Are Plunging Petrodollar Revenues Behind The Fed’s Projected Rate Hikes?

If This Doesn’t Make You Mad…

Why is the Fed threatening to raise interest rates when the economy is still in the doldrums? Is it because they want to avoid further asset-price inflation, prevent the economy from overheating, or is it something else altogether? Take a look at the chart below and you’ll see why the Fed might want to raise rates prematurely. It all has to do with the sharp decline in petrodollars that are no longer recycling into US financial assets. This is from Reuters:

Petrodollar Exports
Source: Reuters

“Energy-exporting countries are set to pull their ‘petrodollars’ out of world markets this year for the first time in almost two decades, according to a study by BNP Paribas. Driven by this year’s drop in oil prices, the shift is likely to cause global market liquidity to fall, the study showed…

This decline follows years of windfalls for oil exporters such as Russia, Angola, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria. Much of that money found its way into financial markets, helping to boost asset prices and keep the cost of borrowing down, through so-called petrodollar recycling.

This year, however, the oil producers will effectively import capital amounting to $7.6 billion. By comparison, they exported $60 billion in 2013 and $248 billion in 2012, according to the following graphic based on BNP Paribas calculations:

‘At its peak, about $500 billion a year was being recycled back into financial markets. This will be the first year in a long time that energy exporters will be sucking capital out,’ said David Spegel, global head of emerging market sovereign and corporate Research at BNP.

In other words, oil exporters are now pulling liquidity out of financial markets rather than putting money in. That could result in higher borrowing costs for governments, companies, and ultimately, consumers as money becomes scarcer.” (, Reuters)

Can you see what’s going on?

Now that petrodollar funding has dried up, the Fed needs to find an alternate source of capital to keep the markets bubbly and to shore up the greenback. That’s why the Fed has been talking up the dollar (“jawboning”) and promising to raise rates even though the economy is still pushing up daisies. According to the Fed’s favorite mouthpiece, Jon Hilsenrath:

“Federal Reserve officials are on track to start raising short-term interest rates later this year, even though long-term rates are going in the other direction amid new investor worries about weak global growth, falling oil prices and slowing consumer price inflation…

Many Fed officials have signaled they expect to start lifting their benchmark short-term rate from near zero around the middle of the year. Recent developments in the economy and markets have caused some trepidation among Fed officials and, if sustained, could cause them to delay acting. However several have indicated recently they still expect to move this year and are withholding judgment on delay.” (Fed Officials on Track to Raise Short-Term Rates Later in the Year, Jon Hilsenrath, Wall Street Journal)

And we’re hearing the same from Reuters: “The Federal Reserve is still on track for a potential mid-year interest-rate increase, a top Fed official said on Friday, citing strong U.S. economic momentum and a falling unemployment rate.”

Notice the sudden change in tone from dovish to hawkish? Expect that to intensify in the months ahead as the major media tries to spin the data in a way that serves the Fed’s broader objectives. Like this article in Bloomberg titled, “Yellen Signals She Won’t Babysit Markets in Turmoil”:

“Janet Yellen is leaving the Greenspan ‘put”’behind as she charts the first interest-rate increase since 2006 amid growing financial-market volatility.

The Federal Reserve chair has signaled she wants to place the economic outlook at the center of policy making, while looking past short-term market fluctuations. To succeed, she must wean investors from the notion, which gained currency under predecessor Alan Greenspan, that the Fed will bail them out if their bets go bad — just as a put option protects against a drop in stock prices.

“The succession of Fed puts over the years has led to a wide range of distortions in financial markets,” said Lawrence Goodman, president of the Center for Financial Stability, a monetary research group in New York. “There have been swollen asset values followed by sharp declines. This is a very good time for the Fed to move away.

“Let me be clear, there is no Fed equity market put,” William C. Dudley, president of the New York Fed, the central bank’s watchdog on financial markets, said in a Dec. 1 speech in New York.” (She’s No Greenspan: Yellen Signals She Won’t Babysit Markets in Turmoil)

“There’s no Fed equity put”?

That’s ridiculous. Then how does one explain the way the Fed has launched additional rounds of QE every time stocks have started to sputter? And how does one explain the Fed’s $4 trillion balance sheet all of which was spent on financial assets?

Let’s face it, Central bank intervention has been the only game in town. It’s not just the main driver of stocks. It’s the only driver of stocks. Everyone knows that. Yellen is going to do everything in her power to keep stocks in the stratosphere just like her predecessors, Greenspan and Bernanke. The only that’s going to change, is her approach.

As for the economy, well, just a glance of the headlines tells the whole story. Like this gem from CNBC last week:

“U.S. consumer prices recorded their biggest decline in six years in December and underlying inflation pressures were benign,…The Labor Department said on Friday its Consumer Price Index fell 0.4 percent last month, the largest drop since December 2008, after sliding 0.3 percent in November. In the 12 months through December, CPI increased 0.8 percent…

Darkening prospects for the global economy could also complicate matters for the U.S. central bank.

Inflation is running below the Fed’s 2 percent target, despite a strengthening labor market and overall economy.” (Consumer Price Index drops 0.4% in December, in line with estimates, CNBC)

Think about that for a minute: Consumer prices just logged their biggest drop since the freaking slump of 2008 and, yet, the Fed is still babbling about raising rates.

Talk about lunacy. Not only has the Fed not reached its inflation target of 2%, but it’s abandoned the project altogether. Why? Why has the Fed suddenly stopped trying to boost inflation when the yields on benchmark 10-year US Treasuries have just plunged to record lows (1.70%) and are blinking red? In other words, the bond market is signaling slow growth and zero inflation for as far as the eye can see, but the Fed wants to raise rates and slash growth even more?? It doesn’t make any sense, unless of course, Yellen has something else up her sleeve. Which she does.

Now get a load of this shocker on retail sales in last week’s news. This is from Bloomberg:

“The optimism surrounding the outlook for U.S. consumers was taken down a notch as retail sales slumped in December by the most in almost a year, prompting some economists to lower spending and growth forecasts.
The 0.9 percent decline in purchases …. extended beyond any single group as receipts fell in nine of 13 major retail categories.
…
Treasury yields and stocks fell as a deepening commodities rout and the drop in sales spurred concern global growth is slowing…

…average hourly earnings falling 0.2 percent in December from the month before in the first drop since late 2012. That limits the amount of spending consumers can undertake without dipping into savings or racking up debt.” (U.S. Retail Sales Down Sharply, Likely Cuts to Growth Forecasts Ahead, Bloomberg)

Remember when everyone thought that low oil prices were going to save the economy? It hasn’t worked out that way though, has it? Nor will it. Falling oil prices usually indicate recession, crisis or deflation. Take your pick. They’re usually not a sign of green shoots, escape velocity, or sunny uplands.

And did you catch that part about falling wages? How do you expand a consumer-dependent economy, when workers are seeing their wages shrivel every month? In case, you haven’t seen the abysmal stagnation of wages in graph-form, here’s a chart from American Progress:

Negative real wage growth means the amount of slack in the market is still considerable.

So while stock prices have doubled or tripled in the last 6 years, wages have basically been flatlining. That’s a pretty crummy distribution system, don’t you think. Unless you’re in the 1 percent of course, then everything is just hunky dory.

But at least Yellen can find some comfort in the fact that unemployment continues to improve. In fact, just two weeks ago unemployment dropped to an impressive 5.4%, the lowest since 2007. So if we forget about the fact that wages are stagnating, that management has nabbed all the productivity-gains for the last 40 years, and that another 451,000 workers dropped off the radar altogether in December, then everything looks pretty rosy. But, of course, it’s all just a bunch of baloney. Take a look at this from Zero Hedge:

“Another month, another attempt by the BLS to mask the collapse in the US labor force with a seasonally-adjusted surge in waiter, bartender and other low-paying jobs. Case in point… the labor participation rate just slid once more, dropping to 62.7%, or the lowest print since December 1977. This happened because the number of Americans not in the labor forced soared by 451,000 in December, far outpacing the 111,000 jobs added according to the Household Survey, and is the primary reason why the number of uenmployed Americans dropped by 383,000.

(Labor Participation Rate Drops To Fresh 38 Year Low; Record 92.9 Million Americans Not In Labor Force, Zero Hedge)

So, yeah, unemployment looks great until you pick through the data and see it’s all a big fraud. Unemployment is only falling because more and more people are throwing in the towel and giving up entirely.

Finally, there’s the rapidly-expanding mess in the oil patch where the news on layoffs and cut backs gets worse by the day. This is from Wolf Richter at Naked Capitalism:

“Layoffs are cascading through the oil and gas sector. On Tuesday, the Dallas Fed projected that in Texas alone, 140,000 jobs could be eliminated. Halliburton said that it was axing an undisclosed number of people in Houston. Suncor Energy, Canada’s largest oil producer, will dump 1,000 workers in its tar-sands projects. Helmerich & Payne is idling rigs and cutting jobs. Smaller companies are slashing projects and jobs at an even faster pace. And now Slumberger, the world’s biggest oilfield-services company, will cut 9,000 jobs.” (Money dries up for oil and gas, layoffs spread, write-offs start, Wolf Richter, Naked Capitalism)

And then there’s this tidbit from Pam Martens at Wall Street on Parade:

“In a December 15 article by Patrick Jenkins in the Financial Times, readers learned that data from Barclays indicated that “energy bonds now make up nearly 16 per cent of the $1.3 trillion junk bond market — more than three times their proportion 10 years ago,” and “Nearly 45 per cent of this year’s non-investment grade syndicated loans have been in oil and gas.” Raising further alarms, AllianceBernstein has released research suggesting that the deals were not fully subscribed by investors with the potential that “as much as half of the outstanding financing from the past couple of years may be stuck on banks’ books.” (The perfect storm for Wall Street banks, Russ and Pam Martens, Wall Street on Parade)

How do you like that? So nearly half the toxic energy-related gunk that was bundled up into dodgy junk bonds (and is likely to default in the near future) is sitting on bank balance sheets. Does that sound like a potential trigger for another financial crisis or what?

And, no, I am not trying to ignore the fact that third quarter GDP came in at a whopping 5 percent which vastly exceeded all the analysts estimates. But let’s put that into perspective. According to economist Dean Baker, the growth spurt was mainly “an anomaly” …”driven by extraordinary jump in military spending and a big fall in the size of the trade deficit that is unlikely to be repeated.” Here’s more from Baker:

“As usual, just about everything we’ve heard about the economy is wrong. To start, the 5.0 percent growth number must be understood against a darker backdrop: The economy actually shrank at a 2.1 percent annual rate in the first quarter. If we take the first three quarters of the year together, the average growth rate was a more modest 2.5 percent.” (Don’t Believe What You Hear About the US Economy, Dean Baker, CEPR)

So, the economy is growing at a crummy 2.5 percent, but Yellen wants to raise rates. Why? Does she want to shave that number to 2 percent or 1.5 percent? Is that it? She wants to go backwards?

Of course not. The real reason the Fed wants to raise rates, is to attract foreign capital to US markets in order to keep stocks soaring, keep borrowing costs low, and reinforce the dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency. That’s what’s really going on. The petrodollars are drying up, so US markets need a new source of funding. Direct foreign investment, that’s the ticket, Ducky. All the Fed needs to do is boost rates by, let’s say, 0.5 percent and “Cha-ching”, here comes the capital. Works like a charm every time, just ask former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin whose strong dollar policy sent stock prices into orbit while widening the nation’s current account deficit by many orders of magnitude. (We never said the plan didn’t have its downside.)

The Fed’s sinister plan to raise interest rates (sometime by mid-2015) will push the dollar’s exchange rate higher thus triggering capital flight in the emerging markets which are already struggling with plunging commodities prices and an excruciating slowdown. The investment flows from the EMs to US financial assets and Treasuries will offset the loss of petrodollar revenue while expanding Wall Street’s ginormous stock market bubble. As for the emerging markets, well, they’re going to take it in the shorts bigtime as one would expect. Here’s a clip from an article by Ambrose-Evans Pritchard that lays it out in black and white:

“The US Federal Reserve has pulled the trigger. Emerging markets must now brace for their ordeal by fire. They have collectively borrowed $5.7 trillion in US dollars, a currency they cannot print and do not control. This hard-currency debt has tripled in a decade, split between $3.1 trillion in bank loans and $2.6 trillion in bonds. It is comparable in scale and ratio-terms to any of the biggest cross-border lending sprees of the past two centuries…

Officials from the Bank for International Settlements say privately that developing countries may be just as vulnerable to a dollar shock as they were in the Fed tightening cycle of the late 1990s, which culminated in Russia’s default and the East Asia Crisis. The difference this time is that emerging markets have grown to be half the world economy. Their aggregate debt levels have reached a record 175pc of GDP, up 30 percentage points since 2009…”

This time the threat does not come from insolvent states. They have learned the lesson of the late 1990s. Few have dollar debts. But their companies and banks most certainly do, some 70pc of GDP in Russia, for example. This amounts to much the same thing in macro-economic terms. ” (Fed calls time on $5.7 trillion of emerging market dollar debt, Ambrose-Evans Pritchard, Telegraph)

The Fed has been through this drill so many times before they could do it in their sleep. (” U.S. interest-rate hikes in 1980s and 1990s played a role in financial crises across Latin America and East Asia.” Foreign Policy Magazine) They’ve learned how to profit off every crisis, particularly the one’s that they themselves create, which is just about all of them. In this case, most of the loans to foreign businesses and banks were denominated in dollars. So, now that the dollar is soaring, (“The dollar’s value has risen about 15 percent relative to the euro and the yen just since the summer.” NPR) the debts are going to balloon accordingly (in real terms) which is going to push a lot of businesses off a cliff forcing sovereigns to step in and provide emergency bailouts.

Did someone say “looming financial crisis”?

Indeed. Bernanke’s “easy money” has inflated bubbles across the planet. Now these bubbles are about to burst due to the strong dollar and anticipated higher rates. At the same time, the policy-switch will send hundreds of billions of foreign capital flooding into US markets pushing stocks and bonds through the roof while generating mega-profits for JPM, G-Sax and the rest of the Wall Street gang. All according to plan.

Naturally, the stronger dollar will weigh heavily on employment and exports as foreign imports become cheaper and more attractive to US consumers. That will reduce hiring at home. Also the current account deficit will widen significantly, meaning that the US will again be consuming much more than it produces. (This took place under Rubin, too.) But here’s what’s interesting about that: According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis: “Our current account deficit has narrowed sharply since the crisis…The U.S. current account deficit now stands at 2.5 percent of GDP, down from more than 6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2005.” (BEA)

Great. In other words, Obama’s obsessive fiscal belt-tightening lowered the deficits enough so that Wall Street can “party on” for the foreseeable future, ignoring the gigantic bubbles they’re inflating or the emerging market economies that are about to be decimated in this latest dollar swindle.

If that doesn’t make you mad, I don’t know what will.

Charlie Dodo: A Deal Is Struck In France

Author’s note:  This is a satire.  Sort of…

Don’t you just hate it when people get killed?  Murdered?  Decapitated?  Have their bodies blown up?  Why would anybody in their right mind even consider killing another fellow human being?  Have you yourself killed anybody lately?  Not me.  I’ve never killed nothing.  Cockroaches, maybe — back when I was living rough on the Lower East Side in 1965.  But cockroaches don’t count.  Or do they?  Can you get PTSD from killing bugs?  Probably not.

Yet last week 12 people were shot dead in the streets of Paris by unknown gunmen dressed in black and carrying AK-47s — and apparently even a rocket launcher.  And yet nobody twigged to these odd Halloween costumes before it was too late?    How did this happen?  Apparently a deal had been struck.

Over the past decade or so, the American military-industrial complex in all its glory has moved into the Middle East and killed a million or so people.  And it has handled, trained and armed Al Qaeda and ISIS, a pretty much documented fact.  However.  What goes on in the Middle East stays in the Middle East, right?  Theoretically, yes.

But Pappy Bush said, “Let’s go invade Kuwait and kill us some Iraqis.”  So he did.  And then Baby Bush said, “I can do you one even better than that!”  And he killed even more Iraqis — and, being in a generous mood, threw in some dead Afghans, Palestinians and Persians as well.

Then Obama came along and started bragging, “I went to Harvard.  I can top that!”  And by God he did.  Libya, Syria, Palestine (again) and Ukraine (technically not the Middle East but it did include slaughtering a whole bunch of people — so that should count for something, right?)

And then apparently some Al Qaeda wannabes sent word to their handlers or whatever at the CIA, saying, “We’ve been your grunts since forever and, don’t get us wrong, we really do appreciate all the training and weapons you’ve given us and the chance to behead women and children left and right.  Don’t get us wrong, Consigliere.  We are not ungrateful.  But could you kinda maybe send a bit of a tidbit or bone or reward our way too?  We too want more of the action.  War in the Middle East just isn’t enough.  We’re bored of shelling Mosul and Damascus.  Can we PLEEZE go shoot up Paris as well?  Just a little bit?  Please?”

Well, the CIA understood.  Who can even think of resisting an all-expense-paid trip to Paris?  Certainly not our homeys in ISIS.  Paris being the City of Light and all that.  “Sure, go on ahead with your bad selves,” the ISIS handlers replied.  And a deal was struck.

“What do you got in mind?” asked the handlers.  “A little R&R on the Champs-Élysées?”

“Nah.  We just want to shoot up Charlie Dodo.  Those guys said really really obscene things about the Prophet.  Not, of course, the same really really obscene things we say about the Prophet — but definitely in the ballpark.   Charlie Dodo has made a mockery of the Prophet.  Not as much of a mockery as we have — but a mockery just the same.”

“Done!” cried the handlers — and then the paperwork began.  And why not?  This could definitely be in War Street’s best interests and get everyone in France hating Muslims (even more than they do already).  Just look how well 9-11 turned out for Islamophobics!  “Plus it’s always fun to stage a false-flag operation — and you know how we love to kill journalists.”  It’s a twofer. 

So their CIA handlers quickly dug up the requisite fake passports and the requisite phony ID cards to leave miraculously lying around at the scene   And they even tried to get their new Qaeda-trash protégé thugs some free passes to Euro-Disney as well, but didn’t quite have the clout to pull that one off.  But the stage was set.  Journalists and police and French citizens were gonna be slaughtered and the whole world was gonna be shocked and go around saying “I am Charlie”.  And it would be “Mission Accomplished” all over again, right?  And, even more important, now France also has a carte blanche excuse to bomb Palestine or Russia or Vietnam or Walmart or whatever they please — just like Baby Bush had his excuse to bomb Afghanistan.

But I still really hate it when people get killed.

PS:  I wrote this because I’m really and totally dubious about what actually happened at Charlie Hebdo the other day.

I’ve been to Iraq, North Korea, Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, Africa, Palestine, Dallas, etc. and I’ve seen with my own eyes what is actually going on in these places.  But then I go back home to the States and read the MSM newspapers and watch the TV news — and it’s a whole different world they are describing, one filled with fantasies, wistful thinking, propaganda and lies.

I never believe anything I read in the MSM any more.  So why should I suddenly start believing what they say about the bad guys who shot up the Charlie Hebdo offices in France?

Kudos To All Of My Fellow Patriots

Counting the sellouts, sycophants, sissies and socialists (by whatever name they call themselves, including Republican) is certainly easier than counting the plucky, perspicacious, passionate patriots, that is for sure. For every one of the latter, there are thousands of the former. In fact, since God would have spared Sodom and Gomorrah had he found a faithful ten (out of a population of around ten thousand), it may be that America is teetering around that same percentage. We might be looking at a similar one in a thousand preserving percentage in this country today.

On Capitol Hill, there are fewer than fifty House members and senators (out of 535) that could be categorized as faithful patriots. In certain State houses and senate chambers, the percentage would be considerably higher. In many states, however, the percentage would be much lower.

When it comes to America’s pulpits, the percentage of faithful patriots is almost certainly no more than five percent. That was the percentage of faithful pastors in Nazi Germany who boldly stood against Hitler’s Police State. And I’m confident the percentage of pastors in America today who are courageously standing against the modern-day Police State is about the same.

There are almost NO mainstream journalists in print or television who haven’t sold their souls to a paycheck. The same is true for the talking heads on the talk radio shows. Likewise, the vast majority of our judges seem completely ignorant of constitutional government and the Bill of Rights–or have complete contempt for the same. As for educators in the halls of higher learning, forget it!

From a futuristic perspective, the horizon of America can be put into three basic camps: 1) Jesus is going to come like the Seventh Cavalry and bail all of the good Christians to Heaven, and then destroy everything; but who cares? Only the “bad” people will be here, 2) There is no hope; it’s all over; it’s only going to get worse until the fiery end comes, and all one can hope for is to prepare his family and close friends to “survive,” 3) All of the trends point to a continuing demise of liberty, and, in all probability, the future will be very problematic for EVERYONE (Christians and unbelievers alike), but our Creator–who is the author of liberty–still has a providential plan for freedom in this land and is (and will continue) separating and calling out a courageous remnant for that purpose. Put me in the last camp.

With all due respect, I think the folks who align themselves in the first two camps are trying to escape reality and evade responsibility. One is as bad as the other. The one who sits back and does nothing because he believes God would never allow Christians in America to go through “tribulation,” and the person who believes tribulation is coming but the only option is to hide in a hole (figuratively speaking) are both abrogating their responsibility to be the “salt” of the earth and the protectors and defenders of liberty.

However, between the two, I feel more umbrage against my Christian brethren in the first group. They are supposed to have the Spirit of God in them. They are supposed to be students of the Scriptures. More than anyone, they should be the ones to take seriously their charge to “Occupy” till Christ comes.

Try selling the line that “Jesus won’t let us go through tribulation” to the Christians in Sudan. For the last twenty years, more than two million Christians have been persecuted, imprisoned, beheaded, disemboweled, dismembered, tortured, sold into slavery, hung on crosses, etc., in that war-torn land. I guess God doesn’t love those poor suffering souls as much as He loves us soft, self-righteous, comfort-crazy, entertainment-mad, feel-good Christians in America. What rubbish!

Try selling that line to the beleaguered Christians in Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, North Korea, Burma, China, India, even Israel, etc. These believers have been in tribulation for generations. Only in America could a theological position on eschatology result in a complete slave-mentality.

I can understand people who don’t believe in God losing hope and resorting to withdrawing from society. But, for the life of me, I cannot understand my Christian brethren using the doctrine of the Rapture as an excuse to remove themselves from the freedom fight. Personally, I think the doctrine of the Rapture is often nothing but a covering to mask the cowardice or indifference that grips their hearts.

Therefore, I regard patriots as possibly being from virtually any religion, church denomination, political affiliation, ethnicity, race, educational background, or social strata. I know Catholics who are patriots, Mormons who are patriots. I know Jews who are patriots. I even know Muslims who are patriots. Yes, you read it right, Muslims. There are patriots who are black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Indian, etc. There are self-proclaimed liberals who have more understanding of liberty than many professing conservatives. There are patriots counted among the Democrat Party, the Republican Party, the Constitution Party, the Libertarian Party, The Reform Party, the Green Party, etc.

As Thomas Jefferson and John Adams stood side by side for the Declaration of Independence, as George Washington and Alexander Hamilton and Patrick Henry and Benjamin Franklin, did the same, so I will stand with any defender of liberty, regardless of race, religion, denomination–and even with those who have no faith.

Of course, my approach to liberty is God-centered. And my hope in the future is, likewise, God-centered. I do not believe that God is finished with liberty in America. And I am convinced that God is calling out a freedom-remnant even as we speak. I see this almost every week here in the redoubt of the Montana Flathead Valley. I am very much a realist; but I am very much NOT a pessimist. I guess I am a futurist: I believe there is a future for liberty-minded people in this country. The one in a thousand is still among us; I am convinced of that.

On Capitol Hill there are a faithful few: Justin Amash of Michigan, Mike Lee of Utah, Steve Stockman of Texas, and Thomas Massie of Kentucky, for example. (I’m withholding judgment on Rand Paul, although among the current list of presidential hopefuls, I like him best so far. I think his foreign policy is far superior to that of Ted Cruz. But Ted’s stand on illegal immigration eclipses Rand’s so far. So, I’m reserving judgment. Jeb Bush is disaster!)

In many State legislatures, there are dynamic patriots fighting ferociously for our liberties. I’m talking about people such as Montana’s Jerry O’Neil, Washington State’s Matt Shea, and Nevada’s Michele Fiore.

Behind the pulpit, there are only a precious few numbered among the patriots. Those five pastors whom the Liberty Church Project just recently helped to withdraw from (or bypass altogether) the devilish 501c3 tax exempt organization status stand out. Warren Luke Campbell and his dad, Warren Campbell, in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, Tony McGhee in Wilmington, North Carolina, Eric Philpot and Nathan Kealer of Dallas,Texas, and Roy Magnuson and his son, Josiah, in Greenville, South Carolina.

Of course, Dr. Greg Dixon, Sr. has been in the freedom fight longer than most of us have been alive. And Dr. David Manning has been an indefatigable opponent of the New World Order as I have ever seen. He just might be the most politically incorrect and bravest pastor in America. And thank God for patriot-preachers such as David Schnittger, Paul Blair, Barry Byrd, Stevie Craft, Hal Curtis, Wiley Drake, Jay Grimstead, and Steve Wagner.

I appreciate the founder and editor of NewsWithViews.com. His website has grown to include a plethora of writers, not all of whom do I agree with, of course. But I know Paul Walter: in his core, he is a patriot. Tom DeWeese has been fighting Agenda 21 longer and more effectively than anyone I know. Christine Tobin over at “Fair And Equal” has done yeoman’s work for years to try and restore free and equal elections to America’s political process. Judge Andrew Napolitano has been a refreshing voice for individual liberty and constitutional government for years, as well. Dr. Tom Kendall stands extremely tall in the world of medicine, as does Dr. Curtis Caine, and the Flathead Valley’s very own Dr. Annie Bukacek.

In the field of law, I am very proud of the stand for freedom taken by my son, Tim. And attorneys Bill Olson and Herb Titus stand as pillars of their profession. And I also greatly admire other patriot-lawyers such as John Whitehead, Larry Klayman, Gene Garrison, Gary Kreep, Ed Vieira, and my dear friend, Danny Kepner.

And though not a majority, there are hundreds of patriot-sheriffs across the country who are relentless in their defense of the liberties of the people of their counties. I’m talking about sheriffs such as Shane Harrington, Joe Arpaio, Bruce Newman, John Hanlin, Gil Gilbertson, Denny Peyman, Larry Smith, and Richard Mack.

And patriots such as Scott Bradley, Sam Bushman, Larry Breazeale, Randy Brogdon, Joel Skousen, Alex Jones, LCDR Guy Cunningham, Aubyn Curtis, Coach Dave Daubenmire, author Thomas DiLorenzo, LCDR David Gillie, filmmaker James Jaeger, Brigadier General Charles Jones, Rick Jore, Roger Koopman, Gary Marbut, and Stewart Rhodes have been fighting the good fight for years. And, of course, Richard Viguerie has been our champion forever.

The numbers of patriots that we have lost over the past few years is too numerous to list. The hole in the freedom fight that they left is massive. God, please raise up freedom-loving Elishas to wear their mantles.

If my estimation is correct, and we still have that preserving-percentage of one in a thousand yet in this country, it means we have ­­­­­­325,000 patriots in America who have not bowed the knee to the New World Order and in whose hearts the love of liberty still beats strong. Ladies and gentlemen, this is an UNCONQUERABLE host.

To all of my fellow patriots: Kudos! Don’t quit! Stay strong! The battle is not over! Freedom still has a future in America!

Oil Price Blowback

Is Putin Creating A New World Order?

“If undercharging for energy products occurs deliberately, it also effects those who introduce these limitations. Problems will arise and grow, worsening the situation not only for Russia but also for our partners.” – Russian President Vladimir Putin

It’s hard to know which country is going to suffer the most from falling oil prices. Up to now, of course, Russia, Iran and Venezuela have taken the biggest hit, but that will probably change as time goes on. What the Obama administration should be worried about is the second-order effects that will eventually show up in terms of higher unemployment, market volatility, and wobbly bank balance sheets. That’s where the real damage is going to crop up because that’s where red ink and bad loans can metastasize into a full-blown financial crisis. Check out this blurb from Nick Cunningham at Oilprice.com and you’ll see what I mean:

“According to an assessment from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, an estimated 250,000 jobs across eight U.S. states could be lost in 2015 if oil prices don’t rise. More than 50 percent of those job losses would occur in Texas, which leads the nation in oil production.

There are some early signs that a slowdown in drilling could spread to the manufacturing sector in Texas… One executive at a metal manufacturing company said in the survey, “the drop in crude oil prices is going to make things ugly… quickly.” Another company that manufactures machinery told the Dallas Fed, “Low oil prices will drive reductions in U.S. drilling rigs, which will in turn reduce the market for our products.”

The sentiment was similar for a chemical manufacturer, who said “lower oil prices will adversely impact margins. Energy volatility will cause our customers to keep inventories tight.”

States like Texas, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Louisiana have seen their economies boom over the last few years as oil production surged. But the sector is now deflating, leaving gashes in employment rolls and state budgets.” (Low Prices Lead To Layoffs In The Oil Patch, Nick Cunningham, Oilprice.com)

Of course industries lay-off workers all the time and it doesn’t always lead to a financial crisis. But unemployment is just one part of the picture, lower personal consumption is another. Take a look:

“Falling oil prices are a bigger drag on economic growth than the incremental “savings” received by the consumer…..Another way to show this graphically is to look at the annual changes in Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) in aggregate as compared to the subsection of PCE spent on energy and related products. This is shown in the chart below.

Lower Energy Prices To Lower PCE (Personal Consumption Expenditures):

See? So despite what you might have read in the MSM, lower gas prices do not translate into greater personal consumption or more robust growth. Quiet the contrary, they tend to intensify deflationary pressures and reduce activity which is a damper on growth.

Then there’s the knock-on effects that crashing prices and layoffs have on other industries like mining, manufacturing and chemical production. Here’s more from Oil Price:

“Oil and gas production makeup a hefty chunk of the “mining and manufacturing” component of the employment rolls. Since 2000, when the oil price boom gained traction, Texas has comprised more than 40% of all jobs in the country according to first quarter data from the Dallas Federal Reserve…

The majority of the jobs “created” since the financial crisis have been lower wage paying jobs in retail, healthcare and other service sectors of the economy. Conversely, the jobs created within the energy space are some of the highest wage paying opportunities available in engineering, technology, accounting, legal, etc. In fact, each job created in energy related areas has had a “ripple effect” of creating 2.8 jobs elsewhere in the economy from piping to coatings, trucking and transportation, restaurants and retail….

The obvious ramification of the plunge in oil prices is that eventually the loss of revenue will lead to cuts in production, declines in capital expenditure plans (which comprise almost 1/4th of all capex expenditures in the S&P 500), freezes and/or reductions in employment, and declines in revenue and profitability…

Simply put, lower oil and gasoline prices may have a bigger detraction on the economy than the “savings” provided to consumers.” (The Gasoline Price Myth, Lance Roberts, oilprice.com)

None of this sounds very reassuring, does it? And yet, all we hear from the media is how the economy is going to reach “escape velocity” on the back of cheap oil. Nonsense. This is just more “green shoots” baloney wrapped in public relations hype. The fact is, the economy needs the good-paying jobs more than it needs low-priced energy. But now that prices are tumbling, those jobs are going to disappear which is going to be a drag on growth. Now check out these headlines I picked up on Google News that help to show what’s going on off the radar:

“Texas is in danger of a recession”, CNN Money.
“Texas Could Be Headed for an Oil-Fueled Recession, JP Morgan Economist Says”, Wall Street Journal “Good Times From Texas to North Dakota May Turn Bad on Oil-Price Drop”, Bloomberg
“Low Oil Prices in the New Year Are Screwing Petrostates”, Vice News
“Top US Oil States Are Taking A Hit From Plunging Crude Prices”, Business Insider

Get the picture? If oil prices continue to fall, unemployment is going to spike, activity is going to slow, and the economy is going tank. And the damage won’t be limited to the US either. Get a load of this from the UK Telegraph:

“A third of Britain’s listed oil and gas companies are in danger of running out of working capital and even going bankrupt amid a slump in the value of crude, according to new research.

Financial risk management group Company Watch believes that 70pc of the UK’s publicly listed oil exploration and production companies are now unprofitable, racking up significant losses in the region of £1.8bn.

Such is the extent of the financial pressure now bearing down on highly leveraged drillers in the UK that Company Watch estimates that a third of the 126 quoted oil and gas companies on AIM and the London Stock Exchange are generating no revenues.

The findings are the latest warning to hit the oil and gas industry since a slump in the price of crude accelerated in November when the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) decided to keep its output levels unchanged. The decision has caused carnage in oil markets with a barrel of Brent crude falling 45pc since June to around $60 per barrel.” (Third of listed UK oil and gas drillers face bankruptcy, Telegraph)

“Carnage in oil markets,” you say?

Indeed. Many of the oil-drilling newcomers set up shop to take advantage of the low rates and easy money available in the bond market. Now that prices have crashed, investors are avoiding energy-related junk bonds like the plague which is making it impossible for the smaller companies to roll over their debt or attract fresh capital. When these companies start to default en masse, as they certainly will if prices don’t rebound, the blowback will be felt on bank balance sheets across the country creating the possibility of another financial meltdown. (Now we ARE talking about a financial crisis.)

The basic problem is that the banks have bundled a lot of their dodgy debt into financially-engineered products like Collateralized Loan Obligations (CLOs) and Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) that will inevitably fail when borrowers are no longer able to service the loans. The rot can be concealed for a while, but eventually, if prices don’t recover, a significant number of these companies are going to go under which will push the perennially-undercapitalized banking system to the brink once again. That’s why Washington’s plan to push down oil prices (to hurt the Russian economy) might have made sense on a short-term basis (to shock Putin into submission) but as a long-term strategy, it’s nuts. And what’s even crazier, is that Obama has decided to double-down on the same wacky plan even though Putin hasn’t given an inch. Check this out from Reuters on Monday:

“The Obama administration has opened a new front in the global battle for oil market share, effectively clearing the way for the shipment of as much as a million barrels per day of ultra-light U.S. crude to the rest of the world…

The Department of Commerce on Tuesday ended a year-long silence on a contentious, four-decade ban on oil exports, saying it had begun approving a backlog of requests to sell processed light oil abroad.

The action comes at a critical juncture for the global oil market. World prices have halved to less than $60 a barrel since the summer as top exporter Saudi Arabia, once a staunch defender of $100 oil, refused to cut production in the face of surging U.S. shale output and tempered global demand…

With global oil markets in flux, it is far from clear how much U.S. condensate will find a market overseas.”
(Analysis – U.S. opening of oil export tap widens battle for global market, Reuters)

Does that make sense to you, dear reader? Why would Obama suddenly opt to change the rules of the game when he knows it will increase supply and push prices down even further? Why would he do that? Certainly, he doesn’t want to inflict more pain on domestic producers, does he?

Let’s let Obama answer the question for himself. Here’s a clip from an NPR interview with the president just last week. About halfway through the interview, NPR’s Steve Inskeep asks Obama: “Are you just lucky that the price of oil went down and therefore their currency collapsed or …is it something that you did?

Barack Obama: If you’ll recall, their (Russia) economy was already contracting and capital was fleeing even before oil collapsed. And part of our rationale in this process was that the only thing keeping that economy afloat was the price of oil. And if, in fact, we were steady in applying sanction pressure, which we have been, that over time it would make the economy of Russia sufficiently vulnerable that if and when there were disruptions with respect to the price of oil — which, inevitably, there are going to be sometime, if not this year then next year or the year after — that they’d have enormous difficulty managing it.” (Transcript: President Obama’s Full NPR Interview)

Am I mistaken or did Obama just admit that he wanted “disruptions” in the “price of oil” because he figured Putin would have “enormous difficulty managing it”?

Isn’t that the same as saying that it was all part of Washington’s plan; that plunging prices were just the icing on the cake for their asymmetrical attack on the Russian economy? It sure sounds like it. And that would also explain why Obama decided to allow domestic producers to dump more oil on the market even though it’s going to send prices lower. Apparently, none of that matters as long as the policy hurts Russia.

So maybe the US-Saudi oil collusion theory isn’t so far fetched after all. Maybe Salon’s Patrick L. Smith was right when he said:

“Less than a week after the Minsk Protocol was signed, Kerry made a little-noted trip to Jeddah to see King Abdullah at his summer residence. When it was reported at all, this was put across as part of Kerry’s campaign to secure Arab support in the fight against the Islamic State.

Stop right there. That is not all there was to the visit, my trustworthy sources tell me. The other half of the visit had to do with Washington’s unabated desire to ruin the Russian economy. To do this, Kerry told the Saudis 1) to raise production and 2) to cut its crude price. Keep in mind these pertinent numbers: The Saudis produce a barrel of oil for less than $30 as break-even in the national budget; the Russians need $105.

Shortly after Kerry’s visit, the Saudis began increasing production, sure enough — by more than 100,000 barrels daily during the rest of September, more apparently to come…

Think about this. Winter is coming, there are serious production outages now in Iraq, Nigeria, Venezuela and Libya, other OPEC members are screaming for relief, and the Saudis make back-to-back moves certain to push falling prices still lower? You do the math, with Kerry’s unreported itinerary in mind, and to help you along I offer this from an extremely well-positioned source in the commodities markets: “There are very big hands pushing oil into global supply now,” this source wrote in an e-mail note the other day.” (“What Really Happened in Beijing: Putin, Obama, Xi And The Back Story The Media Won’t Tell You”, Patrick L. Smith, Salon)

Vladimir Putin: Public Enemy Number 1

Let’s cut to the chase: All these oil shenanigans are really aimed at just one man: Vladimir Putin. There are a number of reasons why Washington wants to get rid of Putin, the first of which is that the Russian president has become an obstacle to US plans to pivot to Asia. That’s the main issue. As long as Putin is calling the shots, there’s going to be growing resistance to NATO’s push eastward and Washington’s military expansion across Central Asia which could undermine US plans to encircle China and remain the world’s only superpower. Here’s an excerpt from Zbigniew Brzezinski’s The Grand Chessboard which helps to explain the importance Eurasia is in terms of Washington’s global ambitions:

“..how America ‘manages’ Eurasia is critical. A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world’s three most advanced and economically productive regions. A mere glance at the map also suggests that control over Eurasia would almost automatically entail Africa’s subordination, rendering the Western Hemisphere and Oceania (Australia) geopolitically peripheral to the world’s central continent. About 75 per cent of the world’s people live in Eurasia, and most of the world’s physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for about three-fourths of the world’s known energy resources.” (p.31) (Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy And It’s Geostrategic Imperatives, Key Quotes From Zbigniew Brzezinksi’s Seminal Book)

Get it? Prevailing in Asia is the administration’s top priority, which is why the US is rapidly moving its military assets into place. Check this out from the World Socialist Web Site:

“Under Obama’s “pivot to Asia,” the Pacific Command will account for more than 60 percent of all US military forces, up from 50 percent under the Bush administration. This includes new US basing arrangements in the Philippines, Singapore and Australia, as well as renewed close military ties to New Zealand, and ongoing US military exercises in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Taiwan….(as well as) large troop deployments in Japan and South Korea, including nuclear-armed units.” (The global scale of US militarism, Patrick Martin, World Socialist Web Site)

The “Big Shift” is already underway, which is why obstacles have to be removed and Putin’s got to go.

Second, Putin has made himself a general nuisance vis a vis US strategic objectives in Syria, Iran and Ukraine. In Syria, Putin has thrown his support behind Assad who the US wants to topple in order to redraw the map of the Middle East and build gas pipelines from Qatar to Turkey to access the lucrative EU market.

Third, Putin has strengthened a number of coalitions and alliances –the BRICS bank, the Eurasian Economic Union, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization–all of which pose a challenge to US dominance in the region as well as a viable alternative to neoliberal financial institutions like the IMF and World Bank. Going back to Brzezinski’s “chessboard” once again, we see that the US should not feel threatened by any one nation, but should be constantly on-the-lookout for “regional coalitions” which could derail its plans to rule the world. Here’s Brzezinski again:

“…the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.” (p.40)

“Henceforth, the United States may have to determine how to cope with regional coalitions that seek to push America out of Eurasia, thereby threatening America’s status as a global power.” (p.55) (Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy And It’s Geostrategic Imperatives, Key Quotes From Zbigniew Brzezinksi’s Seminal Book)

As a founding member and primary backer of these organizations, (and initiator of giant energy deals with China, India and Turkey) Putin has become Washington’s biggest headache and a logical target for regime change.

Finally, Putin is doing whatever he can to circumvent dollar-denominated business and financial transactions. The move away from the buck is a direct attack on the US’s greatest source of power, the ability to control the de facto international currency and to require that other nation’s stockpile dollars for their energy purchases which are then recycled into US financial assets, stocks bonds and US Treasuries. This petrodollar-recycling scam allows the US to run gigantic current account deficits without raising interest rates or reducing government spending. Putin’s anti-dollar policies could diminish the greenback’s role as reserve currency and put an end to a system that institutionalizes looting.

This is why Putin is Public Enemy Number 1. It’s because he’s blocking the US pivot to Asia, strengthening anti-Washington coalitions, sabotaging US foreign policy objectives in the Middle East, creating institutions that rival the IMF and World Bank, transacting massive energy deals with critical US allies, increasing membership in an integrated, single-market Eurasian Economic Union, and attacking the structural foundation upon which the entire US empire rests, the dollar.

Naturally, Washington’s powerbrokers are worried about these developments, just as they are worried about the new world order which is gradually taking shape under Putin’s guidance. But, so far, they haven’t been able to do anything about it. The administration’s regime change schemers and fantasists have shown time-and-again that they’re no match for Bad Vlad who has beaten them at every turn.

Bravo, Putin.

The Low-Information Evangelical – Part 1

We are told throughout the New Testament to judge, to test, to discern, to assess, to rebuke, to hold one another to account, to make moral distinctions, and to pronounce judgment when and where it is due. ~ Bill Muehlenberg

The phrase low-information voter (LIV) was made popular in the mid-1990s.  Although the LIV is uninformed on the issues, he casts his vote.  The LIV is often highly opinionated even when he has no idea what he’s talking about.  A popular conservative talk show host has labeled a segment of those who vote for liberals LIVs.

D. Edmund Wright expresses his disdain for the LIV in a rather harsh way:

But forget low-information voters for just a minute; the malignancy that is really destroying this country is low-information people with high-profile power and/or influence.  You know, people who would lobby for, comment on, advocate for, or vote on laws like ObamaCare without any understanding of its real-world impact.  Such felonies are then carried out by low-information bureaucratic microbes with the power to destroy lives and businesses with impunity, and a political and talking-head class with the access and sway to codify these common malfeasances. Destruction of private property and liberty – and these two concepts are not divisible – takes place in government cubicles every minute of every day across the country.  And why not?  ( – emphasis in original)

While reading Wright’s rant against the organized left (and rightly so) it occurred to me that evangelicalism is dealing with the same sort of crisis – low-information people with high-profile power and/or influence.  So for the purpose of this piece I’ll refer to them as low-information evangelicals (LIE).

Reminiscent of the LIV, the high-profile LIE does not understand the impact that his unorthodox view has on the visible church.  When it comes to the Bible, the LIE has opinions on a variety of challenging topics.  Even when his opinion is decidedly unbiblical, he presents it as the gospel truth.  The LIE’s arguments are often based, not on what God’s Word clearly teaches but instead on esoteric experiences he’s had or what he’s picked up from LIE celebrities.  As a side note, whenever I write a column for the express purpose of exposing a LIE-celeb’s unbiblical teaching and even though I included an abundance of evidence to support the biblical view, the LIE rarely uses logical argumentation to contest the facts and win me over to their way of thinking.   Instead he resorts to personal attacks.  For example I’m often scolded for being unloving…ungracious…mean spirited…hateful…homophobic……and far worse.

Facts are stubborn things.  And the fact of the matter is that it’s biblical to report on a high-profile Christian leader whose teaching is unbiblical.  Much of the problem lies in the fact that oodles of LIE-celebs are unapologetically  in their worldview and their teaching reflects that.  (For the record, “progressive Christian” is an oxymoron.)

Several influential Bible teachers started out as good Bible expositors but got off track when they became enamored with Eastern mysticism.  Today the beliefs some Christians hold contain a good deal of New Age/New Thought ideas borrowed from Eastern mysticism.  Bible teacher, conference speaker and founder of Living Word Ministries  is one of those teachers.

Over the years Moore has gained substantial popularity with women, so much so that her resources line the shelves of churches and Christian book sellers everywhere.  Because she’s affiliated with the  her overt acceptance of “” surprised a lot of people.  For instance, at one of her conferences she shared a vision she supposedly received of “the church as Jesus sees it.”  Listen to this bombshell:

You know what He [God] told me not too long ago? I told you when I first began this whole concept, He first started teaching it to me about five years ago, and He said these words to me: “Baby, you have not even begun to believe Me. You haven’t even begun!”

You know what He said just a few days ago? “Honey, I just want you to know we’re just beginning.” Oh, glory! That meant I had begun. Hallelujah!

But He was telling me, “When this ends, we ain’t done with this. Honey, this is what we do for the rest of your life.” And He says those words to me over and over again: “Believe Me. Believe Me. And I hope it’s starting to ring in your ears, over and over again, Believe Me.” ()

Does that not make your hair stand on end?   “He said these words to me…” is the same as saying “Thus saith the Lord!”   Any discerning Christian will no doubt find Moore’s alleged chats with God troubling.

Contrary to what Beth Moore believes, when the Lord allegedly speaks to her it couldn’t be His voice she’s hearing.  How do I know that?  Because the way in which she claims the Almighty communicates with her is unbiblical.  How does God speak to us today?  We are told in  that He speaks to us by His Son through His Spirit in His Word.

In  Paul commands us to “test everything; hold fast what is good.”  With this in mind, I challenge Beth’s fans to test her teaching by the Word of God.  Those who are open to the truth will discover that this Bible teacher is feeding her followers rotten fruit!

Erin Benziger has been warning of Beth Moore’s shift into mysticism for quite some time.  Erin points out that:

Beth Moore has demonstrated time and again that she cannot properly handle the biblical text. And yet, she is a mentor and teacher to many women who look to her leadership and knowledge as a foundation for their own spiritual walk.

In recent months, Moore participated as a speaker at the Unwrap the Bible conference, which was held at Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church. The event was hosted by ministries, and also featured such dangerous teachers as Priscilla Shirer, Christine Caine, Lisa Harper, Sheila Walsh and of course, Victoria Osteen. Nearly 11,000 women were in attendance at this event. 11,000. That is a tremendous number of women who were exposed to deceptive and erroneous Bible teaching. These are women in your Bible study and in your church. These are women who will now take the principles they learned and will begin to influence other women and girls within their church. This ought to be of no small concern to those who love and revere the Word of God. ()

Before I move on, I should mention that I don’t enjoy tearing down the powerful magnetic personalities professing Christians revere.   My purpose for taking aim at Beth Moore is to get undistinguished LIEs (ordinary folk) up to speed on her unbiblical teaching.  Sadly, some undistinguished low information evangelicals (u-LIEs) assume that popular pastors, teachers and best-selling authors would never steer them wrong.  But nothing could be further from the truth!

The Undistinguished LIE

The u-LIE learns Scripture in a variety of ways:  (1) Best-selling “Christian” books; (2) Blog posts; (3) Religious TV programs; (4) “Christian” radio/podcasts; (5) Trendy market-driven/seeker sensitive churches; (6) Family and friends (some of whom are nominal Christians at best and Bible illiterates at worst.)

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I’m not saying that the u-LIE who utilizes the above resources won’t learn anything worthwhile. He will!  In fact it’s a good idea to gain knowledge from mainstream Bible scholars/theologians/apologists/bloggers and ministers of the gospel; likewise from TV, radio/podcasts of solid Bible expositors.  But we must see to it that those from whom we learn, including LIE-celebs, continually guard against error.  As I said above, when someone’s theology lands outside of the pale of orthodoxy it’s appropriate to challenge what’s being taught and to (gasp!) “name names.”  How else will we know who to be wary of?

Christians must never lose sight of the fact that false teachers are deceptive and evil.  And by the way, anyone who’s exposed as a wolf or wolverine must swallow their pride and repent of their sin against God.  The objective is restoration.

What has resulted from all the abysmal teaching in the Church?  U-LIEs have accepted liberal/progressive theology.  Likewise, they’re up to their eyeballs in aberrant/heretical movements such as liberal/progressive/social justice; emergent/emerging; /health & wealth/name-it-claim-it; New Apostolic Reformation/Dominionism/Latter Rain. Moreover they’ve become easy prey for the .  How does one avoid becoming ensnared by the wiles of the devil?  By becoming a Berean!  ()

Christian Mysticism

Thanks largely to Christian mystics such as recently deceased ordained Baptist Minister Dallas Willard and Quaker Richard Foster, many u-LIEs have been introduced to spiritual formation.  Sounds biblical, but I assure you it’s not.  In a nut shell, spiritual formation,

encourage[s] believers to incorporate a wide variety of extrabiblical spiritual practices, such as contemplative prayer, silence, meditation, creative expression, and yoga.  In fact, some of the most popular methods of spiritual formation have been lifted from Catholicism, new age mysticism, or other religions and rebranded with biblical-sounding terminology. ()

Ken Silva cautions that involving oneself in mysticism can lead to a “denial of the Reformation and the acceptance of apostate  as a viable form of Christianity.”

Both Willard and Foster, as well as Rick Warren, John Ortberg, Ruth Haley Barton and Tony Campolo have encouraged believers to read the writings of Roman Catholic Trappist Monks such as Thomas Merton, Basil Pennington, William Menninger and Thomas Keating to name a few.  From individuals like these, Eastern pagan practices have been introduced into mainline Protestant churches, likewise independent, nondenominational, charismatic and Pentecostal churches.

Because of books penned by Catholic monks, an increasing number of u-LIEs embrace the idea that  in much the same way that He spoke to the patriarchs and apostles.  And this is the primary reason Christians boast that they hear directly from God.

LIE-celebs and u-Lies who are exposed to mysticism will say things such as: “I had a word from the Lord” or “God said (this or that)…”  Or “God told me to do (this or that)…” And “I have received revelation knowledge.”  Anyone who makes these claims is saying that God speaks directly to them!  The danger in thinking this way is that when God doesn’t “speak” to a professed Christian, she worries that He’s silent because she doesn’t have enough faith, or she has a “hidden sin” in her life because if she didn’t, God would speak to her; or perhaps the Lord’s silent because He’s angry over an act of disobedience…and the list goes on.

The Silence Is Not Golden

The aforementioned monks, or , allege that by engaging in a prayer method called The Silence they’ve been able to achieve a profound experience with God.  “We enter the silence to consciously experience our oneness within the one Mind, God.”  The idea of experiencing oneness within the mind of God comes, not from the Bible, but from Eastern mysticism.  It makes no sense for God’s people to borrow from a corrupt religious system that God despises.  Listen to :

For you [God] have rejected your people, the house of Jacob, because they are full of things from the east and of fortune-tellers like the Philistines, and they strike hands with foreigners.

The Desert Fathers have so little discernment that they not only participate in recycled paganism, they encourage others to go that route!  Willard and Foster and other LIE-celebs know full well that they’re “striking hands with foreigners” and they do it anyway!

Being that the Lord condemns paganism, His people are to have nothing to do with it.  No dabbling!  Steer clear of anything to do with .  Methods such as…centering prayer…breath prayer…are forbidden!   Even though this will ruffle some feathers, my advice is to steer clear of “.  “Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.” ()

Part 2, coming up!

Recommended:

 (Posting this with a warning)

The following is a concise presentation of the contemplative practice known as “Entering the Silence” taught by the  [a cult] founded by

—By Mike Ratliff

Research links:

–On Solid Rock Resources

—On Solid Rock Resources

—On Solid Rock Resources

Cowardly Christian Entertainers

During an interview with  last year, country western star Carrie Underwood, a professing Christian, got the media’s full attention when she decided to come out in support of .”  “As a married person myself,” she chirped, “I don’t know what it’s like to be told I can’t marry somebody I love, and want to marry.  I can’t imagine how that must feel. I definitely think we should all have the right to love, and love publicly, the people that we want to love.”  Underwood also noted that she attends a gay-friendly church.

Four years ago another popular “Christian” singer, Jennifer Knapp, came out as a lesbian.  In an interview Knapp stated that she wasn’t interested in becoming another spokesperson for the gay agenda because she wasn’t equipped for that.  “I’m in no way capable of leading a charge for some kind of activist movement,” she bluntly  in 2010, adding, “I’m not capable of getting into the theological argument as to whether or not we should or shouldn’t allow homosexuals within our church.” ()  Four years later we learn that Jennifer has boned up on theology 101 and now feels she’s capable of arguing her view on what the Bible teaches on homosexuality.  Purchase her soon to be released book where she tells the story of her troubled life and you’ll discover Jennifer’s liberal theology.   And, not surprisingly, on her book publisher’s website we learn that she has become an “advocate for LGBT issues in the church.”

The gay agenda has weaseled its way into all aspects of society, including religious institutions, corporations, politics, the media, education, the arts, the entertainment industry and so on.  As a result, there’s a great divide in this country.  Even though the Bible clearly opposes homosexuality, a growing number of professing Christians have no problem with it. Far be it from a Christian to hurt someone’s feelings or to be thought of as – gasp – homophobic.  Anyone who dares oppose sodomy is said to be intolerant, even bigoted.  Well, the fact of the matter is that society has been indoctrinated to believe that homosexuality is normal and natural despite the fact that the scriptures teach just the opposite.  Not only is sodomy deemed unnatural, the Apostle Paul uses the term unseemly:

For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. ()

With all the  why are Christians expected to be tolerant instead of outraged?

The vast majority of highly respected, published, biblical scholars agree that Scripture clearly teaches that homosexuality is sin.  Therefore practicing same-sex sex is unacceptable to God…to Jesus…to the Holy Spirit…in other words, to the holy .

Pastor Larry Tomczak said of so-called Christian entertainers who seem more concerned about their careers than with what the Bible teaches, “To say we genuinely care about our fellow man, yet not “speak the truth in love” is cowardice.”

Amy Grant and Dan Haseltine are the most recent Christian entertainers to take a stance on gay “marriage.” They’re for it.  Thus, Amy and Dan are cowards.

Amy Grant is a singer-songwriter, musician, author and actor.  This accomplished woman also has dozens of Dove awards, six Grammys and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.  Dan is the lead singer of popular Christian singing group Jars of Clay and “tweeter” extraordinaire.

Recently Grant agreed to do an interview with the gay press.  According to Chris Azzopardi:

During her first gay press interview, and for an entire hour, the Grammy winner reflected – with her usual sincerity and thoughtfulness – on her loyal gay fan base, how she reconciles Christianity and homosexuality, her “compassion” for gay marriage…

Azzopardi was curious to know if she was invited to perform at the wedding of one of her gay fans and couldn’t do it because of a conflict in her schedule.  She replied:

I was invited. I was honored to be invited. ()

Honored?  Why would Amy, who proclaims her love for Jesus, feel that it’s an honor to be invited to sing Christian music at a gay “marriage” ceremony?

The answer is obvious. She has rejected  in favor of following her feelings.  As I already pointed out, homosexuality is diametrically opposed to Scripture.

Equally concerning is Grant’s 2010 interview with the world’s largest Catholic network, .  Has she not heard of the ?  By doing the interview she as much as endorsed a religious system that has led billions of people down a path that ends at the Gates of Hell.

Reformer Martin Luther made it clear what Protestants must believe about the :

What kind of a church is the pope’s church?” asked Martin Luther.  “It is an uncertain, vacillating and tottering church. Indeed, it is a deceitful, lying church, doubting and unbelieving, without God’s Word. For the pope with his wrong keys teaches his church to doubt and to be uncertain.

If it is a vacillating church, then it is not the church of faith, for the latter is founded upon a rock, and the gates of hell cannot prevail against it (Matthew.16:18). If it is not the church of faith, then it is not the Christian church, but it must be an unchristian, anti-Christian, and faithless church which destroys and ruins the real, holy, Christian church. (H/T )

It doesn’t require a degree in theology to know that the RCC has for centuries been spreading a false gospel, a gospel that does not save and intends to keep men blinded from the truth.  (). That Ms Grant—or any other professing Christian–would agree to sit down with a representative of a false religious system shows how little discernment she has.  Sadly, it appears that she is not concerned that her fans understand authentic Christian doctrine that will help them mature and grow in their faith.  Amy must know that,

There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.  ()

Likewise:

Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” ()

Dan Haseltine is not a household name.   But many believers are familiar with the popular Christian band .  In April Dan  his support for gay “marriage” and claimed that Scripture has nothing to say on morality.  When Christians objected to his unbiblical stance, he tweeted this stunning rebuke:

I don’t particularly care about Scriptures stance on what is “wrong” I care more about how it says we should treat people.

On biblical morality he tweeted:

Because most people read and interpret scripture wrong. I don’t think scripture “clearly” states much about morality.

The following day Metro Weekly reported Haseltine’s response to the uproar:

“Not meaning to stir things up BUT… is there a non-speculative or non ‘slippery slope’ reason why gays shouldn’t marry? I don’t hear one.” He went on to write “I’m trying to make sense of the conservative argument. But it doesn’t hold up to basic scrutiny. Feels akin to women’s suffrage. I just don’t see a negative effect to allowing gay marriage. No societal breakdown, no war on traditional marriage. ?? Anyone?” ()

By not taking a strong stance against gay “marriage” Amy and Dan have surrendered to three enemies: the world, the flesh and the devil.  And let’s be clear.  From their “progressive” vantage point, their brothers and sisters in Christ who oppose same-sex “marriage” (for biblical reasons) are homophobes, hate mongers and bigots.

But this is not only about Christian entertainers that have gone the way of progressive Christianity.  It is equally about the so-called Bible believing Christian who has chosen to ignore what God’s Word says on homosexuality; the one who puts his tail between his legs and cowers rather than to stand up for the Truth.  God’s people are commanded to “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.”  ()  And by the way, the discerning Christian knows perfectly well that same-sex sex is prohibited in Scripture.  Moreover, a spiritual person () will understand that .  “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” ()

I’ll end this with a lengthy quote from Walter Martin, apologist and founder of the .  Over two decades ago Dr. Martin gave us fair warning:

I don’t think it needs blackboard diagram; or any amount of sophisticated logical presentation a fortiori. I think you can be a fifth-grader and understand that if God says “cursed” is something He takes an extremely dim view of it. I think that’s a rational approach. So the homosexual theologians who are attempting today to defend homosexuality on the basis of Biblical theology are in the same position as the Sadducees, to whom Jesus addressed this remark: “You do err. Not knowing the Scriptures or the power of God.”

That’s exactly where they are. They are trying to put Christianity and homosexuality in the same bed; and you’re not gonna do it because Jesus Christ very forcibly condemned it. And you say, “Where in the New Testament did Jesus ever mention homosexuality?” Open your Bibles and find out; because contrary to what the gay church says, He not only spoke against it—He went out of His way to make it very clear [so] nobody’d misunderstand Him.

Of course, you do have to study your Greek New Testament to come up with it. Most homosexual theologians, so-called, that I have talked to don’t even know the Greek alphabet, much less their Greek exegesis so they miss it completely—but it’s here in the passage and it should be looked at. Matthew, chapter 15, Christ is speaking, verse 19, “For out of the heart proceeds evil thoughts, murders,” notice the differentiation, “adulteries, fornications,” plural, “thefts, false witness, blasphemies.”

“These are the things which defile a man, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.” “The word homosexual is not there; what are you arguing about?” I’m arguing about the use of the word porneus, which was found written over the wall, and the doorway, and the arches, in excavations [by] archaeologists of Roman brothels. And the word porneus did not mean “sex before marriage” alone.

It meant homosexuality, bestiality, and all forms of degraded sex. And it became well known to everybody in the culture, if any of them ever did their homework, that porneus referred to anything goes. Jesus well knew the Roman brothels. He well knew the culture of His time; and when He said adulteries and fornications—plural—He was making a direct reference to the practices of the Romans and the Greeks and the pagans of the time who prostituted themselves to all forms of evil.

He knew it; He condemned it. It’s not just the matter of the word, it’s a matter of the culture; and Jesus certainly understood the culture of His time—if He didn’t, nobody did. And therefore, when He used the word fornications, He obviously was making reference to all forms—all forms, inclusive forms—of that which was the deviation from the norm of Jewish law.

And the reason I can say that with such dogmatism is because He was a rabbi. And if a rabbi didn’t know Jewish law on the subject of homosexuality, nobody on earth knew it. … ()

Additional Resources

–On Solid Rock Resources

—Joe Dallas

The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics–By Robert Gagnon.  Dr. Gagnon  is Associate Professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.  “Gagnon offers the most thorough analysis to date of the biblical texts relating to homosexuality.”

Addressing Concerns Over “Son of God” Film

Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. ~ Eph 5:11

Not surprisingly the movie “Son of God” has created quite a stir in the Christian community.  Before I gave the theater my money I read several reviews, blog posts, Facebook comments and viewed TV interviews of husband and wife team Mark Burnett and Roma Downey promoting their film.  Roma is a familiar face to many and is best-known for her role on the successful TV show “Touched by An Angel.”  Mark Burnett is the executive producer of a string of hit TV shows such as “Survivor,” “The Voice, “Celebrity Apprentice,” “Shark Tank,” and he has won several Emmys.

When I first heard that another full-length feature film about the life of Christ was coming to the silver screen, I was skeptical for several reasons.  First, Mark and Roma are  and I was concerned that the movie would be produced from this perspective; a perspective that in many cases I disagree with.

Second, I learned that Roma earned a degree in “spiritual psychology” from the University of Santa Monica, a private graduate school founded by New Age spiritual and self-help quack John-Roger.   P.J. Miller is not being flippant when he asks:

What do you call someone who is a student of new age psychology and spiritualism? Do you call them new agers? Do you call them seekers? Would you dare call them Christian? Well, if you’re Roma Downey, then yes, you would call yourself all the above. ()

Third, a  shows Jesus asking Peter to follow Him. Peter looks skeptical and asks Jesus what they’re going to do.  Jesus grins and replies “Change the world.”  Well, no.  Jesus never said those words to Peter!  Here’s what Jesus actually said:

While walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Immediately they left their nets and followed him. (Mat 4:18-20)

Jesus commanded  — Peter and Andrew dropped what they were doing to follow Him.  (More on this in a moment.)  Another clip shows a woman sitting in a boat on the Sea of Galilee with Jesus and the apostles during the storm where Jesus walks on water.  But according to Scripture there was no woman in the boat:

Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds.  () 

In the movie Mary was the woman in the boat.  But why would they have a woman in the boat when Matthew informs us that the  got into the boat.  Mary wasn’t one of the twelve disciples/apostles – no woman was!

Finally, S. Michael Houdmann revealed in his review of the movie that, “the reason for Jesus’ death and the meaning of His resurrection are completely missing. The fact that Jesus’ death is the atoning sacrifice for sin is not mentioned at all ().”

As I said, “Son of God” has elicited a great deal of controversy as did Mark and Roma’s “” miniseries produced by LightWorkers Media, a company owned by them. This “” program aired on the History Channel last year. “We knew when we were shooting,” said Downey, “that the Jesus portion of our ‘Bible’ series was special and we shot much more footage and we’ve re-edited many more scenes into a stand-alone feature film called ‘Son of God.'”   I don’t have the space to tackle the “The Bible” brouhaha.  I will say, though, that several highly controversial pastors sat on the . They include , , ,  and.  (For more on “The Bible” go to Resources below)

The Son of God?

“Son of God” opened on February 28, so by now a lot of folks have had the opportunity to view it in theatres and many more will have it streaming into their living rooms in a few months.  Naturally, reviews were quickly written, some good, some not so good.  (You’ll find links to the reviews at the end of this piece.) Suffice to say that in a short amount of time a lot has been said about the film.

Many of you won’t be surprised to learn that Mark and Roma asked Saddleback Church founder Rick Warren to help spread their version of the “good news.”   He happily agreed.  “I’ve seen most of the films produced about Jesus in the past 50 years,” said the pastor, “and ‘Son of God’ is the best.  We’re excited Jesus is back on the big screen, and we’re going to fill the theaters. I want every other faith leader in America to do the same.”

So – why would the man who is affectionately called “America’s Pastor” agree to promote a film that its critics describe as outright unbiblical?

Not only did Warren endorse the film, according to the Baptist Standard staff report :

Pastor and author Rick Warren partnered with LifeWay Christian Resources to release a Bible study related to the Son of God movie from 20th Century Fox, which hits theaters Feb. 28.

The small-group curriculum resource by Warren, , is a companion piece to the movie produced by husband-and-wife team Mark Burnett and Roma Downey.

The six-session study features video clips from the movie and videos from Warren explaining Jesus’ teachings and their impact on people’s lives. Topics include baptism, temptation, suffering, death, resurrection and ministry. ()

As a Southern Baptist preacher, Rick Warren knows perfectly well that the Roman Catholic Church holds to the view that it is the one true Church.  Thus, any church outside the RCC is anathematized (excommunicated, cursed or damned). The Protestant Reformers held the view that the RCC’s gospel is not a gospel that saves; therefore the RCC is apostate.  Anyone who rejects the true gospel – we are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone – is an unbeliever.  Period.  Warren also knows what the Bible teaches regarding believers going into :

Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness. ()

Here’s the thing.  Not everyone who professes the name of Christ has a true saving faith.  What about Mark Burnett and Roma Downey?  Do they have a true saving faith?  Let’s examine the fruit.

Endorsements

Popular pastor and author Mark Driscoll’s church bought out 3,500 seats.  In 2013 he and his wife shared a stage with Mark and Roma at Resurgence 13.  Driscoll later remarked:

We watched the world premier trailer for  at the conference, and the footage choked me up as I thought of the millions of people who will hear about Jesus through this project. I am so encouraged by God’s work through this couple. ()

God’s work?

The connection between the Passover sacrifice (Exodus 12) and Jesus as the Lamb of God () is not made. The fact that Jesus’ resurrection proves His victory over death and sin and guarantees a resurrected eternal life for all who believe in Him (1 Corinthians 15) is nowhere to be found.  — S. Michael Houdmann

Another endorser of the film was “Social Justice Christian” Rev. Jim Wallis.  In my column  I wrote:

This man wears many hats.  He is the founder of Sojourner’s Magazine, speaker, author and activist.  He’s also President Obama’s “spiritual advisor.”  This alone speaks volumes.  Rev. Wallis insists that he’s an evangelical Christian even though he has abandoned the biblical gospel for the “social gospel.”  He believes he’s on a mission from God to assist the poor and oppressed to bring forth the Kingdom of God on earth. 

When this purveyor of the false social justice gospel was asked for advice by the couple, he gladly gave it to them:

What won me over to the whole series was the clip about Jesus meeting Peter, the fisherman. In a Washington, D.C., premiere of “The Bible” series a few weeks ago, I had wonderful conversations with Mark and Roma. Mark asked me if they were right to have Jesus say that he wanted to change the world. Those words are not literally in the scriptures, but it seemed to him and Roma that’s exactly what Jesus was talking about. Absolutely correct, I told them both. And we went through the first few chapters of Mathew which demonstrate that truth. I love the clarity and courage of the statement from Jesus in “The Bible.”

Sunny Shell disagrees:

Christ came into the world to save sinners from the righteous wrath of God, which is the just penalty for our sins. He never said He came to change the world. He said He came to transform people by giving them new hearts and new minds through repentance and faith in Christ alone. ()

The Examiner listed the names of churches and organizations that distributed tickets for a so-called “Theater Take-Over”:

Joel Osteen, pastor of Lakewood Church in Houston, Tex., who is distributing 8,000 tickets donated by an anonymous donor; Jerry Falwell, Jr., of Liberty University which has more than 12,000 students; Craig Groeschel of LifeChurch which has 18 campuses in Oklahoma City and Tulsa, Oklahoma; Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles with over four million members and Miles McPherson of the Rock Church with weekly attendance of more than 10,000 in San Diego, Calif. (Emphasis in original – )

In an article that appeared on Fox News, Mark and Roma wrote:

In all our combined years in the entertainment industry, we’ve never seen anything like this kind of grass-roots support for a project. It is truly miraculous.

So, too, is the unprecedented depth and breadth of those who have endorsed the film. Pastors like Rick, as well as scholars and faith organizations, have graciously supported our effort to share this story of our Savior – though they belong to different denominations, adhere to varying theological doctrine, worship God in their own unique ways. 

Bishop T.D. Jakes of The Potter’s House in Dallas said “the audience will be enthralled, encouraged and inspired.” 

S. Michael Houdmann was not enthralled by the movie.  In his review he writes:

The Son of God presents a Jewish Messiah who is crucified, dies, comes back to life, and commissions His followers to spread the word. But why did He have to die? What is the meaning of the resurrection? What is the message the apostles were supposed to proclaim, and why was it worth dying for? 

More from the Fox News article…

Joel Osteen of Lakewood Church in Houston called it “an epic work that touches the heart.”

The Catholic Archbishop of Los Angeles Jose Gomez says it’s “a very important movie because it gives us the opportunity to realize God’s presence in our own lives.”()

Certainly there are by now “Church leaders” that are sincerely shocked to find out that they endorsed a movie produced by New Age Catholics.  Here’s more proof from a 2010 article  that shows she’s an advocate of New Age/New Thought spirituality:

Says Roma, who lives in Malibu, ‘My kids go to school about a 40-minute drive away. I’m open to the group’s opinion about what we listen to on the way there. On the way back, I get my own selections — books on tape by Eckhart Tolle, Tony Robbins…My husband says I’m so self-realized I’m practically levitating.’

For those who are unfamiliar with Eckhart Tolle, he’s a New Ager.  A few years ago Tolle paired up with  to do 10 online classes on XM Satellite radio on his blockbuster book “A New Earth: Are You Ready to Be Awakened.”  Oprah and Tolle took participants through his book chapter by chapter.  Regrettably, a large number of professing Christians took the class!

 guru and “coach for success” Anthony Robbins once said: “My definition of success is to live your life in a way that causes you to feel tons of pleasure and very little pain.”  Evidently no pain is experienced after completing a barefoot firewalk, a self-empower technique Robbins’ teaches to get an otherwise sane person to walk on a bed of burning hot coals during his “Unleash The Power Within” seminar.  On this  you’ll hear the sound of drums beating and the crowd chanting “YES! YES! YES!” as Robbinswhips them into a frenzy in preparation for the firewalk.

More…

Roma appeared on “psychic medium”  TV show and allegedly spoke to her deceased mother.  What does the Bible have to say about consulting a medium?

And he burned his son as an offering and used fortune-telling and omens and dealt with mediums and with necromancers. He did much evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger. ()

Well, it’s apparent that Roma, who says she loves the Bible, is unaware—or doesn’t care–that God says consulting a medium is evil.

Later she collaborated with Edwards by providing a CD to accompany a book he wrote:

Roma prays the entire rosary on the beautiful CD that comes along with this book. It’s quite lovely and gives you the special opportunity and a unique spiritual closeness to Roma to be able to pray right along with her as if she was right there at your side.” ()

So now you know a bit about two New Age gurus Roma Downey looks forward to listening to each day and an occultist she collaborated with.  The worldview of these men is as far from Christianity as the Earth is from Pluto.

P.J. Miller sat listening to Jim Bakker introduce Mark and Roma on Bakker’s TV show and recalled “their previous work on the History Channel’s The Bible and how they managed to literally re-write the Bible itself, and presented another gospel message altogether. I was captured by their … aggressive but subtle attempt to portray themselves as ‘believers’.  The sappy spiritual love fest that permeated on set showed me that something was indeed changing within Christianity, and that something was another Jesus being introduced to the masses.”

Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There he is!’ do not believe it. For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. ()

After several weeks of due diligence I’ve decided that “Son of God” is not a film I wish to see.  In addition to the concerns I have included in this article, my research has turned up many more — way too many to incorporate here.  Most troubling is the astonishing lack of discernment shown by some of our so-called Christian leaders.  The Son of God I serve is best described in the Bible which is the inerrant, infallible, inspired Word of God.  Inspired means that God moved through the writers to convey to those who read it the words He wanted us to hear.  So to change the words that Christ spoke is prideful and wicked.

It’s unfortunate that those who are unfamiliar with the biblical Jesus and see this film will not come away with a clear understanding of His mission here on Earth.

He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. ()

Resources:

“Son of God” Reviews

 by Sunny Shell

 by S. Michael Houdmann

 by Ben Kayser

“The Bible” Review

 by Sunny Shell

 by Stand Up For The Truth

Endorsements

 by Stand Up For The Truth

New Age/New Thought Movement

 by Marsha West

 by Marsha West

Rick Warren

 by Stand Up For The Truth

 by Marsha West

 by Ken Silva

Miscellaneous

 by Michael Horton

Rome anathematized itself at the Council of Trent

 by Marsha West

 – 

2014 Will Bring More Social Collapse

2014 is upon us. For a person who graduated from Georgia Tech in 1961, a year in which the class ring showed the same date right side up or upside down, the 21st century was a science fiction concept associated with Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film, “2001: A Space Odyssey.” To us George Orwell’s 1984 seemed so far in the future we would never get there. Now it is 30 years in the past.

Did we get there in Orwell’s sense? In terms of surveillance technology, we are far beyond Orwell’s imagination. In terms of the unaccountability of government, we exceptional and indispensable people now live a 1984 existence. In his alternative to the Queen’s Christmas speech, Edward Snowden made the point that a person born in the 21st century will never experience privacy. For new generations the word privacy will refer to something mythical, like a unicorn.

Many Americans might never notice or care. I remember when telephone calls were considered to be private. In the 1940s and 1950s the telephone company could not always provide private lines. There were “party lines” in which two or more customers shared the same telephone line. It was considered extremely rude and inappropriate to listen in on someone’s calls and to monopolize the line with long duration conversations.

The privacy of telephone conversations was also epitomized by telephone booths, which stood on street corners, in a variety of public places, and in “filling stations” where an attendant would pump gasoline into your car’s fuel tank, check the water in the radiator, the oil in the engine, the air in the tires, and clean the windshield. A dollar’s worth would purchase 3 gallons, and $5 would fill the tank.

Even in the 1980s and for part of the 1990s there were lines of telephones on airport waiting room walls, each separated from the other by sound absorbing panels. Whether the panels absorbed the sounds of the conversation or not, they conveyed the idea that calls were private.

The notion that telephone calls are private left Americans’ consciousness prior to the NSA listening in. If memory serves, it was sometime in the 1990s when I entered the men’s room of an airport and observed a row of men speaking on their cell phones in the midst of the tinkling sound of urine hitting water and noises of flushing toilets. The thought hit hard that privacy had lost its value.

I remember when I arrived at Merton College, Oxford, for the first term of 1964. I was advised never to telephone anyone whom I had not met, as it would be an affront to invade the privacy of a person to whom I was unknown. The telephone was reserved for friends and acquaintances, a civility that contrasts with American telemarketing.

The efficiency of the Royal Mail service protected the privacy of the telephone. What one did in those days in England was to write a letter requesting a meeting or an appointment. It was possible to send a letter via the Royal Mail to London in the morning and to receive a reply in the afternoon. Previously it had been possible to send a letter in the morning and to receive a morning reply, and to send another in the afternoon and receive an afternoon reply.

When one flies today, unless one stops up one’s ears with something, one hears one’s seat mate’s conversations prior to takeoff and immediately upon landing. Literally, everyone is talking nonstop. One wonders how the economy functioned at such a high level of incomes and success prior to cell phones. I can remember being able to travel both domestically and internationally on important business without having to telephone anyone. What has happened to America that no one can any longer go anywhere without constant talking?

If you sit at an airport gate awaiting a flight, you might think you are listening to a porn film. The overhead visuals are usually Fox “News” going on about the need for a new war, but the cell phone audio might be young women describing their latest sexual affair.

Americans, or many of them, are such exhibitionists that they do not mind being spied upon or recorded. It gives them importance. According to Wikipedia, Paris Hilton, a multimillionaire heiress, posted her sexual escapades online, and Facebook had to block users from posting nude photos of themselves. Sometime between my time and now people ceased to read 1984. They have no conception that a loss of privacy is a loss of self. They don’t understand that a loss of privacy means that they can be intimidated, blackmailed, framed, and viewed in the buff. Little wonder they submitted to porno-scanners.

The loss of privacy is a serious matter. The privacy of the family used to be paramount. Today it is routinely invaded by neighbors, police, Child Protective Services (sic), school administrators, and just about anyone else.

Consider this: A mother of six and nine year old kids sat in a lawn chair next to her house watching her kids ride scooters in the driveway and cul-de-sac on which they live.

Normally, this would be an idyllic picture. But not in America. A neighbor, who apparently did not see the watching mother, called the police to report that two young children were outside playing without adult supervision. Note that the next door neighbor, a woman, did not bother to go next door to speak with the mother of the children and express her concern that they children were not being monitored while they played. The neighbor called the police. 
“We’re here for you,” the cops told the mother, who was carried off in handcuffs and spent the next 18 hours in a cell in prison clothes.

The news report doesn’t say what happened to the children, whether the father appeared and insisted on custody of his offspring or whether the cops turned the kids over to Child Protective Services.

This shows you what Americans are really like. Neither the neighbor nor the police had a lick of sense. The only idea that they had was to punish someone. This is why America has the highest incarceration rate and the highest total number of prison inmates in the entire world. Washington can go on and on about “authoritarian” regimes in Russia and China, but both countries have far lower prison populations than “freedom and democracy” America.

I was unaware that laws now exist requiring the supervision of children at play. Children vary in their need for supervision. In my day supervision was up to the mother’s judgment. Older children were often tasked with supervising the younger. It was one way that children were taught responsibility and developed their own judgment.

When I was five years old, I walked to the neighborhood school by myself. Today my mother would be arrested for child endangerment.

In America punishment falls more heavily on the innocent, the young, and the poor than it does on the banksters who are living on the Federal Reserve’s subsidy known as Quantitative Easing and who have escaped criminal liability for the fraudulent financial instruments that they sold to the world. Single mothers, depressed by the lack of commitment of the fathers of their children, are locked away for using drugs to block out their depression. Their children are seized by a Gestapo institution, Child Protective Services, and end up in foster care where many are abused.

According to numerous press reports, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 year-old children who play cowboys and indians or cops and robbers during recess and raise a pointed finger while saying “bang-bang” are arrested and carried off to jail in handcuffs as threats to their classmates. In my day every male child and the females who were “Tom boys” would have been taken to jail. Playground fights were normal, but no police were ever called. Handcuffing a child would not have been tolerated.

From the earliest age, boys were taught never to hit a girl. In those days there were no reports of police beating up teenage girls and women or body slamming the elderly. To comprehend the degeneration of the American police into psychopaths and sociopaths, go online and observe the video of Lee Oswald in police custody in 1963. 4FDDuRSgzFk Oswald was believed to have assassinated President John F. Kennedy and murdered a Dallas police officer only a few hours previously to the film. Yet he had not been beaten, his nose wasn’t broken, and his lips were not a bloody mess. Now go online and pick from the vast number of police brutality videos from our present time and observe the swollen and bleeding faces of teenage girls accused of sassing overbearing police officers.

In America today people with power are no longer accountable. This means citizens have become subjects, an indication of social collapse.

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

Source: Paul Craig Roberts

The CIA Gets It Wrong — Again

The CIA really screwed up back in 1961 when it plotted to murder Patrice Lumumba — and just look at the mess they created in all of central Africa as a result, even today.  The CIA also blew it bigtime when it assassinated the democratically-elected president of Iran back in 1952 — and Iran has pretty much been one of the CIA’s biggest headaches ever since.

And of course there was also the CIA’s famous Mandela fiasco — wherein “The Company” supported apartheid in South Africa and schemed to have Mandela thrown in jail.  No wonder Raul Castro was so welcome at Mandela’s funeral.  Cuba was a major anti-apartheid player, while the CIA once again stood on the wrong side of history, supported the Bad Guys and helped engineer the evils of bantustans, mass torture, dumpasses and the cold-blooded slaughter of school girls — plus the CIA, like one other dynasty I could mention right now, also put out false propaganda that South Africa was awash with happy Blacks picking cotton.

The CIA’s next total blunder took place in Chile.  How many thousands and thousands were tortured and killed there for no reason as a result of CIA interference in a democratically-elected government there?  According to the Washington Post, the number was 32,197 — but we may never know the real statistics for sure.  Let’s list Chile as another political (and moral) failure for “The Agency”.

Don’t even get me started on Vietnam.  Or Cambodia.  A land-war in Asia?  Never a good idea.

And let’s not forget the CIA’s disgusting and ugly ongoing disaster in Central America, starting in 1954 when the CIA drew up a “disposal list” to systematically assassinate 58 of Guatemala’s democratically-elected leaders in order to install the worst sort of dictators there.  This illegal and immoral strategy eventually cost American taxpayers untold billions of dollars — yet another big “Fail” for the “Certified Incompetents of America”.

And even today, when farmers in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala go out to plow their fields, they are still finding silent graves filled with whitened bones planted there by CIA-backed Death Squads.  That whole decade of the 1980s was just one big blood bath after another in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.  I shudder to even think about it.  So much shame is there.  And so much bad PR for America.

But let’s not forget Iraq either, the CIA at its very lowest ebb.  False intel there.  A trillion dollars frittered away on creating corpses — a million of them by some counts.  Wrong, wrong, wrong.

And the CIA-backed neo-cons in Israel have also been a big failure.  Those IDF blackshirts have turned out to be nothing more than Cossacks in sheep’s clothing as they run their viscous pogroms through the Christian and Muslim shtetls of the West Bank and Gaza .

Not to mention CIA failures in Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Belfast, Beirut, Georgia, Cuba, Grenada and Dallas.  You can always count on the CIA to back the wrong players and/or play the wrong game.  The whole Middle East is in flames today, thanks to the CIA.  Not to mention the alleged blow-back in 2001 at the World Trade Center — or was that just another one of the CIA’s failed war games too?  Either way, America also lost bigtime here due to the CIA.  

Imagine if “The Agency” had been around during the 1776 Revolution!  With the kind of help that it has to offer, we’d still be saluting the Queen and sipping High Tea.  And the CIA would have just loved George Armstrong Custer.  “There are not enough Indians in the world to defeat the Seventh Cavalry.”  Sounds like CIA spies wrote that report.

“But Jane,” you might ask, “if the CIA has had so many abominable black marks against it and such dismal failures on its books, how come ‘The Company’ hasn’t gone bankrupt yet?”  That’s a very good question.  If any other corporation in America had failed its customers this often, abysmally and immorally, one would think that it would have been forced to go bankrupt a long time ago.  Its publicly-traded stock would have been worthless and laughed at.  But not this “Company”.  Apparently the CIA leads a very charmed life.

I occasionally wish that I could do something like that too — start a business and know for sure and always that no matter what wrong thing I would ever do with it, what ever bad business decision I would ever make or how often I would horribly screw up, I would still automatically make almost a hundred billion a year anyway.  Wouldn’t that be cool — to just sit back and receive corporate welfare like “The Agency” does, no matter how badly I blow it.  Those CIA people certainly do have it all going on.

“But Jane,” you might also ask, “the CIA is a government operation, not a corporation.”  Yeah right.  You just keep telling yourself that.  The CIA never has to answer to We the People.  It answers only to the corporations that own it.  That’s not “government”.  Government, in a true democracy, must be of service to its people.  And how the freak have We ever been served by having America’s reputation shredded to ribbons throughout the world?

Significance of the JFK Assassination

“There exists in this country a plot to enslave every man, woman, and child. Before I leave this high and noble office I intend to expose this plot.” John F Kennedy, just before his Assassination…

For those who were of age and alive at the time of the Dallas killing, a fresh memory of the times and era are integral to their assessment. Those who were born later, have no firsthand experience of the actual change that took place to the body politics. Comparing before and after is mostly forgotten by the history accounts. For those who remember, the country started on a downward spiral that continues to the present. The assassination of John F. Kennedy was a political coup d’état and has been described as an enigma with many layers of disinformation. However, peeling back this onion exposes a rot that very much explains the current condition of our country.

When raising the subject of a conspiracy, it is both amusing and tragic that establishment defenders are quick to discredit the investigator, while avoiding facts, evidence and common sense. Solving the mystery to the satisfaction of competing and often conflicting factions is not necessary. However, understanding the course of events that took hold after the Camelot myth was buried is intensely valuable. The end of innocence became an existential awakening to the perceptive, while believing the conclusions of the Warren commission provided reassurance for not facing reality.

 

Why did powerful elites fear Kennedy? The  provides the motive behind the mask of the media filter.

From this “President and the Press” Speech (April 27, 1961)

“The very word “secrecy” is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. That I do not intend to permit to the extent that it is in my control. And no official of my Administration, whether his rank is high or low, civilian or military, should interpret my words here tonight as an excuse to censor the news, to stifle dissent, to cover up our mistakes or to withhold from the press and the public the facts they deserve to know.”

Remember that most famous of all winks at the LBJ swearing in? Look to None Dare Call It Conspiracy!, and put the pieces of the puzzle in place.

“The significance of the Stone film, JFK, is demonstrated by the assault that the established order heaped upon his portrayal. Believe it or reject it, but investigate the questions that have never been answered. If logic has meaning, have Arlene Spector explain that magic bullet again. That ‘Man X’ was real – his name, colonel Fletcher Prouty, a true ‘black bag’ magician.”

Lyndon B. Johnson initiated the Reign on Terror that continues to this day. His involvement into the plot is supported in the new book, The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ by Roger Stone with Mike Colapietro.

“The notable individuals that knew and said Johnson was involved in murderous acts is also well-documented… they include Oswald murderer Jack Ruby, Dexter Scott King, son of Dr. Martin Luther King, as well as LBJ associate Billy Sol Estes, LBJ mistress Madeleine Brown, Texas Governor Allan Shivers, renowned Texas Ranger Clint Peoples, CIA asset E. Howard Hunt and US Senator and 1964 Republican nominee for President Barry Goldwater. The KGB, fearing that they or their puppet state Cuba would be falsely blamed conducted their own investigation and concluded LBJ killed JFK at the same to time French Intelligence would tell Jackie Kennedy LBJ murdered her husband.”

If this is just too much to accept, look at the “Skull and Bones” operative, who just happened to be a Texas Oilman. Similarly, he was Vice President at the time of an assassination attempt that almost was successful. Sure, such a coincidence should be fodder for an Oliver Stone sequel – Reagan.

Now consider the CIA component in the “Big Event”. Did George H.W. Bush Coordinate a JFK Hit Team?

“Next, George Bush can be seen in photos of Dealey Plaza, next to the TSBD doorway and Ed Lansdale, shortly following the assassination (see below). These photos, unmistakably George Bush, tell us where he went after he left the Dallas Sheriff’s Office: back to the crime scene to get an update on all that he had missed. He must have made his call to the FBI reporting James Parrot from the Dallas Sheriff’s Office, at 1:45 PM, because Bush is seen in Dealey Plaza with Lansdale, who would leave the plaza at about 2 PM and walk past “the three tramps” toward the parking lot. Bush obviously had to go straight back to Dealey Plaza for him to be photographed with Lansdale, who remained around Dealey Plaza until Oswald was arrested at the Texas Theater at 1:50 PM.”

J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI was up to his ears in the investigation. He certainly was no friend of the Kennedy’s. Therefore, when eyewitness testimony from scores of witnesses was ignored or discarded by the Bureau, no one should be surprised that the final report will be suspect. The Mary Ferrell Foundation site furnishes the following:

“The Church Committee in the 1970s analyzed the CIA’s role in supporting the Warren Commission, and found it lacking. The Committee “developed evidence which impeaches the process by which the intelligence agencies [CIA and FBI] arrived at their own conclusions about the assassination, and by which they provided information to the Warren Commission.”

 

Now watch the video from Jim Marrs & St. John Hunt – . A dying admission once held legal merit. But in this disinformation world of government scripted deflection, the public needs to be kept in tranquil ignorance. The Daily Paul site provided additional information.

“One of most explosive under-reported stories of the last 50 years is the deathbed confession of E. Howard Hunt, who was personal assistant to Allen Dulles, head of the CIA at the time, to knowledge that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone and that he, Hunt, had been personally involved in the assassination. Hunt said in his written confession that the assassination was code-named “the Big Event.”

Whatever determination you maintain on the actual circumstances, the results from JFK’s elimination are dramatic. Five Fiendish Ways the Kennedy Assassination Warped Our World list is an effective analysis.

1. LBJ Unleashed – Johnson’s profligate Great Society spending strategies, which took the New Deal and accelerated it into hyper-drive.

2. Vietnam – in October of 1963, Kennedy issued National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 263, which detailed his plan to withdraw U.S. advisers from Vietnam while gradually scaling back our involvement in Southeast Asia. But within four days of the assassination, Lyndon Johnson had already signed and submitted NSAM 273, which reversed course and basically pledged to stand by the government in South Vietnam come hell or high water.

3. The Federal Reserve Survives – In June of 1963, Kennedy signed Executive Order 11110, which authorized the U.S. Treasury to issue certificates backed by silver as an alternative form of money to Federal Reserve notes. But when President Kennedy was killed, LBJ suspended this program immediately, and the Federal Reserve’s control over the U.S. economy has never once been challenged since.

4. The CIA and Our Culture of Secrecy – Kennedy’s statement to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the wind”, his death allowed the CIA to continue and preserve its culture of secrecy.

5. Mainstream Nonsense and the Mainstream Media – The vast majority of the Fourth Estate took the path of least resistance, and the idea of an independent media that would fearlessly search for the truth no matter where it led died a painful and difficult death.

So what is the significance of the JFK Assassination? In an interview, Roger Stone answers the question: How did JFK’s death affect society, people’s minds? Is the impact still present in your opinion?

“I think it certainly changed our policy very dramatically – I think we moved it back into the Cold War. After the death of John F. Kennedy the important conversations between the Russian State and the United States were damaged. We know, because it was historically recorded that Nikita Khrushchev wept, when he heard of the death of Kennedy. There was an American journalist who was with Fidel Castro, when he was distraught what he learned: he said over and over again “this is very bad, this is very bad”… I think we were engaged – we were beginning to engage in some fruitful conversations in terms of easing the tensions between our countries and I think there were those in the Pentagon, those in the US military, those in our US-based intelligent services who were very unhappy about that direction. I think it is a major factor – not the factor, – but a major factor in getting John F. Kennedy killed.”

It is the contention of this “Reign of Terror” series to provide accounts and evidence that the nation has endured under a shadow government of ruling elites; especially, since the elimination of a President, who dared challenge the interests of the true masters of the establishment.

The deplorable circumstance of a society, so ignorant to make distinctions, of real history from invented official fairy tales, explains largely why Americans are in serial denial. The article JFK retrospectives adnauseam, makes this point.

“People never learn. After the sanctioned assassination, healing the country provided the necessary cover to implement the goals of the coup. Most of the evidence that explains the background that led up to the removal of Kennedy fails to address the breakdown of the entire historic underpinning of the nation, since WWII. The seeds of the Great Society were sown in the idiocy of being dragged into that global contrived conflict. Those who should know best, since they lived during that era, often deny their own blind faith in a misguided allegiance to a central government.”

As for the population that never knew or heard actual accounts of this age, “so called” news reporting usually sugar coats or distorts the facts, ignorance really is not bliss. Today’s electronic media is a hodgepodge of government talking points or press releases.

The constant drumbeat to blame Lee Harvey Oswald solely for the Kennedy assassination intends to make patsies of the American people. The greater fool theory works in elections. In a New poll finds that belief in JFK assassination conspiracy still strong, but slipping slightly may be a trend worth noting. Reflecting the goals of the “Great Society” means, that acceptance of government authoritarianism became easier.

Deconstructing the JFK Myth offers this distinction. “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.” The invocation needed to read: “Ask not what you can do for your country — Ask what we can do together to insure individual Liberty”

Propagandists of the ilk of Sargeant Shriver and Arthur Schlesinger Jr., designed a legend that defied factual references”, but the martyrdom of a slain President misses the point. John Kennedy was not a saint, but was an obstacle. What better message to future aspirant reformers that a magic bullet awaits their demise.

Few institutional government critics were known for rocking the boat, especially when Kennedy’s “a rising tide lifts all boats” might upset his elitist executioners. The system is much bigger than any individual. Bucking the sub-rosa interests that seek greater concentrated control can be deadly. America was condemned to a Reign of Terror on November 22, 1963.

What Is The Real Agenda Of The American Police State?

In my last column I emphasized that it was important for American citizens to demand to know what the real agendas are behind the wars of choice by the Bush and Obama regimes. These are major long term wars each lasting two to three times as long as World War II.

Forbes reports that one million US soldiers have been injured in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

RT reports that the cost of keeping each US soldier in Afghanistan has risen from $1.3 million per soldier to $2.1 million per soldier.

Matthew J. Nasuti reports in the Kabul Press that it cost US taxpayers $50 million to kill one Taliban soldier. That means it cost $1 billion to kill 20 Taliban fighters.  This is a war that can be won only at the cost of the total bankruptcy of the United States.

Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes have estimated that the current out-of-pocket and already incurred future costs of the Afghan and Iraq wars is at least $6 trillion.

In other words, it is the cost of these two wars that explain the explosion of the US public debt and the economic and political problems associated with this large debt.

What has America gained in return for $6 trillion and one million injured soldiers, many very severely?

In Iraq there is now an Islamist Shia regime allied with Iran in place of a secular Sunni regime that was an enemy of Iran, one as dictatorial as the other, presiding over war ruins, ongoing violence as high as during the attempted US occupation, and extraordinary birth defects from the toxic substances associated with the US invasion and occupation.

In Afghanistan there is an undefeated and apparently undefeatable Taliban and a revived drug trade that is flooding the Western world with drugs.

The icing on these Bush and Obama “successes” are demands from around the world that Americans and former British PM Tony Blair be held accountable for their war crimes. Certainly, Washington’s reputation has plummeted as a result of these two wars. No governments anywhere are any longer sufficiently gullible as to believe anything that Washington says.

These are huge costs for wars for which we have no explanation.

The Bush/Obama regimes have come up with various cover stories: a “war on terror,”
“we have to kill them over there before they come over here,” “weapons of mass destruction,” revenge for 9/11, Osama bin Laden (who died of his illnesses in December 2001 as was widely reported at the time).

None of these explanations are viable. Neither the Taliban nor Saddam Hussein were engaged in terrorism in the US. As the weapons inspectors informed the Bush regime, there were no WMD in Iraq. Invading Muslim countries and slaughtering civilians is more likely to create terrorists than to suppress them. According to the official story, the 9/11 hijackers and Osama bin Laden were Saudi Arabians, not Afghans or Iraqis. Yet it wasn’t Saudi Arabia that was invaded.

Democracy and accountable government simply does not exist when the executive branch can take a country to wars in behalf of secret agendas operating behind cover stories that are transparent lies.

It is just as important to ask these same questions about the agenda of the US police state. Why have Bush and Obama removed the protection of law as a shield of the people and turned law into a weapon in the hands of the executive branch? How are Americans made safer by the overthrow of their civil liberties? Indefinite detention and execution without due process of law are the hallmarks of the tyrannical state. They are terrorism, not a protection against terrorism. Why is every communication of every American and apparently the communications of most other people in the world, including Washington’s most trusted European allies, subject to being intercepted and stored in a gigantic police state database? How does this protect Americans from terrorists?

Why is it necessary for Washington to attack the freedom of the press and speech, to run roughshod over the legislation that protects whistleblowers such as Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden, to criminalize dissent and protests, and to threaten journalists such as Julian Assange, Glenn Greenwald, and Fox News reporter James Rosen?

How does keeping citizens ignorant of their government’s crimes make citizens safe from terrorists?

These persecutions of truth-tellers have nothing whatsoever to do with “national security” and “keeping Americans safe from terrorists.” The only purpose of these persecutions is to protect the executive branch from having its crimes revealed. Some of Washington’s crimes are so horrendous that the International Criminal Court would issue a death sentence if those guilty could be brought to trial. A government that will destroy the constitutional protections of free speech and a free press in order to prevent its criminal actions from being disclosed is a tyrannical government.

One hesitates to ask these questions and to make even the most obvious remarks out of fear not only of being put on a watch list and framed on some charge or the other, but also out of fear that such questions might provoke a false flag attack that could be used to justify the police state that has been put in place.

Perhaps that was what the Boston Marathon Bombing was. Evidence of the two brothers’ guilt has taken backseat to the government’s claims. There is nothing new about government frame-ups of patsies. What is new and unprecedented is the lockdown of Boston and its suburbs, the appearance of 10,000 heavily armed troops and tanks to patrol the streets and search without warrants the homes of citizens, all in the name of protecting the public from one wounded 19 year old kid.

Not only has nothing like this ever before happened in the US, but also it could not have been organized on the spur of the moment. It had to have been already in place waiting for the event. This was a trial run for what is to come.

Unaware Americans, especially gullible “law and order conservatives,” have no idea about the militarization of even their local police. I have watched local police forces train at gun clubs. The police are taught to shoot first not once but many times, to protect their lives first at all costs, and not to risk their lives by asking questions. This is why the 13-year old kid with the toy rifle was shot to pieces. Questioning would have revealed that it was a toy gun, but questioning the “suspect” might have endangered the precious police who are trained to take no risks whatsoever.

The police operate according to Obama’s presidential kill power: murder first then create a case against the victim.

In other words, dear American citizen, you life is worth nothing, but the police whom you pay, are not only unaccountable but also their lives are invaluable. If you get killed in their line of duty, it is no big deal. But don’t you injure a police goon thug in an act of self-defense. I mean, who do you think you are, some kind of mythical free American with rights?

Further reading:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/11/clemency-for-torturers-but-not-for-edward-snowden/281142/

http://www.policestateusa.com/2013/innocent-man-given-anal-cavity-search-colonoscopy-after-rolling-through-a-stop-sign/

http://www.policestateusa.com/2013/police-tased-arrested-father-as-he-tried-to-save-his-3-year-old-son-from-house-fire/

http://www.policestateusa.com/2013/tube-fed-3-year-old-treated-like-terrorist-by-tsa-family-misses-flight/

http://www.policestateusa.com/2013/john-geer-shot-by-police/

http://www.policestateusa.com/2013/300-pound-officer-shoots-12-pound-terrier-claims-it-threatened-his-life/

http://www.policestateusa.com/2013/innocent-citizens-held-at-gunpoint-in-terrifying-california-checkpoints/

http://www.policestateusa.com/2013/police-perform-simulated-drug-raid-on-5th-graders-child-attacked-by-police-dog/

http://www.policestateusa.com/2013/john-pike-gets-compensation-for-emotional-suffering/

http://www.policestateusa.com/2013/13-year-old-shot-death-police-open-carrying-toy-rifle/

http://www.policestateusa.com/2013/dallas-police-opened-fire-on-unarmed-man-as-he-stood-in-his-doorway/

http://on.rt.com/6w2jqo

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article36833.htm

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article36841.htm

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

Source: Paul Craig Roberts

TV Violence: America’s Dark Night of The Knoll

I was watching “The Mentalist” on TV recently, where some guy was being tortured, had a finger cut off with pruning shears and his face caressed with an acetylene torch.  Yikes!  And even during that nice little detective show “Castle,” you can always count on seeing a whole bunch of blood and guts — not to mention the torture scenes and disemboweling now available on “Elementary” and “Body of Proof” and “Revolution” and “Person of Interest” and “Scandal”.  And these are just the milder prime-time television shows.  I’m not even going to get into the nightmare-producing horrors of “Criminal Minds” and “Law & Order SVU” — because I can’t even bear to watch those.

And then there are all those currently-popular “undead” shows too.  How many times can you torture a werewolf or drive a stake through a vampire’s heart before he or she is truly dead?  Apparently a lot.

I can think of at least eight TV series off the top of my head right now that face this very problem nightly in our very own living rooms:  Dracula, The Originals, Vampire Diaries, Grimm, Once Upon a Time, Sleepy Hollow, Beauty and the Beast, Supernaturals.  And, again, that’s not even counting cable and “True Blood”.  What are America’s television viewers THINKING!  Are they that hungry for blood?  Apparently.

But thank goodness I can’t afford cable TV because that would mean there would be 500 more channels with 500 more new and different ways to kill people off violently and with lots of blood and torture and gore.  Good grief, no wonder hardly anyone blinked when the horrendous secret tortures of Abu Ghraib, Zero Dark 30 and Palestine were exposed to America by social media .  “No big deal.  We see that kind of stuff on TV every night!” Americans replied.

If one were to judge the American way of life solely by what its most popular television programs are, one would think that Americans were all murderous blood-thirsty psychopathic nut cases who dream only of blood.

To quote George H.W. Bush, “The American way of life is non-negotiable.”  Makes you wonder about that.

And speaking of TV violence and George H.W. Bush, wouldn’t you just love it if, on his deathbed, Poppy Bush suddenly decided to make one last attempt at becoming one of the most famous men in history (in the grand tradition of John Wilkes Booth for instance — or Marcus Julius Brutus) by finally confessing to his role in the assassination of John Kennedy.  Wow!  That would really earn Poppy a place in our history books for sure!  

But what I would really love to see would be Dick Cheney doing the same thing:  In a fabulous deathbed interview with Olivia Pope herself, Cheney would finally “tell all” about what he had really been doing on the day that the Twin Towers fell.  Hell, even Dracula himself would come back from the Undead to watch that TV show.  Me too.

I bet there’s a whole long list of creepy “Patriots” here in America, just like those creepy Patriots in “Revolution,” who know exactly where all the bodies in recent American history are buried — and these creepy guys are all getting up there in age.  So if any of these shadowy “Persons of Interest” should suddenly decide that they want to add to America’s “Body of Proof,” become an “Original” and create a huge “Scandal,” now is the time!

I have just one more thing to say about the mind-numbing violence of JFK’s assassination:  If it had happened today instead of 50 years ago, every SmartPhone in Dallas would have posted that video on FaceBook in a nanosecond — a la the shooting of Oscar Grant.  And that grassy knoll shooter wouldn’t have stood a chance in Hell of getting away.  And there couldn’t have been any slimy Warren Commission cover-ups either.

America’s shadow figures and black-ops plotters can no longer get away with the low-life garbage they used to easily pull off 50 years ago, thanks to social media.  And that’s “Elementary”.

Overheard on a military base on Veterans Day:  “You gotta love America.  Even our gangsters are better-armed.”

The Revolutionaries In Our Midst

New York – Jeremy Hammond sat in New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center last week in a small room reserved for visits from attorneys. He was wearing an oversized prison jumpsuit. The brown hair of the lanky 6-footer fell over his ears, and he had a wispy beard. He spoke with the intensity and clarity one would expect from one of the nation’s most important political prisoners.

On Friday the 28-year-old activist will appear for sentencing in the Southern District Court of New York in Manhattan. After having made a plea agreement, he faces the possibility of a 10-year sentence for hacking into the Texas-based private security firm Strategic Forecasting Inc., or Stratfor, which does work for the Homeland Security Department, the Marine Corps, the Defense Intelligence Agency and numerous corporations including Dow Chemical and Raytheon.

Four others involved in the hacking have been convicted in Britain, and they were sentenced to less time combined—the longest sentence was 32 months—than the potential 120-month sentence that lies before Hammond.

Hammond turned the pilfered information over to the website WikiLeaks and  and other publications. The 3 million email exchanges, once

made public, exposed the private security firm’s infiltration, monitoring and surveillance of protesters and dissidents, especially in the Occupy movement, on behalf of corporations and the national security state. And, perhaps most important, the information provided chilling evidence that anti-terrorism laws are being routinely used by the federal government to criminalize nonviolent, democratic dissent and falsely link dissidents to international terrorist organizations. Hammond sought no financial gain. He got none.The email exchanges Hammond made public were entered as evidence in my lawsuitagainst President Barack Obama over Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Section 1021 permits the military to seize citizens who are deemed by the state to be terrorists, strip them of due process and hold them indefinitely in military facilities. Alexa O’Brien, a content strategist and journalist who co-founded US Day of Rage, an organization created to reform the election process, was one of my co-plaintiffs. Stratfor officials attempted, we know because of the Hammond leaks, to falsely link her and her organization to Islamic radicals and websites as well as to jihadist ideology, putting her at risk of detention under the new law. Judge Katherine B. Forrest ruled, in part because of the leak, that we plaintiffs had a credible fear, and she nullified the law, a decision that an appellate court overturned when the Obama administration appealed it.

Freedom of the press and legal protection for those who expose government abuses and lies have been obliterated by the corporate state. The resulting self-exile of investigative journalists such as Glenn Greenwald, Jacob Appelbaum and Laura Poitras, along with the indictment of Barret Brown, illustrate this. All acts of resistance—including nonviolent protest—have been conflated by the corporate state with terrorism. The mainstream, commercial press has been emasculated through the Obama administration’s repeated use of the Espionage Act to charge and sentence traditional whistle-blowers. Governmental officials with a conscience are too frightened to reach out to mainstream reporters, knowing that the authorities’ wholesale capturing and storing of electronic forms of communication make them easily identifiable.

Elected officials and the courts no longer impose restraint or practice oversight. The last line of defense lies with those such as Hammond, Julian Assange, Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning who are capable of burrowing into the records of the security and surveillance state and have the courage to pass them on to the public. But the price of resistance is high.

“In these times of secrecy and abuse of power there is only one solution—transparency,” wrote Sarah Harrison, the British journalist who accompanied Snowden to Russia and who also has gone into exile, in Berlin. “If our governments are so compromised that they will not tell us the truth, then we must step forward to grasp it. Provided with the unequivocal proof of primary source documents people can fight back. If our governments will not give this information to us, then we must take it for ourselves.”

“When whistleblowers come forward we need to fight for them, so others will be encouraged,” she went on. “When they are gagged, we must be their voice. When they are hunted, we must be their shield. When they are locked away, we must free them. Giving us the truth is not a crime. This is our data, our information, our history. We must fight to own it. Courage is contagious.”

Hammond knows this contagion. He was living at home in Chicago in 2010 under a 7-a.m.-to-7-p.m. curfew for a variety of acts of civil disobedience when Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning was arrested for giving WikiLeaks secret information about military war crimes and government lies. Hammond at the time was running social aid programs to feed the hungry and send books to prisoners. He had, like Manning, displayed a remarkable aptitude for science, math and computer languages at a young age. He hacked into the computers at a local Apple store at 16. He hacked into the computer science department’s website at the University of Illinois-Chicago as a freshman, a prank that saw the university refuse to allow him to return for his sophomore year. He was an early backer of “cyber-liberation” and in 2004 started an “electronic-disobedience journal” he named Hack This Zine. He called on hackers in a speech at the 2004 DefCon convention in Las Vegas to use their skills to disrupt that year’s Republican National Convention. He was, by the time of his 2012 arrest, one of the shadowy stars of the hacktivist underground, dominated by groups such as Anonymous and WikiLeaks in which anonymity, stringent security and frequent changes of aliases alone ensured success and survival. Manning’s courage prompted Hammond to his own act of cyber civil disobedience, although he knew his chances of being caught were high.

“I saw what Chelsea Manning did,” Hammond said when we spoke last Wednesday, seated at a metal table. “Through her hacking she became a contender, a world changer. She took tremendous risks to show the ugly truth about war. I asked myself, if she could make that risk shouldn’t I make that risk? Wasn’t it wrong to sit comfortably by, working on the websites of Food Not Bombs, while I had the skills to do something similar? I too could make a difference. It was her courage that prompted me to act.”

Hammond—who has black-inked tattoos on each forearm, one the open-source movement’s symbol known as the “glider” and the other the shi hexagram from the I Ching—is steeped in radical thought. As a teenager, he swiftly migrated politically from the liberal wing of the Democratic Party to the militancy of the Black Bloc anarchists. He was an avid reader in high school of material put out by CrimethInc, an anarchist collective that publishes anarchist literature and manifestos. He has molded himself after old radicals such as Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman and black revolutionaries such as George Jackson, Elaine Brown and Assata Shakur, as well as members of the Weather Underground. He said that while he was in Chicago he made numerous trips to Waldheim Cemetery to visit the Haymarket Martyrs Monument, which honors four anarchists who were hanged in 1887 and others who took part in the labor wars. On the 16-foot-high granite monument are the final words of one of the condemned men, August Spies. It reads: “The day will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voice you are throttling today.” Emma Goldman is buried nearby.

Hammond became well known to the government for a variety of acts of civil disobedience over the last decade. These ranged from painting anti-war graffiti on Chicago walls to protesting at the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York to hacking into the right-wing website Protest Warrior, for which he was sentenced to two years in the Federal Correctional Institute at Greenville, Ill.

He said he is fighting as “an anarchist communist” against “centralized state authority” and “exploitative corporations.” His goal is to build “leaderless collectives based on free association, consensus, mutual aid, self-sufficiency and harmony with the environment.” It is essential, he said, that all of us work to cut our personal ties with capitalism and engage in “mass organizing of protests, strikes and boycotts.” Hacking and leaking, he said, are part of this resistance—“effective tools to reveal ugly truths of the system.”

Hammond spent months within the Occupy movement in Chicago. He embraced its “leaderless, non-hierarchical structures such as general assemblies and consensus, and occupying public spaces.” But he was highly critical of what he said were the “vague politics” in Occupy that allowed it to include followers of the libertarian Ron Paul, some in the tea party, as well as “reformist liberals and Democrats.” Hammond said he was not interested in any movement that “only wanted a ‘nicer’ form of capitalism and favored legal reforms, not revolution.” He remains rooted in the ethos of the Black Bloc.

“Being incarcerated has really opened my eyes to the reality of the criminal justice system,” he said, “that it is not a criminal justice system about public safety or rehabilitation, but reaping profits through mass incarceration. There are two kinds of justice—one for the rich and the powerful who get away with the big crimes, then for everyone else, especially people of color and the impoverished. There is no such thing as a fair trial. In over 80 percent of the cases people are pressured to plea out instead of exercising their right to trial, under the threat of lengthier sentences. I believe no satisfactory reforms are possible. We need to close all prisons and release everybody unconditionally.”

He said he hoped his act of resistance would encourage others, just as Manning’s courage had inspired him. He said activists should “know and accept the worst possible repercussion” before carrying out an action and should be “aware of mass counterintelligence/surveillance operations targeting our movements.” An informant posing as a comrade, Hector Xavier Monsegur, known online as “Sabu,” turned Hammond and his co-defendants in to the FBI. Monsegur stored data retrieved by Hammond on an external server in New York. This tenuous New York connection allowed the government to try Hammond in New York for hacking from his home in Chicago into a private security firm based in Texas. New York is the center of the government’s probes into cyber-warfare; it is where federal authorities apparently wanted Hammond to be investigated and charged.

Hammond said he will continue to resist from within prison. A series of minor infractions, as well as testing positive with other prisoners on his tier for marijuana that had been smuggled into the facility, has resulted in his losing social visits for the next two years and spending “time in the box [solitary confinement].” He is allowed to see journalists, but my request to interview him took two months to be approved. He said prison involves “a lot of boredom.” He plays chess, teaches guitar and helps other prisoners study for their GED. When I saw him, he was working on the statement, a personal manifesto, that he will read in court this week.

He insisted he did not see himself as different from prisoners, especially poor prisoners of color, who are in for common crimes, especially drug-related crimes. He said most inmates are political prisoners, caged unjustly by a system of totalitarian capitalism that has snuffed out basic opportunities for democratic dissent and economic survival.

“The majority of people in prison did what they had to do to survive,” he said. “Most were poor. They got caught up in the war on drugs, which is how you make money if you are poor. The real reason they get locked in prison for so long is so corporations can continue to make big profits. It is not about justice. I do not draw distinctions between us.”

“Jail is essentially enduring harassment and dehumanizing conditions with frequent lockdowns and shakedowns,” he said. “You have to constantly fight for respect from the guards, sometimes getting yourself thrown in the box. However, I will not change the way I live because I am locked up. I will continue to be defiant, agitating and organizing whenever possible.”

He said resistance must be a way of life. He intends to return to community organizing when he is released, although he said he will work to stay out of prison. “The truth,” he said, “will always come out.” He cautioned activists to be hyper-vigilant and aware that “one mistake can be permanent.” But he added, “Don’t let paranoia or fear deter you from activism. Do the down thing!”

Chris Hedges, whose column is published Mondays on Truthdig, has previously spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years.

Source: Truthdig

The Foreclosure Meltdown Was Planned – A Whistle Blower Speaks Out

“The trade in derivatives, using home notes, was designed as a Ponzi scheme. Excel knew it. Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft (CWT), knew it. My fellow junior associates laughed at me, senior associates got mad at me, and the senior partners ultimately asked me to resign or be fired when I wrote repeated lengthy memoranda explaining this out to them.” – Charles Lincoln, III, PH.D., Harvard, J.D., University of Chicago, School of Law

Who is Charles Lincoln, III?

In October, 1993, Charles Lincoln, III began work as an associate at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft (CWT). He had just completed a judicial clerkship for Kenneth L. Ryskamp, U. S. District Judge, Southern District of Florida. During his clerkship with Judge Ryskamp, Lincoln had planned, coordinated, and framed the jury questions for a very large securities fraud trial in Palm Beach against Alan B. Levan’s Florida-based BankAtlantic Bancorp and Subsidiary Bank Atlantic Financial Company (BAFCO), which were heavily involved in Florida Real Estate from 1952-2011.

What he was about to learn, and challenge, would change the course of his life, from one of privilege to destitution.

In many ways, Lincoln might have appeared exactly the kind of associate who could be expected to make partner rapidly. Ambitious, bright, and energetic, CWT hired him because he received top law school grades in Securities, Antitrust, and Banking Law, as well as for his clerkship experience in Securities & Banking cases in the post-S & L Collapse period in Florida. He had also been President of the Environmental Law Society at University of Chicago, School of Law.

In law school, he had become intrigued by the role of securities in establishing, maintaining, and shaping the global-elites of the 20th century. The complexities of hierarchical and socio-political structures had been his greatest interest in Anthropology & History at Harvard.

In his first month at CWT he turned in 393 billable hours wildly exceeding any expectations. First year associates are expected to bill at least 2000 hours per year, Lincoln managed to do this in less than six months. At Cadwalader, Lincoln aspired to a professional specialization in securities litigation, fraud, shareholder’s and directors’ relations, rights and obligations, general agency and relationships of fiduciary duty.

Lincoln had taken up law as a second career after a decade as a working archeologist in Mexico & Central America, during which time he wrote a doctoral dissertation “Ethnicity & Social Organization at Chichen Itza, Yucatan” at Harvard’s Peabody Museum. His dissertation resulted from a project he directed in his 20s, funded by the National Geographic Society, Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology, and private donors such as Doris Zemurray Stone and novelist James A. Michener.

As an archaeologist, Lincoln had become frustrated, acutely aware of problems mounting in the world, which originated in finance. Determined to use law creatively as a force for positive change, he enrolled at the University of Chicago, School of Law. At the school, he served as President of the Environmental Law Society (ELS), presiding on a year-long symposium at the Law School in 1990-1991, concerning oil spills in the immediate wake of the Exxon Valdez disaster of March 24, 1989.

Raised as the grandson, and effectively adopted son, of a wealthy petro-chemical engineer & military supplier in Highland Park, Dallas, Texas, Lincoln was not a stranger to the better addresses in New York. The welcome dinner held at the Waldorf Astoria for the twenty associates hired at the same time, of which he was one, did not impress him. Cadwalader, Wickersham, & Taft, though claiming to be the oldest, founded in 1792, the same year as the New York Stock Exchange, was by no means the largest.

Lincoln knew Cadwalader’s history and greatest claim to fame and power. This is its status as primary law firm to the Bank of New York (BNY), now BNY-Mellon, founded in 1784 by Alexander Hamilton, 8 years before Cadwalader opened its doors under a different name.

The long relationship between the oldest bank and the oldest Wall Street Law Firm include Cadwalader’s role in setting up BNY to be the very first law firm to be traded on the NYSE. Cadwalader’s historical policies have consistently, matched and supported those of the BNY and the thinking of Alexander Hamilton.

Cadwalader’s flagship office was then at 100 Maiden Lane, in New York 10038, close to the heart of the financial district in New York.

Having been hired on for Cadwalader’s litigation department, Lincoln encountered a department which was essentially inactive in 1993. The only the only active cases involved municipal defense to voting rights act cases in California.

Even the litigators, in 1993, were all working on one project, one particular project which was shrouded in great mystery and secrecy.

The Excel Mortgage Project

Instead of litigation, Lincoln along with all other first year associates, were temporarily to work with the “Structured Finance Department” on preparing the registration statement of Excel Mortgage. Lincoln’s role was to review and assess a series of some 1500 Arizona residential properties in relationship to state and federal environmental law and geographic issues, such as cultural resource management, and other points relating to the entire history and possible condition and liabilities of these properties.

The 1500 or so properties, subject of his study, were earmarked as assets being “deposited” into the Excel Mortgage Bond Fund, along with promissory notes originated by a number of creditors on homes conforming to a certain size and value profile, but having no other relationship. These were not part of the same communities, not part of a single development project, not built by a common builder, or anything else. This struck Lincoln as strange. Why “pool” all these unrelated properties together? And would be in the completed “pool?” Why was the Bank of New York underwriting this project?

Enter the Securitized Derivative

Excel Mortgage, a highly valued client of CWT was about to become part of history, doing something that had never been done before: registering a bond for sale to the public, which bond was based on pooled notes, a hybrid of debt and equity interests in and contingent claims to realty. This type of financial instrument had never before been sold to the public, though it had existed for about 25 years in the “private placement” market.

Lincoln was unwittingly participating in the first initial public offering (IPO) of a bond, a debt instrument, derived in part from promissory notes, ‘debts,’ and in part from contingent pledges of title, ‘secured equity,’ in residential real estate.

Securitized derivatives were being born at 100 Maiden Lane.

Bernard Madoff, who founded the NASDAQ when he was 33, was a prominent client of CWT, walking the floors of Cadwalader late at night.

The entire staff of CWT, underwritten by the Bank of New York, supporting Excel, were charged getting these new-fangled “derivative” instruments past examination by the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC).

This was an arduous, and expensive task, necessitating a “lint-picking” review, before these ‘derivative instruments’ could be packaged under the name of Excel Mortgage and offered both on the NYSE and NASDAQ. An SEC Registration Statement is an application for Federal Blessings affirming investing in a certain stock, bond, or “other instrument or obligation” is a reasonable investment for an average investor to make.

Supposedly “sophisticated investors” can do whatever they want to do, so long as it’s not expressly fraudulent or otherwise illegal. But the average grandmother investing for her grandkids’ college needs Federal Protection. Like “Social Security”, the concept of “Security” in the “Securities and Exchange Commission” is essentially a matter of “Trust us, We’re the Government.”

SEC Registration Statements require, prior to sale of any debt or equity instrument to the public, disclosure of all a companies’ assets and liabilities along with the qualifications of its officers and directors, and more.

Nobody outside of the law firms who prepare such things and SEC staff, would ever read this, but preparing the registration would bring CWT millions of dollars.

Excel Mortgage, however, was not selling stock in itself as an enterprise or an entity: it was selling a pooled collection of utterly unrelated and unconnected and barely similar promissory notes with contingent interests in, and access to, equity ownership of real property owned by 1500 different people and subject to 1500 separate notes and mortgages.

1993 – Anomalies, and Questions, Emerge

Who was to supervise its operation after “Registration”? What coherence did this “enterprise” have ASIDE FROM the Registration Statement? Would anyone ever recognize it as a “business?” If so, how and why? Lincoln was puzzled and perplexed, and not satisfied with any of the answers he was getting.

The SEC did not appear to inquire into post-issuance management or maintenance of the pool of assets. Once “securitized” the notes would still be handled by individual originators or assigned to servicers. Lincoln asked “what was there left to be assigned or handled once the notes and mortgages were pooled?”

The SEC is charged with protecting small individuals and the corporate investor.

The SEC is expected to be involved in examining and making inquiries about a company’s claims for potential and predictions of earnings or profitability.

On what opinion or data would these be based for the Excel Mortgage Pool, since there weren’t any?

The opinions used were based on the “normal statistical performance of similarly credit rated and similarly valued mortgages in similar markets from studies of a group at MIT Sloan School of Management headed by a then no-name professor Frank J. Fabozzi. Fabozzi, with close ties to the Bank of New York, was also among the occasional Night walkers at Cadwalader.

The process of preparing an SEC registration statement is a gold-mine for lawyers inclined to highly detailed work. Such a process for registration can normally require Lincoln said, over a thousand individual revisions. The Excel Mortgage registration would be subject to over 2,000 revisions, but in all this there was still no attention given to claims of ownership, transfer of title, the laws of agency and fiduciary duty of managers, any of the concerns which normally plague the corporate world and frame the concern of SEC examiners and securities lawyers.

What’s In It for CWT?

The careers of young associates, and even older partners, at firms such as Cadwalader, Wickersham, & Taft, Chadbourne & Park, Sullivan & Cromwell, or Skadden, Arps, depend upon work measured in billable hours. Cadwalader had a “billing goal” of multiple millions of dollars for the Excel Mortgage registration project.

Lincoln recalls three relevant details:

First, the firm was never able to reach it’s own goal of billable hours by the time the project was complete.

Second, the firm sent constant “internal memoranda” by e-mail to all employees, down to the lowliest legal secretaries and paralegals, to work harder and BILL MORE HOURS. It was simply inconceivable that Cadwalader might have to refund any part of enormous retainer paid for the Excel Mortgage, SEC Registration Statement project. The money for this had all been advanced by BNY, who counted on Cadwalader to do the job which needed to be done.

Third, the practical purpose of any billable hours stood quite above and beyond any possibility of doubt or question. In fact, any and all billings, however described, so long as they were assigned to the Excel Mortgage Registration Statement Account, were welcomed.

Lincoln was therefore able to unleash his curiosity, delving late at night after hours into issues which ranged far, far afield from the environmental history, condition, and culturally or historically significant use or contents of the subject properties.

Despite some losses during the 2007-2008, CWT was in 1993-1994, and remains today, the top firm representing the creators and implementing the designs of “structure finance and derivative securitization” world wide. Lincoln wanted to understand what he was doing, and what he was involved in creating. The more he found out, the more troubled he became.

As an entry-level associate at Cadwalader Lincoln received his own office and secretary and paralegal. Little time was spent interacting with others in the office. A quick question might be asked but friends did not come quickly. Each associate knew what mattered was the hours billed, and friendly socialization was hard to itemize even on the Cadwalader charts. Hanging over the heads of all new associates was the goal of “making partner.”

As an anthropologist, Lincoln saw immediately the subculture of the law firm had its own standards, values, and mandates. The firm had high standards for dress which included ties which remained in place all day, regulations for tie clips or tie pins and cufflinks and belts and, of course, shoes, whether white or “normal.”

Standards for women included skirts below the knee and mandated the length for sleeves and the height of necklines and collars. Even the length of hair, for women, was described and outlined in the firm guide, although one paralegal from the litigation department was granted a special exemption, for cause. Known to and noted by everyone in the firm, for his ponytail and paisley shirts, the associate was hired from SDS in California as “our eyes and ears to the lower classes,” as the senior partners consistently and uniformly described him.

Lincoln, as an undergraduate, had twice been voted, “best dressed man on campus”, but the whole Cadwalader atmospheric ethos of bloodless conformity, as noted above, was for him one of stifling suffocation.

The anomalies which began to intrude on Lincoln’s consciousness during his late hours trying to understand the “entity” being sold almost as if it were a company or entity, without actually being one, became an obsession. At first, this lead only to more billable hours, but the trip down the rabbit hole became increasingly disconcerting.

All questions of real value or reasonable expectations, lead the inquirer to the Bank of New York’s Heart, ending any questions.

The Disconnect between Law and Derivatives

Lincoln’s law school classes, under the University of Chicago’s Andrew M. Rosenfield, William Landes, Geoffrey Parsons Miller, and Richard A. Posner, and from his further and ongoing research as a Law Clerk with Ryskamp and now at Cadwalader, had considered the question of real value and reasonable expectations.

Issuing and selling securities, debt or equity, takes place when a company, or group of people who have control over assets they planned to use to make money, or with which they were already doing something generally profitable, or wanted to raise new capital and/or liquidate their ownership and interests in an ongoing and successful venture.

This did not come close to describing what Bank of New York had underwritten for Cadwalader to prepare for Excel Mortgage.

This SEC Registration Statement gave birth to new type of “debt-equity-derivative debt instrument” which had none of the elements or characteristics of a traditional enterprise at all. It was PAPER MADE FROM PAPER, SECURED BY PAPER.

Indeed, the Excel Mortgage Bond, which was soon to be popped onto the market with an SEC certification of Federal conformity was a creation of the lawyers, by the lawyers, for the lawyers.

As one of the most senior associates, now firm Chairman, Christopher White explained to Lincoln when he asked him, “Who will own the interests in these notes once they are securitized?” He grinned boyishly from ear-to-ear and said, “we will, because everyone will have to pay us to tell them.”

Without any unifying manager or common owner for these properties, the pool of notes struck Lincoln as like nothing so much as “res nullius” in Ancient Roman Law—the legal category of “property belonging to no one”, e.g. virgin forests, wild beasts and undomesticated fur and game animals of every kind, the un-owned and un-ownable creatures of the deep.

Excel Mortgage was going to pool all these “derivative” real estate mortgage interests, whose only commonalities marking them as similar were the price, promissory note, range, size and “single-family home-residential” nature of the properties, and the credit or FICO scores of the owners.

Having “pooled” these “cherry picked” assets, Excel was going to create a strange creature without an owner until either default or foreclosure moved someone to homestead these unownable notes back to control and “ownership” again.

In essence, the concept was, “everything belongs to everyone in common” and “debt is not individual but collective.”No one owes his or her debt to any person, but everyone owes it to everyone to pay. This concept seemed, even to Lincoln in 1994, strangely reminiscent of Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.”

The Excel Mortgage Bond to be securitized reflected an artificial “derivative” interests in a non-coherent, uncontrolled mass of wealth, which could and would have to be tamed individually, just like hunting the wild game of the woods.

There would be only a pretense of relationship between the notes originated and the notes collected upon.

There was no one to oversee the transfers, no one to audit the exchanges of values; there were quite simply no responsible parties anymore than anyone can take charge of wheat chaff thrown into the wind or the by-products of a paper mill dumped into a river, yet these “derivative by-products” were being STRUCTURED into something said to have value.

Around 1500 or 2000 properties had been collected together and placed in a basket or pool. But no single plan of real estate development or construction or sales was involved, nor was any contemplated. Nothing joined these properties as a class. Most were not new, but merely resales.

Raising the Issues

Lincoln dug in further, producing and circulating to all his fellow associates and the senior partners at Cadwalader his own memoranda: lengthy studies and analysis on issues such as the fiduciary obligations in the Law of Agency.

Fiduciary responsibility of issuers of securities to purchasers, holder in due course doctrine, implied covenants of good faith and fair dealing between parties to a contract, privity of contract itself, and commercial paper doctrines such as endorsement and ownership as holder, and the comparative rights and priorities of “naked” holders vs. “perfected” holders.

As Lincoln’s months stretched out among the whirring circular brushes which polished the green and white marble floors of CWT, he spent more-and-more time with the partners of real estate department, which seemed to understand his worries and concerns better than others, certainly better than the Fourth or Fifth year associate in charge of coordinating the Excel Mortgage Project who kept explaining “this is my road to partner; if I can finish this and make it happen, I won’t have to worry about how to live on these lousy six figure salaries anymore, I’ll finally be making millions, and that’s why we all came here, isn’t it?”

Questions Find Answers

Since it was not why Lincoln had arrived at 100 Maiden Lane this presented a dead end for him.

The real estate connection, and an aborted plan to open a CWT office in California, permitted him to compare the Excel Mortgage project with another, more traditional real estate development Sacramento, California.

An extremely prominent CWT client based in Los Angeles was complaining and encountering major problems because of a parallel but separate and distinct set of misapplications of the law of agency, fiduciary duty, and obligation, also originating from the same historical “Cadwalader Memorandum” on transfer of interests which had triggered the explosion of derivative innovations in the securities realm.

With CWT acting as counsel for an old and distinguished California family and collection of enterprises, the Ahmansons, tracts totaling several dozen suburban “townships” in El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo, and Yuba Counties had sold by the Ahmanson family to a Japanese firm and retained an “Ahmanson Construction Group.”

The intention was to build a resort in the area for the benefit of the Japanese owners acting as “construction agents.”

Normally construction is performed pursuant to agreements with “independent contractors” who make estimates but are not obligated to continue working if their estimated budgets prove insufficient to complete a project. The Japanese investors were seeking to securitize all the sales in this immense, almost unimaginable project.

Involved, were the Bank of New York, with Cadwalader’s long-time California based H.F. Ahmanson holding Company, parent company both to Ahmanson Construction and the since failed Home Savings of America Bank.

The “construction agency relationship” which Cadwalader had created imposed devastating duties and obligations on Ahmanson. As agents, Ahmanson Construction was obligated to use its own money to achieve the ends of the principal, in this case the Japanese company which had purchased the real estate but woefully underfunded the construction of the vast tracts of homes. Ahmanson could not make a profit or even break even. In effect, they had become slaves to the Japanese and might never be compensated.

Lincoln, having reviewed the facts, pointed out to Stephen Meyer, Richard C. Field, and John McDermott, the partners most closely associated with Ahmanson, that by not only failing to protect Ahmanson, but in fact, selling them into quasi-slavery as agents under a contract without guarantees of adequate funding to execute agency obligations, the firm had made a ghastly mistake amounting to nothing less than legal malpractice. This was a breach of fiduciary duty in and of itself.

Lincoln was told, “This firm has a policy of doing no wrong. Therefore, you are wrong. The firm is never wrong. You should reevaluate your conclusions.”

This happened in 1994, only two and a half years after the sensational October 1991 confirmation hearings for Justice Clarence Thomas. The Paula Jones allegations against the new President Clinton, were beginning. “Sexual harassment” became a great boogie-man haunting law firms all over America.

Consequences are Clarified

After reading his memorandum on the Ahmanson project, these senior partners asked Lincoln to leave the room.

When they called Lincoln back in, they told him, very solemnly,

“you know you need to keep your nose clean around here. We have all received reports that you have taken your secretary Alex to lunch more than once and what’s more you gave Holly, the Senior Secretary in recruitment & personnel, flowers for her birthday and Valentines Day. So just remember: never ever do anything, anything at all, that you would not want to see published on the front page of the New York Times. Anything here can be, you know, and anything will be, at the drop of a pin, because everyone is very sensitive to questions of decorum these days, and, after all, you are a married man.”

Lincoln reports he did not even bother to ask how they happened to think of this only after a three hour meeting concerning the Ahmanson contract of construction agency, when he had never heard about any concerns of this nature before.

At work, Lincoln continued to pile up daunting billable hours doing research on a growing list of issues, each going back to the dissection of the elements of value, which were being “deposited” into the derivative pool. He was determined to understand what was really happening. Why were they doing this?

Confirming what Christopher White had told him before, a Properties Department attorney named Stephen Meyer, advised Lincoln to keep his mouth shut, this happening shortly before Lincoln was asked to resign. Both men had made it clear, in nearly the same words, that Lincoln should be careful about questioning or criticizing firm’s plan for transforming the economy of the Western World, “this is how things are being done these days. We do because we get to charge everybody. This is how the whole world will be managed by 2020, we have a plan.”

As Lincoln was to discover, there was a plan. A book called “Cadwalader 2020” contained a comprehensive manifesto of how the world would be changed by the year 2020. Unsecuritized individual debt would no longer exist.

During Lincoln’s entire time at CWT, the firm maintained a high level of security over the Excel Mortgage work, work which finally involved everyone at the firm. All who worked at the firm had to submit to a frisk on leaving work. No papers or laptop computers or diskettes, this still the era of 3.5 inch diskettes, were to be taken home or removed from the premises, and no external e-mail was allowed connecting to firm e-mail. All firm e-mail was in fact carefully monitored.

To entirely use up the retainer on the Excel work, Lincoln and all the other first and second year associates found themselves in a large conference room supervised by some of the partners pasting labels on files.

The partners had to review the signature pages before officers of Excel would sign the documents, and the associates were there to prepare and affix signature tabs, saying “sign here, Mr. So-and-So, on to the final pages of Statement before final submission.

Lincoln said it seemed odd to use attorney billable time to prepare, double-check, and verify signature tabs, even on a super important document until you considered the driving desire of CWT to maximize their billable hours.

Billing rates were $150.00 an hour for new associates, $60 – 80 an hour for paralegals, and $40 – 50 an hour for secretaries. On being told that he had failed to bill his secretary’s and paralegals’ time for bringing him after hours meals and snacks, Lincoln asked the senior associate in charge of organizing the Excel Mortgage Project how much the firm billed out for the hourly operators of the automated circular marble floor polishers which whirred seemingly ceaselessly day and night throughout the offices. Epstein just glared at Lincoln silently. Those hours were not billable.

CWT was determined to drain every possible penny from the work done for Excel Mortgage, and did. This appeared to be consistent with the Bank of New York’s plan in financing the project in the first place.

As Lincoln’s research continued, the business plan being followed by Excel Mortgage also emerged, in all of its complexity and disturbing detail. The company had seen the potential to redefine a debt, recreating it as equity, and equity can be used as collateral for originating and extending more debt, which can be hybridized with contingent interests in an ever expanding pyramid of debt, doubled into equity, doubled into debt…. And again, this was the CWT-BNY plan for perpetual inflation.

There was quite simply no plan other than to pool and securitize the notes to issue X millions of dollars in bonds. These would be sold on the major stock exchanges, generating equity. The equity would be used to extend or originate more money to the borrowing public who then “sell” or give their new notes. This then generates more equity through debt, a constantly pooling and production of derivatives then sell to continue the cycle.

Ponzi Scheme Emerges

After his first month of painful research, it took Charles an additional 6 weeks to figure out and map the nature of the pyramid, another 6 weeks to check his work and accept the results, and then he started writing memoranda, one after the other, each one critiqued by other associates or the senior partners and getting longer and longer.

His first memorandum was entitled “The Law of Fiduciary Duty in Agency.”

His second was “Transfer and acceptance of instruments by endorsement and receipt: who is responsible?”

There were at least four others, the longest of which was over 500 pages.

Lincoln’s conclusion was breathtakingly simple: “merger of identities destroys the identities merged, there is no individual liability for debt in the absence of privity of contract, and no privity of contract without individual identity of contracting parties.”

It was clear from the elated attitude of the Senior Partners that designing and implementing the Excel Registration Statement, as the first IPO of its kind, stood in their minds as their most important contribution to western civilization, as envisioned through the world of “Cadwalader 2020”.

Finally, Lincoln was asked to resign, about six weeks shy of his first anniversary. His questions and concerns had not ended and the Partners were becoming hostile.

Leaving with a not quite “Golden Parachute” consisting of a $50,000 severance payment, he had vocally identified a series of challenges which the management of Cadwalader had no intention of addressing. It was now clear to Lincoln these were not any kind of mistake or oversight.

Lincoln’s final memorandum at Cadwalader opined, perhaps overestimating general knowledge of the law, “no mortgage note included in the Excel mortgage pool will ever be lawfully collected in the event of borrower/credit-debtor default, because the pooling of identities obliterates individual obligations and rights, and discrete transactions lie at the foundation of our system of contract and debt.”

At the meeting where he finally resigned, the Senior partners, perhaps understanding the American public better than Lincoln, said to him, “Who is ever going to notice lack of privity of contract besides you? They teach you all those archaic “Elements of Law” at the University of Chicago, we know all about it, but nobody does business that way anymore. The economy of the future is now, nobody cares about endorsements and signatures anymore, it’s all going to be electronic, anyhow.”

Lincoln responded, “well, then, you’re going to have to change the law.” And the masters of the CWT universe said, “Don’t let the door hit you on your way out, we write the law, we interpret the law, we tell everyone in America what the law means, that’s what we do.

The Price Paid

The next nineteen years of Lincoln’s life have been filled with constant attacks from the legal establishment from directions and in ways which exacted a hideous toll on him and those he loves. He has repeatedly learned what it is to be hated, rejected, despised, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. In those two decades he lost his wife, his birth family, and his son, all his inherited property, including several homes and a gigantic private library and personal collections of fossils, numismatic, painted, and sculptural art, his law licenses in three states and even his own not-at-all-insubstantial investments.

Lincoln notes that, after what can only be called a blessed beginning in life with his loving grandparents supporting him, an exceptional education, and basically a privileged and charmed first three decades of life, his consistent pattern of loss only began when he was 33-34 years with his entry into private law practice at Cadwalader, in what, quite simply should have been “the best of all possible worlds.”

Left with nothing, he refused to quit.

All of these events began after those critical months, less than a year, that he had spent at Cadwalader, Wickersham, & Taft.

As historical events unfolded, parallel to his own life, his worst projections regarding the impact of the new market in mortgage derivatives proved to be frighteningly accurate. Lincoln began to research how the runaway Ponzi Scheme could be halted, and reversed.

A Solution

According to Lincoln, for the past ten years, his life has been entirely shaped by the mortgage crisis and its origin in securitization. The question which, he says, drove him is how private property and integrity of contract could restored in the face of the “New World Order” Plan. This is the plan Lincoln first became aware from the internal firm booklet “Cadwalader 2020,” while he was working at CWT in 1993-1994.

Lincoln believes such restoration is possible. The systemic fraud has not gone unnoticed, as CWT and BNY clearly thought would be the case. Their concern is registering through the rising wave of settlements which are now extinguishing the cases they deem most threatening. These cases are now settling on the courthouse steps for significant amounts and return of the real estate, free and clear of mortgage related liens.

Banks understand the ominous possibilities they face if juries realize what really happened. And today, it is not just Cadwalader. Nearly every major financial law firm in the United States who is involved, directly or indirectly, in the implementation, defense, or coverup of securitization is potentially liable.

This potential for liability makes the settlements paid out by cigarette companies seem like chump change.
As long as such settlements are few and remain outside the view of the courts, the banks are safe. But the moment juries hear the facts, and see the reality, the banks are toast, and they know it.

And here, Lincoln said, is the leverage point from which change can be enacted. More cases must be litigated using the facts so cases won in the light of day can become case law and precedent. The war can be won, but will be costly. This challange requires, along with several lines of attack, the means for funding litigation.

One possible solution is to solicit private direct investment in litigation for individual cases in exchange for a share of the awards by the jury. Another is to design an “anti-derivative derivative” plan which bundles and pools both investments and potential awards, allowing Americans at all income levels to invest in the effort.

For this derivative, investors would understand both the risk and the benefits of investing.

Lincoln’s team, they know, cannot fund its efforts as the banks do, by an out of control pyramid scheme piling debt on equity to create more debt, but Lincoln sees a certain symmatry achieved by using the weapons created by the originators of the problem against them.

Either solution, Lincoln says, lies directly in the hands of Americans. If the money is available, litigation can go forward. He and the team see a build out across the country, with litigation taking place in every state as attorneys sign on and funds are available.

They have already begun. Lincoln’s team is now working with homeowners and the currently small number of attorneys willing to litigate. They have no illusions. They are aware they are going up against the most powerful institutions in the world. But they also know that, if they are successful, the crack now forming in the protections constructed by CWT, BNY, and so many others, makes it possible to reverse the ominous trends in the American housing market while proving it is possible to enact accountability for a corrupt establishment and good for the people.

If houses now held by banks go on the market, or are returned to their owners, the heavily inflated prices of homes will drop to its natural market level based on supply and demand. Communities will stabilize, as will the lives of Americans.

The America which emerges from this crisis can be very different. No stability will ever result from the current expectations of perpetual economic growth relying on perpetual inflation and perpetual motion in the market place, and the resultant social instability.

The 99% need to bring the 1% home to live with the rest of us in peace, Lincoln says.

Given the propensity of the legal establishment to go after activist attorneys, Lincoln admits this will not be without risk, but public involvement can help here, too. He remains confident, many will step forward. They did so in 1775 and in other times of crisis in America.

Failing to act, he said, means abandoning Americans to the cartels and monopolies who are responsible for what has happened to our country.

Lincoln and other members of the team believe strongly most attorneys and judges, when asked to make a choice in the light of day, will do the right thing.

The effort has already begin in New Jersey. Right now he has a case in motion in the Garden State, just across the river from Manhattan, where Cadwalader still holds sway at the ominously named “One World Financial Center.”

Now, they are looking for more attorneys who love and respect the law, and investors who know what matters most and want to make a difference. His website is, homeownersjustice.com.

What America Will Look Like In 2050

Does anyone in the United States understand or comprehend what America will look like in 2050 “IF” we continue endless immigration into our country? Does any leader possess an inkling of the ramifications of adding the projected 100 million immigrants, their kids and chain-migrated relatives?

That’s correct, at the current rate of immigration legalized by the 1986 Reagan amnesty, we continue on course to add 100 million immigrants from all over the world. They arrive legally at 1.0 million annually. They birth 900,000 babies among their numbers annually. (Source: Dr. Steven Camorata, www.cis.org) With chain migration, that means each “new” American may invite 10 of his or her relatives to join them with “family-reunification.” If the current S744 amnesty bill passes, your US Congress jumped that 1.0 million to 2.0 million legal immigrants annually.

Do the math! Any way you cut it, that means America will experience an avalanche, a human tsunami, or simply the biggest wave of humanity ever to hit our country or any country, ever. We will grow from our current 316 million to well over 438 million people within 37 years. The extra 38 million will come from our own “population momentum.” These figures stem from our country reaching 300 million in October of 2007. We grow by 3.1 million annually.

What’s it going to look like? Answer: it will become ugly on multiple levels—environmentally, sociologically, linguistically, culturally, quality of life and downgraded standard of living—for starters. Parts 1 through 5 will cover what we face.

First of all, 100 million immigrants will equal our adding 20 of our most populated cities. Think of it: we will add another New York City, Detroit, Atlanta, Miami, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Dallas, Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and eight other American cities.

We face watering 100 million more people, housing them, transporting them, warming them, feeding them and finding jobs for them.

Today in 2013, seven states face shortages: Georgia, Florida, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California. But Georgia will grow from 8.2 million to 16.4 million. Florida expects to grow from 18 million to 36 million. For the whopper fact of all, California expects to jump from 38 million to 58 million.

Our cities face resembling present-day Mumbai, India; or Tokyo, Japan; or Paris, France; or Shanghai, China—bursting at the seams with 50 to100 mile traffic jams, people smooched into 200 square foot apartments rising out of the ground like mindless stalactites.

Our rivers will run with endless chemicals from industrial, farm, human and acid rain pollution. Our National Parks will become so crowded that you will be forced to draw a lottery number in order to visit them.

Every last bit of arable land and wildreness will be destroyed by what scientists call “ecological footprint.” In Ethiopia, it takes .4 (4/10ths) of an acre of land to feed, water and house a person. In the USA, it takes 25.4 acres of land to support one person. (Source:www.allspecis.org)

With those 100 million immigrants, we must destroy 2.54 BILLION acres of land. That, in turn, guarantees accelerating our current 250 species suffering extinction annually in the lower 48 to double that number which will mean 5,000 species a year suffering extinction at the hands of our encroachment on the natural world.

As those enormous human numbers impact the carbon footprint and impact the “water footprint”, we face water predicament that will become unsolvable and irreversible. We face water wars, water confrontations, water irrigation problems heretofore never imagined.

Our giant aquifers like the Ogallala will dry up leaving us with no irrigation of our corn, wheat and hay fields.

We incorporate a Faustian Bargain in 2013 to reap a Hobson’s Choice in 2050—a scant 37 years from now.

Our quality of life cannot help but degrade into severe limitations as to hunting, fishing, wildlife extermination, energy exhaustion and resource depletion.

Let’s talk about energy: we hit Peak Oil in 2011. We face the last 50 percent of all oil remaining on the planet. It takes more energy units to pump it and less energy units out of the ground. Finally, at some point, we will be left with little oil at staggering prices—but a 438 million population to feed. Of sobering note, the world will have added 3.1 billion humans to feed, to this nightmare extends beyond our borders.

How about the environment? Anybody want to guess how much damage our carbon footprint will wreak havoc on our oceans with acidification and warming of the waters? My guess: we face annual Hurricane Sandy’s and Katrina’s. More tornadoes will mow humans down at an outstanding rate.

Additionally: I’ve only covered the tip of the iceberg of what we bequeath to our children.

As I sit here with the scientific facts, my own world travels having seen the 12 largest cities on the planet and my own scientific experiences in Antarctica—I am appalled that the American people and our leaders gallop into this added 100 million more immigrants without so much as a shout, whimper or cry.

Our kids will curse our stupidity, arrogance and outright disregard for their futures. My own two U.S. Senators understand what we face because I spent 45 minutes explaining the facts to their staffs, but they voted to add 2.0 million legal immigrants annually to make our fate arrive even faster than 37 years.

My guess: our leaders resemble intellectual lunatics. Our people resemble the dumbest sheep on the planet.

Finally, why am I one of the few Americans who “sees” this so clearly? Why aren’t there tens of millions of Americans who “see” and take it to “60 Minutes” ; “Charlie Rose” ; “Today Show” ; “DateLine” ; “Good Morning America” ; Scott Pelley, Diane Sawyer, Brian Williams, Wolf Blitzer, Kelly Mygen, Shepard Smith and every other media leader? Why don’t we demand a national discussion?

If we refuse to act, remain too apathetic to act, or don’t act—the S744 Amnesty Bill will pass and add that 100 million immigrants to this country in a blink of time. God help our children when they inherit our legacy of 100 million immigrants.

Immigration Policy And America’s Suzerain

While shopping in a local grocery store my wife asked a nearby gentleman a question; he did not speak English.  Our local Mall has lost several upscale stores; they are quickly replaced but often with unfamiliar businesses.  We now have a Chinese Massage business in our Simon Mall.  The Chinese masseuses can say hello in English but little else.  Together they chatter away in Chinese.  At WalMart in the late afternoon a gaggle of different languages come from an equal number of unassimilated individuals and families.

It is pleasant to be in the company of familiar, like-minded people.   Disagreement destroys peace and causes strife while an inability to communicate isolates. Unfamiliar cultures are interesting to visit but vexing to live in.  Unity produces civic power; diversity is anarchic and feeble. 

Minority cultures tend to lose many of their distinctive qualities in a couple of generations, multi-culturalism is self destructive.

As settlers flooded into the New World, America’s United States displaced the indigenous population and expanded across the continent of North America.  Its occupants were diverse within a limited range.  Most were Europeans seeking the freedom, wealth, and adventure of a new land.  They were a rugged and independent people willing to endure unlimited toil for the reward of self sufficiency.  Denominational divisions set them apart but most were European Christians.

In the early years of the new Republic care was taken in the numbers and roots of new immigrants. Originally the qualifications were European heritage, White skin, and a willingness to assimilate.  The need for industrial workers gradually relaxed Immigration laws expanding the ethnicity of new citizens; but the gates remained well guarded until 1965.

The Immigration Act of 1965 permanently changed the character of the United States.  It removed the nationality based quota system and expanded the eligibility scope to include all nationalities plus their extended families.  Contrary to most recorded history freshman Senator Ted Kennedy had very little to do with the new law; his contribution was mostly verbal. The law itself was written by Norbert Schlei, an assistant Attorney General during the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations.  Schlei was Jewish as were New York Represenative Emanuel Cellar and New York Senator Jacob Javits, the primary powers behind this disastrous legislation.  By the year 2050 it is expected that White Christian citizens of European extraction will be a minority in the nation they founded.   .

Multiculturalism has Jewish roots. Stephen Steinlight, an eloquent spokesman for Jewish policy, confirms this historic immigration policy and in 2004 urged a startling change:  “For Jews, the immigration debate pits the heart against the head. In their gut, many feel that substantially reducing immigration betrays the legacy of their parents and grandparents. But a growing number believes that maintaining this policy betrays their children and grandchildren. The danger arises because mass immigration means importing mass anti-Semitism. The upsurge of violent anti-Semitism in Western Europe tracks perfectly with mass immigration, especially of Muslims. Mass immigration is also the generator of Balkanizing notions of extreme multiculturalism. Having worked for nearly a century through communal organizations, the courts, and interfaith dialogue to achieve a tolerant and cohesive society largely free of anti-Semitism, it’s anguishing for American Jews to watch current immigration erase this outcome. However uncomfortable, American Jews must grapple with the issue: they have a greater stake than other Americans in how this policy plays out.” 

Jewish leadership doggedly conspires to enact policies that benefit Jews.  That these policies are inimical to the inhabitants of the nations they live in is of little concern.  This exclusive agenda has resulted in a litany of historic expulsions.  They were gradually expelled from Europe and England in 1290, France in 1306, Spain and Portugal in 1492, Hungry in 1376, Sicily in the 1400s, Bavaria in 1470, Bohemia in 1542, and Russia in 1881, 1891, 1897 and 1903.

Definitive success is part of their undoing.  As a race they are smart, persistently industrious, dominant, clannish, and supportive of each other.  They are social but they do not assimilate.  The Talmud has more influence on their behavior than the Ten Commandments.  Their work ethic and their clever, amoral wisdom make them invaluable in intellectual circles.  They are unusually successful in climbing the ladders of influence and power.  In the United States they make up less than 3 percent of the population but they exert frightening control over money, government, media, education, and much of industry.

Professor Kevin MacDonald contends that a high IQ allowed Jews to gain wealth and social status which they used to manipulate immigration policy. He writes, “Jewish organizations have been able to have a vastly disproportionate effect on U.S. immigration policy because Jews as a group are highly organized, highly intelligent and politically astute, and they were able to command a high level of financial, political, and intellectual resources in pursuing their political aims.”  (“The Culture of Critique”)

Their successful rise to power in the United States has been skillfully orchestrated by exploiting the Holocaust and controlling information.  Major assistance has come from starry eyed Evangelical Christians who with euphoric ignorance blindly support anything Jewish.  Control of the press has allowed manipulative Jewish interests to control the government and control of the government has allowed those same individuals to kidnap and use our nation for their own nefarious ends.     

American Jews are primarily i. They came to the United States in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth century from Eastern Europe.  Since Communism was considered beneficial to Jews many of these immigrants were Marxists.  For a number of years in the early and mid-Twentieth Century the United States Communist Party was Kosher.

In a recent article entitled “Illegals Swarm in – Dallas Transformed”  Libertarian Nelson Hultberg writes,: “No country in the history of the world has ever survived multiculturalism. America will be no exception. All great nations protect their borders. They abide by the requisites for stability and ‘ordered freedom.’ Their intellectuals peruse history rigorously and learn from it. They respect the ethnic majority of their country. They do not malign its traditions and smear its heroes in the schools.”

Hultberg tells of efforts by Texas communities to stem the flow of immigrants and how those efforts were countered by the ACLU and other pro-immigration organizations.   He breaks with the Libertarian tenet of open borders but makes a serious strategic error by failing to mention the tremendous influence of powerful pro-immigration Jewish interests.  Substantial Jewish financial support sustains the ACLU which in addition to supporting open borders has been a major force in wiping Christianity from the public arena.

Jewish society is not homogeneous.  Jewishness is itself a form of religion but there are several different factions within Judaism. There is stronger diverse opinion in neo-Israel than in the United States.  Some Jews are Christians and some industriously expose the Satanic nature of Zionist leadership.  The Jewish population in general is to some extent a victim of the policies of their leaders.

The Jewish push for massive alien influxes is still in full swing.  If it becomes law Immigration bill S744 will add millions of new voters to the Democratic roster. The Center for Immigration Studies estimates that current immigration volume plus S744 would create 32 million potential voters by 2036  The bill is being sponsored by radically Jewish New York Democratic Senator Charles Schumer and supported by “The Gang of Eight” (Bennet, Durbin, Flake, Graham, McCain, Menendez, and Rubio) a gang that knows who butters their bread. 

For many years United States citizens have displayed a dangerous ignorance of political reality.  Political parties create a wedge between party interests and the good of the nation and a Jewish  controlled press censors important news. Many of our citizens are intentionally stupid, they ignore impending danger seeking solace while it is available.  H. L. Mencken, the acerbic Baltimore pundit, called U. S. voters “Boobus Americanus” and the New York Post has confirmed the assumption with an article informing us that not only are our school children dumb by international standards but so is our adult population.   .  The United States of America has become an imperialistic power being controlled like a puppet by people much smarter than its’ voting adults.  We deserve the tyranny we are getting; we voted for the people who brought it to us.

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