Orwellian Nightmare: Data-Mining Your Kids

One of the most troubling aspects of the “education reforms” currently being advanced by the Obama administration and its allies is the unprecedented monitoring and tracking of students — invasions of privacy so pervasive George Orwell might blush. Everything from biometric data to information on children’s beliefs and families is already being vacuumed up. Opponents of the “reform” agenda have highlighted the cradle-to-grave accumulation of private and intimate data as among the most compelling reasons to kill the whole process.

Aside from data produced by the looming Common Core-aligned national testing regime, most of the data-mining schemes are not technically direct components of the plot to nationalize education standards. However, the vast collection of personal information and the accompanying data-mining are intricately linked to the federally backed standards in multiple ways, not to mention myriad other federal schemes. Despite protestations to the contrary, the new standards and the data collection go together hand in hand.

Efforts to portray the data gathering via Common Core-aligned testing as a “state-led” plot notwithstanding, the Obama administration is reportedly considering raising phone taxes by executive decree to help subsidize the necessary technology. Why federal tax increases would be needed to pay for education and data-mining schemes that the federal government is supposedly not involved in has not been explained by officials, but experts and analysts say the reason is obvious.

Implementing Intrusions

Already, there are numerous systems being used and deployed across America aimed at compiling unprecedented amounts of data on students. Some are run by private organizations with government assistance; others are operated by authorities directly. All of them are extremely controversial, however, with parents and privacy advocates outraged.

Among the data schemes that have received a great deal of attention in recent months is “inBloom.” As with the new national education standards called Common Core, it is also funded by Bill Gates and the Carnegie Corporation. With at least nine states participating in the $100 million program already, the non-profit entity, which shares data with whomever authorities choose, is quickly gobbling up vast quantities of information.

Respected experts such as attorney Michael Farris, president of ParentalRights.org, pointed out that the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child committee has repeatedly pressured governments to create similar national databases on children, albeit using different pretexts. Even liberals have expressed opposition. “Turning massive amounts of personal data about public school students to a private corporation without any public input is profoundly disturbing and irresponsible,” said New York Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Donna Lieberman, slamming authorities for failing to disclose the scheme or offer parents an opt-out.

In conjunction with inBloom, other systems are being funded and largely directed by the federal government itself. Using the same unconstitutional process as the one used to foist Common Core on state governments — a combination of federal bribes, waivers, and more — the Obama administration all but forced cash-strapped states to start monitoring and tracking student information, or to expand their existing systems.

Previous administrations and U.S. lawmakers also contributed to the problem, with the foundations having been laid dec­ades ago. Before Obama, the Bush-era No Child Left Behind Act, for instance, among myriad other demands, called on states seeking federal funds to create “unique statewide identifiers” for each student. Under Obama, the process has accelerated at an unprecedented rate.

The stimulus-funded “Race to the Top,” a so-called school improvement scheme demanded by Obama, only distributed taxpayer funds to states that agreed to build and expand data systems, with the secretary of education specifically requesting interoperable databases to facilitate the collection and transfer of data. Massive bribes to states from the $50 billion “State Fiscal Stabilization Fund” conditioned on acceptance of Common Core and expanded data tracking, also part of the “stimulus” package, were critical in advancing the plot as well.

Boasting about the “stimulus”-funded coercion of state governments on data regimes during a speech to UNESCO, the deeply controversial UN “education” agency, Education Secretary Arne Duncan lauded the program.

“More robust data systems and a new generation of assessments can assist teachers and principals to improve their practices and tailor their instruction in ways that were largely unthinkable in the past,” Duncan continued. “We have advanced data systems that we are constantly improving.” Duncan wants other governments and the UN to follow the Obama administration’s lead on data gathering, he explained.

The administration helped pay for expanding “state” systems with an eye toward integrating them. Some $315 million in federal grants, for example, were used to bribe state governments and help them comply. However, the specific grant scheme, known as the Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) program, actually began handing out taxpayer money in 2005.

As of 2009, the latest year for which figures are available on the Department of Education’s website, 41 states and Washington, D.C. had been awarded federal SLDS grants to expand their data systems on students. Experts say all 50 states now maintain or are capable of maintaining huge databases on the vast majority of American kids.

According to the Department of Education, the goal of the SLDS grants is to have states “expand their data systems to track students’ achievement from preschool through college.” The Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics offers slightly more detail about the SLDS scheme online: “Through grants and a growing range of services and resources, the program has helped propel the successful design, development, implementation, and expansion of K12 and P-20W (early learning through the workforce) longitudinal data systems,” it explains. “These systems are intended to enhance the ability of States to efficiently and accurately manage, analyze, and use education data, including individual student records.”

Cradle to Career Data Collection

Of course, all of the data collected must be shared with the U.S. Department of Education and other entities within and outside the federal government. Acting unilaterally, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan even purported to overrule federal privacy laws by promulgating new “regulations” gutting the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). Some lawmakers expressed outrage, but the process continues.

“As part of what you described as a ‘cradle to career agenda,’ the Department of Education is aggressively moving to expand data systems that collect information on our nation’s students,” wrote Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.), now chairman of the House Education and Workforce Committee, in an early 2010 letter to Duncan. “The Department’s effort to shepherd states toward the creation of ade facto national student database raises serious legal and prudential questions.”

As Kline points out in the letter, there is good reason to believe that the administration is again flouting federal law. “Congress has never authorized the Department of Education to facilitate the creation of a national student database,” he explained. “To the contrary, Congress explicitly prohibited the ‘development of a nationwide database of personally identifiable information’ … and barred the ‘development, implementation, or maintenance of a Federal database.” Despite no mention of the Constitution, multiple federal statutes are cited in the correspondence.

Apparently, the administration does not take kindly to having its alleged violations of the law exposed. While it couldn’t fire Rep. Kline, the Education Department did reportedly dismiss its top privacy official, then-Family Policy Compliance Office chief Paul Gammill. According to a 2010 report in Inside Higher Ed, Gammill was fired after he “argued in internal meetings and documents that the department’s approach to prodding states to expand their longitudinal student data systems violated the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.” The Education Department refused to comment on the case, though it openly admits that one of the long-term goals of the SLDS program is to “make education data transparent through Federal and public reporting.”

According to the Department of Education, grants awarded to states under the program are aimed at supporting the creation and implementation of systems “that have the capacity to link individual student data across time and across databases” and “promote the linking of data collected or held by various institutions, agencies, and States.” Among the data to be included are the yearly test records of individual students mandated under the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act. “States are encouraged to include additional information in their longitudinal data systems,” the department continued.

In another Education Department document offering “guidance” on the SLDS schemes, further insight is offered into what sort of information authorities are seeking and collecting. Among the “Personally Identifiable Information” outlined in the report: name, parents’ names, address, Social Security number, date of birth, place of birth, mother’s maiden name, and more.

Other private and protected data that might be collected, the document suggests, include the “political affiliations or beliefs of the student or parent; mental and psychological problems of the student or the student’s family, sex behavior or attitudes; illegal, anti-social, self-incriminating, and demeaning behavior; critical appraisals of other individuals with whom respondents have close family relationships; legally recognized privileged or analogous relationships, such as those of lawyers, physicians, and ministers; religious practices, affiliations, or beliefs of the student or the student’s parent; or income.” While the collection of such data in surveys and questionnaires funded by federal tax dollars requires parental consent under federal law, state-level collection does not. Plus, experts say there are numerous other potential loopholes as well.

So Much for Student Privacy

Much of the information vacuumed up at all levels of government already makes its way into a national Department of Education scheme known as “EDFacts.” The department describes it online: “EDFacts is a U.S. Department of Education (ED) initiative to collect, analyze, report on and promote the use of high-quality, kindergarten through grade 12 (K-12) performance data…. EDFacts centralizes data provided by state education agencies, local education agencies and schools.” Under EDFacts, state education agencies submit some 180 data groups. The federal National Center for Education Statistics, meanwhile, describes over 400 data points to be collected.

The U.S. Department of Labor, separately, admits that it is working to “integrate workforce data and create linkages to education data.” According to the department’s “Workforce Data Quality Initiative,” the SLDS will “enable workforce data to be matched with education data to ultimately create longitudinal data systems with individual-level information beginning with pre-kindergarten through post-secondary schooling all the way through entry and sustained participation in the workforce and employment services system.” When combined with information from the IRS, ObamaCare, the NSA, and countless other federal data-collection schemes, the picture that emerges has critics very nervous.

As technology advances, the federal government’s Orwellian data gathering will — without action to stop it — almost certainly expand beyond most people’s wildest nightmares. In fact, it already has. Consider, for example, a February 2013 report by the Department of Education dubbed Promoting Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance: Critical Factors for Success in the 21st Century. Included in the 100-page report is information about technology already being used in an Education Department-funded tutoring program.

“Researchers are exploring how to gather complex affective data and generate meaningful and usable information to feed back to learners, teachers, researchers, and the technology itself,” the report explains. “Connections to neuroscience are also beginning to emerge.” (Emphasis added.) The technological tools already being used by federally funded education schemes to probe students’ minds and “measure” the children include, as described in the report, “four parallel streams of affective sensors.”

Among the devices in use today through a federally funded tutoring scheme is a “facial expression camera” used to “detect emotion” and “capture facial expressions.” According to the report, the camera is linked to software that “extracts geometric properties on faces.” There is also a “posture analysis seat” and a “pressure mouse.” Finally, the report describes a “wireless skin conductance sensor” strapped to students’ wrists. The sensors collect “physiological response data from a biofeedback apparatus that measures blood volume, pulse, and galvanic skin response to examine student frustration.” Again, these systems are already being used in government-funded programs, and with technology racing ahead, developments are expected to become increasingly troubling.

Another Education Department report, entitled Enhancing, Teaching and Learning Through Educational Data Mining and Learning Analytics, acknowledges similarly alarming schemes. “A student learning database (or other big data repository) stores time-stamped student input and behaviors captured as students work within the system,” it notes. “A predictive model combines demographic data (from an external student information system) and learning/behavior data from the student learning database to track a student’s progress and make predictions about his or her future behaviors or performance.” (Emphasis added.)

All across the country today, Big Brother-like technological developments in biometrics are also making schools increasingly Orwellian. Earlier this year in Polk County, Florida, for example, students’ irises were scanned without parental consent. “It simply takes a picture of the iris, which is unique to every individual,” wrote the school board’s “senior director of support services” in a letter to parents. “With this program, we will be able to identify when and where a student gets on the bus, when they arrive at their school location, when and what bus the student boards and disembarks in the afternoon. This is an effort to further enhance the safety of our students. The EyeSwipe-Nano is an ideal replacement for the card based system since your child will not have to be responsible for carrying an identification card.”

In San Antonio, Texas, meanwhile, a female student made national news — and exposed what was going on — when she got in a legal battle with school officials over her refusal to wear a mandatory radio-frequency identification (RFID) device. The same devices are already being implanted under people’s skin in America and abroad — albeit voluntarily. Also in the biometric field, since at least 2007, children in states like Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and New Jersey have been fingerprinted at school under the guise of “school lunch” programs and other pretexts.

Despite fierce opposition, the trend toward using biometric data to identify and track students while collecting unimaginable amounts of information is accelerating. The federal government is helping lead the way toward abolishing any vestiges of privacy, and aside from NSA spying on virtually everyone, students appear to be among the primary targets. Without major resistance, experts predict that someday — perhaps even in the very near future — biometric identification will become ubiquitous. Combined with all of the other data being collected, the federal government may finally achieve what was sought by tyrants throughout history: detailed 24/7 information on everything, about everyone.

Source: Alex Newman | The New American

The Gods of War: Don’t Believe The Hype

The US empire’s illusion of benign omnipotence has been broken by the heroic acts of Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden writes Neil Harrison…

The grotesque climax to the manifest destiny dream. Invisible in the sky, malevolent and capricious, an Old Testament-style god rains arbitrary, brutal fate upon unsuspecting civilians.

On that Baghdad street, on that day, god existed. The Reuters journalist and his driver, gunned down for carrying an extended camera lens; the father killed taking his children to school; his children – injured and forced to witness their father’s abject death. For all of these people and more, god existed that day and his name was America.

Of course, this was the footage which finally convinced the troubled Private Bradley Manning to begin a campaign of, in his own words, “shattering the fantasy.” Thanks to Manning, no serious observer of this video, or of USA foreign policy in general, could now continue to indulge in the fantasy of America as the world’s friendly policeman, not without excercising some serious double-think. Especially not while listening to the Apache helicopter’s crew gloat and laugh as they kill and maim innocents (it somehow gets worse the more you see it).

 

Arguably, the video was the most important thing that Bradley Manning leaked before his arrest and incarceration. Footage of other Apache helicopter attacks in Iraq were already available on Youtube, transcripts from the attack had already been printed elsewhere in a book and the world already knew that the Reuters journalists had been killed by American forces, but images and sounds have a visceral impact which mere words often lack. A worldwide, large-scale audience was, for this particular video, guaranteed by the involvement of Wikileaks – Julian Assange’s flair for understated drama publicly piled up embarassment for the US military. Headline status meant that millions could now no longer continue with the ‘fantasy’ anymore than they could ‘unsee’ the footage. Therefore, by the time Manning’s subsequent leaks (including the war logs and the notorious diplomatic cables) came to light, they were being registered by a global public already primed with enlightened eyes and a deep sense of scepticism.

The convergence of a multitude of factors provided Manning with motive and opportunity to inflict one of the biggest clusterfucks in the American god-machine’s history of propaganda war- US government paranoia post 9/11 meant that, due to their insistence on inter-department ‘sharing,’ anyone with clearance could access virtually all government information. Manning’s genius with computers allowed him to trawl for his quarry with ease. Moreover, he felt desperately isolated. In the Mesopotamian desert, thousands of miles from home, among unsympathetic colleagues – it was far from the perfect situation for a very young man suffering deep personal turmoil. Most importantly of all, however, and the thing we should remember above all else, is that Private Bradley Manning cared.

He cared that he may have been complicit in a regime which employed (or contracted out) torture, “I was actively involved in something that I was completely against…” He cared that his fellow Americans were deliberately being kept ignorant of the true nature of their government’s foreign policy, “I want people to see the truth…without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public.” Manning cared enough to risk pissing off a god.

As this week’s verdict of  (though, symbolically, not ‘aiding the enemy,’ which begs the question – if no ‘enemy’ was ‘aided’ where the hell is the crime?) could potentially result in over 130 years jail time for him, and bearing in mind the dreadful incarceration he has already endured, this god is at pains to ensure few follow suit.

The American god-machine sent its son to the Middle-east. Once there, he made a stand for truth and human compassion. For his sacrifice he is now being symbolically martyred. Does this sound familiar? You would be forgiven for finding these comparisons somewhat contrived (put it down to artistic licence). However, before dismissing the notion entirely, consider a couple of further examples.

Firstly, thanks to the actions of another brave whistleblower, Edward Snowden, we now know something of American pretensions to omnipotence. America’s National Security Agency, it is becoming ever more apparent, are now able to read private emails and listen in on telephone conversations not only in the US. but across the globe. For reasons of security, in order to protect you, the NSA needs to be able to hear your weekly takeaway order. America-god knows your favourite pizza toppings. Feel safer?

Finally, there exists the reality of ritual appeasement. In Slavoj Zizek’s The Year of Dreaming Dangerously, he describes how the US must:

‘…suck up a daily influx of one billion dollars from other nations to pay for its consumption and is, as such, the universal Keynesian consumer that keeps the world economy running. (So much for the anti-Keynesian economic ideology that seems to predominate today!) This influx, which is effectively like the tithe paid to Rome in antiquity (or the gifts sacrificed to the Minotaur by the Ancient Greeks), relies on a complex economic mechanism: the US is “trusted” as the safe and stable center, so that all the others, from the oil-producing Arab countries to Western Europe and Japan, and now even the Chinese, invest their surplus profits in the US. Since this trust is primarily ideological and military, not economic, the problem for the US is how to justify its imperial role – it needs a permanent state of war, thus the “war on terror,” offering itself as the universal protector of all other “normal” (not “rogue”) states.’[1]

Herein lies the truth of the matter. America is not a god, it simply wears this diguise of ‘justification,’ therefore maintaining the inflated faux-capacity, to attempt to behave like one. In truth, the US is becoming increasingly desperate to appease and control its own economic god.

But who benefits from this global arrangement? The American people? Maybe we should ask the citizens of Detroit that one?

If we in the ‘liberal’ West really are benefitting from this international tithe-paying/war-making economic regime, then at least now, thanks to Manning and Snowden, we can appreciate the true cost it incurs. Perhaps we may yet glimpse our own future therein, because the only people who have ever genuinely benefitted, who will ever benefit, from the system Zizek describes, are in a tiny and exclusive minority. In the words of Allen Ginsberg, they are:

The Secret,

The Drunk,

The Brutal,

The Dirty Rich.

Describing the way in which “emancipatory politics,” such as socialism or feminism, work “by reaching for a future,” Terry Eagleton invokes [2] a useful image:

“[They insert] the thin end of the wedge of the future into the heart of the present. They represent a bridge between present and future , a point where the two intersect.”

This is exactly what Manning and Snowden have achieved. They have given us a brief view of a future in which no state can be unaccountable for its actions, however clandestine, however obscure its motives – not even the most powerful on Earth.

Our immediate task for the future is to continue forcing the ‘wedge,’ to ensure that the illusion continues to be shattered. Let no motive of those who would make war go uninterogated. Let no action of those who hoard wealth at the expense of the pain, suffering and even the lives of others go unchallenged. This is how best to honour the bravery and sacrifices of Manning, Snowden and others like them. This is how we will display our solidarity with them as they face uncertain futures. This is how we will consign the gods to history.

Notes

[1] Slavoj Zizek, The Year of Dreaming Dangerously, p. 10

[2] Terry Eagleton, Why Marx Was Right p. 69

Source: Counterfire

The Zionist-Nazi Collaboration

The fact that the initiation of the Zionist project had nothing to do with the Holocaust, as it developed more than a half century earlier, and the fact of the mostly indifference to the slaughter of Jews on the part of the founders of Israel, together with its collaboration with the Nazi Party, undermines Israel’s projected, and exploited, image as innocent victim.

Both Nazism and Zionism arose in tandem from small insignificant social movements in the early part of the 20th century, arguing, with equal force, that Jews were an alien and indigestible mass living in the midst of an otherwise pure Aryan population. Both movements contributed to the more general acceptance of this argument in Europe, and particularly in Germany, as mid-century approached, and both have to be responsible for the consequences.

In 1896, journalist Theodore Herzl’s book, Der Judenstaat (The Jews’ State), Herzl expressed his understanding of inevitability, permanence, and omnipresence of anti-Semitism and argued that the only solution was a separate state for Jews.  Herzl stated, in his book:

The Jewish question exists wherever Jews live in perceptable numbers. Where it does not exist, it is carried by Jews in the course of their migrations. We naturally move to those places where we are not persecuted, and there our presence produces persecution. …¹

In 1912, Chaim Weizman, Israel’s first president, and the Zionist advocate who had the most to do with lobbying the British for the Balfour Declaration of 1917, echoed this view, speaking to a Berlin audience:

… each country can absorb only a limited number of Jews, if she doesn’t want disorder in her stomach. Germany already has too many Jews.²

 

Chaim Weizman

Reflecting in 1949 in his autobiography, Trial and Error, Weizmann wrote:

Whenever the quantity of Jews in any country reaches the saturation point, that country reacts against them …

Weizmann, the chemist, invoking a metaphor from the sciences, added:

… the determining factor in this matter is not the is solubility of Jews, but the solvent power of the country. …

This cannot be looked upon as anti-Semitism in the ordinary or vulger sense of that word;

it is a universal social and economic concomitant of Jewish immigration, and we cannot shake it off …³

Ben Frommer, an American Revisionist, stated in 1935:

No matter what country he inhabits … [it] is not of the [his] tribal origins. … Consequently, the Jew’s attempt at complete identity with his country sounds spurious; his patriotism despite his vociferousness [sounds] hollow even to himself; and therefore his demand for complete equality with those who are of the essence of the nation naturally creates friction. This explains the intolerance of the Germans, Austrians, Poles and the increasing tide of antagonism in most European countries … It is presumptuous on the part of a Jew to demand that he be treated as lovingly as say a Teuton in a Teutonic country or a Pole in a Polish country. He must jealously guard his life and liberty, but he must candidly recognize that he does not ‘belong‘. The liberal fiction of perfect equality is doomed because is was unnatural. [Italics mine]⁴

Indeed, in 1925, Jacob Klatzkin, the co-editor of the massive Encyclopedia Judaica, wrote:

If our people is deserving and willing to live its own national life, then it is an alien body that insists on its own distinctive identity, reducing the domain of their life. It is right therefore, that they should fight against us for their national integrity … Instead of establishing societies for defense against the anti-Semites, who want to reduce our rights, we should establish societies for defense against our friends who desire to defend our rights.⁵

The understanding of Herzl, as well as the Zionists, about the inevitability of anti-Semitism was possibly self-fulfilling, for rather than opposing anti-Semitism in the first half of the 20th century, the Zionists found common cause with Hitler, Eichmann, and the Nazis and used anti-Semitism and Nazism as a means of achieving their end which was the establishment of a Jewish state. The two reactionary movements shared the view that German Jews were living in that country as a ‘foreign race’ and that the racial divide was essential to maintain. The Zionists’ use of Nazism involved, among other things, the blocking of avenues of escape to other countries of Europe’s Jews and diverting them to Palestine, even as the death trains began to roll in Europe. The rise of Nazism and Hitler to power was never, or almost never, opposed by the Zionists prior to the establishment of Israel.

Thus, in an article by Siegfried Moses, which appeared in the Rundschau, the official newspaper of the German Zionist Federation, and later, its head, stated:

… it is true that the defense against anti-Semitism is not our main task, it does not concern us to the same extent and is not of the same importance for us as is the work for Palestine …⁶

 

Rabbi Stephen S Wise

In 1934, Stephen Wise, head of the American Jewish Congress said:

… I cannot be indifferent to the Galuth [the Jewish diaspora living outside of Palestine] … if I had to choose between Eretz Israel and its upbuilding and the defense of the Galuth, I would say that then the Galuth must perish.⁷

On October 2, 1937, two SS officers, Herbert Hagen and Adolf Eichmann, disembarked in Haifa and were met by the Gestapo’s agent in Palestine, Fritz Reichert, and later in the day, Fevel Polkes, a Haganah agent, who showed the Nazi officials Haifa from Mt Carmel and then visited a kibbutz. Some years later, when Eichmann was hiding in Argentina, he taped a story of his excursion to Palestine, stating:

I did see enough to be very impressed with the way the Jewish colonists were building up their land. … In the years that followed I often said to Jews with whom I had dealings that had I been a Jew, I would have been a fanatical Zionist.⁸

 

Adolf Eichmann;

Eichmann had read Herzl’s book, Der Judenstaat, and also studied Hebrew.  In their trip report, the two SS officers paraphrased Polkes’s message to them:

The Zionist state must be established by all means and as soon as possible. … When the Jewish state is established according to the current proposals laid down in the Peel paper, and in line with England’s partial promises, then the borders may be pushed further outwards according to one wished.⁹

… in Jewish nationalist circles people were very pleased with the radical German policy, since the strength of the Jewish population in Palestine would be so far increased thereby that in the foreseeable future the Jews could reckon upon numerical superiority over the Arabs in Palestine.¹⁰

During his February trip to Berlin, Polkes proposed that the Haganah act as spies for the Nazi government and, as a sign of good faith, passed on intelligence information which was detrimental to their mutual enemies, the Communists.  History might have been very different had the Zionist component of Jewry opposed Nazism; there might never have been a Holocaust. And there might never have been a state of Israel, as some Zionists well understood.

Lenni Brenner puts it:

… of all of the active Jewish opponents of the boycott idea [of Nazi Germany], the most important was the world Zionists Organization (WZO). It not only bought German wares; it sold them, and even sought out new customers for Hitler and his industrialist backers.

The WZO saw Hitler’s victory in much the same way as its German affiliate, the ZVfD [the German Zionist Organization]: not primarily as a defeat for all Jewry, but as positive proof of the bankruptcy of assimilation and liberalism.¹¹

Here Brenner is referring to the so-called Ha’avara agreement, or ‘transfer agreement’.

In 1933, Sam Cohen, owner of a citrus export company in Tel Aviv, approached the German government with the proposal that emigrants from Germany could avoid the flight tax by instead purchasing German products, which would then be shipped to Palestine, along with their purchasers, where the new arrivals in Palestine could then redeem their investments after the sale of the products by import merchants.

Heinrich Wolff, the German Consul in Jerusalem, quickly realized the utility of such an arrangement in tamping the international boycott effort of German import goods. He wrote to Berlin:

Whereas in April and May the Yishuv [the European Jewish community in Palestine] was waiting boycott instructions from the United States, it now seems that the situation has been transformed. It is Palestine which now gives the instructions… It is important to break the boycott first and foremost in Palestine, and the effect will inevitably be felt on the main front, in the United States.¹²

Cohen had promised Heinrich Wolff that he would work behind the scenes at the forthcoming Jewish conference in London to weaken or defeat any boycott resolution.

Dr Fritz Reichert, the Gestapo’s agent in Palestine, later wrote to his headquarters:

The London Boycott Conference was torpedoed from Tel Aviv because the head of the Transfer in Palestine, in close contact with the consulate in Jerusalem, sent cables to London. Our main function here is to prevent, from Palestine, the unification of world Jewry on a basis hostile to Germany … It is advisable to damage the political and economic strength of Jewry by sowing dissention in its ranks.¹²

Negotiations with the Nazi government were taken over by the World Zionist Organization and Cohen was replaced by Chaim Arlosoroff, the Political Secretary of the Jewish Agency. Arlosoroff traveled to Berlin in May of 1933. He and the Nazis reached a preliminary understanding to continue Cohen’s arrangement. Arlosoroff returned to Tel Aviv where he was assassinated, most probably by some members of the Revisionist wing of Zionism headed by Jabotinsky who opposed any accommodation with the Nazis.

Negotiations continued, however, and an agreement was signed in 1933 between the Nazis and the World Zionist Organization which persisted until 1939 and the German invasion of Poland. The Ha’arava grew to become a substantial banking and trading house with 137 specialists in its Jerusalem office at the height of its activities. The sale of German products expanded to include destinations outside of Palestine, but the arrangement remained essentially the same as the one originally negotiated by Sam Cohen – that German Jews wishing to emigrate, rather giving up most or all of their wealth to the German government, could invest their money in a German bank which would be used for purchasing German export goods. The purchaser could then redeem his investment when the goods had been sold and after he had arrived in Palestine. The German government set the rules and the emigrant would lose typically in excess of 30% of his investment and, eventually, 50%.

Indeed, there was a fundamental incompatibility with the upbuilding of a Jewish state in Palestine and opposition to the Nazi program of extermination of Europe’s Jews. The Ha’avara agreement allowed the transfer of LP 8,100,000 (Palestinian Pounds; then $40,419,000) to Palestine along with 60,000 German Jews between 1933 and 1939. But it also had the effect of undercutting the international boycott effort and providing an inflow of capital to the German government owing to the sale of German manufactured goods abroad.

This understanding is important, as the Holocaust has been central in provoking sympathy for the State of Israel and in amplifying the claims for reparations from European governments. Sympathy for the victims of the Holocaust, whether Jews or Roma, is no less justified, but the state of Israel cannot maintain an air of complete innocence nor be the justified recipient of billions of dollars or reparations, very little of which is actually dispersed to Holocaust survivors.

Nor has Israel accepted the universal principle that states must pay reparations to ethnicities whom it has harmed, as Israel has ignored or denied the catastrophe of ethnic cleansing and massacres which it prosecuted against the Palestinian people in 1948.

The model of Jews fleeing a burning building; i.e., the Nazi Holocaust, and thus creating a redoubt of safety in the form of the state of Israel cannot be maintained. Aside from the fact that the Zionist project was initiated at least by the time of Herzl’s Der Judenstaat of 1896 and his founding of the World Zionist Congress a year later, and well before the Nazi ascension to power in the 1930s, the Zionists were little concerned with the slaughter of Jews in Europe and almost exclusively focused on building a state in Palestine.

 

Delegates at First Zionist Congress.

 

A proposal by the British, in the aftermath of Kristallnacht, of November 1938, that Britain admit a thousand children directly into Britain was sternly opposed by Ben Gurion who told a meeting of the Labor Zionist in December:

If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England, and only half of them by transferring them to Eretz Israel, then I would opt for the second alternative. For we must weigh not only the life of these children, but also the history of the People of Israel.¹³

By 1943, ample reports of massacres of Europe’s Jews were arriving in the US, though it garnered little of the mainstream press.

Jabotinsky’s “revisionist zionism”At this time, Peter Bergson, a Palestinian Jew and member of the Irgun, a militant offspring of the Revisionist Zionists, and his young colleagues, shifted their attention to saving Europe’s Jews. Bergson, who had been sent to New York City, by Revisionists leader, Jaobtinsky, in order to create American support of the establishment of a Jewish army in Palestine, and his colleagues formed the Emergency Committee to Save Europe’s Jews and initiated it with a conference attended by 1500 delegates including former President Herbert Hoover and New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. The delegates ultimately adopted an eight-point rescue program, the primary feature of which was the creation of a US government agency charged with saving Europe’s Jews. They also called for their allies to immediately attack the concentration camps and bomb railroads lines leading to them.

The conference’s program sought to avoid the issue of a Jewish state in Palestine, preferring to leave that to another day. Indeed, the efforts of Bergson were perceived by the American Jewish organizations, and especially by Rabbi Stephen Wise, head of the American Jewish Conference, as an effort to divert energy and attention away from Zionism and the upbuilding of a Jewish state in Palestine.

Bergson’s group sponsored full page advertisements in the New York Timesand other newspapers with such bold headlines as, “HELP Prevent 4,000,000 People from Becoming Ghosts.” Another read, “THIS IS STRICTLY A RACE AGAINST DEATH.”

The Emergency Committee also organized public events and rallies and a march by 450 Orthodox rabbis to the White House and the US Capitol. They also staged a theatrical production, entitled, We Will Never Die, authored by Academy Award winning screen writer Ben Hecht and included actors such as Edward G. Robinson with music written by Bertoldt Brecht. The play chronicled the contributions of Jews and addressed the current situation of Europe’s Jews.

The production played to 40,000 in Madison Square Garden and, in Washington, was viewed by Eleanor Roosevelt and hundreds of members of Congress.

Though the Emergency Committee had raised the consciousness of Americans for the plight of Europe’s Jews, their efforts were strongly opposed by America’s organized Jewish groups including Rabbi Stephen Wise and his American Jewish Congress.

In Buffalo, Baltimore, and Pittsburgh, local mainstream Jewish organizations attempted to block the production of We Will Never Die.

Most significant of the Emergency Committees’ actions was to provoke the sponsorship of a resolution, introduced in the House by Baldwin and Will Rogers Jr., and in the Senate by Guy Gillette, on November 9, 1943.

The full text follows:

Whereas the Congress of the United States, by concurrent resolution adopted on March 15 of this year, expressed its condemnation of Nazi Germany’s ‘mass murder of Jewish men, women, and children,’ a mass crime which has already exterminated close to two million human beings, about 30 per centum of the total Jewish population of Europe, and which is growing in intensity as Germany approaches defeat; and

Whereas the American tradition of justice and humanity dictates that all possible means be employed to save from this fate the surviving Jews of Europe, some four million souls who have been rendered homeless and destitute by the Nazis: therefore be it

Resolved, That the House of Representatives recommends and urges the creation by the President of a commission of diplomatic, economic, and military experts to formulate and effectuate a plan of immediate action designed to save the surviving Jewish people of Europe from extinction at the hands of Nazi Germany.

Senator Gillette emphasized that the bill focused only on rescue and not on the issue of Palestine or a Jewish state.

It is not to be confused with the dispute over the future of Palestine, over a Jewish state or a Jewish army. The issue is non-sectarian. The sole object here is to rescue as many as possible of Hitler’s victims, pending complete Allied victory.

Stephen Wise tried unsuccessfully to persuade the sponsors of the bill to withdraw their support. But failing that, Wise traveled to Washington and testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, chaired by Sol Bloom, stating that the resolution was ‘“inadequate” because it did not urge the British government to open Palestine to Jewish refugees” [italics mine].¹⁴

The lack of a reference to Palestine was, of course, intentionally absent from the bill.

Congressman Rogers also faced strong pressure from Zionists groups:

When it became known that I was becoming a member of the Bergson group, there was a terrific amount of pressure from all sorts of areas. I went back to Beverly Hills and I remember meeting with Rabbi Stephen S Wise in a synagogue. … He took me aside and said, ‘Now, young man. I knew your father very well. Now you are getting confused, you are getting mixed up with the wrong type of people. Let me tell you and steer you clear when it comes on, or want to meet the right people, the responsible people.’ He was quite the diplomat. He didn’t say, ‘If you get mixed up with them, you are not going to be reelected.’ He wasn’t that direct, but he made every pressure that he could, and where he know it would be effective.¹⁵

Gillette also faced strong opposition.

These people used every effort, every means at their disposal, to block the resolution. … [They] tried to defeat it by offering and amendment, insisting on an amendment to it that would raise the question, the controversial question of Zionism or anti-Zionism … or anything that might stop or block the action that we were seeking.¹⁵

On stationary with the letterhead of the American Jewish Congress, Stephen Wise wrote to Secretary of the Interior, Harold L. Ickles on December 23, 1943:

I was very sorry to note, as were others among your friends, that you had accepted the Chairmanship of the Washington Division of the Committee to Rescue European Jews. … I do not like to speak ill of you, not of us, concerning a group of Jews, but I am under the inexorable necessity of saying to you that the time will come, and come soon, when you will find it necessary to withdraw from this irresponsible group, which exists and obtains funds through being permitted to use the names of non-Jews like yourself.

Nor was Bergson beyond the crosshairs of the American Zionists. Bergson received an offer from Congressman Samuel Dickstein (D-NY) to meet with him in his DC office where it turned out that several other US Congressmen had also assembled. He was told, as paraphrased by Bergson, that unless he ‘behaved”, “we will deport you. … One shouldn’t mistake democracy with lawlessness, and don’t feel that you can just come to this country without – on temporary visitor’s visa and do whatever you wish …”¹⁵

Despite the opposition of the American Zionist community, the bill passed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee unanimously only to die in the entire Senate.

According to a State Department memorandum, Rabbi Stephen Wise had expressed to State Department John Pehle, that Wise “had gone so far as to inform Mr Pehle that he regarded Bergson as equally great an enemy of the Jews as Hitler, for reasons that his activities could only lead to increased anti-Semitism.”¹¹

Reports of atrocities and mass murders in the Ukraine began arriving in the west in 1941. In January 1942, the Soviets issued a report of the working of the Einsatzgruppen, or the SS, and in May of that year, the Bund, the Jewish Workers Union of Poland and Russia, which was anti-Zionist, sent London a radio message that 700,000 people, most Jews, were exterminated in Poland. This message was repeated on the BBC two months later.

In April, even before the Bund broadcast, Moshe Shertok, later to become Israel’s second Prime Minister, wrote to British General and commander of the British Eight Army in North Africa:

The destruction of the Jewish race is a fundamental tenet of the Nazi doctrine. The authoritative reports recently published show that that policy is being carried out with a ruthlessness which defies description … An even swifter destruction, it must be feared, would overtake the Jews of Palestine.¹⁶

The focus here is on the hypothetical Nazi attack on Palestine, not on the slaughter actually taking place in Europe, but based, nonetheless, on Shertok’s understanding that such a slaughter was, in fact, taking place.

Despite the amply sufficient reports of massacres and exterminations, essentially nothing at all was done by the Zionist organizations, and reports of atrocities were consistently minimized.

 

Bernard Joseph (later Dov Yosef)

Dov Joseph, acting director of the Jewish Agency’s Political Department cautioned:

… against publishing data exaggerating the number of Jewish victim, for if we announce that millions of Jews have been slaughtered by the Nazis, we will justifiably be asked where the millions of Jews are, for whom we claim that we shall need to provide a home in Eretz Israel after the war ends.¹⁷

Yitzhak Gruenbaum, leader of the Jewish Agency’s Vaad Hazalah (Rescue Committee) who, in 1942 also believed the reports of atrocities taking place in Europe were exaggerated, offers a defense in his post war book, Bi-mei Hurban ve Sho’ah (In the Days of Holocaust and Destruction):

I want to destroy this assumption [that the Zionist leadership was to blame that it did not do everything possible to help the European Jews] in order to take out people from the occupied countries … it would be necessary for the neutral countries to provide refuge, that the warring nations open their gates to the refugees. …

How is it possible that in a meeting in Yerushalayim people will call: “If you don’t have enough money you should take it from Keren Hayesod [the Palestine Foundation Fund], you should take the money from the bank, there is money there.” I thought it obligatory to stand before this wave … .

And this time in Eretz Yisrael, there are comments: “Don’t put Eretz Yisrael in priority in this difficult time, in the time of destruction and European Jewry.’ I do not accept such sayings. And when some asked me: ‘Can’t you give money from the Keren Hayesod to save Jews in the Diaspora’? I said: no! And again I say no! … I think we have to stand before this wave that is putting Zionist activity into second row. …  I think it necessary to say here Zionism is over everything… [Italics mine]

… [W]e must guard Zionism. There are those who feel that this should not be said at the time a Holocaust is occurring, but believe me, lately we see worrisome manifestations in this respect: Zionism is above all – it is necessary to sound this whenever a Holocaust diverts us from our war of liberation in Zionism. Our war of liberation does not arise from the fact of the Holocaust in a straight forward manner and does not interlock with actions for the benefit of the Diaspora … And we must guard – especially in these times – the supremacy of the war of redemption [Italics mine].¹⁸

The irony is overwhelming. Though the memory and imagery of the Holocaust is not far from the lips of every Israel leader, particularly the present one, and though this imagery is exploited for the sake of gaining tolerance and forbearance from the international community, as well as reparations which go well beyond actuarial merits, there was little serious concern on the part of organized Zionism for those facing extermination in Europe. Rather the Holocaust was regarded as a threat which had the potential of diverting energy and resources from the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine which was by far their highest priority.

The fact that the initiation of the Zionist project had nothing to do with the Holocaust, as it developed more than a half century earlier, and the fact of the mostly indifference to the slaughter of Jews on the part of the founders of Israel, together with its collaboration with the Nazi Party, undermines Israel’s projected, and exploited, image as innocent victim.

At the end of the war a document, dated 11 January 1941, produced by Avraham Stern, proposing a military alliance and an understanding between the Third Reich and the Zionists was found in the German embassy in Ankara. It had been presented to two German diplomats in Lebanon, under Vichy at that time. The document was entitled, “Proposal for the National Military Organization (Irgun Zvai Leumi) Concerning the Solution of the Jewish Question in Europe and the Participation of the NMO in the War on the side of Germany.” The NMO, later to adopt the name Lohamamei Herut Yisrael, or lehi for short, was universally known by its British designation as the Stern gang.

The document read:

The evacuation of the Jewish masses from Europe is a precondition for solving the Jewish question; but this can only be made possible and complete through the settlement of these masses in the home of the Jewish people, Palestine, and through the establishment of a Jewish state in its historical boundaries …  The NMO, which is well acquainted with the goodwill of the German Reich government and its authorities towards Zionist activity inside Germany and towards Zionist emigration plans, is of the opinion that:

1. Common interests could exist between the establishment of a New Order in Europe in conformity with the German concept, and the true national aspirations of the Jewish people as they are embodied by the NMO.

2. Cooperation between the new Germany and a renewed volkish-national Hebrium would be possible; and,

3. The establishment of the historical Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis, and bound by a treaty with the German Reich, would be in the interest of a maintained and strengthened future German position of power in the Near East.

Proceeding from these considerations, the NMO in Palestine, under the condition the above-mentioned national aspirations of the Israeli freedom movement, are recognized on the side of the German Reich, offers to actively take part in the war on Germany’s side [italics mine].

This offer by the NMO … would be connected to the military training and organization of Jewish manpower in Europe, under the leadership and command of the NMO. These military units would take part in the fight to conquer Palestine, should such a front be decided upon.

The indirect participation of the Israeli freedom movement in the New Order in Europe, already in the preparatory stage, would be linked with a positive-radical solution of the European Jewish problem in conformity with the above-mentioned national aspirations of the Jewish people. This would extraordinarily strengthen the moral basis of the New Order in the eyes of all humanity.¹⁹

The Irgun, (the MNO) under Manachem Begin, and the Stern Gang, are sometime blamed, by mainstream Zionism, as being uniquely responsible for the more grotesque atrocities of Israel’s fight against both the Arabs and against the British in its quest for statehood; for example, the bombing of the King David Hotel in 1946, in which 96 mostly civilians were killed, and the massacre at Deir Yassin. In fact, both of these actions involved the coordination of these ‘dissident groups’ with the Haganah — the military under the direction of David Ben Gurion.

 

Yitzhak Yzernitsky — later to call himself Yitzhak Shamir,

Yitzhak Yzernitsky — later to call himself Yitzhak Shamir, and later to become Israeli Prime Minister, in fact, the longest serving Prime Minister of Israel except for David Ben Gurion — became the operations commander of the Stern Gang after Avraham Stern was killed by the British army in February of 1942. Under Shamir’s leadership, 14 assassinations were attempted of British officials with two successful ones, of Lord Moyne, the British Minister Resident in the Middle East, sitting in Cairo, and the UN Representative to Palestine, Count Folke Bernadotte, who received three bullets in the heart on the order of Stern’s operations commander and future Prime Minister – Yitzhak Shamir.

The Charter of the Stern Gang, or more accurately, the principles promulgated by Stern, included the establishment of a Jewish state “from the Nile to the Euphrates”, the ‘transfer of the Palestinian Arabs to regions outside of the Jewish state, and the building of the Third Temple in Jerusalem. It maintained offices outside of the Middle East – including Warsaw, Paris, London, and New York City, the latter headed by Benzion Netanyahu, the present Prime Minister’s father.

1. Herzl, Theodore, The Jewish State, p 9, 2007, BN Publishing [?]
2. Weizmann [?]
3. Weizmann, Chaim, Trial and Error, pv90-91 [?]
4. Frommer, Ben, The Significance of the Jewish State, Jewish Call, (Shanghai, 1935), p 10-11. [?]
5. Agus, Jacob, The Meaning of Jewish History, vol II, p 435. [?]
6. Edelheim-Muehsam, Margaret, Reactions of the Jewish Press to the Nazi Challenge, Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, vol V, (1960), p 312. [?]
7. Rabbi Wise, The New Palestine (14 February 1934), p 5-7. [?]
8. Eichmann, Adolf, “Eichmann Tells His Own Damning Story”, Life (28 Nov. 1960) p 22. [?]
9. Polkehn, Klaus, “The Secret Contacts: Zionism and Nazi Germany 1933-41″, Journal of Palestine Studies (Spring 1976), p 337. [?]
10. Hohne, Heinz, The Order of the Death’s Head, p 337. [?]
11. Brenner, Lenni, Zionism in the Age of Dictators, Lawrence Hill, (1983). [?] [?]
12. In Yisraeli, David, “The Third Reich and the Transfer Agreement,” Journal of Contemporary History, vol. VI (1971), P 131. [?] [?]
13. Gelber, Yoav, “Zionism and the Fate of European Jewry (1939-42),” Yad Vashem Studies, vol. XII, p 171. [?]
14. Brownfield, Peter Egill, “The Jewish Establishment’s Focus on Palestine: Did it Distract from Holocaust Efforts?” (Summer 2003). [?]
15. Ibid. Also, Brenner Lenni, Zionism in the Age of Dictators. [?] [?] [?]
16. Laqueur, “Jewish Denial and the Holocaust,” Commentary (December 1979, p 46. [?]
17. Gelber, Zionist Policy and the Fate of European Jewry, p 195. [?]
18. Gruenbaum, Yitzhak, Bi-Mei Hurban ve Sho’ah, p 62-70. [?]
19. Brenner, op. cit., p 267. [?]

William James Martin has written many articles on the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Middle East. He can be reached at : .

Original Source : Dissident Voice
Source: William James Martin | My Catbird Seat

Can The Surveillance State Be Evaded?

“If, as it seems, we are in the process of becoming a totalitarian society in which the state apparatus is all-powerful, the ethics most important for the survival of the true, free, human individual would be: cheat, lie, evade, fake it, be elsewhere, forge documents, build improved electronic gadgets in your garage that’ll outwit the gadgets used by the authorities.” – Philip K. Dick, author of Minority Report.

On any given day, the average American going about his daily business will be monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways, by both government and corporate eyes and ears.

A byproduct of this new age in which we live, whether you’re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency, whether the NSA or some other entity, is listening in and tracking your behavior. As I point out in my new book, A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, this doesn’t even begin to touch on the corporate trackers that monitor your purchases, web browsing, Facebook posts and other activities taking place in the cyber sphere.

The revelations by Edward Snowden only scrape the surface in revealing the lengths to which government agencies and their corporate allies will go to conduct mass surveillance on all communications and transactions within the United States.

Erected in secret, without any public input, these surveillance programs amount to an electronic concentration camp which houses every single person in the United States today. Indeed, government whistleblower Russ Tice, who exposed the NSA’s warrantless surveillance of American phone calls as far back as 2005, insists that despite Obama administration claims that the NSA is simply collecting metadata, the NSA is in fact retrieving “the contents of emails, text messages, Skype communications, and phone calls, as well as financial information, health records, legal documents, and travel documents.”

These communications are being stored in the NSA’s Utah Data Center, a massive $2 billion facility that will be handling yottabytes of data (equivalent to one septillion bytes—imagine a one followed by 24 zeroes) on American communications. This Utah facility is opening amidst a backlash against NSA surveillance. Most recently, the Obama administration and the NSA went into overdrive to quash an amendment sponsored by Justin Amash (R-Mich.) that would have cut off funds to the NSA if it collects surveillance data on American citizens who are not under criminal investigation. It was a bold move, especially when one considers that the NSA operates off a budget of approximately $10 billion. After all, when the government no longer listens to the citizenry—when it no longer abides by the Constitution, which is our rule of law—and when it views the citizenry as a source of funding and little else, we have no choice but to speak to the government in a language it understands—money.

Unfortunately, lobbyists and the Washington elite succeeded in defeating the amendment 217-205. Not surprisingly, many of those who voted down the bill were also recipients of campaign funds from the lucrative security/surveillance sector.

In the face of such powerful lobbyists working in tandem with our so-called representatives, any hope of holding onto even a shred of privacy is rapidly dwindling. Indeed, the life of the average American is an open book for government agents. As Senator Ron Wyden, a longtime critic of the American surveillance state, points out, government agencies operate based upon a secret interpretation of the Patriot Act which allows them to extract massive amounts of data from third party agencies, enabling them to collect information on “bulk medical, financial, credit card and gun-ownership records or lists of ‘readers of books and magazines deemed subversive.’”

Cell phones are equally vulnerable, serving as a “combination phone bug, listening device, location tracker and hidden camera.” Indeed, it’s incredibly easy to activate a cell phone’s GPS and microphone capabilities remotely. For example, the FBI uses the “roving bug” technique, which allows agents to remotely activate the microphone on a cellphone and use it as a listening device. A federal judge actually ruled in 2006 that this was a constitutional technique when it was used to listen to two alleged mobsters, despite the fact that no phone call was taking place at the time.

With private corporations also taking advantage of this technology, the outlook is decidedly grim. In an attempt to mimic the tracking capabilities of online retailers, brick-and-mortar stores now utilize WIFI-enabled devices to track the movements of their customers by tracking their phones as they move throughout the store. The data gathered by these devices include “‘capture rate’ (how successful window displays are at pulling people into the store); number of customers inside the store; customer visit duration and frequency; customer location within the store; people who walk by the store without coming in; and the amount of foot traffic around the store.”

Combined with facial recognition technology, our cell phones have become a tell-all about our personal lives. For example, one Russian marking company, Synqera, “uses facial recognition technology to tailor marketing messages to customers according to their gender, age, and mood.” As one company representative noted, “if you are an angry man of 30, and it is Friday evening, [the Synqera software] may offer you a bottle of whiskey.”

Americans cannot even drive their cars without being enmeshed in this web of surveillance. As confirmed by an ACLU report entitled, “You Are Being Tracked: How License Plate Readers Are Being Used to Record Americans’ Movements,” the latest developments in license plate readers enable law enforcement and private agencies to track the whereabouts of vehicles, and their occupants, all across the country.

License plate readers work by recognizing a passing license plate, photographing it, and running the information against a pre-determined database that lets police know if they’ve got a “hit,” a person of interest, though not necessarily a suspected criminal. There are reportedly tens of thousands of these license plate readers now affixed to police cars and underpasses in operation throughout the country. The data collected from these devices is also being shared between police agencies, as well as with fusion centers and private companies.

Indeed, while all drivers’ data is being collected, only a fraction of the data collected constitutes a “hit.” An even smaller fraction of those “hits” actually result in an arrest. Overall, the hit rate for criminal activity gleaned from the license pictures is usually between .01% and .3%, meaning that over 99% of the people being unnecessarily surveilled are entirely innocent.

The implications for privacy are dire. All of the data points collected by license plate readers can be traced and mapped so that a picture of a vehicle’s past movements can be re-constructed. Furthermore, the photographs produced by license plate readers “sometimes include a substantial part of a vehicle, its occupants, and its immediate vicinity.”

In addition to tracking tens of thousands of innocent people, the data collected by license plate readers is often kept far beyond any reasonable period of time. Data retention policies vary widely, from the Ohio State Highway Patrol, which deletes non-hits immediately, versus some localities which hold on to data for weeks, months, or years. Some localities hold on to the information indefinitely.

To cap it off, private companies are also getting into the data collection game, as data collected on innocent drivers is being shared between both government agencies and corporations. One such business, Final Notice, offers the information they gather to police agencies and intends to start selling the information to other groups soon, including bail bondsmen, private investigators, and insurers.

Another company, MVTrac, claims to have data on “a large majority” of vehicles in the US, and the Digital Recognition Network (DRN) claims to have a network of affiliates of more than 550. These affiliates feed over 50 million plate reads into a national database containing “over 700 million data points on where American drivers have been.”

This is the United States of America today, where liberty and privacy are the currency for any and all essential services. Short of living in a cave, cut off from all communications and commerce, anyone living in the concentration camp that is America today must cede his privacy and liberty to a government agency, a corporation, or both, in order to access information via the internet, communicate with friends and family, shop for food and clothing, or travel to work.

We have just about reached the point of no return. “If we do not seize this unique moment in our constitutional history to reform our surveillance laws and practices, we are all going to live to regret it,” warned Senator Wyden. “The combination of increasingly advanced technology with a breakdown in the checks and balances that limit government action could lead us to a surveillance state that cannot be reversed.”

Source: John W. Whitehead  |  The Rutherford Institute via LewRockwell.com

Obama’s Dangerous Racial Hang-Ups

When Barack Obama said that if he had a son, “he’d look like Trayvon,” it perhaps didn’t say much for him as a parent. And when the president now says that Martin could have been him “35 years ago,” it doesn’t say much for him as a youth. Of course, we know that Choom Gang Obama smoked marijuana like Martin. I wonder, though, did he miss 53 out of 90 days of school and get suspended 3 times during that period? Was he caught with ladies jewelry, a “burglary tool” and drug paraphernalia in school? Did he enjoy fighting and, when a girlfriend implored him to beat his sword into ploughshares, say that he was going to fight another boy again because “he didn’t bleed enough for me”? Most significantly, would Obama have attacked George Zimmerman, broken his nose and pounded his head against the pavement? It seems the president is implying he was a thug.

(Aside: on the other hand, if you truly believe Martin was a good kid, Mr. Obama, would you have been okay with his dating one of your daughters?)

In reality, I’m quite certain what young Obama would’ve done if he had been profiled and was alarmed at being followed. Run. Ah, but should a teenager minding his own business (supposedly) have to be profiled? The president certainly doesn’t think so, as he recently said, “There are very few African American men who haven’t had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars. That happens to me — at least before I was a senator. There are very few African Americans who haven’t had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off.”

Yes, what injustice. What an imposition. What prejudice.

What nonsense.

Let me tell you a story. About 15 years ago I was walking on a lonely street towards a friends’ apartment in a decent Bronx neighborhood (there is such a thing). The only other person on the sidewalk was a woman about 25 paces in front of me. Well, aware of my presence, she nervously stopped, turned hard left, moved in-between two parked cars and remained there anxiously till I passed by, her eyes affixed on me the whole time. Why such a reaction? I can assure you I wasn’t made up to perform in a minstrel show.

She judged that way me simply because I was a young man. Yet she knew nothing about me!

And that’s the point.

Consider what she did know. Almost 90 percent of violent crime is committed by men. If she was going to be raped, it would be by a man. And being a man, I was a lot bigger and stronger than she was. So she was making judgments based on the only information at her disposal: superficial measures. And could I blame her? It’s not as if she sprayed me down with mace as I walked by. She was just applying common sense.

What’s funny here, though, is that we don’t hear activists complain about the “injustice” of sex profiling; they don’t even notice it. People fixate on how Trayvon Martin was profiled because he was black, but it doesn’t even occur to them that a Tawana Martin would have raised considerably less suspicion.

This brings us to a question: if it’s okay for “male” to be part of a criminal profile, shouldn’t all other characteristics associated with a higher incidence of crime be fair game as well? And would “black” qualify? Well, consider what Investor’s Business Daily reports, quoting statistics from Eric Holder’s DOJ:

[E]ven though black men between the ages of 14 and 24 make up only 1% of the U.S. population, they represent 27% of all the nation’s murderers.

… [T]he administration study also found that blacks of any age are eight times more likely to murder than whites [and note that the DOJ included Hispanics in the “white” category].

While blacks make up just 13% of the population, they’re responsible for more than half — 53% — of the country’s murders.

So contrary to what Obama implies, the suspicion of blacks — just like the suspicion of men — has nothing to do with prejudice. It has to do with reality.

Now a bit more about profiling. Profiling is simply a method by which one can determine the probability that a given individual has committed a crime or has criminal intent. And many factors weigh in this assessment, such as sex, age, dress, behavior and, yes, race. This is why complaints about “racial profiling” are as silly as would be talk of “sex profiling.” Because there are only two kinds of profiling: good profiling and bad profiling. The good variety involves all relevant factors as identified by sound criminological science (and the science of streetwise survival). Bad profiling arises when you disallow relevant factors based on the tenets of political correctness.

This brings us back to Martin. He wasn’t viewed suspiciously simply because he was black any more than I was 15 years ago because I was male. In my case, if I’d been 85 years old and/or wearing a business suit (I wore my favorite leather jacket), the woman I encountered would’ve been far less likely to consider me a threat. Likewise, if Martin had been dressed smartly and carried himself with dignity, he would have raised fewer eyebrows.

Of course, having grown up in NYC, I understand that boys in rough neighborhoods don’t want to dress like Little Lord Fauntleroy (the friend I mentioned earlier, a brilliant man of faith, made cultivating the white-trash look an art); appearing tough deters troublemakers. Then again, it’s also true that many black youths think the bad-to-the-bone gangsta’ style is cool. Whatever the motivation, know that the same thing making you seem formidable prey to miscreants makes you seem a fearsome predator to the meek. “But, hey, don’t I have the right to dress how I want?!” Sure, and a white teen may take on the skinhead look— and then people will make their judgments. It’s fairly stupid to don a hoodie and then wonder why you’re viewed as a hood.

In fact, the “do as I please without judgment” attitude — reflected in Obama’s words — is also something else: offensive. After all, imagine I demanded that women check their brains at the door in deference to men’s feelings and not take whatever precautions are prudent when strange men are present. I don’t even have the right to ask such a thing.  Other people’s safety takes precedence over your feelings, Mr. Obama.

And if the world’s Obamas and Sharptons are still angry, they should consider the answer Alan Keyes gave in a presidential primary debate when asked if he’d be upset at being profiled as a black man. He said (I’m paraphrasing), “Yes, I’d be upset. I’d be upset at all the young black men who committed crimes and caused others to view me more suspiciously.”

Of course, the reality is that just as the mouse flees from the Garter snake or the cat from the dog, liberals instinctively profile just like anyone else. Jesse Jackson said in 1993, “There is nothing more painful for me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start to think about robbery and then look around and see it’s somebody white and feel relieved.” Juan Williams admitted in 2010, “[W]hen I get on a plane…if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think…they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.” In a 2008 speech, Obama called his grandmother a “typical white person.” And we know now that even little Saint Trayvon, in all his cherubic, golden-toothed glory, profiled George Zimmerman as a “creepy-**s cracka’” and perhaps even a homosexual predator.

And the irony is that if Martin had actually known how to profile as well as Zimmerman, he might still be alive today.

What Would Jesus Have You Do?

No question, we are a culture that loves to be entertained.  Even churches have caught on to the public’s desire for 24/7 entertainment. As a consequence, a large number of evangelical churches are now driven by a need to fulfill this desire in their congregants.  And what better way to pack the house in ginormous auditoriums than to offer a 90 minute stage show enhanced with state-of-the-art sound, lighting and video systems.

Lights, camera, action!

To boost the mood for the Praise and Worship segment of the service, a large number of churches feature a worship leader and several backup singers accompanied by a live band.  I’ve been in services where the Praise Band could be the opening act for Switchfoot!

To help spice up worship, a team of want-to-be actors treat the audience to a short skit that ties in with the message (sermon). As the lights dim and the actors scurry off stage, a hip cool pastor wearing skinny jeans, a logo T-shirt, and a five o’clock shadow ambles out to preach the “new” Good News.  Hip cool pastors aren’t your average run of the mill ministers.  Some of these guys are genuine entertainers loaded with talent!  They’re bona fide performers.  True showmen.  And some of them are comics!  In fact, most hip cool pastors could walk off the church stage onto a Las Vegas stage and feel right at home.  No really, they’re that good!

By in large, hip cool pastors’ main aim is to see that the folks find God, because once they find Him, they’ll find themselves and then…drum roll please….they’ll find their real “purpose” in life!

Now, I’m not attacking Church entertainment per say.  I’m simply pointing out that in an effort to grow their churches many ministers adopt worldly methods such as the church growth model, a consumer oriented marketing strategy developed to attract the unchurched.  And let’s be honest.  For some pastors it’s not about saving souls, it’s about becoming the CEO of a thriving “megachurch.”  Trying to attract large numbers of people, some pastors go way overboard.  The end result is that the house of God has become like the world.

Warning: Adopting secular marketing techniques has risks.  Often the Gospel becomes compromised when we adapt it to the culture.
 
Hellywood’s Influence On The Church

Many people are movie-goers…TV-viewers…music lovers…concert-attendees…sports fans…game enthusiasts…computer junkies and users of all sorts of other high tech gadgets.  Those who profess Christ and hold to the authority of the scriptures are among those addicted to this kind of entertainment.  To feed their entertainment addiction there are also what we deem “Doubting Thomases” who attend Sunday servicesprincipally for the entertainment value.

That Christians enjoy the same sort of entertainment as those who walk in darkness is revealing.

This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. (I John 1:5-7)

In this day and age it’s rare to find a movie or TV program that’s fit for Christian consumption.  Hedonism, sexual explicitness and perversion, violence, occult themes and vile language aside, very few movies refrain from abusing God’s holy Name.

Have you ever noticed that Hollywood’s elite go out of their way not to offend ethnic groups, homosexuals, environmentalists, abortion providers, radical feminists, illegal immigrants, even Muslim terrorists? Yet evangelical Christians, Catholics and Mormons—especially those with conservative values—are all fair game.

It’s an undisputed fact that the entertainment industry is made up of liberals.  Why should this matter to Christians?  I answered this question in my column Sexually Transmitted Diseases Are A Result of Liberalism:

For most liberals right is wrong and wrong is right. Good is bad and bad is good. Normal is abnormal and abnormal is normal. Whatever advances their cause is what counts. “We must remember that liberalism is not just a system of bad ideas. It is a religion with its priests, creeds, confessions, and dogmas. Liberals worship the system, their church. They gladly sacrifice themselves and anyone else, friend or foe, who gets in the way of the cause. They are more religious than most Christians. They are more dedicated than most Christians.” (Liberal’s Are Evil, Wrong and Nuts!)

In the liberal’s way of thinking pretty much anything goes. Liberals view themselves as tolerant of the behaviors of others. They’re broad-minded. Generous. Untraditional. Unorthodox. Progressive.(Source)

Most Hollywood liberals don’t try to hide their disdain for conservatives — especially if they happen to be conservative Christians!  And liberals don’t try to hide their blatant disrespect for the Lord Jesus Christ and for any of His followers who hold to biblical values.

So with this in mind, why do a large number of Christians tolerate Tinseltown’s deliberate abuse?  Moreover, why do we cower when we’re labeled hateful, bigoted, mean-spirited, homophobic and worse? And why do we lay down our hard earned money at theater box offices when those in the entertainment industry (the same folks who make big bucks off of us) do not give a hoot that they’re dishonoring God’s Name?

While I’m on the subject of disrespect, I must mention that in churches all across America a number of pastors–especially younger pastors—have sunk to the level of using crude language and R-rated stories to “make a theological point.” Would profane pastors deliver a sermon laced with rough language to a church packed to the rafters with God’s holy elect angels?  Of course not!  Which makes one wonder, where are the deacons and elders – the so-called Church leadership?  Why do they fail to roundly rebuke profane pastors?  And when did the Church become Comedy Central?

Consider this also.  Many professing Christians use God’s Name in vain and think nothing of it.  For instance, you hear Christians utter “Oh G–!” and “Oh my G–!” all the time.  How has it escaped them that they’re in violation of the 1st Commandment?  The Bible explicitly says:

Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain (Exodus 20:7).

Clearly, anyone who misuses the Name of the LORD will be held accountable.

Returning to Tinseltown, people who work in entertainment expose young and old alike to gratuitous violence and vile language in films…DVDs…TV…music, especially gangsta rap and grunge! Even pornography, including child pornography, is pushed on society in a myriad of ways through the marvels of modern technology. TV networks have dropped the few remaining standards of decency for prime time telecasts. Those who happen to be TV fans know full well that producers/writers/actors/reality stars relish pushing the envelope. And when someone crosses the line, as is often the case, the FCC looks the other way!

Welcome to the anything goes world of moral relativism, where pretty much nothing is off limits anymore and nothing is sacred – including God’s Name.

What’s In A Name?

God’s Name is special.  His Name carries His personal identity.  So why are followers of Jesus Christ not incensed when they hear someone misusing His Name whether it’s in a movie, on TV, or from the lips of one of your friends or business associates?

Look at it this way, Christian:  If someone close to you, say a parent, spouse or child, is called a vile name for no good reason, you’d come to his or her defense, wouldn’t you?

Of course you would!

So the next time someone drags God’s Name through the mud in your presence, why not turn to the person and say something like: “I’m a Christian, so I’m offended when you take God’s Name in vain.”

Many Christians will spend two hours viewing a movie that’s peppered with language so profane that they readily admit they wouldn’t dream of inviting Jesus to watch with them — because they know perfectly well He’d turn down the invite!

Some believers I know offer some of the most flimsy excuses for putting up with hearing God’s Name misused. For example, when it comes to seeing a movie that tickles their fancy they deem using the Lord’s name in vain acceptable if it’s not overused.

Whenever I broach this subject, I receive a slew of emails from so-called believers providing me with excuses for their viewing habits. The top 4 are:

1) We are under grace not under the law; therefore we mustn’t maintain a pharisaic attitude.
2) The Holy Spirit hasn’t convicted me.
3) Christians can do what is right in their own minds.
4) It doesn’t bother me.

Clearly, some Christian moviegoers think they’re excused from the moral example God has set forth for His people. Those who fall into this category should consider this: Hollywood is using your hard earned money (God’s money) to mock your Savior and to advance a morally bankrupt ideology.

Consider, also, that leftist entertainers use the money they rake in to further an anti-Christian agenda which includes removing all mention of God from the public square; abortion on demand; normalizing every sort of sexual perversion; advancing same-sex “marriage”; and environmental extremism.

What does this tell you about biblical discernment?

What it says to this writer is that far too many followers of the Lord Jesus Christ hold a worldview that is more aligned with Secular Humanism than with biblical Christianity.

The sad fact is that many believers participate in a number of things that the Bible deems inappropriate, immoral, and even toxic to the soul.

Do God’s people’s viewing and listening habits really matter all that much to Him?  I mean, we’re under grace not under law, right?  Listen to the words of the Lord Jesus in Matthew 6:22-23:

The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be filled with darkness.

A “good eye” should be fixed on the Person who made our eyes!

Would Jesus Invite His followers To A Service Such As This?

At the beginning of this article, I discussed churches that have gone astray and, in an effort to “keep people coming,” focus largely on creating a “fun” and “relevant” environment that will draw the seeker in. To that end, hip cool pastors dumb down their sermons in an effort not to offend anyone, church doctrines are disregarded, the gospel is glossed over, worldly music is the norm—some of it with unbiblical lyrics!  Sadly, when people raise holy hands to the God they say they adore, their demonstration of praise and worship comes, not from the heart; it’s merely inspired by the music–especially if it has a good beat.

What Would Jesus Have You Do?

First of all, there’s no perfect church.  In choosing one, a good rule of thumb is to see that you’re in a Bible teaching church that holds to the authority of Scripture. If your current pastor gives a “feel good” message that includes a few Scripture verses with good stories and applications but has no biblical basis, consider shopping for a church with solid Bible teaching.  In other words, find a church where, for the most part, the pastor teaches one verse at a time and rightly divides the word of truth.  (2 Tim. 2:15)

When it comes to entertainment, the professing Christian need only ask:  Would I invite Jesus to sit down next to me during a movie or TV program or while I browse the Net…email…text…comment or “like” something on Facebook?  Would I want my Lord to hear the music stored on my iPod?  Would I offer Him the best-selling book I just finished reading? As I glance through a magazine would it make me a tad uncomfortable to have Jesus looking over my shoulder?  If the answer to any of the above is in the negative, then hightail it out of the theater…turn off the TV…log off the computer…delete the music…close the book!

The Man Who Hears People Before They Speak

“I told my daughter her living room TV was out of sync. Then I noticed the kitchen telly was also dubbed badly. Suddenly I noticed that her voice was out of sync too. It wasn’t the TV, it was me.”

Ever watched an old movie, only for the sound to go out of sync with the action? Now imagine every voice you hear sounds similarly off-kilter – even your own. That’s the world PH lives in. Soon after surgery for a heart problem, he began to notice that something wasn’t quite right.

“I was staying with my daughter and they like to have the television on in their house. I turned to my daughter and said ’you ought to get a decent telly, one where the sound and programme are synchronised’. I gave a little chuckle. But they said ’there’s nothing wrong with the TV’.”

Puzzled, he went to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. “They’ve got another telly up on the wall and it was the same. I went into the lounge and I said to her ’hey you’ve got two TVs that need sorting!’.”

That was when he started to notice that his daughter’s speech was out of time with her lip movements too. “It wasn’t the TV, it was me. It was happening in real life.”

PH is the first confirmed case of someone who hears people speak before registering the movement of their lips. His situation is giving unique insights into how our brains unify what we hear and see.

It’s unclear why PH’s problem started when it did – but it may have had something to do with having acute pericarditis, inflammation of the sac around the heart, or the surgery he had to treat it.

Brain scans after the timing problems appeared showed two lesions in areas thought to play a role in hearing, timing and movement. “Where these came from is anyone’s guess,” says PH. “They may have been there all my life or as a result of being in intensive care.”

Disconcerting delay

Several weeks later, PH realised that it wasn’t just other people who were out of sync: when he spoke, he registered his words before he felt his jaw make the movement. “It felt like a significant delay, it sort of snuck up on me. It was very disconcerting. At the time I didn’t know whether the delay was going to get bigger, but it seems to have stuck at about a quarter of a second.”

Light and sound travel at different speeds, so when someone speaks, visual and auditory inputs arrive at our eyes and ears at different times. The signals are then processed at different rates in the brain. Despite this, we normally perceive the events as happening simultaneously – but how the brain achieves this is unclear.

To investigate PH’s situation, Elliot Freeman at City University London and colleagues performed a temporal order judgement test. PH was shown clips of people talking and was asked whether the voice came before or after the lip movements. Sure enough, he said it came before, and to perceive them as synchronous the team had to play the voice about 200 milliseconds later than the lip movements.

The team then carried out a second, more objective test based on the McGurk illusion. This involves listening to one syllable while watching someone mouth another; the combination makes you perceive a third syllable.

Since PH hears people speaking before he sees their lips move, the team expected the illusion to work when they delayed the voice. So they were surprised to get the opposite result: presenting the voice 200 ms earlier than the lip movements triggered the illusion, suggesting that his brain was processing the sight before the sound in this particular task.

And it wasn’t only PH who gave these results. When 37 others were tested on both tasks, many showed a similar pattern, though none of the mismatches were noticeable in everyday life.

Many clocks

Freeman says this implies that the same event in the outside world is perceived by different parts of your brain as happening at different times. This suggests that, rather than one unified “now”, there are many clocks in the brain – two of which showed up in the tasks – and that all the clocks measure their individual “nows” relative to their average.

In PH’s case, one or more of these clocks has been significantly slowed – shifting his average – possibly as a result of the lesions. Freeman thinks PH’s timing discrepancies may be too large and have happened too suddenly for him to ignore or adapt to, resulting in him being aware of the asynchrony in everyday life. He may perceive just one of his clocks because it is the only one he has conscious access to, says Freeman.

PH says that in general he has learned to live with the sensory mismatch but admits he has trouble in noisy places or at large meetings. Since he hears himself speak before he feels his mouth move, does he ever feel like he’s not in control of his own voice? “No, I’m definitely sure it’s me that’s speaking,” he says, “it’s just a strange sensation.”

Help may be at hand: Freeman is looking for a way to slow down PH’s hearing so it matches what he is seeing. PH says he would be happy to trial a treatment, but he’s actually not that anxious to fix the problem. “It’s not life-threatening,” he says. “You learn to live with these things as you get older. I don’t expect my body to work perfectly.”

Source:  Helen Thomson | NewScientist and  Red Ice Creations

Time To Buy A House? Not On Your Life!

Soon the Foreclosure Floodgates Will Open and Prices Will Plunge…

Anyone who buys a house in today’s market should be aware of the risks. They should know that current prices are not supported by fundamentals, but by unprecedented manipulation by the Fed, the Obama administration, Wall Street Private Equity investors, and the nation’s biggest banks. If any of these main-players withdraws or even reduces their support for the market (in other words, if the banks release more of their distressed inventory, if rates rise, if PE firms buy fewer homes, or if the Congress curtails current mortgage modification programs), housing prices will fall. Given the increasing volatility in global stock and bond markets in recent weeks–which is likely to intensify as the Fed  implements its exit strategy from QE– interest rates will continue to fluctuate putting downward pressure on housing sales and prices. The impact the Fed’s policy will have on markets and the economy is unknown. The Central Bank is in uncharted water. That makes it a particularly bad time to buy a home. Caveat emptor.

When we say that fundamentals are weak, it means that the factors that typically drive the market are not strong enough to boost sales or push up prices. In a normal market, “first-time homebuyers” and “move up” buyers would represent the vast majority of sales. In today’s market, these two “demand cohorts” are actually quite weak, which is to say that current prices are not sustainable. Consider this: According to Lender Processing Services (LPS) Mortgage Monitor for April, there are  “4,699,000, or 9.76% of home loans delinquent or in foreclosure as of April 30th”…” (“Mortgage Delinquencies Down….But a Record 843 Days to Foreclose“, Naked Capitalism)

So, nearly 5 million homes are either seriously delinquent or in some stage of foreclosure. This unseen backlog of distressed homes makes up the so called “shadow inventory” which is still big enough to send prices plunging if even a small portion was released onto the market.   In other words, supply vastly exceeds demand in real terms. Now check this out from Zillow:

“13 million homeowners with a mortgage remain underwater. Moreover, the effective negative equity rate nationally —where the loan-to-value ratio is more than 80%, making it difficult for a homeowner to afford the down payment on another home — is 43.6% of homeowners with a mortgage.” (Zillow)

This might sound a bit confusing, but it’s crucial to understanding what’s really going on. While many people know that 13 million homeowners are underwater on their mortgages,  they probably don’t know that nearly half (43.6%) of the potential “move up” buyers (who represent the bulk of organic sales) don’t have enough equity in their homes to buy another house.  Think about that. Like we said,  housing sales depend almost entirely on two groups of buyers; firsttime homebuyers and move up buyers. Unfortunately, the number of potential move up buyers has been effectively cut in half.  It’s simply impossible for prices to keep rising with so many move up buyers on the ropes.

So, if “repeat” buyers cannot support current prices, then what about the other “demand cohort”,  that is, firsttime home buyers?

It looks like demand is weak there, too. According to housing analyst Mark Hanson: “First-timer home volume hit a fresh 4-year lows last month and distressed sales 6-year lows”.

So, no help there either. Firsttime homebuyers are vanishing due to a number of factors, the biggest of which is the $1 trillion in student loans which is preventing debt-hobbled young people from filling the ranks of the firsttime homebuyers. Given the onerous nature of these loans, which cannot be discharged through bankruptcy, many of these people will never own a home which, of course, means that demand will continue to weaken, sales will drop and prices will fall.

The banks have countered this weakness in demand by withholding distressed inventory. According to Realty Trac, foreclosures are down 33 percent in May year-over-year. There’s no reason for this reduction in foreclosures because there are nearly 5 million homes that are either seriously delinquent or in some stage of foreclosure. The banks are simply manipulating distressed supply to push up prices and avoid losses. To better understand what the banks are up to, check out this article on Marketwatch666:

“As of April, the average seriously delinquent homeowner has not paid on their mortgage for 503 days, and that the typical home in foreclosure has been delinquent for 843 days; in general, those who are seriously delinquent (more than 90 days past due) are not being foreclosed on, and those who are in the foreclosure process are not having their homes seized. Since this metric seems to be increasing an average of ten days a month, and new foreclosure starts are being added each month which should be bringing the average days down, we can only conclude that the foreclosure process is damn near frozen.” (“Mortgage Delinquencies Down….But a Record 843 Days to Foreclose“, Naked Capitalism)

“843 days”! That’s a new record, which means that the banks are actually dragging the process out longer today then ever before. This has had profound effect on prices which have soared by more than 10 percent in the last 12 months creating the illusion of a sustainable recovery.  Keep in mind, that the banks have little choice in the matter. They are still sitting on  more-than one trillion dollars worth of  non performing loans leftover from the recession.  If they simply dumped their backlog of distressed homes onto the market all at once, the deluge would push prices below their 2009-lows leaving bank balance sheets in tatters. That’s the scenario they want to avoid at all costs.   Now get a load of this article in last week’s Reuters:

“Well over a million U.S. homeowners are months behind on payments on government-backed mortgages, raising the risk federal housing agencies will end up facing the cost of managing a fresh flood of foreclosed homes, two government watchdogs said on Thursday.

Some 1.7 million borrowers have missed several payments on mortgages backed by the U.S. government, the inspectors general of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and Department of Housing and Urban Development said in a joint report.

These loan delinquencies represent a “shadow inventory” of homes that could hit the market if foreclosed on, which would need be managed by government-run Fannie Mae (FNMA.OB) or Freddie Mac (FMCC.OB), or some other federal housing agency.” (“Shadow’ homes could burden U.S. housing agencies”, Reuters)

Actually, the numbers are much larger that Reuters indicates, but it’s good to see someone in the MSM finally acknowledging the magnitude of the problem.

It would be interesting to know how many of these 1.7 million non-performing loans were shunted off to Fannie and Freddie in 2009 and 2010 by cagey banksters who knew that they were essentially worthless.  We’ll probably never know for sure. The fact is, the vast majority of toxic mortgages weren’t created by the GSE’s but by crooked bankers who pooled the dreck into private label securities and sold them to gullible investors around the world.  Now, much of that securitized sewage is festering on the Fed’s bloated balance sheet. The Fed has replaced the shadow banking system as the place where bad loans go to die.   Here’s more from Reuters:

“Once seized, these so-called real estate owned properties, or REOs, present significant financial challenges to these government agencies, the report said.

“Not only are current REO inventory levels elevated … they may rise over the next several years depending on the number of shadow inventory properties that are ultimately foreclosed on,” the report stated….

The report said the shadow inventory, which is made up of loans that have been delinquent for at least 90 days, is more than seven times the inventory of REOs that Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and HUD currently own.” (Reuters)

So, the number of seriously delinquent mortgages IS MORE THAN SEVEN TIMES  the inventory of REOs that Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and HUD currently own?!? What the hell kind of shell-game are these guys playing?  Do you get the impression, dear reader, that the government is pulling the wool over your eyes? 7X is a bit more than a rounding error, I’d say.

Okay, so the government has been fudging the numbers to make things look better than they really are. (What a surprise) But why would the GSE’s try to hide what’s going on, after all, Fannie and Freddie have implicit government guarantees, so they don’t really have to worry about falling prices.  And, as far as the red ink, well, Uncle Sugar will take care of that, right?

Not exactly. It looks to me like Fannie and Freddie are tailoring their policies to meet the needs of the banks.  As Reuters reluctantly admits, “Even a fraction of the shadow inventory falling into foreclosure could considerably swell … inventories of REO properties.”

It’s simple, really; more foreclosures mean lower prices. Lower prices, in turn, mean heavier losses for the banks. That’s why Fannie and Freddie are playing hide-n-seek; it’s another giveaway to the banks.

Reuters again: “Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac owned about 158,000 REO properties at the end of September 2012, while HUD had about 37,000.” (Reuters)

Huh?  The author has already admitted that the real number is at least 7 times that amount (“Well over a million.”), so why the sudden reversal? Is he trying to downplay the bad news to slip it past his editor?

Many of the experts still anticipate between 3 to 6 million foreclosures in the next few years, so it is doubtful that the current strategy will work. Eventually, the floodgates will open, distressed supply will be released, and prices will drop.

And distressed inventory is just one of many headwinds facing the housing industry today. There’s also this: “Rising Prices Lead to Fewer Investor Purchases, Longer Holding Times“, DS News:

“Close to half—48 percent—of the investors surveyed in May said they will purchase fewer properties in the next 12 months than they did in the past year.” (DS News)

And this from CNN Money:

“Say goodbye to ultra-low mortgage rates.

In the past month, rates have been on the rise and they are expected to continue to climb. This week, the average rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage jumped another 10 percentage points to 4.07% and are up from 3.3% in early May, according to mortgage giant Freddie Mac.

“It’s unlikely that rates will ever be that low again,” said Doug Duncan, Fannie Mae’s chief economist. “Those who didn’t take advantage of record-low rates have missed the boat — at least for now.” (“ CNN Money)

And this:

Application Volume Stumbles, Sales to Suffer, OC Housing News

“Mortgage application data for May lends credence to analysts’ predictions of a slowdown in the year’s second half, Capital Economics says in its latest US Housing Data Response.  According to Capital Economics’ data—compiled from statistics offered by the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA)—total mortgage application volume fell 2.0 percent from April to May, the first monthly drop since February and the biggest decline since January.”  (“Application Volume Stumbles, Sales to Suffer“, OC Housing News)

And, finally, this from BusinessWeek:

“Hedge fund manager Bruce Rose was among the first investors to coax institutional money into the mom and pop business of single-family home rentals, raising $450 million last year from Oaktree Capital Group LLC.

Now, with house prices climbing at the fastest pace in seven years and investors swamping the rental market, Rose says it no longer makes sense to be a buyer.

“We just don’t see the returns there that are adequate to incentivize us to continue to invest….There’s a lot of — bluntly — stupid money that jumped into the trade without any infrastructure, without any real capabilities and a kind of build-it-as-you-go mentality that we think is somewhat irresponsible.”  (“Carrington Stops Buying U.S. Rentals as Blackstone Adding“,  BusinessWeek)

I could go on, but why bother? You get the point. The fact is, is that this is a uniquely bad time to buy a house.  There’s too much uncertainty about rates, inventory, demand and investors. The risks far outweigh the rewards. Anxious buyers should hold-their-horses and wait for the market to normalize instead of chaining themselves to sinking asset that will cost them a bundle.  Remember, patience is a virtue. It can also save you a lot of dough.

What Is Happenning In Istanbul?

To my friends who live outside of Turkey:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The right to live as honorable citizens of this country.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This blog is my answer to her.

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

Freedom of expression and speech,

Respect for human rights,

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

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

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

Please spread the word and share this blog.

Thank you!

Source: İnsanlik Hali | Global Research

The Sky Gods of Unintended Consequences

Of all the delusions we entertain in our lives, both individually and collectively, that we are the “masters of our own destiny” has got to be one of the grandest. It is emboldening to feel we are somehow ‘in control’, ‘in charge’ of the myriad forces and influences that surround and inhabit us but in reality we seem more like high-stakes gamblers than gods, playing a numbers game not fully aware of the odds that, as often as not, are resolutely stacked against us.

Long before ‘rationalism’ convinced us it was able to even up these odds thus moving into the dominant position it now occupies in the modern psyche, an old proverb, originating from not only a different era but also school of thought, suggested a more subtle and unpredictable relationship between mans actions and the consequences of those actions, in other words between causes and their inevitable, if not immediately obvious, effects. It was a clear warning to those who presume superiority and dominion over wild, unruly Nature and attempt to subjugate it to a mere predictable mechanism. “They that sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind”, goes the ancient saying which seeks to reintroduce the principle of the ‘unknown’, the ‘unaccounted for’ back into the minds of those who cling to their sophisticated certainties and complacencies. As Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defence in the Bush administration and no stranger to an elevated sense of certainty, famously and rather ironically put it: “Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”

The Hidden Conditionality

In 1961 mathematician and meteorologist Professor Edward Lorenz working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA, made what appeared to be an accidental discovery whilst running some tests on his new, though by today’s standards rather primitive computer, the charmingly named Royal McBee LGP-30. This discovery has helped to change our perception of just how surprisingly sensitive the world, as a vast, organic System made up of many minor, interconnected systems, actually is upending the reductionist, ‘world as giant machine’ model which many, particularly in science, have subscribed to.

Far-reaching ideas often originate and ripple outwards from simple, seemingly insignificant insights; the concept of splitting the atom, for example, must be about as small and inconsequential a starting-point as one can imagine. Lorenz’s profound realisation began life rather similarly. In one of those early tests, in 1961, he re-entered data into his computer for a re-run of a weather simulation he had already completed, but this time using the numbers direct from the original printout. To his surprise, he found that the simulation ended with a totally different result. Using exactly the same input data, the final outcome should have been identical. He did this many times over and kept finding the same wild variations. The reason was that the Royal McBee had, in the first instance, entered numbers to an accuracy of six decimal points, whereas the subsequent printout was rounding them off to three decimal points. It was only a margin of error of less than 0.1 per cent, then seen as quite insignificant over a whole experiment, and yet it resulted in huge deviations from the original, exposing the underlying conditionality limiting the science of long-term prediction and a killer-blow to those who see in it an omnipotent future for man and computer.

Lorenz was not the first to have had an inkling of this somewhat hidden conditionality. Over 100 years earlier, the brilliant French mathematician Jules Henri Poincare, whose work also showed that systems are not as stable or predictable as they were previously assumed to be, was largely misunderstood and ignored. Post-Lorenz though that insight, perhaps finding a more receptive time in which to take root than the 1800s of Poincare, has taken on a whole new dimension, showing up the limitations of systemic modelling and analysis, something we have become, in our attempts to ‘manage risk’, increasingly dependent upon and especially with the advent of computers. This, for example, was clearly played out in 2007 at the very beginning of the global financial crisis, when predictive models employed to chart the behaviour of international trade and capital flows, under an atmosphere – not fully recognised at the time – of accentuated volatility proved to be misrepresentative leaving policy-makers, forecasters and speculators completely wrong-footed. Alan Greenspan, former Federal Reserve chairman, stated in late 2008, before a Congressional hearing in Washington, “I have discovered a flaw in the model that I perceived is the critical functioning structure that defines how the world works”, in what can only be described as a moment of frank admission, for an ultra-rationalist. He added, “This modern risk-management paradigm held sway for decades…The whole intellectual edifice, however, collapsed in the summer of last year [2007]“. He was referring partly to his shaken belief in a neo-liberal, ‘free-market’ economic model, and to the ability to predict and control its behaviour, which, on Mr Greenspan’s watch, has managed to dysfunctionalise the entire global economic system and caused untold suffering. Some, including many notable economists, say his policies, whilst the head of the Fed, were significantly responsible for the onset of the financial crisis as they encouraged the sub-prime housing bubble, and it’s inevitable collapse, by keeping interest rates too low for too long – “easy money”. And he failed to rein in the explosive growth of the largely unregulated business of derivatives, risky financial instruments that, as he admitted in the Washington hearing, were out of control and had created havoc throughout the financial world. In 1994, Greenspan successfully opposed the implementation of tougher regulations and restrictions on the derivatives market.

Hair Trigger

Of course the world still operates predictably and measurably in many ways, as our extraordinary modern science has shown but it has become increasingly clear that this is by no means the full story. Those now infamous “masters of the universe”, both in high finance and science, over-dependent on speculative theories and models, hell-bent on retaining their triple-A, god-like status, have tended to conveniently overlook this underlying fact. All systems, which inevitably experience conditions of stress and can therefore become highly sensitized as a result, are prone to unstable, unpredictable modes of behaviour; an instability which can be symptomatic of being driven too hard and to the very limits of natural functioning. It is a warning indicator that any particular system is reaching or has reached a ‘tipping-point’, beyond which it will move into a disturbed and increasingly dysfunctional phase of activity and eventually completely collapse, much like a wheel coming loose from it’s axle; at first wobbling uncontrollably and then coming off altogether. The climate of a particular region, for example, may be masking underlying instability latent in that system and so the potential for disruptive weather patterns is present but remains unnoticed. Similarly with the economy, where many learned and even Nobel-prize winning economists have been caught out, admitting that they did not see this “once in a lifetime” crisis coming. And in the case of the environment, no one truly knows what might unravel if we reach that ominous tipping-point of a polar ice cap and permafrost meltdown.

The sensitivity of systems to influencing factors which may be miniscule, as Lorenz discovered, and therefore virtually impossible to monitor, no matter how accurate the devices used, is often referred to by the well-known term ‘butterfly effect’. It points to the fact that when systems like the climate, environment or economy are in an inherently unstable condition it can lead to unforeseen events even with the smallest of initial disturbances. Like the turbulence generated by the beat of a butterfly’s wings or for that matter the splitting of an atom which, again when the fissile material, on an atomic level, is unstable enough, can set in motion a cataclysmic chain of events. Put another way, in a highly charged ‘atmosphere’, using the word in its broadest sense, it often only takes the smallest of switching devices, a hair-trigger, to move it rapidly into an either destructive or creative phase of activity. The tension inherent in that atmosphere or environment seeks to be diffused, discharged either dramatically as takes place in a lightning strike or gradually like the steady flow of household electricity, kept relatively safe and useable by a whole network of regulating mechanisms and in stark contrast to our neoliberalised and therefore deregulated financial system, which some believe is “ready to blow” – like a whirlwind. The trigger-point or activating ‘seed’ may be minute but in a system, in a sense, ‘fertile’ enough it can grow exponentially into say a hurricane, nuclear explosion, stock market implosion or even social revolution – not by any means a new phenomena but one we are seeing today in a globalised form which includes protest movements like the Arab Spring, the Spanish Indignados and the Occupy Movement.

The True Nature of Justice

There can be little doubt that the ‘global atmosphere’, so to speak, today is one that indeed can be characterised as highly charged, socially, politically, economically and environmentally not to mention the inner storm brewing up in our collective psyche. These are uncertain times with uncertain futures and distressing to a world that appears, to anyone who has eyes to see and not their head jammed firmly in the sand, to have completely lost it’s way. In the lead-up to its annual meeting, the World Economic Forum published its annual report in January 2013 – Global Risks – warning of potential dangers to the functioning of our most critical systems. Compiled by a panel of 1,000 experts, it urged policy-makers to address the key issues of severe income disparities, the indebted state of governments and rising greenhouse gas emissions. The report states: “Continued stress on the economic system is positioned to absorb the attention of leaders for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, the Earth’s environmental system is simultaneously coming under increasing stress. Future simultaneous shocks to both systems could trigger the ‘perfect storm’ with potentially insurmountable consequences… On the economic front, global resilience is being tested by bold monetary and austere fiscal policies. On the environmental front, the Earth’s resilience is being tested by rising global temperatures and extreme weather events that are likely to become more frequent and severe. A sudden and massive collapse on one front is certain to doom the other’s chance of developing an effective, long-term solution.”

We have sown the wind and the whirlwind has surely followed. That is a fact whether generally accepted or not. Many of the operating systems of the planet, as stated above, are under tremendous pressure and are showing the telltale signs of distress and dysfunctionality. The most obvious of course being the degradation of our living environment, which includes pollution and climate change, and yet there are those who are still quite able to rationalise the whole problem away, conveniently understating the human factor and choosing instead to put the emphasis on ‘nature’s cycles’.

As the well over-used cliché puts it, we are now in uncharted territory – a realm of “unknown unknowns” – though perhaps not quite as uncharted as we imagine. For it is always that Nature, an ultimately benevolent, self-regulating Organism, sooner or later, responds to extremes with balancing corrective measures. When the excesses of our planet reach the toxic levels they so obviously have today, with say environmental destruction, carbon dioxide emissions, the wealth and income inequality that exists between the so-called haves and have-nots and many other socio-economic injustices, Nature at a certain point kicks in. Like a safety valve letting off steam it attempts to stem the destructive energetic imbalance before it becomes dangerously polarised, much like an electrical storm, mentioned earlier, seeks to neutralise the build-up of a super-charged differential. There seems in-built in Nature a correcting factor, an element of Universal Justice, which attempts to harmonise destructive inequities and one we appear to be quite unaware of, or at least act as if we are.

Legally Binding

In essence, and not to put too fine a point on it, we have somehow succeeded in creating a global ‘energy-bomb’, for want of a better way of putting it, with many factors having gone into its assemblage and ourselves as the unfortunate targets – the ultimate in suicide missions, albeit an unconscious one. The mounting tensions of the world have been, at best, misunderstood, at worst overlooked and ignored for generations by a long succession of influential policy-makers, both in global politics and economics. This has led to a dangerous and seemingly intractable, bomb-like concentration of problems affecting all aspects of life. It has created this super-charged atmosphere, a supercell of disharmony and dis-ease, which will take some skill and a considerable amount of patience to diffuse before some unforeseen trigger sets in motion a catastrophic chain of events, in the same way a single, well-placed bullet, killing Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on 28th June 1914, acted as the tiny spark that seeded what would later become the raging inferno of World War One.

The world cries out, knowingly or not, for a team of skillful operators with abilities in all fields, whose primary task it is to diffuse the currently explosive situation facing the planet. High level, high-calibre compromisers and negotiators, a role for which the United Nations was originally set up, respected by many and able to take the sting out of the gathering mother of all storms, we have all unintentionally reaped, before it does further untold and perhaps irreversible damage to an already beleaguered planet. At this time of extraordinary significance can we make the right choices in the sense that we accept what the present situation demands from us, as laid down by the Universal Laws of Nature, particularly the key Law of Cause and Effect, which in the end express the interconnectedness of all things? The universe itself is bound together by the interplay of these underpinning guiding principles, as science is continually re-discovering. Why is it humanity thinks it can reasonably exist in some fantasy realm beyond them? And, perhaps more importantly, when will we wake up to this dangerous delusion and renounce these outlaw ways which have brought us all to the very edge of extinction without even fully realising it? That is the question of our times. We appear not to have forever to answer it.

Understanding The Ruling Elite

Intense speculation on the ‘ruling elite’ many believe is running the world from behind the scenes can lead to the presumption that it is all-powerful and infallible. But is it? Identifying the human foibles and underlying desires of those who may be planning centralised domination could lead to a greater chance to offset their agendas.

In my book The Truth Agenda, I explore a widely-held hypothesis in certain quarters: that the world might be controlled by a powerful ruling elite, which puts its own narrow interests and convictions above ours through manipulation and engineered global crises to help bring about an Orwellian-style ‘One World Government’.

The book also considers the possibility that our planet is about to undergo a huge change, social, spiritual or cosmological, something seemingly anticipated by several ancient cultures around the world in the now renowned 2012 prophecies. The exploration of these ideas throws up disturbing possibilities and more pieces of evidence to support them than is entirely comfortable.

However, if all that the most extreme speculation achieves is to help prevent such a grim picture from reaching full fruition, then it will have served a useful purpose. It is also crucial that a note of optimism is struck.

An often valid criticism of conspiracy theorists, or ‘truthseekers’, is that their fevered investigations into humankind’s worst nightmares can leave some listeners feeling more fearful, and risks driving them into a state of disempowered paralysis, putting up the shutters when what is needed is engagement. Yet the unavoidable truth is that looking a potentially tough situation in the eye does mean facing up to disturbing realities that may have been swept under the carpet, for they might require urgent action.

Lifting the blindfold even just a little means that we might not run into the approaching wall at such a great velocity. If the idea of a secretive but all-pervading cabal running the world leaves some feeling shocked, the act of simply contemplating such an idea may in itself spark a new awakening of consciousness.

What psychologically motivates this elite, however? What kind of minds are we really dealing with? How can we attempt to understand them, so that solutions and strategies for dealing with their actions may become clearer?

The Elite and its Motivations

Something too often missed in all the conspiracy speculation is the realisation that if we are being governed by a powerful cabal trying to twist the world to its own ends, then we are still essentially dealing with fellow human beings (putting ET/reptilian bloodline theories aside for a moment).

Like every other person on the planet, they must have physical, social and emotional needs, even if the latter faculty may be too easily set aside in the kind of mind that would plan 9/11-type scenarios (an event widely suspected to have been deliberately staged by Western sources as part of a march towards the ‘New World Order’). The personalities involved must have loved ones of their own, and experience thoughts, feelings and cares in at least some directions. They also, like most of us in our lives, probably think they are doing the right thing, however much we may see their schemes as misguided.

This is an important point. We all have reasons for doing what we do, and can often justify actions to ourselves in the face of serious challenges from the outside. Hard though it may be to comprehend, the motivation of those who might think that wiping out their own people would be a positive move, or who believe that planning wars and economic breakdowns to effect the creation of a unifying world government is an acceptable strategy, the fact is that many seemingly well-intentioned visionaries throughout history have voiced the need for such approaches. This does not make them right, of course, but there is plainly a significant, if small, seam of humanity that believes a bigger picture should be put before the needs of the masses. Those who have expressed support for eugenics and depopulation strategies, for instance, often have deep-seated environmental concerns or feel strongly that we have lost our balance with nature and must put the planet’s future ahead of the requirements of the common people.

One of the most prominent promoters of the term ‘New World Order’ was the famous and much revered writer H G Wells, who believed passionately that the only answer to global strife would be the creation of the eponymous hierarchy, actively proposing it in his 1940 book The New World Order. This is clearly not a modern concept, and has roots going back even further than Wells’ idealistic vision of it. Some believe both World Wars were deliberately coordinated, or at least used, to help bring about a mandate for world government. As early as 1913, writing in his book The New Freedom, President Woodrow Wilson made clear that some formidable force already underpinned the commercial, and probably political, infrastructure of the USA:

Some of the biggest men in the US, in the field of commerce and manufacturing, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organised, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.

What is striking in H G Wells’ writings, however, is his sense of excitement and enthusiasm for the idea of a dominating collective that would put all to rights and avert “the disastrous extinction of Mankind.” There is no sense of negative intention nor a Malthusian dislike for humanity. Yet at the same time Wells was an advocate of eugenics. Many find this concept entirely repugnant, but here is the paradox – the very kinds of people truth-seekers tend to single out as the enemies of humanity very likely see themselves as its saviours. It is all a matter of perspective and of where one chooses to draw the moral line.

The philosopher Bertrand Russell openly accepted the inevitability of a controlling One World Government, founded on the basis of hard scientific values, and was disturbingly frank about the culture that would result. Writing in his 1953 book The Impact of Science on Society, he states:

Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible…

…Gradually, by selective breeding, the congenital differences between rulers and ruled will increase until they become almost different species. A revolt of the plebs would become as unthinkable as an organised insurrection of sheep against the practice of eating mutton.

On the surface, Russell’s thoughts appear to encourage such a world, rather than condemn it, and such thinking seems outrageous, even if it does come close to identifying the very philosophy that may now be actively shaping our society. However, although it seems difficult, almost distasteful, for some to contemplate, there is a thought to be considered here: What if such thinking were definitively shown to be right? What if humankind’s very survival did rest on the notion of more control, not less? What if the choice were demonstrated to be between total destruction through over-population, pollution and over-stretched resources, or a selectively-bred, closely-monitored world that regulated itself and continued on? What if an anarchy-ridden post-2012 apocalypse society could be shown to stand no real chance of survival, whereas a tightly-controlled disciplinarian civilisation would?

Uncomfortably, in the light of the world’s current challenging issues, it can be seen, at least to a small extent, how arguments could be made in these directions when looked at from a certain viewpoint. The problem comes, as ever, with the massive issue of who gets to decide. Those in comfortable circumstances looking down from on high must inevitably see things rather differently to those scraping an existence lower down the rungs, at their mercy.

We already hold the power of genetic manipulation in our hands, and it will not be too long before required characteristics of children will be able to be routinely selected and engineered. Also, with life spans ever increasing, and our understanding of tissue and brain cell regeneration growing by the year, how long will it be before life can be sustained indefinitely? When that occurs, the population problem will clearly explode if unlimited access to such power is allowed (that is, if the majority of humankind is permitted to survive in the first place – depopulation conspiracy theories are rife). A world of immortals would risk stagnation, but also domination from those who attained the status of immortality first. They would effectively decide who would be offered the gift from thereon. In the end, the gene pool would almost certainly be controlled by such authorities, the new eugenics having arrived through the back door.

These issues are already reality, not dystopian fiction. The power of genetic engineering, which is currently changing our food, both animal and vegetable – and thus our entire ecosystem, as spliced and altered genes make their way into nature through pollination and cross-breeding – means that humankind has already taken the entire planet’s evolutionary destiny into its own hands, and there is no going back. Do those calling the shots have the moral compass to carry such a huge responsibility? Can they serve as the gods they are setting themselves up to be?

In a society of angels, perhaps a charter of rigid regulation, surveillance and genetic population control could be applied with compassion and the wide agreement of a common consensus – but we are nowhere near such a state of being. With the motivation of those governing our world today clearly in question, it seems impossible that the kinds of agendas many feel the ruling elite is implementing could work in any way other than being a simple attack on the larger percentage of humankind. Without common consensus, whatever the supposedly good intentions that might exist somewhere behind the plans, any attempt to regulate the world by coercion and draconian measures remains an immoral one.

Inherent Deception

The problem with global cover-ups is that they arrive and build up – as deception does so often for all of us – through a lack of honesty largely sparked by the fear of what people might think or do if they were to perceive the true vulnerability within. The elite appears to fear us and our reactions as much as we may fear it – otherwise it would not need to manipulate and control. Many disingenuous actions are borne of inner psychosis; a lack of trust that other people will understand. Our leaders appear to have got so used to playing deceptive games that they cannot now operate any other strategy. Everything from the banking system to Parliamentary administration appears to be based on subterfuge. Right now we are clearly not trusted by those affecting our lives so strongly and as a result we do not trust them.

Not that some of the elite would be remotely bothered about what any of us thinks of their actions. For those who may feel that caveats to explain such motivation is too generous to people who maim, kill and deceive to get their way, for whatever reason, it should be noted that there do also appear to be those pulling the strings who simply seek power for power’s sake. The lessons of history tell us that selfishness, greed and excited bloodlust cannot be ruled out as prime movers in some cases, at least. And, to acknowledge the not-insubstantial suspicion of a ‘reptilian agenda’, if it were to turn out that this highly exclusive club was indeed the result of a dominating extra-terrestrial gene seeded aeons ago (as some believe, based on ancient myths) and being exploited and/or activated by celestial visitors today, then it admittedly might explain why concern for the needs of humanity appears to be as low down the list of its priorities as our general concern for the welfare of livestock is today.

As for what kind of people may comprise the global elite, the well-intentioned and the not-so well-intentioned, most likely we are largely dealing with high-ranking politicians, academics, intellectuals (as with Wells and Russell), monarchies, and very rich and influential families – with a mixture of political, religious and occult undercurrents. In other words, all the obvious candidates. Numerous books and websites go into the detail, so there is little need to explore it here. How much of the grand plan all of them know, however, and whether there are pyramids-within-pyramids amongst even the power structures near the top, is another matter.

Factions Within Factions

The presumption is often made that the very existence of a ruling elite means that those involved must be all-powerful and of one mind, accurately manipulating domino events that hit the required spot every time, all to a predetermined agenda. But this may apportion them an unwarranted infallibility.

There is evidence to show that there are factions and disputes within the echelons of those with great influence over our lives. After all, the world is a big and complex place. Even with a general agreement on how it should move forward, the pressures of regional needs and personal biases are almost certain to blur the clarity of purpose from time to time. Going on the word that does sneak out from Bilderberg meetings and the suchlike, it seems that as many disagreements, compromises and negotiations arise there as within any supposedly democratic Parliament. If this weren’t the case, the meetings would not presumably need to take place, so pre-orchestrated would the scheming be.

As with Masonic and other secret society structures, there is also a pecking order to consider. It is doubtful that all those ‘in’ on a global conspiracy seeking centralised control would be party to every machination, and certain players may themselves be manipulated from within without realising it. From the outside, for example, it appears that British ex-prime minister Gordon Brown, for all his many references to creating a ‘New World Order,’ seemed destined to be a fall-guy from the start, set up to come to power just as the world economy took a tumble. The question is, did Brown know the full plan? Was he someone faithfully playing a game with a known outcome of outward failure, while secretly ensuring success in an agenda of weakening the UK on the world stage to quicken a move towards One World Government? Or did he cling on in the genuine belief that all would come right and that he would one day be hailed as a political hero?

Likewise, when Bill Clinton found himself under threat of impeachment following the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal, was this all part of a contrived drama, or a sign of factions within factions very genuinely trying to remove him after an unplanned gaffe? And did Richard Nixon go rogue or was he just playing a pre-auditioned role? On a smaller level, when a man in the crowd died after being pushed to the ground by a policeman during the 2009 G20 protests in London, it took all the seemingly contrived focus away from images of a few people smashing a bank window, and suddenly all the headlines became howls about police brutality. Was this an ongoing twist to deliberately stir civil unrest or was it (as many suspect) something going unexpectedly wrong and changing the script? Does every war and false-flag terror attack really go to plan, or is there as much ‘cock-up’ involved as conspiracy?

How organised, then, is this global elite, and is it really as united as some truth seekers give credit for? The evidence suggests that there are chinks in the armour and disagreements within, and weaknesses and unpredictable elements always arise in any grand plan. This offers hope. The foibles of human nature and the sheer universality of chaos theory may ensure that unexpected events and peculiar side tracks undermine the apparent solidity of the control agenda just when they are least expected. We could therefore be dealing with something far less coordinated than feared – indeed, the wide truth seeker presumption of the elite’s potency may make it seem more of a problem than it really is. But can we take the chance of becoming complacent?

It is clear that certain events and trends do seem to be part of an unfolding pattern that suggests an attempt to engineer a mandate for centralised power. Whilst we must not become petrified into inaction by this, nor, however, should we take the opposite risk of assuming there is no real threat, even if the conspirators are found to be less competent than some believe. Either way, it is important at the very least to call attention to the appalling deeds committed by those at least trying to be an all-powerful force.

Consent by Apathy

If plans for world domination are being laid on any level, a simple fact needs to be recognised – that it only goes on because we collectively allow it. Even with obvious governmental deceptions such as the weapons of mass destruction debacle in Iraq, such things only continue to occur as widely as they do because too few people stand solidly against them or fully call their leaders to account. We have allowed apathy and the distractions of (apparent) comfort, trivia and entertainment to hold us in our armchairs in the hope that anything dark ‘out there’ will remedy itself in due course, without our input, energetically or even electorally (voter turnouts for Western elections, whatever they are worth, are generally perilously low).

By having become so disconnected with what goes on around us in our names, we have not stood up in our collective power – and are therefore as responsible as any global elite for having created the world we live in today. With the consent granted by our passivity, we have watched obvious lies and manipulations take away our strength, resolve and liberty, and have done little or nothing about it. As such, we have given away our personal responsibility. The energy spent complaining loudly but emptily in the pub or bus queue about the shortcomings of today’s society, if applied in more proactive and positive directions, could be used to offset the very things being complained about. The problem is that we have been trained to think that we cannot make a difference – when, in truth, we can, especially when we match the tangible power of the collective mind with the practical rewards of direct action, as I explore more in The Truth Agenda.

Speaking out

Much of the awakening process that HAS begun has come from the kind of people drawn to be part of the truth seeking community. Unfortunately, their often unseen efforts are generally rewarded by undeserved ridicule and sidelining by a culture that has shut its eyes and ears to anything but the skewed vision it is fed by those who prefer to keep us dumb. People who question the status quo are easily neutered in the mainstream by being branded with false ‘wacko’ stereotypes created by a media that is all too often either itself controlled, fearful or just lazily stupid. Truth seeker enthusiasm does allow things to spill over into fanaticism and lack of discernment sometimes, no doubt, but the fact is that there are also absolutely vital questions and observations being raised by very reasonable, normal people, which could make a real and positive difference to people’s lives – if ever given a chance.

It doesn’t take long for the average person to see through manipulation once obvious anomalies are pointed out. Assuming the masses will always be dumb may be an arrogant and huge mistake on the part of our masters. When discussed in an accessible and objective way, the concept of a ruling global elite, which believes that some kind of catastrophic cosmological or climatic change may be imminent and has thus been implementing a regime of draconian restrictions by nefarious means to ensure it retains control during and after the chaos, is nowhere near as far-fetched as it may at first seem. It can all be made to sound credible when expressed in balanced tones, and when sensible evidence is presented.

Tones are important. Extreme conspiracy dogma, passionately but indiscriminately shouted, can repel potential support and plays into the hands of the mainstream’s characterisation of all alternative thinkers as uneducated fanatics. Those with the power of insight who can rise above this have a responsibility to convey a user-friendly overview of the control agenda. Successful outreach requires initial moderation – and compassion. Newcomers can be confused by all the many complex sources of information out there, and may shrink from the at-first disturbing idea of a manipulative ruling elite if not properly approached. The uncertain era we live in now, with glimpses of the truth shining in through the cracks, provides a unique opportunity for those with the insights to offer another view of the world – while they can.

There may be more than one reason why a world of centralised control would be desired by a ruling elite, and we cannot fully presume to understand from the outside. But no strategy that imposes an undeclared agenda without transparency or choice can be right, and any regime of underhand manipulation must be resisted. To resist successfully, however, those with awareness must hold on to optimism and strike an appropriate tone if they are to be listened to and people awakened so that a self-elected and questionable minority’s vision for the world is not allowed to ride roughshod over the needs of everyday people.

No elite, of any kind, can be infallible, and this offers true hope for the future – if enough people can rise above their fears and speak out, loudly and clearly.

Adapted from The Truth Agenda by Andy Thomas (Vital Signs Publishing 2009, revised 2011)

ANDY THOMAS is a leading researcher into unexplained mysteries and is the author of the acclaimed The Truth Agenda (Vital Signs Publishing, 2009, revised 2011). His many other books include Vital Signs, described widely as the definitive guide to crop circles. Andy also edited Geoff Stray’s seminal Beyond 2012. Andy extensively writes and lectures, and has made numerous radio and TV appearances around the world. For further information, visit www.truthagenda.org.

Source: The New Dawn

“There Is A Conspiracy”

The title of today’s column, “There Is A Conspiracy,” is a direct quote from Ezekiel 22:25. In this passage, God instructed Ezekiel to blow the whistle on the conspiracy of Israel’s prophets to deny people truth, to devour people’s souls, to defraud people’s substance, and to destroy people’s lives. I dare say this conspiracy is still alive and well today. Many pastors and religious leaders in 2013 America are as guilty of Ezekiel’s charges as were Israel’s ancient prophets.

However, use the word “conspiracy” today and even most Christians will roll their eyes in disbelief. And, of course, the mainstream media is so paranoid of the word conspiracy that one has to speculate that the reason for this aversion to objectively dealing with the subject is simply due to the fact that they are among the co-conspirators.

But once in awhile, someone in the media has the guts to broach the subject of conspiracy. My friends at TruthAlliance.net recently covered a report written by Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone Magazine. Taibbi begins his report saying, “Conspiracy theorists of the world, believers in the hidden hands of the Rothschilds and the Masons and the Illuminati, we skeptics owe you an apology. You were right. The players may be a little different, but your basic premise is correct: The world is a rigged game. We found this out in recent months, when a series of related corruption stories spilled out of the financial sector, suggesting the world’s largest banks may be fixing the prices of, well, just about everything.”

Speaking of the LIBOR and other Wall Street scandals, Taibbi goes on to write, “All of these stories collectively pointed to the same thing: These banks, which already possess enormous power just by virtue of their financial holdings–in the United States, the top six banks, many of them the same names you see on the Libor and ISDAfix panels, own assets equivalent to 60 percent of the nation’s GDP–are beginning to realize the awesome possibilities for increased profit and political might that would come with colluding instead of competing. Moreover, it’s increasingly clear that both the criminal justice system and the civil courts may be impotent to stop them, even when they do get caught working together to game the system.

“If true, that would leave us living in an era of undisguised, real-world conspiracy, in which the prices of currencies, commodities like gold and silver, even interest rates and the value of money itself, can be and may already have been dictated from above. And those who are doing it can get away with it. Forget the Illuminati–this is the real thing, and it’s no secret. You can stare right at it, anytime you want.”

See the report at:

Truth Alliance

Hallelujah! Just about everybody with an IQ over 80 knew it; so it’s about time someone finally said it: gold and silver prices are “rigged.” So is the Petro-Dollar. So is the ammo shortage. So are the headlines on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and MSNBC. And so are many of our national catastrophes.

Back in 2011, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was added to the list of “conspiracy nuts” when tapes that were recorded within months of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, which had been sealed in a vault at the Kennedy Library in Boston, were released. In the tapes, former First Lady Jackie Kennedy revealed that she believed Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson and other “influential individuals” orchestrated the Dallas shooting that killed her husband.

Wow! Jackie Kennedy didn’t believe the official government story that her husband was killed by a “lone gunman.” She believed there was a conspiracy of “influential individuals” who colluded in killing her husband.

I’m with Jackie! Even though I was only a little boy when President Kennedy was assassinated, I could never wrap my head around the “lone gunman” theory. And the older I got, and the more I studied that tragedy, the more I became convinced there was a giant conspiracy involved in both killing the President and covering it up after he had been killed. I still believe that today.

While we are talking about conspiracies, let’s talk about a few more.

TWA Flight 800 “Explosion”

Do you really believe the official story of the crash of TWA flight 800 in 1996? What if an American missile accidentally shot down that jetliner? Do you really think the federal government would come clean about it?

Read this report from The Washington Weekly, if you are willing to be enlightened:

TWA

Oklahoma City Bombing

Do readers really believe the official story that Timothy McVeigh acted alone in igniting the explosion that took down the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and that there was no cover-up as to what actually happened? I don’t.

Here is where you can get started on this one:

OKC Bombing

And here:

OK State Representative Charles Key States His Case

9/11 Twin Towers and Pentagon Attacks

There has been so much written on this subject, I will let readers fend for themselves as to personal research on the matter. Without wading too deeply into this discussion (and for the sake of column space), let me ask just one simple question. Pray tell, what took down Building 7? To this good hour, I have not heard one single plausible explanation proffered by any government or media representative that explains why Building 7 collapsed.

Do I know what really happened on 9/11? No. But do I believe that the government is purposefully keeping the American people in the dark as to what really happened on 9/11/01? You bet I do! Do I believe that there is a cover-up of crucial evidence related to 9/11 by both the federal government and the national news media? You bet I do!

Haiti Earthquake

Another event that the official version is just completely unbelievable to me is the earthquake in Haiti in January of 2010. I will always believe that there was so much to this story that we were not being told. It didn’t “smell” right to me when it happened; it doesn’t “smell” right to me now. If you’re interested, try perusing through some of this information:

Haiti

Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria Wars

Let me be so blunt as to say I don’t believe the official story about any of the wars America is waging in the Middle East. I believe virtually every reason George W. Bush gave the American people for attacking and invading Iraq was a premeditated, bald-faced lie! And I believe every reason Barack Obama gives for staying at war in the Middle East is a premeditated bald-faced lie!

I believe the so-called “War on Terror” which justifies endless wars abroad and endless surveillance at home is completely manufactured by those in government and business for personal economic and political interests. In the name of fighting for freedom overseas, the central government in Washington, D.C., is turning America’s homeland into a giant prison-camp. Pray tell, what good does it do to send American troops overseas to fight a war for freedom, then turn around and use the war for freedom overseas as an excuse to expunge the freedoms of the American people here at home? If that doesn’t smell of conspiracy, nothing does!

Ron Paul was right! “Blowback” truly is a reality; and America’s “War on Terror” is actually making the United States less safe, not more. In fact, if you really want to get sick to your stomach over what this so-called “War on Terror” is accomplishing and why so many people around the world are coming to hate us, take a look at this report:

The Pentagon’s New Power Elite: A Secret War in 120 Countries

The Boston Bombings

Noted researcher and analyst, Joel Skousen, recently wrote a detailed and lengthy exposé on the Boston Bombings in his excellent World Affairs Brief (which I highly recommend). Here is just a short clip:

“It seems very suspicious that the FBI would release so many photos and video excerpts (including even partial and grainy shots as if they are presenting everything possible) showing the brothers [accused bombers] in the area, but then they fail to produce the most conclusive evidence that matches what the indictment says.

“This narrative is so specific that it would be very risky for a federal official to make such detailed reference to video evidence if they did not actually possess it–unless they already had a legal strategy worked out where the claimed evidence would be suppressed under the government’s habitual use of the State Secrets doctrine or via a compliant judge who has agreed in advance to seal the evidence. The suppression of key evidence has been a central part of every major government cover-up including the JFK and Martin Luther King assassinations, Oklahoma City bombing and both WTC attacks.”

To subscribe to Skousen’s World Affairs Brief, go to:

World Affairs Brief

Skousen is right to be suspicious. Agencies of the federal government have long-facilitated terrorist plots in this country. Even the New York Times carried an editorial outlining a long list of examples of how the FBI hatches and then “discovers” terrorist plots.

See the Times editorial at:

Terrorist Plots Helped Along By The FBI

Furthermore, writing for Infowars.com, Paul Joseph Watson chronicles the long-established pattern of central governments in creating national terror as a vehicle with which to blame other groups and set in motion whatever predetermined plan had been previously concocted.

See Watson’s report at:

Why Government Should Be The First Suspect In Any Terror Attack

The Connecticut School Shootings, The Colorado Theater Shootings, etc.

There are so many inconsistencies, changed stories, and conflicting reports with virtually every official report regarding these mass shootings, so much so that it is difficult for any rationally thinking person to believe them. Unfortunately, the absence of true objective investigative reporting by the national news media means the vast majority of the American people will never have the information they need and, thus, they will never know the truth about any of these mass shootings. All the news media does today is simply regurgitate the official government story, without question. (That’s why, if you truly want to be informed, you must abandon the controlled propaganda press corps and research independent sources. But even there, one must be careful. Not every independent source is reliable. Plus, government propagandists are at work planting bogus information on the Internet and elsewhere in an attempt to make government critics appear foolish.) But there is one constant that surrounds every mass shooting: the push for increased gun control by anti-freedom politicians. Yes, I realize we could put this under the “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste” (Rahm Emanuel) category. But I’m so cynical now that I’m seeing the potential for the dark side of government behind every mass shooting.

Speaking of defending the Second Amendment, there is a brand new film being produced entitled, MOLON LABE: How The Second Amendment Guarantees America’s Freedom, based on the masterful research of attorney Edwin Vieira, Jr., in his book, The Sword and Sovereignty. The film features people such as Ron Paul, Pat Buchanan, Larry Pratt, G. Edward Griffin, Alex Jones, Stewart Rhodes, and yours truly. This film has the potential to be a “game-changer” in the attacks against the preservation of our right to keep and bear arms. Acclaimed producer James Jaeger is nearing final editing and could really use the support of thousands of freedomists around the country. Your contributions to this project could pay off mightily in helping to preserve the Second Amendment. I highly encourage readers to seriously consider donating to the completion of this terrific film. It is a film that Barack Obama and Dianne Feinstein hope will never be seen. Here is the trailer along with information on how you can contribute:

So, Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone Magazine, the late Jackie Kennedy Onassis, and the Prophet Ezekiel all agree: “There is a conspiracy.” I believe it.

Going Against God “Just For Fun”

Today we’re hearing a lot about Spiritism or Spiritualism, not to be confused with spiritual or spirituality, as in “I’m not religious, I’m spiritual,” or “I’m into spirituality.”  The term Spiritism has replaced what was once called animism and other religious practices involving the invocation of spiritual beings.

Some religions meld Spiritualism with Christianity.  For example, a blend of Christian and African folk beliefs that originated in Brazil is now practiced in the U.S.   Spiritualism is much the same as Spiritism only it has adopted Christian rites and prayers.  People visiting Spiritualistic services can be misled into thinking they’re Christian churches.  The problem is Christianity cannot be melded with any other religion or practice.

One of the major tenets of Spiritism is reincarnation.  The classic form of reincarnation originated in India in the 9th century BC.  Reincarnation has become a hot topic in our post-modern culture.

There are a whole host of beliefs about reincarnation.  The most widely touted belief  is that upon death one’s spirit exits the body in search of another body to inhabit. Believing in reincarnation gives hope for continuing one’s existence in further lives to work off one’s karma.  Karma is broadly defined as the consequences of one’s actions.

Ask professing Christians as they flow through the doors of a Sunday worship service if they believe in reincarnation, some will give you a cavalier “Yes,” as if it’s no big deal for believers to mix Christianity with mystical beliefs.  However, believing in reincarnation is a very big deal for the serious Christian.  For example, reincarnation is a central tenet within Hinduism, not Christianity!

The thing Christians need to come to terms with is that belief in reincarnation goes against what the Bible teaches regarding the soul’s final judgment by a holy God.  What Jesus Christ clearly taught is that unrepentant sinners are condemned to an eternity in hell.  Jesus never mentioned reincarnation – not once!

Hebrews 9:27 reveals what occurs when human beings die:

And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.

Listen to what Paul says happens when we die:

We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.(2 Cor. 5:8)

It is imperative that serious Christians view mysticism as evil.  When Paul came face to face with the Jewish mystic Elymas, he charged him with being a child of the devil and an enemy of righteousness. Moreover, he accused the mystic of perverting the right ways of the Lord.  (Acts 13:10)  Through the power of the Holy Spirit, Paul caused him to go blind.  Not only did he put out the sorcerer’s eyes, he also put him out of a job! When it came to confronting evil, Paul never backed down, never hesitated, wavered or vacillated.  He had all the subtlety of a sledgehammer when it came to evildoers.

God forbids any sort of participation in paganism for our own protection.  His reason is simple: its roots are steeped in pagan idolatry and drug use.  The occult world is an open door to Satan’s world.  Those who enter find themselves on a quest for ‘hidden wisdom’ or ‘deeper truth.’  And, not surprisingly, the sought after ‘hidden wisdom’ is not meant for everyone, it’s meant for a select few such as New Age disciples and gurus.

We call those who possess supernatural power (power’s what it’s all about) shamans, witchdoctors, clairvoyants, trance channelers, spiritists, and the list goes on.  So, how does a spiritist go about getting in contact with the spirit world?  By receiving radiation, frequencies or vibrations from the dead.  “Communication from the spirit world manifests itself in psychical phenomena (e.g., telepathy, clairvoyance, trance speaking, and apparitions) and in physical phenomena (e.g., levitation, automatic writing, and poltergeist and ectoplasmic activities).” (Source)

The Bible tells us that it is God who instigates communication, not man.  Generally the Lord will use angels as His envoys to humans.  We know very little about angels, either the elect or the fallen.  However, the scriptures inform us that on occasion the Lord sent a holy elect angel to Earth to deliver messages. And He also sent angles to minister to people, to protect them, and also to execute His judgment.  The angels have one purpose: to glorify God’s holy Name and to carry out His will.

There are also fallen angels – the rebellious ones!  The most notorious of the lot is Lucifer aka Satan.  The Bible refers to the fallen angels as demons, spirits of darkness and evil spirits.  The ones that rebelled against God fell from grace.  Consequently, they were hurled out of heaven, lock stock and barrel.  Bible expositor John MacArthur elucidates what happened next:

At that point, Satan gained the rulership of the world, and the term world took on a third meaning: the evil system opposed to God that now dominates this planet. The system that Satan began will continue to develop up to the time period known as the Great Tribulation.

As I have made clear, Christianity and Spiritism have nothing in common whatsoever.  I mean, think about it. Can you trust God and Satan at the same time?  Here’s what Paul said:

Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?

And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the uncleanthing; and I will receive you, And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty. (2 Cor. 6:14-18)

Satan is known as the “father of lies.”  Even those who are guided by an “inner voice” can be deceived, warns occultist Nicholas Weeks:

Channels such as [Alice] Bailey are sincere and convinced that their inner voices and visions are real Masters. Unhappily, sincerity is no protection from delusion. In 1884 Master KH wrote to a psychic of that time, giving an explanation for the befuddling of a channel or seer. ‘Since you have scarcely learned the elements of self-control, in psychism, you must suffer bad consequences. You draw to yourself the nearest and strongest influences “often evil” and absorb them, and are psychically stifled or narcotised by them. The airs become peopled with resuscitated phantoms. They give you false tokens, misleading revelations, deceptive images. Your vivid creative fancy evokes illusive Gurus and chelas [disciples], and puts into their mouths words coined the instant before in the mint of your mind, unknown to yourself. The false appear as real, as the true, and you have no exact method of detection since you are yet prone to force your communications to agree with your preconceptions. (Source)

And to think, many Christians are now engaged in magical mystical practices such as contemplative prayer that can give the practitioner misleading revelations and deceptive images, where the false may appear real.  (See a column I wrote on contemplative prayer here.)

Keep in mind that the spirits that speak through the mouths of the willing are demons.  People who get themselves into a mind-altering trance with the purpose being to channel a benevolent spirit may end up becoming demon possessed!  Granted, some channelers are really nothing more than convincing actors who write the script as they go along.  These are the charlatans who do it for money or fame – or both.  However, there are many dupes that allow their bodies to be used by spirit entities that use the occasion to spew anti-Christian propaganda!

The Bible tells us to, “Prove [test] all things; hold fast that which is good.” (1 John 4:1). We’re also told to flee (run like a maniac) from the devil who “walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.” (1 Peter 5:8) Now, picture a lion hiding in the brush to pounce on an unsuspecting wildebeest.  The devil’s like the hungry lion, only he’s waiting to pounce on Christ’s sheep!  Unfortunately many Christians fail to obey God’s command to resist the devil, which is one of the reasons Christianity’s in the sorry state it’s in today.

Far too many followers of Jesus Christ are unaware that our Lord quite literally detests all forms of sorcery. There are no exceptions!  Sorry to be a wet blanket, but even astrology is banned.  And it doesn’t matter if it’s done “just for fun.”  One cannot be a Presbyterian on Sunday and a spiritist the other six days of the week.

This brings me to two blogs I stumbled on.  Both male bloggers declare their love for Christ and state that the Bible is the standard by which they live their lives.  One studies apologetics; the other is a youth pastor.  They both have their Zodiac signs on display.  That way if you land on aspiring apologist’s blog, you’ll know that he’s a Gemini; likewise, if you land on youth pastor’s blog, you’ll discover that he’s a Virgo.  One can only assume that these young men have not yet read Leviticus 19:26, Deuteronomy 18:9-12, Exodus 22:18 and other similar passages where God commands His people to steer clear of sorcery.  And yet these so-called Bible believers find time to read up on astrology?

Christians who are confronted with an evil practice must lace up their trusty running shoes and high tail it out of there, pronto!  Keep away from horoscopes (astrology), numerology, séances, tarot cards, tealeaves, palm reading, crystal balls, talking boards, omens or signs.  Moreover, do not get involved in wizardry, witchcraft, the study of Kabbalah, nature religion (Wicca), and the practice of yoga (its sole purpose is purely spiritual). Believers must flee from any and all pagan customs and practices.  Those who are currently involved in any of the above must bring it to an end today!

Since dabbling in sorcery is a sin against God, repentance is of paramount importance.  So if you’ve been dabbling, repent! And never return to any sort of evil practice — even if it’s “just for fun.”

Bear in mind that the demonic powers operating in the realm of the occult are very real.  These spirits are stronger and more dangerous than people realize.  The Bible warns us to “regard not them that have familiar spirits, neither seek after wizards, to be defiled by them: I am the LORD your God.” (Lev. 19:31).

The Apostle Paul understood all too well that evil forces are ever present in the “heavenlies.” Hence, he admonished followers of Christ to wear the “armor of God” to protect against familiar spirits that prey on gullible humans.  He even gave specific instructions to the Church in Ephesus:

Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God: (Ephesians 6:1-12).

Christian — take Paul’s instructions to heart and daily put on the full armor of God to protect against the rulers of the darkness of this world.

Recommended:

The Old Serpent and the Slacker—an allegory on the “Armor of God” By Marsha West
Are You Armed for Battle? By Marsha West
Occult – On Solid Rock Resources
Angels – On Solid Rock Resources
New Age Movement – On Solid Rock Resources
Contemplative Prayer – On Solid Rock Resources
Christian Yoga? – On Solid Rock Resources

Fall of Mankind

“Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.”   Proverbs 16:18

In “Against the Heathen,” early Church Father Athanasius reveals that pride and haughtiness preceded man’s fall into idolatry and paganism.  A haughty spirit led them to make light of higher things, and deliberately disregarding what they knew to be true they began to seek in preference things in the lower or natural dimension.  Thus they fell into worship of self, sexual pleasures and acquisition of status and things to the living God and higher things.

The truth as to evil said Athanasius,

 “….is that it originates, and resides, in the perverted choice of the darkened soul” which, “materialized by forgetting God” and engrossed in lower things, “makes them into gods,” and thereby  “descends into a hopeless depth of delusion and superstition,” whereby ”they ceased to think that anything existed beyond what is seen, or that anything was good save things temporal and bodily; so turning away and forgetting that she was in the image of the good God, she no longer… sees God the Word after whose likeness she is made; but having departed from herself, imagines and feigns what is not (and then) advancing further in evil, they came to celebrate as gods the elements and the principles of which bodies are composed….” (Against the Heathen, New Advent)  

Having descended into delusion and superstition they imagined they had no free will and further that “all that exists” is the natural dimension— a divine One Substance, watery abyss, chaos, or void, primordial matter, animated natural powers, forces, and deterministic laws, all of which they celebrated and attributed miraculous powers to.   So for example, with the Egyptians’ self-created Sun-God Ra, the divine abyss or One Substance out of which he evolved is Nu–primordial matter:

“I came into being from primordial matter…I made all the forms under which I appeared by means of (or out of) the god-soul which I raised up out of Nu (i.e., the primeval abyss of water.) (The Long War Against God, Dr. Henry Morris, p. 243)

This is naturalism, or materialism, which is the belief that there is neither living God nor heavenly realm.  There is only the natural dimension, thus evolutionary materialist Dr. Scott Todd wrote in the science journal ‘Nature:’

“Even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic.”  (Naturalism in the Light of Reality, Robert Gurney, creation.com, June 14, 2012) 

Materialism is of the worldview of monism which is held in common by pantheism and spiritualism and dates back to pagan antiquity and was or is taught by all non-biblical thought systems.

Greek Stoics and Epicureans, for example, were materialistic monists and these two schools of natural science and evolution held the ancient world of thought in allegiance well into the Roman Empire.  Epicureanism reigns supreme in our own age through modern evolutionary materialism, which is merely revamped and revised Epicureanism.   

The pagan philosopher Epicurus (342-270 B.C.) believed in an infinite number of worlds, or parallel universes in the words of contemporary ‘new’ pagan materialists.  Like his modern counterparts, Epicurus taught that there was no god or gods, first principles, moral law, souls and afterlife as all things on earth had evolved from the earth material.  

 Epicurus preferred lower things to higher things, as do his contemporary followers, thus he taught that “all that exists” is an eternally existing void and animated matter.  This made human beings, their intelligence and volition, an evolved accident of chance.    Reason is left, but reason is active only because sensations (i.e., firing of neurons, chemical interactions) stimulate it.

In modern “scientific” terms, the idea that brute matter spontaneously generated itself from nothing (void) in much the same way as Ra spontaneously generated himself from Nu is called abiogenesis.  On the basis of this ancient mythological superstition, new-pagan evolutionary materialists assert that the living supernatural God, souls, spirits, angels, demons, heaven, hell and metaphysics do not exist.

As for ‘modern’ evolutionary theory, anthropologist Henry Fairfield Osborn, longtime director of the American Museum of Natural History reveals that Darwin is not its’ originator but rather ancient pagans are.  In the introduction to his history of evolutionism Osborn wrote:

“When I began the search for anticipations of the evolutionary theory….I was led back to the Greek natural philosophers and I was astonished to find how many of the pronounced and basic features of the Darwinian theory were anticipated even as far back as the seventh century B.C.” (Osborn, From the Greeks to Darwin, p. xi)

Abiogenesis is such an obvious embarrassment that today some naturalists such as SETI researcher Paul Davies and Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the DNA molecule, have abandoned it in favor of panspermia.  

Panspermia is the idea that life on earth was accidentally seeded by meteorites containing the essential building blocks of life or perhaps by highly evolved extraterrestrials who for billions of years have been guiding the evolution of man.   The extraterrestrial idea was favored by Arthur C. Clarke in his book, “Childhood’s End” and a variation on this theme has recently been advanced by Davies, Crick, and Ralph Pudritz of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.

 Davies has written seriously about the possibility of “alien bioengineering” that could be detected in the DNA of life on earth and suggests that citizen scientists and school students be enlisted to help search for evidence. (An Alien Code Close to Home: Seeking ET Beyond the Radio Silence, Astrobiology Magazine, Jeremy Hsu, 10/27/2011)

Pudritz theorizes that humans and aliens may share the same DNA which itself could be part of a universal structure “of the first genetic codes anywhere….” (Why Aliens Might Look Like You, Eddie Wren, dailymail.co.uk/ June 11, 2012)

Crick proposes a theory called “directed panspermia,” the idea that,

“…life on earth may have begun when aliens from another planet sent a rocket ship containing spores to seed the earth.”   

He admits however that his theory only pushes the unresolvable problem of the origin of life out into deep space:

“This scenario still leaves open the question of who designed the designer [aliens] — how did life originally originate?”   (Crick, Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature, 1981)

The Myth of Extraterrestrials

In his book, “Scientific Mythologies,” James A. Herrick traces the ‘aliens from outer-space’ idea back to certain Renaissance astrologers, occultists, and mystics such as Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) who claimed to not only receive telepathic secrets from spirits but to have visited populated planets during out-of-body experiences. 

Swedenborg’s influence is far-reaching.  From Kant to the occult theosophist Madame Blavatsky and points in between and on into our own time to psychologist J.B. Rhine, a vast array of science fiction writers (i.e., Clarke, H.G. Wells, Ray Bradbury, Steven Spielberg) and numerous evolutionary scientists.

Over time, Swedenborg’s astral plane ‘space travels’ gave birth to what Herrick dubs “The Myth of the Extraterrestrial.”  As far back as the seventeenth century science fiction writers were imagining “the intelligent extraterrestrial visitor” and preparing the public to accept their existence.   And accept them they have, for the twentieth century has witnessed a veritable population explosion in the alien domain, said Herrick.  (p. 43)

In general, science fiction, like new-pagan evolutionary materialism, is neither particularly scientific nor futuristic.  It is rather a regression to the mystical pagan origins of modern science that reappeared in the heart of Christendom during the Renaissance.   In “The Abolition of Man” (1974) C.S. Lewis points out that the Renaissance reawakened a magical view of the world closely connected with pagan Gnostic sectarianism, Hermetic magic, astrology, Eastern pantheism and alchemical scientism .   Accompanying all of this was evolution, occultism, Epicureanism, reincarnation and karma.

Evolution is both the antithesis of creation ex nihilo and the primary doctrine of both Eastern pantheism and Western scientific materialism, and so early on Lewis understood that both movements were merely two sides of the same pagan revival.  Thus he argued that pantheism and materialism are not enemies in principle but rather cooperating philosophies united against the supernatural Creator, His Revelation, creation ex nihilo, all higher things, the linear view of history and Christian-based civilization.

What this means is that naturalism, abiogenesis, chance, natural selection, multiple universe and panspermia theories are but six contemporary adaptations of ancient pagan “idolatry, magic, occult mysticism and mythology.”   These six are of a whole host of fallacies derived from modern evolutionary thinking that have permeated the post-Christian West and American society giving birth to a “new” pagan religion of evolutionary science.

Fall of Western Civilization

Christendom and Protestant America arose on the wings of the Genesis account of creation ex nihilo, the Biblical view of man’s sinful condition and God’s Moral Law.   Their subsequent fall was traced by Richard Weaver in his book, “Ideas Have Consequences,” (1945).   In many ways Weaver’s analysis parallels Athanasius’ account of the fall of man.  

Weaver writes that 14^th century Western man had made an “evil decision” to abandon his belief in the transcendent God and universals and thus the position that “there is a source of truth higher than, and independent of, man…”  The consequences of the rejection of “higher things” were catastrophic:

“The denial of everything transcending experience means inevitably…the denial of truth. With the denial of objective truth there is no escape from the relativism of ‘man is the measure of all things.” (The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America, George H. Nash, pp. 32-33)

“Now the soul of mankind, not satisfied with the devising of evil, began by degrees to venture upon what is worse still.”   Athanasius

Fueled by a corrupted motive of dominating and bull-dozing the real world so as to coerce other wills, Western apostates conceptually murdered the living God, sealed off the supernatural dimension and elevated Nature to the supreme reality.  The doctrine of original sin was abandoned and replaced by the “goodness of man.”  With only the material realm of the senses held to be real, supernatural Christianity declined, the omniscient mind of human-gods arose, and pagan materialistic science became the most prestigious way to study man.  With knowledge limited to the sensory realm, man’s spiritual attributes—-soul, mind, conscience and volition—were soon lost in an endless cycle of reductionism and determinism.  Man, created in the spiritual likeness of his supernatural Creator was lost.  In his place stood the soulless human ape, an accidental emergent product of evolution and “earth material.”

 Fall of Western Man

From the Renaissance to our own time, a stunning spiritual transformation of consciousness has shifted Western and American thinking away from the supernatural God and biblical religion and toward the lower thing, the new pagan religion of evolution.    In his book, “The Making of the New Spirituality: The Eclipse of the Western Tradition,” James Herrick calls it the “New Religious Synthesis” and briefly outlines seven of its components:

1. History (as well as unchanging truth and moral absolutes) has no spiritual significance.  This is because the idea of continuous evolutionary change makes them absurd.

2. The supremacy of omniscient reason, mystical mind-powers, intuition, and collective consciousness.

3. The spiritualization of science. Since the empirical study of the material universe employs reason to acquire knowledge, and reason is not physical but rather spiritual, today it is acknowledged that reason is in fact acquiring spiritual knowledge.

4. Animated nature (animism).   The natural dimension is alive with energies, divine spirit, Zoe, god-soul, and consciousness. 

5. Gnosis, or esoteric knowledge, the provenance of spiritual elites and extraordinarily gifted individuals, including some scientists.

6. Spiritual evolution.  Through control and direction of their own spiritual evolution certain naturally selected humans are destined to realize unimaginable spiritual advances. Spiritual or conscious evolution leap frogs off of Darwin’s’ biological theory and will supposedly lead to actual human divinity.

7. Religious syncretism rooted in common mystical experiences and telepathic revelations from disembodied intelligences. (Herrick, pp. 33-35)

“But in his estate shall (Antichrist) honour the God of forces.” Dan. 11:38

Under the New Religious Synthesis, the animated god-force called evolution is the principle miracle-producing power of the cosmos. Whether by way of abiogenesis or by accidental or directed panspermia, human beings are evolution’s conscious products and can now achieve ever-higher levels of consciousness by directing their own evolution.

In the book, “The Aquarian Conspiracy,” Marilyn Ferguson pointed out that the efficient direction of evolution requires “a mechanism for biological change more powerful than chance mutation” which will open “the possibility of rapid evolution in our time.” (p. 148)

Some evolutionists now claim that this powerful mechanism is presently available to man from aliens who will solve mankind’s problems and conduct man to a new “cosmic” age. Aliens are busily transforming the consciousness of abductees and other Westerners and through them teaching evolution, naturalism  and occult New Age philosophy as well as warning of a coming planetary apocalypse and denying the living God, the supernatural dimension and Christian theism. 

All of this has led French physicist and UFO researcher Dr. Jacques Vallee to conclude that something is happening to human consciousness that is causing a major shift in man’s belief systems and his relationship to the concept of the invisible.  Vallee believes that the same “powerful force’ that influenced the human race in the past is influencing it again:

“…..human belief…is being controlled and conditioned, man’s concepts are being rearranged, and we may be headed toward a massive change of human attitudes toward paranormal abilities and extraterrestrial life.”  (Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future, Fr. Seraphim Rose, p. 109)

In light of this, Vallee proposes the hypothesis that there is a control system,

“… for human consciousness…I am suggesting that what takes place through close encounters with UFOs is control of human beliefs, control of the relationship between our consciousness and physical reality, and that this control has been in force throughout history….” (Alien Intrusion: UFOs and the Evolution Connection, Gary Bates, p. 158)

Frank Baumer concurs and observes that evolution has,

“….persuaded people to think of everything in nature as the fruit of a gradual growth rather than an original creation.”   The sweeping acceptance of evolutionary thinking means that it is “now difficult if not impossible for an educated man to conceive of a primitive revelation such as traditional Christianity taught, or even of an original natural religion from which men had declined.” This difficulty arises because “in an evolving world, perfection obviously lay, not in the past, but in the future.”(Religion and Rise of Skepticism, p. 147)

In occult terminology, transformation of consciousness is egregore, a concept representing a “thought form” (i.e., Richard Dawkins’ memes) or “collective group mind,” resulting from a psychic entity influencing the thoughts of a group of people.   However, egregore derives from the Greek word for “watchers,” leading the French occult magician Eliphas Levi (1810-1875) to identify egregore with the fallen angel ‘fathers’ of the nephilim.   In Christian language, transformation of consciousness means “demonic outpouring.’ Vallee’s “powerful force” is a new demonic outpouring being loosed upon mankind.

So complete has the transformation been that the God of forces has successfully inverted the order of creation and reversed the direction of Biblical theism.  With creation ex nihilo virtually replaced by evolution, it is now believed that men have not fallen from perfection but instead are gradually evolving upward from their ape beginnings toward greater and greater spiritual perfection.  Self-perfecting man no longer needs the living, supernatural God as the idea of “conscious evolution” means he can save himself, and perhaps even attain god-hood.

“The gradual abasement of the Soul from Truth to Falsehood (is) by the abuse of her freedom of Choice.”     Athanasius

Two brilliant visionaries foresaw the stunning events we are witnessing today—the wholesale rejection of Truth tied to the fall of Westerners into idolatry and paganism influenced and directed by a demonic outpouring effecting a transformation of consciousness in tandem with the rise of the New Religious Synthesis.  Each man in his own way predicted these events would usher in the end of the world and the appearance of the Antichrist. The two visionaries, Vladimir Soloviev (1850-1900), a brilliant Russian philosopher and theologian, and Robert Hugh Benson (1871-1914), an English Catholic priest, recorded their predictions in gripping novels—Soloviev in the “A Short Tale of the Antichrist” and Benson in “Lord of the World.”

Benson saw through the scientific pretenses of new-pagan materialism and its’ primary doctrine, evolutionary theory, leading him to describe it and its’ ideological movement Communism as “quiet pantheism.” 

Benson predicted that evolutionary thinking would prepare Westerners and Americans not only to embrace the ‘new’ pagan religion but to worship and adore Antichrist, for this human-god (Mr. Felsenburgh) is the first perfected product of nature and evolutionary forces. Mr. Felsenburgh has arisen in America and he is,

“….the first perfect product of that new cosmopolitan creation to which the world has labored throughout its history…” (p 85)

He transfixes men, and they excitedly declare they have seen, 

“…the Son of Man,’ the ‘Savior of the world,’ we knew Him in our hearts as soon as we saw Him, as soon as He stood there. It was like a glory around his head (and now we) understand it all… It was He for whom we have waited so long; and He has come, bringing Peace and Goodwill in His hands.” (pp. 85, 89)

Christianity failed, it divided people. But now Jehovah is gone.  He never existed at all except as a hideous nightmare. Now at long last man’s natural Savior has arisen:

”The reign of God has really begun (and) we are all partakers of God” because God is in everything, including all men….”Jehovah has fallen. He is in His grave.”  In His place is the evolved Son of Man, a god indeed and a man as well…”a god because human and a man because so divine.” (ibid, pp. 93, 95)

Soloviev’s predictions regarding events in our age are astonishing in their prescience, primarily because they not only offer an amazingly accurate glimpse into the mind of the super-man who will become the Antichrist but they also illustrate the real obstacle to salvation, the refusal by proud, willful men to recognize and admit to their sinful condition. 

Prior to his transformation, Soloviev describes the proud super- man as outwardly just, but within he is full of pride and is morally reprehensible:

“…. He believes in God but loves nobody but himself. His relationship with Christ was quickly defined as one of superiority (for he will never) bow before Him like the most stupid of Christians (nor) mutter senselessly….’Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me’….’I, the bright genius, the superman! No, never!” (The Wrath of God: The Days of Antichrist, Livio Fanzaga, pp. 39-40)

As the super-mans’ spiritual fall progresses, instead of the former cold rational respect for the living God and Christ:

“…..there was born and grew in his heart, first, a kind of terror, and then a burning, choking and corroding envy and furious breath-taking hatred.”  Devoured with envy of Jesus Christ he cries out “He rotted in the tomb, rotted like the lowest…” (ibid, pp. 40-41)

This is the moment the Evil One has been waiting for.  He openly approaches the proud super-man and possesses him:

“He saw those piercing eyes and heard…a strange voice, toneless…stifled, and yet clear, metallic and absolutely soulless as though coming from a phonograph.” Satan pours out his spirit, saying, “I ask nothing of you, and I will help you for your own sake…Receive my spirit…it gives birth to you in power. At these words…the superman’s lips opened of themselves, two piercing eyes came quite close to his face, and he felt a sharp, frozen stream enter into him and fill his whole being. And at the same time he was conscious of a wonderful strength, energy, lightness and rapture.” (p. 43)

Soloviev masterfully portrays a striking contrast between the apostles of Christ and the Antichrist. The former receive the power of the living God and are full of wisdom, truth, and courage while the latter receives the power of the devil and is full of nihilistic pride, lies, burning envy, murderous hate, blasphemy, cursing, resentment, deception, covetousness, and perversion.

The Antichrist, as described by Soloviev, suffers the same massively inflated pride and envy that transformed Lucifer into the devil. This same pride and envy animated the pantheist sorcerer Hegel, the neo-pagan Masonic Illuminati who planned and instigated the bloody French Revolution, as well as Karl Marx, Nietzsche, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, the West’s “God is dead” theologians, America’s Ruling Class, and many contemporary New World Order globalists. 

  The “New” Pagan Religion of Darkened Souls

“….human history can now be hesitantly traced back as an unbroken narrative to 4000 B.C.  The facts must not, however, be twisted to suit the fallacy of necessary human progress.  For the picture emerging….is one of the Fall of Man in historic terms as well as his rise; it is a picture …more of degradation than of success; it is a picture of monotheism breaking down into polytheism and of the struggle to return to monotheism.  The establishment view of the history of religion gradually progressing from animism to polytheism, from polytheism to monotheism is the reverse of facts.”  (The God-Kings and the Titans: The New World Ascendancy in Ancient Times, James Baily, 1973, p. 296)

Evolution is a religion, said Michael Ruse. From the beginning it was a religion and this is true of evolution today.  (Michael Ruse, former professor of philosophy and zoology at the University of Guelph, Canada, “How evolution became a religion: creationists correct?” National Post, pp. B1, B3, B7, May 13, 2000)

Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.  From the beginning this was true, and in these last days it is still true.  Pride, haughtiness and envy are the common bonds linking Satan, the Antichrist, idolatry, paganism, the Religion of Evolution and all who have been and are being spiritually transformed by it.   Thus when the Antichrist arrives, perhaps as a highly evolved extraterrestrial or as the Transcended Master Maitreya, all darkened souls will perversely celebrate him as the highly evolved god and man they foolishly believe they too will become.

Christians Mystically Encountering God

For a couple of decades there has been a big push by numerous evangelical leaders to incorporate pagan practices into the visible Church. These unbiblical practices have their origins in Eastern religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism, likewise the New Age movement. Roman Catholic Trappist Monks fully embraced Eastern religion’s pagan practices. Through the writings of Thomas Merton, Basil Pennington, William Menninger and Thomas Keating these practices have been introduced into mainline Protestant churches as well as independent, nondenominational, charismatic and Pentecostal churches.

Those who wish to develop a more meaningful prayer life are urged by popular evangelicals such as Dallas Willard, Richard Foster, Rick Warren, John Ortberg, Ruth Haley Barton and Tony Campolo, just to name a few, to undertake a mystical prayer practice called The Silence.

How does one achieve The Silence? By practicing eastern-style mantra meditation aka Transcendental Meditation (TM).

What is the goal of TM? To gain “ultimate knowledge of God by a direct experience that bypasses the mind.”

What must one do to attain this sort of mind-altering experience? Settle into a quiet comfortable place and with eyes closed repeat a word or phrase from Scripture over and over until the thinking process shuts down to the point of silence…..and, low and behold, the practitioner will allegedly have an encounter with God in the spirit realm.

Our final goal is ‘union with God,’ which is a pure relationship where we see ‘nothing.’ (Source)

Wow. Sounds a bit New Age, doesn’t it? No doubt about it! And because it is New Age, why, pray tell, do shepherds of the flock not have a problem pushing this sort of practice on their sheep?

Contemplative prayerUndoubtedly many Christians have never heard of The Silence. Be that as it may, terms such as ; centering prayer; lectio divina; Divine presence; sacred word; transformation/transforming union; listening prayer; soaking prayer; and breath prayer may ring a bell. But it matters not what term we use; what matters is that to pray The Silence is unbiblical.

Former New Ager Marcia Montenegro wrote an in depth essay on Contemplative Prayer (CP) entitled “Contemplating Contemplative Prayer: Is It Really Prayer?” Marcia warns us that,

The influence of Buddhism and Hinduism on Contemplative Prayer … is apparent. Words such as “detachment,” “transformation,” “emptiness,” “enlightenment” and “awakening” swim in and out of the waters of these books. The use of such terms certainly mandates a closer inspection of what is being taught, despite the fact that contemplative prayer is presented as Christian practice.

Themes that one finds echoed in the CP movement include the notions that true prayer is: silent, beyond words, beyond thought, does away with the “false self,” triggers transformation of consciousness, and is an awakening. Suggested techniques often include breathing exercises, visualization, repetition of a word or phrase, and detachment from thinking. (Source)

Evangelical pastor Gary Gilley also tells us what to watch out for:

[C]ontemplative prayer is not the same as prayer defined biblically; “sacred reading” (also called lectio divina) of Scripture is not the same as Bible study; meditation (mystically encountering God) is not the same as knowing God and so forth. Many of the same terms are used, but as the classical liberals, and the more recent emergents, are fond of doing, they take our terms, including biblical ones, and give them new definitions and twists. (Source)

Spiritual Disciplines

Paul wrote, “Train yourself for godliness” (1 Tim. 4:7). This sort of training promotes Christlikeness. The ESV translates “train” as “discipline.” To “train yourself for godliness” means a call to holy living. It also means hard work. According to the John MacArthur Study Bible study notes, “train” is an athletic term “denoting the rigorous, self-sacrificing exercise an athlete undergoes. Spiritual self-discipline is the path to godly living.” Training such as this has been termed “spiritual exercises” or “spiritual disciplines.” As a result of “spiritual disciplines” many Christians now practice Contemplative Prayer. Many CP practitioners believe that they’re receiving direct revelations from God. “From years of studying mystics of all stripes,” says Ken Silva, “I can tell you their perceived revelations then trump the texts of Holy Scripture for them. In other words, rather than testing these experiences by God’s Word, now these (CP) practitioners … are instead using their feelings to interpret the Bible through what they think God is saying. I’m telling you, the tragic fact is, the mainstream of professing Christendom is rapidly devolving into all kinds of silly superstitions.” (Source)
Gospel Coalition’s D.A. Carson explains the spiritual disciplines thusly:

Nowadays spiritual disciplines may include Bible reading, meditation, worship, giving away money, fasting, solitude, fellowship, deeds of service, evangelism, almsgiving, creation care, journaling, missionary work, and more. It may include vows of celibacy, self-flagellation, and chanting mantras. In popular usage, some of these so-called spiritual disciplines are entirely divorced from any specific doctrine whatsoever, Christian or otherwise: they are merely a matter of technique. That is why people sometimes say, “For your doctrine, by all means commit yourselves to evangelical confessionalism. But when it comes to the spiritual disciplines, turn to Catholicism or perhaps Buddhism.” What is universally presupposed by the expression “spiritual discipline” is that such disciplines are intended to increase our spirituality. From a Christian perspective, however, it is simply not possible to increase one’s spirituality without possessing the Holy Spirit and submitting to his transforming instruction and power. Techniques are never neutral. They are invariably loaded with theological presuppositions, often unrecognized. (emphasis added) (Source)

As I said above, many Christians feel like something is missing from their prayer life and they long to “connect with God” in a more meaningful way. So they’ll do just about anything to “cultivate intimacy with God,” including unbiblical meditation. The irony is that they’ll attempt to defend an unbiblical practice by quoting Scripture. Take for example Joshua 1:8:

This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.

Some Christians will argue that Joshua 1:8 shows that God approves of this mind emptying type of meditation. Wrong! The text is instructing us to meditate on God’s Word, not to empty our minds.
I’ll explain biblical mediation in a moment. But first let’s look at how Webster’s defines meditation:

The words Ponder, Meditate, Muse, and Ruminate are synonyms and mean to consider or examine attentively or deliberately. PONDER implies a careful weighing of a problem or, often, prolonged inconclusive thinking about a matter; MEDITATE implies a definite focusing of one’s thoughts on something as to understand it deeply; muse suggests a more or less focused daydreaming as in remembrance; RUMINATE implies going over the same matter in one’s thoughts again and again but suggests little of either purposive thinking or rapt absorption.

Now let’s look at Psalm 119 to see what the Bible teaches on meditation:

I will meditate in thy precepts, and have respect unto thy ways. (119:15).

Princes also did sit and speak against me: but thy servant did meditate in thy statutes. (119:23)

Make me to understand the way of thy precepts: so shall I talk of thy wondrous works. (119:27)

My hands also will I lift up unto thy commandments, which I have loved; and I will meditate in thy statutes. (119:48)

See also: 119:78, 119:97, 119:99,119:148.

The Apostle Paul says the following:

Consider what I say; and the Lord give thee understanding in all things. (2Tim 2:7)

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think [mediated] on these things. (Phil 4:8)

Could the Almighty have made the meaning of meditation any clearer? God has also made it abundantly clear that He forbids His people to indulge in any form of pagan idolatry. So practicing mystical mantra meditation is going against God! This alone should be enough to scare individuals away from this type of approach to prayer.

When it comes to pagan practices God leaves no room for doubt: Do it and die spiritually…even physically, as in King Saul’s case.

Yoga Meditation

Over the years I have dealt with “Christian yoga” in several of my columns. So I’ll briefly touch on it here for the simple reason that a large number of Christ followers have wholeheartedly embraced the Buddhist practice of yoga. Even churches offer yoga classes with a Christian spin on it! Not surprisingly, enterprising Christians head up successful yoga businesses such as “Holy Yoga,” “PraiseMoves and “Yahweh Yoga” (YY) just to name a few. YY’s website promises to “increase the kingdom of Jesus Christ by establishing, providing and maintaining a Christian yoga studio and teaching academy that honors God in all business and ministry endeavors. Yahweh Yoga seeks to…empower men and women to de-stress, to grow in their relationship with Jesus Christ and to improve their mind, body and spirit…”

It’s not a stretch to say that the language used to promote YY comes right out of the New Age handbook.

Here’s the bottom line. So-called Christian yoga has nothing in common with authentic Christianity. In fact, the Bible warns:

For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light: (For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth;) Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord. And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. (Eph 5:8-11)

In one of my columns entitled Can A Pagan Practice Be “Christianized” I drew attention to the fact that:

Yoga is being marketed to mainline churches with the assurance of creating stress reduction, developing self-confidence, and improving concentration. It is also marketed to business and industry, athletes, senior citizens, students, teens and adolescents. Because of our fast paced life-style, who wouldn’t want to reduce stress? This is why yoga classes have become so popular.

Now here’s the main reason Christians should avoid yoga. Christian apologists John Ankerberg and John Weldon maintain that, “The basic premise of yoga theory is the fundamental unity of all existence: God, man, and all of creation are ultimately one divine reality.” To explain the basic premise, the authors quote from an editorial in the Yoga Journal:

“We are all aware that yoga means ‘union’ and that the practice of yoga unites body, breath, and mind, lower and higher energy centers and, ultimately self and God, or higher Self. But more broadly, yoga directs our attention to the unity or oneness that underlies our fragmented experiences and equally fragmented world. Family, friends, the Druze guerrilla in Lebanon, the great whale migrating north — all share the same essential [divine] nature.”

This quote alone should raise concerns among Christians but when looked at in light of Bible expositor John MacArthur’s comments extracted from a CNN Primetime interview where he was asked “Should Christians practice yoga,” it ought to be completely clear that Christians should not participate:

John MacArthur…wondered why Christians would want to “borrow a term that is part of a false religion” (that clashes with historic orthodox Christianity). MacArthur contends that Christians shouldn’t put themselves in weird physical positions, empty their minds, focus on him or herself, and try to find the “god within” as a way to relieve stress. “This is practicing a false religion,” he said rather pointedly. Then he boldly shared the gospel. He said in order to have a whole and complete life, Christians must go to the Word of God, to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, “The idea of Christianity is to fill your mind with biblical truth and focus on the God which is above you.”

We can be thankful that there are a few Christian leaders in America who are willing to stand up for the truth.

In conclusion, “Christian mysticism” has emerged from false religious systems. But instead of fleeing from magical mystical practices, scores of Christians have embraced them! The brethren must be warned that Scripture strictly forbids uniting with pagans and apostates. Moreover, those who profess Christ must be admonished not to participate in Contemplative Prayer or any sort of mantra meditation for the reason that spiritual harm can result from it.

Why The NRA Is Right About Hollywood

Upstate New York’s Catskill Mountain Range is a bucolic place near and dear to my heart. It’s where storybook character Rip Van Winkle enjoyed his legendary slumber, and its scenery hasn’t changed much since he was born of Washington Irving’s fertile imagination. Yet, like Van Winkle, if I’d fallen asleep for 20 years when first arriving in that verdant heaven, I, too, would have noticed some profound changes upon awakening.

About two decades ago, many rural Catskill teens — sons of farmers and hunters and fishermen — suddenly started donning baggy pants and reflecting “gangsta’” counter-culture despite living nowhere near any large urban center. The following generation of teens experienced today’s recent cultural evolution and often sport multiple tattoos and body piercings despite living nowhere near NYC’s grungy East Village. Yet I’m wrong in a sense: those places were actually very close — a television set away.

My old hinterland haunt was once place where, if you wiggled the rabbit-ear antenna just right, you could pull in one or two TV stations. And what could you see? Perhaps reruns of The Brady Bunch, perhaps the news. But about a quarter century ago came VCRs and video stores; then cable and satellite TV; and, finally, the Internet. The serpent had entered Eden.

In the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy, much fire has been directed at gun advocates in general and the National Rifle Association in particular. In response, the organization has implicated Hollywood and popular culture in general for mainstreaming mindless violence. Yet even many Second Amendment advocates part company with the NRA on this point. After all, blaming entertainment for crime smacks of blaming guns. Yet there’s quite a profound difference: guns don’t transmit values. But how we use guns— and knives, fists and words — on screen certainly does.

This message is often a tough sell, however, as it’s very natural to defend one’s entertainment. We grow up with certain shows, movies, characters and music and often become emotionally attached to them; in fact, we may identify with them so closely that an attack upon them can be taken personally. It’s the same phenomenon that causes an avid sports fan to defend his favorite team as if it’s his favored son. And it is then we may hear that old refrain, “It isn’t the entertainment; it’s the values learned at home” (they’re actually one and the same since entertainment enters the home with, in the least, the parents’ tacit approval).

Yet it appears few really believe that refrain. Sure, depending on our ideology, we may disagree on what entertainment is destructive, but that it can be destructive is something on which consensus exists. Just consider, for instance, that when James Cameron’s film Avatar was released, there was much talk in the conservative blogosphere about its containing environmentalist, anti-corporate and anti-American propaganda. At the other end of the spectrum, liberals wanted the old show Amos ‘n Andy taken off the air because it contained what they considered harmful stereotypes. Or think of how critics worried that Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ would stoke anti-Jewish sentiment or that Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ would inspire anti-Christian feelings, and how the Catholic League complained that The Da Vinci Code was anti-Catholic. Now, I’m not commenting on these claims’ validity. My only point is that when our own sacred cows are being slaughtered, few of us will say, “Well, yeah, the work attacks my cause, but I don’t care because it’s the values taught at home that really matter.”

The truth? Entertainment is powerful. This is why Adolf Hitler had his propaganda filmmaker, Leni Riefenstahl, and why all modern regimes have at times created their own propaganda films. It’s why the ancient Greeks saw fit to censor the arts and American localities traditionally had obscenity laws. And it is why, while “The pen is mightier than the sword” and a picture mightier still, being worth a “thousand words,” we have to wonder how many words moving footage coupled with sound would be. How mighty art thou, Tinseltown? Well, we worry that a child witnessing one parent continually abuse the other will learn to be violent, as children learn by example. Yet often forgotten is that while a person can model behavior seven feet away from the television, he can also model it seven feet away through the television.

And what effect do our entertainment role models have? Much relevant research exists, and the picture it paints isn’t pretty. For instance, a definitive 1990s study published by The Journal of the American Medical Association found that in every society in which TV was introduced, there was an explosion in violent crime and murder within 15 years. As an example, TV had been banned in South Africa for internal security reasons until 1975, at which point the nation had a lower murder rate than other lands with similar demographics. The country’s legalization of TV prompted psychiatrist Dr. Brandon Centerwall to predict “that white South African homicide rates would double within 10 to 15 years after the introduction of television….” But he was wrong.

By 1987 they had more than doubled.

Then the Guardian told us in 2003 that, “…Bhutan, the fabled Himalayan Shangri-la, became the last nation on earth to introduce television. Suddenly a culture, barely changed in centuries, was bombarded by 46 cable channels. And all too soon came Bhutan’s first crime wave — murder, fraud, drug offences.” The serpent had struck again.

And exactly how it strikes is interesting…and scary. Lt. Col. David Grossman, a former West Point military psychologist and one of the world’s foremost experts on what he calls “killology,” explains the process well. In his essay “Trained to Kill,” he speaks of how the military learned that during WWII only 15 to 20 percent of riflemen would actually shoot at an exposed enemy soldier. Yet this rate was increased to 55 percent during the Korean War and then 90 percent in Vietnam. How? By applying psychological principles, says Grossman, identical to the forces our children are exposed to through entertainment. They are (all quotations are Grossman’s):

• Brutalization and desensitization: this occurs in boot camp where the training is designed “to break down your existing mores and norms and to accept a new set of values that embrace destruction, violence, and death as a way of life.” Entertainment can perhaps be even more effective when doing this to children because the process often starts when they’re too young to distinguish between fantasy and reality. Grossman explains:
• To have a child of three, four, or five watch a “splatter” movie, learning to relate to a character for the first 90 minutes and then in the last 30 minutes watch helplessly as that new friend is hunted and brutally murdered is the moral and psychological equivalent of introducing your child to a friend, letting [him] play with that friend, and then butchering that friend in front of your child’s eyes.
• Classical conditioning: the Japanese employed this during WWII. Soldiers would have to watch and cheer as a few of their comrades bayoneted prisoners to death. All the servicemen were then “treated to sake, the best meal they had had in months, and to so-called comfort girls. The result? They learned to associate committing violent acts with pleasure.” Likewise, today “[o]ur children watch vivid pictures of human suffering and death, learning to associate it with their favorite soft drink and candy bar, or their girlfriend’s perfume.”
• Operant conditioning: “When people are frightened or angry, they will do what they have been conditioned to do…. [It’s] stimulus-response, stimulus-response.” Thus, one of the ways the military increased riflemen’s willingness to shoot exposed enemies was to switch from the bull’s-eye targets of WWII training to “realistic, man-shaped silhouettes that pop into their field of view.” The soldiers have only a split-second to engage this new “stimulus” with the response of firing reflexively. As for kids, “every time a child plays an interactive point-and-shoot video game, he is learning the exact same conditioned reflex and motor skills.” This can help explain, says Grossman, why robbers under stress will sometimes reflexively shoot victims even when it wasn’t “part of the plan.”

If the above seems at all simplistic, note that it’s a life’s work boiled-down to 500 words. Suffice it to say, however, that entertainment has an effect. And do we really consider today’s entertainment benign? We’ve transitioned from a pre-TV America where boys sometimes brought real guns to school for target shooting to a TV-addicted America where boys bring toy guns to school and get suspended. And, of course, the reasons for this societal sea change are complex. But if we’re going to point to one factor, is it wiser to blame the AR-15 than PG-13?

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