US Economic Forecast for 2012 and the Election Year Cycle

When it comes to business cycles, the former rules no longer seem to apply. The seminal events that changed the economic landscape after the 2008 financial crash still points to an uncertain future and marginal recovery. If you watch CNBC or Bloomberg business news, you hear that a modest recovery is in place. Accepting this kind of reporting may temporarily make you feel better, but in the real economy, the prospects for a rebound are mere fiction. Prosperity only exists for the chums of the insider financial system, who are immune from actual market conditions. Under the privileged and favoritism model, political subsidies and bailouts are more important than creative industry or innovative execution.

The businesses that produce and service the everyday functions of society flounder in a sea of uncertainty and a desert of capital illiquidity. Within this context, the only realistic way to examine the prospects for 2012, must factor in the political component. Yet the promoters of the corporatist system build up false hope, while fudging the numbers.

Analyze the valid question; Can We Trust The Moderate Growth Forecasts?

“Another day, another economic forecast. The 35 economists polled for the latest Livingston Survey via the Philadelphia Fed project that real GDP for the U.S. will grow at an annualized 2.5% rate for the second half of 2011. That’s down from June’s 3.2% second-half 2011 forecast. Down, but still not out.Looking ahead to 2012, the Livingston survey forecasters “see the growth rate of economic output slowing to 2.1 percent (annual rate) in the first half of 2012, and they predict that it will then increase to 2.5 percent (annual rate) in the second half of the year.” The economists also expect “a slow recovery in the labor market, with the unemployment rate at 9.0 percent in December 2011 and at 8.9 percent in June 2012.”

Lakshman Achuthan, chief operations officer of the Economic Cycle Research Institute, talks with Bloomberg about the next year in the U.S. Economic Outlook, Labor Market video.

Mr. Achuthan continues in a second video interview on the  – .

“It’s too soon to predict just how bad it’s going to get, but he expects another spike in unemployment and further expansion of the federal government’s $1 trillion deficit. This forecast has huge ramifications for the 2012 election and the already struggling U.S. consumer and Achuthan says a “mild” recession is the best-case scenario.”

This type of analysis is typical of traditional media. But, for a more daring and intense approach that factors political pandemonium into the economic projections, Gerald Celente fills the bill. Mac Slavo writes about Celente Warns Of 2012: Economy Will Crash, Banks Will Close, Chaos Will Ensue, Military Will Take Over.

“If you’ve followed trend forecaster Gerald Celente for any period of time you’ve probably realized he knows what he’s talking about. For the better part of two decades Celente and his Trends Journal have been forecasting political, financial, economic and social trends with an uncanny ability for accuracy.”

Celente provides his list of projection. Read them in the Top 12 Trends 2012.

1. Economic Martial Law:

2. Battlefield America:

3. Invasion of the Occtupy:

4. Climax Time:

5. Technocrat Takeover:

6. Repatriate! Repatriate!:

7. Secession Obsession:

8. Safe Havens:

9. Big Brother Internet:

10. Direct vs. Faux Democracy:

11. Alternative Energy 2012:

12. Going Out in Style:

Another perceptive publication projects The Economic Collapse in A Very Scary Christmas And An Incredibly Frightening New Year, sums it up this way.

“The head of the International Monetary Fund, Christian Lagarde, recently stated that we could soon see conditions “reminiscent of the 1930s depression” and that no country on earth “will be immune to the crisis”….

“There is no economy in the world, whether low-income countries, emerging markets, middle-income countries or super-advanced economies that will be immune to the crisis that we see not only unfolding but escalating”

The first six months of 2012 are going to be a very key time. National governments and big European banks are scheduled to roll over huge mountains of debt. But if they can’t find any takers that could bring the global financial system to a moment of great crisis very quickly.”

Reject the Marc Faber Gloom Boom & Doom Report viewpoint of analysis if you wish, but dismiss these forecasts at your peril. However, what you cannot ignore are the disastrous political consequences of failed public inept intrusions into the private sector that never turns the economy around. Even in an election year, the normal pump priming expenditures, just hit a dry hole. The enormous debt build up in the last three years has done nothing to revive Main Street business.The partisan formula of an incumbent to buy off voters with an easy money injection into the economy, will not work this time. Yes, the dependency voters may cast their ballot for a second Obama term, but the engine of economic growth, namely; small business is slated for a fire sale under the corporatist prototype of the globalist economy.

Implementing constructive government policies that would unleash merchant small business will not happen in 2012 for a very simple reason. The goal of Wall Street and their handpicked political operatives want private independent enterprises to die on the vine. Social discontent grows daily because the public no longer believes that the political class can provide any viable economic future for the average family. Unfortunately, this attitude misses the mark. Government never produces prosperity. Nevertheless, most people who do voter want to trust in their elected officials. Maybe this fact explains why so many Americans refuse to vote anymore.

The break, with the nostalgia, that the next generation will have it better than the previous one is now shared by even the most optimistic romantic. This election cycle forecasts that economic salvation is illusory. Stock markets may rise, but inflation in stable goods is here to stay. Your money buys less so that the banks can speculate. Government policies and fiscal manipulation, by design, results in dire prospects for 2012. Remember this fact when you vote next November.

Draghi’s Real Goal in the Eurozone

Crush Labor and Impose Austerity…

Imagine if your banker offered to lend you a $150,000 to make up for the money that you’d lost on your home since the housing bubble burst in 2006. And, let’s say, he agreed to lend you this money for 3 years at rock-bottom rates of 1 percent provided that you post the contents of your garage  (ie. rusty bikes, a bent basketball hoop, an old dollhouse, and rodent-infested luggage) as collateral on the loan.

Would that seem like a good deal to you?

On Wednesday, the European Central Bank (ECB) made this very same offer to over a hundred underwater banks in Europe, awarding them $640 billion (489 euros) in dirt-cheap 3-year loans in exchange for all manner of dodgy collateral for which there is currently no market. Now you, dear reader, know that when you try to sell something on Craig’s List and there’s very little interest; you have to drop the price in order to attract a buyer. That’s just how supply-demand dynamics work in a free market, right?

Au contraire. In fact, this rule never applies to bankers. When the junk assets on a bank’s balance sheet begin to fall in value, the banks just ring-up their big brother at the ECB or the Fed and demand a bailout, er, I mean, “swap liquidity for collateral that is temporarily impaired.” But the truth is, the garbage that the banks have accumulated–particularly the sovereign bonds from Italy, Spain, Greece, etc–is not merely “impaired”. These bonds will never regain their original value because the loans were made at the peak of a bubble.  So, there’s as much chance that Greek bonds will bounce back in three years as there is that that tacky $650,000 McMansion you bought in Encinito in 2005 will claw its way back to par.

That’s not going to happen.

So, the $640 billion that the ECB forked out on Tuesday, is basically a whopping-big gift to the banksters that will probably never be repaid. And if you have any doubt about this, then just take look at the Fed’s balance sheet which has exploded to nearly $3 trillion. You’ll notice that the $1.45 trillion in mortgage-backed securities (MBS) that Bernanke bought from the banks two years ago has not gone down at all, mainly because no one in their right-mind would buy these turkeys. And, if the Fed were to put their stash of MBS up for auction; the sale would further depress the assets on the banks balance sheets triggering another financial crisis. (In fact, this actually happened about a year ago when the government experimented with bonds from the AIG fund. Not only did the auction fail, but it also sent the equities markets into a nosedive) So, just as the Fed will eventually have to account for the losses on their pile of MBS,  so too will EU banks have to writedown the losses their sovereign bonds. That will push many of the banks into bankruptcy, which will undoubtedly trigger another round of loans. When financial institutions are insolvent, their only choice is to extend and pretend. Obviously, the ECB sees its job as helping with this fakery.

This is a familiar pattern with central banks. They create the easy money and loose regulatory environment where bubbles emerge, and then they provide “limitless” liquidity so their friends don’t lose money on the inflated value of their assets. That’s what Tuesday’s  $640 billion boondoggle was really all about, propping up toxic bonds that are worth a mere fraction of their original value.

So far, though, Draghi’s Long-Term Refinancing Operation (LTRO) has been a spectacular flop. While interbank lending rates have dropped ever-so-slightly (3-month Euribor fell from 1.404 to 1.410 percent), the banks have not been using the loans to buy more sovereign bonds (which would push down bond yields for struggling sovereigns) or to increase their lending.   Instead, they’ve parked a good portion of the money in overnight deposits at the ECB. Here’s the scoop from the Wall Street Journal:

“Use of the European Central Bank’s overnight deposit facility reached a new record high for the year Thursday, suggesting recent measures by central banks and policy makers still aren’t enough to restore confidence in inter-bank lending markets.

Banks deposited €346.99 billion ($453.38 billion) in the overnight deposit facility, up from €264.97 billion a day earlier and a previous high for the year of €346.36 billion, reached earlier this month.

The high level reflects ongoing distrust in inter-bank lending markets, where banks prefer using the ECB facility as a safe haven for excess funds rather than lending them to other banks.

The high deposit level also suggests markets aren’t fully convinced that the ECB’s massive long-term loan allotment is enough to fortify the currency bloc’s banking sector. The central bank extended nearly half a trillion euros in long-term loans to euro-zone banks Wednesday, hoping to ease fears of a new credit crunch as banks struggle to borrow from markets.” (“ECB Overnight Deposits Reach New 2011 High”, Wall Street Journal)

Can you believe it? So, while most of the loans were used to roll over existing debt, $453.38 billion was stuck back in the vaults of the ECB for safekeeping.  In other words, the banks are just as distrustful of each other as they were before the lending facility was launched. And the same is true of the yields on Spanish and Italian debt which Draghi thought would drop after he pumped a half a trillion euros into the banking system. Here’s the story from Reuters:

“Spanish and Italian bond yields crept higher on Thursday and underperformed German debt as markets grew sceptical that banks would use funds borrowed from the European Central Bank to buy lower-rated government bonds.

Banks borrowed a huge 489 billion euros from the ECB at an unprecedented offer of three-year loans on Wednesday, which some had expected to be reinvested in Spanish and Italian debt and help ease borrowing costs.

But, those looking for an immediate boost to Italy and Spain were likely to be disappointed. Traders said the preference was to reinvest some of the funds into safe-haven paper rather than pick up the higher yields on offer from some of Europe’s more troubled states.

“What happened yesterday is not a silver bullet to the crisis… but it is too soon to see the impact yet,” said Niels From, strategist at Nordea in Copenhagen.” (“EURO GOVT-Spain, Italy yields rise; hope of ECB relief wanes”, Reuters)

Unbelievably, the benchmark Italian 10-year BTP rose above the 7 percent mark again on Friday morning signalling renewed stress in the bond market. So while Draghi’s program may have breathed new life into a few teetering banks, it has failed miserably of all its main objectives.

So why has Draghi handled the crisis the way he has?  Why did he sit on his hands for so long while interbank lending slowed,  overnight deposits climbed to new records,  sovereign bond yields skyrocketed, and all the gauges of market stress got so much worse?

The obvious answer to this question is that Draghi’s been using the crisis to pursue his own agenda.  He wants to push through his so called  ”fiscal compact” that enshrines harsh budget discipline and  labor-battering austerity measures into law so that national budgets will come under the control of financial elites (aka–ECB-designated “technocrats”) Naturally, nations aren’t going to surrender that kind of authority without a fight, so Draghi let the crisis get out-of-hand so there would be less resistance. Here’s how economist Dean Baker sums it up:

“The people who gave us the eurozone crisis are working around the clock to redefine it in order to profit politically. Their editorials – run as news stories in media outlets everywhere – claim that the euro crisis is a story of profligate governments being reined in by the bond market. This is what is known in economics as a “lie”.

The eurozone crisis is most definitely not a story of countries with out of control spending getting their comeuppance in the bond market…It is a story of countries victimized by the mismanagement of the ECB….People should recognize this process for what it is: class war. The wealthy are using their control of the ECB to dismantle welfare state protections that enjoy enormous public support”.

Draghi’s real goal is to implement the labor reforms and “adjustments” that big finance demands. He’s already succeeded in deposing two democratically elected leaders in Greece and Italy and replacing them with bank-friendly stooges that will carry out his diktats. Now, he’s on to bigger things, like slashing the social safety net, crushing the unions, and reducing the eurozone to third world poverty.

The Tax Plan that’s Better than Cain’s, Perry’s or Gingrich’s

Bold tax reform is front and center this campaign season.  First Herman Cain made waves and poll headway with his9-9-9tax plan, which involves national 9-percent taxes on personal and corporate income and a 9-percent national sales tax.  Now Rick Perry has followed suit with a 20-percent flat-tax plan, and Newt Gingrich has gone 5 better, with a 15-percent flat proposal.  And these ideas certainly haven’t fallen flat: tax reform is immensely popular among the Republican base.

Yet there has been criticism, too – at least of Cain’s plan, the only one around long enough to be criticized.  Many are concerned about giving the feds another vehicle – a sales tax – through which to fleece us.  Sure,9-9-9 sounds good, but what is to stop it from becoming10-10-10, then11-11-11and ending up as 30-30-30?  Yet, national sales tax or not, this threat looms with any plan; what is to stop Perry’s 20 percent or Gingrich’s 15 from becoming 40?  Remember, the one-percent income tax sounded good, too, in 1913, but consider what it has morphed into.

So, yes, this threat exists with any plan.

That is, except one.

The plan I’ve been proposing for years.

Politicians will always A, find ways to raise taxes; and B, invent new, furtive ways of fleecing us (i.e., hidden taxes).  Thus, any effective tax proposal will address these two problems.  And the following two-pronged plan is the only one that does.

 National Referenda on All Tax Proposals 

We generally get bogged down arguing about numbers,9-9-9, 20, 15, etc.  Is it too high?  Too low?  Is it revenue-neutral?  But all this misses the point.  Once again, this isn’t mainly about numbers because, with ever-rapacious politicians, the numbers aren’t set in stone.

It’s about who will control those numbers.

And who should control this “power to tax” that “is the power to destroy,” as Chief Justice John Marshall put it?  Those whose money would be taken – those who could be destroyed – should.  This is why I propose national referenda on all tax proposals.

In other words, the politicians could propose any tax increase they wanted.  But it would then have to go up for a vote of the people.  And if it didn’t pass, the statists would have to find a way to get their votes other than by purchasing them.

As to the formula, I’d prefer that a tax measure have to pass by a two-thirds margin and not just a simple majority, but this could be debated.  Also, the language of the law would have to prohibit the sneaky pols from instituting taxes under a different name, such as “surcharges” or “levies.”

Lastly, since the Constitution gives Congress the power to levy taxes, an amendment may be necessary to institute this plan.  So be it.  If we truly are to be a government of, by and for the people, the power to destroy must be in their hands.

Allow the Federal Government Only One Form of Taxation

This would eliminate the hidden-tax racket.  Politicians love hidden taxes – the bacteria of the tax world – because they enable them to raise revenue out of the light of day and avoid incurring the voters’ wrath at election time.  Such taxes also hide the true cost of government.  After all, how often do people think about taxes on phone bills, airplane tickets or gasoline?  Government should be transparent, and this should start with its cost.

Now, why is this necessary if the electorate would have to approve of tax proposals in the first place?  For starters, because we need to eliminate the argument, “Well, it’s only five cents on your ________ (fill in the blank)!”  Second, this eliminates the targeting of minority population groups with specific taxes, such as the 10-percent federal tax on handguns and the 45-cent-per-shaft one on archery arrows.  And it’s a lot harder to pass tax increases if the majority has skin in the game.  Third, as obscure taxes proliferate, people will inevitably forget about them, allowing them to attain hidden status over time.

And what should the one form of taxation be?  To determine this, let’s consider, as before, what problem confronts us.

If a stranger approached you and asked how much money you made, your answer would likely be, “That’s personal.”  Yet strangers – working in government – ask us not only how much we make, but how we make it, what our expenses are and for many other details every year.

And we readily divulge the information.

But does Big Brother really have right to this window into your private financial life?

This is a reason why I’d prefer the one form of taxation to be the federal government’s original way of raising revenue: tariffs on foreign-made goods.  A second benefit to this is that it would protect American industry, as domestic manufacturers couldn’t be undersold by overseas-stationed companies that can get away with paying slave wages.

Having said this, I’m not married to any particular kind of tax because, just as with the numbers, the type is secondary.  The keys are transparency and who controls the purse strings.  What matters is having only one form of federal taxation and, most importantly, those referenda on all tax proposals.

Now, another benefit to my plan is that it enables us to more easily deal with a common criticism, one leveled at Cain’s proposal: that it’s not revenue-neutral.  After all, since the numbers aren’t set in stone but by the electorate, people can raise the rate if they choose.  This leaves the statists to argue against power to the people, to claim, as they no doubt would, that Americans won’t fund the government “sufficiently.”

Also note that the criticism that a proposal won’t yield enough revenue can be – and will be – leveled at any plan involving fundamental change.  After all, as with most things in economics, it’s hard to predict exactly how an overhaul of the tax code will shake out in a complex civilization of 308 million people.  But so what?  In case the critics haven’t noticed, the current tax system doesn’t raise enough revenue.  And is this a surprise with government spending in excess of 40 percent of GDP?  Moreover, if we’re going to let fears that poor ol’ Uncle Scam won’t have enough money to waste on the next Solyndra prevent us from making changes, then we’d better be resigned to being like an insect preserved in amber.  Fear is then our dogma and the status quo our god.

But then there’s something more significant.  Frankly, I don’t care whether Leviathan will have “enough” money – especially since it’s never enough.

I care that the people have enough money.

It is theirs, after all.  As for the government, our message should be clear: Budget yourself.

You will make do on what we give you.

And for those who truly are concerned about runaway deficits, there is a solution to that problem, too: couple my tax plan with a balanced-budget amendment (BBA).  This not only would enforce fiscal responsibility, it would also help forestall tyranny.  Remember, money is the lifeblood of government; the state uses it to fuel its intrusive bureaucracies and enforce its tyrannical laws.  Cut the flow and you wither the beast on the vine.  For if it can’t raise taxes and can’t run deficits, it will have to crawl back into the constitutional cage it long ago escaped.  My tax plan and a BBA would be a one-two punch to big government.

Are we serious about fiscal responsibility, about constitutionalism, about eliminating waste, about getting the feds out of our lives?  The best intentions may lie behind 9-9-9or 20 or 15, but that won’t matter.  They would inevitably become 30-30-30 or 40 or 45.  And as the saying goes, “A sign of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.”  For how long will we continue placing the “power to destroy” in the hands of those who’ve wrought nothing but destruction?  It’s time to try something different – like power to the people.

What a radical idea.

The Database: Why Criminal Governments Spy On Citizens

At the very foundation of perhaps every modern day conflict between the expansive powers of unchecked bureaucracy and the dwindling freedoms of the ordinary citizen dwells the vital issue of privacy. Privacy and the right to hold personal and political views without being singled out and scrutinized by government is absolutely essential to any society which dares to deem itself “fair and just”. Ultimately, without the presence of these two liberties, and without people to defend them, a nation is ill equipped to circumvent the growth of tyranny, and anyone claiming to be “free” in the midst of such a culture is living a delusion of the highest order.

Often, social engineers attempt to direct debate over the issue of privacy towards rationalizations of relative morality, or artificially delineated priorities. We quibble over the level of government intrusion that should be tolerated for the sake of the “greater good”. We struggle with questions of bureaucratic reach, wondering at which point we should consider government a threat to the safety and liberty of the people, rather than a servant and protector. The dialogue always turns towards “how much” room government should be given to lumber about our personal lives. Rarely do we actually confront the idea that, perhaps, government should not be welcomed at all into such places.

Really, what makes a governmental entity so special that it should be allowed free access to the activities of the average citizen? Why should ANY intrusion of privacy be tolerated, let alone the kind that goes on today? Our most important concern is not how much leeway our government should be given to snoop into our pocket books, our medical records, our education, our political leanings, or our child rearing philosophies, but rather, whether or not they fulfill any purpose whatsoever through these actions. Is the government, as it exists now, even necessary, or does it cause only harm?

Under tyranny, privacy is usually the first right to be trampled in the name of public safety. Its destruction is incremental and its loss a victim of attrition in the wake of more immediate crisis.Disturbingly, many people become so fixated upon the threats of the moment that they lose complete track of the long term derailment of their own free will in progress. Government, no matter how corrupt, is seen as an inevitability. Conditioned by fear, desperation, insecurity, and sometimes greed, we begin to forget what it was like to live without prying eyes constantly over our shoulders. In the past decade alone, Americans have witnessed a substantial invasion of our individual privacy as well as a destabilization of the legal protections once designed to maintain it. Not just America, but most of the modern world has undergone a quiet program of surveillance and citizen cataloging that goes far beyond any sincere desire for “safety” and into the realm of technocratic domination.

Spying on U.S. citizens by a host of alphabet agencies has been going on for decades, but the actual cataloging of the public by government became most direct during WWII, which saw the use of the Census Bureau as a tool for collecting the names and residencies of Japanese Americans, as well as the highly illegal and unconstitutional internment of these innocents and their families:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=confirmed-the-us-census-b

The creation of lists designed to brand dissenters, activists, and even average passive persons has only become more prevalent since. From the McCarthy witch hunts (based on some real threats but skewed by McCarthy’s ignorance of the bigger picture), to the Cointelpro antics of the Vietnam era, government spying and cataloging has been a way of life and an expected prerequisite part of the relationship between citizenry and leadership. Though consistently opposed, surveillance has become ingrained into our social framework.

In 1978, the Foreign Intelligence Information Act (FISA) was signed by Jimmy Carter into law.The claimed purpose of this act was to confront the extensive abuses of power initiated by the Nixon administration, and to ensure that intelligence agencies were never used again as tools for suppressing political opposition or activist groups. Instead, the act merely became a cover for even more surveillance of American citizens. FISA’s use was expanded far beyond the realm of “foreign intelligence” by both the Bush and Obama Administrations to include vast warrantless wire tapping programs and internet monitoring against U.S. citizens in tandem with telecom companies who are now immune from civil litigation should their intrusions ever be discovered. In 2010, orders for FISA surveillance were up 19%, and not a single request was turned down. This included over 24,287 national security information requests by the FBI pertaining to over 14,000 U.S. persons:

http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/doj/fisa/2010rept.pdf

In 2002, the Bush Administration established the Information Awareness Office (IAO) under the supervision of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Using what they call “Total Information Awareness”, and stemming from the usurping authority of the Patriot Act, this project’s purpose is to monitor vast swaths of domestic communication, as well as collect a massive database of the personal information of every U.S. citizen, including phone calls, emails, social networking records, medical records, and financial records without search warrant authorization:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/feb/18/september11.usa

In the UK, a national database including biometrics has been ordered for completion by 2017, including the issuance of a microchipped ID card:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1580895/All-UK-citizens-in-ID-database-by-2017.html

A similar action has been taken by the government of India for citizens “below the poverty line”, supposedly, to make welfare programs easier to administer. Of course, nearly half of India’s population is under the international poverty line:

http://www.mit.gov.in/content/national-citizen-database

In 2009, the Russian government gave itself sweeping powers to spy on citizens, including unlimited access to all private mail without a warrant:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/5878430/Kremlin-gives-itself-powers-to-spy-on-all-Russian-mail.html

Last month, the Obama Administration launched a website called ‘Attack Watch’. Its purpose?To monitor and catalog all internet based opponents of the Obama presidency. Obama supporters can “report” attacks on the White House using the website by sending an email or twitter:

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/09/obama-attack-watch-website-to-help-supporters-fight-back/

And most recently, the Federal Reserve itself launched a new strategy called the “Social Listening Platform”, which is designed to compile and monitor lists of Fed opponents and critics in a vast database, while at the same time watching billions of web conversations and blogs for negative influence against the central bank:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/44701381/The_Fed_Wants_to_Be_Your_Facebook_Friend

Obviously, the current levels of surveillance against citizens has gone way beyond the old excuse of “defense against terrorism”, and jaunted into the realm of Orwellian thought police.The Fed, for instance, has always claimed that its privately controlled banking structure is valuable to the U.S. government and the economy because it allows them a level of political independence that is useful in applying “objective” solutions to economic problems. Yet, they now insist on tracking the political views and opinions of their opponents in the general populace! This hardly sounds “objective” to me…

If the Fed wants to know what we think of them, they certainly don’t need to covertly monitor our communications or writings. All they have to do is ask us! Of course, this kind of tactic has less to do with knowing our opinions, and more to do with silencing our opinions.

To understand the concept of the subversion of dissent through surveillance, we must examine two factors. First, is the reality of the spying itself, which we just outlined clearly above. Second, are the common arguments and talking points used by the champions of Big Brother culture, and how nonsensical they can be. Let’s take a look some of these arguments now…

1) If You Have Nothing To Hide, Then You Have Nothing To Fear From Government Surveillance

At bottom, whether we have “something to hide” or not is none of the government’s concern unless they can provide probable cause. This issue is directly dealt with in the 4^th Amendment to the Constitution. It is NOT subject to wild interpretations or matters of stipulation. No national emergencies, wars, terrorist enemies, nor little green men from outer space take precedence over the rights of the individual to be secure from constant and unwarranted scrutiny. In a free country, all men are innocent until proven guilty, but in a surveillance slave culture, everyone is treated as a potential criminal.

2) Surveillance Makes Our Country Safer

Regardless of the society at risk, or the government involved, history has shown that the act of government spying is rarely if ever about citizen safety. Rather, it is invariably about protecting the establishment power structure itself, especially when that structure has committed heinous transgressions and criminal behavior that inspire the citizenry to overthrow it. The more offensive and corrupt the government, the more surveillance that government thrusts upon the public. Guaranteed. The safety provided by the state is, in general, an illusion, and the prevention of danger is hardly successful enough to warrant the faith that the populace places in the establishment. Citizens ultimately provide their own safety, or none at all. Governments cannot save you from danger, they can only give you a superficial sense of comfort. A social placebo to ease the constant paranoia they simultaneously strive to perpetuate.

3) The Authorities Already Know Everything About Us Anyway, So A Little More Surveillance Won’t Matter

The magic of faulty logic is apparent in its circular nature. One lie feeds into another until a complete, but erroneous, idea is born. Again, the question needs to be raised; what makes the inhabitants of government so trustworthy or upright that they deserve to expect full knowledge of our personal lives? What they know or do not know already is utterly irrelevant to this question.Being privy to public information databases does not qualify an individual to walk into your home, track your phone calls and emails, or place you on a list of undesirables. So, why should it be any different for a government?

4) Our Government Is Elected By The People, So If You Don’t Like Surveillance, Vote Them Out

The ignorance of this response is hopefully apparent to most readers. In an election dynamic controlled by a two party system in which both parties represent the top 1% or less of global elitists, and not the people, voting on the national level is hardly meaningful or effective. There is only one Ron Paul, and few others in government with similar convictions or principles.Therefore, regardless of how we vote, the system is designed to continue forward in the construction of a surveillance society. Our government today is NOT elected by the people. Not as long as the false left/right paradigm remains.

5) All Individuals Should Make Sacrifices For The Greater Good

The “greater good” is a matter of perspective. My definition is certainly much different from that of an elitist or a collectivist. Ideally, any widely applied view of this elusive greater good should be built upon the foundation of inherent conscience, and be driven by true sincerity and empathy for the future of humanity. This future, if it is to be any future worth living in, must include those liberties and desires for self determination that exist in every one of us. There is no group (an abstract concept) that is worth the sacrifice of these principles. There is no group that is worth more that the individuals which make its existence possible. The greater good then, logically, should revolve around the nurturing of strong individuals, without which, the group crumbles into chaos and dust. Supplanting individualism for the sake of a surveillance society always leads to such an end.

As stated above, government spying and cataloging of citizens is a means to several ends. It is meant to create fear, doubt, and self censorship. It is meant to divert attention away from the legitimate criminal behaviors of authorities and towards the inevitable and justifiable reactions of those in opposition. It is meant to create efficiency in subversion. Meaning, when smaller forces (corrupt governments) seek to destabilize and diminish larger forces (populations), efficiency of action is the key. By identifying, then targeting and defaming specific and prominent critics of the Fed, for example, rather than making broad based attacks on all of us, the central bank is more likely to dissuade the growth of dissent, and chill the air for leadership figures in the movement. That is, if they are successful…

The great anxiety here is one of “what if”? What if they target you? Or me? What happens then?My personal response; who cares! The more people who effectively endure as obstacles to centralization of control, the more people they have to add to their ridiculous lists. Eventually, with catalogs of millions cluttering the war room, the very tactic of government spying becomes futile. The key is to cast off the dread of the machine and realize that none of us is alone in the fight. The juggernaut is hollow. Its terrible roar is choked with smoke. It rolls forward only because we have not yet dared to stand in its path. It is weak, and indeed, we may find, its doubts are far heavier than ours.

Source:Brandon Smith | Alt-Market.com

America Is Rotting From The Inside Out

It would be easy to know how to defend America if enemy forces were invading our shores.  But how do you defend a nation that is rotting from the inside out?  How do you eradicate the internal decay that is eating away at the heart and soul of this nation a little bit more every single day?  Just like we saw happen with the Roman Empire, the internal rot that is eating its way to the surface threatens to bring us down as a nation.  Greed, corruption, gluttony, lust and pride have become national pastimes.  We are addicted to debt, food, entertainment and pleasure.  We have been taught to hate those that look different from us or that believe different things than we do.  Society is literally coming apart at the seams and the federal government is increasingly implementing “Big Brother” security measures in an attempt to maintain control and keep us “safe”.  We have far more people in prison than any other nation on the planet and yet things just keep getting worse and worse.  So how can we fix America?  How do we rescue a nation that is rotting from the inside?

It is absolutely crucial that we acknowledge just how bad things have gotten.  Simply getting the right political party into power will not save America.  Neither will implementing a new political system or a new economic system.  America’s problems are deeper than that.  The very core of America is deeply sick, and once we admit that, then perhaps we will start focusing on some real solutions.

The following are 40 signs that America is rotting from the inside out….

#1 A secret panel of government officials can now put American citizens on a “kill list”.  A recent Reuters article explained that no law established this secret panel and that there are no laws which govern it….

There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House’s National Security Council, several current and former officials said. Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate.

#2 It is on record that the federal government facilitated the sale of thousands upon thousands of very powerful guns to Mexican drug cartels.  The Mexican government was never told about this operation.  U.S. border agents have been shot with these guns, and these guns have been involved in dozens of murders already in Mexico.  Mexican drug cartels will continue to kill people with these guns for many years to come.  The Obama administration is working incredibly hard to cover up this scandal and the mainstream media is mostly ignoring the story.

#3 The other day, CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson shared with radio show host Laura Ingraham that Obama administration officials have yelled at her and cussed at her for aggressively investigating Operation Fast and Furious.  This must have created a lot of waves, because now CBS News has now put her on lockdown and has made her unavailable for interviews.

#4 A host of other recent examples show that if you are associated with the mainstream media in any way and you make a “politically incorrect” comment, you will be given the boot so fast that it will make your head swim.  For example, Hank Williams Jr. was recently booted off Monday Night Football simply because he compared Barack Obama to Hitler.

#5 At the current protests in New York City, police are  and  in their faces.  As the economic crisis gets even worse and protests spread and become more intense in future years, will all of America soon look like this?

#6 The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world and thelargest total prison population on the entire globe.

#7 The other day, a group of thieves stole a 50 foot long bridge in Pennsylvania.  Yes, you read that correctly.  They stole the entire bridge.

#8 Criminals seem willing to steal just about anything that is not bolted down these days.  For example, a group of thieves has stolen from farms in Minnesota and Iowa in recent months.

#9 Class warfare is certainly rising to a new level in this nation.  Recently, Roseanne Barr said that it would be a good idea for some bankers to “go to the reeducation camps“.

#10 Michael Moore is warning that the economic riots that we are starting to see around the country could potentially become violent in the future….

“The smart rich know they can only build the gate so high. And, and, sooner or later history proves that people when they’ve had enough aren’t going to take it anymore. And much better to deal with it nonviolently now, through the political system, than what could possibly happen in the future, which nobody wants to see”

#11 Have we become a socialist nation?  At this point, nearly half of all Americans live in a household that receives some form of government benefits.

#12 From the time George Washington became president until January 1993, the United States government accumulated a national debt of $4.16 trillion.  Since Barack Obama entered the White House, more than $4.2 trillion has been added to the national debt.

#13 Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke recently warned Congress not to cut “too much” from the federal budget right now.

#14 According to one recent report, the EPA wants to hire 230,000 more bureaucrats that will help enforce all of the new greenhouse gas regulations that the EPA plans to implement.

#15 There are more than 3 million reports of child abuse in the United States every single year.

#16 Horrifying brawls involving groups of young people are breaking out all over the nation.  For example, check out  of a brawl that recently broke out during a football game in California.

#17 All over the nation, little children are being publicly arrested by police in their own classrooms and are being marched out of their schools in handcuffs.

#18 In some areas of the country, law enforcement officials are now using “extraction devices” to download data from the cellphones of motorists that they pull over.

#19 In the United States today, it is estimated that one out of every four girls is sexually abused before they become adults.

#20 Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson recently declared that it if your spouse develops Alzheimer’s disease, it is okay to divorce them.

#21 The United States has the highest divorce rate on the globe by a wide margin.

#22 Children in the United States are three times more likely to be prescribed antidepressants as children in Europe are.

#23 Former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld recently stated that “extremism in Christianity” is a significant danger to the United States.

#24 More pornography is created in the United States than anywhere else on the entire globe.  89 percent is made in the U.S.A. and only 11 percent is made in the rest of the world.

#25 Vanderbilt University has ruled that five on-campus Christian groups have violated Vanderbilt’s non-discrimination policy because they will not allow people that do not believe in Christianity to become leaders in the groups.

#26 Globally, the United States is tied with the U.K. for the most hours of television watched per person each week.

#27 According to NationMaster.com, the United States has the highest percentage of obese people in the world.

#28 The federal government recently sued a company down in Texas .

#29 Are American students getting dumber?  This year, the average score on the verbal portion of the SAT was the lowest ever recorded.

#30 The United States has more people on pharmaceutical drugs than any other country on the planet.

#31 The percentage of women taking antidepressants in America is higher than in any other country in the world.

#32 One out of every four teen girls in the United States now has an STD.

#33 Law enforcement officials estimate that about 600,000 Americans and about 65,000 Canadians are trading dirty child pictures online.

#34 There are more reported rapes in the United States each year than anywhere else in the world.

#35 Totalitarian police states used to be ridiculed in this country, but now that has all changed.  In fact, the “If You See Something, Say Something” campaign looks like it could have been pulled right out of an East German security handbook.

#36 According to a shocking FBI document obtained by Oath Keepers, the FBI definition of “suspicious activity” now includes making “extreme religious statements” and believing in “radical theology“.

#37 It is estimated that 500,000 babies that will be born this year will be sexually abused before they turn 18.

#38 In airports all over the country, the federal government is forcing large numbers of women and children to endure very offensive “enhanced pat-downs” during which their private parts are touched before they are allowed to get on to their flights.

#39 It was bad enough when the TSA was just abusing our families at the airports.  Now, TSA “VIPR teams” are conducting approximately  a year at subway stations, bus terminals, ports and highway rest stops.

#40 Since 1973, approximately 50 million babies have been slaughtered in the United States before they were even born.

Some of the examples above may seem unrelated at first glance, but they really are not.  The truth is that all of those examples illustrate the deep decay that has taken hold in this nation.

Sadly, hundreds more examples could easily be listed.  This country is deeply sick, and “tweaking” a couple of things or electing the right politician is not going to cure us.

America is dying and time is running out.

Source: The American Dream

Americans Who Love Liberty And Freedom Should Watch Their Backs

Do you love liberty and freedom?  If so, you better watch your back.  The control freaks that run our society are stripping away our liberties and freedoms a little bit more each day, and lately they seem to be particularly focused on coming after those that are not “integrating” into the system.  Just like the rest of the western world, America is being transformed into a “Big Brother” police state control grid.  Nearly everything that you do is being watched and monitored.  A whole host of organizations know that you are on this website right now.  If you want to go to an NFL game next weekend, there is a good chance that you will be on the receiving end of an “enhanced pat-down” and if you are producing raw milk on your farm there is a good chance that the feds will show up for a pre-dawn raid on your property.  In many areas of the country, the government forces us to shoot our kids full of vaccines and implant dangerous microchips in our pets.  Virtually wherever we go there is a camera that is watching us or there are other Americans that are evaluating whether or not we are engaged in “suspicious activity” that needs to be reported to the government.  Once upon a time, America was all about liberty and freedom, but today our nation is undergoing a radical cultural shift.  America is being “locked down”, and those who love liberty and freedom should watch their backs.

Once upon a time, our founders thought that they were guaranteeing our freedoms by adding a Bill of Rights to the Constitution.

But today there are a lot of freedoms that we simply do not have any longer.

In America today, you do not have the right to say whatever you want.  If you say the wrong thing on a blog or a website it can have dramatic consequences.

In America today, you do not have the right to do raise your own children as you see fit.

In America today, you do not have the right to grow whatever food you want and you do not have the right to eat whatever food you do grow.

In America today, you do not have the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure.

In America today, you do not have a right to privacy.  In fact, you should expect that everything that you do is watched, tracked, monitored and recorded.

If you doubt any of the statements above, just check out the examples posted below.

The following are 12 signs that Americans who love liberty and freedom should watch their backs….

#1 A 55-year-old man in Arizona was recently ordered to turn in all his guns because of things that he wrote on his blog.  Fortunately, after WorldNetDaily covered the story there was an outpouring of outrage and the order was overturned, but what would have happened if WorldNetDaily had not covered the story?

#2 According to Mike Adams of Natural News, the CDC is starting to call parents all over the nation to question them about the vaccination status of their children….

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control, which has been comprehensively exposed as a vaccine propaganda organization promoting the interests of drug companies, is now engaged in a household surveillance program that involves calling U.S. households and intimidating parents into producing child immunization records. As part of what it deems a National Immunization Survey(NIS), the CDC is sending letters to U.S. households, alerting them that they will be called by “NORC at the University of Chicago” and that households should “have your child’s immunization records handy when answering our questions.”

You can see a copy of the letter that the CDC is sending out to selected parentsright here.

#3 According to blogger Alexander Higgins, students in kindergarten and the 1st grade in the state of New Jersey are now required by law to participate “in monthly anti-terrorism drills”.  The following is an excerpt from a letter that he recently received from the school where his child attends….

Each month a school must conduct one fire drill and one security drill which may be a lockdown, bomb threat, evacuation, active shooter, or shelter-in place drill. All schools are now required by law to implement this procedure.

So who in the world ever decided that it would be a good idea for 1st grade students to endure “lockdown” and “active shooter” drills?

To get an idea of what these kinds of drills are like, just check out .

#4 According to licensed private investigator Angela V. Woodhull, hospitals are increasingly using “guardianship” to strip elderly Americans of their liberty and to rapidly drain their bank accounts.  The following is one story that Woodhull included in a recent article….

Ginger Franklin, Hendersonville, Tennessee, fell down the stairs in her condo and suffered a bump on her head.  She was declared “temporarily mentally incapacitated” and a guardian was appointed through the courts.  Within six weeks, the guardian had sold Franklin’s home, car, furniture, and drained her bank account.  Today, Franklin has her freedom back, but she is having to start all over.

#5 In a sign of just how far individual liberty in the United States has declined, a judge in Wisconsin has actually ruled that citizens do not have a right to grow and eat whatever foods they want to.  The following is a short excerpt from his recent decision….

1) no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to own and use a dairy cow or a dairy herd;

2) no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to consume the milk from their own cow;

3) no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to board their cow at the farm of a farmer;

4) no, the Zinniker Plaintiffs’ private contract does not fall outside the scope of the State’s police power;

5) no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to produce and consume foods of their choice;

#6 The freedom to raise our pets as we want to is also being greatly curtailed in many areas of the country.  For example, a new law in St. Louis would require nearly all dogs and cats to be sterilized and microchipped….

Board Bill 107 would require all pet owners to spay or neuter their dogs and cats and microchip them for identification. Those who don’t want to sterilize their pets would be assessed a fee of $200 per year.

Will the control freaks that run things want to start sterilizing and microchipping humans someday?

#7 Whenever any politician suggests that we should “suspend elections”, that should be a major red flag.  North Carolina Governor Bev Perdue recently made national headlines when she made the following statement….

“I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won’t hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover“

#8 As I wrote about recently, many NFL teams are now performing “enhanced pat-downs” of fans before they enter the stadiums.  In Green Bay, the Packers are using hand-held metal detectors on fans before they are allowed to enter Lambeau field.

What is next?  Will they soon insist that we all undergo full body cavity searches before we are permitted to attend the games?

#9 Many Americans have complained about the horrible treatment that they are receiving at U.S. airports, but now the TSA is bringing their brand of “security” to many other locations throughout America as well.

TSA “VIPR teams” now conduct approximately  a year at subway stations, bus terminals, ports and highway rest stops.

#10 Many of our public schools are now being run like prisons.  In fact, in many areas of the country, little kids are being publicly arrested by police in their own classrooms and are being marched out of their schools in handcuffs.

#11 If you think that anything that you do on the Internet is private, you should guess again.  It has recently come out that Facebook continues to track most of the websites that you visit even after you have logged out of Facebook.

In addition, law enforcement agencies all over the globe are increasingly viewing social media as a law enforcement tool.  For example, the NYPD recently createda special “social media” unit dedicated to looking for criminals on Facebook and Twitter.

Also, many large organizations are now setting us very sophisticated systems that keep track of what is being said about them online and who is saying it.  For example, the new “Social Media Monitoring Solution” being developed by the Federal Reserve will identify “key bloggers” and monitor “billions of conversations” about the Fed on Facebook, Twitter, forums and blogs.

#12 The U.S. government is ramping up efforts to have all of us watch one another and to report any sign of “suspicious activity” to them immediately.  But exactly what does “suspicious activity” entail?  According to a shocking document obtained by Oath Keepers, the FBI has really broadened their definition of “suspicious activity”.  According to the document, “suspicious activity” now includes….

-paying with cash

-missing a hand or fingers

-“strange odors”

-making “extreme religious statements”

-“radical theology”

-purchasing weatherproofed ammunition or match containers

-purchasing meals ready to eat

-purchasing night vision devices, night flashlights or gas masks

According to WorldNetDaily, this document is part of a “series of brochures” that will be distributed “to farm supply stores, gun shops, military surplus stores and even hotels and motels.”

Our entire society is becoming extremely paranoid.

The Department of Homeland Security is spending massive amounts of money and running tons of ads to promote the “See Something, Say Something” campaign.

Apparently the Obama administration wants to turn the entire country into a vast network of government snitches.

They spend billions upon billions of dollars watching all of us, and yet now they also want all of us to watch each other.

It is not right.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to end up living in a society that resembles the novel “1984” by George Orwell.

Sadly, the death of our civil liberties is very rarely mentioned by any of our politicians these days.

Both major political parties seem to have fully embraced the growing national security apparatus that is starting to suffocate the life out of this country.

Yes, we will always need security, but security measures should be implemented in such a way that they will never violate the liberty, freedom, honor or dignity of ordinary Americans.

In a previous article, I wrote the following….

If those in charge of our security right now cannot protect us without compromising our liberty, freedom, honor and dignity then they need to immediately resign and allow someone else to do the job.

The Department of Homeland Security should be given a dual mandate.  They must be charged with protecting us and they must be charged with protecting our liberty, freedom, honor and dignity at the same time.

If those running the security apparatus in this country right now feel like they cannot do that, then they need to step aside and let someone else take over.

The status quo is not acceptable.

Right now, all law enforcement personnel in this country are trained to bark at us like dogs and to treat us like cattle.

They are actually instructed to be mean and aggressive with us.  From the first day of training, they are taught to treat us like dirt.

Things were not always this way in America.  Once upon a time there was a clear distinction between the United States and “evil” totalitarian regimes.

Well, today we are becoming a little more “evil” and a little more “totalitarian” with each passing day.

If you love liberty and freedom, you better watch your back.

America is changing, and not for the better.

Source: The American Dream

18 Examples Of How Christians Are Being Specifically Targeted By Big Brother

When the freedom of speech of one group is being threatened, it is a threat to all of us.  Just because you may not be a Christian, don’t think that what you are about to read is not a problem for you as well.  The truth is that any individual or group that does not “fit in” with the new “politically-correct” global system that is emerging is going to be persecuted sooner or later.  In our society today, it has become quite fashionable to bash Christians.  In fact, I am quite certain that some of the comments that get left after this article will say really horrible things about Christians.  But after “Big Brother” is done with the Christians, are you sure that they will not come after you next?  When I speak of “Big Brother”, I am not just speaking of the government.  In today’s world, giant corporations and the mainstream media also play instrumental roles in the totalitarian police state prison grid that is being constructed all around us.  The elite control the government, they run nearly all of the major corporations and they own most of the major media outlets.  Anyone that does not “conform” to their system is a threat.  As time goes by, the persecution of those that attempt to “rebel” against their system is only going to become more intense.

So if you are not a Christian, do not applaud when the system cracks down on Bible-believing Christians.

You never know, you might be next.

The following are 18 examples of how Christians are being specifically targeted by “Big Brother”….

#1 Home Bible studies are now banned in the city of San Juan Capistrano, California.  According to city officials, regular gatherings “of more than three people” in private homes are simply not allowed.  One couple that has held home Bible studies for years has already been fined twice and is being threatened with even more fines.

#2 Paypal has initiated “formal investigations” of a large number of Christian websites and organizations.  Apparently, many of these investigations have been launched due to concerns that these websites and organizations do not hold to a “politically-correct” view of sexuality.

According to WorldNetDaily, Paypal has targeted include Americans For Truth, Last Days Watchman and a host of other Christian organizations including “Abiding Truth Ministries, New Generation Ministries, Noua Dreapta of Romania, Truth in Action Ministries, Dove World Outreach, Faith Word Baptist Church, Family Research Institute and American Society for the Defense of Traditional Family”.

#3 In Wichita, Kansas last year, a Christian minister was handcuffed and hauled off to jail by police for sharing the gospel and handing out tracts to Muslims on a public sidewalk.  Apparently freedom of speech does not apply on the public sidewalks of America any longer.

#4 In the UK, police recently threatened a cafe owner with arrest for silently playing a Bible DVD on a small television on the back wall of his cafe.  The following is an excerpt from a Daily Mail article about this incident….

Mr Murray, 31, was left shocked after he was questioned for nearly an hour by the officers, who arrived unannounced at the premises.

He said he had turned off the Bible DVD after an ‘aggressive inquisition’ during which he thought he was going to be arrested and ‘frog-marched out of the cafe like a criminal’.

#5 Last year, a high school student in Southern California was suspended for two days because he had private conversations with his classmates during which he discussed Christianity.  He was also banned from bringing his Bible to school ever again.

#6 Big cable networks regularly feature “comedians” that love to mock Christians.  For example, HBO “comedian” Bill Maher recently stated that “there’s a term for people who hate charity and love killing: Christian“.

If that had been said about another minority group, it would have made front page headlines for weeks.

#7 Down in Texas, the Department of Veteran Affairs actually tried to ban prayers  during funeral services for veterans.

#8 In North Carolina last year, a pastor was dismissed from his chaplain duties for praying in the name of Jesus.

#9 An unclassified Department of Homeland Security report published a couple years ago entitled “Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment” claims that a belief in Bible prophecy “could motivate extremist individuals and groups to stockpile food, ammunition and weapons.”  The report goes on to state that such people are potentially dangerous.

#10 Back on February 20, 2009, the State of Missouri issued a report entitled “MIAC Strategic Report: The Modern Militia Movement“.  That report warned that the following types of people may be potential terrorists….

*anti-abortion activists

*those that are against illegal immigration

*those that consider “the New World Order” to be a threat

*those that have a negative view of the United Nations

#11 All over the nation, “child protection agencies” are ripping an inordinate number of children out of Christian homes.  In many of these cases the parents believe in homeschooling their children or they do not believe in having their children vaccinated.

#12 On June 18, 2010 two Christians decided that they would peacefully pass out copies of the gospel of John on a public sidewalk outside a public Islamic festival in Dearborn, Michigan and within three minutes 8 police officers surrounded them and placed them under arrest.

#13 A Christian consultant was recently fired by Bank of America and by Cisco because they discovered a book that he had written that expressed Christian viewpoints about social issues.

#14 A while back, a federal judge actually ruled that the University of Californiacan deny course credit to applicants from Christian high schools that use textbooks that teach that it was God who created the earth.

#15 Back in 2009, one 8 year old boy in Massachusetts was sent home from school and was forced to undergo a psychological evaluation because he drew a picture of Jesus on the cross.

#16 The Obama administration has announced that there is a whole host of laws that it will not be enforcing, but one thing that the Obama administration has chosen to do is to aggressively pursue lawsuits against anti-abortion protesters.

#17 , U.S. Representative Sheila Jackson Lee warned that “Christian militants” might try to “bring down the country” and that such groups need to be investigated.

#18 According to a shocking FBI document obtained by Oath Keepers, the FBI definition of “suspicious activity” now includes making “extreme religious statements” and believing in “radical theology“.

The good news is that there still is at least a limited amount of religious freedom in America.  It may soon be gone, but at least we are in better shape than most of the globe.

Almost 70 percent of the population of the world now lives in countries where religious activities are highly restricted.

The sad truth is that the entire planet is moving away from freedom of religion.

That is a right that we are supposed to be guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution, but it should be obvious to everyone that our right to religious freedom is rapidly dying.

If you are not religious, don’t think that you should not be fighting for religious freedom along with the rest of us.

Once they take some of our rights away, it will be much easier for them to take all the rest of our rights away.

United we stand, or divided we will fall.

Source: The American Dream

30 Signs That America Has Become A Horrible Place For Children

What in the world has happened to the United States?  Once upon a time the U.S. was one of the best places in the world to raise a child, but today it is an absolutely horrible place for children.  We physically abuse our children at staggering rates, we pump them full of antidepressants and other pharmaceutical drugs and we send them off to public schools that more closely resemble prison camps every single day.  Meanwhile, the economic decline of the America is hitting children far harder than it is hitting the adult population.  More than one out of every five children in America is living in poverty and one out of every four children is on food stamps.  One of the ways that a society is judged is by how it treats its most vulnerable members.  As you will see below, the way that children are treated in America today is absolutely shameful.

The following are 30 signs that America has become a horrible place for children….

#1 There are more than 3 million reports of child abuse in the United States every single year.

#2 There are 314 counties in the United States where at least 30% of the children are facing food insecurity.

#3 In Washington D.C., the “child food insecurity rate” is 32.3%.

#4 If you can believe it, an average of five children die as a result of child abuse in the United States every single day.

#5 In the United States today, it is estimated that one out of every four girls is sexually abused before they become adults.

#6 The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is now publicly advising parents that infants and young children are ““.

#7 67 percent of all sexual assault victims in America are children.

#8 The state of Illinois has actually been paying convicted sex offenders .

#9 20 percent of all child sexual abuse victims are under the age of 8.

#10 Children in the United States are three times more likely to be prescribed antidepressants than children in Europe are.

#11 The United States has the highest divorce rate on the globe by a wide margin.  This is ripping millions of families with children to shreds.

#12 According to one recent study, approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States were living below the poverty line in 2010. In the UK and in France that figure is well under 10 percent.

#13 It is estimated that up to half a million children may currently be homeless in the United States.

#14 In America today, many families allow the television to raise their children.  In fact, the United States is tied with the U.K. for the most hours of television watched per person each week.

#15 Our public schools are being transformed into prison camps.  Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has announced that school officials can search the cell phones and laptops of public school students at any time if there are “reasonable grounds for suspecting that the search will turn up evidence that the student has violated or is violating either the law or the rules of the school.”

#16 Today, one out of every four American children is on food stamps.

#17 It is being projected that approximately 50 percent of all U.S. children will be on food stamps at some point in their lives before they reach the age of 18.

#18 More than 20 million U.S. children rely on school meal programs to keep from going hungry.

#19 The U.S. Department of Agriculture is spending huge amounts of money to install surveillance cameras in the cafeterias of public schools so that government control freaks can closely monitor what our children are eating.

#20 According to researchers, convicted rapists in the United States report that two-thirds of their victims were under 18, and among those cases 58% said that their victims were 12 years old or younger.

#21 Since 1973, approximately 50 million babies have been slaughtered in the United States before they were even born.

#22 One out of every four teen girls in the United States now has an STD.

#23 It has been reported that Texas police gave “1,000 tickets” to elementary school kids over one recent six year period.

#24 The number of young children that are being ripped out of good homes by “child protective services” continues to soar.

#25 All over the nation, little children are being publicly arrested by police in their own classrooms and are being marched out of their schools in handcuffs.

#26 Law enforcement officials estimate that about 600,000 Americans and about 65,000 Canadians are trading dirty child pictures online.

#27 All over the United States, lemonade stands run by young children are being shut down by police.

#28 The federal government has spent 14 trillion dollars that belong to our children and our grandchildren.  Will future generations thank us for loading such a massive debt on to their backs?

#29 In airports all over the country, many young children are being subjected to “enhanced pat-downs” during which their private parts are touched before they are allowed to get on to their airplanes.

#30 It is estimated that 500,000 babies that will be born this year will be sexually abused before they turn 18.

What in the world has happened to us?  America used to be the envy of the rest of the world, but now they look at us like we are a bunch of degenerates.

How are we supposed to teach our children that it is improper for them to be touched in certain places when the federal government is forcing large numbers of children to be publicly groped at airports before they are allowed to get on to their flights?

How are we supposed to teach our children what liberty and freedom are all about when our public schools are slowly being turned into “Big Brother” prison grids?

How can we claim that we are “the greatest nation on earth” when millions of American children are going hungry tonight?

The way that we are treating our children is shameful.  Sadly, the abuse that we are heaping on to them is going to come out in their behavior as they get older.

When we pump our kids full of “legal” drugs and allow the television, movies, video games and public schools to raise them, we should not be surprised when they turn out very sick and twisted.

Source: The American Dream

Breaking The Silver Manipulation Barrier

In 2011, so far gold has been the champion investment above and beyond any contender, including stocks and equities. At the announcement of the S&P downgrade of America’s credit rating, only gold showcased immunity. In fact, gold has thrived (as we predicted) in the face of any potential economic threat, from deflation in stocks, to inflation of fiat currencies. Some may wonder, though, where silver has been while its big brother is flexing its investment muscle?While traditionally, silver tends to follow market surges in gold, the past eight months have been rather confusing for the cheaper metal. Admittedly, silver has performed far beyond the predictions of slow witted mainstream skeptics, but it still has not come anywhere near its true potential, especially in light of gold’s incredible strides. Many may be wondering how it was possible for gold to stampede into the $1800 an ounce range after the downgrade while silver stayed completely static at around $40 an ounce. The behavior of commodities markets has been, indeed, very strange…

The common assertion by MSM pundits is that because silver has a larger industrial market than gold, silver is affected more negatively when stocks decline. This is absurd logic. Silver is still very much an alternative currency and just as much a hedge against market instability as gold is. All told, silver should actually be MORE apt to increase during economic uncertainty than gold, because of its wider industrial usage and subsequent decreasing supply. The “utility argument” for decreasing silver values just doesn’t fly.

As many are well aware, silver is a much smaller market than gold, with fewer primary players in control of tighter trade. Most of us are also well aware that one of these players, JP Morgan Chase, was exposed as a massive silver manipulator in 2010 by commodities trader Andrew Maguire. Gold and silver investors have been demanding a Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) investigation of such manipulation for decades. These demands fell on deaf ears, and claimants were quickly disregarded as “conspiracy theorists”. Issuers of ETFs (paper silver or gold) have long circulated silver equities supposedly backed by real metal, but when investors began to notice that the amount of paper issued far surpassed the amount of real silver in actual circulation, the scale of the manipulation in progress became quite clear.Global banks were purposely driving down the value of silver by creating the illusion that there is a greater silver supply than there actually is. JP Morgan has also been caught red handed initiating coordinated naked short selling of silver equities as a way to fool average investors into believing that demand for the metal is falling.

With the Maguire revelation, the hope was that the CFTC would finally do their job and take market manipulation seriously. So far, they have not. Maguire’s evidence and testimony have been ignored, investigations were limited to a few pointless committee hearings, and the global bank ETF fraud continues.

Another snake in the grass when it comes to precious metals investment is the COMEX itself.The COMEX is not a free market by any means of the term. It is in fact a highly micromanaged exchange owned and operated by an organization called the CME Group based out of Chicago.CME is the preeminent hand in the flow of trade in all commodities (at least until recently). Their main method for stifling the rise in metals is the use of “margin hikes”. Buying silver equities “on margin” allows investors to borrow capital from a company with a certain percentage of their own cash as collateral, in order to get more silver than they would using their personal funds alone. When the silver margin sits at 50%, for example, an investor with $10,000 can borrow from the company to buy $20,000 worth of securities (ETFs). However, if the CME increases the margin from 50% to 75%, that investor will have to quickly increase his collateral by 25% or lower his silver holdings. CME has the ability to make these changes at will, and such margin hikes have the ability to trigger massive sell-offs in metals, especially silver. In May of this year, as silver edged towards $50 an ounce, CME hiked margins four times! Three times in the span of only seven days! Investors scrambled to unload their ETF’s, which they could no longer afford to collateralize, and silver’s price plummeted to around $30 an ounce.

The CME (and the idiots who defend the CME) often claim that they must raise margins aggressively in order to offset market volatility caused by “speculators”. Strangely, though, there was NO VOLATILITY in silver markets in May. Not until the CME actually increased margins, creating an engineered dump of equities. This forced reduction in silver prices also greatly benefits consistent short selling manipulators like JP Morgan and HSBC, but that’s just a coincidence, I’m sure.

Obviously, someone out there does not like the idea of silver crossing the historic $50 an ounce mark…

So, the next logical question is; how long will this manipulation go on, and how can we fight back? The keys to the end of commodities manipulation may already be in play, while methods for combating centralized control of metals are increasing. Here’s why…

China Competes With The Comex

As of this summer China now has its own Comex, called the Hong Kong Mercantile Exchange.The exchange opened for trade on May 18^th (the CME’s incredible margin hikes in silver began only weeks before, which suggests to me that they were trying to preempt the positive effects the HKMEX would have on metals). The HKMEX moved into action only five months after the Chinese Pan American Gold Exchange was instituted. The exchange issues its own ETF’s in gold and silver. These securities, though, are not based on leverage or derivatives like most Comex based ETFs. The bottom line; the Comex global monopoly on commodities trade is over:

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2011-01/13/content_11846539.htm

http://af.reuters.com/article/metalsNews/idAFL3E7II0W920110718

This would explain gold’s unstoppable expansion into the $1800 range, and how silver was able to climb back after the CME’s brutal margin manipulation into the $40 range. Only last week, the CME issued a margin hike on gold of 22%. Despite this the fall in gold was minimal, showing that their influence, though vast, is beginning to wane. With competition, manipulation becomes more difficult, and room for growth is created.

The new Hong Kong Exchange coupled with the now explosive buying of physical PM’s by Chinese consumers is slowly but surely overriding the long prevailing manipulations of corporate robber barons intent on ensuring gold and silver are never treated as a currency alternative to the dollar. Silver markets in the East were set into motion a bit more slowly than gold markets were, but given a little more time, I suspect that the resultant spike in silver prices will be the same.

Global Silver Investment Growing

World investment in silver rose by an impressive 40% in 2010 and industrial use increased by 12%, while global supply from mining production only increased by 5%. Growth of demand severely outweighs the growth of supply. After the opening of the HKMEX, China rushed into silver markets. The CME margin hikes that caused the substantial drop in silver spot price in May only served to create a buying opportunity for those investors smart enough to see the writing on the wall. After the S&P downgrade of the U.S. AAA credit rating, silver values did not skyrocket like gold’s, but in the face of extensive manipulation attempts by the CME and major banks, silver’s steadfast hold to its current prices says quite a bit about is resiliency.

One very important factor to consider is that silver is the common man’s currency, and has been for thousands of years. Both gold and silver are solid hedges against financial crisis, especially inflation. However, silver retains more accessibility. As gold continues its climb into the thousands of dollars per ounce, silver will become more appealing to those of us who want to protect our savings, but can’t afford gold. Being that the economic crisis we currently face is unfolding in almost every nation, the demand for a safe haven will increase exponentially. It is only a matter of time before silver is engulfed by an enormous surge of buyers.

With the Federal Reserve continuing to print progressively devaluing dollars, the European Central Bank announcing its own TARP measures, and China in the midst of a full-on inflationary battle royale, national currencies are undoubtedly losing market favor. Gold’s price will soon become unreachable for common people, but silver will be there to fill the void.

How To Break The Barrier

Methods for smaller investors to fight back against the market manipulations of large banks have been sparse, and often limited to desperate appeals to the CFTC and the government, who are bought and paid for, and who have no intention of ever stopping global financiers from dragging their unwashed behinds across the face of the planet. Relying on bureaucrats to mend the wounds they themselves encouraged or inflicted is foolhardy, to say the least. Top down solutions are NOT an option now, and I’m not sure if they ever were. This leaves us with only one other choice; to fix the problem with our own hands from the bottom up. This is, of course, easier said than done…

In the case of silver manipulation, what we are faced with is an unprecedented effort to subvert and suppress an alternative system so that the mainstream system can continue to assert control over our financial lives. To effectively confront this issue, we must first end our reliance of the mainstream system. The longer we continue to participate in the fraud, the longer it will go on. Here are just a few strategies for decoupling, and walking away from the rigged game…

1) End The ETF Casino: If you play the ETF lottery, for god sakes, STOP! You are only perpetuating the con-game that is paper silver. While the allure of speed of light silver trade can be overwhelming, the bottom line is that even though you may think you have the market right where you want it, you don’t. ETFs are an amazing rip off. Trade fees can nickel and dime smaller traders to death. ETFs being held, even without trade, lose value through numerous surcharges as companies nibble away at your holdings. Most ETFs also will NOT allow you to take physical delivery of silver when cashing out your equities unless you have extensive holdings, and even then, it may take months for the silver to reach your doorstep. Because banks issue ETFs for silver they don’t actually have, they would never allow you to exchange them for physical if they can help it. Otherwise, the scam would be exposed, and they would be out of business.

Playing the margins is shear stupidity when you realize that global banks are hell bent on suppressing silver values. There is no rhyme or reason to silver ETFs and margin hikes beyond the whims of corporate puppeteers. Mainstream analysts can pretend as if there is a hard science to this brand of investment, but in reality, it is a large and very expensive joke.Unless you have a crystal ball, your only other tactic for discerning when to sell is pure luck. The very idea of the CME being able to control the price of physical by hiking the margins of paper securities that represent silver that doesn’t even exist is a farce beyond reckoning.

Buy physical, not paper. Be a part of the solution, not part of the problem.

2) Vault Storage Depositories: If you aren’t a buy and hold investor, and insist on participating in short term selling strategies, there is an effective (and smarter) alternative to ETFs and the fake paper market. Silver and gold vault storage depositories allow you to buy and store large quantities of physical metal while having the option of liquidating your holdings for cash just as quickly as if you were selling ETFs. Depositories do not charge hidden fees and do not reduce your silver holdings while they are in the vault. What you put in is what you get back. Period.

Because your silver is already sitting in their vault, a mere phone call allows you to liquidate a portion or all of your stock into cash whenever you wish, just like ETFs, but without the fraud. On top of this, depositories will deliver any or all of your silver or gold on demand to your doorstep, usually within 48 hours. If a sizable number of silver investors switched from ETFs to vault depositories, the ETF market would crumble, and market manipulation would end.

3) Encourage Physical Trade: Max Keiser’s ‘Crash JP Morgan’ campaign was an excellent first step in encouraging silver investment by showing average Americans that they can hurt the big banks simply by purchasing something they don’t want you to have. The next logical step would be to, of course, encourage larger ETF investors to demand physical delivery on their holdings by showing them the folly of the market itself, and, to encourage average investors to actually utilize the silver they buy not just to crash the banks, but for organized trade.

The construction of silver based barter markets must become a priority. Owning silver is not enough. We must start to use it in place of dollars if we are to have any control over our own economy. Barter efforts like this are becoming much more common, but we are still a far cry from full scale utilization of alternative currencies. With the implosion of

the dollar, it will only be a matter of time before metals take primacy as a means of trade, so why not get a head start now? Eventually, the increased circulation of physical will allow the free market to determine the natural value of silver and gold, instead of the subjugated paper market, until finally, the mainstream spot price is completely irrelevant.

4) Offer Incentives: For business owners or for those who are involved in private barter, offering incentives to those who pay in physical would encourage more silver investment, and by extension, more silver circulation as a currency. Add a certain percentage above spot price for silver trade, or, offer a discount on goods or services to those who pay in silver. Businesses, for that matter, could very well give their employees the option of being paid in silver, completing the currency circle and the flow of commerce. The more silver is used day to day, the harder it is for banks to control, and the more its value will rise.

All economies larger than a small village need a unit of trade beyond the barter of goods and services. They also need a unit of trade that maintains its value and buying power, instead of devaluing, inflating, and destroying the savings of those who hold it. Precious metals are the only existing option that can take on this role, and silver is the most attainable for average people. There is a reason why MSM analysts and establishment economists have been trying to crush interest in PM’s for years. There is a reason why global banks have gone out of their way to suppress the market values of metals. The second Americans realize there are other choices, other systems for living and working beyond the controlled paradigm we have been handed, the illusion slips away, and centralization becomes a memory. This is true for all aspects of economic structure, social structure, and political structure, not just for silver or gold.Ultimately, though, we have to start somewhere, and silver is as good a place as any.

Source: Alt-Market.com

You can contact Brandon Smith at:  

President Downgrade

When Barack Obama promised change that would transform America, most never suspected that he would make history by presiding over the nation’s first-ever credit downgrade.  But, well, yes – he can.

And he did.

Of course, the blame cannot be laid entirely at Obama’s feet.  Since Congress controls the purse strings, it allocates the money (the president does have a veto pen, however).  And, if in light of this we can still say that a president “spends,” for two terms Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, spent like a drunken sailor.

Yet the reality is that Obama has spent like three drunken sailors and a tipsy cabin boy.  And this isn’t just rhetoric.  According to a Weekly Standard piece featured at the very liberal NPR’s website, deficit spending under Obama is three and one half times what it was under Bush, as he has signed budget increases amounting to a whopping one trillion a year more in deficit spending.   So the reality is that, in a great measure, the president owns our economic woes.

Yet there is something even more significant here: When Standard & Poor’s lowered our credit rating, it wasn’t just a fiscal reality.

It was symbolic.

It was symbolic of a man who has downgraded the White House, the Constitution, human life, foreign policy and race relations – and America herself.

Welcome to the reign of President Downgrade.

The U.S. is the nation that defeated Nazism, stood down communism, and helped spread democracy and freedom wherever these ethereal blessings could take root.  It is the land that has provided 300 million people of all races, creeds and colors unprecedented wealth and human rights.  For these reasons and others, American presidents generally exhibited a healthy patriotism.

But not President Downgrade.

Within months of taking office, he had already apologized for Americaon foreign soil.  In 2009 he said that the U.S. “has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive” toward Europe when he was speaking to, of all peoples, the French.  And he managed to start this downgrade even before taking office.  In a 2008 Berlin speech he said, “I know my country has not perfected itself.  At times, we’ve struggled to keep the promise of liberty and equality for all of our people.  We’ve made our share of mistakes, and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions.”

To place this statement in perspective, let’s apply it not to a mother country, but to a mother.  Imagine if a person said, “I know my mother has not perfected herself.  At times, she has struggled to keep the promise of fairness for all of her children.  She has made her share of mistakes, and there are times when her actions around the town have not lived up to her best intentions.”  Since it’s a given that all people are imperfect, this statement would be gratuitous.

That is, unless the person believed that his mother was unusually flawed.

As President Downgrade believes about America.

He has downgraded our Constitution as well, with his effort to turn us into a top-down, command-control socialist state.  He has undermined the rule of law and our system of checks and balances and has further subverted the Natural Economy; he has visited on us blatantly unconstitutional ObamaCare, which was bought but not paid for with bribery and backroom deals; he has in a sense nationalized the banks, the financial arena and automakers; and he next wants to institute a cap-and-trade scam that would give Big Brother a vice-grip around the private sector’s neck, to name just a few of President Downgrade’s constitutional trespasses.  To him, our Constitution is not America’s national contract and a prescription for limited government.  It is an impediment.

He has downgraded foreign policy by snubbing long-time allies such as Britain and Israel.  Perhaps even worse, he has bowed to potentates in reality – and to the world metaphorically.  As to the latter, his tendency to behave as if he is ashamed of his country tells other leaders he is a weak sister who can be had.  Moreover, people generally are contemptuous of those who throw their own under the bus; no one respects a traitor.  And what do you suppose foreign leaders think about a nation that has elected one?

President Downgrade seeks to downgrade human life with his opposition to the Born Alive Infants Protection Act, his lifting of the ban on overseas abortion funding, and ObamaCare’s taxpayer financing of abortion through insurance plans.

He has downgraded the White House by inviting thuggish rappers into its once hallowed halls and by introducing a new level of informality.  And don’t be surprised.  President Downgrade’s judgment and conscience are such that he even downgraded his own daughters.  I refer to his 2004 admission that he allowed then three-year-old Sasha to listen to rap.

And post-racial Mr. Downgrade has downgraded race relations as well.  He presides over a Department of Justice that, whistleblowers have informed, will not pursue voting-rights cases in which the victims are white and the victimizers are minorities.  This explains why the DOJ wouldn’t prosecute the who were caught on videotape wielding nightsticks and trying to intimidate white voters.

And this is most amazing when you consider that doing so would have been a win-win scenario for President Downgrade.  He could have made a statement – as he did when he rashly said that some white Cambridge police officers “acted stupidly” – and proclaimed that he was the president of all the people and that, regardless of race, creed or color, whenever Americans’ rights are trampled, he’ll be there by their side.  He would have been hailed as a truly fair, just leader and as an authentic racial healer.  Instead, he threw away this opportunity, thus casting himself as one who would even go so far as to take political flak to stick it to whites.  He has made clear that his heart was downgraded, from innocent to bigoted, long ago.

Having said all this, there is something worse than having a President Downgrade: having a people downgraded to the point at which they would elect him.  In 2008, Americans saw a Chicago-machine thug, an urban rube, a man who sat in the “” church for 20 years, a radical Alinskyite who owned the Senate’s most left-wing voting record (even to the left of that body’s only avowed socialist), and what did they do?  They pulled the lever for him.

Upgrading the White House is relatively easy; that takes only one usual election or one unusual impeachment proceeding.  But upgrading the culture – restoring hearts and minds so they deserve freedom and not fetters – is a different matter entirely.

The Essential Rules Of Tyranny

As we look back on the horrors of the dictatorships and autocracies of the past, one particular question consistently arises; how was it possible for the common men of these eras to NOT notice what was happening around them? How could they have stood as statues unaware or uncaring as their cultures were overrun by fascism, communism, collectivism, and elitism? Of course, we have the advantage of hindsight, and are able to research and examine the misdeeds of the past at our leisure. Unfortunately, such hindsight does not necessarily shield us from the long cast shadow of tyranny in our own day. For that, the increasingly uncommon gift of foresight is required…

At bottom, the success of despotic governments and Big Brother societies hinges upon a certain number of political, financial, and cultural developments. The first of which is an unwillingness in the general populace to secure and defend their own freedoms, making them completely reliant on corrupt establishment leadership. For totalitarianism to take hold, the masses must not only neglect the plight of their country, and the plight of others, but also be completely uninformed of the inherent indirect threats to their personal safety. They must abandon all responsibility for their destinies, and lose all respect for their own humanity. They must, indeed, become domesticated and mindless herd animals without regard for anything except their fleeting momentary desires for entertainment and short term survival. For a lumbering bloodthirsty behemoth to actually sneak up on you, you have to be pretty damnably oblivious.

The prevalence of apathy and ignorance sets the stage for the slow and highly deliberate process of centralization. Once dishonest governments accomplish an atmosphere of inaction and condition a sense of frailty within the citizenry, the sky is truly the limit. However, a murderous power-monger’s day is never quite done. In my recent article ‘The Essential Rules of Liberty’ we explored the fundamentally unassailable actions and mental preparations required to ensure the continuance of a free society. In this article, let’s examine the frequently wielded tools of tyrants in their invariably insane quests for total control…

Rule #1: Keep Them Afraid

People who are easily frightened are easily dominated. This is not just a law of political will, but a law of nature. Many wrongly assume that a tyrant’s power comes purely from the application of force. In fact, despotic regimes that rely solely on extreme violence are often very unsuccessful, and easily overthrown. Brute strength is calculable. It can be analyzed, and thus, eventually confronted and defeated. Thriving tyrants instead utilize not just harm, but the imminent THREAT of harm. They instill apprehension in the public; a fear of the unknown, or a fear of the possible consequences for standing against the state. They let our imaginations run wild until we see death around every corner, whether it’s actually there or not. When the masses are so blinded by the fear of reprisal that they forget their fear of slavery, and take no action whatsoever to undo it, then they have been sufficiently culled.

In other cases, our fear is evoked and directed towards engineered enemies. Another race, another religion, another political ideology, a “hidden” and ominous villain created out of thin air.Autocrats assert that we “need them” in order to remain safe and secure from these illusory monsters bent on our destruction. As always, this development is followed by the claim that all steps taken, even those that dissolve our freedoms, are “for the greater good”. Frightened people tend to shirk their sense of independence and run towards the comfort of the collective, even if that collective is built on immoral and unconscionable foundations. Once a society takes on a hive-mind mentality almost any evil can be rationalized, and any injustice against the individual is simply overlooked for the sake of the group.

Rule #2: Keep Them Isolated

In the past, elitist governments would often legislate and enforce severe penalties for public gatherings, because defusing the ability of the citizenry to organize or to communicate was paramount to control. In our technological era, such isolation is still used, but in far more advanced forms. The bread and circus lifestyle of the average westerner alone is enough to distract us from connecting with each other in any meaningful fashion, but people still sometimes find ways to seek out organized forms of activism.

Through co-option, modern day tyrant’s can direct and manipulate opposition movements. By creating and administrating groups which oppose each other, elites can then micromanage all aspects of a nation on the verge of revolution. These “false paradigms” give us the illusion of proactive organization, and the false hope of changing the system, while at the same time preventing us from seeking understanding in one another. All our energies are then muted and dispersed into meaningless battles over “left and right”, or “Democrat versus Republican”, for example. Only movements that cast aside such empty labels and concern themselves with the ultimate truth of their country, regardless of what that truth might reveal, are able to enact real solutions to the disasters wrought by tyranny.

In more advanced forms of despotism, even fake organizations are disbanded. Curfews are enforced. Normal communications are diminished or monitored. Compulsory paperwork is required. Checkpoints are instituted. Free speech is punished. Existing groups are influenced to distrust each other or to disintegrate entirely out of dread of being discovered. All of these measures are taken by tyrants primarily to prevent ANY citizens from gathering and finding mutual support. People who work together and organize of their own volition are unpredictable, and therefore, a potential risk to the state.

Rule #3: Keep Them Desperate

You’ll find in nearly every instance of cultural descent into autocracy, the offending government gained favor after the onset of economic collapse. Make the necessities of root survival an uncertainty, and people without knowledge of self sustainability and without solid core principles will gladly hand over their freedom, even for mere scraps from the tables of the same men who unleashed famine upon them. Financial calamities are not dangerous because of the poverty they leave in their wake; they are dangerous because of the doors to malevolence that they leave open.

Destitution leads not just to hunger, but also to crime (private and government). Crime leads to anger, hatred, and fear. Fear leads to desperation. Desperation leads to the acceptance of anything resembling a solution, even despotism.

Autocracies pretend to cut through the dilemmas of economic dysfunction (usually while demanding liberties be relinquished), however, behind the scenes they actually seek to maintain a proscribed level of indigence and deprivation. The constant peril of homelessness and starvation keeps the masses thoroughly distracted from such things as protest or dissent, while simultaneously chaining them to the idea that their only chance is to cling to the very government out to end them.

Rule #4: Send Out The Jackboots

This is the main symptom often associated with totalitarianism. So much so that our preconceived notions of what a fascist government looks like prevent us from seeing other forms of tyranny right under our noses. Some Americans believe that if the jackbooted thugs are not knocking on every door, then we MUST still live in a free country. Obviously, this is a rather naïve position. Admittedly, though, goon squads and secret police do eventually become prominent in every failed nation, usually while the public is mesmerized by visions of war, depression, hyperinflation, terrorism, etc.

When law enforcement officials are no longer servants of the people, but agents of a government concerned only with its own supremacy, serious crises emerge. Checks and balances are removed. The guidelines that once reigned in police disappear, and suddenly, a philosophy of superiority emerges; an arrogant exclusivity that breeds separation between law enforcement and the rest of the public. Finally, police no longer see themselves as protectors of citizens, but prison guards out to keep us subdued and docile.

As tyranny grows, this behavior is encouraged. Good men are filtered out of the system, and small (minded and hearted) men are promoted.

At its pinnacle, a police state will hide the identities of most of its agents and officers, behind masks or behind red tape, because their crimes in the name of the state become so numerous and so sadistic that personal vengeance on the part of their victims will become a daily concern.

Rule #5: Blame Everything On The Truth Seekers

Tyrants are generally men who have squelched their own consciences. They have no reservations in using any means at their disposal to wipe out opposition. But, in the early stages of their ascent to power, they must give the populace a reason for their ruthlessness, or risk being exposed, and instigating even more dissent. The propaganda machine thus goes into overdrive, and any person or group that dares to question the authority or the validity of the state is demonized in the minds of the masses.

All disasters, all violent crimes, all the ills of the world, are hoisted upon the shoulders of activist groups and political rivals. They are falsely associated with fringe elements already disliked by society (racists, terrorists, etc). A bogus consensus is created through puppet media in an attempt to make the public believe that “everyone else” must have the same exact views, and those who express contrary positions must be “crazy”, or “extremist”. Events are even engineered by the corrupt system and pinned on those demanding transparency and liberty. The goal is to drive anti-totalitarian organizations into self censorship. That is to say, instead of silencing them directly, the state causes activists to silence themselves.

Tyrannical power structures cannot function without scapegoats. There must always be an elusive boogie man under the bed of every citizen, otherwise, those citizens may turn their attention, and their anger, towards the real culprit behind their troubles. By scapegoating stewards of the truth, such governments are able to kill two birds with one stone.

Rule #6: Encourage Citizen Spies

Ultimately, the life of a totalitarian government is not prolonged by the government itself, but by the very people it subjugates. Citizen spies are the glue of any police state, and our propensity for sticking our noses into other peoples business is highly valued by Big Brother bureaucracies around the globe.

There are a number of reasons why people participate in this repulsive activity. Some are addicted to the feeling of being a part of the collective, and “service” to this collective, sadly, is the only way they are able to give their pathetic lives meaning. Some are vindictive, cold, and soulless, and actually get enjoyment from ruining others. And still, like elites, some long for power, even petty power, and are willing to do anything to fulfill their vile need to dictate the destinies of perfect strangers.

Citizen spying is almost always branded as a civic duty; an act of heroism and bravery. Citizen spies are offered accolades and awards, and showered with praise from the upper echelons of their communities. People who lean towards citizen spying are often outwardly and inwardly unimpressive; physically and mentally inept. For the average moral and emotional weakling with persistent feelings of inadequacy, the allure of finally being given fifteen minutes of fame and a hero’s status (even if that status is based on a lie) is simply too much to resist. They begin to see “extremists” and “terrorists” everywhere. Soon, people afraid of open ears everywhere start to watch what they say at the supermarket, in their own backyards, or even to family members. Free speech is effectively neutralized.

Rule #7: Make Them Accept The Unacceptable

In the end, it is not enough for a government fueled by the putrid sludge of iniquity to lord over us.At some point, it must also influence us to forsake our most valued principles. Tyrannies are less concerned with dominating how we live, so much as dominating how we think. If they can mold our very morality, they can exist unopposed indefinitely. Of course, the elements of conscience are inborn, and not subject to environmental duress as long as a man is self aware. However, conscience can be manipulated if a person has no sense of identity, and has never put in the effort to explore his own strengths and failings. There are many people like this in America today.

Lies become “necessary” in protecting the safety of the state. War becomes a tool for “peace”.Torture becomes an ugly but “useful” method for gleaning important information. Police brutality is sold as a “natural reaction” to increased crime. Rendition becomes normal, but only for those labeled as “terrorists”. Assassination is justified as a means for “saving lives”. Genocide is done discretely, but most everyone knows it is taking place. They simply don’t discuss it.

All tyrannical systems depend on the apathy and moral relativism of the inhabitants within their borders. Without the cooperation of the public, these systems cannot function. The real question is, how many of the above steps will be taken before we finally refuse to conform? At what point will each man and woman decide to break free from the dark path blazed before us and take measures to ensure their independence? Who will have the courage to develop their own communities, their own alternative economies, their own organizations for mutual defense outside of establishment constructs, and who will break under the pressure to bow like cowards?How many will hold the line, and how many will flee?

For every American, for every human being across the planet who chooses to stand immovable in the face of the very worst in mankind, we come that much closer to breathing life once again into the very best in us all.

Source: Alt-Market.com

You can contact Brandon Smith at:  

The NSA Is Building An Artificial Intelligence System That Can Read Minds

The New Thought Police – The NSA Wants to Know How You Think – Maybe Even What You Think

The National Security Agency (NSA) is developing a tool that George Orwell’s Thought Police might have found useful: an artificial intelligence system designed to gain insight into what people are thinking.

With the entire Internet and thousands of databases for a brain, the device will be able to respond almost instantaneously to complex questions posed by intelligence analysts. As more and more data is collected—through phone calls, credit card receipts, social networks like Facebook and MySpace, GPS tracks, cell phone geolocation, Internet searches, Amazon book purchases, even E-Z Pass toll records—it may one day be possible to know not just where people are and what they are doing, but what and how they think.

The system is so potentially intrusive that at least one researcher has quit, citing concerns over the dangers in placing such a powerful weapon in the hands of a top-secret agency with little accountability.

Getting Aquaint

Known as Aquaint, which stands for “Advanced QUestion Answering for INTelligence,” the project was run for many years by John Prange, an NSA scientist at the Advanced Research and Development Activity. Headquartered in Room 12A69 in the NSA’s Research and Engineering Building at 1 National Business Park, ARDA was set up by the agency to serve as a sort of intelligence community DARPA, the place where former Reagan national security advisor John Poindexter’s infamous Total Information Awareness project was born. [Editor’s note: TIA was a short-lived project founded in 2002 to apply information technology to counter terrorist and other threats to national security.] Later named the Disruptive Technology Office, ARDA has now morphed into the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA).

A sort of national laboratory for eavesdropping and other spycraft, IARPA will move into its new 120,000-square-foot home in 2009. The building will be part of the new M Square Research Park in College Park, Maryland. A mammoth two million-square-foot, 128-acre complex, it is operated in collaboration with the University of Maryland. “Their budget is classified, but I understand it’s very well funded,” said Brian Darmody, the University of Maryland’s assistant vice president of research and economic development, referring to IARPA. “They’ll be in their own building here, and they’re going to grow. Their mission is expanding.”

If IARPA is the spy world’s DARPA, Aquaint may be the reincarnation of Poindexter’s TIA. After a briefing by NSA Director Michael Hayden, Vice President Dick Cheney, and CIA Director George Tenet of some of the NSA’s data mining programs in July 2003, Senator Jay Rockefeller IV, the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, wrote a concerned letter to Cheney. “As I reflected on the meeting today,” he said, “John Poindexter’s TIA project sprung to mind, exacerbating my concern regarding the direction the administration is moving with regard to security, technology, and surveillance.”

Building “HAL”

The original goal of Aquaint, which dates back to the 1990s, was simply to develop a sophisticated method of picking the right needles out of a vast haystack of information and coming up with the answer to a question. As with TIA, many universities were invited to contribute brainpower to the project. But in the aftermath of the attacks on 9/11, with the creation of the NSA’s secret warrantless eavesdropping program and the buildup of massive databases, the project began taking on a more urgent tone.

In a 2004 pilot project, a mass of data was gathered from news stories taken from the New York Times, the AP news wire, and the English portion of the Chinese Xinhua news wire covering 1998 to 2000. Then, 13 U.S. military intelligence analysts searched the data and came up with a number of scenarios based on the material. Finally, using those scenarios, an NSA analyst developed 50 topics, and in each of those topics created a series of questions for Aquaint’s computerized brain to answer. “Will the Japanese use force to defend the Senkakus?” was one. “What types of disputes or conflict between the PLA [People’s Liberation Army] and Hong Kong residents have been reported?” was another. And “Who were the participants in this spy ring, and how are they related to each other?” was a third. Since then, the NSA has attempted to build both on the complexity of the system—more essay-like answers rather than yes or no—and on attacking greater volumes of data.

“The technology behaves like a robot, understanding and answering complex questions,” said a former Aquaint researcher. “Think of 2001: A Space Odyssey and the most memorable character, HAL 9000, having a conversation with David. We are essentially building this system. We are building HAL.” A naturalized U.S. citizen who received her Ph.D. from Columbia, the researcher worked on the program for several years but eventually left due to moral concerns. “The system can answer the question, ’What does X think about Y?’” she said. “Working for the government is great, but I don’t like looking into other people’s secrets. I am interested in helping people and helping physicians and patients for the quality of people’s lives.” The researcher now focuses on developing similar search techniques for the medical community.

Thought Policeman

A supersmart search engine, capable of answering complex questions such as “What were the major issues in the last 10 presidential elections?” would be very useful for the public. But that same capability in the hands of an agency like the NSA—absolutely secret, often above the law, resistant to oversight, and with access to petabytes of private information about Americans—could be a privacy and civil liberties nightmare. “We must not forget that the ultimate goal is to transfer research results into operational use,” said Aquaint project leader John Prange, in charge of information exploitation for IARPA.

Once up and running, the database of old newspapers could quickly be expanded to include an inland sea of personal information scooped up by the agency’s warrantless data suction hoses. Unregulated, they could ask it to determine which Americans might likely pose a security risk—or have sympathies toward a particular cause, such as the antiwar movement, as was done during the 1960s and 1970s. The Aquaint robospy might then base its decision on the type of books a person purchased online, or chat room talk, or websites visited—or a similar combination of data. Such a system would have an enormous chilling effect on everyone’s everyday activities—what will the Aquaint computer think if I buy this book, or go to that website, or make this comment? Will I be suspected of being a terrorist or a spy or a subversive?

Controlling Brain Waves

Collecting information, however, has always been far less of a problem for the NSA than understanding it, and that means knowing the language. To expand its linguistic capabilities, the agency established another new organization, the Center for Advanced Study of Language (CASL), and housed it in a building near IARPA at the M Square Research Park. But far from simply learning the meaning of foreign words, CASL, like Aquaint, attempts to find ways to get into someone’s mind and understand what he or she is thinking.

One area of study is to attempt to determine if people are lying simply by watching their behavior and listening to them speak. According to one CASL document, “Many deception cues are difficult to identify, particularly when they are subtle, such as changes in verb tense or extremely brief facial expressions. CASL researchers are studying these cues in detail with advanced measurement and statistical analysis techniques in order to recommend ways to identify deceptive cue combinations.”

Another area of focus explores the “growing need to work with foreign text that is incomplete,” such as partly deciphered messages or a corrupted hard drive or the intercept of only one side of a conversation. The center is thus attempting to find ways to prod the agency’s cipher-brains to fill in the missing blanks. “In response,” says the report, “CASL’s cognitive neuroscience team has been studying the cognitive basis of working memory’s capacity for filling in incomplete areas of text. They have made significant headway in this research by using a powerful high-density electroencephalogram (EEG) machine acquired in 2006.” The effort is apparently directed at discovering what parts of the brain are used when very good cryptanalysts are able to guess correctly the missing words and phrases in a message.

Like something out of a B-grade sci-fi movie, CASL is even trying to turn dull minds into creative geniuses by training employees to control their own brain waves: “The cognitive neuroscience team has also been researching divergent thinking: creative, innovative and flexible thinking valuable for language work. They are exploring ways to improve divergent thinking using the EEG and neurobiological feedback. A change in brain-wave activity is believed to be critical for generating creative ideas, so the team trains its subjects to change their brain-wave activity.”

James Bamford is the author of three books on the National Security Agency, including the 2008 The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA From 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America, from which this article was adapted with kind permission of Doubleday. Bamford coproduced, with Scott Willis, NOVA’s “The Spy Factory,” which was based on this book.

Source: pbs.org

Peace Activist and Vet Adam Kokesh Victim of Police Brutality (Video)

Adam Vs. The Man…

Television host Adam Kokesh and several other activists participating in a flash-mob were arrested at the publicly-funded Thomas Jefferson Memorial. Their crime? Silently dancing, in celebration of the first amendment’s champion; a clear violation of their right to free-expression. In an excessive use of force, video was captured of Adam being body slammed and placed in a choke for his non-crime.

Extreme Paranoia

Have you noticed that our entire society operates on fear now? Everyone is afraid of everybody else. We are taught not to trust anyone that we do not know and that we should literally spy on our neighbors because they might be a threat. If you do not participate in all of the extreme paranoia that is going on then supposedly something is wrong with you. In fact, if you are not paranoid like everyone else is then you might be a threat.  After all, according to FBI Director Robert Mueller, “homegrown terrorists” represent as big a threat to American national security as al-Qaeda does.  But in the midst of all of this extreme paranoia, we have thrown common sense out the window.  We are told that it is Islamic extremists that want to attack us, and yet we are so obsessed with being politically correct that the TSA will grope grandma, grandpa and all the little children they can get their hands on but they will allow men in full Islamic dress to walk right through airport security without even being checked.  We will put up video cameras to watch schoolchildren eat their lunches and yet we are leaving our borders completely wide open.  Thousands of real terrorists could be crossing our borders each day and we would never even know it.  But this is what happens when extreme paranoia sets in – people (and governments) start behaving very irrationally.

Recently, U.S. Representative Paul Broun went through airport security and what he witnessed ….

“I walked through there was right behind me there was a grandmother — little old lady, and she was was patted down. Right behind her was a little kid who was patted down. And then right behind him was a guy in Arabian dress who just walked right through. Why are we patting down grandma and kids?”

What ever happened to common sense?

The American people are constantly whipped into a state of fear by the mainstream media and so there is a never ending call for even more “security” so that we can all feel safe.

Meanwhile, the most basic things that need to be done for our security, such as securing our borders, are totally ignored because they are not politically correct.

Instead, most of the focus seems to be on keeping as many eyeballs on American citizens of possible.

U.S. Senator Ron Wyden made headlines recently when he revealed that the U.S. government interprets the Patriot Act  than the general public does….

“We’re getting to a gap between what the public thinks the law says and what the American government secretly thinks the law says.”

That doesn’t sound good.

According to Wyden, “the government is relying on secret interpretations of what the law says without telling the public what those interpretations are.”

Isn’t that great?

Now the government has such extreme paranoia that they won’t even tell us what the rules are so we won’t even know if we are breaking them.

Have you noticed that everything seems to be “secret” these days?

Everywhere you turn someone in the government is claiming that “national security” is at risk for one reason or another.  The American people are being increasingly kept in the dark about everything because we cannot be “trusted”.

Secrecy and extreme security measures are now equated with patriotism.

Recently, U.S. Representative Ron Paul gave a speech on “The Patriot Act” on the floor of the House of Representatives.  The following is a brief except from that speech….

Our Presidents can now, on their own:

• Order assassinations, including American citizens,
• Operate secret military tribunals,
• Engage in torture,
• Enforce indefinite imprisonment without due process,
• Order searches and seizures without proper warrants, gutting the 4th Amendment,
• Ignore the 60 day rule for reporting to the Congress the nature of any military operations as required by the War Power Resolution,
• Continue the Patriot Act abuses without oversight,
• Wage war at will,
• Treat all Americans as suspected terrorists at airports with TSA groping and nude x-raying.

And the Federal Reserve accommodates by counterfeiting the funds needed and not paid for by taxation and borrowing, permitting runaway spending, endless debt, and special interest bail-outs.

Does that sound “patriotic” to you?

The following is a short video that includes even more of Ron Paul’s remarks….

Sadly, Ron Paul is vastly outnumbered in Congress by those that want even more secrecy and even more extreme security measures.

America is becoming a much different place.  The truth is that even if we give up all of our liberties and all of our freedoms we will still be extremely vulnerable to outside threats.

Do you really want to live in a society where there is very little liberty or freedom?  That is the direction America is going.  We may feel slightly safer, but we will cease to be Americans.

Recently, I wrote about the growing “big brother” control grid going up all over the country on The American Dream….

Do you want your children and grandchildren to live in a futuristic “big brother” control grid where everything they do is watched, recorded, tracked and tightly controlled?  Well, that is exactly where things are headed.  We witnessed some really bad totalitarian regimes during the 20th century, but what is coming is going to be far more restrictive than any of the despots of the past ever dreamed was possible.  Today, nearly every government on earth is tightening their grip on their citizens.  Paranoia has become standard operating procedure all over the planet and nobody is to be trusted.

All of this extreme paranoia must stop.

Sometimes people will say something like this: “Well, I don’t mind if the government watches me or searches me because I have nothing to hide.”

The next time someone tells you something like that, do the following….

Pull out a chair and set it down six inches away from that person.  Then sit in the chair and stare directly at him or her without moving.  After a few moments that person will say something like: “What in the hell are you doing?”

In response, just tell them that they just said that they didn’t mind being watched.

The truth is that none of us want eyeballs on us 24 hours a day.

Our founding fathers included the Bill of Rights in the Constitution for a reason.  The Bill of Rights is there to protect our most basic liberties.

If we allow those liberties to be stripped away in exchange for a little bit more security we will only have ourselves to blame.

Source: The Economic Collapse

Face-recognition technology to monitor school attendance

By Katherine Donnelly | Independent.ie…

“End is in sight for roll calls as schools face the future”

An Irish software firm has brought the traditional school attendance register into the computer age.

Two schools have already adopted the latest face-recognition technology to monitor attendance and timekeeping among thousands of pupils, and other schools are planning to introduce the system from September.

Students simply look at a device when they arrive at school and, within seconds, they are scanned, identified and their attendance is registered.

Conor Kavanagh, a first-year pupil at Templeogue College, Dublin, next to the new system.

It saves hours of teachers’ time recording attendance and ’lates’, and provides an at-a-glance record of who’s in and who’s out.

It also makes it easy to track poor attendance or lateness patterns, which would allow for early intervention to nip a problem in the bud.

And it overcomes the so-called ’buddy punching’ problem, where a student can make a false registration by swiping in someone else’s card.

Templeogue College in south Dublin has become the first school here to use the system to track attendance and timekeeping among its 700 pupils.

Installed

It has also been installed in Ardscoil Ris, Limerick, in recent weeks and a number of other schools are planning to use it from September.

The Anseo Enterprise system has been created by the Co Kerry software company, Ivertec, specialising in educational products and costs an average of about €15 per pupil.

Face-recognition software is now widely used as an ID system, but this is the first time it has been adopted by schools in this country.

A student is required to do little beyond perhaps pulling back a long fringe so the scanner gets a clear view of the face.

Templeogue principal Aoife O’Donnell said they wanted an accurate and efficient system to replace the time-consuming tradition of rolls.

They were investigating systems such as swipe cards when they learned of the face-recognition software, which eliminates the issue of lost or forgotten cards.

She said parents have been generally supportive.

“Within five minutes of school starting, we know exactly who is in the building and if students come in late, it will show up,” Ms O’Donnell said.

It is too early to say what impact the system will have on attendance and timekeeping, but when fully operational she said it would allow them to build up attendance profiles.

Ms O’Donnell added that, in an era of cutbacks, staff time was much better employed in teaching rather than in checking and recording attendance manually across a minimum of 24 classes every day.

Sixth-year student Luke O’Callaghan-White (17), said there were a few ’Big Brother’-style jokes initially, but that had all passed. He said the system was “straightforward, efficient and preferable to a year head interrupting the first class for five minutes” to take a roll.

Americans Are Living In 1984

By Paul Craig Roberts…

The White House’s “death of bin Laden” story has come apart at the seams. Will it make any difference that before 48 hours had passed the story had changed so much that it no longer bore any resemblance to President Obama’s Sunday evening broadcast and has lost all credibility?

So far it has made no difference to the once-fabled news organization, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), which on May 9, eight days later, is still repeating the propaganda that the SEALs killed bin Laden in his Pakistani compound, where bin Laden lived next door to the Pakistani Military Academy surrounded by the Pakistani army.

Not even the president of Pakistan finds the story implausible. The BBC reports that the president is launching a full-scale investigation of how bin Laden managed to live for years in an army garrison town without being noticed.

For most Americans the story began and ended with four words: “we got bin Laden.” The celebrations, the sweet taste of revenge, of triumph and victory over “the most dangerous man on the planet” are akin to the thrill experienced by sports fans when their football team defeats the unspeakable rival or their baseball team wins the World Series. No fan wants to hear the next day that it is not so, that it is all a mistake. If these Americans years from now come across a story that the killing of bin Laden was an orchestrated news event to boost other agendas, they will dismiss the report as the ravings of a pinko-liberal-commie.

Everyone knows we killed bin Laden. How could it be otherwise? We–the indispensable people, the virtuous nation, the world’s only superpower, the white hats–were destined to prevail. No other outcome was possible.

No one will notice that those who fabricated the story forgot to show the kidney dialysis machine that, somehow, kept bin Laden alive for a decade. No doctors were on the premises.

No one will remember that Fox News reported in December, 2001, that Osama bin Laden had passed away from his illnesses.http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,41576,00.html

If bin Laden beat all odds and managed to live another decade to await, unarmed and undefended, the arrival of the Navy SEALS last week, how it is possible that the “terror mastermind,” who defeated not merely the CIA and FBI, but all 16 US intelligence agencies along with those of America’s European allies and Israel, the National Security Council, the Pentagon, NORAD, Air Traffic Control, airport security four times on the same morning, etc. etc., never enjoyed another success, not even a little, very minor one? What was the “terror mastermind” doing for a decade after 9/11?

The “death of bin Laden” serves too many agendas that cover the political spectrum for the obvious falsity of the story to be recognized by very many. Patriots are euphoric that America won over bin Laden. Progressives have seized on the story to excoriate the United States for extra-judicial murder that brutalizes us all. Some on the left-wing bought into the 9/11 story because of the emotional satisfaction they received from oppressed Arabs striking back at their imperialist oppressors. These left-wingers are delighted that it took the incompetent Americans an entire decade to find bin Laden, who was hiding in plain view. The American incompetence in finding bin Laden simply, in their minds, proves the incompetence of the US government, which failed to protect Americans against the 9/11 attack.

Those who ordered, and those who wrote, totally incompetent legal memos that torture was permissible under US and international law, thereby setting up George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for the possibility of prosecution, are riding the euphoria of bin Laden’s death by declaring that it was torture that led the American assassins to bin Laden. All of a sudden, torture, which had fallen back into the disrepute in which it had been for centuries, is again in the clear. Anything that leads to the elimination of bin Laden is a valid instrument.

Those, who want to increase the pressure on Pakistan to shut up about Americans murdering Pakistani citizens in Pakistan from the air and from troops on the ground, have gained a new club with which to beat the Pakistani government into submission: “you hid bin Laden from us.”

Those who want to continue to fatten the profits of the military/security complex and the powers of Homeland Security, such as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, use bin Laden’s second, or ninth, death as proof that America is being successful in its war on terror and that the war must continue on such a successful path until all enemies are slain.

Most ominous of all was the statement by the CIA director that bin Laden’s death would lead to new attacks on America and new 9/11s from al Qaeda seeking revenge. This warning, issued within a few hours of President Obama’s Sunday evening address, telegraphed the inevitable “al Qaeda” Internet posting that America would suffer new 9/11s for killing their leader.

If the Taliban knew in December 2001 that bin Laden was dead, does anyone think that al Qaeda didn’t know it? Indeed, no member of the public has any way of knowing if al Qaeda is anything more than a bogyman organization created by the CIA which issues “al Qaeda” announcements. The evidence that al Qaeda’s announcements are issued by the CIA is very strong.

The various videos of bin Laden for the last nine years have been shown by experts to be fakes. Why would bin Laden issue a fake video? Why did bin Laden cease issuing videos and only issue audios? A person running a world-wide terrorist organization should be able to produce videos. He would also be surrounded by better protectors than a couple of women. Where was al Qaeda, which according to former Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, consists of “the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth.” Had these most dangerous men alive abandoned their leader?

The CIA director’s warning of future terrorist attacks, followed by a suspect “al Qaeda” threat of the same, suggests that if the American public continues to lose its enthusiasm for the governments open-ended wars, which are conducted at the expense of the US budget deficit, the dollar’s exchange value, inflation, Social Security, Medicare, income support programs, jobs, recovery, and so forth, “al Qaeda” will again outwit all 16 US intelligence agencies, those of our allies, NORAD, airport security, Air Traffic Control, etc. etc., and inflict the world’s only superpower with another humiliating defeat that will invigorate American support for “the war on terror.”

I believe that “al Qaeda” could blow up the White House or Congress or both and that the majority of Americans would fall for the story, just as the Germans, a better educated and more intelligent population, fell for the Reichstag Fire–as did a number of historians.

The reason I say this is that Americans have succumbed to propaganda that has conditioned them to believe that they are under attack by practically omnipotent adversaries. Proof of this is broadcast every day. For example, on March 9, I heard over National Public Radio in Atlanta that Emory University, a private university of some distinction, treated its 3,500 graduating class to a commencement address by Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security.

This is the agency that has goons feeling the genitals of young children and adults and which has announced that it intends to expand this practice from air travelers to shopping malls, bus and train stations. That a serious university invited such a low-lifer, who clearly has no respect for American civil liberty and is devoid of any sort of sense of what is appropriate, to address a graduating class of southern elite is a clear indication that the Ministry of Truth has prevailed. Americans are living inGeorge Orwell’s 1984.

For those who haven’t read Orwell’s classic prediction of our time, Big Brother, the government, could tell the “citizens” any lie and it was accepted unquestioningly. As a perceptive reader pointed out to me, we Americans, with our “free press,” are at this point today: “What is really alarming is the increasingly arrogant sloppiness of these lies, as though the government has become so profoundly confident of its ability to deceive people that they make virtually no effort to even appear credible.”

A people as gullible as Americans have no future.

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