per day in June.
Shale gas rigs have dropped even more precipitously, from 1,200 in 2009 to just 209 at present, while output has increased by 30 percent!
Apparently, the Saudis miscalculated when they thought they could shut down the United States' oil business, based on the old model of long lead times and highly expensive drilling. Once shut down, rigs would stay down, forcing prices higher.
It seems they didn't have any idea that 1) fracking was so much less capital intensive, and 2) so much more responsive to market prices. Not to mention how aggressive frackers have been in reducing their costs, which has allowed many/most of them to remain profitable even under the falling price scenario.
What the Saudis didn’t count on was American ingenuity. With technological gains, a single surface well in the United States can now drill horizontally in eight or 10 different directions, seeking out favorable formations far below the surface.
Think of traditional oil wells as sitting on a jelly donut, sucking up the good stuff from straight beneath the surface. Think of fracking wells as sitting on a piece of tiramisu, with a single straw descending down miles into the Earth’s surface, and then becoming multiple straws turning at right angles to seek out the oil and gas.
Another calculation the Saudis missed: The cost of a new fracking well is a fraction of what it would take to develop a traditional well, which means that a marginal well can be shuttered and then brought back online within days or weeks when prices justify it. Some developers, in fact, have fracking wells that aren’t producing until prices rise to justify that production. Consider it as manufacturing “inventory," just waiting for more favorable conditions to bring it to market.
With prices nearing $40 a barrel, producers are working to cut costs even further. Variable costs have already been cut in half this year, with another 30 percent available, according to John Hess, head of the Hess Corporation.
And when a new well is developed, the time from start to production has also been cut in half over just the last year. Scott Sheffield, head of Pioneer Natural Resources, asserted, “We have just drilled an 18,000-foot well [that’s nearly three-and-a-half miles] in 16 days in the Permian Basin. Last year it took 30 days.”
The other faulty assumptions informing the Saudis' failing gamble were that China would continue to increase its demand for energy, that Iran would continue to suffer under sanctions, and that other members of the OPEC cartel would restrain their own production. None of these have proven to be accurate, causing deficits in Saudi Arabia to run close to 20 percent of the country’s total GDP. If oil prices drop further (some are estimating a floor at $30), those deficits will increase.
In February Standard & Poor’s lowered its outlook on Saudi Arabia to “negative," explaining, “We view Saudi Arabia’s economy as undiversified and vulnerable to a steep and sustained decline in oil prices.”
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, writing in London’s Telegraph, noted:
In hindsight, it was a strategic error [for the Saudis] to hold prices so high, for so long, allowing shale frackers … to come of age. The genie cannot be put back in the bottle.
There is no easy way out of this bad bet for the Saudis. If they continue to pump, prices will likely continue to decline, increasing their deficits. If they restrain production, they will lose market share, giving other members of OPEC the advantage and encouraging American producers to bring their rigs back online.
At current rates, those healthy foreign reserves could decline to just $200 billion in three years, leaving the Saudis with few options. The country relies on oil for 90 percent of its budget revenues, and has installed a costly welfare state that was just goosed in January with generous bonuses to public-sector workers by King Salman, who apparently was oblivious to the impending implosion, thanks to his country’s bad bet.
The Saudi central bank is right: For the Saudis' strategy to work will require patience. But that patience will expire as its precious foreign currency reserves evaporate, potentially leaving that once-powerful and influential country just as it was before oil was discovered underground: another poor Middle Eastern backwater populated by nomadic tribal societies eking out a marginal existence in an inhospitable desert.
Link:
http://www.thenewamerican.com/economy/markets/item/21372-saudi-arabia-s-oil-reserves-dwindling-forcing-it-to-borrow
Saturday, August 8, 2015
Enough already...
The Most Idiotic Cliché Among Hundreds Of …
By Robert J. Ringer
The most idiotic cliché among hundreds of idiotic clichés floating around today is: “We need to have an honest discussion about race.”
Huh? Discussing race has become nothing less than an obsession for many people over the past six-and-a-half years. In fact, it seems as though it’s the only thing some folks want to talk about.
Maybe I’m in the minority, but I don’t believe I’ve talked to anyone — certainly not in the last couple of decades — who sounds or acts like a racist. On the contrary, it’s quite inspiring how the vast majority of white people have not only come to respect the rights of blacks, but — and let’s be honest here — bend over backwards to make sure they are treated as equals.
That’s why it’s so disappointing when a “Hands up, don’t shoot” or Freddie Gray type scam is promoted by hate-filled people who desperately want to stir up trouble. And, in addition, by emasculating the police, it makes living in cities like New York and Baltimore much more dangerous – especially for law-abiding black citizens.
Vengeful politicians and bureaucrats like Baltimore’s mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and State Attorney Marilyn Mosby should be held legally responsible for their reckless misdeeds. They are the real racists, and their misconduct has cost residents of Baltimore an enormous amount of pain and suffering.
Enough! I think what Americans need to do is STOP talking about race. Both slavery and Jim Crow are ancient history. It’s time to get back to where we were just a few short years ago when things were not only much better for both blacks and whites, but getting even better with each passing day.
Link:
http://www.targetliberty.com/2015/08/the-most-idiotic-cliche-among-hundreds.html
By Robert J. Ringer
The most idiotic cliché among hundreds of idiotic clichés floating around today is: “We need to have an honest discussion about race.”
Huh? Discussing race has become nothing less than an obsession for many people over the past six-and-a-half years. In fact, it seems as though it’s the only thing some folks want to talk about.
Maybe I’m in the minority, but I don’t believe I’ve talked to anyone — certainly not in the last couple of decades — who sounds or acts like a racist. On the contrary, it’s quite inspiring how the vast majority of white people have not only come to respect the rights of blacks, but — and let’s be honest here — bend over backwards to make sure they are treated as equals.
That’s why it’s so disappointing when a “Hands up, don’t shoot” or Freddie Gray type scam is promoted by hate-filled people who desperately want to stir up trouble. And, in addition, by emasculating the police, it makes living in cities like New York and Baltimore much more dangerous – especially for law-abiding black citizens.
Vengeful politicians and bureaucrats like Baltimore’s mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and State Attorney Marilyn Mosby should be held legally responsible for their reckless misdeeds. They are the real racists, and their misconduct has cost residents of Baltimore an enormous amount of pain and suffering.
Enough! I think what Americans need to do is STOP talking about race. Both slavery and Jim Crow are ancient history. It’s time to get back to where we were just a few short years ago when things were not only much better for both blacks and whites, but getting even better with each passing day.
Link:
http://www.targetliberty.com/2015/08/the-most-idiotic-cliche-among-hundreds.html
"A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both."
About Jewish Violin Players
By Walter E. Williams
A particular act or policy might not have a discriminatory intent, but that doesn't let you off the hook. If it has a disproportionately negative impact on so-called protected classes, it is said to have a disparate impact and risks being prohibited by law. The uninformed assumption made by judges, lawyers and academics is that but for the fact of racial and sex discrimination, we all would be distributed across occupations, educational backgrounds and other socio-economic characteristics according to our percentages in the population. Such a vision is absolute nonsense. There is no evidence, anywhere, at any time, that but for the fact of discrimination, there would be proportional representation among various socio-economic characteristics. Let's look at some disproportionalities, with an eye toward discovering the causes and then deciding what to do about them.
If one were to list the world's top 30 violinists of the 20th century, at least 25 of them would be of Jewish ancestry. Another disparity is that despite the fact that Jews are less than 3 percent of the U.S. population and a mere 0.2 percent of the world's population, during the 20th century, Jews were 35 percent of American and 22 percent of the world's Nobel Prize winners. Are Jews taking violin excellence and Nobel Prizes that belong to other ethnicities? If America's diversity worshippers see underrepresentation as probative of racial discrimination, what do they propose be done about overrepresentation?
Overrepresentation may be seen as denial of opportunity. For example, blacks are 13 percent of our population but about 80 percent of professional basketball players and 65 percent of professional football players and among the highest-paid players in both sports. By stark contrast, blacks are only 2 percent of the NHL's professional ice hockey players. Basketball, football and ice hockey represent gross racial disparities and as such come nowhere close to "looking like America." Do these statistics mean that the owners of multibillion-dollar basketball and football operations are nice guys and ice hockey owners are racists? By the way, just because blacks are 65 percent of professional football players, let's not lull ourselves into complacency. When's the last time you saw a black NFL kicker or punter?
There are even geographical disparities. Not a single player in the NHL's history can boast of having been born and raised in Hawaii, Louisiana or Mississippi. Geographical disparities are not only limited to ice hockey. The population statistics for North and South Dakota, Iowa, Maine, Montana and Vermont show that not even 1 percent of their population is black. In states such as Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, blacks are overrepresented. When such racial disparities were found in schooling, the remedy was busing. I'll tell you one thing; I'm not moving to Montana. It's too cold.
Geographical disparities don't only apply to the U.S. Historically, none of the world's greatest seamen has been born and raised in a Himalayan nation, such as Nepal and Bhutan, or a sub-Saharan nation of Africa. They mostly have been from Scandinavia, other parts of Europe, East Asia or the South Pacific.
Being a man, I find another disproportionality particularly disturbing. According to a recent study conducted by Bond University in Australia, sharks are nine times likelier to attack and kill men than they are women. Such a disproportionality leads to only one conclusion: Sharks are sexist. Another disturbing sex disparity is that despite the fact that men are 50 percent of the population and so are women, men are struck by lightning six times as often as women. Of those killed by lightning, 82 percent are men. I wonder what whoever is in charge of lightning has against men.
Differences are seen by many as signs of inequality. Nobel laureate Milton Friedman put it best: "A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both." Equality in conjunction with the general rules of law is the only kind of equality conducive to liberty that can be secured without destroying liberty.
Link:
http://www.targetliberty.com/2015/08/about-jewish-violin-players.html
By Walter E. Williams
A particular act or policy might not have a discriminatory intent, but that doesn't let you off the hook. If it has a disproportionately negative impact on so-called protected classes, it is said to have a disparate impact and risks being prohibited by law. The uninformed assumption made by judges, lawyers and academics is that but for the fact of racial and sex discrimination, we all would be distributed across occupations, educational backgrounds and other socio-economic characteristics according to our percentages in the population. Such a vision is absolute nonsense. There is no evidence, anywhere, at any time, that but for the fact of discrimination, there would be proportional representation among various socio-economic characteristics. Let's look at some disproportionalities, with an eye toward discovering the causes and then deciding what to do about them.
If one were to list the world's top 30 violinists of the 20th century, at least 25 of them would be of Jewish ancestry. Another disparity is that despite the fact that Jews are less than 3 percent of the U.S. population and a mere 0.2 percent of the world's population, during the 20th century, Jews were 35 percent of American and 22 percent of the world's Nobel Prize winners. Are Jews taking violin excellence and Nobel Prizes that belong to other ethnicities? If America's diversity worshippers see underrepresentation as probative of racial discrimination, what do they propose be done about overrepresentation?
Overrepresentation may be seen as denial of opportunity. For example, blacks are 13 percent of our population but about 80 percent of professional basketball players and 65 percent of professional football players and among the highest-paid players in both sports. By stark contrast, blacks are only 2 percent of the NHL's professional ice hockey players. Basketball, football and ice hockey represent gross racial disparities and as such come nowhere close to "looking like America." Do these statistics mean that the owners of multibillion-dollar basketball and football operations are nice guys and ice hockey owners are racists? By the way, just because blacks are 65 percent of professional football players, let's not lull ourselves into complacency. When's the last time you saw a black NFL kicker or punter?
There are even geographical disparities. Not a single player in the NHL's history can boast of having been born and raised in Hawaii, Louisiana or Mississippi. Geographical disparities are not only limited to ice hockey. The population statistics for North and South Dakota, Iowa, Maine, Montana and Vermont show that not even 1 percent of their population is black. In states such as Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, blacks are overrepresented. When such racial disparities were found in schooling, the remedy was busing. I'll tell you one thing; I'm not moving to Montana. It's too cold.
Geographical disparities don't only apply to the U.S. Historically, none of the world's greatest seamen has been born and raised in a Himalayan nation, such as Nepal and Bhutan, or a sub-Saharan nation of Africa. They mostly have been from Scandinavia, other parts of Europe, East Asia or the South Pacific.
Being a man, I find another disproportionality particularly disturbing. According to a recent study conducted by Bond University in Australia, sharks are nine times likelier to attack and kill men than they are women. Such a disproportionality leads to only one conclusion: Sharks are sexist. Another disturbing sex disparity is that despite the fact that men are 50 percent of the population and so are women, men are struck by lightning six times as often as women. Of those killed by lightning, 82 percent are men. I wonder what whoever is in charge of lightning has against men.
Differences are seen by many as signs of inequality. Nobel laureate Milton Friedman put it best: "A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both." Equality in conjunction with the general rules of law is the only kind of equality conducive to liberty that can be secured without destroying liberty.
Link:
http://www.targetliberty.com/2015/08/about-jewish-violin-players.html
Thursday, August 6, 2015
American Gestapo...
SCALE OF ‘SECRET’ ARRESTS REVEALED… At least 3,500 Americans have been detained in Chicago police warehouse…
Absolutely abhorrent that this can happen nowadays. Even more abhorrent though, is that it hardly comes as a surprise.
from theguardian:
At least 3,500 Americans have been detained inside a Chicago police warehouse described by some of its arrestees as a secretive interrogation facility, newly uncovered records reveal.
Of the thousands held in the facility known as Homan Square over a decade, 82% were black. Only three received documented visits from an attorney, according to a cache of documents obtained when the Guardian sued the police.
Despite repeated denials from the Chicago police department that the warehouse is a secretive, off-the-books anomaly, the Homan Square files begin to show how the city’s most vulnerable people get lost in its criminal justice system.
People held at Homan Square have been subsequently charged with everything from “drinking alcohol on the public way” to murder. But the scale of the detentions – and the racial disparity therein – raises the prospect of major civil-rights violations.
Documents indicate the detainees are a group of disproportionately minority citizens, many accused of low-level drug crimes, faced with incriminating themselves before their arrests appeared in a booking system by which their families and attorneys might find them.
The Chicago police department has maintained – even as the Guardian reported stories of people being shackled and held for hours or even days, all without legal access – that the warehouse is not a secret facility so much as an undercover police base operating in plain sight. “There are always records of anyone who is arrested by CPD, and this is no different at Homan Square,” the police asserted ina March statement.
But an independent Guardian analysis of arrestees’ records, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, shows that Homan Square is far from normal:
Between September 2004 and June 2015, around 3,540 people were eventually charged, mostly with forms of drug possession – primarily heroin, as well as marijuana and cocaine – but also for minor infractions such as traffic violations, public urination and driving without a seatbelt.
More than 82% of the Homan Square arrests thus far disclosed – or 2,974 arrests – are of black people, while 8.5% are of white people. Chicago, according to the 2010 US census, is 33% black and 32% white.
Over two-thirds of the arrests at Homan Square thus far revealed – at least 2,522 – occurred under the tenure of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the former top aide to Barack Obama who has said of Homan Square that the police working under him “follow all the rules”.
Contained within the statistics are stories of people held at Homan Square in and under questionable circumstances:
A 42-year-old civil rights activist says he was abducted by masked officers, shackled, held on false charges and “with no food, no water, no access to the outside world” at the behest of “covert operations”. He is one of at least 118 people whom police have detained at Homan Square since the Guardian exposed the warehouse’s usage as a detention facility in February. His wife described the ordeal as feeling their family had been “lost” by the police.
One young man, held at the warehouse for 14 hours without any public listing of his whereabouts, was just shy of his 18th birthday; the courts sentenced him to community service and probation.
Another man, not included in the disclosed data, said he fled Chicago after resisting police pressure to become an informant during multiple stints inside Homan Square.
The revelations are by no means a full accounting of police detentions at Homan Square, which Chicago has owned since 1995. The records only date from late 2004 and they exclude people eventually released without charge. After months of disputing the Guardian’s reporting, the Chicago police only made detailed information available after the Guardian sued them for it. Vast amounts of data documenting the full scope of detentions and interrogations at Homan Square remain undisclosed.
But longtime civil rights lawyers who reviewed the results of the Guardian’s lawsuit condemned Chicago police and politicians for sweeping Homan Square “under the rug of denial”. The Chicago police department did not respond to a detailed list of questions seeking to clarify its own records.
“I am extremely troubled but sadly not shocked at the exceedingly broad scope and fundamentally racist nature of the unconstitutional police conduct at Homan Square that the Guardian’s most recent study documents,” said Flint Taylor, who played a major role in pressuring Emanuel and the city to create a reparations fund for victims of police torture.
“Hopefully, Chicago’s political leadership and its establishment media will finally take notice and stop collaborating to bury this story, so righteously championed by the Guardian, under the rug of denial and false ignorance.”
Read more at http://investmentwatchblog.com/scale-of-secret-arrests-revealed-at-least-3500-americans-have-been-detained-in-chicago-police-warehouse/#VcB0JchTJUM52gpv.99
Absolutely abhorrent that this can happen nowadays. Even more abhorrent though, is that it hardly comes as a surprise.
from theguardian:
At least 3,500 Americans have been detained inside a Chicago police warehouse described by some of its arrestees as a secretive interrogation facility, newly uncovered records reveal.
Of the thousands held in the facility known as Homan Square over a decade, 82% were black. Only three received documented visits from an attorney, according to a cache of documents obtained when the Guardian sued the police.
Despite repeated denials from the Chicago police department that the warehouse is a secretive, off-the-books anomaly, the Homan Square files begin to show how the city’s most vulnerable people get lost in its criminal justice system.
People held at Homan Square have been subsequently charged with everything from “drinking alcohol on the public way” to murder. But the scale of the detentions – and the racial disparity therein – raises the prospect of major civil-rights violations.
Documents indicate the detainees are a group of disproportionately minority citizens, many accused of low-level drug crimes, faced with incriminating themselves before their arrests appeared in a booking system by which their families and attorneys might find them.
The Chicago police department has maintained – even as the Guardian reported stories of people being shackled and held for hours or even days, all without legal access – that the warehouse is not a secret facility so much as an undercover police base operating in plain sight. “There are always records of anyone who is arrested by CPD, and this is no different at Homan Square,” the police asserted ina March statement.
But an independent Guardian analysis of arrestees’ records, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, shows that Homan Square is far from normal:
Between September 2004 and June 2015, around 3,540 people were eventually charged, mostly with forms of drug possession – primarily heroin, as well as marijuana and cocaine – but also for minor infractions such as traffic violations, public urination and driving without a seatbelt.
More than 82% of the Homan Square arrests thus far disclosed – or 2,974 arrests – are of black people, while 8.5% are of white people. Chicago, according to the 2010 US census, is 33% black and 32% white.
Over two-thirds of the arrests at Homan Square thus far revealed – at least 2,522 – occurred under the tenure of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the former top aide to Barack Obama who has said of Homan Square that the police working under him “follow all the rules”.
Contained within the statistics are stories of people held at Homan Square in and under questionable circumstances:
A 42-year-old civil rights activist says he was abducted by masked officers, shackled, held on false charges and “with no food, no water, no access to the outside world” at the behest of “covert operations”. He is one of at least 118 people whom police have detained at Homan Square since the Guardian exposed the warehouse’s usage as a detention facility in February. His wife described the ordeal as feeling their family had been “lost” by the police.
One young man, held at the warehouse for 14 hours without any public listing of his whereabouts, was just shy of his 18th birthday; the courts sentenced him to community service and probation.
Another man, not included in the disclosed data, said he fled Chicago after resisting police pressure to become an informant during multiple stints inside Homan Square.
The revelations are by no means a full accounting of police detentions at Homan Square, which Chicago has owned since 1995. The records only date from late 2004 and they exclude people eventually released without charge. After months of disputing the Guardian’s reporting, the Chicago police only made detailed information available after the Guardian sued them for it. Vast amounts of data documenting the full scope of detentions and interrogations at Homan Square remain undisclosed.
But longtime civil rights lawyers who reviewed the results of the Guardian’s lawsuit condemned Chicago police and politicians for sweeping Homan Square “under the rug of denial”. The Chicago police department did not respond to a detailed list of questions seeking to clarify its own records.
“I am extremely troubled but sadly not shocked at the exceedingly broad scope and fundamentally racist nature of the unconstitutional police conduct at Homan Square that the Guardian’s most recent study documents,” said Flint Taylor, who played a major role in pressuring Emanuel and the city to create a reparations fund for victims of police torture.
“Hopefully, Chicago’s political leadership and its establishment media will finally take notice and stop collaborating to bury this story, so righteously championed by the Guardian, under the rug of denial and false ignorance.”
Read more at http://investmentwatchblog.com/scale-of-secret-arrests-revealed-at-least-3500-americans-have-been-detained-in-chicago-police-warehouse/#VcB0JchTJUM52gpv.99
"...increasing numbers of college students are accepting “post-birth abortion,” with some even saying four- or five-year-old children could be killed because they supposedly aren’t yet “self-aware.” But one might ask these culture-of-death disciples: Once respect for life is thoroughly undermined, do you really think having more cells than a five-year-old will keep you safe?"
As Planned Parenthood Sells Baby Parts, It Schemes to Avoid Legal Consequences
Written by Selwyn Duke
“Oh, look, here’s some organs for you,” said the “doctor” in the video. “They’re all attached. Here’s a stomach, heart, kidney, adrenal…,” she continued, talking casually like a butcher asking a customer what he’d like for tonight’s dinner. Of course, at issue were the body parts of, as the abortionist herself put it, “a baby.”
These are just a few of the stomach-turning details in the fourth video released by the The Center for Medical Progress, which has been documenting Planned Parenthood’s selling of murdered babies' body parts. As the group (which has since released a fifth video as well) describes it, the fourth video shows the abortionist “negotiating a fetal body parts deal, agreeing multiple times to illicit pricing per body part harvested, and suggesting ways to avoid legal consequences.” This makes it harder for Planned Parenthood (PP) to claim it didn’t know it was violating the law.
ULINE Shipping Supplies
Huge Catalog! Over 29,000 Products. Same Day Shipping from 11 Locations
www.ULINE.com
The abortionist is Dr. Savita Ginde, vice-president and medical director of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains (PPRM). Speaking with cold detachment, Ginde, reports The Blaze,
is seen sitting down with two actors who posed as tissue buyers before taking them into a pathological laboratory, where she is seen sifting through aborted fetal organs and parts to presumably show the buyers what’s available.
“Oh, look, here’s some organs for you. They’re all attached. Here’s a stomach, heart, kidney, adrenal,” Ginde says in the footage, while parsing through the fetal remains. “I don’t know what else is in there.”
A medical assistant adds, “I don’t see the legs. Did you see any legs?”
Upon finding the legs the assistant can be heard saying, “Another boy” (video below).
Breitbart provides more sordid details, writing:
In this new video there are more scenes in the pathology lab where Planned Parenthood personnel [are] picking through body parts in a petri dish. At one point there is a cracking sound and a medical assistant says it’s the cracking of the baby’s skull.
Dr. Ginde laughs and says, “It’s a baby.”
Referring to the value of an intact heart laying [sic] in the dish, a medical assistant is heard to say, “five stars.”
Whether or not PP actually knows the “value” of a person, it certainly knows the prices. As Breitbart also reported, “In a previous video Ginde is caught talking about the prices of intact body parts and, looking at the body of a child in a petri dish, concluded that the pieces sold separately would run to $200-$300.”
Continuing with the mercenary theme, Ginde can also be heard in the video responding to a buyer’s question with, “I think a per-item [body part] thing works a little better, just because we can see how much we can get out of it.”
The video also puts the lie to PP’s claims of legally clean hands. As LifeNews relates:
Ginde also suggests ways for Planned Parenthood to cover-up its criminal and public relations liability for the sale of aborted body parts. “Putting it under ‘research’ gives us a little bit of an overhang over the whole thing,” Ginde remarks. “If you have someone in a really anti state who’s going to be doing this for you, they’re probably going to get caught.”
Ginde implies that PPRM’s lawyer, Kevin Paul, is helping the affiliate skirt the fetal tissue law: “He’s got it figured out that he knows that even if, because we talked to him in the beginning, you know, we were like, ‘We don’t want to get called on,’ you know, ‘selling fetal parts across states.’” The buyers ask, “And you feel confident that they’re building those layers?” to which Ginde replies, “I’m confident that our Legal will make sure we’re not put in that situation.”
The video is also telling in other ways. Note that Ginde and her assistant said, “It’s a baby” and “Another boy,” not “It’s an unviable tissue mass” and “Another lump of cells” (in this sense, Ginde is a lump of cells, too, just a larger one). It’s clear these abortionists are under no illusions about what they’re doing — the “unviable tissue mass” line is just marketing. Similarly, the “Who’s to say when a fetus becomes human?” question is not meant to inspire analytical thought, but to cloud thinking.
For a proper analysis informs that if we’re to contend human life begins at any time after conception, we’re confronted with a series of refutative questions: Whatever the month cited, what week of that month? What day of that week? What hour of that day and what minute of that hour?
Then, what second of that minute?
Claiming post-conception humanization is to assert that one second the “it” within the womb is just an unviable tissue mass, but the next second he’s a human being. How does this make sense? By what magic does this transition occur?
But the second of conception is a different matter. The individual’s complete DNA is then present; the spark of life has occurred. And like a fire sparked after the necessary ingredients — flammable materials and the requisite heat energy — come together, the person will grow as long as he’s fed. And he’ll live until he naturally burns out. Or until he’s snuffed out.
Yet such arguments say nothing to the world’s Dr. Gindes. Pro-life activists long labored under the assumption that if they could just convince the “other side” that human life is at stake, the day will have been won. Once again, though, Ginde, her assistant, and many, many others know abortion kills a person. They just don’t care.
This mentality’s prevalence was illustrated for me long ago. As a high-school sophomore, I had a very interesting English teacher who’d sometimes pose thought-provoking questions to the class. One day he asked (I’m paraphrasing): “If you could push a button and get a million dollars, but a little old Chinese man living in the woods — with no friends or family — would die, would you push the button?”
Approximately a third of the students raised their hands indicating they would.
More people than we might suppose have the soul of a sociopath, while many others could be convenience killers. But is this really so surprising given our age’s spirit? After all, if we have no souls as our secular elites inform, then what are we but some pounds of chemicals and water — organic robots? And what could be wrong with terminating an inconvenient robot’s function (not to mention that absent God and His Truth, there can be no right or wrong)? Ginde and her ilk can be cold-blooded killers partially because a little knowledge is dangerous: They know the physical nature of what’s being aborted, but not the true nature of the baby. They know the science but not the soul.
There is such a thing as “philosophical fact,” and the idea we’re mere “lumps of cells” is undeniably a corollary of atheism. And the ideas we spread matter. As I reported last year, increasing numbers of college students are accepting “post-birth abortion,” with some even saying four- or five-year-old children could be killed because they supposedly aren’t yet “self-aware.” But one might ask these culture-of-death disciples: Once respect for life is thoroughly undermined, do you really think having more cells than a five-year-old will keep you safe?
Link:
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/crime/item/21367-as-planned-parenthood-sells-baby-parts-it-schemes-to-avoid-legal-consequences
Written by Selwyn Duke
“Oh, look, here’s some organs for you,” said the “doctor” in the video. “They’re all attached. Here’s a stomach, heart, kidney, adrenal…,” she continued, talking casually like a butcher asking a customer what he’d like for tonight’s dinner. Of course, at issue were the body parts of, as the abortionist herself put it, “a baby.”
These are just a few of the stomach-turning details in the fourth video released by the The Center for Medical Progress, which has been documenting Planned Parenthood’s selling of murdered babies' body parts. As the group (which has since released a fifth video as well) describes it, the fourth video shows the abortionist “negotiating a fetal body parts deal, agreeing multiple times to illicit pricing per body part harvested, and suggesting ways to avoid legal consequences.” This makes it harder for Planned Parenthood (PP) to claim it didn’t know it was violating the law.
ULINE Shipping Supplies
Huge Catalog! Over 29,000 Products. Same Day Shipping from 11 Locations
www.ULINE.com
The abortionist is Dr. Savita Ginde, vice-president and medical director of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains (PPRM). Speaking with cold detachment, Ginde, reports The Blaze,
is seen sitting down with two actors who posed as tissue buyers before taking them into a pathological laboratory, where she is seen sifting through aborted fetal organs and parts to presumably show the buyers what’s available.
“Oh, look, here’s some organs for you. They’re all attached. Here’s a stomach, heart, kidney, adrenal,” Ginde says in the footage, while parsing through the fetal remains. “I don’t know what else is in there.”
A medical assistant adds, “I don’t see the legs. Did you see any legs?”
Upon finding the legs the assistant can be heard saying, “Another boy” (video below).
Breitbart provides more sordid details, writing:
In this new video there are more scenes in the pathology lab where Planned Parenthood personnel [are] picking through body parts in a petri dish. At one point there is a cracking sound and a medical assistant says it’s the cracking of the baby’s skull.
Dr. Ginde laughs and says, “It’s a baby.”
Referring to the value of an intact heart laying [sic] in the dish, a medical assistant is heard to say, “five stars.”
Whether or not PP actually knows the “value” of a person, it certainly knows the prices. As Breitbart also reported, “In a previous video Ginde is caught talking about the prices of intact body parts and, looking at the body of a child in a petri dish, concluded that the pieces sold separately would run to $200-$300.”
Continuing with the mercenary theme, Ginde can also be heard in the video responding to a buyer’s question with, “I think a per-item [body part] thing works a little better, just because we can see how much we can get out of it.”
The video also puts the lie to PP’s claims of legally clean hands. As LifeNews relates:
Ginde also suggests ways for Planned Parenthood to cover-up its criminal and public relations liability for the sale of aborted body parts. “Putting it under ‘research’ gives us a little bit of an overhang over the whole thing,” Ginde remarks. “If you have someone in a really anti state who’s going to be doing this for you, they’re probably going to get caught.”
Ginde implies that PPRM’s lawyer, Kevin Paul, is helping the affiliate skirt the fetal tissue law: “He’s got it figured out that he knows that even if, because we talked to him in the beginning, you know, we were like, ‘We don’t want to get called on,’ you know, ‘selling fetal parts across states.’” The buyers ask, “And you feel confident that they’re building those layers?” to which Ginde replies, “I’m confident that our Legal will make sure we’re not put in that situation.”
The video is also telling in other ways. Note that Ginde and her assistant said, “It’s a baby” and “Another boy,” not “It’s an unviable tissue mass” and “Another lump of cells” (in this sense, Ginde is a lump of cells, too, just a larger one). It’s clear these abortionists are under no illusions about what they’re doing — the “unviable tissue mass” line is just marketing. Similarly, the “Who’s to say when a fetus becomes human?” question is not meant to inspire analytical thought, but to cloud thinking.
For a proper analysis informs that if we’re to contend human life begins at any time after conception, we’re confronted with a series of refutative questions: Whatever the month cited, what week of that month? What day of that week? What hour of that day and what minute of that hour?
Then, what second of that minute?
Claiming post-conception humanization is to assert that one second the “it” within the womb is just an unviable tissue mass, but the next second he’s a human being. How does this make sense? By what magic does this transition occur?
But the second of conception is a different matter. The individual’s complete DNA is then present; the spark of life has occurred. And like a fire sparked after the necessary ingredients — flammable materials and the requisite heat energy — come together, the person will grow as long as he’s fed. And he’ll live until he naturally burns out. Or until he’s snuffed out.
Yet such arguments say nothing to the world’s Dr. Gindes. Pro-life activists long labored under the assumption that if they could just convince the “other side” that human life is at stake, the day will have been won. Once again, though, Ginde, her assistant, and many, many others know abortion kills a person. They just don’t care.
This mentality’s prevalence was illustrated for me long ago. As a high-school sophomore, I had a very interesting English teacher who’d sometimes pose thought-provoking questions to the class. One day he asked (I’m paraphrasing): “If you could push a button and get a million dollars, but a little old Chinese man living in the woods — with no friends or family — would die, would you push the button?”
Approximately a third of the students raised their hands indicating they would.
More people than we might suppose have the soul of a sociopath, while many others could be convenience killers. But is this really so surprising given our age’s spirit? After all, if we have no souls as our secular elites inform, then what are we but some pounds of chemicals and water — organic robots? And what could be wrong with terminating an inconvenient robot’s function (not to mention that absent God and His Truth, there can be no right or wrong)? Ginde and her ilk can be cold-blooded killers partially because a little knowledge is dangerous: They know the physical nature of what’s being aborted, but not the true nature of the baby. They know the science but not the soul.
There is such a thing as “philosophical fact,” and the idea we’re mere “lumps of cells” is undeniably a corollary of atheism. And the ideas we spread matter. As I reported last year, increasing numbers of college students are accepting “post-birth abortion,” with some even saying four- or five-year-old children could be killed because they supposedly aren’t yet “self-aware.” But one might ask these culture-of-death disciples: Once respect for life is thoroughly undermined, do you really think having more cells than a five-year-old will keep you safe?
Link:
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/crime/item/21367-as-planned-parenthood-sells-baby-parts-it-schemes-to-avoid-legal-consequences
Bill Gates on Cash...
Bill Gates Attacks Cash
When you have this guy feeling sorry for you because you have to carry cash around, it is time to double the amount of money and gold tucked under your bed.
Cash and gold are the enemy of the tracking state. Thus, they are both mediums of exchange that are inconvenient for governments, not individuals.
Link:
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2015/08/bill-gates-attacks-cash.html
When you have this guy feeling sorry for you because you have to carry cash around, it is time to double the amount of money and gold tucked under your bed.
Cash and gold are the enemy of the tracking state. Thus, they are both mediums of exchange that are inconvenient for governments, not individuals.
Link:
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2015/08/bill-gates-attacks-cash.html
Dwight Eisenhower said: “The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”
Thank God for the Deaths of 200,000 Civilians
Laurence M. Vance
Actually, the article in the War Street Journal was titled “Thank God for the Atomic Bomb.” [subscription required to read; let me know if you can find it online somewhere] A critique of the article is here. Dwight Eisenhower said: “The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing,” and he was, of course, correct, but even if Japan was not ready to surrender, I would say that it is never right, or just, or moral to kill 200,000 civilians to possibly prevent the deaths of an unknown number of soldiers. And see also my article “Nuclear Christians.”
Read more here:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/thank-god-for-the-deaths-of-200000-civilians/
Laurence M. Vance
Actually, the article in the War Street Journal was titled “Thank God for the Atomic Bomb.” [subscription required to read; let me know if you can find it online somewhere] A critique of the article is here. Dwight Eisenhower said: “The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing,” and he was, of course, correct, but even if Japan was not ready to surrender, I would say that it is never right, or just, or moral to kill 200,000 civilians to possibly prevent the deaths of an unknown number of soldiers. And see also my article “Nuclear Christians.”
Read more here:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/thank-god-for-the-deaths-of-200000-civilians/
Endless war...
US Military-Industrial Complex Needs Russia as an Enemy
Press TV
The US military-industrial complex always wants to have an enemy and now it seeks to use Russia as an adversary, says former American presidential candidate Ron Paul.
“The people have to have the propaganda convert them into someone they hate, so they can hate,” Paul said on Friday, during the 2015 YAL National Convention in Washington, DC.
The former Texas congressman said the US is conducting a propaganda campaign aimed at spreading disinformation about issues like the crisis in Ukraine to show Russia as an enemy.
“All of a sudden the Cold War is over, and there’s a full explanation of what’s going on in Ukraine, and it’s not all the Russians’ fault, I tell you,” Paul said. “But we have to have an enemy to keep on churning this.”
The US military-industrial complex does not “deliberately say, well this started a war, but this started some aggravation which ended up in a war much bigger.”
Head of the US Special Operations Command General Joseph Votel has described Russia as an “existential threat” to the United States.
Votel told Fox News recently that Russia is trying to “create these frozen conflicts and create situations that are very, very difficult to resolve along their border.”
US Army General Mark Milley has also warned about Russia’s nuclear capability, saying it is the only country on earth that could destroy the United States.
The ties between Russia and the United States deteriorated after US-backed forces ousted Ukraine’s elected President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014.
The US and its allies accuse Moscow of sending troops into eastern Ukraine in support of the pro-Russian forces. Moscow has long denied involvement in Ukraine’s crisis.
On Friday, Paul also criticized the US government for waging what he described as “nonsense wars”.
“Why do we allow our government to push us around, and take away our liberties, and over tax us, and send us off to nonsense wars?”
In April, Paul wrote in an article that “the new ‘threats’ that are being hyped bring big profits to military contractors and the network of think tanks they pay to produce pro-war propaganda.”
The Pentagon has signed deals worth over $850 million with defense contracting companies. Raytheon, for instance, received $700 million of the total amount just to install new equipment in a Cold War-era nuclear bunker.
Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/08/no_author/the-military-industrial-complex/
Press TV
The US military-industrial complex always wants to have an enemy and now it seeks to use Russia as an adversary, says former American presidential candidate Ron Paul.
“The people have to have the propaganda convert them into someone they hate, so they can hate,” Paul said on Friday, during the 2015 YAL National Convention in Washington, DC.
The former Texas congressman said the US is conducting a propaganda campaign aimed at spreading disinformation about issues like the crisis in Ukraine to show Russia as an enemy.
“All of a sudden the Cold War is over, and there’s a full explanation of what’s going on in Ukraine, and it’s not all the Russians’ fault, I tell you,” Paul said. “But we have to have an enemy to keep on churning this.”
The US military-industrial complex does not “deliberately say, well this started a war, but this started some aggravation which ended up in a war much bigger.”
Head of the US Special Operations Command General Joseph Votel has described Russia as an “existential threat” to the United States.
Votel told Fox News recently that Russia is trying to “create these frozen conflicts and create situations that are very, very difficult to resolve along their border.”
US Army General Mark Milley has also warned about Russia’s nuclear capability, saying it is the only country on earth that could destroy the United States.
The ties between Russia and the United States deteriorated after US-backed forces ousted Ukraine’s elected President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014.
The US and its allies accuse Moscow of sending troops into eastern Ukraine in support of the pro-Russian forces. Moscow has long denied involvement in Ukraine’s crisis.
On Friday, Paul also criticized the US government for waging what he described as “nonsense wars”.
“Why do we allow our government to push us around, and take away our liberties, and over tax us, and send us off to nonsense wars?”
In April, Paul wrote in an article that “the new ‘threats’ that are being hyped bring big profits to military contractors and the network of think tanks they pay to produce pro-war propaganda.”
The Pentagon has signed deals worth over $850 million with defense contracting companies. Raytheon, for instance, received $700 million of the total amount just to install new equipment in a Cold War-era nuclear bunker.
Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/08/no_author/the-military-industrial-complex/
"The tapes are the abortionists’ nightmare, because in their wanton slaughter they have let slip the utter humanity of their victims. And the souls of the Holy Innocents who have been slaughtered before drawing their first breaths are no doubt praying for the conversion of the hearts and the salvation of the souls of those who killed them."
The Slaughter of Babies
By Andrew P. Napolitano
The recent broadcast of videotapes taken of persons employed at Planned Parenthood — the prolific and notorious abortion provider — has brought the issue of abortion to the national consciousness again and front and center to the Republican presidential primary campaign. The tapes were made secretly by a pro-life group determined to show to the world the dark side of Planned Parenthood’s use of federal funds.
What the world saw was terrifying and damning. The tapes are difficult to watch, just as any discussion of human slaughter is difficult to watch. If you have seen these tapes, you witnessed physicians and others talking about the profits Planned Parenthood is making in the sale of baby body parts, even though such sales are criminal under federal law.
The cavalier demeanor of those who profit from this slaughter is chilling, and the moral punch in the nose to the Democratic Party is excruciating. That’s because Planned Parenthood is virtually a branch of the Democratic Party. It has a lock on the federal treasury to the tune of $500 million per year. It pays for or performs more than 325,000 abortions a year, which is about one-third of all abortions in America. It contributes heavily to the campaigns of Democratic office seekers. You can see the cycle.
Even though federal law has prohibited the use of federal funds for abortions for nearly 18 years, money is fungible. The Planned Parenthood folks may be baby killers, but they are not dumb. They know how to dedicate federal funds for maternal health and free up maternal health funds for the slaughter of babies — and make it all look legal.
The reason these tapes are so upsetting to the Democrats, and to some Republicans as well, is that they have convinced themselves that the fetus in the womb is not a person. Yet, watching their abortionists graphically discuss the monetary value of body parts and the physical manipulation of fully formed babies so as to maximize the harvesting of their organs ironically humanizes the body parts and the babies from which the parts came, and is thus so upsetting to those who deny fetal personhood.
But this is more than upsetting — it seriously challenges the underlying commitment of today’s Democratic Party that the fetus is not a person. This is, of course, the central holding of the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade. Just as in Dred Scott v. Sandford, wherein the court held in 1857 that African-Americans were not persons, so did Roe v. Wade make that holding for fetuses.
And the stated reason for the holding was the absence of consensus in 1973 among philosophers, physicians, theologians and scientists about when life begins. Yet, the duty of the court is to say what the Constitution means, not to count noses. Roe is the only Supreme Court decision in history grounded on the absence of discernible consensus among the populace.
Is the fetus in the womb a person? Before answering this, consider the depravity to which we have sunk due to its legal non-personhood. The slaughter of babies, some where it is legal in their ninth month of gestation, the sale of their body parts, and the taxpayer financing of this have become so morose that even their staunchest supporters cannot confront these realities publicly for fear of losing political support.
Is the fetus in the womb a person? Before answering this, consider the danger of a Supreme Court possessing the power to declare any human offspring to be a non-person. Two months ago, we witnessed the spectacle of the court finding four plain English words — “established by the States” — to be ambiguous and, 21 pages later, telling us that legally those words do not mean what they say. If the court can change the meaning of ordinary words, can it change the meaning of life?
It has.
Is the fetus in the womb a person? Of course it is. It has two fully human parents and the fully actualizable human genome to achieve post-natal existence. The single-cell zygote in the mother’s womb came from her flesh and cannot be anything but a human person. For 600 years, the law has permitted the fetus in the womb to inherit property. How could that be if the fetus were not a human person? If you kill a pregnant woman and the fetus dies, you can be charged with the murder of two persons. If the reason for government in the first place is to protect rights, the government’s prime obligation is to protect the rights of persons to live.
The Democrats are not alone at fault here. In the first six years of the presidency of George W. Bush, when the Republicans controlled the White House and the Congress, numerous efforts were made to introduce a simple one-line statute: “The fetus in the womb shall be, for all constitutional and legal purposes, a person.” Republican congressional leaders kept all such proposals from being voted upon.
But seeing is believing. The tapes are the abortionists’ nightmare, because in their wanton slaughter they have let slip the utter humanity of their victims. And the souls of the Holy Innocents who have been slaughtered before drawing their first breaths are no doubt praying for the conversion of the hearts and the salvation of the souls of those who killed them.
Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/08/andrew-p-napolitano/the-slaughter-of-babes/
By Andrew P. Napolitano
The recent broadcast of videotapes taken of persons employed at Planned Parenthood — the prolific and notorious abortion provider — has brought the issue of abortion to the national consciousness again and front and center to the Republican presidential primary campaign. The tapes were made secretly by a pro-life group determined to show to the world the dark side of Planned Parenthood’s use of federal funds.
What the world saw was terrifying and damning. The tapes are difficult to watch, just as any discussion of human slaughter is difficult to watch. If you have seen these tapes, you witnessed physicians and others talking about the profits Planned Parenthood is making in the sale of baby body parts, even though such sales are criminal under federal law.
The cavalier demeanor of those who profit from this slaughter is chilling, and the moral punch in the nose to the Democratic Party is excruciating. That’s because Planned Parenthood is virtually a branch of the Democratic Party. It has a lock on the federal treasury to the tune of $500 million per year. It pays for or performs more than 325,000 abortions a year, which is about one-third of all abortions in America. It contributes heavily to the campaigns of Democratic office seekers. You can see the cycle.
Even though federal law has prohibited the use of federal funds for abortions for nearly 18 years, money is fungible. The Planned Parenthood folks may be baby killers, but they are not dumb. They know how to dedicate federal funds for maternal health and free up maternal health funds for the slaughter of babies — and make it all look legal.
The reason these tapes are so upsetting to the Democrats, and to some Republicans as well, is that they have convinced themselves that the fetus in the womb is not a person. Yet, watching their abortionists graphically discuss the monetary value of body parts and the physical manipulation of fully formed babies so as to maximize the harvesting of their organs ironically humanizes the body parts and the babies from which the parts came, and is thus so upsetting to those who deny fetal personhood.
But this is more than upsetting — it seriously challenges the underlying commitment of today’s Democratic Party that the fetus is not a person. This is, of course, the central holding of the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade. Just as in Dred Scott v. Sandford, wherein the court held in 1857 that African-Americans were not persons, so did Roe v. Wade make that holding for fetuses.
And the stated reason for the holding was the absence of consensus in 1973 among philosophers, physicians, theologians and scientists about when life begins. Yet, the duty of the court is to say what the Constitution means, not to count noses. Roe is the only Supreme Court decision in history grounded on the absence of discernible consensus among the populace.
Is the fetus in the womb a person? Before answering this, consider the depravity to which we have sunk due to its legal non-personhood. The slaughter of babies, some where it is legal in their ninth month of gestation, the sale of their body parts, and the taxpayer financing of this have become so morose that even their staunchest supporters cannot confront these realities publicly for fear of losing political support.
Is the fetus in the womb a person? Before answering this, consider the danger of a Supreme Court possessing the power to declare any human offspring to be a non-person. Two months ago, we witnessed the spectacle of the court finding four plain English words — “established by the States” — to be ambiguous and, 21 pages later, telling us that legally those words do not mean what they say. If the court can change the meaning of ordinary words, can it change the meaning of life?
It has.
Is the fetus in the womb a person? Of course it is. It has two fully human parents and the fully actualizable human genome to achieve post-natal existence. The single-cell zygote in the mother’s womb came from her flesh and cannot be anything but a human person. For 600 years, the law has permitted the fetus in the womb to inherit property. How could that be if the fetus were not a human person? If you kill a pregnant woman and the fetus dies, you can be charged with the murder of two persons. If the reason for government in the first place is to protect rights, the government’s prime obligation is to protect the rights of persons to live.
The Democrats are not alone at fault here. In the first six years of the presidency of George W. Bush, when the Republicans controlled the White House and the Congress, numerous efforts were made to introduce a simple one-line statute: “The fetus in the womb shall be, for all constitutional and legal purposes, a person.” Republican congressional leaders kept all such proposals from being voted upon.
But seeing is believing. The tapes are the abortionists’ nightmare, because in their wanton slaughter they have let slip the utter humanity of their victims. And the souls of the Holy Innocents who have been slaughtered before drawing their first breaths are no doubt praying for the conversion of the hearts and the salvation of the souls of those who killed them.
Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/08/andrew-p-napolitano/the-slaughter-of-babes/
Wednesday, August 5, 2015
Ask the question...
Two Questions for the GOP Debate
by Jacob G. Hornberger
I wish the mainstream press would ask the following two questions to the GOP presidential candidates in Thursday’s debate:
Given more than 40 years of death, destruction, and failure in the war on drugs, as president will you seek a repeal of all drug laws and will you immediately pardon all federal drug offenders?
As president, will you reject any attempt by the CIA, including on grounds of “national security,” to delay the scheduled release by the National Archives in October 2017 of the records relating to the JFK assassination that the CIA has kept secret from the American people for more than 50 years?
Rationale for Question 1:
It is an indisputable fact that the war on drugs has failed to achieve a drug-free society. If failure was all there was to the matter, that would be one thing. But the other indisputable fact is that the drug war has produced horrific adverse consequences.
Drug laws have caused the price of drugs to skyrocket, which has made it more difficult for addicts to purchase the drugs they’re addicted to. So, they have resorted to robberies, thefts, and muggings to get the money to pay for their drugs.
Drug laws have brought soaring profits for drug dealers, which has tempted regular people, including law-enforcement officers, to get into the drug trade.
Drug laws have brought corruption in for the form of bribes of judges, prosecutors, and law-enforcement personnel.
Drug laws have brought asset-forfeiture laws into existence, enabling cops to steal money from innocent people in order to feather their own nests.
Drug laws have brought mandatory-minimum sentences, which have consigned drug users to long prison terms, even life in prison without possibility of parole.
Drug laws have produced massive infringements on civil liberties and personal and financial privacy.
Drug laws have brought into existence drug gangs and drug cartels, along with gang wars, assassinations, and militarization of the police.
Drug laws have worsened addiction by discouraging people from openly seeking treatment, for fear of being busted by a snitch.
Drug laws have brought about the disappearance and deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people.
Drug laws have enabled bigoted cops to abuse, insult, harass, humiliate, and frame racial minorities.
Drug laws have destroyed the core principle of freedom — that is, the fundamental, God-given right of people to live their lives any way they want so long as their conduct is peaceful.
Rationale for Question #2:
In the aftermath of the JFK assassination, officials in the national-security branch of the federal government, including the Pentagon and the CIA, did everything they could to keep matters secret, on grounds of “national security.”
Some of that secrecy was lifted during the 1970s when the House Select Committee on Assassinations, reinvestigating the Kennedy assassination, rejected the official finding of the Warren Commission that Kennedy had been killed by a lone nut. As a result of the lifting of some of the secrecy, people began discovering the shenanigans surrounding Kennedy’s autopsy, shenanigans that are detailed in FFF’s ebook The Kennedy Autopsy by Jacob Hornberger.
It was during the House Select Committee investigation when the CIA intentionally obstructed efforts to investigate the agency, especially with respect to a CIA agent named George Joannides who, unbeknownst to the committee, had been working with and funding a New Orleans group that immediately began advertising the communist bona fides of Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin, immediately after the assassination. See “Who Was George Joannides and Why Is His Story Important?” by Jefferson Morley.
After Oliver Stone’s movie JFK was released in 1991, there was an enormous public outcry over the continued secrecy by the national-security branch of the government on matters relating to the Kennedy assassination. As a result of that outcry, Congress enacted a law ordering the release of all Kennedy-assassination related records. The Assassination Records Review Board was formed to ensure that all federal agencies complied with the law.
As a result of ARRB’s work, the massive amount of circumstantial evidence that was disclosed to the public pointed in the direction of a Cold War regime-change operation at the hands of the national-security establishment. See FFF’s ebooks JFK’s War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated by Douglas P. Horne, who served on the staff of the ARRB, and Regime Change: The JFK Assassination by Jacob G. Hornberger.
During and after the term of the ARRB, the CIA continued to keep records relating to the assassination secret. Many of the still-secret records are being held by the National Archives, which has publicly announced that it intends to disclose them to the public in October 2017, pursuant to the law that Congress enacted in the aftermath of Stone’s movie. See “Almost 3,600 JFK Records at National Archives Sealed Until 2017” by Jefferson Morley.
But there is one condition: the law permits the CIA to seek another extension of time for continued secrecy by pleading “national security,” the two-word term that has become a license for wrongdoing by the national-security branch of the government. If the remaining records are incriminatory, which is a distinct possibility, it is a virtual certainty that the CIA will seek continued secrecy. See the recent article at Politico “Why the Last of the JFK Files Could Embarrass the CIA” by Bryan Bender.
Who has the authority to grant such an extension? The president of the United States.
Therefore, the American people should know where all the candidates stand on this issue before the election: Will the candidate unconditionally support the release of the remaining records or will he defer to the CIA if it pleads for continued secrecy on grounds of “national security”?
Link:
http://fff.org/2015/08/05/two-questions-gop-debate/
by Jacob G. Hornberger
I wish the mainstream press would ask the following two questions to the GOP presidential candidates in Thursday’s debate:
Given more than 40 years of death, destruction, and failure in the war on drugs, as president will you seek a repeal of all drug laws and will you immediately pardon all federal drug offenders?
As president, will you reject any attempt by the CIA, including on grounds of “national security,” to delay the scheduled release by the National Archives in October 2017 of the records relating to the JFK assassination that the CIA has kept secret from the American people for more than 50 years?
Rationale for Question 1:
It is an indisputable fact that the war on drugs has failed to achieve a drug-free society. If failure was all there was to the matter, that would be one thing. But the other indisputable fact is that the drug war has produced horrific adverse consequences.
Drug laws have caused the price of drugs to skyrocket, which has made it more difficult for addicts to purchase the drugs they’re addicted to. So, they have resorted to robberies, thefts, and muggings to get the money to pay for their drugs.
Drug laws have brought soaring profits for drug dealers, which has tempted regular people, including law-enforcement officers, to get into the drug trade.
Drug laws have brought corruption in for the form of bribes of judges, prosecutors, and law-enforcement personnel.
Drug laws have brought asset-forfeiture laws into existence, enabling cops to steal money from innocent people in order to feather their own nests.
Drug laws have brought mandatory-minimum sentences, which have consigned drug users to long prison terms, even life in prison without possibility of parole.
Drug laws have produced massive infringements on civil liberties and personal and financial privacy.
Drug laws have brought into existence drug gangs and drug cartels, along with gang wars, assassinations, and militarization of the police.
Drug laws have worsened addiction by discouraging people from openly seeking treatment, for fear of being busted by a snitch.
Drug laws have brought about the disappearance and deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people.
Drug laws have enabled bigoted cops to abuse, insult, harass, humiliate, and frame racial minorities.
Drug laws have destroyed the core principle of freedom — that is, the fundamental, God-given right of people to live their lives any way they want so long as their conduct is peaceful.
Rationale for Question #2:
In the aftermath of the JFK assassination, officials in the national-security branch of the federal government, including the Pentagon and the CIA, did everything they could to keep matters secret, on grounds of “national security.”
Some of that secrecy was lifted during the 1970s when the House Select Committee on Assassinations, reinvestigating the Kennedy assassination, rejected the official finding of the Warren Commission that Kennedy had been killed by a lone nut. As a result of the lifting of some of the secrecy, people began discovering the shenanigans surrounding Kennedy’s autopsy, shenanigans that are detailed in FFF’s ebook The Kennedy Autopsy by Jacob Hornberger.
It was during the House Select Committee investigation when the CIA intentionally obstructed efforts to investigate the agency, especially with respect to a CIA agent named George Joannides who, unbeknownst to the committee, had been working with and funding a New Orleans group that immediately began advertising the communist bona fides of Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin, immediately after the assassination. See “Who Was George Joannides and Why Is His Story Important?” by Jefferson Morley.
After Oliver Stone’s movie JFK was released in 1991, there was an enormous public outcry over the continued secrecy by the national-security branch of the government on matters relating to the Kennedy assassination. As a result of that outcry, Congress enacted a law ordering the release of all Kennedy-assassination related records. The Assassination Records Review Board was formed to ensure that all federal agencies complied with the law.
As a result of ARRB’s work, the massive amount of circumstantial evidence that was disclosed to the public pointed in the direction of a Cold War regime-change operation at the hands of the national-security establishment. See FFF’s ebooks JFK’s War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated by Douglas P. Horne, who served on the staff of the ARRB, and Regime Change: The JFK Assassination by Jacob G. Hornberger.
During and after the term of the ARRB, the CIA continued to keep records relating to the assassination secret. Many of the still-secret records are being held by the National Archives, which has publicly announced that it intends to disclose them to the public in October 2017, pursuant to the law that Congress enacted in the aftermath of Stone’s movie. See “Almost 3,600 JFK Records at National Archives Sealed Until 2017” by Jefferson Morley.
But there is one condition: the law permits the CIA to seek another extension of time for continued secrecy by pleading “national security,” the two-word term that has become a license for wrongdoing by the national-security branch of the government. If the remaining records are incriminatory, which is a distinct possibility, it is a virtual certainty that the CIA will seek continued secrecy. See the recent article at Politico “Why the Last of the JFK Files Could Embarrass the CIA” by Bryan Bender.
Who has the authority to grant such an extension? The president of the United States.
Therefore, the American people should know where all the candidates stand on this issue before the election: Will the candidate unconditionally support the release of the remaining records or will he defer to the CIA if it pleads for continued secrecy on grounds of “national security”?
Link:
http://fff.org/2015/08/05/two-questions-gop-debate/
"...your retirement or pension plan is square in their sights."
A Sneaky Way to Grab Your Retirement Savings
By Mark Nestmann
With an $18 trillion debt and $97 trillion or so in unfunded liabilities, Uncle Sam is anything but flush with money. So Congress and President Obama are looking for ways to stem the flow of red ink. And your retirement or pension plan is square in their sights.
No, Congress isn’t going to confiscate your IRA or 401(k) retirement plan, although there are lots of people marketing various products and services that want you to believe that. Sensationalism sells, after all.
But as I discussed in this essay, confiscation isn’t politically feasible. Look at the numbers. More than 60 million Americans have IRAs or 401(k)s, holding nearly $6 trillion parked away for retirement. Sure, the Feds would love to get their hands on these assets. But any politician who openly advocated confiscation would face near-instant impeachment.
Instead, Congress will whittle around the edges of the Tax Code to raise some additional revenue. President Obama even wants to end tax-deductible contributions to IRAs and other pension plans once their combined account balances exceed $3.4 million. And since we’re now dealing with the “rich,” no real political obstacles to changing the rules exist.
The biggest objection that the tax-and-spenders have is that Americans in higher tax brackets get a bigger tax benefit for retirement plan contributions than anyone else. Someone in the 39.6% tax bracket saves almost $40 in income tax for each $100 contributed to a retirement plan. In contrast, someone in the 15% tax bracket only saves $15.
To fix this “problem,” the 2016 White House budget proposal creates a 28% maximum tax benefit for contributions to retirement accounts. If you’re in a 28% or lower tax bracket, nothing changes. But if you’re in a higher tax bracket, you’re out of luck. You’ll no longer receive a full tax deduction for money you contribute into a retirement plan.
That assumes that you can make a tax-deductible contribution at all. Congress has already imposed strict limitations on tax-deductible IRA contributions. If you have a retirement plan at work, you can’t deduct an IRA contribution unless you earn less than $70,000 annually. If you’re married and filing taxes jointly with your spouse, that threshold increases to $116,000.
Some in Congress want to go even further. A proposal floated last year would limit the deduction to 25%. It would even impose a 10% surtax on all contributions made by anyone in the 35% or higher tax brackets.
The White House budget also targets “back door” Roth IRA contributions. This is a strategy I’ve written about previously in our members-only Alert service. The idea is to make a non-deductible contribution to a regular IRA and then convert it into a Roth IRA. Using this technique, you can funnel up to $34,500 annually into your Roth IRA with no additional tax liability. This is a powerful strategy for high earners. It lets you bypass income limitations that otherwise apply to Roth IRA contributions. And with a Roth, there’s no further tax liability as long as you comply with the withdrawal rules. The Obama budget would put an end to this strategy by limiting Roth conversions to pre-tax dollars only.
Finally, the 2016 budget proposal targets “stretch IRAs.” Loved ones who inherit what’s left of your IRA can now “stretch” distributions over their lifetimes. In the case of a Roth IRA, your heirs can receive a lifetime tax-free income. The Obama plan would limit stretch IRAs to surviving spouses, children under the age of 18, and a few other categories. Other beneficiaries would be required to receive all IRA payments within five years of your death.
Given the fact that both houses are controlled by Republicans, I don’t anticipate any of these proposals will become law anytime soon. But I fully expect to read all matter of nonsense about how they amount to confiscation of retirement assets. They don’t. Be especially careful if someone promoting a concept called a “checkbook IRA” promises you that it will avoid confiscation in the unlikely event that Congress or the president decide to simply grab IRA assets. It won’t, for reasons I discussed in this essay.
One more point: It’s perfectly legal to target international investments in your IRA or 401(k). You can purchase real estate, precious metals, securities, and almost anything else in your plan and have the assets held outside the US.
Investing your retirement plan internationally gives you numerous benefits. These include making investments not available in the US, hedging against the US dollar, and making your assets less visible. And it’s definitely possible – we’ve helped hundreds of clients internationalize their retirement plans over the years.
Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/08/mark-nestmann/greedy-government-is-eying-yours/
By Mark Nestmann
With an $18 trillion debt and $97 trillion or so in unfunded liabilities, Uncle Sam is anything but flush with money. So Congress and President Obama are looking for ways to stem the flow of red ink. And your retirement or pension plan is square in their sights.
No, Congress isn’t going to confiscate your IRA or 401(k) retirement plan, although there are lots of people marketing various products and services that want you to believe that. Sensationalism sells, after all.
But as I discussed in this essay, confiscation isn’t politically feasible. Look at the numbers. More than 60 million Americans have IRAs or 401(k)s, holding nearly $6 trillion parked away for retirement. Sure, the Feds would love to get their hands on these assets. But any politician who openly advocated confiscation would face near-instant impeachment.
Instead, Congress will whittle around the edges of the Tax Code to raise some additional revenue. President Obama even wants to end tax-deductible contributions to IRAs and other pension plans once their combined account balances exceed $3.4 million. And since we’re now dealing with the “rich,” no real political obstacles to changing the rules exist.
The biggest objection that the tax-and-spenders have is that Americans in higher tax brackets get a bigger tax benefit for retirement plan contributions than anyone else. Someone in the 39.6% tax bracket saves almost $40 in income tax for each $100 contributed to a retirement plan. In contrast, someone in the 15% tax bracket only saves $15.
To fix this “problem,” the 2016 White House budget proposal creates a 28% maximum tax benefit for contributions to retirement accounts. If you’re in a 28% or lower tax bracket, nothing changes. But if you’re in a higher tax bracket, you’re out of luck. You’ll no longer receive a full tax deduction for money you contribute into a retirement plan.
That assumes that you can make a tax-deductible contribution at all. Congress has already imposed strict limitations on tax-deductible IRA contributions. If you have a retirement plan at work, you can’t deduct an IRA contribution unless you earn less than $70,000 annually. If you’re married and filing taxes jointly with your spouse, that threshold increases to $116,000.
Some in Congress want to go even further. A proposal floated last year would limit the deduction to 25%. It would even impose a 10% surtax on all contributions made by anyone in the 35% or higher tax brackets.
The White House budget also targets “back door” Roth IRA contributions. This is a strategy I’ve written about previously in our members-only Alert service. The idea is to make a non-deductible contribution to a regular IRA and then convert it into a Roth IRA. Using this technique, you can funnel up to $34,500 annually into your Roth IRA with no additional tax liability. This is a powerful strategy for high earners. It lets you bypass income limitations that otherwise apply to Roth IRA contributions. And with a Roth, there’s no further tax liability as long as you comply with the withdrawal rules. The Obama budget would put an end to this strategy by limiting Roth conversions to pre-tax dollars only.
Finally, the 2016 budget proposal targets “stretch IRAs.” Loved ones who inherit what’s left of your IRA can now “stretch” distributions over their lifetimes. In the case of a Roth IRA, your heirs can receive a lifetime tax-free income. The Obama plan would limit stretch IRAs to surviving spouses, children under the age of 18, and a few other categories. Other beneficiaries would be required to receive all IRA payments within five years of your death.
Given the fact that both houses are controlled by Republicans, I don’t anticipate any of these proposals will become law anytime soon. But I fully expect to read all matter of nonsense about how they amount to confiscation of retirement assets. They don’t. Be especially careful if someone promoting a concept called a “checkbook IRA” promises you that it will avoid confiscation in the unlikely event that Congress or the president decide to simply grab IRA assets. It won’t, for reasons I discussed in this essay.
One more point: It’s perfectly legal to target international investments in your IRA or 401(k). You can purchase real estate, precious metals, securities, and almost anything else in your plan and have the assets held outside the US.
Investing your retirement plan internationally gives you numerous benefits. These include making investments not available in the US, hedging against the US dollar, and making your assets less visible. And it’s definitely possible – we’ve helped hundreds of clients internationalize their retirement plans over the years.
Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/08/mark-nestmann/greedy-government-is-eying-yours/
Tuesday, August 4, 2015
Abortion denier...
BREAKING: Hillary Clinton emerges as abortion denier
by: J. D. Heyes
Planned Parenthood is a noble organization and is the only organization capable of providing professional, quality health services to women, and anything else the organization is accused of doing is mean-spirited, false and political in nature.
At least, that is the message of the latest #abortiondenier - Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton, who joins a host of others on the progressive Left in an attack on anyone who is opposed to Planned Parenthood's ghoulish – and illegal – harvesting of aborted baby body parts, including the sale of entire intact fetuses, as we reported Aug. 3.
As reported by the Washington Free Beacon:
Clinton attacked Republican presidential contenders Gov. Rick Perry, Gov. Scott Walker and former Gov. Jeb Bush for supporting efforts to cut off taxpayer funding to the nation's leading abortion provider in the ad. She attached the ad to a tweet that included the #standwithPP hashtag that Planned Parenthood popularized after its top medical officials were caught on camera sipping wine and discussing price tags for baby body parts with undercover reporters.
"If this feels like a full-on assault on women's health, that's because it is," Clinton says of the videos.
Keep updated with all breaking stories about Hillary Clinton at www.clinton.news
The ultimate abortion denier
Just a week prior, mind you, Clinton was prodded to go on record as saying the videos were "disturbing," the New Hampshire Union Leader reported.
Even then, however, she couched her carefully worded and very light criticism in denial.
"I have seen pictures from them and I obviously find them disturbing," she said. "Planned Parenthood for more than a century has done a lot of really good work for women: cancer screenings, family planning, all kinds of health services. And this raises not questions about Planned Parenthood so much as it raises questions about the whole process, that is, not just involving Planned Parenthood, but many institutions in our country."
And that was it. Now, as her new attacks show, she has lapsed back into full denial mode.
The group Center for Medical Progress conducted a years-long undercover investigation into Planned Parenthood's abortion activities. The videos the group has released, and continues to release, were culled from that investigation.
In fact, the center released a fourth video last week showing executives at PP in the Rocky Mountains combing through aborted fetal body parts, saying "it's a baby" and "another boy!"
Rocky Mountain Vice President Savita Ginde told the undercover videographers how her organization justifies the sale of the organs.
"In public I think it makes a lot more sense for it to be in the research vein than, I'd say, a business venture," she said.
Secretary Clinton should explain her position
Planned Parenthood has responded predictably, insisting repeatedly that its branch offices have done nothing wrong and that sold baby body parts are used for research – though PP officials cannot point to a single medical cure or breakthrough involving aborted baby tissues.
For her part, Clinton has been a longtime and ardent supporter of Planned Parenthood, and that includes the organization's extremist procedure known as "partial birth abortion" (which both President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama support as well). As president, her husband, Bill Clinton, vetoed legislation to outlaw the horrific procedure.
Hillary Clinton has also received about $10,000 from nine individuals who work for PP, the country's largest abortion services provider.
In addition, when she was Secretary of State, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), a division of the State Department, gave tens of millions of dollars to Planned Parenthood during her tenure – though that agency is supposed to provide aid dollars to developing nations.
Some presidential contenders have called on Planned Parenthood to be defunded, including GOP candidate and former Texas governor Rick Perry.
"Secretary Clinton should explain to the American people why she supports an organization that rips apart and sells the body parts of aborted babies. I am proud to have defunded Planned Parenthood in Texas, and support efforts to defund them at the federal level," he said.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/050649_Hillary_Clinton_Planned_Parenthood_abortion_denier.html#ixzz3htaaFZiC
by: J. D. Heyes
Planned Parenthood is a noble organization and is the only organization capable of providing professional, quality health services to women, and anything else the organization is accused of doing is mean-spirited, false and political in nature.
At least, that is the message of the latest #abortiondenier - Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton, who joins a host of others on the progressive Left in an attack on anyone who is opposed to Planned Parenthood's ghoulish – and illegal – harvesting of aborted baby body parts, including the sale of entire intact fetuses, as we reported Aug. 3.
As reported by the Washington Free Beacon:
Clinton attacked Republican presidential contenders Gov. Rick Perry, Gov. Scott Walker and former Gov. Jeb Bush for supporting efforts to cut off taxpayer funding to the nation's leading abortion provider in the ad. She attached the ad to a tweet that included the #standwithPP hashtag that Planned Parenthood popularized after its top medical officials were caught on camera sipping wine and discussing price tags for baby body parts with undercover reporters.
"If this feels like a full-on assault on women's health, that's because it is," Clinton says of the videos.
Keep updated with all breaking stories about Hillary Clinton at www.clinton.news
The ultimate abortion denier
Just a week prior, mind you, Clinton was prodded to go on record as saying the videos were "disturbing," the New Hampshire Union Leader reported.
Even then, however, she couched her carefully worded and very light criticism in denial.
"I have seen pictures from them and I obviously find them disturbing," she said. "Planned Parenthood for more than a century has done a lot of really good work for women: cancer screenings, family planning, all kinds of health services. And this raises not questions about Planned Parenthood so much as it raises questions about the whole process, that is, not just involving Planned Parenthood, but many institutions in our country."
And that was it. Now, as her new attacks show, she has lapsed back into full denial mode.
The group Center for Medical Progress conducted a years-long undercover investigation into Planned Parenthood's abortion activities. The videos the group has released, and continues to release, were culled from that investigation.
In fact, the center released a fourth video last week showing executives at PP in the Rocky Mountains combing through aborted fetal body parts, saying "it's a baby" and "another boy!"
Rocky Mountain Vice President Savita Ginde told the undercover videographers how her organization justifies the sale of the organs.
"In public I think it makes a lot more sense for it to be in the research vein than, I'd say, a business venture," she said.
Secretary Clinton should explain her position
Planned Parenthood has responded predictably, insisting repeatedly that its branch offices have done nothing wrong and that sold baby body parts are used for research – though PP officials cannot point to a single medical cure or breakthrough involving aborted baby tissues.
For her part, Clinton has been a longtime and ardent supporter of Planned Parenthood, and that includes the organization's extremist procedure known as "partial birth abortion" (which both President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama support as well). As president, her husband, Bill Clinton, vetoed legislation to outlaw the horrific procedure.
Hillary Clinton has also received about $10,000 from nine individuals who work for PP, the country's largest abortion services provider.
In addition, when she was Secretary of State, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), a division of the State Department, gave tens of millions of dollars to Planned Parenthood during her tenure – though that agency is supposed to provide aid dollars to developing nations.
Some presidential contenders have called on Planned Parenthood to be defunded, including GOP candidate and former Texas governor Rick Perry.
"Secretary Clinton should explain to the American people why she supports an organization that rips apart and sells the body parts of aborted babies. I am proud to have defunded Planned Parenthood in Texas, and support efforts to defund them at the federal level," he said.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/050649_Hillary_Clinton_Planned_Parenthood_abortion_denier.html#ixzz3htaaFZiC
"Oblivious to what lies ahead, we’ve been manipulated into believing that if we continue to consume, obey, and have faith, things will work out. But that’s never been true of emerging regimes. And by the time we feel the hammer coming down upon us, it will be too late."
They Live, We Sleep: A Dictatorship Disguised as a Democracy
By John W. Whitehead
“You see them on the street. You watch them on TV. You might even vote for one this fall. You think they’re people just like you. You're wrong. Dead wrong.”—They Live
We’re living in two worlds, you and I.
There’s the world we see (or are made to see) and then there’s the one we sense (and occasionally catch a glimpse of), the latter of which is a far cry from the propaganda-driven reality manufactured by the government and its corporate sponsors, including the media.
Indeed, what most Americans perceive as life in America—privileged, progressive and free—is a far cry from reality, where economic inequality is growing, real agendas and real power are buried beneath layers of Orwellian doublespeak and corporate obfuscation, and “freedom,” such that it is, is meted out in small, legalistic doses by militarized police armed to the teeth.
All is not as it seems.
This is the premise of John Carpenter’s film They Live(1988), in which two migrant workers discover that the world’s population is actually being controlled and exploited by aliens working in partnership with an oligarchic elite. All the while, the populace—blissfully unaware of the real agenda at work in their lives—has been lulled into complacency, indoctrinated into compliance, bombarded with media distractions, and hypnotized by subliminal messages beamed out of television and various electronic devices, billboards and the like.
It is only when homeless drifter John Nada (played to the hilt by the late Roddy Piper) discovers a pair of doctored sunglasses—Hoffman lenses—that Nada sees what lies beneath the elite’s fabricated reality: control and bondage.
When viewed through the lens of truth, the elite, who appear human until stripped of their disguises, are shown to be monsters who have enslaved the citizenry in order to prey on them. Likewise, billboards blare out hidden, authoritative messages: a bikini-clad woman in one ad is actually ordering viewers to “MARRY AND REPRODUCE.” Magazine racks scream “CONSUME” and “OBEY.” A wad of dollar bills in a vendor’s hand proclaims, “THIS IS YOUR GOD.”
When viewed through Nada’s Hoffman lenses, some of the other hidden messages being drummed into the people’s subconscious include: NO INDEPENDENT THOUGHT, CONFORM, SUBMIT, STAY ASLEEP, BUY, WATCH TV, NO IMAGINATION, and DO NOT QUESTION AUTHORITY.
This indoctrination campaign engineered by the elite inThey Live is painfully familiar to anyone who has studied the decline of American culture. A citizenry that does not think for themselves, obeys without question, is submissive, does not challenge authority, does not think outside the box, and is content to sit back and be entertained is a citizenry that can be easily controlled.
In this way, the subtle message of They Live provides an apt analogy of our own distorted vision of life in the American police state, what philosopher Slavoj Žižek refers to as dictatorship in democracy, “the invisible order which sustains your apparent freedom.”
We’re being fed a series of carefully contrived fictions that bear no resemblance to reality. The powers-that-be want us to feel threatened by forces beyond our control (terrorists, shooters, bombers). They want us afraid and dependent on the government and its militarized armies for our safety and well-being. They want us distrustful of each other, divided by our prejudices, and at each other’s throats. Most of all, they want us to continue to march in lockstep with their dictates.
Tune out the government’s attempts to distract, divert and befuddle us and tune into what’s really going on in this country, and you’ll run headlong into an unmistakable, unpalatable truth: the moneyed elite who rule us view us as expendable resources to be used, abused and discarded.
In fact, a 2014 study conducted by Princeton and Northwestern University concluded that the U.S. government does not represent the majority of American citizens. Instead, the study found that the government is ruled by the rich and powerful, or the so-called “economic elite.” Moreover, the researchers concluded that policies enacted by this governmental elite nearly always favor special interests and lobbying groups.
In other words, we are being ruled by an oligarchydisguised as a democracy, and arguably on our way towards fascism—a form of government where private corporate interests rule, money calls the shots, and the people are seen as mere subjects to be controlled.
Consider this: it is estimated that the 2016 presidential election could cost as much as $5 billion, more than double what was spent getting Obama re-elected in 2012.
Not only do you have to be rich—or beholden to the rich—to get elected these days, but getting elected is also a surefire way to get rich. As CBS News reports, “Once in office, members of Congress enjoy access to connections and information they can use to increase their wealth, in ways that are unparalleled in the private sector. And once politicians leave office, their connections allow them to profit even further.”
In denouncing this blatant corruption of America’s political system, former president Jimmy Carter blasted the process of getting elected—to the White House, governor’s mansion, Congress or state legislatures—as “unlimited political bribery… a subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect, and sometimes get, favors for themselves after the election is over.”
Rest assured that when and if fascism finally takes hold in America, the basic forms of government will remain. As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, fascism will appear to be friendly. The legislators will be in session. There will be elections, and the news media will continue to cover the entertainment and political trivia. Consent of the governed, however, will no longer apply. Actual control will have finally passed to the oligarchic elite controlling the government behind the scenes.
By creating the illusion that it preserves democratic traditions, fascism creeps slowly until it consumes the political system. And in times of “crisis,” expediency is upheld as the central principle—that is, in order to keep us safe and secure, the government must militarize the police, strip us of basic constitutional rights, criminalize virtually every form of behavior, and build enough private prisons to house all of us nonviolent criminals.
Clearly, we are now ruled by an oligarchic elite of governmental and corporate interests. We have moved into “corporatism” (favored by Benito Mussolini), which is a halfway point on the road to full-blown fascism.
Vast sectors of the economy, government and politics are managed by private business concerns, otherwise referred to as “privatization” by various government politicians. Just study modern government policies.
Corporatism is where the few moneyed interests—not elected by the citizenry—rule over the many. In this way, it is not a democracy or a republican form of government, which is what the American government was established to be. It is a top-down form of government and one which has a terrifying history typified by the developments that occurred in totalitarian regimes of the past: police states where everyone is watched and spied on, rounded up for minor infractions by government agents, placed under police control, and placed in detention (a.k.a. concentration) camps.
For the final hammer of fascism to fall, it will require the most crucial ingredient: the majority of the people will have to agree that it’s not only expedient but necessary. But why would a people agree to such an oppressive regime? The answer is the same in every age: fear.
Fear makes people stupid.
Fear is the method most often used by politicians to increase the power of government. And, as most social commentators recognize, an atmosphere of fear permeates modern America: fear of terrorism, fear of the police, fear of our neighbors and so on.
The propaganda of fear has been used quite effectively by those who want to gain control, and it is working on the American populace.
Despite the fact that we are 17,600 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist attack; 11,000 times more likely to die from an airplane accident than from a terrorist plot involving an airplane; 1,048 times more likely to die from a car accident than a terrorist attack, and 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist, we have handed over control of our lives to government officials who treat us as a means to an end—the source of money and power.
We have allowed ourselves to become fearful, controlled, pacified zombies.
In this regard, we’re not so different from the oppressed citizens in They Live. Most everyone keeps their heads down these days while staring zombie-like into an electronic screen, even when they’re crossing the street. Families sit in restaurants with their heads down, separated by their screen devices and unaware of what’s going on around them. Young people especially seem dominated by the devices they hold in their hands, oblivious to the fact that they can simply push a button, turn the thing off and walk away.
Indeed, there is no larger group activity than that connected with those who watch screens—that is, television, lap tops, personal computers, cell phones and so on. In fact, a Nielsen study reports that American screen viewing is at an all-time high. For example, theaverage American watches approximately 151 hours of television per month.
The question, of course, is what effect does such screen consumption have on one’s mind?
Psychologically it is similar to drug addiction. Researchers found that “almost immediately after turning on the TV, subjects reported feeling more relaxed, and because this occurs so quickly and the tension returns so rapidly after the TV is turned off, people are conditioned to associate TV viewing with a lack of tension.” Research also shows that regardless of the programming, viewers’ brain waves slow down, thus transforming them into a more passive, nonresistant state.
Historically, television has been used by those in authority to quiet discontent and pacify disruptive people. “Faced with severe overcrowding and limited budgets for rehabilitation and counseling, more and more prison officials are using TV to keep inmates quiet,” according to Newsweek.
Given that the majority of what Americans watch on television is provided through channels controlled by six mega corporations, what we watch is now controlled by a corporate elite and, if that elite needs to foster a particular viewpoint or pacify its viewers, it can do so on a large scale.
If we’re watching, we’re not doing.
The powers-that-be understand this. As television journalist Edward R. Murrow warned in a 1958 speech:
We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable and complacent. We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it, and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.
This brings me back to They Live, in which the real zombies are not the aliens calling the shots but the populace who are content to remain controlled.
When all is said and done, the world of They Live is not so different from our own. As one of the characters points out, “The poor and the underclass are growing. Racial justice and human rights are nonexistent. They have created a repressive society and we are their unwitting accomplices. Their intention to rule rests with the annihilation of consciousness. We have been lulled into a trance. They have made us indifferent to ourselves, to others. We are focused only on our own gain.”
We, too, are focused only on our own pleasures, prejudices and gains. Our poor and underclasses are also growing. Racial injustice is growing. Human rights is nearly nonexistent. We too have been lulled into a trance, indifferent to others.
Oblivious to what lies ahead, we’ve been manipulated into believing that if we continue to consume, obey, and have faith, things will work out. But that’s never been true of emerging regimes. And by the time we feel the hammer coming down upon us, it will be too late.
Link:
http://www.targetliberty.com/2015/08/they-live-we-sleep-dictatorship.html#more
By John W. Whitehead
“You see them on the street. You watch them on TV. You might even vote for one this fall. You think they’re people just like you. You're wrong. Dead wrong.”—They Live
We’re living in two worlds, you and I.
There’s the world we see (or are made to see) and then there’s the one we sense (and occasionally catch a glimpse of), the latter of which is a far cry from the propaganda-driven reality manufactured by the government and its corporate sponsors, including the media.
Indeed, what most Americans perceive as life in America—privileged, progressive and free—is a far cry from reality, where economic inequality is growing, real agendas and real power are buried beneath layers of Orwellian doublespeak and corporate obfuscation, and “freedom,” such that it is, is meted out in small, legalistic doses by militarized police armed to the teeth.
All is not as it seems.
This is the premise of John Carpenter’s film They Live(1988), in which two migrant workers discover that the world’s population is actually being controlled and exploited by aliens working in partnership with an oligarchic elite. All the while, the populace—blissfully unaware of the real agenda at work in their lives—has been lulled into complacency, indoctrinated into compliance, bombarded with media distractions, and hypnotized by subliminal messages beamed out of television and various electronic devices, billboards and the like.
It is only when homeless drifter John Nada (played to the hilt by the late Roddy Piper) discovers a pair of doctored sunglasses—Hoffman lenses—that Nada sees what lies beneath the elite’s fabricated reality: control and bondage.
When viewed through the lens of truth, the elite, who appear human until stripped of their disguises, are shown to be monsters who have enslaved the citizenry in order to prey on them. Likewise, billboards blare out hidden, authoritative messages: a bikini-clad woman in one ad is actually ordering viewers to “MARRY AND REPRODUCE.” Magazine racks scream “CONSUME” and “OBEY.” A wad of dollar bills in a vendor’s hand proclaims, “THIS IS YOUR GOD.”
When viewed through Nada’s Hoffman lenses, some of the other hidden messages being drummed into the people’s subconscious include: NO INDEPENDENT THOUGHT, CONFORM, SUBMIT, STAY ASLEEP, BUY, WATCH TV, NO IMAGINATION, and DO NOT QUESTION AUTHORITY.
This indoctrination campaign engineered by the elite inThey Live is painfully familiar to anyone who has studied the decline of American culture. A citizenry that does not think for themselves, obeys without question, is submissive, does not challenge authority, does not think outside the box, and is content to sit back and be entertained is a citizenry that can be easily controlled.
In this way, the subtle message of They Live provides an apt analogy of our own distorted vision of life in the American police state, what philosopher Slavoj Žižek refers to as dictatorship in democracy, “the invisible order which sustains your apparent freedom.”
We’re being fed a series of carefully contrived fictions that bear no resemblance to reality. The powers-that-be want us to feel threatened by forces beyond our control (terrorists, shooters, bombers). They want us afraid and dependent on the government and its militarized armies for our safety and well-being. They want us distrustful of each other, divided by our prejudices, and at each other’s throats. Most of all, they want us to continue to march in lockstep with their dictates.
Tune out the government’s attempts to distract, divert and befuddle us and tune into what’s really going on in this country, and you’ll run headlong into an unmistakable, unpalatable truth: the moneyed elite who rule us view us as expendable resources to be used, abused and discarded.
In fact, a 2014 study conducted by Princeton and Northwestern University concluded that the U.S. government does not represent the majority of American citizens. Instead, the study found that the government is ruled by the rich and powerful, or the so-called “economic elite.” Moreover, the researchers concluded that policies enacted by this governmental elite nearly always favor special interests and lobbying groups.
In other words, we are being ruled by an oligarchydisguised as a democracy, and arguably on our way towards fascism—a form of government where private corporate interests rule, money calls the shots, and the people are seen as mere subjects to be controlled.
Consider this: it is estimated that the 2016 presidential election could cost as much as $5 billion, more than double what was spent getting Obama re-elected in 2012.
Not only do you have to be rich—or beholden to the rich—to get elected these days, but getting elected is also a surefire way to get rich. As CBS News reports, “Once in office, members of Congress enjoy access to connections and information they can use to increase their wealth, in ways that are unparalleled in the private sector. And once politicians leave office, their connections allow them to profit even further.”
In denouncing this blatant corruption of America’s political system, former president Jimmy Carter blasted the process of getting elected—to the White House, governor’s mansion, Congress or state legislatures—as “unlimited political bribery… a subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect, and sometimes get, favors for themselves after the election is over.”
Rest assured that when and if fascism finally takes hold in America, the basic forms of government will remain. As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, fascism will appear to be friendly. The legislators will be in session. There will be elections, and the news media will continue to cover the entertainment and political trivia. Consent of the governed, however, will no longer apply. Actual control will have finally passed to the oligarchic elite controlling the government behind the scenes.
By creating the illusion that it preserves democratic traditions, fascism creeps slowly until it consumes the political system. And in times of “crisis,” expediency is upheld as the central principle—that is, in order to keep us safe and secure, the government must militarize the police, strip us of basic constitutional rights, criminalize virtually every form of behavior, and build enough private prisons to house all of us nonviolent criminals.
Clearly, we are now ruled by an oligarchic elite of governmental and corporate interests. We have moved into “corporatism” (favored by Benito Mussolini), which is a halfway point on the road to full-blown fascism.
Vast sectors of the economy, government and politics are managed by private business concerns, otherwise referred to as “privatization” by various government politicians. Just study modern government policies.
Corporatism is where the few moneyed interests—not elected by the citizenry—rule over the many. In this way, it is not a democracy or a republican form of government, which is what the American government was established to be. It is a top-down form of government and one which has a terrifying history typified by the developments that occurred in totalitarian regimes of the past: police states where everyone is watched and spied on, rounded up for minor infractions by government agents, placed under police control, and placed in detention (a.k.a. concentration) camps.
For the final hammer of fascism to fall, it will require the most crucial ingredient: the majority of the people will have to agree that it’s not only expedient but necessary. But why would a people agree to such an oppressive regime? The answer is the same in every age: fear.
Fear makes people stupid.
Fear is the method most often used by politicians to increase the power of government. And, as most social commentators recognize, an atmosphere of fear permeates modern America: fear of terrorism, fear of the police, fear of our neighbors and so on.
The propaganda of fear has been used quite effectively by those who want to gain control, and it is working on the American populace.
Despite the fact that we are 17,600 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist attack; 11,000 times more likely to die from an airplane accident than from a terrorist plot involving an airplane; 1,048 times more likely to die from a car accident than a terrorist attack, and 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist, we have handed over control of our lives to government officials who treat us as a means to an end—the source of money and power.
We have allowed ourselves to become fearful, controlled, pacified zombies.
In this regard, we’re not so different from the oppressed citizens in They Live. Most everyone keeps their heads down these days while staring zombie-like into an electronic screen, even when they’re crossing the street. Families sit in restaurants with their heads down, separated by their screen devices and unaware of what’s going on around them. Young people especially seem dominated by the devices they hold in their hands, oblivious to the fact that they can simply push a button, turn the thing off and walk away.
Indeed, there is no larger group activity than that connected with those who watch screens—that is, television, lap tops, personal computers, cell phones and so on. In fact, a Nielsen study reports that American screen viewing is at an all-time high. For example, theaverage American watches approximately 151 hours of television per month.
The question, of course, is what effect does such screen consumption have on one’s mind?
Psychologically it is similar to drug addiction. Researchers found that “almost immediately after turning on the TV, subjects reported feeling more relaxed, and because this occurs so quickly and the tension returns so rapidly after the TV is turned off, people are conditioned to associate TV viewing with a lack of tension.” Research also shows that regardless of the programming, viewers’ brain waves slow down, thus transforming them into a more passive, nonresistant state.
Historically, television has been used by those in authority to quiet discontent and pacify disruptive people. “Faced with severe overcrowding and limited budgets for rehabilitation and counseling, more and more prison officials are using TV to keep inmates quiet,” according to Newsweek.
Given that the majority of what Americans watch on television is provided through channels controlled by six mega corporations, what we watch is now controlled by a corporate elite and, if that elite needs to foster a particular viewpoint or pacify its viewers, it can do so on a large scale.
If we’re watching, we’re not doing.
The powers-that-be understand this. As television journalist Edward R. Murrow warned in a 1958 speech:
We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable and complacent. We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it, and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.
This brings me back to They Live, in which the real zombies are not the aliens calling the shots but the populace who are content to remain controlled.
When all is said and done, the world of They Live is not so different from our own. As one of the characters points out, “The poor and the underclass are growing. Racial justice and human rights are nonexistent. They have created a repressive society and we are their unwitting accomplices. Their intention to rule rests with the annihilation of consciousness. We have been lulled into a trance. They have made us indifferent to ourselves, to others. We are focused only on our own gain.”
We, too, are focused only on our own pleasures, prejudices and gains. Our poor and underclasses are also growing. Racial injustice is growing. Human rights is nearly nonexistent. We too have been lulled into a trance, indifferent to others.
Oblivious to what lies ahead, we’ve been manipulated into believing that if we continue to consume, obey, and have faith, things will work out. But that’s never been true of emerging regimes. And by the time we feel the hammer coming down upon us, it will be too late.
Link:
http://www.targetliberty.com/2015/08/they-live-we-sleep-dictatorship.html#more
Be careful what you wish for...
CEO Hikes Minimum Wage To $70K, Capitalist Tragicomedy Ensues
By Tyler Durden
Meet 31-year-old Dan Price.
Dan is the CEO of Seattle-based credit card payments processing firm Gravity Payments, and three months ago, he did a funny thing.
After talking with a friend who confessed to having difficulties making student loan payments and rent each month on an annual salary of $40,000, Dan decided to set a $70,000 per year pay floor at Gravity.
Dan was not, The New York Times says, looking to insert himself into “the current political clamor over low wages or the growing gap between rich and poor.” All he wanted to do was improve the lives of the 120 or so people who worked for him and after reviewing some literature on the subject, he decided that $70,000 was the level at which workers start to experience “an enormous difference in [their] emotional well-being.”
Read the rest here:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/08/tyler-durden/capitalist-tragicomedy/
By Tyler Durden
Meet 31-year-old Dan Price.
Dan is the CEO of Seattle-based credit card payments processing firm Gravity Payments, and three months ago, he did a funny thing.
After talking with a friend who confessed to having difficulties making student loan payments and rent each month on an annual salary of $40,000, Dan decided to set a $70,000 per year pay floor at Gravity.
Dan was not, The New York Times says, looking to insert himself into “the current political clamor over low wages or the growing gap between rich and poor.” All he wanted to do was improve the lives of the 120 or so people who worked for him and after reviewing some literature on the subject, he decided that $70,000 was the level at which workers start to experience “an enormous difference in [their] emotional well-being.”
Read the rest here:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/08/tyler-durden/capitalist-tragicomedy/
"In other words, the NSA had all the technical ability necessary to prevent the 9/11 terrorist attacks long before implementation of the Patriot Act."
New 9/11 Conspiracy? NSA Whistleblowers say Agency Kept Tabs on Attackers
Sputnik News
New revelations about the National Security Agency’s ability to track phone calls in pre-9/11 America are raising the specter of a massive government cover-up. One that could have been used to hide intelligence failures, and fuel arguments for mass domestic spying.
In 2000, Khalid al-Mihdhar was living in San Diego. One year later, he would go on to be one of the five hijackers aboard American Airlines Flight 77, steered into the Pentagon on September 11. But in the months leading up to that horrifying day, al-Mihdhar made a number of phone calls to Yemen from his California apartment.
Those calls went directly to one of Osama bin Laden’s operation centers in Sanaa, already a major target for US intelligence monitoring.
“One of the 9/11 hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar, made a phone call from San Diego to a known al Qaeda safehouse in Yemen,” President Obama said during a speech in 2014. “NSA saw that call, but it could not see that the call was coming from an individual already in the United States.”
But according to the testimony of agency whistleblowers like Thomas Drake and Kirk Wiebe, it would have been impossible for the agency not to have known the origin of those phone calls.
“You have a target so important to the system that you don’t ever tune a receiver away from that frequency or off of that target,” former senior analyst with the NSA Kirk Wiebe told Foreign Policy.
“You know the phone numbers involved, who’s making the phone call, and who it’s going to because the billing system has to have that metadata to charge you.”
It’s known as “cast iron” coverage, an intelligence term referring to the 24/7 monitoring of a primary target, like Bin Laden’s Sanaa ops center.
“They’re trying to cover up the failure of the NSA,” Wiebe added. “And I think they’re embarrassed by that.”
The NSA’s director at the time, Michael Hayden, repeatedly attributed the agency’s failure in anticipating the terrorist attack on weak technical infrastructure. That argument was used to help usher in the Patriot Act, used to justify mass domestic surveillance.
“Nothing in the physics of the intercept, nothing in the content of the call, told us they were in San Diego,” Hayden told Frontline last year. “If we’d had the metadata program…those numbers in San Diego would have popped up.”
Thomas Drake, a former member of the NSA’s Senior Executive Service, told Foreign Policy that he was shocked by that explanation.
“Not true,” Drake said. “That’s an absolute lie. Every number that comes into that switchboard, if you’re cast-iron coverage on that switchboard, you know exactly what that number is and where it comes from…You know exactly – otherwise it can’t get there.”
Prior to the Patriot Act, the NSA had any number of ways to access the kind of information Hayden claimed was inaccessible. Through a number of secret agreements with telecommunications satellites, the agency was able to access satellites.
Even those that refused – like Thuraya, which provides mobile coverage to over 160 countries – had their encrypted data routinely breached by the NSA.
“Our secret was that the Thuraya system had been broken for a long time – deep state secret,” an anonymous high-ranking source told FP. “Routinely, we could intercept [the satellite transmission] at will. We could take any number that was being dialed in or out…[and] listen in literally live on any conversation or after the fact.”
In other words, the NSA had all the technical ability necessary to prevent the 9/11 terrorist attacks long before implementation of the Patriot Act.
While the agency appears to have been covering its own failures, Drake also suggested another reason for the cover up: bureaucratic bickering.
Because of interagency infighting, the NSA refused to share its intelligence with other federal agencies. Michael Scheuer, a former chief with the CIA’s bin Laden desk, made repeated requests for intel to the NSA.
“We sent about 250 electronic messages…and not one of them was ever answered,” he told FP.
If the whistleblowers are right, then the September 11 attacks could represent the largest intelligence blunder in history, and the subsequent government cover up may have ushered in the unprecedented domestic spying apparatus employed throughout the last decade.
Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/08/no_author/was-the-nsa-tracking-the-911-hijackers/
Sputnik News
New revelations about the National Security Agency’s ability to track phone calls in pre-9/11 America are raising the specter of a massive government cover-up. One that could have been used to hide intelligence failures, and fuel arguments for mass domestic spying.
In 2000, Khalid al-Mihdhar was living in San Diego. One year later, he would go on to be one of the five hijackers aboard American Airlines Flight 77, steered into the Pentagon on September 11. But in the months leading up to that horrifying day, al-Mihdhar made a number of phone calls to Yemen from his California apartment.
Those calls went directly to one of Osama bin Laden’s operation centers in Sanaa, already a major target for US intelligence monitoring.
“One of the 9/11 hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar, made a phone call from San Diego to a known al Qaeda safehouse in Yemen,” President Obama said during a speech in 2014. “NSA saw that call, but it could not see that the call was coming from an individual already in the United States.”
But according to the testimony of agency whistleblowers like Thomas Drake and Kirk Wiebe, it would have been impossible for the agency not to have known the origin of those phone calls.
“You have a target so important to the system that you don’t ever tune a receiver away from that frequency or off of that target,” former senior analyst with the NSA Kirk Wiebe told Foreign Policy.
“You know the phone numbers involved, who’s making the phone call, and who it’s going to because the billing system has to have that metadata to charge you.”
It’s known as “cast iron” coverage, an intelligence term referring to the 24/7 monitoring of a primary target, like Bin Laden’s Sanaa ops center.
“They’re trying to cover up the failure of the NSA,” Wiebe added. “And I think they’re embarrassed by that.”
The NSA’s director at the time, Michael Hayden, repeatedly attributed the agency’s failure in anticipating the terrorist attack on weak technical infrastructure. That argument was used to help usher in the Patriot Act, used to justify mass domestic surveillance.
“Nothing in the physics of the intercept, nothing in the content of the call, told us they were in San Diego,” Hayden told Frontline last year. “If we’d had the metadata program…those numbers in San Diego would have popped up.”
Thomas Drake, a former member of the NSA’s Senior Executive Service, told Foreign Policy that he was shocked by that explanation.
“Not true,” Drake said. “That’s an absolute lie. Every number that comes into that switchboard, if you’re cast-iron coverage on that switchboard, you know exactly what that number is and where it comes from…You know exactly – otherwise it can’t get there.”
Prior to the Patriot Act, the NSA had any number of ways to access the kind of information Hayden claimed was inaccessible. Through a number of secret agreements with telecommunications satellites, the agency was able to access satellites.
Even those that refused – like Thuraya, which provides mobile coverage to over 160 countries – had their encrypted data routinely breached by the NSA.
“Our secret was that the Thuraya system had been broken for a long time – deep state secret,” an anonymous high-ranking source told FP. “Routinely, we could intercept [the satellite transmission] at will. We could take any number that was being dialed in or out…[and] listen in literally live on any conversation or after the fact.”
In other words, the NSA had all the technical ability necessary to prevent the 9/11 terrorist attacks long before implementation of the Patriot Act.
While the agency appears to have been covering its own failures, Drake also suggested another reason for the cover up: bureaucratic bickering.
Because of interagency infighting, the NSA refused to share its intelligence with other federal agencies. Michael Scheuer, a former chief with the CIA’s bin Laden desk, made repeated requests for intel to the NSA.
“We sent about 250 electronic messages…and not one of them was ever answered,” he told FP.
If the whistleblowers are right, then the September 11 attacks could represent the largest intelligence blunder in history, and the subsequent government cover up may have ushered in the unprecedented domestic spying apparatus employed throughout the last decade.
Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/08/no_author/was-the-nsa-tracking-the-911-hijackers/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)