Christian filmmakers give notice to court: Stop censorship

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A team of Minnesota filmmakers is giving notice to a federal court that the censorship of their work must stop.

Lawyers representing Carl and Angel Larsen of Telescope Media Group have filed a notice of appeal to the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals of a lower court’s decision regarding their challenge to a state law “that allows Minnesota officials to control the stories they tell.”

They are represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, whose lawyers say the law “forces them to use their creative talents to promote same-sex marriages if they produce films that celebrate marriage between one man and one woman.”

The lower court dismissed their complaint, which requested that the enforcement of the law be suspended while their case is decided.

Instead, the court simply dismissed the case, meaning “the Larsens have to continue censoring their own speech about marriage to avoid violating the law.”

“Creative professionals who engage in the expression of ideas shouldn’t be threatened with fines and jail simply for having a particular point of view about marriage that the government may not favor,” said ADF Senior Counsel Jeremy Tedesco. “People should have the freedom to disagree on critical matters of conscience, which is why everyone, regardless of their view of marriage, can support the Larsens.

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“The same government that can force them to violate their faith and conscience can force any one of us to do the same. That’s why we are appealing the district court’s ruling to the 8th Circuit.”

The case alleges problems with Minnesota Statutes Chapter 363. The Minnesota Department of Human Rights claims the law forces creative professionals like the Larsens to promote objectionable messages – even those that violate their constitutionally protected religious faith.

The filmmakers say they have the right to decide what stories to tell.

It’s a common fight in America these days, where LGBT activists hunt for people in such businesses who are Christian, then create the circumstances that force them to violate their faith or face retribution from the law.

It’s the same issue before the U.S. Supreme Court this fall, in the Colorado case of baker Jack Phillips, who declined to use his artistry to promote a homosexual wedding. A biased commission in Colorado decided to force him and his employees to undergo a state reindoctrination program as punishment.

“Like most people in the expressive professions, we work with all people; we just can’t promote all messages,” Angel Larsen wrote in a FoxNews.com op-ed published Friday. “Two of our sons are adopted from Ethiopia. Our youngest child is half Cameroonian and half Native American. And having eight children means we can’t afford to travel the world, so we bring the world to us. We do this precisely because we believe beauty exists in the diversity of God’s creation. … This has included spending Christmas with an alcoholic Vietnam veteran, a bisexual international student, and yes, even Trump supporters, among many, many others. We love all people. We work with all people. We simply don’t promote all messages.”

The state of Minnesota, however, has dictated that private businesses such as the Larsens’ violate the law if they decline to create expression promoting same-sex weddings. Penalties for violation include payment of a civil penalty to the state; triple compensatory damages; punitive damages of up to $25,000; a criminal penalty of up to $1,000; and even up to 90 days in jail.

When the case arose, WND reported the Larsens’ were having problems with the state law that forbids businesses to treat people differently based upon “race, color, national origin, sex, disability (or) sexual orientation.”

They brought a pre-emptive lawsuit, but federal Judge John Mannheim lashed out at them, saying their efforts to follow their faith and decline requests to video same-sex ceremonies was “akin to a ‘White Applicants Only’ sign.”

ADF Senior counsel Jonathan Scruggs told WND and Radio America that the judge’s rationale is way off base.

“That comparison is entirely false. The Larsens do not discriminate based on of any status,” Scruggs explained. “They are willing to serve all people, including people of all different sexual orientations. They just can’t promote messages they disagree with and events they disagree with. That’s a common-sense distinction.”

He said the judge’s disturbing language did not stop there.

“The court acknowledged that this law was raising First Amendment concerns yet said that was only an ‘incidental burden’ on the Larsens’ First Amendment rights, when they are compelled to create and promote videos of a same-sex wedding ceremony,” Scruggs said.

“That is a direct assault on the First Amendment,” he added. “We’re hopeful that the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is the appellate court, will be receptive of our arguments to protect the Larsens’ rights.”

Scruggs said a bedrock American constitutional principle is at stake here.

“All Americans should have the right to choose what messages they promote or the messages they don’t promote,” he said. “It is a great burden on our clients’ freedoms for the state to come in and say, ‘You’ve got to create from scratch a video that promotes and honors a same-sex wedding ceremony.”

Listen to the WND/Radio America interview with Jonathan Scruggs:

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Watch | Julia Child & Jackson Pollock Worked For The CIA

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When you think of a CIA agent, you probably think of the Hollywood stereotypes: a tall, athletic man in a black suit with dark sunglasses, walking around with one hand on his gun and the other on his ear piece.

But that’s stupid. Spies are meant to blend in, not stick out, and the best spies are the ones you’re least likely to expect. So I bet you never knew these people were secretly working for the CIA.

1 – Julia Child

When you think Julia Child, you probably think “soufflé” before you think “spy.” But you’d be wrong.

Julia McWilliams was an advertising copy writer for a New York City furniture store when Pearl Harbor changed her life. Wanting to join the war effort, she applied to the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of today’s CIA, and started work as a research assistant directly under OSS Director William “Wild Bill” Donovan.

From there her career took several surprising turns. She helped develop a shark repellent to coat marine explosives for the U-boat warfare effort. She spent time in Ceylon helping to coordinate the invasion of the Malay Peninsula. She ran the OSS Registry in China during the final crucial months of the war in the Pacific.

She also met her husband, Paul Child, who was also working for the OSS, and the two were married in 1946. He joined the US Information Agency and was assigned to Paris in 1948 where Julia studied French cooking at one of France’s most prestigious cooking schools, Le Cordon Bleu. And the rest as they say, is history. The officially-sanctioned history with all the spy bits left out, that is. Julia’s role in the OSS wasn’t declassified for over 50 years.

 2 – Arthur Sulzberger

As publisher of The New York Times, Arthur Sulzberger Sr. was one of the most influential men in the news media from the early 1960s to the late 1990s. And he worked hand in hand with the CIA.

The connection was first uncovered by Ramparts Magazine in 1966, investigated by Congress in the mid-70s and documented in detail by Carl Bernstein in his landmark 1977 Rolling Stone article, “The CIA and the Media.” In the report, Bernstein identifies Sulzberger (along with Henry Luce of Time Inc., William Paley of CBS and numerous other mass media organizations) as working directly and knowingly with the CIA to help the agency achieve its propaganda objectives. There were ten CIA operatives working at the New York Times in the 50s and 60s alone.

The CIA’s drive to infiltrate the news media was codenamed “Operation Mockingbird” and included everything from Sulzberger’s New York Times and Paley’s CBS down to AP, Newsweek, Reuters and even the Louisville Courier-Journal. The program formally came to an end in February 1976 when then-Director George. H.W. Bush created a new agency policy promising that the CIA would never again contract with any accredited U.S. news service, newspaper, radio station, television network or journalist. Because we all know the CIA would never lie about something like that, right?

3 – Jackson Pollock

Do you ever get the feeling that modern art can only exist because it’s being funded by the CIA in a vast conspiracy to confuse and disorient the public? Because if you do, you’d be exactly right.

At least, such was the case throughout much of the 50s and 60s. In 1950, Tom Braden set up the CIA’s International Organizations Division specifically to pay for such diverse artistic endeavors as the touring program of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the animation of George Orwell’s Animal Farm (complete with an altered ending that made it more palatable for American propaganda purposes). As we now know (thanks to the 1995 admission of former case officer Donald Jameson) they also funded abstract expressionist painters, from Jackson Pollack to Mark Rothko to Willem de Kooning.

So why would the CIA be interested in promoting an artist who hung paint cans upside down and let them drizzle on to the canvas randomly? The official explanation is that it was all part of a cunning plan to convince the Soviets of the vibrant creativity of American culture…Or something like that. Given that it probably just made the Russkies cock an eyebrow or laugh at American silliness, one has to wonder what the real purpose of the program was. Especially when it’s discovered that other counter-cultural movements of the period were funded by the Agency, it would seem that the program was aimed more at demoralizing America itself than in scoring cultural points in the Cold War.

4 – Ken Kesey

Speaking of CIA-funded cultural movements, it turns out the 1960s drug culture was helped along by everyone’s favourite spy agency.

In 1959, Ken Kesey, Alan Ginsberg and 140 other young men and women volunteered to take partin an experiment at Stanford University. The experiment, run by two researchers who were secretly working for the CIA, involved giving the subjects their first hit of LSD. Five years later, Kesey was “Captain Flag” of the “Merry Panksters” taking their Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test across the country and Ginsberg was spearheading the budding counterculture movement along with fellow suspected CIA operative, Timothy Leary.

But Kesey and Ginsberg weren’t the only 60s counterculture icons to be under the influence of the CIA. Others who have been confirmed to have been CIA funded include feminist movement leader Gloria Steinem. Even Gordon Wasson’s research into magic mushrooms (introduced to the public via CIA associate Henry Luce’s Life magazine) was funded by the CIA as part of their MKUltra mind control program.

5 – Ahmed Wali Karzai

In 2013 the then-President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzei, admitted that the CIA deliver bags of cash directly to his office as part of an ongoing campaign to control the Afghan government. But if you think that openly bribing the president of a foreign country is something, wait until you get a load of this: In 2009 it was revealed that the CIA was also openly bribing his drug dealing brother.

Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of President Hamid Karzai, was a powerful politician in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province who functioned much like every other warlord in the war-ravaged country; namely, using his government position to protect his business. And do you want to guess what that business was? If you guessed heroin and opium, you’d be correct!

So yes, the CIA was not only openly bribing the president of a foreign country, but his drug-dealing brother, too! Given the long history of the CIA’s drug running with Air America, their participation in Iran-Contra, their association with Pablo Escobar and dozens of other stories, is this really a surprise?

This list just scratches the surface of the CIA’s reach, of course, but it should at least give you pause for thought. Not all CIA agents, operatives, associates and useful idiots look like Jason Bourne or Jack Ryan.

But all of this is ancient history now. The real question is who is secretly working for the CIA today?

Top photo | The Central Intelligence Agency flag is displayed, partially cast in a shadow. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

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What Do Hillary, Uranium One, And An FBI Bust Of A Deep Cover Russian Spy Network Have In Common?

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In 2010, shortly after Hillary Clinton assumed her position as Secretary of State in the Obama administration, the FBI broke up a deep-cover Russian spy ring that had been operating in the U.S. for decades.  The operation, code named "Ghost Stories," was a huge bust for the FBI that handed the U.S. intelligence community 10 highly trained, deep-cover, Russian spies presumably with immensely valuable insights into Russia's covert operations in the homeland.  All of which is why its so confounding that Hillary, as Secretary of State, "worked so feverishly" to retun them all to Moscow posthaste rather than exploit their intelligence value to the fullest extent possible.

As the Daily Caller points out today, the FBI's bust couldn't have come at a worse time for the Clintons as it came literally the day before Bill Clinton delivered a $500,000 speech in Moscow on behalf of a Russian bank with an interest in securing approval of the controversial Uranium One deal...oh the tangled webs...

For a decade, the FBI ran an operation called Ghost Stories to monitor and rip apart a deep-cover Russian agent network. Ghost Stories tracked a ring Russian spies who lived between Boston and Washington, D.C., under false identities. It was one of the FBI’s most elaborate and successful counterintelligence operations in history.

 

Under the code name Operation Ghost Stories, the FBI had been working the ring for a decade. Its targets had burrowed in along the Acela Corridor between Boston, New York, and Washington DC. They lived normal daily lives as Americans to attend universities, run businesses, marry, and conceive and raise children to infiltrate society and subvert government institutions. One of the SVR agents had stolen the identity of a six week-old Canadian baby who had died in 1963. That prompted the Ghost Stories code name. The ring inspired the FX network’s television series, “The Americans.”

 

After the FBI arrested 10 of the spies in June, 2010, Secretary of State Clinton worked feverishly to return the Russian agents to Moscow in a hastily arranged, lopsided deal with Putin.

 

It all happened as the uranium deal was in play: An arrangement to provide Moscow’s state Rosatom nuclear agency with 20 percent of American uranium capacity, with $145,000,000 to pour into the Clinton Family Foundation and its projects.

 

For the Clintons, the FBI’s biggest counterintelligence bust in history couldn’t have come at a worse time.

 

The day the FBI arrested the Russian agents, on June 28, 2010, the day before the secretary of state’s husband, Bill Clinton, was to give a speech in Moscow. A Kremlin-connected investment bank, Renaissance Capital, paid the former president $500,000 for the hour-long appearance.

Making Clinton's decision to expel the captured spies even more confounding, was evidence that Hillary was perhaps one of the biggest targets of the Russian spy operation as agent Lidiya Guryeva, or Cynthia Murphy as she was known in her fake American life, tracked her daily movements and even moved to Washington D.C. along with Hillary in 2009. 

From New York, SVR agent Lidiya Guryeva had Clinton in her sights. Guryeva had a real-life job, under the assumed name Cynthia Murphy, as vice president of a high-end tax services company in lower Manhattan. Guryeva’s prime targets, FBI evidence and later news reports show, were Clinton and no fewer than five members of her inner circle.

 

Guryeva was far more important than a fellow agent would become the most famous member of the spy ring. The publicity would go to Anna Vasilyevna Kushchenko, who after her arrest would be become a glamourous spy princess under her married name, Anna Chapman.

 

While the FBI’s unclassified information is vague, it is clear that Guryeva’s target was an early Obama administration member from New York who handled foreign policy after having run for high-level public office. Clinton is the only person fitting that description.

 

Clinton became secretary of state on January 21, 2009. Two weeks later, on February 3, Guryeva sent an encrypted message to the SVR’s Moscow Center. The agent reported “several work-related meetings” with a New York-based “financier” who was “prominent in politics,” an “active fundraiser” for a major political party whose name the FBI redacted, and “a personal friend” of an Obama cabinet official whom the FBI did not publicly identify. Guryeva told her bosses that she would seek to use that personal friend to “provide” inside information on American foreign policy and the White House, and invite her to major political events.

 

Guryeva and her husband would sell their New Jersey house and follow Clinton to the nation’s capital. There, she could get a job with a Washington, DC-based company or policy shop. A tasking message dated October 18, 2009, from Moscow Center sought agents to seek out information “unknown publicly but revealed in private by sources close to State Department, Government, major think tanks.”

 

As the FBI told the court, “the SVR requested information on the U.S. position with respect to a new Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty, Afghanistan, and Iran’s nuclear program.” Moscow Center specifically asked Guryeva for intelligence concerning “approaches and ideas” of what the FBI called “four names of sub-cabinet United States foreign policy officials, omitted,” meaning that all four were deputies to Secretary Clinton whose identities had been redacted.

 Hillary Clinton was mining Kremlin cash for her personal benefit while secretary of state, at the exact time Putin’s SVR spies were targeting her and penetrating her inner circle. She had every personal motivation to make the spy problem disappear and deny that she had been a target.

Of course, given that the Clintons were on the verge of securing a windfall of donations for their "Clinton Foundation," which came shortly after the Uranium One deal was completed just a few months later, among other Russian-based schemes to enrich her friends and family (described below), it seems Hillary was forced to choose between exploiting an intelligence treasure chest of information for the benefit of the country at large or covering up yet another scandal that would potentially disrupt her family's personal self-enrichment schemes...

Clinton pledged at Foggy Bottom to “reset” relations with the Putin-controlled regime. She blamed the former George W. Bush administration for the bad feelings. To the Kremlin’s relief, she opposed what would become the Magnitsky Act to sanction Russian criminal oligarchs and regime figures. Weeks into her tenure as secretary, she told Russian television, “our goal is to help strengthen Russia.”

 

She immediately used her position as America’s top diplomat to pour Russia-related money into her family foundation. One of her earliest acts as secretary of state was personally to authorize the State Department to arrange for 28 American tech CEOs and venture capitalists – 17 of them Clinton Foundation donors – to visit a Russian high-tech hub called Skolkovo. With Skolkovo, the SVR doesn’t need to steal when it can arrange legal purchases. The US military calls Skolkovo “an overt alternative to clandestine industrial espionage.” The Skolkovo visit, which reportedly began as a Clinton Foundation initiative, occurred in May, 2010, a month before the arrests.

 

Four days before the FBI would break up the ring, on June 24, Obama personally met with his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, to coordinate billions of dollars in deals with Kremlin-affiliated businesses. Putin held power behind the scenes as prime minister, between his terms as president.

...guess which path she chose...

Clinton didn’t want leverage. She wanted the issue to go away. She toiled feverishly to get the 10 Ghost Stories spies back to Moscow as quickly as possible. She accepted whatever Putin would give her to pass off as a face-saving swap.

 

She folded America’s strong hand of cards. The US had ten relatively young, highly trained Russian spies in custody with immense, fresh knowledge of SVR statecraft. A normal secretary of state would bide her time and get the best deal.

 

The State Department coordinated quickly with the Kremlin to return the spies in a lopsided swap over a busy Fourth of July weekend, when few in Washington were paying attention.

 

In return, the US accepted an SVR officer who had been an American double agent, an open-source researcher whom Amnesty International considered a political prisoner, a Russian military intelligence colonel who spied for the British, and an elderly ex-KGB man from Soviet times whom not even a Communist court convicted of treason.

All of which, as the Daily Caller notes, raises several questions: Precisely what did the FBI know about Russia’s spy service targeting Hillary Clinton and her inner circle? Why did Clinton deny through spokespersons that she had been a Russian target? Why did she work so feverishly to get the spies out of the United States and back to Russia? Why has the FBI leadership not been more vocal in touting one of its greatest counterintelligence successes ever? And why did nobody in the FBI leadership raise this issue during the 2016 Russian election meddling controversy?

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6 Years Ago Today, the US Helped Murder Gaddafi to Stop the Creation of Gold-Backed Currency

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Six years ago today, the West took it upon itself to use NATO to overthrow Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi — not for any humanitarian threat to civilians as had been...

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Barrasso Seeks Documents Related to Russia Uranium Investigation

http://freebeacon.com/issues/barrasso-seeks-documents-related-to-russia-uranium-investigation/

Report: the corruption and sadistic culture within Child Protective Services is a threat to every family in America

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The Huffington Post has released a report on Child Protective Services (CPS) by Child Advocate and contributor Patricia Mitchell, founder of Patricia’s Children, Inc. The report is filled with documented data that is important for all families to know, due to the threat that CPS poses to literally every family in America.Some of the data in the report will come as no surprise to the families impacted by medical kidnapping. While children and parents are being destroyed behind ...

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Everyone knew about Harvey Weinstein

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In another life, long ago and far away, I covered Hollywood.

I’ll bet you didn’t know that. Yes, I’ve led an unusual and surprising life.

I spent 10 years in journalism in Los Angeles. If you don’t cover Hollywood in some way as a working journalist in Los Angeles, then you are in the wrong town. It’s just that simple.

It was one of my “beats.” The other one was the Middle East. I could tell you what they have in common, but it would be a digression from what I’m writing about today – the “shocking” Harvey Weinstein.

In response to recent reports of sexual harassment and assault, all his friends, even his own brother and business partner, are “shocked, shocked,” to paraphrase Claude Rains’ famous line in “Casablanca.”

I haven’t lived and worked in L.A. since 1990, but it was no surprise to me that Harvey Weinstein was a sexual predator. Everyone knew it, but dared not speak about it except in hushed tones. It was dangerous to do so in Hollywood. He was powerful.

One thing you have to understand about the press corps in L.A. is that it is not so much a group of journalists, as it is a collection of wannabe screenwriters. With few exceptions, that’s why they are there – to write a story they can option as a screenplay. That’s the goal – the only goal.

So, which enterprising, investigative reporter in L.A. would you expect to burn down quite possibly the biggest entertainment mogul in recent decades?

No one.

And that’s why Weinstein got away with behavior that would make Bill Clinton proud. (Notice I didn’t say blush. Bill Clinton doesn’t blush.)

Long after I left L.A. in the dust, I still heard plenty of gossip about Harvey Weinstein – gossip I wasn’t even interested in or seeking out.

So, that’s how it is possible for this kind of behavior to go on for so long without any accountability.

There’s another obvious reason. You didn’t have to live and work as a journalist in L.A. for 10 years to figure this out.

Harvey Weinstein bought protection against accountability from the very people and the very political party that exuberantly proclaim to be the guardians of the universe when it comes to women’s rights, women’s equality, women’s dignity, women’s safety and women in the workplace.

Oh yeah, Hillary Clinton is denouncing him now. But she would have you believe she was totally ignorant of what he was all about, just like she didn’t know about her husband. She would denounce sexual harassment and sexual assaults as long as it didn’t hit too close to home or her campaign coffers.

She would have you believe this was all a big shock to her. This was the same woman who claimed any allegation of sexual harassment or sexual assault had to be investigated – except, of course, if it affected her life in any way. Did she stand up for Paula Jones? No. Did she stand up for Juanita Broaddrick? No. Did she stand up for Kathleen Willey? No. Did she stand up for any of the dozens of women who made claims of sexual harassment or sexual assault against her husband, or, more precisely, what she thought was her ticket to the White House? No.

This is how sexual predators get away with rape, harassment, coercion and assault.

It happened with Clinton, and it happened with Weinstein.

If you pay patronage to the gods of liberalism, if you say the right things and make the right kind of movies and have money and/or power, you can get away with a lot of stuff for a long time.

What disgusts me almost as much as Weinstein’s outrageous victimization, though, is the super-hypocrisy of the political left. They turn a blind eye to this kind of outrageous behavior whenever one of their own is the perp.

Even now, when confronted with the actions of her own husband, Hillary has the audacity to say: “Well, that’s all been litigated.” Litigated? Where was any of it litigated? I know Bill Clinton lost his law license for lying under oath about it. I know he got impeached because of it. But has it changed any of his behavior – even in his old age? No.

And, believe me, nothing will change in Hollywood. The casting couch has been around since the earliest days of the movie industry. So, where’s the change?

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Turkey cleanses its libraries

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Following the coup d’etat in July 2016 attributed to Fethullah Gülen, the Turkish government had cleansed its university libraries. Notably, it had ordered the destruction of 1 800 000 copies of different manuals (including mathematics) published by publishing houses linked to the preacher or simply bearing his initials. While this first purge had enabled 13 000 tonnes of paper to be recycled, it cost 16 million dollars.

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Journalist Behind Leak That Exposed Clinton’s Criminal Campaign Donors, Blown Up In Her Car

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TheLastAmericanVagabond.com

A world-renowned journalist was assassinated, and her son claims a police sergeant who is supposed to investigate her murder, was celebrating it on Facebook. (TFTP) Maltese Investigative Journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was described as a “One-Woman WikiLeaks” after she led the Panama Papers investigation, was killed on Monday afternoon in a car bomb near […]

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The United States Of Weinstein: Complicity, Greed, & Corruption Is The Status Quo

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Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

If integrity means more than any of these baubles, then prepare to fail.

The theme this week is The Rot Within.

The sordid story of Harvey Weinstein is being presented as an aberration. It is not an aberration; it is merely a high-profile example of how the status quo functions in the USA, a.k.a. The United States of Weinstein, in which complicity, greed and corruption reign supreme in every sector and in every nook and cranny of power.

The dirty secret of America's status quo is that power and wealth are both extremely concentrated, which means there are gatekeepers who must be bribed, sated or serviced if you want to claw your way up the wealth-power pyramid. Mr. Weinstein's alleged conduct and payoffs of those he exploited is par for the course in the corridors of power in the USA.

As a gatekeeper in Hollywood, Mr. W. could make or break careers with absurd ease.

Gatekeepers are the key functionaries in a rentier economy in which the few at the top skim the wealth of the many. Want to play in the big leagues of Hollywood, Washington D.C., the Pentagon, or the various HQs of Global Corporate America? You have to pay the Gatekeepers what they demand.

It might be the casting couch or a slice of the profits, or a vote in committee, but the price of admission will always include complicity--silence about the crimes committed and the endemic corruption, and a sacrifice of moral standards. This is the minimal price of "success" in the elite circles of wealth and power in America.

If you doubt this, dig deep into any concentration of power in America and see what you find. Outsiders won't find anyone willing to talk, of course; that's how complicity works.

The overheated engine of complicity is greed. Hollywood kept quiet about Mr. Weinstein because insiders and wannabes alike hoped to score a plum role in Mr. W.'s next hitmaking production, or secure a couple of points of the gross. (1 point = 1%.)

This is the evil fruit of a system that ruthlessly concentrates power and wealth, not just in Hollywood and Washington D.C. but in the judiciary, in higher education, in Big Pharma, the National Security State, Corporate America and yes, the Deep State, which is comprised not of the bureaucratic functionaries (sorry to pop your balloon) of the state but those one level above the gatekeepers.

Every American has a simple but profound choice. Either place your integrity above all else, and refuse to climb the putrid pyramid of wealth and power, or succumb to greed and become complicit in an empire of greed, complicity and corruption.

If "success" means a fat salary, points of gross, invitations to A-list parties, access to the inner circle, being the right-hand boy/girl of someone powerful, a seat on the private jet, etc., then you will be required to service the gatekeepers and sacrifice whatever integrity you once possessed.

If integrity means more than any of these baubles, then prepare to fail. You won't clamber up the putrid pyramid, you won't get past the gatekeepers, and you won't be invited to join the elite skimming the nation's wealth for its own gratification and greed.

But you will still have yourself, your pride, and your integrity.

It's not an easy choice. Choose wisely. As Orwell observed about a totalitarian oligarchy, some are more equal than others. But the sacrifices required to become more equal than than the bottom 99.5% are irrevocable--you will have to sacrifice everything but your greed, your appetite for corruption and your willingness to hide the truth from the outside world.

True success lies outside the empire of greed, complicity and corruption.

*  *  *

If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com. Check out both of my new books, Inequality and the Collapse of Privilege ($3.95 Kindle, $8.95 print) and Why Our Status Quo Failed and Is Beyond Reform ($3.95 Kindle, $8.95 print, $5.95 audiobook) For more, please visit the OTM essentials website.

 

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FBI uncovered Russian bribery plot before Obama administration approved controversial nuclear deal with Moscow – GOV'T SLAVES

FBI uncovered Russian bribery plot before Obama administration approved controversial nuclear deal with Moscow – GOV'T SLAVES:



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Why Finland has the best education system in the world? - YouTube

Why Finland has the best education system in the world? - YouTube:



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TSA: US Residents from 9 States Will Need Passports for Domestic Flight

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This latest move by America’s notorious Transportation Security Authority (TSA) seems to be step one in a move towards a national ID Card, complete with biometrics and embedded RFID technology.

By forcing residents of nine states to get passports in order to board domestic flights, the TSA is de facto pushing those states towards the implementation of a new state-of-the-art ID card system.

This will help to give real teeth to the ‘The Real ID Act’

It’s just the next phase in the further militarization of US society.

Forbes reports…

You may have thought you don’t need a passport because you don’t travel outside the United States. But for residents of nine states, that will change at the beginning of 2018 for any commercial flight, whether international or domestic.

Nine states will no longer allow travelers to board an airplane with just their state issued driver’s licenses as of January 22, 2018. To get past TSA security checkpoints, another form of identification will be required: passport, permanent resident card/green card or a military ID.

The Real ID Act of 2005 states that state-issued IDs from these nine states do not meet the minimum security standards of the federal government:

• Kentucky
• Maine
• Minnesota
• Missouri
• Montana
• Oklahoma
• Pennsylvania
• South Carolina
• Washington

With just a few months until the Real ID Act goes into full effect, it is time to start planning now and look into getting your passport. Here is the airport signage, placed around the security checkpoints in airports to remind U.S. travelers of what;s to come (with my emphasis):

“Starting January 22, 2018, you will need a driver’s license or ID from a state compliant with the REAL ID ACT, a state that has an extension for compliance, or an alternate ID to fly. For REAL ID information, and a list of acceptable IDs, visit tsa.gov. ”

Some states have started working on offering federally approved issued IDs that would not require a passport for domestic air travel. Check with your local government office to see if there is a different type of ID you can apply for, and the TSA website to clarify this situation. Because on January 22, 2018, the enforcement for those nine states will go into effect, and by 2020, even more people will end up needing a passport, as confirmed by the official website of the Transportation Security Administration.

To repeat, if you’re going to take a flight and you have a state-issued ID from one of those nine states listed above, unless your state has made federally approved changes before January, you should use a passport to go anywhere across the country, as all domestic travel is included in these new standards. (States other than those nine will not be affected.)

Continue this story at Forbes

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