Saturday, March 18, 2017

The Real Irish-American Story Not Taught in Schools | By Bill Bigelow | Common Dreams

The Real Irish-American Story Not Taught in Schools | By Bill Bigelow | Common Dreams: "By contrast, Holt McDougal’s U.S. history textbook The Americans, devotes a flat two sentences to “The Great Potato Famine.” Prentice Hall’s America: Pathways to the Present fails to offer a single quote from the time. The text calls the famine a “horrible disaster,” as if it were a natural calamity like an earthquake. And in an awful single paragraph, Houghton Mifflin’s The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People blames the “ravages of famine” simply on “a blight,” and the only contemporaneous quote comes, inappropriately, from a landlord, who describes the surviving tenants as “famished and ghastly skeletons.” Uniformly, social studies textbooks fail to allow the Irish to speak for themselves, to narrate their own horror.

These timid slivers of knowledge not only deprive students of rich lessons in Irish-American history, they exemplify much of what is wrong with today’s curricular reliance on corporate-produced textbooks.

First, does anyone really think that students will remember anything from the books’ dull and lifeless paragraphs? Today’s textbooks contain no stories of actual people. We meet no one, learn nothing of anyone’s life, encounter no injustice, no resistance. This is a curriculum bound for boredom. As someone who spent almost 30 years teaching high school social studies, I can testify that students will be unlikely to seek to learn more about events so emptied of drama, emotion, and humanity."



'via Blog this'

Steve 'Big Short' Eisman: Smart, Lucky, Abrasive (& Now One Of Them)

ORIGINAL LINK

Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

20170318_eisman_0.jpg

I loved Michael Lewis’ book – The Big Short – about the 2008 Wall Street created global financial catastrophe, that is still impacting the little guys on Main Street eight years after it was supposedly resolved by Paulson, Bernanke and Obama. I even wrote an article about it called The Big Short: How Wall Street Destroyed Main Street. I also loved one of the main characters in the book – Frontpoint Partners hedge fund manager Steve Eisman – a foul mouthed, highly skeptical, open minded guy who figured out the fraudulent subprime mortgage scheme and shorted the crap out of the derivatives backing the fraud, making hundreds of millions in the process.

I had the opportunity to attend a 90 minute talk by Steve Eisman last night where he discussed the financial crisis, the response by the Fed and government, and the future for the financial industry. My perception of him, based on the book and movie, was he was a cantankerous asshole who didn’t care what anyone thought about him. My perception matched what I experienced. He was dropping f-bombs, insulting the institution hosting his talk, making fun of business school students (he graduated with a liberal arts degree) and dismissing any question he found to be stupid.

He was very funny. You could tell immediately he was smart and very opinionated. He was confident in his area of expertise. His diagnosis of what happened leading up to the financial implosion was dead on. He correctly tied the entire debacle to ridiculous levels of leverage taken on by Wall Street banks, warped incentives for financial industry employees and rating agencies, and Federal Reserve regulators asleep at the wheel, convinced Wall Street could regulate itself. I think he was too easy on the people who knowingly committed fraud to buy houses they knew they couldn’t afford. He said they were lured into the fraud by the unscrupulous mortgage industry. It takes two to tango.

He described how the credit standards continued to descend as the Wall Street doomsday machine needed more product to convert into toxic derivative products, rated AAA by the greedy worthless rating agencies, so they could sell the weapons of mass destruction to unsuspecting pension funds, mutual funds, and little old ladies. He openly despised Alan Greenspan as the worst Fed Chairman in history and blames him for the lack of regulation leading up to the crisis.

The slimy mortgage originators offered teaser rates of 3% to migrant workers so they could purchase a $700,000 home with nothing down and no proof of income. After three years the rate would adjust to 9%. The underwriters rated the loans based on the 3%, not the 9%. The home occupier had to pay 4 or 5 basis up front to get the loan. Since they could never afford the 9%, they had to refinance and pay another 4 or 5 basis points. The same loan would get repackaged twice into derivatives, while the shysters made out like bandits.

“In Bakersfield, California, a Mexican strawberry picker with an income of $14,000 and no English was lent every penny he needed to buy a house for $724,000.” ? Michael Lewis, The Big Short

This subprime slime was the fuse destined to blow up the system, but it was the Wall Street leverage which created the nuclear bomb attached to the fuse. He described how the Wall Street banks were leveraged 10 to 1 in 2000. By 2007 they were leveraged 33 to 1. And most of the assets on their balance sheet were toxic debt slime. Eisman was a Wall Street guy and understood their mindset. When he would point out how stupid these decisions were, the Wall Street big swinging dicks would respond they made $50 million last year and he didn’t. They were smart because they were rich.

The arrogant pricks who ran Wall Street firms mistook their self pronounced brilliant results for leverage propelled fake profits. Levering up your firm with toxic un-payable debt made you look brilliant in the short term, but created a debt bomb destined to blow up the world. Greed, hubris, ignorance of the products they were creating, complete lack of risk management, and the immoral culture of Wall Street led to the worst financial crisis in world history. Eisman’s diagnosis of the causes was perfect.

In my opinion, his positive response to how Paulson, Bernanke and the Obama administration “solved” the crisis was disingenuous, proof he’s a Wall Street guy at heart, and not the defender of the little guy as described by Steve Carrell, who portrayed him in the movie:

“I think he [Eisman] seems himself as a defender of justice and righteousness, while at the same time being conflicted.”

In the movie he was portrayed as the moral compass. After hearing his praise for the awesome job Paulson did by saving the criminal Wall Street banks with taxpayer money, I think the justice and righteousness stuff is overdone. Earlier in his talk he said banks existed to “fuck you” – his exact words. Then later he says we had to save them or the world would have ended. He spun the same old narrative that if you didn’t save AIG, Goldman, GE, and the rest of the corrupt Wall Street cabal, unemployment would have been 30% instead of the 10% it eventually reached. I guess he believes the BLS bullshit that unemployment is currently 4.7%.

Other smart people, not beholden to Wall Street (he works for Neuberger Berman), argue that we could have had an orderly liquidation of the Wall Street banks that took too much risk and levered themselves 33 to 1. The people on Main Street didn’t lever themselves 33 to 1, but we got to bail them out. Rewarding failure encourages more failure. There were over 8,000 banks in the US and it was only 10 or 20 who almost destroyed the world. They should have paid the price for their criminality and recklessness. Their executives should have gone to jail. Not one did.

I began to realize Eisman is a liberal Democrat when he enthusiastically praised Elizabeth Warren as a champion of the people and how Dodd Frank has completely reined in the Wall Street banks. He positively gushed about his friend Daniel Tarullo, the Fed’s chairman of the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council. He expounded on how tough he has been on the Wall Street banks and his gotten them under control. Meanwhile, they continue to pay billions in fines for their criminal acts and Michael Lewis’ other bestseller – Flashboys – documents the continued rigging of markets and criminality on Wall Street.

His defense of Wall Street as it’s constituted today reminded me of the Upton Sinclair quote:

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” 

He is a creature of Wall Street who depends on their good graces for his continued income. He wouldn’t even name Bill Miller as the idiot mutual fund manger who bought Bear Stearns as it was about to go under, because his compliance manager said he shouldn’t do so. It was at this point I realized he wasn’t some prescient sage who understands the markets better than the average schmuck. He got lucky. It wasn’t even his idea to short the subprime market derivatives. Greg Lippman from Deutsche Bank sold the idea to him in February 2006. He just acted on the advice.

His dismissal of overturning the Glass Steagall Act as a cause, Fannie & Freddie’s role in the crisis, and the fact this was a calculated control fraud deserving of prison sentences for hundreds of Wall Street executives, changed my view of the man in a matter of minutes. I find liberal minded people like himself are sometimes excellent at diagnosing problems, but their solutions either exacerbate the problem or ignore the real problem.

He said nothing about how Bernanke & Geithner’s threats to the FASB, resulting in the suspension of mark to market accounting, marked the exact bottom of the market. From that point onward, the Wall Street banks, along with Fannie and Freddie, could value their assets at whatever they wanted – mark to fantasy. Amazingly, the banks and the insolvent mortgage companies immediately started reporting billions of fake profits. Loan loss reserves were relieved, while Fannie & Freddie made billions in fake payments to the Treasury, artificially decreasing annual deficits.

Eisman, the man of the people, said nothing about how real median household income is lower today than it was at the height of the crisis, while Wall Street bonus pools are at record highs. He said nothing about senior citizens who used to count on 5% money market returns to scrape by now getting .25% because the Fed used ZIRP to save the Wall Street banks. Eisman is an extremely rich Wall Streeter. He wouldn’t know how to find Main Street, even with a GPS. He was surely blindsided by the deplorables, outside his NYC bubble, electing Trump as a reaction to the screwjob they received from Wall Street, the Fed and the Obama administration.

His laid back view of the Wall Street banks and how great their balance sheets are, with leverage of only 11 to 1, completely ignores the fact the Fed bought $3.6 trillion of their toxic debt at one hundred cents on the dollar, and the Obama administration took on $10 trillion of national debt to give the economy the appearance of recovery – while the majority are still experiencing a recession, except for Eisman’s Wall Street cronies. He had no problem with Wall Street hedge funds buying up all the foreclosed homes, driving prices higher to fix Wall Street balance sheets, and renting them back to the poor people he pretends to care about.

No mention from Steve about why the economy requires emergency level interest rates, nine years after the crisis. He seems sanguine about a $20 trillion national debt, where normalization of interest rates would blow up the world again. He thinks the US banking industry is the safest it has ever been in history. Isn’t it funny that he did an interview a few weeks ago revealing he is long the banking industry? He is just talking his book, just like every other Wall Street chameleon.

Even though stock valuations are at highs only seen in 1929, 2000, and 2007, Eisman sees no stock market bubble. He expects stocks to go higher due to Trump’s tax cuts and deregulation plans. Even though home prices are nearing 2005 levels again, he sees no real estate bubble. He sees no subprime auto loan bubble. He sees no student loan bubble – he said it’s the government’s problem, as if the government gets their money from someone other than the people. He doesn’t care about the debt bubble, because he’s an equity guy. This type of vision might explain why his hedge fund venture after Frontpoint – Emrys Partners – went under in two years.

My experience of seeing Steve Eisman in person was a letdown. I expected some sort of visionary superhero and I got an abrasive, myopic, captured Wall Street guy, parroting the Wall Street line that all is well, the future is bright, debt doesn’t matter, and stocks always go higher. I left the venue wondering whether I have the bad case of cognitive dissonance and can’t see how great things are, or whether Steve has the bad case of cognitive dissonance. I guess time will tell.

There are two things I learned.

  1. Its better to be lucky than smart.
  2. Wall Street will never change.

“What are the odds that people will make smart decisions about money if they don’t need to make smart decisions–if they can get rich making dumb decisions? The incentives on Wall Street were all wrong; they’re still all wrong.” ? Michael Lewis, The Big Short



via IFTTT

Fluorides, the atomic bomb, and fake news

ORIGINAL LINK

Occasionally, I reprint this article. I wrote it some years ago, during research on toxic chemicals pervading the landscape. I used to send the piece to mainstream reporters, but I eventually gave that up as a bad bet.They’re dedicated to fake news…and now they’re losing control over public consciousness. Losing badly. Independent media are in the ascendance, and rightly so. In 1997, Joel Griffiths and Chris Bryson, two respected mainstream journalists, peered into an abyss. They ...

via IFTTT

Friday, March 17, 2017

Fukushima: “Worst Industrial Cataclysm in World History”, Nuclear Engineer Arnie Gundersen

ORIGINAL LINK
Arnie Gundersen, former nuclear engineer, Mar 11, 2017: “The scientific impact of the triple meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi is an ongoing disaster that was never envisioned by the engineers who created and designed these atomic reactors and countries who built…

via IFTTT

Thursday, March 16, 2017

“We Are All Doing It”: Thousands Of Canadian Bankers Admit Lying To Customers To Boost Sales

ORIGINAL LINK

from ZeroHedge:

Several days after shares of Canada’s TD Bank tumbled following reports that its employees were engaging in practices similar to those which led to a major scandal at Wells Fargo, which cost CEO John Stumpf his job and led to bonus clawbacks and numerous terminations over the practice of “cross-selling”, employees from all five of Canada’s big banks have flooded CBC’s “Go Public” whistleblower hotline with stories of how they too feel pressured to upsell, trick and even lie to customers to meet unrealistic sales targets and keep their jobs.

n nearly 1,000 emails, employees from RBC, BMO, CIBC, TD and Scotiabank locations across Canada describe the pressures to hit targets that are monitored weekly, daily and in some cases hourly. “Management is down your throat all the time,” said a Scotiabank financial adviser. “They want you to hit your numbers and it doesn’t matter how.”

The deluge is fuelling multiple calls for a parliamentary inquiry similar to that which followed the Wells Fargo revelations, even as the banks claim they’re acting in customers’ best interests, CBC reported, adding it has agreed to protect their identities because the workers are concerned about current and future employment.

Some examples:

An RBC teller from Thunder Bay, Ont., said even when customers don’t need or want anything, “we need to upgrade their Visa card, increase their Visa limits or get them to open up a credit line.” “It’s not what’s important to our clients anymore,” she said. “The bank wants more and more money. And it’s leading everyone into debt.”

A CIBC teller said, “I am expected to aggressively sell products, especially Visa. Hit those targets, who cares if it’s hurting customers.”

A financial services manager who left BMO in Calgary two months ago said he quit after having a full-blown panic attack in his branch manager’s office as she threatened to stifle his banking career because he hadn’t met sales targets. “It was like the only thing they cared about at BMO,” he said. “If you weren’t selling, you weren’t worth having around.”

He claims his manager once told him not to tell clients who wanted to invest more than $40,000 that the markets were down, because putting their money into GICs wouldn’t earn the branch as much sales revenue.

He said she also told him to attach high interest rates on mortgages and lines of credit and to not tell clients those interest rates are negotiable. He said he was “pressured to lie and cheat customers,” but refused to do it.

As CBC adds, the revelations about other banks came pouring in after Go Public revealed last week that front-line staff at TD were under pressure to sell customers products and services they may not need and that some employees were breaking the law to hit their sales revenue targets. Those stories, experts say, prompted the largest drop in TD Bank shares since the financial market downturn of 2009.

They also resulted in hundreds more emails from TD workers past and present, including a teller who recently stopped working in Bramalea, Ont., who said the requirement to meet ever-increasing goals was so unprofessional, “I thought this was not a bank but a flea market.”

He admits to acting unethically because he says he feared being fired. “I bumped up credit cards, overdraft or account types just because of the pressures.”

A TD insurance broker in Barrie, Ont., wrote, “We are straight up told to tell false stories (lie) to sell products.” And an RBC financial adviser told Go Public, “We are all doing it.”

Read More @ ZeroHedge.com



via IFTTT

Wednesday, March 15, 2017

Hillary Clinton Campaign Was Connected To Russian Government

ORIGINAL LINK

1200px-Mil_Mi-8_4712470358-750x523.jpg

Russian bank Sberbank has now admitted to hiring a lobbying firm connected to the Hillary Clinton campaign to fight sanctions against the Russian government. The Podesta Group was founded by John Podesta, who served as campaign chairman for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during her 2016 presidential campaign.

According to senate lobbying disclosure forms, John’s brother and current head of the firm, Tony Podesta, was paid $170,000 in 2016 to represent Sberbank to end one of the Obama administration’s economic sanctions against Russia.

Podesta and other lobbyists worked Congress and set up meetings between the Russians and State Department officials to discuss ways to end the sanctions imposed in Executive Order 13660 in response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Sberbank and VTB Capital—the first and second largest banks in Russia, respectively—paid $700,000 for the lobbying work.

The report of paid lobbying by people associated with Clinton campaign comes on the heels of a disclosure by the Russian government that Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak met with advisers to the Clinton campaign during the 2016 election.

While seemingly benign, Ambassador Kislyak’s meetings with Trump campaign officials during the election have proved to be controversial, as Kislyak is considered a “top spy” and recruiter by U.S. intelligence, according to CNN.

Whether Kislyak was able to recruit any advisers to Hillary Clinton to work for Russian intelligence remains unknown.

The recent news stories are not the first time connections between the Clinton campaign and Russia have been revealed. Bloomberg News reported last August that Russian oligarchs allied with Russian President Vladimir Putin made political contributions to Hillary Clinton.

Specifically, money came from the family members of Leonard Blavatnik, Oleg Baibakov, and Roman Abramovich—all of whom have an interest in the political system maintained by Russian President Vladimir Putin. They were some of the biggest beneficiaries of Russia’s crash privatization scheme after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The extent to which the Clinton campaign was connected to the Russian government has yet to be fully investigated.

The post Hillary Clinton Campaign Was Connected To Russian Government appeared first on Shadowproof.



via IFTTT

"Something Snapped": US Department Store Sales Crash Most On Record

ORIGINAL LINK

bigger%20short_0.jpg

As we first documented last week in "Mega-Bears Smell Blood As Mall REITs Tumble" and as Bloomberg followed up yesterday, looking at CMBS on the Mall REIT space, many have set their sights on mall REITs as the "next big short." However, an obvious question that has emerged is whether it is too late to go all in on this particular short, or whether as some have suggested, the bottom is in. “The short feels crowded to us,” said Matthew Weinstein, principal at Axonic Capital, a hedge fund that specializes in structured products. “If these defaults start happening soon, the short will work, but if the defaults do not occur quickly, the first guy out could drive the market meaningfully higher.”

On the other hand, one particular chart revealed in the latest monthly Bank of America debit and credit card spending report shows that things may be about to get a whole lot worse for America's department stores, as well as malls where they are for the most part the anchor tenants. Of note: while official US retail sales data will be released tomorrow (BofA data always comes several days ahead of the official release), what is especially ominous is that the collapse in department store spending was the biggest on record.



via IFTTT

Documents Show Monsanto Colluded With EPA To Hide RoundUp’s Cancer Link

ORIGINAL LINK

Unsealed court documents have been released that reveal emails between Monsanto and officials at the Environmental Protection Agency showing the two groups working together to draft reports saying that RoundUp’s active ingredient glyphosate does not cause cancer.  Monsanto was allowed to ghostwrite the reports themselves, and that’s why the federal agency refused to label the

The post Documents Show Monsanto Colluded With EPA To Hide RoundUp’s Cancer Link appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.



via IFTTT

The “Inside Job” Hypothesis of the 9/11 Attacks: JFK, 9/11 and the American Left

ORIGINAL LINK
On November 23, 1963, the day after John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Fidel Castro gave a talk on Cuban radio and television.[1] He pulled together, as well as he could in the amount of time available to him, the evidence he…

via IFTTT

Tuesday, March 14, 2017

This creepy facial recognition app lets users FIND STRANGERS on Facebook by taking their picture

ORIGINAL LINK

Facebook.jpg

A facial recognition app that can identify strangers from a photograph has been created by a British entrepreneur.

(Article by Cara McGoogan republished from Telegraph.co.uk)

Facezam can identify people by matching a photo of them with their Facebook profile. All users have to do is take a picture of someone on the street and run it through the app, which will tell them who it thinks the person in the photo is.

“Facezam could be the end of our anonymous societies,” said Jack Kenyon, founder of Facezam. “Users will be able to identify anyone within a matter of seconds, which means privacy will no longer exist in public society.”

Facezam scans billions of Facebook profile images a second, which it accesses through a database for developers, until it finds a match. It claims to be able to link most photos with a profile on the social network within 10 seconds.

The app, which will launch on iOS on March 21, has been tested on more than 10,000 images to date with a 70 per cent accuracy.

Read more at: Telegraph.co.uk



via IFTTT

U.S. About to Hit $20 Trillion in Debt: Here’s How It Affects You

ORIGINAL LINK

(ANTIMEDIA) As the vulture pundits in the mainstream media pick apart hollow political scandals, the essential bankruptcy of the federal government looms just ahead. The national debt is creeping toward 20 trillion dollars, and the United State’s largest problem is once again staring the world in the face.

Just before the government was slated to shut down in 2015 (as it did in 2013), Congress was able to pass a delay on the debt ceiling decision until March 15th of this year — Wednesday of this week. Recurring uncertainty caused by events like this has implications that extend far beyond our own borders. The amount of leverage in the current system has already forced foreign holders of U.S. debt to question the real value of America’s full faith and credit.

2016 was a record-setting year for the liquidation of foreign-held U.S. bonds, topping out at nearly $405 billion. The selling was led by China, America’s second-biggest creditor, which currently holds over $1 trillion of U.S. debt, almost 28% of the total held by foreign central banks. They weren’t alone, though, and even the U.S.’ number one lender, Japan, has rolled back their positions to protect themselves as the reality of U.S. insolvency comes into focus. A gradual change has been set in motion, and the global superpower status of the United States may be systematically eroded — not militarily, but economically.

If the government does shut down again, the Treasury Department reportedly has as little as $66 billion in reserves and just enough income from taxes to meet its essential obligations. Entitlements like social security and Medicare will likely be unaffected, but if lawmakers can’t collaborate to pass some kind of resolution, the power to allocate additional federal spending will largely be turned over to President Trump. The initial hiring freeze on federal employees that was implemented shortly after his inauguration could be just a taste of what’s to come.

debt ceiling

The president’s promised tax cuts, Obamacare “reform,” and increased military spending will only intensify the political rift in this country. Democratic leaders have already accused the Trump administration of colluding with Russia, so it’s likely they’ll refuse to compromise on the budget in an effort to further undermine the Republican agenda. The destructive results of a polarized two-party system are exposed whenever crucial decisions like this must be made. When the legislative branch fails in its duties, the odds of a dictatorial executive developing are always amplified. The coming budgetary stalemate also threatens to undermine the recent record highs seen in the stock market.

Although the financial markets have enjoyed massive gains since the election, many investors have been hypnotized into blindly embracing the illusion that ‘this time it’s different.’ Nearly a decade of emergency monetary policy by the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates, along with its injection of trillions of dollars into the economy, has numbed Wall Street to the harsh realities of history.

David Stockman, former budget director for the Reagan administration, spoke to Neil Cavuto on Fox Business about the imminent debt crisis threatening to blindside the U.S. economy:

“What I’m saying is, all the extra growth from dynamic accounting that you could get if you got all these tax cuts through, it will not happen, the math isn’t there, it’s impossible. There is going to be a debt crisis this summer that will cause a financial crash of unbelievable proportions….It’s going to go on for days and weeks if not months, because Congress is already nasty and partisan. I’m seeing reality, the robo-machines are simply trading sound bites and tweets and hourly sentiments, this is meaningless. This is the biggest suckers rally in history and there is going to be a huge surprise very soon.”

This plague of short-term thinking and desire for instant gratification has lulled America into an apathetic fog. People no longer act as though they have a stake in the future. They choose willful ignorance even as the most serious problems go unresolved. The $20 trillion balance on the national credit card is the most tangible example of how nearly a century of decadence can transform a society. This country once represented the world’s moral compass and a beacon of economic freedom, but those pillars have been abandoned to indulge in war profiteering and monetary fraud.

Delaying the inevitable has become an American pastime, along with avoiding responsibility for the consequences of our actions. The easy way out everyone appears to be looking for doesn’t exist, and the assumption that some enlightened person out there in a position of power has their best interests at heart is a fantasy.

Sure, 20 trillion is just a number, and the United States has a printing press, so technically, it can just create money to pay its bills. But that kind of short-sightedness is what has brought great civilizations to their knees in the past. Millennials can blame the baby boomers and the baby boomers can claim they didn’t know any better, but regardless, the situation is dire.

Despite the anticipation of reaching these debt levels, in all likelihood, the ceiling will eventually be raised and more reckless spending will follow. The spectacle put on by bureaucrats in Washington may be entertaining, but history will judge those who remain silent and pretend it isn’t their responsibility to intervene.

The time to think about who has been entrusted with your life savings and retirement is now. Most people wander through life never considering the unpleasant truths that might disturb their rose-colored view of the world. By acknowledging the reality of the situation, individuals can finally take the first steps towards securing peace of mind for themselves and their families. The United States federal government is not a benevolent caretaker, but a leech that will use its citizens as a host to keep itself alive.

As mainstream pundits and elected officials inevitably shift blame around like a twisted version of musical chairs, remember that self-reliance is the only solution. Those who become dependent on this crumbling house of cards are doomed to suffer the same fate as those seen waiting in lines for government handouts in places like Venezuela. Celebrate the $20 trillion dollar debt by breaking from the old system and exploring the new economy built on peer-to-peer networks, where individual skills are worth more than empty promises made by the State.

Creative Commons / Anti-Media / Report a typo / Image: Marta Nimeva Nimeviene



via IFTTT

2 Years After This American Journalist Was Killed, Her ‘Conspiracy Theories’ on Syria are Proven as Facts

ORIGINAL LINK

While Americans continue to be distracted by the discussion over Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, geopolitical tension around the proxy war in Syria has escalated to levels that could lead to regional warfare or open conflict between nuclear superpowers Russia and the United States, as described by military officials from multiple countries. US Army General Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated that a “no-fly zone” in Syria would lead to war with Russia, during a September 22 Senate committee hearing. Hillary Clinton also admitted similar risks of the military policy she supports for the Syria war, saying “you’re going to kill a lot of Syrians,” during a speech at a Goldman Sachs event.



via IFTTT

UN Experts Denounce ‘Myth’ That Pesticides Are Necessary to Feed the World

ORIGINAL LINK

Though it’s been publicized that humanity requires pesticides to avoid world hunger, a new report by United Nations food and pollution experts says this is actually a myth.

The report calls out corporations that manufacture pesticides, accusing them of “systematic denial of harms,” “aggressive, unethical marketing,” and swaying governments to stop reforms and global pesticide restrictions from passing. According to the report, pesticides have “catastrophic impacts on the environment, human health and society as a whole.” And despite all their harm, pesticides do nothing to help world hunger.

By 2050, the world’s population will reportedly increase by 2 billion people. Considering it’s estimated that about 795 million people of the 7.3 billion people in the world, or one in nine, were suffering from chronic undernourishment in 2014-2016, that projection should disquiet us all. If we are on track to see 9 billion people living on Earth in 2050, world hunger stands to become an even greater problem.

The pesticide industry’s response to such a concern is an argument that its market is an essential part of ensuring sufficient food supplies.

“It is a myth,” said Hilal Elver, the UN’s special rapporteur on the right to food. “Using more pesticides is nothing to do with getting rid of hunger. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), we are able to feed 9 billion people today. Production is definitely increasing, but the problem is poverty, inequality and distribution.”

According to Elver, many of the pesticides used are on commodity crops like palm oil and soy, not foods necessary for treating world hunger. “The corporations are not dealing with world hunger, they are dealing with more agricultural activity on large scales.”

The new report noted:

While scientific research confirms the adverse effects of pesticides, proving a definitive link between exposure and human diseases or conditions or harm to the ecosystem presents a considerable challenge. This challenge has been exacerbated by a systematic denial, fuelled by the pesticide and agro-industry, of the magnitude of the damage inflicted by these chemicals, and aggressive, unethical marketing tactics.

The pesticide industry is a market worth $50 billion a year, killing at least 250,000–370,000 people each year.

The report explained: “Chronic exposure to pesticides has been linked to cancer, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, hormone disruption, developmental disorders and sterility.

“The industry frequently uses the term ‘intentional misuse’ to shift the blame on to the user for the avoidable impacts of hazardous pesticides,” the report said. “Yet clearly, the responsibility for protecting users and others throughout the pesticide life cycle and throughout the retail chain lies with the pesticide manufacturer.”

The report provided a solution to the injustice of false reporting and reported health hazards of  the pesticide industry, recommending  a global treaty to oversee the use of pesticides, while pushing for sustainable practices like natural methods of hindering pests and crop rotation. It also suggested incentivizing organically produced food.

 



via IFTTT

Monday, March 13, 2017

The Banking Secret that Neither Economists Nor Laypeople Know … Which Is Destroying the Real Economy (While Making a Few King)

ORIGINAL LINK

Private Banks - Not the Government or Central Banks - Create 97 Percent of All Money

Who creates money?

Most people assume that money is created by governments ... or perhaps central banks.

In reality - as noted by the Bank of England, Britain's central bank - 97% of all money in circulation is created by private banks.

Bank Loans = Creating Money Out of Thin Air

But how do private banks create money?

We've all been taught that banks first take in deposits, and then they loan out those deposits to folks who want to borrow.

But this is a myth ... The Bank of England the German central bank have explained that loans are extended before deposits exist ... and that the loans create deposits:

The above is from an official video released by the Bank of England. The Bank of England explains:

Whenever a bank makes a loan, it simultaneously creates a matching deposit in the borrower’s bank account, thereby creating new money. The reality of how money is created today differs from the description found in some economics textbooks:

  • Rather than banks receiving deposits when households save and then lending them out, bank lending creates deposits.

***

One common misconception is that banks act simply as intermediaries, lending out the deposits that savers place with them. In this view deposits are typically ‘created’ by the saving decisions of households, and banks then ‘lend out’ those existing deposits to borrowers, for example to companies looking to finance investment or individuals wanting to purchase houses.

***

In reality in the modern economy, commercial banks are the creators of deposit money .... Rather than banks lending out deposits that are placed with them, the act of lending creates deposits — the reverse of the sequence typically described in textbooks.

***

Commercial banks create money, in the form of bank deposits, by making new loans. When a bank makes a loan, for example to someone taking out a mortgage to buy a house, it does not typically do so by giving them thousands of pounds worth of banknotes. Instead, it credits their bank account with a bank deposit of the size of the mortgage. At that moment, new money is created. For this reason, some economists have referred to bank deposits as ‘fountain pen money’, created at the stroke of bankers’ pens when they approve loans. *** This description of money creation contrasts with the notion that banks can only lend out pre-existing money, outlined in the previous section. Bank deposits are simply a record of how much the bank itself owes its customers. So they are a liability of the bank, not an asset that could be lent out.

Similarly, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago published a booklet called “Modern Money Mechanics” in the 1960s stating:

[Banks] do not really pay out loans from the money they receive as deposits. If they did this, no additional money would be created. What they do when they make loans is to accept promissory notes in exchange for credits to the borrowers’ transaction accounts.

Monetary expert and economics professor Randall Wray explained to Washington's Blog that:

Bank deposits are bank IOUs.

Economics professor Richard Werner - who obtained his PhD in economics from Oxford, was the first Shimomura Fellow at the Research Institute for Capital Formation at the Development Bank of Japan, Visiting Researcher at the Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies at the Bank of Japan, Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Monetary and Fiscal Studies at the Ministry of Finance, and chief economist of Jardine Fleming - was granted access to study a bank's books, and confirmed that private banks create money when they simply create fictitious deposits into a borrower's account. Werner explains:

What banks do is to simply reclassify their accounts payable items arising from the act of lending as ‘customer deposits’, and the general public, when receiving payment in the form of a transfer of bank deposits, believes that a form of money had been paid into the bank.

***

No balance is drawn down to make a payment to the borrower.

***

The bank does not actually make any money available to the borrower: No transfer of funds from anywhere to the customer or indeed the customer’s account takes place. There is no equal reduction in the balance of another account to defray the borrower. Instead, the bank simply re-classified its liabilities, changing the ‘accounts payable’ obligation arising from the bank loan contract to another liability category called ‘customer deposits’.

While the borrower is given the impression that the bank had transferred money from its capital, reserves or other accounts to the borrower’s account (as indeed major theories of banking, the financial intermediation and fractional reserve theories, erroneously claim), in reality this is not the case. Neither the bank nor the customer deposited any money, nor were any funds from anywhere outside the bank utilised to make the deposit in the borrower’s account. Indeed, there was no depositing of any funds.

***

The bank’s liability is simply re-named a ‘bank deposit’.

***

Banks create money when they grant a loan: they invent a fictitious customer deposit, which the central bank and all users of our monetary system, consider to be ‘money’, indistinguishable from ‘real’ deposits not newly invented by the banks. Thus banks do not just grant credit, they create credit, and simultaneously they create money.

***

Instead of discharging their liability to pay out loans, the banks merely reclassify their liabilities originating from loan contracts from what should be an ‘accounts payable’ item to ‘customer deposit’ ....

How Can Banks DO This?

Professor Werner explains the reason that banks - but no one else - can create money out of thin air is that they are the only institution exempted from normal accounting rules. Specifically, every other company would be busted for fraudulent accounting if they conjured new money out of thin air by reclassifying a liability (i.e. an accounts payable) as an asset (i.e. a deposit). But the banks have pushed through exemptions so that they don't have to follow normal accounting rules:

What enables banks to create credit and hence money is their exemption from the Client Money Rules. Thanks to this exemption they are allowed to keep customer deposits on their own balance sheet. This means that depositors who deposit their money with a bank are no longer the legal owners of this money. Instead, they are just one of the general creditors of the bank whom it owes money to. It also means that the bank is able to access the records of the customer deposits held with it and invent a new ‘customer deposit’ that had not actually been paid in, but instead is a re-classified accounts payable liability of the bank arising from a loan contract.

***

What makes banks unique and explains the combination of lending and deposit-taking under one roof is the more fundamental fact that they do not have to segregate client accounts, and thus are able to engage in an exercise of ‘re-labelling’ and mixing different liabilities, specifically by re-assigning their accounts payable liabilities incurred when entering into loan agreements, to another category of liability called ‘customer deposits’.

What distinguishes banks from non-banks is their ability to create credit and money through lending, which is accomplished by booking what actually are accounts payable liabilities as imaginary customer deposits, and this is in turn made possible by a particular regulation that renders banks unique: their exemption from the Client Money Rules. [Werner gives a concrete example on British law for banking and non-banking institutions.]

Sound fraudulent? Professor Werner thinks so, also:

But he also makes some more important points ...

What Does It All Mean? The Implications of Money Creation By Private Banks

Mainstream economists believe that private debt doesn’t even “exist as a force that acts on the economy. For example, Ben Bernanke and Paul Krugman assume that huge levels of household debt don’t hurt the economy because more debt among households just means that savers have loaned them money … i.e. that it is a net wash to the economy. To make this assumption, they rely on the myth debunked above ... that banks can only loan as much money out as they have in deposits. In reality, 143 years of history shows that excessive private debt – in and of itself – can cause depressions.

Moreover, Professor Werner points out that attempts to shore up the banking system with capital requirements (such as the Basel accords) are doomed to failure, since they don't recognize that banks create money at will:

Basel rules were doomed to failure, since they consider banks as financial intermediaries, when in actual fact they are the creators of the money supply. Since banks invent money as fictitious deposits, it can be readily shown that capital adequacy based bank regulation does not have to restrict bank activity: banks can create money and hence can arrange for money to be made available to purchase newly issued shares that increase their bank capital. In other words, banks could simply invent the money that is then used to increase their capital. This is what Barclays Bank did in 2008, in order to avoid the use of tax money to shore up the bank’s capital: Barclays ‘raised’ £5.8 bn in new equity from Gulf sovereign wealth investors — by, it has transpired, lending them the money! As is explained in Werner (2014a), Barclays implemented a standard loan operation, thus inventing the £5.8 bn deposit ‘lent’ to the investor. This deposit was then used to ‘purchase’ the newly issued Barclays shares. Thus in this case the bank liability originating from the bank loan to the Gulf investor transmuted from (1) an accounts payable liability to (2) a customer deposit liability, to finally end up as (3) equity — another category on the liability side of the bank’s balance sheet. Effectively, Barclays invented its own capital. This certainly was cheaper for the UK tax payer than using tax money. As publicly listed companies in general are not allowed to lend money to firms for the purpose of buying their stocks, it was not in conformity with the Companies Act 2006 (Section 678, Prohibition of assistance for acquisition of shares in public company). But regulators were willing to overlook this. As Werner (2014b) argues, using central bank or bank credit creation is in principle the most cost-effective way to clean up the banking system and ensure that bank credit growth recovers quickly. The Barclays case is however evidence that stricter capital requirements do not necessary prevent banks from expanding credit and money creation, since their creation of deposits generates more purchasing power with which increased bank capital can also be funded.

Moreover, Werner points out that banks create the boom-bust cycle by lending too much for speculative, non-productive purposes:

By failing to take into account the fact that banks create money, economists and governments are sowing the seeds for future crashes. But the economics field is very resistant to change ... Economics professor Steve Keen notes in Forbes:

In any genuine science, empirical data like this would have forced the orthodoxy to rethink its position. But in economics, the profession has sailed on, blithely unaware of how their model of “banks as intermediaries between savers and investors” is seriously wrong, and now blinds them to the remedy for the crisis as it previously blinded them to the possibility of a crisis occurring.

A wit once defined an economist as someone who, when shown that something works in practice, replies “Ah! But does it work in theory?”

And a 2016 IMF paper notes:

Around [the 1960s] banks began to completely disappear from most macroeconomic models of how the economy works.­

This helps explain why, when faced with the Great Recession in 2008, macroeconomics was initially unprepared to contribute much to the analysis of the interaction of banks with the macro economy. Today there is a sizable body of research on this topic, but the literature still has many difficulties.­

***

Virtually all recent mainstream neoclassical economic research is based on the highly misleading “intermediation of loanable funds” description of banking ...

***

In modern neoclassical intermediation of loanable funds theories, banks are seen as intermediating real savings. Lending, in this narrative, starts with banks collecting deposits of previously saved real resources (perishable consumer goods, consumer durables, machines and equipment, etc.) from savers and ends with the lending of those same real resources to borrowers. But such institutions simply do not exist in the real world. There are no loanable funds of real resources that bankers can collect and then lend out. Banks do of course collect checks or similar financial instruments, but because such instruments—to have any value—must be drawn on funds from elsewhere in the financial system, they cannot be deposits of new funds from outside the financial system. New funds are produced only with new bank loans (or when banks purchase additional financial or real assets), through book entries made by keystrokes on the banker’s keyboard at the time of disbursement. This means that the funds do not exist before the loan and that they are in the form of electronic entries—or, historically, paper ledger entries—rather than real resources.­

***

This “financing through money creation” function of banks has been repeatedly described in publications of the world’s leading central banks—see McLeay, Radia, and Thomas (2014a, 2014b) for excellent summaries. What has been much more challenging, however, is the incorporation of these insights into macroeconomic models [how true].

What's the Solution?

We've seen the problems created by failing to take into account the fact that private banks create money. But there are solutions ... Initially, Professor Werner notes that preventing banks from creating new money to loan for speculation and mere personal consumption would prevent booms and busts:

Werner says that the "Asian Miracle" happened for exactly this reason:

Additionally, allowing small community banks to grow would cause the real economy to flourish ... since small banks loan to small businesses (which create most of the jobs), while big banks only loan to giant companies and speculators:

Indeed, big banks are virtually out of the business of traditional lending ... and small banks are the only ones funding Main Street. Werner says this is the secret of Germany's economic success:

Postscript: Due to their unique money-printing powers, banks now literally own the world … including the entire political system.

There's a war raging in connection with banking. Remember that the giant banks tried to kill off community banking through the Trans Pacific Partnership. And as Professor Werner points out, the European Central Bank is currently in a war to destroy community banks:

One of key battles for prosperity and democracy today is decentralization of the banking system.



via IFTTT

How 1 of history's most brilliant men viewed God

ORIGINAL LINK
Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein was born in Germany on March 14, 1879. He began teaching himself calculus at age 14. With a doctorate from the University of Zurich, Einstein wrote papers on electromagnetic energy, relativity, and statistical mechanics.

Einstein predicted a ray of light from a distant star would appear to bend as it passed near the sun. When an eclipse confirmed this, the London Times ran the headline, Nov. 7, 1919, “Revolution in science – New theory of the Universe-Newtonian ideas overthrown.”

In 1921, Albert Einstein won the Nobel Prize in Physics. Describing the theory of relativity, Albert Einstein said: “When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute – and it’s longer than any hour. That’s relativity.”

Einstein’s first visit to the United States was to raise funds for Jerusalem’s Hebrew University. On his third visit, 1932, he took a post at Princeton University. When the National Socialist Workers Party took control of Germany, they barred Jews from holding official positions or teaching at universities.

Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels proclaimed “Jewish intellectualism is dead” and burned Einstein’s works.

Commenting on redistribution of wealth, Albert Eistein stated: “I am absolutely convinced that no wealth in the world can help humanity forward, even in the hands of the most devoted worker in this cause. The example of great and pure individuals is the only thing that can lead us to noble thoughts and deeds. … Can anyone imagine Moses, Jesus, or Gandhi armed with the moneybags of Carnegie?”

Einstein stayed in the United States, becoming a citizen in 1940. Einstein’s theory of relativity, E=MC2, is the basis for applying atomic energy. His warning that Nazis could create the atom bomb led President Franklin D. Roosevelt to set up the Manhattan Project.

Albert Einstein stated: “The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.”

In November of 1952, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion asked Einstein to be Israel’s second president, but he declined due to age, dying less than three years later. Being “deeply moved” by the offer, Einstein replied: “My relationship with the Jewish people became my strongest human tie.”

The periodic table’s 99th element, discovered shortly after his death in 1955 was named “einsteinium.”

Albert Einstein was quoted in The New York Times, Nov. 9, 1930, saying: “I assert that the cosmic religious experience is the strongest and noblest driving force behind scientific research.”

Albert Einstein stated: “God Almighty does not throw dice.” and “Before God we are all equally wise – equally foolish.”

As recorded by Helen Dukas in “Albert Einstein, The Human Side” (Princeton University Press, 1981, p. 66), Einstein stated: “My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance-but for us, not for God.”

Einstein stated in an interview published in G.S. Viereck’s book “Glimpses of the Great,” 1930: “I’m absolutely not an atheist. … The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws.”

Discover more of Bill Federer’s eye-opening books and videos in the WND Superstore!

Walter Isaacson quoted Einstein in the article “Einstein and Faith,” Time 169, April 5, 2007, 47): “The fanatical atheists … are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who – in their grudge against the traditional ‘opium of the people’ – cannot bear the ‘music of the spheres.'”

According to Prince Hubertus (Ronald W. Clark, “Einstein: The Life and Times,” New York: World Publishing Company, 1971, p. 425), Einstein said: “In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views.”

Einstein wrote to M. Berkowitz, 1950, (William Hermanns, “Einstein and the Poet. In Search of the Cosmic Man,” Brookline Village MA: Branden Books, 1983, p. 60): “‘God’ is a mystery. But a comprehensible mystery. I have nothing but awe when I observe the laws of nature. There are not laws without a lawgiver, but how does this lawgiver look? Certainly not like a man magnified.”

Though not believing in a personal God, The Saturday Evening Post, Oct. 26, 1929, published George Sylvester Viereck’s interview with Albert Einstein. When asked “To what extent are you influenced by Christianity,” Einstein answered: “As a child I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene.”

When asked “Have you read Emil Ludwig’s book on Jesus,” Einstein replied: “Emil Ludwig’s Jesus is shallow. Jesus is too colossal for the pen of phrasemongers, however artful. No man can dispose of Christianity with a bon mot! (witty remark)”

When asked “You accept the historical existence of Jesus,” Einstein answered: “Unquestionably! No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life.”

Princeton University’s Fine Hall has inscribed Albert Einstein’s words above the fireplace: “Raffiniert ist der Herr Gott, aber Boshaft ist er nicht.” (God is clever, but not dishonest.)

Brought to you by AmericanMinute.com.

Discover more of Bill Federer’s eye-opening books and videos in the WND Superstore!

Receive Bill Federer's American Minutes in your email

BONUS: By signing up for these alerts, you will also be signed up for news and special offers from WND via email.
  • Name*
    First Last
  • Email*
    Where we will email your daily updates
  • Postal code*
    A valid zip code or postal code is required


via IFTTT

Sunday, March 12, 2017

Consuming Our Future: Das Warns "The Model Was Always Doomed To Fail"

Superstar reporter describes Obama's creepy spying on her

ORIGINAL LINK
Former Attorney General Eric Holder and former President Obama

Former Attorney General Eric Holder and former President Obama

“It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran.” – George Orwell, “1984” 

WASHINGTON – The woman who is perhaps the nation’s top investigative journalist is fighting back against Big Brother.

Sharyl Attkisson shared with WND a detailed and harrowing description of what it was like to experience a reality straight out of Orwell: The reporter claims she was spied on by the Obama administration while investigating its scandals.

What tipped her off?

Imagine what it must be like to watch your computer turn itself on and off.

“That’s one visible sign I noticed over many months,” Attkisson told WND in an email interview.

“At the time, I suspected it was some sort of phishing program seeking my passwords and contacts, and was confident my computer had sufficient protections. I never suspected it was connected to an intrusion of my systems until sources and forensics told me that it was.”

Sharyl Attkisson

Sharyl Attkisson

She also watched a different computer that she used delete files by itself.

After Attkisson released a video showing that as it was happening, Vox’s Max Fisher claimed it was more likely that she had a stuck backspace key.

WND asked, as an Emmy-award winning investigative journalist and now the anchor of her own Sunday morning national TV news program, “Full Measure,”did she find Fisher’s claim that she was confused by a keyboard plausible?

“It was just a silly attempt by a noted propagandist blog that had no firsthand information to deflect from the surveillance,” she replied dismissively.

“The ‘expert’ didn’t even know enough to understand there is no ‘backspace’ key on the computer shown, and — in any event — that holding down such a key cannot duplicate the super fast deletions demonstrated at the beginning of that particular video clip.”

The five-time Emmy Award winner and recipient of the Edward R. Murrow award for investigative reporting announced in January she is suing the Justice Department and seeking $35 million in damages for illegally hacking her computers and monitoring her work between 2011 and 2013.

Three separate computer forensic exams of her computers revealed what appears to be stunning evidence pointing straight to the Obama administration.

“The most important and irrefutable finding is: forensic evidence of a government-owned I.P. (internet protocol) address accessing my computer,” Attkisson told WND.

She said she was told that was “better evidence than the U.S. had when it accused China of various acts of hacking into our government, which the government accepts as proven.”

Her computers were examined by three independent forensics examiners including: a confidential source, an examiner hired by CBS News, and an examiner hired by her attorney.

What they found is just stunning.

Attkisson provided an itemized overview of some of their findings, and described what a confidential source and examiner hired by her attorney found:

  • “A government-owned I.P. address was used to access my computer.”
  • “We are able to see instances of exact date and time that the intruders entered my computers, and the methods they used to do so.”
  • “They used commercial, non-attributable software proprietary to the CIA, FBI, NSA or DIA.”
  • “The malware was constantly running on my computers. It included a feature that logged my keystrokes, accessed all my emails and collected my passwords.”
  • “Skype was surreptitiously used to listen in on audio.”
  • “My smartphone was also infected.”
  • “Three classified documents had been put on my computer.”
  • “Once sources notified me that I was likely being surveilled, and I discussed this in emails, the intruders took steps to erase evidence of their presence. However, the deletions themselves create a record of evidence.”

CBS and its analyst found:

  • “Attkisson’s computer was accessed by an unauthorized, external, unknown party on multiple occasions in late 2012.”
  • “Evidence suggests this party performed all access remotely using Attkisson’s accounts.”
  • “An intruder had executed commands that appeared to involve search and exfiltration of data.”
  • “This party also used sophisticated methods to remove all possible indications of unauthorized activity, and alter system times to cause further confusion.”
  • “[Attkisson’s] systems were indeed subject to non-standard interactions between June 2012 and January 2013.”
  • “Definitive evidence that shows commands were run from Sharyl’s user account that she did not personally authorize.”
  • “This history has been deliberately removed from Sharyl’s hard drive.”
  • The intruders conducted an inordinate number of internal computer clock “time stamp” changes, likely to try to confuse any forensics that might be conducted.

Why her?

WND asked the former CBS Washington bureau investigative correspondent, did she think the administration considered her a foe? And acted to stop her out of purely political concerns?

“I have no idea, the perpetrators would have to answer that question and they certainly aren’t stepping forward,” she replied.

“But,” she continued, “my computer intrusions occurred in context of the Obama administration’s crackdown on whistleblowers and a lot of my work deals with whistleblowers.”

“Additionally, we know the administration was aggressively trying to control the narrative on a number of stories it saw as damaging, especially as the re-election year of 2012 shaped up.”

Attkisson detailed her experience under surveillance in 2014 in her highly acclaimed New York Times bestseller, “Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama’s Washington.”

stonewalled

Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, records previously obtained by the government watchdog group Judicial Watch indicate Attkisson was targeted by the Obama administration because of critical reporting.

In 2014, Judicial Watch said it “obtained an October 4, 2011, email to White House Deputy Press Secretary Eric Schultz, Attorney General Eric Holder’s top press aide, (in which) Tracy Schmaler, described Attkisson as ‘out of control.’

“Schmaler added ominously, ‘I’m also calling Sharryl’s [sic] editor and reaching out to Scheiffer’ (an apparent reference to CBS’ Chief Washington Correspondent and Face the Nation moderator Bob Scheiffer). Schultz responded, ‘Good. Her piece was really bad for the AG’ (attorney general.)”

Given that Obama’s Justice Department had labeled her as “out of control” and tried to get the reporter’s employer to rein her in, WND asked Attkisson:  What did she make of an administration that seeks to control reporters?

“I expect it,” was the sober response. “But it’s our job to resist it and we aren’t doing a very good job of that as an industry.”

(Attkisson described problems endemic in the news media, including the genesis of fake news, in an interview with WND in December previewing her new book titled “The Smear: How Shady Political Operatives Control What You See, What You Think, and How You Vote,” due to be published on May 22, 2017.)

Did she think her experience and that of the Associated Press and Fox News reporter James Rosen (both spied on by the Obama administration) were part of a pattern?

“Yes. I was informed about my case prior to us knowing about any of the other cases, just before the Snowden revelations, and prior to former DNI (Director of National Intelligence James) Clapper falsely telling Congress that the government was not collecting data of millions of Americans…but all of these events occurred in the same general time frame.”

smear

So, was it the administration that was “out of control?”

“You decide!” she replied, echoing a famous news slogan.

Investigating the truth about her own story, the award-winning reporter has faced what she called a Catch-22 dilemma.

“To find out who accessed my computer, we need the government’s cooperation, but the government isn’t cooperating.”

“In my lawsuit, we seek to learn who had access to the I.P. address that was used to infiltrate my computer,” she continued. “To date, the Department of Justice has taken multiple steps to block us from finding this answer.”

However, her persistence has revealed some compelling results.

“Finally, at my request, the DOJ (Department of Justice) Inspector General’s office sent investigators to look at a separate computer, my personal home computer.”

Attkisson said that although the Justice Department’s inspector general’s office will not release their notes and records, “and have improperly failed to respond to my Freedom of Information Act request for the information,” their forensics investigators reported to her that they found the following on her personal computer:

  • “Evidence of suspicious deletions of files that could not have been done by me.
  • “Use of my computer in ‘advanced mode’ (which was not done by me).”
  • “‘Someone’ installed software onto my desktop and executed it and overwrote some important logs effectively covering their tracks and erasing much evidence of their actions.”
  • “As with my CBS computer, they found a lot of unusual time and date setting changes on my personal computer as well (15 times in four days).”
  • “They executed data recovery, recovering previously deleted logs.”

Attkisson said the forensics examiners working for the Justice Department’s inspector general “told me they believed the intruder(s) were actually working in my house at the computer conducting these acts, rather than conducting them remotely, but, in fact, the acts were conducted remotely, as with the work computers referenced above.”

“Furthermore,” she continued, “the examiners indicated that prior to their supervisors signing off on their findings, ‘somebody’ narrowed their mission to only reporting on any ‘remote’ intrusions (i.e. not addressing the suspicious forensics they found by someone they believed was actually in my house working at the computer.)”

And that’s when the investigation hit a wall.

“At this point, as their report was sent to higher-ups for approval, they dialed back their communications with me and would not deliver the promised final report or the notes that went with it.”

Attkisson said she filed a FOIA to obtain them but it was ignored. Many months went by.

“When Congress pressed the issue, the DOJ IG issued only a summary and emphasized there was no evidence of ‘remote’ intrusion in that computer and left out the suspicious forensics they discovered,” explained the investigative super-sleuth. “To this day, the DOJ IG has failed to properly respond to my FOIA requests seeking the full information and report.”

As a result, “Many in the media misreported that this DOJ IG report was somehow conclusive evidence that my computers had not been infiltrated.”

“In fact,” she clarified, “the DOJ IG didn’t even examine the primary computers in question — referenced in the other exams above— because CBS would not allow them to look at the computers.”

Did she think the problem was specific to the previous administration, or was it due the growth of the surveillance community, its powers and lack of oversight?

“I think this is an outgrowth of technology that makes such surveillance possible, politicians and corporate interests who are willing to use it for improper purposes, and a weak and conflicted news media that has done little to stop it.”

Finally, WND said it would be remiss if it did not ask the ace reporter if her experience had given her any insight into President Trump’s accusations that his campaign had been spied on by the Obama administration.

However, Attkisson said she has not looked at, or reported, on those allegations.



via IFTTT

US Immunization Schedule Recommends 26 Vaccinations For Children Under 1, Highest In World And Ranks 34th In Infant Mortality

ORIGINAL LINK

Vaccine-Syringe-and-Teddy-Bear-1.jpg

A new study published today in the Journal of Human and Experimental Toxology found that countries that administer a higher number of vaccines during the first year of life experience higher infant mortality rates.



via IFTTT

Evidence of Obama administration wiretapping Trump compelling

ORIGINAL LINK

The New York Times front-page story was titled, “Trump, Offering No Evidence, Says Obama Tapped His Phones.” CNN’s news crawl proclaimed, “Trump’s baseless wiretap claim.” And the Washington Post, not to be outdone, exclaimed, “Trump, citing no evidence, accuses Obama of ‘Nixon/Watergate’ plot to wiretap Trump Tower.”

Interestingly, all of those publications have been printing stories over the past several months that provide the very evidence they said Trump was lacking. Just over a month ago, on January 20th, the New York Times’ front-page story was titled, “Wiretapped Data Used In Inquiry of Trump Aides.” That story went on to reveal, “The FBI is leading the investigations, aided by the National Security Agency, the CIA and the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Unit. The investigators have accelerated their efforts in recent weeks but have found no conclusive evidence of wrongdoing, the officials said. One official said intelligence reports based on some of the wiretapped communications had been provided to the White House.”



via IFTTT

Russian Bank Confirms Hiring Podesta Group to Remove Sanctions

ORIGINAL LINK

So as of now, we have more proof of Hillary's circle working for the Russians than Trump's.

This would be playing non-stop as proof if it was on the other shoe.



via IFTTT

New Study: More Vaccines Increase Infant Mortality Rates | The Healthy Home Economist

New Study: More Vaccines Increase Infant Mortality Rates | The Healthy Home Economist: "The study’s findings are in line with previously observed reductions in the infant mortality rate, specifically in Japan where vaccines were eliminated for children under the age of 2 in 1975.   The country’s infant mortality rate subsequently plummeted to the lowest level in the world.  Japan changed its infant vaccination schedule again in 1995, but it remains one of the least aggressive in the world with Japan’s IMR remaining low as well (third in 2009)."



'via Blog this'

Tech devices won't fix our education system

ORIGINAL LINK
Well, let's just say that in my school where every student is given a Chromebook to use both in class and at home, I've struggled with lessons or ...

via IFTTT

Manufacturing consent in science: the diabolical twist

ORIGINAL LINK

Manufacturing consent in science: the diabolical twist

by Jon Rappoport

March 8, 2017

“Science plays a larger and larger role in running the world. But much of it is misleading science, slanted, cooked, biased, stepped on, false, and invented out of thin air.” (The Underground, Jon Rappoport)

In the famous 1988 Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman book, Manufacturing Consent, the authors explore how media distort the news and employ propaganda, in order to bring about consent in the population.

This is nothing less than the creation of reality.

From so many directions, official science is shaping our future—that’s why it’s vital to understand the manipulations involved.

It’s one thing to say media collaborate to sell a false picture of reality, a picture which is then bought by the masses. It’s quite another thing to say media collaborate to PRETEND there is ALREADY a consensus of the best professional minds on a given scientific subject—when there ISN’T.

I’ll start with a theoretical example. Let’s say three researchers at a university examine data based on US space shuttle missions, and they conclude that a small set of new conclusions is true. I’ll call this set X.

The researchers publish an article in a journal, and a healthy debate ensues in professional circles. Is X correct? Are there flaws in the research?

However, a powerful public agency decides that X is dangerous. X could lead to inquiries about contractors, investigations into cost overruns, missing money, and, worst of all, flawed engineering of the shuttles.

Therefore, this powerful agency goes on an all-out propaganda campaign, tapping its press sources, culminating in a new study that concludes X is entirely false.

The press basically trumpets: “Experts agree X is false. X was the result of shoddy research. The original researchers made numerous amateur mistakes.”

Notice that, in this case, the press isn’t simply distorting the news. It’s announcing that a superior consensus already/suddenly exists among the best scientific minds.

It’s lying about a consensus that doesn’t exist among scientists who, up until that moment, were having a healthy debate.

The press is presenting the false consensus as if it were real and widespread, when it isn’t.

But at this point, all relevant scientists get the message: keep quiet, don’t debate for another moment; otherwise grant monies will vanish, demotions will occur, peers will lay on heavy criticism, excommunication from The Club will follow.

So these scientists do keep quiet—and NOW a consensus among them comes into being, by implied threat and coercion.

This is basically what happened in the arena of energy-production via cold fusion. Wikipedia adequately summarizes the superficial situation: “The most famous cold fusion claims were made by Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann in 1989. After a brief period of interest by the wider scientific community, their reports were called into question by nuclear physicists.”

Not just called into question; defamed, derided, mocked, slammed over the head with a sledgehammer.

A superior consensus was invented, despite the fact that many scientists were intensely interested in the Pons/Fleishmann findings. Some of these scientists tried, in vain, to point out that failed efforts to reproduce those findings resulted because researchers were altering Pons and Fleishman’s methods.

No dice. Cold fusion was labeled a giant error and even a fraud. The official door was closed. THEN a consensus hardened—through coercion and intimidation.

In my research leading up to the publication of my first book, AIDS INC., in 1988, I reviewed the period of the early 1980s, when many researchers were coming at the question of the cause(s) of AIDS from different angles. But then, suddenly, in the spring of 1984, the US government officially announced, at a televised press conference, that a virus called HTLV-III (HIV) was the cause.

The science was shoddy, to put it mildly. It was bad science and no science. There was no single published paper that meticulously laid out proof of HIV as the cause of AIDS. But no matter. Overnight, all the monies that had gone into discovering what caused AIDS were diverted into the question: How does HIV cause AIDS? Any scientist who failed to see the handwriting on the wall was shoved out into the cold.

The press closed ranks. The consensus (though it was manufactured in the blink of an eye) was trumpeted around the world.

The big news headline wasn’t just false and distorted. It was false-and-distorted about a consensus that, until a few seconds ago, didn’t exist—and only existed now because researchers went silent and accepted dogma and folded up.

Predatory corporations, who spray poisonous pesticides all over the world and cause birth defects, need special protection and cover? Public health agencies that recommend giving vaccines to pregnant women, and increase the risk of babies born with defects? Solution: invent, overnight, and broadcast, a consensus that a basically harmless virus is the cause of those tragic birth defects.

I can assure you there are many scientists who don’t, for a second, believe the Zika virus is such an agent of destruction. But they have kept their mouths shut, and have chosen to roll with the tide.

However, that tide is turning, in many arenas of science. Journalists and researchers with no allegiance to official bodies have emerged.

A different species of handwriting is being inscribed on the wall.

What can the mainstream press do about it?

They can only deploy the crass tactics I’ve mentioned here.

A massive and stunning re-education is taking place among the population. No school is running it. No agency is sponsoring it. It’s happening from the ground up.

It turns out that living as a cipher and a unit in the sticky web of fabricated consensus isn’t nearly as attractive as it once was.

More and more, major media are using the consensus strategy to invent the news—and people are rejecting it.

Without realizing it, the press is committing professional suicide. An article that was once headlined, “Three dead horses found in a field,” has become, “Scientists agree that the three dead horses were an unconnected coincidence.” And people are laughing the press out of court.

The ongoing scandal surrounding the film, Vaxxed (trailer), is a good example. The press assures the population that pointing out a connection between a vaccine and autism is absurd, because scientific experts agree there is no such connection.

But the film features a long-time researcher at the Centers for Disease Control, who confesses that he and colleagues falsified a 2004 study in order to exonerate such a vaccine, the MMR, which does increase the risk of autism.

One of the film’s subjects is false consensus.

And the press can do no better than repeat, over and over: the consensus is real and valid.

The CDC researcher and whistleblower, William Thompson, essentially said: I was part of the fake consensus. Don’t you get it? I was a card-carrying member of the club that invents fake consensus. And now I’m telling you that.

Bottom line: the media are collapsing into their own swamp.

The swamp they manufacture.

For decades, the press, government agencies, the UN, and a whole host of think-tank, foundation, university players, and financiers have been fronting for a consensus which they falsely claim is already established: planned societies.

They frame this consensus as technology/science—as if science itself dictates that the future must consist of interlocked organizations which insert citizens into slots. Slots where they live, where they work, where they socialize.

Abstract patterns, imposed on humans.

This has the flavor of science, but on reflection, not the substance. “We can make the top-down organization of society look scientific, as if we’re following physical laws. We can sell this as science.”

Really? Is a chart detailing how thousands of slaves will transport huge blocks of stone to chosen sites, where monuments will be built, scientific? Of course not.

In the modern world, this fakery is called technocracy. Technocracy may employ methods such as technological surveillance, but the overriding plan for organizing society has nothing to do with science. It has to do with control.

And when you see it that way, the supposed consensus falls apart.

Who wants to live in an assigned slot “for the greater good?”

Up close and personal, who wants to give up his freedom?

Review your understanding of Marxism. “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” It, too, was sold as a scientific analysis of human society. It was imbued with the flavor of science, as if this Marxian principle had been discovered, just as molecules and atoms had been discovered.

And it too was promoted as an already-existing consensus among the wisest and the best and the brightest.


power outside the matrix

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, Power Outside The Matrix, click here.)


Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.


Filed under: Medical Fraud, Science Fraud

via IFTTT