Is America’s Economy Being Sovietized?

The foundation of the Soviet model of trade and investment was centralization under the guise of “universal public ownership”. The entire goal of communism in general was not to give more social and political power to the people, but to extinguish alternative options and focus power into the hands of a select few. The process used to reach this end result can vary, but the goal always remains the same. In most cases, such centralization begins with economic hegemony, and it is in our fiscal structure that we have the means to see the future. Sovietization in our financial life will inevitably lead to sovietization in our political life.

Does the U.S. economy’s path resemble the Soviet template exactly? No. And I’m sure the very suggestion will make the average unaware free market evangelical froth at the mouth. However, as I plan to show, the parallels in our fundamentals are disturbing; the reality is that true free markets in America died a long time ago.

The Tyranny Of Planned Economy

The characteristics of a free market society defy the use of centralized planning. Adam Smith’s original concept of free market trade stood as an antithesis to what was then referred to as “mercantilism,” a select few “joint stock companies” (corporations) monopolizing production while using government ties to destroy any new competition. Unfortunately, there are to this day economists and politicians who believe that corporate centralization is a “natural” function of a free market. In reality, corporate monopolies are an unnatural creation of collusion between governments and big-money interests designed to suffocate any entrepreneurship outside of their sphere of influence. Over time, as we now see in the United States today, government power and corporate power begin to hybridize, until one can barely be distinguished from the other.

The bottom line is that you cannot have planned structures, monopolized production or controlled capital flow within an economy and still claim it to be a “free market. There are no exceptions to this rule.

The Soviet system was the ultimate in centralization. Every aspect of financial life was dictated by the communist government, from industrial input and output to investment to food production and rationing to wages and retail prices. Some people might argue that this structure is a far cry from what we now have in the United States, but let’s look at the fundamentals.

Controlled Money Creation

One of the primary tenets of The Communist Manifesto was the creation of a central bank meant to keep tight controls over currency issuance. The existence of a central bank immediately disrupts any chance of a true free market. Central banking without competition allows an oligarchy, whether corporate or political or a meshing of the two, to manipulate interest rates as well as adjust prices through inflation. Lending standards (which the central bank determines arbitrarily) built on fractional reserve banking opens the door to murky debt instruments and toxic financial products that are further used to either fabricate a “high” standard of living (as we saw in the U.S. in the 90s and early 2000s) or execute a bubble implosion causing a lower standard of living (as the U.S. is experiencing today).

Since the establishment of the Federal Reserve through subversive collusion between banking interests and corrupt politicians in 1913, America has not had a free market system. From that point forward, every boom and bust, every interest rate disaster, every inflationary increase in prices has been scientifically engineered.

Dominance Of Industry

Soviet controls on industrial output are legendary. Every part of the resource allocation process became subject to bureaucracy, and this led to stunted manufacturing growth as well as a culture of misrepresented economic data. In the United States, the establishment has taken a slightly different approach but with the same end result.

Heavy taxation on business ventures within the U.S. against entrepreneurs not lucky enough to run in elitists circles has erased incentives for manufacturing experiments within our borders. In the meantime, members of the corporate glee club receive government subsidization while they simultaneously outsource industrial projects to Third World nations. Controlled industry within communist Russia was meant to force the population to depend upon the government for every means of survival. In the United States, dependency on government has been replaced by interdependency on the globalized model in general. Necessities are now compartmentalized, and only select international businesses with cooperation from government have the ability to bring all the pieces together to keep our domestic economy running smoothly. Our society has been so distanced from self-sufficiency that many people now consider the globalist dynamic indispensable.

The next step in this degradation of free market industry is the introduction of “public works projects” by the federal government, which gives the illusion that job creation through centralization is possible.  This is the same strategy used in the Soviet Union and to this day, socialists still argue that the communist design for industrial expansion was “effective”.  In truth, the soviet public works plan with all its trains and transits and bridges and buildings was an absolute failure, as the collapse of the country made clear.  Tax funded infrastructure is no replacement for free market invention, and at bottom, no public works enterprise can be undertaken without the government first stealing capital from one area in order to fund another.  Governments can never and will never create wealth or jobs.  They can only present the semblance of economic progress while siphoning wealth away from private citizens.

Bureaucracy And Food Production

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulations, based on dubious junk science and often instituted on high without congressional oversight, further erode business possibilities, especially for young companies as well as private agriculture, while giving free reign to elitist entities like Monsanto, an organization the government actually PROTECTS through specialized legislation making it nearly immune to civil litigation.

While farms in the United States are not exactly “controlled” by the Federal government in the Soviet sense, many of them are subsidized through welfare on the condition that they grow only particular kinds of crops, raise particular animals or grow nothing at all. This subsidization is an indirect form of price control, creating engineered scarcity or abundance. At the same time, agricultural empires like Monsanto make private farm ownership increasingly difficult by using their government protection to harass and squeeze out independent food producers.

This destabilization of private resource management by common citizens has culminated in the passage of President Barack Obama’s executive order National Defense Resource Preparedness, which allows under a “national emergency” (which the President can declare for any reason) the confiscation of any and all private resources, including farms and businesses, to be redistributed by the government to ensure security conditions. This is the Stalinist model, pure and simple.

Centralized Control Of Investment

We now know that since at least 2008, the U.S. stock market, often presented by the mainstream as a paragon of free market prowess, has actually been propped up and inflated by Federal Reserve fiat. Both former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and current branch head Richard Fisher have openly admitted in separate news interviews that the central bank spends considerable energy in “artificially sustaining” equity markets. This has been done, I suspect, with full knowledge of the U.S. Treasury and the Obama Administration.

The Soviet model for investment was to remove all uncertainties from their domestic markets, often in the name of preventing manipulation by “speculators.” The speculator rationale was generally a distraction away from the attempt to dictate the natural forces of supply and demand. The idea was that if the government could dismiss legitimate demand or lack of demand or hide excess supply or lack of supply, the perception of a balanced economy could be conjured for the population. This led to strict redirection of capital to areas where manipulation was needed to artificially pump up (or deflate) a particular part of the economy. The government became the sole investor of the Soviet system and, thus, the sole determinant of the success or failure of any particular market.

This is EXACTLY what is going on in America today, in what mainstream economists now call “the new normal”. Federal Reserve fiat is being printed and dumped into every financial mechanism that supposedly maintains our country’s fiscal health, including stocks, Treasuries and municipals, while trade volume remains low and private investment disappears. The Federal government now owes its very existence to the continued support of central bank dollars, and the Dow Jones does as well. If this is not the Soviet ideal, then I don’t know what is.

Labor Oppression, Dismal Living Standards And Government Dependency

Poverty levels within the United States are at record highs. Nearly 50 million Americans are now dependent on government-subsidized food stamps for their survival. Nearly 100 million Americans receive welfare (or Social Security) in one form or another from the establishment. That is almost one-third of our entire population that relies on the system for at least a part of their sustainment. If Obamacare is fully realized, millions more Americans will also be conditioned to become dependent on government-designated healthcare providers. The point is not to pass judgment on those people who get money or services from the government, only to make clear our progression away from freedom and into centralized servitude.

For a Soviet structure to thrive, poverty among common citizens has to be institutionalized. Dependency requires a constant state of desperation. In America, this has been accomplished through a combination of inflated prices and reduced wages in conjunction with the destruction of labor options.

At the height of the communist machine in Russia, employment was ample; but the kind of employment one could apply for was dependent on bureaucratic red tape and availability based on a worker’s record. Only the academic “elite” within the government-run cesspools of Soviet universities and military schools had their choice of employment; even then, they were often pressured into particular specialized fields, depending on the kind of labor the state needed done at that particular time.

In the United States anyone can certainly aspire to do whatever job he hopes to do. But again, options have been removed economically; and the same academic elitism pervasive in Soviet Union labor markets exists in America today. In a recent installment of his weekly radio show,New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said it was better for “so-so” high school students to pursue a career in plumbing rather than go to college.

Though I rarely agree with Bloomberg on anything, my initial reaction was surprise at his willingness to steer American youth away from university indoctrination centers. However, upon further examination, it became clear that Bloomberg was not trying to save the next generation time and money. Instead, he is promoting a shift in the labor dynamic of the U.S. economy toward a Soviet-style foundation. Bloomberg knows well that the U.S. labor market will never return to its former glory, partly because he is a supporter of the globalist policies that ruined our economy in the first place. Instead of suggesting ways to reverse the trend of progressive poverty and the lack of high-end jobs that engender ingenuity and invention, elitists like Bloomberg are saying “forget your dreams and get used to being a drone.”

In a 70% service and retail economy, where job availability is increasingly degraded and independent business is discouraged, Americans will have two choices:  Excel in the world of federally funded and propagandized education and sell your soul just for a chance at obtaining a professional career in a field of influence, or, settle for the leftovers.  Modern socialists often sing the praises of the soviet educational model for raising the literacy rates of once agricultural and isolated people to 98%, but what they fail to mention is that this literacy was only encouraged in order to create a more efficient servant class that was easier to propagandize.  The U.S. is moving into a similar paradigm.  For some people, being a plumber is a fine thing; but it should not be the only thing. In a true free market, a smart man can make his own way, even if he does not conform to the ideologies of the educational racket. In a Sovietized market, a smart man is prohibited from accomplishing anything unless he conforms to the ideologies of the educational racket.

Some people may respond that the centralization conspiracy within the American economy is an obvious thing today, and that there is little need to expose it any further.  I would point out that centralization is not the only issue here; the guidebook by which that centralization is being implemented is also important.  This has all been done before on the other side of the world only decades ago, and the end result was a horrifying cascade of social enslavement and mechanically inclined death.

In the end, the Soviet economy was so utterly fraudulent that the final breakdown of the system came as a complete surprise to many in political and economic fields of the era.  This is what happens when governments control all source data for financial statistics; transparency dies and collapse creeps in. Centralization is an absolute affront to the natural laws of supply and demand and an oppressive hindrance to the innovation that humanity thrives on. Such systems require constant theft from the populace in the form of reduced employment, reduced wages, reduced resources, increased taxes, increased price controls and a highly ignorant citizenry in order to function even for a short time. Sadly, the United States is well on its way in all of these areas, emulating a poisonous fiscal system and lending itself to a global economic tyranny in which all of us work much harder, for much less, and all for a government that seeks to use our very labor against us.

Source: Brandon Smith | Alt-Market

So Many of My Friends Coming Down With Cancer

In the past 10 months, nine of my friends contracted cancer in many of its various forms: kidney, stomach, breast, prostate, colorectal, Hodgkin’s, liver, ovarian and skin cancers.  All of them struggle for their lives as you read this column.

Last year, my long time friend Mike discovered his kidney cancer in November and died in February.  Twenty years ago, my sister suffered from melanoma cancer, which doctors cut from her body.  Eighteen years ago, doctors cut a cancerous growth out of me.  My sister and I enjoy our lives every single day.

I don’t mind telling you that cancer scared the living hell out of me and it sobered me to the daunting enormity of its presence within our society.

The American Cancer Society estimates the numbers of new cancer cases and deaths expected in the United States in the current year and compiles the most recent data on cancer incidence, mortality and survival based on incidence data from the National Cancer Institute, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries and mortality data from the National Center for Health Statistics. A total of 1,638,910 new cancer cases and 577,190 deaths from cancer were projected to occur in the United States in 2012.

An estimated 12.7 million cancer cases occurred around the world in 2008. The number is expected to rise to 21 million by 2030.

When cancer hits, you cannot believe it would happen to you.  At first, I felt dumbfounded. When the doctor cut into me, I felt all alone.  Why me? I feared the outcome.  He told me about a 10 percent chance that my cancer would return.

That did it!  I decided to take my life into my own hands and make sure I prevented a return of any cancer in my body.  In the ensuing months and years, I continue my vigilance for the care of my body.  I never take a day for granted and I never give cancer a second chance.

My actions may help you or a friend.  But I know one thing: you may avoid cancer and you may beat cancer’s attack on your body by following some excellent nutritional protocol.  As most of you know, I became a vegetarian 43 years ago.  I exercise with enthusiasm six days a week by swimming, cycling, running and lifting weights. I avoid plopping down in front of the television 29 hours a week, which continues as the norm for American males.  A mere 24 hours a week for American females! I cannot understand why so many people waste their lives in front of the boob tube.   I let my body know that I care about it and make sure that every muscle knows that I need it by using it.  I complete 100 sit-ups every morning.

But more than that, it’s what I put into my mouth that makes all the difference in the world.

First of all, my wife Sandi and I eat everything organic.  We eat every natural. We avoid genetically modified foods of any kind.  We drink filtered water and lots of it to keep our systems clean and flushed.  We moved away from the city to insure cleaner air for breathing into our lungs.

Second, we consume twice a day—fish oil tablets, flax seed, Omega 3s and krill oil to increase the power of our bodies to combat cancer cells from establishing themselves in our bodies.

Third, we eat greens, greens and more greens.  We eat kale, broccoli, Brussel sprouts,  raw carrots, celery, green beans, spinach and all other dark green plants to create an “alkaline PH” in our bodies that makes it extremely difficult for aberrant cancer cells to form and reproduce in such a “toxic” alkaline environment.  This point three really needs to be followed.

Fourth, we avoid virtually all canned and packaged foods.  We never, ever eat fast food of any kind.  We avoid dairy products like milk, cheese, ice cream, butter and yogurt.

Fifth, we avoid refined sugars found in candy bars, table sugar, cookies, ice cream or any product that contains refined sugars.  We learned that refined sugars feed cancer cells. They thrive on sugar.

Sixth, we avoid sodas of any kind. We avoid aspartame-loaded soda pop and yogurts and other “sugar free” products.

Seventh, we eat raw fruits and vegetables every day.  In fact, I blend 10 organic fresh fruits with aloe vera and flaxseed every day for my energy drink which I sip all day.  That drink contains incredible anti-oxidants that protect my cellular tissue.

Eight, we avoid any and all “artificially colored” products with all those dyes in them.

Ninth, when we go out to eat, we pick restaurants that care about our health as much as they care about their own.

Tenth, we make sure we are happy and peaceful every day.  We work at a job that we choose to enjoy. We maintain friends that support us with joy, spiritual blessings and grace.  We are thankful every day to the Infinite Intelligence, God, the Great Spirit and the Grand Mastermind of the universe.  However you perceive the Creator in your life makes for great appreciation.

Eleventh, we read everything about maintaining a cancer free body.  One of the best books on avoiding cancer: Cancer Free: your guide to gentle non-toxic healing by Bill Henderson and Carlos Garcia.  You may find many other books on preventing breast, prostate and other cancers by going to Amazon.com.

What else can you do?  I think we as a civilization need to move away from fossil fuel burning cars, boats, trains, planes and all combustion engines that pollute our air that we breathe.  We need to change from coal to alternative clean energies such as solar, wind and wave.  We need to stop spraying and injecting our air, land and water with 80,000 chemicals that humanity created and inserts into our biosphere 24/7.   When you think about our total disregard for our planet home and all the other living creatures that share it with us, it’s all coming back to haunt us.

The price we pay grows greater by the day as we add 1 billion humans every 12 years, net gain to this finite planet. Something has got to give at some point.  We destabilize our atmosphere with all our pollutants and carbon footprint.  We contaminate our land and water at breakneck speed.  We show no regard for our soils with the injecting and spraying them with billions of tons of insecticides, herbicides and chemical fertilizers.  We need to change our actions as a civilization if we hope to live rich, abundant and healthy lives.  What are you doing to make change for the betterment of your children and future generations?

Media Once Bitten, Forever Scorn

Hurrah, the worm has turned! Or has it? The corporatist controlled mass media love affair with the puppet spinmeister seems to be on the rocks. For progressive propagandists, the profession of journalism has long sunk into the sewer. Withal, the elitist snobbery of the self-appointed gatekeepers for the globalist power structure got a slap in the face and a wakeup call, from Associated Press spy-gate. The reporter darlings for the Obama “Chicago Outfit” protection racket just got a taste of unexpected payback appreciation. Slow on the uptake, Obama Lapdog Andrea Mitchell on IRS Scandal: “One of the most outrageous excesses I’ve seen in all my years in journalism” “Wait until this fossil finds out about AP records being seized.”

 

This sentiment typifies the insincere shock from the hypocrites that ignored the criminal pattern of governance for the last four plus years. Just listen to their temper tantrum in the YouTube video, Media turn on Obama in response to AP probe. Oh, woe is I, how can our esteemed profession be treated in such a way by our celebrity creation rock star? How could he betray us, after we covered for him at every turn?

Well, the fact that the “Chicago Gangster Organization” of the Obama crew targeted the electronic communications of the press should not be a shock in the age of the Patriot Act. The real bombshell is that the Justice Dept. Wiretapped the House of Representative’s Cloak Room. “California congressman Devin Nunes made the claim yesterday that the Justice Department wiretapped telephones in the House of Representative’s Cloak Room, an exclusive part of the Capitol where members are able to privately interact with one another.

“Will the newly invigorated and hardy souls of the “Fourth Estate” become bloodhounds and sniff out the ugly stories behind the headlines? Before the long beleaguered news consumer regains confidence that the muckraker tradition of theWashington Merry-Go-Round has returned, consider who really benefits from this miraculous turn of conscience.

Let’s get right down with the despicable truth that most mainstream news is simply a product of disinformation that benefits the shadowy forces that control the editorial content of the spin. Polite company is supposed to ignore that Zionism and the Mediahas an Israel-First agenda in reporting. The direct links of tribe ownership, editorial approval and journalists staffing is simply a fact within the industry.

The linkage of a systemic slanted viewpoint and sympathy for an ideology that conflicts with traditional Americanism is a reality that cannot be denied by any honest observer. Prodigious lies from politicians are expected, but repeating the prevarications, while professing a claim that objective journalism is their trade, is a primary reason whypresstitutes are so despised.

In order to understand the current media scorn towards the Obama regime needs a shot of bold courage for analysis of the geo-political influence that dictates the perspective that goes into print. Since the mass media is a top down cabal of groupthink, it is entirely explicable that some political objective is at the core of the “so called” fabricated media outrage.

The Obama administration has demonstrated a reluctance to do the bidding of the most bellicose pro Zionists. The significance that an illegal preempted strike on Iran, a priority for Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition, has not received approval from Barry Soetoro means that the string is running out on Obama usefulness. Interminable media speculation has been registered about Barack Hussein Muslim sympathies. Leaving the extent of such motivations aside, the critical question is whether a teleprompt reader, tutored by the CIA to become an asset for the agency, is really making foreign policy decisions.Consider that the red line has passed for Obama, and that operations for false flag distractions are firmly in the hands of his controllers. Stripping the imposter in chief of his political capital and placing blame on his inept and gonzo behavior is a natural for the skilled character blackwash of media assassins.

The most reasonable conclusion from an analysis of the sudden turn by a uniform media is that the order, from on high, went forth that ignoring greater Israel interests, has consequences. From none other than the oracle of Zionist supremacy, the New York Times editorial board Spying on The Associated Press, expresses their new found denigration.

“For more than 30 years, the news media and the government have used a well-honed system to balance the government’s need to pursue criminals or national security breaches with the media’s constitutional right to inform the public. This action against The A.P., as the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press outlined in a letter to Mr. Holder, “calls into question the very integrity” of the administration’s policy toward the press.”

The mere mention of the Attorney General from the Department of Injustice, mildly stated is just a little late. “Fast And Furious” Eric Holder is the poster boy for careerist corruption going back to the Oklahoma City Bombing. Why now is the media turning on an AG that makes one longing for the resurrection to office of John Mitchell?

The POTUS proclaims, I Have ‘Complete Confidence’ In Holder.

“President Barack Obama continues to back Attorney General Eric Holder following the fallout over the Justice Department secretly obtaining two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press.

During a Rose Garden press conference, the president stated that he has “complete confidence” in the job Holder is doing.”

And why would Obama not back his buffoon sibling in law-breaking? Know NothingHolder is either the minister of incompetence or the sheriff of selective memory.

“Attorney General Eric Holder used the phrase “I don’t know” or some variation, at least 57 times during a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee today as House Republicans grilled him over controversies including the IRS’ targeting of Tea Partiers, the Justice Department’s seizure of journalist phone records, and the security lapses surrounding the Boston bombing.

Holder, who says he has recused himself from an intelligence leak probe in which the Department of Justice subpoenaed phone records from Associated Press reporters, repeatedly dodged questions about the growing scandal.

When asked whether the DOJ attempted to work with the AP before seizing the phone records, Holder said, “I don’t know what happened. I was recused from the case.”

The Daily Mail expands in the article, Eric Holder points finger at his DEPUTY, “Holder said that he recused himself from the making the controversial decision to subpoena the phone records of Associated Press journalists, saying that it was made by Deputy Attorney General James Cole.”For all those remaining Obama supporters, why isn’t Eric Holder indicted for obstruction of justice as a prelude to impeachment of his boss?

Already we are hearing that many more disclosures are about to break. One such disgrace, coming out of a broadcaster, notable for their ESPN coverage, is the account of the IRS Official in Charge During Tea Party Targeting Now Runs Health Care Office.

“Sarah Hall Ingram served as commissioner of the office responsible for tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012. But Ingram has since left that part of the IRS and is now the director of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act office, the IRS confirmed to ABC News today.”

The sport of network political coverage has been more about entertainment than accountability coverage. The application of investigative inquiry and objective criteria is mostly absent from the half-truths and feel good treatment of favored political causes and personalities. Quality investigatory reporting of a Robert Novak, Seymour Hersh or a Jack Anderson is very rare today. The standards that they practiced need to be applied by the Washington press corps.

Will the media demonstrate the same intensity of scrutiny, when querying Press Secretary Jay (Ron Ziegler, Jr) Carney as they did during Watergate? Dream on folks, the asymptomatic embellishment in reporting by the progressive media is embedded in their genes. Their function is to enable the collectivist cover-up that has a primal goal of dismantling our constitutional republic.

Independent news organizations need to get down to veracity and confront the power structure with the same vigor and intensity of John Peter Zenger. The publishing trade honed by Benjamin Franklin is dishonored by the journalists that grovel for career recognition from media conglomerates that write deliberate falsehoods.

Journalists know that their editor can strip out any item that does not conform to the “PC” policy of the publisher. The real Associated Press scandal is that the moguls of media stories are in the business of serving the political agenda of their ownership masters.

The reason that alternative news sites are dangerous to the establishment version of information is that the internet readers obtain none filtered content and are able to assess their own conclusions. The rightful contempt due for government political propaganda also applies to the slick talking heads that mouth the scripts of their internationalist overlords. Whom do you trust? The globalist adaptation of reality has no credibility.

The Ethics of a Drone Contractor – Green Hills Software, Inc.

Around January 21st1998 a meeting, or series of meetings, took place at Green Hills Software, Inc., between Dan O’Dowd and Glenn Hightower. The meeting included on their agenda approval of a false stock option agreement to replace the award of shares made to Craig Franklin in 1996.

This was the final step Dan needed to take before exercising the sudden death partnership agreement between himself and Hightower, who had provided the original funding which allowed Green Hills to open its doors in 1982. More on Hightower

Dan had cut a deal with Franklin, agreeing to help him evade characterization of the stock award as marital property in exchange for Franklin’s assistance to prevent Hightower from exercising his right to buy out the company for 47 million, far less than the approximately 350 million it was actually worth.

Franklin’s wife, Melinda, had no idea her husband was divorcing her, though later she would find out he had filed the day he returned from their Hawaiian vacation with the entire family of six children on January 1st. It was planned not as a divorce but as take-no-prisoners war.

Melinda had every reason to believe their marriage was stable. The previous year she had saved Craig from the tax disaster his non-filing of returns had caused. He had, in fact, never filed until Melinda forced the issue the previous year when she discovered the reason they were bankrupt was Franklin’s non-filing.

Other things she did not know came very close to killing her and the couple’s son, Arthur. More

Hightower found out about the plan just after the meeting during which he was persuaded to sign off on Franklin’s new share agreement. Dan informed him the sudden death partnership agreement had been exercised.

Shocked, Hightower returned to Pasadena and began to make arrangements to raise the capital. This, he believed, would not be difficult for him. He had started and still owned other companies. He was wrong only because he did not know Craig was to persuade the other vice presidents and critical employees to agree to walk out if he owned Green Hills. Craig did just this the next summer. When the due diligence team came to Green Hills a walk-out occurred. Lavish promises of additional stock and other benefits had been made to the senior personnel. Not all promises were kept, but after the fact there was little they could do about it.

Dan and Craig are both psychopaths. More about them here, “When psychopaths cooperate”

Over the next nearly two years the outcome of the Hightower buyout remained in question because Glenn, outraged by Dan’s manipulations, which had begun with an restraining order keeping him from making contact with employees, filed a law suit after the orchestrated walk out. Law suit, Exhibit 7 “Morgan Pillsbury – Franklin Transcript”

Dan, who has all of the human skills of a piranha, evidently finally realized he needed someone to create a more human face for the corporation. Since Dan hoped to take Green Hills public this should also be someone with an impressive corporate resume able to make affirmative introductions to potentially useful board members, essential to acquiring credibility.
And thus entered a new member for the GHS Team.

John B. Douglas III, Unlikely Addition to the Green Hills Team

Douglas Bio from Green Hills Site

Douglas’ association with Green Hills Software actually began simultaneous with the time Dan was feverishly working to ensure he had the 47 million locked down to buy Green Hills himself. Reading the various and carefully worded resumes which abound on the Internet for Jack you find this phrasing at Bloomberg Business Week. “Mr. Jack Douglas has been Vice Chairman at Green Hills Software since April 2003. Mr. Douglas served as Chief Executive Officer to obtain multiple forms of debt and equity financing and on other strategic initiatives. Mr. Douglas also acts as a key advisor to other growing companies. ”

Chief Executive Officer of what, Green Hills Software, during the time they were attempting to go public? Of course, it could be a mis-statement by an online site which was perpetuated through reposting. But there are other indications money was tight during the period of 1998 – 2003 when Green Hills became a government contractor.

Dan borrowed a million dollars from Dr. Carl Franklin, Craig’s father, supposedly to pay for Craig’s stock options. It would have seemed reasonable for Craig to then use the generous dividends being paid from 1998 on to repay this, but evidently this did not happen. The money was extracted from Dan. Craig never repays loans since he has better uses for the money. This has been true his entire life, with only a few exceptions.

This ‘loan,’ for what ever reason it was made, was not repaid when expected and only firm action on the part of Dr. Franklin’s other two sons, Sterling and Larry, both attorneys, resulted in extracting the money from Dan.

Someone with Jack’s qualifications must have seemed like a dream come true for Dan at the time because along with Jack’s connections he also brought a far more normal personal manner than either Dan or Craig had to offer as officers of the company.

Also, there was Dan, strapped for money, with Hightower suing and only Craig to provide him with comfort and ideas.

Craig at this time, late 1998 through 1999, had became obsessed with having a hit man kill his wife, according to affidavits given later by those talking to him every day. (Affidavit, Middle of Page 2) This came about because Melinda was, like Hightower, not following the carefully scripted plan he and Dan had laid out. She was supposed to die during the divorce from her heart condition, as Hightower was supposed to just go away. Therefore, it is doubtful Dan found their daily lunches together very comforting. Craig’s public rantings probably made Dan, who is far more cautious, uneasy.

Craig looks far more normal here than he actually is. Despite appearances, he is highly intelligent with an I. Q. of 180, making him smarter than Einstein.

Jack not only looks normal, he looks charming, sophisticated, and intelligent. His resume, which includes his graduation, summa cum laude from Harvard Law, speaks for itself. Jack could be depended on not to shock potential investors with his table manners, too, an iffy proposition with Craig.

Additionally, Jack’s masterful analysis for running an in-house division for corporate counsel, “The Reebok Rules,” is filled with sage advice, some of which Jack might have found useful himself.

Now, what motivated John B. (Jack) Douglas III, to go to work at Green Hills, besides money? Jack had received stock when he was working for Apple and, presumably, his income from the stellar corporations, including Reebok, where he held senior executive positions , “helping Reebok grow to over $3 billion in revenue,” also provided substantial remuneration, as did Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Each of these jobs seems to have grown shorter in duration. Jack was at Reebok for ten years, the others for far shorter periods, compressed into the time he had also assumed a consulting role with Green Hills.

By all reports, if they are to be believed, it was not any problem with his professional performance which caused him to move on. That leaves personal considerations and, of late, we have had indications all was not normal with Jack’s personal life.

On April 17th Jack was arrested for committing an act of, “Lewdness, open and gross, c 272 s16 (272/16)” in plain sight of a family seated for a meal at the Olive Garden Restaurant in Taunton, Massachusetts. The father of the children, an off duty police officer immediately confronted Jack, this leading to his arrest and arraignment. The event took place at 3:49pm. The facts are recounted in the POLICE REPORT.

Evidently, Jack is an exhibitionist, a form of sexual perversion, “known by several names including: flashing, apodysophilia, and Lady Godiva syndrome, according to Thrive Boston.

According to the same site ”Some exhibitionists have a conscious desire to shock or upset the person or persons they are exposing themselves to. In contrast, a high percentage of exhibitionists hope or fantasize that the target of their exposure will become sexually aroused and want to engage in sexual activity with them.

In some cases an exhibitionist will masturbate while exposing him or herself.”

The first part of this accords with Jack’s reported activity.

The Defense Human Resources Activity (DHRA) site provides the outcome of studies which state male exhibitionists may be sexually inhibited, or even impotent, this starting before age 18 in most cases. Most common in men in their twenties the impulse supposedly diminishes during the 30s and 40s, becoming less common. Another study found, “that the typical exhibitionist is married, has above average intelligence, is satisfactorily employed, and shows no other evidence of serious emotional problems.132 and that,” The absence of other emotional problems has been a consistent finding in a number of studies. 130 “

The condition is reported to be treatable and treatment programs are available which lower the rate of recidivism to ‘rare.’ Today Jack is entering his sixties, however, making him somewhat unusual for an exhibitionist.

It is therefore unlikely the incident in Taunton was the first time Jack exhibited himself, raising the possibility his changes in employment and frequent changes of address are not unrelated to this condition.

It is conceivable Green Hills provided a safe harbor for Jack because events in his personal life had overcome him. By leaving Millennium and ‘hiring on’ at Green Hills he could continue to live in Massachusetts and still have an active professional profile, even if it was one which radically changed his previous, far more prestigious, trajectory.

Also, he did not actually have to live in Santa Barbara and see very much of Dan and Craig. But he knew, through his interactions with them, beginning in 1998, the company would cover for him if questions about his personal life were raised. Dan had certainly provided this service to Craig, who was guilty of raping women in his office during working hours, to say nothing of his after hours activities.

And, given the arrest cited above, it is very likely he knew it would be well to have an understanding and helpful employer.

Despite not inconsiderable research on the web there is actually very little to be found about Jack’s personal life. Those with which he is associated are better understood as extensions of his professional life.

Unlike his fellow Team members Jeff Hazarian and Jason Issacs, he appears to be uninvolved in his local community in any not-for-profit organization. Hazarian and Issacs both joined Green Hills after the events of 1998 and are in stable marriages. Hazarian is very active in his church. Issacs and his wife contribute and participate in local charities, which other members of the GHS management team, do not appear to do.

In effect, Dan provided a sanctuary for those employees inclined to engage in personally unethical behavior. This became a perk of employment, where it obtained the services of individuals who otherwise would not have tolerated his unwillingness to share profits and a business strategy which included providing weapons used to commit human rights violations around the world.

The score card for the management team can be read like this.

Dan and Craig – Psychopathic.
Dave Kleidermacher and Dave Chandler – Caught by greed and their complicity in Dan’s 1998 fraud.
Jack – Sexually Deviant, needs assistance in finding an effective treatment program.
Chris Smith – Unknown.
Tim Reed – Cal Tech graduate, still researching.
Jeff and Jason – Tolerant of the corporate culture which financially benefits them.

Next: The genocides of the 20th Century and how they link to America’s present wars.

A continuing series of articles written for publication on Drone Free Zone in cooperation with PsychoBusters, a coordinated project carried out to awaken the public to the psychological nature, and motives, of those presently providing contracting services and products to the military and governmental agencies. 

FOR MORE INFORMATION:
William B. McReynolds
williambmcreynolds@gmail.com
T +1 (623) 209-2003

UN General Assembly Vote Reflects Shift In Syrian Public Opinion

It’s not hard to find critics of the Assad government in the Governorate (Muhafazat) of Homs or for that matter, to varying degrees in Syria’s other thirteen Governorates according to Syrian analysts interviewed by this observer and reports from human rights groups including lawyers representing dissidents in Syria. However, after nearly 27 months of turmoil, the public opinion pendulum is markedly shifting back in support of the current regime.

One international political result was registered at the United Nations this past week when a US-Qatari-Saudi drafted General Assembly Resolution that was designed to increase pressure on the Assad government stumbled badly and fell far short of what the Saudi Ambassador to the UN and other US allies predicted would be an overwhelming vote in favor.

Effect of shift in popular opinion in Syria

Over the past four or five months it has become increasingly clear that public opinion in Syria is shifting for reasons that include, but are not limited to the following:

While inflation at the grocery stores in probably the most common complaint heard from a cross-section of society here, the population is adapting somewhat to higher prices and it appears to credit the government for efforts, some successful, to soften the impact of the illegal US-led sanctions that target this same Syrian population for purely political reasons to achieve regime change.

While Syrians demand dignity and freedom from oppressive security forces and an end to corruption, as all people do in this region and beyond, they are witnessing a return to near normalcy with respect to supplies of electricity, benzene, mazout fuel oil, bus schedules, schools, and a host of public services such as garbage collection, street sweeping, park maintenance, and sympathetic traffic cops who are rather understanding of short-cuts taken by drivers and pedestrians due to “the situation”.

In addition, public service announcement and even text messages demonstrate that the government is aware of the degree of suffering among the population, accept partial blame, and are focusing on remedial measure and crucially, ending the crisis with its horrific bloodshed. One observes here a definite trend of the pulling together of a high percentage of Syrians who share a very unique history and culture and who are deeply connected to their country and who are increasingly repelled by the continuing killing from all sides including the recent barbarisms of body mutilations and summary executions videotaped and broadcast on utube by jihadist elements. The latter who these days come from nearly three dozen countries, paid for and indoctrinated by enemies of Syria’s Arab nationalism and deep rooted pillar of resistance to the occupation of Palestine.

In addition, many among Syria’s 23 million citizens, who initially supported the uprising following government reaction to event in Deraa in March 2011, now have serious second thoughts about who exactly would replace the current government. Events in Syria are also making plain that the army is still loyal to the Assad government, and according to Jane’s Defense Weekly, is actually gaining experience and strength as well as the well-known fact that as western diplomats are admitting, the “opposition militias” are hopelessly fractured, turning one another, many essential mafia outfits, and beginning to resemble their fellow jihadists from Libya, Chechnya and in between.

Opinion in Damascus and surrounding areas visited this past week, confirms this observers experience the past five months of a sharp and fairly rapid shift in opinion that now strongly favors letting the Syrian people themselves decide, without outside interference, whether the Assad regime will stay, and indeed, whether, the Baathist party will continue to represent majority opinion, not through wanton violence but rather via next June’s election. Many express confidence in the run up to this critical vote, noting that the election will be closely monitored by the international community to assure fairness.

Perhaps aided by the current glorious May weather, a certain optimism, that was more scarce in the past, pervades many neighborhoods.

For different reasons, foreign powers, including the USA, Turkey, European Union, the UK Jordan and even the majority population of the six Gulf Cooperation Council family run countries, according to Pew Research, are shifting their earlier positions which were based in part of the US administration, NATO, and Israeli assurances that the Assad government would surely fall quickly, “A matter of days, not weeks” US President Obama promised. That was two years ago.

As noted above, this trend has accelerated since the UN General Assembly vote with last weeks which did not go as planned on the biased and politicized non-binding draft resolution on Syria.

The public reaction in Syria and across the Middle East is substantially that the “Friends of Syria” non-binding GA resolution contradicts the reality on the ground, backs terrorism in Syria and hinders the international efforts to help achieve a political solution to the crisis in this country. Only 107 states voted in favor of the resolution, 12 against while 59 countries, mostly from Africa and Latin America, abstained from voting.

One reason the vote fell short of the 130 favorable votes that the basically same resolution garnered the past two times is that it is widely viewed as ignoring the crimes and atrocities committed by the armed jihadist groups in Syria and the flow of thousands of international terrorists backed by the West, the Gulf states and Turkey who provide them with weapons and money. According to the Russian delegate, backed by several other speakers, “the resolutions ignores all the terrorists’ heinous crimes and denounces what it called the escalation of the attacks by the Syrian government”. Afterward one Latin American Permanent Representative told Inner City Press that the count would have been below 100 if not for some “last minute arm-twisting.” As it turned out, 15 countries didn’t vote at all, opting to “get coffee,” as one African Permanent Representative put it before the vote.

Syria’s Ambassador al-Jaafari exposes a hoax in the Gulf

Syria’s permanent Envoy to the UN Bashar al-Jaafari said his country regretted the adoption of a biased and unbalanced UN resolution, thanking the countries that rejected the resolution “for their responsible positions which support the UN principles and the international law articles”. He noted that the decrease in the number of countries that voted in favor and the increase of numbers of those who abstained from voting indicates the growing international understanding of the reality of what is happening in Syria due to the foreign interference, support of terrorism, the spread of extremism and incitement besides the refusal of dialogue.

“We rely on the UN and its member states to support Syria and its people against the culture of extremism and terrorism, and to encourage the comprehensive national dialogue to peacefully resolve the Syrian crisis.” he said. In a statement released after the vote on the UN draft resolution on Syria, al-Jaafari He said that the French delegation had foiled the issuance of a number of UN press releases to condemn the terrorist acts committed by al-Qaeda-linked armed groups in Syria which claimed the lives of thousands of Syrians as it foiled a UN release to condemn the attempt of assassination of the Syrian Premier.

After Qatar’s ambassador spoke in favor of the resolution his country drafted (and re-drafted several time), Ja’afari revealed that there existed an e-mail, from the representative of the Syrian opposition given to Syria’s embassy in Qatar, showing Qatar’s involvement in the kidnapping of UN peacekeepers by the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade. He read out a phone number from the e-mail as several Gulf diplomats grimaced or scowled, and three left the Chamber.

Visibly stunned, the UK Permanent Representative Lyall Grant called the whole matter “deeply confusing”. Another Permanent Representative, from a militia contributing country, said that if true, it’s “very problematic.” The reasons include the fact that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had just thanked Qatar for its roles in the release of the UN Peacekeepers the earlier kidnapping of whom the Qatari government may have planned, paid for and executed.

Meanwhile, Ban Ki-moon’s spokesperson Martin Nesirky said he would not disclose any more about the “negotiations to free the peacekeepers or who was behind the crime.”

Score a major diplomatic victory for Syria’s UN Ambassador as public opinion shifts in favor of the Assad government and pressure as well as certain optimism builds in the run-up to the Geneva II conference being organized by the White House and the Kremlin.

The White House Wants Pastors To Promote Gun Control

A group of influential pastors and ministers recently met with Vice President Joe Biden at the White House where the Vice President called on them to use their influence to help pass President Barack Obama’s new gun control measures. Of course, these measures include the outlawing of all semi-automatic rifles, outlawing high-capacity magazines, and establishing a government-mandated national gun registration policy, which is subtly identified as “Universal Background Checks.” These measures were recently defeated in the US Senate, so now the White House is calling on the clergy to help sell this gun grab to America’s churches.

Here is how Breitbart.com covers the story: “Vice President Joe Biden wants pastors, rabbis and nuns to tell their flocks that enacting gun control is the moral thing to do. But another vote may have to wait until Congress wraps up work on an immigration overhaul.

“Biden met for two-and-a-half hours Monday with more than a dozen leaders from various faith communities –Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Sikh, to name a few. Both Biden and the faith leaders encouraged each other not to give up on what has been an arduous and thus far fruitless effort by Biden and President Barack Obama to pass new gun laws in the wake of December’s schoolhouse shooting in Connecticut.

“Around a large, circular table in a conference room on the White House grounds, Biden waxed optimistic about prospects for passing a bill, according to four participants who spoke to The Associated Press after the meeting. Biden’s chief of staff, Bruce Reed, joined the group, as did a handful of Obama aides who work on faith-based outreach. The meeting closed with a meditation and a prayer for action.”

The report continued saying, “Monday’s session reflects an attempt to broaden the coalition calling for new gun laws to include a wide array of religious groups–including evangelicals and conservative faith communities.”

The report concluded by saying, “A spokeswoman for Biden declined to comment on the meeting. But Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Assembly, said a diverse spectrum of denominations and religious orders were represented. She said they included evangelical leaders Richard Cizik and Franklin Graham, the son of evangelist Billy Graham, as well as Sister Marge Clark of Network, a Catholic group.”

See the report here:

Biden Asks Clergy To Make Moral Argument On Guns

There is nothing new about the White House attempting to use America’s pastors to promote gun control. Both the G.W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations have had the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) conduct pastor training programs whereby pastors are instructed to use their influence to convince citizens to completely surrender any and all rights and liberties to the federal government in the event of a national emergency or crisis. Submission to tyrannical actions such as forced relocation and gun confiscation is taught in these training programs.

See this report:

Secret FEMA Plan To Use Pastors As Pacifiers In Preparation For Martial Law

And here is a local Louisiana television news report on the FEMA “Clergy Response Teams”:

FEMA Training Pastors For Emergency Response

Obviously, the Obama administration’s effort to enact more gun control has already enjoyed the support of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Richard Land (who is a member of the CFR) and evangelist Franklin Graham. It is noteworthy that Mr. Graham was in attendance at Vice President Biden’s private meeting. President Obama must consider Franklin Graham a key ally in his quest to enact these new gun control measures.

Unfortunately, a sizable percentage of America’s pulpits are occupied by men and women who are either extreme liberal and socialist activists or by conservatives who are sheepishly passive and compliant, and who would, therefore, say or do nothing to interfere with or resist any tyrannical efforts by the federal government. There are many other pastors who truly love freedom and would naturally resist any effort of government to usurp God-given liberties, but they have been indoctrinated in the fallacious “obey-the-government-no-matter-what” interpretation of Romans 13. It is more than interesting that FEMA is instructing pastors to teach this perversion of Romans 13 to their congregations. Plus, I seem to recall that this is exactly what Hitler’s Nazi government instructed the pastors of Germany to also do. But this is just a coincidence, right?

This is the biggest difference between Obama’s gun control measures and the efforts of old King George III when he attempted to seize the weapons of the colonists that were stored in Concord, Massachusetts. When that attempt occurred in 1775, the pulpits of Colonial America were mostly unified in renouncing this act of tyranny and in boldly proclaiming the Biblical principles of lawful self-defense to their congregations. But when Barack Obama and Senator Dianne Feinstein tried to enact laws in 2013 that were equally egregious to those of old King George, the silence of America’s pulpits was deafening. Yes, millions of liberty-loving Americans rose to the challenge and helped beat back Obama’s gun grab, but this was done with little or no help from America’s pastors. This fact was not lost to the White House, and now the effort is underway to convince America’s pastors and ministers to openly support Obama’s gun grab.

For the sake of freedom and liberty in this country, it is critical that America’s pastors start sounding forth the clarion call. It is critical that they become “watchmen on the wall.” It is critical that they join the fight to preserve, protect, and defend those Natural rights that are safeguarded in the US Constitution–including the right of the people to keep and bear arms. PASTORS MUST BE ENGAGED.

As I said earlier, there are many pastors and Christians who only know what they have been taught. And what they have been taught is that the Bible does not support the right to resist government, that the right to keep and bear arms is not sacred, and that Christians are supposed to be pacifistic in their approach to issues that relate to the Second Amendment. They are taught this erroneous doctrine in Bible colleges and universities and seminaries all over America–regardless of denomination.

It is for this reason that my constitutional attorney son, Tim, and I wrote a brand new book entitled, “To Keep or Not To Keep: Why Christians Should Not Give Up Their Guns.” This book looks at the right to keep and bear arms strictly from a Biblical perspective. Books outlining the constitutional and historical principles relating to the Second Amendment are plentiful. But I know of NO BOOK written within the last one-hundred years that deals with this subject solely from a Scriptural perspective. That is exactly what our new book does.

Here are some of the questions we answer in our new book:

*Is the right to keep and bear arms a divine right?

*Should Christians surrender their firearms if the law requires them to do so?

*Does the New Testament require Christians to always be non-violent?

*Did the fact that Jesus and the apostles not rise up with arms against tyrannical government mean that Christians today should never do so?

*Were America’s Founding Fathers right or wrong when they rebelled with arms against the British Crown?

These are the questions that Christians everywhere are rightly asking. These are the questions that America’s pastors must be addressing from their pulpits. And these are the questions that Tim and I show the Biblical answers to in our new book.

To order this brand new book, “To Keep or Not To Keep: Why Christians Should Not Give Up Their Guns,” go to:

Keep Your Arms

I firmly believe that if enough pastors and Christians would read and digest this book, it would revolutionize the way churches respond to efforts such as Obama’s gun grab. It might even be an instrument that could help preserve liberty in our nation for the next fifty years or more.

We MUST get this book into the hands of as many people as possible. I’m asking readers to help me get the word out about this new book. If everyone reading this column would purchase two of these books, one for themselves and one for a friend, the results could be mind-boggling. I truly believe this book has the potential to change the course of America. Why? Because the pulpits and churches have the potential to change the course of America. And this book has the potential to provide the instruction and inspiration necessary to awaken and energize America’s pastors and churches. Perhaps your pastor or Christian school administrator would even be willing to sell multiple copies of this book in their church or school. There are discount prices for bulk orders. Why not ask him or her?

Again, to purchase this brand new book, “To Keep or Not To Keep: Why Christians Should Not Give Up Their Guns,” go to:

Keep Your Arms

President Obama and Vice President Biden are trying to enlist pastors and ministers in their efforts to disarm the American people. I’m asking pastors and ministers and Christians all over America to join “the holy cause of liberty.” (Patrick Henry) And make no mistake about it: without the freedom to keep and bear arms, there is no freedom. And, yes, as our new book shows, that is a Biblical principle.

P.S. Where does your pastor stand? We have asked pastors all over America to be courageous enough to publicly support the right to keep and bear arms from their pulpits. We have asked these men and women to also be willing to add their names to our list of Second Amendment Pastors so freedom-minded people in their cities can see that there are pro-freedom pastors nearby. To see if there is a Second Amendment pastor near you or, as a pastor, to sign up as a Second Amendment pastor, go here:

Second Amendment Pastors

Storm Clouds Gathering

Government is bad for personal freedom. That argument is premised upon the truism that everything government does interferes with freedom because it either prohibits or compels. Everything it owns it has taken from others. Much of what it says is divorced from the truth. President Obama, like President George W. Bush, has argued that his first job is to keep America safe, and if he impairs personal freedom in the process, that is a small price to pay for safety. Many of my colleagues in the media on the left and right have bought this argument, notwithstanding its fallacies.

Until now.

This past week, we learned that the IRS has targeted for additional scrutiny the tax exemption applications of groups with whose messages it disagrees. We also learned that the Department of Justice obtained the personal telephone records of hundreds of reporters and editors employed by the Associated Press without a search warrant issued by a judge. And during this past week we learned that the White House, the Department of State and the CIA all engaged in a conspiracy of disinformation so that the official version of events of what caused the murders of four Americans at our consulate in Benghazi, Libya, would not impair Obama’s re-election campaign in 2012.

The common threads in all of this government secrecy and lying are a general rejection of government’s moral obligation to tell the truth, a disturbing yet brazen willingness to evade and avoid the restrictions the Constitution has deliberately built around government, and a glib admission that the government can do as it pleases so long as it can politically get away with it.

The Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause requires that the government treat all similarly situated entities in a similar manner. The Constitution’s First Amendment prohibits the government from using the speech and expressive activities of persons in America as a basis for the disparate treatment of them.

Thus, on its face – that is, on the basis of what the IRS has admitted and without any further investigation – we have violations of these constitutional principles. If the IRS were to examine the applications for tax exemption of Media Matters with the same level of scrutiny as it does with Tea Party Patriots, it would not run afoul of these principles. But Congress has given the IRS broad latitude to scrutinize the behavior of the taxpayers it chooses to scrutinize, and the IRS has given itself authority to probe, prod and plunder wherever it wishes. I say “given itself,” because the IRS has rule-making power, which when overlooked by Congress (as is almost always the case) actually serves to enhance IRS powers beyond what Congress permits.

Short of criminal behavior such as bribery or conspiracy, the IRS employees who have singled out applications for tax exempt status for more scrutiny based on anticipated political expression are subject to removal from office, but they cannot be prosecuted or sued. Here again, Congress is to blame, as both Republicans and Democrats have used and abused the IRS to their advantage, and neither party inwardly wants laws that will prevent it from doing so in the future. Is this what you expect of our tax collectors?

The First Amendment also assures the right of professional journalists to seek and protect their sources, and it gives them immunity from government prosecution or retribution for truthfully publishing matters of material public interest, even when it involves information stolen from the government. The Supreme Court taught us this in the Pentagon Papers case.

Moreover, the Fourth Amendment requires that if the government wants private information about who stole its secrets, it needs a search warrant from a judge. But the Patriot Act, which was celebrated by some in the media whose telephone records have since been seized, permits federal agents to write their own search warrants when they seek records from a third party like a telephone company and can claim that pursuit of terrorists is at stake. The Patriot Act makes a mockery of the Fourth Amendment, and the government knows that. When the government chills free speech, we all suffer. Thomas Jefferson preferred newspapers without government to government without newspapers. Whose personal records will the government authorize itself to seize next?

The lesson of Benghazi is that we had no lawful right to interfere in the domestic affairs of the Libyan government. It was unlawful for Obama to bomb Col. Gadhafi without a congressional declaration of war. The organized assault on our consulate was the unintended consequence of us using force to infuse American-style democracy on a people whose culture is unable and unwilling to accept it.

But the president’s people were terrified that the murder of our ambassador to Libya during the 2012 presidential campaign might impair Obama’s re-election chances. So they and he tried to rewrite history, and the more they and he lied the more they and he needed to lie to cover up their original lies. Would you retain an employee who lied to you about the deaths of innocents and lied more to cover up the original lies?

Now, back to Bush and Obama and the president’s job. According to the Constitution, the president’s first job obligation is to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. According to the Constitution, that means preserving Americans’ freedom first and safety second. Freedom is our natural state and is the ultimate natural right. Safety is a need that we ourselves can provide when unimpeded by the government. If the president keeps us safe but not free, he is not doing his job. Do you know anyone who feels freer or even any safer because the government trampled personal freedoms and so far has gotten away with it?

Source: Andrew Napalitano |LewRockwell.com

Green Fields Renewal Demands Exxon Act Now To Save Residents of Mayflower, Arkansas

NEWS RELEASE – (Mayflower, AR) – Green Fields Renewal, a partner company for Rebuild America, today issued a statement on the disaster. The statement urged all parties to focus on the core issues. These, the statement said, are to ensure the long term survival of residents and to clean up the spill, minimizing damage which continues to spread.

Melinda Pillsbury-Foster, an officer of Green Fields, said, “While much attention has been given to organizing a class action law suit,  the sad fact is that given the history of Exxon for the last two generations, many of the people involved could be dead before a dime is ever paid for resident’s health by Exxon. This kind of irresponsibility can no longer be tolerated.”

The statement continued, “Instead, we propose Exxon offer to relocate ALL impacted families and individuals whose homes may now be dangerous to health to new homes. For Exxon, this cost is minimal for a spill of this magnitude. For the people it might literally be life and death. Exposure to toxic Tar Sands can become a death sentence, which Exxon well knows. People in Mayflower are already struggling with health issues, bewildered, and desperate for answers.

CNN reported, few of the over 10,000 who helped clean up the Exxon Valdez Spill almost 25 years ago are alive today and Exxon has still failed to pay all of the ordered reparations. We cannot permit this to happen again.

We can make this the turning point for America, rejecting the systemic irresponsibility of corporations like Exxon, establishing accountability for oil companies to ensure that people are not dying to improve their profits.”

Pillsbury-Foster closed her comments urging people to go to their website, read it, and take action in conjunction with David Lincoln, who is on the ground in Mayflower to provide coordination. Dave can be reached by phone to 870-321-0251 and by email to davelinc@aol.com.

From: Green Fields Renewal – Goals

We propose a negotiated settlement using a Qualified Settlement Trust. This works to help you limit the damage done to you and your family so you can move on with your lives, while at the same time creating a precedent which will protect others in the future.

When citizens are affected by large pollution events, such as a pipeline spill, they are often left little recourse to ensure compensatory damages for their losses. A Qualified Settlement Trust is a tool used in negotiating an appropriate and long-term model to assist community members who have been impacted.  

The fund is established under §468B of the Internal Revenue Code. This Code section permits Exxon to deposit money or property into a trust and receive a full and complete release of liability. Once the funds are deposited, Exxon is entitled to a current deduction from income tax for the amount paid into the fund.

A QST provides a way for the entire community to stand together and be secured. Individuals can still retain legal counsel; this could bring a fair and just reaction from Exxon or the court systems in the event that Exxon does not fulfill their obligations.

This takes into account the well documented history of Exxon and other oil companies for delay and intimidation of those impacted.

Otherwise, the strategy Exxon and other oil companies follow is ruthless, and intended to avoid creating any precedent for alleviating the problems created or assisting those harmed.

This approach protects you, and everyone in your community. To learn more, talk to Dave, and sign up, go to  OUR GOALS

Our Proposal

Our proposal for you is to rebuild your homes outside the impacted area, but still within your community, to remove you permanently from the danger zone.

Your Homes

As part of the restitution for what you have already suffered, and for impacting your lives and health, we propose those homes be entirely paid for by Exxon and built to allow you to focus less on the problems you will still face, and more on ensuring your health and the health of your families is not further impacted.

Moving the subdivision should include everyone, both owners who are resident and renters. Owners who were not resident should be paid the full price for the loss of the house because all of the homes in the subdivision have been permeated with toxic fumes and are no longer safe for habitation.

Follow-Up Health Insurance

All who have been impacted, including clean-up personnel, should receive no cost to them coverage for twenty years, again paid for by Exxon along with heath professionals to provide assessments on an ongoing basis.

The Environment

The land and water remain impacted. We propose Exxon do a thorough clean-up using the technologies now in use in other parts of the world for exactly these problems. This technology leaves the land and water clean and fertile in a far shorter period of time and helps avoid the problems which are already occurring as the waste seeps into other areas downstream.

This proposal would cost Exxon far less than litigation – but would create the precedent for accountability all of us need. You can ensure this happens, benefiting yourselves and all Americans – if you stand firm.

We will provide multiple forms of documentation, proving the point, to you and to the media directly through this site.

Today, you face years of health risks. Many have died of exactly what you face today.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:
WilliambMcReynolds@gmail.com 
T +1 (623) 209-2003
F +1 (623) 209-2008

Take It From The Rabbi’s Mouth

Every so often we come across a secular Jewish ‘anti’ Zionist’  who argues that Zionism is not Judaism and vice versa. Interestingly enough, I have just come across an invaluable text that illuminates this question from a rabbinical perspective. Apparently back in 1942, 757 American Rabbis added their names to a public pronouncement titled ‘Zionism an Affirmation of Judaism’. This Rabbinical rally for Zionism was declared at the time “the largest public pronouncement in all Jewish history.”

Today, we tend to believe that world Jewry’s transition towards support for Israel followed the 1967 war though some might  argue that already in 1948, American Jews manifested a growing support for Zionism. However, this rabbinical pronouncement proves that as early as 1942, the American Jewish religious establishment was already deeply Zionist. And if this is not enough, the rabbis also regarded Zionism as the ‘implementation’ of Judaism. Seemingly, already then, the peak of World War two, the overwhelming majority of American Rabbis regarded Zionism, not only as fully consistent with Judaism, but as a “logical expression and implementation of it.”

In spite of the fact that early Zionist leaders were largely secular and the East European Jewish settler waves were driven by Jewish socialist ideology, the rabbis contend that “Zionism is not a secularist movement. It has its origins and roots in the authoritative religious texts of Judaism.

Those rabbis were not a bunch of ignoramuses. They were patriotic and nationalistic and they grasped that “universalism is not a contradiction of nationalism.” The rabbis tried to differentiate between contemporaneous German Nationalism and other national movements and they definitely wanted to believe that Zionism was categorically different to Nazism. “Nationalism as such, whether it be English, French, American or Jewish, is not in itself evil. It is only militaristic and chauvinistic nationalism, that nationalism which shamelessly flouts all mandates of international morality, which is evil.” But as we know, just three years after the liberation of Auschwitz the new Jewish State launched a devastating racially driven ethnic-cleansing campaign. Zionism has proven to be militaristic and chauvinistic.

Shockingly enough, back in 1942 as many as 757 American rabbis were able to predict the outcome of the war and they realised that the suffering of European Jewry would be translated into a Jewish State . “We are not so bold as to predict the nature of the international order which will emerge from the present war. It is altogether likely, and indeed it may be desirable, that all sovereign states shall under the coming peace surrender some of their sovereignty to achieve a just and peaceful world society (a Jewish State).”

Some American patriots today are concerned with Israeli-American dual nationality and the dual aspirations of American Jews. Apparently our rabbis addressed this topic too. According to them, there is no such conflict whatsoever. All American Jews are American patriots and all American decision makers are Zionists. “Every fair-minded American knows that American Jews have only one political allegiance–and that is to America. There is nothing in Zionism to impair this loyalty. Zionism has been endorsed in our generation by every President from Woodrow Wilson to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and has been approved by the Congress of the United States. The noblest spirits in American life, statesmen, scholars, writers, ministers and leaders of labor and industry, have lent their sympathy and encouragement to the movement.”

Back in 1942 our American rabbis were bold enough to state that defeating Hitler was far from sufficient. For them, a full solution of the Jewish question could only take place in Palestine. “Jews, and all non-Jews who are sympathetically interested in the plight of Jewry, should bear in mind that the defeat of Hitler will not of itself normalize Jewish life in Europe. “

But there was one thing the American rabbis failed to mention – the Palestinian people. For some reason, those rabbis who knew much about ‘universalism’ and in particular Jewish ‘universalism’ showed very little concern to the people of the land. I guess that after all, chosennss is a form of blindness and rabbis probably know more about this than anyone else.

Zionism: An Affirmation of Judaism

http://zionistsout.blogspot.com/2008/03/zionism-affirmation-of-judaism.html

ZIONISM AN AFFIRMATION OF JUDAISM A Reply by 757 Orthodox, Conservative and Reform Rabbis of America to a Statement Issued by Ninety Members of the Reform Rabbinate Charging That Zionism Is Incompatible with the Teachings of Judaism

THE SUBJOINED REPLY was prepared at the initiative of the following Rabbis who submitted it to their colleagues throughout the country for signature: Philip S. Bernstein, Barnett R. Brickner, Israel Goldstein, James G. Heller, Mordecai M. Kaplan, B. L. Levinthal, Israel H. Levinthal, Louis M. Levitsky, Joshua Loth Liebman, Joseph H. Lookstein, Jacob R. Marcus, Abraham A. Neuman, Louis I. Newman, David de Sola Pool, Abba Hillel Silver, Milton Steinberg, and Stephen S. Wise.

WE, THE UNDERSIGNED RABBIS of all elements in American Jewish religious life, have noted with concern a statement by ninety of our colleagues in which they repudiate Zionism on the ground that it is inconsistent with Jewish religious and moral doctrine.This statement misrepresents Zionism and misinterprets historic Jewish religious teaching, and we should be derelict in our duty if we did not correct the misapprehensions which it is likely to foster.

We call attention in the first place to the fact that the signatories to this statement, for whom as fellow-Rabbis we have a high regard, represent no more than a very small fraction of the American rabbinate. They constitute a minority even of the rabbinate of Reform Judaism with which they are associated. The overwhelming majority of American Rabbis regard Zionism not only as fully consistent with Judaism but as a logical expression and implementation of it.

Our colleagues concede the need for Jewish immigration into Palestine as contributing towards a solution of the vast tragedy of Jewish homelessness. They profess themselves ready to encourage such settlement. They are aware of the important achievements, social and spiritual, of the Palestinian Jewish community and they pledge to it their unstinted support. And yet, subscribing to every practical accomplishment of Zionism, they have embarked upon a public criticism of it. In explanation of their opposition they advance the consideration that Zionism is nationalistic and secularistic. On both scores they maintain it is incompatible with the Jewish religion and its universalistic outlook. They protest against the political emphasis which, they say, is now paramount in the Zionist program and which, according to them, tends to confuse both Jews and Christians as to the place and function of the Jewish group in American society. They appeal to the prophets of ancient Israel for substantiation of their views.

TREASURING the doctrines and moral principles of our faith no less than they, devoted equally to America and its democratic processes and spirit, we nonetheless find every one of their contentions totally without foundation.

Zionism is not a secularist movement. It has its origins and roots in the authoritative religious texts of Judaism. Scripture and rabbinical literature alike are replete with the promise of the restoration of Israel to its ancestral home. Anti-Zionism, not Zionism, is a departure from the Jewish religion. Nothing in the entire pronouncement of our colleagues is more painful than their appeal to the prophets of Israel—to those very prophets whose inspired and recorded words of national rebirth and restoration nurtured and sustained the hope of Israel throughout the ages.

Nor is Zionism a denial of the universalistic teachings of Judaism. Universalism is not a contradiction of nationalism. Nationalism as such, whether it be English, French, American or Jewish, is not in itself evil. It is only militaristic and chauvinistic nationalism, that nationalism which shamelessly flouts all mandates of international morality, which is evil. The prophets of Israel looked forward to the time not when all national entities would be obliterated, but when all nations would walk in the light of the Lord, live by His law and learn war no more.

Our colleagues find themselves unable to subscribe to the political emphasis “now paramount in the Zionist program.” We fail to perceive what it is to which they object. Is it to the fact that there are a regularly constituted Zionist organization and a Jewish Agency which deal with the mandatory government, the Colonial office, the League of Nations and other recognized political bodies? But obviously, even immigration and colonization are practical matters which require political action. The settlement of a half million Jews in Palestine since the last war was made possible by political action which culminated in the Balfour Declaration and the Palestine Mandate. There can be little hope of opening the doors of Palestine for mass Jewish immigration after the war without effective political action. Or is it that they object to the ultimate achievement by the Jewish community of Palestine of some form of Jewish statehood? We are not so bold as to predict the nature of the international order which will emerge from the present war. It is altogether likely, and indeed it may be desirable, that all sovereign states shall under the coming peace surrender some of their sovereignty to achieve a just and peaceful world society.

Certainly our colleagues will allow to the Jews of Palestine the same rights that are allowed to all other peoples resident on their own land. If Jews should ultimately come to constitute a majority of the population of Palestine, would our colleagues suggest that all other peoples in the post-war world shall be entitled to political self-determination, whatever form that may take, but the Jewish people in Palestine shall not have such a right? Or do they mean to suggest that the Jews in Palestine shall forever remain a minority in order not to achieve such political self-determination?

PROTESTING their sympathy both for the homeless Jews of the world and for their brethren in Palestine, our colleagues have by their pronouncement done all these a grave disservice. It may well be that to the degree to which their efforts arc at all effective, Jews who might otherwise have found a haven in Palestine will be denied one. The enemies of the Jewish homeland will be strengthened in their propaganda as a result of the aid which these Rabbis have given them. To the Jews of Palestine, facing the gravest danger in their history and fighting hard to maintain morale and hope in the teeth of the totalitarian menace, this pronouncement comes as a cruel blow.

We do not mean to imply that our colleagues intended it as such. We have no doubt that they are earnest about their fine spun theoretical objections to Zionism. We hold, however, that these objections have no merit, and further that voicing them at this time has been unwise and unkind.

We have not the least fear that our fellow Americans will be led to misconstrue the attitudes of American Jews to America because of their interest in Zionism. Every fair-minded American knows that American Jews have only one political allegiance–and that is to America. There is nothing in Zionism to impair this loyalty. Zionism has been endorsed in our generation by every President from Woodrow Wilson to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and has been approved by the Congress of the United States. The noblest spirits in American life, statesmen, scholars, writers, ministers and leaders of labor and industry, have lent their sympathy and encouragement to the movement.

Jews, and all non-Jews who are sympathetically interested in the plight of Jewry, should bear in mind that the defeat of Hitler will not of itself normalize Jewish life in Europe.

An Allied peace which will not frankly face the problem of the national homelessness of the Jewish people will leave the age-old tragic status of European Jewry unchanged. The Jewish people is in danger of emerging from this war not only more torn and broken than any other people, but also without any prospects of a better and more secure future and without the hope that such tragedies will not recur again, and again. Following an Allied victory, the Jews of Europe, we are confident, will be restored to their political rights and to equality of citizenship. But they possessed these rights after the last war and yet the past twenty-five years have witnessed a rapid and appalling deterioration in their position. In any case, even after peace is restored Europe will be so ravaged and war-torn that large masses of Jews will elect migration to Palestine as a solution of their personal problems.

 Indeed, for most of these there may be no other substantial hope of economic, social and spiritual rehabilitation.

THE freedom which, we have faith, will come to all men and nations after this war, must come not only to Jews as individuals wherever they live, permitting them to share freedom on a plane of equality with all other men, but also to the Jewish people, as such, restored in its homeland, where at long last it will be a free people within a world federation of free peoples.

Of the 757 Rabbis listed below, 214 are members of the Central Conference of American Rabbis (Reform); 247 are members of the Rabbinical Assembly of America (Conservative); and the rest are affiliated with the Rabbinical Council of America (Orthodox) or the Union of Orthodox Rabbis. The total represents the largest number of rabbis whose signatures are attached to a public pronouncement in all Jewish history.

To see the scanned image in PDF format with the list of signers, click here

Note: A version of the above statement was released to the press on November 20, 1942. By that time 818 rabbis had signed on. It appears in Samuel Halperin’s The Political World of American Zionism. (Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1961) 333.

Lions And Tigers And Terrorists, Oh My!

The debate over what actions actually constitute “terrorism,” I believe, will become one of the defining ideological battles of our era. Terrorism is not a word often used by common people to describe aberrant behaviors or dastardly deeds; however, it is used by governments around the world to label and marginalize political enemies. That is to say, it is the government that normally decides who is a “terrorist” and who is a mere “criminal,” the assertion being that one is clearly far worse than the other.

The terrorist label elicits emotional firestorms and fearful brain-quakes in the minds of the masses. It causes the ignorant and unaware to abandon principles they would normally apply to any other malicious enterprise. They begin to reason that a criminal should be afforded justice, while a terrorist should be afforded only vengeance, even though the act of branding a person a “terrorist” is often completely arbitrary. This vengeance is usually pursued by any means. Thus, the terrorist moniker becomes a rationalization for every vicious and inhuman policy of the establishment, as well as for the citizenry.

Dishonorable and foolish people claim the existence of terrorism essentially gives license for the rest of us to become criminal, willfully trampling on individuals’ rights to privacy, property, free speech, due process, civic participation, etc. Mass criminality against the individual in the name of social safety is the glue that holds together all tyrannical systems, triggering a catastrophic cycle of moral relativism that eventually bleeds a culture dry.

Historically, the expanded use of the terrorist label by governments tends to coincide with the rising tides of despotism. A government that quietly seeks to dominate the people will inevitably begin to treat the people as if they are the enemy. Those citizens who present the greatest philosophical or physical threat to the centralization of power are usually the first to suffer. I do not think it is unfair to say that any system of authority that suddenly claims to see terrorists under every rock and behind every tree is probably about to rain full-on fascism down upon the population.

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is the legal extension of this process, with a vaporous gray language that allows the government to interpret it in any manner it deems useful, which conveniently allows it to interpret a wide range of “offenses” as acts of war against the state.

The Department of Homeland Security’s “If You See Something Say Something” campaign is the social extension of the process, by which it creates the framework for a paranoid self-censored surveillance culture.

The fusion center network is the enforcement extension designed to surround local and State police with an atmosphere of indoctrination and federalized dogma, teaching common cops to profile according to a template that is so ambiguous that literally any activity could be considered suspicious or terroristic.

All that is left for the establishment is to force the vocabulary of fear into mainstream consciousness. This means constant propaganda. This means furious hype. This means an utterly shameless barrage of false associations, misdirections and fantastical fairyland lies. This means that we have reached a point in the grand totalitarian scheme in which the American populace is about to be bombarded with an endless drone of terrorism brainwashing — not demonizing a foreign enemy, but demonizing the hypothetical extremist next door. In fact, the Boston Marathon bombing seems to have been the signal for an escalation of such rhetoric. The high-speed conditioning has already begun.

In Middlefield, Ohio, James Gilkerson, an unemployed man taking care of his elderly mother, was pulled over during a routine traffic stop only to exit his vehicle firing an AK-47 at police officers. The action was obviously unprovoked; the police responded with deadly force, and rightly so. I would have done the same. Gilkerson’s attack was crazy, yes. Criminal? Yes. But Middlefield Police Chief Arnold Stanko’s remarks to the press bring a whole other dark side to this already tragic event. Stanko stated that: “He got out of the vehicle, intending to kill my officers. We don’t know why he did it… He was a scumbag and a terrorist, and he’s dead.”

Stanko doesn’t know why Gilkerson fired at police, but he is certain that the man was a “terrorist.” What if Gilkerson was depressed or overmedicated or he just snapped that day? Terrorism denotes certain premeditation and planning. This attack was clearly not part of a malicious scheme, yet the label of “terrorist” is being thrown around nonchalantly, almost as if law enforcement has been trained to use such rhetoric whenever it suits them.

In Montevideo, Minn., the FBI recently raided the home of Buford Rogers, who was convicted of felony burglary in 2011. Authorities had received reports that Buford was in possession of a firearm, which is illegal for convicted felons. The raid did indeed produce firearms, as well as items the FBI dubbed “explosive devices.” They did not specify what these “explosive devices” were or if they actually posed a significant threat to anyone. After the bust, headlines read “FBI Thwarts Terror Attack.”

Again, there is absolutely no indication here of a planned attack. There’s no indication that Rogers had any intent to hurt anyone or even any ideological motivations to hurt anyone. Yet the terrorism label is used again to describe a routine criminal arrest.

In Tempe, Ariz., 18-year-old Joshua Prater was arrested after a maid found an “explosive device” in his closet and turned it in to authorities. Prater claims he built the device, consisting of a carbon dioxide cartridge, a fireworks fuse, gunpowder, match heads and fireworks, eight years ago; and he claims he was not aware it was dangerous. Police did not call Prater a terrorist, but they did refer to his device as an “IED,” which, as we all know, is the abbreviation used by U.S. soldiers to describe an “improvised explosive device,” the favorite weapon of insurgents and “terrorists” in Iraq and Afghanistan. Such terminology is not coincidental. Make no mistake; this is a calculated effort to introduce the language of the battlefield to the streets of America.

Seattle police are now holding simulation drills of attacks on local schools in which law enforcement officials fight against gun-wielding proxy opponents posing as “angry parents.”

These kinds of drills are a part of a larger DHS program implemented through fusion centers which, in my view, is designed to desensitize law enforcement to violence against common citizens. Said drills have simulated conflicts with constitutionalists, home-schoolers, patriots and so on. Let’s be clear here; the “terrorists” that the police are now being trained to fight against are people like you and me. We are being painted as the future enemy.

Just to solidify this reality, I will also point out the recent exposure of a DHS training program series available on the Federal Emergency Management Agency Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program website, which includes a media section designed to provide teaching aids to agency heads and law enforcement. The series includes a fabricated news broadcast that covers a hypothetical raid on a “militia headquarters.” The video shows semi-automatic firearms, rifle scopes, night vision, flak jackets — all perfectly legal in the United States today — as illegal “contraband,” while painting gun owners and militias as chemical weapon-wielding terrorists.

What started as an appeal to the average American’s sense of Islamophobia after the 9/11 attacks has now evolved into the full-spectrum theater of random domestic terrorism that culminates in what the establishment calls “self-radicalization.”

The concept of self-radicalization is a very interesting propaganda tactic. Rather than limiting the public’s fear only to some outside foreign enemy like Al Qaeda or some domestic activist organization like the liberty movement, the establishment has now composed a narrative in which each and every one of us might one day catch the extremist virus of dissent, defiance or ideological violence and suddenly decide to kill, kill, kill.

The more naïve subsections of our society will accept unConstitutional methods against the “radicalized” out of fear and conditioning, without realizing that the machinations of bureaucracy being used against those they hate could just as easily be used against them in the future.

If the elites achieve the social endgame they desire, legal and political wordplay will become so broad that anyone could be targeted. If you are a citizen who defies the establishment power structure, then you are an extremist. If you are an extremist, then you are a terrorist. If you are a terrorist, then you are an enemy combatant. And, under the NDAA, if you are an enemy combatant, you are no longer a citizen and you no longer deserve Constitutional protection. The circular logic is maddening, not to mention outrageous. But it is also very useful when an abusive government needs a pretext to silence or destroy dissent. Under totalitarianism, all people become terrorists. It starts with the mistreatment of the worst of us, and it ends with the mistreatment of the best of us.

Source: Brandon Smith | Alt-Market

Gangster State America

There are many signs of gangster state America. One is the collusion between federal authorities and banksters in a criminal conspiracy to rig the markets for gold and silver.

My explanation that the sudden appearance of an unprecedented 400 ton short sale of gold on the COMEX in April was a manipulation designed to protect the dollar from the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing policy has found acceptance among gold investors and hedge fund managers.

The sale was a naked short. The seller had no gold to sell. COMEX reported having gold only equal to about half of the short sale in its vaults, and not all of that was available for delivery. No one but the Federal Reserve could have placed such an order, and the order came from one of the Fed’s bullion banks, one of the entities “too big to fail.”

Bill Kaye of the Greater Asian Hedge Fund in Hong Kong and Dave Kranzler of Golden Returns Capital have filled in the details of how the manipulation worked. Being sophisticated investors of many years of experience, both Kaye and Kranzler understand that the financial press runs with the authorized story planted to serve the agenda that has been put into play.

Institutional investors who have bullion in their portfolio do not want the expense associated with storing it securely. Instead, they buy into Exchange Traded Funds (ETF) and hold their bullion in the form of a paper claim. The largest, the SPDR Gold Trust or GLD, trades on the New York Stock Exchange. The trustee and custodian is a bankster, and only other banksters are able to turn investments into delivery of physical bullion. Only shares in the amount of 100,000 can be redeemed in gold.

The price of bullion is not set in the physical market where individuals take delivery of bullion purchases. It is set in the paper futures market where short selling can drive down the price even if the demand for physical possession is rising. The paper gold market is also the market in which people speculate and leverage their positions, place stop-loss orders, and are subject to margin calls.

When the enormous naked shorts hit the COMEX, stop-loss orders were triggered adding to the sales, and margin calls forced more sales. Investors who were not in on the manipulation lost a lot of money.

The sales of GLD shares are accumulated by the banksters in 100,000 lots and presented to GLD for redemption in gold acquired at the driven down price.

The short sale is leveraged by the stop-loss triggers and margin calls, and results in a profit for the banksters who placed the short sell order. The banksters then profit again as they sell the released gold into the physical market, especially in Asia, where demand has been stimulated by the sharp drop in bullion price and by the loss of confidence in fiat currency. Asian prices are usually at a higher premium above the spot prices in New York-London.

Some readers have said “don’t bet against the Federal Reserve; the manipulation can go on forever.” But can it? As the ETFs such as GLD are drained of gold, their ability to cover any of their obligations to investors diminishes. In my opinion, these ETFs are like a fractional reserve banking system. The claims on gold exceed the amount of gold in the trusts. When the ETFs are looted of their gold by the banksters, the gold price will explode, as the claims on gold will greatly exceed the supply.

Kranzler reports that the current June futures contracts are 12.5 times the amount of deliverable gold. If more than 8 percent of these trades were to demand delivery, COMEX would default. That such a situation is possible indicates the total failure of federal financial regulation.

What the Federal Reserve has done in order to maintain its short-run policy of protecting the “banks too big too fail” is to make the inevitable reckoning more costly for the US economy.

Another irony is the benefactors of the banksters sale of the gold leeched from the gold ETFs. Asia is the beneficiary, especially India and China. The “get out of gold line” of the US financial press enables China to unload its excess supply of dollars, accumulated from the offshored US economy, into the gold market at a suppressed price of gold.

Kranzler points out that not only does the Fed’s manipulation permit Asia to offload US dollars for gold at low prices, but the obvious lack of confidence in the dollar that the manipulation demonstrates has caused wealthy European families to demand delivery of their gold holdings at bullion banks (the bullion banks are essentially the “banks too big to fail”). Kranzler notes that since January 1, more than 400 tons of gold have been drained from COMEX and gold ETF holdings in order to satisfy world demand for physical possession of bullion.

Again we see that institutions of the US government are acting 100% against the interests of US citizens. Just who does the US government represent?

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. His latest book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is now available. 

Source: Paul Craig Roberts

IRS As A Political Hit Squad

When the Internal Revenue Service admits to violations of law by targeting limited government advocate organizations, you know that the non-divulged crimes are much worse. The discloser in the mainstream media is a pleasant astonishment. The usual pattern of protecting “Big Government” is still intact, while the noise and agency diversion on the abuses of the IRS avoid the fundamental problem with federal taxation, based upon a system of deductions, exemptions, incentives and grants. The extortion and intimidation in the enforcement of the tax code is the entrusted role assigned to the IRS by the political hacks that administer the social engineering experiment that is fundamentally changing America.

The politicalization of the system is premeditated. The revelation that Obama governance resulted in IRS scrutiny went beyond Tea Party, targeting of conservative groups broader than thought, should not be shocking. The sycophants in federal employment have a deranged hostility towards any voice that defends and promotes constitutional federalism. Foxnews reports:

“The internal IG timeline shows a unit in the agency was looking at Tea Party and “patriot” groups dating back to early 2010. But it shows that list of criteria drastically expanding by the time a June 2011 briefing was held. It then included groups focused on government spending, government debt, taxes, and education on ways to “make America a better place to live.” It even flagged groups whose file included criticism of “how the country is being run.”

By early 2012, the criteria were updated to include organizations involved in “limiting/expanding government,” education on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and social economic reform.”

The game of citing partisan hypocrisy in describing respective “enemy lists” avoids the necessary task of replacing the taxation labyrinth, designed to select winners and losers. Every administration uses the bureaucracy to punish political foes and most presidencies intentionally engage in illegal retribution, but all share the virtual immunity from prosecution for their misdeeds. What can we reasonably expect from this Obama scandal? It certainly has the hallmark of being a far more severe constitutional violation than those committed in the heyday of the LBJ, Nixon and Clinton outlaws.

Now be forewarned, that the IRS is charged with overseeing compliance under Obamacare. Giving a mandate for expansion under this current cloud of criminality is the height of arrogance. Notwithstanding, the irreversible loss in credibility, the wholesale revamping of the method of taxation should be examined and a trustworthy replacement adopted. However, before reviewing one such alteration, it must be pointed out, that collecting taxes to finance governmental operations is not the primary purpose of the current system.

Perpetual trillion dollar deficits demonstrate that raising revenue to pay for federal programs lacks the ability to balance budgets. The principal function of the Internal Revenue Service is to facilitate the tax avoidance practices of corporatist transnational conglomerates. The retaliatory mission against working class citizens is ostensibly a disciplinary process to maintain control over the finances of producing contributors. Inhibiting upward mobility for the populace, while accelerating elite’s wealth accumulation, is the destructive result of the tax code.

The Hill offers a solution in the article, House GOP seeks to abolish IRS, replace income tax with consumption tax.

“The FairTax Act, from Rep. Rob Woodall (R-Ga.), would abolish the 16th Amendment, which was ratified 100 years ago this February. That amendment gives Congress the power to impose income taxes without having to spend the revenues evenly among the states.

Woodall’s bill, H.R. 25, would replace the current tax system with a 23 percent consumption tax on all new goods and services. He said Thursday that this change would eliminate the need for a complicated tax code, and would be the kind of tax reform that helps reinvigorate the economy.”

The merits or criticism of a consumption tax and certainly any final amount of the levy certainly deserves a vigorous national debate. However, the need for eliminating the byzantine complexity and inherent inequity in the present punitive tax collection system should be unanimous.

Obviously, the prospect that the establishment ruling class would allow the slaughter of their cash-cow is zero. The entire existence of the Tea Party movement grew out of a desire to restore the principle of no taxation without representation. Yet, the efforts out of the authoritarian globalists are to ramp up even more draconian measures to monitor and intrude into every financial affair of normal people.

The only prudent political response to this intolerable obliteration of our eternal right to the pursuit of happiness is to require a return to the pre income tax system of revenue collection. Just listen to the screams, from those progressive socialists, who demand that the State must use their penalizing power to force egalitarian redistribution upon every wealth creator or economic producer.

The calculated fear factor imbedded into the Internal Revenue Service goes well beyond targeting just conservative groups. Every self-respecting American shares a vested interest in restoring a constitutional government. As it stands now, the prospect of achieving even a reasonable prospect of legitimate authorities is incompatible as long as the IRS is allowed to run amok over the masses who are attempting to petition and redress their government.

USA Today reports, Obama calls purported IRS targeting “outrageous”, from the latest Obama presidential press conference.

“Obama says first learned about the IRS controversy from news reports. He called the purported targeting of conservative groups by IRS personnel “outrageous and there is no place for it.” The IRS has to have “absolute integrity, ” Obama adds.

“You don’t want the IRS ever being perceived to be biased,” Obama said.

The president adds that his administration will get to the bottom of what happened at the IRS. “I have no patience for it. I will not tolerate it.”

How can anyone believe that Obama has clean hands or that some faction within the Internal Revenue Service was operating without his knowledge? Well Mr. President, prove the meaning in your words and put forth the political capital to pass the H.R. 25 legislation.

Eroding Freedom In America

US democracy is illusory. America never was beautiful. It’s not the land of the free and home of the brave. It wasn’t created that way. More than ever, it’s not now.

Freedom is a four-letter word. It’s fast disappearing. It’s an endangered species. Wealth, power and privilege alone matter. America’s war on terror priorities advance them.

International, constitutional and US statute laws are spurned. Rogue state ruthlessness replaced them. Boston’s unprecedented lockdown suggests what’s coming. It covered a two hundred square mile area. An important threshold was crossed.

Martial law terrorized city residents. Constitutional rights were suspended. Perhaps it was prelude to what’s coming. It can happen anywhere across America. It can show up nationwide.

Thousands of heavily armed militarized police, National Guard troops, FBI Swat teams, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives operatives, Drug Enforcement Administration agents, and perhaps other federal, state and local enforcers showed what full-blown tyranny looks like.

Defying public diktats risked arrest or getting shot. Helicopters hovered low over neighborhoods. House-to-house searches ordered pajama-clad families outside.

Without probable cause, some were handcuffed and/or placed face down on sidewalks. Others were publicly strip-searched. Imagine what’s coming next time. Freedom in America’s on the chopping block for elimination.

What’s ongoing already includes:

• numerous police state laws;

• waging war on humanity;

• indefinite detentions without evidence, charges or trials;

• forced disappearances;

• targeted assassinations;

• torture and other forms of abuse;

• Big Brother surveillance;

• warrantless searches;

• other privacy invasions;

• false flag national security abuses;

• war on terror fear-mongering;

• military commission trials, including for US citizens;

• domestic military force deployments;

• secret FEMA concentration camps;

• racial profiling and persecution;

• militarized local police;

• criminalizing whistleblowers; and

• targeting non-believers for supporting right over wrong.

Tyranny isn’t in the eye of the beholder. It’s escalating in plane sight. It’s just a matter of time until it’s full-blown. Washington’s bipartisan criminal class plans it.

It’s hard-right, unbridled, reactionary, and pro-corporate. It’s anti-democratic, anti-dissent, anti-freedom, anti-civil and human rights, anti-social justice, anti-environmental sanity, and anti-government of, by and for everyone.

It’s dangerous living in America at the wrong time. Supporting right over wrong is threatened. Anyone can be targeted for any reason or none at all. Guilt by accusation is policy. Diktat authority has final say.

The National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms (NCPCF) includes national and local organizations. Its mission is:

“To educate the public about the erosion of civil and political freedoms in the society, and the abuses of prisoners within the US criminal justice system especially after 9/11, and to advocate for the preservation of those freedoms and to defend those rights according to the US Constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its related UN Conventions, and the Geneva Conventions.”

Civil liberties are threatened, it warns. Public safety at the expense of freedom assures neither.

Post-9/11, thought crime prosecutions followed. Individuals and groups were targeted for “their beliefs, thoughts, or associations.”

Doing so violates constitutional protections. First Amendment freedoms are compromised. They’re fundamental. Without them, all others are at risk.

They include free speech, a free press, free thought, culture and intellectual inquiry, assembly, freedom to practice the religion of one’s choice, and to petition government for redress of grievances.

The Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC) “defend(s) the rule of law and rights and liberties challenged by overbroad national security and counter-terrorism policies.”

It “support(s) an ideologically, ethnically, geographically, and generationally diverse grassroots movement to protect and restore these principles by encouraging widespread civic participation; educating people about the significance of our rights; and cultivating grassroots networks to convert concern, outrage, and fear into debate and action.”

Its “Campaign for the Constitution” headlines: “Building a Movement. Restoring Rights. Reclaiming Our Constitution.” At issue is restoring lost rights. Bipartisan complicity compromised them en route to eliminating them altogether.

Rule of law protections “withered under warrantless surveillance, rampant racial and religious profiling, and torture – and even human experimentation – with impunity.”

The ACLU highlights lost digital age civil liberties. New technologies compromised existing protections. Post-9/11, they’ve undergone serious erosion.

Web site visits are tracked. Cell phones log our movements. Emails and social network communications are monitored and stored. Warrantless spying is policy.

“Things we once thought could only happen in far-away enemy states or distant dystopias are suddenly happening here in America” said ACLU.

Privacy laws haven’t kept up with technology. War on terror priorities matter most.

Protecting civil liberties in the digital age requires “ensur(ing) that expressive, associational, and privacy rights are strengthened rather than compromised by new technology.”

It’s also about “protect(ing) these core democratic rights against intrusive corporate and government practices that rely on new technology to invade these rights.”

They’re being systematically destroyed. According to the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), Washington “consistently (doesn’t) recognize the protections afforded by the US Constitution and international law, and in doing so, it has failed in its responsibility to maintain a democratic society that is both open to, and accountable to, the people.”

Government is shrouded in secrecy. Checks and balances no longer matter. Bill of Rights freedoms are fading. They’re fundamental in democratic societies.

War on terror priorities breached First, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendment freedoms. At issue are search and surveillance authority, indefinitely detaining citizens and non-citizens uncharged, and undermining free expression, due process, and equal protection.

Washington’s criminal class is bipartisan. Ahead expect much worse. Old time radio listeners recall a memorable Jack Benny skit. “Your money or your life,” a robber asked?

After a pause, he was asked again. He responded saying “I’m thinking it over.”

Today no one’s asked. It isn’t either-or. It’s both.

A Final Comment

Fixing America’s dysfunctional system demands fundamental change. It starts by reforming the nation’s sham electoral process. Throwing out bums assures new ones.

Both major parties are two sides of the same coin. Not a dime’s worth of difference separates them. Secrecy and back room deals substitute for a free, fair and open process. Duopoly power rules.

Party bosses chose candidates. Big money owns them. Voters have no say. They get the best democracy money can buy. It happens every time.

The entire process was constitutionally flawed by design. Over time, things got worse. Bipartisan politics serves serves wealth, power, and privilege. Popular interests go begging.

Money power runs America. It games the system. It does so destructively. Controlling money, credit and debt for private enrichment assures speculation, booms, busts, inflation, deflation, instability, crisis, recessions and depressions.

It assures transferring enormous amounts of wealth from ordinary people to corporate giants and super-rich elites already with too much.

Washington is Wall Street occupied territory. What financial giants want, they get. They’re waging financial war on humanity. They’re more powerful than standing armies.

Economies are strip-mined for profit. Communities are laid waste. Ordinary people are impoverished and left out. Vital needs go begging.

Money power in private hands and democracy can’t co-exist. Complicit politicians betray the public trust. They do so for benefits they derive.

Social injustice defines official policy. Class war rages more than ever. America’s on a fast track toward tyranny. Stopping it requires free, fair and open elections. It’s also about returning money to public hands where it belongs.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book is titled “Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

It airs Fridays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour

 

Source: ICH

Surviving A Full SHTF Collapse In Bosnia

Many in the precious metals community are eagerly anticipating a complete systemic collapse of the financial system because as “preppers”, they expect to not only survive, but to prosper in a SHTF scenario.  We suspect however that the following MUST READ account of surviving the Bosnian war in the midst of a complete collapse of the grid will be eye-opening in just how difficult it is to survive a full-on Mad Max scenario, even if one has spent years preparing for it.

I am from Bosnia. You know, between 1992 and 1995, it was hell. For one year, I lived and survived in a city with 6,000 people without water, electricity, gasoline, medical help, civil defense, distribution service, any kind of traditional service or centralized rule.

Today, me and my family are well-prepared, I am well-armed. I have experience. It does not matter what will happen: an earthquake, a war, a tsunami, aliens, terrorists, economic collapse, uprising. The important part is that something will happen.

The following is my experience:

Our city was blockaded by the army; and for one year, life in the city turned into total crap. We had no army, no police. We only had armed groups; those armed protected their homes and families.
When it all started, some of us were better prepared. But most of the neighbors’ families had enough food only for a few days. Some had pistols; a few had AK-47s or shotguns.

After a month or two, gangs started operating, destroying everything. Hospitals, for example, turned into slaughterhouses. There was no more police. About 80 percent of the hospital staff were gone. I got lucky. My family at the time was fairly large (15 people in a large house, six pistols, three AKs), and we survived (most of us, at least).

The Americans dropped MREs every 10 days to help blockaded cities. This was never enough. Some — very few — had gardens. It took three months for the first rumors to spread of men dying from hunger and cold. We removed all the doors, the window frames from abandoned houses, ripped up the floors and burned the furniture for heat. Many died from diseases, especially from the water (two from my own family). We drank mostly rainwater, ate pigeons and even rats.

Money soon became worthless. We returned to an exchange. For a tin can of tushonka (think Soviet spam), you could have a woman. (It is hard to speak of it, but it is true.) Most of the women who sold themselves were desperate mothers.

Arms, ammunition, candles, lighters, antibiotics, gasoline, batteries and food. We fought for these things like animals. In these situations, it all changes. Men become monsters. It was disgusting.

Strength was in numbers. A man living alone getting killed and robbed would be just a matter of time, even if he was armed.

Today, me and my family are well-prepared, I am well-armed. I have experience.

It does not matter what will happen: an earthquake, a war, a tsunami, aliens, terrorists, economic collapse, uprising. The important part is that something will happen.

Here’s my experience: You can’t make it on your own. Don’t stay apart from your family; prepare together, choose reliable friends.

1. How to move safely in a city

The city was divided into communities along streets. Our street (15 to 20 homes) had patrols (five armed men every week) to watch for gangs and for our enemies.

All the exchanges occurred in the street. About 5 kilometers away was an entire street for trading, all well-organized; but going there was too dangerous because of the snipers. You could also get robbed by bandits. I only went there twice, when I needed something really rare (list of medicine, mainly antibiotics, of the French original of the texts).

Nobody used automobiles in the city: The streets were blocked by wreckage and by abandoned cars. Gasoline was very expensive. If one needed to go somewhere, that was done at night. Never travel alone or in groups that were too big — always two to three men. All armed, travel swift, in the shadows, cross streets through ruins, not along open streets.

There were many gangs 10 to 15 men strong, some as large as 50 men. But there were also many normal men, like you and me, fathers and grandfathers, who killed and robbed. There were no “good” and “bad” men. Most were in the middle and ready for the worst.

2. What about wood? Your home city is surrounded by woods; why did you burn doors and furniture?

There were not that many woods around the city. It was very beautiful — restaurants, cinemas, schools, even an airport. Every tree in the city and in the city park was cut down for fuel in the first two months.

Without electricity for cooking and heat, we burned anything that burned. Furniture, doors, flooring: That wood burns swiftly. We had no suburbs or suburban farms. The enemy was in the suburbs. We were surrounded. Even in the city you never knew who was the enemy at any given point.

3. What knowledge was useful to you in that period?

To imagine the situation a bit better, you should know it was practically a return to the Stone Age.

For example, I had a container of cooking gas. But I did not use it for heat. That would be too expensive! I attached a nozzle to it I made myself and used to fill lighters. Lighters were precious.

If a man brought an empty lighter, I would fill it; and he would give me a tin of food or a candle.

I was a paramedic. In these conditions, my knowledge was my wealth. Be curious and skilled. In these conditions, the ability to fix things is more valuable than gold.

Items and supplies will inevitably run out, but your skills will keep you fed.

I wish to say this: Learn to fix things, shoes or people.

My neighbor, for example, knew how to make kerosene for lamps. He never went hungry.

4. If you had three months to prepare now, what would you do?

Three months? Run away from the country? (joking)

Today, I know everything can collapse really fast. I have a stockpile of food, hygiene items, batteries — enough to last me for six months.

I live in a very secure flat and own a home with a shelter in a village 5 kilometers away. Another six-month supply there, too. That’s a small village; most people there are well-prepared. The war had taught them.

I have four weapons and 2,000 rounds for each.

I have a garden and have learned gardening. Also, I have a good instinct. You know, when everyone around you keeps telling you it’ll all be fine, but I know it will all collapse.

I have strength to do what I need to protect my family. Because when it all collapses, you must be ready to do “bad” things to keep your children alive and protect your family.

Surviving on your own is practically impossible. (That’s what I think.) Even you’re armed and ready, if you’re alone, you’ll die. I have seen that happen many times.

Families and groups, well-prepared, with skills and knowledge in various fields: That’s much better.

5. What should you stockpile?

That depends. If you plan to live by theft, all you need is weapons and ammo. Lots of ammo.

If not, more food, hygiene items, batteries, accumulators, little trading items (knives, lighters, flints, soap). Also, alcohol of a type that keeps well. The cheapest whiskey is a good trading item.

Many people died from insufficient hygiene. You’ll need simple items in great amounts. For example, garbage bags. Lots of them. And toilet papers. Non-reusable dishes and cups: You’ll need lots of them. I know that because we didn’t have any at all.

As for me, a supply of hygiene items is perhaps more important than food. You can shoot a pigeon. You can find a plant to eat. You can’t find or shoot any disinfectant.

Disinfectant, detergents, bleach, soap, gloves, masks.

First aid skills, washing wounds and burns. Perhaps you will find a doctor and will not be able to pay him.

Learn to use antibiotics. It’s good to have a stockpile of them.

You should choose the simplest weapons. I carry a Glock .45. I like it, but it’s a rare gun here. So I have two TT pistols, too. (Everyone has them and ammo is common.)

I don’t like Kalashnikov’s, but again, same story. Everyone has them; so do I.

You must own small, unnoticeable items. For example, a generator is good, but 1,000 BIC lighters are better. A generator will attract attention if there’s any trouble, but 1,000 lighters are compact, cheap and can always be traded.

We usually collected rainwater into four large barrels and then boiled it. There was a small river, but the water in it became very dirty very fast.

It’s also important to have containers for water: barrels and buckets.

6. Were gold and silver useful?

Yes. I personally traded all the gold in the house for ammunition.

Sometimes, we got our hands on money: dollars and Deutschmarks. We bought some things for them, but this was rare and prices were astronomical. For example, a can of beans cost $30 to $40. The local money quickly became worthless. Everything we needed we traded for through barter.

7. Was salt expensive?

Yes, but coffee and cigarettes were even more expensive. I had lots of alcohol and traded it without problems. Alcohol consumption grew over 10 times as compared to peacetime. Perhaps today, it’s more useful to keep a stock of cigarettes, lighters and batteries. They take up less space.

At this time, I was not a survivalist. We had no time to prepare — several days before the shit hit the fan. The politicians kept repeating over the TV that everything was going according to plan, there’s no reason to be concerned. When the sky fell on our heads, we took what we could.

8. Was it difficult to purchase firearms? What did you trade for arms and ammunition?

After the war, we had guns in every house. The police confiscated lots of guns at the beginning of the war. But most of them we hid. Now I have one legal gun that I have a license for. Under the law, that’s called a temporary collection. If there is unrest, the government will seize all the registered guns. Never forget that.

You know, there are many people who have one legal gun, but also illegal guns if that one gets seized. If you have good trade goods, you might be able to get a gun in a tough situation. But remember, the most difficult time is the first days, and perhaps you won’t have enough time to find a weapon to protect your family. To be disarmed in a time of chaos and panic is a bad idea.

In my case, there was a man who needed a car battery for his radio. He had shotguns. I traded the accumulator for both of them. Sometimes, I traded ammunition for food, and a few weeks later traded food for ammunition. Never did the trade at home, never in great amounts.

Few people knew how much and what I keep at home.

The most important thing is to keep as many things as possible in terms of space and money. Eventually, you’ll understand what is more valuable.

Correction: I’ll always value weapons and ammunition the most. Second? Maybe gas masks and filters.

9. What about security?

Our defenses were very primitive. Again, we weren’t ready, and we used what we could. The windows were shattered, and the roofs in a horrible state after the bombings. The windows were blocked — some with sandbags, others with rocks.

I blocked the fence gate with wreckage and garbage, and used a ladder to get across the wall. When I came home, I asked someone inside to pass over the ladder. We had a fellow on our street that completely barricaded himself in his house. He broke a hole in the wall, creating a passage for himself into the ruins of the neighbor’s house — a sort of secret entrance.

Maybe this would seem strange, but the most protected houses were looted and destroyed first. In my area of the city, there were beautiful houses with walls, dogs, alarms and barred windows. People attacked them first. Some held out; others didn’t. It all depended how many hands and guns they had inside.

I think defense is very important, but it must be carried out unobtrusively. If you are in a city and SHTF comes, you need a simple, non-flashy place, with lots of guns and ammo.

How much ammo? As much as possible.

Make your house as unattractive as you can.

Right now, I own a steel door, but that’s just against the first wave of chaos. After that passes, I will leave the city to rejoin a larger group of people, my friends and family.

There were some situations during the war. There’s no need for details, but we always had superior firepower and a brick wall on our side.

We also constantly kept someone watching the streets. Quality organization is paramount in case of gang attacks.

Shooting was constantly heard in the city.

Our perimeter was defended primitively. All the exits were barricaded and had little firing slits. Inside we had at least five family members ready for battle at any time and one man in the street, hidden in a shelter.

We stayed home through the day to avoid sniper fire.

At first, the weak perish. Then, the rest fight.

During the day, the streets were practically empty due to sniper fire. Defenses were oriented toward short-range combat alone. Many died if they went out to gather information, for example. It’s important to remember we had no information, no radio, no TV — only rumors and nothing else.

There was no organized army; every man fought. We had no choice. Everybody was armed, ready to defend themselves.

You should not wear quality items in the city; someone will murder you and take them. Don’t even carry a “pretty” long arm, it will attract attention.

Let me tell you something: If SHTF starts tomorrow, I’ll be humble. I’ll look like everyone else. Desperate, fearful. Maybe I’ll even shout and cry a little bit.

Pretty clothing is excluded altogether. I will not go out in my new tactical outfit to shout: “I have come! You’re doomed, bad guys!” No, I’ll stay aside, well-armed, well-prepared, waiting and evaluating my possibilities, with my best friend or brother.

Super-defenses, super-guns are meaningless. If people think they should steal your things, that you’re profitable, they will. It’s only a question of time and the amount of guns and hands.

10. How was the situation with toilets?

We used shovels and a patch of earth near the house. Does it seem dirty? It was. We washed with rainwater or in the river, but most of the time the latter was too dangerous. We had no toilet paper; and if we had any, I would have traded it away.

It was a “dirty” business.

Let me give you a piece of advice: You need guns and ammo first — and second, everything else. Literally everything! All depends on the space and money you have.

If you forget something, there will always be someone to trade with for it. But if you forget weapons and ammo, there will be no access to trading for you.

I don’t think big families are extra mouths. Big families means both more guns and strength — and from there, everyone prepares on his own.

11. How did people treat the sick and the injured?

Most injuries were from gunfire. Without a specialist and without equipment, if an injured man found a doctor somewhere, he had about a 30 percent chance of survival.

It ain’t the movie. People died. Many died from infections of superficial wounds. I had antibiotics for three to four uses — for the family, of course.

People died foolishly quite often. Simple diarrhea will kill you in a few days without medicine, with limited amounts of water.

There were many skin diseases and food poisonings… nothing to it.

Many used local plants and pure alcohol — enough for the short-term, but useless in the long term.

Hygiene is very important, as well as having as much medicine as possible — especially antibiotics.

Source: Silver Doctors

Committing Treason And The Benghazi Murder Cover-Up

Take off your partisan hat and open your minds to the actual uninterrupted high treason that is part of the foreign policy establishment. Party politics is often just a show that plays to their respective bases. However, the tract and direction of extending the transnational empire just continues on a global scale. The full-blown treason committed by every administration that practices the internationalist vision of democracy domination is really a masquerade for worldwide dominion. Presidents are mere temporary talking heads for the oligarchy that actually rules. Murdering their own diplomats and hired help is incidental, when 1,455,590 Iraqi deaths since the U.S. invasion are ignored and dismissed.

Just how well is the consistent and bipartisan aggressive interventionist foreign policy doing? Go over the list of The Arab Spring country by country.

The Wall Street Journal provides a timeline on U.S. Government Reaction to the Benghazi Attack. “For days after the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi, Libya, intelligence officials and the Obama administration said it was likely the outgrowth of protests sparked by an anti-Islamic video made in the U.S. Follow some of the administration statements on the Libya attack.”The infamous propaganda voice for the Obamaistas, Media Matters puts forth their partisan spin in, What Dick Cheney’s Benghazi Criticism Misses.

“David Martosko of the Daily Mail Online provided former Vice President Dick Cheney a platform to criticize the Obama administration’s failure to anticipate the September 11, 2012 attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya, without noting that seven attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities occurred during the Bush administration.”

Such diversion seeks to limit focus on the literal events that caused the Benghazi attack and the real reasons why Ambassador Christopher Stevens was left to perish by the Obama/Clinton foreign policy team of betrayers.

 

The shameful chronicle of the intentional and politically motivated stand down that doomed Stevens and his defenders was sensitively told during Gregory Hicks’ 30 Minute Recount of Benghazi Attack. While the Congressional hearings were praised for the attempt to restrain partisan grandstanding, the Washington press corps avoids placing blame on the administration as a tenant of their loyalty test. A government cover-up is made easy when the imperium friendly media is reporting on a proclaimed progressive administration.

The facts necessitate that even the venerable CBS mainstream media machine reluctantly admits that the Thousands of Libyan missiles from Qaddafi era missing in action, are a central concern with the overthrow of the Libyan regime.

“In the case of Libya’s missing MANPADS, there was also concern they would get into the Syrian conflict. “Once they start getting sold on the black market, we can’t control them,” says one source.

The source added he’s unaware of any U.S. attempt to send recovered Libyan MANPADS to arm Syrian rebels seeking to depose President Bashar al-Assad.”

According to the Business Insider, the veracity of this CBS source is questionable. Connect the dots and go back to the reason why a cover-up of the Benghazi murders becomes crucial to the long-term goals to destabilize the Middle East. The US Is Openly Sending Heavy Weapons From Libya To Syrian Rebels cites the following:

“The Obama administration has decided to launch a covert operation to send heavy weapons to Syrian rebels, Christina Lamb of The Sunday Times of London reports.Diplomatic sources told the Sunday Times that the U.S. “bought weapons from the stockpiles of Libya’s former dictator Muammar Gaddafi.”

The heavy arms include mortars, rocket propelled grenades, anti-tank missiles and the controversial anti-aircraft heat-seeking SA-7 missiles, which are integral to countering Bashar Al-Assad’s bombing campaign.”

Now compute the decades old design for the territory as stated by Wes Clark and the neocon dream. Glenn Greenwald provides further documentation in Salon that the various Middle Eastern and North African wars were planned before 9/11:

“General Wesley Clark … said the aim of this plot [to "destroy the governments in ... Iraq, ... Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran"] was this: “They wanted us to destabilize the Middle East, turn it upside down, make it under our control.” He then recounted a conversation he had had ten years earlier with Paul Wolfowitz — back in 1991 — in which the then-number-3-Pentagon-official, after criticizing Bush 41 for not toppling Saddam, told Clark: “But one thing we did learn [from the Persian Gulf War] is that we can use our military in the region – in the Middle East – and the Soviets won’t stop us. And we’ve got about 5 or 10 years to clean up those old Soviet regimes – Syria, Iran [sic], Iraq – before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us.” Clark said he was shocked by Wolfowitz’s desires because, as Clark put it: “the purpose of the military is to start wars and change governments? It’s not to deter conflicts?”

The diabolic union between Neoconservatives and Neoliberals produces a litter of demonic adventures that build up the body count and push the region into a globalist cesspit of satanic dimensions. In order to comprehend the interconnection of conflicts it is important to understand the deceptive war on terror and the assembled alliance with the Al Qaeda bogyman.

The message in the essay, It’s Dishonest to Talk about Benghazi Without Talking About the Syrian War, is a reality that many cowardly Americans are unwilling to deal with, much less act upon.

“Both parties are avoiding the bigger picture … The fact that Democrats and Republicans alike have been using Benghazi as the center of U.S. efforts to arm the Al Qaeda-affiliated Syrian rebels.

Specifically, the U.S. supported opposition which overthrew Libya’s Gadaffi was largely comprised of Al Qaeda terrorists.According to a 2007 report by West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center’s center, the Libyan city of Benghazi was one of Al Qaeda’s main headquarters – and bases for sending Al Qaeda fighters into Iraq – prior to the overthrow of Gaddafi:”

What possible justification is there to intervene in Syria? The presupposed civil war is really a designed coup d’état overthrow that only benefits a greater Israel regional expansion. Note how the policy wonks work in their nefarious planning for destabilization. The flagship establishment mouthpiece Foreign Policy has the mission to signal the intentions of government stratagem as the master plans are implemented, in the article How to destabilize the Assad regime.

“In order to re-up its strategy, the administration should employ a cross-governmental approach that enlists the Treasury, Commerce, and Defense Departments. The Treasury Department should use sanctions to limit Assad’s ability to repatriate funds from oil exports and more properly enforce the 2012 GRAHVITY sanctions prohibiting the transfer of internet, communications, or surveillance technology to Syria. The Treasury Department should also prohibit U.S. companies from doing business with Assad’s enablers by designating those entities that continue to supply him with resources. Congress could bolster the latter measure by requiring federal contractors to certify that they are not in business with Assad’s enablers. Congress should also prohibit foreign financial institutions enabling Assad from doing business with U.S. banks. Meanwhile the Commerce Department should secure tighter control over the delivery of information and communications technology to Syria especially through authorized foreign distributors. Finally, as mandated by an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2013, the Pentagon should cease its business with Rosoboronexport, one of Assad’s chief enablers, instead of entering into new contracts as it has expressed the intention to do.”

What do you call the treachery, when your own government is committing the subversiveness?

 

The cryptic psychopolitical spook Dr. Steve Pieczenik presents an astounding analysis that answers this question in the You Tube, Benghazi Truth: Obama Was Running Secret Army. His call to action is a rare and daring challenge to the military that is worth a sober assessment if for no other reason than observing the anxious and flabbergasted reaction from Alex Jones. The treason committed, depends upon the nationalist loyalties of the government agents. In this case, the evidence seems well placed that the security apparatus is serving the wrong master.The substance of the Benghazi duplicity and scandalous evasion of accountability is an entrenched practice that permeates every level of command and control. The courage of Gregory Hicks, Mark Thompson and Eric Nordstrom is an act of legitimate patriotism seldom seen out of Foggy Bottom.

If professional State Department public servants can speak truth to power, where are the guts of the General Military Officers? If the Joint Chiefs of Staff is a brood of poodle puppies and lap dogs, God Save the Republic. Dr. Pieczenik is In Search of James Mattoon Scott. Most subservient subjects are oblivious to the Seven Days in May scenario. Perpetuating the myth, that civilian command preserves the constitutional liberties of citizens, does not conform to the record of presidential dictatorship. When state treason is codified normality, the mere murder of four more Americans is hardly an afterthought to the executioners of the country. Respecting commander in chief traitors is an absurd national death wish.

Professor Falk Graces Lebanon And Gets An Ear Full

The United Nations Special Rapporteur for Palestine, Professor Richard Falk, came to Lebanon last week on an unofficial visit to survey opinion while fact finding the condition in Palestinian refugee’s camps.

It was the Professors first visit to Lebanon since the fateful summer of 1982. Back then, en route by sea to Beirut, which was under Israeli siege and blockade, Falk was Vice-Chair of the Sean McBride Commission of Inquiry into Israeli crimes against Lebanon. Mid –way between Cyprus and Lebanon, the Zionist navy, in a blatant act of piracy on the high seas, intercepted, circled and demanded the passenger list from the vessel.

Eventually, under reported American pressure via US Envoy Morris Draper’s telephoned profanity to Tel Aviv, the pirates allowed Falk’s delegation to disembark at the port of Jounieh, just north of Beirut. Draper, who like so many US diplomats, claims he finally “saw the light after retiring”, told this observer that “I never swore so much in my life as I did at those SOBS during that summer of 1982 and after I learned the details of Ariel Sharon’s choreography of the Sabra-Shatila massacre!” Ambassador Draper added, “The world will never know the extent of Israeli crimes committed against Lebanon and its refugees until Washington threatens to cut off all aid until Tel Aviv opens up its archives on this period.”

Professor Falk, as he mentioned during several events here, including a first-rate conference on the status of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and their struggle for the most elementary civil rights to work and to own a home, organized by the Institute of Palestine Studies, came to Lebanon not to offer counsel to Lebanon’s sects or even to the Palestinians. (The IPS, (http://www.palestine-studies.org) founded in 1969, is considered by this observer and many others, as the most reliable and authoritative source of information on Palestinian affairs and the Arab-Israel conflict.)

Falk came to listen and to learn. He did both. He listened intently to each speaker, scribing hurried notes regarding the current conditions of Palestinian refugee, including education and health status, in Lebanon’s 12 camps and two dozen “gatherings,” reports that were presented by several academics and NGO’s based here.

Falk and others in attendance at the briefings found the findings sobering and alarming. They included but are not limited to, the following.

There are currently 42,000 Palestinian refugees from Syria who have been forced into Lebanon as a result of the crisis in Syria. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East – UNRWA -reported to the IPS workshop, that they expect 80,000 Palestinians by the end of the year. Others estimate the December 2013 number will exceed 100,000. According to figures, forwarded to Professor Falk by the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign, supplied by refugee camp committees, approximately 6,000 Palestinians who fled Syria remain in Lebanon’s Bekaa |Valley, close to the Syrian borders, in two main gatherings, al-Jalil (4,216 refugees) and central Bekaa (2,352). In the North, Baddawi camp hosts 4,116 and Nahr al Bared 2,016. In Beirut, Burj al-Barajneh camp hosts 2,928 additional refugees from Syria, Shatila and the surrounding areas 2,800, and Mar Elias 862. In the South, 8,549 refugees arrived to Ain al-Hilweh and 2,400 are dispersed around Saida. Mieh Mieh camp hosts 1,512, with an additional 2,160 in Wadi al-Zaineh. Further south to Tyre, Palestinian refugees from Syria are distributed among Shabriha (184), Rashidieh (1,370), Al Bass (478), Burj al-Shemali (2,800), Qasimiyeh (372), and Jal al-Bahr (128).

Falk knew, before gracing Lebanon with his visit, that UNWRA is basically out of money and cannot continue to meet its mandate for aiding Lebanon’s Palestinians even less those arriving from Syria at the rate of more than two dozen families per day. On 5/5/13, the popular committee representative at Jalil Camp near Baalbec reported that they receive on average 8 additional families per day, with dozens now living in the Jalil camp cemetery.

Palestinian children in Lebanon, Falk was advised, unfortunately provide textbook examples of the fact of life that it is difficult to concentrate on school when ones stomach is growling with hunger. And it’s even harder to stay in school when there’s even a remote chance to work odd jobs and earn money for food – something education doesn’t immediately offer. One new local initiative is the Meals for Schools, whose organizers hope serve food to impoverished schoolchildren in Lebanese slum areas. One idea is to give coupons for meals to schools. Unfortunately the scope will not include Palestinian children “at this time due to limited funding”, according to one AUB student hoping to help children stay in school by helping them to have breakfasts.

Palestinian refugee children have limited access to the public educational system in Lebanon. Only 11 per cent these “foreign” children can access free public education in Lebanon while most refugees can’t afford the high tuition fees of private schools. Palestinian refugees who attend one of the 58 UNRWA begin at age seven since UNWRA cannot afford pre-school level education. Consequently, for Palestinians here, while the elementary sector comprises more than 60% of students, the number drops to 28% in intermediate and only 10% at the secondary level. While the attendance rate for 7 year olds is 98.6%, by the time they reach age 11 attendance falls to 93.4%. But from this level, the primary level school completion rate cascades to only 37%, due to astronomical dropout rates. The above figures reveal that Palestinian education levels have been indeed progressively dropping in recent years. This is further supported by the passing rate in the Brevet Official exams (official diploma qualifying entry into secondary) which was in some schools as low as 13.6% in some schools according to the UNRWA results of Brevet exams, despite the average passing rate in UNRWA schools being 43% for the 2009-10 academic year.

Professor Falk was briefed on myriad realities including the fact that Palestinians camps in Lebanon remain sites of control and surveillance by the Lebanese Army. People’s mobility and access to construction materials have been restricted by the army check points at the entrance of camps. Palestinian refugees are forbidden by law – since 2001 – to own or inherit real estate in Lebanon; consequently when a Palestinian dies, even if she or he inherited property between 1948-2001, before a wave of revenge led to the 2001 racist law, the property goes to Sunni Muslim Dar al-Fatwa one of the richest real estate holding entities in Lebanon. Accused of deep corruption by some, their leadership has a history of opposing full civil rights for Palestinian refugees here remain opposed to home ownership.

The UN’s humanitarian chief, Valerie Amos, reported this week that seven million people need humanitarian assistance in Syria. “The needs are growing rapidly and are most severe in the conflict and opposition-controlled areas” of the civil-war ravaged country, the global body’s humanitarian chief Valerie Amos told the U.N. Security Council. Amos cited data showing there are 6.8 million people in need — out of a total population of 20.8 million — along with 4.25 million people internally displaced and an additional 1.3 million who have sought refuge in neighboring countries.

Falk was briefed on most recent household surveys of Palestinian refugees carried out by the American University of Beirut which show that two thirds of Palestine refugees are poor. The extreme poverty rate in camps (7.9%) is almost twice of that observed in gatherings (4.2%). The study also developed a Deprivation Index based on components of welfare which included components such as good health, food security, and adequate education, access to stable employment, decent housing, and ownership of essential household assets. The Deprivation Index showed that 40% of Palestine Refugees living in Lebanon are deprived. The study reported that 56% of refugees are jobless and only 37% of the working age population is employed (Hanafi et al. 2012). It is unsurprising that the poor socio-economic situation often encourages students to leave school to get a paid job.

Despite the importance of education fewer Palestinian refugee students are actually interested in continuing their higher education. Lack of motivation to learn, is believed to be one of the main reasons for the high dropout rates. Palestinian refugees’ access to Lebanon’s public university is limited by their status as foreigners, and their access to private universities is restricted by a lack of resources to pay tuition fees (Hroub, 2012).

The old cliché that stated that “The Palestinians are the most educated Arab nation”, is just a myth today. This educational hemorrhage among young Palestinians has been attributed to a number of factors such as the deteriorating socio-economic conditions amongst Palestinian refugees and the growing disillusionment with schooling and the benefits it brings. Palestinian students also suffer from an education acculturation as they are forced to learn only the Lebanese curriculum without being able to access the country’s system. The following section examines these three main challenges.

Statistics indicate that just under half of the classrooms in public schools have less than 15 students per class while 20 % are overcrowded with 26 to 35 students per class. However, in UNRWA schools, the average number of students per classroom is 30 making them the most crowded classrooms in Lebanon.

With respect to the UN refugee agency, (UNHCR) the current situation in both Syria and among the more than 450,000 Syrian in Lebanon is only marginally better than the conditions of arriving Palestinians. As Maeve Murphy, UNHCR’s Senior Field Coordinator in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, explained to this observer and others during a visit on 5/5/13, near the Nicolas Khoury Center in Zahle, Lebanon, amidst sea of hundreds of Syrians, some waiting for three months or longer just to get registered, the UN refugee agency is also unable to meet its mandate for the same reason as UNRWA and the World Food Program and others. Ms. Murphy reported that over 453,000 Syrians have either registered with the U.N. agency or are waiting to register. An additional several hundred thousand people are thought to be refugees but haven’t approached the U.N.

Complicating the desperate situation of Palestinian and Syrian refugees seeking sanctuary in Lebanon is the fact that millions of Syrian refugees face food rationing and cutbacks to critical medical programs because oil-rich Gulf states have failed to deliver the funding they promised for emergency humanitarian aid, an investigation by James Cusick for The Independent on Sunday has found. Pledges for $ 650 minion in donations from various sources including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain, made during the January 2013, Kuwait UN emergency conference, have yet to materialize.

The World Food Program (WFP), the food aid arm of the UN, says it is spending $19m a week to feed 2.5 million refugees inside Syria and a further 1.5 million who have fled to official camps in Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon and Iraq. By July, the WFP says, there is no guarantee that its work on the Syrian crisis can continue. A spokesman told the UK Independent, “We are already in a hand-to-mouth situation. Beyond mid-June – who knows?”

The emergency conference in Kuwait – hosted by the Emir of Kuwait and chaired by Mr Ban Ki Moon – promised to bring a “message of hope” to the four million Syrian refugees. Mr Ban proclaimed the outcome a shining example of “global solidarity in action”. The reality has been markedly different. Oxfam recently issued an appeal: “The League of Arab States must urge all Arab countries that have pledged to the Syrian crisis, to be transparent and to share information about their commitments, and mechanisms for fulfilling their pledges.”

Mousab Kerwat, Islamic Relief’s Middle East institutional funding manager, said: “It’s better for countries to stay away from donor conferences than to attend and make pledges they don’t intent to keep. As a minimum, they should communicate where their pledges have gone in a transparent process.

If Professor Falk was weary as he left Lebanon from all the data, visits, and wrenching experiences he was presented with, it would be understandable. But the humanitarian and scholar he showed no signs of fatigue but rather appeared to be energized by the experience. Given his history as a supporter of resistance to occupation and oppression, Richard Falk’s assurances that he will continue his work armed with the above sampling of data offers new hope for Palestinian and Syrian refugees from Syria and to those who support their Right and Responsibility to Return to Palestine.

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