Still Believe Nature Got It Wrong? Top 10 Health Benefits of Marijuana

There is no plant on Earth more condemned than marijuana. We’re talking about a living organism which governments have taken upon themselves to designate as an illegal substance. Despite no existing evidence of anyone ever dying of a marijuana overdose, possession of this plant is still illegal in many parts. Marijuana has been found to suppress cancer, reduce blood pressure, treat glaucoma, alleviate pain and even inhibit HIV. It is an antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective. Can you understand more now why it’s illegal?

No Independent Study Has Ever Linked Marijuana To Psychosocial Problems

Cannabis is one of the most powerful healing plants on the planet. Dozens of studies have made pseudoscientific attempts to indicate that young people who use cannabis tend to experience psychological, social problems and mental decline. However, there is no evidence that marijuana use is directly linked with such problems, according to the results of a study published in The Lancet.

“Currently, there is no strong evidence that use of cannabis of itself causes psychological or social problems,” such as mental illness or school failure, lead study author Dr. John Macleod of the University of Birmingham in the UK told Reuters Health.

“There is a great deal of evidence that cannabis use is associated with these things, but this association could have several explanations,” he said, citing factors such as adversity in early life, which may itself be associated with cannabis use and psychosocial problems.

Macleod and his team reviewed 48 long-term studies, 16 of which provided the highest quality information about the association between illicit drug use reported by people 25 years old or younger and later psychological or social problems. Most of the drug-specific results involved cannabis use.

Cannabis use was not consistently associated with violent or antisocial behavior, or with psychological problems.

In another study, Scientists from King’s College, London, found occasional pot use could actually improve concentration levels.

The study, carried in the American Journal of Epidemiology, tested the mental function and memory of nearly 9,000 Britons at age 50 and found that those who had used illegal drugs as recently as in their 40s did just as well, or slightly better, on the tests than peers who had never used drugs.

‘Overall, at the population level, the results seem to suggest that past or even current illicit drug use is not necessarily associated with impaired cognitive functioning in early middle age,’ said lead researcher Dr Alex Dregan.

Dr Dregan’s team used data on 8,992 42-year-olds participating in a UK national health study, who were asked if they had ever used any of 12 illegal drugs. Then, at the age of 50, they took standard tests of memory, attention and other cognitive abilities.

Overall, the study found, there was no evidence that current or past drug users had poorer mental performance. In fact, when current and past users were lumped together, their test scores tended to be higher.

The Age of Deception is Ending 

In 2003, the U.S. Government as represented by the Department of Health and Human Services filed for, and was awarded a patent on cannabinoids. The reason? Because research into cannabinoids allowed pharmaceutical companies to acquire practical knowledge on one of the most powerful antioxidants and neuroprotectants known to the natural world.

The U.S. Patent 6630507 was specifically initiated when researchers found that cannabinoids had specific antioxidant properties making them useful in the treatment and prophylaxis of wide variety of oxidation associated diseases, such as ischemic, age-related, inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. The cannabinoids are found to have particular application as neuroprotectants, for example in limiting neurological damage following ischemic insults, such as stroke and trauma, or in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and HIV dementia. Nonpsychoactive cannabinoids, such as cannabidoil, are particularly advantageous to use because they avoid toxicity that is encountered with psychoactive cannabinoids at high doses useful in the method of the present invention.

In a historic and significant moment in American history, last November, Colorado became the first US state to legalize marijuana for recreational use. The impact of the decision could ripple across the entire country with vast opportunities to educate millions on the top health benefits of marijuana.

With the passage of I-502 in the 2012 Washington State election, marijuana also became legal in Washington–not just for medical use, but also for recreational use. Weed is still illegal as far as the United States government is concerned, but Washington and Colorado both have yet to figure out how that will work. It’s certain that this issue will continue to evolve and smooth out as time goes by, but the remaining states will eventually follow suit or be left behind with outdated laws.

Top Health Benefits

It’s no surprise that the United States has decreed that marijuana has no accepted medical use use and should remain classified as a highly dangerous drug like heroin. Accepting and promoting the powerful health benefits of marijuana would instantly cut huge profits geared towards cancer treatment and the U.S. would have to admit it imprisons the population for no cause. Nearly half of all drug arrests in the United States are for marijuana.

According to MarijuanaNews.com editor Richard Cowan, the answer is because it is a threat to cannabis prohibition “…there really is massive proof that the suppression of medical cannabis represents the greatest failure of the institutions of a free society, medicine, journalism, science, and our fundamental values,” Cowan notes.

Besides the top 10 health benefits below, findings published in the journalPLoS ONE, researchers have now have now discovered that marijuana-like chemicals trigger receptors on human immune cells that can directly inhibit a type of human immuno-deficiency virus (HIV) found in late-stage AIDS.

Recent studies have even shown it to be an effective atypical anti-psychotic in treating schizophrenia, a disease many other studies have inconsistently found it causing.

1. Cancer

Cannabinoids, the active components of marijuana, inhibit tumor growth in laboratory animals and also kill cancer cells. Western governments have known this for a long time yet they continued to suppress the information so that cannabis prohibition and the profits generated by the drug industry proliferated.

THC that targets cannabinoid receptors CB1 and CB2 is similar in function to endocannabinoids, which are cannabinoids that are naturally produced in the body and activate these receptors. The researchers suggest that THC or other designer agents that activate these receptors might be used in a targeted fashion to treat lung cancer.

2. Tourette’s Syndrome

Tourette’s syndrome is a neurological condition characterized by uncontrollable facial grimaces, tics, and involuntary grunts, snorts and shouts.

Dr. Kirsten Mueller-Vahl of the Hanover Medical College in Germany led a team that investigated the effects of chemicals called cannabinols in 12 adult Tourette’s patients. A single dose of the cannabinol produced a significant reduction in symptoms for several hours compared to placebo, the researchers reported.

3. Seizures
Marijuana is a muscle relaxant and has “antispasmodic” qualities that have proven to be a very effective treatment for seizures. There are actually countless cases of people suffering from seizures that have only been able to function better through the use of marijuana.

4. Migraines
Since medicinal marijuana was legalized in California, doctors have reported that they have been able to treat more than 300,000 cases of migraines that conventional medicine couldn’t through marijuana.

5. Glaucoma
Marijuana’s treatment of glaucoma has been one of the best documented. There isn’t a single valid study that exists that disproves marijuana’s very powerful and popular effects on glaucoma patients.

6. Multiple Sclerosis
Marijuana’s effects on multiple sclerosis patients became better documented when former talk-show host, Montel Williams began to use pot to treat his MS. Marijuana works to stop the neurological effects and muscle spasms that come from the fatal disease.

7. ADD and ADHD A well documented USC study done about a year ago showed that marijuana is not only a perfect alternative for Ritalin but treats the disorder without any of the negative side effects of the pharmaceutical.

8. IBS and Crohn’s
Marijuana has shown that it can help with symptoms of the chronic diseases as it stops nausea, abdominal pain, and diarrhea.

9. Alzheimer’s
Despite what you may have heard about marijuana’s effects on the brain, the Scripps Institute, in 2006, proved that the THC found in marijuana works to prevent Alzheimer’s by blocking the deposits in the brain that cause the disease.

10. Premenstrual Syndrome
Just like marijuana is used to treat IBS, it can be used to treat the cramps and discomfort that causes PMS symptoms. Using marijuana for PMS actually goes all the way back to Queen Victoria.

Mounting Evidence Suggests Raw Cannabis is Best

Cannabinoids can prevent cancer, reduce heart attacks by 66% and insulin dependent diabetes by 58%. Cannabis clinician Dr. William Courtney recommends drinking 4 – 8 ounces of raw flower and leaf juice from any Hemp plant, 5 mg of Cannabidiol (CBD) per kg of body weight, a salad of Hemp seed sprouts and 50 mg of THC taken in 5 daily doses.

Why raw? Heat destroys certain enzymes and nutrients in plants. Incorporating raw cannabis allows for a greater availability of those elements. Those who require large amounts of cannabinoids without the psychoactive effects need to look no further than raw cannabis. In this capacity, it can be used at 60 times more tolerance than if it were heated.
Raw cannabis is considered by many experts as a dietary essential. As a powerful anti-inflammatory and antioxidant, raw cannabis may be right u there with garlic and tumeric.

About the Author

Marco Torres is a research specialist, writer and consumer advocate for healthy lifestyles. He holds degrees in Public Health and Environmental Science and is a professional speaker on topics such as disease prevention, environmental toxins and health policy. 

Sources: 
scribd.com
bigbudsmag.com
berkeleypatientscare.com
washingtonpost.com
about.com
safeaccess.ca

Source: Waking Times

Retailers And Entertainment Industry Spire To Hyper-sexualize Girls

Victoria’s Secret (VS) has sunk to a new low – and I didn’t think that was possible. Recently the retailer introduced a line of intimate apparel that they’re calling “Bright, Young Things.” The new line is designed to appeal to teen and tween girls. Get a load of this:

In the spring line, you’ll find an array of panties, from lace back cheeksters with the word “Wild” on the back, to a lace trim thong with “Call Me” on the front, to green-and-white polka-dot hipsters reading “Feeling Lucky? (Source)

So – the decision makers at VS see nothing wrong with targeting middle and high school girls for the purpose of purchasing lace trimmed thongs with “Call me” emblazoned on the front? Do these people not comprehend that this new line exploits girls? Have they no sense of decency?

Apparently not.

Because the company is in business to make money it appears every decision is strictly about the bottom (pardon the pun) line: “Sales of lingerie for younger women are a $1.5 billion-a-year business for Victoria’s Secret’s Pink line, which also woos girls.” If making a profit means the company has to hyper-sexualize girls – because that’s what they’re doing – so be it. Dads, how do you feel about your 12-year-old wearing hipster panties that ask the question: “Feeling lucky?” Would you think it cute? This is what I was referring to when I said that Victoria’s Secret has sunk to a new low. One can only hope that parents will have the good sense to shop elsewhere for their precious daughter’s undergarments.

But VS is not the only organization pushing sleazy undergarments to young girls. According to Bloomberg Business Week, retailers of top name brands such as Hot Topic and Urban Outfitters present their garments as cute vs. sexy. Marcie Merriman, founder of consulting firm PrimalGrowth, candidly reveals that retailers are “all going to say they’re targeting 18- to 22-year-olds, but the reality is you’re going to get the younger customer.”

The Bloomberg article maintains that intimate apparel for girls generates big bucks for retailers – more than $11.1 billion in annual sales! Limited Brands has done even better – its VS Pink brand has done $1.5 billion and expects to do even better in the coming years.

Bloomberg also reports this sad fact:

A decade ago girls had little choice in underwear; a training bra was often a plain garment bought at Target (TGT). No longer. “Sensuality and body image continues to be a message that young girls are seeing and are being exposed to in a much less controlled fashion perhaps than even 10, 12 years ago,” says Dan Stanek, executive vice president at consultancy Big Red Rooster. They’re aiming to imitate the lingerie styles worn by celebrities seen on the Web, he says.

Even worse:

Lingerie makers have to be careful adjusting their messaging for a younger audience so it’s more about the girl and less about dressing in a way that’s appealing for men…” Moreover, “Merchandisers must “use the word ‘pretty’ more than ‘sexy’…. (Source)

Sly devils, aren’t they?

Teen Girl Magazine “Seventeen”

While I’m on the subject of hyper-sexualizing teens and tweens, according to a March 11 Fox News report:

Ashley Benson, 23, knows what sells to America’s 12-year-old girls: sex, including threesomes. Together with Seventeen magazine, the actress is promoting her new movie “Spring Breakers” on the magazine’s cover, despite the fact that the movie is being hyped elsewhere for its steamy sex scene between Benson, actress Vanessa Hudgens, 24, and actor James Franco. The movie is rated R for strong sexual content, language, nudity, drug use and violence. Seventeen targets an audience of females, aged 12 to 19.

What, no cannibalism?

From the Media Research Center:

“Seventeen” Entertainment Director, Carissa Rosenberg Tozzi, introduced the interview with Benson by asking girls, “Ever feel like you want to try something different, but everyone else wants you to stay exactly the same?” The article sought empathy, relating how “It’s super-frustrating to be pigeon-holed like that – and Ashley Benson knows exactly how it feels.”

According to Tozzi, Benson desired to “branch out and try something edgier” in her new “Spring Breakers” role. She wanted to be “bold” because, in Benson’s words, “as long as you’re happy, that’s what’s important.”

In an effort to be viewd as bold and edgy, the Disney star happily cast off her wholesome image, much the same as teen idol Miley Cyrus did a few years ago when she decided to change her wholesome image to sultry seductress. In a column I wrote entitled America’s Moral Implosion I disclosed what young Miley was up to:

In her raunchy new music video single “Who Owns My Heart” fans won’t recognize the cute teenage girl who plays the title role of Hanna Montana on the Disney channel. Miley is17-years-old and apparently thinks she’s all grown up. If appearances are any indication, she seems quite comfortable in her new role. Watching the video makes one think that writhing on a bed wearing only underwear and grinding with males and females on the dance floor wearing short shorts and a reveling top is old hat for Lady Miley. One thing’s for sure: Miley Cyrus is no longer the Disney darling she once was. Watch her video. See the new Barbarella do her thing.

I also pointed out that ever since the early sixties secularists have done their best to denigrate and coarsen the culture. Five decades later most adults don’t bat an eye when they see “teenage girls parade around in public, scantily dressed, wearing getups that 20 years ago only prostitutes turning tricks on street corners would dare dress in.” And I warned that, “unbridled immorality is part and parcel of the secular worldview.” Moreover:

Young people abuse drugs and alcohol. They lie, cheat and steal without remorse. They do not flinch at brutality. Instead of portraying vampires and witches as villains, they are the new heroes and heroines. Coarse language spews forth from the mouths of preteens…there is little or no respect for authority or for adults…selfishness and narcissism has become the rule, not the exception. What more proof do we need that liberalism brings destruction to a nation?

Dysfunctional Hollywood Liberals

To a great extent, the entertainment industry (EI) is to blame for sexualizing girls. It’s a well known fact that liberals are the movers and shakers in the EI. And those who work in entertainment, especially celebrities, are largely to blame for corrupting society.

Pro-family and religious conservatives are not the ones that have brought us the culture of death and destruction – liberals have. Liberals, aka progressives, insist that all mention of God and the scriptures be removed from the public square through their misinterpretation of the First Amendment. Was the First Amendment really intended to rid public education of prayer and the Bible, while at the same time giving license to pornography that has introduced society to every sort of evil imaginable?

Track the increase of gruesome crimes against children such as rape, sodomy and abductions since 1947 and you’ll find a huge spike. No one can blame Bible reading and prayer for the upswing in crime against children. No. The blame must be laid squarely upon the shoulders of hedonist “progressives” for the simple reason that they are the ones to blame for our nation’s descent onto moral relativism – the belief that there is no right or wrong and that morality does not exist – and if everyone’s doing it then it must be okay.

A large number of Americans worry that society is experiencing a moral meltdown. They point to Hollywood as the main culprit for this. Yet Hollywood’s elites choose to ignore the obvious. Instead of producing wholesome entertainment, which many people seem to want, the EI continually turns out filth – and the more twisted the better. Sex, violence and occult themes have increased in movies, on TV programs, video games, board games, and so on. Sex sells in magazines. Clothing manufactures sell sex. Even so-called Christian retailers are selling sex! (I reported on this in depth in my columnThe “New Breed” of Christian Fashion.)

A July 2012 study suggests that children who watch sex on TV programs and movies will be more promiscuous and sexually active from a younger age. “Psychologists concluded that teenagers exposed to more sex on screen in popular films are likely to have sexual relations with more people and without using condoms.”

Dr. Ross O’Hara, who led the study, cautioned:

This study, and its confluence with other work, strongly suggests that parents need to restrict their children from seeing sexual content in movies at young ages. (Source)

What To Do?

I’ll close with an excerpt from a column I wrote entitled Liberals Created the Culture of Evil and Death, Part 1 where I offered the following advice on ways to turn the clock back to a time when children were allowed to be children, before America took a very dark turn:

First, Bible believing Christians must share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with the lost. “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, the just shall live by faith” (Rom 1:15-7).

We must make disciples of all nations. (Mat. 28:19) This is a command not a suggestion. People will not change unless hearts and minds are changed. It is men and women who need changing, not just the system (but the system needs changing too). There’s a Holy Spirit filled power in the gospel that can change the most hardened criminal into a saint.

Second, Christian parents must instill in their children a Christian worldview on a variety of moral issues such as premarital sex, bearing babies out of wedlock, abortion, homosexuality, biblical marriage, gambling and drug use.

Third, parents must address what’s going on in the government-run-schools they send their children to, where individual thinking is discouraged and group-think is rewarded. What kids are being exposed to is humanistic education. A large number of our public school teachers and counselors are radical liberals. Their aim is to persuade students to reject their parent’s values and instill their own leftist ideology. In her book “Total Truth,” Nancy Pearcey warns parents that they’re youngsters “must be equipped to analyze and critique the competing worldviews they will encounter when they leave home” and she explains how to equip them. In short, young people must have the confidence to stand up for what they believe, both in college and the workplace. Turning the other cheek has never deterred a liberal.

Fourth, “Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.” Why is this important? “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables. But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry” (2 Tim 4:2-5).

Fifth, pray! “Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit” (James 5:17, 18). When you pray you must pray to the only true God.

Women In Combat: Battling Nature, Battering Reality

Senseless advice and nothing nice; that’s what little-girls-in-combat policy is made of.

The obvious has already been said about placing women in front-line combat positions. Their presence will reduce unit cohesiveness; male soldiers’ natural instinct to protect women will influence battlefield decisions; there will be the problem of sexual impropriety within the ranks and of rape when women are captured; women will have more trouble measuring up to the physical and psychological demands of battle; special accommodations will no doubt be made so that women may tend to feminine concerns; and, as the high pregnancy rate aboard naval vessels has proven, having young men and women operate in close quarters is folly. Yet the truth is that it was just a matter of time before women were allowed in combat; it’s a piece that fits seamlessly into the modern sex-role puzzle. And it’s not surprising if a majority of Americans support the policy; they are sex-role puzzled.

When I worked with children years ago, one of my students, an 11-year-old boy, guessed that the women’s world record for the mile would be faster than the men’s when a question about the matter was put to him. In the same vein, a respondent to one of my articles mentioned a young man she knew who opined that women and men should compete together in sports. When she informed him that this would eliminate athletic opportunities for women — boys’ American high school records surpass women’s world records — he was surprised that the gap between the sexes was so great. You may be surprised at a knowledge gap so great. Don’t be.

For a few decades now, children have been raised seeing women in combat. Movies and television shows have long featured masculinized female characters who talk, act, and fight like men — except when they’re shown fighting even better and vanquishing men. If a show features a male hero, he almost invariably has to be balanced with a tough(er?) heroine. Professional wrestling will now occasionally even show women grappling with men (yes, it’s fake, but not to a seven-year-old). Kids also have equality dogma drummed into them; equality this and equality that, and the only departure from it is when they’re exposed to entertainment that makes men appear weak or to specious science indicating female superiority. It is another example of how the left presents the young with a distorted picture of reality.

It’s thus no surprise that people make poor decisions on policy affecting the sexes. We better understand the different roles of horses and dogs because we perceive their characteristic strengths and weaknesses; likewise, how can we understand what roles are suggested by the sexes’ characteristic qualities if we blind ourselves to them?

Ah, dare I speak of “roles”? Some will now accuse me of fostering sex stereotyping, the very thing the left has been combating with the agenda outlined earlier. (This, by the way, is one of the main reasons Hollywood mainstreamed masculinized female characters: they wanted to change how people think. It worked.) All right, let’s discuss stereotypes.

One of these stereotype opponents would be Beck Laxton, a British mother who strives to raises “gender neutral” children and has said, “Stereotypes seem fundamentally stupid. Why would you want to slot people into boxes?” Thus, Laxton believes in allowing her son to find his own sex-role path; as Shine’s Piper Weiss tells us, she is on a quest to “let her kid just be a kid.” But this raises a question: if putting people in boxes is such an imposition, why put your kid in a kid box?

In other words, why impose species-oriented norms on a child and put him in a human box? After all, we instill ideas about identity and innumerable other things when we put children in clothing; cut their hair; teach them to wash and brush their teeth; teach them language, manners, a conception of virtue, and social norms; and laugh at some behaviors while frowning at others. But do we consider that, like self-professed canine “Wolfie Blackheart,” the child may later decide that homo-sapiens status isn’t for him?

The point is that it isn’t a matter of whether we’ll put children in boxes; that is unavoidable.

It’s a matter of putting them in the correct boxes.

And we put a little human in a human box not because we’ve been brainwashed with some arbitrary social construct but because he was born in a human body, and it’s better for everyone if is he is socialized as a human than trained as a ferret. His human status involves unique abilities and relative physical weaknesses; thus do we apply “species stereotyping” when raising him. Of course, he may announce when he is 18 that he is a ferret, or something slightly larger, such as Robert Reich. That’s what mental institutions are for.

The truth is that we only hear complaints about stereotypes when those stereotypes are out of fashion — or out of favor with the “fashionable” set. For example, it’s now common to scoff at traditional female portrayals such as that of devoted housewife June Cleaver in Leave it to Beaver. But what of her husband, Ward? Do little boys dream of growing up, wearing a suit, and working 9 to 5 at a job that is probably drudgery? Yet what would have been better? Should Ward Cleaver have been cast as a layabout Beat Generation type who some nights never came home, drank like a fish, mainlined heroin, and frequented bathhouses? Would it have been healthy to destroy the Cleaver stereotype and institute a new one such as that reflected in the now cancelled All My Babies’ Mommas? I think men should be pushed toward the box of gainfully employed, loving, responsible father — that’s the only way civilization can survive. And women have their boxes, too.

This is where “sex stereotyping” (the term gender is misused today) comes into play. Sure, we’ve heard that it places children in a potential-stifling straitjacket. But there is another theory, one considered self-evident truth not long ago. It goes like this: at issue here isn’t negatively connoted “stereotyping.” Rather, just as we give humans a species-specific upbringing, we should give a boy a sex-specific upbringing; this is not because we’ve fallen victim to some arbitrary social construct but because he was born in a boy’s body (that’s called a clue). Is this stifling? On the contrary, just as you may provide art-specific opportunities to help a child with a proclivity for art exploit his potential, sex-specific childrearing helps the sexes cultivate and augment their unique potential. That is how boys and girls come to full flower as men and women.

I haven’t said much here about women in combat, and for good reason. It’s just a branch on the feminist tree, a branch whose appearance was just a matter of time. And now I’ll be the hatchet man.

Even science, which often eventually catches up with common sense, tells us that the sexes have different characteristic qualities and strengths. And since “male” and “female” are real and different statuses, also real are the adjectives that describe what is characteristic of each one, “masculine” and “feminine.” It also then follows that the verbs “masculinize” and “feminize” describe actual changes that really can be effected.

Taking it further, the sexes’ different proclivities imply different roles, which we call masculine and feminine roles. Two of these, “mother” and “father,” are of inestimable importance because they constitute the nucleus of civilization’s central building block: the family. Thus, anything that diminishes the chances of the sexes successfully performing those roles threatens to destroy the family — and, hence, civilization.

Given this, should we accept any social norm that discourages the cultivation of a sex’s respective qualities or serves to masculinize women or feminize men? Does it behoove us to steer girls toward masculine endeavors? Those are the big questions — and they get at the big picture.

And this answers the little-picture question of women in combat. If warfare isn’t a masculine endeavor, what is? And if putting women in military uniforms, giving them weaponry, and teaching them to be warriors doesn’t masculinize them, what does? And what does it say about our society that the masculinization of women has reached this advanced stage?

It says that the feminist tree is deep-rooted and tall, with a canopy that blocks out the light of common sense. The sooner that tree is burnt to ashes with the world’s fiercest accelerant, the better.

Smoke Em If You Got Em! Marijuana Now Legal In Washington State

Thursday morning was the dawn of a new era for pot-smoking Washingtonians, as state law finally approved the personal possession of up to one ounce – or roughly 28g – of marijuana, making it the first US state to fully legalize the drug.

Washington voters shocked the nation last month by voting for Initiative 502 (I-502), which legalizes the possession of up to one ounce (28g) of marijuana for personal use. Under the initiative, all penalties for marijuana possession and use have also been abolished.

Many users said they would be gathering around various public areas across the state to celebrate the landmark ruling – by breaking the law. Public marijuana use is still illegal, but the fine for smoking weed in public carries the same fine as publicly consuming alcohol.

I-502, approved by a 55.5 percent majority, will make Washington the first US state to officially legalize recreational marijuana use in the US. State penalties for possession will be eliminated, and excise taxes like those applied to alcohol and tobacco sales will be enacted.

A similar measure passed in Colorado will be implemented no later than January 6.

Although Washington’s new law legalizes possession of up to an ounce for those over 21, selling marijuana remains illegal.

I-502 gives Washington a year to come up with a system of state-licensed growers, processors and retail stores. It plans to tax every stage at 25 percent. Analysts say it could bring Washington hundreds of millions of dollars annually in new tax revenue.

But I-502 also puts Washington at loggerheads with the federal government: Despite record levels of support for nationwide legalization, it is still illegal under federal law to carry or use any amount of marijuana.

Pot is considered a ‘Schedule I’ narcotic under the Federal Controlled Substances Act, putting it in the same category as heroin. This means federal agents can still arrest people for it, and it remains banned from federal properties, including military bases and national parks

But I-502 is going into effect at a time when national support for legalization is at an all-time high.

A national poll conducted by Public Policy Polling (PPP) from November 30 to December 2 showed that 59 percent of US voters believe marijuana should be legalized, while only 39 percent do not. Half of respondents also expected that marijuana will become legal under federal law within a decade’s time.

The Obama administration has thus far made no mention of how it will react to the measure, though the White House has repeated on numerous occasions that it remains “firmly committed to enforcing the Controlled Substances Act.”

Washington Governor Chris Gregoire recently met with Deputy Attorney General James Cole at the Justice Department, though he came away with no answers.

“They said they were reviewing it,” the Washington Post cites Gregoire’s spokesperson Cory Curtis as saying Friday.“They didn’t give us a timeline when they would provide clarity.”

Steve Fox, director of government relations for the Marijuana Policy Project, argued that Obama would be working against the popular will and the greater good if the federal government attempted to continue with its “failed policy of marijuana prohibition.”

“The increasingly strong national support for making marijuana legal demonstrates that the writing is on the wall,” Fox said. “Marijuana prohibition’s days are numbered. The Obama administration cannot stop history. If it interferes in the implementation of these new laws, it will only unnecessarily prolong the chaos of an uncontrolled market. The time for state-regulated systems of marijuana cultivation and sales is here.”

Source: RT

The New York Times Won’t Report The News

The New York Times (and liberal media generally) have two ways of dealing with news they don’t like.

Stories can be ingeniously “spun” so their significance is dimmed. The  main facts might be mentioned; but the emphasis is expertly shifted and important details are placed toward the end. Opposing testimony is featured throughout. The “spun” story, a murmur of its prior self, is then buried on a back page.

A more radical, more Orwellian technique is to pretend that the story never happened. News is thus “disappeared.” Savor the irony. A vast organization–allegedly set up to find news–ends up functioning as a screening device to identify undesirable stories and hide them.

This second technique seems more commonplace and reckless in the Obama era. Previously, the Times could ignore a story, confident that few people would realize it hadn’t been covered. In the age of the internet and the New Media, the Times has to know that a big portion of the population will hear about significant stories. Bizarrely, the Times doesn’t seem to care about its own declining prestige.

Here then are three big stories NOT reported in the New York Times.

1) Hollywood Heroine. During the 2008 primary season, Bettina Viviano, a producer with serious film credits, was deeply involved in the campaign to nominate Hillary Clinton. She was typical of thousands of smart professional women who assumed that Hillary would be the nominee; and they wanted to be part of the process. Shockingly, they discovered that politics is a rough game indeed when played by the gang from Chicago.

Bettina Viviano witnessed intimidation, fraud, anything you can think of that gangster politicians have done throughout history. Viviano and colleague Gigi Gaston decided to make a documentary about this tainted primary. The title is “We Will Not Be Silenced.” Two things happened: lots of people had grim stories to tell; and great pressure was brought to shut down the project. Indeed, it was put on hold during 2009.

In the spring of 2012, Viviano decided she couldn’t remain silent. She wrote some articles, gave some interviews. She’s an impressive witness and tells a fascinating story. She argues that had the primary been conducted legally, Hillary would have been the candidate. More surprising to many is Viviano’s comment that everyone in the campaign assumed Obama was ineligible, and that Bill Clinton would step forward at the proper time to dismiss Obama’s legitimacy. He didn’t do this, Viviano said, because he was threatened. Anyway, at risk to her career (at least), Viviano told a detailed story that unfolds over months and now years. This is not some little anecdote but a big slice of American political history that should have been served up on the front page of every paper in America: INSIDERS SAY OBAMA MACHINE STOLE NOMINATION.

It’s far more significant than anything we heard about Herman Cain; but the Times covered Herman Cain in scores of stories, smirking, scorning, chortling (in a tone the Times would call “racist” if the subject were Obama.)

But if you go to the New York Times now to learn about a far more important chapter in our history, here’s what the search engine says: “Your search - bettina viviano, hillary clinton - did not match any documents.”

2) “America’s Sheriff.” This nickname tells you that Joe Arpaio is a national figure, and that probably millions of people know about his activities. He held a press conference on March 1, 2012, to announce that Obama’s newest birth certificate was most likely a forgery. Later in the year, July 17, he held a second press conference to announce there’s no doubt: the official White House birth certificate is a digital forgery. This is a huge story with many unique features, just what journalists used to hunger for. There’s only one investigation by a law enforcement group into this birth certificate, and only one nationally famous sheriff. Not to mention, somebody in the White House is committing forgery.

The Times touched on this story a few times fleetingly, with no detail or forensic curiosity. At present there is a long biographical sketch of Arpaio, about 1500 words, on the Times website, with this single reference: “Mr. Arpaio has waged an increasingly bitter dispute with the Obama administration, including questioning the president’s birth certificate and portraying the civil rights investigation as politicized.”

This is almost comedy journalism. As Arpaio himself has mentioned, if a reporter wants to win a Pulitzer, all he has to do is refute the sheriff’s investigation.

3) Handicapper. Wayne Allyn Root is, according to his August 6 article and video, “one of the most accurate Las Vegas oddsmakers and prognosticators.” Furthermore, Root was in Columbia’s Class of ‘83, the president’s class. Root notes that virtually nobody  remembers seeing this guy. But the real question is how does a student with mediocre grades, a fondness for reefer, and not much money manage to attend several Ivy League schools? Root plays the biggest hunch of his career, claiming that Obama had all his records sealed because he most likely attended Columbia as a “foreign exchange student.” In that classification, Obama did not need good grades, money, or even to attend class.

Rush Limbaugh read the entire column on the air. Root’s prognostications went viral. At that point, the Times should at least report the story. If they could refute Root’s analysis, why not do it?

This story, of course occurred a few months after another equally huge story that Obama, on his literary agent’s website, said he was from Kenya. This claim remained on the web for more than 10 years. Meanwhile, the president’s birth certificate has been denounced as a fake. A Republican politician would not survive two days with these convergent accusations hanging in the air. The Times would report them in banner headlines.

Times search engine reports: “Your search [last 12 months] - wayne allyn root - did not match any documents.

Where the president is concerned, the Times sees no evil, hears no evil, and reports no evil. The wider tragedy is that this faux-newspaper dictates what all the lesser papers will bother to report. Check your local paper: did it report these stories?

People should be asking when did “media whore” become a tautology? Once upon a time, media whore referred to people who would do anything to be mentioned in the news. Now the phrase better refers to media that will do anything to avoid mentioning the news.

Education is my main beat; I think of this as an education story. The media won’t report facts. Schools try not to teach facts. There almost seems to be, throughout our society, what Martin Gross called “a conspiracy of ignorance.”

The United States and Its Comrade-In-Arms, Al Qaeda

And other tales of an empire gone mad…

Afghanistan in the 1980s and 90s … Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s … Libya 2011 … Syria 2012 … In military conflicts in each of these countries the United States and al Qaeda (or one of its associates) have been on the same side. ¹

What does this tell us about the United States’ “War On Terrorism”?

Regime change has been the American goal on each occasion: overthrowing communists (or “communists”), Serbians, Slobodan Milosevic, Moammar Gaddafi, Bashar al-Assad … all heretics or infidels, all non-believers in the empire, all inconvenient to the empire.

Why, if the enemy is Islamic terrorism, has the United States invested so much blood and treasure against the PLO, Iraq, and Libya, and now Syria, all mideast secular governments?

Why are Washington’s closest Arab allies in the Middle East the Islamic governments of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan, and Bahrain? Bahrain being the home of an American naval base; Saudi Arabia and Qatar being conduits to transfer arms to the Syrian rebels.

Why, if democracy means anything to the United States are these same close allies in the Middle East all monarchies?

Why, if the enemy is Islamic terrorism, did the United States shepherd Kosovo — 90% Islamist and perhaps the most gangsterish government in the world — to unilaterally declare independence from Serbia in 2008, an independence so illegitimate and artificial that the majority of the world’s nations still have not recognized it?

Why — since Kosovo’s ruling Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) have been known for their trafficking in women, heroin, and human body parts (sic) — has the United States been pushing for Kosovo’s membership in NATO and the European Union? (Just what the EU needs: another economic basket case.) Between 1998 and 2002, the KLA appeared on the State Department terrorist list, remaining there until the United States decided to make them an ally, due in no small part to the existence of a major American military base in Kosovo, Camp Bondsteel, well situated in relation to planned international oil and gas pipelines coming from the vast landlocked Caspian Sea area to Europe. In November 2005, following a visit to Bondsteel, Alvaro Gil-Robles, the human rights envoy of the Council of Europe, described the camp as a “smaller version of Guantánamo”. ²

Why, if the enemy is Islamic terrorism, did the United States pave the way to power for the Libyan Islamic rebels, who at this very moment are killing other Libyans in order to institute a more fundamentalist Islamic state?

Why do American officials speak endlessly about human rights, yet fully support the Libyan Islamic rebels despite the fact that Doctors Without Borders suspended its work in prisons in the Islamic-rebel city of Misurata because torture was so rampant that some detainees were brought for care only to make them fit for further interrogation? ³

Why is the United States supporting Islamic Terrorists in Libya and Syria who are persecuting Christians?

And why, if the enemy is Islamic terrorism, did US Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice — who daily attacks the Syrian government on moral grounds — not condemn the assassination of four Syrian high officials on July 18, in all likelihood carried out by al Qaeda types? RT, the Russian television channel broadcast in various parts of the United States, noted her silence in this matter. Does anyone know of any American media that did the same?

So, if you want to understand this thing called United States foreign policy … forget about the War on Terrorism, forget about September 11, forget about democracy, forget about freedom, forget about human rights, forget about religion, forget about the people of Libya and Syria … keep your eyes on the prize … Whatever advances American global domination. Whatever suits their goals at the moment. There is no moral factor built into the DNA of US foreign policy.

Bring back the guillotine

In July, the Canadian corporation Enbridge, Inc. announced that one of its pipelines had leaked and spilled an estimated 1,200 barrels of crude oil in a field in Wisconsin. Two years ago, an Enbridge pipeline spilled more than 19,000 barrels in Michigan. The Michigan spill affected more than 50 kilometers of waterways and wetlands and about 320 people reported medical symptoms from crude oil exposure. The US National Transportation Safety Board said that at $800 million it was the costliest onshore spill cleanup in the nation’s history. The NTSB found that Enbridge knew of a defect in the pipeline five years before it burst. According to Enbridge’s own reports, the company had 800 spills between 1999 and 2010, releasing close to 7 million gallons of crude oil. ⁴

No executive or other employee of Enbridge has been charged with any kind of crime. How many environmental murderers of modern times have been punished?

During a period of a few years beginning around 2007, several thousand employees of stock brokers, banks, mortgage companies, insurance companies, credit-rating agencies, and other financial institutions, mainly in New York, had great fun getting obscenely rich while creating and playing with pieces of paper known by names like derivatives, collateralized debt obligations, index funds, credit default swaps, structured investment vehicles, subprime mortgages, and other exotic terms, for which, it must be kept in mind, there had been no public need or demand. The result has been a severe depression, seriously hurting hundreds of millions of lives in the United States and abroad.

No employee of any of these companies has seen the inside of a prison cell for playing such games with our happiness.

For more than half a century members of the United States foreign policy and military establishments have compiled a record of war crimes and crimes against humanity that the infamous beasts and butchers of history could only envy.

Not a single one of these American officials has come any closer to a proper judgment than going to see the movie “Judgment at Nuremberg”.

Yet, we live in the United States of Punishment for countless other criminal types; more than two million presently rotting their lives away. No other society comes even close to this, no matter how the statistics are calculated. And many of those in American prisons are there for victimless crimes.

On the other hand, we see the Chinese sentencing their citizens to lengthy prison terms, even execution, for environmental crimes.

We have an Iranian court recently trying 39 people for a $2.6 billion bank loan embezzlement carried out by individuals close to the political elite or with their assent. Of the 39 people tried, four were sentenced to hang, two to life in prison, and others received terms of up to 25 years; in addition to prison time, some were sentenced to flogging, ordered to pay fines, and banned from government jobs. ⁵

And in Argentina in early July, in the latest of a long series of trials of former Argentine officials, former dictator Jorge Rafael Videla was convicted and sentenced to 50 years for a systematic plan to steal babies from women prisoners who were kidnapped, tortured and killed during the military junta’s war on leftist dissenters — the “dirty war” of 1976-83 that claimed 13,000 victims. Many of the women had “disappeared” shortly after giving birth. Argentina’s last dictator, Reynaldo Bignone, was also convicted and got 15 years. Outside the courthouse a jubilant crowd watched on a big screen and cheered each sentence. ⁶

As an American, how I envy the Argentines. Get the big screen ready for The Mall in Washington. We’ll have showings of the trials of the Bushes and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Obama. And Henry Kissinger, a strong supporter of the Argentine junta among his many contributions to making the world a better place. And let’s not forget the executives of Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Bank of America, and Enbridge, Inc. Fining them just money is pointless. We have to fine them years, lots of them.

Without imprisoning these people, nothing will change. That’s become a cliché, but we very well see what continues to happen without imprisonment. And it’s steadily getting worse, financially and imperially.

Items of interest from a journal I’ve kept for 40 years, part VII

• Bantustanning the aboriginals all over the world: The Indians in America, the aboriginals in Australia, the blacks in South Africa, and the Palestinians in Palestine.
• From 1966 tape of President Lyndon Johnson: “I know we oughtn’t to be there [in Vietnam], but I can’t get out.” And he never did. And thousands more troops would die before Johnson left office. (Washington Post, March 12, 2006)
• The Germans had Lebensraum. Americans had Manifest Destiny.
• chinks, gooks, wogs, towelheads, ragheads — some of the charming terms used by American soldiers to describe their foes in Asia and the Middle East
• In June, 2005, Cong. Duncan Hunter (Rep.-CA) held a news conference concerning Guantánamo. Displaying some tasty traditional meals, he said the government spends $12 a day for food for each prisoner. “So the point is that the inmates in Guantánamo have never eaten better, they’ve never been treated better, and they’ve never been more comfortable in their lives than in this situation.” (Scripps Howard News Service, June 28, 2005, Reg Henry column)
• Vice President Dick Cheney: Guantánamo prisoners are well treated. “They’re living in the tropics. They’re well fed. They’ve got everything they could possibly want.” (CNN.com, June 23, 2005)
• “[Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld said Guantánamo’s operations have been more open to scrutiny than any military detention facility in history.” (Associated Press, June 14, 2005)
• “Their ‘coalition of the willing’ [in Iraq] meant the US, Britain, and the equivalent of a child’s imaginary friends.” Paul Loeb, Truthout, June 16, 2005
• Nobody has ever suggested that Serbia attacked or was preparing to attack a member of NATO, and that is the only event which justifies a military reaction under the NATO treaty, such as the 1999 78-day bombing of Serbia.
• Rumsfeld re Chinese military buildup: “Since no nation threatens China, one wonders: Why this growing investment?” (New York Times, June 6, 2005
• Rumsfeld re Venezuelan major weapons buildup: “I don’t know of anyone threatening Venezuela, anyone in this hemisphere.” (Washington Post, October 3, 2006) [Is it possible that the response to both points raised is the same? A country in North America bordering on Mexico?]
• The failure of the United Nations — as an institution and its individual members — to unequivocally oppose and prevent the United States invasion of Iraq in 2003 can well be called “appeasement”.
• The Iraqi Kurds generally sided with Iran during the 1981-88 Iraq-Iran war; helped the United States before and during its bombing of Iraq in 2003 and during its occupation; and most Kurds don’t identify with being Iraqi according to polls.
• One of the military judges at Guantánamo said: “I don’t care about international law. I don’t want to hear the words ‘international law’ again. We are not concerned with international law.” (Democracy Now, April 12, 2005)
• George W. Bush, re al Qaeda types: “Iraqis are sick of foreign people coming in their country and trying to destabilize their country. And we will help them rid Iraq of these killers.” (Baltimore Sun, May 6, 2004)
• “I think all foreigners should stop interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq. Those who want to come and help are welcome. Those who come to interfere and destroy are not.” Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense and unindicted war criminal (Chicago Tribune, July 22, 2003)
• Timothy McVeigh, Gulf War veteran who bombed a government building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people: “What occurred in Oklahoma City was no different than what Americans rain on the heads of others all the time … The bombing of the Murrah building was not personal, no more than when Air Force, Army, Navy or Marine personnel bomb or launch cruise missiles against government installations and their personnel. … Many foreign nations and peoples hate Americans for the very reasons most Americans loathe me. Think about that.” (McVeigh’s letter to and interview with Rita Cosby, Fox News Correspondent, April 27 2001)
• Douglas Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and unindicted war criminal: “Defense Department officials don’t lie to the public. … The Defense Department doesn’t do covert action, period.” (Washington Post, February 21, 2002)
• The United States will “deal promptly and properly with the terrible abuses” of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers. “No country in the world upholds the Geneva Conventions on the laws of armed conflict more steadfastly than does the United States.” Douglas Feith, Boston Globe, May 5, 2004
• “The State Department plans to delay the release of a human rights report that was due out today, partly because of sensitivities over the prison abuse scandal in Iraq, U.S. officials said. One official who asked not to be identified said the release of the report, which describes actions taken by the U.S. government to encourage respect for human rights by other nations, could ‘make us look hypocritical’.” (Los Angeles Times, May 5, 2004)
• In the decades after 1945, as colonial possessions became independent states, it was widely believed that imperialism as a historical phenomenon was coming to an end. However, a new form of imperialism was in fact taking shape, an imperialism not defined by colonial rule but by the global capitalist market. From the outset, the dominant power in this imperialism without colonies was the United States.
• Francis Boyle re the capture and public display of Saddam Hussein: “This is the 21st century equivalent of the Roman Emperor parading the defeated barbarian king before the assembled masses so that they might all shout in unison: Hail Caesar!”
• The US-provided textbooks in Nicaragua after the US-instigated defeat of the Sandinistas in 1990 carefully excluded all mention of Augustino Sandino as a national hero. (Z magazine, November, 1991)
• “Col. David Hogg, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division, said tougher methods are being used to gather the intelligence. On Wednesday night, he said, his troops picked up the wife and daughter of an Iraqi lieutenant general. They left a note: ‘If you want your family released, turn yourself in.’ Such tactics are justified, he said, because, ‘It’s an intelligence operation with detainees, and these people have info.’ They would have been released in due course, he added later. The tactic worked. On Friday, Hogg said, the lieutenant general appeared at the front gate of the U.S. base and surrendered.” (Washington Post, July 28, 2003) [This is illegal under international law; in ordinary parlance we'd call it a kidnapping with ransom; in war, it's the collective punishment of civilians and is forbidden under the Geneva Convention]
• “Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.
• “Americans, who up until now had been so valued for their pragmatism, have become ideologues, ‘Bolsheviks’ of the Right, as Daniel Cohn-Bendit once described them.” (Jean-Marcel Bouguereau, concerning Iraq, Le Nouvel Observateur, September 8, 2003)
• Six months after its invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration defended its policy on the basis of schools and hospitals opening and strides made in providing water and electricity. (Washington Post, September 25, 2003) — These are all things 12 years of US bombing and sanctions had destroyed.

Notes

1. For a summary of much of this, see: Peter Dale Scott, “Bosnia, Kosovo, and Now Libya: The Human Costs of Washington’s Ongoing Collusion With Terrorists“, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, August 7, 2011 ^↩
2. Camp Bondsteel entry on Wikipedia ^↩
3. Washington Post, January 27, 2012 ^↩
4. Enbridge entry on Wikipedia; Washington Post, July 29, 2012^↩
5. Reuters, July 31, 2012 ^↩
6. Associated Press, July 6, 2012 ^↩

10 Things That Will Happen If Barack Obama Continues To Systematically Legalize Illegal Immigration

Barack Obama seems completely obsessed with systematically legalizing illegal immigration.  The United States borders a failed narco-state that is one of the most crime-ridden nations on the entire planet, but Barack Obama refuses to secure the border and the consequences for the American people have been absolutely catastrophic.  Right now it is already costing us tens of billions of dollars a year to provide welfare for illegal immigrants and to educate their children in our public schools.  Right now illegal immigrants are already working millions of jobs that should belong to American workers.  Right now Mexican drug cartels are already active in more than 1,000 U.S. cities.  But apparently that is not good enough for Barack Obama.  He wants to roll out the red carpet and give the green light to tens of millions more illegal immigrants.  Last year, Obama issued a list of 19 factors for government officials to use when deciding whether to use “prosecutorial discretion” in deportation cases.  In essence, under that new set of rules criminals and “national security threats” were to be deported and virtually everyone else was to be allowed to stay.  But now Barack Obama has taken things to a whole new level.  Now, if you are under the age of 30, came to the United States under the age of 16 and have lived here for at least five years you will be able to apply for legal status and a work permit.  With the election less than 6 months away it is obvious that Barack Obama is pandering for votes.   But this kind of “banana republic politics” is only going to divide America even more deeply and is going to result in some very serious pain for this nation in the years ahead.

How close do you think officials are going to check to see if people applying for this new amnesty are really under the age of 30 or really have been in this country for at least five years?

As I have written about previously, illegal immigrants lie to the IRS all the time.  Every year they file hordes of fraudulent tax returns that result in them receiving 4 billion dollars in tax refunds that they are not entitled to.

So if they are willing to even lie to the IRS, then why wouldn’t they lie about when they came to the U.S. or about how long they have been here?

For a long time Barack Obama has supported “sanctuary cities” for illegal immigrants, but now he has essentially turned the entire country into a “sanctuary city”.  Our immigration laws are still on the books, but everyone knows that Obama is not going to enforce the vast majority of them.

And that is really sad.  The United States will always need immigration, but the way that we do things today is really stupid.  We make legal immigration an absolute nightmare, but we leave the back door completely wide open for anyone that wants to break the rules and come in illegally.  So those that would like to come in legally and do things the right way are greatly discouraged from doing so while criminals, drug dealers, gang members, welfare parasites and those willing to survive in the underground economy are given the green light to come on over any time they would like.

Our immigration system makes no sense whatsoever and now Obama has just made things a whole lot worse.

The following are 10 things that will happen if Barack Obama continues to systematically legalize illegal immigration….

#1 There Will Be Fewer Jobs For American Workers

In the United States today, 53 percent of all college graduates under the age of 25 are either unemployed or underemployed.  Many of them are absolutely desperate for work.

Overall, there are more than 100 million working age Americans that do not have jobs right now.

Meanwhile, millions of illegal immigrants are occupying jobs that could otherwise be held by American citizens.  Many employers prefer to hire illegals because they work for a lot less money.

Sadly, many prominent politicians actually support the “right” of these “undocumented workers” to steal our jobs as a recent article by Devvy Kidd pointed out….

In April 2008, the very popular, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, prostituted himself during a speech for votes at an event sponsored by the Latino Leadership Alliance of New Jersey by assuring his audience illegal aliens were not really here illegally, but were simply “undocumented.”

The ‘unofficial’ number of unemployed Americans is close to 25 MILLION. Those “undocumented” criminals Gov. Christie refers to are illegally holding 11.5 MILLION jobs that belong to Americans and naturalized citizens. Shame on you, Gov. Christie for thumbing your nose at our federal immigration laws and encouraging even more criminals to break into our country. Roll out the welcome mat. Unemployment in New Jersey is holding at a steady 9.3%. Gov. Christie apparently doesn’t care if jobs go to illegal aliens instead of legal citizens in his state. After all, they’re simply “undocumented”.

#2 Wages For American Workers Will Continue To Decline

When you have a lot more workers competing for the same number of jobs, what happens?

That is right – wages go down.

We are seeing this happen in industry after industry.

For example, several decades ago a roofer could live a nice middle class lifestyle and support an entire family on one income.

But today that is no longer the case.

So what has changed?

A flood of illegal labor has entered the marketplace.

#3 Illegal Immigrants Will Overwhelm Our Welfare System

Every year, illegal immigrants receive tens of billions of dollars in welfare payments.  They get free food assistance, free housing assistance, free health care benefits and free education for their children.  Life is good if you are an illegal immigrant and you know how to game the system.

In fact, many cities in United States now openly advertise that they will help illegal immigrants with these things.

Unfortunately, according to Devvy Kidd the cost to taxpayers is getting to be astronomical….

Last year alone, the cost to taxpayers of LA County was whopping $600 MILLION dollars in welfare for children of illegal aliens. I guess it doesn’t bother the people there getting fleeced in taxes to pay for all that welfare because they continue to elect governors who refuse to lock down the border and sympathizers of the invasion across the southern border of California to their legislature.

Overall, it has been estimated that U.S. taxpayers spend $12,000,000,000 a year on primary and secondary school education for the children of illegal immigrants.

#4 Mexican Drug Cartels Will Establish A Presence In Nearly Every City In The United States

Mexican drug cartels continue to expand their influence inside the United States at a frightening pace.  They are slowly taking over our communities.  How far do things have to go before we say enough is enough?

The amount of money that Mexican drug cartels bring in from selling drugs inside the United States is absolutely staggering….

In the sober reckoning of the RAND Corporation, for instance, the gross revenue that all Mexican cartels derive from exporting drugs to the United States amounts to only $6.6 billion. By most estimates, though, Sinaloa has achieved a market share of at least 40 percent and perhaps as much as 60 percent, which means that Chapo Guzmán’s organization would appear to enjoy annual revenues of some $3 billion — comparable in terms of earnings to Netflix or, for that matter, to Facebook.

Can you imagine that?

We are talking about serious money.

And Mexican drug cartels are not just operating in huge cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago and New York.  The truth is that they have become deeply embedded in many rural communities as well….

News of cartel machinations are common in cities near the border, such as Phoenix, and the far-flung drug hubs of New York, Chicago or Atlanta, but smaller towns bring business, too. In unsuspecting suburbs and rural areas, police are increasingly finding drugs, guns and money they can trace back to Mexican drug organizations.

The numbers could rise in coming years. The Justice Department’s National Drug Intelligence Center estimates Mexican cartels control distribution of most of the methamphetamine, heroin and marijuana coming into the country, and they’re increasingly producing the drugs themselves.

In 2009 and 2010, the center reported, cartels operated in 1,286 U.S. cities, more than five times the number reported in 2008. The center named only 50 cities in 2006.

#5 There Will Be Increasing “Anti-American Violence” Inside The United States

These days a lot of Americans are being attacked (and sometimes killed) down in Mexico.

The following is from a recent ABC News article….

American travelers to Mexico should beware of possible violent retaliation for this week’s arrest of alleged Zetas drug cartel associates and family members inside the U.S., the U.S. State Department has warned.

Though the warning does not specify which “Transnational Criminal Organization” might engage in “anti-American” violence, on Tuesday federal authorities arrested seven alleged associates of the powerful Zetas drug cartel in New Mexico and Oklahoma for allegedly laundering millions in drug profits through breeding and racing quarterhorses in the U.S. Those arrested included Jose Trevino Morales, the brother of Zetas leaders Miguel Angel and Oscar Omar Trevino Morales, who were also indicted but remain at large in Mexico.

As Mexican drug cartels and criminal gangs expand north, it is inevitable that “anti-American violence” will spread deeper and deeper into the U.S. itself.

The level of violence that we are seeing down in Mexico right now is absolutely frightening.  These drug cartels can beabsolutely brutal….

Fourteen dismembered bodies were found in a truck in the center of a town in northern Mexico on Thursday in what appeared to be the latest atrocity committed by rival gangs battling over drug-smuggling routes, local media said.

The bodies of 11 men and three women were discovered in the sugar-cane farming town of Ciudad Mante in the south of Tamaulipas state, which borders on Texas, daily Milenio reported on its website.

Overall, more than 55,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence in Mexico since 2006.

Is that the kind of violence we want in this country?

Already the region along the U.S./Mexico border is an open war zone.

Just across the U.S. border, the city of Juarez, Mexico is considered to be one of the most dangerous cities on the face of the earth.  In fact, Juarez is now the murder capital of the western hemisphere.

But instead of strengthening security along the border, Barack Obama wants to make the border meaningless.

#6 Massive Bribes Will Corrupt Our Judicial System

When there are billions of dollars involved, it is inevitable that some members of the police and some members of the judiciary will take bribes.

Just look at what has happened down in Mexico.  The following is from a recent article in the New York Times….

When you tally it all up, bribery may be the single largest line item on a cartel’s balance sheet. In 2008, President Felipe Calderón’s own drug czar, Noe Ramirez, was charged with accepting $450,000 each month. Presumably, such gargantuan bribes to senior officials cascade down, securing the allegiance of their subordinates. “You have to recruit the high commands, so they can issue the information to lower ranks and order whatever they want,” the corrupt cop, Fierro Méndez, testified. But in key jurisdictions, the cartel most likely makes payments up and down the chain of command. In a 2010 speech, Genaro García Luna, Mexico’s secretary of public security, speculated that together, the cartels spend more than a billion dollars each year just to bribe the municipal police.

What would you do if you were offered a bribe of $450,000 a month?

Don’t assume that Americans are so much more “moral” than the Mexicans are.

#7 Gang Activity Will Continue To Grow In The United States By Leaps And Bounds

Gang activity is absolutely exploding inside the United States.

According to the FBI, there are now 1.4 million gang members involved in the 33,000 different gangs that are active inside the United States.

The number of gang members in America has increased by 40 percent since 2009.

Those stats should be very alarming to all of us.

What are we going to do if gangs keep growing at this rate?

According to federal statistics, gang members are responsible for up to 80 percent of all violent crimes committed in the United States every year.

A very large percentage of these gang members have entered the United States from Mexico, but the federal government refuses to do anything to stop it.

#8 The Decline Of Our Health Care System Will Continue To Accelerate

Illegal immigrants are overwhelming emergency rooms all over the country.  They walk in, receive high quality treatment and often never pay after they leave.

Things have gotten so bad in many areas of the nation that it is causing entire hospitals to go bankrupt and shut down.

In a previous article, I described what unchecked illegal immigration is doing to the health care system in California….

Thanks to illegal immigration, California’s overstretched health care system is on the verge of collapse.  Dozens of California hospitals and emergency rooms have shut down over the last decade because they could not afford to stay open after being endlessly swamped by illegal immigrants who were simply not able to pay for the services that they were receiving.  As a result, the remainder of the health care system in the state of California is now beyond overloaded.  This had led to brutally long waits, diverted ambulances and even unnecessary patient deaths.  Sadly, the state of California now ranks dead last out of all 50 states in the number of emergency rooms per million people.

#9 Legalizing Illegal Immigrants Will Cause A Huge Shift In Voting Patterns

Instead of looking out for the American people, many Democrats support legalizing illegal immigration because it will give the Democratic Party more support at the polls.

This is incredibly selfish and self-serving, but this is the way that the political game is played in 2012.

#10 There Will Be A Flood Of New Illegal Immigrants

Amazingly, far more people move into the United States illegally than come in through the legal immigration process.

As word spreads of the “Obama amnesty”, millions more will come on over.  After all, what would they have to lose?  If they get caught crossing over they will just get nicely sent back and can try again in a few days.

If they make it they can take advantage of all the free goodies here in the United States.  Thanks to Obama, the odds of deportation are now very slim.  And they can often make significantly more money in the “underground economy” in the U.S. than they can back home.

So what is the downside for illegal immigrants?

Where is the pain?

If you do get deported, you can always sneak back in.  Security along the U.S. border with Mexico is a total joke.

Sadly, many politicians on both sides of the border seem very pleased that the United States and Mexico are slowly but surely being integrated through illegal immigration.

In fact, one gets the impression that Barack Obama would be quite pleased if the border between the United States and Mexico were to disappear completely.

Politicians like Barack Obama don’t seem to care about the catastrophic impact that illegal immigration is having on this country.  They are absolutely obsessed with their social and political agendas and they aren’t going to allow a few inconvenient “details” to derail them.

Unfortunately, there is not much hope for significant change any time soon.  Mexico is already a “failed state” and we are freely allowing millions of their bad guys to pour into our country.

In the end, we will pay a very great price for our foolishness.

Source: The American Dream

Rock’s Sympathy for the Devil

It was popularly believed in the 1930s that the legendary bluesman Robert Johnson, who inspired Muddy Waters, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton, sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for his musical gifts. It was believed Johnson had the ‘Evil Eye’ and was murdered because of his alleged power over women. He seduced the wife of a beer hall owner who in revenge laced the musician’s whisky with arsenic. Many moralists saw his fate as a punishment for dealing with the powers of darkness.

Johnson is said to have sold his soul to Old Nick during a midnight ceremony at a crossroads. However, that story did not originate with him. In the 1920s and 1930s there are numerous tales of black musicians and gamblers signing a pact with a mysterious ‘man in black’ at the crossroads. Famous examples are the black singer Clara Smith and Robert Johnson’s namesake Tommy Johnston, a decade before him. The dark stranger has been identified by some writers as either the Christian Devil or the West African trickster god Eshu, worshipped in voodoo and taken to the southern states of America by black slaves.

While there is little evidence of modern pop and rock musicians actually ‘selling their souls’ to the ‘Devil’, the link between popular music and the occult is a strong one. Christian fundamentalists have predictably seen the widespread use of magical and occult symbols in rock music as evidence it is the work of Satan, but the truth is far stranger than their religious fantasies.

Sometimes the alleged connections of famous rock musicians with occultism surfaced in apocryphal showbiz gossip or rumour. For example, everyone knows that ill-fated glam rock star Marc Bolan studied as a sorcerer’s apprentice with a magician in a French chateau (in fact he actually admitted it), that the late pop diva Dusty Springfield allegedly belonged to a satanic group called the Temple of the Prince in Manchester, and that Jim Morrison of The Doors married a Wiccan high priestess (which was true).

Then there was the 1970s British musician Graham Bond, accused by his fellow R & B artist Long John Baldry of sacrificing his pet cat in a magical ritual. Bond told his groupies he was one of the illegitimate sons of the infamous ‘black magician’ Aleister Crowley, and that his musical output was designed to contact “higher forces.” Bond also believed he had been cursed by a fellow occultist. When in 1974 the musician fell in front of a train on the London Underground in mysterious circumstances, many thought the curse had worked.

The Beatles & the Rolling Stones

The Beatles are well known for flirting with Eastern mysticism and transcendental meditation during their psychedelic hippy stage in the late 1960s. They may also have had darker interests. For instance, the Great Beast 666, Aleister Crowley, is featured (top left corner above) in the photomontage of “people we most admire” on the cover of the Fab Four’s famous album Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Antiquarian bookseller and Crowley bibliographer Timothy D’Arch Smith relates how the Beatles attended an exhibition of rare books on witchcraft and the occult he held in Swinging London. Jane Asher, Paul McCartney’s then girlfriend, had suggested the visit to him and, according to D’Arch Smith, encouraged him to buy rare books as an investment.

If the Beatles were mildly interested in the occult, then their main rivals for the pocket money and affection of teenage girls, the Rolling Stones, were definitely involved in a more dramatic way. Despite their respectable middle-class backgrounds, in the Sixties the Stones were deliberately promoted as the ‘bad boys of pop’. It now seems this was a marketing ploy by their then manager Andrew Oldham, and is summed up in the famous newspaper headline, ‘Would you let your daughter marry a Rolling Stone?’ If the parents of Middle England had known about their dabbling in the occult, the answer may have been in the negative.

Lucifer Rising

The so-called ‘satanic’ influence on the Stones was through the avant-garde filmmaker, Luciferian and Tinseltown gossip-queen Kenneth Anger. He had become interested in the band’s career and particularly in guitarist Brian Jones and his girlfriend Anita Pallenberg, a German film actress and model. Jones had some unusual interests, and both he and the pop singer Robert Palmer were fascinated by the master musicians of Joujouka in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco in North Africa. These musicians claimed to be still practising the ancient rites of the goat-footed god Pan. Jones went so far as to travel to North Africa to record an album of the tribal music performed by this pre-Islamic cult.

In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine Robert Palmer described how he had witnessed one of these rites to Pan. He said the dancing tribesmen appeared to be in an ecstatic trance with their eyes rolled back in their heads. Palmer said that when “the power came down” the dancer was suddenly “not there.” In fact “something else” was looking out of his eyes, which began to “glow like ruby lasers” (Rolling Stone, 23 March 1989).

Kenneth Anger believed that Anita Pallenberg and Brian Jones, who was to drown in mysterious circumstances in the swimming pool of his Sussex mansion, were witches. Allegedly, Jones showed the filmmaker an extra nipple he had on his inner thigh and told him: “In another time they would have burned me [as a witch].” Extra nipples were regarded by witch-hunters as a sign of the Devil’s Mark. A friend of Anita Pallenberg, Tony Sanchez, believed she kept her drug stash hidden in an old carved wooden chest in her flat. One day he looked inside. Instead of drugs he found it contained bones and pieces of fur and skin from “strange animals.” Mick Jagger’s one time girlfriend Marianne Faithfull described how she and Pallenberg used to sit for hours reading aloud passages from Robert Graves’ book The White Goddess and studying the ancient Celtic tree alphabet.

In her autobiography Marianne Faithfull claims the gay Anger had a crush on the bisexual Stones’ singer which was not reciprocated. When the filmmaker’s sexual overtures were rejected he became a bit of a nuisance. One day he turned up at the couple’s house in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea and bizarrely threw several books by the 18th century poet and mystic William Blake through the window. Jagger responded in disgust at this stunt by burning all the copies of the occult works that Anger had given him by Crowley and the French occultist Eliphas Levi.

Despite this, Marianne Faithfull got involved in Anger’s experimental movie Lucifer Rising, allegedly financially sponsored by Anita Pallenberg, and with a score originally to be composed by Mick Jagger. Initially the Stones’ singer was to play the leading role in the film, but he got cold feet and backed out of the project altogether. In the first version, made in 1967, the lead was taken by his brother Chris Jagger. Marianne Faithfull became involved in the second version filmed in 1972 and she agreed to take the part of the demon-goddess Lilith.

Faithfull described the baby-slaying Lilith as one of the classic female archetypes and compared her with pagan goddesses such as Diana, Astarte, Ishtar, Aphrodite and Demeter. However, she added: “From the view of patriarchy, of course, she was the pure incarnation of evil” (Faithfull by Marianne Faithfull with David Datton, 224). Interestingly, the part of the ancient Egyptian god Osiris in the film was played by Donald Cammell, son of Charles Cammell, a friend and biographer of Crowley. The younger Cammell made his own films including the controversial Performance in co-operation with Nic Roeg. It starred Mick Jagger, Anita Pallenberg and the archetypal English actor Edward Fox. Donald Cammell committed suicide in the 1990s.

The shooting of Lucifer Rising took place in Egypt and Faithfull claims that as soon as the crew and cast arrived in the country it was obvious Anger did not know what he was doing as either a film director or a magician. At that stage in her life Faithfull was seriously addicted to heroin and admits she did not know what she was doing on the set either. The whole thing was a recipe for disaster. The last sequence of the film was a winter solstice rite shot at a Neolithic site in Germany. During it, Faithfull managed to fall off a mountain. She somersaulted and landed on her feet without sustaining any injury. This convinced her that her magic was stronger than Anger’s. In her autobiography she dismissed him as a “kitsch occultist” and “a witch out of a Hollywood tabloid.”

Marianne Faithfull claims that both Mick Jagger and the Stones’ lead guitarist Keith Richards were also sceptical about Anger’s “satanic hocus-pocus” and did not take any of it seriously. However, after an incident involving the magician at the house in London now shared by Richards and Anita Pallenberg, Faithfull became seriously spooked out. As a result, she believed she was under psychic attack. Allegedly, she wore a clove of garlic around her neck and slept in a circle of lit candles for protection. Whether this paranoid behaviour was connected to her heroin addiction is not known.

One of Marianne Faithfull’s tracks on her comeback album Broken English is called ‘Witches Song’. She dedicates it as “my ode to the wild pagan woman I know and have always around me.” Faithfull says she got the idea for the song after she and Mick Jagger visited an exhibition in Madrid of paintings on the theme of the Witches Sabbath by the Spanish artist Goya. Her autobiography also describes an incident when she and Jagger took LSD before visiting Primrose Hill in North London “where the ancient ley lines are supposed to run” and where modern neo-druids hold their seasonal ceremonies. Under the influence of the acid the couple saw “a great face in the sky” they were convinced was the head of the Celtic giant god Bran. This seems to fit with Faithfull’s professed pagan beliefs. In her autobiography she says she believes not in God the Father, but in the Great Goddess and her consort Pan.

Jimmy Page & Aleister Crowley

In 1969 the satanic aura around the rock mega-group Led Zeppelin reached such a pitch that, in echoes of Robert Johnson, rumours circulated in the Los Angeles music scene that its members had signed a pact in their own blood with the Devil to gain fame.

James Patrick ‘Jimmy’ Page’s well-known interest in the occult fuelled these rumours of the group’s alleged satanic activities. Described by the magazine AllMusic as “one of the all-time most influential, important and versatile [rock] guitarist and songwriters,” Page had been interested in alternative religions since childhood. While a member of the Yardbirds, he had hung out with Brian Jones and Anita Pallenberg at their studio flat in South Kensington. Page has never hidden his interest in Aleister Crowley, and Led Zeppelin’s famous album Rune has a photograph of the Great Beast on its cover. In an interview with Sounds magazine in 1976 Page is quoted as saying that Crowley was “a misunderstood genius of the twentieth-century.”

Jimmy Page purchased as many artefacts and first edition books belonging to Crowley that he could find. In 1969, Kenneth Anger rented Crowley’s old (seriously haunted) house Boleskine on the shores of Loch Ness where he lived in the 1900s for a few months. When it came on the market for sale, Anger suggested to Page he should buy it. This he did and hired an occult artist called Charles Pace to paint suitable atmospheric magical murals in each room. The Led Zeppelin guitarist could be seen driving around the area like a Scottish laird in a Land Rover with a stack of stag’s antlers on the bonnet. Page also visited Sicily and contemplated buying the old villa where Crowley established his ‘Abbey of Thelema’ in the 1920s.

In the early 1970s Page opened an occult bookshop in Kensington called The Equinox. It was done out in a futuristic style with glass bookshelves and display cabinets and chrome steel pillars. Under its auspices, Page published a facsimile of Crowley’s 1904 edition of the medieval grimoire Goetia.

Kenneth Anger approached Jimmy Page and asked him to provide a soundtrack for his ongoing film project Lucifer Rising. Unfortunately, the two men fell out when Page only managed to produce 23 minutes of music and Anger wanted 28 minutes. The filmmaker accused Page of being a mere dabbler in the occult and a drug addict so out of his mind he could not finish the film score. However, in 1976 Page lent Anger the basement of his London house for film editing purposes. Again, the two men did not see eye to eye and Page allegedly cursed the filmmaker. Page later branded the incident as “silly and pathetic” and said he still respected Anger as an occultist.

There has been a lot of debate about whether Jimmy Page ever belonged to one of the modern versions of Crowley’s magical group the OTO (Ordo Templis Orientis or Order of the Eastern Temple). In fact, the jury seems to be out on whether Page is an actual magical practitioner at all. In this respect New Musical Express journalist Nick Kent dismisses rumours the guitarist spends his time with “his head in a cowl ritually slaughtering various species of livestock.” Kent instead says from his experience Page is “just another seeker after esoteric knowledge, a collector of dusty old books, and committed student of the ‘magical’ information that was supposedly contained in their yellowed pages.”

Although Jimmy Page’s interest in Crowley and the occult is well known, his Led Zeppelin colleague Robert Plant also has esoteric interests. These manifest in a study of folklore, Norse and Germanic mythology, and reading ‘sword and sorcery’ novels. Plant spent most of his life living on the Welsh Border and in an interview with the rock music magazine Kerrang! he said he often visited the Black Mountains in South Wales. There he rediscovered his roots in the local Celtic culture. Using an ordnance survey map, he wandered the hills visiting Bronze Age sites and places where the Welsh had battled with the Saxons.

David Bowie

Another famous rock star who openly admits an interest in the occult, magic and Crowley is David Bowie (born David Robert Jones). In the 1970s he says he studied the Kabbalah and “Crowleyism” and more recently became interested in Gnosticism. On a practical level the singer used Tarot cards and a crystal ball for divination, an ouija board to contact spirits, and performed magical rituals for exorcism and psychic protection. His early album Hunky-Dory features a song called ‘Quicksand’ that references both Crowley and the Victorian magical group Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

According to David Bowie’s wife Angie in her autobiography, her husband’s interest in the occult was due to his desire to outdo Jimmy Page. Allegedly, he saw the Led Zeppelin guitarist as a magical rival. Bowie eventually decided, possibly because of Page’s interest in him, that Crowley and his works were “small shit.” For that reason he began studying Tibetan magic which he claimed was far more powerful than anything the Great Beast or Page had ever done.

In an interview with New Musical Express (February 1997) David Bowie admits he had been into “old fashioned magic” in the 1970s, and said he always believed Crowley was a charlatan. He reveals that Arthur Edward Waite, a member of the Order of the Golden Dawn, and the Welsh-born occultist Dion Fortune, author of Psychic Self-Defence, have been important to him. In fact, Bowie used Fortune’s book extensively when he believed he was under psychic attack. Talking of a house he rented in Los Angeles in 1975, Bowie said he decorated it with ancient Egyptian artefacts. This was because, “I had this more than passing interest in Egyptian mysticism and the Kabbalah…” (Stage Fascination: David Bowie the Definite Story by David Buckley, 235).

Angie Bowie says the musician was heavily involved with occult activities in 1975-76. This coincides with a period when he used cocaine and she believed this made him paranoid. Apparently, Bowie stored bottles of his own urine in the fridge and carefully disposed of his nail and hair clippings. This was in case magical practitioners obtained these personal items in order to cast spells on him. He also set up an altar in his sitting room with black candles on it, painted occult symbols on the walls, and performed magical banishing rituals for protection. Angie Bowie once witnessed him exorcise a swimming pool he believed was haunted.

When the couple were viewing properties to rent or buy in Hollywood they came across an old house with a pentagram of five-pointed star painted on the floor. Bowie freaked out and said he could not live there as the building had been used for black magic rites. One day he phoned his wife and told her witches were trying to steal his semen. Allegedly they wanted to create a test-tube baby and then sacrifice it in a satanic rite. It turned out the ‘witches’ were just some innocent groupies he met in a bar.

At this difficult point in his life Bowie also flirted with neo-Nazism. He explained in an interview with the British rock music journalist Tony Parsons in 1993 that this was only because he was fascinated by the use of occult symbols like the swastika by the original Nazi Party in Germany. He was interested in their quest for the Holy Grail because he was also searching for its meaning (Stage Fascination: David Bowie the Definite Story by David Buckley, 235-236). Bowie once said that it might be a good idea to have a fascist dictatorship in Britain, although he later denied he was serious and claimed it was a joke.

Black Sabbath & Heavy Metal

Partly as a reaction to the hippy ‘flower power’ and ‘peace and love’ movement of the late Sixties, heavy metal bands began to appear using violent satanic imagery and playing loud over-amplified rock music. Groups such as Warlock, Saxon, Venom, Motley Crue, W.A.S.P., Slayer, Iron Maiden, Incubus and Bathory put out albums with covers decorated with human skulls, pentagrams, hooded figures, gravestones, goat-headed demons and vampires. One of the most famous and pioneering heavy metal bands Black Sabbath came out of Birmingham in the industrial Midlands of England in 1969. They combined heavy guitar riffs with satanic inspired lyrics and an obsession with the gothic dark side that soon gave them a dedicated, if rather odd, fan base.

The band’s distinctive name was taken from an old horror movie starring English actor Boris Karloff, famous for his movie interpretation of Dr. Frankenstien’s monster. Originally, Black Sabbath started out as a jazz-blues band until they became influenced by the ‘black magic’ novels of the thriller writer Dennis Wheatley and books by Aleister Crowley. Their leader ‘Geezer’ Butler was lent a 16th century grimoire or book of magic. Its contents so freaked him out that he locked it in a cupboard before going to bed. During the night he had a spectral visitation from a dark shadowy figure who stood at the end of his bed. In the morning when Butler opened the cupboard the grimoire had vanished and it was never seen again.

Butler claims the band was invited to play a gig at a Witches Sabbath at Stonehenge, which sounds like something out of a Dennis Wheatley novel. When the boys refused the chief “warlock” of the coven ritually cursed the band. Geezer says he consulted a “white witch” to get the curse lifted and was told the band had to wear crosses to ward off the evil forces directed at them. Apparently, lead singer Ozzy Osbourne’s father, who was a bit of a handyman, made the crosses for each of the band members to wear.

Ozzy Osbourne always denies he was seriously into the occult, although he did have his Tarot cards read – twice. Famously he said the only evil spirits that interest him are whisky, gin and vodka! He describes the strange people attracted to the band, who habitually wear white face make-up and black hooded robes, as “freaks.” Ozzy says the only good thing about all the satanic stuff is it gave the band free publicity increasing their record sales and bank accounts.

Some of the heavy metal bands took their interest in witchcraft and magic more seriously. One of these, for a while, was Black Widow who played a mixture of progressive rock and folk music and used demonic imagery in their act based on serious research. In 1968 the group’s manager approached Maxine and Alex Sanders, the so-called ‘King and Queen of the Witches’. He wanted to know if the couple could recommend a nubile young witch with dancing skills to take part in their new stage act. This featured a magician played by one of the band’s members conjuring up a demon who was once an ancient goddess called Ashtaroth.

Several professional dancers auditioned for the part of the demon-goddess. Each one suffered fainting fits during rehearsals and felt they were being possessed by an evil spirit. In desperation the band wanted to hire a real witch who would not be fazed by the magical goings-on. Black Widow’s manager said the Sanders were happy to help and he described them as “clever business people” only interested in making money in any way they could.

A member of the Sanders’ coven volunteered for the role and the rehearsals were successful. Unfortunately, on the day of the first performance at the Lyceum Theatre in London, she fell ill. Alex Sanders volunteered his wife and the high priestess of the coven Maxine as a suitable stand-in. When the lead singer of Black Widow playing the sorcerer invoked the demon-goddess and accidentally stepped out of the protective magical circle, she was supposed to attack him. In her autobiography Maxine Sanders says the singer complained afterwards about the bruises he suffered from the physical assault by the ‘Queen of the Witches’.

Danny Carey

Another more contemporary band called Tool and its lead singer Danny Carey are well known for their interest in all things magical. Carey collects rare limited edition publications by such modern occult practitioners as Crowley, Kenneth Grant, Austin Osman Spare and Andrew D. Chumbley. During their recordings of albums, Tool use magical banishing rituals to get rid of unwelcome influences left in the studio by previous performers. They have also been known to employ talismans and occult sigils used by the Elizabethan magician and astrologer Dr. John Dee in their gigs. During a South American tour, local Christian workers refused to handle the band’s equipment because it was “satanic.”

The 1990s saw a sinister link established between rock music and Satanism with the rise of the so-called ‘black metal’ or ‘death metal’ groups. These new bands were committed to an anti-Christian philosophy of anarchism, nihilism, violence and an obsession with death that made Black Sabbath stage appearances look like a vicar’s tea party. Possibly the most dramatic and violent manifestation of this new trend was in Scandinavia. A new cultural trend united satanic beliefs with atavistic forms of neo-paganism and extreme nationalist right-wing politics promoting racism and white supremacy. This deadly combination was to lead to arson and murder.

In 1992 an ancient wooden stave church was burnt down in a firebomb attack. Rumours began circulating that hard-core black metal fans were responsible for the outrage. It was alleged they were pagan Viking revivalists who expressed neo-Nazi views. Further church burnings and graveyard desecrations took place followed by murders involving rival groups of black metal fans and biker gangs. Media reports said that self-styled teenage satanists saw neo-Nazism and rock music as cultural stepping stones to a revival of Aryan-based paganism. Because the historic Christian churches were built on the site of pagan temples, they had to be destroyed before the heathen ‘old religion’ could be established again.

Today the number of rock bands using satanic and occult imagery is increasing. The new ‘high priest’ of the Church of Satan in the USA, Boyd Rice, is himself a musician. Critics have dubbed his musical output as “sonic terrorism as an art form.” Strangely enough, his satanic master, Anton LaVey, who found the Church of Satan in the 1960s, preferred Gershwin and Cole Porter with his bedtime cocoa.

It seems certain that in the future wherever and however rock music is played, there will always be those who claim, quite literally, the Devil has the best tunes.

Bibliography

Heavy Metal Thunder by Neil Aldis and James Sherry, Mitchell Beazley, 2006

Backstage Passes: Life on the Wild Side with David Bowie by Angie Bowie and Patrick Carr, Orion, 1993

Stage Fascination: David Bowie the Definite Story by David Buckley, Virgin Books, 1999

Robert Plant: Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Page & the Solo Years by Neil Daniels, Independent Music Press, 2008

The Lives of John Lennon and the Beatles by Hunter Davies, McGraw Hill Books USA, 1985

Hammer of the Gods: Led Zeppelin Unauthorised by Stephen Davies, Pan Books, 1995

The Book of the Beast by Timothy D’Arch-Smith, Mandrake Press 2010

Faithfull by Marianne Faithfull with David Datton, Michael Joseph, 1994

No One Gets Out of Here Alive: Jim Morrison and the Doors by Danny Hopkins and Sugarman, Warner Books USA, 1980

Apathy for the Devil: A 1970’s Memoir by Nick Kent, Faber and Faber Limited, 2010

I Am Ozzy by Ozzie Osbourne with Chris Agnes, Sphere, 2009

Firechild: The Life and Magic of Maxine Sanders ‘Witch Queen’ by Maxine Sanders, Mandrake Press, 2008

Bowie: Loving the Alien by Christopher Sandford, Little, Brown and Company, 1996

When Giants Walked the Earth: A Biography of Led Zeppelin by Mick Wall, Orion Books, 2008

Led Zeppelin: From Early Days to Page and Plant by Ritchie Yorke, Virgin Books, 1999.

MICHAEL HOWARD became interested in the connections between rock music and the occult while working for a major record company in London in the 1970s. He is the author ofSecret Societies (Destiny Books, 2009) and Modern Wicca: from Gerald Gardner to the Present (Llewellyn, USA 2010). He can be contacted by email at mike@the-cauldron.fsnet.co.uk.

Source: New Dawn

1.4 MILLION Gang Members And More Pour Into The United States Every Single Day

A vast army of heavily armed criminals has embedded itself in every major city in the United States.  In fact, nearly every community in America is now affected by these thugs.  Drugs, theft and brutal violence are all part of the every day lifestyle of the members of this army.  They aggressively recruit our young people and floods of illegal immigrants are joining their ranks.  Once civil unrest erupts in America, they will go on a crime spree that will be absolutely unprecedented and they will burn large areas of some U.S. cities to the ground.  So who am I talking about?  I am talking about the rapidly growing gangs that are terrorizing cities all over the nation.  The FBI tells us that there are now 1.4 million gang members involved in the 33,000 different gangs that are active inside the United States.  The number of gang members in the U.S. has increased by 40 percent since 2009.  Just think about that.  That is absolutely astounding.  Just since 2009, the number of gang members has increased by 40 percent.  The FBI says that 48 percent of all violent crime in this country can be directly traced to gangs and that this is a national crisis that is progressively getting worse.  Unfortunately, the federal government refuses to secure our borders and is allowing new waves of illegal immigrants to enter the United States every single day.  A substantial number of those illegal immigrants end up involved in these gangs.  Yet the federal government just stands by and allows it to keep happening.  One day, the foolishness of this policy will be evident to all.

In many areas of America today, families live behind windows that have bars on them and they won’t ever go out at night because it is just too dangerous.  There are some communities that have pretty much been entirely taken over by the gangs, but instead of addressing the problem the federal government continues to spend a massive amount of resources checking out what might be in our underwear at U.S. airports.

Meanwhile, criminal gangs are thriving.  They are becoming incredibly powerful and increasingly sophisticated.  The following is from an FBI press release….

Gangs are increasingly engaging in non-traditional gang-related crime such as alien smuggling, human trafficking, and prostitution. Gangs are also engaging in white-collar crime such as counterfeiting, identity theft, and mortgage fraud.

You can find much more background information about gang activity in the United States from the FBI right here.

You have probably heard of some of the largest of these gangs.

For example, the 18th Street Gang is the largest gang in the state of California.  It is said that they have 15,000 members in California alone, and that on average they are responsible for at least one major crime in Los Angeles County every single day.

It has been reported that police in Los Angeles are extremely hesitant to ever venture into the areas most heavily controlled by the 18th Street gang.  They are absolutely brutal and they do not back down to anyone.  The following is whatWikipedia has to say about the 18th Street Gang….

A US Justice Department report from 2009 estimates that the 18th Street gang has a membership of some 30,000 to 50,000 with 80% of them being illegal aliens from Mexico and Central America and is active in 44 cities in 20 states. Its main source of income is street-level distribution of cocaine and marijuana and, to a lesser extent, heroin and methamphetamine. Gang members also commit assault, auto theft, carjacking, drive-by shootings, extortion, homicide, identification fraud, and robbery.

Another very prominent gang that you may have heard of is the Latin Kings.  It is reported that they have 18,000 members in the city of Chicago alone.  They are believed to be the largest Hispanic gang in the entire nation.

One of the gangs that has law enforcement authorities the most concerned is MS-13.  There are chapters of MS-13 in 42 states now, and if you cross a member of MS-13 there is a good chance that you will lose a limb or be hacked to death with a machete.

This tough economic environment has made it even easier for these gangs to recruit new members.  Today, there are way too many young people sitting around with nothing to do.

Back in the year 2000, more than 50 percent of all Americans teens had a job.  This past summer, only 29.6% of all American teens had a job.

When you have lots of teens and young adults sitting around with nothing but time on their hands, bad things are prone to happen.

As the family unit continues to decline in America, young people are looking for a sense of belonging.  For many youths, a gang becomes a new “family” for them.

But unfortunately, these new “families” do not exactly teach “family values”.  Instead, they teach our young people about how to be brutal and violent.

And we are seeing evidence of this out on the streets every single day.  For example, a group of 6 young thugs recently attacked a 64-year-old Vietnam veteran in Philadelphia and beat him up so badly that he almost died….

Kate Schaefer, the victim’s wife, told Eyewitness News, ‘They just smashed every bone in his face. I can’t tell you the words. I guess I was just happy that he was alive.’

During 2011, we saw a large increase in “group crime” behavior.  Some of the incidents have been absolutely horrific.  For example, the following is how one local ABC News affiliate described the “flash mob” attacks that took place at the Wisconsin state fair earlier this year….

Milwaukee police said that around 11:10 p.m., squads were sent to the area for reports of battery, fighting and property damage being caused by an unruly crowd of “hundreds” of people. One officer described it as a “mob beating.”

Police said the group of young people attacked fair goers who were leaving the fair grounds. Police said that some victims were attacked while walking. They said others were pulled out of cars and off of motorcycles before being beaten.

Can you imagine taking your kids to the state fair and having them witness that?

But this is just the beginning.

These gangs are becoming very organized and they are becoming very heavily armed.

The FBI says that rifles, machine guns, grenades and even artillery rounds are being found in the possession of gangs more frequently than ever.

Some examples of this were recently posted on military.com.  These gangs seem to have a particular affection for AK-47s….

In late July, 27 AK-47s were stolen from a Fort Irwin warehouse, officials said. Those close to the case, who would speak only under the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the subject, said investigators believe gang members were involved in the theft.

Sadly, that same article noted that members of the U.S. military have even been arrested for trying to sell weapons to these gangs….

In November 2010, three former Marines were arrested in Los Angeles for selling assault weapons to members of the violent street gang, Florencia 13, according to the NGIC report. That same month, a Navy Seal from San Diego and two others were arrested in Colorado for smuggling about 18 military-issued machine guns from Iraq and Afghanistan to be sold and shipped to buyers in Mexico.

Those that want to steal guns are becoming increasingly bold.  For example, 21 machine guns were stolen a while back right out of an LAPD training facility.

Down in Miami, thieves have become so bold that they have actually beenbreaking into parked police cruisers and stealing guns and ammo out of them.

When people are stealing guns directly from the police, that is a sign that it is very late in the game.

Our politicians spend so much time talking about the violence in Afghanistan and Iraq, but the truth is that the area right along the U.S./Mexico border is far more dangerous.

Just check out the following information from CNSNews.com….

According to the Mexican government, from January through September 2011 2,276 deaths were recorded in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, which borders Texas and New Mexico.

A Nov. 2011 Congressional Research Service (CRS) reportstates that over nearly the same period – January through October 2011 – 2,177 civilians were killed in Afghanistan, where a U.S.-led war against the Taliban is underway. It did not provide a breakdown of responsibility for that period, but said that in 2010, 75 percent of civilian deaths were attributed to the Taliban and other “anti-government elements.”

Per capita, a person was at least nine times more likely to be murdered in Chihuahua last year than in Afghanistan.

Many of the areas along our border with Mexico are open war zones.

But do we hear about this much in the mainstream media?

Of course not.

Just across the U.S. border lies the city of Juarez, Mexico.  Juarez is considered to be one of the most dangerous cities on the entire planet because of the brutal drug war being waged there. In fact, Juarez is the murder capital of the western hemisphere.

But most Americans have never even heard of Juarez.

Complete and total chaos reigns in vast areas of northern Mexico, and yet most Americans don’t even realize that there is a problem.

Overall, more than 35,000 people have been killed since the Mexican government declared war on the drug cartels back in 2006.

You would think that would warrant some significant news coverage.

But no, the mainstream media can’t talk much about that because then the people might actually start demanding that we secure our borders.

Amazingly, instead of securing our borders the Obama administration has been busy sending guns down to the drug cartels in Mexico.

That is what this whole “Fast and Furious” scandal is all about.  As I have written about previously, ATF agents purposely allowed thousands of guns to be sold to individuals that they believed would get them into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.

But so far, nobody in the Obama administration has been held accountable for this.

During 2009 and 2010, 70 percent of the 30,000 guns that were recovered by authorities in Mexico were determined to have come from inside the United States.

That is a major problem.

These Mexican drug cartels and the gangs that work with them have become very heavily armed and they have become very bold.

It has been reported that Mexican drug cartels are now openly conducting military operations inside the United States. Scouts for the cartels maintain strategic lookout bases in the hills of southern Arizona, and the federal government has even put up signs that warn tourists to say out of certain areas.  The cartels very much try to avoid any confrontations with our border patrol or with our local police, but once they are approached they are not afraid to open fire.

One very frustrated border patrol agent told Fox News the following about what is going on in his area….

“To say that this area is out of control is an understatement.”

So how in the world can the federal government allow this to go on?

Well, a big part of it is that Barack Obama does not want to do anything that could scare away his Hispanic voters.

In fact, he is doing just about everything that he can to portray himself as “Hispanic-friendly”.

A few months ago, I wrote about how the Obama administration has announced that there will now be a case-by-case review of all deportation cases involving illegal immigrants.  Those involving “criminals” will be prioritized and almost all the rest will be thrown out.

Yes, you read that correctly.

If you are an illegal immigrant and you have not been convicted of a crime that means that you almost certainly get to stay in this country.

So that is basically a big green light for even larger waves of illegal immigrants to enter this country.

That means that the ranks of the gangs will swell even more.

The chaotic drug war that is going on in northern Mexico has spread into many areas of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.  With each passing day, the gangs that are embedded in all of our major cities are getting stronger.  They are a ticking time bomb that eventually will go off.

One day, when mass civil unrest erupts in the United States, the gangs will have a field day.  Given the opportunity, most gangs will gleefully indulge in brutal violence, looting, arson, rape and mindless property destruction.

Sadly, this all could have been avoided.

Instead of strip-searching old women at airports, this is what we should have been dedicating our law enforcement resources to.

Instead of spending billions of dollars spying on the American people, the federal government should have spent billions of dollars on securing our borders.

Unfortunately, we made the wrong choices as a nation and so now we are going to pay the price.

Source: The American Dream

10 Ways The War On Drugs Is A Wild Success

For all the evidence of how the War on Drugs has failed society, there’s equally as much evidence of how it is a great success to those who continue to support it.  The drug war has many advantages if you wish to control society and expand your empire.  It also enriches several industries that would otherwise have a very difficult time staying solvent without it.

Here are ten ways the War on Drugs is a wild success:

Military-Industrial Profits: As the Vietnam War came to an end, it struck fear into the military-industrial machine that enjoyed great profits from that conflict.  In a world where contrived enemies were needed to keep a constant funding of weapons, Richard Nixon declared drugs “Public Enemy Number 1″.  Thus, domestic armies were erected to combat the illegal drug trade, delivering consistent cash flow to weapons manufacturers.  These companies make money, not just from the needs of the DEA, border patrol, and local police forces, but also from drug traffickers. Win-win and profits all around.

Huge Boon to Private Prisons: The private prison industry thrives off long sentences for drug offenders.  At least 25% of their profits come from these nonviolent criminals.  A great number more are held on “drug related” charges that may have resulted in drug violence.  However, the current trend shows that three-quarters of new inmates admitted to state prisons are nonviolent offenders. Private prisons clearly depend on arresting pot smokers and addicts of more severe drugs.

Prevents Higher Unemployment Rates: Imagine if the millions of American currently jailed on drug charges were released into a job market already suffering from real unemployment numbers over 20%.  Additionally, if it wasn’t for drugs being illegal, countless people like DEA agents, court staff, prison guards, parole officers, drug dealers, etc would otherwise be unemployed.  Thank goodness for the war on drugs, or the U.S. economy would look even worse.

Suppresses Minority Populations: It’s often said that the drug war is a war on minorities: “According to the ACLU, African Americans make up an estimated 15% of drug users, but they account for 37% of those arrested on drug charges, 59% of those convicted and 74% of all drug offenders sentenced to prison. Or consider this: The U.S. has 260,000 people in state prisons on nonviolent drug charges; 183,200 (more than 70%) of them are black or Latino.”  So it is a huge success for those who wish to suppress minority populations.

Drives Up Prices: Making any substance illegal will result in much higher prices than a free market would dictate.  Especially when there’s a high demand for that substance.  In the case of the cannabis plant, which grows like a weed and requires very little value added, the dried flower would virtually be free if it wasn’t for the harsh restrictions and dangers involved in producing and distributing it. These high prices are terrific for drug dealers and even medical marijuana growers opposed legalization in California because it threatened their profits.

Drug Violence Justifies Tough Gun Laws: The violence generated from the prohibition of drugs is reminiscent of the extreme mob violence during the prohibition of alcohol. Prohibition of anything will always create black markets which require firearms to protect banned products.  Recently, the U.S. government itself was caught red-handed supplying guns to Mexican drug cartels in their “Fast and Furious” scandal.  It’s now proven that the ATF plotted to use Fast and Furious to push for new gun control regulations.  Indeed, most street violence is due to turf wars over the drug trade, and tougher gun laws are proposed as the war escalates. It’s wonderful for those who blame violence on guns and wish to restrict them from law-abiding citizens.

Protects Big Pharma Monopolies: No one is happier about the war on drugs than Big Pharma.  Their control over the FDA and monopoly of “controlled substances” would be threatened if all drugs were legalized.  They want you addicted to their FDA-approved versions of heroin and cocaine, not something you can get on the black market.  In turn, they also benefit greatly when the prices of street drugs increase, as they can then inflate the cost of their products.  They love the drug war so much they’ve lobbied to extend it to vitamins and supplements.

Allows Proxy Armies: If you want to create an empire by force, but it’s politically disadvantageous to base your army in certain countries, then the global war on drugs is your ticket to supplying troops or creating proxy armies. One of the most recent examples is Costa Rica, a peaceful country in Central America without an army, where the U.S. bribed the government to allow the Navy and Marines to be stationed off the Caribbean coast to fight the war on drugs.  In other nations where even this won’t be allowed, the CIA funds and arms one of the drug cartels who then act as their hired enforcers, or they’re used as an excuse for governments to accept U.S. help to combat the enemy they created.  In either case, the U.S. sells more arms and trains soldiers to be used upon command.

Keeps Big Banks Flush with Cash:  It has long been known that big banks happily launder money for the big drug cartels. According to The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), “Up to 1.5 trillion dollars in drug money are laundered through legal enterprises, accounting for 5% of global GDP.” Take just this year and one bank, Wachovia; who had to pay a slap-on-the-wrist fine for laundering more than $420 billion for Mexican drug cartels.  Imagine where the big banks would be without this money, given that they also needed a bailout of over $23 trillionfor lack of sufficient deposits to pay for their gambling habits.

Funds CIA Black Ops: Do you ever wonder where the U.S. government gets all that money for their secret “Black Ops” like underground bases, secret wars, corporate takeovers and seed money, etc?  It’s been proven over and over that the CIA (and Pentagon) controls a large majority of the illicit drug trade either directly or indirectly through proxies mentioned above.  They’ve been caught in the act of shipping in massive amounts of cocaine, while the CIA now openly admits to protecting and facilitating the opium trade in Afghanistan.  If it wasn’t for this tremendous profit, the CIA would not be able to build their secret shadow government.

So, as you can see, there are great benefits to the War on Drugs depending what side of the coin you’re on.  If you’re a poor pot smoker, well, you’re out of luck.  But if you’re the biggest heroin and cocaine dealer in the world and desire a monopoly . . . well, you’ve got the world right where you want it.

Source: Activist Post

The Fed Wants You To Beg For QE3

The psychological effects of the Dow are undeniable. When the average investor or even consumer sees green, life is good, even if every other indicator in the economy clearly says otherwise. For the common Dow lemming, “green” supplants reason, mathematics, instinct, and blatant logic. If mushroom clouds came in that particular shade of bull market green, nuclear holocaust would be welcomed with beers, barbeque, and jubilee. Green in the Dollar Index is no different. Many market joyriders and MSM parrots decree victory for Team Dollar without even a remedial understanding of the implications of dollar strength being measured against multiple faltering currencies across the globe. Just because the Euro, for instance, is nearly as superfluous as the greenback, this does not mean the dollar is a stable or healthy currency by default. They are BOTH screwed. But hey, as long as that little ticker points up, all is right with the world……right?

Red is the ultimate party stopper. Red makes Americans pause and reflect. It makes them question their economic sensibilities, their political loyalties, their futures, perhaps even their choice of marriage partners or favorite football team. The sight of red in the Dow brings to mind thoughts of recession, depression, collapse. At bottom, red makes our government and the people charged with safeguarding U.S. financial good-time-tootie-fruitiness look bad. Red?!Red?! Vote the bums out!

Given this American predisposition to ignore all other indicators except the Dow and sometimes the DXY, you can imagine why the private Federal Reserve in tandem with the U.S. Treasury has focused so much of their attention on stimulus measures designed to keep these two indexes predominantly in the green since the derivatives crash of 2008. They have done this through direct and indirect injections of fiat into market systems which have acted as a buffer; multiple yet temporary patches in the hull of a scattershot ship on the verge of being swallowed by the voracious waters of the briny deep. The problem is, after over three years of this activity, the opiate of fiat is starting to lose its euphoric aftertaste. Like some dirty track-marked heroin fiend, the U.S. economy is now nervously scratching its rancid fiscal sores and screaming for more of that sweet sweet fiat juice. The more we get, the more we need later down the road to satisfy our dependency.

Obviously, QE1 and QE2 accomplished nothing. The bailouts and TARP accomplished nothing.The ongoing U.S. bailouts of the EU at the American people’s expense continue to accomplish nothing. All we have received for trillions upon trillions of inflationary dollars created has been a few years of static 20% real unemployment, higher food and energy prices, an endlessly imploding housing market, virtually bankrupt states and municipalities, and the first ever downgrade of the U.S. credit rating in history. Oh….and a wonderfully fake bull run in the Dow, which I suppose, makes up for all the previously listed annoyances, at least, until recently…

In past articles, I have often pointed out that if the investment community EVER caught even the slightest inkling that the Fed might end stimulus measures and let the markets stand on their own, they would jump ship and the Dow would collapse back to levels seen in 2008 or worse.Well, with the highly inconclusive and vaporous announcement of “Operation Twist”, a program designed to sell short term treasuries in exchange for long term treasuries (???), the Fed sent just such a message. One might wonder, especially after the U.S. lost its AAA credit rating, why the Fed would bother to hesitate to announce QE3 and keep the markets plugging away?They’ve never had any qualms about revving up the printing presses before, so why change posture now?

Answer: Sometimes there is advantage in allowing the markets to bleed red too. Here are some reasons why…

Stimulus Ignoramus: Though most Americans now understand the basics of bailouts and quantitative easing, including many of the risks, most still think that these programs are somehow limited, or exclusive. In reality, there is no QE1, QE2, TARP, etc. These are not separate stimulus efforts that actually started and concluded independent of one another. They are all a part of one long fiat injection into our economy that never ended. The insanity is that a large percentage of investors actually believe that because Bernanke did not yet announce QE3, there is no stimulus going on today! The Fed is ALWAYS creating fiat. Some of it is reported, most of it is not. Ask yourself this: Are interest rates still at near zero? If the answer is yes, then the fiat still flows. The Fed has allowed the public to assume that injections have ceased even though they most certainly have not.

Stimulus Impotent: Even before the S&P downgrade, the markets had begun to strain and tremble. In any Keynesian inflationary effort on the part of government, there comes a point at which the force of debt and the force of fiat reach a climactic peak. From then on, even the illusion of stability becomes impossible, and both centers of gravity tear upon one another and spiral out of control. The Fed knew full well this point had been reached, and so, reversed its rhetoric to give the impression that it was stepping back. Actually, the markets will deteriorate despite any Fed intervention from now on. Stimulus at this juncture will only serve to keep the government functional through treasury purchases while the rest of the system collapses. This is what happened in Weimar, Argentina, and to some extent Russia after the Soviet breakdown.Cleverly, the Federal Reserve covered its own tracks by making it appear that the inevitable Dow disintegration was somehow caused by the lack of QE.

Deflation Cheerleaders Return: Like mythical mucous addled hobgoblins drawn to the cries of helpless newborns, rabid deflationists have oozed back out of the muck after a long hibernation in response to the current Dow descent to proclaim yet again that the dollar is “too strong”, and that even more printing is called for. As stated, they fail to understand the nature of the Fed, and the fact that stimulus is always ongoing. Simultaneously, they actually serve Fed interests, whether they know it or not, by promoting even more dollar devaluation as “practical”. For some reason, many deflationists have adopted the strange and unsupported assumption that debt somehow “cancels out” overt currency creation. This is simply not so. Yes, fiat dollars can be used to pay off a debt, but those dollars do not suddenly disappear after they have entered the system. They stay, and circulate, and collect, like mold, or a beard of bees. Neither is pleasant to clean up. Hyperinflation of the money supply is not only possible during unregulated stimulus of a highly indebted system, it is a sine qua non. In America’s immediate circumstance, the likelihood of stagflation is high. This process combines the worst elements of deflation and hyperinflation into a single, enormous, and incredibly painful boot in the ass. Deflationary purists will feel the sting soon enough…

Dollar Primacy Nostalgia: While much of the rest of the world is slowly but surely walking away from the dollar and dollar denominated assets, many American investors still cling to the old days, when sour markets meant a dash for the greenback safe haven. Could the dollar index reach as high as 77 or 78 in the course of the next four weeks? Absolutely. Does this make the dollar a legitimate safe haven? No. The secret of the dollar index magic trick is rooted in how it is calculated; using comparisons to world currencies that are also in dire straights. As multiple currencies fall WITH the dollar, they make the dollar index appear as if it remains stable, or even superior. On top of this, we still have a very active Fed printing to prop up treasuries, which also artificially strengthens dollar sentiment, at least until other countries which own our debt begin to dump it completely.

Trade War Blitzkrieg: Last Tuesday, U.S. representatives sought trade restrictions against China in poultry markets, which might not seem like much, but the move, in my view, was to test the waters for even further confrontation with China. A crumbling Dow has the advantage of adding pressure to the renewed issue of economic warfare. A trade war is the perfect trigger for a treasury and dollar dump by China, which is on the cusp of taking such action anyway because of the violent nature of inflation within its own borders. After several failed attempts to soften inflation by raising bank reserve requirements, the only option left to the Chinese now is a sharp valuation of the Yuan to increase the buying power of the citizenry. This kind of valuation is most easily achieved by a dumping of their vast dollar holdings, a steep devaluation in the dollar, leading to rapid foreign capital redirection into the Yuan. China denies they would take such action, though they have openly admitted the possibility. Don’t buy it. If price inflation continues at similar levels, the Chinese will have no other choice but to take extreme action.

Thinning The Commodities Herd: Its funny, but every time there is a pullback in commodities like gold and silver, the same people come out of the woodwork to announce the death of precious metals. Metals then, of course, make an astonishing comeback despite all odds, and these men disappear again into their respective hovels. The reason they always get it wrong is simple; they are incapable of looking at the big picture, and few, if any, have memories that go past last week. Firstly, in an economy at the edge of utter disaster, commodities are invariably erratic. Expect to see 10% swings in gold and silver up or down CONSTANTLY from here on out. This is not unusual. It is normal considering the circumstances. Another element that is unfortunately deeply ingrained is the ETF markets, which are entirely fraudulent, and not representative of true physical metals values. However, lets get some perspective here; during the 2008 Dow drop, silver hit lows between $11 and $13. Today, even after a severe drop, it hovers near $30. There is a big difference, and that difference is due to dollar devaluation.Weak hands will buckle. The cheap silver and gold will be snapped up by smarter buyers (Asian investors and central banks, most likely), metals will climb back to the mid thirties, QE3 will be announced (eventually), and from there, the sky is literally the limit. In the meantime, the Fed has just deprived a few more people of their sound money. Silver at $30? Gold at $1600?That’s called a buying opportunity, folks, not a last chance to sell.

Fear Makes The Heart Grow Fonder?

Resistance to Fed liquidity measures has been substantial. Three years ago, no one knew what the Federal Reserve was, or even cared. Today, most of America is at least aware of its existence and not enamored of its purpose. The latest downturn in markets, as well as seeming Fed indecision, I believe, not only signals the next aggressive leg down in the ongoing collapse of the U.S. economy, but also a very deliberate strategy on the part of our central banking elite to drive the public towards a consensus desire for further intervention. That is to say, the Fed wants us to beg for more QE, instead of fighting against it.

There is quite a bit of practicality to this tactic. If we demand stimulus measures out of fear just to slow the Dow hemorrhaging, then the Fed is able to deflect most of the blame when such measures eventually go awry. The American people become the cause of dollar destruction, instead of the Fed, and this blame will permeate into international opinions and world views.Make no mistake, QE3 is the end of the line, and it will be announced, or at least quietly enacted. At this time, our government is operating upon the fumes of Fed fiat, and nothing more. Without it, the lights go out. The only tool that exists, or ever existed for the government to influence the appearance of the economy is fiat creation through the Fed. Whether we ask for it or not, this tool will be utilized. They would just prefer that we went along with the program willingly…

We cannot forget that the Fed is a haven for open proponents of globalism. The eventual goal of central banks has always revolved around a weakening of the U.S. system for the sake of “harmonization”. This project ends with the debasement of the dollar and the loss of its world reserve status to a basket of currencies represented by the IMF’s SDR. For this end to be reached, the Fed MUST continue liquidity measures like QE. We don’t need to ask for it, nor should we ask for it. They will certainly pursue QE3 regardless. The trick to winning this game is in refusing to participate, or at least, refusing to play by their rules.

Source: Brandon Smith | Alt-Market

War On Terror Or War On Freedom?

A recent major investigative report by the Los Angeles Times sheds light on what all this “war on terror” is actually costing–and actually accomplishing. According to the report, “A decade after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, federal and state governments are spending about $75 billion a year on domestic security, setting up sophisticated radio networks, upgrading emergency medical response equipment, installing surveillance cameras and bombproof walls, and outfitting airport screeners to detect an ever-evolving list of mobile explosives.

“But how effective has that 10-year spending spree been?

“‘The number of people worldwide who are killed by Muslim-type terrorists, Al Qaeda wannabes, is maybe a few hundred outside of war zones. It’s basically the same number of people who die drowning in the bathtub each year,’ said John Mueller, an Ohio State University professor who has written extensively about the balance between threat and expenditures in fighting terrorism.”

The LA Times report goes on to say, “Like the military-industrial complex that became a permanent and powerful part of the American landscape during the Cold War, the vast network of Homeland Security spyware, concrete barricades and high-tech identity screening is here to stay. The Department of Homeland Security, a collection of agencies ranging from border control to airport security sewn quickly together after Sept. 11, is the third-largest Cabinet department and–with almost no lawmaker willing to render the U.S. less prepared for a terrorist attack–one of those least to fall victim to budget cuts.

“The expensive and time-consuming screening now routine for passengers at airport boarding gates has detected plenty of knives, loaded guns and other contraband, but it has never identified a terrorist who was about to board a plane. Only 14 Americans have died in about three dozen instances of Islamic extremist terrorist plots targeted at the U.S. outside war zones since 2001–most of them involving one or two home-grown plotters.”

The report also notes, “Large sums of Homeland Security money, critics complain, have been propelled by pork barrel politics into the backyards of the congressionally connected.”

See the LA Times report at:

http://tinyurl.com/3u3olzx

Add to the LA Times report a report by Madison Ruppert. In the report, Ruppert notes that it is clearly the Bill of Rights–especially the First Amendment’s freedom of speech and the Second Amendment’s right to keep and bear arms–that are suffering the most egregious attacks from the federal government’s “war on terror.”

Ruppert concludes his report saying, “In short, despite the fact that all the statistics and data in the world directly contradict the report’s findings and the claims made by clearly biased ‘experts’ on the threat of terrorism, especially of the homegrown variety, the HSPI [Homeland Security Policy Institute] and other bodies continue to fearmonger and lie to the American people to keep us scared while they empty our pockets and continue their imperialistic adventures in the Middle East and now North Africa.”

See Ruppert’s column at:

http://blacklistednews.com/?news_id=15638&print=1

Back to the Times report, not only do we Americans have about an equal chance of dying at the hands of a terrorist as we do dying in our own bathtubs, we have a much greater risk of dying at the hands of prescription drugs–something lawfully encouraged and tightly controlled by the US government. According to a recent report, more people now die each year from prescription drugs than from automobile accidents. That’s some 37,000 deaths via prescription drugs annually! (Come to think of it, how many people do you know who have died from marijuana?) And as hard as it will be for some people to accept, this number is gigantically greater than those who die from hard drugs such as heroin or crack cocaine. In fact, the prescription drug Vicodin, by itself, has killed more people than cocaine and heroin combined.

See the report on prescription drug deaths at:

http://tinyurl.com/6eh8bw3

So, what has this trillion-dollar “war on terror” accomplished? If it’s not making us more secure, what is it doing? Well, for one thing, it has created a stupendous surveillance society. Virtually every piece of public communication is now captured and stored by the federal government. Surveillance cameras are now ubiquitous throughout the United States. We have a gargantuan federal police department (which is anathema to the US Constitution): the Department of Homeland Security. We have thousands of Orwellian laws, most of which were spawned by the Patriot Act. And more and more often, law enforcement agencies are demonizing US citizens for their religious and political beliefs and statements–even categorizing them as potential domestic terrorists based simply on those religious and political beliefs.

To refresh reader’s minds regarding how Americans have been labeled, profiled, and denigrated as “terrorists” because of their religious or political beliefs, please peruse the material on this web page:

http://chuckbaldwinlive.com/home/?page_id=52

Fortunately, it does appear that the combination of an emerging police state and a declining economy that has resulted from this “war on terror” is finally starting to catch the attention of the American people. According to a Brooking Institution report, “Six in ten Americans believe that that the United States weakened its economy by overspending in its responses to the 9/11 attacks. In particular, respondents felt this was especially true of the U.S. mission in Iraq. Two out of three Americans perceive that over the decade since 9/11, U.S. power and influence in the world has declined.”

A Rasmussen report further revealed, “As with the recent turmoil in Egypt, most Americans (67%) say the United States should leave the situation in the Arab countries alone.”

Beyond that, “A Zogby poll conducted in August 2007 found that 51% of Americans want Congress to probe Bush/Cheney regarding the 9/11 attacks, two-thirds (67%) of Americans say the 9/11 Commission should have investigated the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7.”

See the BlacklistedNews.com report containing the above survey results and more at:

http://tinyurl.com/3v2n538

The LA Times is right to question what Americans are getting for their $75 billion a year contribution to the “war on terror.” Some could even argue–with convincing data–that the “war on terror” is in reality a “war on freedom.”

Does Superman Really Want To Know Himself?

Transhumanists seek enhancement in all aspects of existence. Or so they say. The average H+ers want better bodies, better and more deeply embedded tools for living, smarter brains and so on. But do the supermen and women want enhanced knowledge or awareness of themselves?

Ibogaine is a hallucinogenic compound containing Iboga, a substance largely found in the African Tabernanthe Iboga root. It’s safe to say it’s the world’s least popular psychedelic substance. An Ibogaine trip lasts 36 hours and is understood to launch the deepest probe into personal psychological material available to humans on planet earth. A couple of hours into the experience, the Ibogaine tripper experiences an irresistible need to lie down and close her eyes. After than, (s)he will usually receive information — often experienced as though watching scenes on a giant screen —about all the accumulated traumatic events and the other types of awkward, uncomfortable, pathetic elements of personality and experience that the vulnerable human organism represses — partially or entirely — in order to “grow up” and maintain the socialized ego required by a complicated and competitive civilization.

What seems to emerge from these experiences is not a shipwrecked husk of a human being (as occasionally happened with LSD). It’s more like the tripper has undergone a very positive “extreme makeover” — but not one of a superficial sort. Indeed, many of those in the West who have had the opportunity (and need) to experience Ibogaine arrived at the experience as shipwrecked husks — they were drug addicts.

In 1962, Howard Lotsof was a 19-year-old heroin addict who also enjoyed experimenting with a variety of mind-altering drugs. Knowing only that it was another exotic psychedelic to add to his list of heady adventures, he bought some Ibogaine from a dealer. A friend of his tried some and reported back enthusiastically, “That’s not a drug. It’s a food!” So Lotsof decided to take a dose. He underwent the sort of experience I described above. Then he slept. When he woke up, he no longer had a craving for heroin. In other words, aside from having an illuminating self-examination, somehow his body reset itself so that it would not experience a very difficult and very physical period of sickness.

From that day forward, Lotsof dedicated his life to organizing and legalizing experiments with this substance as a possible cure for addiction. Years of experimentation yielded positive results. The drug didn’t work for everybody, but it worked for most. It wasn’t always a permanent cure, but it stopped or lessened the pains of withdrawal for most — and usually kept the opiate lover away from his or her favorite kick for at least a few years without the usual need for a replacement opiate like Methadone. And it turned out to not just be a cure for heroin withdrawal. Similar results were observed in experiments with habitual cocaine and methamphetamine users. One guy even used it because he was tired of feeling like he needed to smoke pot every day. It worked for him too.

My own fascination with Ibogaine came about as the result of picking up a book called The Ibogaine Story: Report of the Staten Island Project, written by Paul De Rienzo and Dana Beal. It was like the book was written just for me, since Beal was a NYC Yippie leader, and a narrative about underground life in the East Village and other parts of Gotham was woven throughout the book, which was organized much like a scrapbook. So it had Yippies and Black Panthers and High Times magazine and New York Dolls and Warhol acolytes — a variety of touchstones of my early adulthood. You might say I was hooked.

But once my curiosity about the in the ins and outs of these movements and social scenes was sated, something else emerged that has been with me ever since. In gathering together the reports of the experiences shared by the trippers (and aside from psychological content, most of the trips also seem to involve lessons from a severe African god), Beal found himself compelled to reread Valis by Philip K. Dick. And through the book, he weaved various threads about Ibogaine research, the psychedelic movement, the NYC counterculture with Dick’s strangest and most amazing exploration into Gnosticism and — if that wasn’t enough — a smattering of experiential and scientific discourses on the nature of reality (quantum physics, neurology…).

As I explored this brilliant mess, a promise beyond even the deepest psychological self-exploration and the cure for drug addiction began to emerge. It seemed that Ibogaine might not just be a cure — or at least a tool — against drug addiction. It may be a tool against addiction itself. In other words, it may be a cure — or at least a tool — for resolving overconsumption, neediness, and habitual behavior. It may be a counteragent against what William Burroughs (yet another reference point in the book) — in explaining how he saw heroin addiction as a metaphor for the functioning of our entire civilization — labeled “the geometry of need.”

So, superman… can you pass the Ibogaine test? I’ve trembled before it in trepidation myself for the last 14 years and haven’t yet worked up the nerve. But surely, some of you stout rugged individualists amongst us who insist on a relentless dispassionate pursuit of objective reality however harsh or cruel… certainly you will want to chance a plunge into deeply buried psychological materials and know thyself. Or maybe not. My sense is that most people would rather “work on themselves” for 40 years than be dragged in front of stark actuality — a terrifying something that we have no control over.

So… will you take the red pill? Or will you take the blue pill… “you wake up in bed and believe whatever you want to believe”… for a long, extended time?

Source:  R.U. Sirius | HPlusMagazine.com

Israel and the Upcoming Nuclear War

The “Unthinkable” is Now Inevitable…

The total destruction of Israel, something used by the Zionist lobby to bilk the US out of billions for years, is no longer a dream, it is inevitable.  The only question is “when?”  With it a limited world war may emerge with some surprises in store.  It all started long ago but we can focus back one year when Israel murdered 9 Turkish citizens in an act of piracy, peace activists on an aid ship heading for Gaza.  Aid ships heading for Gaza now get a military escort from the Turkish Navy and Turkey’s president is heading for Gaza and Egypt now, to slap Israel down.

A year ago, Israel and Turkey were best of friends.  Their spy agencies in the US shared nuclear secrets, sold them to China, North Korea, Pakistan, Brazil, worked as partners blackmailing half of Washington’s army of corrupt officials and traitorous military officers.  Patriotism in Washington is rare nowadays, considered stupid.  Washington is all about “globalism” and “no borders,” about corporations, not “America.”  To most in Washington, America is a joke, a bankrupt “has been” nation drowning in debt with a military now useless, spread across the globe running errands for a cabal of international bankers.

Until a week ago, the Turkish Army believed it had control of Turkey, despite the elected government.  Israel believed the same.  They were wrong.  A year ago, Israel believed Turkey would always be controlled because of their desire to join the European Union.  Now that dream is considered hopeless.  Who would want to join anyway, the EU is broke, falling apart and toothless.  Turkey, instead, is an economic powerhouse, outdistancing all but Germany in technology, productivity and science.

Turkey also has a huge army, a mobile army and a military tradition of relentlessness and, to be truthful, cruelty.  Israel has been pointing that out of late, how Turkey wiped out the Armenians, much as Israel is wiping out the Palestinians.  Problem is, Turkey’s army is big, highly disciplined, capable of supporting military operations across the entire Middle East, allied with Iraq, Iran and Egypt and considers Israel’s killings of Turkish citizens last year as an act of war.

This leaves only America or Israel’s nuclear weapons to protect them.

Problem?

Paid stooges in Washington talk about Israel’s strategic importance to the US.  That’s a dream, much as the strength of Israel’s army is a dream.  There are two strategic allies in the Middle East, Egypt with their control of the Suez Canal and Turkey with their control of the Bosporus, the only gateway to the Black Sea, something of immense value to the US.  Turkey is also the gateway for oil from Central Asia and Northern Iraq.

Another factor is Kurdistan.  Israel has controlled the PKK, the communist terror group that has killed thousands in Turkey.  Israel is threatening to unleash them again.  In meetings with leaders in Iraq, however, I was told that Turkish military actions against the PKK, even inside Iraq were welcomed.  Kurds in Iraq hate the PKK and have long seen it as destructive.  Northern Iraq is closely aligned with Turkey, their economy is totally dependent on Turkey, much more than Baghdad.  Hopes for a Kurdish nation are dependent on good relations with Turkey and those relations have improved continually for some time.

One reality is the weakness of Egypt.  The Mubarak government, including the military and intelligence services worked closely with Israel as did those of Turkey.  It is Israel’s goal to keep Egypt in line.  However, with the killing of 5 Egyptian police and the protestors sacking the Israeli embassy in Cairo, that is coming into question.

Israel still has considerable resources in place in Egypt, particularly as we saw on August 11th, 2011, when Bush/Bechtel “envoy” David Welch met with Israeli and Gaddafi representatives in Cairo, at the Four Seasons Hotel, CIA and Egyptian spies in the room, planning bribes to be paid to journalists and “peace activists” in a last ditch attempt to save another Israeli ally, Gaddafi.

Thus, Turkey will be doing a “road trip” to gain allies against Israel and to flank US backing, blackmailing the US.  As Turkey has nearly all US nuclear secrets, gotten through their spy partnership with AIPAC, something we were told of when I interviewed FBI informants within the Bush White House, they have things to trade.  Turkey can turn out thermonuclear weapons quickly.

Israel’s counter is their partnership with India.  India is building long range ICBMs, capable of carrying 10 warheads, also capable of reaching the United States.  Israel has requested 10 of those missiles, giving them the capability of hitting the United States with 100 hydrogen bombs.  This is not conjecture, this deal with India has been confirmed, the weapons are being built with US technology stolen by Israel (and Turkey) and Pakistan has spies working inside every aspect of the project, no secret to anyone.

China is also aware and they believe they are a potential target of these Indian weapons.  Thus, China is transferring advanced technologies, not only thermonuclear but advanced aircraft designs and missile technology to Pakistan.

In reality, from a military standpoint, India overshadows Pakistan by a mile.However, with the US in economic decline and dependent on China to buy US debt, betting against China and their close relationship to Pakistan is inadvisable.  Pakistan represents China’s foothold in Central Asia and their access to a port, Gwadar, in the Indian Ocean.

China is dependent on oil from the region and sees the Indian Ocean as an area of strategic value.Pakistan is taking advantage of that.Russia is laughing themselves to death.  They helped set up America to fall in Afghanistan, payback for America’s support of the Mujahideen and are enraged at the CIA and US military for its role in flooding Russia with cheap heroin from Afghanistan.

Heroin is destroying the social fabric of Russia nearly as much as drug profits that have infected the US political system have destabilized the US, left the Mexican border totally open and kept the US in Afghanistan as guardians of the largest opium den in the world.

The changes we will see?

Libya’s new government is more than aware of Israel’s interference on behalf of Gaddafi and will become a relentless enemy of Israel, despite false reports Israel has inserted into the “fringe media.”  Egypt is in play.  Things could go either way, depending on how meetings go this week with Turkey.

With the UN vote on Gaza a given, the US will veto Palestinan statehood, Egypt and Turkey will be pushed together as US prestige in the region crashes.Israel’s reaction under its repressive and reactionary Likudist regime, under attack at home for economic failures, one after the other, will be to push for military action against Gaza.

They may also wish to “play” in Lebanon, taking advantage of Syria’s current weakness.  This would be a mistake.  Syria will not “go down in flames” like the Gaddafi regime.  They are too vulnerable and will lose their place at the table, offset by Turkey, a nation that has an unpleasant history in the region lasting hundreds of years, a reputation Turkey is now trying to repair.

This could also go either way.  Israel still has nuclear weapons.  Their “nuclear advantage” in the Middle East is now likely to make them a target.

Turkey’s army is more than a match for Israel, not even close.  There is little expectation that Egypt will do more than posture as their military under Mubarak became a defensive force only, infiltrated, as is Turkey’s, with corrupt officers.

What will happen?

Israel, with all its planning, its “possible involvement” in 9/11, its very proven involvement in the 2003 invasion of Iraq and its machinations in, not just Washington but Cairo, Ankara and other capitols across the region, is the big loser.  Israel is now totally isolated and very much considered sacrificable by the US, despite continual pronouncements by members of congress otherwise.

When Israel had to turn against the Democrats, despite the fact that 79% of American Jews support the Democratic Party, and turn to the GOP and Christian Zionists for support, they bought “friends” they would never be able to trust.

For years, American conservatives were known to hate Jews, ban them from organizations, maintain “no Jews allowed” policies at resorts and “ritzy” neighborhoods, under the euphemism of “restricted.”

Red States were always “no Jews or Niggers allowed after sundown.”

This may not be taught in history books but it is real history just the same and the generation of American Jews that remember real antisemitism, not the phony “Abe Foxman” kind, know who their real friends are.

Turkey, not Iran, will be forced to go nuclear. Turkey, however, is a long time American ally, a charter member of NATO and, at heart, very pro-American, pro-Western and, as it were, sitting on the world’s most strategic real estate.

Turkey is also a relentless enemy, one Israel will be too stupid to apologize to, too stupid to make reparations to and will depend on its nuclear arsenal and friends in the US for protection.

Nobody will benefit from this, not the Palestinian people, not Egypt, only those who wish to see Israel have their faces in the dirt.  There is a problem with this.  There was some hope that Israel itself might have a rebirth of democracy, with 500,000 demonstrators demanding the resignation of Netanyahu’s ultra-nationalist government last week, their was a hope.

The other big loser will be the United States.  Pakistan will bring China into Central Asia.  Turkey may well bring them into the Mediterranean or further.

Whether American’s choose to recognize it or not, Bush murdered America’s military future.  Social cuts and job programs won’t be enough.  America will have to gut its military and withdraw from its bases around the world, that or economically die in less than 5 years.

The only other way out is “debt denial” which requires full cooperation from China and Japan.  In light of these issues, these problems, Israel, that “small country” that has so much control over the US government will wake up one morning a forgotten “backwater” in world affairs.

Back in 1981, it looked like Israel would be a peaceful neighbor in a Middle East destined to move forward, maybe not to freely elected governments but at least to no longer be a sideshow for the Cold War.

There were lessons from 1981, when Jews visited Cairo as honored guests.

500,000 Israeli’s, homeless, underemployed, say they can no longer afford, even with the billions America is giving them, to try to run the world from a few acres of sand, now farmed by foreign workers.

If Israel’s extremist government continues its fear mongering, helped along by AIPAC and the ADL in the United States, Israel will not survive.  Israel will not die alone, not by a long shot.  The problem is that there is no political leader in Israel or within the Zionist community in the United States that seems to care.

The dreams of world domination, as some of us have always seen, never left room for the survival of Israel or any other nation.

Source: Veterans Today

Pretending Ron Paul Doesn’t Exist (Video)

This is an absolutely outstanding clip that tells the truth about Paul’s massive success in Iowa and beyond, and skewers the corporate media for ignoring the truth.

Ron Paul Remains Media Poison

By Roger Simon

August 16, 2011 “Politico” — I admit I do not fully understand Ron Paul and his beliefs. But I do understand when a guy gets shafted, and Ron Paul just got shafted.

On Saturday, the Ames Straw Poll was conducted in Iowa amid huge media interest and scrutiny. The results were enough to force one Republican candidate, Tim Pawlenty, out of the race, and catapult another, Michele Bachmann, into the “top tier.”

There are so many “top tier” stories in the media today that I can barely count them, let alone read them all, and Bachmann is in all of them by virtue of her victory at Ames. The rest of the tier is made up of two candidates who skipped Ames, Rick Perry and Mitt Romney.

As The Daily Beast put it: “The new top tier of Bachmann, Perry, and Romney — created by Bachmann’s Iowa straw poll win, Perry’s entry into the race and Romney’s lead so far in many national and state polls — has unleashed torrents of talk about the reshaped race.”

Paul’s name was not mentioned in this piece nor in many others. A Wall Street Journal editorial Monday magnanimously granted Paul’s showing in the straw poll a parenthetical dismissal: “(Libertarian Ron Paul, who has no chance to win the nomination, finished a close second.)”

But “close” does not fully describe Paul’s second-place finish. Paul lost to Bachmann by nine-tenths of one percentage point, or 152 votes out of 16,892 cast.

If it had been an election, such a result would almost certainly have triggered a recount. It was not an election, however, and that is my point. Straw polls are supposed to tell us, like a straw tossed into the air, which way the wind is blowing.

And any fair assessment of Ames, therefore, would have said the winds of the Republican Party are blowing toward both Bachmann and Paul.

Nonsense, some would say. Straw polls are just organized bribery, with the campaigns buying the tickets and distributing them to supporters. (And, in fact, this is what I wrote before Ames.)

What they really show, many argue, is not where the philosophical heart of the party is, but the organizational abilities of the candidates.

Fine, I’ll buy that. But why didn’t Paul get the same credit for his organizational abilities as Bachmann did for hers?

I am far from a Libertarian. I believe big government is swell as long as it does big things to help the common good. But after Ames, it was as if Paul had been sentenced to the Phantom Zone.

Bachmann appeared on five Sunday shows following Ames. Paul appeared on none. POLITICO’s Kasie Hunt was one of the few reporters to do a separate storyon Paul’s showing at the straw poll, but to most of the media he remained an exotic, unworthy of attention.

And I don’t disagree that some of his beliefs — legalizing heroin, the right of states to secede — are strikingly peculiar (though he has been elected to a congressional district in Texas 12 times). But if Bachmann’s victory at Ames was good enough to gain her enormous publicity and top-tier status, why was Paul’s virtual tie good enough only to relegate him to being ignored?

So I asked Paul Monday if the media blackout disturbed him,

“It did disturb me, but it was not a total surprise,” he replied. “The result at Ames was significant; it might well have propelled us to the top tier. The media cannot change that.”

Though the media can, of course, change that since we get to determine who the top tier is.

“It is hard for them to accept,” Paul said of his showing at Ames. “I had one interview scheduled for this morning, a national program, but they canceled. It is shocking to be told nobody wants you.”

Was this because technically Paul came in second and not first? I don’t think so. Four years ago, Mike Huckabee came in a bad second to Romney, losing by 13.4 percentage points. Huckabee managed to spin that into a victory at Ames and became a media darling.

But Paul almost wins the thing and he remains poison.

“They [the media] believe this guy is dangerous to the status quo,” Paul said, “but that is a reason to be more energized. I am a bit more challenging, but I am not on the wrong track. I don’t think that my ideas are more exotic. They are threatening.”

In his interview with me, Paul stressed his “peace” message — he wants our troops brought home from foreign soil — and believes that and his fiscal conservatism will gain him supporters.

“We are trying to reverse 100 years of history, the change from a republic to an empire, the change to tax and spending, who wants to admit that?” Paul said. “Who wants to admit we don’t have to be policeman of the world?”

Let me say right here that unlike many of Paul’s supporters, I don’t believe there is a left-wing media conspiracy working against him. Ralph Nader, who is about as far as you can get from Paul politically, has the same problem whenever he runs for president.

And, no, media attention is not based solely on polls. The most recent polls, taken before Ames, showed Bachmann with 10.2 percent of the vote and Paul with 9.0 percent. That’s not a huge difference. Though those polls will no doubt change with all the publicity Bachmann is now getting because of her “stunning” victory at Ames.

There was a deliciously intriguing line in The Washington Post’s fine recap of Ames on Sunday. It said had Paul edged out Bachmann, “it would have hurt the credibility and future of the straw poll, a number of Republicans said.”

So don’t blame the media. Here are Republicans, presumably Republican operatives, who said if one candidate wins, the contest is significant, but if another wins the contest is not credible

Amazing. And disturbing.

“Well, yes I can get discouraged and dispirited,” Paul told me. “We came so very close. To come that close to winning, it shows my views are very mainstream. And if we are worth our salt and our message is sound and we tell it honestly, we will do well.”

Though possibly no one will notice.

Factory Foods Cause 70 pct of all foodborne illnesses; Dairy safest

With all the milk raids over the past few years, you wouldn’t think that dairy is the safest type of food in the U.S., or that factory foods cause 70% of all foodborne illnesses – but that’s just what a new study by the University of Florida reveals. [1]

Using data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) [2] and other peer-reviewed sources covering the years 1999 thru 2008, UF sought to determine which pathogens on which foods pose the highest risk.

UF produced a Top 10 chart revealing that “complex” factory foods (defined as non-meat factory foods with a host of additives) account for a whopping 70% of 3.9 million annual foodborne illnesses (resulting in 765 deaths).

Below is the ranking based just on number of illnesses and deaths per food group (leaving out other factors that UF used):

Dairy caused 434 illnesses out of 3.9 million.  That’s about 1/100th of a percent of all foodborne illnesses.  Quite an extremely rare event. By the way, “almost all” of the dairy contamination was “due to soft-ripened cheeses” – mostly queso fresco.

But UF determined that dairy is the fifth most dangerous food group sold in the U.S, by weighting various other factors, like “quality of life-year” and lethality. [3]

Still, 434 dairy-induced illnesses out of 3.9 million total foodborne illnesses and it ranks 5th most dangerous food group?  Take a look at the above chart again. Which food group looks most dangerous to you?

Here’s UF’s Top 10 chart, where they segregated categories based on food-pathogen connection:

No doubt, there is merit to qualifying the data.  A bout of diarrhea [4] that lasts a day is a hell of a lot different from a brain infection [5] lasting ten years that eventually kills you.

Though dairy caused only 434 illnesses out of 3.9 million, 70 of those people died.  That’s 1 out of 6.  Same goes for deli meats – only 651 illnesses out of 3.9 million. Yet, because 1 out of 6 people died from it, UF ranked deli meats as the third most dangerous food group.

That’s quite a stretch, requiring a strong imagination.  UF’s risk system simply fails to consider the rarity of foodborne illnesses from a specific food group and therefore cannot be relied upon in developing food safety policies.

In UF’s Top 10 chart, we get a real sense of a political agenda behind the ranking. Factory foods that cause 70% of all foodborne illnesses and the highest percentage of deaths is ranked at #6 and #7 in UF’s Top 10 list.

UF also provided a Top 50 chart.  Again, removing UF’s qualifiers and creating a chart just based on number of illnesses and deaths, here’s the ranking of the most common and most dangerous foodborne pathogens:

Norovirus is the top concern [6] of the National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods (NACMCF), accounting for 64% of all foodborne illness.  Yet, UF ranks it 7th on its Top 10 chart.

Politics, Not Science, Behind Government Attacks on Raw Milk

Susan Vaughn Grooters, who contributed to the UF report, was just appointed to the NACMCF by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. [7] She’ll serve a two-year term as a “consumer representative.”

Dr. Wafa Birbari of junk food giant, Sara Lee Corp. also sits on the NACMCF.

Grooters currently works with STOP Foodborne Illness (formerly Safe Tables Our Priority), an organization that condemns raw dairy and urges broad expansion of federal control over food.  In a playful charade, she recently tweeted:

“Really??? Really? I would beg to differ Sec. Vilsack! ..unless of course you’re proposing a change to policies…  http://usat.ly/kceLEY”

These opinions echo the sentiments of the food “safety” gang that believes Americans have no right to food choice, no right to health, and no right to private contract.

How Bad It Is(n’t)

As the Director of Research and Education, Grooters is responsible for the STOP Foodborne Illness page, “Fact vs. Myth.” [8]  As if unable to distinguish the two, SFI repeats unsubstantiated, fear mongering propaganda. We’ll start with an easy one:

“There are no documented health benefits associated with ingestion of unpasteurized milk or milk products.”

Quite the opposite is true.  In 2006, researchers reported the “competitive exclusion” effect of good bacteria found in raw milk, observing that:

“Lactococcus lactis subsp. lactis C-1-92 and Enterococcus durans 152 … are bactericidal to Listeria monocytogenes or inhibit the growth of L. monocytogenes both in vitro and in biofilms.” [9]

Listeria monocytogenes is responsible for 1,591 illnesses a year, according to the 2011 CDC report (at Table 2). [2]  That’s for all foods, not just milk.

Based on CDC data and Dept of Health and Human Services (DHS) data covering 1999 thru 2010, retired pathologist Ted Beals determined, “there have been no cases attributed to drinking raw milk in the last twelve years.” [10]

On the other hand, Lactococcus lactis, a probiotic bacterium found in raw milk of pastured cows, was legislated as Wisconsin’s state microbe last year.  Microbiology professor Kenneth Todar explains that Lactococci are associated with grasses, which pastured cows ingest, and which then show up in their milk. [11]

Not only are Lactococcus deadly to pathogenic bacteria, but they are vital to making certain cheeses and other fermented products. And, they have to be added back in when starting with pasteurized milk.

Grooters also repeats the tired warning that:

“Pregnant women, young children, the elderly and those with weakened immune systems should avoid unpasteurized products.”

It’s a wonder the human species survived 200,000 years before the food police came along! We know for certain that humans have been drinking unpasteurized animal milk for at least ten thousand years. [12]  Our population certainly hasn’t decreased since then.

The enzymes and “friendly” bacteria destroyed by pasteurization boost our immunity.  We know this based on the scientifically accepted “competitive exclusion” principle – the more friendly bacteria you have, the fewer pathogenic ones that survive.  Friendly bacteria compose part of our immune system, and competitive exclusion is what the entire probiotics food industry is based on.

Pasteurized Milk Contaminations

Grooters also stated at the Myths and Facts page:

“Raw or unpasteurized milk can transmit many serious infectious diseases to children.”

Then why doesn’t it?  Statistics from the UF report to which she contributed show dairy to be the safest of all foods, amounting to 1/100th of a percent of all foodborne illnesses annually.

In fact, raw milk is much safer than all other food.  According to Dr Beals, in 2010, DHS reported 90,771 confirmed foodborne illnesses for the period 1999 thru 2010.  Based on DHS data, Beals reports you are 35,000 times more likely to get sick from any food other than raw milk. [10]

Using government data, Beals calculated that 42 people become ill from contaminated raw milk each year, a figure which includes “both ‘confirmed’ and ‘presumed’ cases.”

Yet, in a single case of contaminated pasteurized milk in Massachusetts, 49 people became ill in 1983.  Later, 14 of them died.  An inspection found the pasteurization process up to snuff, leading scientists to question relying on pasteurization to kill listeria. [14]

In another single case of contaminated pasteurized milk, over 16,000 people became ill in several Midwest states.  Later, up to 5 of them died.  That 1985 calamity was called the “worst outbreak of Salmonella food poisoning in U.S. history.” [13]  It even beats last year’s half-billion egg recall with just over 1,900 confirmed salmonella cases.

This single case of contaminated factory milk was more dangerous than all the raw milk produced and sold in the past 100 years.

Yet, state and federal authorities pursue raw milk producers as if they’re selling heroin. Grooters is part of the team propagandizing Americans against natural milk, while ignoring the science.

Given her statements, and the UF report she helped draft, Grooters is not at all a surprising choice for Secretary Vilsack to have made. But it is rather disingenuous to characterize her as representing consumers, when, clearly, she represents corporate aims to shut down natural dairy.

If President Obama truly wanted to develop a “science-based” food safety policy driven by “risk-based” analysis, [15] raw dairies would be promoted rather than criminalized.  Instead, what we see is support for factory-processed foods adulterated with genetically modified organisms, drugs, chemicals, nanomaterials, rat droppings, and wood [16] – all permitted by the FDA.

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