Government To Pulpit: Shut Up

The relationship between the throne and the pulpit has always been a tenuous one at best. Since the days of Melchisedec, God intended that the office of priest and king be separate. Old Testament kings learned the hard way not to intrude into the priest’s office. God clearly intended that His prophets be free and independent men who possessed as much courage as they did faith. Reading the scriptural record of the Old Testament reveals that the prophecies and warnings of the prophets were aimed as much at the throne as at the village. And, more often than not, these prophecies were not well received (putting it mildly) by ancient Israel’s equivalent to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

King Amaziah commanded the prophet Amos to “prophesy not.” King Jeroboam I attempted to seize, with the intent to kill, the prophet. Fortunately, God miraculously protected His man. King Ahab looked everywhere for Elijah with the intent to kill him. Queen Jezebel tried to kill Elijah, as well. Ahab’s last act was to imprison the prophet Micaiah. Ahab’s son, King Ahaziah, tried to arrest Elijah three times and lost over 100 men in the process. Ahab’s second son, King Jehoram, tried to kill the prophet Elisha. King Joash killed Zechariah. King Amaziah beat God’s prophet into silence. King Jehoiakim killed Uriah. The prophet Jeremiah spent more time in prison than he did out. Israel’s kings falsely accused him, hated him, mocked him, persecuted him, and repeatedly imprisoned him. They even attempted to murder him, and without divine protection, would no doubt have succeeded. The prophets Amos, Micah, and Isaiah all record Israel’s kings as telling them to “prophesy not,” or in modern parlance, to “shut up.”

So egregious were the persecutions against God’s prophets by Israel’s kings that Jesus stood outside the capital city of Jerusalem and declared, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee.” (Matthew 23:37 KJV)

Likewise, the early church was birthed in a baptism of persecution. And the story of the church throughout history has, for the most part, been one of governmental persecution, oppression, and tyranny against believers. Some of them were unable to defend themselves and were led away as sheep to the slaughter. Others resisted with force. Of these, some prevailed, threw off the oppressor, and lived in peace; while some fell on the battlefield, choosing to die as free men than live as slaves.

The history of America reflects the struggle of religious men to live free of the king’s tyranny. First, the pilgrims came to these shores fleeing persecution. Then, the patriots bled and died on these shores fighting persecution. The result was a land of liberty in whose founding documents are enshrined the eternal principles of liberty. Chief among those principles was the divine principle that the throne must stay out of the pulpit, that no more could the king tell the prophet to shut up.

But there is more than one way to silence a man. If coercion and intimidation won’t work, bribery is always an option. Back in the 1950s, then Texas US Senator Lyndon Johnson cleverly employed both tactics when he introduced and helped pass what we now know as the 501c3 non-profit, tax-exempt corporation status for churches. Suddenly, free and independent church bodies became creatures of the state. Pastors, elders, deacons, etc., were no longer offices of the church; they were now corporate officers, authorized and sanctioned by the state.

Just as Ahab had his gaggle of bought-and-paid-for prophets, so, too, now Lyndon Johnson and his fellow would-be kings had successfully bought and paid for the silence of the pulpit. And the perks were good. These state-owned preachers were able to launch radio and television programs, build schools and universities, and enjoy the approbation of heads of state. Wealthy corporate heads were happy to provide vast sums of money to these state-approved “ministries.” The state even generously provided faith-based taxpayer money to their approved churches. Compliant pastors were called to the White House for lavish banquets and private meetings. The marriage between throne and pulpit was complete. It was a small price to pay: all the prophets had to do was “shut up.”

Brothers and sisters, that’s why your pastor will not “Cry aloud, spare not, [and] lift up [his] voice like a trumpet.” (Isaiah 58:1). That’s why he will not rebuke Ahab or Herod. That’s why he will not talk about “politics.” That’s why he will not preach the hard sermons. That’s why he refuses to read the books or watch the videos you give him. That’s why he tells the church family to stay away from you. That’s why he warns his flock to not listen to Chuck Baldwin. That’s why he rolls his eyes at the mere mention of the word “conspiracy.” He is a hireling of Caesar. He is bought and paid for by the government’s 501c3 tax-exempt bribe.

Just as Pharaoh had the religious wizards Jannes and Jambres to withstand Moses, modern heads of state have their religious wizards to stand against those patriot-pastors who dare to oppose them. These hireling-wizards even dare to proclaim that America’s Founding Fathers were sinful when they resisted the tyranny of King George. They mingle the magic potion of pacifism by twisting Romans 13 and other scriptures to promote the damnable doctrine of submission to oppression. If they mention the great Swiss reformer Zwingli at all, they fail to mention that he died on the battlefield–sword in hand–defending religious liberty. They condemn the heroic efforts of courageous preachers such as Germany’s Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Niemoller. They cast aspersion upon the sacrifices of American patriot-pastors such as Jonas Clark, James Caldwell, John Peter Muhlenberg, Joab Houghton, John Witherspoon, and John Leland. Yes, they are willing to sacrifice the lives and liberties of their own offspring in order to eat well at the king’s table. And eat well they do.

Everyone now seems concerned about the way the IRS sought to intimidate and punish “conservative” non-profits groups. But why should this surprise us? The IRS has been the chief instrument of coercion against America’s churches for over a half-century. And where is the outrage among America’s Christians for the way their pastors have been intimidated and bribed into silence by this monstrous agency? If America’s churches had any guts, they would stand up now and demand that the IRS, along with its infernal 501c3 code, be forever abolished.

Jesus said that a man cannot serve two masters–neither can a church. The church cannot be the property of the state and the property of Christ at the same time. Its loyalty is to one or the other. A pastor cannot be the prophet of God and the hireling of men at the same time. And the scripture is clear: “Be not ye the servants of men.” (I Corinthians 7:23)

There was a time in America when we had pastors and preachers in the similitude of Old Testament prophets. They were men who helped forge a land of freedom. Furthermore, they helped insure that in the United States there was “No king but Jesus.” They feared no one but God, and they loved liberty from the depths of their souls. And they made sure that in this country no civil magistrate could ever tell the pulpit to “shut up.” What ever happened to those men?

Privacy Disappears In A Prism

Recent Revelations are Worse Than Our Worst Nightmare…

This past Thursday (June 6), The Guardian (the British newspaper) and the Washington Post simultaneously reported that the National Security Agency has been collecting staggering amounts of user data and files from seven of the world’s most powerful technology companies.

An information collection program called Prism has been routinely tapping the servers of these companies and collecting emails, articles, on-line searches, chat logs, photos and videos. There are no subpeonas, court orders or even clearly-defined investigations supporting this program. Traditionally, the government must establish that what they’re seizing is relevant to an investigation. With Prism, they seize everything, review it and then decide its relevance. It’s an information vacuum cleaner.

It’s also a key tool of the Obama Administration. Data gathered through Prism now accounts for almost one in seven intelligence reports, the NSA said in a statement.

“Microsoft – which is currently running an advertising campaign with the slogan “Your privacy is our priority” – was the first (company in the program), with collection beginning in December 2007,” the Guardian reported [1]. “It was followed by Yahoo in 2008; Google, Facebook and PalTalk in 2009; YouTube in 2010; Skype and AOL in 2011; and finally Apple, which joined the program in 2012. The program is continuing to expand, with other providers due to come online.”

Because these are the companies whose services comprise Internet life for most of us, the program signals the effective end of privacy as a right. If you use Google or Yahoo or Iphone or Skype, at least some of what you do, write, search, say in chat or put in your a video or photo on any of those services is being collected.

The story’s centerpiece is a 41-slide PowerPoint presentation, apparently used to train intelligence operatives on the capabilities of the program and leaked to the two newspapers. It is classified as “top secret with no distribution to foreign allies”. The document also implies that the program has the consent of the companies, although most of them immediately denied that.

“Google cares deeply about the security of our users’ data,” the company said. “We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege that we have created a government ‘back door’ into our systems, but Google does not have a back door for the government to access private user data.”

As one who has repeatedly accused Google of having that “back door”, I declare myself acutely skeptical. Google is one of the world’s most sophisticated Internet firms and its CEO, Eric Schmidt, is the Obama Administration’s key advisors on technology. To say that the government could remove data for four years without the company catching on while risking its cozy relationship with Google holds less water than a bottom-less bottle.

Among the most remarkable aspects of the story is that the government quickly admitted it’s true…almost. In one of those non-admission admissions Washington is famous for, Director of National Intelligence Gen. James Clapper said Prism was “designed to facilitate the acquisition of foreign intelligence information concerning non-US persons located outside the United States. It cannot be used to intentionally target any US citizen, any other US person, or anyone located within the United States.” He also pointed out [2] that Prism doesn’t really collect everything; it takes data that matches search terms.

That is ludicrous. The Internet has no national boundaries and the idea of “intentional targeting” is a cynical joke. The power and value of the Internet is that it’s world-wide and people routinely communicate with others all over the world. Even those who don’t get email from someone in another country certainly visit websites that are beyond U.S. borders or view material from other countries. In order to determine whether you have communicated in some way with “a target”, they seize and review all your data and a large library of search terms (which is undoubtedly what they are using) doesn’t screen out data. It merely organizes it.

The casualness with which Klapper made his admission is understandable. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, recently reauthorised by Congress, allows government agencies to use this investigative approach and the Obama administration believes what it’s doing is completely legal and morally defensible. “Information collected under this program is among the most important and valuable foreign intelligence information we collect,” Klapper insisted, “and is used to protect our nation from a wide variety of threats.”

But what threat can be greater than losing your privacy? Privacy is, as we’ve written here before, a right that allows us to communicate with, work with and act with people without government surveillance. It’s what allows us to organize and analyze as a movement without government interference and disruption. It’s key to our ability to oppose government policies and mobilize against them: a cornerstone of a democracy. Privacy, we now learn, no longer exists in this country. That’s not the picture of a democracy; it’s a snapshot of a police state. When one considers the intense national campaign organized [3] and run by the federal government to spy on, infiltrate, harass and ultimately to crush the Occupy Movement — a totally peaceful and constitutionally protected protest movement — in this light, there is no way Prism can be viewed as benign, much less legal or moral.

To make things even more frightening, it’s the military that is doing the gathering. “It’s shocking enough just that the NSA is asking companies to do this,” Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU’s Center for Democracy, said. “The NSA is part of the military. The military has been granted unprecedented access to civilian communications. This is unprecedented militarisation of domestic communications infrastructure. That’s profoundly troubling to anyone who is concerned about that separation.”

Anyone who is not concerned is nuts! This is the same military that has become a mass murder machine: fighting illegal wars, murdering civilians world-wide and, the symbol of this moral bankruptcy, using drones that kill people indiscriminately with “signature strikes” [4]. If they can do that with lives, imagine what they’re willing to do with email.

What do you call a country where the military gathers massive information on its citizens?

In an example of “things getting worse quickly”, the stunning Prism revelations actually eclipsed a story released Wednesday about the NSA collecting the phone records of tens of millions of Americans. That dance of intrusion was brought to light after the Guardian (having a great “scoop” week) published a secret government order that Verizon hand over its records: all of them, for a three-month period that is currently running.

What was amazing about that story is that Congressional leaders from both Republican and Democratic sides of the aisle reacted with a shrug. It’s no big thing, they said, we’ve been authorizing that for years.

So they seize all Verizon phone records and most of our data from the Internet. That’s the end of privacy as we’ve known it.

There are alternatives to these big companies and activists should certainly explore using them. But progressive movements have also been reluctant to take this privacy issue on as a priority. It’s not clear what we’ve been waiting for but it’s clear we can wait no longer. We need to take back what we’ve lost, before it becomes impossible to do so.

Source URL: http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/prism

Links:
[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data
[2] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22809541
[3] http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/1494
[4] http://rt.com/usa/cia-drone-strikes-unknown-targets-293/

The Schools’ Sinister War On Guns

Call it living in Upside-downLand or the realization of the Bible’s prediction of a time when bad will be called good and good, bad, but once again innocent schoolchildren have been persecuted for, well, just being children. This time the offender was Chase Lake Elementary School (CLES) in Edmonds, WA, where some kids were suspended for using Nerf guns on school grounds. And it’s an all-too-common story. A child will be punished for drawing a gun, shaping his fingers as one and saying “bang!” merely talking about guns or some other innocuous action. And recently there was a case of a five-year-old boy who brought a cap gun to school to show a friend and then was interrogated for two hours until he wet his pants. It’s all very bizarre and very twisted.

In the Edmonds case, the children were told that they could bring the toys to school, but I’m not interested in individual details but deeper matters. And make no mistake, something deeper is afoot here.

To introduce this, let’s start with another common thread in these cases: the reaction of the persecuted children’s parents. While they’re always upset about the relatively draconian punishment visited upon their kids, their comments often reflect those of Edmonds mother Stacey Leidholm, who addressed her son’s suspension and marred permanent record and said “I do understand that they definitely need consequences, but not that harsh of a consequence.”

Let’s stop right there. Why do they “need consequences”? This isn’t a matter of simply having to respect the rules even if you disagree with them, since “with toy or facsimile guns, discipline is handed out at the discretion of the principal [at CLES],” writes KomoNews.com. Moreover, consequences imply a transgression, but what’s wrong with playing with toy guns? It’s not as if these brightly colored toys could be mistaken for real guns, and playing with them is certainly less likely to cause injury than is playing baseball or most any other sport. So what danger is posed by the possession of toy guns on school grounds?

Before I get to that, a bit of history. Not that long ago it was common for boys to bring guns to school, as they might have target shooting afterwards; this was even the case in New York City in the 1940s and ‘50s, where kids would often ride the subways with their guns. And while this no longer occurred when I attended school in the Bronx in the ‘70s, no school official even batted an eye at our bringing toy guns to school. That was just what little boys did. Clearly, something has changed in society—and it isn’t the availability of guns or little boys’ desire to play with them.

The obvious answer here is that the last two decades’ school shootings and our civilization’s general moral decline have changed the equation. But while this would explain the desire to keep students with real firearms off school grounds, there is no logical reason to apply this to toy guns. Saying otherwise is like claiming that because you wouldn’t trust an 11-year-old to drive the family car to school, you won’t let him bring toy cars with him, either; or that he won’t be allowed to possess toy airplanes because he isn’t ready to pilot a 747 for Delta. The same applies to the argument that bringing toy guns to school makes the leap to bringing real ones that much shorter; it’s as nonsensical as saying that junior is more likely to steal the family sedan if you let him play with Matchbox cars.

Of course, there is the paranoia explanation: the school shootings have made people so fearful that anything smacking of firearms is reflexively rejected. And I’m sure this is a factor—but I’m also sure there’s more to it. What is it?

Conditioning.

Many have posited the theory that the goal here is to raise generations amenable to strict gun control by instilling the young with negative attitudes toward firearms. And how better to do this than with swift and sure punishment for anything that evidences even the thought of a gun? Doodle a firearm, point your fingers like one—anything at all—and, bang!, you suffer for your wrong thinking. Think doubleplusgood thoughts, little boy, about flowers and kittens and rainbows and what gender you want to be. And should a child be a tad recalcitrant, nothing creates negative associations with firearms like a two-hour, pants-wetting interrogation at the age of five.

(By the way, it’s funny how leftists who would outlaw a 30-second spanking will then commit horrendous psychological and emotional child abuse. Hey, nothing convinces a situational-values libtard of the value of punishment like a person in need of reeducation.)

To buttress this theory, please consider this 1990s video of our beloved attorney general, Eric Withholder. He outlines a plan for combating violence and says:

What we need to do is change the way people think about guns—especially young people—and make it something that’s not cool; that it’s not acceptable, it’s not hip to carry a gun anymore, in the way that we’ve changed out attitudes about cigarettes. …Over time we changed the way people thought about smoking, so now we have people who cower outside of buildings and kind of smoke in private and don’t want to admit it. And that’s what I think we need to do with guns. …I’ve asked that the creative community in Washington… devote [their] talent in a more constructive way, so we can get at the minds of these young people. …. People who have credibility with young people should be on the television, on the radio…and telling these youngsters that it’s wrong to carry a gun…. I’ve also asked the school board to make a part of every day some kind of anti-violence, anti-gun message; every day, every school at every level. One thing that I think is clear with young people, and with adults as well, is that we have to be repetitive about this…. We need to do this every day of the week and just really brainwash people into thinking about guns in a vastly different way [emphasis added].

Now, I don’t imply this is a grand conspiracy. It doesn’t have to be when you have millions of like-minded people who, being fellow travelers, all act in similar ways quite instinctively. Sure, there are puppet masters in the vanguard of these movements who create policy (like the zero-tolerance nonsense) and who purposely effect Machiavellian designs, but they are mere catalysts. Of course, there are many others—teachers and administrators (mostly women)—who instinctively dislike guns, or fear them, and for this reason are inclined to carry out these policies and punish a wrong-thinking child harshly. But theirs is more an emotional reaction, as opposed to the colder, more insidious, Luciferian motives of the world’s Withholders.

But then there are millions of other sheeple, caught in the Matrix, who simply enforce these rules because they exist. As to this, I called CLES and asked someone in community relations the following: “How does the possession of toy guns on school grounds pose a threat?” After giving me a non-answer and then my having to rephrase the question once or twice, the school official seemed genuinely flummoxed and said that she would have to consult the literature and get back to me. An unthinking drone.

But the question is, are the rest of us going to be sheeple as well? If not, there are things we can and should do to counter the schools’ war on guns and tradition. First, parents should organize, pick up their children from an offending school with toy guns in hand, and play a visible shoot-‘em-up game on school grounds. I’m serious. It’s called desensitization. Moreover, it tells the children in the strongest way possible that there is nothing wrong with toy-gun play. And if the schools are trying to condition your kids the wrong way, why not condition them the right way?

Then there is the stick. The reason insanity keeps occurring at schools and elsewhere is that leftists are never held accountable. But here we must take a leaf out of their book. When someone transgresses against their politically correct code—think Jimmy “the Greek” Snyder, Don Imus, or James Watson here—an apology won’t suffice.

The left wants the person destroyed.

So follow suit. Don’t be like a certain popular cable-news host who is wont to say “I don’t want to see ____ (the tyrant du jour) lose his job.” Make sure a school official who commits leftist abuse upon a child never works again. Go for the jugular, for the kill shot; give no quarter. Go Roman. It’s only when thousands of the thought police’s decaying corpses of careers are lining the Apian Way that those in darkness will see the light. The Culture War is just that—a war. And if you want to turn it around, this must be your mindset—every day, every way, every school, at every level.

How The Reading War Became A Religious War

The Reading War was a fight over how reading should be taught.

Unexpectedly, this conflict also became a religious war. Progressive secular humanists declared that their method (Whole Word) was scientifically best. They claimed the opposing method (phonics) was favored only by irrational religious extremists (read: Christians).

The logic for those claims is convoluted. Probably there is no logic, merely propaganda.

Psychiatrists would also probably speak of “projection.” The progressives listed all the bad features of Whole Word, and then insisted that these dreadful results were characteristic of phonics. How convenient.

You might think the people in this fight would have to come up against reality at some point. In fact, that should have happened in 1955 when Rudolf Flesch wrote “Why Johnny Can’t Read.” He explained that Whole Word does not work, and schools must use phonics. However, the progressives simply refused to listen. They formed the International Reading Association for the purpose of attacking Flesch, and promoting Whole Word (also known by several other names).

So we had a total inversion of reality. In order to push this inversion on to victory, the Education Establishment more and more injected the hysteria of religious conflicts.

The country was told that foolish, misguided, possibly evil people chose phonics because these people were religious fanatics. Conversely, secular humanists endorsed Whole Word because they were logical and clear-thinking, never mind that this method produced tens of millions of functional illiterates.

This was the weird state of American education during the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Phonics, the proven winner, was dismissed as religious nuttiness. Whole Whole, a proven loser, was said to be research-based genius.

This long-running conflict often unfolded behind the scenes, a debate waged in scholarly slurs. Then came an event in 1974, in the backwoods of West Virginia, which caused the progressive views to be plainly articulated.

James Moffett, one of the country’s leading Whole Language proponents, had created an elaborate K-12 curricula for use in public schools. Many literary items were sophisticated and seemed inappropriate to the parents of West Virginia. Resistance formed. The Education Establishment screamed: “censorship.” The liberal media played it that way. A battle raged for many months.

In 1989 James Moffett wrote a book about this piece of history. In three amazing statements, he summed up the views which had propelled the entire drama throughout several decades:

“In my textbooks and workshops for teachers I recommend [favoring] the whole-sentence and full-text methods and to regard phonics as probably not necessary for reading.”

“Almost invariably parents and others not having these professional reasons side with phonics because it suits the conservative cast of mind.`God believes in the beauty of phonics’ means that those who see themselves as God’s spokespeople prefer phonics, precisely, I think, because it shuts out content by focusing the child on articles of language too small to have any meaning.”

“How to limit what they may find to read out of school? A good way is to cripple literacy at the outset, to make reading so technical and meaningless youngsters will…simply not seek books any further or will find the act of reading so painful that they virtually give it up.”

I believe Moffett has everything backwards (having accepted the sophistries of Frank Smith and Ken Goodman), and that most children do learn to read by mastering the small “articles” which he disparages.

Moffett lies in pretending that children learn these small parts so they can stop there. No, it’s a first step. All instruction progresses from crawling to walking to running, then to dancing, skiing, etc. You don’t crawl in order to crawl for the rest of your life but Moffett weirdly pretends that we do.

Conversely, Whole Word is built on what might be called the expert fallacy. Adults, according to Whole Word theory, read whole words. So let’s teach children to read whole words from the beginning. This is like teaching a child to ski by letting him loose on a steep slope.

Constance Weaver, another famous proponent of Whole Language, argued: “What motivates such advocacy? Oddly enough, it may not necessarily be what proponents claim: namely, the desire to teach all children to read. A great deal of the force behind such advocacy seems to be the desire to promote a religious agenda and/or to maintain the socioeconomic status quo.”

A third advocate of Whole Word instruction, Reggie Routman, actually wrote: “phonics instruction is a useless sore, even a handicap.”

In fact, it’s phonics that makes children into fluent, independent readers, the kind of people who can learn what they want and make decisions for themselves. Conversely, it’s the millions of functional illiterates created by Whole Word that turn out to have few skills. Talk about maintaining the socioeconomic status quo.

You can say that these Whole Word people were not just wrong, they were pathetically wrong. They drank the Kool-Aid and then denied the obvious: a phonetic language such as English requires that children learn that letters on a page stand for sounds. That’s the essence of phonetics, or phonics.

Ideally, all parents would understand how phonics works and that Whole Word can cripple a child. Additionally, they would be aware that many dangerous sophistries were devised during the Reading Wars, thereby rendering the entire reading debate muddled and dysfunctional. Working around this confusion is the first priority.

Bottom line: English words were never designed to be memorized visually. If you want to see how weird our words look to a first grader, just choose a random page of text, turn it upside down, and look at it in a mirror. You will see that the word-designs are annoyingly similar; and they change in unpredictable ways from typeface to typeface, from lower case to UPPER CASE. There’s a lot of visual complexity and chaos. Imagine trying to memorize many hundreds of these so-called sight-words on sight. This project is nearly impossible. The progressives’ Reading War was actually a reading scam.

Phonics, by proceeding one simple step at a time, enables all children to read, typically by the end of first grade.

What Is Happenning In Istanbul?

To my friends who live outside of Turkey:

I am writing to let you know what is going on in Istanbul for the last five days. I personally have to write this because most of the media sources are shut down by the government and the word of mouth and the internet are the only ways left for us to explain ourselves and call for help and support.

Four days ago a group of people most of whom did not belong to any specific organization or ideology got together in Istanbul’s Gezi Park. Among them there were many of my friends and students. Their reason was simple: To prevent and protest the upcoming demolishing of the park for the sake of building yet another shopping mall at very center of the city. There are numerous shopping malls in Istanbul, at least one in every neighborhood! The tearing down of the trees was supposed to begin early Thursday morning. People went to the park with their blankets, books and children. They put their tents down and spent the night under the trees. Early in the morning when the bulldozers started to pull the hundred-year-old trees out of the ground, they stood up against them to stop the operation.

They did nothing other than standing in front of the machines.

No newspaper, no television channel was there to report the protest. It was a complete media black out.

But the police arrived with water cannon vehicles and pepper spray. They chased the crowds out of the park.

In the evening the number of protesters multiplied. So did the number of police forces around the park. Meanwhile local government of Istanbul shut down all the ways leading up to Taksim square where the Gezi Park is located. The metro was shut down, ferries were cancelled, roads were blocked.

Yet more and more people made their way up to the center of the city by walking.

They came from all around Istanbul. They came from all different backgrounds, different ideologies, different religions. They all gathered to prevent the demolition of something bigger than the park:

The right to live as honorable citizens of this country.

They gathered and marched. Police chased them with pepper spray and tear gas and drove their tanks over people who offered the police food in return. Two young people were run over by the panzers and were killed. Another young woman, a friend of mine, was hit in the head by one of the incoming tear gas canisters. The police were shooting them straight into the crowd. After a three hour operation she is still in Intensive Care Unit and in very critical condition. As I write this we don’t know if she is going to make it. This blog is dedicated to her.

These people are my friends. They are my students, my relatives. They have no «hidden agenda» as the state likes to say. Their agenda is out there. It is very clear. The whole country is being sold to corporations by the government, for the construction of malls, luxury condominiums, freeways, dams and nuclear plants. The government is looking for (and creating when necessary) any excuse to attack Syria against its people’s will.

On top of all that, the government control over its people’s personal lives has become unbearable as of late. The state, under its conservative agenda passed many laws and regulations concerning abortion, cesarean birth, sale and use of alcohol and even the color of lipstick worn by the airline stewardesses.

People who are marching to the center of Istanbul are demanding their right to live freely and receive justice, protection and respect from the State. They demand to be involved in the decision-making processes about the city they live in.

What they have received instead is excessive force and enormous amounts of tear gas shot straight into their faces. Three people lost their eyes.

Yet they still march. Hundred of thousands join them. Couple of more thousand passed the Bosporus Bridge on foot to support the people of Taksim.

No newspaper or TV channel was there to report the events. They were busy with broadcasting news about Miss Turkey and “the strangest cat of the world”.

Police kept chasing people and spraying them with pepper spray to an extent that stray dogs and cats were poisoned and died by it.

Schools, hospitals and even 5 star hotels around Taksim Square opened their doors to the injured. Doctors filled the classrooms and hotel rooms to provide first aid. Some police officers refused to spray innocent people with tear gas and quit their jobs. Around the square they placed jammers to prevent internet connection and 3g networks were blocked. Residents and businesses in the area provided free wireless network for the people on the streets. Restaurants offered food and water for free.

People in Ankara and İzmir gathered on the streets to support the resistance in Istanbul.

Mainstream media kept showing Miss Turkey and “the strangest cat of the world”. ***

I am writing this letter so that you know what is going on in Istanbul. Mass media will not tell you any of this. Not in my country at least. Please post as many as articles as you see on the Internet and spread the word.

As I was posting articles that explained what is happening in Istanbul on my Facebook page last night someone asked me the following question:

«What are you hoping to gain by complaining about our country to foreigners?»

This blog is my answer to her.

By so called «complaining» about my country I am hoping to gain:

Freedom of expression and speech,

Respect for human rights,

Control over the decisions I make concerning my on my body,

The right to legally congregate in any part of the city without being considered a terrorist.

But most of all by spreading the word to you, my friends who live in other parts of the world, I am hoping to get your awareness, support and help!

Please spread the word and share this blog.

Thank you!

Source: İnsanlik Hali | Global Research

Normalizing PH Levels Can Stop Cancer In Its Tracks

Part 3: Killing cancer cells with alkaline pH levels and iodine instead of killing your cells with chemotherapy…

If you or a loved one suffers from cancer, you enjoy a plethora of research and knowledge to take this disease down to the mat and defeat it.  In this third part of the series, you will discover two very powerful combatants to reduce and destroy cancer cells in your body.

By the way, my research shows that 97 percent of chemotherapy fails.  That deadly chemical only works effectively on childhood leukemia, lymphoma cancers like Hodgkin’s and testicular cancers. It works for a scant 1.4 percent of breast cancer cases.

You may visit: http://www.cancerfightingstrategies.com/ph-and-cancer.html to give you even greater understanding on how you can take charge of your cancer recovery.

The report states, “There is plenty of research showing the link between acidic pH and cancer. Cancer thrives in an acidic environment, and doesn’t survive in a normal, more alkaline environment. Cancer cells make your body even more acidic as they produce lactic acid. So if you have cancer, your ph levels are low and your body is too acidic. Taking action to make your body more alkaline is vital in the battle against cancer.”

However, most Americans eat the S.A.D., which stands for Standard American Diet.  Americans lack the proper alkaline pH levels to stave off cancer in the first place. While cancer entrenches in our bodies because we chomp down on pizzas, Coca-Cola, Big Mac’s, Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, candy and sugars in just about everything—our immune systems swirl into the toilet because our bodies suffer too high acidic levels.

According to Keiichi Morishita in his book, Hidden Truth of Cancer, “When your blood starts to become acidic, your body deposits acidic substances (usually toxins) into cells to allow the blood to remain slightly alkaline. This causes your cells to become more acidic and toxic, which results in a decrease of their oxygen levels, and harms their DNA and respiratory enzymes.”

Sang Whang, in his book Reverse Aging, points out that toxins are acidic. He said, “In general, degenerative diseases are the result of acid waste buildups within us. When we are born, we have the highest alkaline mineral concentration and also the highest body ph. From that point on, the normal process of life is to gradually acidify. That is why these degenerative diseases do not occur when you are young. Reverse aging requires two separate steps: chemical and physical. The first step is to lower the acidity of the body so that it can dispose of acidic wastes in the blood and cellular fluids safely and easily. The second step is to physically pull out old stored wastes into the blood stream so that they can be discharged from the body.”

BLA and BLA Enhancer — Blocks Lactic Acid Release from Cancer Cells and raises pH Levels

BLA equals a frequency enhanced water elixir made with the unique technology used in PrugX and many other top cancer fighters. The report said, “These energies deliver an information message to your body. The instructions BLA carries to your body tell it to block the effluxion or elimination of lactic acid from all cancer cells.”

In this report, “BLA is the best cancer fighter we found that adjusts pH. It works in a unique way that increases ph in your body if you have cancer. BLA instructs cancer cells to stop pumping the lactic acid they produce (as part of the fermentation process) into the body. And they produce a lot of lactic acid. This lactic acid, when it is pumped out, makes your body even more acidic than it already is. Using BLA will stop this lactic acid from pumped out so it works to prevent this lactic acid from making you more acidic. Thus, BLA helps to alkalize your body by stopping the output of lactic acid from cancer cells.”

Americans maintain their addiction to refined sugars.  It started when Gerber Baby Foods laced kids’ vegetables to make them taste better to their mothers. In the process, Americans became sugar addicts since the 1950s.  The report said, “Feeding cancer cells sugar caused them to produce much more lactic acid then they normally would. In fact, the more sugar he gave his patient, the faster the cancer cells died because the lactic acid built up faster in the cells. He brought the tumor markers in one advanced cancer patient down to 0 in 30 days. A second patient’s markers dropped 40% in 2 weeks. Truly amazing results.”

For this part of the report, “In use since early 2011, BLA is proving to be one of the top cancer fighting supplements we have researched. Especially when used with PrugX, a sister elixir that causes a buildup of hydrogen peroxide in cancer cells. They work synergistically together, creating a toxic soup of lactic acid and hydrogen peroxide in cancer cells.”

Iodine kills cancer cells within your body

Please investigate this website in order to discover your potential as to specific cancer cures with iodine: breast, prostate, endocrine and more. Facts presented: http://theiodineproject.webs.com/cancerandiodine.htm

Iodine Deficiency Growing Worse

* Iodine consumption by Americans has dropped 50 percent since the 1970s as breast cancer rates have risen.  In the US Goiter Belt, where iodine in the soil is lower, breast cancer is higher .

• ·         By contrast, the incidence and severity of breast cancer are less in Japan than in Europe and the US, attributable to the diet.  Japanese women consume 25 times more dietary iodine than North American women and have lower breast cancer rates.

• Meanwhile, since the 1970s, in the US and several other countries, iodine-blocking bromides have been added to flour,  some sodas, and medications, exacerbating the iodine deficiency.

• Fluoridated drinking water also depletes iodine absorption. Thus, as women consume less iodine and excrete more due to toxic elements, our risk for breast cancer grows.

The key: read the information provided and make choices. A dear friend of mine with prostate cancer discovered this information and put it to use immediately.  His alkaline pH rose to 7 within several weeks. He pushes toward 8 on the pH scale.  At that level, research shows that cancer cells pack up and die while leaving your body.

In this series, you must investigate the websites provided to save your own life.  Leaving it to the usual methods such as chemotherapy only adds to the medical profession’s $100 billion a year largess—at your expense.

Food Justice: Monsanto, Factory Farming, And Beyond

On May 25, 2013, millions marched against Monsanto across the globe. I took part here in New York City, of course, and was fortunate to have the opportunity to lead a teach-in called: “Food Justice, GMOs, & the Vegan Option (Eat Like a Revolutionary).”
The ostensible goals of this event included:

• Present GMOs as much more than a single issue.
• Suggest that GMOs offer a powerful entry point for outreach to the mainstream.
• Provide facts to be used for such outreach.
• Explain why there’s more to food justice than screaming “Fuck Monsanto.”

At the request of those who attended the teach-in, I’ve compiled some of the material in an article of sorts. This is not meant to be the definitive word on any of these topics. Rather, I strongly encourage all readers to follow-up with their own research and, of course, share what they find.

Monsanto 101

Monsanto is not a food company.

Monsanto a chemical company that made its name, for example, selling saccharin to Coca-Cola and Agent Orange to U.S. military. Its products also include PCBs, dioxin, DDT, and rBGH.

Monsanto records annual sales of roughly $11.8 billion and operates 404 facilities in 66 countries, over 6 continents with products grown on more than 282 million acres worldwide.

Monsanto is one of three corporations (along with DuPont and Syngenta) that control 70 percent of the global seed market — aiming for monopoly power over the planet’s food and water supplies.

GMO 101

GMO is short for “genetically modified organism” and is the result of corporate scientists taking genes from one species and inserting them into another species in an attempt to obtain a desired trait or characteristic. GMOs are also known as “transgenic organisms” and the process is often called “genetic engineering” or GE.

Examples of genetic engineering include:

• Inserting spider genes into goat DNA in an attempt to produce goat milk that contains spider web protein to be used in the manufacturing of bulletproof vests.
• Arctic fish gene spliced into tomatoes and strawberries to make them tolerant to frost.
• Potatoes that will glow in dark when they need water.

All this and so much more is happening even though, as any non-corporate scientist can tell you, our current understanding of the way DNA works is extremely limited. Any change to DNA can have side effects that are impossible to predict or control. Still, the industry forges on, e.g. 94 percent of soy is GM, 90 percent of cotton, 88 percent of corn, and 95 percent of sugar beets.

Reality: 80 percent of processed food contains at least one GM ingredient.

Monsanto Protection Act

For those who seek solace in oversight, be warned: the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not require a single safety study, does not mandate the labeling of GMOs, and allows companies to put GM foods onto the market without even notifying the agency.

You might even say we are the test.

GMOs were introduced into the American food supply in 1996 and within nine years, the percentage of Americans with three or more chronic illnesses jumped from 7 percent to 13 percent while food allergies skyrocketed.

Which brings us to what is euphemistically known as the “Monsanto Protection Act.” Thanks to the Farmer Assurance Provision, Section 735, of the recently passed spending bill, even if an individual or group were to bring suit against a GM company, no action could be taken until an “Environmental Impact Statement” (EIS) is compiled — and this typically takes years.

Translation: The product suspected to be dangerous stays on the market until the EIS inevitably declares it safe.

“Safe?”

GMOs are bad for the environment.

 GMOs, explains Greenpeace, “can spread through nature and interbreed with natural organisms, thereby contaminating non-GE environments and future generations in an unforeseeable and uncontrollable way. Their release is genetic pollution and is a major threat because GMOs cannot be recalled once released into the environment.”

Most GM crops are engineered to be “herbicide tolerant.” This is why Monsanto sells Roundup Ready crops, designed to survive their Roundup herbicide. As a result, between 1996 and 2008, U.S. farmers sprayed an extra 383 million pounds herbicide on GM crops and the overuse of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide creates what are called “superweeds,” and thus, even more herbicide is used in the futile attempt to control this cycle.

GMOs interbreed with natural organisms, contaminating non-GE environments. Again: once genetic pollution is released into nature, it cannot be recalled.

GMOs are not the answer to world hunger.

 The 2008 Friends of the Earth report, “Who Benefits From GM Crops,” sums it up well: “The majority of GM crops are not destined for hungry people in developing countries, but are used to feed animals, generate biofuels, and produce highly processed food products — mainly for consumption in rich countries. GM crops have not increased food security for the world’s poor. None of the GM crops on the market are modified for increased yield potential and research continues to focus on new pesticide-promoting varieties that tolerate application of one or more herbicides.”

Companies like Monsanto seeks only profit and control.

 In my 2010 interview with journalist Marie-Monique Robin, she told me: “Monsanto is the world leader in biotechnology and the first seed company. Ninety percent of the GMOs grown in the world belong to it. During the last decade, the firm bought dozens of seed companies all over the world, pushing its transgenic seeds, which are patented. A patented seed means that the farmers who grow it may not keep a part of his crops to re-sow it, the next year, as farmers used to do everywhere in the world. In the United States and Canada, farmers who grow transgenic crops must sign a ‘technology agreement.’ The no-sowing requirement is clearly expressed. If they don’t respect the agreement and violate the patent, they are harassed by the ‘gene police’ and sued by Monsanto. Clearly transgenic crops are just a tool to control the seeds supply — which is the first link in the food chain — by forcing farmers to buy seeds each year.”
Seed monopolies = 250,000 farmers to commit suicide in India alone.

Next from Monsanto: Gene Use Restriction Technologies (GURTS).

Some radical food choices…

Obviously, we need to do more than talk and listen and learn. We have to put into practice the kind of world we want. In terms specific to GMOs, we can:

• Avoid buying ‘em and instead opt for fresh, local, organic non-GMO, non-processed food from farmers markets.
• Label ‘em ourselves.
• Organize non-GMO seed banks/local swaps/seed bomb events.
• Start or join a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) initiative.
• Grow our own organic non-GMO food everywhere: window boxes, balconies, community garden, rooftops, fire escapes, etc.
• Choose food not lawns.

FYI: The single most irrigated crop in the U.S. is lawn.

Instead of gardens, we have 40 million acres of lawn from sea to overfished sea. Americans spend $40 billion per yea on seed, sod, and chemicals; one-third of all residential water use in the United States goes to lawns; and lawns require ten times more chemicals per acre than industrial farmland.

“If the Bill of Rights contains no guarantee that a citizen shall be secure against lethal poisons distributed either by private individuals or by public officials,” wrote Rachel Carson some five decades ago, “it is surely because our forefathers … could conceive of no such problem.”

We now produce pesticides at a rate more than 13,000 times faster than we did when Carson wrote Silent Spring in 1962. The EPA considers 30 percent of all insecticides, 60 percent of all herbicides, and 90 percent of all fungicides to be carcinogenic, yet Americans spend about $7 billion on 21,000 different pesticide products each year.

How have we reached this point? One reason is that we’ve opted to blindly trust the morally indefensible and scientifically fraudulent institution of animal experimentation.

This is but one way our speciesist culture intersects with Monsanto. Also, 65 percent of grains — the vast majority of which is GM — are fed to the 53 billion land animals murdered for “food” each year.

FYI: These animal “food” products are also not labeled as GE.

For activists to know all this and still consume animal products is at the very least denial and at the very most: sheer hypocrisy.

The most radical food choice…

The vast majority of food we consume involves GMOS, unspeakable animal cruelty, exploited human labor, a human health holocaust, higher profits and more control for the 1%, and irreversible environmental degradation.

Translation: Every time you order a pizza to one of your rallies or get a quick bite at McDonalds (or any such death emporium) or opt to chow down on Ben & Jerry’s because the owners are so “progressive,” or plan a turkey dinner for climate change victims, you are voting with your meager dollars for GMOs, unspeakable animal cruelty, exploited human labor, a human health holocaust, higher profits and more control for the 1%, and irreversible environmental degradation.

What kind of irreversible environmental degradation, you ask? Let’s begin with this: The number one source of human-created greenhouse gases is the global animal by-products industry — factory farming, the meat-and-dairy-based diet.

More:

• We lose nearly 7 billion tons of topsoil every year and 75 percent of the original U.S. topsoil is already gone. Without nutrient-rich topsoil, human life will vanish… and guess what’s causing 85 percent of this topsoil erosion: livestock raising and feedcrops.
• 200,000 acres rainforest are destroyed every single day and 70 percent of previous forested land in the Amazon is now pastures or feedcrops for doomed livestock. Every time you eat a burger sourced from the rainforest, you are responsible for 700 pounds of living matter being destroyed: 20-30 plant species; 100 insect species; and of dozens reptiles, birds, and mammals.
• The land used to raise animals for “food” is 10 billion acres. Livestock production consumes 70 percent of all agricultural land, which translates into one-third of the land surface on the planet.

Let’s re-cap: 

Each year, 65 percent of untested GM grains are fed to 53 billion doomed land animals in an industry that eats up one-third of the land surface on the planet and is the number one source of human-created greenhouse gases.

Translation: Going vegan is a lot more than just tofu recipes.

It’s even more than barbarism like: veal crates, vivisection, battery cages, slaughterhouses, whaling ships, carriage horses, dogfight rings, fur farms, zoos, circuses, and rodeos.

It’s also about (among many other things): workplace justice, torture, health care, deforestation, overfishing, poverty, habitat loss, ocean dead zones, corporate welfare, and GMOs.

Most of all, embracing veganism and animal rights is more than a boycott, a diet, or a lifestyle option. It is a surrendering of a privilege and that privilege is called “speciesism.” Every time someone voluntarily surrenders a privilege, it is an act of revolution. Thus, veganism and animal rights are part of a liberation movement, recognizing that animals are not property, products, or commodities.

Angela Davis, someone who knows a thing or two about challenging privilege, has declared her vegan status to be “part of a revolutionary perspective — how we not only discover more compassionate relations with human beings but how we develop compassionate relations with the other creatures with whom we share this planet.”

At your next sign-making party: 

Recognize that Monsanto is far from only corporation killing planet via food industry and consider…

Tyson Foods, which became the world’s largest poultry and red meat provider after buying Iowa Beef Processors, Inc. (IBP) in 2001. Tyson controls 27 percent of all meat and poultry sales in the United States. One out of every four pounds of chicken, beef, and pork consumed in the United States is a Tyson product.

Fuck Tyson Foods…

Smithfield Foods, the largest pig-farming operation in the united States and the world’s largest pork producer. Smithfield controls 26 percent of the U.S. pork market, raising 14 million pigs at its facilities and killing 27 million of the 60 million that went to slaughter in 2006.

Fuck Smithfield Foods…

Cargill, the second largest meat processing company in the United States, after Tyson Foods. It is the second largest supplier of animal feed in the world.

Fuck Cargill…

Cal-Maine Foods, the largest egg producer in the U.S. In 2009, Cal-Maine sold approximately 778 million dozen shell eggs, representing approximately 18 percent of domestic shell egg consumption. The company’s approximately 27 million laying hens and 6 million pullets and breeders is the largest concentration of chickens in the United States.

Fuck Cal-Maine Foods…

Nestle, the world’s leading producer of dairy products.

Fuck Nestle…

McDonalds, the largest purchaser of beef and second largest purchaser of poultry in the United States.

Fuck McDonalds…

KFC, the largest purchaser of poultry in the United States.

Fuck KFC…

This is where food justice and our food choices connect directly with Wall Street and with “free trade” agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

Not free, not trade

TPP, as described by the Citizens Trade Campaign, is a “massive new international trade pact being pushed by the U.S. government at the behest of transnational corporations. The TPP is already being negotiated between the United States, Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam — but it is also specifically intended as a ‘docking agreement’ that other Pacific Rim countries would join over time, with Japan, Korea, China and others already expressing some interest.  It is poised to become the largest Free Trade Agreement in the world.”

Such an agreement would also give animal agribusiness the opportunity to pressure countries to eliminate import safety standards and eliminate tariffs on U.S. meat, dairy, and egg exports.

Translation: More animals suffering on factory farms, more climate change and factory farm pollution, more destruction of rainforests for livestock feed, more diabetes, heart disease, and cancer in the global South, more outbreaks of deadly diseases like bird flu and swine flu, and dig this: more countries shifting to factory farming to stay competitive.

Fuck Wall Street and fuck the TPP…

Side note to the lesser (sic) evil crowd: Neither party gets it on these issues or wants to get it or will ever get it.

I give you Michael Taylor, appointed by President Obama to the position of deputy commissioner for Foods at the FDA. Taylor is also vice president for public policy at Monsanto, which means he’s in charge of GMOs being put into our food supply.

Fuck Obama and fuck the so-called 2-party system…

It starts with alternative vision: While the dominant hierarchy drowns in its own hypocrisy, fear, and greed let’s use our energy and passion to create – occupy – a whole new cultural model.

So yes, scream: “Fuck Monsanto!”

But also scream: “Fuck the entire system!”

Fuck the entire system because we have reached the point of no return and minor changes are no longer enough.

Fuck the entire system because we recognize the big connections and must stop acting like we’re the last generation of humans.

Fuck the entire system because we must re-imagine our relationship with the natural world, the source of our existence.

Fuck the entire system because we want total liberation and we know that mutual aid and cooperation are not utopian. We know that mutual aid and cooperation are our last, best chance.

Utah Phillips once said: “The earth is not dying. It is being killed, and the people killing it have names and addresses.”

With that in mind, here’s our message to the 1%: If you won’t protect all life on earth, we will… and we will do so, by any means necessary.

“In nature’s economy, the currency is not money, it is life.” – Vandana

World Bank Insider Blows Whistle On Corruption, Federal Reserve

A former insider at the World Bank, ex-Senior Counsel Karen Hudes, says the global financial system is dominated by a small group of corrupt, power-hungry figures centered around the privately owned U.S. Federal Reserve. The network has seized control of the media to cover up its crimes, too, she explained. In an interview withThe New American, Hudes said that when she tried to blow the whistle on multiple problems at the World Bank, she was fired for her efforts. Now, along with a network of fellow whistleblowers, Hudes is determined to expose and end the corruption. And she is confident of success.

Citing an explosive 2011 Swiss study published in the PLOS ONE journal on the “network of global corporate control,” Hudes pointed out that a small group of entities — mostly financial institutions and especially central banks — exert a massive amount of influence over the international economy from behind the scenes. “What is really going on is that the world’s resources are being dominated by this group,” she explained, adding that the “corrupt power grabbers” have managed to dominate the media as well. “They’re being allowed to do it.”

According to the peer-reviewed paper, which presented the first global investigation of ownership architecture in the international economy, transnational corporations form a “giant bow-tie structure.” A large portion of control, meanwhile, “flows to a small tightly-knit core of financial institutions.” The researchers described the core as an “economic ‘super-entity’” that raises important issues for policymakers and researchers. Of course, the implications are enormous for citizens as well.

Hudes, an attorney who spent some two decades working in the World Bank’s legal department, has observed the machinations of the network up close. “I realized we were now dealing with something known as state capture, which is where the institutions of government are co-opted by the group that’s corrupt,” she told The New American in a phone interview. “The pillars of the U.S. government — some of them — are dysfunctional because of state capture; this is a big story, this is a big cover up.”

At the heart of the network, Hudes said, are 147 financial institutions and central banks — especially the Federal Reserve, which was created by Congress but is owned by essentially a cartel of private banks. “This is a story about how the international financial system was secretly gamed, mostly by central banks — they’re the ones we are talking about,” she explained. “The central bankers have been gaming the system. I would say that this is a power grab.”

The Fed in particular is at the very center of the network and the coverup, Hudes continued, citing a policy and oversight body that includes top government and Fed officials. Central bankers have also been manipulating gold prices, she added, echoing widespread concerns that The New American has documented extensively. Indeed, even the inaccurate World Bank financial statements that Hudes has been trying to expose are linked to the U.S. central bank, she said.

“The group that we’re talking about from the Zurich study — that’s the Federal Reserve; it has some other pieces to it, but that’s the Federal Reserve,” Hudes explained. “So the Federal Reserve secretly dominated the world economy using secret, interlocking corporate directorates, and terrorizing anybody who managed to figure out that they were having any kind of role, and putting people in very important positions so that they could get a free pass.”

The shadowy but immensely powerful Bank for International Settlements serves as “the club of these private central bankers,” Hudes continued. “Now, are people going to want interest on their country’s debts to continue to be paid to that group when they find out the secret tricks that that group has been doing? Don’t forget how they’ve enriched themselves extraordinarily and how they’ve taken taxpayer money for the bailout.”

As far as intervening in the gold price, Hudes said it was an effort by the powerful network and its central banks to “hold onto its paper currency” — a suspicion shared by many analysts and even senior government officials. The World Bank whistleblower also said that contrary to official claims, she did not believe there was any gold being held in Fort Knox. Even congressmen and foreign governments have tried to find out if the precious metals were still there, but they met with little success. Hudes, however, believes the scam will eventually come undone.

“This is like crooks trying to figure out where they can go hide. It’s a mafia,” she said. “These culprits that have grabbed all this economic power have succeeded in infiltrating both sides of the issue, so you will find people who are supposedly trying to fight corruption who are just there to spread disinformation and as a placeholder to trip up anybody who manages to get their act together.… Those thugs think that if they can keep the world ignorant, they can bleed it longer.”

Of course, the major corruption at the highest levels of government and business is not a new phenomenon. Georgetown University historian and Professor Carroll Quigley, who served as President Bill Clinton’s mentor, for example, wrote about the scheme in his 1966 book Tragedy And Hope: A History Of The World In Our Time. The heavyweight academic, who was allowed to review documents belonging to the top echelons of the global establishment, even explained how the corrupt system would work — remarkably similar to what Hudes describes.

“The powers of financial capitalism had a far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole,” wrote Prof. Quigley, who agreed with the goals but not the secrecy. “This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world’s central banks which were themselves private corporations.”

But it is not going to happen, Hudes said — at least not if she has something do to with it. While the media are dominated by the “power grabber” network, Hudes has been working with foreign governments, reporters, U.S. officials, state governments, and a broad coalition of fellow whistleblowers to blow the entire scam wide open. There has been quite a bit of interest, too, particularly among foreign governments and state officials in the United States.

Citing the wisdom of America’s Founding Fathers in creating a federal system of government with multiple layers of checks and balances, Hudes said she was confident that the network would eventually be exposed and subjected to the rule of law, stopping the secret corruption. If and when that happens — even if it may be disorderly — Hudes says precious metals will once again play a role in imposing discipline on the monetary system. The rule of law would also be restored, she said, and the public will demand a proper press to stay informed.

“We’re going to have a cleaned-up financial system, that’s where it is going, but in the meantime, people who didn’t know how the system was gamed are going to find out,” she said. “We’re going to have a different kind of international financial system…. It’ll be a new kind of world where people know what’s going on — no more backroom deals; that’s not going to keep happening. We’re going to have a different kind of media if people don’t want to be dominated and controlled, which I don’t think they do.”

While Hudes sounded upbeat, she recognizes that the world is facing serious danger right now — there are even plans in place to impose martial law in the United States, she said. The next steps will be critical for humanity. As such, Hudes argues, it is crucial that the people of the world find out about the lawlessness, corruption, and thievery that are going on at the highest levels — and put a stop to it once and for all. The consequences of inaction would be disastrous.

Photo of World Bank headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Alex Newman, a foreign correspondent for The New American, is currently based in Europe. He can be reached atanewman@thenewamerican.com.

Source: The New American

Google And The NSA Connection

The data mining technology that is integral to the Google AdWords experience is a power tool in creating an individual profile for anyone who surfs the web. The amazing capacity to target specific ads to personal search topics, geographic locations and web history is the harbinger of a total recall on your personality. If the benefits of getting relevant advertisement that maximize sales opportunities were the only purpose of the process, the relatively benign intrusion of a materialistic message might be tolerable to most internet users. However, the bull in the china shop is not merely in the business of making a commercial profit. Google is a wonder creation of the calculate surveillance society.

Research at Google acknowledges:

“When data mining systems are placed at the core of interactive services in a rapidly changing and sometimes adversarial environment, statistical models need to be combined with ideas from control and game theory; for example, when using learning in auction algorithms.

Research at Google is at the forefront of innovation in machine learning and data mining – we have one of the most active groups working on virtually all aspects of data mining.”

OK, so the dominant internet technology company is in business to harvest information on the inner recesses of each unique login. Should a cyber sleuth be concerned? Well, according to the scholarly paper, The Google-NSA Alliance: Developing Cybersecurity Policy at Internet Speed by Stephanie A. DeVos:

“On February 4, 2010, the Washington Post reported that Google and the National Security Agency had partnered to analyze the cyberattacks, with the objective of better defending Google and its users from future attack. Though neither organization commented on the partnership, sources told the Washington Post that the alliance allows for the sharing of critical information without violating Google’s policies or laws that protect Americans’ privacy of online communications. Under the terms of the alliance, Google will not be sharing proprietary data and the NSA will not be viewing users’ searches or e-mail accounts. The article stated that Google approached the NSA shortly after the attacks, but due to the sensitivity of the alliance, the deal took time to be formulated. Any agreement would be the first instance where Google had entered a “formal information-sharing relationship” with the NSA.”

PC World in the article, The Google-NSA Alliance: Questions and Answers lists the following concerns and would have you believe there is nothing ominous behind any alleged relationship.

1) Is the Google-NSA alliance really happening?

2) What would be the point of a Google-NSA partnership?

3) Would the government gain access to my personal information?

4) Why would Google work with the NSA instead of the Department of Homeland Security?

5) Has the NSA worked with Google before?

If the nature of the relationship between Google and the National Security Agency is innocent, where is the transparency? This item from Legal Times, DOJ Asks Court To Keep Secret Any Partnership Between Google, NSA, has a disturbing appearance.

“The Justice Department is defending the government’s refusal to discuss—or even acknowledge the existence of—any cooperative research and development agreement between Google and the National Security Agency.

The Washington based advocacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center sued in federal district court here to obtain documents about any such agreement between the Internet search giant and the security agency.

The NSA responded to the suit with a so-called “Glomar” response in which the agency said it could neither confirm nor deny whether any responsive records exist. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in Washington sided with the government last July.”

Another concern comes from a report in Higher Thinking Primate. “The ruling comes as controversy has been growing around CISPA, a bill that passed the House last month that would allow private firms like Google to share a wide range of information with government agencies like the NSA for cybersecurity reasons.”Even if one accepts that, the NSA agreement preserves Google’s stated policies on Americans’ privacy, what will be the effect of the new CISPA legislation on the supposed firewall protecting your personal data history?

The technology behind the most successful search engine evolves as different objectives develop. Anyone conducting Google searches knows that changes to their algorithms have the net effect of filtering out results that once were routine. TheElectronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has concerns about “the vagueness of what Google considers to be a high number of removal notices, how Google plans to make its determinations, and how “there will be no process of recourse for sites who have been demoted.”Many civil libertarians fear that the sordid political agenda of the NSA is influencing the business practices of Google to ban “undesirable” content from search queries.

Wire publishes a disturbing article, NSA Mimics Google, Pisses Off Senate.

“In 2008, a team of software coders inside the National Security Agency started reverse-engineering the database that ran Google.

They closely followed the Google research paper describing BigTable — the sweeping database that underpinned many of Google’s online services, running across tens of thousands of computer servers — but they also went a little further. In rebuilding this massive database, they beefed up the security. After all, this was the NSA.”

Even more sinister is the description of NSA projects on How The NSA Used Google To Spy On Americans — Until The Internet Figured It Out. The 634-page book, “Untangling the Web: A Guide to Internet Research”, which is available for downloadand was published by the NSA’s Center for Digital Content, has an interesting chapter entitled “Google Hacking.”

If you are still a skeptic, watch the video, Google is an NSA tool DE-CLASSIFIED DOCUMENT.

The lingering questions about the nature of the Google – NSA relationship, jeopardize business confidence in the use of their services and ad programs. The persistent claims that Google data integration is coordinated with the NSA and that the Utah Data Center has linkage with the Google server network, gains traction when the government refuses public disclosure of the full historical relationship.Once online, the data lives eternally. Act accordingly.

How Obama And Al-Qaeda Became Syrian Bedfellows

For a president that is executing Bush’s “war on terror” against Al-Qaeda and “it’s affiliates,” it seems odd that President Obama has targeted the secular Syrian government for “regime change.”

Equally odd is that Obama’s strongest military ally on the ground in Syria- the best equipped and effective fighting force against the Syrian Government — is Jabhat al-Nusra, a group that has affiliated itself with  al-Qaeda, and aims to turn Syria into an extremist Islamic state that enforces a fundamentalist version of Sharia law.

It’s difficult to know exactly how al-Nursa received its guns, but one can make an educated guess. For example, The New York Times explained in detail how the CIA has been in a massive arms trafficking operation that has already funneled thousands of tons of guns from Saudi Arabia and Qatar to Syria:

“The C.I.A. role in facilitating the [weapons] shipments… gave the United States a degree of influence over the process [of weapon distribution]…American officials have confirmed that senior White House officials were regularly briefed on the [weapons] shipments.”

Where are the guns winding up in this massive arms trafficking operation? An important question to ask is: which rebels in Syria have guns and which ones don’t.    The Guardian reports :

“The [secular] Free Syrian Army’s shortage of weapons and other resources compared with [jihadist] Jabhat al-Nusra is a recurrent theme… ‘If you join al-Nusra, there is always a gun for you but many of the FSA brigades can’t even provide bullets for their fighters,’…3,000 FSA [Free Syrian Army] men have joined al-Nusra in the last few months, mainly because of a lack of weapons and ammunition…Al-Nusra fighters rarely withdraw for shortage of ammunition…”

While it’s difficult to know if CIA trafficked guns are going directly or indirectly to al-Nursa, it’s extremely likely that these guns are going directly into the hands of ideological cousins of al-Nursa, since the Syrian rebels are completely dominated by Islamic extremists.

For example, when the Economist magazine was outlining the most important fighting groups in Syria, “Who’s Who in the Syrian Battlefield,”  they noted with regret that the only important non-Islamist group was in the Kurdish areas, which is virtually an autonomous zone. As far as the secular U.S.-backed fighting group, The Supreme Military Command, the Economist conceded it “has little control on the ground.” Keep in mind that the Economist is very much in favor of a U.S.-NATO military intervention in Syria.

The New York Times also confirmed the complete dominance of extremists on the rebel side:

“Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of.”

Thus, the minority of secular rebel fighters are not leading the civil war and will not be in power if Assad falls. Instead, honest Syrian revolutionaries will instantly fall victim to the extremists, who will immediately proceed to a mopping-up mission of their former allies.

It’s now clear that Obama’s foreign policy in Syria is actively encouraging terrorism. Many rebel-controlled areas in Syria are now new safe havens for terrorists, and there have been hundreds of terrorist bombing attacks against the Syrian government, many of which have targeted civilian areas.

While the U.S. is pouring arms into the jihadist-controlled areas, they have also downplayed the atrocities committed by these rebels, which are well documented on Youtube and include a multitude of war crimes that include beheadings, group execution of prisoners,ethnic cleansing , and the recent episode where a famous rebel commander was videotaped mutilating a dead Syrian solider and eating his heart.  

By minimizing this barbarism the Obama administration ensures that it will continue, since the extremists are empowered by U.S. support and are shielded in the U.S. media and protected from international political pressures.

One question the U.S. media never thinks of asking is: Where did all these Islamic extremists come from and why? The Sunni Islamic opposition inside Syria has long been religiously moderate, implying that many of the extremists are foreigners.

The ideological source of this extremism came from Saudi Arabian religious figures and their allies, who use Islam as a political tool to target nations “unfriendly” to Saudi Arabia and the United States. The most glaring example of this in regard to Syria was the Fatwa (official interpretation/statement) issued by 107 Islamic scholars that denounced the Syrian government and encouraged Muslims to fight against it. The statement essentially encouraged jihad, though the word wasn’t mentioned explicitly.

The statement includes:

“It is a duty for all Muslims to support the revolutionaries in Syria [against the government] “so that they can successfully complete their revolution and attain their rights and their freedom.”

The hypocrisy of such a statement is almost too glaring: the many Saudi figures who signed the document that want “freedom” in Syria are not demanding freedom in Saudi Arabia, by far the country with the least amount of freedoms in the world.

With Saudi Arabia and Qatar providing guns to the Syrian rebels — with help from the CIA — the Saudi religious figures attached to the Saudi regime give religious/political support by misleading devout Muslims to flock to Syria to attack a country of Muslims, thus creating the giant sectarian divisions we now see throughout the Islamic world.

The vast majority of this Islamic sectarian warfare is exported by Saudi Arabia, which funds radical Islamic schools all over the Middle East that attract the downtrodden of these countries by providing basic social services that the host country is too poor — or unwilling — to provide.  There is an informative chapter on this dynamic in Vijay Prashad’s excellent book, A People’s History of the Third World.

Now the debate among U.S.-NATO countries is whether to give more sophisticated weaponry to the extremist-dominated rebels in Syria. The Obama Administration is pressuring the European Union to drop its arms embargo on Syria so that a new torrent of weapons can flood the country (apparently the CIA operations haven’t yet completely drenched Syria with guns).

In response to the “drop the embargo” discussion, Oxfam intelligently responded by saying:

“Sending arms to the Syrian opposition won’t create a level playing field. Instead, it risks further fueling an arms free-for-all where the victims are the civilians of Syria. Our experience from other conflict zones tells us that this crisis will only drag on for far longer if more and more arms are poured into the country.”

One EU diplomat gave a scathing rebuke to the Obama Administration’s claim that it could ensure that new weapons wouldn’t wind up in “the wrong hands” in Syria:

“It would be the first conflict where we pretend we could create peace by delivering arms,” the diplomat said. “If you pretend to know where the weapons will end up, then it would be the first war in history where this is possible. We have seen it in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Weapons don’t disappear; they pop up where they are needed.”

In Syria the weapons are needed by those doing the brunt of the fighting. Again, the al-Nursa extremists are widely acknowledged to be the most effective fighting force against the Syrian government, the guns will thus flow to them.

Obama has taken the saying, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” to irrational heights, and in so doing is helping to produce a new generation of Islamic extremists that will help fuel the U.S.-led never-ending “war on terror.”  The real intention of the War on Terror is not to stop terrorists, but to target nation states that are opposed to U.S. foreign policy: Iraq and Libya — like Syria — were both secular countries at the time of their being invaded; Afghanistan was invaded even though the vast majority of those involved in the 9-11 attacks were from Saudi Arabia. There was no terrorist problem in Iraq before the U.S. invaded, just like there was no terrorist problem in Syria before the U.S.-backed rebels came onto the scene.

It’s blatantly obvious to most Americans that Syria and Iran are at the top of Obama’s war list, a much higher priority than any terrorist group. This is why Obama is tolerating the terrorist groups inside Syira; they are being used as tools against his real target, Syria and then Iran.

The Syrian people must be left to themselves to decide their future. The United States is utterly incapable of “helping” countries by using military means, as the fractured nations of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya painfully prove. The global anti-war movement must demand Hands Off Syria!

Notes

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/world/middleeast/arms-airlift-to-syrian-rebels-expands-with-cia-aid.html?hp&_r=1& 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/08/free-syrian-army-rebels-defect-islamist-group 

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2013/05/daily-chart-12 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/world/middleeast/islamist-rebels-gains-in-syria-create-dilemma-for-us.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2&hp& 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/04/opinion/syrias-crumbling-pluralism.html?_r=3& 

http://www.islam21c.com/fataawa/2407-fatwa-on-syria-by-107-scholars 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/22/syria-arms-embargo-rebels 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/22/syria-arms-embargo-rebels?guni=Network%20front:network-front%20main-3%20Main%20trailblock:Network%20front%20-%20main%20trailblock:Position5 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/divided-europe-imperils-syrian-arms-embargo-8632376.html

Drones, And The Military-Industrial Complex

Drones are a weapon of war, presently being used by the U.S. Military using assertions not supported by facts. These weapons are manufactured and sold to the military by companies which own the technologies and thereby profit. The right or wrong of the war is ignored in their calculations, which focus on the profit to be made.

The membership organization which lobbies for the use of drones for the corporations which comprise its membership is the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International. The growth of this industry is now measured in the billions of dollars, with applications for drone usage growing out into law enforcement within the United States on a weekly basis.

These are facts, supportable by contracts reflecting sales.

Facts are generally inconvenient for parties attempting to ‘win’ the battle for public opinion. These facts are true for drone contractors today and were true of the Military Industrial Complex on January 17, 1961 when Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his farewell address, and warning about the influence of these corporations, to the American People.

Propaganda 

Manufacturing opinion in Americans results in increased sales and a limiting of the options they see as possible. This is at the heart of the strategy by which the Multi-National Corporations have build their business plan from the time of World War I – present day.

Propaganda had been used to influence groups and nations for as long as we have recorded history. But the practice was codified with a set of rules by Edward Bernays, a cousin of Sigmund Freud, in the 1020s. There are seven principles of propaganda, which include:

Seven Main Principles

Bandwagon – Follow the Crowd.

Card stacking – Tell them ONLY what you want them to know.

Glittering Generalities – Use words which let the listener fool themselves.

Name Calling - Negative, derogatory langauge to describe the enemy in speech, images, and writing.

Plain Folks – Taking on language, idioms, jokes, and accent to increase of the target audience to increase familiarity and elicit acceptance and trust.

Additional Principles

Assertion – Say it, and say it again with conviction

Lesser of Two Evils – Limit the choices to this or that, ignoring all other possibilities.

Pinpointing the Enemy – Name an individual, group, or nation as the ‘problem.’ Ignore refuting facts.

Simplification (Stereotyping) – Similar to Pinpointing. Ignore refuting facts.

The opinions held by Americans are largely the product of propaganda today, though this is now changing through access to the Internet.

Public Relations professionals know the public forgets about scandals, both corporate and politically, in only a few months or years. Today, major scandals of the early 90s have vanished from the collective memory. 

Main Stream Media 

Controlling the Main Stream Media, which is owned entirely my major corporations, ensured this would remain true. America originally saw independent journalism as an essential protection for the rights of the people. Newspapers were mostly owned locally, reflecting a diversity of voices.

Local ‘government,’ which was understood to be a service center used by the People, who together were and are the real government under American theory and law, was used to carry out those functions deemed of mutual benefit by the People. 

America’s Foundations 

Until the rise of the Internet, Americans had, in large part, lost connection with their own history and the foundations for American government. A reading of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, theBill of Rights, and survey of the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers shows this to be the case.

The rising power of corporations, asserting itself through government, began to change this in the late 1800s. World War I and World War II enormously enriched the same corporations and banks named by Eisenhower in his speech. A significant number of these were simultaneously in business with Nazi Germany before and during World War II and also Russia. In his book, “Creature from Jekyll Island,” G. Edward Griffin provides documentation for this.

Major General Smedley Butler was the most respected and decorated military figure in America in the first half of the 20^th Century. Having spent his life serving his country as a Marine in wars dictated by the economic wishes of corporations for decades he realized he and the troops he commanded had been used by those corporations. In response, he wrote, “War is a Racket.”

VIDEO – Major General Smedley Butler & The Fascist Takeover Of The USA – A Warning From History

The General conveniently, and very suddenly, died in 1940 before our entry into World War II. War was building immense wealth within a small number of corporations, who were determined this flow of power and money continue. 

Wars for Profit 

The Second World War was opposed by Conservative Republican congressional leader Robert A. Taft, “who articulated a non-interventionist foreign-policy vision sharply at odds with the internationalism of Truman and Eisenhower. Although derided as ostrich-like, Taft was prescient on several points, such as the structural weakness of the United Nations and the propping up of repressive regimes that would result from U.S. interventionism.”

After World War II Conservatism was targeted by the Rockefeller Republicans, who today we know as NeoConservatives. To accomplish this they used an array of tools which included the C. I. A., an agency which recruited from a social elite who had strong connections to the corporate world.

Today, the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy on November 22, 1963, is credited to a cooperative effort between the C.I.A., and corporations in such first hand and authoritative books as “Mary’s Mosaic,”by Peter Janney. Janney is the son of Wistar Janney, a high level operative in the C. I. A. from close to the time of it’s inception after World War II through the 1960s.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall the world appeared to be heading for a long-awaited peace. But this was not in alignment with the business plans of the Military Industrial Complex.

Managing American Fear

The public relations people for the corporations had used boogymen to persuade Americans to the necessity of war and vast expenditures in military spending from World War I until the Wall came down. For this purpose they had first vilified the ‘Hun,’ and then ‘Communism.’

They chose a new boogyman in the last years of the Reagan Administration.

“The Power of Nightmares,” produced by the BBC, digs into the history of the C.I.A., and its manipulation of Islam and placement of operatives to stymy their move toward liberalization, which threatened the oil companies. The issue of a threat from a radical Islam must be considered outside the narrowing confines of propaganda, the corporate tool used to herd Americans, keeping us within the limits which powers their profits. This is especially true for the strategies of Pinpointing the Enemy, and Stereotyping.

VIDEOS

Part I: Baby It’s Cold Outside

Part II: The Phantom Victory

Part III: The Shadows in the Cave

Big Oil 

If you identify the location of the major world sources of oil you will notice much of the world reserves are located in land controls by Islamic people. Until this became known Islam was never presented as a threat. Once this took place, this changed.

Multiple operations in these countries by the CIA and its corporate partners caused shifts in attitudes within the people living in these countries. Ron Paul, using the term coined by the CIA, called it “Blow-Back.” John Perkins, in his book, “Confessions of an Economic Hit-Man,” explains the means used to defraud smaller nations of their natural resources, oil chief among these.

People resent being manipulated, bombed, and defrauded. Where we did not have enemies, they were created.

VIDEO – Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: How the U.S. Uses Globalization to Cheat Poor Countries Out of Trillions

For a century corporations have used the military and government of our country to make war on people around the world. They have done this for profit and without showing a shred of conscience.

Today, the world is fed up. If the roles were reversed, we would have taken action long since.

These same interests understand well Americans are waking from their long sleep. This why drone technologies are now being deployed within the United States.

Why Disinformation Works

Have you ever wondered how the government’s misinformation gains traction?

What I have noticed is that whenever a stunning episode occurs, such as 9/11 or the Boston Marathon bombing, most everyone whether on the right or left goes along with the government’s explanation, because they can hook their agenda to the government’s account.

The leftwing likes the official stories of Muslims creating terrorist mayhem in America, because it proves their blowback theory and satisfies them that the dispossessed and oppressed can fight back against imperialism.

The patriotic rightwing likes the official story, because it proves America is attacked for its goodness or because terrorists were allowed in by immigration authorities and nurtured by welfare, or because the government, which can’t do anything right, ignored plentiful warnings.

Whatever the government says, no matter how problematical, the official story gets its traction from its compatibility with existing predispositions and agendas.

In such a country, truth has no relevance. Only agendas are important.

A person can see this everywhere. I could write volumes illustrating how agenda-driven writers across the spectrum will support the most improbable government stories despite the absence of any evidence simply because the government’s line can be used to support their agendas.

For example, a conservative writer in the June issue of Chronicles uses the government’s story about the alleged Boston Marathon bombers, Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, to argue against immigration, amnesty for illegals, and political asylum for Muslims. He writes: “Even the most high-tech security systems imaginable will inevitably fail as they are overwhelmed by a flood of often hostile and dangerous immigrants.”

The writer accepts all of the improbable government statements as proof that the brothers were guilty. The wounded brother who was unable to respond to the boat owner who discovered him and had to be put on life support somehow managed to write a confession on the inside of the boat.

As soon as the authorities have the brother locked up in a hospital on life support, “unnamed officials” and “authorities who remain anonymous” are planting the story in the media that the suspect is signing written confessions of his guilt while on life support. No one has seen any of these written confessions. But we know that they exist, because the government and media say so.

The conservative writer knows that Dzhokhar is guilty because he is Muslim and a Chechen. Therefore, it does not occur to the writer to wonder about the agenda of the unnamed sources who are busy at work creating belief in the brothers’ guilt. This insures that no juror would dare vote for acquittal and have to explain it to family and friends. Innocent until proven guilty in a court has been thrown out the window. This should disturb the conservative writer, but doesn’t.

The conservative writer sees Chechen ethnicity as an indication of guilt even though the brothers grew up in the US as normal Americans, because Chechens are “engaged in anti-Russian jihad.” But Chechens have no reason for hostility against the US. As evidence indicates, Washington supports the Chechens in their conflict with Russia. By supporting Chechen terrorism, Washington violates all of the laws that it ruthlessly applies to compassionate Americans who give donations to Palestinian charities that Washington alleges are run by Hamas, a Washington-declared terrorist organization.

It doesn’t occur to the conservative writer that something is amiss when martial law is established over one of America’s main cities and its metropolitan area, 10,000 heavily armed troops are put on the streets with tanks, and citizens are ordered out of their homes with their hands over their heads, all of this just to search for one wounded 19-year old suspect. Instead the writer blames the “surveillance state” on “the inevitable consequences of suicidal liberalism” which has embraced “the oldest sin in the world: rebellion against authority.” The writer is so pleased to use the government’s story line as a way of indulging the conservative’s romance with authority and striking a blow at liberalism that he does not notice that he has lined up against the Founding Fathers who signed the Declaration of Independence and rebelled against authority.

I could just as easily have used a left-wing writer to illustrate the point that improbable explanations are acceptable if they fit with predispositions and can be employed in behalf of an agenda.

Think about it. Do you not think that it is extraordinary that the only investigations we have of such events as 9/11 and the Boston Marathon bombing are private investigations, such as this investigation of the backpacks: http://whowhatwhy.com/2013/05/20/official-story-has-odd-wrinkles-a-pack-of-questions-about-the-boston-bombing-backpacks/

There was no investigation of 9/11. Indeed, the White House resisted any inquiry at all for one year despite the insistent demands from the 9/11 families. NIST did not investigate anything. NIST simply constructed a computer model that was consistent with the government’s story. The 9/11 Commission simply sat and listened to the government’s explanation and wrote it down. These are not investigations.

The only investigations have come from a physicist who proved that WTC 7 came down at free fall and was thus the result of controlled demolition, from a team of scientists who examined dust from the WTC towers and found nano-thermite, from high-rise architects and structural engineers with decades of experience, and from first responders and firefighters who were in the towers and experienced explosions throughout the towers, even in the sub-basements.

We have reached the point where evidence is no longer required. The government’s statements suffice. Only conspiracy kooks produce real evidence.

In America, government statements have a unique authority. This authority comes from the white hat that the US wore in World War II and in the subsequent Cold War. It was easy to demonize Nazi Germany, Soviet Communism and Maoist China. Even today when Russian publications interview me about the perilous state of civil liberty in the US and Washington’s endless illegal military attacks abroad, I sometimes receive reports that some Russians believe that it was an impostor who was interviewed, not the real Paul Craig Roberts. There are Russians who believe that it was President Reagan who brought freedom to Russia, and as I served in the Reagan administration these Russians associate me with their vision of America as a light unto the world. Some Russians actually believe that Washington’s wars are truly wars of liberation.

The same illusions reign among Chinese dissidents. Chen Guangcheng is the Chinese dissident who sought refuge in the US Embassy in China. Recently he was interviewed by the BBC World Service. Chen Guangcheng believes that the US protects human rights while China suppresses human rights. He complained to the BBC that in China police can arrest citizens and detain them for as long as six months without accounting for their detainment. He thought that the US and UK should publicly protest this violation of due process, a human right. Apparently, Chen Guangcheng is unaware that US citizens are subject to indefinite detention without due process and even to assassination without due process.

The Chinese government allowed Chen Guangcheng safe passage to leave China and live in the US. Chen Guangcheng is so dazzled by his illusions of America as a human rights beacon that it has never occurred to him that the oppressive, human rights-violating Chinese government gave him safe passage, but that Julian Assange, after being given political asylum by Ecuador is still confined to the Ecuadoran embassy in London, because Washington will not allow its UK puppet state to permit his safe passage to Ecuador.

Perhaps Chen Guangcheng and the Chinese and Russian dissidents who are so enamored of the US could gain some needed perspective if they were to read US soldier Terry Holdbrooks’ book about the treatment given to the Guantanamo prisoners. Holdbrooks was there on the scene, part of the process, and this is what he told RT: “The torture and information extraction methods that we used certainly created a great deal of doubt and questions in my mind to whether or not this was my America. But when I thought about what we were doing there and how we go about doing it, it did not seem like the America I signed up to defend. It did not seem like the America I grew up in. And that in itself was a very disillusioning experience.” http://rt.com/news/guantanamo-guard-islam-torture-608/

In a May 17 Wall Street Journal.com article, Peggy Noonan wrote that President Obama has lost his patina of high-mindedness. What did Obama do that brought this loss upon himself? Is it because he sits in the Oval Office approving lists of US citizens to be assassinated without due process of law? Is it because he detains US citizens indefinitely in violation of habeas corpus? Is it because he has kept open the torture prison at Guantanamo? Is it because he continued the war that the neoconservatives started, despite his promise to end it, and started new wars?

Is it because he attacks with drones people in their homes, medical centers, and work places in countries with which the US is not at war? Is it because his corrupt administration spies on American citizens without warrants and without cause?

No. It is none of these reasons. In Noonan’s view these are not offenses for which presidents, even Democratic ones, lose their high-minded patina. Obama can no longer be trusted, because the IRS hassled some conservative political activists.

Noonan is a Republican, and what Obama did wrong was to use the IRS against some Republicans. Apparently, it has not occurred to Noonan that if Obama–or any president–can use the IRS against opponents, he can use Homeland Security and the police state against them. He can use indefinite detention against them. He can use drones against them.

All of these are much more drastic measures. Why isn’t Peggy Noonan concerned?
Because she thinks these measures will only be used against terrorists, just as the IRS is only supposed to be used against tax evaders.

When a public and the commentators who inform it accept the collapse of the Constitution’s authority and the demise of their civil liberties, to complain about the IRS is pointless.

Source: Paul Craig Roberts

Friends Coming Down With Cancer – Remarkable Natural Cures That Work

Part 2: Defeating cancer naturally…

In their brilliant book, Cancer Free: Your Guide to Gentle Non-Toxic Healing, Bill Henderson and Dr. Carlos Garcia offer the best and most effective alternatives to treating cancer once you discover it within your body.

To tell you the truth, I wasn’t prepared for the hundreds of emails that poured into my computer after Part 1 published: “So many of my friends coming down with cancer.”  Doctors chastised me that I didn’t go far enough.  Others told me their trepidations and experiences.  Still others offered tremendously success battle plans for cancer.    Thank you all.

One of my dearest friends, experiencing a stomach cancer tumor, took nearly six months of heavy chemotherapy treatment.  Result: the cancer still thrives in his body.  He’s frightened out of his wits.

“Chemotherapy as a choice for treating and curing cancer has a failure rate of 97 percent,” said Garcia and Henderson.  “Spontaneous remission has a higher success rate.  This may be a shock to you and cause you to ask: “If this is so, why were we not told this by oncologists?”

“All I can say is that you seek the answer from your oncologist,” said Henderson.  “I was shocked to find that chemotherapy is only effective in 1.4 percent of women with breast cancer.  Those who know these facts rarely share this information with trusting and compliant cancer patients who suffer the consequences of this life through omission.”

For those who claim that this must be nonsense, Henderson refers you to his website:www.UtopiaWellness.com. Find the search box and type in “chemotherapy cure.”

Methods for curing cancer naturally without chemotherapy

Once you start reading this book, you can’t stop because the research stems from two passionate men who have experienced cancer on a personal level and care to bring out the truth the cancer victims. (Henderson’s wife died from it.)

A.    Immune system boosters: Beta-1,3d Glucan—“Almost all immune booster products are soluble.  That means that where they dissolve in the body and the effect they have as a result is difficult to control.  Beta-1,3d Glucan is insoluble.  It is a fiber-like substance.  It gets where it belongs.  Namely, it passes from the small intestine through Peyer’s patches to the lymphatic system.  From there, it is carried into the blood stream, all the body’s organs and even into the bone marrow by phagocytes, which are immune cells that gobble the bad guys.

“It primes the neutrophil immune cells to recognize cancer cells and kill them. Normally, they do not recognize cancer cells.  Beta-1,3d Glucan binds to a receptor in the outer membrane of these cells. With this receptor activated, they “see” cancer cells and kill them.”  This therapy will double the effectiveness of your immune system.

Check this information out: www.Ancient5.com . You can even talk to Phyllis Pipkin at the website at: 1 855 877 8220.

B.     The Budwig Diet makes powerful impact on cancer cells. “You are not powerless,” said Henderson.    You eat six ounces of organic cottage cheese mixed with six tablespoons of flaxseed oil each day.

“The theory behind this odd combination?” said Henderson.  “Dr. Budwig says the absence of linoleic acids in the average Western diet is responsible for the production of oxydase, which induces cancer growth and is the cause of many other chronic disorders.  The use of oxygen in the body and one of the best ways to “erase” cancer cells can be stimulated by protein compounds of sulphuric content which make oils water-soluble and which are present in cheese, nuts, onions, chives, garlic and especially cottage cheese.”  For more thorough information: www.BudwigCenter.com

You will discover in the book specific foods not to consume: high fructose corn syrup, sugar, soda pop, margarine, fried foods, trans fats, French fries, fried onions, fast food hamburgers.

“Budwig’s work has confirmed that this imbalance, caused by hydrogenated fat in processed foods is the cause of most infirmities we suffer.  Several studies have shown that our typical Omega-3 level in our bodies is 80 percent below [normal for most Americans].  The flaxseed oil, when mixed with cottage cheese, restores that balance.”

C.     A very concerned Dr. Roger Hepperla wrote me, “Don’t you and millions of others realize YET that there is a cure/prevention for cancer that has been available for 40 years!     Its chemical name is “Loevo-mandelonitrile-beta Glucuronoside.”    It’ a naturally occurring compound found in dozens of plants.     There have been about six scientific books written about “Leatrile” which are available on line.  The best and most widely known one is “World Without Cancer” by G. Edward Griffin. It’s in its Third Edition and twenty-first printing.   It was published in 1974 and available in over six languages and 30 countries!    You can google the author, who has an extensive WEB site.   I am a Medical Doctor and have recommended Leatrile for over 30 years.   I have in fact cured my own skin cancers and they have not returned.

“The AMA, American Cancer Society, the FDA, and many other organizations have tried to suppress this information for 40 years!     It’s a long story and you should check this info before you write any more reviews! So, just go on line and Google Laetrile,  Amygdalin,  B17, and Dr. Ernst T. Krebs, the chemist who discovered Laetrile.     This compound was actually known in the 1890′s and used even then for the treatment of Cancer.   The amazing fact is that “Cancer” is very simply part of the normal reproductive process!   It’s called “Triphoblast” and allows the forming embryonic cells to develop in the endometrium of the uterus after conception.     In other words “cancer” is “trophoblast occurring at the wrong time and wrong place in the body!  This process is usually controlled by the pancreatic enzymes and if that fails, dietary vitamin B17 takes over and destroys the cancer.    So, I can only recommend that you read the book.”

Dear reader.  I will do everything in my research power to bring you the latest information in conquering cancer in your own life or a life of a loved one.  My passion equals yours in defeating cancer in yourself, friends or family members. For all of you who wrote letters with your own discoveries, I will research and incorporate them

Israel Heads Closer To War On Syria

Washington’s war. It was planned years ago. It began in early 2011. No end of conflict looks near. Escalating it appears likely.

Israel’s very much involved. It abhors peace and stability. Its history reflects belligerence. It’s a direct threat. It borders Syria. Both countries are longstanding imperial partners. The Israeli Lobby plays a key role. So do major media soundrels. More on Israel below.

Orwell once said “(w)ho controls the past, controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” Saving the future requires understanding both past and present. Preventing imperial annihilation depends on it.

So-called “rebel” forces are no match against Syria’s military superiority. Al-Qusayr is a strategic western Syrian city. It’s about 18 miles southwest of Homs.

It’s located on Lebanon’s border. It links Damascus with government controlled Mediterranean coastal areas.

It’s a key smuggling route. Insurgents, weapons, munitions and supplies pass cross-border into Syria. Stopping them is strategically important.

Fighting for control continues. On May 21, Press TV said Syrian forces control over 70% of the city. According to a Syrian source:

“We managed to enter the city from several directions. We encountered heavy resistance but we overpowered them and seized control of these places and we will pursue them and eliminate them wherever they go.”

According to Voice of Russia, Syria captured the city. Russia’s Rossia-24 TV reported it. Insurgents controlled the city throughout the conflict. No longer.

Capturing Al-Qusayr prevents supplying insurgents from key parts of Lebanon.

Voice of Russia and Rossia-24 reported “mopping-up operations” around Aleppo.

According to the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), “Army units restored stability and security to the full eastern area of (Al-Qusayr) in Homs Countryside after killing big numbers of terrorists and destroying their hideouts.”

“A military source added that army units dismantled a number of explosive devices, planted by terrorists in al-Souk area in the middle of the city.”

“The source added that army units are continuing hunting the remnants of terrorists in some hideouts in the northern and southern areas of the city.”

Insurgents suffered heavy losses. Leadership elements were killed or captured. “Tens of terrorist” surrendered. Others were arrested.
SANA said insurgents were routed in several provinces.

Local journalist Abdallah Mawazini told Russia Today that Syria’s army “managed to make a full circle around the city, fighting the opposition fighters. The main achievement is to stop the line of supply chain between Lebanon and Syria.”

“They started from the western side of the city, in the rural areas. They control this zone with some fighters from Lebanon.”

“Some extremist groups were preparing to go into Syria to fight with the rebels, they were going to go make a bigger front in order to fight and expand the fighting line between the government and the opposition.”

America’s war of words continues. Assad’s wrongfully blamed for US-backed insurgent crimes. They’re death squads. They’re US proxy foot soldiers. They’re foreign invaders. They’re recruited from many countries.

They’re funded, armed, trained and directed. Don’t expect US government sources to explain. Nor will media scoundrels.

On May 20, State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said Washington “strongly condemns the Assad regime’s intense air and artillery strikes this weekend on the Syrian town of (Al-Qusayr), along the Lebanese border, where more than 90 people were reportedly killed.”

“The Assad regime deliberately provoked sectarian tensions through its assaults, which we saw recently in Sunni massacres in the towns of Bayada and Banias.”

“We reject the regime’s use of sectarian-driver war to divide the Syrian people. The Assad regime and its supporters who continue to commit crimes against the Syrian people should know that the world is watching and they will be identified and held accountable.”

Insurgents bear direct responsibility for numerous massacres wrongfully blamed on Assad. Hezbollah elements are aiding their Syrian ally. They’re doing so responsibly. They’re confronting US imperialism. Not according to Ventrell.

He “condemn(ed) Hezbollah’s direct intervention in the assault on (Al-Qusayr) where its fighters are playing a significant role in the regime’s offensive.”

“Hezbollah’s occupation of villages along the Lebanese-Syrian border and its support for the regime and pro-Assad militias exacerbate and inflame regional sectarian tensions and perpetuate the regime’s campaign of terror against the Syrian people.”

“We reject Hezbollah’s efforts to escalate violence inside Syria and incite instability in Lebanon.”

Hezbollah and Syrian forces are trying to end conflict. They want peace. They want stability restored. They want Washington’s imperial intentions defeated. Much rides on their success.

On May 20, Lebanon’s Daily Star headlined “Situation in Syria against US, Israel: Hezbollah.”

According to Hezbollah MP Nawaf Musawi, Syria’s conflict hasn’t gone according to US and Israeli plans. He warned both countries against toppling Assad, saying:

“If some were betting on weakening our ally in Syria and toppling him, he should keep in mind that two years into the (conflict) have passed while betting on delusions.”

“Those who were banking on US power and Israeli threats of war and victory of the US-Israeli attack on Syria are mistaken.”

He added that Hezbollah won’t hesitate to plunge “Israel into the abyss. If the enemy – through its aggression – is practicing brinkmanship with the resistance and its allies in this region, the resistance is not afraid to push the enemy itself into the abyss.”

“Hezbollah has enough potential to make any Israeli official aware that the threat of war applies to him, and that he will be the first to lose as a result of his behavior.”

Syria’s military displayed a captured Israeli army vehicle. It did so in Al-Qusayr. Lebanon’s Al-Mayadeen television aired video proof.

Military uniforms, wiretapping and jamming equipment were found in the vehicle. Damascus called it evidence of Israel’s involvement.

Last June, insurgents were captured with Israeli weapons. Israel’s very much involved.

On May 21, SANA said

“the seizure of an Israeli military vehicle refutes the allegations made by Israel to justify its aggression on Syria and proves the scale of Israel’s military and intelligence involvements in the events in Syria.”

“(T)he Israeli military support for the armed terrorist groups proves the involvement of Qatar, Turkey and Israel in the aggression on Syria which is waged through a single central operations room.”

“(T)he Israeli military support for terrorism in Syria proves once more that Israel was and still is adopting the policy of organized state terrorism, stressing that the world must act to confront this terrorism.”

“(T)he questions raised by the seizure of the Israeli military vehicle and the surveillance and jamming equipment show that the armed terrorist groups with all their different names are merely headlines for a single structure led by Israel, Qatar and Turkey.”

Syria understands Washington’s key role. Partnered with Israel, other NATO countries, and rogue Arab states, they’re waging imperial war against a non-belligerent country. Doing so is lawless aggression. It’s the supreme crime against peace.

Israel escalated things further. In response to alleged cross-border gunfire, it “returned precise fire,” according to IDF officials.

Tammuz missiles were used. Twice before they targeted Syrian sites.

Incidents are easy to manufacture. Doing so provide pretexts to respond. On May 4 and 5, Israel bombed Syria. It did so preemptively. It was a joint US-Israeli provocation. It suggests further aggression ahead.

On May 21, Mossad-connected DEBKAfile (DF) claimed a “Syrian-Israeli confrontation loomed closer”

DF alleges Damascus admitted responsibility for Monday night’s cross-border gunfire. No source was cited. Syria’s gone out of its way to avoid challenging other countries.

It hasn’t retaliated against previous Israeli and Turkish provocations. It’s unlikely to change tactics now. Doing so would be self-defeating. Assad has no death wish. DF’s allegations don’t wash.

It cites unnamed Israeli military sources claiming his “readiness for a war of attrition on Israel from the Golan.”

It says Hezbollah will be involved. On Sunday, Netanyahu sent mixed messages. On the one hand, he said Israel won’t intervene in Syria’s conflict.

On the other, he stressed it will act if its own interests are affected. He said he’ll topple Assad if he responds to Israeli attacks. He suggested further bombings may follow. Allegedly they’ll target weapons transfers to Hezbollah.

Bombings and other belligerence are willful provocations. At issue is goading Syria to respond. Doing so would provide pretext for direct US/Israeli intervention.

Assad’s not about to give them reason to attack. He’s gone out of his way to avoid it. His ability to do so depends on US/NATO/Israeli plans. Direct intervention appears likely. How and when remains to be seen.

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

 

African Safari Trip of A Lifetime

The most amazing thing I learned on my first safari trip in South Africa is that elephants have the most incredible, very long black eyelashes. Second, lions could not care less about nearby trucks and people, nor lights at night. Third, though giraffes seem to walk slow and gracefully, their legs are so long that they cover long distances very quickly.

When it comes to the political world, I was dismayed to learn that the illiteracy rate among South Africans exceeds 70 percent, 60 percent of school teachers lack a college degree, only 10 percent pay income tax, the public health care system is abysmal, virtually every house is surrounded by an electrified security barrier, and though apartheid is formally and legally gone the small white population at about 10 percent still rules the economy. Nelson Mandela is universally revered, almost closer to a deity than a political leader; his image and name are ubiquitous. Sadly, there is no one in the South African system with similar public respect and capability to help the country solve its severe root problems.

Countless people from all over the globe book African safari tours because of the widespread desire to see exotic, beautiful animals in their native habitat. I can attest as someone who has traveled very widely internationally for decades that taking a safari vacation is one of the best, most rewarding things a tourist can do. I want to share some things I have learned from my recent trip that can help others make good decisions, because these safari tours are pretty expensive. The toughest decision is what tour company to select of the great many in the market.

A critically important issue is how many game drives you actually get, usually one in the early morning and one in the evening at safari lodges. These drives in specially designed vehicles usually last for three hours or more and can be very rough rides over dirt roads and sometimes directly into the bush landscape. Each vehicle has a ranger who drives and provides information continuously to usually four to six guests in the vehicle. He also has a rifle that is always at hand, just for that remote possibility of an animal charging people. Check out this reference for general information on safari trips.

Up front on a special seat sits a tracker who, in the daylight, is continuously examining the ground for evidence of specific animals. At night the tracker continuously directs a large flashlight into the bush to spot the eyes of animals. It is truly amazing how the trackers actually locate various animals, including lions, elephants, leopards, rhinos, giraffes and many more so that guests can get up close to magnificent creatures.

On my tour there were blankets for passengers because of the chill in the morning and nighttime hours. In the morning there was also a much appreciated hot water bottle. Midway during the drives drinks and snacks are served. Upon return from drives there is a sumptuous breakfast and dinner.

Everything is done to make it easy for people to take pictures of the wildlife, often getting extremely close to the animals. Most people take many hundreds of photos on these trips.

For months my wife and I researched a great many African safari tours and finally selected the Tauck company and its South Africa: An Elegant Adventure tour; it offered eight animal drives in two different safari areas in Kruger Park; and the itinerary included seeing more than just wildlife in safari regions, including Cape Town and surrounding areas as well as Johannesburg and Victoria Falls. Second, we had the distinct impression that it would be a luxury tour with true first class hotels and other amenities. Other tours at lower cost, perhaps half as much, mean roughing it and this may appeal to many people.

Let me emphasize that we absolutely loved our trip just as everyone else we met while traveling who were on different tours, mostly because of so many wonderful experiences seeing all the animals in glorious settings. Local guides and staff were excellent. Yet there were some disappointments. Of the five hotels the first three were wonderful five star hotels with great food and amenities, including the waterfront Cape Grace hotel in Cape Town, the best South African city, and the two safari lodges, Tinga and Sabi Sabi. But all the satisfaction of staying there set us up for disappointment.

The last two hotels did not live up to the Tauck reputation for elegant accommodations and supplying comfort to its clients. The rooms at the DaVinci hotel in Johannesburg were in the two star category, small, poorly designed and dysfunctional in many respects. The tour director upon hearing complaints justified the hotel on the basis of its location, the safe Sandton suburb with interconnected underground malls. But nearby was an Intercontinental hotel and the Saxon Boutique Hotel that would surely offer superior rooms. Whatever safari tour companies you consider, question them not only about what hotels or lodges they use but also what type rooms in them you will get; all too often tour companies like Tauck buy the cheapest rooms.

You definitely want to see Victoria Falls if you travel to Africa; they are truly electrifying. Boat rides along the Zambezi River that feeds the falls are usually included in tours; ours was wonderful, including close up views of an elephant and a hippo. But disappointing was the much acclaimed Victoria Fall Hotel. While the location, grounds, exterior and public rooms define a historic, elegant five star venue, nearly all the guest rooms were quite small with very old and drab furnishings and poor views. There are some very fine rooms which a few people on the tour got (including suites), which raises ethical questions why some people were better treated by Tauck. Our room was so awful with a thick smell of tobacco that we demanded and received a different room, which still was a one star accommodation. There are other hotels and lodges in the Victoria Falls area that merit consideration when researching possible safari tours, including The Kingdom, a modern hotel, and the luxury Royal Livingstone Hotel. If you go to the falls, definitely go to the local market where artisans sell their goods; the variety and prices are just about the best we saw on our entire trip.

Tauck proclaims that it offers personalized service with each guest treated as an individual, with their own needs understood, and most safari tour companies also seem to promise this. However, we did not experience this. Unlike luxury, small ship cruises where the cruise director and other staff go out of their way to make you feel cared for, at no point did the Tauck tour director seek to discover whether or not we were fully satisfied and having all our needs satisfied. In particular, it was very disappointing that the tour director did not facilitate shopping at local artisan venues, especially in Victoria Falls. Lastly, there is a valid view that Tauck tours like other companies are relatively small group ones, but there were 31 people in our group, not exactly small and intimate. Pay close attention to any safari tour company with regard to group size.

Most important, give serious thought to going to Africa for a memorable safari tour. Though there are other countries where safari trips are highly praised, starting with South Africa and seeing some of its cities is a good choice, especially for people interested in politics and culture.

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

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