James P. Tucker, Jr.
American Free Press
April 9, 2010
The Bilderberg group will conduct its annual meeting June 3-6 in Sitges, Spain (a small, exclusive resort town about 20 miles from Barcelona) behind a wall of armed guards who will seal off the resort in a futile attempt to keep the event secret.
Bilderberg’s meeting will follow that of its brother group, the Trilateral Commission, which will gather at the Four Seasons Resort in Dublin, Ireland May 6-10. Leaders of Bilderberg also attend the Trilateralists’ meeting to map their common agenda. About 300 attend Trilateral Commission meetings, which are conducted behind sealed-off, guarded floors of their hotel. About 100 will attend Bilderberg, which seals off the entire resort behind platoons of uniformed police and private security.
Bilderberg hopes to keep the global recession going for at least a year, according to an international financial consultant who deals personally with many of them. This is because, among several reasons, Bilderberg still hopes to create a global “treasury department” under the United Nations. Bilderberg first undertook this mission at its meeting last spring in Greece, but the effort was blocked by nationalists in Europe and the United States. “Nationalists” (a dirty word in Bilderberg) objected to surrendering sovereignty to the UN.
AFP’s source pointed to the words of French President Nicolas Sarkozy in a March 29 speech at notoriously left-wing Columbia University, where he said, “We should invent a new global monetary order.”
He was clearly referring to the recently proposed world “treasury department.”
Bilderberg’s ultimate goal remains unchanged: Turn the UN into a world government with “nation-states” becoming merely geographic references. The European Union is to become a single political entity, followed by the “American Union” and, finally, the “Asian-Pacific Union.” The “American Union” is to include the entire Western Hemisphere, including Cuba and other offshore islands.
Like the EU, the “AU” will have a legislature, executive commission and head of state which can impose laws on member nations. There is to be an EU-like common currency, removing each member state’s symbol of sovereignty. The “Asian-Pacific Union,” or “APU,” is to follow a similar path.
But growing public awareness of the evil agenda of Bilderberg and the Trilateralists has emerged as a significant barrier. For decades, until 1975 when The Spotlight emerged, the blackout was 100 percent complete worldwide. (The Spotlight is AFP’s lineal ancestor.)
Today, in Europe, major metropolitan newspapers and broadcast outlets give both groups heavy, front-page attention. In the United States, independent newspapers and broadcast stations give Bilderberg extensive coverage.
But the major newspapers and network broadcasters maintain a complete blackout in the United States. That’s because their executives have attended these meetings on lifetime promises of secrecy. The hypocritical owners of The Washington Post have attended since 1954. The Post’s chairman, Donald Graham, and associate editor, Jimmy Lee Hoagland, have attended each meeting for years.
But as public awareness grows, so does patriotic resistance. There is strong resistance throughout Europe to increasing the powers of the EU at the cost of national sovereignty. In the United States, there is growing resistance to the proposed North American Free Trade Agreement, which would eliminate borders between the United States, Mexico and Canada. NAFTA is to expand, under Bilderberg-Trilateral plans, to include the entire hemisphere and evolve into the “American Union.”
In the 1990s, Bilderberg was confident that the “American Union” would be established by the year 2000. A decade later, they are still fighting—and losing— the battle.
Source: AFP
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Bilderberg To Prolong Global Financial Recession For Another Year
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Friday, April 9, 2010
The Bilderberg Group will meet this year in Spain and continue to advance their agenda for world economic governance while agreeing to prolong the global financial recession for another year, according to Bilderberg sleuth Jim Tucker, who has discovered through his routinely accurate inside sources that the conference will take place from June 3-6.
Bilderberg sleuths were correct in predicting that this year’s meeting would take place in western Europe, but were wrong in pinpointing the UK as the likeliest location. The 2010 conference will take place in a coastal resort called Sitges, which is about 20 miles from Barcelona.
Bilderberg have now been absent from the UK for the longest time in their history. Even if Bilderberg chooses the UK as their 2011 destination, 13 years will have passed since their 1998 conference in Scotland, the longest gap between UK conferences since the group’s founding in 1954. As we highlighted yesterday, Bilderberg’s decision to avoid the UK is undoubtedly related to increased awareness of the group and the expectation that they would receive unwanted press attention as well as sizeable demonstrations if they held the meeting in the British Isles.
Bilderberg last met in Spain in 1989 when they held their annual conference on the Spanish island of La Toja.
This year’s confab will be similarly secluded, with Bilderberg’s increasing army of police and private security guards on hand to create a lock down of the entire resort.
Bilderberg will have a wide choice of hotels from which to host their secretive get-together, meaning the precise location of the conference will be harder than ever to pin down. The area is known for having a plethora of high standard hotels and is a popular tourist resort.
The most likely candidate however would appear to be the Hotel Dolce Sitges (pictured top), a 5 star luxury resort adjacent to a prestigious golf club. Forming the consensus which sets the agenda for global policy behind closed doors can be stressful, which is why Bilderbergers like to interrupt their scheming with the odd round of golf.
“Business facilities include 11 meeting rooms, 25 breakout rooms, 2 boardrooms, and a spacious amphitheatre accommodating up to 60 guests. All of the venues are equipped with the latest audiovisual technologies and ideal for holding congresses, cocktails, weddings and any other kind of event for up to 550 guests,” states the promotional text for the hotel, suggesting it would be ideal for the Bilderbergers.
The Hotel Dolce Sitges has no rooms available from June 2 to June 6, strongly indicating that this is when the resort will be locked down for the arrival of Bilderberg elitists.
The resort appears to be suitably secluded and away from the crowded tourist areas, making it perfect for Bilderberg’s needs. In addition, attempting to book a room from June 3-6 via the hotel’s website reveals that no rooms are available from June 2 to June 6, strongly indicating that this is when the resort will be locked down for Bilderberg.
However, Bilderberg has been known to leak false information about where the group is staying, so we cannot confirm the exact location until Jim Tucker or Daniel Estulin pinpoint the precise location via their inside sources, who have proven to be habitually accurate.
State of the art conference facilities and 5 star luxury suggest the Hotel Dolce Sitges may be the preferred location for this year’s Bilderberg meeting.
This year’s confab will focus around prolonging the global financial recession and creating more economic woe in order to provide the pretext for more regulation in pursuit of world economic governance, according to Jim Tucker’s sources.
“Bilderberg hopes to keep the global recession going for at least a year, according to an international financial consultant who deals personally with many of them. This is because, among several reasons, Bilderberg still hopes to create a global “treasury department” under the United Nations. Bilderberg first undertook this mission at its meeting last spring in Greece, but the effort was blocked by nationalists in Europe and the United States. “Nationalists” (a dirty word in Bilderberg) objected to surrendering sovereignty to the UN,” writes Tucker.
Tucker’s source highlighted a recent speech by French President Nicolas Sarkozy in which he called for a “new global monetary order.” As we have highlighted, such rhetoric has been abundant over the past year, with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and EU President Herman Van Rompuy repeatedly echoing similar ideas.
As Bilderberg investigator Daniel Estulin revealed during last year’s Bilderberg meeting in Greece, elitists were planning to paint a false picture of economic recovery in order to sucker investors into ploughing their money back into the stock market, which is exactly what has happened with the Dow soaring back to just below the 11,000 level.
Estulin correctly predicted the housing crash and the 2008 financial meltdown as a result of what his sources inside Bilderberg told him the elite were planning based on what was said at their 2006 meeting in Canada and the 2007 conference in Turkey.
“Bilderberg’s ultimate goal remains unchanged,” writes Tucker. “Turn the UN into a world government with “nation-states” becoming merely geographic references. The European Union is to become a single political entity, followed by the “American Union” and, finally, the “Asian-Pacific Union.” The “American Union” is to include the entire Western Hemisphere, including Cuba and other offshore islands.”
Source: Prison Planet.com
What do your IRS taxes really pay for?
JT Coyoté
Infowars.com
April 9, 2010
Most taxpayers have no idea what their federal income taxes actually provide. When I ask folks if they know where their IRS check goes I get answers from, “…it pays for the operation of the Federal Government.” to, “… hummm, I really don’t know.” Actually both answers are partially true. Why were the IRS and the Federal Reserve created by the same act of Congress — what is their relationship to the Federal Government?
About a year ago, I made the assertion that the Federal Reserve through the IRS has the power to tax directly by congressional action and indirectly by inflation. It is very easy to see when you understand the “not quite governmental, not quite private” structure of the Federal Reserve System and its taxing arm the IRS.
Here is how it works. Congress passes a law, the House appropriates the funds. The Federal Treasury Department prints the notes for the appropriation. Then the Federal Reserve purchases these notes/paper at the cost of printing, about 4 cents note. A $1bill, $100 bill, or $1000 bond, costs the same 4 cents. The Federal Reserve then loans this money back to the Federal Government at interest based on face value. This interest rate may fluctuate. The cash is then distributed to the regional Federal Reserve banks from which the appropriations are disseminated as per the Congressional mandate.
Now, as the interest climbs with each appropriation, this debt requires payment your taxes – and occasionally the taxes must be increased to keep up with the “can never be paid off by design, debt”. The Federal Reserve profits greatly on this value created out of thin air paid by IRS collected taxes, and OUR REAL ASSET collateral on loans that go into foreclosure/confiscation.
Periodically, the Federal Reserve will ask Congress for an increase in money supply. This indirectly taxes folks by pumping cash into the economy which decreases the buying power of the dollar. This makes it seem as though prices have risen – not the case, the money added causes the value of the dollar to drop. This is the inflation tax. A tax that causes big problems for people with savings or on fixed incomes. The frightening thing is, the FED-IRS has NEVER had it’s books opened to Congressional scrutiny.
On 2/26/09, Representative Ron Paul rose before the House to introduce his “Federal Reserve Transparency Act” HR-1207. In his speech, he said…
“…Throughout its nearly 100-year history, the Federal Reserve has presided over the near-complete destruction of the United States dollar. Since 1913 the dollar has lost over 95% of its purchasing power, aided and abetted by the Federal Reserve’s loose monetary policy. How long will we as a Congress stand idly by while hard-working Americans see their savings eaten away by inflation? [...] Whenever you question the Fed about the strength of the dollar, they will refer you to the Treasury, and vice versa. The Federal Reserve has, on the one hand, many of the privileges of government agencies, while retaining benefits of private organizations, such as being insulated from Freedom of Information Act requests. [...] The Federal Reserve can enter into agreements with foreign central banks and foreign governments, and the GAO is prohibited from auditing or even seeing these agreements. Why should a government-established agency, whose police force has federal law enforcement powers, and whose notes have legal tender status in this country, be allowed to enter into agreements with foreign powers and foreign banking institutions with no oversight?”
In this unique Federal Reserve/Federal Government relationship the IRS works as the “Taxing Arm For The FED” – NOT the Federal Government which is prohibited from direct taxing at Article 1 section 9 clause 4 of the Constitution! Now you know. Those sneaky-rascal bankers anyway.
Source: infowars.com
Soros: It’s Not Easy Being God
Joy Tiz
Canada Free Press
April 9, 2010
I carried some rather potent messianic fantasies with me from childhood, which I felt I had to control otherwise they might get me into trouble. -George Soros
Obama’s boss, George Soros discovered his own narcissism at an early age. Robert Slater, in his unauthorized biography of Soros—Soros, The Life, Times & Trading Secrets of the World’s Greatest Investor:
“Yet, what is one to make of a child who believed he was God?”
Slater posits that such grandiose thoughts in childhood, if they were the “fleeting dreams of a small child” might be understandable if Soros had given any indication as an adult that he had outgrown his delusions.
“Yet, as an adult, he offered no sign, no dismissive gesture, no footnote signifying that he no longer clung to such wild convictions, but only the suggestion of how difficult it was for someone to believe himself a deity.” (Pg. 15).
In other words, Soros figured out early on that his messiah complex wasn’t going to be well received in the real world and he should try to tone it down a bit.
He’s having mixed results with that.
There are those who still cling doggedly to the fabrication that Soros is some kind of “philanthropist” despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The compassionate philanthropist has been pushing for human euthanasia for years.
The august altruist has long believed we made much too big of a fuss about 9/11, an event which he found inspiring: “Hijacking fully fueled airliners and using them as suicide bombs was an audacious idea, and its execution could not have been more spectacular.” (George Soros, “The Bubble Of American Supremacy,” The Atlantic Monthly, 12/03)
Read entire article: http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/21748
America: The Grim Truth
Lance Freeman
Information Clearing House
April 9, 2010
You have the worst quality of life in the developed world – by a wide margin.
If you had any idea of how people really lived in Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and many parts of Asia, you’d be rioting in the streets calling for a better life. In fact, the average Australian or Singaporean taxi driver has a much better standard of living than the typical American white-collar worker.
I know this because I am an American, and I escaped from the prison you call home.
I have lived all around the world, in wealthy countries and poor ones, and there is only one country I would never consider living in again: The United States of America. The mere thought of it fills me with dread.
Consider this: you are the only people in the developed world without a single-payer health system. Everyone in Western Europe, Japan, Canada, Australia, Singapore and New Zealand has a single-payer system. If they get sick, they can devote all their energies to getting well. If you get sick, you have to battle two things at once: your illness and the fear of financial ruin. Millions of Americans go bankrupt every year due to medical bills, and tens of thousands die each year because they have no insurance or insufficient insurance. And don’t believe for a second that rot about America having the world’s best medical care or the shortest waiting lists: I’ve been to hospitals in Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Singapore, and Thailand, and every one was better than the “good” hospital I used to go to back home. The waits were shorter, the facilities more comfortable, and the doctors just as good.
This is ironic, because you need a good health system more than anyone else in the world. Why? Because your lifestyle is almost designed to make you sick.
Let’s start with your diet: Much of the beef you eat has been exposed to fecal matter in processing. Your chicken is contaminated with salmonella. Your stock animals and poultry are pumped full of growth hormones and antibiotics. In most other countries, the government would act to protect consumers from this sort of thing; in the United States, the government is bought off by industry to prevent any effective regulations or inspections. In a few years, the majority of all the produce for sale in the United States will be from genetically modified crops, thanks to the cozy relationship between Monsanto Corporation and the United States government. Worse still, due to the vast quantities of high-fructose corn syrup Americans consume, fully one-third of children born in the United States today will be diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes at some point in their lives.
Of course, it’s not just the food that’s killing you, it’s the drugs. If you show any sign of life when you’re young, they’ll put you on Ritalin. Then, when you get old enough to take a good look around, you’ll get depressed, so they’ll give you Prozac. If you’re a man, this will render you chemically impotent, so you’ll need Viagra to get it up. Meanwhile, your steady diet of trans-fat-laden food is guaranteed to give you high cholesterol, so you’ll get a prescription for Lipitor. Finally, at the end of the day, you’ll lay awake at night worrying about losing your health plan, so you’ll need Lunesta to go to sleep.
With a diet guaranteed to make you sick and a health system designed to make sure you stay that way, what you really need is a long vacation somewhere. Unfortunately, you probably can’t take one. I’ll let you in on little secret: if you go to the beaches of Thailand, the mountains of Nepal, or the coral reefs of Australia, you’ll probably be the only American in sight. And you’ll be surrounded crowds of happy Germans, French, Italians, Israelis, Scandinavians and wealthy Asians. Why? Because they’re paid well enough to afford to visit these places AND they can take vacations long enough to do so. Even if you could scrape together enough money to go to one of these incredible places, by the time you recovered from your jetlag, it would time to get on a plane and rush back to your job.
If you think I’m making this up, check the stats on average annual vacation days by country:
Finland: 44
Italy: 42
France: 39
Germany: 35
UK: 25
Japan: 18
USA: 12
The fact is, they work you like dogs in the United States. This should come as no surprise: the United States never got away from the plantation/sweat shop labor model and any real labor movement was brutally suppressed. Unless you happen to be a member of the ownership class, your options are pretty much limited to barely surviving on service-sector wages or playing musical chairs for a spot in a cubicle (a spot that will be outsourced to India next week anyway). The very best you can hope for is to get a professional degree and then milk the system for a slice of the middle-class pie. And even those who claw their way into the middle class are but one illness or job loss away from poverty. Your jobs aren’t secure. Your company has no loyalty to you. They’ll play you off against your coworkers for as long as it suits them, then they’ll get rid of you.
Of course, you don’t have any choice in the matter: the system is designed this way. In most countries in the developed world, higher education is either free or heavily subsidized; in the United States, a university degree can set you back over US$100,000. Thus, you enter the working world with a crushing debt. Forget about taking a year off to travel the world and find yourself – you’ve got to start working or watch your credit rating plummet.
If you’re “lucky,” you might even land a job good enough to qualify you for a home loan. And then you’ll spend half your working life just paying the interest on the loan – welcome to the world of American debt slavery. America has the illusion of great wealth because there’s a lot of “stuff” around, but who really owns it? In real terms, the average American is poorer than the poorest ghetto dweller in Manila, because at least they have no debts. If they want to pack up and leave, they can; if you want to leave, you can’t, because you’ve got debts to pay.
All this begs the question: Why would anyone put up with this? Ask any American and you’ll get the same answer: because America is the freest country on earth. If you believe this, I’ve got some more bad news for you: America is actually among the least free countries on earth. Your piss is tested, your emails and phone calls are monitored, your medical records are gathered, and you are never more than one stray comment away from writhing on the ground with two Taser prongs in your ass.
And that’s just physical freedom. Mentally, you are truly imprisoned. You don’t even know the degree to which you are tormented by fears of medical bankruptcy, job loss, homelessness and violent crime because you’ve never lived in a country where there is no need to worry about such things.
But it goes much deeper than mere surveillance and anxiety. The fact is, you are not free because your country has been taken over and occupied by another government. Fully 70% of your tax dollars go to the Pentagon, and the Pentagon is the real government of the United States. You are required under pain of death to pay taxes to this occupying government. If you’re from the less fortunate classes, you are also required to serve and die in their endless wars, or send your sons and daughters to do so. You have no choice in the matter: there is a socio-economic draft system in the United States that provides a steady stream of cannon fodder for the military.
If you call a life of surveillance, anxiety and ceaseless toil in the service of a government you didn’t elect “freedom,” then you and I have a very different idea of what that word means.
If there was some chance that the country could be changed, there might be reason for hope. But can you honestly look around and conclude that anything is going to change? Where would the change come from? The people? Take a good look at your compatriots: the working class in the United States has been brutally propagandized by jackals like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. Members of the working class have been taught to lick the boots of their masters and then bend over for another kick in the ass. They’ve got these people so well trained that they’ll take up arms against the other half of the working class as soon as their masters give the word.
If the people cannot make a change, how about the media? Not a chance. From Fox News to the New York Times, the mass media in the United States is nothing but the public relations wing of the corporatocracy, primarily the military industrial complex. At least the citizens of the former Soviet Union knew that their news was bullshit. In America, you grow up thinking you’ve got a free media, which makes the propaganda doubly effective. If you don’t think American media is mere corporate propaganda, ask yourself the following question: have you ever heard a major American news outlet suggest that the country could fund a single-payer health system by cutting military spending?
If change can’t come from the people or the media, the only other potential source of change would be the politicians. Unfortunately, the American political process is among the most corrupt in the world. In every country on earth, one expects politicians to take bribes from the rich. But this generally happens in secret, behind the closed doors of their elite clubs. In the United States, this sort of political corruption is done in broad daylight, as part of legal, accepted, standard operating procedure. In the United States, they merely call these bribes campaign donations, political action committees and lobbyists. One can no more expect the politicians to change this system than one can expect a man to take an axe and chop his own legs out from underneath him.
No, the United States of America is not going to change for the better. The only change will be for the worse. And when I say worse, I mean much worse. As we speak, the economic system that sustained the country during the post-war years is collapsing. The United States maxed out its “credit card” sometime in 2008 and now its lenders, starting with China, are in the process of laying the foundations for a new monetary system to replace the Anglo-American “petro-dollar” system. As soon as there is a viable alternative to the US dollar, the greenback will sink like a stone.
While the United States was running up crushing levels of debt, it was also busy shipping its manufacturing jobs and white-collar jobs overseas, and letting its infrastructure fall to pieces. Meanwhile, Asian and European countries were investing in education, infrastructure and raw materials. Even if the United States tried to rebuild a real economy (as opposed to a service/financial economy) do think American workers would ever be able to compete with the workers of China or Europe? Have you ever seen a Japanese or German factory? Have you ever met a Singaporean or Chinese worker?
There are only two possible futures facing the United States, and neither one is pretty. The best case is a slow but orderly decline – essentially a continuation of what’s been happening for the last two decades. Wages will drop, unemployment will rise, Medicare and Social Security benefits will be slashed, the currency will decline in value, and the disparity of wealth will spiral out of control until the United States starts to resemble Mexico or the Philippines – tiny islands of wealth surrounded by great poverty (the country is already halfway there).
Equally likely is a sudden collapse, perhaps brought about by a rapid flight from the US dollar by creditor nations like China, Japan, Korea and the OPEC nations. A related possibility would be a default by the United States government on its vast debt. One look at the financial balance sheet of the US government should convince you how likely this is: governmental spending is skyrocketing and tax receipts are plummeting – something has to give. If either of these scenarios plays out, the resulting depression will make the present recession look like a walk in the park.
Whether the collapse is gradual or gut-wrenchingly sudden, the results will be chaos, civil strife and fascism. Let’s face it: the United States is like the former Yugoslavia – a collection of mutually antagonistic cultures united in name only. You’ve got your own version of the Taliban: right-wing Christian fundamentalists who actively loathe the idea of secular Constitutional government. You’ve got a vast intellectual underclass that has spent the last few decades soaking up Fox News and talk radio propaganda, eager to blame the collapse on Democrats, gays and immigrants. You’ve got a ruthless ownership class that will use all the means at its disposal to protect its wealth from the starving masses.
On top of all that you’ve got vast factory farms, sprawling suburbs and a truck-based shipping system, all of it entirely dependent on oil that is about to become completely unaffordable. And you’ve got guns. Lots of guns. In short: the United States is about to become a very unwholesome place to be.
Right now, the government is building fences and walls along its northern and southern borders. Right now, the government is working on a national ID system (soon to be fitted with biometric features). Right now, the government is building a surveillance state so extensive that they will be able to follow your every move, online, in the street and across borders. If you think this is just to protect you from “terrorists,” then you’re sadly mistaken. Once the shit really hits the fan, do you really think you’ll just be able to jump into the old station wagon, drive across the Canadian border and spend the rest of your days fishing and drinking Molson? No, the government is going to lock the place down. They don’t want their tax base escaping. They don’t want their “recruits” escaping. They don’t want YOU escaping.
I am not writing this to scare you. I write this to you as a friend. If you are able to read and understand what I’ve written here, then you are a member of a small minority in the United States. You are a minority in a country that has no place for you.
So what should you do?
You should leave the United States of America.
If you’re young, you’ve got plenty of choices: you can teach English in the Middle East, Asia or Europe. Or you can go to university or graduate school abroad and start building skills that will qualify you for a work visa. If you’ve already got some real work skills, you can apply to emigrate to any number of countries as a skilled immigrant. If you are older and you’ve got some savings, you can retire to a place like Costa Rica or the Philippines. If you can’t qualify for a work, student or retirement visa, don’t let that stop you – travel on a tourist visa to a country that appeals to you and talk to the expats you meet there. Whatever you do, go speak to an immigration lawyer as soon as you can. Find out exactly how to get on a path that will lead to permanent residence and eventually citizenship in the country of your choice.
You will not be alone. There are millions of Americans just like me living outside the United States. Living lives much more fulfilling, peaceful, free and abundant than we ever could have attained back home. Some of us happened upon these lives by accident – we tried a year abroad and found that we liked it – others made a conscious decision to pack up and leave for good. You’ll find us in Canada, all over Europe, in many parts of Asia, in Australia and New Zealand, and in most other countries of the globe. Do we miss our friends and family? Yes. Do we occasionally miss aspects of our former country? Yes. Do we plan on ever living again in the United States? Never. And those of us with permanent residence or citizenship can sponsor family members from back home for long-term visas in our adopted countries.
In closing, I want to remind you of something: unless you are an American Indian or a descendant of slaves, at some point your ancestors chose to leave their homeland in search of a better life. They weren’t traitors and they weren’t bad people, they just wanted a better life for themselves and their families. Isn’t it time that you continue their journey?
Source: Information Clearing House
Information Clearing House
April 9, 2010
You have the worst quality of life in the developed world – by a wide margin.
If you had any idea of how people really lived in Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and many parts of Asia, you’d be rioting in the streets calling for a better life. In fact, the average Australian or Singaporean taxi driver has a much better standard of living than the typical American white-collar worker.
I know this because I am an American, and I escaped from the prison you call home.
I have lived all around the world, in wealthy countries and poor ones, and there is only one country I would never consider living in again: The United States of America. The mere thought of it fills me with dread.
Consider this: you are the only people in the developed world without a single-payer health system. Everyone in Western Europe, Japan, Canada, Australia, Singapore and New Zealand has a single-payer system. If they get sick, they can devote all their energies to getting well. If you get sick, you have to battle two things at once: your illness and the fear of financial ruin. Millions of Americans go bankrupt every year due to medical bills, and tens of thousands die each year because they have no insurance or insufficient insurance. And don’t believe for a second that rot about America having the world’s best medical care or the shortest waiting lists: I’ve been to hospitals in Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Singapore, and Thailand, and every one was better than the “good” hospital I used to go to back home. The waits were shorter, the facilities more comfortable, and the doctors just as good.
This is ironic, because you need a good health system more than anyone else in the world. Why? Because your lifestyle is almost designed to make you sick.
Let’s start with your diet: Much of the beef you eat has been exposed to fecal matter in processing. Your chicken is contaminated with salmonella. Your stock animals and poultry are pumped full of growth hormones and antibiotics. In most other countries, the government would act to protect consumers from this sort of thing; in the United States, the government is bought off by industry to prevent any effective regulations or inspections. In a few years, the majority of all the produce for sale in the United States will be from genetically modified crops, thanks to the cozy relationship between Monsanto Corporation and the United States government. Worse still, due to the vast quantities of high-fructose corn syrup Americans consume, fully one-third of children born in the United States today will be diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes at some point in their lives.
Of course, it’s not just the food that’s killing you, it’s the drugs. If you show any sign of life when you’re young, they’ll put you on Ritalin. Then, when you get old enough to take a good look around, you’ll get depressed, so they’ll give you Prozac. If you’re a man, this will render you chemically impotent, so you’ll need Viagra to get it up. Meanwhile, your steady diet of trans-fat-laden food is guaranteed to give you high cholesterol, so you’ll get a prescription for Lipitor. Finally, at the end of the day, you’ll lay awake at night worrying about losing your health plan, so you’ll need Lunesta to go to sleep.
With a diet guaranteed to make you sick and a health system designed to make sure you stay that way, what you really need is a long vacation somewhere. Unfortunately, you probably can’t take one. I’ll let you in on little secret: if you go to the beaches of Thailand, the mountains of Nepal, or the coral reefs of Australia, you’ll probably be the only American in sight. And you’ll be surrounded crowds of happy Germans, French, Italians, Israelis, Scandinavians and wealthy Asians. Why? Because they’re paid well enough to afford to visit these places AND they can take vacations long enough to do so. Even if you could scrape together enough money to go to one of these incredible places, by the time you recovered from your jetlag, it would time to get on a plane and rush back to your job.
If you think I’m making this up, check the stats on average annual vacation days by country:
Finland: 44
Italy: 42
France: 39
Germany: 35
UK: 25
Japan: 18
USA: 12
The fact is, they work you like dogs in the United States. This should come as no surprise: the United States never got away from the plantation/sweat shop labor model and any real labor movement was brutally suppressed. Unless you happen to be a member of the ownership class, your options are pretty much limited to barely surviving on service-sector wages or playing musical chairs for a spot in a cubicle (a spot that will be outsourced to India next week anyway). The very best you can hope for is to get a professional degree and then milk the system for a slice of the middle-class pie. And even those who claw their way into the middle class are but one illness or job loss away from poverty. Your jobs aren’t secure. Your company has no loyalty to you. They’ll play you off against your coworkers for as long as it suits them, then they’ll get rid of you.
Of course, you don’t have any choice in the matter: the system is designed this way. In most countries in the developed world, higher education is either free or heavily subsidized; in the United States, a university degree can set you back over US$100,000. Thus, you enter the working world with a crushing debt. Forget about taking a year off to travel the world and find yourself – you’ve got to start working or watch your credit rating plummet.
If you’re “lucky,” you might even land a job good enough to qualify you for a home loan. And then you’ll spend half your working life just paying the interest on the loan – welcome to the world of American debt slavery. America has the illusion of great wealth because there’s a lot of “stuff” around, but who really owns it? In real terms, the average American is poorer than the poorest ghetto dweller in Manila, because at least they have no debts. If they want to pack up and leave, they can; if you want to leave, you can’t, because you’ve got debts to pay.
All this begs the question: Why would anyone put up with this? Ask any American and you’ll get the same answer: because America is the freest country on earth. If you believe this, I’ve got some more bad news for you: America is actually among the least free countries on earth. Your piss is tested, your emails and phone calls are monitored, your medical records are gathered, and you are never more than one stray comment away from writhing on the ground with two Taser prongs in your ass.
And that’s just physical freedom. Mentally, you are truly imprisoned. You don’t even know the degree to which you are tormented by fears of medical bankruptcy, job loss, homelessness and violent crime because you’ve never lived in a country where there is no need to worry about such things.
But it goes much deeper than mere surveillance and anxiety. The fact is, you are not free because your country has been taken over and occupied by another government. Fully 70% of your tax dollars go to the Pentagon, and the Pentagon is the real government of the United States. You are required under pain of death to pay taxes to this occupying government. If you’re from the less fortunate classes, you are also required to serve and die in their endless wars, or send your sons and daughters to do so. You have no choice in the matter: there is a socio-economic draft system in the United States that provides a steady stream of cannon fodder for the military.
If you call a life of surveillance, anxiety and ceaseless toil in the service of a government you didn’t elect “freedom,” then you and I have a very different idea of what that word means.
If there was some chance that the country could be changed, there might be reason for hope. But can you honestly look around and conclude that anything is going to change? Where would the change come from? The people? Take a good look at your compatriots: the working class in the United States has been brutally propagandized by jackals like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. Members of the working class have been taught to lick the boots of their masters and then bend over for another kick in the ass. They’ve got these people so well trained that they’ll take up arms against the other half of the working class as soon as their masters give the word.
If the people cannot make a change, how about the media? Not a chance. From Fox News to the New York Times, the mass media in the United States is nothing but the public relations wing of the corporatocracy, primarily the military industrial complex. At least the citizens of the former Soviet Union knew that their news was bullshit. In America, you grow up thinking you’ve got a free media, which makes the propaganda doubly effective. If you don’t think American media is mere corporate propaganda, ask yourself the following question: have you ever heard a major American news outlet suggest that the country could fund a single-payer health system by cutting military spending?
If change can’t come from the people or the media, the only other potential source of change would be the politicians. Unfortunately, the American political process is among the most corrupt in the world. In every country on earth, one expects politicians to take bribes from the rich. But this generally happens in secret, behind the closed doors of their elite clubs. In the United States, this sort of political corruption is done in broad daylight, as part of legal, accepted, standard operating procedure. In the United States, they merely call these bribes campaign donations, political action committees and lobbyists. One can no more expect the politicians to change this system than one can expect a man to take an axe and chop his own legs out from underneath him.
No, the United States of America is not going to change for the better. The only change will be for the worse. And when I say worse, I mean much worse. As we speak, the economic system that sustained the country during the post-war years is collapsing. The United States maxed out its “credit card” sometime in 2008 and now its lenders, starting with China, are in the process of laying the foundations for a new monetary system to replace the Anglo-American “petro-dollar” system. As soon as there is a viable alternative to the US dollar, the greenback will sink like a stone.
While the United States was running up crushing levels of debt, it was also busy shipping its manufacturing jobs and white-collar jobs overseas, and letting its infrastructure fall to pieces. Meanwhile, Asian and European countries were investing in education, infrastructure and raw materials. Even if the United States tried to rebuild a real economy (as opposed to a service/financial economy) do think American workers would ever be able to compete with the workers of China or Europe? Have you ever seen a Japanese or German factory? Have you ever met a Singaporean or Chinese worker?
There are only two possible futures facing the United States, and neither one is pretty. The best case is a slow but orderly decline – essentially a continuation of what’s been happening for the last two decades. Wages will drop, unemployment will rise, Medicare and Social Security benefits will be slashed, the currency will decline in value, and the disparity of wealth will spiral out of control until the United States starts to resemble Mexico or the Philippines – tiny islands of wealth surrounded by great poverty (the country is already halfway there).
Equally likely is a sudden collapse, perhaps brought about by a rapid flight from the US dollar by creditor nations like China, Japan, Korea and the OPEC nations. A related possibility would be a default by the United States government on its vast debt. One look at the financial balance sheet of the US government should convince you how likely this is: governmental spending is skyrocketing and tax receipts are plummeting – something has to give. If either of these scenarios plays out, the resulting depression will make the present recession look like a walk in the park.
Whether the collapse is gradual or gut-wrenchingly sudden, the results will be chaos, civil strife and fascism. Let’s face it: the United States is like the former Yugoslavia – a collection of mutually antagonistic cultures united in name only. You’ve got your own version of the Taliban: right-wing Christian fundamentalists who actively loathe the idea of secular Constitutional government. You’ve got a vast intellectual underclass that has spent the last few decades soaking up Fox News and talk radio propaganda, eager to blame the collapse on Democrats, gays and immigrants. You’ve got a ruthless ownership class that will use all the means at its disposal to protect its wealth from the starving masses.
On top of all that you’ve got vast factory farms, sprawling suburbs and a truck-based shipping system, all of it entirely dependent on oil that is about to become completely unaffordable. And you’ve got guns. Lots of guns. In short: the United States is about to become a very unwholesome place to be.
Right now, the government is building fences and walls along its northern and southern borders. Right now, the government is working on a national ID system (soon to be fitted with biometric features). Right now, the government is building a surveillance state so extensive that they will be able to follow your every move, online, in the street and across borders. If you think this is just to protect you from “terrorists,” then you’re sadly mistaken. Once the shit really hits the fan, do you really think you’ll just be able to jump into the old station wagon, drive across the Canadian border and spend the rest of your days fishing and drinking Molson? No, the government is going to lock the place down. They don’t want their tax base escaping. They don’t want their “recruits” escaping. They don’t want YOU escaping.
I am not writing this to scare you. I write this to you as a friend. If you are able to read and understand what I’ve written here, then you are a member of a small minority in the United States. You are a minority in a country that has no place for you.
So what should you do?
You should leave the United States of America.
If you’re young, you’ve got plenty of choices: you can teach English in the Middle East, Asia or Europe. Or you can go to university or graduate school abroad and start building skills that will qualify you for a work visa. If you’ve already got some real work skills, you can apply to emigrate to any number of countries as a skilled immigrant. If you are older and you’ve got some savings, you can retire to a place like Costa Rica or the Philippines. If you can’t qualify for a work, student or retirement visa, don’t let that stop you – travel on a tourist visa to a country that appeals to you and talk to the expats you meet there. Whatever you do, go speak to an immigration lawyer as soon as you can. Find out exactly how to get on a path that will lead to permanent residence and eventually citizenship in the country of your choice.
You will not be alone. There are millions of Americans just like me living outside the United States. Living lives much more fulfilling, peaceful, free and abundant than we ever could have attained back home. Some of us happened upon these lives by accident – we tried a year abroad and found that we liked it – others made a conscious decision to pack up and leave for good. You’ll find us in Canada, all over Europe, in many parts of Asia, in Australia and New Zealand, and in most other countries of the globe. Do we miss our friends and family? Yes. Do we occasionally miss aspects of our former country? Yes. Do we plan on ever living again in the United States? Never. And those of us with permanent residence or citizenship can sponsor family members from back home for long-term visas in our adopted countries.
In closing, I want to remind you of something: unless you are an American Indian or a descendant of slaves, at some point your ancestors chose to leave their homeland in search of a better life. They weren’t traitors and they weren’t bad people, they just wanted a better life for themselves and their families. Isn’t it time that you continue their journey?
Source: Information Clearing House
MSNBC’s Ratigan Remarkably Tells Truth About Bankster Scam
MSNBC
April 9, 2010
Source: MSNBC
April 9, 2010
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Source: MSNBC
Friday, April 9, 2010
One Day Soon, We’ll All Be “Homegrown Terrorists”
Giordano Bruno
Neithercorp Press
April 9, 2010
The word “terrorist” has assumed numerous presumptive connotations over the decades, and this trend of “redefining” the vicious label to suit certain governmental needs has only intensified in recent years, especially since 9/11. Its graduation as widely used political terminology gives it an almost archetypal quality, because it has the ability to trigger abundant and subconscious emotional reactions in the populace. However, these reactions are usually based on mass delusions: false ideas of what terrorism is, what it is not, and who is actually guilty of these loosely classified crimes. It is a weighted word, filled with projections, biases, and faulty perceptions.
Governments across the world, and organizations such as the UN, have considered “officially” categorizing what a terrorist actually is, but claim that they have been unable to reach an accord that satisfies everyone. I feel it is much more likely that ruling bodies, most especially the UN, would like nothing better than to keep the specifics of the term as hazy as possible for as long as possible. The more elusive it is, the more powerful it becomes to those elite minorities who wish to retain and centralize political control. While we tend to associate terrorism with Muslim extremism, because this is the image we have been force-fed for the past ten years, that association can just as easily be swayed or redirected to someone else depending on which person or people become most obstructive to the government’s immediate desires. At bottom, under the current cultural climate, anyone can be labeled a terrorist for any reason, even American Citizens liable for nothing more than exercising their Constitutional rights.
As our country spirals towards certain monetary derailment, scathing discontentment with the establishment is sure to arise. When trusted leadership betrays, when criminality becomes a political guideline, when the corrupt loot the world, burning the people alive in their ever expanding grip, invariably, defiance is born. The Globalists know this well. They have seen it time and again, and have learned from past mistakes. Instead of immediately attempting to crush this opposition of individualists, the Elites now preempt violence with “false cultural identification”; the public demonization of those who would inevitably rebel BEFORE they even do so, much like a murderer who admonishes his future victims for wanting to defend themselves. The wise man would find this tactic absurd, or insane, but wisdom is in short supply these days.
In this article, we will explore the steps that the Elites are taking to prime the masses for the label we will soon be hearing daily; “Homegrown Terrorist”. We will also take a look at the organizations and think tanks that manufacture this propaganda and mold it for public consumption…
Hutaree, And Pavlov’s Dog
Though the “Hutaree Militia” and their arrest have been widely publicized in the media, and the MSM has all but sentenced them as guilty in the eyes of the nation before a trial has even begun, I will retain judgment until all the facts are in. The incident has all the characteristics of a “Trojan Horse” disinformation maneuver, in which groups who oppose the government are infiltrated by men posing as members. A common occurrence in the 60’s and 70’s during the anti-Vietnam War movement, these federal moles would then purposely lure groups into illegal acts, or frame them outright. The main goal of this tactic is to topple the moral high ground that the challenging movement stands on, making them appear as corrupt as the governments they defend against. However, the manipulation goes much further.
Whether or not the Hutaree are actually guilty of the crimes they have been accused is really not the most relevant issue. What is relevant, are the false associations and connections made by the MSM in an attempt to not only demonize the Hutaree, but the entire Liberty Movement along with them.
While it is not uncommon for the globalist-controlled media to attack the Liberty Movement, the widespread anger over the recent passing of Obama’s unconstitutional health care bill and the Hutaree incident have opened certain doors for exploitation. The news is now awash in anti-patriot misinformation. Here are a few of the most prominent falsehoods being presented:
1) The Liberty Movement Is An Extremist Right Wing Element?: It may be a bit cliché to say, but people really do fear what they don’t understand. Half of the American populace have absolutely no clue what the “Right Wing” is, let alone what a “Right Wing Extremist” is. During the presidency of George W. Bush, the Liberty Movement railed against the Republican Party for tripling the size of federal government, for going to war in Iraq on false pretenses, for refusing to allow a truly independent investigation of 9/11 despite numerous inconsistencies and scientifically erroneous evidence in the official reports, and for illegal expansion of domestic wire tapping and spy programs against American citizens, including FISA, not to mention the Patriot Act and PDD 51, which give the executive branch legal authority to assume full control over the functions of government without checks and balances under any circumstance they see fit. In response, the MSM and others called us “liberal fanatics” and “communists”. Only a few years later, they now have the audacity to label us “right wing extremists”, as we call out the Obama Administration for supporting the exact same policies as Bush. The Time Magazine article below illustrates this well:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1976308,00.html?xid=rss-fullnation-yahoo
Many Americans do not comprehend the position of the Liberty Movement because they are still trapped in the fabricated world of the false “left / right” paradigm. The leadership of both parties, Democrat and Republican, are under the influence of the same corporate globalist interests, and this is evident in the fact they support nearly identical executive legislative actions that erode civil liberties and U.S. sovereignty. The illusion of the Left and Right is not substantiated by fact, but by the theater of media. Barack Obama’s rhetoric, for instance, has never matched his actions, and few if any of his campaign promises to end Bush-era injustices have been fulfilled.
As a country, we must stop living in the fantasy world of celebrity politics, a world in which what people say is more important than what they really do. This is where the Liberty Movement exists; in the plane between the phony realities of Left and Right, where “taking sides” is meaningless, where the only thing that is important is what is TRUE, and what is dishonest.
The attempt by the media today to brand us as “Right Wing” is merely a ruse to associate us with the much hated Neo-Con ideology (which is really socialist), and to continue perpetuating the lie of the current two party apparatus. In this way, they can marginalize us as a fringe element of a fake party, an element that people can be made to dread, instead of the birth of a new third party, which is what we really are.
2) The Liberty Movement’s Anger Over The Health Care Debate Makes Us “Dangerous”?: Last year, Neithercorp reported on the developments surrounding Obamacare and our personal belief that not only was the bill not practical, but that it was not meant to work at all:
http://neithercorp.us/npress/?p=92
‘ObamaCare’ will not come to fruition, for many reasons, but most of all because the U.S. is beyond indebted. The costs involved in nationalizing health care are enormous. The sales of U.S. treasury debt to foreign banks have plummeted over the past year, and they will continue to do so. Like Greece to the tenth power, America is on the verge of sovereign debt default. The government and the private Federal Reserve’s only recourse has been to create massive amounts of currency out of thin air to cover the mushrooming expense of keeping the economy afloat. Without the constant injections of liquidity into treasuries, our government would no longer be able to operate. Very soon, these injections will inflate the money supply to levels which will destroy our currency, throwing the financial system into chaos. And, in the midst of all this, the Obama administration decides to increase our budget deficit to record levels and introduce socialized health care? Of course people are angry! It is my suspicion, however, that this was the goal all along.
ObamaCare can be used to create intense divisions in the citizenry, as well as distract us from the economy. It can also be used to redirect the debate over expansion of government power. By introducing ObamaCare, the elites change the dynamic of the argument. Before, the contention was that the government’s size was unsustainable and would bankrupt the nation. Now, the argument is over the ethics of leaving people without healthcare, and the “necessity” of large government in supplying that care. The debate morphed from a clean cut examination of what we could afford, into a foggy morality play in which those who oppose government expansion are “uncaring”, “greedy”, or perhaps “evil”. The article below alludes to such accusations:
http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2010/04/01/americas-season-of-rage-and-fear/
The message here is that proponents of private healthcare are “overreacting” to the legislation. Arguments that Obamacare is no more insidious than Medicare are highly disingenuous. Medicare is government ASSISTED health care, not government CONTROLLED health care. There is a very big difference, one which we refuse to ignore.
The Liberty Movement’s position on any issue has always been; do we have the money, and does the Constitution allow it? While it is unfortunate that the poor (I have been one of them) cannot afford health insurance, the cold hard reality is that we do not have the savings to fund collectivist healthcare, nor does the Constitution allow for government to dominate the healthcare industry, or force people to buy insurance they don’t want. This is not about little orphan Annie who needs a kidney transplant. Obama couldn’t care less. This is about putting those who call for smaller government in the position of being the “bad guy”, as well as making Federal influence over our private lives that much easier. The goal is to paint the movement as unfeeling, and without compassion, thus making it easier for the average American to see us as “terrorists” in the near future.
3) The Liberty Movement Is Driven By Racism?: This has to be my favorite disinfo talking point, mainly because of its blatancy. There was a time when all propaganda was so straight forward, simple, and shameless. Below is a Time Magazine article which is obviously trying to connect Constitutionalists and militias with racism and white power organizations:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1198895,00.html?iid=sphere-inline-sidebar
This tactic does not need much explaining. First, I’ve been going to the Tea Parties for years, long before they were co-opted by Fox News, and I can say from firsthand experience that the Liberty Movement is composed of people from all racial, religious and political backgrounds. Many militias are also organized the same way.
The fact that the movement is fully opposed to illegal immigration is often used by the establishment to draw more false associations. The connection to which they allude is that since we are against illegal immigration, we are against all immigrants, especially Hispanic immigrants. This is nonsensical. We are against illegal immigration, for one, because it is ILLEGAL. I am not sure what is so complicated about this concept, but for some people, especially those who place themselves on the left end of our fake political spectrum, it is difficult to comprehend.
There are in fact legal channels one can take to immigrate to the U.S., as there are for any other country. If an American wishes to immigrate to Canada, he does not simply skip across the border and declare it so. He must follow legal guidelines, or be deported. This does not make Canadians biased against Americans, it makes them rational. If millions of us decided to lumber into Quebec and begin collecting on government programs that we never paid into, it would throw their entire economy into disarray. If we all offered our services to employers there at discount prices under the table, it would destroy their jobs market. It has nothing to do with race and everything to do with what makes sense.
This is why polls show that a large percentage of minorities in the U.S. are also against illegal immigration, not just whites:
http://www.examiner.com/x-35821-Immigration-Reform-Examiner~y2010m3d2-New-poll-shows-that-minorities-want-tougher-enforcement-against-illegal-aliens
The purpose behind the racist label is evident. No one likes a racist, especially not a militant racist. The tactic is designed to plant assumptions in the minds of those unaware of the facts, especially Democrats, so that when a Liberty Movement representative engages them in discussion, they will automatically refuse to listen, regardless of how reasonable that representative may be. The blunt nature of the method reveals how desperate globalists are to keep as many Democrats as possible from joining the movement.
4) People Who Spread Liberty Movement Information Are As Threatening As Those In Militias?: The sudden push on the part of the current administration for the institution of the Fairness Doctrine is no fluke. It is also even less of a fluke that they are attempting to apply the Fairness Doctrine to the internet.
The Fairness Doctrine accomplishes two things for the establishment: First, it forces all media to define themselves as either Left, or Right, and then balances them accordingly, meaning all media would be strong armed into playing out the false paradigm forever, neither side ever changing or gaining an advantage. Second, it allows government to dictate what acceptable political discussion is and shut down those that stray from their guidelines. If the Fairness Doctrine were to be applied, it would not affect those gatekeeper news outlets that play the paradigm game; Fox, MSNBC, CNN, etc. In reality, the only news sources that would be dealt a drastic blow would be those that straddle the line between left and right, or that deny the paradigm altogether; Liberty Movement sources.
I have noticed that this development has occurred in tandem with another more subtle strategy. While government moves to gain more influence over what news providers are allowed to operate, the MSM has moved to infer that Liberty Movement news sources are “instigating” violence, simply because they exist. While most of us are aware of the attempts to connect Alex Jones and his Infowars radio show with any violent gunman that happens to stumble out of the woodwork, there has also been an endeavor to link all Constitutionally based websites and radio with “extremist behavior”, as the below article shows:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,982895,00.html
All societies that are advancing towards fascism begin by singling out certain ideas as “dangerous” to the greater good. The very fabric of American life is centered on the protection of ideas, regardless of their origin. We do not prosecute people for their beliefs, no matter how much we might disagree. This is beginning to change though, and one can feel it in the air. The MSM is now producing a low droning hum of propaganda aimed at accusing liberty based news as accomplices in “extremist crime”. As if the general disenchantment and opposition to collectivist government would somehow disappear if we were not here to write our views and report on the facts.
The above list of establishment talking points demonstrates a discernable pattern. This pattern is engineered around the concept of “conditioning”. Like Pavlov’s dog, Americans are being prepared mentally to react to certain bells and whistles in a way that serves Elitist interests. In this case, instead of salivating every time they hear the words “militia”, “truth movement”, “patriot”, “Liberty Movement”, “Constitutionalism”, etc, they are meant to think “Hutaree”, they are meant to think “homegrown terrorist”. Of course, unlike Pavlov’s dog, human beings cannot be conditioned if they are aware, and they can even break their own conditioning if given the opportunity. This is why we are pummeled daily with a constant barrage of misinformation, so that we never get a chance to open our eyes and see who is hitting us. So, who is hitting us…?
The ADL And SPLC: Propaganda Machines Extraordinaire
Whenever you see a news story on almost any mainstream news channel, or read one in almost any newspaper dealing with the Liberty Movement and parallel movements, the chances are very high that the ADL (Anti Defamation League) or the SPLC (Southern Poverty Law Center) had a hand in it.
The ADL was founded in 1913 (coincidentally, the same year as the private Federal Reserve), and poses as a sort of civil rights group and non-profit corporation. In truth, it is a multifaceted propaganda arm for globalists, much like the Council on Foreign Relations, which has been involved in, and implicated in, domestic spying as well as other illegal activities.
In 1993, the ADL was caught red handed employing spies like Roy Bullock, who infiltrated organizations ranging from the White Aryan Resistance, to the NAACP and Greenpeace. Interestingly, they were also caught spying on other anti-discrimination groups, such as the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee:
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1993-04-09/news/1993099283_1_anti-defamation-league-adl-san-francisco
These spies compiled dossiers on thousands of American citizens and hundreds of non-violent groups. In the mid-80’s, they also terrorized certain peaceful assemblies for nothing more than free-speech. A method they are now applying to us.
Because the ADL is organized around the Jewish fraternal order of B’nai B’rith, some people make the mistake of assuming that they are a purely Israeli construct, however, they are actually a tool for Elitist activities, not just Israeli, and alphabet agencies such as the FBI and the CIA collude with them constantly. In fact, the government has only supported the ADL more since they were exposed in 1993, and the MSM reports their skewed statistics and baseless opinions as undeniable fact.
http://www.adl.org/learn/adl_law_enforcement/default.htm
When interviewed by the MSM, ADL and SPLC representatives are rarely challenged by their interviewers on any issue, and an interviewee with an opposing viewpoint is almost never present. When they are present, the “journalist” and the SPLC/ADL representative attack them maliciously, using dishonest Alinsky Tactics, such as attempting to keep the person from speaking, or attacking the person’s character instead of addressing the information he presents. A good example is this interview on MSNBC with Chris Mathews and director of the SPLC, Mark Potok against Stewart Rhodes of Oath Keepers:
Oath Keepers is an organization of military and police members who are openly re-stating their support for the Constitution, over the shifting of government mandates, as all people in the armed forces are supposed to do. Yes, they must truly be a menace…
Notice that Potok and Matthews immediately generalize and dismiss every one of the Oath Keeper concerns on government as “dark conspiracy theory” without actually providing any tangible reasoning to support their claims, nor providing Rhodes any real opportunity to counter their accusations.The “conspiracy theory” redirection relies on an ignorant public, unaware of the numerous facts and evidence that support the Liberty Movement view. The ADL and SPLC hope that you and your family will take them at their word, instead of investigating the truth for yourself. That the term “conspiracy theory” will trigger a Pavlov’s dog reaction, a knee-jerk response that causes your mind to immediately close. They also commonly use terms like “white supremacist”, “Oklahoma City”, or names like “Timothy McVeigh” in the same breath as “Oath Keepers” and “Patriot Movement”. This is done deliberately, and if you watch a number of interviews involving the ADL/SPLC, you will notice that they do it as a rule. Again, the attempt is to link the unseemly actions of one man, or one small group, to the whole of the movement, and to the ideology of liberty.
When reason is applied, and research is undertaken, Mark Potok’s arguments appear juvenile and lazy. The government’s own legislation is what created the Liberty Movement’s concern over martial law and loss of Constitutional freedoms. This legislation includes those mentioned above, like the Patriot Act and PDD 51, along with the Civilian Inmate Labor Program, and new legislation drafted by Republican, John McCain, and Democrat, Joe Lieberman (another example of the fake left/right working together), called the “Enemy Belligerents Act”:
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s111-3081
This new act allows, among other things, for the treatment of U.S. citizens who dissent as enemy combatants, for the indefinite detention of these citizens without trial, and to be held under military jurisdiction. It also allows for “enhanced interrogation techniques”, i.e. torture.
Bills like this are introduced to Congress yearly, and yet I have to watch Mark Potok on MSNBC call my concerns and the Liberty Movement’s concerns “conspiracy theory”?
When We Are All Homegrown Terrorists…
Anyone who can’t see where all this is leading would have to be cognitively impaired. I, for example, am just a writer, but under the broad definitions laid out in government legislation, I could easily be considered a threat to national security. Could my articles not inspire resentment in someone? Could the facts I present not instill a need for “dissent”, or even self defense in the event that the establishment does institute martial law? What about people who aren’t writers, but regular Americans who happen to speak openly about their suspicions of where the country is heading? Are they “enemy belligerents” and combatants?
If the ADL and the SPLC had existed in the early days of the American Independence Movement, before a shot was ever fired, they would have called men like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson “terrorists”, good men, who only wanted to be free. There is little difference between our situation then, and our situation now, except that the terminology has changed, and indeed, we know even more about who we are fighting.
While being categorized as a homegrown terrorist may be a frightening prospect, what other people are led to believe about us is not so important. What is important is that we do not start to believe it ourselves. That we are not made to feel guilty for wanting to determine our own destinies, for wanting to keep government out of our lives and our children’s lives. We are not the instigators of this conflict, we are not the antagonists of this story. In the end, we are the deciders of this conflict. We are the authors of this story.
It is possible we will soon see an acceleration of our own malignment over the coming year. We will be ridiculed, condemned, and perhaps some of us even incarcerated. Violent attacks against innocent Americans will likely be carried out, some by real and misguided people, some engineered by government. We cannot allow these acts to be forced upon us as implied persona. We cannot allow others to speak for us, because others are unlikely to speak the truth. And most crucial of all, we cannot ever be afraid to speak for ourselves. The ultimate triumph for the Elites would be our silence.
Affirm your freedoms as an unbound man, cut the air, forceful and clear, let the world listen, and never stop.
Source: Neithercorp Press
That thing from 1984
Winston Smith and everyone around him are strictly controlled in a collective.
Ethan Indi
OpEdNews
April 8, 2010
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
So begins one of the most profound works of political literature, George Orwell’s 1984. The book was originally published in 1949, and yet has provided a persistent exploration of contemporary politics. The book describes a world at war with constantly switching sides and lies. All information is controlled by the state. All institutions are linked to the state and all individuals are dependent on the state.
On April 4, 1984, the main character begins to pen a diary. Winston Smith and everyone around him are strictly controlled in a collective. The collective is so harsh and belittling of the individual that free thinking is illegal, a thought-crime. There is Big Brother, the entity adopted by the state and there is the Brotherhood, a supposed loose group of people who defy Big Brother. Big Brother issues a dictionary that eliminates language with every edition. And the Brotherhood has its own required reading, called The Theory and Practice to Oligarchical Collectivism. It has become known as the book within the book. Oligarchical Collectivism means the linking or joining of institutions, institutions designed to keep control in the hands of the few.
There are three types of institutions in the world, those of state, those of corporate and those of religion. A foundational concept of the United States is, or was, a separation of these institutions to eliminate the potential for oligarchical collectivism. The founding fathers may not have used the term, but they certainly observed such diabolical collectives of institutions, states supported by churches, with corporate functions.
1984 has done in the real world what Orwell supposed the book within the book could do in his fictional world. The book has spawned new terminology and thus new ability to express and explore political concepts which in some cases have occurred for centuries. Some might say that Orwell would not appreciate his penname being adopted and made to express a concept, as in Orwellian. However I think he would be honored that expressions from his fictional masterpiece have enhanced language and added words to the vocabulary of real world.
Respect to George Orwell on this bright cold day in April. Read 1984, for this might be the most Orwellian time period yet, with abundant examples of oligarchical collectivism.
Source: OpEdNews.com
The Oklahoma City Bombing: Still seeking the truth, 15 years later
Red Dirt Report
April 8, 2010
OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma City bombing victim’s family members and survivors, along with investigative journalists, law-enforcement officers, private investigators, documentary filmmakers and attorneys impacted by the bombing will hold a press conference to review the unanswered questions and latest revelations pertaining to this very important part of U.S. history.
Well-documented information contradicting the patently false, official account of the Oklahoma City bombing of April 19, 1995 as offered by the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI will be reviewed. Why should any one of us be asked to remember the deaths of the Oklahoma City bombing victims in a lie?
In addition, updates pertaining to the unsolved torture – murders of Kenneth Michael Trentadue and Oklahoma City Police Department Sgt. Terrance Yeakey will be presented.
Guest speakers include Pat Shannan, with the American Free Press in Washington, DC; Wendy Painting, a New York University graduate student and OKC bombing researcher and V.Z. Lawton, a bombing survivor, will all be in attendance.
The location of this press conference will be in the Oklahoma State Capitol Building on the second floor, in the west wing – the State Supreme Court corridor. It will take place at 1:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 15, 2010.
For more information please contact Christopher Emery, executive producer with OTR Film Productions, LLC at otrfilms@cox.net or call 505-980-5422.
Source: Red Dirt Report
Leaked UN Documents Reveal Plan For “Green World Order” By 2012
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Friday, February 26, 2010
Leaked policy documents reveal that the United Nations plans to create a “green world order” by 2012 which will be enforced by a structure of global governance and funded by a gargantuan $45 trillion transfer of wealth from richer countries, as the globalists’ insidious plan to centralize power, crush sovereignty while devastating the economy is exposed once again.
As we warned at the time, the failure of Copenhagen in December did not spell the end of the global warming heist, but merely a roadblock in the UN’s agenda to create a world government funded by taxes paid by you on the very substance you exhale – carbon dioxide.
Using the justification of the vehemently debunked hoax that carbon dioxide is a deadly threat to the planet, the UN is already working to resurrect the failed Copenhagen agreement, with a series of new Copenhagen process negotiations set to take place in April, May and June.
Leaked planning documents (PDF) obtained by Fox News lift the lid on the UN’s plan to impose global governance by the time of their 2012 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Rio, which will mark the 20th anniversary since the notorious “Earth Summit” held in the same city.
“The new Rio summit will end, according to U.N. documents obtained by Fox News, with a “focused political document” presumably laying out the framework and international commitments to a new Green World Order,” reports Fox News’ George Russell.
“Just exactly what that environmental order will look like, and the extent of the immense financial commitments needed to produce it, are under discussion this week at a special session in Bali, Indonesia, of the United Nations Environment Program’s 58-nation “Governing Council/Global Ministerial Environmental Forum,” which oversees UNEP’s operations.”
The document outlines the globalist’s mission to enact a “radical transformation of the world economic and social order” by putting “a new treaty in place as the capstone of the Green World Order”.
This system will be managed by “an additional governing structure composed of exactly those insiders,” writes Russell.
“Moving towards a green economy would also provide an opportunity to re-examine national and global governance structures and consider whether such structures allow the international community to respond to current and future environmental and development challenges and to capitalize on emerging opportunities,” states the white paper (emphasis mine).
The imposition of such “global governance structures” will be achieved with the help of “vast wealth transfers” from richer countries (in the form of carbon taxes levied on citizens) to poorer nations, amounting to no less than $45 trillion dollars. The paper also outlines the need to change the “consumption patterns” of people living in richer countries, which undoubtedly is a euphemism for lowering living standards.
The policy proposes that the old economic model be discarded in pursuit of a new global green economy focused around “green jobs”.
As we have previously highlighted, the promise that the creation of “green jobs” will offset the inevitable damage to the economy that a 50 per cent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions will cause is a complete fallacy.
The implementation of so-called “green jobs” in other countries has devastated economies and cost millions of jobs. As the Seattle Times reported back in June, Spain’s staggering unemployment rate of over 18 per cent was partly down to massive job losses as a result of attempts to replace existing industry with wind farms and other forms of alternative energy.
In a so-called “green economy,” “Each new job entails the loss of 2.2 other jobs that are either lost or not created in other industries because of the political allocation — sub-optimum in terms of economic efficiency — of capital,” states the report.
As we have documented, a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions of 50-80 per cent would inflict a new great depression in the United States, reducing GDP by 6.9 percent – a figure comparable with the economic meltdown of 1929 and 1930.
The UN’s mission to create a legally binding treaty on the reduction of CO2 emissions is running parallel with measures already being enforced at state level in the U.S. which bypass stuttering federal efforts to impose the cap and trade fraud.
The very foundation of the global warming argument has been completely eviscerated by the Climategate scandal, which proved that United Nations IPCC scientists forged and exaggerated data to “hide the decline” in global temperatures while engaging in witch hunts to cull dissenting opinions from appearing in IPPC reports.
Despite this, control freaks intent on taxing the life-giving gas carbon dioxide have signaled that they no longer care about the truth behind man-made climate change and have resolved to slam through their totalitarian agenda anyway. EPA head Lisa Jackson told reporters this week that “The science regarding climate change is settled, and human activity is responsible for global warming,” even though she failed to refute the fact that there had been no global warming since 1995, as was admitted by CRU scientist Professor Phil Jones.
Prison Planet.com
Greenpeace To Global Warming Skeptics: “We Know Where You Live”
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Monday, April 5, 2010
An article carried by the official Greenpeace website written by a Greenpeace member urges climate activists to resort to criminal activity in an effort to reinvigorate momentum for their stalling global warming agenda, while ominously threatening climate skeptics, “we know where you live”.
The article, written by Greenpeace activist “Gene” from India, calls for “mass civil disobedience to cut off the financial oxygen from denial and skepticism”.
“Gene” then has a special message for roughly half of Americans who, in the wake of the climategate scandal, are now skeptical of man-made global warming – “We know who you are. We know where you live. We know where you work. And we be many, but you be few.”
“Gene” quotes another climate activist who calls for an army of greenies to break the law and take retribution against anyone who stands in their way.
“The politicians have failed. Now it’s up to us. We must break the law to make the laws we need: laws that are supposed to protect society, and protect our future. Until our laws do that, screw being climate lobbyists. Screw being climate activists. It’s not working. We need an army of climate outlaws.”
Greenpeace has not issued a retraction of the comments, preferring instead to buffer the blog at both beginning and end with desperate-sounding explanations insisting that the author has peaceful intentions. The organization has obviously been taking a hammering for this as it worsens into another public relations disaster.
This is by no means the first time global warming adherents have resorted to physical threats in an effort to bolster their rapidly crumbling credibility on climate change issues. In June last year, a global warming activist posted an article on the Talking Points Memo website entitled “At What Point Do We Jail Or Execute Global Warming Deniers?”
Shortly after the article was retracted, a comment traced back to another prominent global warming activist which appeared on the Climate Progress blog threatened Skeptics that “an entire generation that will soon be ready to strangle you and your kind while you sleep in your beds.” Website owner Joe Romm defended the comment as “clearly not a threat but a prediction”.
For years, climate Skeptics have been the target of campaigns to denounce them as criminals and traitors on the scale of the Nazis, with calls for Nuremberg trials. A July 2007 Senate report detailed how skeptical scientists have faced threats and intimidation.
“Is this really the kind of caring, sensitive message this charity ought to be conveying to the world?” asks James Delingpole. “Not to judge by the comments below. Happy Easter, Greenpeace PR department! I think you’re going to have a busy next few days…”
As a recent Psychological Science study highlighted, warmists tend not to adhere to the caring, sensitive image they portray when it comes to their own private lives.
“Those who wear what the authors call the “halo of green consumerism” are less likely to be kind to others, and more likely to cheat and steal,” summarizes the Telegraph’s Iain Hollingshead. “Faced with various moral choices – whether to stick to the rules in games, for example, or to pay themselves an appropriate wage – the green participants behaved much worse in the experiments than their conventional counterparts. The short answer to the paper’s question, then, is: No. Greens are mean.”
Despite Greenpeace’s efforts at damage control, there can be little doubt as to the true context of the article. By first encouraging climate activists to “break the law” in pursuit of their stalling political agenda, “Gene” has greased the skids for criminal activity. Concluding with the threat to climate Skeptics that “we know where you live,” is clearly a form of intimidation and an invitation for “an army of climate outlaws” to take physical retribution against people who disagree with them.
Imagine if Infowars put out an article urging its readers to break the law in order to combat the IRS, imagine if we told IRS agents, “we know where you live”. We’d be raided quicker than a heartbeat and Alex Jones would be demonized all over the establishment media as a dangerous extremist. Indeed, a mere peaceful letter-writing campaign urging governors to resign was leapt upon by the media and the federal government this past weekend as a concerning portend of the “extremist” threat posed by constitutionalists despite the fact that there was no indication of violence.
When so-called “right-wingers” or libertarians merely write letters urging peaceful political change, they are demonized as terrorist hate-mongers, but when greenies openly call for criminal behavior allied with thinly veiled threats of physical violence, it’s no big deal.
Will CNN and MSNBC devote weeks of endless coverage to Greenpeace’s threats towards people they disagree with? There’s more chance of Keith Olbermann awarding Rep. Hank Johnson (a major global warming adherent) his “worst person in the world” gong for hilariously warning that the island of Guam could capsize like a boat due to overpopulation.
Source: Prison Planet.com
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
CNN Touts Civilian Service Corps As Way Of Shedding Student Debt
Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Wednesday, April 7th, 2010
CNN has some advice for any former students now saddled with excess debt – carry out a decade of social work or join the ranks of the government’s civilian service corps.
CNN business news correspondent Stephanie Elam put on the hard sell for government service to viewers of Newsroom.
“This is really about helping those people out, getting them ready as far as the choice for best course of study for the financial future,” Elam told viewers.
“So you may consider the possibility of enlisting in public service. Demand is really high right now for government jobs …and any remaining debt on federal student loans will be forgiven after you work full-time in public service for ten years.” Elam continued.
“But to get this benefit, you need to take out your loan from a federal lender as opposed to a private one like Sallie Mae,” she continued, apparently auditioning for the role of Obama’s public service czar.
CNN’s national public service broadcast continued as Elam then touted AmeriCorps and the Peace Corp service:
“They’re not going to forgive your loan, but if you do have service that you provide to AmeriCorps, you will enjoy loan forbearance, and what that really means is you won’t be have to make any payments while you’re serving, and AmeriCorps volunteers are also eligible for an education reward for $5,350,” the anchor said.
Elam then added “…four full years of Peace Corps service will equal a 70 percent cancellation of an existing Perkins loan.”
Watch the video:
Essentially, if you join up with the government’s civilian service army, you get some of your indentured debt stripped away. However, if you choose to work in the private sector, where real jobs and wealth are created, you get no cushty kick backs and the debt remains. What a way to stimulate the ailing economy.
We have previously highlighted the eagerness that the Obama Administration has displayed in pushing for a comprehensive system of national service.
Last year, in an effort to enhance the role of public service, Democrats introduced The ACTION Act, aimed at increasing awards for AmeriCorps volunteers and reestablishing the Corporation’s connection with federal agencies.
The message is clear – serve the federal government and you will be rewarded, serve the U.S. economy and you will not.
Source: infowars.net
Small army to protect Toronto during G20 summit
Colin Freeze
The Globe and Mail
April 7, 2010
Police forces have entered into an alliance to deal with the threat of violent protest at Toronto’s G20 summit with as many as 10,000 uniformed officers and 1,000 private security guards teaming up to protect world leaders.
Federal contract tenders obtained by The Globe indicate a small army will descend on Canada’s largest city this June, exceeding the estimated 6,000-police-officer presence at Vancouver’s 2010 Olympics.
The police security will come at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, although police officials would not confirm deployment numbers. Yet federal contract tenders posted online indicate how things are shaping up.
Source: The Globe and mail
Nevadans are free to don their arms in the open
Steve Kanigher
Las Vegas Sun
April 7, 2010
Just about everybody on the Metro Police force has heard of Tim Farrell, and he sometimes gets mistaken for a law enforcement officer.
Farrell is simply a 29-year-old wireless Internet engineer — and a gun rights crusader. He is one of what appears to be a growing number of people taking up the “open-carry” cause, advocating a constitutional right to openly carry firearms.
“The open-carry movement has gained momentum over the last four or five years because people are waking up to their rights,” Farrell says. “I don’t need a permit to exercise free speech. I don’t need a permit to be tried by a jury if I’m accused of a crime, so why do I need a permit to carry a gun if I have a constitutional right to carry a gun?”
Source: The Las Vegas Sun
EPA Institutes Cap-and-Trade for the Auto Industry
EVMeme.com
April 7, 2010
The buzz so far this week has been about the new EPA (Ever Pretending Aristocrats) and NHTSA (The Roadblockers) standards, which were signed into being Monday. The new rules set emissions standards for both vehicle engine emissions and for the emissions of a manufacturer’s entire fleet (called the CAFE standard). The new rules also set up a cap and trade scheme for CO2 credits within the total fleet of each manufacturer in the U.S.
The new CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standard will be raised, in stages, to 35.5mpg by 2016. With one big change. Instead of measuring this in miles per gallon, as has been the norm, the EPA will instead be measuring this new standard in the miles per gallon “equivalent” of carbon dioxide emissions.
That’s right, instead of just measuring each vehicle in an automaker’s fleet by the usual MPG standard and then averaging that over the entire company’s fleet to get the CAFE number, the EPA will now be measuring CO2 emissions from the vehicles and using that. 35.5mpg works out to 250g CO2/mile, which will be required as the CAFE standard for light passenger vehicles by model year 2016.
Usually, here on EVMeme, I just make fun of things that are, well, generally laughable in the electric vehicle and automotive industry. This, however, isn’t all that funny. When I began writing this piece, I was going to just have my way with the EPA (hey, that rhymes!) and come up with some jokes about bureaucrats and scientists who can’t get a real job (so they work for the government). That kind of fell apart after I’d read through much of the 800-odd pages of this new standards setup the EPA has signed into bureaucratic, regulatory being.
The Cap and Trade Style Scheme – The Cap
The new cap-and-trade style scheme is being called ABT for “Averaging, Banking, and Trading” of credits based on fleet average CO2 numbers. OK, so it’s not a cap-and-trade “style” scheme, it’s just a CnT scheme outright.
The program is footprint-based, meaning the CO2 emissions compliance number for a vehicle is based on its total overall size and weight. The size of the vehicle fits into a scale so that passenger cars will have a sliding scale of CO2 requirements starting with MY 2012 and getting stricter up to MY 2016. Light trucks have a different scale along the same timeline and combined fleet vehicles are on a third scale, also on a timeline. The combined economy is basically the halfway point between the passenger and light truck scales, so the 2016 CO2 allowance for a small car is 225g/mile while for a light truck it’s 298g/mile with the combined being 250g/mile.
That defines the “cap” in this scheme.
The “trade” bit comes later. Before that, let me explain the points system.
The Cap and Trade Style Scheme – The “and”
Auto manufacturers are allowed to earn credits that can be applied towards fleet-wide average CO2 standards. These can come from improved A/C systems – by lowering their HFC (hydrofluorocarbon) refrigerant losses. They can also come from lowering indirect CO2 emissions from things like electric power steering (which reduces engine load), advanced transmissions, start-stop technology, and so forth.
Of course, if a brand new innovation comes along that isn’t included in the EPA’s list, it won’t qualify. Thus giving automakers less incentive to use the new tech – a byproduct of nearly all regulation, come to think of it.
These points are added up and applied to the CAFE number to lower the overall emissions (and its equivalent MPG). Automakers can “bank” these points to use them on their own numbers or sell/trade them to other automakers.
The Cap and Trade Style Scheme – The Trade
The ABT system allows for the banking (read: hoarding) and trading of these CO2 credits between auto manufacturers or between vehicles in the fleet. So if Company A has a surplus of credits and has met CAFE standards for CO2, but has one vehicle struggling to keep on target, then those extra credits can be applied to that vehicle.
Like with previous CAFE standards, total sales or manufacturing volume of any one vehicle is not counted, so if Company A is making 2,000,000 of the SUV that can’t quite cut the mustard with CO2 emissions, but makes 500 of a compact city car that has extra CO2 credits in spades, then it all evens out. According to the EPA, anyway.
Likewise, if Company A has a surplus and needs some bargaining chips when dealing with Company B, they could throw in some CO2 credits as extra incentive. If Company B is having a rough time with one of their vehicles or the entire fleet-wide standard.. Bingo! Problem solved.
Cap and Trade Scheme Finalized, and It Will Spread
Now that the EPA has put this in place for auto manufacturers, expect the idea to spread. The auto industry is their easiest target, so it follows that they would aim this at them first. Most of the American automotive sector is struggling and already under the EPA and NHTSA’s thumbs, so forcing this now will be easy. In fact, so far there’s been little outcry from anyone in the business.
Now you can expect that over the next couple of years, similar schemes will be cooked up for other industries under the EPA’s watchful gaze.
Some Thoughts
Without getting too political, I just want to say that I’ve noticed that people generally mistrust their government. At the same time, most Americans will still put their faith in bureaucrats in some “untouchable” agencies like the EPA. People seem to assume that the Environmental Protection Agency (like the FDA and others) is incapable of doing wrong and only exists for our benefit. This amazes me and baffles logic.
Having been writing about some of the new, up-and-coming and truly innovative new technologies in the automotive industry, I have a different perspective, I guess. These regulatory agencies are nothing but roadblocks (and pretty costly, serious ones at that) to clean fuel and alternative technologies.
Do you wonder why we don’t have more electric vehicles and alt-fuel cars on the road? Look no further than the EPA and the NHTSA. It takes years and millions of dollars to get approval from these Kings of the Road to put your car or truck onto our nation’s highways. That’s why most “new” cars aren’t so new – they’re just remakes of other models.
Welcome to the real problem.. Government. Again.
Source: EVMeme.com
April 7, 2010
The buzz so far this week has been about the new EPA (Ever Pretending Aristocrats) and NHTSA (The Roadblockers) standards, which were signed into being Monday. The new rules set emissions standards for both vehicle engine emissions and for the emissions of a manufacturer’s entire fleet (called the CAFE standard). The new rules also set up a cap and trade scheme for CO2 credits within the total fleet of each manufacturer in the U.S.
The new CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standard will be raised, in stages, to 35.5mpg by 2016. With one big change. Instead of measuring this in miles per gallon, as has been the norm, the EPA will instead be measuring this new standard in the miles per gallon “equivalent” of carbon dioxide emissions.
That’s right, instead of just measuring each vehicle in an automaker’s fleet by the usual MPG standard and then averaging that over the entire company’s fleet to get the CAFE number, the EPA will now be measuring CO2 emissions from the vehicles and using that. 35.5mpg works out to 250g CO2/mile, which will be required as the CAFE standard for light passenger vehicles by model year 2016.
Usually, here on EVMeme, I just make fun of things that are, well, generally laughable in the electric vehicle and automotive industry. This, however, isn’t all that funny. When I began writing this piece, I was going to just have my way with the EPA (hey, that rhymes!) and come up with some jokes about bureaucrats and scientists who can’t get a real job (so they work for the government). That kind of fell apart after I’d read through much of the 800-odd pages of this new standards setup the EPA has signed into bureaucratic, regulatory being.
The Cap and Trade Style Scheme – The Cap
The new cap-and-trade style scheme is being called ABT for “Averaging, Banking, and Trading” of credits based on fleet average CO2 numbers. OK, so it’s not a cap-and-trade “style” scheme, it’s just a CnT scheme outright.
The program is footprint-based, meaning the CO2 emissions compliance number for a vehicle is based on its total overall size and weight. The size of the vehicle fits into a scale so that passenger cars will have a sliding scale of CO2 requirements starting with MY 2012 and getting stricter up to MY 2016. Light trucks have a different scale along the same timeline and combined fleet vehicles are on a third scale, also on a timeline. The combined economy is basically the halfway point between the passenger and light truck scales, so the 2016 CO2 allowance for a small car is 225g/mile while for a light truck it’s 298g/mile with the combined being 250g/mile.
That defines the “cap” in this scheme.
The “trade” bit comes later. Before that, let me explain the points system.
The Cap and Trade Style Scheme – The “and”
Auto manufacturers are allowed to earn credits that can be applied towards fleet-wide average CO2 standards. These can come from improved A/C systems – by lowering their HFC (hydrofluorocarbon) refrigerant losses. They can also come from lowering indirect CO2 emissions from things like electric power steering (which reduces engine load), advanced transmissions, start-stop technology, and so forth.
Of course, if a brand new innovation comes along that isn’t included in the EPA’s list, it won’t qualify. Thus giving automakers less incentive to use the new tech – a byproduct of nearly all regulation, come to think of it.
These points are added up and applied to the CAFE number to lower the overall emissions (and its equivalent MPG). Automakers can “bank” these points to use them on their own numbers or sell/trade them to other automakers.
The Cap and Trade Style Scheme – The Trade
The ABT system allows for the banking (read: hoarding) and trading of these CO2 credits between auto manufacturers or between vehicles in the fleet. So if Company A has a surplus of credits and has met CAFE standards for CO2, but has one vehicle struggling to keep on target, then those extra credits can be applied to that vehicle.
Like with previous CAFE standards, total sales or manufacturing volume of any one vehicle is not counted, so if Company A is making 2,000,000 of the SUV that can’t quite cut the mustard with CO2 emissions, but makes 500 of a compact city car that has extra CO2 credits in spades, then it all evens out. According to the EPA, anyway.
Likewise, if Company A has a surplus and needs some bargaining chips when dealing with Company B, they could throw in some CO2 credits as extra incentive. If Company B is having a rough time with one of their vehicles or the entire fleet-wide standard.. Bingo! Problem solved.
Cap and Trade Scheme Finalized, and It Will Spread
Now that the EPA has put this in place for auto manufacturers, expect the idea to spread. The auto industry is their easiest target, so it follows that they would aim this at them first. Most of the American automotive sector is struggling and already under the EPA and NHTSA’s thumbs, so forcing this now will be easy. In fact, so far there’s been little outcry from anyone in the business.
Now you can expect that over the next couple of years, similar schemes will be cooked up for other industries under the EPA’s watchful gaze.
Some Thoughts
Without getting too political, I just want to say that I’ve noticed that people generally mistrust their government. At the same time, most Americans will still put their faith in bureaucrats in some “untouchable” agencies like the EPA. People seem to assume that the Environmental Protection Agency (like the FDA and others) is incapable of doing wrong and only exists for our benefit. This amazes me and baffles logic.
Having been writing about some of the new, up-and-coming and truly innovative new technologies in the automotive industry, I have a different perspective, I guess. These regulatory agencies are nothing but roadblocks (and pretty costly, serious ones at that) to clean fuel and alternative technologies.
Do you wonder why we don’t have more electric vehicles and alt-fuel cars on the road? Look no further than the EPA and the NHTSA. It takes years and millions of dollars to get approval from these Kings of the Road to put your car or truck onto our nation’s highways. That’s why most “new” cars aren’t so new – they’re just remakes of other models.
Welcome to the real problem.. Government. Again.
Source: EVMeme.com
Armoured vehicles adopted by B.C. RCMP
Last Updated: Wednesday, March 24, 2010 | 9:29 AM PT Comments100Recommend25.
CBC News
The RCMP say their new tactical armoured vehicles will be used in dangerous armed standoffs. (RCMP)
The RCMP in B.C. are rolling out their newest crime-fighting tools — two surplus tactical armoured vehicles (TAVs) that were given to them by the Canadian Armed Forces.
The Cougars, as the military called them, were gathering dust and out of service, so the Canadian Forces decided to turn them over to the RCMP for free. The six-wheel vehicles will be stationed in the Vancouver-area for the emergency response team to use in dangerous situations.
When the vehicles last saw military service, they were armed with heavy guns and grenade launchers, but all the weapons were removed from the 32-year-old vehicles before they were handed over to the RCMP.
"It contains absolutely no special weapons inside. There's no secrets here," said RCMP Sgt. Peter Thiessen.
The tank-like vehicles were called Cougars when used by the Canadian Armed Forces. (RCMP)
The RCMP did borrow armoured personnel carriers from the military 15 years ago to help quell an armed standoff with native protesters at Gustafsen Lake, B.C.
Now, officers in B.C. say they need their own machines to protect against the growing firepower on the streets.
"Last year was a perfect example, within the Lower Mainland the gang violence, the amount of shootings, the type of firearms that were being utilized," said Thiessen, referring to the spate of gang shootings and homicides that plagued the region.
The TAVs were called out for the first time on Monday night to an incident involving a man with a gun, but the RCMP plans to routinely deploy the TAVs in order to increase public awareness and to give the officers experience operating them in an urban environment.
"These are older vehicles but they certainly have a lot of life left in them. And they're going to be put to good use when needed," said Thiessen.
The RCMP said the so-called "Cougars for cops" is a national program, and residents of other cities can expect to see the vehicles on their streets too.
Source: CBS News
Psychiatrists say that being angry is a mental illness
Posted by sakerfa on April 7, 2010
(NaturalNews) – Proposed updates to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) are prompting many to question whether or not the psychiatric profession itself has gone crazy. The latest additions to the alleged “mentally ill” could include hoarders, people who get angry every now and again, lazy people, and even those who get outraged over things like sex and violence on television.
Since its first publication back in 1952, the DSM has grown exponentially larger with each subsequent edition. Many people are lambasting the American Psychiatric Association (APA) for trying to establish virtually all behavior as some sort of mental disorder that should be treated with psychiatric drugs.
“For this latest revision they’ve set up a special task force to decide if behaviors like bitterness, extreme shopping or overuse of the internet should be included,” explained Professor Christopher Lane to a reporter from the the U.K.’s Daily Mail. “The science underlying all this is very shaky to non-existent.”
Dr. David Kupfer, chairman of the APA’s special task force, has come out in defense of the additions. He claims that each one is grounded in science, despite the fact that no biological markers can definitely identify any of the additions as actual disorders. In order to identify things like excessive shopping and extreme laziness as mental disorders, the team will simply call them as such and provide a description of the each one’s symptoms.
If the additions themselves are not loony enough, the APA is actually recommending the inclusion of what it calls “risk syndromes”, or early warning signs that could lead to one of its supposed mental disorders. By catching these “risk syndromes” early, doctors can begin prescribing medication for conditions that people do not even have.
The entire DSM charade is a ploy to characterize an ever-increasing segment of the population as being “sick” and in need of pharmaceutical drugs. There can be no variations in personality and individual characteristics; if a person does not live, think, and react in prescribed fashion, then he or she is sick and in need of treatment, according to the APA.
The latest DSM draft, which is set to be published in 2013, has already been posted on the internet for public viewing. Since being posted, there has been widespread outcry against many of the proposed additions. It remains to be seen what will be included in the final edition and whether or not people will continue to take the DSM and the APA seriously.
Sources for this story include:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/a…
Source: Natural News
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