Public School Education — There’s Bad News And Good News

The bad news is that John Dewey’s “progressives” are winning big. They mobilized every educational front group and every pedagogical gimmick to achieve the goal of controlling what goes on in the schools, as a way of achieving a fundamental transformation of America, to coin a phrase.

The educational front groups include the National Council of Teachers of Math, the Common Core Consortium, National Education Association, International Reading Association, National Science Foundation, the Department of Education, and many more. Their favorite pedagogical gimmicks include Whole Language, Reform Math, Balanced Literacy, Constructivism, Project-Based Learning, Cooperative Learning, 21st-Century Skills, and many more.

So it’s clearly a far-flung, intricately coordinated attack, like Hitler’s military roaring into Russia during the summer of 1941. The progressives want total control so they can turn the schools into social engineering experiments. Traditional approaches will be denigrated; knowledge will be disdained.  gave the marching orders 100 years ago. Our Education Establishment probably feels it is close to total victory, thanks to all the new gimmicks contained in Common Core Standards.

So how can there possibly be any good news? Hitler’s Wehrmacht could tell you. When you advance 100 miles into new territory,  overrunning everything in sight, you can easily gobble up too much too fast.

At some point, even the most successful invaders find they have overextended their lines and exposed their flanks to counterattack. There’s the good news.

In education, this has a peculiar form. Quite simply, the public is starting to see the comic bizarreness of it all. Everywhere people look in education they see frantic activity (and frantic spending) but nobody’s learning very much. Millions of kids can’t read well or do simple math. Surely, someone must be playing a prank, and the whole country is being punked.

The public watches the foolishness and rolls their eyes. What, is the circus in town? Who are all these clowns running around with their funny little cars and pratfalls?

We see the garish makeup, the big red noses, the comedy routines. But we are no longer amused. What does this Clown Corps think it’s doing? How can they squander billions every day, but somehow the children get more ignorant and less literate?

 Summing up, public education in America resembles a Rube Goldberg contraption with the Three Stooges operating all the levers. The good news is that the public can no longer take these people seriously, no more than the majority of the public now takes Obama seriously, and for the same reasons. The public sees the Emperor has no clothes, he’s tipsy, and stumbling around in public.

Here’s one way you know the Education Establishment has gone too far. More people talk casually about . Even a  of education agrees.

Here’s another way you know. Common Core rolled over the country–altogether 45 states embraced it, thanks to lavish bribes (stimulus money repurposed as Race to the Top grants). But now most of those . Indiana has pulled out. Other states will follow. Hallelujah.  The sooner every state cancels Common Core, the safer the country will be.

Another way you know is that the Internet is full of videos where because they can’t do their homework, parents are at meetings to denounce the failed methods used in the schools, and employers  complain ever more loudly they can’t find educated workers.

In fact, Our Education Establishment has been practicing the art of going too far for decades. But now the public is noticing. The election of Obama  may have pushed our education commissars over the edge. Perhaps they were worried they might have only eight years, and they needed to complete their project immediately. Helter-skelter, with a rush of urgency, they had to drive out every traditional approach, terminate every old-fashioned teacher, silence every conservative voice, and banish every administrator who wasn’t a complete toady. Common Core—with its top-down, same answer for every situation—was supposed to finish the job.

Recall the famous World War II movie A Bridge Too Far. Our Education Establishment has committed the strategic sin of A Gimmick Too Many.

Siegfried   “The system adopts instructional programs and practices that have never been tried out on a small scale—like the Common Core standards. The same is true of many instructional programs. They are adopted, then tried out for the first time. That is completely backward.”

The main effort is to drive content out of the school. They’ve got a dozen pretexts for doing this. After you’ve deleted as much content as possible, you garble whatever is left. Each year, the typical student ends up learning  less than the year before. We will hear constantly about “social justice,” which roughly translates “If everyone is mediocre, that’s fairer.”

 All this dumbing down makes even the people in charge dumber. In the process, they make a mockery of their claim to be “educators.” Anti-educators is more accurate.  It’s time for the circus to leave town.

2014 Election Business As Usual

Thus far this election cycle has been a dud. Hardly a sweat is broken in the rarified air of partisan politics punditry. The only consistent factor that can always be counted upon to amuse is the reams of paper wasted on the false promises and prevarication made by the esteemed party regulars. It is easy to simply blame the entrenched incumbents or the current crop of insurgents, but it goes much deeper when an entire nation remains mute in the face of the worse run and most condemnable conduct, coming out of the District of Criminals in decades. The party in power traditionally will suffer huge losses in Congress, while the gang of “pols” out of power will start contacting real estate agents within the beltway.

What passes for political news today is not even fit to wrap fish. The meat and potatoes of journalism, once upon a time, were made up of scandals. Under the protection racket department of the media government alliance, the abuse of power never reaches the point of national saturation. The Obama administration has outdone the nastiest of offenses under Lyndon Johnson and William Clinton. The Democrats in the Senate allow Harry Reid to be the sickest dictatorial tyrant in living memory.

Customarily, the party with the majority takes the blame for failures. Yet, with each new transgression and unlawful activity, the purported opposition crew of RINOs shirks their constitutional responsibility and shutter out of fear of being labeled a racist. How sad. But that is exactly the condition and lack of courage out of the GOP leadership.

One might think the Democrats just keep digging the hole deeper that they created. Then again, many partisans will look to shift blame and pin shared responsibility on the Republican deadheads in Congress. Forgotten in the fog out of foggy bottom is that Obama owns the failed policies that have been followed after five and a half years in office.

The chaos at the border is intentional. Failure to revive the economy and implement policies that favor job creation is also deliberate. Perpetuating a foreign policy based upon defiance of international law is maintained in the proud tradition of interventionist empire building. Truly this is the institutional synergism, between both parties, that steer career politicians to the dark side. Lastly, the infamous and destructive Obamacare fiasco is the apex of social engineering.

So why won’t the political establishment respond to this laundry list of malfeasance and repeal bad legislation and caustic regulation or change the direction of national policy? It is very difficult for most Americans to accept that the political class is actively working for the downfall of the country and the substitution of a constitutional republic for the dictatorship of permanent privileged elites.

What makes this faction of ruling vermin different from previous ages is that the overriding sentiment for dominance is based upon the systematic dismantling of the nation state. The façade of protecting the homeland is pure hogwash. With the rise of the internationalism culture for governance, the motivation to legislate as if a representative was a sincere patriot has evaporated.

There are not many reasons to even project an appearance of restoring an independent and self-sustaining national economy, a civilization based upon individual liberties and a society where opportunity builds a viable middle class. No, the day that politicians had sincere respect and devotion to institutions of lawful administration and beneficial programs that actually advanced the public interest are long gone.

So why do the hard core political junkies get so exercised over the latest news on how a particular race is turning? With the bipartisan gerrymandering that takes places after each census, every state gets their chance to game the election system. Since there are a small number of elections that can be described as truly competitive, the attention garnished on the few races that could be decided by greater campaign efforts, goes under the microscope.

Back in 2010 the decisive involvement of the genuine grassroots Tea Party captured the House of Representative for the GOP. How did that work out? For traditional conservatives, this freshman class made a substantial attempt to rock the floor of the chamber. Nevertheless, let no good Congressperson go left unpunished. The leadership of the do nothing and gutless Republicans, could not bring themselves to demonstrate fiscal prudence or foreign policy statesmanship.

Sorry folks, the NeoCons are still very much in control.

For this election cycle, the Senate seems to be in play by nearly all accounts. Races for a Senate seat in Alaska, Colorado, Iowa, North Carolina and Kansas are most often talked about holding the keys to the cloakroom. It is incomprehensible that majority leader Senate Harry Reid could muster even the lowest level of respect for the way he has conducted himself in the role of the perfect obstructionist. Yet, Democrat loyalists come to the rescue of his tainted honor, no matter how offensive his behavior and conduct degenerates.

Optimism that Reid will be relegated to the closet motivates discontented votes in the few States that matter. OK, even if the slimy and seedy boss of the Democrat crime syndicate gets demoted, what might be reasonably expected from a Republican majority in the Senate?

Most would expect that the remainder of the Obama Presidency will be dead in the water. Oh, how nice if that would be true. However, be prepared. For what you have already seen from this pathological liar and pretender, who have more in common with Mobutu the African despot, may well foretell an explosive ending.

The nihilism and the mental illness that marks the behavior of this egomaniac gives little reason to think that anything will restrain his one man one rule arrogance. If you watched the blushing admiration that Barry Soetoro showered on the biggest crook that even headed up the Department of Injustice, Eric Holder; you know that this psychotic president flaunts his disgust for America, has more insults left to inflict.

The fact that Republican representatives had no stomach to impeach this madman illustrates the nature of the existential problem that plagues the very foundation of legitimacy and threatens the civil liberties of every honest citizen.

Would a GOP Senate interject backbone into the jelly spines of the legislature branch and commence a revival of in an era of “good government”? Excuse me again, only the dreamers believe that an ethical administration can and will emerge, when morality in its most basic application, is almost nonexistent in the popular culture and the secular society.

Back in the ancient days of the network news monopoly, the three broadcast organizations would sometimes pool their resources to access the same voter count. Tallying ballots always presented the risk of voter fraud. Now, the projection and predicting prognostications are so much more refined. Voter scams are so advanced, using electronic machines to program in the results that only a Boss Tweed could fully appreciate.

Ah, just knowing the time wasted on campaigning is reward enough for those who rate congressional candidates lower than your latest terrorist splinter group. The suspense for the 2014 season better start to build soon or the media moguls will need to invent a different realty show to stage.

Maybe a slight threat of citizen participation could have a remote chance to influence the results in a primary run, but that time has passed. Tuesday, the 4th of November has all the making of another day of shame. Not because there is no qualified champion to support, you already know that to be the case. But for the reason that the likelihood that if a “good” person could be elected, merely means that he or she will be destroyed by the professional caste of political untouchables.

Play ball or your days are numbered. That’s the game and what better chamber exemplifies the experience of blackmail than the “World’s Greatest Deliberative Body”.

If some stubborn and obstinate reformer sticks to their guns, just bring in the NSA for the maximum level of authoritarian extortion.

By now you should all be psyched up for making your X. Soon the latest round of illegal invaders will be getting their identity credentials and drive on over to the booth to pick their macho man official. How many more of these futile elections will it take before the pretense of voting will be just as silly as those candidate projected appearances of being a trustworthy representative of the populace?

This year’s Election Day recommendation has not changed. Show up, be vocal, express your disgust, vote third party or make a point that none of the above is your real selection. The charade of a loyal opposition to the party in power has never been so clear for even the densest “true believer” to come to their senses.

Little ever changes for the good and nothing actually reverses the direction towards national suicide. The reason is clear, it is the plan and every system is firing on all cylinders. The rest of the Obama term is poised to have deceased Americans turning in their graves. For those who claim they are still alive, prove it – show your outrage.

Our Population Growth Totalitarian Future

As the world explodes in violence, war, riots, and uprisings, it is challenging to step back and examine the bigger picture. With airliners being shot down over the Ukraine, missiles flying between Israel and Gaza, ongoing civil war in Syria, Iraq falling apart as ISIS gains ground, dictatorship crackdown in Egypt, Turkey on the verge of revolution, Iran gaining control of Iraq, Saudi Arabia fomenting violence, Africa dissolving into chaos, South America imploding and sending their children across our purposely porous southern border, Mexico under the control of drug lords, China experiencing a slow motion real estate collapse, Japan experiencing their third decade of Keynesian failure, facing a demographic nightmare scenario while being slowly poisoned by radiation, and Chinese-Japanese relations moving towards World War II levels, it is easy to get lost in the day to day minutia of history in the making.

Why is this happening at this point in history? Why is the average American economically worse off today than they were at the height of the economic crisis in 2009? Why is the Cold War returning with a vengeance? Why is the Federal Reserve still employing emergency monetary policies when we are supposedly five years into a recovery and the stock market has attained record highs? Why do the ECB and European politicians continue to paper over the insolvency of their banks and governments? Why did the U.S. support the ouster of a dictator we supported for decades in Egypt and then support the elevation of a new dictator after we didn’t like the policies of the democratically elected president? Why did the U.S. eliminate the leader of Libya and allow the country to descend into anarchy and civil war? Why did the U.S. fund and provoke a revolutionary overthrow of a democratically elected leader in the Ukraine? Why did the U.S. fund and arm Al Qaeda associated rebels in Syria who are now fighting our supposed allies in Iraq? Why has the U.S. been occupying Afghanistan for the last thirteen years with the result being a Taliban that is stronger than ever? Why are the BRIC countries forming a monetary union to challenge USD domination? Why is the U.S. attempting to provoke Russia into a conflict with NATO?

Why is the U.S. government collecting every electronic communication made by every American? Why is the U.S. government spying on world leader allies? Why is the U.S. government providing military equipment to local police forces? Why is the U.S. military conducting training exercises within U.S. cities? Why is the U.S. government attempting to restrict Second Amendment rights? Why is the U.S. government attempting to control and lockdown the internet? Why has the U.S. government chosen to treat the Fourth Amendment as if it is obsolete? Why is the national debt still rising by $750 billion per year ($2 billion per day) if the economy is back to normal? Why have 12 million working age Americans left the workforce since the economic recovery began? How could the unemployment rate be back at 2008 levels when there are 14 million more working age Americans and the same number employed as in 2008? Why are there 13 million more people on food stamps today than there were at the start of the economic recovery in 2009? Why have home prices risen by 25% since 2012 when mortgage applications have been at fourteen year lows? Why are Wall Street profits and bonuses at record highs while the real median household income stagnates at 1998 levels?

Why do 98% of incumbent politicians get re-elected when congressional approval levels are lower than whale shit? Why are oil prices four times higher than they were in 2003 if the U.S. is supposedly on the verge of energy independence? Why do the corporate controlled mainstream media choose to entertain and regurgitate government propaganda rather than inform, investigate and seek the truth? Why do corporations and shadowy billionaires control the politicians, media, judges, and financial system in their ravenous quest for more riches? Why has the public allowed a privately owned bank to control our currency and inflate away 96% of its value in 100 years? Why have American parents allowed their children to be programmed and dumbed down by government run public schools? Why have Americans allowed themselves to be lured into debt in an effort to appear wealthy and successful? Why have Americans permitted their brains to atrophy through massive doses of social media, reality TV, iGadget addiction, and a cultural environment of techno-narcissism? Why have Americans lost their desire to read, think critically, question authority, act responsibly, defer gratification, and care about future generations? Why have Americans sacrificed their freedoms, liberties and rights for the false expectation of safety and security? Why will we pay dearly for our delusional, materialistic, debt financed idiocy? – Because we never learn the lessons of history.

There are so many questions and no truthful answers forthcoming from those who pass for leaders in this increasingly totalitarian world. Our willful ignorance, apathy, hubris and arrogance will have consequences. Just because it hasn’t happened yet, doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen. The cyclicality of history guarantees a further deepening of this Crisis. The world has evolved from totalitarian hegemony to republican liberty and regressed back to totalitarianism throughout the centuries. Anyone honestly assessing the current state of the world and our country would unequivocally conclude we have regressed back towards a totalitarian regime where a small cabal of powerful oligarchs believes they can control and manipulate the masses in their gluttonous desire for treasure. Aldous Huxley foretold all the indicators of a world descending into totalitarianism due to overpopulation, propaganda, brainwashing, consumerism, and dumbing down of a distracted populace in his 1958 reassessment of his 1931 novel Brave New World.

Is There a Limit?

“At the rate of increase prevailing between the birth of Christ and the death of Queen Elizabeth I, it took sixteen centuries for the population of the earth to double. At the present rate it will double in less than half a century. And this fantastically rapid doubling of our numbers will be taking place on a planet whose most desirable and pro­ductive areas are already densely populated, whose soils are being eroded by the frantic efforts of bad farmers to raise more food, and whose easily available mineral capital is being squandered with the reckless extravagance of a drunken sailor getting rid of his accumulated pay.” –Aldous Huxley – Brave New World Revisited – 1958

Demographics are easy to extrapolate and arrive at an accurate prediction, as long as the existing conditions and trends remain relatively constant. Huxley was accurate in his doubling prediction. The world population was 2.9 billion in 1958. It only took 39 years to double again to 5.8 billion in 1997. It has grown by 24% in the last 17 years to the current level of 7.2 billion. According to United Nations projections, world population is projected to reach 9.6 billion in 2050. The fact that it would take approximately 70 years for the world’s population to double from the 1997 level reveals a slowing growth rate, as the death rate in many developed countries surpasses their birth rate. The population of the U.S. grew from 175 million in 1958 to 320 million today, an 83% increase in 56 years.

The rapid population growth over the last century from approximately 1.8 billion in 1914, despite two horrific world wars, is attributable to cheap, easy to access oil and advances in medical technology made possible by access to cheap oil. The projection of 9.6 billion in 2050 is based upon an assumption the world’s energy, food and water resources can sustain that many people, no world wars kill a few hundred million people, no incurable diseases spread across the globe and there is no catastrophic geologic, climate, or planetary events. I’ll take the under on the 9.6 billion.

Anyone viewing the increasingly violent world situation without bias can already see the strain that overpopulation has created. Today, six countries contain half the world’s population.

A cursory examination of population trends around the world provides a frightening glimpse into a totalitarian future marked by vicious resource wars, violent upheaval and starvation for millions. India, a country one third the size of the United States, has four times the population of the United States. A vast swath of the population lives in poverty and squalor. India contains the largest concentration (25%) of people living below the World Bank’s international poverty line of $1.25 per day. According to the U.N. India is expected to add 400 million people to its cities by 2050. Its capital city Delhi already ranks as the second largest in the world, with 25 million inhabitants. The city has more than doubled in size since 1990. The assumptions in these U.N. projections are flawed. Without rapidly expanding economic growth, capital formation and energy resources, the ability to employ, house, feed, clothe, transport, and sustain 400 million more people will be impossible. Disease, starvation, civil unrest, war and a totalitarian government would be the result. With its mortal enemy Pakistan, already the sixth most populated country in the world, jamming 182 million people into an area one quarter the size of India and one twelfth the size of the U.S. and growing faster than India, war over resources and space will be inevitable. And both countries have nuclear arms.

More than half the globe’s inhabitants now live in urban areas, with China, India and Nigeria forecast to see the most urban growth over the next 30 years. Twenty-four years ago, there were 10 megacities with populations pushing above the 10 million mark. Today, there are 28 megacities with areas of developing nations seeing faster growth: 16 in Asia, 4 in Latin America, 3 in Africa, 3 in Europe and 2 in North America. The world is expected to have 41 sprawling megacities over the next few decades with developing nations representing the majority of that growth. Today, Tokyo, with 38 million people, is the largest in the world, followed by New Delhi, Jakarta, Seoul, Shanghai, Beijing, Manila, and Karachi – all exceeding 20 million people.

To highlight the rapid population growth of the developing world, the New York metropolitan area containing 18 million people was ranked as the third largest urban area in the world in 1990. Today it is ranked ninth and is expected to be ranked fourteenth by 2030. The U.S. had the fewest births since 1998 last year at 3.95 million. We also had the highest recorded deaths in history at 2.54 million.  The fertility rate for 20- to 24-year-olds is now 83.1 births per 1,000 women, a record low. That combination created a gap in births over deaths that is the lowest it has been in 35 years.

This is the plight of the developed world (U.S., Europe, Japan) and even China (due to one child policy). According to the U.N. report, the population of developed regions will remain largely unchanged at around 1.3 billion from now until 2050. In contrast, the 49 least developed countries are projected to double in size from around 900 million people in 2013 to 1.8 billion in 2050. The rapid growth of desperately poor third world countries like Nigeria, Afghanistan, Niger, Congo, Ethiopia, and Uganda will create tremendous strain on their economic, political, social, and infrastructural systems. Nigeria’s population is projected to surpass the U.S. by 2050. Japan, Europe and Russia are in demographic death spirals. China is neutral, and the U.S. is expected to grow by another 89 million people. I wonder how many of them the BLS will classify as not in the labor force.

What are the implications to mankind of the world adding another billion people in the next twelve years, primarily in the poorest countries of Asia, Africa and South America? What does the world think of the U.S., which constitutes 4.4% of the world’s population, but consumes 20% of the world’s oil production and 24% of the world’s food? Will there be consequences to having the 85 richest people on earth accumulating as much wealth as the poorest 3.5 billion, with 1.2 billion surviving on less than $1.25 per day? Can a planet with finite amount of easily accessible financially viable extractable resources support an ever increasing number of people? Is there a limit to growth? I believe these questions will be answered in the next fifteen years as the dire consequences play out in civil strife, resource wars, totalitarian regimes, and societal collapse.  cycles always sweep away the existing social order and replace it with something new. It could be better or far worse.

Impact of Over-Population

“The problem of rapidly increasing numbers in relation to natural resources, to social stability and to the well-being of individuals — this is now the central problem of mankind; and it will remain the central problem certainly for another century, and perhaps for several centuries thereafter. Unsolved, that problem will render insoluble all our other problems. Worse still, it will create conditions in which individual free­dom and the social decencies of the democratic way of life will become impossible, almost unthinkable. Not all dictatorships arise in the same way. There are many roads to Brave New World; but perhaps the straightest and the broadest of them is the road we are travel­ing today, the road that leads through gigantic num­bers and accelerating increases.” 

The turmoil roiling the world today is a function of Huxley’s supposition that over-population pushes societies towards centralization and ultimately totalitarianism. The relentless growth in the world’s population, not matched by growth in energy resources, water, food, and living space, results in increasing tension, anger, economic decline, government dependency, war and ultimately totalitarianism. Huxley believed politicians and governments would increasingly resort to propaganda and misinformation to mislead citizens as the problems worsened and freedoms were revoked. Could this recent statement by our commander and chief of propaganda have made Edward Bernays and Joseph Goebbels any prouder?

“The world is less violent than it has ever been. It is healthier than it has ever been. It is more tolerant than it has ever been. It is better fed then it’s ever been. It is more educated than it’s ever been.”

I’m sure the people living in Gaza, the Ukraine, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Thailand, Turkey, Africa and American urban ghettos would concur with Obama’s less violent than ever mantra. Disease (Cholera, Malaria, Hepatitis, Aids, Tuberculosis, Ebola, Plague, SARS) and malnutrition beset third world countries, while the U.S. obesity epidemic caused by consumption of corporate processed food peddled to the masses through diabolical marketing methods enriches the mega-corporate food companies, as well as the corporate sick care complex. Religious wars and culture wars rage across the world as intolerance for others beliefs reaches all-time highs. After three decades of government controlled public education they have succeeded in dumbing down the masses through social engineering, propaganda, and promoting equality over excellence. Obama should stop trying to think and stick to what he does best – golf and fundraising. After reading his drivel, I’m reminded of a far more pertinent quote from Huxley:

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”

The chart below details the fact that 12% of the world’s population in countries producing 9% of the world’s oil are currently in a state of war. The violence, war, and civil unrest roiling the Ukraine, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan are a direct result of U.S. meddling, instigation, and provocation. The U.S. government funds dictators (Hussein, Mubarak, Assad, Gaddafi) until they no longer serve their interests, engineer the overthrow of democratically elected leaders in countries (Iran, Egypt, Ukraine) that don’t toe the line, and dole out billions in military aid and arms to countries around the world in an effort to make them do our dirty work and enrich the military industrial complex. The true motivation behind most of the violence, intrigue and war is the U.S. need to maintain the U.S. petro-dollar hegemony and to control the flow of oil and natural gas throughout the world. The ruling oligarchy’s power, influence, and wealth are dependent upon dictating currency valuations and flow of oil and gas from foreign fiefdoms.

In Huxley’s 1931 Brave New World fable the world’s population is maintained at an optimum level (just under 2 billion) calculated by those in control. This is done through technology and biological manipulation. Procreation through sexual intercourse is prohibited. Creation of the desired number of people in each class is scientifically determined and the classes are conditioned from birth to fulfill their roles in society. When Huxley reassessed his novel in 1958’s Brave New World Revisited he didn’t argue for an optimum level of population. He simply hypothesized a close correlation between too many people, multiplying too rapidly, and the formulation of authoritarian philosophies and rise of totalitarian sys­tems of government.

The introduction of penicillin, DDT, and clean water into even the poorest countries on the planet had the effect of rapidly decreasing death rates around the globe. Meanwhile, birth rates continued to increase due to religious, social and cultural taboos surrounding birth control and the illiteracy and ignorance of those in the poorest regions of the world. The ultimate result has been an explosion in population growth in the developing world, least able to sustain that growth. Huxley just uses common sense in concluding that as an ever growing population presses more heavily upon accessible resources, the economic position of the society undergoing this ordeal becomes ever more precarious.

It essentially comes down to the laws of economics. Most of the developing world is economic basket cases. They cannot produce food, consumer goods, housing, schools, infrastructure, teachers, managers, scientists or educated workers at the same rate as their population growth. Therefore, it is impossible to improve the wretched conditions of the vast majority, as they wallow in squalor. Unless a country can produce more than it consumes, it cannot generate the surplus capital needed to invest in machinery, agricultural production, manufacturing facilities, and education. The rapidly growing population sinks further into poverty and despair. Huxley grasps the nefarious implications for freedom and liberty as over-population wreaks havoc around the globe:

“Whenever the economic life of a nation becomes pre­carious, the central government is forced to assume additional responsibilities for the general welfare. It must work out elaborate plans for dealing with a criti­cal situation; it must impose ever greater restrictions upon the activities of its subjects; and if, as is very likely, worsening economic conditions result in polit­ical unrest, or open rebellion, the central government must intervene to preserve public order and its own authority. More and more power is thus concentrated in the hands of the executives and their bureaucratic managers.”– Aldous Huxley – Brave New World Revisited – 1958

Despots, dictators, and power hungry presidents arise in an atmosphere of fear, scarce resources, hopelessness, and misery. As the power of the central government grows the freedoms, liberties and rights of the people are diminished and ultimately relinquished.

Source: The Millennium Report

Absolution In A Sophomoric Society

In a post-modernism age the most assertive and self-proclaimed worshipers in the supremacy of science, have no room for a belief in God. These arrogant elites treat anyone, who profess that a true understanding of science does not contradict the presence of the almighty, with condescending distain for refusing to accept that God is dead. The transhumanist insistence that they will emerge as supreme beings is the pivotal sacrilege that underpins the social culture and political chaos that leads to the ultimate destruction of the species. Extinction of the human race and the invention of an artificial deity, denies that the act of creation inherently is the prowess of the All Powerful.

Sophomoric intelligence based upon pretentious and conceited self-regard is actually immature and ill-informed sense of worth and understanding. The reason for the absurdity, which is the hallmark of societal dysfunction, stems from the malevolent masterminds NWO globalist plan and carried out by their technocrat minions.

The Most Secret Science by Archibald E Roberts examines the MATTOID SYNDROME in chapter twelve. “Irrational political decisions at policy-making levels force upon perceptive Americans the conclusion that an invisible government of men “unbridled by logic or understanding” has acquired ultimate power and influence in the United States. Furthermore, the image-building manipulations of these Mattoids favor the development of similar attitudes in others and give thousands—perhaps millions—of normally well-balanced persons the courage to overtly engage in absurd or infamous acts.”

Colonel Archibald E. Roberts championed his views several decades ago. Yet, his analysis has not lost any of the impact or importance as the 21th century unfolds. Essentially, the situation is a geometric progression as the delusion worsens.

Scientists once relied upon empirical evidence and followed the four steps of the scientific method.

• Observation and description of a phenomenon or group of phenomena.
• Formulation of a hypothesis to explain the phenomena. In physics, the hypothesis often takes the form of a causal mechanism or a mathematical relation.
• Use of the hypothesis to predict the existence of other phenomena, or to predict quantitatively the results of new observations.
• Performance of experimental tests of the predictions by several independent experimenters and properly performed experiments.

The current credibility of the academic community is suspect as government funding and peer pressure for career advancement demands conformity to promote specific political agendas. No area of science is more tainted than the study of global climate. In the New Report, IPCC Falsifying Climate Science, New Fraud Reports Exposed, CO2 illustrates the politicization of science and the betrayal of their own methodology standards.

Inexhaustible debate on the global warming hypothesis has developed bitter contention because conclusions much be tailored to advance the globalist hysteria that is seen as necessary to maintain the New World Disorder Psychology. Wacko environmentalists share an extreme similarity with their scientist gurus who mock divine intervention and profess that man has all the knowledge necessary to become masters of the universe.

“Secular Humanism, has become, the leading export of the ‘West’ to the rest of the world. The movers and shakers of public policy accept its values, cosmology, as Sigmund Freud views that reason rules, and that a rejection of God is acceptable. Religion is seen as a threat, and that life can be lived without delusions, especially the illusion of a religious belief. His theory of human nature and the culture of morality is founded upon the substitute of the super-ego, for the role of religion. As the source of morality and conscience, man is able to apply his reason to follow ethical behavior.”

In the end, all the HAARP manipulations and chemtrail spraying cannot and will not achieve domination over the planet. Relying on NASA to discover nirvana or trusting Japanese scientists to resolve a Fukushima nuclear winter is no better than following celebrity global warming advocates into the vast void of their own mental space.

However, the stakes become critical, when purported distinguished scientific institutes, fall into the trap of anti-intellectual conduct. The Prestigious Helmholtz Research Center Gutter-Dives…Promotes Sophomoric Attacks On Skeptics, Labelling Them “Deniers”

“It’s worrisome enough that the German government itself recently issued a brochure singling out, naming, and defaming German and American climate science skeptics. Today we have one of Germany’s most prestigious science associations actively backing adolescent-level attacks on skeptics who have decided not to take part in the collective climate hysteria.”

Seeking remission for fabricated crisis, like the newly renamed climate disruption, plays to the mental illness of fools who demand that saving the planet requires that they bury any semblance of religious belief and repentance. According to such enlighten cretins; absolution is not necessary, since acknowledging a creator would make their Frankenstein genetic engineering and eugenics experiments unholy.

Proponents of deceptive discourse would have you believe that sophomoric reasoning is rationalizing about what one understands poorly. It is often apologetics (starting with a conclusion) and masquerades as “critical thinking“. Sound good on the surface, but when you probe closely the real bias of the position becomes obvious.

“Science begins with hypotheses; apologetics begins with conclusions. Science performs experiments which can disconfirm hypotheses; apologetics employs rhetoric (conclusions can never be disconfirmed). Science discovers how the world works; Christian apologetics assures that the world conforms to the Bible (or to church doctrine). Apologetics is not a productive approach to discovering how the world works; science is not a productive method for making the world conform to the Bible.”

The last point divulges the basic disconnect. Belief in the Bible is an existential decision. Inquiry in the way the world operates is not reducible to merely running technological experimentation. Dismissing the significance and value of accepting faith in a revealed Creator is the usual determination to the scientific trained mind. Yet the objection to investigate the validity for acceptance of a divine plan for the salvation of souls permeates the man-centered culture of Modern Prometheus inquiry.

The function of science is to question, but the methods of science are not synonymous with scholarship. The burden of proof that an agnostic or atheistic conviction is a requirement for conducting good science is a research project that most universities will avoid. Nevertheless, membership of good standing into the scientific community undoubtedly rests upon this canon of doctrine.

It seems to be puerile to demand blindness to the universal evident, that the cosmos provides. Benjamin Cain critique of Stephen Hawking’s Scientific Atheism philosophy concludes it is absurdly anti-philosophical, so he is forced to pretend that his atheism is purely scientific.

“Here is Hawking’s stripped-down argument for God’s nonexistence: the universe was created in the Big Bang, which means that in its earliest stage the universe was infinitesimal and so the laws of quantum mechanics apply to its origin, and we know from those laws that quantum events can happen spontaneously without any cause; moreover, the Big Bang’s gravitational singularity was in effect a black hole and we know that in modern-day black holes time stops inside of them, which means there was no time before the Big Bang and thus no time for anyone to create the universe.”

Mr. Cain continues, “atheists presuppose a religion in their effort to unite naturalism with their typical liberal values: this religion is secular humanism, Scientism, positivism, or pragmatism. But when a religion is only presupposed rather than openly acknowledged, the religion is bound to be clumsy and lackluster, and that’s the case with Hawking’s atheistic argument.”

Taking the “Political Incorrect” cult of religion to the extreme, the example of Lawrence Torcello – assistant professor of philosophy at Rochester Institute of Technology, NY, writes in an essay at The Conversation that climate scientists who fail to communicate the correct message about “global warming” should face trial for “criminal negligence”. How advance civilization has become under the scientific inquisition.Absolution by compurgation testimony of your peers may become necessary for acquittal. Under the new standard of scientific rule, even the “PC” philosopher must adopt the dogma of the Galileo court. How radical the tables have turned now that we know that the earth is round and rotates around the sophomoric society.

One of the latest targets for political persecution happens to be Dinesh D’Souza. During a recent debate on the subject he argued that the two — science and religion — are fundamentally separate.

“The questions to which God is the answer are not scientific questions,” D’Souza said. Humans around the world want to know why the universe exists, the purpose of our existence and what will come afterward. Science doesn’t “have a clue” as to the answers to these questions, D’Souza said.

Looking to science for a discovery of salvation is irrational. Achieving Raymond Kurzweil’s singularity promise of immorality within the artificial intelligence of a new life form species sounds allot like Satan’s sin of pride.While religion has never rendered a redemptive society, faith in God provides the only hope in living in a world of the boundless inhumanity of man to his brother. When scientists dismiss the need for forgiveness, their culture of forging enhanced tiers of technology, usually translates into greater levels of human bondage. The real climate disruption comes out of the laboratories of weird science. Adversely altering the natural order of the universe is as simpleminded as you can get.

Power In Military Black Budgets

The top five military contractors by sales are Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumann, General Dynamics and Raytheon. In addition to the Department of Defense allocations, the top five intelligence agencies that often provide military use applications are the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Program and the General Defense Intelligence Program. The actual amount of monies that go into funding off the books secret projects, estimated by Bill Sweetman as cited in the Economic Crisis and the Pentagon`s Black Budget, exceeds rational comprehension. “The Pentagon’s ‘black’ operations, including the intelligence budgets nested inside it, are roughly equal in magnitude to the entire defense budgets of the UK, France or Japan, and ten percent of the total.”

Even the Washington Post in the account, “Black Budget” details U.S. operations, goals reports the “Spending in the most recent cycle surpassed that amount based on the $52.6 billion detailed in documents obtained by The Post, plus a separate $23 billion devoted to intelligence programs that more directly support the U.S. military.”So where did this figure come from? None other than the audacious whistleblower or infamous traitor, depending on your viewpoint, revealed the figures. In the article, Snowden Reveals First Ever Public Disclosure Of Secret Black Budget Programs, the costs may be in the trillions.

“The Washington Post revealed that the “black-budget” documents report a staggering 52.6 billion dollars that was set aside for operations in the fiscal year 2013. Although it’s great to have this type of documentation in the public domain proving the existence of these black budget programs, the numbers seem to be off according to some statements made by some very prominent people who have been involved in the defense sector for years. There is a lot of evidence to suggest that these programs are not using billions of dollars, but trillions of dollars that are unaccounted for.”

Almost makes you believe that when Rumsfeld Says $2.3 Trillion Never Lost, Just Untracked, he might have actually been telling the truth for once.

See for Yourself: The Pentagon’s $51 Billion ‘Black’ Budget provides some astounding details of the way the “Black Operations” system works.

“The Pentagon likes to play a little hide and seek with its black budget. Projects with code names like the Navy’s “RETRACT JUNIPER” and “LINK PLUMERIA” are simple enough to find in the research development, testing and evaluation budget (.pdf). As are many of the Army’s “TRACTOR” projects: “TRACTOR NAIL,” “TRACTOR CAGE,” and so on. But then comes along a project like “TRACTOR DESK” hiding in one of the Army’s eight research budget documents, while others find their way to the operations and maintenance and procurement budgets.These projects are also where to go when searching for what’s getting cut. Something called the “Classified Program USD(P),” formerly valued around a respectable $100 million, had its budget reduced to zero. “TRACTOR JUTE” is on life support and “COBRA JUDY” had the sting taken out of it.

Most other projects saw lesser cuts, however, and others like “RETRACT MAPLE” even saw minor gains. This is also while the researcher at Darpa only received a slight trim.”

Looks like the KISS (keep to simple, stupid) principle did not make it into the budget.Now take a high profile program that surely excites the imagination, even if it strains the pocketbook.

The Lockheed Martin SR-72 Specification & Technical Data, might just be another cover-up project designed to conceal the actual replacement for the SR-71 (Aurora) rumored to be flying for decades.

“The Lockheed Martin SR-72 is a conceptualized unmanned, hypersonic aircraft intended for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance proposed by Lockheed Martin to succeed the retired SR-71 Blackbird. The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird has been overtaken by it’s successor, The SR-72, the fastest Aircraft ever built. According to Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works, the SR-72, has a twin-engine aircraft which is designed in such a way that it can fly at Mach 6. By 2018, the SR-72 could be up for demonstration showing off at the high-speed strike weapon (HSSW), a U.S. hypersonic missile program taking shape under the Air Force and Darpa.”

They Fought For Our Freedom? American Veterans Abused By The Police State

It is easy to stand up and cheer for your favorite government activity. It is quite another to acknowledge what it means in the real world.

I almost never try to speak for other people. However, I think it is fairly safe to say that the average military recruit firmly believes that he joins the military so that you and I can live and breathe in freedom. To be sure, he had other reasons for joining, but I think the defense of liberty is a fairly common characteristic.

That is certainly what I thought when I was in Navy boot camp in Orlando, Florida, in 1983. After all, this is what I had been told all my life: sailors, soldiers, airmen and marines defend freedom.

But is this actually what they do?

Consider the following:

• This Marine lost both legs in an IED blast in Iraq. He claims he was forced by TSA to remove both prosthetic legs before he could board an airplane in Phoenix.
• This Vietnam veteran in Spicewood, Texas, had flashbacks to his combat experience during a marijuana raid at a friend’s house. What police claimed was marijuana turned out to be ragweed.
• Jared Goering, who served 19 years in the Army, including tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, was kicked off the boardwalk in Wildwood, N.J. for walking with his service dog, Gator.
• Emily Yates, who served two tours with the Army in Iraq, was violently arrested by park police in Philadelphia for asking why she couldn’t play her banjo under some shade trees.
• Dimitrios Karras is a Marine Corps veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan. Read about the ATF raid on his business in National City, California.
• Martin Goldberg of Brooklyn is a World War II veteran whose apartment was subject to a drug raid. Later, the cops realized they had raided the wrong apartment. His 83-year-old wife was hospitalized with an irregular heartbeat as a result of the raid.
  
• In 1997, four sailors from the USS Saipan (LHA-2) were falsely accused of the rape and murder of a Norfolk, Virginia, woman. One spent eight-and-one-half years in prison while the other three were sentenced to life in prison. These three were pardoned in 2009. Even though the actual killer is serving a life sentence, four innocent men are still required to register as sex offenders and are still fighting to clear their names.
• was 18 and fresh out of Marine boot camp. On a trip home to Covina, California, he was hanging out with a few friends when he was arrested for resisting arrest and nothing else. He spent 21 days in Los Angeles County jail, even though he had harmed no one.
• Carlos Jaramillo is a former Marine combat instructor who lives in Onslow County, North Carolina. Watch what happened when he recorded a sheriff’s deputy who arrested him for no apparent reason.
• Noel Polanco was an unarmed 22-year-old National Guardsman who was shot and killed by New York City police at a traffic stop near LaGuardia Airport.
• John Laigaie, a retired Army master sergeant, was threatened at gunpoint by police while legally carrying a gun in a park in Bellingham, Washington.
• Homer Wright is an 80-year-old Army veteran who was charged with felony gun use after he shot a burglar who entered his home in Englewood, Illinois.
  
• Mark Schmidter, a Vietnam veteran who lives in Orlando, is for passing out jurors’ rights information on the steps of a local courthouse.
• Justin Ross of Ankeny, Iowa, was recently discharged from the Army. to enter his home executing a warrant for some items purchased with stolen credit cards. They did not find any of these items.
• Saadiq Long is an Air Force veteran who was placed on a TSA no-fly list. He had to battle for months to be removed from this list just so he could fly home from Qatar to visit his ailing mother.
• Chuck Benton of Long Grove, Iowa, served 22 years in the Army. He was arrested and charged simply for living in the same house with his son who was growing medical marijuana.
• Cody Donovan is a former Marine MP who lives in New Milford, N.J. He was charged with unlawful possession of a weapon after carrying a loaded gun into the Garden State Plaza mall when he attempted to help police apprehend the shooter.
  
• In 1932, 17,000 veterans marched on Washington to demand payment of bonuses they had been promised as a result of their service in World War I. Two were shot and killed by police. 55 were arrested and 135 were injured when the United States Army became an instrument of domestic law enforcement. Two of the chief enforcers were named MacArthur and Patton. Yes, those two.
• Mark England, an Army combat medic who saw action in Iraq and Kosovo was at McCarran Airport in Las Vegas.
• Air Force Staff Sergeant Matt Pinkerton of Glen Burnie, Maryland, faces second degree murder charges after fatally shooting a home intruder in September.
• Leo Hendrick, an army veteran who lives in Northwood, Iowa, faces up to 30 days in jail and a $600 fine for raising chickens in his yard.
• Yes, the cops had a search warrant. However that in no way excuses their vandalizing the home of Army veteran Dan Neary of Lakewood, Washington.
• These World War II veterans were threatened with arrest for visiting a closed war memorial in Washington, D.C. during the October “shutdown.”
  
• These Vietnam veterans actually were arrested for visiting a New York City war memorial after curfew.
• Denis Reynoso was a disabled veteran who saw action with the Marines in Iraq. He was shot dead by police in his Lynn, Massachusetts, apartment.
• Nick Morgan, an Iraq veteran, was pulled out of a crowd by police in Hempstead, New York, and .
• Gary Shepherd of Broadhead, Kentucky was a Vietnam veteran. He used medical cannabis to relieve the pain in his left arm, which was crippled during the war. Shepherd was shot dead by a SWAT team, after they had threatened to cut down his cannabis plants.
• Valente and Manuel Valenzuela of San Antonio produced sufficient documentation to enlist, respectively, in the Army and Marine Corps. Both fought in Vietnam, where Valente won a Bronze Star. Now they are facing deportation to Mexico because of erroneous entries on their birth certificates.
• Jerome Murdough, a homeless Marine Corps veteran, died in a jail cell on New York’s Rikers Island after being arrested for trespassing. A heating malfunction caused the temperature in the cell to soar to 100 degrees.
• Kenneth Chamberlain was a retired Marine and Vietnam veteran living in White Plains, New York. Early one morning he set off his medical alert device. The first responders in this case were not medics, but rather .
  
• This organized to help legalize marijuana during the 2012 elections. They claim – and I believe them – that marijuana helps mitigate PTSD. If you support any punishment whatsoever for a combat veteran who heals himself with a plant that grows wild in some form within a few miles of you, I don’t care what you tell me. YOU DON’T BELIEVE IN FREEDOM!
• Stanley Gibson, a was by Las Vegas police in December, 2011.
• Army Specialist Michael Sharkey returned home from deployment in Afghanistan to find his home in New Port Richey, Florida, unlawfully occupied by two squatters. The local sheriff says that Sharkey has no grounds upon which to evict them.
• These veterans say they are being required to prove they are worthy of gun rights. Our rights are gifts from God that are inherent in our very humanity. We never have to prove to anybody that we have them.
• Dwight Edwards, a disabled Marine veteran of Afghanistan, says that cops in Queens brutally beat him for no reason.
• Army Staff Sgt. C.J. Grisham, who won the Bronze Star with Valor, was forcibly disarmed for no good reason by a policeman while on a hike with his son not far from Fort Hood, Texas.
  
• Brandon Raub, a Marine who was decorated for bravery in Iraq and Afghanistan, was forced to spend a week in a Virginia mental hospital over . (His interviewer here, John Whitehead, is a constitutional attorney, Vietnam infantry veteran and superlative anti-police state blogger.)
• Operation Vigilant Eagle is a project of the Department of Homeland Security that has led to numerous Iraq and Afghanistan veterans “finding themselves under surveillance, threatened with incarceration or involuntary commitment, or arrested, all for daring to voice their concerns about the alarming state of our union and the erosion of our freedoms.” Indeed, merely being a “returning veteran” can have you designated as a potential terrorist.
  
• We will never know the whole truth about Navy veteran and former Los Angeles cop Christopher Dorner, who was the subject of a police manhunt and media witch hunt in 2013. He never got the chance to tell his story in court.
• Hector Barrios came to America in 1961. He was drafted and served as an infantry soldier in Vietnam. In 1996, he was busted for possessing marijuana, which he used to treat his PTSD. As a result, he was deported to his native Mexico where he died.
• Matthew Corrigan of Washington, D.C. was a first sergeant in the Army Reserve and a veteran of Iraq. His home was destroyed in a SWAT rampage because it was reported to the police that Corrigan had a gun.
• Jamie Dean was an Army veteran of Afghanistan was diagnosed with PTSD. Upset about his impending deployment to Iraq, Dean had an intense emotional outburst at his Maryland home in December 2006. Even though he neither harmed nor threatened anyone, he was shot and killed by a local SWAT team.
  
  
• Bennie Coleman, 76, is a retired Marine who lost his Washington, D.C., home because of a $134 tax lien that District authorities had sold to an investor.
• Jeremy Usher is a former Navy hospital corpsman who lives in Greeley, Colorado. He faces jail time for using medical marijuana to treat his PTSD.
• Brittany Ball, a 23-year-old soldier at Fort Jackson, S.C., was manhandled by a cop at a local bar, even though she had done nothing wrong.
• Air Force Airman First Class Michael Davidson was shot in the stomach by police in Opelika, Alabama, at the scene of a traffic accident.
• Benjamin Wassell sustained traumatic brain injuries while with the Marines in Iraq. The Buffalo-area resident was the first person charged with illegal gun sales under New York’s new SAFE Act.
  
• Erik Scott graduated from West Point in 1994 and served as a tank platoon leader. In 2010, he was gunned down and killed by police as he peacefully walked out of a Las Vegas Costco.
• Scott Olsen saw action with the Marines in Iraq. Later, he would join the Occupy Oakland movement. In October, 2011, suffered a fractured skull after being hit in the head with a projectile fired by police.
• Derek Hale served honorably with the Marines in Iraq. Although, he had committed no crime, he died after being tasered three times and then shot three times by police in Wilmington, Delaware.
• Roderick King, an Iraq war veteran, was arrested in Philadelphia after he and his friends had criticized a cop’s driving.
• Howard Dean Bailey, a Navy veteran, was deported to his native Jamaica when immigration authorities discovered he had taken a plea bargain in a marijuana case in Norfolk, Virginia.
  
• To be sure, the recently deceased folk singer Pete Seeger could not have been more of a leftist. However, he did serve three years in the Army after being drafted during World War II. He was sentenced to one year in jail after refusing to reveal his political connections to the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1956. He appealed this sentence, citing the First Amendment, and ultimately spent only four hours behind bars.
• Larry Kirschenman of Nogales, Arizona, served 22 years in the Army and was decorated for bravery in Vietnam. Learn how he was brutalized by Border Patrol agents when asking why he was .
• We will never know for sure what happened in Army veteran Matthew Stewart’s Ogden, Utah, apartment one night in January 2012, as he will never have his day in court. He was in prison awaiting trial on charges of shooting and killing one of the police officers who raided his apartment searching for marijuana. Stewart, whose guilt was never proven, committed suicide in his cell.
• Sergio Arreola is a cop in Los Angeles who served with the Marines in Iraq. He was beaten by the police in suburban Pomona for no good reason whatsoever.
• This former Army paratrooper is appealing to the New York state legislature to legalize medical marijuana. He has severe multiple sclerosis and is “forced to break the law to have some semblance of a bearable existence.”
  
  
• On May 5, 2011, a Tucson SWAT team approached the home of Jose Guerena, who had served two tours with the Marines in Iraq. Guerena grabbed his AR-15 as is his right, but did not fire. The SWAT team let loose with 71 rounds, 60 of which perforated Guerena’s body.
• Marty Maiden lived a few blocks from Guerena in Tucson. and saw action with the Army in Afghanistan. He posted a suicidal note on Facebook which prompted a call to the police, who shot him dead.
• Steve Lefemine is a West Point graduate who was arrested for protesting against abortion in a “no-demonstration zone” outside the Republican National Convention in New York in 2004. The 2nd Circuit U.S. Circuit Court justified the arrest based on a “compelling state interest in security”.
  
• Eileen Erickson’s husband Sid served in Vietnam and died of Agent Orange exposure. Erickson is now in the crosshairs of authorities in Venice, California, who want to tear down the tree house Sid built before he died.
• Listen to this with then-Senate candidate Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) about the benefits of medical marijuana. Listen to the totalitarian response.
• John Wrana, a 95-year-old Army Air Corps veteran of World War II, was by police in Forest Park, Illinois. His “crime”? Refusing medical attention.
• John Colaprete saw action in Vietnam as a Marine Corps officer. In 1994, his Virginia Beach home and restaurants were the object of paramilitary-style raids by the IRS. The raid was prompted by a false accusation by a former employee. While you need to watch this documentary in its entirety some time, .
  
• Boxing legend Joe Louis was also tyrannized by the IRS. The Brown Bomber enlisted in the Army in 1942 saying “Let us at them Japs.” Louis never saw combat, as he was assigned to the Special Services Division. While still a civilian, Louis fought some charity bouts and donated the proceeds to the Navy Relief Society. The IRS, however, viewed these proceeds as taxable income. IRS problems would plague him all his life.
• Adam Arroyo is a Hispanic veteran of the Iraq war who lives in Buffalo. Police shot and killed his dog while executing a drug warrant for a black man.
• Henry Taylor was a retired Air Force veteran in Louisville, Tennessee, who was shot dead by a local sheriff’s deputy while investigating a burglary at a rental property he owned.
• This is a fascinating article: When Johnny Comes Marching Home … He Goes to Jail. It is absolutely tragic how we chew up and spit out so many of those we send to “fight for our freedom.”
  
• Radio talk host Adam Kokesh won the Navy Commendation Medal as a Marine in Iraq. In recent years, he has been arrested several times for various non-violent protests. His most recent arrest happened after he loaded a shotgun in public in Washington, D.C. on July 4, 2013. On July 10, police violently raided his home and arrested him. He was incarcerated for four months without bond, bail or trial. He is currently on probation for two years. You may not like Kokesh’s demeanor or approve of all of his antics, but he has been very courageous when so many of his critics can’t be bothered to put down the remote.
  
• James Moore, my brothah from anothah mothah, walked away from a very lucrative engineering position in San Jose to re-enlist in the Army following 9/11. He sustained significant physical injuries as well as PTSD while serving in the Special Forces in Afghanistan. On the afternoon of March 25, 2008, Moore, who had done absolutely nothing wrong, was beaten to the point of flat lining by Denver police.
• One of the coolest people I have never met is Antonio Buehler. Buehler graduated from West Point in 1999, earned his Ranger tab, and saw action in Kosovo and Iraq. (He also sports a Stanford MBA.) Early in the morning on January 1, 2012, Buehler for taking a few pictures of Austin police manhandling a young woman outside a 7-11. Buehler has been arrested four times since. He heads the Peaceful Streets Project, whose members work to expose abuse, brutality and overreach both in Austin and .
  

There are no doubt numerous other injustices against veterans that I do not know about. Enough to fill a book. None of these things would have happened if America were a free society. As Kokesh puts it, “The greatest enemies to the Constitution are not to be found in the sands of some far off land but rather right here at home.”

I cannot speak to the specific political beliefs of most of the veterans I have mentioned here. Some may be pacifists, while others may make John McCain look like a hippie in Haight-Ashbury. No matter what their individual views may be, the freedom they risked their lives for was flagrantly violated on the streets of the land they fought to protect.

Society endlessly applauds sailors, soldiers, airmen and Marines for “fighting for our freedom”. It is in no way disrespectful to say that this is not what they do. No foreign government or terrorist group poses any threat to our liberty. America accounts for about half of the world’s military spending. We have 300 ships in our Navy, plus thousands of planes, tanks and nuclear warheads as well as 300 million firearms in private hands. Nobody is going to invade us.

In a constitutional country, which America ceased to be 100 years ago, the job of the military – a vital and most noble one – is to defend the borders, shores and airspace. It cannot protect you from being tyrannized domestically. Indeed, throughout history, armies have been instruments of domestic tyranny. Our Constitution forbids a standing army for just this reason.

Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia had enormous military establishments. How did things work out in these countries?

I am a Christian who believes liberty is a gift from God – Leviticus 25:10; II Corinthians 3:17; Galatians 5:1. To quote Jefferson, liberty is preserved not by military might, but by “eternal vigilance” against one’s own government at all levels. It is the grossest form of disrespect to send young men around the world to “fight for freedom” while relinquishing that freedom on the home front.

For several years, America has had the world’s highest incarceration rate. Since 2001, Americans have gladly accepted previously unthinkable intrusions on their freedom in the name of “safety” and “security”. These include, but are not limited to: warrantless searches and spying, the suspension of habeas corpus, sexual assault as a condition of travel, rampant , indefinite detention without any semblance of due process, severe restrictions on peaceful protest, massive ammunition purchases by DHS and surveillance drones in our skies watching our every move. Can predator drones be far behind?

And in every election 98 percent of voters put their stamp of approval on perpetuating this monstrosity.

On April 20, 2013, Boston and several surrounding towns got a serious taste of martial law. How many military veterans were on the receiving end of this? Is this what they signed up to fight for?

Stop thinking in clichés. Have a good hard look at everything your media and government tell you. This includes media outlets and parts of the government that you like. Study. Read. Ask questions. And learn that the defense of liberty is not the duty of the military. Rather, it is your duty and mine.

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• Special thanks to Radley Balko and William Grigg for providing several of the above stories.
• Read this article by John Whitehead.

“Engineering Chaos”: Mother Agnes-Mariam Lectures Elites On Their Bad Behavior

I just went to hear Mother Agnes-Mariam, a Syrian nun dressed in a serious nun outfit, give a talk on the horrible situation that her country finds itself in today — and I ended up with ten pages of notes on the shocking details of what she said. However, the main gist of her talk can be summed up in just a few words. “[Western neo-colonial] powers have been engineering chaos in Syria — and they need to stop this disruptive behavior right now so that peace and reconciliation can safely proceed.”

According to Mother Agnes-Mariam, these Western powers-that-be have been “engineering chaos” in Syria quite successfully over the last three years. But I would also like to add that Western neo-cons haven’t just been engineering chaos in Syria — oh no. They’ve also been doing it everywhere that they can, all across the Middle East. And then it also suddenly dawned on me that said neo-cons have been following a similar step-by-step pattern all over the world, not just in the Middle East:

Step 1: Find yourself a resource-rich country where a percentage of the population is unhappy — for whatever reason (and if you can’t find any unhappy people there, then just make some up).

Step 2: Begin to foment revolution in the name of “Freedom and Democracy”. Make F&D sound really really good!

Step 3: Start the killing — or “Shock and Awe” or whatever you want to call it. Use terms like “freedom fighters” and “rebels” and “no-fly zones” and “humanitarian relief”. And also be sure to throw in scare-words like “WMDs” and “Chemical Weapons” and “Nuclear Proliferation” whenever humanly possible. But it doesn’t really matter what you call anything as long as chaos results. Or another Benghazi. Or another Maiden Square.

Step 4: The most imperative goal in Step 4 is to make sure that an impressive number of civilians are killed (See Step 3)

Step 5: Disassemble the mechanisms of state. Bomb the hospitals. Bump off the water supply. Destroy the infrastructure. Blow up city hall. Replace the strong-arm guy who is holding the country together with a thousand factional groups who all hate each other and everyone else — and are willing to kill to prove it too. Think Iraq. Think Libya. Think Yugoslavia.

Step 6: Move into the void that’s created and steal land and resources to your heart’s content. “Good job, Brownie!”

But enough of this. Let’s get back to Mother Agnes-Miriam’s talk. She spoke for over an hour on peace and reconciliation in Syria — by and for Syrians. It was a hopeful speech; sadly informative but also rational and inspiring.

And then suddenly five or six people popped up from the audience as if on cue and started shouting at Mother Agnes. “What about the use of chemical weapons! What about that dictator Assad!”

I at first thought that the ushers at the venue had over-reacted a bit by telling those guys to either be quiet or leave. But later I learned that these same guys have been following Mother Agnes-Miriam all around America and trying to disrupt all of her talks.

And at another one of her talks, I later found out, Mother Agnes had welcomed their participation and attempted to answer their questions — only to discover that they had no valid evidence, no real POV and nothing really to say.

These guys were simply trying to “engineer chaos” too!

And afterwards, outside on the front steps, one of these guys (wearing a really expensive-looking suit) handed me his card. He was from Washington DC, of course. That figures.

For those of you who still want to soldier on and read more about what Mother Agnes-Mariam had to say, here are some of the quotes that I wrote down. I think I copied most of them correctly, but I was writing pretty fast:

“In Syria today, the horrendous reality is of thousands and thousands of mercenaries who enter historic city complexes to turn them into battlefields. They are terrorists and bandits who spread agony among the residents.

“Sponsored by foreign powers, these ‘Tafiri’ [self-appointed inquisitionists] ‘liberate’ towns by forcing the residents out of them. The majority of Islamic clerics throughout the world denounce the Tafiri, however.

“Syria is a cauldron of chaos — designed to dismantle a country. It is engineered by neo-colonials to divide and reign — and to dismantle and gain.

“All of Syria used to be middle-class. No homeless people in Syria. And now they are obliged to beg; living in slums where the violence has followed them. Mosques, churches and synagogues are also being systematically destroyed. Factories, hospitals, residences. Homs now looks like Stalingrad. Apocalyptic. The economic and production heart of Syria has also been destroyed. The engineers of chaos destroyed it.

“A young woman wakes up with no legs. And her friend is now blind. In some places, only 3% of the population remain — and the Takfiri ‘rebels’ still shell them. We are living among vampires — where beheading is getting very normal. We are seeing heads everywhere. They play football with them. One Takfiri leader is said to have beheaded 350 people.

“What happened to the Arab Spring? That striving for freedom and democracy has been highjacked by the engineers of chaos. The Free Syrian Army lacks money, its members are starving. But the Takfiri faction is receiving all kinds of money and weapons. The Takfiri are in direct opposition to reconciliation. They come from 80 countries — and Syrians are their victims.

“There are seven million refugees inside of Syria and two more million outside of the country. They are starving. Out of a population of just 22 million, each day 9,500 more civilians are forced to leave their homes. Soon all 22 million will be displaced. We are back to the barbarian era.

“When you see something like this in your city — thousands beheaded, children pushed off roofs, people roasted in ovens — there will be more and more violence. But there is a third way. We have to build bridges. That is the challenge of reconciliation among Syrians. We have to develop trust. We have a lot of martyrs [to the non-violent cause], but we will not stop because the bloodshed must stop!

“Saddam was killed. Gaddafi was killed. Has it gotten any better? If Assad is gone, who will take his place? The 2000 factions? No. How can I reconcile with a group who wants to behead me? We are now talking to former [FSA] fighters who go back to protect their neighborhoods from the Takfiris. The FSA is willing to talk. Even Syria’s Al Qaeda is upset that ISIS Takfiri are killing everyone and burning factories.

“We are accused continuously, especially by people in the US, of being political. This is preposterous. We are talking only out of a position to stop the bloodshed. Alternative media can now go deeper and not just repeat mainstream media [brainwashing] ad nauseam. Go and hear everyone. I am not an oracle — but do not put me to death if I disagree. This is not the way to truth.

“If a solution to Syria’s problems is imposed from outside, we will be worse off than before. We must be free from foreign intervention. Change will not come from violence. Violence has just strengthened [Assad’s] regime. All the Takfiris have done is to get rid of the infrastructure of the state instead. The state itself is the sole hope for Syria. That, and a dialogue of symbiosis and reconciliation among Syrians themselves.”

Sociopath Officials And Establishment Idiots

Genetically Modified Organisms: Killing The Natural World

“The introduction of genetically modified foods (GMO) tampers with the essence of life in an experiment with an unknown outcome and no real way to undue the damage. The FDA purposely does not require labeling of GMO food, since no one who understands the issue would ever purchase it. This makes it all the more difficult to locate healthful food.”  Byron J. Richards, The Leptin Diet: How Fit Is Your Fat?

This series exposes the outright fraud against peoples’ lives and the contempt for American citizens (and citizens of the world who eat our grains) with the injection of Genetically Modified Organism foods by the highest representatives in our U.S. Congress.

Call it a “financial cartel” that allows GMOs to be fed to our citizenry, but worse, for the love of money, those power elites accelerate the destruction of our Natural World.

We humans grow too clever and too arrogant to understand the long-term penalties we heap on Mother Nature until she finds no other answers but to claw back at us, i.e., cancers, disease and more aberrant environmental disasters to come.

Every crop in America, Canada, Australia and much of the third world where GMO advocates like ADM and Monsanto can force their “Frankensteinization” on farmers—they push it.

Even with all the evidence piling up, those same elites hammer any opposition into the ground.  They “bribe” the FDA officials to not label any GMO foods so you don’t know what you’re eating.

We destroy our own bodies by our actions, but we also obliterate the Natural World and its inhabitants.

Today around the world, trillions of bees suffer “colony collapse” via GMO crops.  Nature cannot figure out how to deal with plants that suffer genetic modification or DNA change-ups.

GMO foods represent a pitcher throwing an orange to the catcher in a Major League Baseball game.  Within several pitches, the orange wouldn’t hold its form from the violent treatment.  If the batter connected with the orange, it would splatter all over the field.  Result: the game couldn’t continue.  The players could not play and the spectators would go home.

But in GMO production, the consequences cannot be seen as quickly, however those “errors” against Mother Nature will surface well into the future.

Ethan Huff, science writer for Natural News said,  “A pair of studies recently published in the journal Science raises dire warnings about the continued decline of crop-pollinating insects all over the world, and what this means for the future of the world’s food supply. Both studies highlight the fact that wild pollinators like bumblebees, butterflies, and beetles are basically disappearing, and that industrial agriculture, which includes genetically-modified organisms (GMOs), are a major factor causing this insect genocide.

“At least half a dozen other studies published in the last couple of years have arrived at similarly disturbing findings. They do, however, shed further light on how the situation has progressed throughout the decades, pointing to corporate monoculture practices, shrinking forests and wild lands, and general changes in physical landscapes as some of the primary culprits in promoting this ruinous trend.”

We not only change the DNA of our fellow planetary travelers, but we destroy their habitat.  We seem to think no consequences will befall us.

“The earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.”
― 

Last week, I interviewed with Ross Kaminsky at  in Denver, Colorado. Mind you, this young man, about 30, sounded brilliant and highly articulate.  I liked him.   I spoke about America adding 100 million immigrants and a total of 138 million people by 2050—a scant 36 years from now.  I brought facts and compelling information to the show.  I attempted to show him and the public the ramifications of adding 138 million people—and that, we could not sustain such numbers and our environment.

He sat across from me saying, “We don’t have a population problem. We have plenty of water and oil.  The oceans can absorb all our carbon footprint.”

I said, “You’re speaking with assumptions as if they were facts.  You make statements based on belief where I make them based on facts from my research.”

He dumbfounded me with his arrogance that we can keep adding endless people with no consequences. He wanted everyone to live a free life.  I countered with the fact that as our population numbers rise, our freedoms decline along with balance in our Natural World.  That fact cannot be disputed.

I explained how our oceans suffer acidification and that reefs die with carbon footprint and how marine life cannot endure the onslaught.

He wouldn’t hear of it.  Mind you, this young man, traveled on six continents like I have traveled.  He lives in denial and defends it. Along with him, the majority of the American public feels the same.

We see the same denial with our leaders who advocate for GMOs in plants and fish—in the face of facts.

“In one of the studies, researchers from Montana State University (MSU) compared insect data collected in the late 1800s to similar data collected in the same test location in the 1970s,” said Huff. “They then compiled current data from the same area to compare to both of these other two data sets, upon which they discovered that the number of unique wild bee species had dropped by nearly half.

“What is perhaps more disturbing, however, is the fact that researchers observed modern bees to be generally interacting less with plants than they used to in previous generations. According to the data, the overall number of interactions between bees and plants has also dropped by roughly half, indicating a serious problem as far as the general  is concerned, as about 75 percent of global food crops rely on pollination by animals.”

Managed honeybees do not pollinate crops as well as wild honeybees

The second study troubles me further:  having found that pollinating insects in general, which include a wide range of insects and other animals, continue vanishing from their normal habitats and foraging areas.

“Based on field trials conducted in 20 different countries, wild insects are clearly on the decline everywhere, and managed honeybee colonies established to replace them in many areas are failing to pick up where the wild honeybees left off,” said Huff.

“In landscapes with lower diversity and lower abundance of wild insects, the crops had less fruits,” explains Lucas Garibaldi, author of the second study. “Wild insects pollinated way more efficiently: Flowers produced twice as many fruits after being visited by wild insects and were more consistent in their production than when visited by honeybees.”

“Some “leaders” blame climate destabilization and other outside factors for this mysterious decline in crop ,” said Huff. “But the major elephant in the room, and the one that the mainstream media is desperately trying to avoid, is GMOs and the chemical-based technologies used to grow them. As we have covered time and time again, neonicotinoids and other pesticide and herbicide products are responsible for weakening and killing off bees and other crop pollinators, particularly in North America where  are most widely cultivated.”

“The proof is obvious that one of the major reasons of the bees’ decline is by the ingestion of GMO proteins,” explains a report by Brit Amos from Global Research about the decline of bee colonies. “The truth is that organic farming is relatively untouched as the bee crisis is concerned. Organic farming maintains the diversity of the eco-system and preserves the quality of the foods produced.”

The more I research into what we and our children face with our “disfiguring” the Natural World with our poisons and GMO assault, the more sickened I am in my mind and heart.  Since I lack any power or influence, someone like Bill Gates or Warren Buffet needs to fund campaigns to stop GMO production.  After all, it’s their kids, too, who must live in this world.

All of this GMO nightmare stems from too many people needing food for survival with too many elites willing to sacrifice the Natural World in order to make endless billions of dollars to live in big homes, drive expensive cars and fly Lear Jets.
You can learn more: 

Go to  to get involved and learn how to avoid GMOs. Look for Non-GMO Shopping Guide.

Start buying non-GMO today.

Help stop the genetic engineering of our food supply.

You may become involved:

By mail: Institute For Responsible Technology, P.O. Box 469, Fairfield, IA 52556 Online:  by phone:

Read the book—Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risk of Genetically Engineered Foods by Jeffrey M. Smith.

Genetically Modified Organisms: Sobering Consequences

“If manufacturers are so sure there is nothing wrong with genetically modified foods, pesticides and cloned meats, they should have no problems labeling them as such. “After all, cancer will kill one in every two men and one in every three women now alive,” reports Samuel Epstein, chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition. Like our ancestors, we act in ways that will bemuse future societies. The military-industrial complex lubricates the mass-agriculture system with fossil fuels. Tons of heavy metals and other hazardous waste is sprayed on American agricultural soil.” – Adam Leith Gollne, The Fruit Hunters: A Story of Nature, Adventure, Commerce and Obsession

During WWII, chemical companies like Chevron manufactured Mustard gas to kill enemies by disrupting troops’ nervous systems.  They changed their focus to continue their profits. They decided that crops growing in the fields of America needed poisons to stop the insects that nurtured them like bees, wasps and bats—all pollinators that make crops multiply and thrive.

They campaigned with “higher crop yields” and paid off a lot of U.S. Congressmen who “okayed” the poisons via legislation.  Chevron and other companies amassed a fortune with DDT and other nerve gases that crippled mosquitoes, flies and gnats, but quickly killed birds, rodents, hawks, eagles and countless other species living on the ground floor of Earth.

Why did those companies do that? Answer: billions upon billions of dollars.  You could call them financial terrorists because that’s how they must be defined.  They kill anyone for a few billion bucks.

Today, every single American faces cancers affecting himself, herself or a friend.  I lost four friends to cancer last year and two already this year with one more hanging on for another 30 days.  A doctor cut cancer out of my sister (melanoma) and me 19 years ago.  Terror gripped me until I cleared that drama.  To this day, I eat only organic, only filtered water, only non-GMOs, live in the country and eat nothing in a can, package or box.

The fact remains:  The American Cancer Society solicits funds to eradicate cancer, but they will not “touch” the fact that we poison our foods to such an extent that our bodies respond with aberrant cell behavior, i.e., cancers in all their forms.

Every fruit and vegetable suffers chemical sprays that become part of the produce that enters your stores and you buy it. And, you eat it.

Jeffrey Smith, , said, “Did you know GMO plants such as soybean, corn, cottonseed and canola have had foreign genes forced into their DNA. And the inserted genes come from species, such as bacteria and viruses that have never been in the human food supply.

“Did you know genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are not safe? They have been linked to thousands of toxic and allergenic reactions, thousands of sick, sterile and dead livestock, and damage to virtually every organ and system studied in lab animals.”

Why isn’t the FDA protecting us?

“In 1992, the Food and Drug Administration claimed that they had no information showing that GMO foods were substantially different from conventionally grown foods and therefore were safe to eat,” said Smith.  “But internal memos made public by a lawsuit reveal that their position was staged by political appointees under orders from the White House to promote GMOs.  FDA scientists, on the other hand, warned that GMOs can create unpredictable, hard-to-detect side effects, including allergies, toxins, new diseases, and nutritional problems.

“They urged long-term safety studies, but were ignored. The FDA does not require any safety evaluations for GMOs. Instead, biotech companies, who have been found guilty of hiding toxic effects of their chemical products, are now in charge of determining whether their GMO foods are safe.” (The FDA official in charge of creating this policy was Michael Taylor, Monsanto’s former attorney and later their vice president.)

From everything I have studied, the worst men of humanity run Monsanto and ADM.  They create synthetic sugars like Aspartame, High Fructose Corn Syrup and other chemicals that you see in “Diet Coke” and in your sugar packets at every lunch counter and restaurant in America.   Top scientists implicated Aspartame as a precursor to Lupus and Fibromyalgia along with a growing list of deleterious human conditions.

Same with the tobacco barons:  do you think they care that 450,000 Americans die of tobacco-induced lung cancer annually for the past 50 years?  Answer: they laugh during their golf games.

While GMO barons live in luxury, Lear jets and country mansions, Americans suffer diseases by the millions.  And, we die for it by the millions.

Widespread, unpredictable changes of GMOs

During GMO “Frankensteinization”, natural genes suffer deletion or become permanently turned on or off, and hundreds may change their levels of expression.

In addition:

*The inserted gene is often rearranged.

*It may transfer from the food into our body’s cells or into the DNA of bacteria inside us

*The GMO protein produced by the gene may have unintended properties or effects.

Why do they do it?

The primary reason companies genetically engineer plants: to make them tolerant to their brand of herbicide. The four major GMO plants, soy, corn, canola, and cotton, are designed to survive an otherwise deadly dose of weed killer like Round-up or Weed-B-Gone. The second GM trait: built-in pesticide.

In other words, kill the insects that allow the world to thrive.  It becomes more insane the more I research this series.

GM food supplement caused deadly epidemic

In the 1980s, a contaminated brand of a food supplement called L-tryptophan killed about 100 Americans and caused sickness and disability in another 5,000-10,000 people. If GMO foods on the market cause common diseases or if their effects appear only after long-term exposure, we may not be able to identify the source of the problem for decades.  No one monitors GMO-related problems and no long-term animal studies. Heavily invested biotech corporations gamble away the health of our nation for profit.

Go to  to get involved and learn how to avoid GMOs. Look for Non-GMO Shopping Guide.

Start buying non-GMO today.

Help stop the genetic engineering of our food supply.

You may become involved:

By mail: Institute For Responsible Technology, P.O. Box 469, Fairfield, IA 52556 Online:  by phone:

Read the book—Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risk of Genetically Engineered Foods by Jeffrey M. Smith.

Saving Civilization Means Killing Equality

If a famine befell us and you couldn’t save everyone, would you withhold the food you had and let every citizen starve rather than endure the inequality of just saving some? If recent history is any guide, certain leftists just might say yes.

A good example of this phenomenon involved a multiple sclerosis patient in Gothenburg, Sweden, who was denied a more effective and expensive medication — even though he was willing to pay for it — because, wrote columnist Walter Williams in 2009, “bureaucrats said it would set a bad precedent and lead to unequal access to medicine.” No wonder Winston Churchill said that socialism’s “inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.”

And another example just reared its ugly head in Plymouth, Michigan, where the locality’s high school is tearing down newly constructed bleachers in deference to the equality police. MyFoxDetroit.com reports on the issue, writing:

A new set of seating is being torn down outside the Plymouth Wildcats varsity boys’ baseball field, not long before the season begins, because the fields for boys’ and girls’ athletics must be equal.

A group of parents raised money for a raised seating deck by the field, as it was hard to see the games through a chain-link fence. The parents even did the installation themselves, and also paid for a new scoreboard.

So what happened? Some unnamed malcontent lodged a complaint with the feral government, at which point U.S Education Department Office for Civil Rights overlords decreed that the seating must go. Ain’t equality grand?

Except that equality is simply a ruse. And think about it with respect to this issue: the principle is that facilities “for boys’ and girls’ athletics must be equal,” but are boys’ and girls’ athletics equal? The striking contradiction in these male/female sports equality controversies is that calls for “equality” are deferred to within the context of the acceptance and promotion of an inherently unequal system. That is to say, if equality is the guiding principle here, why have separate leagues, teams and tours — protected from the best competition — for girls and women?

The solution, whether it’s the Plymouth situation or calls for equal prize money in tennis, is simple. If a lightweight boxer wants the purses the heavyweights get, he needs to fight and succeed in the heavyweight class; likewise, if feminists want what the boys/men have, they should try to compete in their arena. And I do advocate this: eliminate separate categories for women, and let the sexes compete together on a level playing field. After all, to echo what Lincoln said about laws, the best way to eliminate bad social policy is to enforce it strictly. If you believe in equality, practice it.

Live it.

And live with it.

And since the boys’ American high-school mile record is considerably faster than the women’s world record — and since this gap appears, with some variation, across sports — my proposal would provide some necessary “policy clarification.”

The education department’s decree is also an attack on charity. The message is that pursuing good works just might be a waste of time because, inevitably, they’ll conflict with some government regulation or mandate. It’s in addition a quasi-Marxist assault on the market. After all, the Plymouth community’s interest in building new baseball bleachers was no doubt driven by there being greater fan turnout for the boys’ games. And the market renders such verdicts all the time. It’s said that female fashion models earn three times what their male counterparts do, bars may offer women free drinks or entry without a cover charge, and no one troubles over women-only health clubs. It’s only when market determinations seem to benefit boys or men that the equality ruse is trotted out.

The truth is that equality dogma is a fiction of modern times. As for the timeless, the word “equality” appears in only 21 biblical verses, mostly referring to matters such as weights and measures. There’s good reason for this, and don’t blame it on the supposed “backwardness” of religion because a devout evolutionist would have to be the staunchest believer in hierarchies born of natural inequality. As G.K. Chesterton pointed out, “[I]f they [people] were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal.” Look around you at the world of nature and man, which, if the evolutionists are correct, are certainly one and the same. How much equality do you see? Rams butt heads, and one ram wins and the other loses; wolves have alphas and one male lion dominates and leads a pride. Then, there are 3.1 billion possible combinations when a couple has a child. And, oh, what combinations they can be. How many of us can play golf like Tiger Woods, defy gravity and shoot baskets like Michael Jordan or compose music at four years of age as did Mozart? People have greatly varying IQs, physical capabilities, personalities, inclinations toward virtue and gifts. Equality is a pipe dream.

This variation exists among groups, too. Ashkenazi Jews have the world’s highest average IQ, while Asians enjoy that status insofar as major groups go. And disease and conditions have no regard for equality, either: the Pima Indians have the highest rate of diabetes on Earth, breast cancer afflicts mainly women, the incidence of Tay-Sachs disease is highest among Jews, black men suffer from prostate cancer at twice the rate whites do, while sickle-cell anemia is found almost exclusively among blacks. I guess reality is “racist.”

Reality is actually this: it’s completely illogical and contradictory for a person to claim on one hand that he believes in classical, cosmic-accident evolution, but on the other that all groups somehow, quite accidentally, wound up the same in capacity, inclination and worldly abilities. After all, since evolution holds that groups lived and developed separately for millions of years — subject to different environments, stresses, adaptive requirements and to the luck of the draw — their winding up “equal” was, for all intents and purposes, a mathematical impossibility.

Earlier evolutionists recognized and accepted this reality, mind you, and in fact became eugenicists. Note here that the term “eugenics” was coined by Charles Darwin’s cousin Sir Francis Galton. Also note that the concept greatly predates the term: Greek philosopher Plato advocated murdering weak children, and the Spartans had actually done it.

This doesn’t mean I embrace eugenics or classical evolution (my views on the latter are found here). The point is that whether you believe we’re accidentally different or that, as St. Therese learned, there are even divinely ordained hierarchies in Heaven, equality is certainly not a thing of this world.

This helps explain why entities prescribing “equality” — such as the early French republic and all the Marxist killing-field regimes — become the worst tyrannies. Since equality is wholly unnatural, its mullahs must violate man’s nature, must trump it and twist it, in an effort to pound their sinister square peg into the round hole of reality. And woe betide he who defies their self-deified will.

Cries for equality are today the second-to-last refuge of a scoundrel (shouts of “racism” are the absolute last). Contrary to what Churchill said, however, they don’t actually visit upon us an equal sharing of misery. Rather, the pigs more equal than others will dispense the ever-diminishing pork to the peons, as they feed at the trough of modern man’s sloth, envy and error.

The Greatest Propaganda Coup of Our Time?

There’s good propaganda and bad propaganda. Bad propaganda is generally crude, amateurish Judy Miller “mobile weapons lab-type” nonsense that figures that people are so stupid they’ll believe anything that appears in “the paper of record.” Good propaganda, on the other hand, uses factual, sometimes documented material in a coordinated campaign with the other major media to cobble-together a narrative that is credible, but false.

The so called Fed’s transcripts, which were released last week, fall into the latter category. The transcripts (1,865 pages) reveal the details of 14 emergency meetings of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) in 2008, when the financial crisis was at its peak and the Fed braintrust was deliberating on how best to prevent a full-blown meltdown. But while the conversations between the members are accurately recorded, they don’t tell the gist of the story or provide the context that’s needed to grasp the bigger picture. Instead, they’re used to portray the members of the Fed as affable, well-meaning bunglers who did the best they could in ‘very trying circumstances’. While this is effective propaganda, it’s basically a lie, mainly because it diverts attention from the Fed’s role in crashing the financial system, preventing the remedies that were needed from being implemented (nationalizing the giant Wall Street banks), and coercing Congress into approving gigantic, economy-killing bailouts which shifted trillions of dollars to insolvent financial institutions that should have been euthanized.

What I’m saying is that the Fed’s transcripts are, perhaps, the greatest propaganda coup of our time. They take advantage of the fact that people simply forget a lot of what happened during the crisis and, as a result, absolve the Fed of any accountability for what is likely the crime of the century. It’s an accomplishment that PR-pioneer Edward Bernays would have applauded. After all, it was Bernays who argued that the sheeple need to be constantly bamboozled to keep them in line. Here’s a clip from his magnum opus “Propaganda”:

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”

Sound familiar? My guess is that Bernays’ maxim probably features prominently in editors offices across the country where “manufacturing consent” is Job 1 and where no story so trivial that it can’t be spun in a way that serves the financial interests of the MSM’s constituents. (Should I say “clients”?) The Fed’s transcripts are just a particularly egregious example. Just look at the coverage in the New York Times and judge for yourself. Here’s an excerpt from an article titled “Fed Misread Crisis in 2008, Records Show”:

“The hundreds of pages of transcripts, based on recordings made at the time, reveal the ignorance of Fed officials about economic conditions during the climactic months of the financial crisis. Officials repeatedly fretted about overstimulating the economy, only to realize time and again that they needed to redouble efforts to contain the crisis.” (“Fed Misread Crisis in 2008, Records Show”, New York Times)

This quote is so misleading on so many levels it’s hard to know where to begin.

First of all, the New York Times is the ideological wellspring of elite propaganda in the US. They set the tone and the others follow. That’s the way the system works. So it always pays to go to the source and try to figure out what really lies behind the words, that is, the motive behind the smokescreen of half-truths, distortions, and lies. How is the Times trying to bend perceptions and steer the public in their corporate-friendly direction, that’s the question. In this case, the Times wants its readers to believe that the Fed members “misread the crisis”; that they were ‘behind the curve’ and stressed-out, but–dad-gum-it–they were trying their level-best to make things work out for everybody.

How believable is that? Not very believable at all.

Keep in mind, the crisis had been going on for a full year before the discussions in these transcripts took place, so it’s not like the members were plopped in a room the day before Lehman blew up and had to decide what to do. No. They had plenty of time to figure out the lay of the land, get their bearings and do what was in the best interests of the country. Here’s more from the Times:

 ”My initial takeaway from these voluminous transcripts is that they paint a disturbing picture of a central bank that was in the dark about each looming disaster throughout 2008. That meant that the nation’s top bank regulators were unprepared to deal with the consequences of each new event.”

Have you ever read such nonsense in your life? Of course, the Fed knew what was going on. How could they NOT know? Their buddies on Wall Street were taking it in the stern sheets every time their dingy asset pile was downgraded which was every damn day. It was costing them a bundle which means they were probably on the phone 24-7 to (Treasury Secretary) Henry Paulson whining for help. “You gotta give us a hand here, Hank. The whole Street is going toes-up. Please.”

Here’s more from the NYT:

“Some Fed officials have argued that the Fed was blind in 2008 because it relied, like everyone else, on a standard set of economic indicators. As late as August 2008, “there were no clear signs that many financial firms were about to fail catastrophically,” Mr. Bullard said in a November presentation in Arkansas that the St. Louis Fed recirculated on Friday. “There was a reasonable case that the U.S. could continue to ‘muddle through.’ (“Fed Misread Crisis in 2008, Records Show”, New York Times)

There’s that same refrain again, “Blind”, “In the dark”, “Behind the curve”, “Misread the crisis”.

Notice how the Times only invokes terminology that implies the Fed is blameless. But it’s all baloney. Everyone knew what was going on. Check out this excerpt from a post by Nouriel Roubini that was written nearly a full year before Lehman failed:

“The United States has now effectively entered into a serious and painful recession. The debate is not anymore on whether the economy will experience a soft landing or a hard landing; it is rather on how hard the hard landing recession will be. The factors that make the recession inevitable include the nation’s worst-ever housing recession, which is still getting worse; a severe liquidity and credit crunch in financial markets that is getting worse than when it started last summer; high oil and gasoline prices; falling capital spending by the corporate sector; a slackening labor market where few jobs are being created and the unemployment rate is sharply up; and shopped-out, savings-less and debt-burdened American consumers who — thanks to falling home prices — can no longer use their homes as ATM machines to allow them to spend more than their income. As private consumption in the US is over 70% of GDP the US consumer now retrenching and cutting spending ensures that a recession is now underway.

On top of this recession there are now serious risks of a systemic financial crisis in the US as the financial losses are spreading from subprime to near prime and prime mortgages, consumer debt (credit cards, auto loans, student loans), commercial real estate loans, leveraged loans and postponed/restructured/canceled LBO and, soon enough, sharply rising default rates on corporate bonds that will lead to a second round of large losses in credit default swaps. The total of all of these financial losses could be above $1 trillion thus triggering a massive credit crunch and a systemic financial sector crisis.” ( Nouriel Roubini Global EconoMonitor)

Roubini didn’t have some secret source for data that wasn’t available to the Fed. The financial system was collapsing and it had been collapsing for a full year. Everyone who followed the markets knew it. Hell, the Fed had already opened its Discount Window and the Term Auction Facility (TAF) in 2007 to prop up the ailing banks–something they’d never done before– so they certainly knew the system was cratering. So, why’s the Times prattling this silly fairytale that “the Fed was in the dark” in 2008?

I’ll tell you why: It’s because this whole transcript business is a big, freaking whitewash to absolve the shysters at the Fed of any legal accountability, that’s why. That’s why they’re stitching together this comical fable that the Fed was simply an innocent victim of circumstances beyond its control. And that’s why they want to focus attention on the members of the FOMC quibbling over meaningless technicalities –like non-existent inflation or interest rates–so people think they’re just kind-hearted buffoons who bumbled-along as best as they could. It’s all designed to deflect blame.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying these conversations didn’t happen. They did, at least I think they did. I just think that the revisionist media is being employed to spin the facts in a way that minimizes the culpability of the central bank in its dodgy, collaborationist engineering of the bailouts. (You don’t hear the Times talking about Hank Paulson’s 50 or 60 phone calls to G-Sax headquarters in the week before Lehman kicked the bucket, do you? But, that’s where a real reporter would look for the truth.)

The purpose of the NYT article is to create plausible deniability for the perpetrators of the biggest ripoff in world history, a ripoff which continues to this very day since the same policies are in place, the same thieving fraudsters are being protected from prosecution, and the same boundless chasm of private debt is being concealed through accounting flim-flam to prevent losses to the insatiable bondholders who have the country by the balls and who set policy on everything from capital requirements on complex derivatives to toppling democratically-elected governments in Ukraine. These are the big money guys behind the vacillating-hologram poseurs like Obama and Bernanke, who are nothing more than kowtowing sock puppets who jump whenever they’re told. Here’s more bunkum from the Gray Lady:

 ”By early March, the Fed was moving to replace investors as a source of funding for Wall Street.

Financial firms, particularly in the mortgage business, were beginning to fail because they could not borrow money. Investors had lost confidence in their ability to predict which loans would be repaid. Countrywide Financial, the nation’s largest mortgage lender, sold itself for a relative pittance to Bank of America. Bear Stearns, one of the largest packagers and sellers of mortgage-backed securities, was teetering toward collapse.

On March 7, the Fed offered companies up to $200 billion in funding. Three days later, Mr. Bernanke secured the Fed policy-making committee’s approval to double that amount to $400 billion, telling his colleagues, “We live in a very special time.”

Finally, on March 16, the Fed effectively removed any limit on Wall Street funding even as it arranged the Bear Stearns rescue.” (“Fed Misread Crisis in 2008, Records Show”, New York Times)

This part deserves a little more explanation. The author says “the Fed was moving to replace investors as a source of funding for Wall Street.” Uh, yeah; because the whole flimsy house of cards came crashing down when investors figured out Wall Street was peddling toxic assets. So the money dried up. No one buys crap assets after they find out they’re crap; it’s a simple fact of life. The Times makes this sound like this was some kind of unavoidable natural disaster, like an earthquake or a tornado. It wasn’t. It was a crime, a crime for which no one has been indicted or sent to prison. That might have been worth mentioning, don’t you think?

More from the NYT: “…on March 16, the Fed effectively removed any limit on Wall Street funding even as it arranged the Bear Stearns rescue.”

Yipee! Free money for all the crooks who blew up the financial system and plunged the economy into recession. The Fed assumed blatantly-illegal powers it was never provided under its charter and used them to reward the people who were responsible for the crash, namely, the Fed’s moneybags constituents on Wall Street. It was a straightforward transfer of wealth to the Bank Mafia. Don’t you think the author should have mentioned something about that, just for the sake of context, maybe?

Again, the Times wants us to believe that the men who made these extraordinary decisions were just ordinary guys like you and me trying to muddle through a rough patch doing the best they could.

Right. I mean, c’mon, this is some pretty impressive propaganda, don’t you think? It takes a real talent to come up with this stuff, which is why most of these NYT guys probably got their sheepskin at Harvard or Yale, the establishment’s petri-dish for serial liars.

By September 2008, Bernanke and Paulson knew the game was over. The crisis had been raging for more than a year and the nation’s biggest banks were broke. (Bernanke even admitted as much in testimony before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in 2011 when he said “only one ….out of maybe the 13 of the most important financial institutions in the United States…was not at serious risk of failure within a period of a week or two.” He knew the banks were busted, and so did Paulson.) Their only chance to save their buddies was a Hail Mary pass in the form of Lehman Brothers. In other words, they had to create a “Financial 9-11″, a big enough crisis to blackmail congress into $700 no-strings-attached bailout called the TARP. And it worked too. They pushed Lehman to its death, scared the bejesus out of congress, and walked away with 700 billion smackers for their shifty gangster friends on Wall Street. Chalk up one for Hank and Bennie.

The only good thing to emerge from the Fed’s transcripts is that it proves that the people who’ve been saying all along that Lehman was deliberately snuffed-out in order to swindle money out of congress were right. Here’s how economist Dean Baker summed it up the other day on his blog:

“Gretchen Morgensen (NYT financial reporter) picks up an important point in the Fed transcripts from 2008. The discussion around the decision to allow Lehman to go bankrupt makes it very clear that it was a decision. In other words the Fed did not rescue Lehman because it chose not to.

This is important because the key regulators involved in this decision, Ben Bernanke, Hank Paulson, and Timothy Geithner, have been allowed to rewrite history and claim that they didn’t rescue Lehman because they lacked the legal authority to rescue it. This is transparent tripe, which should be evident to any knowledgeable observer.” (“The Decision to Let Lehman Fail”, Dean Baker, CEPR)

Here’s the quote from Morgenson’s piece to which Baker is alluding:

“In public statements since that time, the Fed has maintained that the government didn’t have the tools to save Lehman. These documents appear to tell a different story. Some comments made at the Sept. 16 meeting, directly after Lehman filed for bankruptcy, indicate that letting Lehman fail was more of a policy decision than a passive one.” (“A New Light on Regulators in the Dark”, Gretchen Morgenson, New York Times)

Ah ha! So it was a planned demolition after all. At least that’s settled.

Here’s something else you’ll want to know: It was always within Bernanke’s power to stop the bank run and end to the panic, but if he relieved the pressure in the markets too soon (he figured), then Congress wouldn’t cave in to his demands and approve the TARP. Because, at the time, a solid majority of Republicans and Democrats in congress were adamantly opposed to the TARP and even voted it down on the first ballot. Here’s a clip from a speech by, Rep Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) in September 2008 which sums up the grassroots opposition to the bailouts:

“The $700 bailout bill is being driven by fear not fact. This is too much money, in too short of time, going to too few people, while too many questions remain unanswered. Why aren’t we having hearings…Why aren’t we considering any other alternatives other than giving $700 billion to Wall Street? Why aren’t we passing new laws to stop the speculation which triggered this? Why aren’t we putting up new regulatory structures to protect the investors? Why aren’t we directly helping homeowners with their debt burdens? Why aren’t we helping American families faced with bankruptcy? Isn’t time for fundamental change to our debt-based monetary system so we can free ourselves from the manipulation of the Federal Reserve and the banks? Is this the US Congress or the Board of Directors of Goldman Sachs?”

But despite overwhelming public resistance, the TARP was pushed through and Wall Street prevailed. mainly by sabotaging the democratic process the way they always do when it doesn’t suit their objectives.)

Of course, as we said earlier, Bernanke never really needed the money from TARP to stop the panic anyway. (Not one penny of the $700 bil was used to shore up the money markets or commercial paper markets where the bank run took place.) All Bernanke needed to do was to provide backstops for those two markets and, Voila, the problem was solved. Here’s Dean Baker with the details:

“Bernanke deliberately misled Congress to help pass the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). He told them that the commercial paper market was shutting down, raising the prospect that most of corporate America would be unable to get the short-term credit needed to meet its payroll and pay other bills. Bernanke neglected to mention that he could singlehandedly keep the commercial paper market operating by setting up a special Fed lending facility for this purpose. He announced the establishment of a lending facility to buy commercial paper the weekend after Congress approved TARP.” (“Ben Bernanke; Wall Street’s Servant”, Dean Baker, Guardian)

So, there you have it. The American people were fleeced in broad daylight by the same dissembling cutthroats the NYT is now trying to characterize as well-meaning bunglers who were just trying to save the country from another Great Depression.

I could be wrong, but I think we’ve reached Peak Propaganda on this one.

(Note: By “good” propaganda, I mean “effective” propaganda. From an ethical point of view, propaganda can never be good because its objective is to intentionally mislead people…..which is bad.)

Foreclosure Filings Jump As Investors Eye Exits

“Speculators may do no harm as bubbles on a steady stream of enterprise. But the position is serious when enterprise becomes the bubble on a whirlpool of speculation. When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done.” – John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

It’s too bad Keynes isn’t around today to see how the toxic combo of financial engineering, central bank liquidity and fraud have transformed the world’s biggest economy into a hobbled, crisis-prone invalid that’s unable to grow without giant doses of zero-rate heroin and mega-leverage crack-cocaine. This is exactly what the British economist warned about more than half a century ago in his magnum opus, “The General Theory…”, that you can’t build a vital, prosperous economy on the ripoff, Ponzi scams of Wall Street charlatans, mountebanks and swindlers. It can’t be done. And, yet– here we are again– in the middle of another historic asset-price bubble conceived and engineered by the bubbleheaded crackpots at the Federal Reserve. Go figure?

Just take a look at housing, which is at the end of an astonishing 18-month run that was entirely precipitated by what?

Higher wages?

Nope.

Lower unemployment?

Wrong again.

Consumer confidence, bigger incomes, credit expansion, growing revenues, pent-up demand?

No, no, no, no and no. Economic fundamentals played no part in the so called housing rebound. In fact–as everyone knows–the economy stinks as bad today as it did 4 years ago when the government number-crunchers announced the end of the recession. The reason prices have been rising is because of the Fed’s loosy-goosey monetary policy (fake rates and QE), inventory suppression, bogus gov mortgage modification programs, and unprecedented speculation. (mainly Private Equity and investors groups) Those are the four legs of the stool propping up housing. Only now it looks like a couple of those legs are in the process of being sawed off which is going to put downward pressure on sales and prices. Take a look at this from DS News:

“A majority of experts surveyed by Zillow and Pulsenomics expect large-scale investors will pull out of the housing market in the next few years…

Out of 110 economists, real estate experts, and investment strategists surveyed in Zillow’s latest Home Value Index, 57 percent said they think institutional investors will work to sell the majority of homes in their portfolios “in the next three to five years.” These investors are largely credited with propping up housing during its recession, helping to keep sales volumes from plummeting too far.

While their withdrawal will most certainly affect today’s still-fragile market—79 percent of those surveyed said the impact would be “significant or somewhat significant” should investor activity curtail this year.”
Experts Predict Level Playing Field as Investors Withdraw, DS News

This is what we were afraid of from the very beginning, that the big PE firms would pack-it-in and move on once they’d made a killing, which they have, since prices soared 12 percent in one year. Now they want to get out while they getting is good, which means that–in some of the hotter markets where investors represented upwards of 50 percent of all purchases–there will have to be a new source of demand. Unfortunately, the demand for housing has never been weaker.

Sales are down, purchase applications are down, and the country’s homeownership rate has slipped to levels not seen since 1995, 18 years ago. The Fed’s $1 trillion purchase of mortgage backed securities (MBS) and zero rates have done nothing to stimulate “organic” consumer demand. Zilch. No “trickle down” at all. All the policy has done is generate a temporary surge of speculation that’s distorted prices and created conditions for another big bust. Get a load of this article from Housing Perspectives:

“Although household growth is the major driver of housing demand, getting an accurate picture of recent trends in this measure is difficult…In its recent release, the HVS reported annual household growth of just 448,800 in 2013. This represents a 48 percent drop in household growth relative to that from 2012 and marked the lowest annual household growth measure since 2008, in the depths of the Great Recession (Figure 1).

Repeat: “…a 48 percent drop in household growth relative to that from 2012 and marked the lowest annual household growth measure since 2008, in the depths of the Great Recession.”

Do you really think there are enough firsttime homebuyers in out there in Mortgageland to fill that gap?

In your dreams! Keep in mind, that a lot of firsttime homebuyers are collage grads who want to start a family and put down roots. Regrettably, nearly half of those potential buyers have been scrubbed from the list due to their burgeoning student loans which now exceed $1 trillion. These kids will probably never own a home, let-alone have a positive impact on sales in 2014. Ain’t gonna happen.

Maybe this is why the banks are suddenly speeding up their foreclosure filings, because they want to offload more of their distressed inventory before prices fall. Is that it? Check out this article on Housingwire:

“Monthly foreclosure filings — including default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions — reversed course and increased 8% to 124,419 in January from December, according to the latest report from RealtyTrac.

This marks the 40th consecutive month where foreclosure activity declined on an annual basis, with filings down 18% from January…

As a whole, 57,259 U.S. properties started the foreclosure process for the first time in January, rising 10% from December…

…this month’s foreclosure starts increased from a year ago in 22 states, including Maryland (up 126%), Connecticut (up 82%), New Jersey (up 79%), California (up 57%), and Pennsylvania (up 39%).

Scheduled foreclosure auctions jumped 13% in January compared to the previous month.”, Housingwire

Like most articles on housing, you have to sift through the bullshit to figure out what’s really going on, but it’s worth the effort. The banks have been dragging their feet for 40 months now, slowing down the foreclosure process (and adding to the shadow supply of distressed homes.) in order to push up prices hoping to ignite another boom. Now–after 3 and a half years of blatant collusion–they’ve done a 180 and started speeding up foreclosures. Why?

It’s because they agree with the above-mentioned “110 economists, real estate experts, and investment strategists” who think that “institutional investors” are going to call-it-quits and move on to greener pastures. That’s going to push down prices, which means they’re going to lose money. So they want to get ahead of the curve and dump more houses on the market before the stampede. That way, they lose less money.

Keep in mind, the banks are up-to-their-eyeballs in distressed inventory. Even conservative estimates of shadow backlog puts the figure of 90-day delinquent or worse, above 3 million homes. But if you review the gloomier prognostications, the sum could easily exceed 6 million homes, enough to suck the entire bleeding banking system into a black hole of insolvency. There was an interesting article on the topic in Bloomberg last week. It seems that, “bond king” Jeffrey Gundlach has been warning mortgage-backed security purchasers that they should to pay more attention to underlying collateral in MBSs (vacant homes, that is) which have been “rotting away” for “six years” or more. Here’s a clip from the article:

“The housing market is softer than people think,” Mr. Gundlach said, pointing to a slowdown in mortgage refinancing, shares of homebuilders that have dropped 13% since reaching a high in May, and the time it’s taking to liquidate defaulted loans…

About 32% of seriously delinquent borrowers, those at least 90 days late, haven’t made a payment in more than four years, up 7% from the beginning of 2012, according to Fitch analyst Sean Nelson.

“These timelines could still increase for another year or so,” Mr. Nelson said, leading to even higher losses because of added legal and tax costs, and a greater potential for properties to deteriorate.”
Gundlach Counting Rotting Homes Makes Subprime Bear, Bloomberg

Let me get this straight: The number of “seriously delinquent borrowers” has actually gone up in the last year? Not only that, but many of these people “haven’t made a payment in more than four years”?

That’s a mighty fine recovery you got there, Mr. Bernanke. Sheesh.

Keep in mind, the backlog of unwanted homes could be a lot bigger than most people think. Way bigger. I was reading an article by Keith Jurow the other day, (“The Coming Mortgage Delinquency Disaster”, Keith Jurow, dshort.com) that paints a pretty grim picture of what is really going on behind the faux inventory numbers. Jurow–who has done extensive research on pre-foreclosure notice filings in New York state– says: “The number of monthly foreclosure filings in Suffolk County on Long Island …(were) more than 180,000 (while) fewer than 1,000 foreclosure filings had been served each month in (the last 4 years). By this calculation, Jurow figures that there should have been 1,192,000 foreclosures in New York state while the actual percentage of homes that have been repossessed remains in the single digits. (Read the whole article here.)

Chew on that for a minute. So, that’s a total of 180,000 homeowners who would have faced foreclosure under normal conditions, while less than 48,000 have actually been foreclosed. That’s 132,000 fewer foreclosures than there should have been IN JUST ONE COUNTY IN ONE STATE ALONE.”

The reason the prodigious shadow stockpile continues to balloon is quite simple, as Jurow points out in his piece: “Servicers do not foreclose on seriously delinquent borrowers throughout the entire NYC metro area. Completed foreclosures have actually declined rather dramatically throughout the nation in the past two years. The difference is that in the NYC metro, the servicers have not been foreclosing since the spring of 2009.”

So, there you have it; the banks haven’t been foreclosing because it hasn’t been in their interest to foreclose. Foreclosure sales push down prices which batters balance sheets and scares shareholders. Who wants that? So the game goes on. Only now, the dynamic is changing. Skittish investors are eyeing the exits, QE is winding down, and housing prices have peaked. The recovery has reached its zenith, which is why the bankers want get off on the top floor before the elevator begins its bumpy descent.

People who are thinking about buying a house in the near future, should watch developments in the market closely and proceed with extreme caution. No one wants to get burned in another bank swindle.

The Bilderberg Plan of Human Deconstruction

I recently interviewed Daniel Estulin the author of what will be the newest best seller,.

Estulin wrote the book based largely on a Bilderberg white paper which was smuggled to him by a Bilderberg insider. The document was filled with information which spelled the end of the human race as we know it.

Hollywood Prepares the American Public for the Inevitable

Hollywood has made millions on movies like The Terminator, Blade Runner, and RoboCob, just to name a few. In fact, Robocop is being re-released in the next several weeks. Estulin states that cyborgs or man-machines are the future in a post-human world. Yes, you read that correctly, we could soon find ourselves living in a post-human world.

You may be familiar with the new TV series on FOX called Almost Human where one of the main characters is a cyborg cop. We could see such an interaction between nonhuman and morphed humans in the near future (i.e. Robocop).

Rules for Thee but Not for Me

In the future of transevolution we will be witnessing a literal fountain of youth, which will result from becoming a cyborg as it will soon be possible to purchase immortality in the future. However, everyone except the super elite will be banned from purchasing this literal fountain of youth.

Your existence, my common brethren, will be similar to what movie goers saw in the Summer of 2013 in the movie, Man of Steel. In the opening 30 minutes of the movie, it was revealed that every resident of Krypton had certain genes “turned on” and certain genes “turned off”. And everyone from Krypton, except for Superman, had been artificially bred for specific purposes. This is what humanity is quickly moving towards and unless you are the elite, you will be bred, dumbed down if needed, to serve a purpose for the global elite.

The Purpose for the Destruction of the Global Economy

Estulin mentioned that the wholesale destruction of the world’s economy is not an accident, nor is it a miscalculation or the result of political shenanigans. This destruction is being done on purpose, absolutely on purpose. Estulin revealed that his Bilderberg insider told him that the slave masters on this planet want to collapse the economy, force people into the stack and pack cities of mega millions and then exterminate most of humanity.

Estulin and I explored the methods that the super elite may use to exterminate 90% of all people on this planet. We both agreed that starvation is the most likely candidate. Starvation is a clean method of killing, it is quick and it would leave the planet in good shape for the global elite to establish their paradise on Earth.

Some of my readers and listeners have asked me about why I am so opposed to Agenda 21 and devote so much time fighting against it? To these and all others, I answer that forcing humanity to forsake rural and suburban living and move into the soon-to-be death traps of these mega cities, is very consistent with the tenets of Agenda 21 (i.e. Earth First).

Monsanto: The Great Satan of Food Production

I recently interviewed my good friend, Barbara Peterson, who presented evidence which demonstrated that the super elite are in the process of attacking not just humans with GMO’s which will eventually kill you, the GMO’s are also sterilizing our food supply. And then, as if by magic, Peterson and I took calls on my show from farmers all across the country, who confirmed the sterilization of both crops and farm animals was well under way.

Let’s give credit where credit is due. Monsanto is not alone in this conspiracy against humanity. In Chapter two of his book, Estulin, details how huge corporations like Monsanto, Cargill, and Archer Daniels are plotting to set up mass starvation on the planet. These corporate names became household names and they have become an “interlocked self perpetuating syndicate that will decide who eats and who doesn’t, who lives and who dies.”

Why are mega corporations, such as these and a small socio-political elite, allowed to own our food and control the very basis of humanity? The simple answer is, because they can.

Studies have shown that rats that are fed with genetically modified organisms (GMO), like potatoes, showed structural changes in their white blood cells making them more vulnerable to infection and disease, which could indicate a greater future risk of developing cancer, when compared to other rats fed non-GMO potatoes. Estulin’s research indicates that GMO food was the creation of the Rockefeller Foundation, who are members of the Bilderberg Group. This all part of the plan for total control of mankind. As an aside, Barbara Peterson noted in my interview with her that McDonalds fries will soon all be made of GMO’s.

Genetic Engineering

Genetic engineering is about taking control of nature, redesigning it and rebuilding it. The phrase “playing God” comes up in almost every conversation about genetic engineering. This is no longer the stuff of science fiction. Nothing good comes from genetic engineering as this generation of children will be the last generation which will be human in the sense that we define humanity today.

Estulin documented how insects are being weaponized for combat through chipping as a result of recent DARPA projects. Humans will soon be chipped, not necessarily for warfare, but for the purpose of transformation into something hideous which will serve the whims of the global elite.

The National Security State

Presently, all the communication happening on the planet right now can be monitored in real time and it is being done to control us, to dumb us down, to brainwash, to influence, and to predict our future behavior. The super elite is doing this so that we don’t get in the way of important people by doing too much thinking on our own. A simple example of this fact is in evidence in an ever-increasing number of airports as facial scanning techniques are designed to reveal to security individuals who are angry, malevolent, etc. This technology is right here, right now!

Estulin mentions Nazi Germany, in his book, numerous times throughout the book, Estulin drew a similarity between the mass control the Nazis had in comparison to the control the super elite has over the human race right now. Presently, America is the 21st century fulfillment of what Hitler, Stalin and Mao as they attempted to initiate their genocidal regimes.

Off World Escape Plan If Things Get Ugly

According to USA Today,

“NASA recently revealed that their Mars robotic rover has found signs that a vast and hospitable lake once spread over the now-desolate surface, a potential home to past life for centuries or more.”

With this new discovery that life may be possible on Mars, the elite could easily, through nanotechnology subsequently build a homestead there! There are many private corporations on the planet who are ready to go to Mars within five years. Some speculate that billionaire, Robert Bigelow, is ready now.

Apparently, if the elite cannot exterminate humanity in the clean and neat ways that they have designed, it may be necessary to temporarily move off world while the job is completed in more “messy” ways. According to some, this is their “Plan B”.

A Cowardly New World

Unlike Huxley, I have seen nothing brave about this new world. Nanotechnology is a powerful new technology for taking apart and reconstructing nature at the atomic level. Scientists are acting like God to manipulate life through the use of this technology. I can only imagine all the horrible things nanotechnology can do to the human race.

Nothing good with regard to nanotechnology can or will come from this blatant insanity. The plans of the global elite constitute an abomination before God.

Right now, the elite are employing their “Promethean plans” which will change the world and will transform the very essence of humanity. Again, this is happening Now!!!

Let’s make no mistake about it, the super elite are attempting to become more powerful than God. The super elite controls the human race in every imaginable possible way. Just the term, “conspiracy theorist”, was invented by the global elite as a marginalizing tool to keep the public from believing in conspiracy theories that will enslave humanity.

Absolutely nothing that happens in our world is an accident; it’s all part of this grand plan. Because of this, there is no hope for humanity if we do not rise up and defeat Agenda 21 and force a change in the leadership of the world, and it must be done RIGHT NOW, before the personal control mechanisms of this new system are locked into place.

My fellow human beings, we do not have five years. You sit idly by on the sidelines at the risk of not only your life but the lives of your children and grandchildren, born or not yet born. Soon, we will be saying “Welcome to Krypton”, as humanity becomes the weak puppets in the theatre of life created by the super elite.

Source: Dave Hodges  |  The Common Sense Show

Government Schools Common Core Indoctrination

Over the last half century, the public school establishment in America has achieved enormous results, if the intention was to dumb down the population. The term public is archaic, since the current age promotes an internationalist interdependency culture, where the state defines institutional roles and sanctions accepted standards. The public plays virtually no effective role in this process. For this reason the proper term to use is government indoctrination centers. Bringing back the McGuffey Readers as the alternative to the state syllabus of common core is a step in the right direction.Our Dysfunctional Public Education Is No Accident essay lays out the correct standard.

“Education needs to be about teaching the tools, methods and process of “How To Think”. The mission of the instructor is one of developing the intuitive nature of inquiry that is natural in every person. Training the intrinsic urge of curiosity as the means of discriminating and rational thought is the prime goal for the educator. But to achieve this level of tutoring the teacher must be founded in their own understand in logic and analytical thinking. In today’s classroom, social engineering has replaced Aristotle, Locke and Kant with the latest celebrity of multiculturalism.”

The Common Core site attempts to outline the purpose and worthiness of their education standards. Sounds like a noble goal; however, what is the reality?

“As a natural outgrowth of meeting the charge to define college and career readiness, the Standards also lay out a vision of what it means to be a literate person in the twenty-first century. Indeed, the skills and understandings students are expected to demonstrate have wide applicability outside the classroom or workplace. Students who meet the Standards readily undertake the close, attentive reading that is at the heart of understanding and enjoying complex works of literature. They habitually perform the critical reading necessary to pick carefully through the staggering amount of information available today in print and digitally. They actively seek the wide, deep, and thoughtful engagement with high-quality literary and informational texts that builds knowledge, enlarges experience, and broadens worldviews. They reflexively demonstrate the cogent reasoning and use of evidence that is essential to both private deliberation and responsible citizenship in a democratic republic. In short, students who meet the Standards develop the skills in reading, writing, speaking, and listening that are the foundation for any creative and purposeful expression in language.”

Dr. Susan Berry presents a wealth of information and resource links in her article, Common Core Rooted In Math Class Social Justice Indoctrination “While proponents of the Common Core claim that the new standards are focused on “college and career readiness,” more evidence is surfacing that a central purpose of the initiative is social justice and income redistribution indoctrination.” This one example sums up the dilemma.

“Radical Math boasts over 700 lesson plans, articles, charts, books, and websites that cover a wide range of socio-political issues including redistribution of wealth, discrimination against the poor by whites, corporations, banks, etc., and the message that widespread racism against blacks continues in the United States today.”

Now compare this critical appraisal to the lofty mission of math back in the Common Core mission statement. How can this statement below square with the above practice?

“For over a decade, research studies of mathematics education in high-performing countries have pointed to the conclusion that the mathematics curriculum in the United States must become substantially more focused and coherent in order to improve mathematics achievement in this country. To deliver on the promise of common standards, the standards must address the problem of a curriculum that is “a mile wide and an inch deep.” These Standards are a substantial answer to that challenge.”

Integration into a 21th century business and social model is the ultimate intent of the common core objective. Nowhere is there a debate of what kind of future mankind wants or the kind of reality that all human beings are intrinsically part of. Those questions require the study in humanity education and liberal arts training that are quite different from the instruction in algorithm programming.

The world view of this common core inculcation presupposes that society accepts their premises as a fait accompli. Their technocrat approach to instruction demands that authentic education must be marginalized if not outright eliminated. The traditional Christian cosmology has no place in this brave new world. In the article, Common Core’s Negative Impact on Education and Biblical Literacy, explains the destructive nature of this dehumanizing standardization.

“The central organizing theme of the Common Core ELA standards is that study of creative literature must be diminished in favor of nonfiction “informational texts.” The idea is that students should be drilled in the types of documents they are more likely to encounter in their entry-level jobs (and make no mistake, Common Core is a workforce-development model, not an education model).

The fundamental problem with the Common Core approach is that, to achieve its job-training goals, it recognizes no difference between one “complex” text and another “complex” text. A great work of literature has value far beyond the complexity of the words used – it allows students to understand the eternal human condition; it allows them to confront human challenges that recur throughout the ages; it teaches empathy, prudence, forgiveness; it transports the readers to places and times not their own. The Common Core ELA standards are, quite simply, indifferent to this type of education. Training, not educating, is their goal. They are not interested in helping students become the people God created them to be; they are interested in creating workers.”

You can just hear the profane condemnation from the American Federation of Teacher and the National Education Association opposing the mere mention of God in their secular temples of perdition. Irony excluded how biblical revelation dare be debated in a non-judgmental culture of relativism. At the heart of the government school establishment is an unending choir of fallen angels that preach their vision of paradise, while demanding ever higher budgets and far greater control over the indoctrination of their impressionable guinea pigs.

America is now a country stuck on stupid, greatly because of this unholy and apocalyptic system that dooms our society. Gee, moving to a common core curriculum has the intent to eliminate the last remnants of independent school boards. Home Schooling is also threatened as the article, What Homeschool Parents Need to Know about the Common Core argues.

“One factor is the century-long effort to nationalize and standardize American education. The standardization efforts have their roots in Dewey, Cubberley, and the schools of education at Stanford and Columbia. They picked up steam in the 1960s and 1970s as the national teachers’ unions gained more power. They strengthened more when President Jimmy Carter fulfilled a promise to the NEA by creating a separate, cabinet-level Department of Education.

The educrats dream of a day when every student in America will receive exactly the same education, using the same textbooks and lesson plans. Those textbooks and lesson plans will, of course, be developed by the best and the brightest, who will pass them down on tablets of stone. The worker bees and drones will be programmed to follow them exactly. This is a nightmare scenario, one which anyone who believes in individual rights, local control, and federalism should oppose at every opportunity. The Common Core Standards become dangerous when they form a stepping stone which helps to move the educrats’ vision forward.”

Top down control always is intended to eradicate the voice of the individual. Under a national coordinated imposition of federal funding, local school districts have become dependent upon the conditional requirements of conformity to keep the money flowing.

So what is the solution? From the Dysfunctional Public Education Is No Accident article.

“Reform is no long possible. A Federal Department of Education hastens central controls for social compliance. At this point, an education free from public schools, has more value than going through the disinformation that is currently being taught. The errors that are learned in childhood are more difficult to overturn, then if they were never acquired in the first place. So what exactly is the advantage in an education under government approved instructors? If you want to reverse the decay in moral aptitude, you must find alternatives for the education of your children.”

Common Core pronouncements sound so nice. In spite of this, the key question is whether their program of study teaches the principles of developing good citizens. Lest we forget, a good citizen is an independent thinking and rationally responsible trained advocate of liberty and moral values. Maintaining and expanding a structure of mindless and obedient state compliance is ridiculous.

Our founding fathers were distinguished, well spoken and skilled in the understanding of human nature. Today’s specimens, hatched from government schools, are chicken-livered dimwits that aspire to the lowest paradigm that a common core can establish. The miserable failure of the taxpayer collective education system is undeniable by any judicious measure. RIP before the entire nation dies.

The Year of Iran: Tehran’s Challenge To American Hegemony In 2014

In 1979, Iran shocked the world—and directly confronted America’s hegemonic ambitions in the Middle East — by charting its own revolutionary course toward participatory Islamist governance and foreign policy independence.  Over the past thirty-five years the Islamic Republic of Iran has held dozens of presidential, parliamentary, and local council elections and attained impressive developmental outcomes—including more progressive results at alleviating poverty, delivering health care, providing educational access, and (yes) expanding opportunities for women than the last shah’s regime ever achieved.  Furthermore, the Islamic Republic has done these things while withstanding significant regional challenges and mounting pressure from the United States and its allies.  Below, Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett suggest that like 1979, 2014 is likely to be, in unique ways, another Year of Iran, when Tehran’s foreign policy strategy will either finally compel Western acceptance of Iran’s sovereign rights—especially to enrich uranium under international safeguards—or fundamentally delegitimise America’s already eroding pretensions to Middle Eastern hegemony.

Hassan Rohani’s election as Iran’s president seven months ago caught most of the West’s self-appointed Iran “experts” by (largely self-generated) surprise.  Over the course of Iran’s month-long presidential campaign,  showed that a Rohani victory was increasingly likely.  Yet Iran specialists at Washington’s leading think tanks continued erroneously insisting (as they had for months before the campaign formally commenced) that Iranians could not be polled like other populations and that there would be “a selection rather than an election,” engineered to install Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s “anointed” candidate—in most versions, former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili.  On election day, as Iranian voters began casting their ballots, the Washington Post proclaimed that Rohani “will not be allowed to win”—a statement reflecting virtual consensus among American pundits.

Of course, this consensus was wrong—as have been most of the consensus judgments on Iran’s politics advanced by Western analysts since the country’s 1979 revolution.  After Rohani’s victory, instead of admitting error, America’s foreign policy elite manufactured two explanations for it.  One was that popular disaffection against the Islamic Republic—supposedly reflected in Iranians’ determination to elect the most change-minded candidate available to them—had exceeded even the capacity of Khamenei and his minions to suppress.  This narrative, however, rests on agenda-driven and false assumptions about who Rohani is and how he won.

“The Islamic Republic aims to replace American hegemony with a more multi-polar distribution of power and influence. It seeks to achieve this by using international law and by leveraging participatory Islamist governance and foreign policy independence to accumulate real “soft power”.”

At sixty-five, Rohani is not out to fundamentally change the Islamic Republic he has worked nearly his entire adult life to build.  The only cleric on the 2013 presidential ballot, Rohani belongs to Iran’s main conservative clerical association, not its reformist antipode.  While he has become the standard bearer for the Islamic Republic’s “modern” (or “pragmatic”) right, with considerable support from the business community, his ties to Khamenei are also strong.  After Rohani stepped down as secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council in 2005, Khamenei made Rohani his personal representative on the Council.

Backing Rohani was thus an unlikely way for Iranian voters to demand radical change, especially when an eminently plausible reformist was on the ballot—Mohammad Reza Aref, a Stanford Ph.D. in electrical engineering who served as one of reformist President Mohammad Khatami’s vice presidents. (Methodologically-sound polls showed that Aref’s support never exceeded single digits; he ultimately withdrew three days before Iranians voted.)  The outcome, moreover, hardly constituted a landslide—not for Rohani and certainly not for reformism: Rohani won by just 261,251 votes over the 50-percent threshold for victory, and the parliament elected just one year before is dominated by conservatives.

The other explanation for Rohani’s success embraced by American elites cites it as proof that U.S.-instigated sanctions are finally “working”—that economic distress caused by sanctions drove Iranians to elect someone inclined to cut concessionary deals with the West.  But  that accurately predicted Rohani’s narrow win also show that sanctions had little to do with it.  Iranians continue to blame the West, not their own government, for sanctions.  And they do not want their leaders to compromise on what they see as their country’s sovereignty and national rights—rights manifest today in Iran’s pursuit of a civil nuclear program.

The Iranian Challenge

Iran’s presidential election and the smooth transfer of office to Rohani from term-limited incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stand out in today’s Middle East.  Compared to Afghanistan, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Palestine, Syria, and Tunisia, the Islamic Republic is actually living up to former U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s description of Iran as “an island of stability” in an increasingly unsettled region.  And compared to some Gulf Arab monarchies, where perpetuation of (at least superficial) stability is purchased by ever increasing domestic expenditures, the Islamic Republic legitimates itself by delivering on the fundamental promise of the revolution that deposed the last shah thirty-five years ago: to replace Western-imposed monarchical rule with an indigenously generated political model integrating participatory politics and elections with principles and institutions of Islamic governance.

“Partnering with Tehran would require Washington and its friends in London and Paris to accept the Islamic Republic as the legitimate government of a fully sovereign state with legitimate interests.”

These strengths have enabled the Islamic Republic to withstand sustained regional and Western pressure, and to pursue a foreign policy strategy likely to reap big payoffs in 2014.  This strategy aims to replace American hegemony, regionally and globally, with a more multi-polar distribution of power and influence.  It seeks to achieve this by using international law and institutions, and by leveraging the Islamic Republic’s model of participatory Islamist governance, domestic development, and foreign policy independence to accumulate real “soft power”—not just with a majority of Iranians living inside their country, but (according to polls) with hundreds of millions of people across the Muslim world and beyond, from Brazil to China and South Africa.  Such soft power was on display, for example, in the last year of Ahmadinejad’s presidency, when, during a trip to China, he won a standing ovation from a large audience at Peking University, where a representative sample of next-generation Chinese elites showed themselves deeply receptive to his call for a more equitable and representative international order.

In the current regional and international context, the West is increasingly challenged to come to terms with the Islamic Republic as an enduring entity representing legitimate national interests.  In Tehran, the United States and its European allies could have a real partner in countering al-Qa’ida-style terrorism and extremism, in consolidating stable and representative political orders in Syria and other Middle Eastern trouble spots, and in resolving the nuclear issue in a way that sets the stage for moving toward an actual WMD-free zone in the region.  But partnering with Tehran would require Washington and its friends in London and Paris to accept the Islamic Republic as the legitimate government of a fully sovereign state with legitimate interests—something that Western powers have refused to accord to any Iranian government for two centuries.

President Obama’s highly public failure to muster political support for military strikes against the Assad government following the use of chemical weapons in Syria on August 21, 2013 has effectively undercut the credibility of U.S. threats to use force against Iran.  On November 24, 2013, this compelled an American administration, for the first time since the January 1981 Algiers Accords that ended the embassy hostage crisis, to reach a major international agreement with Tehran—the interim nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1—largely on Iranian terms.  (For example, the interim nuclear deal effectively negates Western demands—long rejected by Tehran but now enshrined in seven UN Security Council resolutions—that Iran suspend all activities related to uranium enrichment).

But recent Western recognition of reality is still partial and highly tentative.  The United States and its British and French allies continue to deny that Iran has a right to enrich uranium under international safeguards. They also demand that, as part of a final deal, Tehran must shut down its protected enrichment site at Fordo, terminate its work on a new research reactor at Arak, and allow Western powers to micromanage the future development of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.  Such positions are at odds with the language of the interim nuclear deal and of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).  They are also as hubristically delusional as the British government’s use of the Royal Navy to seize tankers carrying Iranian oil on the high seas after a democratically-elected Iranian government nationalised the British oil concession in Iran in 1951—and as London’s continued threat to do so even after the World Court ruled against Britain in the matter.

If Western powers can realign their positions with reality on the nuclear issue and on various regional challenges in the Middle East, Iran can certainly work with that.  But Iranian strategy takes seriously the real prospect that Western powers may not be capable of negotiating a nuclear settlement grounded in the NPT and respectful of the Islamic Republic’s legal rights—just as Britain and the United States were unwilling to respect Iran’s sovereignty over its own natural resources in the early 1950s.  Under such circumstances, more U.S.-instigated secondary sanctions that illegally threaten third countries doing business with Iran will not compel Tehran to surrender its civil nuclear program. Rather, Iran’s approach—including a willingness to conclude what the rest of the world other than America, Britain, France, and Israel would consider a reasonable nuclear deal—seeks to make it easier for countries to rebuild and expand economic ties to the Islamic Republic even if Washington does not lift its own unilaterally-imposed sanctions.

“Continuing hostility toward the Islamic Republic exacerbates America’s inability to deal with popular demands for participatory Islamist governance elsewhere in the Middle East.”

Likewise, Iranian strategy takes seriously the real prospect that Washington cannot disenthrall itself from Obama’s foolish declaration in August 2011 that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must go—and therefore that America cannot contribute constructively to the quest for a political settlement to the Syrian conflict.  If the United States, Britain, and France continue down their current counter-productive path in Syria, Tehran can play off their accumulating policy failures and the deepening illegitimacy of America’s regional posture to advance the Islamic Republic’s strategic position.

How Will the West Respond?

Coming to terms with the Islamic Republic will require the United States to abandon its already eroding pretensions to hegemony in the Middle East.  But, if Washington does not come to terms with the Islamic Republic, it will ultimately be forced to surrender those pretensions, as it was publicly and humiliatingly forced to do in 1979.  Moreover, continuing hostility toward the Islamic Republic exacerbates America’s inability to deal with popular demands for participatory Islamist governance elsewhere in the Middle East.  Less than a month after Rohani’s election, it was widely perceived that the United States tacitly supported a military coup that deposed Egypt’s first democratically elected (and Islamist) government.  The coup in Egypt hardly obviates the fact that, when given the chance, majorities in Middle Eastern Muslim societies reject Western intervention and choose to construct participatory Islamist orders.  Refusing to accept this reality will only accelerate the erosion of U.S. influence in the region.

The United States is not the first imperial power in decline whose foreign policy debate has become increasingly detached from reality—and history suggests that the consequences of such delusion are usually severe.  The time for American elites to wake up to Middle Eastern realities before the United States and its Western allies face severe consequences for their strategic position in this vital part of the world is running out.

About the Authors

Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett are authors of Going to Tehran: America Must Accept the Islamic Republic of Iran (New York: Metropolitan, 2013), which has just been released in paperback, with a new Afterword. They had distinguished careers in the U.S. government before leaving their positions on the National Security Council in March 2003, in disagreement with Middle East policy and the conduct of the war on terror. They teach international relations, he at Penn State, she at American University.

Source: The World Financial Review

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