“Does anybody really know what time it is?” asked a 1969 hit song. What about “holy time” ordained by God? Do we really know what day is the Sabbath?
Some say God’s Sabbath is Sunday; some say it’s Saturday. Others say both are wrong, and that Friday is God’s holy time. Still others say it doesn’t make any difference which day we pick as long as we worship and honor God on that day.
How can we know for sure which day was the Sabbath of the Bible? The Bible was written so long ago and there have been so many calendars, calculated in so many ways, since then, haven’t there?
Are the days of the week counted as they were at the time of creation? Or even since the time of Christ?
Some of those who ask such questions then tell us that “since we can’t know for sure what day is the Sabbath today” we just need to acknowledge “one day in seven” to worship, and all will be well!
Sounds logical, doesn’t it? After all, there are more than 40 different calendars in use today around the world. There have been so many changes and so many different ways of calculation, that some may think “time has been lost.”
That may sound right and provide an excuse to justify not carefully proving which day is the Christian Sabbath. But the fact is that this premise is false. Time has not “been lost,” and we can know for certain that the seventh day of the week (commonly called Saturday) is still the Sabbath established at creation.
The seventh day of the week is still the seventh day of the week
For starters, note this reference from the article “General Chronology” in The Catholic Encyclopedia: “The days of the week are numbered according to their natural order, viz. Sunday=1, Monday=2, Tuesday=3, Wednesday=4, Thursday=5, Friday=6, Saturday=7. (At the time from which the Christian Era starts there were of course no weeks, such a measure of time not being known among the Greeks and Romans. Counting backwards, however, according to our present system, we can divide all time into weeks, and it is to be noted that in the Christian period the order of days of the week has never been interrupted.)”
It’s clear from this source, representing a denomination that worships on Sunday, that the order of the days of the week is unchanged since the time of Christ. And Christ, certainly, knew what day is the Sabbath!
What about before Jesus’ time?
How did Moses and the Israelites know that the seventh day of the week, as they understood it, was the same one Adam received from God?
After the descendants of Abraham went into Egyptian captivity, God miraculously revealed the weekly cycle to Israel. He did so by providing manna for their food, but it was only provided six days of the week—none would fall on the Sabbath day.
“Then he said to them, ‘This is what the LORD has said: “Tomorrow is a Sabbath rest, a holy Sabbath to the LORD. Bake what you will bake today, and boil what you will boil; and lay up for yourselves all that remains, to be kept until morning.”’ So they laid it up till morning, as Moses commanded; and it did not stink, nor were there any worms in it. Then Moses said, ‘Eat that today, for today is a Sabbath to the LORD; today you will not find it in the field. Six days you shall gather it, but on the seventh day, the Sabbath, there will be none’” (Exodus 16:23-26).
Even if the weekly cycle had somehow become lost to Israel, God certainly restored that knowledge by miraculously revealing which was the seventh day of the week.
Throughout Israel’s history, the importance of the Sabbath was emphasized and blessings were promised for observing it (Isaiah 58:13-14). The prophet Jeremiah wrote of national blessings for observing the Sabbath and punishment for ignoring it (Jeremiah 17:19-27). The people knew when the seventh day of the week was. They simply refused to honor it.
So what day is the Sabbath?
Basic research removes any doubt and can answer the question rapidly: The seventh day of the week today is the same day of the week that God sanctified at creation (Genesis 2:1-3). That day is the day we call Saturday. It is the seventh-day Sabbath.
It is clear to those who regard the Bible as God’s inspired Word that the weekly cycle remains unbroken and unchanged. God’s Word proclaims the seventh day as the Sabbath.
What day will you keep holy? For further study about the Sabbath and how to keep it, see the articles in our section about the Sabbath.
Don’t lose any time!
While hardly news to frequent visitors, especially those who recall the following
list, anyone who needs a 7 minute refresher into why the US middle class is
on collision course with extinction is urged to watch the following brief video
which highlights all the salient facts such as:
And of course, foodstamps, foodstamps, foodstamps and the nearly 50 million
poverty-level Americans who need them to survive
Why seven minutes? Because everyone knows that just like you can't get "six minute abs", so it is
impossible to recap the doom of America's middle class in only six minutes (or,
gasp, less).
(NaturalNews) Today we announce the first investigation conducted at the Natural News Forensic Food Laboratory, the new science-based research branch of Natural News where we put foods under the microscope and find out what's really there.
Earlier today I purchased a 10-piece Chicken McNuggets from a McDonald's restaurant in Austin, Texas. Under carefully controlled conditions, I then examined the Chicken McNuggets under a high-powered digital microscope, expecting to see only processed chicken bits and a fried outer coating.
But what I found instead shocked even me. I've seen a lot of weird stuff in my decade of investigating foods and nutrition, but I never expected to find this...
Strange fibers found embedded inside Chicken McNuggets
As the following photos show, the Chicken McNuggets were found to contain strange fibers that some people might say even resemble so-called "Morgellon's."
We found dark black hair-like structures sticking out of the nugget mass, as well as light blue egg-shaped structures with attached tail-like hairs or fibers.
These are shown in extreme detail in the photos below, taken on August 15, 2013 at the Natural News Forensic Food Lab. The actual Chicken McNugget samples used in these photos have been frozen for storage of forensic evidence.
We also found odd red coloring splotches in several locations, as well as a spherical green object that resembles algae.
We are not claiming or implying that these objects in any way make McDonald's Chicken McNuggets unsafe to consume. We do, however, believe that this visual evidence may warrant an FDA investigation into the ingredient composition of Chicken McNuggets.
In particular, where are the hair-like structures coming from? This is especially important to answer, given that chickens do not have hair. Is there cross-species contamination in the processing of Chicken McNuggets? This question needs to be answered.
There is no evidence that Gardasil or Cervarix can prevent
cancer better than a decent screening program. There is strong evidence that
they can produce severe and life-threatening harm. This report by 4 scientists
documents how science has been corrupted & misused to promote these
life-devastating vaccines.
When Jesus "began to preach and to say, 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand'" (Matthew 4:17), most people didn't understand His message. The reason is quite simple: He purposefully spoke in a way that hid key aspects of the truth. Though multitudes of people thronged to hear Him, most didn't comprehend what He was saying about the Kingdom of God.
Jesus' teaching style—authorative and unlike the scribes—attracted people's attention (Matthew 7:29), and many came to be healed of physical ailments (Matthew 14:35-36). Others likely came hoping to see a miracle or watch Jesus verbally get the best of the religious authorities or possibly a free meal (Luke 23:8; Matthew 15:1-20, 29-38; 14:13-21). But most didn't fully grasp what He was saying. While they couldn't deny the miracles and were intrigued by His style of preaching, His message was a mystery. View Web Booklet
In a cryptic note posted Thursday to the Lavabit website, owner Ladar Levison said the company is folding rather than becoming, in his words, "complicit in crimes against the American people." Levison didn't return a phone call from The Associated Press.
It appears that the firm received a National Security Letter because it claims it "cannot" talk about exactly why they made this decision. Yet that would be the only reason for such a decision -- a gag order with whatever demand was made.
The firm was one where Snowden had at least one email account and may have had more than one.
And for founder to stick his middle finger up in the air in response it has to be presumed that what the government demanded was not a particular set of exchanges with a particular customer but rather a copy of everything, and likely a prospective wiretap on a forward basis as well.
Of course I can't prove that, and the founder can't tell me if I'm right if I run him down and ask him.
But I can come to a logical deduction as to what prompted this response. It hasn't stopped there:
Silent Circle, which makes software that encrypts phone calls and other communications, announced in a company blog post that it could "see the writing on the wall" and decided it best to shut down its Silent Mail feature. The company said it was inspired by the closure earlier Thursday of Lavabit, another encrypted e-mail service provider that alluded to a possible national security investigation.
I've had people ask me about setting up a VPN-based service that is basically impenetrable (under today's technology anyway) -- and have generally been very reticent to discuss such a service.
Having run an ISP before, and this was before the "rage" of current games such as National Security Letters, I'm very-aware of the potential for harassment or worse when it comes to such services.
MCSNet received various legal process from time to time and we always complied with it. We complied rather than fight even if fighting would have been legally difficult (as is the case here) because I never saw such a demand come across my desk that was per-se unreasonable; in each and every case what was being demanded identified specific entities and it was very obvious (even though often not stated specifically) exactly what sort of criminal activity was being investigated.
Simply put we never received anything like what appears to be part and parcel of the current police state crap -- blanket search and seizure orders without any hint of due process or even reasonable suspicion behind them coupled with a threat to throw corporate officers in prison if they refuse to comply -- or even disclose that I received them. The premise of a legitimate judicial order includes the ability to challenge the basis upon which the order was issued and that in turn requires the ability to debate the order and its predicate(s).
There is a reasonable counterbalance to this when the search or seizure order pertains to a clear target that is the subject of an ongoing and active investigation who is still believed, upon reasonable suspicion, to be engaging in whatever conduct is unlawful.
But that is never the case for blanket seizure orders.
In addition these orders are blatantly unconstitutional under the 4th Amendment as they do not target a specific, articulable individual or group of individuals engaged in a specific unlawful act or set of acts.
Instead they're fishing expeditions or worse, not even in that class, simply intended to vacuum up all the data and store it in the event that it becomes expedient later to use it in some form or fashion.
The people of this nation need to rise and say **** YOU to the NSA, the CIA and all other agencies and each of their employees, contractors and others who feed off their funds and activities to the extent that they are operating inside the United States and aiming their activity at any US firm or person. That means a very public boycott of the people involved in same at all levels, including any who support such activities in word or deed in any way, from cutting their hair to selling them groceries to sitting next to them in the pew on Sunday. Period.
My view on this matches that of Silent Circle and Lavabit, and just in case anyone has trouble understanding it or thinks there is some nuance to it let me put it in universally-understood terms:
Clemson University Study Shows Beyond Tangy Tangerine has Anti-Cancer and Anti-Inflamatory Properties
Clemson University Study Shows Beyond Tangy Tangerine has Anti-Cancer and Anti-Inflamatory Properties
A recent study conducted by Clemson University on Youngevity's Beyond Tangy Tangerine and Ultimate Classic show amazing anti-cancer and anti-inflamatory properties. The study was conducted at the request of Youngevity Essential Life Sciences.
Here are some of the highlights of the Clemson University study. QUOTE: Dietary supplement safety is the most highly regarded aspect of any of the Youngevity® various products and has become synonymous with the Youngevity® name and brand. Although Youngevity® only uses nutrients that are absolutely needed by the body and in forms that are highly bioavailable, Youngevity® felt it was important to show empirically the range and degree of safety through looking at (3) factors – Genotoxicity, Anti-Genotoxicity, and Anti-Mutagenicity. The results of the experiments showed that Beyond Tangy Tangerine® and Ultimate Classic® at various concentrations did not show any genotoxicity.
The first part of the Clemson University Study analyzed how safe the Youngevity products were looking at 3 factors - Genotoxicity, Anti-Genotoxicity, and Anti-Mutagenicity. The results of the University experiments showed that Ultimate Class and Beyond Tangy Tangerine at various concentrations did not show any genotoxicity. QUOTE: When Beyond Tangy Tangerine® and Ultimate Classic® were administered to healthy human cell lines; they did not induce or create any inflammatory response in levels above and below the recommended dosage. Beyond Tangy Tangerine® and Ultimate Classic® showed inflammation protective properties and heightened the body’s protective responses to possible inflammation.
The next part examined how Beyond Tangy Tangerine and Ultimate Classic effected healthy human cell lines. The results clearly showed that when administered at levels above and below recommended dosage no inflammatory response appeared in healthy human cell lines. The study also showed that Beyond Tangy Tangerine and Ultimate Classic appear to have inflammation protective properties and heightened the body's protective responses to possible inflammation. So not only does Beyond Tangy Tangerine create no inflammatory response it has been showed to help the body's protective responses to possible inflammation. QUOTE: When Beyond Tangy Tangerine® and Ultimate Classic® were administered to healthy human colon cells; there was no significant death of healthy human cells compared to cancerous colon cells. Ultimate Classic® killed 95% of cancerous colon cells, 65% of cancerous liver cells, 65% of cancerous stomach cells, and 30% of cancerous breast cells. Beyond Tangy Tangerine® killed 60% of cancerous colon cells, 65% of cancerous liver and stomach cells, and 30% of cancerous breast cells.
The most exciting results of the Clemson University study is the Anti-Cancer properties found in both products. The Ultimate Classic had the most effect on cancerous cells killing 95% cancerous colon cells, 65% of cancerous liver cells, 65% of cancerous stomach cells, and 30% of cancerous breast cells. The Beyond Tangy Tangerine faired almost as well killing 60% of cancerous colon cells, 65% of cancerous liver, 65% of cancerous stomach cells, and 30% of cancerous breast cells. QUOTE: Beyond Tangy Tangerine® and Ultimate Classic® both exhibited efficient inhibition on proliferation of cancerous cells at the recommended dosage levels. Both products showed there was inhibition of the growth of more cancerous cells, preventing further malignant multiplication and growth of unhealthy cells. The final part of the Clemson University Study dealt with growth of cancerous cells. Both products when taken at recommended dosage levels showed there was inhibition of the growth of more cancerous cells, and helped prevent further malignant multiplication and growth of unhealthy cells.
The results of the Clemson University Study on Beyond Tangy Tangerine and Ultimate Classic provides clear scientific proof that these products are the real deal. Both products proved not only to be non-toxic and have no inflammatory properties, but also to have Anti-Cancer properties and help inhibit the growth of cancerous cells in the future. If you are new to the Youngevity product line I suggest you start by trying just one canister of the Beyond Tangy Tangerine. The Beyond Tangy Tangerine Complete Multi-Vitamin Mineral Complex is a great tasting powder that can be added to water or juice. Supplements like the Beyond Tangy Tangerine that are administered in a liquid form are the most bioavailable and easiest for your body to digest. This product contains 115 vegetables and fruits and has an ORAC score of 5745 per serving. In my research the Beyond Tangy Tangerine is the best all around supplement for health and wellbeing. Containing a mega dose of plant derived minerals, vitamins, amino acids and other beneficial nutrients. I take at least two scoops of Beyond Tangy Tangerine daily as my base supplement. Claim your first canister of Beyond Tangy Tangerine Complete Multi-Vitamin Mineral Complex: Tangy Tangerine is Here !!!
“I mean—hell, I been surprised how sane you guys all are. As near as I can tell you’re not any crazier than the average asshole on the street.” – R.P. McMurphy – One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
“Years ago, it meant something to be crazy. Now everyone’s crazy.” – Charles Manson
“In America, the criminally insane rule and the rest of us, or the vast majority of the rest of us, either do not care, do not know, or are distracted and properly brainwashed into acquiescence.” – Kurt Nimmo
I have to admit to being baffled by the aptitude of the Wall Street and K Street financial elite to keep their Ponzi scheme growing. I consider myself to be a rational, sane human being who understands math and bases his assessments upon facts and a sensible appraisal of the relevant information obtained from trustworthy sources. Of course, finding trustworthy sources is difficult when you live in a corrupt, crony-capitalist, fascist state, controlled by banking, corporate and military interests who retain absolute control over the mainstream media and governmental propaganda agencies. Those seeking truth must pursue it through the alternative media and seeking out unbiased critical thinkers who relentlessly abide by what the facts expose. This is no time for wishful thinking, delusions and fantasies. In the end, the facts are all that matter. As Heinlein noted decades ago, the future is uncertain so facts are essential in navigating a course that doesn’t lead you to ruin upon the shoals of ignorance.
“What are the facts? Again and again and again – what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what “the stars foretell,” avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the un-guessable “verdict of history” – what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!” ― Robert A. Heinlein
Facts are treasonous and dangerous in an empire of lies, fraud and propaganda. It is maddening to watch the country spiral downward, driven to ruin by a psychotic predator class, while the plebs choose to remain willfully ignorant of reality and distracted by their lust for cheap Chinese crap and addicted to the cult of techno-narcissism. We are a country running on heaping doses of cognitive dissonance and normalcy bias, an irrational belief in our national exceptionalism, an absurd trust in the same banking class that destroyed the finances of the country, and a delusionary belief that with just another trillion dollars of debt we’ll be back on the exponential growth track. The American empire has been built on a foundation of cheap easily accessible oil, cheap easily accessible credit, the most powerful military machine in human history, and the purposeful transformation of citizens into consumers through the use of relentless media propaganda and a persistent decades long dumbing down of the masses through the government education system.
This national insanity is not a new phenomenon.Friedrich Nietzsche observed the same spectacle in the 19th century.
“In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.”
The “solutions” imposed by the supposed brightest financial Ivy League educated minds and corrupt bought off political class upon people of the United States since the Wall Street created 2008 worldwide financial collapse are insane and designed to only further enrich the crony capitalists and their banker brethren. The maniacs are ruling the asylum. John Lennon saw the writing on the wall forty five years ago.
“Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives…. I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends … and I think I’m liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what’s insane about it.” – John Lennon, Interview BBC-TV (June 22, 1968)
The world is most certainly ruled by a small group of extremely wealthy evil men who desire ever more treasure, supremacy and control, but the vast majority of Americans have stood idly by mesmerized by their iGadgets and believing buying shit they don’t need with money they don’t have is the path to happiness and prosperity, while their wealth, liberty and self-respect were stolen by the financial elite. Our idiot culture, that celebrates reality TV morons, low IQ millionaires playing children’s sports, egomaniacal Hollywood hacks, self-promoting Wall Street financers, and self-serving corrupt ideologue politicians, has been degenerating for decades.
“We are in the process of creating what deserves to be called the idiot culture. Not an idiot sub-culture, which every society has bubbling beneath the surface and which can provide harmless fun; but the culture itself. For the first time, the weird and the stupid and the coarse are becoming our cultural norm, even our cultural ideal.” - Carl Bernstein -1992
The examples of our national insanity are almost too vast to document, but any critical assessment of what we’ve done over the last one hundred years reveals the idiocracy that has engulfed our collapsing empire.
The Madness of Crowds
“In reading The History of Nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities, their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first.” – Charles MacKay – Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
We have become a nation that seamlessly goes mad every five years in pursuit of some new delusionary fantasy sold to us by the ruling class, only to see those dreams shattered like a wooden ship on the reef of reality. You can never underestimate the power of human stupidity. Ben Bernanke and his Federal Reserve cronies have printed $2.6 trillion of new money out of thin air since September 2008 in order to prop up their Wall Street owners, who had engineered the largest control fraud (mortgage debt/housing bubble) in world history, recklessly gambled in their ravenous appetite for sordid profits, and drove their firms into insolvency. It took the Federal Reserve 95 years to accumulate a balance sheet of $900 billion of safe U.S. Treasuries.
They have insanely quadrupled their balance sheet in the last 5 years by accumulating toxic mortgage debt from Wall Street banks and purchasing the majority of new Treasury debt being issued to fund the Federal government’s insane trillion dollar annual deficits. Bernanke, the corporate media, government apparatchiks, and captured political class act as if this is normal, when it is clearly the act of a desperate ruling class in its final death throes. Bernanke has leveraged his balance sheet 60 to 1. Lehman and Bear Stearns were leveraged 30 to 1 when they collapsed. The 100 basis point move in rates over the space of two months has resulted in Bernanke losing $200 billion and effectively wiping out his $55 billion of capital.
Of course, in a corrupt regime accounting fraud is encouraged and applauded by the status quo. Just as the spineless accountants on the FASB buckled to threats from Bernanke and Paulson in early 2009 and reversed the requirement that assets be marked to market so the felonious Wall Street banks could fraudulently hide their insolvency, the Federal Reserve has decided their losses don’t matter. The Federal Reserve classifies their losses as an asset. Don’t you wish you could classify your 401k losses and your home value losses as an asset? The tapering bullshit storyline is just another attempt to distract the masses from focusing on the fact that Bernanke will never stop expanding his balance sheet because if he stops the financial system will collapse in a catastrophic implosion. The Ponzi scheme will continue until loss of faith leads to a scramble away from the U.S. dollar.
Since the infamous creation of the Federal Reserve by a secretive cabal of bankers and politicians in 1913, the ultimate destination of the American empire was set. Every fiat currency in world history has collapsed. Our entire system has been based on infinite exponential growth. The fallacy of American exceptionalism has been built on an underpinning of pure stupid luck and the issuance of more and more debt. The American empire grew to epic proportions due to the discovery of cheap easily accessible oil in the late 19th century and the physical and economic destruction of Europe, Russia and Japan during World War II. The accumulation of debt was fairly moderate during the glory years after World War II, but began to accelerate after the fateful year of 1971 when U.S. oil production peaked and Tricky Dick Nixon removed the last vestiges of restraint from central bankers and politicians by closing the gold window. With the shackles removed from the wrists of corruptible knaves and shysters, America’s future depended upon the wisdom, honesty and financial acumen of Washington politicians and Wall Street financers. Once the citizens realized they could vote for more bread and circuses, our ultimate demise was set in motion. A nation that had produced real annual growth of 4% during the 1950’s and 1960’s has seen a steady decline for the last four decades.
The term pushing on a string describes the Quantitative Easing (literally money printing) and Keynesian debt financed pork spending efforts of our increasingly frantic owners. The insanity of what we’ve done since 1971 is almost too crazy to comprehend. In the first 182 years of our existence the leaders we elected to steward the nation accumulated $400 billion of national debt. By 1981, unleashed from any semblance of spending control, the politicians and bankers had added another $600 billion of debt, a 150% increase in 10 years. By 1991 our beloved leaders had added another $2.6 trillion of debt, another 160% increase in 10 years. By 2001 another $2.2 trillion had been accumulated, only a 60% increase due to the end of the Cold War and a one-time tax surge from the Dot.com stock bubble. Bush’s worldwide War on Terror, expansion of the police state, tax rebate stimulus idiocy, and expansion of the welfare state (Medicare Part D) drove the national debt up by another $2.2 trillion in just eight years, a 40% increase.
The insane amassing of debt since 2008 has put a final nail in the coffin of the ridiculous Keynesian theory, as the Federal government has increased annual spending by 35% over the last five years and the economy is still moribund. Our fearless leaders have driven the national debt from $7.8 trillion to $16.7 trillion in less than five years, a 110% increase. The country continues to add $2 to $3 billion of debt per day. Consider how insane it is that we now accumulate more debt in half a year than we did cumulatively over the first 182 years of our existence as a country. And our elected, or should I say selected, leaders, cheer on the intellectually bankrupt academics like Bernanke whose only solution to every crisis is to print moar and then lie to the American people about his true purpose, act as if annually spending $1 trillion more than we collect while knowing there are over $200 trillion of unfunded promises to fulfill is a reasonable and realistic way to manage the national finances. Any sane person knows our current path will lead to ruin. When you need to issue new debt in order to honor old debt, the end is in sight.
The multitude of insane responses to a financial crisis created by a few greedy psychopathic bankers will be looked upon by historians with contempt and scorn. Future generations will wonder “What were they thinking?” Trillions in wealth were vaporized due to the actions of a small secretive league of highly educated, egocentric psychopaths whose warped sense of morality led them to pillage the wealth of the nation through fraudulent financial products, bribing regulatory agencies, stabbing clients and competitors in the back, and peddling lies, propaganda and misinformation to the public through their captured media mouthpieces. Not only haven’t any predator bankers been thrown in jail, but these villains have grown their parasitic entities to enormous proportions while paying themselves obscene billion dollar bonuses. Jon Corzine stole $1.2 billion directly from the accounts of his customers to cover his gambling losses and he remains free to laze about in one of his five gated mansions. The largest banks on earth have been caught red handed forging mortgage documents, rigging LIBOR, front running the muppets with non-public economic information, insider dealing, and using their HFT supercomputers to manipulate the markets at their whim. Government spy agencies regularly use the U.S. Constitution like toilet paper while accumulating electronic dossiers on every citizen in the country. The rule of law does not exist for the ruling class.
Only in a world gone insane would we be celebrating Wall Street generating all-time high profits through the use of accounting fraud and Bernanke filling their coffers with trillions of interest free money while bilking senior citizens out of $400 billion per year of interest income through his dastardly ZIRP “save a Wall Street banker” scheme. Bernanke has stolen close to $2 trillion from the bank accounts of little old ladies since 2008 and given it to Jamie Dimon, Lloyd Blankfien and the rest of the Wall Street scumbags. While Wall Street and the crony capitalist mega-corporations report record profits, Main Street is left with 5 million less full-time jobs than they had in 2007 and a real unemployment rate exceeding 20%. While the government has insanely reported a recovering economy since mid-2009, the food stamp rolls have grown from 33 million to 47 million. The ruling class cheers the record highs in the stock market that overwhelmingly benefit the top .1% because they are the .1%. Meanwhile, the average schmuck out in the hinterlands is paying double the price they were paying for gas in 2009 and their everyday living costs are rising by greater than 5% annually. Luckily for the financial elite, the average American would rather watch Honey Boo Boo than try to understand the evilness of Federal Reserve created inflation. The economic recovery storyline is obliterated by the fact that real household income is still 9% below its 2008 peak and amazingly 8% below its 2000 level.
Since the 2009 low, the household net worth of the wealthiest 7% has grown by 28%, while the other 93% have seen their net worth decline by a further 4%. The profits accrue to those who run the show, buy the politicians, write the laws, command the media propaganda machine and control the currency. As a sane person in this insane world I’m flabbergasted that there is virtually no outrage at the perpetrators of these crimes against humanity. Americans have earned the moniker – ignorant masses. Bread and circuses have won the day in our declining empire. The oligarchs thank you.
The blame doesn’t rest solely on the shoulders of the evil men running the show. They have only done what we allowed them to do. From top to bottom our society has hopped on the crazy train. The lack of national morality, sense of civic duty, inter-generational responsibility, and willful ignorance regarding sensible financial policies has led us to a tipping point. Decades of feckless self-serving political leadership making entitlement promises they could never honor to win votes, combined with a parasitic financial class peddling debt to millions of witless, narcissistic, math challenged, materialistic morons, has left the country in debt up to its eyeballs with no escape other than cataclysmic default. Michael Lewis documents the bleeding out of our society in his recent book:
“The people who had the power in the society, and were charged with saving it from itself, had instead bled the society to death. The problem with police officers and firefighters isn’t a public sector problem; it isn’t a problem with government; it’s a problem with the entire society. It’s what happened on Wall Street in the run-up to the subprime crisis. It’s a problem of taking what they can, just because they can, without regard to the larger social consequences. It’s not just a coincidence that the debts of cities and states spun out of control at the same time as the debts of individual Americans. Alone in a dark room with a pile of money, Americans knew exactly what they wanted to do, from the top of the society to the bottom. They’d been conditioned to grab as much as they could, without thinking about the long-term consequences. Afterward, the people on Wall Street would privately bemoan the low morals of the American people who walked away from their subprime loans, and the American people would express outrage at the Wall Street people who paid themselves a fortune to design the bad loans.” – Michael Lewis – Boomerang
The insanity of our debt accumulation in relation to our pathetic economic growth is clearly evident to even an Ivy League educated economist or a bubble headed CNBC anchorwoman. Since 1971 nominal GDP has grown by a factor of 14. Over this same time frame total credit market debt (household, corporate, government) has grown by a factor of 32. Real GDP (even using the fraudulent BLS manipulated CPI) has only expanded by a factor of 3.5 since 1971. The exponential growth model is clearly failing, with debt going hyperbolic, while GDP has stagnated.
Since 2007 real GDP has gone up $500 billion while total credit market debt has gone up by $6 trillion. Only an insane society would allow itself to be convinced by the perpetrators of the financial crimes that collapsed our economic system that accelerating the level of debt in our system will resolve the dilemma of Too Big to Trust banker insolvency. Transferring the immense losses of greedy sham capitalist gambling addicts from their insolvent balance sheets onto the balance sheets of the taxpayer has allowed the criminals to retain and expand their wealth, while sovereign states shift the pain and suffering onto the backs of the sinking middle class. This is a worldwide phenomenon perpetuated by central bankers at the behest of their crony capitalist co-conspirators. They call it capitalism when the scams, dodges and swindles work and the profits accrue to the schemers. When the gamblers and extreme risk addicts roll craps they use their crony capitalist connections, bought with blood money, to socialize their losses. The game is rigged and your owners don’t care about your hopes and dreams or your children’s future. They care about their own wealth and lifestyles of luxury. When the richest 300 people in the world have a greater net worth than the poorest 3 billion people on earth, a sane person realizes a chaotic end of the existing social order beckons.
“All over the world people borrowed vast sums of money they could never repay. The honest toting up, and taking, of the losses is being delayed. There’s a reason for this. The bad debts are owed, largely, to big banks. The big banks (even bigger than they were at the start of this crisis) and the people who own them enjoy a wildly disproportionate amount of political influence. And so, even now, five years into this mess, we remain at the mercy of the failed financial institutions that sit at the center of our capitalism. Geithner & Bernanke, along with their European counterparts, are doing everything in their power to prevent banks from failing. But the effect of this new financial order is bizarre: capitalism for everyone but the capitalists. Ordinary workers remain fully exposed to the increasingly harsh collisions in the marketplace while the highest paid financial elites ride protected by a passenger airbag.” – Michael Lewis – Boomerang
Clearly we’ve entered the final phase of our debt financed orgy of narcissistic materialism and self-absorbed avarice. The unsustainability of our course is a fact. Our society has gone mad en-masse but we are only recovering our sanity one by one. The global financial system is insolvent. A fractional reserve fiat money based system requires continuous growth or it collapses. The global banking system is overleveraged and real global growth is stagnant. Central bankers are not smart men. They have one response to every crisis – print!!! Bernanke and his fellow banker cronies are printing at hyper-speed in order to prop up the terminally ill mega-banks. Bernanke feigns confusion at the fact that his QE to infinity and ZIRP have only benefitted his banker puppet masters and the richest .1%, while further impoverishing senior citizen savers and the working middle class.
The anger at the true Wall Street malefactors manifested itself in the Tea Party movement and Occupy Wall Street movement, but both efforts were quickly hijacked by neo-con right wingers and socialist left wingers for their own ideological purposes. The existing social order continues to hold the reins of power, but their grip is growing precarious. The anger, dismay and resentment in the country simmer beneath the surface. The average person senses that all is not well, but most absurdly continue to believe the lies and propaganda spewed at them on a daily basis by the ruling class and their corporate media pawns. When the next shoe drops and billions of stock market and housing wealth are wiped out again, the national anger will sweep away the corrupt social order in a torrent of blood and retribution. Innocent and guilty alike will suffer the consequences. Michael Lewis is somewhat perplexed by the lack of outrage and violence so far.
“A lot has happened. And yet, given the provocation, it’s amazing how little has happened. No one on Wall Street has been shot, or even jailed – and the existing social order has not been seriously challenged. There’s a reason for this, too. The anger arising from the financial crisis finds no natural channel. In another era – an era before catastrophic experiments with radical socialism and nationalism – we would be watching market capitalism being displaced by something far uglier. But today there is no natural place for anger to flow, and so the anger flows haphazardly, like raindrops down a windowpane. The only political ideology that anger benefits these days is anarchy. From the point of view of those who enjoy political stability, it’s a stroke of luck that anarchists have no natural talent for organizing themselves. But how long will it take them to learn?” – Michael Lewis – Boomerang
Staying sane in a society gone mad is not easy. Millions of people believe themselves to be sane, but they have really just adapted to an insane society, so they appear sane within the warped paradigm of that insane society. The truly sane people appear to be insane in an insane society. It’s enough to drive a man crazy. The immense forces of normalcy bias and social inertia have led millions to refuse to understand the mathematical certainty of the coming collapse. The worldwide banking system is like a great white shark that needs to keep moving or it dies. Exponential growth and continuous credit expansion have been the essential ingredients to expanding the American empire, but the growth has stopped, while the debt keeps growing. Infinite growth on a finite planet is impossible. As natural resources deplete and become more expensive to obtain, while the planet’s population continues to grow, the fractional reserve banking system and the nation states who continue to pile up trillions in debt will suddenly suffer a catastrophic collapse. We are in the end stages of a confidence game. Your government will not give you warning. We need to come to our senses one by one, until there are enough sane people to tip the scales in our favor. I’ve concluded that I live in a dishonest, insane, intolerable world and consider it my duty to spread discontent among those I can reach. I’m a dangerous man in the eyes of our corporate fascist surveillance state. So be it.
“The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is apt to spread discontent among those who are.” – H.L. Mencken
In Part 2 of this article I will attempt to figure out why mass insanity has gripped the world and ponder what might happen when sanity returns
On Jan. 4 of last year, a local narcotics strike force
conducted a raid on the Ogden, Utah, home of Matthew David Stewart at 8:40 p.m.
The 12 officers were acting on a tip from Mr. Stewart's former girlfriend, who
said that he was growing marijuana in his basement. Mr. Stewart awoke, naked, to
the sound of a battering ram taking down his door. Thinking that he was being
invaded by criminals, as he later claimed, he grabbed his 9-millimeter Beretta
pistol.
Sean McCabe
The police say that they knocked and identified
themselves, though Mr. Stewart and his neighbors said they heard no such
announcement. Mr. Stewart fired 31 rounds, the police more than 250. Six of the
officers were wounded, and Officer Jared Francom was killed. Mr. Stewart himself
was shot twice before he was arrested. He was charged with several crimes,
including the murder of Officer Francom.
The police found 16 small marijuana plants in Mr.
Stewart's basement. There was no evidence that Mr. Stewart, a U.S. military
veteran with no prior criminal record, was selling marijuana. Mr. Stewart's
father said that his son suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and may
have smoked the marijuana to self-medicate.
Early this year, the Ogden city council heard complaints
from dozens of citizens about the way drug warrants are served in the city. As
for Mr. Stewart, his trial was scheduled for next April, and prosecutors were
seeking the death penalty. But after losing a hearing last May on the legality
of the search warrant, Mr. Stewart hanged himself in his jail cell.
The police tactics at issue in the Stewart case are no
anomaly. Since the 1960s, in response to a range of perceived threats,
law-enforcement agencies across the U.S., at every level of government, have
been blurring the line between police officer and soldier. Driven by martial
rhetoric and the availability of military-style equipment—from bayonets and M-16
rifles to armored personnel carriers—American police forces have often adopted a
mind-set previously reserved for the battlefield. The war on drugs and, more
recently, post-9/11 antiterrorism efforts have created a new figure on the U.S.
scene: the warrior cop—armed to the teeth, ready to deal harshly with targeted
wrongdoers, and a growing threat to familiar American liberties.
The acronym SWAT stands for Special Weapons and Tactics.
Such police units are trained in methods similar to those used by the special
forces in the military. They learn to break into homes with battering rams and
to use incendiary devices called flashbang grenades, which are designed to blind
and deafen anyone nearby. Their usual aim is to "clear" a building—that is, to
remove any threats and distractions (including pets) and to subdue the occupants
as quickly as possible.
The country's first official SWAT team started in the
late 1960s in Los Angeles. By 1975, there were approximately 500 such units.
Today, there are thousands. According to surveys conducted by the criminologist
Peter Kraska of Eastern Kentucky University, just 13% of towns between 25,000
and 50,000 people had a SWAT team in 1983. By 2005, the figure was up to
80%.
The number of raids conducted by SWAT-like police units
has grown accordingly. In the 1970s, there were just a few hundred a year; by
the early 1980s, there were some 3,000 a year. In 2005 (the last year for which
Dr. Kraska collected data), there were approximately 50,000 raids.
A number of federal agencies also now have their own
SWAT teams, including the Fish & Wildlife Service, NASA, the Consumer
Products Safety Commission and the Department of the Interior. In 2011, the
Department of Education's SWAT team bungled a raid on a woman who was initially
reported to be under investigation for not paying her student loans, though the
agency later said she was suspected of defrauding the federal student loan
program.
The details of the case aside, the story generated
headlines because of the revelation that the Department of Education had such a
unit. None of these federal departments has responded to my requests for
information about why they consider such high-powered military-style teams
necessary.
Americans have long been wary of using the military for
domestic policing. Concerns about potential abuse date back to the creation of
the Constitution, when the founders worried about standing armies and the
intimidation of the people at large by an overzealous executive, who might
choose to follow the unhappy precedents set by Europe's emperors and
monarchs.
The idea for the first SWAT team in Los Angeles arose
during the domestic strife and civil unrest of the mid-1960s. Daryl Gates, then
an inspector with the Los Angeles Police Department, had grown frustrated with
his department's inability to respond effectively to incidents like the 1965
Watts riots. So his thoughts turned to the military. He was drawn in particular
to Marine Special Forces and began to envision an elite group of police officers
who could respond in a similar manner to dangerous domestic disturbances.
When A strike force raided the home of Matthew David
Stewart, one officer was killed.
Mr. Gates initially had difficulty getting his idea
accepted. Los Angeles Police Chief William Parker thought the concept risked a
breach in the divide between the military and law enforcement. But with the
arrival of a new chief, Thomas Reddin, in 1966, Mr. Gates got the green light to
start training a unit. By 1969, his SWAT team was ready for its maiden raid
against a holdout cell of the Black Panthers.
At about the same time, President Richard Nixon was
declaring war on drugs. Among the new, tough-minded law-enforcement measures
included in this campaign was the no-knock raid—a policy that allowed drug cops
to break into homes without the traditional knock and announcement. After fierce
debate, Congress passed a bill authorizing no-knock raids for federal narcotics
agents in 1970.
Over the next several years, stories emerged of federal
agents breaking down the doors of private homes (often without a warrant) and
terrorizing innocent citizens and families. Congress repealed the no-knock law
in 1974, but the policy would soon make a comeback (without congressional
authorization).
During the Reagan administration, SWAT-team methods
converged with the drug war. By the end of the 1980s, joint task forces brought
together police officers and soldiers for drug interdiction. National Guard
helicopters and U-2 spy planes flew the California skies in search of marijuana
plants. When suspects were identified, battle-clad troops from the National
Guard, the DEA and other federal and local law enforcement agencies would swoop
in to eradicate the plants and capture the people growing them.
Advocates of these tactics said that drug dealers were
acquiring ever bigger weapons and the police needed to stay a step ahead in the
arms race. There were indeed a few high-profile incidents in which police were
outgunned, but no data exist suggesting that it was a widespread problem. A
study done in 1991 by the libertarian-leaning Independence Institute found that
less than one-eighth of 1% of homicides in the U.S. were committed with a
military-grade weapon. Subsequent studies by the Justice Department in 1995 and
the National Institute for Justice in 2004 came to similar conclusions: The
overwhelming majority of serious crimes are committed with handguns, and not
particularly powerful ones.
The new century brought the war on terror and, with it,
new rationales and new resources for militarizing police forces. According to
the Center for Investigative Reporting, the Department of Homeland Security has
handed out $35 billion in grants since its creation in 2002, with much of the
money going to purchase military gear such as armored personnel carriers. In
2011 alone, a Pentagon program for bolstering the capabilities of local law
enforcement gave away $500 million of equipment, an all-time high.
The past decade also has seen an alarming degree of
mission creep for U.S. SWAT teams. When the craze for poker kicked into high
gear, a number of police departments responded by deploying SWAT teams to raid
games in garages, basements and VFW halls where illegal gambling was suspected.
According to news reports and conversations with poker organizations, there have
been dozens of these raids, in cities such as Baltimore, Charleston, S.C., and
Dallas.
In 2006, 38-year-old optometrist Sal Culosi was shot and
killed by a Fairfax County, Va., SWAT officer. The investigation began when an
undercover detective overheard Mr. Culosi wagering on college football games
with some buddies at a bar. The department sent a SWAT team after Mr. Culosi,
who had no prior criminal record or any history of violence. As the SWAT team
descended, one officer fired a single bullet that pierced Mr. Culosi's heart.
The police say that the shot was an accident. Mr. Culosi's family suspects the
officer saw Mr. Culosi reaching for his cellphone and thought he had a
gun.
Assault-style raids have even been used in recent years
to enforce regulatory law. Armed federal agents from the Fish & Wildlife
Service raided the floor of the Gibson Guitar factory in Nashville in 2009, on
suspicion of using hardwoods that had been illegally harvested in Madagascar.
Gibson settled in 2012, paying a $300,000 fine and admitting to violating the
Lacey Act. In 2010, the police department in New Haven, Conn., sent its SWAT
team to raid a bar where police believed there was underage drinking. For sheer
absurdity, it is hard to beat the 2006 story about the Tibetan monks who had
overstayed their visas while visiting America on a peace mission. In Iowa, the
hapless holy men were apprehended by a SWAT team in full gear.
Unfortunately, the activities of aggressive, heavily
armed SWAT units often result in needless bloodshed: Innocent bystanders have
lost their lives and so, too, have police officers who were thought to be
assailants and were fired on, as (allegedly) in the case of Matthew David
Stewart.
In my own research, I have collected over 50 examples in
which innocent people were killed in raids to enforce warrants for crimes that
are either nonviolent or consensual (that is, crimes such as drug use or
gambling, in which all parties participate voluntarily). These victims were
bystanders, or the police later found no evidence of the crime for which the
victim was being investigated. They include Katherine Johnston, a 92-year-old
woman killed by an Atlanta narcotics team acting on a bad tip from an informant
in 2006; Alberto Sepulveda, an 11-year-old accidentally shot by a California
SWAT officer during a 2000 drug raid; and Eurie Stamps, killed in a 2011 raid on
his home in Framingham, Mass., when an officer says his gun mistakenly
discharged. Mr. Stamps wasn't a suspect in the investigation.
What would it take to dial back such excessive police
measures? The obvious place to start would be ending the federal grants that
encourage police forces to acquire gear that is more appropriate for the
battlefield. Beyond that, it is crucial to change the culture of militarization
in American law enforcement.
Consider today's police recruitment videos (widely
available on YouTube), which often feature cops rappelling from helicopters,
shooting big guns, kicking down doors and tackling suspects. Such campaigns
embody an American policing culture that has become too isolated,
confrontational and militaristic, and they tend to attract recruits for the
wrong reasons.
If you browse online police discussion boards, or chat
with younger cops today, you will often encounter some version of the phrase,
"Whatever I need to do to get home safe." It is a sentiment that suggests that
every interaction with a citizen may be the officer's last. Nor does it help
when political leaders lend support to this militaristic self-image, as New York
City Mayor Michael Bloomberg did in 2011 by declaring, "I have my own
army in the NYPD—the seventh largest army in the world."
The motivation of the average American cop should not
focus on just making it to the end of his shift. The LAPD may have given us the
first SWAT team, but its motto is still exactly the right ideal for American
police officers: To protect and serve.
SWAT teams have their place, of course, but they should
be saved for those relatively rare situations when police-initiated violence is
the only hope to prevent the loss of life. They certainly have no place as
modern-day vice squads.
Many longtime and retired law-enforcement officers have
told me of their worry that the trend toward militarization is too far gone.
Those who think there is still a chance at reform tend to embrace the idea of
community policing, an approach that depends more on civil society than on brute
force.
In this very different view of policing, cops walk
beats, interact with citizens and consider themselves part of the neighborhoods
they patrol—and therefore have a stake in those communities. It's all about a
baton-twirling "Officer Friendly" rather than a Taser-toting RoboCop.
Mr. Balko is the author of "Rise of the Warrior
Cop," published this month by PublicAffairs.
This is a rough translation of an article that appears in Der Spiegel.
NSA affair: Ex-President Carter Condemns U.S. Snooping By Gregor Peter Schmitz, from Atlanta 17.07.2013 – 13:59 Uhr
Ex-President Carter: "The invasion of privacy has gone too far"
The Obama administration has tried to placate Europe's anger over their spying programs. Not so ex-President Jimmy Carter: The Democrat Carter sharply criticized U.S. intelligence policy. The disclosure by the whistleblower Snowden was "useful."
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter was in the wake of the NSA spying scandal criticized the American political system. "America has no functioning democracy," Carter said Tuesday at a meeting of the "Atlantic Bridge" in Atlanta.
Previously, the Democrat had been very critical of the practices of U.S. intelligence. "I think the invasion of privacy has gone too far," Carter told CNN. "And I think that is why the secrecy was excessive."
With regard to the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, Carter said his revelations were "likely to be useful because they have informed the public."
Carter has repeatedly warned that the moral authority of the United States has declined sharply due to excessive curtailment of civil rights. Last year he wrote in an article in the "New York Times" that new U.S. laws have allowed "never before seen breaches of our privacy by the government."
Here is the only article I was able to find in English that discusses the same interview I believe. There were some others but they only talk about Carter's comments on the Zimmerman trial.
![[image]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_vDfaZZGHbqjlLR8CLNypBb0DMPo8PgxIcmNXcuimr28N8G7r0nB6Hqji3rJ0kw9VdsuuTUaD3_0uaJ4MwYw5twiD22JkPUeZybWdjHGaoW02le4cQEjLt40ozKsCfun2BLcbDdKKwVjOweD4Dg1_bDVCI=s0-d)
Sean McCabe 
