Institutionalized Tyranny

What happens when an institution becomes more important than the cause for which the institution was formed? How long should people who believe in the cause remain loyal to such an institution? And at what point does loyalty to such an institution comprise an abandonment of the cause itself?

I’m afraid the majority of Americans have been institutionalized in a manner not unlike the way prisoners are institutionalized after a long period of confinement. After a point, a prisoner is so conditioned to accepting the circumstances of his confinement that, should he be released from confinement, he truly would be unable to cope. Such seems to be the mentality of a majority of us today.

Christians have been institutionalized. The reason and purpose of the church or Christian organization is no longer relevant. Generations have grown up reciting the same liturgies, regurgitating the same prayers, and rehearsing the same programs until the reason for it all doesn’t even matter. But take the institution away from them, and they would not be able to cope.

The Pharisees despised the Lord Jesus because He challenged the religious institutions that had come to govern people’s lives. I am convinced if Jesus came to America today, He would be just as despised by the vast majority of our religious leaders as He was by the Pharisees.

The Church that Jesus built in the Book of Acts owned no buildings, was indebted to no lenders, took no tax benefits from the civil government, had no denominational hierarchy, and identified itself with no ecclesiastical brand. And the Church was just as persecuted by the religious establishment as Christ was.

One of the reasons one may know that the modern church is so unlike Christ and the apostles is by the persecution that it never experiences. Just as the Pharisees were bosom buddies with the Roman Empire’s governing elite, so are our religious leaders today. Caesar was very generous in sharing the fruit of his tyrannically-extracted bounty with his allies in the Jewish Sanhedrin. And they were happy to return the favor by insisting that the Hebrew people submit to Caesar’s harsh rule over their lives.

The Pharisees also enjoyed a cozy relationship with the moneychangers. The moneychangers were descended from a long line of corrupt banking interests that dated all the way back to the Edomites. We are not talking about your friendly local banker here. These were highly organized, well-positioned money-manipulators. Jesus was so incensed with their manipulation and theft within in the Temple that he used physical violence to remove them from the property. He is recorded as doing this twice in the Gospel narratives. Note that after the second time in which it is recorded that He drove out the moneychangers (with a whip, no less), the Pharisees soon had Jesus crucified. There is no question that one of the reasons Pilate ordered Jesus to be scourged with a whip was in direct retaliation for the manner in which Jesus whipped the moneychangers. Remember, the moneychangers were from a very well-ensconced, elitist national (and even international) organization.

And lest you think all of this is irrelevant to today, the moneychangers are still very much with us. The Rothschilds, Rockefellers, and other members of the international banking elite, are the direct descendants of the moneychangers of Jesus’ day. And if you ever have an opportunity to ask one of them about it, they will proudly admit it.

Yes, the Pharisees institutionalized religion. This accomplished two things: 1) it helped enslave the people, 2) it helped make them rich. The institutionalized church is accomplishing much the same things today.

The establishment church is doing as much to enslave people as any other institution in the world. Our political institutions and educational institutions have nothing on the church for making good little subjects and serfs to the all-powerful state. And if you don’t think that a host of church leaders are not reaping the spoils from assisting our taskmasters, you’re not paying attention.

Many, if not most, of these big-name TV evangelists have as many houses and yachts and Swiss bank accounts as any big-name Hollywood actor or politician. In some cases, more. Most of these big-church pastors are bathing in luxury. Many of them take the kinds of vacations that only CEOs of the biggest corporations or presidents could afford. Do you really think that the IRS rules and regulations governing these non-profit corporations, called churches, really bother these church leaders? Get real!

No wonder all of these “successful” preachers are constantly teaching their congregations to always submit to the government. No wonder they have no interest in abandoning their 501c3 tax-exempt status. They are in the exact same position as were the Pharisees of old. And they are just as effective in helping to enslave people today as were the Pharisees.

The institution of the church–along with its programs, formalities, buildings, rituals, etc.,–has become more important than the purpose for which the church was created. Instead of preaching the liberating message of the Cross, which frees men from the fetters of sin–and that includes sinful political and financial fetters–the church is preaching a message of subjugation and enslavement. It is teaching people to submit to all kinds of oppression, including religious oppression.

Some of the most oppressed and subjugated people in the world are religious people. There are churches and Christian colleges that are every bit as tyrannical as anything coming out of East-bloc or Muslim countries. About the only thing missing is physical torture and execution. Spiritually, however, the oppression is the same.

How could real men who love the liberty they have in Christ allow themselves–and especially their wives–to be told how to dress, how to wear their hair, what kind of music to listen to, what kind of vacations to take, what restaurants they may or may not eat at, what forms of entertainment they may or may not participate in, etc., etc., ad infinitum?

I tell you the truth: many Christians in America are already slaves. To talk to them about freedom is a complete waste of time. The chains of tyranny are already clamped around their hearts. Why should it matter to them if chains are clamped around their necks? When they talk about “defending the faith,” they are talking about defending the institution. They are slaves to the institution. And the same is true for many unchurched Americans.

What is more important: liberty, or the government that is supposed to secure liberty? To a sizeable number of Americans today, it is more important to preserve the institution than the freedoms that the institution was created to protect.

Our Declaration of Independence states, “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [the God-given rights of life, liberty, etc.], it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Did you see that: “any form of government”? ANY FORM. The form of government is only as good as its ability to secure liberty.

I hear a lot of politicians and media personalities talking about “American exceptionalism.” This is a potentially dangerous mindset. If one means that America is exceptional in our history and the manner in which our Constitution and Bill of Rights were established to protect liberty, well and good. But if it means that America has carte-blanche to do anything it wants–no matter how unconstitutional or tyrannical–because it is “exceptional,” it is a bunch of hooey.

What difference does it make if we have a 50-State Union or not? There is a bill in the California legislature that would divide that State into six states. Five counties in Western Maryland are trying to secede from Baltimore. Ten northern counties in Colorado are trying to secede from Denver. If a State refuses to secure the liberties of the people of that State, they have every right under God to separate. The State is not nearly as important as the liberties of the people within the State.

The spirit of secession is actually growing like wildfire all over the world. In recent history, Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Kosovo all separated from Yugoslavia. Transnistria broke free from Moldova. Abkhazia and South Ossetia fought free from Georgia. The Slovaks seceded from Czechoslovakia. And now Crimea is separating from Ukraine.

To be sure, not every country that secedes from another country is motivated purely by the love of liberty. But for those of us in America, the issue that has propelled the desire to separate from one country or one State has always been liberty. It was the love of liberty that created the United States and that created the free and independent states of Maine, Vermont, Kentucky, and West Virginia–all of which seceded from existing U.S. states.

Furthermore, what difference does it make if Washington, D.C., is our federal capital, or, if say, Helena, Montana, would become the federal capital of a mountain state confederation of Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Northern Colorado, eastern Washington and Oregon, the Dakotas, Alberta and British Columbia, Canada, and Alaska? Or if Austin was the federal capital of an independent Republic of Texas? Preserving some sort of political union (especially if it is a forced and coerced union) is not nearly as important as preserving liberty.

Again, it is not the political institution that is important. What is important is the liberty that the political institution is supposed to secure.

Many great minds in this country are already philosophizing over the possibility that secession is an idea whose time has come–again. A few years ago, Walter Williams wrote, “Like a marriage that has gone bad, I believe there are enough irreconcilable differences between those who want to control and those want to be left alone that divorce is the only peaceable alternative. Just as in a marriage, where vows are broken, our human rights protections guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution have been grossly violated by a government instituted to protect them. Americans who are responsible for and support constitutional abrogation have no intention of mending their ways.

“Americans who wish to live free have two options: We can resist, fight and risk bloodshed to force America’s tyrants to respect our liberties and human rights, or we can seek a peaceful resolution of our irreconcilable differences by separating. That can be done by peopling several states, say Texas and Louisiana, control their legislatures and then issue a unilateral declaration of independence just as the Founders did in 1776. You say, ‘Williams, nobody has to go that far, just get involved in the political process and vote for the right person.’ That’s nonsense. Liberty shouldn’t require a vote. It’s a God-given or natural right.

“Some independence or secessionists movements, such as our 1776 war with England and our 1861 War Between the States, have been violent, but they need not be. In 1905, Norway seceded from Sweden, Panama seceded from Columbia (1903), and West Virginia from Virginia (1863). Nonetheless, violent secession can lead to great friendships. England is probably our greatest ally and we have fought three major wars together. There is no reason why Texiana (Texas and Louisiana) couldn’t peaceably secede, be an ally, and have strong economic ties with United States.

“The bottom line question for all of us is should we part company or continue trying to forcibly impose our wills on one another?”

See William’s column here:

Hear! Hear!

In the eyes of God, marriage is the most sacred of all unions. It is far more sacred than any political union. If our Creator has authorized the separation of a husband and wife under certain circumstances in which one party violated the sacred terms of the holy contract (and He has), who among us has the audacity to say that political unions may not be abandoned when government commits political adultery by forsaking its oath to the people?

Again, are we more interested in preserving an institution or the liberty that the institution is supposed to secure?

As an institution, the Church at large is apostate. Yet, millions of Christians continue to prop up an institution that has abandoned the purpose for which it was created. They are more interested in preserving the forms and liturgies and tapestries and buildings of the institution. And, all the while, they are being spiritually enslaved by the very institution they are helping to prop up.

And as an institution, the U.S. federal government is apostate. Yet, millions of citizens continue to make excuses for it, justify it, and condone it. They are more interested in preserving the agencies and entities and power of the institution. Yet, all the while, they are being enslaved by the very institution they are helping to prop up.

What happens when an institution becomes more important than the cause for which the institution was formed? When the institution is civil government and the cause is liberty, tyranny is what happens.

Third World America’s Trade Agreements

The corporate media would have us believe that the nation is in the midst of an economic recovery.

In the shadow of the approaching mid-term elections, the president cites the number of jobs created and speaks optimistically about America’s economic future. The future is indeed bright, but only if you are among the wealthiest one percent of the population.

For instance, since the 2007 recession, the greatest crisis of capitalism in 75 years, corporate profits have risen, CEO salaries and bonuses are at record levels and the stock market is soaring. By contrast, workers’ wages have stagnated for more than four decades, benefits are either few or non-existent, and workers are encumbered with debt that forces them to perform multiple jobs— if they can find them—in order to survive.

Jobs that offer long-term security and a living wage are scarce even for those with university degrees. Adjusted for inflation, today’s workers are worse off than they were in the late 1960s.

Whose economic recovery is this?

According to economic forecaster Gerald Celente, 90 percent of the jobs created in 2013 were part-time, most of them paying low wages and providing no benefits. Student loan debt exceeds $1.1 trillion, a number that surpasses the combined credit card liability of the nation.

These debts cannot be discharged through bankruptcy. The big banks and corporations that finance political campaigns have no such restrictions placed upon them.

Even the unemployment figures are deceiving. According to the latest government data, unemployment is at 6.7 percent. In reality, that number is probably closer to 17 or 18 percent, according to economist Richard Wolff.

The government does not count people whose unemployment benefits have expired or those who have given up looking for work. A cashier working 10 hours a week at Food Lion is counted as fully employed.

We have students, many of them burdened with immense debt, entering a job market that makes it difficult for them to earn a decent living. This is the economic minefield that workers across America must navigate. A little truth might help them find their way and comprehend why this is happening.

One of the many reasons we face such a bleak economic future is the implementation of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs).

In 1992, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was implemented between the governments of the United States, Canada and Mexico. NAFTA was fast-tracked through Congress by President H.W. Bush and signed into law by President Clinton. NAFTA was promoted in the commercial media as an engine for job creation in the United States, an assertion that is contradicted by the facts. According to Wolff, more than 700,000 jobs fled the country as the result of NAFTA, many of them providing middle class incomes and benefits.

Those jobs are never coming back. It is not just the number of jobs created that matter, it is the quality of those jobs that is a predictor of economic success.

Furthermore, the mass movement of U.S. corporations to Mexico wrecked the already struggling Mexican economy, particularly its sustainable, locally-based businesses. The situation initiated a mass migration of immigrant Mexican workers to the U.S. in search of better-paying jobs than were available to them in the homeland. Multinational corporations seeking a source of cheap labor and a climate of deregulation are the primary benefactors. The quantifiable effect that NAFTA has had on the U.S. workers is staggering job loss, reduced wages and increasing economic disparity.

Now, with the backing of corporate lobbyists, yet another FTA—the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)—is being fast-tracked through Congress. Both Democrats and Republicans are enthusiastically backing the legislation.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation describes the process: “The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a secretive, multi-national trade agreement that threatens to extend restrictive intellectual property (IP) laws across the globe and rewrite international rules on its enforcement.” TPP is currently being negotiated between nine to 12 nations.

If enacted, TPP will permit privately-owned corporations to have hegemony over the governments of sovereign nations. For instance, if the state of West Virginia were to ban the use of genetically modified soybeans, Monsanto Corporation could either overturn the decision or extort billions of dollars in remuneration from their projected loss of profits. FTAs belligerently put corporate profits before the legitimate needs of the people and the welfare of the biosphere.

The implications for students and working class people will be profoundly detrimental.

Hundreds of thousands of jobs will flee the country, wages will fall yet again, autonomy will be lost, and the job market will resemble the wreckage of the Hesperus. FTAs are the means by which the power elite are turning the U.S. into a Third World economy.

Obama Regulations To Shut Down 40 Percent of Nation’s Electricity

Obama administration regulations could force power plants that make 40 percent of the nation’s electricity to shut down.

At issue are EPA restrictions on emissions that would close hundreds of coal-burning power plants which represent around 40 percent of the nation’s electricity.

If that wasn’t bad enough, some observers think the regulations could double electricity rates for average households. The rates would increase because utilities would have to pass the cost onto ratepayers of replacing coal burning power plants or modernizing them to comply with the regulations.

The EPA rules — Carbon Pollution Standards for New Power Plants — are part of Obama’s plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions which the agency says contribute to global warming.

Obama Admitted Plan Would Raise Electricity Rates

There is some evidence that President Obama has a deliberate strategy of increasing electricity rates and destroying the coal industry.

“Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket,” Obama told the editorial board of The San Francisco Chronicle in 2008. “Even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad. Because I’m capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, you know, natural gas, you name it — whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to, retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers.”

“So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them,” Obama said, “because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”

Harness the power of the sun when the power goes out…

Obama’s prediction about coal plants have been proven true. As Off The Grid News previously reported, in October 2013, FirstEnergy Corp announced that it would shut down two coal-fired powered plants in Pennsylvania because it said the cost of complying with EPA regulations was too high.

Reuters estimated that coal-burning power plants capable of generating 15,000 megawatts of electricity have shut down since Obama took office in 2009. The news service also estimates that power plants that generate around 37,000 megawatts of power will close in the next 10 years. One megawatt can provide electricity to up to about 1,000 homes.

Awfully Expensive Electricity

Those plants will be closing at a time when demand for electricity is increasing. That will force utilities to build power plants that burn other fuels such as natural gas. It will add additional cost to electricity rates at a time when the rates are already going up dramatically.

“It could get awfully expensive,” Daniel Simmons of the Institute for Energy Research told World Net Daily. “Some people might see their electricity rates double. If there’s no backup power plants, that means electricity is going to get awfully expensive when you have shortages around the country.

Another Obama Plan To Raise Your Electric Bill

“We’re talking about dramatically increasing the cost of electricity all to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. I think that is the real goal,” Simmons said.

Another Obama administration plan to reduce greenhouse emissions, Carbon Capture and Sequestration, or CSS technology, could raise electricity costs even more, Simmons predicted. He noted that a an experimental CSS power plant in the United States will cost an estimated $4.3 billion to build and the EPA doesn’t know if the technology would work.

“The technology is awfully expensive because it hasn’t been tried anywhere, and that’s to try to capture the carbon dioxide as it comes out after they burn the coal.” Simmons said of CSS.

CSS involves the use of filters to divert carbon emissions from the air – and every taxpaying American will pay. The CSS plants under construction will require $300 million in taxpayer subsidies.

US Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia has been critical of the Obama administration’s policy on coal.

“This Administration is trying to hold the coal industry to impossible standards,” Manchin said. “Never before has the federal government forced an industry to do something that is technologically impossible. Forcing coal to meet nearly the same emissions standards as gas when experts know that the required technology is not operational on a commercial scale makes absolutely no sense and will have devastating impacts to the coal industry and our economy.”

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Source: Off The Grid News

Interpretation and the Allegory of the Cave

The ideological chains that bind and subdue us are stronger and more effective than any chain forged from steel. These manacles are more freedom inhibiting than a prison cell or solitary confinement. Belief, faith, and hope can imprison as well as liberate us. By the power of suggestion, a thin cotton string can effectively tether an elephant.

Politicians and their associates in the corporate media are master manipulators of language and images. Anytime you hear them speak, think of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave). Virtually everything that we see and hear, nearly everything we have been told, is an officious lie, an illusion created to deceive and control us. The purpose of deception is to promote the dogma and welfare of those in power, while implicitly disempowering those who are being deceived. Language is rarely, if ever, neutral. Coercive ideology lurks behind every sentence.

In a sense, all language is propaganda, even the words on this page. For instance, in this short essay, I declare my intention to lead my readers to a conclusion that I hope will awaken them, promote consciousness, and encourage principled behavior that is conducive to the collective emancipation of the working class.

Our faith in capitalistic institutions promotes the pretense of democracy, while it delivers plutocracy, corporate fascism, and militarism. Similarly, imprudent belief in the American Dream induces people to behave in ways that promote the welfare of those in power rather than the perspectives of those of us struggling to be free. Belief in this discredited notion keeps workers from organizing against their oppressors.

The puppeteers casting shadows on the cave wall know that the images they project are not real. By contrast, the indoctrinated audience interprets the shadows as authentic figures rather than the phantasms they are. The purveyors of mythos and propaganda, the authors of the sanctioned historical narrative that defines reality for the masses, are consciously misleading us. The empowered are aware that we are attempting to navigate a house of mirrors with trap doors, but we continue to believe that the flickering images on the cave wall are real. Interpretation is everything.

Americans believe that we are a free and representative republic, because that is what we have always been told, despite evidence to the contrary. But choosing our oppressors every few years makes us neither free nor democratic. Electoral outcomes that are determined by capital do not give us a real voice in fashioning an equitable economic agenda, taxation, or foreign policy, including decisions about war. Participation in bogus systems of power binds us to delusions and keeps us ideologically imprisoned. They prevent us from taking meaningful action.

In America, working people are excluded from all of the important decisions that profoundly affect their lives. Legislators at all levels of government are beholden to the corporations and wealthy individuals who fund their campaigns. To the power elite, “we the people” are little more than background noise to be tuned out.

Cast a stone at the mirrors and the illusion immediately dissolves into shards of broken glass. A perplexing chain reaction is set in motion; worlds fall like rows of dominoes and fill the vacuum vacated by appearance with new images, new ideas, and new possibilities. Polaris abruptly appears with the stars of Ursa Minor wrapped around her like a jeweled necklace glistening in the velvet black darkness of eternal night. She was always there but concealed behind striated walls of silvered glass in the great American funhouse of lies and delusion we call reality.

Bearing the Allegory of the Cave in mind, consider this: If a worker puts his faith in an economic system that exploits and alienates him, his faith shackles rather than liberates him. Correspondingly, if a man believes that his oppressor is his liberator or protector, he ideologically imprisons himself and promotes behavior that benefits and strengthens his tormentor rather than himself or his socioeconomic class. If he believes that the systems of power serve him and promote justice rather than work for his capitalist masters, he will not attempt to dismantle them. The worker must then not only overcome his oppressor, he must first transcend his own ideological beliefs and ignorance before he can even begin to extricate himself.

In many ways, us workers are our own worst enemy. We lose our humanity, become alienated from our highest self, our families, our communities, our coworkers, and the Earth Mother. As participants in and recipients of unfettered capitalism, we have become the unwitting tools of universal oppression and militarism we claim to disdain. Our demise stems from the misinterpretation of reality and our shifting location within a volatile matrix of phantasmagoric holograms, none of which are real.

We believe what we hear and do what we are told rather than think critically about anything. Questioning authority makes us uncomfortable, and there are always consequences to challenging the dominant paradigm. We have an abiding psychological need to believe that everything we think we know about our country and the world is as advertised because the alternative terrifies us. We thus surrender our conscience and our life to become a tool of the unscrupulous sociopaths in power.

The American worker must comprehend that his assigned role within the capitalist system is not to be a thoughtful or conscious human being, but rather an efficient economic serf, a dehumanized automaton concealed within in a human husk. Painful as this reality is, it does not behoove us to believe or act otherwise. The worker’s plight is like being a solider in the war-torn Middle East: take orders and do what you are told. Check your conscience and your humanity at the door. We all know where that leads.

Armed with this knowledge, perhaps we may finally begin the vital work of our individual and collective emancipation. Our subordinate role in this unequal economic, social, and political arrangement must be challenged and subverted. No one is born a slave. The only power anyone has over us is that which we allow them to have.

A Line In The Sand Is Being Drawn Again

In March of 1836, a young man of twenty-three years of age took his sword out of its scabbard and drew a line in the sand in front of an old mission outside of San Antonio, Texas, and called on the men defending that mission who were willing to stay on the ramparts and face an opposing army more than ten times their number to signify their commitment by stepping across the line. Of course, the young man was William Barrett Travis and the old mission was the Alamo. He could not have known it then, but Travis’ line in the sand would forever become the benchmark by which all future acts of commitment would be measured. In a mystical way, but, then again, in very real way, Travis’ line in the sand is being drawn again. Oh, it may not be a line in dirt drawn by the point of a sword; it is a line in the hearts of men being drawn by the Spirit of God.

My last three columns (not including the column promoting THE FREEDOM DOCUMENTS) generated more responses than any three columns I have ever written, and I have been writing this column for some fifteen years. At first, the responses were mostly negative and often vitriolic. But this past week, responses have been over 90% positive and very enthusiastic. I am confident that the manner in which these columns have brought out intense emotion and determination on both sides is a microcosm of what is happening nationally. A line in the sand for freedom is being drawn once again.

This line in the sand for freedom is separating people in a major way. And this is not necessarily a bad thing. In the same way that God commanded Abram to separate from his home and kin, so, too, the Spirit of God is separating people many times from their friends, their neighbors, their kinfolk, and, yes, their church families. I seem to recall that during the period of the early church, the conflict of principle forever separated the apostles Paul and Silas. And during America’s War for Independence, the conflict of principle separated Benjamin Franklin and his son William–as it did tens of thousands of others.

Perhaps not since the days of Patrick Henry, Sam Adams, et al., have Americans been forced to deal–intellectually, reasonably, emotionally, volitionally, and spiritually–with the fundamental issues of liberty as we are being forced to do today. For way too long, Americans have taken freedom for granted. For way too long, our educational and religious institutions (not to mention our homes) have not taught the fundamental principles of liberty. This negligence has brought our country to the brink of oppression and despotism. And, just as was the case in Colonial America, a line in the sand for freedom is being drawn in the hearts of men.

This internal line in the sand is being drawn irrespective of a person’s education, temperament, upbringing, intelligence, or faith. While some men seem to be content to live under the heel of governmental oppression, many others have an innate thirst for freedom that all of the armies in the world cannot quench.

In truth, the thirst for freedom is part of Natural Law. A horse is not broken without a fight; a tiger or lion will pace its cage as long as it can walk looking for an avenue of escape; a bird will fly around its cage ten thousand times looking for an opening to return to the sky. Yes, animals can be broken–and so can be some men, unfortunately. But the innate desire for freedom is born in the soul of every man.

However, the desire for comfort, ease, and material pleasure is a handsome tempter that many people find more attractive than the harsh and weather-torn face of liberty. Plus, the further liberty slips out of view, the more vague the memory of it becomes. And before we realize it, the face of liberty is only seen in the irrelevant relics of the songs and statues of history. But it is exactly at this point that the Spirit of God begins to renew in the hearts of men the Natural thirst for liberty. And that is precisely what is happening now.

All over America, and, yes, all over the world, people’s hearts are beating fast for freedom. I am receiving thousands of letters and emails from people all over the globe. Unfortunately for many of these people, they do not live in a country in which the governmental and political foundation and structure is conducive to the reclamation of liberty. But in the United States, it is not a matter of government; it is a matter of will. Do the American people yet have the will to reclaim liberty?

While it would appear that the majority of today’s Americans have allowed ignorance, materialism, and false Bible teaching regarding the principles of liberty to suppress their love of liberty, I am absolutely convinced that the spirit of liberty is swelling in the hearts of teeming millions of people. Highly educated and high school dropouts, affluent and average, Christians and unchurched, men and women, young and old: their hearts are ablaze with the love of liberty. And they are no longer content to surround themselves with those who would allow the chains of servitude to be clamped around their necks.

Are we patriots or loyalists? That question had to be answered by every man and woman in Colonial America. The same question must be answered by every American today. Are we going to bravely fight for the principles of liberty as did our patriot forebears, or are we going to be loyal to a corrupt and tyrannical system that is literally choking the life out of our freedoms? And how each of us answers that question will determine the direction and destination of our lives and futures.

The freedom to separate is a Natural right. Forced union is not a union at all; it is enslavement. The current world and U.S. maps are testimonies to the right of Natural separation. Pat Buchanan recently wrote:

“In the last decade of the 20th century, as the Soviet Empire disintegrated, so, too, did that prison house of nations, the USSR.

“Out of the decomposing carcass came Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Moldova, all in Europe; Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Caucasus; and Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan in Central Asia.

“Transnistria then broke free of Moldova, and Abkhazia and South Ossetia fought free of Georgia.

“Yugoslavia dissolved far more violently into the nations of Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Kosovo.

“The Slovaks seceded from Czechoslovakia.”

Buchanan also notes that in the U.S., “Four of our 50 states–Maine, Vermont, Kentucky, West Virginia–were born out of other states.”

See Pat’s column at:

Think of this, too: the most fundamental and sacred union of all is the union of a man and woman in marriage. Had Adam and Eve not fallen into sin, there would, no doubt, be no right or reason for separation. (Matthew 19:8) But with the fall of man into sin came all kinds of abuse. As a result, the Scriptures grant divorce (separation) on the grounds of both adultery (Matthew 19) and abandonment (I Corinthians 7). While never preferred, few among us would deny the right of a husband or wife to separate under certain circumstances. Because not every man is willing to be governed by the Natural and revealed laws of God, men are granted the right to separate themselves from those who would violate the fundamental principles upon which the union is based. This is true maritally, ecclesiastically, spiritually, socially, and politically.

In 1836, Will Travis drew a line in the sand to separate those who were willing to defend the liberty of Texas on the ramparts of the Alamo from those who were not. And I am convinced that God is drawing a line in the hearts of men today for the same reason: to separate those who are willing to give their lives in the defense of liberty from those who are not. And, ironically, the freedom of everyone–including the ones who are not willing to defend it–depends on the willingness of the ones who are. I guess it’s always been that way.

I know which side of the line I am on; and after the deluge of correspondence I have received over the past couple of weeks, I know I am not alone.

Are Chemicals In Drinking Water Giving People Cancer?

Traces of 18 unregulated chemicals were found in drinking water from more than one-third of U.S. water utilities in a nationwide sampling, according to new, unpublished research by federal scientists.

Included are 11 perfluorinated compounds, an herbicide, two solvents, caffeine, an antibacterial compound, a metal and an antidepressant, reports Environmental Health News.

While studies increasingly report newly emerging contaminants in wastewater, there has been little data on which ones are in drinking water. Researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) analyzed single samples of untreated and treated water from 25 U.S. utilities that voluntarily participated in the project.

Twenty-one contaminants were detected—mostly in low concentrations of parts per trillion—in treated drinking water from at least nine of the utilities. Eighteen of the chemicals are not regulated under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act so utilities do not have to meet any limit or even monitor for them.

“The good news is the concentrations are generally pretty low,” said Dana Kolpin, a research hydrologist with the USGS who participated in the study. “But there’s still the unknown. Are there long-term consequences of low-level exposure to these chemicals?”

For many of the contaminants, little is known about potential human health effects of low doses. But one of the perfluorinated compounds, known as PFOA, has been linked to a variety of health problems, including cancer, among people in communities where water is contaminated by a chemical plant in West Virginia.

Of 251 chemicals, bacteria, viruses and microbes the scientists measured, 117 were not detected in any of the treated drinking water. Twenty-one were found in water from more than one-third of the 25 utilities (nine or more) and 113 were found in less than one-third (eight or fewer).

Four of the chemicals found in the samples—the metal strontium, the herbicide metolachlor, PFOS and PFOA—are on the EPA’s list of chemicals under consideration for drinking water standards. The EPA plans to make decisions regarding at least five of the contaminants on its list next year.

“We’re hoping through this work the EPA will do a much more intensive contaminant candidate list and develop new methods and requirements for drinking water plants,” said Edward Furlong, a scientist with the USGS who participated in the study.

Perfluorinated chemicals, which were found most frequently, are widely used in a variety of industrial processes, including manufacture of some nonstick and stain-resistant food packaging, fabrics and cookware.

The two most common perfluorinated compounds, PFOS and PFOA, in the utilities’ water have been detected in the blood of nearly all people in the U.S.

A panel of scientists has concluded there is a “probable link” between PFOA in drinking water and high cholesterol, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease, testicular cancer, kidney cancer and pregnancy-induced hypertension. The findings were based on people in Mid-Ohio Valley communities whose water was polluted with PFOA from a DuPont plant.

PFOS, used in Scotchgard until 3M phased it out in 2002, has been linked to attention disorders in children and thyroid disease in men.

The EPA has classified metolachlor as a possible human carcinogen based on studies of highly exposed rats. Strontium can affect bone growth, according to some animal studies that used doses much higher than those found in drinking water.

The perfluorinated compounds were at similar concentrations in the untreated and treated drinking water, suggesting that treatment techniques are largely unsuccessful. Only one plant was successful at removing them and it used activated carbon treatment.

Activated carbon, ozone and UV treatments are generally better at removal than traditional chlorine treatment, but such techniques are often prohibitively expensive, said EPA research chemist Susan Glassmeyer, who led the project.

“People resent having to pay anything for water,” she said. “There’s the thought that there’s a God-given right to have as much as we want but, if you want the cleanest water, these techniques take money.”

Treatment also can sometimes transform compounds into new ones, said Laurel Schaider, a research associate at the Harvard School of Public Health.

“Chlorination and other treatments technologies will remove some contaminants, but will react with others,” Schaider said. “Some compounds may appear to be removed but may be transformed to a chemical we know even less about.”

Glassmeyer said the utilities, which remain anonymous, represented a mix of large and small and used different water treatment technologies.

Preliminary findings of the study, which is expected to be published next year, were presented by the scientists at a toxicology conference in Nashville last month.

Source: Kaye Spector | EcoWatch

DHS Creates New Fusion Centers, Taking Control of Local Police

As the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) doles out billions of dollars to convince local police departments to surrender control to the federal agency, a recent report indicates that intelligence gathered at precincts-cum-surveillance-centers will be shared among all levels of law enforcement.

An article published by Fierce Homeland Security on November 4 reports:

The phenomenon of fusion centers sharing intelligence and skills with each other — not just with the federal government — is a new and underappreciated aspect of the centers, panelists at a Homeland Security Policy Institute event said.

Fusion centers mainly apply national intelligence to local contexts and gather information locally that they can share with federal agencies. But in recent years, a great deal of “horizontal sharing” has occurred, where fusion centers work closely with each other, said Ross Ashley, the executive director of National Fusion Center Association.

“We’ll find an expert in Washington state on international human trafficking over international ferry systems. Well, I don’t need that expert everywhere. What I need is the ability to reach out to that expert if I’m in West Virginia,” he said at the event, held Oct. 23 in Washington, D.C.

That meeting, entitled “State and Local Fusion Centers: Key Challenges for the Next Decade,” featured three panelists: John Cohen, principal deputy under secretary for intelligence and analysis, U.S. Department of Homeland Security; Thomas Kirk, director, West Virginia Intelligence Fusion Center; and Ross Ashley, executive director, National Fusion Center Association. The keynote address was delivered by Representative Michael McCaul (R-Texas), Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security.

In July, McCaul co-authored with Representative Peter King (R-N.Y.) a report on the progress of the establishment of the nationwide spread of the fusion centers. The press release announcing the report reveals the pair’s support for a program that dismantles federalism and accelerates the militarization of local police and the consolidation of control of those departments to the federal government. The McCaul-King report states:

Fusion centers serve as hubs of strategic analysis and information sharing where Federal, State, and local agencies are all represented in one location. State and local crime data is coordinated, gathered and reviewed to determine if there is any potential connection to terrorist activity. In addition, Federal terrorism-related information is shared with State and local law enforcement.

Seems the congressmen should be reminded of the fact that there is not a single syllable of the Constitution authorizing any such federal participation in law enforcement. If the power isn’t granted to the federal government in the Constitution, then authority over that area remains with the states and the people as described in the Tenth Amendment.

Remarkably, McCaul and King lament the fact that the chain of fusion centers isn’t growing quickly enough and the DHS isn’t getting adequate access to all that information. The report adds:

The Committee’s review concludes that the Network is not functioning as cohesively as it should be and fusion centers are facing numerous challenges that prevent the Network from realizing its full potential to help secure the homeland.

Of course, there couldn’t be a piece of federal police and surveillance program propaganda without reminding citizens that all this deprivation of their rights is for their safety. As if to say, if the federal government doesn’t take control of your local police department and keep all citizens under surveillance, the terrorists will strike again.

The representatives’ zeal for constructing local outposts of the central surveillance headquarters is not surprising. Self-serving bureaucrats inside the U.S. government are tirelessly trying to obliterate local police forces answerable to local citizens and promote the consolidation movement as a step toward federalization of law enforcement. These proponents of regional and national police forces desire nothing less than the eradication of all local police departments and sheriffs’ offices, the surrender of state and municipal sovereignty, and the conversion of police into federal security agents sworn not to protect and to serve their neighbors, but to protect the prerogatives of politicians.

Take for example the information contained in a White Paper presented in 2012 to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. In that report, the DHS is encouraged to embark on an “evolving mission” away from its ostensible purpose of fighting terrorism, toward becoming the administrator of an enormous domestic intelligence agency resulting from an integration of the country’s local and state law-enforcement agencies.

This report was written by the Aspen Institute Homeland Security Group, co-chaired by former DHS chief Michael Chertoff. The blueprint promoted in the White Paper pushes Congress toward green-lighting the growth of DHS and the dissolution of local police and sheriffs.

The organization described in the paper, entitled “Homeland Security and Intelligence: Next Steps in Evolving the Mission,” is reminiscent of more draconian governments. For example, one section of the report calls for a transition in the mission of DHS away from protecting the country from the “terrorism” of foreign militants and toward “more specific homeward focused areas.” Additional sections of the report lay out the plans for building a DHS/police hybrid agency that can monitor Americans in any town and prevent threats from fellow citizens.

In order to achieve their ultimate aim, the globalists demand that DHS or some other federal agency take control of the personnel decisions currently made by local police chiefs and county sheriffs. “As the threat grows more localized,” the report claims, “the federal government’s need to train, and even staff, local agencies, such as major city police departments, will grow.” Put another way: The federal government will run your local police department and sheriff’s office.

The establishment of fusion centers is a key component of this plan. The following information is taken from a fact sheet on fusion centers posted on the DHS website:

A fusion center is a collaborative effort of two or more agencies that provide resources, expertise and information to the center with the goal of maximizing their ability to detect, prevent, investigate, and respond to criminal and terrorist activity.

A description of the functioning of these incubators for the forthcoming federal police force is also provided on the DHS site:

State and major urban area fusion centers (fusion centers) serve as primary focal points within the state and local environment for the receipt, analysis, gathering, and sharing of threat-related information among federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial (SLTT) partners…. Fusion centers conduct analysis and facilitate information sharing, assisting law enforcement and homeland security partners in preventing, protecting against, and responding to crime and terrorism.

The literature promoting the acceptance of fusion centers lists several ways the new federal agency will impose its will on the formerly autonomous and accountable police chief or county sheriff.

Last year, The New American described the likely procedure:

First, the feds will decide where and when to deploy local police department personnel. The chief, if he still exists, will be no more than a functionary required to make sure that the orders of the federal government are carried out. More likely than not, these new missions, in addition to preventing crime in the city or county, will engage in the collection of information about and apprehension of those local citizens identified by a committee in Washington as posing a threat to national security. Consider the revelation in 2009 that Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis released a document entitled “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalism and Recruitment,” which listed war veterans, anti-abortion activists, small-government advocates, and those concerned about immigration as terrorist risks.

Second, DHS (or whichever one of the federal agencies eventually takes over law-enforcement duties) will train new recruits. Policies, procedures, and purposes will not reflect traditional (and constitutional) goals of law enforcement, but will be tailored to training officers to perform those duties associated with the new, national emphasis of the force, with a slant toward federalism.

Finally, funds for this conversion from local police department to outpost of the federal law-enforcement agency will be provided by the bureaucrats on Capitol Hill. This carrot will be tied to the stick of federal control.

The speed and success of the Department of Homeland Security’s plan to string together a powerful net of surveillance-focused fusion centers in all the country’s police departments is evident in the following statement at the Homeland Security Policy Institute’s meeting made by Thomas Kirk, director of the West Virginia Intelligence Fusion Center:

“In all law enforcement, I’ve never seen anything like that,” he said. “Most of the time when I call another fusion center director, they know my voice.”

Joe A. Wolverton, II, J.D. is a correspondent for The New American and travels frequently nationwide speaking on topics of nullification, the NDAA, and the surveillance state.  He is the host of The New American Review radio show that is simulcast on YouTube every Monday. Follow him on Twitter @TNAJoeWolverton and he can be reached at 

Source: Joe Wolverton, II, J.D. | The New American

Is Secession’s Time Coming Again?

Pat Buchanan recently wrote an intriguing column titled, “Is Red State America Seceding?” His column clearly reveals that an independence/secession movement is spreading globally. Pat rightly observes that in just the last few years some 25 nations have broken free of mother countries and formed their own independent states. And, no, most of these separations did NOT require violent revolution. In addition, talk of secession is currently going on in at least six other regions of the world. And, as Buchanan correctly observes, the spirit of secession is very much alive and well in the United States.

Buchanan writes, “The five counties of western Maryland–Garrett, Allegany, Washington, Frederick and Carroll, which have more in common with West Virginia and wish to be rid of Baltimore and free of Annapolis, are talking secession.”

But people in Maryland are not the only ones talking secession. Buchanan continues to write, “Ten northern counties of Colorado are this November holding non-binding referenda to prepare a future secession from Denver and the creation of America’s 51st state.”

Furthermore, people in northern California are also talking secession. Again, to quote Pat Buchanan: “In California, which many have long believed should be split in two, the northern counties of Modoc and Siskiyou on the Oregon border are talking secession–and then union in a new state called Jefferson.”

Buchanan goes on to say, “Folks on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, bordered by Wisconsin and the Great Lakes, which is connected to lower Michigan by a bridge, have long dreamed of a separate state called Superior. The UP has little in common with Lansing and nothing with Detroit.

“While the folks in western Maryland, northern Colorado, northern California and on the Upper Peninsula might be described as red state secessionists, in Vermont the secessionists seem of the populist left. The Montpelier Manifesto of the Second Vermont Republic concludes:

“‘Citizens, lend your names to this manifesto and join in the honorable task of rejecting the immoral, corrupt, decaying, dying, failing American Empire and seeking its rapid and peaceful dissolution before it takes us all down with it.’”

Pat concludes his column saying, “This sort of intemperate language may be found in Thomas Jefferson’s indictment of George III. If America does not get its fiscal house in order, and another Great Recession hits or our elites dragoon us into another imperial war, we will likely hear more of such talk.”

See Pat Buchanan’s column here:

Buchanan’s analysis is right on the money. The spirit of independence is far from dead in the United States. In fact, the spirit of independence (otherwise known as the Spirit of ’76) has already begun driving people to separate from states and cities in which they have lived for most or all of their lives. The biggest recipient of these many thousands of freedom-minded people seems to be the Rocky Mountain States of America’s Northwest.

Faithful readers of this column know that my entire family, including five heads of households and some 18 family members, relocated to the Flathead Valley of Montana after having lived a lifetime–or the better part of a lifetime–in the southeastern United States. And during the last three years, I have witnessed scores of families also relocate to northwestern Montana from all over the country.

But it’s not just Chuck Baldwin’s move or the people from around the country who have decided to join us here in the Flathead Valley: thousands of people are relocating to what is now commonly referred to as “The American Redoubt.” This area includes Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, eastern Washington State, and eastern Oregon.

By the way, to read a compilation of articles as to why my family and I chose the Flathead Valley of Montana to which to relocate, peruse the material here:

Just recently, Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) did a television report on the growing numbers of people who are relocating to The American Redoubt. See the report here:

The mood all over America is one of intense uncertainty and uneasiness. More and more Americans are waking up to the reality that Washington, D.C., is hopelessly broken (financially and morally), and it’s only a matter of time before something catastrophic happens. They see the way America’s major cities are becoming more and more tyrannical and crime-infested.

In the major cities, public schools more and more resemble prisons; police departments more and more resemble the German Gestapo; local governments more and more try to make criminals out of honest gun owners and more and more attack the Christian values that were once revered in this country. Add any major disaster (natural or man-made) to these growing concerns and the prospect for a normal life in the big cities is practically zero. People are yearning to be more self-reliant, more independent, more secure, and, yes, more free. In fact, for a host of people today, the longing for liberty trumps the desire for wealth and pleasure. What used to attract people to big cities now repulses them. And they are more than willing to downscale their incomes and living standards in order to live simpler and breath freer.
In reality, secession is not a future event; it has already started. People all over America are separating from their homes and families, from their jobs and livelihoods, from their cities and states, and from their very way of life in order to find even a semblance of what America used to look like. This trend will not diminish anytime soon. In fact, I am convinced it has not yet begun to peak.

So, don’t despair my friends. The Spirit of ’76 is alive and well–and not just in America but in many regions around the world also. The smell of independence is in the air. It smells so sweet. Take a big whiff. Then prayerfully decide to what and to where that wind is leading you.

Pat Buchanan’s analysis of the modern independence movement just might be more of a prophecy than anything else.

I cannot help but think of the speech John Adams gave to the Continental Congress as it contemplated the Declaration of Independence. When one thinks of fiery speeches for independence, one normally thinks of Patrick Henry, Sam Adams, or James Otis. But John Adams’ speech to the Continental Congress ranks up there with the greatest of them. So, for all of my freedom-loving brothers and sisters in America and around the world who are already, in their own way, engaged in the independence movement, I conclude this column with the concluding words from that immortal speech:

“Sir, I know the uncertainty of human affairs, but I see, I see clearly, through this day’s business. You and I, indeed, may rue it. We may not live to the time when this Declaration shall be made good. We may die; die, colonists; die, slaves; die, it may be, ignominiously and on the scaffold. Be it so; be it so! If it be the pleasure of heaven that my country shall require the poor offering of my life, the victim shall be ready at the appointed hour of sacrifice, come when that hour may. But, while I do live, let me have a country, or at least, the hope of a country, and that a free country.

“But whatever may be our fate, be assured, be assured that this Declaration will stand. It may cost treasure, and it may cost blood, but it will stand, and it will richly compensate for both. Through the thick gloom of the present, I see the brightness of the future, as the sun in heaven. We shall make this a glorious, an immortal day. When we are in our graves, our children will honor it. They will celebrate it with thanksgiving, with festivity, with bonfires and illuminations. On its annual return, they will shed tears, copious, gushing tears, not of subjection and slavery, not of agony and distress, but of exultation, of gratitude and of joy.

“Sir, before God, I believe the hour is come. My judgment approves this measure, and my whole heart is in it. All that I have, and all that I am, and all that I hope, in this life, I am now ready here to stake upon it. And I leave off as I began, that, live or die, survive or perish, I am for the Declaration. It is my living sentiment, and by the blessing of God it shall be my dying sentiment, Independence now, and INDEPENDENCE FOREVER!”

Amen and Amen!

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

One-World Brain

Jim Keith (1949-1999)  |  Excerpt from the book Mass Control: Engineering Human Consciousness (Chapter 29). Kempton: Adventures Unlimited Press, 1999.

In the 1930s, British intelligence agent and one-world theoretician H.G. Wells proposed a mind control plan that is apparently coming to fruition now, at the turn of the 21st century, with the creation of the Internet. At a November, 1936 speech before the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Wells laid out his idea for what he called a “World Encyclopaedia.” Wells said:

“I want to suggest that something, a new social organization, a new institution—which for a time I shall call World Encyclopaedia… This World Encyclopaedia would be the mental background of every intelligent man in the world… Such an Encyclopaedia would play the role of an undogmatic Bible to world culture. It would do just what our scattered and disoriented intellectual organizations of today fall short of doing. It would hold the world together mentally… It would compel men to come to terms with one another… It is a super university. I am thinking of a World Brain; no less… Ultimately, if our dream is realized, it must exert a very great influence upon everyone who controls administrations, makes wars, directs mass behavior, feeds, moves, starves and kills populations… You see how such an Encyclopaedia organization could spread like a nervous network, a system of mental control about the globe, knitting all the intellectual workers of the world through a common interest and cooperating unity and a growing sense of their own dignity, informing without pressure or propaganda, directing without tyranny.”

Wells was a little more candid in a private memo written in the same month:

“The Universities and the associated intellectual organizations throughout the world should function as a police of the mind.” [1]

Policing of the mind is precisely the danger of the Internet. Although at first blush the possibility of a communications medium that is egalitarian in its ability to accommodate both individuals and media monoliths is exciting, the apparent freedom of the Internet may be transitory…and illusory.

One problem is that along with ability to disseminate information widely and almost instantaneously, due to its technical flexibility the Internet also has the potential for assimilating—for literally devouring—all of the major information sources on the planet. With high-tech linkages and interfaces it is quite probable that worldwide television, radio, computer, and print media will all be sucked into the maw of what is currently called the Internet. All of these information and communication sources are gradually being linked together into a single computerized network, providing an opportunity for unheralded control of what will be broadcast, what will be said, and ultimately what will be thought.

The Internet provides the ability for almost instantaneous monitoring of the content of communications. It is possible that the ‘wide open information frontier’ of the Internet, as it currently exists, is going to be a temporary thing, and that a program of increased monitoring and regulation—as well as a more aggressive use of mind control, such as foreseen by Dr. Persinger—will emerge.

When NBC and Microsoft launched their joint venture MSNBC, in an attempt to link television and the Internet, newscaster and CFR member Tom Brokaw said,

“We can’t let that generation and a whole segment of the population just slide away out to the Internet and retrieve what information it wants without being in on it.” [2]

In China, they have also not held their tongues about what they see as the necessity of Internet control. Xia Hong, an advocate of government monitoring of the Net has said,

“The Internet has been an important technical innovator, but we need to add another element, and that is control. The new generation of information superhighway needs a traffic control center. It needs highway patrols: users will require driver’s licenses. These are the basic requirement for any controlled environment.” [3]

Is the idea that the Internet can be used for increasing surveillance on the public just paranoia on my part? Then we should examine who currently controls the medium: American intelligence agencies. At this time the major nexus of control of the Internet resides in the monopoly of “domain registration,” the keys to the broad Internet landscape. These domain names are registered as Internet Protocol numbers, and until recently were deeded by Network Solutions, Inc., a subsidiary of the government funded National Science Foundation. While Network Solutions registered the I.P. numbers, it was done as a free public service. This is no longer taking place.

Now the long arm of American intelligence agencies has hijacked the free flow of information—registration of domain names now starts at fifty dollars per year—since the purchase of Network Solutions by another company, Scientific Applications International Corp. (SAIC), a group previously mentioned circumstantially in this book in connection with the Heaven’s Gate mass suicide—or murder.

SAIC is an arm of the military industrial establishment, with twenty thousand employees and over 90% of its $1.9 billion in 1994 revenues obtained from government contracts. On the twenty-three person board of directors of SAIC are Admiral Bobby Inman, former deputy director of the CIA and head of the National Security Agency; President Nixon’s former defense secretary Melvin Laird; General Max Thurman, who commanded the invasion of Panama. Other board members of SAIC have included former CIA director Robert Gates; Secretary of Defense William Perry; and CIA director John Deutch.

Among the projects that Scientific Applications International Corp. has been engaged in recently have been the creation and implementation of technology for the Army Global Command and Control System—the renovation of the Pentagon’s computer and communication systems—and the upgrading of national, state, and local law enforcement databases. In other words, SAIC is involved in the upgrading and integration of the computerized infrastructure of the Establishment.

And now SAIC stands at the gate of the Internet.

According to researcher Jesse Hersh:

“The military-industrial complex was the name used to refer to the ruling power elite during the 1950s and 1960s. However, with the wide penetration of television during the ’60s, and the further proliferation of electronic media throughout the 1970s and ’80s, the complex has dissolved into the inner workings of almost all aspects of our society. The war economy has successfully been transformed into the information economy. Military technology, and military communications systems now control and operate almost all of our political-economic and social relations. This amalgamation of media, and conglomeration of power, is currently being presented to the ‘consumer’ as the Information Superhighway or ‘Internet’.” [4]

If it seems unlikely that Big Brother would concern himself with the communications of ordinary citizens on the Internet, then it should be realized that government is already engaged in monitoring civilian and business communications on an awesome scale. Around the world, electronic messages are intercepted by a collaboration amongst several spy agencies headed by the American NSA, termed ECHELON. Based upon a document known as the UKUSA Agreement, signed in 1948 by the U.S., Great Britain, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, ECHELON is a system composed of receiving stations in Yakima, Washington; Sugar Grove, West Virginia; Norwenstow in Cornwall, England; Waihopai, New Zealand; and Geraldton, Australia.

The receiving stations of ECHELON sift through the output of the world’s electronic media. ECHELON primarily targets non-military domestic and business communications, including email, telephone, fax, and telex networks. This interception is primarily done through monitoring the communications of international phone company telecommunications satellites, civilian communications satellites, and communications as they are sent from undersea cables to microwave transmitters.

ECHELON uses computers that incorporate symbol and voice recognition systems to sift through millions of messages every minute, and to identify keywords and phrases, including business names, e-mail addresses, phone and fax numbers that are of interest to its participating member intelligence groups in the U.S., Britain, Canada, and New Zealand. After these phrases are located and the communications they are embodied in are culled, they are sent to analysts in whatever country requested the intercepts. According to one analyst, Amnesty International and Greenpeace have been among ECHELON’s targets.

“Let me put it this way,” a former NSA officer said. “Consider that anyone can type a keyword into a Net search engine and get back tens of thousands of hits in a few seconds. Assume that people working on the outer edges have capabilities far in excess of what you do.” [5]

The gradual assimilation and control of all communications—and ultimately all transactions entirely, including those of perception and thought—is a long term strategy of the controllers that has in recent years been facilitated through the creation of the interdisciplinary science of cybernetics. Now, with cybernetics, mass control is here, eating up our freedom on a day-to-day basis like a fast-acting viral organism.

The term cybernetics was invented by Norbert Wiener, a professor of mathematics at MIT who was involved with what was termed Operations Research as well as System Dynamics for the U.S. during World War II.

Cybernetics is primarily the science of information theory, and it is currently being applied to the world as a whole. Cybernetics theory was first envisioned as a way of precisely managing wars, but with experience it was seen that the disciplines and projections that were vital in the conduct of war were essentially the same as those utilized by government during peacetime. The cybernetic approach evolved such cross-disciplinary groups as the RAND Corporation, Mitre, and Ramo-Wooldridge (which became TRW), brainstorming the cybernetic approach to controlling society and nature itself. The cybernetics idea also provided the genus for the National Security Agency, which is at this time the largest intelligence agency on the planet. Such is the importance of information, according to the controllers.

According to cybernetic innovator Jay W. Forrester,

“The professional field known as system dynamics [or cybernetics] has been developing for the last 35 years and now has a world-wide and growing membership. System dynamics combines the theory, methods, and philosophy needed to analyze the behavior of systems in not only management, but also in environmental change, politics, economic behavior, medicine, engineering, and other fields. System dynamics provides a common foundation that can be applied where we want to understand and influence how things change through time.”

One experiment in cybernetics was conducted in 1971 after the Marxist-leaning Dr. Salvador Allende was elected president of Chile. As Castro had done earlier, Allende set about nationalizing the industry, banks, and major companies of Chile. But Allende was no agrarian primatif, and therein lay his danger to the Establishment world. He called in the British cyberneticist Stafford Beers to provide the means for micro-managing the country, which is rich in natural resources, but which has always been drained by the major industrial powers with little of its gelt left over for the country itself.

Beer gathered together a highly qualified group of cybernetics-savvy scientists and launched what he called Project Cybersyn, the objective of which was, according to Beers,

“To install a preliminary system of information and regulation for the industrial economy that will demonstrate the main features of cybernetic management and begin to help in the task of actual decision-making by March 1, 1972… It was a massive application of cybernetic feedback to help each industry and each factory keep track of itself through a central location. All communications flowed through the central location.”

Project Cybersyn utilized three primary components:

• Cybernet, which was something of a precursor to today’s Internet, a means by which businessmen and government could communicate and consult with anyone else in the web.
• Cyberstride, the programs necessary for monitoring individual companies as well as the economy as a whole, as well as providing alerts when specific areas needed enhancement or were in trouble.
• Chaco, a computerized model of the Chilean economy that provided effective simulations of potential scenarios.

The purpose of Cybersyn was to monitor, to dissect, and to predict the Chilean economy; to debug it in order to create a functioning machine, in much the same manner that is being done in many countries throughout the world today.

 

The problem is that Cybersyn may have worked too well and so posed a threat to the capitalist world. As the demonstration project that Allende and Beers foresaw, it might have provided a tremendous public relations coup for the Communist world. Henry Kissigner, it is said, was the one who intervened to put an end to the grand experiment. Salvador Allende was assassinated by Chileans who are reported to have been in the pay of the CIA, and Cybersyn went by the wayside.

The CIA seems to have known precisely what it was doing, since there are indications that the Agency at about the same time was focused on cybernetic concerns of its own. According to Anna Keeler in my Secret and Suppressed anthology,

“Richard Helms wrote of such a system in the mid-1960s while he was CIA Plans Director. He spoke of ‘Sophisticated approaches to the coding of information for transmittal to population targets’ in the ‘battle for the minds of men’ and of ‘an approach integrating biological, social and physical-mathematical research in an attempt to control human behavior.’ He found particularly notable ‘use of modern information theory, automata theory, and feedback concepts…for a technology controlling behavior…using information inputs as causative agents…”

Elsewhere Helms wrote,

“Cybernetics can be used in molding of a child’s character, the inculcation of knowledge and techniques, the amassing of experience, the establishment of social behavior patterns…all functions which can be summarized as control of the growth processes of the individual.”

Cybernetics and the Internet—otherwise, the one world brain envisioned by H.G. Wells—allows for a regulated, interventionist world, one so fine-tuned that much of the machinations that take place behind the scenes are not observed by the man in the street. Among the control strategies that can be and are employed by the elitists in a cybernetic world are the control of food, the control of the monetary supply, the control of energy, and the control of public opinion. The Clinton administration’s close attention to the media and opinion polls, and manipulation of same, are in essence a primitive cybernetic approach that has allowed for the institution in the U.S. of a “soft” cybernetic fascism where violent internal intervention is rarely needed, and then seemingly only for public relations purposes.

The techno-fascists are approaching closure, and may have already achieved it. Not only do governments and intelligence agencies currently have the ability to monitor computer and other media messages, as well as the emotional responses of the electorate via polling and other techniques, they have the ability and the will to use media to brainwash us, to change our opinions when they believe it is warranted, and to sell us on every step on the road to complete utilization. As satirized in works like Report From Iron Mountain andSilent Weapons for Quiet Wars, the cybernetics approach to world management can yield the ultimate in control. Extrapolating from the accelerating advances of the last century, it is obvious that unless lovers of freedom act, and act fast, within the next twenty years the ruling elite will have effectively realized total control over the minds and bodies of mankind.[6]

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Notes:

[1] Wells, H.G. Cited in White, Carol. The New Dark Ages Conspiracy. New York: The New Benjamin Franklin House, 1980.

[2] Brokaw, Tom, cited in Pouzzner, Daniel. “The Architecture of Modern Political Power,” http://www.mega.nu/ampp/

[3] “The Great Firewall of China” by Geramie R. Barme and Sang Ye, Wired Magazine.

[4] Hersh, Jesse, “The Internet Complex,” Prevailing Winds, number 4; King, Bradley J., “Doubleplusungood! The Specter of Telescreening,” [formerly] at www.parascope.com.

[5] Hagar, Nicky, “Exposing the Global Surveillance System,” Covert Action Quarterlyonline, http://www.projectcensored.org/4-exposing-the-global-surveillance-system/; “Spies Like Us,” Connected, 16 December, 1997, at www.telegraph.co.uk; Vest, Jason, “Listening In,” Village Voice, August 12-18, 1998.

[6] Helms, Richard, cited in Bowart, Walter. Operation Mind Control. New York: Dell Books, 1978; Friedman, George and Meridith. The Future of War — Power, Technology, and American World Dominance. 1996; Beer, Stafford. Brain of the Firm, 1986; Wiener, Norbert. The Human Use of Human Beings — Cybernetics and Society. 1954; “Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars,” Secret and Suppressed, ed. Jim Keith, Feral House, 1993.

Source: War Is Crime

How The Reading War Became A Religious War

The Reading War was a fight over how reading should be taught.

Unexpectedly, this conflict also became a religious war. Progressive secular humanists declared that their method (Whole Word) was scientifically best. They claimed the opposing method (phonics) was favored only by irrational religious extremists (read: Christians).

The logic for those claims is convoluted. Probably there is no logic, merely propaganda.

Psychiatrists would also probably speak of “projection.” The progressives listed all the bad features of Whole Word, and then insisted that these dreadful results were characteristic of phonics. How convenient.

You might think the people in this fight would have to come up against reality at some point. In fact, that should have happened in 1955 when Rudolf Flesch wrote “Why Johnny Can’t Read.” He explained that Whole Word does not work, and schools must use phonics. However, the progressives simply refused to listen. They formed the International Reading Association for the purpose of attacking Flesch, and promoting Whole Word (also known by several other names).

So we had a total inversion of reality. In order to push this inversion on to victory, the Education Establishment more and more injected the hysteria of religious conflicts.

The country was told that foolish, misguided, possibly evil people chose phonics because these people were religious fanatics. Conversely, secular humanists endorsed Whole Word because they were logical and clear-thinking, never mind that this method produced tens of millions of functional illiterates.

This was the weird state of American education during the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Phonics, the proven winner, was dismissed as religious nuttiness. Whole Whole, a proven loser, was said to be research-based genius.

This long-running conflict often unfolded behind the scenes, a debate waged in scholarly slurs. Then came an event in 1974, in the backwoods of West Virginia, which caused the progressive views to be plainly articulated.

James Moffett, one of the country’s leading Whole Language proponents, had created an elaborate K-12 curricula for use in public schools. Many literary items were sophisticated and seemed inappropriate to the parents of West Virginia. Resistance formed. The Education Establishment screamed: “censorship.” The liberal media played it that way. A battle raged for many months.

In 1989 James Moffett wrote a about this piece of history. In three amazing statements, he summed up the views which had propelled the entire drama throughout several decades:

“In my textbooks and workshops for teachers I recommend [favoring] the whole-sentence and full-text methods and to regard phonics as probably not necessary for reading.”

“Almost invariably parents and others not having these professional reasons side with phonics because it suits the conservative cast of mind.`God believes in the beauty of phonics’ means that those who see themselves as God’s spokespeople prefer phonics, precisely, I think, because it shuts out content by focusing the child on articles of language too small to have any meaning.”

“How to limit what they may find to read out of school? A good way is to cripple literacy at the outset, to make reading so technical and meaningless youngsters will…simply not seek books any further or will find the act of reading so painful that they virtually give it up.”

I believe Moffett has everything backwards (having accepted the sophistries of Frank Smith and Ken Goodman), and that most children do learn to read by mastering the small “articles” which he disparages.

Moffett lies in pretending that children learn these small parts so they can stop there. No, it’s a first step. All instruction progresses from crawling to walking to running, then to dancing, skiing, etc. You don’t crawl in order to crawl for the rest of your life but Moffett weirdly pretends that we do.

Conversely, Whole Word is built on what might be called the expert fallacy. Adults, according to Whole Word theory, read whole words. So let’s teach children to read whole words from the beginning. This is like teaching a child to ski by letting him loose on a steep slope.

Constance Weaver, another famous proponent of Whole Language, argued: “What motivates such advocacy? Oddly enough, it may not necessarily be what proponents claim: namely, the desire to teach all children to read. A great deal of the force behind such advocacy seems to be the desire to promote a religious agenda and/or to maintain the socioeconomic status quo.”

A third advocate of Whole Word instruction, Reggie Routman, actually wrote: “phonics instruction is a useless sore, even a handicap.”

In fact, it’s phonics that makes children into fluent, independent readers, the kind of people who can learn what they want and make decisions for themselves. Conversely, it’s the millions of functional illiterates created by Whole Word that turn out to have few skills. Talk about maintaining the socioeconomic status quo.

You can say that these Whole Word people were not just wrong, they were pathetically wrong. They drank the Kool-Aid and then denied the obvious: a phonetic language such as English requires that children learn that letters on a page stand for sounds. That’s the essence of phonetics, or phonics.

Ideally, all parents would understand how phonics works and that Whole Word can cripple a child. Additionally, they would be aware that many dangerous sophistries were devised during the Reading Wars, thereby rendering the entire reading debate muddled and dysfunctional. Working around this confusion is the first priority.

Bottom line: English words were never designed to be memorized visually. If you want to see how weird our words look to a first grader, just choose a random page of text, turn it upside down, and look at it in a mirror. You will see that the word-designs are annoyingly similar; and they change in unpredictable ways from typeface to typeface, from lower case to UPPER CASE. There’s a lot of visual complexity and chaos. Imagine trying to memorize many hundreds of these so-called sight-words on sight. This project is nearly impossible. The progressives’ Reading War was actually a reading scam.

Phonics, by proceeding one simple step at a time, enables all children to read, typically by the end of first grade.

37 Statistics Which Show How Four Years Of Obama Have Wrecked The U.S. Economy

The mainstream media covered the inauguration of Barack Obama with breathless anticipation on Monday, but should we really be celebrating another four years of Obama?  The truth is that the first four years of Obama were an absolute train wreck for the U.S. economy.  Over the past four years, the percentage of working age Americans with a job has fallen, median household income has declined by more than $4000, poverty in the U.S. has absolutely exploded and our national debt has ballooned to ridiculous proportions.  Of course all of the blame for the nightmarish performance of the economy should not go to Obama alone.  Certainly much of what we are experiencing today is the direct result of decades of very foolish decisions by Congress and previous presidential administrations.  And of course the Federal Reserve has more influence over the economy than anyone else does.  But Barack Obama steadfastly refuses to criticize anything that the Federal Reserve has done and he even nominated Ben Bernanke for another term as Fed Chairman despite his horrific track record of failure, so at a minimum Barack Obama must be considered to be complicit in the Fed’s very foolish policies.  Despite what the Obama administration tells us, the U.S. economy has been in decline for a very long time, and that decline has accelerated in many ways over the past four years.  Just consider the statistics that I have compiled below.  The following are 37 statistics which show how four years of Obama have wrecked the U.S. economy…

1. During Obama’s first term, the number of Americans on food stamps increased by an average of about 11,000 per day.

2. At the beginning of the Obama era, 32 million Americans were on food stamps.  Today, more than 47 million Americans are on food stamps.

3. According to one calculation, the number of Americans on food stamps now exceeds the combined populations of “Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.”

4. The number of Americans receiving money directly from the federal government each month has grown from 94 million in the year 2000 tomore than 128 million today.

5. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 146 million Americans are either “poor” or “low income” at this point.

6. The unemployment rate in the United States is exactly where it was (7.8 percent) when Barack Obama first entered the White House in January 2009.

7. When Barack Obama first entered the White House, 60.6 percent of all working age Americans had a job.  Today, only 58.6 percent of all working age Americans have a job.

8. During the first four years of Obama, the number of Americans “not in the labor force” soared by an astounding 8,332,000.  That far exceeds any previous four year total.

9. During Obama’s first term, the number of Americans collecting federal disability insurance rose by more than 18 percent.

10. The Obama years have been absolutely devastating for small businesses in America.  According to economist Tim Kane, the following is how the number of startup jobs per 1000 Americans breaks down by presidential administration…

Bush Sr.: 11.3

Clinton: 11.2

Bush Jr.: 10.8

Obama: 7.8

11. Median household income in America has fallen for four consecutive years.  Overall, it has declined by over $4000 during that time span.

12. The economy is not producing nearly enough jobs for the hordes of young people now entering the workforce.  Approximately 53 percentof all U.S. college graduates under the age of 25 were either unemployed or underemployed in 2011.

13. According to a report from the National Employment Law Project, 58 percent of the jobs that have been created since the end of the recession have been low paying jobs.

14. Back in 2007, about 28 percent of all working families were considered to be among “the working poor”.  Today, that number is up to 32 percent even though our politicians tell us that the economy is supposedly recovering.

15. According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, only 24.6 percent of all of the jobs in the United States are “good jobs” at this point.

16. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the middle class is taking home a smaller share of the overall income pie than has ever been recorded before.

17. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the United States is losinghalf a million jobs to China every single year.

18. The United States has fallen in the global economic competitiveness rankings compiled by the World Economic Forum for four years in a row.

19. According to the World Bank, U.S. GDP accounted for 31.8 percentof all global economic activity in 2001.  That number declined steadily over the course of the next decade and was only at 21.6 percent in 2011.

20. The United States actually has plenty of oil and we should not have to import oil from the Middle East.  We need to drill for more oil, but Obama has been very hesitant to do that.  Under Bill Clinton, the number of drilling permits approved rose by 58 percent.  Under George W. Bush, the number of drilling permits approved rose by 116 percent.  Under Barack Obama, the number of drilling permits approved actuallydecreased by 36 percent.

21. When Barack Obama took office, the average price of a gallon of gasoline was $1.84.  Today, the average price of a gallon of gasoline is$3.26.

22. Under Barack Obama, the United States has lost more than 300,000 education jobs.

23. For the first time ever, more than a million public school students in the United States are homeless.  That number has risen by 57 percent since the 2006-2007 school year.

24. Families that have a head of household under the age of 30 now have a poverty rate of 37 percent.

25. More than three times as many new homes were sold in the United States in 2005 as were sold in 2012.

26. Electricity bills in the United States have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.

27. Health insurance costs have risen by 29 percent since Barack Obama became president.

28. Today, 77 percent of all Americans live paycheck to paycheck at least part of the time.

29. It is being projected that Obamacare will add 16 million more Americans to the Medicaid rolls.

30. The total amount of money that the federal government gives directly to the American people has grown by 32 percent since Barack Obama became president.

31. The Obama administration has been spending money on some of the most insane things imaginable.  For example, in 2011 the Obama administration spent $592,527 on a study that sought to figure out once and for all why chimpanzees throw poop.

32. U.S. taxpayers spend more than 20 times as much on the Obamas as British taxpayers spend on the royal family.

33. The U.S. government has run a budget deficit of well over a trillion dollars every single year under Barack Obama.

34. When Barack Obama was first elected, the U.S. debt to GDP ratio was under 70 percent.  Today, it is up to 103 percent.

35. During Obama’s first term, the federal government accumulated more debt than it did under the first 42 U.S presidents combined.

36. As I wrote about yesterday, when you break it down the amount of new debt accumulated by the U.S. government during Obama’s first term comes to approximately $50,521 for every single household in the United States.  Are you ready to contribute your share?

37. If you started paying off just the new debt that the U.S. has accumulated during the Obama administration at the rate of one dollar per second, it would take more than 184,000 years to pay it off.

But despite all of these numbers, the mainstream media and the left just continue to shower Barack Obama with worship and praise.  Newsweek recently heralded Obama’s second term as “The Second Coming“, and at Obama’s pre-inauguration church service Reverand Ronald Braxton openly compared Obama to Moses…

At Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church, Braxton reportedly crafted his speech around Obama’s personal political slogan: “Forward!”

Obama, said Braxton, was just like Moses facing the Red Sea: “forward is the only option … The people couldn’t turn around. The only thing that they could do was to go forward.” Obama, said Braxton, would have to overcome all obstacles – like opposition from Republicans, presumably, or the bounds of the Constitution. Braxton continued, “Mr. President, stand on the rock,” citing to Moses standing on Mount Horeb as his people camped outside the land of Israel.

But it wasn’t enough to compare Obama with the founder of Judaism and the prophet of the Bible. Braxton added that Obama’s opponents were like the Biblical enemies of Moses, and that Obama would have to enter the battle because “sometimes enemies insist on doing it the hard way.”

So what do you think the next four years of Obama will bring?

Source: The Economic Collapse

The Irony of 47.7 Million Americans Subsisting On Food Stamps

As of November of 2012, a mind-numbing 47.7 million Americans subsist on taxpayer-funded food stamps.  One in seven Americans cannot feed himself or herself with a job or work of any kind.  What constitutes the irony to this national tragedy?  Answer: our U.S. Congress imports 100,000 legal immigrants into the USA with green cards every 30 days.

No matter how much poverty and unemployment blacks, whites and Hispanic Americans suffer– the leaders of this country continually pound more humans into the mix without pause.  At the same time, food banks go belly up with bare shelves. Over 13 million American children live in destitute poverty and cannot secure three square meals per day.

While Congress supports our enormous military spending into the trillions of dollars and two 10 year long wars that devour (ed) money—it fails to create jobs and feed our poorest.  It fails the fundamental rights of our own citizens to work and eat.

The gross statistics created by our U.S. Congress:  (Source:hubpages.com)

#1 According to one calculation, the number of Americans on food stamps now exceeds the combined populations of “Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.”

#2 In October 2008, 30.8 million Americans were on food stamps. By August 2012 that number had risen to 47.1 million Americans.

#3 Right now, one out of every seven Americans is on food stamps and one out of every four American children is on food stamps.

#4 It is projected that half of all American children will be on food stamps at least once before they turn 18 years of age.

#5 According to new numbers that were just released by the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of Americans living in poverty increased to a new all-time record high of 49.7 million last year.

#6 The number of Americans living in poverty has increased by about 6 million over the past four years.

#7Today, about one out of every four workers in the United States brings home wages that are at or below the federal poverty level.

#8According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the poverty rate for children living in the United States is about 22 percent.

#9 Overall, approximately 57 percent of all children in the United States are living in homes that are either considered to be either “low income” or impoverished.

#10 In the United States today, close to 100 million Americans are considered to be either “poor” or “near poor”.

#11 One university study estimates that child poverty costs the U.S. economy 500 billion dollars each year.

#12 Households that are led by a single mother have a 31.6 percent poverty rate.

#13 In 2010, 42 percent of all single mothers in the United States were on food stamps.

Once you research the numbers, you cannot help but look to your own U.S. Senators and House reps and see failure, duplicity and corruption.  No excuses!  How could men and women who are supposed to represent American citizens continually leave American citizens in the grips of poverty, joblessness and homelessness?

Some kind of moral, ethical and spiritual wrong grows in the nation’s capitol all the way up to the president.  American citizens become its victims.

Do you think there is any chance of it changing and becoming better as that same U.S. Congress adds over 3.1 million immigrants every year on our way to adding 100 million immigrants within the next 38 years?