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The Dark-Side Psychology Behind Holiday Madness
December 4, 2013 by Administrator · Leave a Comment
"Men (people) are rarely aware of the real reasons which motivate their actions." — Edward Bernays, Propaganda, 1928
The winter holidays are traditionally supposed to embody a certain ideal of that which is best in the hearts of human beings. As the world around us retreats into ice and snow and the Earth's northern cycle returns to death once again, the holidays represent a time of contemplation, as well as an opportunity to shine a light in an otherwise dark and dreary period. This heritage is as old as history, dating back to an era in which agriculture was paramount and men garnered far more respect for the tides of nature. The parallel relationship between social "renewal" and seasonal renewal has served the collective psyche of Western society, in my view, for the better. Unfortunately, this process has all but vanished today, twisted and mutilated into something sinister and poisonous.
Those of us who pay attention are well aware of a trend of cultural decline within our nation, and this problem is disturbingly visible from Thanksgiving to Christmas. It's not just the highly publicized Black Friday (now Black Thursday) riots over semi-cheap Chinese-made garbage. Those are certainly vile examples:
Rather, it's the behavior of people throughout the season on a daily basis that is most disconcerting. I have personally witnessed, as I'm sure many people have, a magnified and astonishing disregard for conscience and basic decency growing worse each year for at least the past decade. That which is most unsettling about our society today is somehow unleashed with wild abandon every year at this time.
The idiocy and barbarism seems to span all economic "classes" — from the upper-middle-class snob screaming at bewildered cashiers over a coupon worth 50 cents, to the middle-class suburbanites brawling on the sticky floors of Wal-Mart over flat-screen TVs, to the part-time employee who sold her soul for minimum wage and who now yells at people on Thanksgiving eve to stop filming the mindless brawls that her corporate masters encourage because such videos might "reflect badly" on the company image. The dark side truly knows no social or financial bounds.
Every year, we see this behavior, shake our heads in dismay and look forward to the beginning of January, when Americans go back to being only moderately disdainful toward each other. This time, however, instead of merely gawking in disbelief at the circus sideshow, I would like to challenge people to explore more deeply the true motivations of the mob itself, as well as the motivations of the elitists who manipulate the mob for their own purposes. Let's take a look at the fundamental dynamics of the psychology of mobs and the madness of crowds.
Filling The Emptiness
In my recent article 'You Should Feel Sorry For Sheeple; Here's Why', I outline the inner life, or rather the lack of inner life, common to the average sheeple. Many of my compatriots find it increasingly difficult to muster any pity for the sheeple subculture, and I can see why. When given ample opportunity, sheeple always sink toward the worst humanity has to offer usually in an effort to aggrandize themselves.
But let's set aside that sick feeling in our stomachs when thinking of sheeple and really consider what their existence is like. What does a sheeple's daily life consist of?
In most cases I've observed, he lives what he believes to be the American dream. He wakes up in the morning swelling with superficial concerns of personal gain, scheming ways in which he can raise his perceived stature among the other sheeple around him. He then then travels to his place of employment, usually a job he hates, in order to accumulate enough wealth (scraps from the plates of government and corporate financiers) to buy all the "things" he assumes everyone else wants. In the process, he pawns off his children to state-run schools designed to crush their spirits; and he becomes estranged from his spouse, who begins to forget why they ever got married in the first place. He returns home physically and emotionally drained, knowing that he did nothing worthwhile with his time, only to sit apathetically in front of his television for a few hours being bombarded with cancerous marketing propaganda and barely talking with the family he tells himself he works so hard for.
Think about it. Think of the pitch-black void that his life has become. Think of all the abandoned dreams, all the missed opportunities for experience and joy, all the moments of reflection and self-education that were missed because he was "too busy" trying to elevate himself within the ranks of a heartless collective.
Now, for one frightening moment, imagine this is your life. No sense of legitimate pride or individualism. No understanding of the underlying events that affect your environment or the high-placed people who determine your future. No thoughts outside the mainstream box. No recognition of possible alternative ways to live or how to break free. No hope for tomorrow but the endless drudgery of today's mediocrity. Think of the unconscious rage you would have brewing inside like a putrid ball of sulfur and magma.
This rage is what sheeple use to fill the emptiness inside themselves once they subconsciously realize that no amount of frivolous consumerism will make them whole. Typically, they are on constant lookout for opportunities to vent their anger at unsuspecting victims in drive-by fashion.
Somehow, the holidays appear to have become a prime period of opportunity during which society opens the door for the dark side to come out and for sheeple to passively or not-so-passively project their failings onto others. For now, we might presume that this behavior is somewhat contained and relegated to particular moments of seasonal insanity, but the consequences of the willfully ignorant strata of American culture could go far beyond what most morally conscious people want to predict.
The Psychopath Next Door
"If thirty years ago anyone had dared to predict that our psychological development was tending towards a revival of the medieval persecutions of the Jews, that Europe would again tremble before the Roman fasces and the tramp of legions, that people would once more give the Roman salute, as two thousand years ago, and that instead of the Christian Cross an archaic swastika would lure onward millions of warriors ready for death — why, that man would have been hooted at as a mystical fool." — Carl Jung, Archetypes And The Collective Unconscious, 1938
In his book, The Undiscovered Self, one of the fathers of modern psychology, Carl Gustav Jung, discusses the tension-filled relationship between the individual versus the collective and the state. In particular, he studies how individuals become swallowed up in the actions of the collective mob and how this momentum invariably leads to mass atrocities that defy imagination. A point of primary importance in Jung's work is his discovery that at least 10 percent of any population at any given time is made up of individuals with latent psychopathic or sociopathic tendencies. Meaning, at least one out of every 10 random people around you today was born with the capacity for psychopathic behavior, including the ability to completely ignore inherent conscience.
The idea that one out of every 10 people near you might suddenly burst into an overwhelming animalistic blood fever is, of course, terrifying to many people. But generally, latent psychopathy in a person does not surface in immediately recognizable ways; and many people with that potential live their entire lives without ever acting on it. Some even come to terms with it through self-awareness and dispel it altogether. Problems arise, though, as Jung warned, when a society creates an environment in which emotionally or physically violent psychopathic acts become "acceptable" to the collective. That is to say, individual latent psychopaths and sociopaths are not so much a danger on their own; but when they get together in an organization or mob, the terrible floodgates open.
During national crisis, or during great ideological shifts towards collectivism, the 10 percent are given ample opportunity to act out their inner impulses. The corrupt state will often give latent psychopaths free reign or seek them out for positions of petty authority, leaving the gates to hell ajar, as it were.
Another dangerous reality is that these same people tend to pursue positions of authority, or they unconsciously gravitate toward events and situations that allow them to act on their darker side without facing consequences. One might even suggest that there will always be a potential for despotic regimes exactly because the 10 percent will likely always be around to be used as a weapon by dictatorships.
The mass rage and self-absorption we witness during the holidays feels ominous to us because it is just a glimpse of the greater shadow side of the American public. It is a glimpse of the kind of mentality that makes all human catastrophe possible. Like the tip of a shark fin cutting the surface of the water, we swim fearing not the dorsal, but the monster we KNOW it is connected to.
The Magicians Of Manufactured Consent
Jung, once a favorite of Sigmund Freud's, broke sharply with Freud's analytical school when he realized Freud would not accept the idea of inherent psychological properties beyond base instincts. Freud believed that conscience, morality, artistic ability, reason, etc. were all extensions of environment and experience. Freud's theories on psychology focused on the idea that man was driven by base animal urges at his core, that people have no complex inborn contents and that all one needed to do was manipulate his environment to make himself "healthy." Jung's studies proved otherwise, finding that there are vast layers of inborn knowledge and personality in every individual.
It was not until Freud was near death that he admitted the merit of Jung's work. Jung was shunned by the mainstream and labeled everything from a "charlatan" to an "anti-Semite" because of his opposition to the Freudian method.
Some industrious elites did find Freud's notions of environmental manipulation useful, though, including his nephew, Edward Bernays, who saw it not as a way to make people healthy, but rather, to make them unhealthy. Bernays wrote extensively on the use of propaganda to control what he called "herd instinct," believing (as most elitists believe) that self-governance of common people was "dangerous" and that the irrational public had to be controlled for their own good and the good of the nation. His entire philosophy is summed up in this quote:
"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. … We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. … In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons… who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind."
Bernays was instrumental in promoting Freudian psychology in the United States, where it became the mainstay of universities across the country. He helped establish the Tavistock Institute, a globalist think-tank much like the Council On Foreign Relations, focused on molding public opinion. He was also instrumental in promoting psychological propaganda models in everyday corporate marketing and political campaigns. He called this "engineering consent."
It was Bernays who taught the marketing world how to appeal to the basest instincts of human beings and to use those instinctual desires to covertly control them. Corporations used Bernays' strategies to create an atmosphere of decadent consumption in America that has lasted since the end of World War II. The idea was simple: Convince the public that buying corporate products will satisfy their animal urges. All commercialism to this day revolves around this method (which is why almost every beer commercial for several decades has included scantily clad women or sexual innuendo, for example).
But Bernays was not only teaching corporations how to tap into existing human impulses, he was also teaching corporations and governments how to use psychological trickery to manipulate the citizenry to RELY on their basest impulses. Essentially, Bernays taught the establishment how to convince people, or shame people, into ignoring their greater selves and indulging their psychopathic and sociopathic urges. Bernays taught the establishment how to turn people into zombies.
We see the clear results today all around us as we enter into the absurdity that Christmas has become. The ramifications are dire. The holidays have come to represent not hope, but despair; not reflection, but callowness; not compassion, but narcissism and selfishness. They have become a yearly measure of our Nation's sharp fall into something more or less horrific, something ironically inhuman.
The only solution is to strive with everything we have to remind others, and ourselves, that we are more than the sum of our darker instincts. That we have been living in the midst of a carefully crafted lie meant to make us impotent and non-threatening to the establishment. That there are greater and more meaningful contents at our core, and these elements of our being can only be satisfied by one thing: the truth.
Source: Brandon Smith | Alt-Market
6 Key Ways To Survive A Personal Economic Collapse
November 26, 2013 by Administrator · Leave a Comment
With all that is being written about the national economic collapse, people seem to be waiting for some huge event.
However, for many North Americans, the collapse is here. This isn't relegated to only lower income neighborhoods. As an article from a Cincinnati new station stated, "Hunger doesn't know a zip code."
For many people who were formerly financially comfortable, the economic collapse has already happened in the form of a job loss, hours that have been cut back due to Obamacare requirements for employers, an exorbitant medical bill or other crushing debt, or simply an inflation rate that has outstripped your pay increases. Despite all of the warnings, many people are still going to be absolutely blindsided.
For many families, personal finances have reached a catastrophic level – they are left to make terrible choices:
- Which utility can I live without?
- Should I walk away from my mortgage?
- Should I eat something so I can work harder or should I skip meals so my kids have food?
- Should I use the grocery money to take my child to the doctor or should I wait and hope he/she improves without medical intervention?
- Do I risk the IRS-enforced penalties by forgoing enrollment in Obamacare or should I skip that whole grocery shopping thing so I can pay the monthly premiums and enormous deductibles in order to stay in the government's good graces?
These are the kind of decisions that people across the nation are grappling with every day.
I'm talking about good people, hardworking men and women who have always been employed and paid their bills. A personal financial crisis does not just strike those stereotypical "welfare queens" with the long manicured nails, Gucci knock-off purse, and a grocery cart full of EBT-funded lobster.
I'm talking about the person next door, who seems to have it all together. I'm talking about that quiet family that sits two rows in front of you at church. I'm talking about that two-income family with two children and a car in the driveway that takes them to work and school 5 days a week. I'm talking about people just like you and me.
What is a personal economic collapse?
A personal economic collapse is a little different than the major crises you see all over Europe right now, where huge segments of the population can't feed their children or stay employed. It is a crisis that just hits your family due to a given set of circumstances. (In actuality North Americans are on the brink of the kind of collapse that is occurring in Europe, but because of easy access to credit and a buy-now, pay-later society, many of us still have the appearance of prosperity.)
Here are some signs that you may be in the midst of a personal economic collapse:
- You can only afford to pay the minimum payment on most of your bills.
- The same dollar amount you used to spend on groceries doesn't buy enough food to feed your family for the week.
- You can't afford to go to the doctor when you're sick.
- You are taking dangerous steps to "stretch" needed medications because you can't afford the prescriptions.
- Your utility bills are past due and your power is in danger of being cut off.
- You skip meals in order to save money or to have enough food for your kids.
- You've lost your job or had your hours cut.
- You have lost property due to foreclosure or repossession (such as your home or your vehicle).
Surviving the crisis
Times are tough but you can survive this.
1.) First you have to see exactly where you are.
It's time for a brutally honest assessment of your finances. If you use your debit card or credit card for most expenditures, you'll easily be able to see what you're spending and bringing in.
Print off your bank account statements for the past 2 months. On a piece of paper, track where your money is going. List the following
- Rent/Mortgage
- Utilities
- Car payments
- Vehicle operating expenses (fuel, repairs)
- Insurances
- Credit card and other debt payments
- Telephone/Cell phone
- Cable/Satellite
- Internet
- Extracurricular activities for the kids
- Extracurricular activities for the adults
- Dining out
- Groceries
- School expenses
- Clothing
- Recreational spending
- Gifts
- Miscellaneous (anything that doesn't fall into the above categories gets its own category or goes here)
Don't say to yourself, "Well, I usually don't spend $400 on clothing so that isn't realistic." If you spent it, then it's realistic. You are averaging together two months, which should account for those less common expenses. Brutal honesty isn't fun, but it's vital for this exercise.
So . . . what do you see when you look at your piece of paper with your average monthly expenditures for the past two months? Are there any surprises? Did you actually realize how much you've been spending? Most of us will immediately see places that we can trim the budget. Those $1-$5 purchases can really add up. Reining them in may just allow you to take care of an important need that you thought you could not meet.
It can't continue like this. The economy will not withstand it. Step one is to see where you can cut things out right now from the above expenditures. Can you reduce your grocery bill? Slash meals out? Budget more carefully for gift-giving and school clothes?
2.) Rethink necessities.
If your finances are out of control, the best possible reality check is a stark look at what necessities really are. It is not necessary to life to have an iPhone, a vehicle in both stalls of your two-car garage, or for your children to all have separate bedrooms. People in Southern and Eastern Europe right now will tell you, as they scramble for food, basic over-the-counter medications like aspirin, and shelter, that necessities are those things essential to life:
- Water
- Food (and the ability to cook it)
- Medicine and medical supplies
- Basic hygiene supplies
- Shelter (including sanitation, lights, heat)
- Simple tools
- Seeds
- Defense items
Absolutely everything above those basic necessities is a luxury.
So, by this definition, what luxuries do you have?
3.) Reduce your monthly output
Reduce your monthly payments by cutting frivolous expenses. Look at every single monthly payment that comes out of your bank account and slash relentlessly. Consider cutting the following:
- Cable
- Cell phones
- Home phones
- Gym memberships
- Restaurant meals
- Unnecessary driving
- Entertainment such as trips to the movies, the skating rink, or the mall
4.) Waste not, want not.
We live in a disposable society. Food comes in throw-away containers. People replace things instead of repairing them. If you throw out more than a couple of bags of garbage each week, that's a very good sign that you may be wasting resources.
Before throwing anything away, pause and think about how it might be able to be reused.
Food: Many times small amounts of leftovers can be recycled into a brand new meal. Meat bones can be used to make broth or stock. Small amounts of veggies or grains can be frozen and added to a future soup or casserole. Leftovers can be frozen in meal-sized portions to take to work for a brown-bag lunch. (Learn more about repurposing leftovers HERE.)
Clothing: Clothing that is torn or damaged can often be repaired with only rudimentary sewing skills. If it has been outgrown or cannot be repaired, often the fabric or yarn can be reused for other purposes, from cleaning rags to fashionable accessories like scarves and headbands, or home items like throw pillows, potholders or rag rugs. When all else fails, the fabric can be used for cleaning rags or patches to repair other items. Keep jars full of buttons, elastic, and other notions that can easily be removed before you throw a clothing item away or relegate it to the rag bag.
Electronics: Obviously, initially you should attempt to repair (or have repaired) electronic items that are not working. If this is not feasible, are there components of the item that can be reused, either now or in the future? What about hardware such as screws or fasteners?
Containers: Most food comes in a container of some sort. Before throwing the container away, consider whether or not it might be useful. Glass jars, plastic tubs, and plastic bags can often be reused to store food in your refrigerator or to contain food in brown bag lunches. Clean aluminum cans can hold all manner of items, from hardware and tools in a workshop to sewing and craft supplies. Use your imagination.
5.) Take control of your food budget.
The price of food is skyrocketing. Who hasn't been to the grocery store recently and been shocked at the high price of that cart full of groceries or at the mysterious shrinking food packages that are the same price as yesterday's larger ones?
Stockpile: Create a stockpile of nutritious, healthy staples at today's prices to enjoy when the cost goes even higher tomorrow. (Learn how to create a frugal food stockpile HERE.)
Preserve: Learn to preserve food yourself when you come across a windfall. Pressure canning,waterbath canning, freezing, and dehydrating can allow you to take advantage of great sales or end-of-season scores.
Eat less: This suggestion isn't for everyone, but many of us could stand to shed a few pounds. Perhaps now would be a good time to cut back a little and shrink both your waistline and your weekly food bill. Lots of people eat for the sheer entertainment of it or out of habit. Next time you're watching TV, grab some mending or a crossword puzzle instead of a bag of potato chips. Dish out slightly smaller servings at dinnertime to leave enough to stretch the leftovers for a brown bag meal the next day.
Drink water: Skip the beverages and drink water instead. At less than $1 per gallon for purchased water you simply can't beat the price. It's better for you, also, than sugary drinks. If you are lucky enough to have well water or access to spring water, your drinks don't have to cost you a penny.
Focus on nutrition instead of convenience: Buy the best quality of food you can, and skip the processed, nutritionless convenience foods.
Grow your own. In the summer, grow the biggest garden you can. In the winter, or if you are an apartment dweller, put some sprouts and greens in a sunny windowsill to add some fresh produce for pennies.
6.) Reduce your dependence on utilities.
Energy rates are skyrocketing. As the prices begin to rise, more and more people will be unable to pay their bills and eventually their power will be shut off. Check your bill each month and as prices increase, use less power. Try some of these ideas to reduce your reliance and drop your bills.
- Hand wash your clothing
- Hang clothes to dry
- Cook on a woodstove or outdoor grill
- Can foods to preserve them instead of relying on a large chest freezer
- Turn the heat down a few degrees and use non-grid methods to keep warm
- Use rain barrels to collect water
- Direct the gray water from your washing machines to reservoirs
- Turn off the lights and open the blinds
- Use solar lighting whenever possible
How do you intend to weather the storm?
There are bleak days ahead. Have you planned for this? What strategies do you intend to use to weather the financial crisis that is coming for all of us? What suggestions do you have for families who are undergoing their own economic collapses? Please post questions and ideas in the comments section below.
Source: The Organic Prepper
Sheeple: Why You Should Feel Sorry For Them
November 21, 2013 by Administrator · Leave a Comment
It is often said there only two kinds of people in this world: those who know, and those who don't. I would expand on this and say that there are actually three kinds of people: those who know, those who don't know, and those who don't care to know. Members of the last group are the kind of people I would characterize as "sheeple."
Sheeple are members of a culture or society who are not necessarily oblivious to the reality of their surroundings; they may have been exposed to valuable truths on numerous occasions. However, when confronted with facts contrary to their conditioned viewpoint, they become aggressive and antagonistic in their behavior, seeking to dismiss and attack the truth by attacking the messenger and denying reason. Sheeple exist on both sides of America's false political paradigm, and they exist in all social "classes". In fact, the "professional class" and the hierarchy of academia are rampant breeding grounds for sheeple; who I sometimes refer to as "intellectual idiots". Doctors and lawyers, scientists and politicians are all just as prone to the sheeple plague as anyone else; the only difference is that they have a bureaucratic apparatus behind them which gives them a false sense of importance. All they have to do is tow the establishment line, and promote the establishment view.
Of course the common argument made by sheeple is that EVERYONE thinks everyone else is blind to the truth, which in their minds, somehow vindicates their behavior. However, the characteristic that absolutely defines a sheeple is not necessarily a lack of knowledge, but an unwillingness to consider or embrace obvious logic or truth in order to protect their egos and biases from harm. A sheeple's mindset is driven by self centered motives.
So-called mainstream media outlets go out of their way to reinforce this aggressive mindset by establishing the illusion that sheeple are the "majority" and that the majority perception (which has been constructed by the MSM) is the only correct perception.
Many liberty movement activists have noted recently that there has been a surge in media propaganda aimed at painting the survival, preparedness and liberty cultures as "fringe," "reactionary," "extremist," "conspiracy-minded," etc. National Geographic's television show "Doomsday Preppers" appears to have been designed specifically to seek out the worst possible representatives of the movement and parade their failings like a carnival sideshow. Rarely do they give focus to the logical arguments regarding why their subjects become preppers, nor do they normally choose subjects who can explain as much in a coherent manner. This is a very similar tactic used by the establishment media at large-scale protests; they generally attempt to interview the least-eloquent and easiest-to-ridicule person present and make that person a momentary mascot for the entire group and the philosophy they hold dear.
The goal is to give sheeple comfort that they are "normal" and that anyone who steps outside the bounds of the mainstream is "abnormal" and a welcome target for the collective.
It would appear that the life of a sheeple is a life of relative bliss. The whole of the establishment machine seems engineered to make them happy and the rest of us miserable. But is a sheeple's existence the ideal? Are they actually happy in their ignorance? Are they truly safe within the confines of the system? Here a just a few reasons why you should feel sorry for them.
Sheeple Are Nothing Without The Collective
A sheeple gathers his entire identity from the group. He acts the way he believes the group wants him to act. He thinks the way he believes the group wants him to think. All of his "ideas" are notions pre-approved by the mainstream. All of his arguments and talking points are positions he heard from the media, or academia, and he has never formed an original opinion in his life. Without the group telling him what to do, the average sheeple is lost and disoriented. When cast into a crisis situation requiring individual initiative, he panics or becomes apathetic, waiting for the system to come and save him rather than taking care of himself. Sheeple are so dependent on others for every aspect of their personality and their survival that when faced with disaster, they are the most likely people to curl up and die.
Sheeple Crave Constant Approval From Others
Sheeple are not only reliant on the collective for their identity and their survival; they also need a steady supplement of approval from others in order to function day to day. When a sheeple leaves his home, he is worried about how his appearance is perceived, how his attitude is perceived, how his lifestyle is perceived and how his opinions are perceived. Everything he does from the moment his day begins revolves around ensuring that the collective approves of him. Even his acts of "rebellion" are often merely approved forms of superficial "individualism" reliant on style rather than substance. This approval becomes a kind of emotional drug to which the sheeple is addicted. He will never make waves among the herd or stand out against any aspect of the herd worldview, because their approval sustains and cements his very existence. To take collective approval away from him would be like cutting off a heroin junky's supplier. To be shunned by the group would destroy him psychologically.
Sheeple Are Incapable Of Original Creativity
Because sheeple spend most of their waking moments trying to appease the collective, they rarely, if ever, have the energy or inclination to create something of their own. Sheeple do not make astonishing works of art. They do not achieve scientific discovery. They do not make history through philosophical or ideological innovation. Instead, they regurgitate the words of others and hijack ideas from greater minds. They remain constant spectators in life, watching change from the bleachers, caught in the tides of time and tossed about like congealed satellites of Pacific Ocean garbage from the after-wash of Fukushima. The destiny of the common sheeple is entirely determined by the outcome of wars and restorations waged by small groups of aware individuals — some of them good, some of them evil.
Sheeple Have No Passion
If you draw all of your beliefs from what the collective deems acceptable, then it is difficult, if not impossible, to become legitimately passionate about them. Sheeple have little to no personal connection to their ideals or principles; so they become mutable, empty and uninspired. They tend to turn toward cynicism as a way to compensate, making fun of everything, especially those who ARE passionate about something. The only ideal that they will fight for is the collective itself, because who they are is so intertwined with the survival of the system. To threaten the concept of the collective is to threaten the sheeple's existence by extension.
Sheeple Are Useless
The average sheeple does not learn how to be self-reliant because it is considered "abnormal" by the mainstream to be self-reliant. The collective and the state are the provider. They are mother and father. Sheeple have full faith that the system will protect them from any and all harm. When violence erupts, they cower and hide instead of defending themselves and others. When large-scale catastrophe strikes, they either sit idle waiting for the state to save them or they join yet another irrational mob. They do not take proactive measures, because they never felt the need to learn how.
Consider this: Why do the mainstream and the people subject to it care if others prepare for disaster or end their dependency on the establishment? Why are they so desperate to attack those of us who find our own path? If the system is so effective and the collective so correct in its methodology, then individualists are hurting only themselves by walking away, right? But for the sheeple, successfully self-reliant individuals become a constant reminder of their own inadequacies. They feel that if they cannot survive without the system, NO ONE can survive without the system; and they will make sure that individualists never prove otherwise. "You didn't build that" becomes the sheeple motto, as they scratch and scrape like spoiled children, trying to dismantle the momentum of independent movements and ventures in non-participation.
Sheeple Are Easily Forgotten
To live a life of endless acceptance is to live a life of meaningless obscurity. When one arrives at his deathbed, does he want to reflect on all of his regrets or all of his accomplishments? Most of us would rather find joy than sadness when looking back over our past. For sheeple, though, this will not be possible — for what have they ever done besides conform? What will they have left behind except a world worse off than when they were born? What will they have accomplished, but more pain and struggle for future generations? In the end, what have their lives really been worth?
I cannot imagine a torture more vicious and terrifying than to realize in the face of one's final days that one wasted his entire life trying to please the plethora of idiots around him, instead of educating them and himself and molding tomorrow for the better. I cannot imagine a punishment more severe than to spend the majority of one's years as a slave without even knowing it. I cannot imagine an existence more deserving of pity and remorse than that of the sheeple.
Source: Brandon Smith | Alt-Market
TV Violence: America's Dark Night of The Knoll
November 14, 2013 by Administrator · Leave a Comment
I was watching "The Mentalist" on TV recently, where some guy was being tortured, had a finger cut off with pruning shears and his face caressed with an acetylene torch. Yikes! And even during that nice little detective show "Castle," you can always count on seeing a whole bunch of blood and guts — not to mention the torture scenes and disemboweling now available on "Elementary" and "Body of Proof" and "Revolution" and "Person of Interest" and "Scandal". And these are just the milder prime-time television shows. I'm not even going to get into the nightmare-producing horrors of "Criminal Minds" and "Law & Order SVU" — because I can't even bear to watch those.
And then there are all those currently-popular "undead" shows too. How many times can you torture a werewolf or drive a stake through a vampire's heart before he or she is truly dead? Apparently a lot.
I can think of at least eight TV series off the top of my head right now that face this very problem nightly in our very own living rooms: Dracula, The Originals, Vampire Diaries, Grimm, Once Upon a Time, Sleepy Hollow, Beauty and the Beast, Supernaturals. And, again, that's not even counting cable and "True Blood". What are America's television viewers THINKING! Are they that hungry for blood? Apparently.
But thank goodness I can't afford cable TV because that would mean there would be 500 more channels with 500 more new and different ways to kill people off violently and with lots of blood and torture and gore. Good grief, no wonder hardly anyone blinked when the horrendous secret tortures of Abu Ghraib, Zero Dark 30 and Palestine were exposed to America by social media . "No big deal. We see that kind of stuff on TV every night!" Americans replied.
If one were to judge the American way of life solely by what its most popular television programs are, one would think that Americans were all murderous blood-thirsty psychopathic nut cases who dream only of blood.
To quote George H.W. Bush, "The American way of life is non-negotiable." Makes you wonder about that.
And speaking of TV violence and George H.W. Bush, wouldn't you just love it if, on his deathbed, Poppy Bush suddenly decided to make one last attempt at becoming one of the most famous men in history (in the grand tradition of John Wilkes Booth for instance — or Marcus Julius Brutus) by finally confessing to his role in the assassination of John Kennedy. Wow! That would really earn Poppy a place in our history books for sure!
But what I would really love to see would be Dick Cheney doing the same thing: In a fabulous deathbed interview with Olivia Pope herself, Cheney would finally "tell all" about what he had really been doing on the day that the Twin Towers fell. Hell, even Dracula himself would come back from the Undead to watch that TV show. Me too.
I bet there's a whole long list of creepy "Patriots" here in America, just like those creepy Patriots in "Revolution," who know exactly where all the bodies in recent American history are buried — and these creepy guys are all getting up there in age. So if any of these shadowy "Persons of Interest" should suddenly decide that they want to add to America's "Body of Proof," become an "Original" and create a huge "Scandal," now is the time!
I have just one more thing to say about the mind-numbing violence of JFK's assassination: If it had happened today instead of 50 years ago, every SmartPhone in Dallas would have posted that video on FaceBook in a nanosecond — a la the shooting of Oscar Grant. And that grassy knoll shooter wouldn't have stood a chance in Hell of getting away. And there couldn't have been any slimy Warren Commission cover-ups either.
America's shadow figures and black-ops plotters can no longer get away with the low-life garbage they used to easily pull off 50 years ago, thanks to social media. And that's "Elementary".
Overheard on a military base on Veterans Day: "You gotta love America. Even our gangsters are better-armed."
Jane Stillwater is a regular columnist for Veracity Voice
She can be reached at: firstname.lastname@example.com
The Ocean Is Broken
October 25, 2013 by Administrator · Leave a Comment
It was the silence that made this voyage different from all of those before it.
Not the absence of sound, exactly.
The wind still whipped the sails and whistled in the rigging. The waves still sloshed against the fibreglass hull.
And there were plenty of other noises: muffled thuds and bumps and scrapes as the boat knocked against pieces of debris.
What was missing was the cries of the seabirds which, on all previous similar voyages, had surrounded the boat.
The birds were missing because the fish were missing.
Exactly 10 years before, when Newcastle yachtsman Ivan Macfadyen had sailed exactly the same course from Melbourne to Osaka, all he'd had to do to catch a fish from the ocean between Brisbane and Japan was throw out a baited line.
"There was not one of the 28 days on that portion of the trip when we didn't catch a good-sized fish to cook up and eat with some rice," Macfadyen recalled.
But this time, on that whole long leg of sea journey, the total catch was two.
No fish. No birds. Hardly a sign of life at all.
"In years gone by I'd gotten used to all the birds and their noises," he said.
"They'd be following the boat, sometimes resting on the mast before taking off again. You'd see flocks of them wheeling over the surface of the sea in the distance, feeding on pilchards."
But in March and April this year, only silence and desolation surrounded his boat, Funnel Web, as it sped across the surface of a haunted ocean.
North of the equator, up above New Guinea, the ocean-racers saw a big fishing boat working a reef in the distance.
"All day it was there, trawling back and forth. It was a big ship, like a mother-ship,"he said.
And all night it worked too, under bright floodlights. And in the morning Macfadyen was awoken by his crewman calling out, urgently, that the ship had launched a speedboat.
"Obviously I was worried. We were unarmed and pirates are a real worry in those waters. I thought, if these guys had weapons then we were in deep trouble."
But they weren't pirates, not in the conventional sense, at least. The speedboat came alongside and the Melanesian men aboard offered gifts of fruit and jars of jam and preserves.
"And they gave us five big sugar-bags full of fish," he said.
"They were good, big fish, of all kinds. Some were fresh, but others had obviously been in the sun for a while.
"We told them there was no way we could possibly use all those fish. There were just two of us, with no real place to store or keep them. They just shrugged and told us to tip them overboard. That's what they would have done with them anyway, they said.
"They told us that his was just a small fraction of one day's by-catch. That they were only interested in tuna and to them, everything else was rubbish. It was all killed, all dumped. They just trawled that reef day and night and stripped it of every living thing."
Macfadyen felt sick to his heart. That was one fishing boat among countless more working unseen beyond the horizon, many of them doing exactly the same thing.
No wonder the sea was dead. No wonder his baited lines caught nothing. There was nothing to catch.
If that sounds depressing, it only got worse.
The next leg of the long voyage was from Osaka to San Francisco and for most of that trip the desolation was tinged with nauseous horror and a degree of fear.
"After we left Japan, it felt as if the ocean itself was dead," Macfadyen said.
"We hardly saw any living things. We saw one whale, sort of rolling helplessly on the surface with what looked like a big tumour on its head. It was pretty sickening.
"I've done a lot of miles on the ocean in my life and I'm used to seeing turtles, dolphins, sharks and big flurries of feeding birds. But this time, for 3000 nautical miles there was nothing alive to be seen."
In place of the missing life was garbage in astounding volumes.
"Part of it was the aftermath of the tsunami that hit Japan a couple of years ago. The wave came in over the land, picked up an unbelievable load of stuff and carried it out to sea. And it's still out there, everywhere you look."
Ivan's brother, Glenn, who boarded at Hawaii for the run into the United States, marvelled at the "thousands on thousands" of yellow plastic buoys. The huge tangles of synthetic rope, fishing lines and nets. Pieces of polystyrene foam by the million. And slicks of oil and petrol, everywhere.
Countless hundreds of wooden power poles are out there, snapped off by the killer wave and still trailing their wires in the middle of the sea.
"In years gone by, when you were becalmed by lack of wind, you'd just start your engine and motor on," Ivan said.
Not this time.
"In a lot of places we couldn't start our motor for fear of entangling the propeller in the mass of pieces of rope and cable. That's an unheard of situation, out in the ocean.
"If we did decide to motor we couldn't do it at night, only in the daytime with a lookout on the bow, watching for rubbish.
"On the bow, in the waters above Hawaii, you could see right down into the depths. I could see that the debris isn't just on the surface, it's all the way down. And it's all sizes, from a soft-drink bottle to pieces the size of a big car or truck.
"We saw a factory chimney sticking out of the water, with some kind of boiler thing still attached below the surface. We saw a big container-type thing, just rolling over and over on the waves.
"We were weaving around these pieces of debris. It was like sailing through a garbage tip.
"Below decks you were constantly hearing things hitting against the hull, and you were constantly afraid of hitting something really big. As it was, the hull was scratched and dented all over the place from bits and pieces we never saw."
Plastic was ubiquitous. Bottles, bags and every kind of throwaway domestic item you can imagine, from broken chairs to dustpans, toys and utensils.
And something else. The boat's vivid yellow paint job, never faded by sun or sea in years gone past, reacted with something in the water off Japan, losing its sheen in a strange and unprecedented way.
Back in Newcastle, Ivan Macfadyen is still coming to terms with the shock and horror of the voyage.
"The ocean is broken," he said, shaking his head in stunned disbelief.
Recognising the problem is vast, and that no organisations or governments appear to have a particular interest in doing anything about it, Macfadyen is looking for ideas.
He plans to lobby government ministers, hoping they might help.
More immediately, he will approach the organisers of Australia's major ocean races, trying to enlist yachties into an international scheme that uses volunteer yachtsmen to monitor debris and marine life.
Macfadyen signed up to this scheme while he was in the US, responding to an approach by US academics who asked yachties to fill in daily survey forms and collect samples for radiation testing – a significant concern in the wake of the tsunami and consequent nuclear power station failure in Japan.
"I asked them why don't we push for a fleet to go and clean up the mess," he said.
"But they said they'd calculated that the environmental damage from burning the fuel to do that job would be worse than just leaving the debris there."
Source: Greg Ray | Newcastle Herald
Repo, Baby, Repo: How Unregulated Banking Triggered The Crash of '08
October 24, 2013 by Administrator · Leave a Comment
"Repo has a flaw: It is vulnerable to panic, that is, 'depositors' may 'withdraw' their money at any time, forcing the system into massive deleveraging. We saw this over and over again with demand deposits in all of U.S. history prior to deposit insurance. This problem has not been addressed by the Dodd-Frank legislation. So, it could happen again." – Gary B. Gorton, Professor of Management and Finance, Yale School of Management (lifted from Repowatch)
Subprime mortgages did not cause the financial crisis, nor did the housing bubble or Lehman Brothers. The financial crisis originated in a corner of the shadow banking system called the repo market. That's where the bank run occurred that froze the secondary market, sent prices on mortgage-backed assets plunging, and pushed the financial system into a death spiral. In the Great Crash of 2008, repo was ground zero, the epicenter of the global catastrophe. As analyst David Weidner noted in the Wall Street Journal, "The repo market wasn't just a part of the meltdown. It was the meltdown."
Regrettably, the Federal Reserve's nontraditional monetary policies (ZIRP and QE) have succeeded in restoring the repo market to it's precrisis level of activity, but without implementing any of the changes that would have made the system safer. Repo is as vulnerable and crisis-prone today as it was when the French bank PNB Paribas stopped redemptions in its off-balance sheet operations in 2007 kicking off the tumultuous bank run that would eventually implode the entire system and push the economy into the deepest slump since the Great Depression. By failing to rein in repo, the Fed has ensured that financial crises will be a regular feature in the future occurring every 15 or 20 years as was the case before banks were more strictly regulated and government backstops were put in place. Repo returns us to Wild West "anything goes" banking.
Why would the Fed be so reckless and pave the way for another disaster? We'll get to that in a minute, but first, let's give a brief explanation of repo and how the system works.
Repo is short for repurchase agreement. The repo market is where primary dealers sell securities with an agreement for the seller to buy back the securities at a later date. This sounds more complicated than it is. What's really going on is the seller (primary dealers) are getting short-term loans from money market funds, securities firms, banks etc in order to maintain a position in securities in which they're suppose to make markets. So, repo is like a loan that's secured with collateral. (ie–the securities) It is a "funding mechanism".
What touched off the Crash of 2008, was the discovery that the collateral that was being used for repo funding was "toxic", that is, the securities were not Triple A after all, but subprime mortgage-backed gunk that would only fetch pennies on the dollar. So, when PNB Paribas stopped redemptions in its off-balance sheet operations on August 9, 2007, the rout began. Cash-heavy investors (like money markets) turned off the lending spigot, which reduced trillions of dollars of MBS to junk-status, precipitated massive fire sales of distressed assets that were dumped on the market pushing prices further and further down wiping out trillions in equity and reducing the financial system to a smoldering pile of rubble. That's why the Fed stepped in, backstopped the system with explicit guarantees for both regulated and unregulated financial institutions and set about to reflate financial asset prices to their precrisis highs.
Newly appointed Fed chairman Janet Yellen summarized what happened in the panic in a speech she gave earlier this year. She said:
"The trigger for the acute phase of the financial crisis was the rapid unwinding of large amounts of short-term wholesale funding that had been made available to highly leveraged and/or maturity-transforming financial firms."
In other words, the crisis began in repo. Unfortunately, Wall Street has fended off all attempts to fix the system, because repo is a particularly lucrative area of activity. And we are talking serious money here, too. Tri-party repo alone–which is a small subset of the larger repo market–represents "about $1.6 trillion in outstanding repos daily." That means that the prospect of a big dealer dumping his portfolio of securities on the market at a moment's notice igniting another panic, is never far away.
Why do banks borrow in the unregulated, shadow system instead of conducting their business in the light of day where regulators can check the quality of the underlying collateral, oversee the various transactions on public trading platforms, and make sure that capital requirements are maintained?
It's because the banks want to deploy all their capital, leverage up to their eyeballs and play fast-and-loose with the rules. Here's what the New York Fed has to say on the topic:
"One clear motivation for intermediation outside of the traditional banking system is for private actors to evade regulation and taxes. The academic literature documents that motivation explains part of the growth and collapse of shadow banking over the past decade…
Regulation typically forces private actors to do something which they would otherwise not do: pay taxes to the official sector, disclose additional information to investors, or hold more capital against financial exposures. Financial activity which has been re-structured to avoid taxes, disclosure, and/or capital requirements, is referred to as arbitrage activity." ("Shadow Bank Monitoring", Federal Reserve Bank of New York Staff Reports, September, 2013)
In other words, the banks are conducting their operations in the shadows because it's cheaper. That's what this is all about. Here's more from the same report:
"While the fundamental reason for commercial bank runs is the sequential servicing constraint, for shadow banks the effective constraint is the presence of fire sale externalities. In a run, shadow banking entities have to sell assets at a discount, which depresses market pricing. This provides incentives to withdraw funding—before other shadow banking depositors arrive."
Okay, so when there's a run on the local bank, the bank may have to offload some of its illiquid assets (real estate, commercial property, etc) to meet the increased demand of depositors who want their money, but they can also rely on government backing. (deposit insurance). But with shadow banking–like repo– it's a bit different; the problem is fire sales. For example, when repo lenders–like the big money markets–demanded more collateral from the banks in exchange for short-term funding; the banks were forced to dump more of their assets en masse pushing prices lower, eroding their equity and leaving many of the banks deep in the red. This is how the panic wiped out Wall Street and cleared the way for the $700 TARP bailout. It all started in repo.
The point is, had the system been adequately regulated with the appropriate safeguards in place, there would have been no fire sales, no panic, and no crisis. Regulators would have made sure that the underlying collateral was legit, that is, they would have made sure that the subprime borrowers were creditworthy and able to repay their loans. They would have made sure that repo borrowers (the banks) had sufficient capital to meet redemptions if problems arose. And regulators would have limited excessive leveraging of the securitized assets.
Regulation works. It provides safety, stability, and security as opposed to panic, bankruptcy and severe recession which is the scenario that Wall Street's profiteers seem to prefer. Now check this out from the NY Fed:
"While leveraged lending collapsed in 2008 from a peak of $680 billion in 2007, it has rebounded very quickly, and is now at record levels of volume, projected to be larger than $1 trillion in 2013…" (NY Fed)
How's that for progress, eh? So, Bernanke's reflation efforts have effectively restored the same shabby, poorly designed system to its former glory putting all of us at risk again. Here's more:
"One area of concern, however, is the significant increase in the fraction of covenant lite loans, which have increased dramatically from 0 percent in 2010 to 60 percent in 2013. This deterioration in loan underwriting has come hand-in-hand with an increased presence of retail investors in the leveraged loan market, through both CLOs and prime funds, as relatively sophisticated investors, like banks and hedge funds, are exiting the asset class." (New York Fed)
Great. So now we are seeing the same problems that emerged in 2004 and 2005 with subprime mortgages, that is, there's so much liquidity in the system–thanks to the Fed's zero rates and QE– that investors are dabbling in all-types of risky garbage that you wouldn't normally touch with a 10 foot dungpole. Check this out from Testosterone Pit:
"Shadow banking loans are estimated to have reached $15 trillion in the US. And among them is a particularly hot category: lending to highly leveraged companies with junk credit ratings. … the NY Fed found that these loans are increasingly issued in a loosey-goosey manner, with low underwriting standards. And issuance has soared…
Layered into these crappy and risky loans are the crappiest and riskiest of all loans, namely "covenant-lite" loans. Their covenants are so watered down and so full of holes that investors have few if any protections in case of default. If the Fed ever allows reality to set, and these companies stumble under their load of debt or can't refinance it at ridiculously low rates, investors can kiss their money goodbye." …
these desperate small investors…have unknowingly made a quantum leap in risk – allowing the smart money, which hears the hot air hissing from the credit bubble, to bail out. This must be one of the proudest moments in Chairman Bernanke's glorious tenure." ("Fed: Hedge Funds, Banks Sell Crappiest Debt To Small Investors (Before Credit Bubble Blows Up) " Testosterone Pit)
Nice, eh? So the big boys are planning to vamoose before the whole house of cards comes tumbling down. Meanwhile, Mom and Pop are about to get reamed for the umpteenth time when the Fed "tapers" and these covenant lite IEDs blow up in their face taking another sizable chunk out of their retirement savings. Way to go, Bernanke. Here's more from the NY Fed report:
"Shadow credit transformation increased from only 5 percent of total credit transformation in 1945 to a peak amount of 60 percent in 2008 before declining to 55 percent in 2011."
So now the shadow players are generating more than half of all the nation's credit via their dodgy, unregulated operations. Why? So a handful of ravenous banks can make bigger profits.
According to the Financial Stability Board (FSB) "credit intermediation that takes place in an environment where prudential regulatory standards and supervisory oversight are either not applied or are applied to a materially lesser or different degree than is the case for regular banks engaged in similar activities." (FSB, 2011).
Read that over again. What they're saying is that it's a completely ridiculous, insane system. We've given the banks this outrageous privilege of creating private money out of thin air, (credit) and they spit in our face. They won't even follow a few simple rules that would make the process safer for everyone. Keep in mind, that Dodd Frank does nothing to remedy the problems in repo.
One last thing (from the NY Fed):
"Intermediaries create liquidity in the shadow banking system by levering up the collateral value of their assets. However, the liquidity creation comes at the cost of financial fragility as fluctuations in uncertainty cause a flight to quality from shadow liabilities to safe assets. The collapse of shadow banking liquidity has real effects via the pricing of credit and generates prolonged slumps after adverse shocks."
Repeat: "liquidity creation comes at the cost of financial fragility as fluctuations in uncertainty cause a flight to quality from shadow liabilities to safe assets."
Can you believe it? The Fed doesn't even try to deny what's going on. They admit that letting the banks ratchet up their leverage increases "financial fragility " which could precipitate another crash. ("flight to quality from shadow liabilities to safe assets.") In other words, the Fed KNOWS the system is nuts, just like they know that it's only a matter of time before the whole bloody thing blows up again and the economy goes off the cliff. Still, they're not going to lift a finger to change the system.
You know why.
Because a few fatcats at the top like the way things are now, that's why.
If that doesn't make your blood boil, I don't know what will.
Mike Whitney is a regular columnist for Veracity Voice
Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at: email@example.com
Staging The News Is Staging Reality
October 14, 2013 by Administrator · Leave a Comment
"Hi! We're the news…manufacturing witnesses, creating dupes, and using true believers. Just like an intelligence agency. Come join us!"
Focus on the network evening news. This is where the staging is done well.
First, we have the image itself, the colors in foreground and background, the blend of restful and charged hues. The anchor and his/her smooth style.
Then we have the shifting of venue from the studio to reporters in the field, demonstrating the reach of coverage: the planet. As if this equals authenticity.
The managing editor, usually the elite anchor, chooses the stories to cover and their sequence.
The anchor goes on the air: "Our top story tonight, more signs of gridlock today on Capitol Hill, as legislators walked out of a session on federal budget negotiations…"
The viewer fills in the context for the story: "Oh yes, the government. We want the government to get something done, but they're not. We want to government to avoid a shutdown. These people are always arguing with each other. They don't agree. They're in conflict. Yes, conflict, just like on the cop shows."
The anchor: "The Chinese government reports the new flu epidemic has spread to three provinces. Forty-two people have already died, and nearly a thousand are hospitalized…"
The viewer again supplies context, such as it is: "Flu. Dangerous. Epidemic. Could it arrive here? Get my flu shot. Do the Chinese doctors know what they're doing? Crowded cities. Maybe more cases all of a sudden. Ten thousand, a hundred thousand."
The anchor: "A new university study states that gun owners often stock up on weapons and ammunition, and this trend has jumped quickly since the Newtown, Connecticut, school-shooting tragedy…"
The viewer: "People with guns. Why do they need a dozen weapons? People in small towns. I don't need a gun. The police have guns. Could I kill somebody if he broke into the house?"
The anchor: "Doctors at Yale University have made a discovery that could lead to new treatments in the battle against Autism…"
Viewer: "That would be good. More research. Laboratory. Germs. The brain."
If, at the end of the newscast, the viewer bothered to review the stories and his own reactions to them, he would realize he'd learned almost nothing. But reflection is not the game.
In fact, the flow of the news stories has washed over him and created very little except a sense of continuity.
It would never occur to him to wonder: are the squabbling political legislators really two branches of the same Party? Does government have the Constitutional right to incur this much debt? Where is all that money coming from? Taxes? Other sources? Who invents money?
Is the flu dangerous for most people? If not, why not? Do governments overstate case numbers? How do they actually test patients for the flu? Are the tests accurate? Are they just trying to convince us to get vaccines?
What happens when the government has overwhelming force and citizens have no guns?
When the researchers keep saying "may" and "could," does that mean they've actually discovered something useful about Autism, or are they just hyping their own work and trying to get funding for their next project?
These are only a few of the many questions the typical viewer never considers.
Therefore, every story on the news broadcast achieves the goal of keeping the context small and narrow—night after night, year after year. The overall effect of this, yes, staging, is small viewer, small viewer's mind, small viewer's understanding.
Billions of dollars are spent by the networks to build a reality the size of a room in a cheap motel.
Next we come to words over pictures. More and more, news broadcasts are using the rudimentary film technique of a voice narrating what the viewer is seeing on the screen.
People are shouting and running and falling in a street. The anchor or a field reporter says: "The country is in turmoil. Parliament has suspended sessions for the third day in a row, as the government decides what to do about uprisings aimed at forcing democratic elections…"
Well, the voice must be right, because we're seeing the pictures. If the voice said the riots were due to garbage-pickup cancellations, the viewer would believe that, too.
How about this: two-day-old footage of runners approaching the finish line of the Boston Marathon. A puff of smoke rises at the right of the screen. A runner falls down in the street. The anchor is saying: "The FBI has announced a bomb made in a pressure cooker caused the injuries and deaths."
Must be so. We saw the pictures and heard the voice explain.
We see Building #7 of the WTC collapse. Must have been the result of a fire. The anchor tells us so. Words over pictures.
We see footage of Lee Harvey Oswald inside the Dallas police station. The anchor tells he's about to be transferred, under heavy guard, to another location. Oswald must be guilty, because we're seeing him in a police station, and the anchor just said "under heavy guard."
Staged news. It works. Why?
Because it mirrors what the human mind, in an infantile state, is always doing: looking at the world and seeking a brief summary to explain what the world is, at any given moment.
Since the dawn of time, untold billions of people have been urging a "television anchor" to "explain the pictures."
The news gives them that precise thing, that precise solution, every night.
"Well, Mr. Jones," the doctor says, as he pins X-rays to a screen in his office. "See this? Right here? We'll need to start chemo immediately, and then we may have to remove most of your brain, and as a followup, take out one eye."
Sure, why not? The patient saw the pictures and the anchor explained them.
After watching and listening to the last year of news, the population is ready to see the president or one of his minions step up to a microphone and say, "Quantitative easing…sequester…"
Reaction? "Don't know what it is, but it must be okay."
Eventually, people get the idea and do it for themselves. They see things, they invent one-liners to explain them. They're their own anchors. They short-cut and undermine their own experience with vapid summaries of what it all means.
"Here are the photos. Just look at these photos. Don't look at any other photos. These are the killers. Here's what it means: we're going to send in SWAT teams and rout you out of your homes at gunpoint, we'll search your homes, no warrants, and you're going to comply, and when it's over and we've caught them, you'll cheer."
"Sure. Okay. We will."
Pictures, explanation, obedience.
The staging of reality, the staging of news; they're the same thing.
At some point in time, the television audience begins to experience an itch. "If reality is the news, then maybe I could become a visible piece of reality. Maybe I could get on the news. What would I have to do? How can I stand out? What outlandish thing could I cook up?"
Anyone's face could appear on the screen and flicker there and be driven into the minds of millions of people as something hypnotic.
If not fortune, then at least fame.
Whereas an honest television news anchor, if one existed, would say:
"The battle over the government shutdown and its funding continue as a piece of planned chaos. Events like this are shaped well in advance by men who manipulate the One Political Party With Two Heads, and you, the viewer, are reacting predictably. You're choosing sides. You're angry. And I'm sitting here on most nights adding fuel to the fire. The fix is in, and I'm going along with it. Here in the studio, I'm staging the news about staged reality."
The news is a movie of a movie.
And then, of course, when the news cuts to commercial, the fake reality of products takes over:
"Well, every night they're showing the same brand names, so those brands must be better than the unnamed alternatives."
Which devolves into: "I like this commercial better than that commercial. This is a great commercial."
Which devolves into: reality is an advertisement for itself.
Source: Jon Rappoport | No More Fake News
The Top 10 Ridiculous Ways The Government Shutdown Will Affect You According To CNN
September 30, 2013 by Administrator · Leave a Comment
Millions around the world today are hoping the US federal government shuts down at midnight on Monday. Many have thoughts of wars and occupations ending in their regions… but, sadly, this is not part of the "services" that will be cut during a shutdown.
In fact, not only will the Department of Offense continue on as usual but so will all the tyrannical agencies such as the DEA, IRS, ATF, CIA and countless other alphabet soup agencies of oppression.
What will "shut down"? According to CNN these are the Top 10 Ways A Government Shutdown Would Affect Your Daily Life:
1. I'm Proud To Be An American. According to CNN, "the biggest hit would be to the collective psyche. America is the largest economy in the world and a beacon for how democracy ought to work". It is sad if even one person in the US has their "psyche" hurt because of this! It is sad how many people in the US now consider their country/region and the government that rules it as being one in the same. Not to mention that the US was never designed to be a democracy… it was set-up as a Republic and all the founding fathers spoke very warily against any sort of democracy. Democracy, fundamentally, is mob rule and anti-freedom. It is the tyranny of the majority against the minority.
2. Anything Dirty or Dingy or Dusty. It is unbelievable that this #2 reason from CNN warns people of how dramatically their lives will be affected if the federal government shuts down (and this after #1 was that it might hurt their "psyche"). It goes on to say that the only region in the entire country where trash pickup may stop in the event of a shutdown is in Washington, District of Criminals. Hardly a national disaster! And, not to mention, that if that really were the case, free market private enterprise would spring up, like in Detroit, and people would actually have good options for waste disposal rather than a communist style, centrally planned garbage pickup.
3. Money. According to CNN, if you need a loan from the government, you won't be able to get it in event of a shut down. Good! If you are such a credit risk that no one in private enterprise will lend you money then, definitely, the government shouldn't lend you the money they stole from the innocent victims in their tax farm! They also mention that Socialist InSecurity (SS) cheques may stop coming. This is often one of the first things the government tries to scare people with, as Barack Obama did in 2011, during the last event of this type. Why? Because old people vote in much greater numbers than younger people and scaring them with threats of withheld money works. What should really scare them is that both the US government and its SS Ponzi scheme is bankrupt.
4. Ammunition. According to CNN, "A shutdown would affect the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Translation: That gun permit you wanted processed wouldn't happen anytime soon". The ATF shutting down would be a wonderful thing. So sad in the "land of the free" that one of the biggest threats to a government shutdown is that you may not get permission from the government to have a gun!
5. Drugs. According to CNN, "The Republicans want to defund Obamacare in exchange for funding the government. But the health care act at the center of this storm would continue its implementation process during a shutdown. That's because its funds aren't dependent on the congressional budget process". CNN is really reaching to find 10 ways this shut down will affect people when they explicitly state that #5 won't affect drugs or Obamacare!
6. The Mail. CNN is really running out of ideas now that they have to bring up the post office, that bankrupt, antiquated, 1800s style of delivering information that the internet, FedEx and UPS rendered it obsolete decades ago. Oh, but here CNN again let's us know that even that embarrassing anachronism won't actually shut down! "You know that whole 'Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night' thing? Apparently, the U.S. Postal Service works through shutdowns as well."
7. The Roads! Muh Roads! For the third time in a row CNN says this will be unaffected (what was the point of this list again?). They pitch this one as, "If you drive a car, I'll tax the street" as though to lead you into thinking the roads will close without the federal government, but then they don't mention roads again. Here's what they had to say on it, "You may be thinking, 'No functioning government, no need to pay taxes.' Think again. The Man would continue to collect taxes. U.S. bonds would still be issued. And other essential banking functions would go on". So, here is another one that won't affect you, unfortunately. You still have to pay extortion to the federal government, even if they are "shut down".
8. The Military. CNN says, "The good news (for you) is that the men and women in uniform would continue to keep you safe. "… okay, that's four in a row that won't affect people on a list of 10 ways the shut down will affect you! Instead it is the usual propaganda trying to make people feel like the US military "protects" Americans.
9. Celebrate! Seriously, this is #9 on the list. Here's what they said, "Don't come to work if you're a federal employee. You're on furlough. (Offer not valid for workers in 'critical services,' such as air traffic controllers, hazardous waste handlers and food inspectors.) Do take some time to celebrate. In previous shutdowns, everyone who stayed home was paid retroactively after peace returned to Washington". So, the shutdown is a good thing because millions of federal government employees get a free vacation that will be paid by Americans who will be paying for them to do nothing.
10. National Parks. According to CNN, "Need to get away? Well, you can't. At least not to national parks. Or to national zoos. Or to national museums. They'd all be closed. That's 368 National Park Service sites closed, millions of visitors turned away. Were you thinking more along the lines of a trip to France? If you don't already have a passport, you might have to bid that adieu — you might not get your blue book in time. The last time the government threw a hissy fit, 200,000 applications for passports went unprocessed. Tourism and airline revenues reeled". So, some parks may be shuttered and your permission to travel may be withheld.
That's it? That's the best that CNN can come up with on how a potential government shutdown will affect people? Your psyche may get hurt (if you had a delusional belief in the US government being the same as yourself); there may not be garbage collection in Washington, Den of Criminals; you won't be able to get a federal loan and you may not get permission from the government to have a gun or travel.
And this is what has the mainstream media talking about non-stop?
Of course, if the Federal Reserve did not print the money (QE2Infinity) to keep the US government going with over a $1 trillion deficit per year, 90% plus of what the government does would come to an immediate halt. Then there would be countless very serious things that would "affect your life". Anyone depending on food stamps (which is now over 50 million people), anyone depending on SS to survive would definitely be affected as there'd be no money to pay them. And, not to mention, every bank in the US would be insolvent and all depositor's money would be lost as the FDIC is also bankrupt.
But, we aren't betting on that ever happening. This is democracy, after all. And that means keeping the debts and new money flowing until the economic system collapses as the printing of money causes the eventual demise of the dollar and The End Of The Monetary System As We Know It (TEOTMSAWKI).
This system is now down to two options: massive debt default or massive inflation and neither is particularly good for anyone living in the US. Every major government or empire in history when faced with those two options chose to continue printing money until the currency collapsed.
In either case, what is happening today is nothing compared to what is going to happen. Use this time to prepare and get your assets, and if you can, even your own ass outside of what will be ground zero for this economic collapse, the US.
We talk about all the ways to do that at the TDV newsletter including things like putting your IRA into a self-directed IRA and getting the assets internationalized (into precious metals offshore – like we talk about in Getting Your Gold Out Of Dodge – and foreign real estate like Galt's Gulch in Chile), getting offshore bank accounts and set-up with an offshore corporation for your business endeavors (TDV Offshore), getting a foreign residency or passport (TDV Passports) and, if you have assets over $1 million, using TDV Wealth Management to get the assets safely outside of the blast radius.
What is going on in Washington, DC, today could mean postponing a trip to Yellowstone national park or having delayed garbage pickup in DC itself. What is coming in the next few months and years has the potential to destroy all your assets and leave you devoid of any way of earning income as the economy is totally destroyed by a currency collapse.
The best case scenario for the populace of the US in the long run is for a complete shutdown of the US federal government… But, that collapse is going to be messy and a lot of people are going to get hurt in the short term during that collapse.
Anarcho-Capitalist. Libertarian. Freedom fighter against mankind's two biggest enemies, the State and the Central Banks. Jeff Berwick is the founder of The Dollar Vigilante, CEO of TDV Media & Services and host of the popular video podcast, Anarchast. Jeff is a prominent speaker at many of the world's freedom, investment and gold conferences as well as regularly in the media including CNBC, CNN and Fox Business.
Source: Jeff Berwick | The Dollar Vigilante
Are Palestinians In Lebanon Choosing Kalashnikovs Over College?
July 20, 2013 by Administrator · Leave a Comment
They are 67 new families, or about 400 Palestinian refugees displaced from Syria, residing in 60 recently erected tents set up as an emergency 'gathering' near the Ein el-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp adjacent to the city of Sidon in southern Lebanon. In all, there are approximately 75,000 thousand Palestinians in Lebanon who have fled from Syria over the past 28 months.
Additional Palestinians arrive every week and sometimes meet former neighbors from Yarmouk and other Syrian Palestinian camps at the Masnaa Lebanon-Syria border crossing. The new arrivals are often grimaced to happen upon their countrymen who are returning to take their chances facing death in Syria including dodging the snipers and bombings targeting Yarmouk and elsewhere. The reasons the returnees give for returning to Syria focus on the appalling humanitarian conditions in Lebanon for Palestinians as well as the nearly 780,000 other refugees here from Syria.
Palestinians forced into Lebanon from Syria soon learn, if they were not aware previously, that all Palestinians refugees in Lebanon are barred by law from the most elementary civil rights to work and to own a home. More than 50 professions open to Palestinians in Syria and in every other country, including occupied Palestine, are forbidden here. Two examples of jobs Palestinians can do and are doing in Lebanon when they arrive from Syria include scavenging through the rotting filth at Saida Garbage Mountain and other Lebanese government public garbage dumps to find something worth a few Lebanese Lira (LL) to help their loved ones survive. No, nearly impossible to secure work permit, is even required so they need not fear arrest by the Lebanese authorities who irregularly round up Palestinian violators of this country's no work for Palestinian refugees ban.
The same, "no work permit required" reality is true of another profession which critics accuse the "Government" of Lebanon and its competing politicians of approving instead of allowing even one currently banned legitimate job to those whose lives are at risk and who are desperately in need of livelihood.
That profession which is open to every Palestinian today in Lebanon willing to consider it, is 'hired gun'.
While both the major political grouping in Lebanon will deny they do it but will accuse the other, the fact of the matter is that both continue to discreetly recruit Palestinians to fight their personal battles on the cheap. It is unfortunately the case that some Palestinians, sweltering in the squalid, fetid camps in Lebanon, discriminated against in public institutions of higher learning, and barred from internationally mandated elementary civil rights, are seeking jobs as militiamen. This against the admonitions and sage counsel of the older generation of PLO fighters, now mainly retired, that the Syrian civil war is not theirs and that Palestinian involvement will not advance Return to Palestine and reclaiming stolen homes and land, by one minute or by one inch.
The choice for many Palestinian young men in Lebanon has come down to guns or education. By force of Lebanese law and under threat of prison for violators, Palestinians are denied the elementary civil rights to work in more than 50 professions and are barred by a 2001 racist law from them or their families, more than six decades living as refugees in Lebanon, from even owning a home. Among Palestinian youth, unemployment rates hover around 70%, while refugee students are also discriminated against in admission to Lebanese state institutions of higher education, including the relatively low-tuition fees at Lebanese University. This makes it difficult for young Palestinians in Lebanon to pursue higher education after graduating from UNWRA schools and passing the Baccalaureate II exam. Being barred from most jobs, it is very difficult to come up with even modest sums for tuition payments.
Against this backdrop of flagrant state sponsored discrimination, if one were to offer un-employed young camp resident, say $ 200 per month, an AK-47 with plenty of ammo, and free cigarettes, the odds are good that you just might have yourself a militiaman. Those journalists and observers who spent much of the summer of 2011 in Libya saw a similar phenomenon and now it's also the case in Syria. In Lebanon, it is resurgent from the 1975-90 civil war days. The gun for hire resource is being exploited across the political spectrum here among many of the same confessions and political parties that ignited this country's massively destructive civil war more than three decades ago.
Today, some Palestinians are being paid to fight for certain factions whether from the North of Lebanon at Tripoli and Akkar, to Beirut and various contentious areas such as Tariq al-Jdideh, Sabra, Cola, and down south in Saida during recent clashes that saw 16 Lebanese army killed and twice that number from the supporters of Salafist activist Ahmad Asir. Despite denials from some sources, there were a few Palestinians who fought for Asir and some Palestinians joined other militia including the Hezbollah organized "Resistance Brigades' and the Lebanese army in fighting against Asir's forces. An investigation in supposedly underway of the army's conduct and the involvement of political parties from both the March 14anti-Assad sects and elements of the March 8th pro-Assad groups regarding recruitment of Palestinian youngsters.
President Mahmoud Abbas repeatedly warned Palestinians in Lebanon during his 72 hour visit to Lebanon last week to reject these offers and not to be drawn into the Syrian conflict despite the 'market place maneuverings' going on here from various armed confessions. What he meant is that as most of the Lebanese sects are frantically arming and seeking gunmen and weapons, that Palestinian s must refuse to be exploited once again and that they must reject any involvement in a military conflict that contravenes their communities wishes and their national interest. He lectured a gathering of PLO factions at a Palestine Embassy event that this terrible error was the case during the 1975-1990 Lebanese civil wars. For that involvement, Palestinians in Lebanon continue to pay a very heavy price from certain factions here that rather see Lebanon's economy continue to decline than allow Palestinians to work and help build the local economy as they have done in countless other countries which granted them the right to work and the opportunity to invest in the economy with their technical competence and business skills.
As one Palestinian academic pointed out last week to this observer, "While President Abbas assured Lebanese politicians that Palestinian factions did not want to join the Syrian civil war, he also chastised Lebanon's government in private for not pressuring various factions, most with representatives in Parliament, to stop recruiting and enticing the hapless, desperate for work refugees, forced into Lebanon against their will.
PA President Abbas also repeated the PLO's willingness to turn the refugee camps weapons over to the government. He did this with a straight face but surely he knows well that despite the regular scapegoating of Palestinians refugees in Lebanon and the danger they are said by some to pose because some have access to light arms, as everyone in Lebanon does, the truth of the matter is that the Lebanese political groups, even the most open about their hatred of Palestinians in Lebanon, do not want the state to collect or receive as gifts the arms in the Palestinian camps and gatherings, however many there they in fact are. The reason is that if the Palestinians had no weapons at all in the camp, it would make it awkward for some politicians to use the fear of a return to the early 1970's and the potential danger of a Palestinian uprising for sects political advantage. Truth told, there is no realistic fear, unless provoked, from Palestinians arms. They are exaggerated as is the number of salafist factions inside camps. Yet without the right to work, some Palestinians will doubtless be seduced into becoming hired guns for scarce cash to feed their families.
Hiring young men as gunmen in Lebanon is also impliedly condoned by silence on this problem from various polarized and politicized religious leaders. Some of Lebanon's religious personalities, too often, wearing pious faces and donning prelatical 'Pope-wannabe', if sometimes comical, outfits, and often sporting fingers ringed with gold and precious jewels, intone their gospels according to St. Mark, or his equivalents, about human dignity and being our brother's keeper, and often referencing " our blood-veins support for Palestine and the Right of Return." While simultaneously standing in Janus-faced opposition to the elementary internationally mandated right to work for Palestinians in Lebanon.
When a Palestinian is arrested for carrying a weapon, it's often front-page news but also usually exaggerated or later shown to be inaccurate. What is more surprising is that more Palestinians are not in the streets, motivated by the Arab Spring and Islamic Awakening, demanding the civil right to work. Yet signs are starting to appear of a pending and overdue intifada in Lebanon demanding this universally recognized right of every refugee to be able to seek work to sustain oneself and family.
Rumors abound these tense days in many part of Lebanon, as if to say, "I told you didn't I? The Palestinians are the source of most of Lebanon's problems!" (or the Zionists, or the Saudis, EU, Iranians, Syrians, other Lebanese sects or the Americans, or just about anyone except, this countries deeply destructive confessional system and the Lebanese who profit from this, to date, failed state. Too many Lebanese politicians reject granting rights to Palestinian refugees while they seek to gain personal, regional and international benefits from playing the "Palestinian card". Meanwhile, dangerous temperature and pressure levels are building in the huge Presto cookers that are Lebanon's camps.
On a brighter note, arriving with a late news item of 7/18/13, are the just released results of the General Science (SG) and Life Science (SV) secondary school official exam results known as the Baccalaureate II exam results. Preliminary analysis suggests that despite all their hardships, Palestinian and Syrian refugees have done well on the required exams.
One Palestinian mother from Yarmouk camp in Damascus, now among the 700 Palestinian refugee families temporarily here from Syria, and squeezed into the already overflowing Shatila camp explained to this observer as she proudly displayed this week's announcement of her children's academic success. She beamed that even with little electricity in her family hovel, polluted drinking water, no fresh air and not much food this past year, her daughter's and son's success in passing 'the BACC II" made her forget her family's misery.
So it is that the doors are cracked open for higher education, if Palestinian refugees in Lebanon can come up with tuition, sometimes fairly modest by western standards but beyond the means of a majority of camp families. The good news that there will be places in Lebanon's institutions of higher learning this fall semester, assuming that these youngsters, desperate to be allowed to work at the same jobs that every other foreigner in granted on arriving to Lebanon, do not heed the sirens calls of various sects here, singing seductive songs of quick cash in exchange for carrying a gun.
On April 19, 2013 at the Shatila Camp Youth Center, exactly 30 years to the week following the death of American journalist, Janet Lee Stevens here in Beirut, and recalling times during the 1982 Israeli aggression that rained American bombs of various types down on the civilian population, and still hearing Janet's voice telling young Palestinian defenders, during the 75-day Zionist siege, " Once the fighting ends you must, every one of you, return to school, whether to study quantum physics or literature or whatever interests you. Higher education is what will hasten your return to Palestine. Education is your greatest resource and your most potent weapon."
Speaking at the Shatila Scholarship Award event, one American, paying tribute to Janet as a mediator and advocate for Palestine, and addressing the tuition grant recipients, sought to encourage these future Palestinian leaders:
"An education is forever and its purpose is to enjoy a more productive lifetime while seeking to fulfill all of what each of us is capable as we give back to our respective communities. Staying in school here in Lebanon where we are all guests, just for the time being, and pursuing knowledge and practical skills is a quintessential and noble act and commitment of Resistance against oppression and occupation – anywhere. Education cannot be ethnically cleansed, stolen, tortured, jailed, uprooted, bulldozed, massacred, murdered, bombed or burned down. Rather, staying in school and pursuing ones dream is what your cherished for-bearers, who were forced from their homes and lands into Lebanon and trekked from Palestine- approximately 130,000- in the summer and fall of 1948, would want for you, and expect of you.
Education is a Saladinian Resistance toward liberating, six decades after the Nakba, those still under occupation in Palestine. And to help achieve for refugees in the diaspora, their inalienable full Right of Return."
When and how do we put an end to this outrage which is an urgent humanitarian imperative shared by every one of us?
We end it immediately.
We do it by Lebanon's parliament, taking 90 minutes of its time, which is all that would be required, and grant these youngsters the most elementary civil right to work which will also enable them to pursue their dreams of higher education.
And by international support.
This can be facilitated by international pressure. One telephone call from Washington, Riyadh, or Tehran, to local political allies, can get the job done in just over an hour without further procrastination.
If not, to add to its other problems, Lebanon may face a civil right intifada– ignited by continued repression.
In the words of the angelic Miss Hiba of Ein el Hilweh camp, now 19 years old and three years after her defiant declaration in 2010 to those who sneered at her that she should get married at age 16, and with her beauty, could demand a handsome dowry for her impoverished family, and forget about college: "There is no other choice than success with the civil rights goal of every Palestinian in Lebanon to seek a job and to pursue education as we peacefully intensify our struggle to Return to our stolen and still occupied country, Palestine. "
Today, Hiba continues the good fight as she completes next year, her degree in engineering. She insists she will need this knowledge when she returns to her family's occupied home near Safed.
Dr. Franklin Lamb is Director, Americans Concerned for Middle East Peace, Beirut-Washington DC, Board Member of The Sabra Shatila Foundation, and a volunteer with the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign, Lebanon. He is the author of The Price We Pay: A Quarter-Century of Israel's Use of American Weapons Against Civilians in Lebanon and is doing research in Lebanon for his next book. He can be reached at email@example.com
Dr. Franklin Lamb is a regular columnist for Veracity Voice
UN General Assembly Vote Reflects Shift In Syrian Public Opinion
May 18, 2013 by Administrator · Leave a Comment
It's not hard to find critics of the Assad government in the Governorate (Muhafazat) of Homs or for that matter, to varying degrees in Syria's other thirteen Governorates according to Syrian analysts interviewed by this observer and reports from human rights groups including lawyers representing dissidents in Syria. However, after nearly 27 months of turmoil, the public opinion pendulum is markedly shifting back in support of the current regime.
One international political result was registered at the United Nations this past week when a US-Qatari-Saudi drafted General Assembly Resolution that was designed to increase pressure on the Assad government stumbled badly and fell far short of what the Saudi Ambassador to the UN and other US allies predicted would be an overwhelming vote in favor.
Effect of shift in popular opinion in Syria
Over the past four or five months it has become increasingly clear that public opinion in Syria is shifting for reasons that include, but are not limited to the following:
While inflation at the grocery stores in probably the most common complaint heard from a cross-section of society here, the population is adapting somewhat to higher prices and it appears to credit the government for efforts, some successful, to soften the impact of the illegal US-led sanctions that target this same Syrian population for purely political reasons to achieve regime change.
While Syrians demand dignity and freedom from oppressive security forces and an end to corruption, as all people do in this region and beyond, they are witnessing a return to near normalcy with respect to supplies of electricity, benzene, mazout fuel oil, bus schedules, schools, and a host of public services such as garbage collection, street sweeping, park maintenance, and sympathetic traffic cops who are rather understanding of short-cuts taken by drivers and pedestrians due to "the situation".
In addition, public service announcement and even text messages demonstrate that the government is aware of the degree of suffering among the population, accept partial blame, and are focusing on remedial measure and crucially, ending the crisis with its horrific bloodshed. One observes here a definite trend of the pulling together of a high percentage of Syrians who share a very unique history and culture and who are deeply connected to their country and who are increasingly repelled by the continuing killing from all sides including the recent barbarisms of body mutilations and summary executions videotaped and broadcast on utube by jihadist elements. The latter who these days come from nearly three dozen countries, paid for and indoctrinated by enemies of Syria's Arab nationalism and deep rooted pillar of resistance to the occupation of Palestine.
In addition, many among Syria's 23 million citizens, who initially supported the uprising following government reaction to event in Deraa in March 2011, now have serious second thoughts about who exactly would replace the current government. Events in Syria are also making plain that the army is still loyal to the Assad government, and according to Jane's Defense Weekly, is actually gaining experience and strength as well as the well-known fact that as western diplomats are admitting, the "opposition militias" are hopelessly fractured, turning one another, many essential mafia outfits, and beginning to resemble their fellow jihadists from Libya, Chechnya and in between.
Opinion in Damascus and surrounding areas visited this past week, confirms this observers experience the past five months of a sharp and fairly rapid shift in opinion that now strongly favors letting the Syrian people themselves decide, without outside interference, whether the Assad regime will stay, and indeed, whether, the Baathist party will continue to represent majority opinion, not through wanton violence but rather via next June's election. Many express confidence in the run up to this critical vote, noting that the election will be closely monitored by the international community to assure fairness.
Perhaps aided by the current glorious May weather, a certain optimism, that was more scarce in the past, pervades many neighborhoods.
For different reasons, foreign powers, including the USA, Turkey, European Union, the UK Jordan and even the majority population of the six Gulf Cooperation Council family run countries, according to Pew Research, are shifting their earlier positions which were based in part of the US administration, NATO, and Israeli assurances that the Assad government would surely fall quickly, "A matter of days, not weeks" US President Obama promised. That was two years ago.
As noted above, this trend has accelerated since the UN General Assembly vote with last weeks which did not go as planned on the biased and politicized non-binding draft resolution on Syria.
The public reaction in Syria and across the Middle East is substantially that the "Friends of Syria" non-binding GA resolution contradicts the reality on the ground, backs terrorism in Syria and hinders the international efforts to help achieve a political solution to the crisis in this country. Only 107 states voted in favor of the resolution, 12 against while 59 countries, mostly from Africa and Latin America, abstained from voting.
One reason the vote fell short of the 130 favorable votes that the basically same resolution garnered the past two times is that it is widely viewed as ignoring the crimes and atrocities committed by the armed jihadist groups in Syria and the flow of thousands of international terrorists backed by the West, the Gulf states and Turkey who provide them with weapons and money. According to the Russian delegate, backed by several other speakers, "the resolutions ignores all the terrorists' heinous crimes and denounces what it called the escalation of the attacks by the Syrian government". Afterward one Latin American Permanent Representative told Inner City Press that the count would have been below 100 if not for some "last minute arm-twisting." As it turned out, 15 countries didn't vote at all, opting to "get coffee," as one African Permanent Representative put it before the vote.
Syria's Ambassador al-Jaafari exposes a hoax in the Gulf
Syria's permanent Envoy to the UN Bashar al-Jaafari said his country regretted the adoption of a biased and unbalanced UN resolution, thanking the countries that rejected the resolution "for their responsible positions which support the UN principles and the international law articles". He noted that the decrease in the number of countries that voted in favor and the increase of numbers of those who abstained from voting indicates the growing international understanding of the reality of what is happening in Syria due to the foreign interference, support of terrorism, the spread of extremism and incitement besides the refusal of dialogue.
"We rely on the UN and its member states to support Syria and its people against the culture of extremism and terrorism, and to encourage the comprehensive national dialogue to peacefully resolve the Syrian crisis." he said. In a statement released after the vote on the UN draft resolution on Syria, al-Jaafari He said that the French delegation had foiled the issuance of a number of UN press releases to condemn the terrorist acts committed by al-Qaeda-linked armed groups in Syria which claimed the lives of thousands of Syrians as it foiled a UN release to condemn the attempt of assassination of the Syrian Premier.
After Qatar's ambassador spoke in favor of the resolution his country drafted (and re-drafted several time), Ja'afari revealed that there existed an e-mail, from the representative of the Syrian opposition given to Syria's embassy in Qatar, showing Qatar's involvement in the kidnapping of UN peacekeepers by the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade. He read out a phone number from the e-mail as several Gulf diplomats grimaced or scowled, and three left the Chamber.
Visibly stunned, the UK Permanent Representative Lyall Grant called the whole matter "deeply confusing". Another Permanent Representative, from a militia contributing country, said that if true, it's "very problematic." The reasons include the fact that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had just thanked Qatar for its roles in the release of the UN Peacekeepers the earlier kidnapping of whom the Qatari government may have planned, paid for and executed.
Meanwhile, Ban Ki-moon's spokesperson Martin Nesirky said he would not disclose any more about the "negotiations to free the peacekeepers or who was behind the crime."
Score a major diplomatic victory for Syria's UN Ambassador as public opinion shifts in favor of the Assad government and pressure as well as certain optimism builds in the run-up to the Geneva II conference being organized by the White House and the Kremlin.
Dr. Franklin Lamb is Director, Americans Concerned for Middle East Peace, Beirut-Washington DC, Board Member of The Sabra Shatila Foundation, and a volunteer with the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign, Lebanon. He is the author of The Price We Pay: A Quarter-Century of Israel's Use of American Weapons Against Civilians in Lebanon and is doing research in Lebanon for his next book. He can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.com
Dr. Franklin Lamb is a regular columnist for Veracity Voice
Surviving A Full SHTF Collapse In Bosnia
May 13, 2013 by Administrator · Leave a Comment
Many in the precious metals community are eagerly anticipating a complete systemic collapse of the financial system because as "preppers", they expect to not only survive, but to prosper in a SHTF scenario. We suspect however that the following MUST READ account of surviving the Bosnian war in the midst of a complete collapse of the grid will be eye-opening in just how difficult it is to survive a full-on Mad Max scenario, even if one has spent years preparing for it.
I am from Bosnia. You know, between 1992 and 1995, it was hell. For one year, I lived and survived in a city with 6,000 people without water, electricity, gasoline, medical help, civil defense, distribution service, any kind of traditional service or centralized rule.
Today, me and my family are well-prepared, I am well-armed. I have experience. It does not matter what will happen: an earthquake, a war, a tsunami, aliens, terrorists, economic collapse, uprising. The important part is that something will happen.
The following is my experience:
Our city was blockaded by the army; and for one year, life in the city turned into total crap. We had no army, no police. We only had armed groups; those armed protected their homes and families.
When it all started, some of us were better prepared. But most of the neighbors' families had enough food only for a few days. Some had pistols; a few had AK-47s or shotguns.
After a month or two, gangs started operating, destroying everything. Hospitals, for example, turned into slaughterhouses. There was no more police. About 80 percent of the hospital staff were gone. I got lucky. My family at the time was fairly large (15 people in a large house, six pistols, three AKs), and we survived (most of us, at least).
The Americans dropped MREs every 10 days to help blockaded cities. This was never enough. Some — very few — had gardens. It took three months for the first rumors to spread of men dying from hunger and cold. We removed all the doors, the window frames from abandoned houses, ripped up the floors and burned the furniture for heat. Many died from diseases, especially from the water (two from my own family). We drank mostly rainwater, ate pigeons and even rats.
Money soon became worthless. We returned to an exchange. For a tin can of tushonka (think Soviet spam), you could have a woman. (It is hard to speak of it, but it is true.) Most of the women who sold themselves were desperate mothers.
Arms, ammunition, candles, lighters, antibiotics, gasoline, batteries and food. We fought for these things like animals. In these situations, it all changes. Men become monsters. It was disgusting.
Strength was in numbers. A man living alone getting killed and robbed would be just a matter of time, even if he was armed.
Today, me and my family are well-prepared, I am well-armed. I have experience.
It does not matter what will happen: an earthquake, a war, a tsunami, aliens, terrorists, economic collapse, uprising. The important part is that something will happen.
Here's my experience: You can't make it on your own. Don't stay apart from your family; prepare together, choose reliable friends.
1. How to move safely in a city
The city was divided into communities along streets. Our street (15 to 20 homes) had patrols (five armed men every week) to watch for gangs and for our enemies.
All the exchanges occurred in the street. About 5 kilometers away was an entire street for trading, all well-organized; but going there was too dangerous because of the snipers. You could also get robbed by bandits. I only went there twice, when I needed something really rare (list of medicine, mainly antibiotics, of the French original of the texts).
Nobody used automobiles in the city: The streets were blocked by wreckage and by abandoned cars. Gasoline was very expensive. If one needed to go somewhere, that was done at night. Never travel alone or in groups that were too big — always two to three men. All armed, travel swift, in the shadows, cross streets through ruins, not along open streets.
There were many gangs 10 to 15 men strong, some as large as 50 men. But there were also many normal men, like you and me, fathers and grandfathers, who killed and robbed. There were no "good" and "bad" men. Most were in the middle and ready for the worst.
2. What about wood? Your home city is surrounded by woods; why did you burn doors and furniture?
There were not that many woods around the city. It was very beautiful — restaurants, cinemas, schools, even an airport. Every tree in the city and in the city park was cut down for fuel in the first two months.
Without electricity for cooking and heat, we burned anything that burned. Furniture, doors, flooring: That wood burns swiftly. We had no suburbs or suburban farms. The enemy was in the suburbs. We were surrounded. Even in the city you never knew who was the enemy at any given point.
3. What knowledge was useful to you in that period?
To imagine the situation a bit better, you should know it was practically a return to the Stone Age.
For example, I had a container of cooking gas. But I did not use it for heat. That would be too expensive! I attached a nozzle to it I made myself and used to fill lighters. Lighters were precious.
If a man brought an empty lighter, I would fill it; and he would give me a tin of food or a candle.
I was a paramedic. In these conditions, my knowledge was my wealth. Be curious and skilled. In these conditions, the ability to fix things is more valuable than gold.
Items and supplies will inevitably run out, but your skills will keep you fed.
I wish to say this: Learn to fix things, shoes or people.
My neighbor, for example, knew how to make kerosene for lamps. He never went hungry.
4. If you had three months to prepare now, what would you do?
Three months? Run away from the country? (joking)
Today, I know everything can collapse really fast. I have a stockpile of food, hygiene items, batteries — enough to last me for six months.
I live in a very secure flat and own a home with a shelter in a village 5 kilometers away. Another six-month supply there, too. That's a small village; most people there are well-prepared. The war had taught them.
I have four weapons and 2,000 rounds for each.
I have a garden and have learned gardening. Also, I have a good instinct. You know, when everyone around you keeps telling you it'll all be fine, but I know it will all collapse.
I have strength to do what I need to protect my family. Because when it all collapses, you must be ready to do "bad" things to keep your children alive and protect your family.
Surviving on your own is practically impossible. (That's what I think.) Even you're armed and ready, if you're alone, you'll die. I have seen that happen many times.
Families and groups, well-prepared, with skills and knowledge in various fields: That's much better.
5. What should you stockpile?
That depends. If you plan to live by theft, all you need is weapons and ammo. Lots of ammo.
If not, more food, hygiene items, batteries, accumulators, little trading items (knives, lighters, flints, soap). Also, alcohol of a type that keeps well. The cheapest whiskey is a good trading item.
Many people died from insufficient hygiene. You'll need simple items in great amounts. For example, garbage bags. Lots of them. And toilet papers. Non-reusable dishes and cups: You'll need lots of them. I know that because we didn't have any at all.
As for me, a supply of hygiene items is perhaps more important than food. You can shoot a pigeon. You can find a plant to eat. You can't find or shoot any disinfectant.
Disinfectant, detergents, bleach, soap, gloves, masks.
First aid skills, washing wounds and burns. Perhaps you will find a doctor and will not be able to pay him.
Learn to use antibiotics. It's good to have a stockpile of them.
You should choose the simplest weapons. I carry a Glock .45. I like it, but it's a rare gun here. So I have two TT pistols, too. (Everyone has them and ammo is common.)
I don't like Kalashnikov's, but again, same story. Everyone has them; so do I.
You must own small, unnoticeable items. For example, a generator is good, but 1,000 BIC lighters are better. A generator will attract attention if there's any trouble, but 1,000 lighters are compact, cheap and can always be traded.
We usually collected rainwater into four large barrels and then boiled it. There was a small river, but the water in it became very dirty very fast.
It's also important to have containers for water: barrels and buckets.
6. Were gold and silver useful?
Yes. I personally traded all the gold in the house for ammunition.
Sometimes, we got our hands on money: dollars and Deutschmarks. We bought some things for them, but this was rare and prices were astronomical. For example, a can of beans cost $30 to $40. The local money quickly became worthless. Everything we needed we traded for through barter.
7. Was salt expensive?
Yes, but coffee and cigarettes were even more expensive. I had lots of alcohol and traded it without problems. Alcohol consumption grew over 10 times as compared to peacetime. Perhaps today, it's more useful to keep a stock of cigarettes, lighters and batteries. They take up less space.
At this time, I was not a survivalist. We had no time to prepare — several days before the shit hit the fan. The politicians kept repeating over the TV that everything was going according to plan, there's no reason to be concerned. When the sky fell on our heads, we took what we could.
8. Was it difficult to purchase firearms? What did you trade for arms and ammunition?
After the war, we had guns in every house. The police confiscated lots of guns at the beginning of the war. But most of them we hid. Now I have one legal gun that I have a license for. Under the law, that's called a temporary collection. If there is unrest, the government will seize all the registered guns. Never forget that.
You know, there are many people who have one legal gun, but also illegal guns if that one gets seized. If you have good trade goods, you might be able to get a gun in a tough situation. But remember, the most difficult time is the first days, and perhaps you won't have enough time to find a weapon to protect your family. To be disarmed in a time of chaos and panic is a bad idea.
In my case, there was a man who needed a car battery for his radio. He had shotguns. I traded the accumulator for both of them. Sometimes, I traded ammunition for food, and a few weeks later traded food for ammunition. Never did the trade at home, never in great amounts.
Few people knew how much and what I keep at home.
The most important thing is to keep as many things as possible in terms of space and money. Eventually, you'll understand what is more valuable.
Correction: I'll always value weapons and ammunition the most. Second? Maybe gas masks and filters.
9. What about security?
Our defenses were very primitive. Again, we weren't ready, and we used what we could. The windows were shattered, and the roofs in a horrible state after the bombings. The windows were blocked — some with sandbags, others with rocks.
I blocked the fence gate with wreckage and garbage, and used a ladder to get across the wall. When I came home, I asked someone inside to pass over the ladder. We had a fellow on our street that completely barricaded himself in his house. He broke a hole in the wall, creating a passage for himself into the ruins of the neighbor's house — a sort of secret entrance.
Maybe this would seem strange, but the most protected houses were looted and destroyed first. In my area of the city, there were beautiful houses with walls, dogs, alarms and barred windows. People attacked them first. Some held out; others didn't. It all depended how many hands and guns they had inside.
I think defense is very important, but it must be carried out unobtrusively. If you are in a city and SHTF comes, you need a simple, non-flashy place, with lots of guns and ammo.
How much ammo? As much as possible.
Make your house as unattractive as you can.
Right now, I own a steel door, but that's just against the first wave of chaos. After that passes, I will leave the city to rejoin a larger group of people, my friends and family.
There were some situations during the war. There's no need for details, but we always had superior firepower and a brick wall on our side.
We also constantly kept someone watching the streets. Quality organization is paramount in case of gang attacks.
Shooting was constantly heard in the city.
Our perimeter was defended primitively. All the exits were barricaded and had little firing slits. Inside we had at least five family members ready for battle at any time and one man in the street, hidden in a shelter.
We stayed home through the day to avoid sniper fire.
At first, the weak perish. Then, the rest fight.
During the day, the streets were practically empty due to sniper fire. Defenses were oriented toward short-range combat alone. Many died if they went out to gather information, for example. It's important to remember we had no information, no radio, no TV — only rumors and nothing else.
There was no organized army; every man fought. We had no choice. Everybody was armed, ready to defend themselves.
You should not wear quality items in the city; someone will murder you and take them. Don't even carry a "pretty" long arm, it will attract attention.
Let me tell you something: If SHTF starts tomorrow, I'll be humble. I'll look like everyone else. Desperate, fearful. Maybe I'll even shout and cry a little bit.
Pretty clothing is excluded altogether. I will not go out in my new tactical outfit to shout: "I have come! You're doomed, bad guys!" No, I'll stay aside, well-armed, well-prepared, waiting and evaluating my possibilities, with my best friend or brother.
Super-defenses, super-guns are meaningless. If people think they should steal your things, that you're profitable, they will. It's only a question of time and the amount of guns and hands.
10. How was the situation with toilets?
We used shovels and a patch of earth near the house. Does it seem dirty? It was. We washed with rainwater or in the river, but most of the time the latter was too dangerous. We had no toilet paper; and if we had any, I would have traded it away.
It was a "dirty" business.
Let me give you a piece of advice: You need guns and ammo first — and second, everything else. Literally everything! All depends on the space and money you have.
If you forget something, there will always be someone to trade with for it. But if you forget weapons and ammo, there will be no access to trading for you.
I don't think big families are extra mouths. Big families means both more guns and strength — and from there, everyone prepares on his own.
11. How did people treat the sick and the injured?
Most injuries were from gunfire. Without a specialist and without equipment, if an injured man found a doctor somewhere, he had about a 30 percent chance of survival.
It ain't the movie. People died. Many died from infections of superficial wounds. I had antibiotics for three to four uses — for the family, of course.
People died foolishly quite often. Simple diarrhea will kill you in a few days without medicine, with limited amounts of water.
There were many skin diseases and food poisonings… nothing to it.
Many used local plants and pure alcohol — enough for the short-term, but useless in the long term.
Hygiene is very important, as well as having as much medicine as possible — especially antibiotics.
Source: Silver Doctors
Boston Massacre Media Diversion
April 22, 2013 by Administrator · Leave a Comment
Only a media masochist can stand watching network and cable TV news. The extent of self-immolation coming out of their broadcasts, have seldom been more vivid, with their bizarre reports on the Boston Marathon bombing. If one did not know better, the comparison with the Marx Brothers antics would have you believe that you have a ringside seat At the Circus. Silly behavior is the mainstay of the mainstream media. Real news investigation has long ago been relegated to the archives of a half century ago, when there was at least a small measure of a healthy distrust of government sources. Today the clowns that act as ventriloquist dummies have more in common with Karl Marx than Groucho.
The passion of lies flows from the lips of the talking heads, as they get their instructions from corporatist producers in their earpiece. The latest example of a Mossad agent and Zionist exponent is the infamous liar, CNN Wolf Blitzer. A Rush to Misjudgment, states, "CNN is coming under criticism after it falsely reported authorities had arrested a Boston Marathon bombing suspect, whom it had earlier described as a "dark-skinned male." Catching Blitzer tap dancing around the blowup of the designed script of placing culpability on the intended stooges, selected to advance the domestic war of terror, reminds of a skit played by Chico in a bad version of Monkey Business.
That other CNN and CIA plant, Anderson Cooper provides the complementary tag team effort to confuse and distract on a news production that even the global radical and former network owner Ted Turner has to hang his head. Cooper plays the role of Harpo as Pinky as he stirs the Duck Soup broth disinformation. The only way to watch "the government news hour" is with the volume on the Harpo setting - silent no verbal talk.
Not to be outdone the Fox News Network features another CNN alumnus, Bill Hemmer as their Zeppo, performing relatively straight (non-comedic) roles as an authoritive source for an authoritarian mindset of neoconservatives. Deceiving real liberty loving viewers with a pseudo patriotic flag waving is the hallmark of the fair and balanced news format now that Rupert Murdoch is the target of the globalists cabal to act friendly with their new world order scheme.
The next hack over at MSNBC, Chris "Gummo" Matthews on "Hardball" tonight, the host openly questioned whether at least a portion of the horror was an intentional attack against the Democratic Party. What class from this dedicated Marxist brother in media prevarications?
"Let me ask you about domestic terrorism as a category. Normally, domestic terrorists, people tend to be on the far right, well that's not a good category, just extremists, let's call them that. Do they advertise after they do something like this? Do they try to get credit as a group or do they just hate America so much or its politics or its government that they just want to do the damage, they don't care if they get public credit, if you will?"
In addition, the Weekly Standard, the quid essential NeoCon diatribe publication, lashes out at MSNBC as an adjunct enabler of the globalist agenda.
"MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell made the case this evening that the National Rifle Association is to blame for the slow investigation into the Boston bombings:
"There are new developments tonight in the bombing investigation here in Boston," said O'Donnell. "But that investigation could be moving faster were it not for the successful lobbying efforts of the National Rifle Association. The NRA's efforts to guarantee that American mass murderers are the best-equipped mass murders in the world is not limited to murderers who use assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. The NRA is also in the business of helping bombers get away with their crimes. Gunpowder could be traced by investigators to a buyer at the point of sale if gunpowder contained a taggant, an element that would enable tracing of the purchase of gunpowder. But thanks to the National Rifle Association, identification taggants are required by law only in plastic explosives. The NRA has successfully blocked any requirements for such taggants in gunpowder. So such supremely helpful evidence as taggants are not available to the FBI in this investigation."
The bombings took place at Monday's marathon."
For an even more revolting low in propaganda, the MSNBC: NRA 'in the Business of Helping Bombers Get Away With Their Crimes' You Tube, is typical of a state sponsored Pravda style media misinformation, that now passes as journalism. Now compare this garbage MSNBC government coordinated onslaught with the perceptive, daring and provocative coverage on Breaking the Set, with host Abby Martin that is aired on RT TV. The video broadcast of Corporate Media Disaster Porn | Weapons of Mass Distraction, raises the issue that the corporate media is reporting false information. The long record of government drill operations during "so called" terrorist events might well prove to apply to the Boston Marathon massacre.
At the forefront of this speculation, Yahoo News lays claim that Alex Jones raises 'false flag' conspiracy after Boston Marathon bombings.
"Jones suggested that the FBI orchestrated the bombings under the false flag of a terrorist organization in order to justify expanded security powers. The Boston attack, he theorized, was staged by the U.S. government to extend the reach of both the Dept. of Homeland Security and Transportation Security Administration."
With the FBI suspects, Tamerlan Tsarnaev dead and his brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev at large and now captured, it will take some serious investigatory reporting in order to penetrate the layers of government secrecy that reasonably can be expected to conceal what actually transpired on April 15, 2013. Still, the lamestream media will never report any evidence that conflicts with the homeland security police. The presence of sensible alternative explanations are consistently dismissed when the war of terror needs another jolt of fear to keep the public on edge.
Believing any of the government press releases that pass as independent news reporting is more risky than taking your chances in a world of deranged psychopaths. Simply stated, no one in the "so called" know has the inside track on all the complexity of the official investigation, or the potential compartmental complicity in a sanctioned undercover mission.
Where are the brave correspondents that would dare shout from the rooftops, that the response from the Boston carnage is virtually a green light for lock down martial law on the public? Just look to the Faux resident pinhead, Bill O'Reilly for bold reporting, Bill O'Reilly Attacks Alex Jones and Infowars for Daring to Ask Questions About Boston Bomber Narrative.
"Fox resident blowhard Bill O'Reilly and correspondent Juliet Huddy have attacked Alex Jones and Infowars.com reporter Dan Bidondi. For the two Fox News talking heads it is apparently a serious crime to quiz Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick about the false flag attack in Boston on Monday. It is impermissible to call into question the validity of the official narrative now coagulating around the event. It is forbidden to deviate from the establishment's script.Huddy dismissed Jones and Bidondi as "idiots" and the accused sexual predator O'Reilly – who has strongly condemned the First Amendment in the past and has shilled for mass murder in Iraq and Afghanistan – made his disgust manifestly apparent, as usual. Both displayed contempt for the internet and alternative media, a quite natural reaction from two irrelevant teleprompter readers. Fox News in particular and the rest of the bloated script-reading dinosaur media in general are seriously threatened by free expression and news reportage on the web."
Viewers that still watch, let alone believe, the fabrications coming out of the bowls of the presstitutesneed a reality check. Just think of all the naive clones that pay their cable or satellite charges for the privilege of bonding with the establishment mouthpieces. What you get from the mind control media is a government version of indoctrination into a slave society. Denial of even the possibility of a false flag operation in the underlying exercise is the only reporting you are supposed to watch.
The FBI tells America: believe us and no one else, outlines the official dictates from the ranks of the G-man enforcers, "The implication is clear: there is official truth and then there is everything else."Since the fascination of following, another manhunt with live feeds is so compelling to the trained seals that are pinned to the screen, the significance of a tyrannical takedown of an entire region of law-abiding citizens, goes unreported by the whores that read from the government approved teleprompters. The autocue message is sanitized of any possibility that the crew of a covert operative drill might just provide cover for a despotic counterattack to the shot heard around the world.
Americans are so easily duped. The Marxist media feed Animal Crackers to a dumb downed public that swallows a systematic federalization of genuine peace keeping functions. The true race in Boston is to re-establish the rebirth of the American Revolution.
Sartre is the publisher, editor, and writer for Breaking All The Rules. He can be reached at: BATR
Sartre is a regular columnist for Veracity Voice
The Global Elite Are Very Clearly Telling Us That They Plan To Raid Our Bank Accounts
March 28, 2013 by Administrator · Leave a Comment
Don't be surprised when the global elite confiscate money from your bank account one day. They are already very clearly telling you that they are going to do it. Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem is the president of the Eurogroup – an organization of eurozone finance ministers that was instrumental in putting together the Cyprus "deal" – and he has said publicly that what has just happened in Cyprus will serve as a blueprint for future bank bailouts. What that means is that when the chips are down, they are going to come after YOUR money. So why should anyone put a large amount of money in the bank at this point? Perhaps you can make one or two percent on your money if you shop around for a really good deal, but there is also a chance that 40 percent (or more) of your money will be confiscated if the bank fails. And considering the fact that there are vast numbers of banks all over the United States and Europe that are teetering on the verge of insolvency, why would anyone want to take such a risk? What the global elite have done is that they have messed around with the fundamental trust that people have in the banking system. In order for any financial system to work, people must have faith in the safety and security of that financial system. People put their money in the bank because they think that it will be safe there. If you take away that feeling of safety, you jeopardize the entire system.
So exactly how did the big banks in Cyprus get into so much trouble? Well, they have been doing exactly what hundreds of other large banks all over the U.S. and Europe have been doing. They have been gambling with our money. In particular, the big banks in Cyprus made huge bets on Greek sovereign debt which ended up failing.
But what happened in Cyprus is just the tip of the iceberg. All over the planet major financial institutions are being incredibly reckless with client money. They are leveraged to the hilt and they have transformed the global financial system into a gigantic casino.
If they win on their bets, they become fabulously wealthy.
If they lose on their bets, they know that the politicians won't let the banks fail. They know that they will get bailed out one way or another.
And who pays?
We do.
Either our tax dollars are used to fund a government-sponsored bailout, or as we have just witnessed in Cyprus, money is directly confiscated from our bank accounts.
And then the game begins again.
People need to understand that the precedent that has just been set in Cyprus is a game changer.
The next time that a major bank fails in Greece or Italy or Spain (or in the United States for that matter), the precedent that has been set in Cyprus will be looked to as a "template" for how to handle the situation.
Eurogroup president Jeroen Dijsselbloem has even publicly admitted that what just happened in Cyprus will serve as a model for future bank bailouts. Just check out what he said a few days ago…
"If there is a risk in a bank, our first question should be 'Okay, what are you in the bank going to do about that? What can you do to recapitalise yourself?'. If the bank can't do it, then we'll talk to the shareholders and the bondholders, we'll ask them to contribute in recapitalising the bank, and if necessary the uninsured deposit holders"
Dijsselbloem insists that this will cause people "to think about the risks" before they put their money somewhere…
"It will force all financial institutions, as well as investors, to think about the risks they are taking on because they will now have to realise that it may also hurt them. The risks might come towards them."
Well, as depositors in Cyprus just found out, there is a risk that you could lose 40 percent (and that is the best case scenario) of your money if you put it in the bank.
Why would anyone want to take that risk – especially in a nation that is already experiencing very serious financial troubles such as Greece, Italy or Spain?
As if that was not enough, Dijsselbloem later went in front of the Dutch parliament and publicly defended a wealth tax like the one that was just imposed in Cyprus.
Dijsselbloem is being widely criticized, and rightfully so. But at least he is being more honest that many other politicians. His predecessor as the head of the Eurogroup, Jean-Claude Juncker, once said that "you have to lie" to the people in order to keep the financial markets calm…
Mr. Dijsselbloem's style contrasts with that of his predecessor, Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg's prime minister, who spoke in a low mumble at news conferences and was expert at sidestepping questions. Mr. Juncker once even advocated lying as a way to prevent financial markets from panicking—as they did Monday after Mr. Dijsselbloem's comments.
"When it becomes serious, you have to lie," Mr. Juncker said in April 2011. "If you have pre-indicated possible decisions, you are feeding speculation in the financial markets."
But Dijsselbloem is certainly not the only one among the global elite that is admitting what is coming next. Just check out what Joerg Kraemer, the chief economist at Commerzbank, recently told Handelsblatt about what he believes should be done in Italy…
"A tax rate of 15 percent on financial assets would probably be enough to push the Italian government debt to below the critical level of 100 percent of gross domestic product"
And as I wrote about the other day, the Finance Minister of New Zealand is proposing that bank account holders in his nation should be required to "take a haircut" if any banks in his nation fail.
They are telling us what they plan to do.
They are telling us that they plan to raid all of our bank accounts when the global financial system fails.
And calling it a "haircut" does not change the fact of what it really is. The truth is that when they confiscate money from our bank accounts it is outright theft. Just check out what the Daily Mail had to say about the situation in Cyprus…
People who rob old ladies in the street, or hold up security vans, are branded as thieves. Yet when Germany presides over a heist of billions of pounds from private savers' Cyprus bank accounts, to 'save the euro' for the hundredth time, this is claimed as high statesmanship.
It is nothing of the sort. The deal to secure a €10 billion German bailout of the bankrupt Mediterranean island is one of the nastiest and most immoral political acts of modern times.
It has struck fear into the hearts of hundreds of millions of European citizens, because it establishes a dire precedent.
And when you cause paralysis in the banking system, a once thriving economy can freeze up almost overnight. The following is an excerpt from a report from someone that is actually living over in Cyprus…
As it stands now, nowhere in Cyprus accepts credit or debit cards anymore for fear of not being paid, it is CASH ONLY. Businesses have stopped functioning because they cannot pay employees OR pay for the stock they receive because the banks are closed. If the banks remain closed, the economy will be destroyed and STOP COMPLETELY. Looting, robberies and theft are already on the rise. If the banks open now, there will be a massive run on the bank, and the banks will FAIL loosing all of its deposits, also causing an economic crash. TONIGHT there are demonstrations at most street corners and especially at the parliament building (just 2 miles from me).
Many are thinking that the ECB and EU are allowing Cyprus to fail as a test ground for new financial standards.
Just wanted all you guys to know the real story of whats going on here. Prayers are appreciated (although this is very interesting to watch) many of my local friends have lots of money in the banks.
Would similar things happen in the United States if there was a major banking crisis someday?
That is something to think about.
In any event, the problems in the rest of Europe continue to get even worse…
-The stock market in Greece is crashing. It is down by more than 10 percent over the past two days.
-The stock markets in Italy and Spain are experiencing huge declines as well. Banking stocks are being hit particularly hard.
-The Bank of Spain says that the Spanish economy will sink even deeper into recession this year.
-The latest numbers from the Spanish government show that Spain's debt problem is rapidly getting worse…
"The central government's interest bill surged 15 percent last year to 26 billion euros, while tax receipts slumped 21 percent. The cost of servicing debt represented 30 percent of the taxes collected at the end of December, up from 20 percent a year earlier."
-The euro took quite a tumble on Thursday and the euro will likely continue to decline steadily in the weeks and months to come.
For a very long time I have been warning that the next major wave of the economic collapse is going to originate in Europe.
Hopefully people are starting to see what I am talking about.
As this point, the major banks in Europe are leveraged about 26 to 1, and that is close to the kind of leverage that Lehman Brothers had when it finally collapsed. As a whole, European banks are drowning in debt, they are taking risks that are almost incomprehensible and now faith in those banks has been greatly undermined by what has happened in Cyprus.
Anyone that cannot see a crisis coming in Europe simply does not understand the financial world. A moment of reckoning is rapidly approaching for Europe. The following is from a recent article by Graham Summers…
At the end of the day, the reason Europe hasn't been fixed is because CAPITAL SIMPLY ISN'T THERE. Europe and its alleged backstops are out of money. This includes Germany, the ECB and the mega-bailout funds such as the ESM.
Germany has already committed to bailouts that equal 5% of its GDP. The single largest transfer payment ever made by one country to another was the Marshall Plan in which the US transferred an amount equal to 5% of its GDP. Germany WILL NOT exceed this. So don't count on more money from Germany.
The ECB is chock full of garbage debts which have been pledged as collateral for loans. If anyone of significance defaults in Europe, the ECB is insolvent. Sure it can print more money, but once the BIG collateral call hits, money printing is useless because the amount of money the ECB would have to print would implode the system.
And then of course there are the mega bailout funds such as the ESM. The only problem here is that Spain and Italy make up 30% of the ESM's supposed "funding." That's right, nearly one third of the mega-bailout fund's capital will come from countries that are bankrupt themselves.
What could go wrong?
Right now, close to half of all money that is on deposit at banks in Europe is uninsured. As people move that uninsured money out of the banks, the amount of money that will be required to "fix the banks" will go up even higher.
It would be wise to try to avoid the big banks at this point – especially those with very large exposure to derivatives. Any financial institution that uses customer money to make reckless bets is not to be trusted.
If you can find a small local bank or credit union to do business with you will probably be better off.
And don't think that this kind of thing can never happen in the United States.
One of the key players that was pushing the idea of a "wealth tax" in Cyprus was the IMF. And everyone knows that the IMF is heavily dominated by the United States. In fact, the headquarters of the IMF is located right in the heart of Washington D.C. not too far from the White House. When I worked in D.C. I would walk by the IMF headquarters quite a bit.
So if the United States thought that confiscating money from bank accounts was a great idea in Cyprus, why wouldn't they implement such a thing here under similar circumstances?
The global elite are telling us what they plan to do, and the game has dramatically changed.
Move your money while you still can.
Unfortunately, it is already too late for the people of Cyprus.
Source: The Economic Collapse
We Sweep So Much Under The Rug In America
March 8, 2013 by Administrator · Leave a Comment
On the front of the March 11, 2013 cover of Time Magazine, legless athlete Oscar Pistorius stands like a physical specimen held up by his prosthetic legs. The title reads, "Man, superman, gunman: Oscar Pistorius and South Africa's culture of violence," by Alex Perry.
"Don't keep sweeping your troubles under the rug for someday you'll trip over it." Taylor Wapaha
While reading the article, I felt overwhelmed by the statistics: South Africa # 6 in the world for gun killings, 88 percent rise in home robberies in the past five years and total racial separation. Black poverty skyrocketed after the end of apartheid. Two surveys found: "…28 percent of men admitted to being rapists and 46 percent of victims were less than 16 years of age, 23 percent under 11 and 9 percent under six years old. Out of 3.5 million residents of Cape Town, 2.1 million live in shacks without toilets or running water."
"In the townships, vigilante beatings and killings are the norm," wrote Time writer Alex Perry. "South Africa's private security industry employs 411,000 people, more than double the number of police officers. South Africa knows crime as a vast stretch of lawlessness covering an area twice the size of Texas. As much as $50 billion annually is lost to graft and crime."
Much of Africa comprises dictators and unimaginable human brutality toward women. When you include the Muslim world's honor killings of 5,000 women killed by fathers, brothers and husbands annually, you get a sick feeling in your stomach. While the world "rapes" Africa for its natural resources, its human residents suffer indescribable misery from Cape Town to Cairo. Note Egypt's internal revolution, Syria killing of over 70,000 and Libya's ongoing war, Somalia's starving people, Sudan, etc.
What about human nature in America?
In my Denver Post, another equally disturbing article appeared by Lisa Wirthman: "I felt like I was dying inside." (February 24, 2013) The rape victim said, "I was paralyzed by flashbacks, nightmares and anxiety attacks."
Domestic violence in America:
- One in four U.S. adult women is a victim of domestic violence in her lifetime. A woman in America suffers a violent attack every 15 seconds 24/7. Four million abuse cases annually.
- Three women are killed by a current or former intimate partner each day in America.
(Source: Centers for Disease Control)
In America in the 21st century in a highly educated society: rape and brutality continue without pause.
In the meantime, our country brutalized and killed countless people in Iraq in a war started by George W. Bush via the fabrication of "Weapons of Mass Destruction." David Brown, Washington Post staff writer said, "A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred."
When it comes to mechanized violence, our U.S. Military killed over 2.1 million men, women and children in Vietnam. The total deaths from the 11 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan may total over one million human beings. How can our U.S. Congress act with such arrogance and self-righteousness to continue those wars for so long with so much cost and so much death? Yet, we sweep it under the rug and out of our minds.
War on Mother Nature succeeding
While we spend so much money on the "War on Terror"; "War on Poverty"; "War on Drugs" and other such "wars", we fail dramatically. Ten years of war in Iraq did absolutely nothing whatsoever to protect the United States of America. Instead, it ravaged a sovereign society and flooded our country with tens of thousands of Muslim refugees. Same with Afghanistan!
Notwithstanding, our "War on Mother Nature" proceeds with blinding speed. We humans, in the blink of 50 years and the invention of plastic, managed to create the 100 million ton Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the size of Texas, floating 1,000 miles off San Francisco. It kills millions of marine and avian life annually. We have done nothing to stop adding to it. No deposit-return laws worldwide—no nothing.
(Unfathomable billions of pieces of plastic washing throughout the oceans, lakes, seas, rivers and streams of the world—all created by humans around the planet.) Photo by www.thewritefuture.com
"The world's navies and commercial shipping fleets make a significant contribution, throwing some 639,000 plastic containers overboard every day, along with their other litter," said ocean reporter Richard Grant. "But after a few more years of sampling ocean water in the gyre and near the mouths of Los Angeles streams, Moore concluded that 80 per cent of marine plastic was discarded on land. There are now 46,000 pieces of plastic per square kilometer of the world's oceans, killing a million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals each year."
(Endless plastic trash washes up on beaches around the world and kills wildlife by the millions.) Photo bywww.thewritefuture.com
In an Associated Press article by Verena Dobnic, "River of trash", (March 3, 2013) she reports, "Just across the East river from midtown Manhattan's shimmering skyscrapers sits one of the nation's most polluted neighborhoods, fouled by generations of industrial waste, overflow from the city's sewage system and an underground oil leak bigger than the Exxon Valdez spill. Oily, rainbow-slick water is filled with soda cans, plastic bottles, raw sewage and decaying food. Ditched vehicles are stuck in the mud. What was once a watershed is now a sewage shed. Today, the creek's bottom is lined with 15 foot thick layer of petroleum-based pollutants that scientists have dubbed "black mayonnaise."
(Wildlife eat the plastic trash that eventually kills them.) Photo by www.thewritefuture.com
With endless poisons injected into our rivers, the Mississippi River creates a 10,000 mile square dead-zone at its mouth. The Yangtze, Ganges and other great rivers create 20,000 square mile dead zones at their mouths. Yet, we humans do absolutely nothing to clean up our messes all over the planet.
I've tried for 40 years to get Peter Coors of Coors Brewing to support a 10 cent deposit return law in Colorado. Instead, his money killed our deposit-return efforts in Colorado in 1974 and 1988. Why do men and women with money and power in this country—do nothing for the good of our environment? Why do the men and women of our U.S. Congress do absolutely nothing for the good of our natural world?
What would solve so many of the aforementioned problems? Answer: first and foremost—education to create responsible citizens who care about their world, loving families, jobs, stable communities, recreation and a healthy natural world. Is it asking too much for our leaders to work for the betterment of our lives rather than endless wars, profits over humanity and destruction of planet?
In the end, with another 3.1 billion people projected to be added to this planet within the next 37 years, is there any hope for civility, care about our planet and care about our fellow human beings?
Frosty Wooldridge has bicycled across six continents – from the Arctic to the South Pole – as well as six times across the USA, coast to coast and border to border. In 2005, he bicycled from the Arctic Circle, Norway to Athens, Greece.
He presents "The Coming Population Crisis in America: and what you can do about it" to civic clubs, church groups, high schools and colleges. He works to bring about sensible world population balance at his website: www.frostywooldridge.com
Frosty Wooldridge is a regular columnist for Veracity Voice
Corporatism: A System Of Control Designed By The Monopoly Men Of The Global Elite
March 7, 2013 by Administrator · Leave a Comment
The Dow is at a record high and so are corporate profits – so why does it feel like most of the country is deeply suffering right now? Real household income is the lowest that it has been in a decade, poverty is absolutely soaring,47 million Americans are on food stamps and the middle class is being systematically destroyed. How can big corporations be doing so well while most American families are having such a hard time? Isn't their wealth supposed to "trickle down" to the rest of us? Unfortunately, that is not how the real world works. Today, most big corporations are trying to minimize the number of "expensive" American workers on their payrolls as much as they can. If the big corporation that is employing you can figure out a way to replace you with a worker in China or with a robot, it will probably do it. Corporations are in existence to maximize wealth for their shareholders, and most of the time the largest corporations are dominated by the monopoly men of the global elite. Over the decades, the politicians that have their campaigns funded by these monopoly men have rigged the game so that the big corporations are able to easily dominate everything. But this was never what those that founded this country intended. America was supposed to be a place where the power of collectivist institutions would be greatly limited, and individuals and small businesses would be free to compete in a capitalist system that would reward anyone that had a good idea and that was willing to work hard. But today, our economy is completely and totally dominated by a massively bloated federal government and by absolutely gigantic predator corporations that are greatly favored by our massively bloated federal government. Our founders tried to warn us about the dangers of allowing government, banks and corporations to accumulate too much power, but we didn't listen. Now they dominate everything, and the rest of us are fighting for table scraps.
In early America, most states had strict laws governing the size and scope of corporations. Individuals and small businesses thrived in such an environment, and the United States experienced a period of explosive economic growth. We showed the rest of the world that capitalism really works, and we eventually built the largest middle class that the world had ever seen.
But now we have replaced capitalism with something that I like to call "corporatism". In many ways, it shares a lot of characteristics with communism, and that is why nations such as communist China have embraced it so readily. Under "corporatism", monolithic predator corporations run around sucking up as much wealth and economic power as they possibly can. Most individuals and small businesses cannot compete and end up getting absorbed by the corporations. These mammoth collectivist institutions are in private hands rather than in government hands (as would be the case under a pure form of communism), but the results are pretty much the same either way. A tiny elite at the top gets almost all of the economic rewards.
There are some out there that would suggest that the answer to our problems is to move more in the direction of "socialism", but to be honest that wouldn't be the solution to anything. It would just change how the table scraps that the rest of us are getting are distributed.
If we truly wanted a return to prosperity, we need to dramatically shift the rules of the game so that they are tilted back in favor of individuals and small businesses. A much more pure form of capitalism would mean more wealth, less poverty and a more equitable distribution of the economic rewards in this country.
But it will never happen. Most of our politicians are married to the big corporations and the wealthy elitists that fund their campaigns. And most Americans are so uneducated that they believe that what we actually have today is "capitalism" and that the only alternative is to go "to the left" toward socialism.
Very few people out there are suggesting that we need to greatly reduce the power of the federal government and greatly reduce the power of the big corporations, but that is exactly what we need to do. We need to give individuals and small businesses room to breathe once again.
With each passing year, things get even worse. In fact, the founder of Subway Restaurants recently said that the environment for small businesses is so toxic in America today that he never would have been able to start Subway if he had to do it today.
For much more on how small business is being strangled to death in the United States, please see my previous article entitled "We Are Witnessing The Death Of Small Business In America".
What I want to do now is to discuss some of the results that "corporatism" is producing in America.
First of all, we continue to see incomes go down even though we live in an inflationary economy.
As Time Magazine recently reported, personal incomes took a huge nosedive during the month of January…
Data released by the Commerce Department last week showed that personal income fell 3.6% in January, the biggest decline in 20 years. The drop was even bigger when taxes and inflation are taken into account. Real personal disposable income fell by 4%, the biggest monthly drop in half a century.
But this is part of a longer term trend. Median household income in the U.S. has declined for four consecutive years, and it is now significantly lower than it was all the way back in 2001…
Real median US household income — that's "real," as in "adjusted for inflation" — was $50,054 in 2011, the most recent data available from the US Census Bureau. That's 8% lower than the 2007 peak of $54,489.
Meanwhile, big corporations are absolutely raking in the cash. The following is from a recent New York Times article…
"So far in this recovery, corporations have captured an unusually high share of the income gains," said Ethan Harris, co-head of global economics at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. "The U.S. corporate sector is in a lot better health than the overall economy. And until we get a full recovery in the labor market, this will persist."
The result has been a golden age for corporate profits, especially among multinational giants that are also benefiting from faster growth in emerging economies like China and India.
Today, corporate profits as a percentage of U.S. GDP are at an all-time high, but wages as a percentage of U.S. GDP are near an all-time low.
Just check out the following chart. Corporate profits have absolutely exploded over the past decade…
Meanwhile, wages as a percentage of GDP continue to fall rapidly…
Most of the jobs being created in America today are "low wage" jobs. Tens of millions of Americans are working as hard as they can only to find that they can barely put food on the table and provide a roof over the heads of their children. The ranks of the "working poor" are exploding and the middle class continues to shrink.
Many of you that are reading this article are members of the working poor. You know what it is like to stare up at your ceiling at night wondering how you are going to pay the bills next month.
Today, most Americans are living very close to the edge financially. A recent article by NBC News staff writer Allison Linn shared some of their stories. The following is one example…
Crystal Dupont knows what it's like to try to live on the federal minimum wage.
Dupont has no health insurance, so she hasn't seen a doctor in two years. She's behind on her car payments and has taken out pawn shop and payday loans to cover other monthly expenses. She eats beans and oatmeal when her food budget gets low.
When she got her tax refund recently, she used the money to get ahead on her light bill.
"I try to live within my means, but sometimes you just can't," said Dupont, 25. The Houston resident works 30 to 40 hours a week taking customer service calls, earning between $7.25 and $8 an hour. That came to about $15,000 last year.
It's a wage she's lived on for a while now, but just barely.
Sadly, the number of Americans that are "just barely" surviving continues to grow.
But if corporate profits are soaring to unprecedented heights, then who is getting all of those rewards?
The monopoly men of the global elite are.
Just check out the following video which does a great job of illustrating how corporatism has systematically funneled all of the economic rewards in our system to the very top…
Once again, I want to make it very clear that I am not advocating socialism as the answer in any way, shape or form. Socialism takes away the incentive to create wealth and it almost always results in almost all of the economic rewards going to a very tiny elite anyway.
As I said earlier, what we need is a return to a much more pure form of capitalism, but this is so foreign to the way that most people think that most people will not be able to grasp this.
It certainly would be possible to greatly reduce the power of the federal government and greatly reduce the power of the big corporations at the same time, but this is so "outside the box" for most people that they cannot even conceive of doing such a thing.
We need to create an environment where individuals and small businesses can thrive once again. But instead, most of us are content to continue "playing the game" and getting enslaved in even more debt.
For example, according to CNBC, auto loans just continue to get larger and continue to get stretched out for longer periods of time…
American car buyers, attracted by new models and cheap financing, are taking out bigger auto loans and stretching out the terms of those loans to a new record length.
New analysis from Experian Automotive shows the average new car loan in the fourth quarter of last year was $26,691 and stretched out over an average of 65 months. The length of the average loan is one month longer than the previous record set in the third quarter of last year.
What will they think of next?
Will we eventually have auto loans that get paid off over 10 years?
By the way, that is another way that the monopoly men of the global elite get all of our money. They enslave us to debt, and we spend year after year of our lives slaving away to make them even wealthier.
They are very smart. There is a reason why they have 32 TRILLION dollars stashed away in offshore tax havens. They know how to play the game, and they are very happy that most of the rest of us are asleep.
Fortunately, it appears that an increasing number of Americans are waking up.
For example, I wanted to share with you all an excerpt from a comment that one of my readers left on one of my recent articles…
In the past year, I've been slowly but surely waking up to the nonsense happening around me. There's so many things I need to simply get off my chest, so excuse the length of this post. Recently in the past two years, I've gotten married and have been medically discharged from the Marines after being injured in Afghanistan. Being 23 years old and married, my goal is secure a secure a future for my family, but with the way things are going, I'm not exactly sure how much of a future we're going to have in 50 years. I can't explain it, but I've felt this need to change my attitude and motivations lately.
I started by turning off the garbage music, television and other mindless entertainment that seems to plague my generation. It was easier than it looked – I don't miss most of it really. The next order of business was to educate myself on world news, so that's what I did. Every day, like clockwork, I check all major mainstream news feeds (NBC, Fox, Abc, CNN, Reuters, BBC, etc.) as well as not-so-mainstream news sites – yours being one of them. It's incredible how fast our world changes and the manner in which it changes. The local 10 o'clock doesn't show anything but local news, sports, weather, lottery #'s and whatever else they decide to throw in. It's a night and day difference once you start to actually research and see what's happening all over the world. Look at the number of comments about a news story on the economy and then look at a celebrity story on the "news"….People are so blind, it truly amazes me. My friends, family and classmates at college seem to be under a spell of some sort. They're distracted – and it's contagious. Nobody I know gives a damn about global affairs/economics. They're more interested in the newest iPhone, cars, shows, movies, and just about anything else you can think of. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with these things, but my friends/family/peers are CONSUMED by these distractions. When the election was taking place in 2012, every Tom, Dick and Harry on Facebook had an opinion and rant. After the circus ended however, everyone simply went back to posting about parties, kittens, Farmville etc. It's a huge joke. For me, it's little terrifying and exciting to see history unfolding in front of our eyes. This country of ours is going through big changes now that will most certainly affect our future, so I strive to adapt and prepare myself and my family. I'm looking at buying my first home this summer. Right now I live in an apartment right outside Philly and spend more money on rent than most pay for a mortgage. I need a house with a little land to raise chickens, grow fruits/vegetables, store canned food – and to be as independent from the system as I can. For my job, I wanted a skill/trade that people would always need, so I picked the funeral business. On the side, I work in construction and have been learning everything there is to know about building with my own two hands. I feel as though these old forgotten skills are going to be handy in a short while.
Hopefully we can get a lot more people to wake up and start breaking out of "the matrix" of control that is all around us.
Right now, the system is designed to continually funnel more money and more power to the very top of the pyramid. The global elite are becoming more dominant with each passing day. Unless something dramatic happens, at some point the American people will become so powerless that they won't be able to do anything about it even if they wanted to.
The idea of a very tiny elite completely dominating all the rest of us goes against everything that America is supposed to stand for. In the end, it will result in absolute tyranny if it is not stopped.
Source: The Economic Collapse
3 Last Minute Survival Scenarios
March 3, 2013 by Administrator · Leave a Comment
We know that waiting till the last second is not a good idea, but for some it is the only option. So we have taken three possible average scenarios and broken them down for you. All scenarios will include a family of 4 – Mom, Dad and two kids under high school age – living in the suburbs of a megaplex city…
Scenario #1
You have a few cases of water
You have some freeze-dried storage food, maybe a 30 day supply.
You have some sleeping bags and some basic camping supplies.
You have a general idea of the area to which you want to go.
You think maybe something might happen in which case you could need to get your family out of the city.
All supplies are in the garage, ready to load into your minivan should the need arise.
You live in a suburban area of a mexaplex city – first and foremost, where the hell are you going to go? If you are starting out with only a general idea of where to go, you are planning to fail. Knowing exactly where you are going and a little preparation are very much in order. Even if your plan is to squat on BLM land, National Forest Service land or private land, just having a general idea of where you are going is dangerous. You, see, in your suburb of a megaplex area, how many other people have the same general idea? Of those of like mind, most likely that's a very high percentage. So have something better than a general idea. Know exactly where you are going and if it's remote enough, you can hide supplies (not what you must have for survival, but that which you would like to have with you there) in the trees. You just need a cammo cargo net and some rope. Hoist it high into a tree, hidden by the foliage.
Here is an idea I've been discussing with people lately. Call it "Free Advice": If you have no where to go then the National Forrest my be your best bet. There are several very remote FREE National Forrest camp grounds, (http://www.forestcamping.com/dow/list/nflist.htm) that you can take advantage of. There is one around here (20 miles away) that is very remote and almost no one comes around unless its elk season (Sept. thru Dec.). So before you decide on a campground, check out what dates are the hunting season. Some National Forrest campgrounds have water, some have toilet dumps, most have toilets, some have showers… I have even seen a laundrette at one, and almost no one ever using it. The occasional park ranger will pass by. The Free campground space can by used for 14 consecutive days at a time. Some park rangers interpret this to mean that you must leave the park others interpret it that you have to move to another space in the same campground every 14 days. Either way, if you had to leave the park for one day, only to return the next day, that works, too.
Next to consider is, what would prompt your leaving? Most everyone completely ignores this one because they believe that when the time comes, they'll "just know". What is needed is a clear-cut definition of what event would prompt your bugging out. Even if you jump the gun and get to your survival location too soon, you can always go back to suburbia if you feel the coast is still clear. Some possible guidelines would be: war in Syria or Iran, a banking holiday, if you see military troops in your town setting up check points.
Back in the day there was an old hippie bumper sticker that said, "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised". It is also true that CNNFOXABCNBCCBSMSNBC et al will NOT have a news flash that says "Marshall law will be declared in 30 minutes, so if you're going to boogie, do it now!" Just remember, if you wait until there is clear unambiguous proof that it's time to go, you just might find yourself in a traffic jam and no further.
For transportation, a minivan is not going to get you any place safe enough. Consider getting something more robust, such as an older pick up truck (pre-95 is best – simple electronics, less susceptible to EMP and solar flares) with an extend-a-cab or club-cab for the kids. The RV market has collapsed. Prices have never been lower on used RVs of all types.
With a pickup truck you could get a cab-over camper quite inexpensively. These slip into the cargo area of a pick up. Most sleep 4 or more, have a toilet, shower, water storage tank, oven, range, sink, dining area, a closet and cabinet space. With the economy the way it is, watching craigslist you will find great bargains. Most people are paying in the neighborhood of $500 for an older but still serviceable cab-over camper. If a pick up truck is just not something you can do, then you may want to consider a Coleman-type pop-up camper, which can be towed behind even some compact cars with ease (also about $500 on craigslist). You can use either type of camper to store everything you will need to take with you to your bug-out location, and you'll be able to just hook up and go when it's time, no need to think about what to bring. It's the ultimate "bug-out-bag". You can have hundreds of pounds of food and water and supplies in it, without having to crowd the supplies and the family into the minivan.
If the only water you have is a couple of cases, that won't do it. A case of water is about 2-1/2 gallons of water on average. How many cases can you carry? If you have a cab-over or pop-up camper, both have a fresh water tank to store in the area of 150-200 gallons of water. Check and see if the place you have chosen for your bug-out has any access to water – lake, pond, stream, river, pump, well, etc. The average person, under Spartan conditions, can just get by on one gallon per day – 2 quarts to drink and a couple of quarts for cooking and hygiene. Consider the water you'll need if your food is dehydrated or freeze-dried! So for 4 of you, with a 200 gallon water tank, you would have enough for about 50 days.
If all you have is freeze-dried or dehydrated items for food, you will want to have some items to supplement that, so that you don't experience appetite fatigue. We would suggest some of the following be added to your supplies for long-term evacuation:
Cocoa Powder
Cooking Oil
Dried Fruits
Baking Soda
Plus any family favorites, just to break the monotony.
Also, throw into your packing some board games, deck of cards, books, etc., toilet paper and RV toilet sanitizer (blue stuff). If you have extra jeans, socks, shirts, sneakers, shoes/boots – the clothing you bring can be used outdoors with ease – as well as toiletries should also be packed. Don't forget to include a first aid kit. For some of you it will be a military medic/field surgical kit, for others it will be some antiseptic, gauze and tape, depending on your skill level.
Scenario #2
You (and your family) are going to stay in your suburban home.
You have 6 cases of water
You have 6 cases of Dinty Moore Beef Stew and a few miscellaneous canned goods.
You have a shotgun
You don't want to tell your wife and kids what may be coming up in the near future because it will rock their world. Besides, "they'll think I'm nuts."
In this scenario, there is no need to have a bug-out time definition. But you still need to know what to look for so that you know when to hunker down. So, again, some pre-defined conditions bear strong consideration. What to do, when such and such a thing happens, including a rendezvous place for children to meet you for picking up.
Food will be your biggest concern. Let's first deal with the "having". You'll need to have food. Basically, nothing different than the previous scenario, although not having to consider transportation, you can store more of it. More importantly, you'll need to be covert. Being in the suburbs means being around lots of people. Lots of hungry people. The smell of cooking can attract predators – of all kinds: hungry neighborhood dogs and cats going feral, not to mention your neighbors, themselves, who undoubtedly are hungry. The smell of your cooking anything is going to bring people either knocking on or breaking down your door. What would you do if your kids hadn't eaten in a week and you smelled food?
Cooking hot food in the suburban environment could garner you a lot of negative attention. For these reasons, ready to eat foods (jerky, dried fruits and vegetables, cookies and crackers) are most desirable. For some of you that might be military MREs. We don't recommend them as a steady diet – too much GMO and MSG to name a few – but in this case they may be useful against hunger while maintaining a low profile.
The power that pumps water to your house may well be disabled. That means that you will not have water coming from your faucet, nor to your toilet for flushing. The -Mart stores sell 5 gallon water bottles (like those used in water coolers) for about $5 each. Get yourself as many as you can, fill them and cover them up where you have your storage items. Refer to the above scenario for daily requirements. Also, fill all your sinks and bathtubs with water while you still have power. Place a garbage bag over the sinks and bathtubs to keep the dust out of the water. Often times forgotten, your water heater has a spigot at the bottom of it, from which you can access the water in there as well – usually anywhere from 20-40 gallons of additional, usable water.
Some rules about toilet water usage… "If it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down." Save the water from washing up (gray water) to use – as little as possible – to do the flushing. Pour it into the bowl until the "brown goes down". If you want to pour your gray water into your toilet tank, add rocks (too large to get into the flapper hole) or bricks into the tank so that they take up some of the unnecessary water space.
Now, for these scenarios, here is a lesson in "How Not to Be Seen" (with a tip of the hat to Monty Python). For evacuation scenarios, if you are in a very secluded part of say, the National Forest or private land, it's a safe bet that if you encounter other people who are not part of your group, you will be encountering trouble. So my advice would be, "if people move in, move out" and choose another camping sight.
Avoid having large, smoky fires that would attract others. Do most of your fireside cooking during the day and avoid night time fires completely. Also, avoid loud talking, loud music, etc. Don't think that because you can't see anyone around you, it's okay to play your Lead Zeppelin CDs at 800 decibels and no one would notice. You would be surprised how far sound travels in the wilderness, without car noises, people noises, etc., drowning it out.
For Suburban How not to be seen, use no night time lights, even if you have plenty of candles and flashlights. If you do need to illuminate something, do it discretely and for a short time, preferably in a room that has few windows. It's a good idea to put heavy drapes on your windows also, as long as there are no gaps. Avoid going outside and therefore being noticed. If you have a garage, put your car into it. A car parked outside lets others know there are people inside – not what you want to do. The car battery can be used as a 12 volt power source if needed, and you can hook up a 110 AC power inverter to use as a house current power source.
"I don't want to tell the wife and kids what may be coming up in the future because I don't want to shake their world." Better to have them prepared than having to follow your instructions while they are in a panic. Like in the movie Knowing, when the little girl's mother panics, grabs the kids and drives madly toward a cave she knows (so does everyone else), it's not a good situation. It doesn't end well. Even if your family thinks you are a tin-foil-hat-wearing loon, if you have at least told them in advance what the trigger point would be, when that point arrives it will be that much less of a shock and they will be apt to be much more on board when the time comes. At some point they'll have to face it anyway. Better they be prepared than blissfully ignorant until that point.
Scenario #3
You (and your family) are already living at your survival retreat.
You are off the grid, self-sufficient and lovin' the life!
When TSHTF, it will just be another day.
Way to go!
Source: SurvivingSurvivalism.com