Seeking Truth in a World of Propaganda. Links do not necessarily indicate agreement with stories or perspectives.
“Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.” - Plato
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(NaturalNews) China's Ministry of Finance recently announced that it has allocated 199 million yuan ($29.8 million) to be spent on cloud seeding weather modification projects being implemented throughout the country.The Chinese government is hoping that the cloud seeding operations... |
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(NaturalNews) James Ehrlich, founder of ReGen Villages, commissioned Danish architectural firm EFFEKT to envision a future where self-sustaining communities could grow their own food and produce their own energy. ReGen Villages are planned off-grid communities that address issues... |
While we have often heard that members of Congress, who are not only exempt from insider trading oversight, are also ardent daytraders we had never seen it in action.
Until now.
The following publicly filed monthly Periodic Transaction Report by Democrat Congresswoman, Judy Chu, shows us just how pervasive daytrading is not only for algos, but for those who supposedly are paid to serve their constituents. What is interesting is the size of the trades - between $1,000 and $15,000 each, this is not some novice, penny pincher; what is even more interesting are the underlying securities of choice: volatile, and levered, calls and puts on not only the S&P500, but also on some of the most volatile securities out there, such as the VIX.
Here are some examples of the trades in question (the latest full report can be found here):
There are more of these. Much more: some 9 pages worth just for June. The full breakdown is at the bottom of the post (link here).
* * *
While we would be the last to begrudge Ms. Chu her daytrading largesse, whether or not in possession of material, non-public inside info at time of trading - after all, if it is legal, by all means trade on inside information - something did catch our interest.
According to her public profile, the Democrat representing the 27th Congressional District, taught psychology for 20 years in an East LA Community College system, from 1981 to 2001, and reported a pension worth between $100,001 and $250,000 for those years of work. She also draws a smaller pension from serving on the Monterey Park City Council. She became a member of Congress in 2009.
In other words, a community college psychology teacher who daytrades S&P calls and puts in size up to $15,000? Maybe she is merely "piggybacking" on her husband's net worth? Then again, maybe not. Her husband, former Assemblyman Mike Eng, is a senior partner at an immigration law firm in Los Angeles valued between $250,001 and $500,000.
* * *
And then we look at her net worth, which is where things get interesting, because this career psych professor, currently has an average net worth of $3.5 million, which according to InsideGov makes her the 103rd richest member of the House. Chu's net worth was 3.2 times more than the average member of Congress and 4 times more than the average representative. When compared to the California Congressional Delegation, Chu had a net worth that was 3.6 times more than the average.
But most interesting is the history of Rep. Judy Chu's net worth over a short 6 year period, as shown in the chart below.
To summarize: a former East LA psychology professor (with an annual pension) started off her Congressional career with virtually nothing in the bank, and over the next 5 years, built up a net worth of over $3 million. We are curious how: it wasn't with the modest salary that members of the house collect; it wasn't from outside activities, it wasn't from her husband.
Which leaves just one possibility: her phenomenal daytrading skills, which are made even more phenomenal since her trades are exempt from regulatory oversight.
We are curious: why does Ms. Chu waste her amazing trading talent in D.C. when she could be working for Steve Cohen, or better yet, run her own hedge fund, making billions. Because if she can recreate her phenomenal 6 year return with outside capital, we would be the first in line to let her manage our money... assuming of course she can repeat her trading performance when the SEC at least pretend to care.
Judy's June trading disclosure is below
(ANTIMEDIA) Albuquerque, NM — In Soviet America, burping in class is a serious crime. Need proof? Just look at the story of this 13-year-old from Albuquerque, New Mexico’s Cleveland Middle School.
According to George Washington University law professor, Jonathan Turley, the boy was acting like a class clown, doing what many class clowns do: disrupting class. Because of his loud burps, his teacher, Margaret Mines-Hornbeck, reported the boy to Officer Arthur Acosta. The seventh grader was then taken to an administrative office after being searched for drugs, as the assistant principal accused the 13-year-old of participating in a marijuana transaction.
During the search, the boy was asked to remove his jeans and shoes, then flip the waistband of the shorts he had been wearing underneath. This was all in vain considering no drugs were found.
After the traumatizing experience, the boy was suspended for the remainder of the year, all because he burped too loud. But sure enough, that wasn’t the end of it.
Instead of letting this matter go after such a harsh punishment, Cleveland Middle School decided to charge him criminally using a provision that says “[n]o person shall willfully interfere with the educational process of any public or private school by committing, threatening to commit or inciting others to commit any act which would disrupt, impair, interfere with or obstruct the lawful mission, processes, procedures or functions of a public or private school.”
Making matters even worse, the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit decided to uphold the Albuquerque school officials’ action by claiming police and school leadership were justified in sending the 13-year-old to juvenile jail.
That’s right. The courts ruled it’s okay to send a child to jail for being a class clown.
According to Reason Magazine’s Nick Gillespie, this type of overreaction helps explain why Americans are losing confidence in major institutions “of political, commercial, and civic life.” Instead of believing in their enforcement methods, these authorities act as if they have no “belief in themselves and the things they run,” proving this is a “society in decline … that no longer feels as if it can exercise power at any level except via banishment and extreme action.”
He might be right since this isn’t the first time children have been harshly punished for acting like kids.
Last year, Ahmed Mohamed was arrested after his MacArthur High School teacher called officials over a clock he had assembled at home. Officials at the time alleged that the boy had attempted to cause a bomb scare, but the case was later dropped.
More recently, Professor Turley reports, a series of students have been suspended or expelled over comments they made on social media websites, making us wonder why “[t]eachers and administrators have been criminalizing juvenile conduct rather than dealing with such issues with the students and their teachers.”
Could this be the new norm?
This article (13-Year-Old Strip Searched Then Thrown in Jail for Burping in Class) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Alice Salles and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article to edits@theantimedia.org.
Anti-Marxist women wave white handkerchiefs in Santiago, Chile, Sept. 5, 1973, as they demand the resignation of President Salvador Allende. (Credit: AP)
American Exceptionalism is a belief which is sustained by several ideas. The United States is uncommon among nations because of its democratic founding and the particular character of its people. The history of the United States developed in a unique way because unlike European nations it does not have a history of feudalism. Americans are an “inherently good” and “decent” people. God preordained the United States and its people for a special place among nations. Of course, the United States is an “indispensable force for good” in the world.
Both the Democratic and Republican Parties repeat these platitudes. They are taught in the country’s schools. These beliefs are reinforced and circulated by American popular culture. In total, American Exceptionalism is a cornerstone of civil religion in the United States. It provides comfort to a people. However, a belief in American Exceptionalism also interferes with asking necessary and difficult questions about United States foreign policy and the country’s behavior abroad.
In a story where the facts are very much still in dispute, hackers associated with Russian intelligence agencies supposedly stole files from the Democratic National Committee with the goal of influencing the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. Headlines in the United States described this happening as “worse than Watergate,” a “frightening” event, pondered if it constitutes an “act of war,” and discussed it as a type of “intervention” in American domestic politics.
As more information is gathered, these headlines may prove to be accurate, and their warnings about the consequences of the data theft from the Democratic National Committee to be true. But curiously absent from these notes of panic and alarm is any substantial mention or consideration of how the United States routinely interferes with domestic politics and elections in other countries.
Since 1953, the United States has directly or indirectly supported coup d’états (or in more polite and sterile language “regime change”) in at least 80 countries. This number does not include instances where United States’ involvement is suspected but remains unproven.
These countries are not all “dictatorships” or “repressive” regimes. They include democratically elected governments which American elites decided were “threats” to “national security.”
For example, in 1973, the United States government attempted to assassinate Salvador Allende. When that was not successful, the United States finally used the Chilean military to depose him. Thousands of people would be killed and “disappeared” under Augusto Pinochet’s military regime. In 1953, the democratically elected leader of Iran Mohammed Mossadegh was removed by the CIA and the Shah of Iran put in his place. Likewise, Indonesia’s democratically elected Sukarno was overthrown in 1965 by the CIA and replaced with a military dictatorship which is estimated to have killed as many as one million people. And in 1965, the CIA conspired with the Belgian government to assassinate Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected leader of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Ultimately, throughout the Cold War, the United States government removed democratically elected leaders and suppressed populist movements across Latin and South America, Africa, and Asia.
Yes, the individuals who stole the files from the Democratic National Committee’s computer systems should be punished if possible. Of course, the state actors who were involved in this act of political espionage should be retaliated against. Donald Trump’s connections—if any—to Russian President Vladimir Putin and his country’s spying apparatus need to be exposed. But, the American people need to be more mature about the role of their nation in the world, and to be especially mindful of the dangers that come with a type of hypocrisy that deems the actions taken by the United States as always appropriate and right by definition and the same actions to be wrong and suspect when committed by another country.
Donald Trump managed to sound at least one encouraging note at a Republican convention focused more on fueling fears then empowering individuals. "We will rescue kids from failing schools by helping their parents send them to a safe school of their choice," he boasted in his acceptance speech.
Well, OK. The reference to "safe school" does put the emphasis on danger rather than education, but at least Trump called for parental choice. And Donald Trump Jr. compared public schools to "Soviet Era department stores that are run for the benefit of the clerks and not the customers, for the teachers and the administrators and not the students." He went on to call for choice and competition.
That sounds great for those of us who like options, especially with a new school year looming. And Americans have been embracing education choices—we've seen high-profile growth in the number of children attending privately-managed, publicly-funded charter schools, from 800,000 kids in 2003-2004 to 2.5 million, or 5.1 percent of total public school enrollment, in 2013-2014. That's sparked a lot of debate about the effectiveness of charter schools and the desirability (yes, really) of letting motivated families flee faltering public institutions.
More quietly, though, many American families have opted out of institutional education of any sort, taking on the responsibility of teaching their own children. From 1.1 million kids in 2003, the ranks of the homeschooled increased to 1.8 million in 2012—and an estimated 2.3 million this year, catching up quickly with the charter population. Homeschooled children outnumbered those enrolled in North Carolina's private schools as of 2014 after a whopping 27 percent increase in just two years.
My son is part of the surge in the number of children learning at home. The reason for our choice is ably captured in a point made by John Taylor Gatto, a former New York State Teacher of the Year who became a critic of government-controlled education. In his 2008 book, Weapons of Mass Instruction, Gatto wrote about the difference between schooling and education. "Education is a matter of self-mastery, first; then self-enlargement, even self-transcendance—as all possibilities of the human spirit open themselves into zones for exploration and understanding. There are points where the two conditions inform one another, but in schooling, somebody else's agenda is always uppermost."
You could say the same of any institution—that its interests overwhelm the individual concerns of the people within it. But that's why it's always a good idea to have alternatives and an exit strategy for when "somebody else's agenda" is incompatible with your own.
Such incompatibility has become a serious concern even with popular charter schools. Aside from the fact that there's always a potential mismatch between a family's priorities and a school's, even in an independently operated institution, charter schools face growing regulatory burdens that push them to consolidate and homogenize. Controversial national education standards have added to that burden, since they fall on charter schools as well as traditional public schools. "Some 2 million families have decided that charter schools are the best place for their children," the Goldwater Institute's Jonathan Butcher warned. "But under Common Core, these schools' options for differentiating themselves could be limited."
As of yet, homeschoolers face no comparable regulatory threats. Opposition to Common Core was part of the inspiration for the surge in homeschooling in North Carolina, according to the Charlotte Observer, and the same phenomenon is at work across the country. Rather than expend their time and energy battling to change a stubborn institution (North Carolina officials spent a year investigating a replacement for Common Core before deciding to keep the standards in place), parents walked out the doors and took on the task of education themselves.
Not that homeschooling parents all have the same motivation. As befits a DIY movement encompassing millions of Americans, people have different reasons for taking on the responsibility and different ways of getting it done. Once known as a domain for the religious (and a few hippies), the number of homeschoolers reporting "a desire to provide religious instruction" as a motivating reason dropped from 83 percent in 2006-2007 to 64 percent in 2011-2012. "[T]he face of home schooling is changing, not because of faith, but because of what parents see as shortcomings in public and private schools," USA Today reported in 2012. "[T]he movement is deepening its mainstream roots," Reuters agreed, and that mainstreaming is likely to continue since most homeschooled adults appear to be happy with their experience. "About three-quarters of a sample of home-educated students who are now adults raising their own children are opting to home school."
That satisfaction may be derived in part from the academic success achieved by many homechooled students who "score, on average, at the 84th to 89th percentile" on tests. That's pretty impressive when you consider that a good many homeschoolers deemphasize grades and standardized testing, which are most useful for assessing masses of students within institutions, not individual learners.
Old concerns that homeschooled kids are locked away from interaction with the rest of the world—probably derived from the days when the practice was illegal and had to be done in secret—have faded as kids taught by their families have become more common and recognized as obviously normal (as "normal" as anybody else that is). "Research shows that in terms of self-concept, self-esteem and the ability to get along in groups, homeschoolers do just as well as their public school peers," according to Brian Ray of the National Home Education Research Institute.
And maybe homeschooling—DIY education—is the right movement for an increasingly diverse country suspicious of large institutions. In an America of proliferating news sources, gigs replacing jobs, fragmenting political parties, and myriad religious beliefs, why wouldn't people see teaching their own kids as one more thing they can do better than the powers-that-be?
So let's hope that Donald Trump means what he says about educational choice if he takes up residence in the White House next year. It would be nice to think that there's one area where he'll actually expand our liberty. But millions of Americans aren't waiting on politicians to offer them a few more options for teaching their children—they're doing it themselves.
![bernie-delegates-dnc-750x398.png](https://shadowproof.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/bernie-delegates-dnc-750x398.png ""Sanders delegates during John Podesta's speech [at the Democratic Convention]." Still from C-SPAN broadcast. By Michael Tracey / @mtracey on Twitter.")
After returning home from the Democratic convention, I was shocked to learn that friends and family who followed the extravaganza had no idea that there were protests on the inside.
How was this possible? I was there. I witnessed the tension. Each day of the convention was marred by protests, with hundreds of Sanders delegates chanting, booing, walking out, and waving signs in defiance of Hillary Clinton’s coronation.
I reviewed the media coverage I missed while I was in the convention bubble.
After “a bruising primary season,” the Clinton and Sanders camps “pulled together and orchestrated a week relatively free of public controversy,” reported the Washington Post.
“It looks like a mess, but the Democratic Party is more unified than it seems,” blared Vox.
“[W]hat had been a raging boil on Monday was by Thursday morning just a simmer,” observed Politico, marveling at the DNC for “creating opportunities to publicly make peace between the party’s rival factions.”
The corporate media’s adulatory coverage of the carefully choreographed pageantry at the Democratic convention couldn’t be further from the truth.
There was no unity, only the illusion of it made possible by manufactured consent, forced conformity, and exhaustion on the part of Sanders delegates.
The DNC, with help and approval from both the Clinton and Sanders campaigns, confiscated signs, drowned out protest chants with counter-chants, locked down the arena during certain speeches to deter walkouts, and stationed party-appointed whips in the aisles to monitor rowdy Sanders delegates and signal to Clinton supporters when to chant and hold up pro-Clinton signs.
In other words, if the protests seemed non-existent to television audiences, it was because the DNC suppressed them and the media played along with the suppression.
Angered by the dirty tactics employed by the Clinton campaign and the DNC throughout the primary process, many Sanders delegates doubled down on their refusal to support Clinton. They declared their intention to throw their weight behind Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, who has received unprecedented interest in her campaign following Sanders’ endorsement of Clinton.
The DNC’s authoritarian conduct toward Sanders delegates at the convention chased some lifelong Democrats, who would have held their noses and voted for Clinton, out of the party.
The Washington state delegation is a case-in-point.
With 76 delegates for Sanders compared to just 24 for Clinton, the Washington delegation was a hotbed for Sanders support. Yet during the roll call vote, Sanders delegates found themselves pushed to the back of the delegation, tucked behind a giant “Hillary for America” banner unfurled just in time for the cameras to zoom in on their state. It was then that Majid Al-Bahadli, chair of the Sanders delegation, held up an “I support Palestinian human rights” sign, which was quickly yanked out of his hand by Washington superdelegate Lona Wilbur.
Al-Bahadli told me that Wilbur initially denied snatching his sign, only to be contradicted by video evidence the next day. “She’s been to my house,” said Al-Bahadli. “I’ve known her for years. I feel like she stabbed me in the back.”
Al-Bahadli, who campaigned for Obama in both 2008 and 2012, will likely leave the Democratic Party, which he feels doesn’t represent him.
As of this writing, Wilbur has not returned a request for comment.
DNC compliance director Alan Reed, who appears in the DNC emails leaked to WikiLeaks, declined to comment on the conduct of the DNC. Reed played a role in “vetting” Sanders supporters when they sought to attend Democratic Party events during the primary.
Convention personnel went beyond snatching signs from delegates and stripped Sanders delegates of credentials for merely holding up signs that expressed opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement.
I ran into one Sanders delegate, 61-year-old Frank Klein, at a bar in Center city during Clinton’s acceptance speech on Thursday night. Asked why he wasn’t at the convention, Klein explained the DNC had refused to issue him credentials that morning because he held up an anti-TPP sign during Barack Obama’s speech the night before.
Klein drove 22 hours to get to Philly. He also raised money so he could afford the trip. None of that mattered to the DNC.
Bernie delegate drove 22 hrs to be here. DNC denied him credentials this morning bc he held anti-TPP sign yesterday pic.twitter.com/JkVhoaI1Bp
— Rania Khalek (@RaniaKhalek) July 29, 2016
Despite there being no known provisions that prohibit delegates from holding up signs or that empower party leaders to strip delegates of their credentials, the state party’s attorney Chris Burks insisted that Klein violated the convention rules.
Most of the Sanders delegates I spoke with were ordinary working people who, like Klein, had taken time off work, unpaid, and raised money to travel to Philadelphia to represent their state. Meanwhile, the party’s corporate donors were wined and dined in executive suites across the city, making the convention a giant contradiction.
There was no better example of the illusion of unity than the story of North Carolina delegate Nida Allam.
Earlier in the week, the Clinton campaign tweeted out a photo of Allam weeping at the moment Bernie Sanders conceded. The photo misrepresented Allam as a Clinton supporter, excited to tears for the first female nominee of a major party.
Clinton's campaign account tweeted photo of this woman misrepresenting her as a Hillary supporter #DemConvention pic.twitter.com/f3SwtOnBuZ
— Rania Khalek (@RaniaKhalek) July 27, 2016
Despite apologizing for the mix-up, the Clinton campaign refused to delete the tweet.
We're sorry for the mixup. Thanks for everything you did to make history, too. https://t.co/Zn6Kem9zzy
— Hillary for America (@HFA) July 27, 2016
We made history. pic.twitter.com/TBvItE7oSa
— Hillary for America (@HFA) July 26, 2016
“It would not have affected me so negatively if [Clinton] actually stood up for what the majority of Muslim Americans want,” said Allam, pointing to overwhelming Muslim support for Palestinian rights, to which Clinton is fanatically opposed.
“Right now Muslim Americans are going to be voting for her out of fear for Donald Trump, not out of support for her,” she said, adding, Clinton “hasn’t earned our vote, she’s just lucky [to be running against Trump].”
Allam got the word out about the Clinton campaign’s tweet during a press conference for Ohio state senator Nina Turner, one of Sanders’ most powerful surrogates. Sanders’ A-list supporters turned up for the presser to condemn the DNC for barring Turner from speaking during Ohio’s roll call vote.
Sanders, for his part, all but disappeared as the patience of his delegates was exhausted by the DNC’s draconian antics.
By the time Clinton gave her acceptance speech on Thursday, Sanders delegates were either purged from the convention, coerced into silence, or drowned out by awkwardly timed chants of “Hillary, Hillary!” at the command of party whips.
Meanwhile, seat-fillers helped occupy empty chairs left by Sanders supporters who weren’t present. I met one named Ryan Frank, who identified himself as an alternate delegate from Iowa.
“Alternate delegate means if a delegate couldn’t make it then I would be stepping in. I was called to come,” said Frank.
Asked why he wasn’t sitting with the California delegation, which had been a major source of protests and walkouts, Frank responded combatively: “Iowa was filled up by the time I got here. We just found seats where we could and tried to make friends.”
Frank did not have delegate credentials. His convention pass simply said “guest.” Meanwhile, a young woman sitting three seats down from him confirmed that she was indeed a seat-filler, though she declined to give her name or speak with reporters.
The end of the convention went smoothly because of well-practiced censorship, suppression, and genuine fear of Trump on the part of Sanders delegates—even as dozens of Sanders delegates joined Jill Stein outside the convention, chanting “Jill not Hill.”
Establishment press, which displayed contempt for Sanders and his supporters throughout the primary, mocked delegates at their evening parties. They had no interest in understanding their outrage and were perfectly okay with the party’s authoritarian attempts to make Democrats stronger together.
The false narrative of unity that emanated from the convention’s scripted theatrics has not changed the fact that the Democratic Party faces a significant ideological fracture. No matter who wins in November, that division will not go away.
The post DNC Achieved Unity Through Forced Conformity And Manufactured Consent appeared first on Shadowproof.
As a world, are we thriving at our best? The question may seem comical. Of course it depends how you look at it. There is our day-to-day happiness, living in the moment, and feeling fulfilled by our home, our job, our loved ones, our environment. Then there is the deep-rooted issue of feeling like we are not thriving as a world, because there are obstacles we simply cannot overcome.
I was sitting on the beach the other day, staring out at the vast ocean, and asked myself, do I feel free? At first I thought, well, yes. Despite government control, in my own little world, I am happy, and do not feel chained to an idea, a person, and so on. But then I wondered if perhaps I am just brainwashed.
Foster Gamble of Thrive answers in a way that both alarms me and causes me to open my eyes:
“…my research revealed that a small group of financial elite have gained control over key areas of our lives – energy, food, health care, education and more – and are the single greatest threat to humanity’s ability to thrive.”
The financial elite who govern us do so out of greed, not for a better world, a better America, but for heavy pockets and incredible power. A study conducted by two political science professors suggests ordinary Americans have virtually no impact on the making of national policy. So who runs America? Rich individuals and business-controlled interest groups.
In the throes of political upheaval, there is so much discussion about what should have been, could have been, and what will be. It is a confusing and controversial time in the U.S. When voters put Barack Obama in office, they anticipated big changes. Obama sought to defend civil liberties and privacy, yet many question how Obama’s version of national security is that much different than the one he inherited.
“His 2007 speech has become a cautionary tale of the gulf between powerful campaign rhetoric and reality,” noted CNN. So while the president lets down the country, and we are left to believe in his wrongdoings, the reality is, he couldn’t have pulled through in the first place.
“Guantanamo Bay remains open. The NSA has, if anything, become more aggressive in monitoring Americans. Drone strikes have escalated. Most recently it was reported that the same president who won a Nobel Prize in part for promoting nuclear disarmament is spending up to $1 trillion modernizing and revitalizing America’s nuclear weapons,” notes a 2014 article from The Boston Globe.
This isn’t really a discussion about what was accomplished or not with Obama in office, however. That’s just a small part of a much bigger issue. Tufts University political scientist Michael J. Glennon backs up this idea that Obama couldn’t have changed policies much even if he tried. As Americans, we are told we can steer our own government by electing new officials, but the truth of the matter is we are victims of a “double government.” There’s the one we elect, and then there’s the one behind it, in which a disturbing amount of policy goes unchecked.
For instance, Glennon points outs out Obama and his team’s shock and dismay upon discovering that the military gave them only two options for the war in Afghanistan once he arrived in office: The United States could add more troops, or they could add a lot more troops. So while Obama fans became angered to find that he had opted for adding 30,000 more troops, the reality is, he had no choice.
It’s hard to swallow the pill that a “secret government” truly governs us, making us mere puppets in their play, but there are far too many examples of such a theory for it to be overlooked.
Take a look at the National Security Agency (NSA) for instance. Founded in 1952, its existence was kept secret from the public until the mid 1960s. And even more disturbing is the National Reconnaissance Office. Founded in 1960, it remained a secret for 30 years before it was officially revealed by Edward Snowden a few years ago.
There are a plethora of political individuals who have discussed this secrecy as well. John F. Hylan, for example, was Mayor of New York City from 1918-1925, and has been famously quoted as saying:
“The real menace of our Republic is the invisible government, which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy legs over our cities, states and nation … The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both parties … [and] control the majority of the newspapers and magazines in this country. They use the columns of these papers to club into submission or drive out of office public officials who refuse to do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which compose the invisible government. It operates under cover of a self-created screen [and] seizes our executive officers, legislative bodies, schools, courts, newspapers and every agency created for the public protection.”
And in times like today, with WikiLeaks blowing the lid on the many lies within the U.S. government, it’s hard not to feel even more tricked, even more out of control of our lives than ever before. Bernie Sanders said from the beginning that he was essentially being bullied by the DNC, yet it wasn’t until the first “Hillary Leaks” that we have come to find out just how real and serious, and, more than anything, how rigged the political game really is. It’s not about fairness. It’s about money, and so a hidden agenda sweeps us all off our feet and continues to take control.
So the question remains, and is more pertinent now than ever before: How can we truly believe we are living in a “democracy” when presidents don’t even have enough power to significantly change anything?
Are we really free? Or have we been conditioned to believe we are? Corporations and mainstream media have us glued to our TV screens, searching for answers, searching for promises that can never be kept. Living as the puppets we are, we’ve become distracted from the truth, our attention diverted to what we want to hear as opposed to what we need to hear.
Go ahead and argue over who should be president, and go ahead and be angry or excited over the president that does get elected. But just know that you are wasting your breath on this very surface idea.
If we want real change, we have to look within, we have to look to ourselves. We can’t keep putting our faith and tasking our ‘leaders’ with the task of changing this world. The first step is awareness, and it’s happening faster and faster. More people are starting to become aware of what’s really happening on our planet. The next step is action, and we are just starting as a collective to take various action steps. The future really is brighter than ever, it’s always darkest before the dawn.
Related CE Articles:
10 Presidents & Politicians Who Told Us That A Secret Government Controls The World & What They Said
More On The Secret Government & Snowden’s Black Budget Leaks
(ANTIMEDIA) The world has been captivated by a continuous stream of disturbing and shocking headlines. Seemingly every other day, different terrorist attacks, police assassinations or political stunts ignite the public into an emotional frenzy. But as fear shuts down critical thinking, banks that control Europe’s financial system are entering a death spiral. Despite what establishment media narratives push, the most dangerous threat to our way of life isn’t a religious ideology or political divide.
The real risk is a contagion that is undermining the core of the financial system, and the interconnectedness of the globalized economy we live in makes containing the problem nearly impossible. Concerns that used to be isolated to the failing state of Greece have now engulfed the rest of the PIIGS nations. If these dominos continue to fall in Europe, the momentum could carry the destruction to every corner of the globe.
Italian banks are the latest on the chopping block in the wake of Brexit. For years, they have been acknowledged as a weak link in the economic chain, but they now face stress tests that could expose the scope of their internal problems. The oldest bank in the world, Monte Dei Paschi, is at the center of the controversy, with an expected shortfall of over 3 billion euros.
Other big names, like UniCredit, are in equally bad shape. Wells Fargo recently found that nearly 15% of all loans held by Italian banks could be at risk of default, a staggering figure to attempt to unwind. Further, England’s departure from the E.U. has sparked questions over the future of the euro — and Italy could be the catalyst for an all out breakdown of confidence. If panic begins to grip the Italian people, things could escalate quickly, potentially triggering bank runs.
Mihir Kapadia of Sun Global Investments explained the current situation in a recent article:
“A perfect storm of slow or zero Italian economic growth, low interest rates and politically connected, often corrupt, lending have combined to create a situation where the Italian financial system is in need of a large rescue.“
The head of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, wasted no time reassuring the markets and downplaying the significance of the hurdles ahead. Draghi is a former governor to the Bank of Italy, and he recently came out in full support of a ‘public backstop’ for the toxic loans. The public backstop suggested is the political term for shafting the taxpayer. Governments and banks alike have no problem shifting the responsibility of the debt onto the citizens, all while chastising them about how excessive their entitlement programs are and framing the greed of everyday people as the root of the issue. For the elites, it is much easier to use austerity measures, inflation, and shaming of the public to deflect blame from themselves than it is to take ownership for their own corrupt actions.
New regulations passed by the E.U. prevent bailout-style action similar to what the U.S. implemented during the 2008 crisis, meaning the only other option on the table is to use customer accounts to re-capitalize, otherwise known as a bail-ins. We saw a test run of this a few years ago in Cyprus, which led to the confiscation of all personal funds exceeding 100,000 euros. In this trial, the seizures only affected the very wealthy, so there was little major outrage; most accounts over the threshold were also held by foreigners, particularly from Russia.
But in such a future scenario, private savings accounts, retirement funds, and IRAs of average citizens could be stolen by the banks — without compensation — to cover their bad investments. Although it would be devastating for Italy to have to implement these tactics to save their failing institutions, the real fireworks would be the effects such a move could have on other key banks and foreign nations.
As time passes, red flags continue to emerge that point to a terminal diagnosis for the system as a whole.Deutsche bank is by far the most crucial in the E.U., as it supports the union’s powerhouse economy of Germany. In the last year alone, however, their stock price has plummeted more than 60%, bringing the total decline to 90% since its peak in 2007. The bank also just announced its plan to close over 188 branches and cut 3,000 jobs in the coming months. The rebound in the American financial sector over the last seven years never manifested in Europe; instead, the value of their banks continued to grind lower, perpetuated by political ineptitude and central bank manipulation. Germany is the last strong economy left to prop up the crumbling trade bloc in Europe, and without its stability, this grand experiment is doomed to fall apart at the seams.
If those signs aren’t bad enough, Deutsche has also become the poster child for the ominous derivatives bubble. It, alone, has amassed an exposure of over $75 trillion dollars in these risky devices, which is almost equal to theannual GDP of the world. This problem is by no means isolated to the European markets; the U.S. banks also drank the kool-aid, and believe it or not, helped create a quadrillion dollar mess.
The empty promises made by financial managers are only as good as the public’s confidence in them. Before the subprime mortgage crisis, it seemed like there wasn’t a care in the world — until everyone got spooked and headed for the exits at once. If a similar stampede occurred today, the implications would be far worse. The amount of money needed to pay out on the outstanding derivative contracts doesn’t even exist, and the CIA’s factbook states that broad money, including all paper currency, coins, checking, savings, and money market accounts, equals just over 80 trillion dollars — a mere fraction of the what it would take to cover the exposure of the banks.
Warren Buffet famously referred to these instruments as “financial weapons of mass destruction.” He reiterated his perspective in a more recent interview:
“I regard very large derivative positions as dangerous. We inherited a modest sized position at [Berkshire’s reinsurance vehicle] Gen Re in a benign market and we lost about $400m just trying to unwind it with no pressure on us whatsoever. So I think it does continue to be a danger to the system.”
The derivative market is one of the most obscure in all of finance. Instead of buying a share of a company, or a commodity like oil or corn at a future price, a derivative has no value on its own. Its entire worth is derived from the performance of other parts of the market. It is essentially a side bet on the price movements of real assets. If the major banks, like Deutsche, were to go under, all of those derivatives would be wiped out and could light the fuse on this economic time bomb.
Even George Soros has commented on the ongoing crisis in the E.U., saying:
“Europe’s leaders must recognize that the EU is on the verge of collapse. Instead of blaming one another, they should pull together and adopt exceptional measures.”
The Italian banking crisis and the ballooning derivative market may seem like a trivial issue that is out of sight and out of mind, but the black hole it could open up would destroy our way of life. Thinking about these possibilities can be terrifying, but there are steps that can be taken to ensure individuals at least have an insurance plan in place. Becoming educated on the financial system we’re living in is paramount to having the foresight needed to take action.
Developing technologies like Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have created an entirely new monetary system that isn’t subject to the corruption of the broken centralized model. These peer-to-peer networks can secure wealth while allowing unprecedented mobility and anonymity. Other forms of stable money, like gold or silver, also play a key role in financial independence. There are few assets with zero counter-party risks, and precious metals allow each individual to become their own central bank.
Being self-reliant is also a powerful tool; not being dependent on someone else in a worst-case scenario is crucial to thinking clearly when financial panic breaks out. There is no antidote for the potential chaos bearing down on us, but building strong relationships, obtaining basic skills, and stockpiling the necessities of daily lifecan provide peace of mind and preparedness.
A chain of events has been set in motion that will expose the massive fraud world banks and governments have perpetuated on their citizens. When fear porn is being promoted on the major networks, keep in mind the real threats to freedom and security will not be openly announced. The focus on the lone nutjob that kills 20 or the spread of deadly pandemics, for example, is nothing but propaganda aimed at shifting attention to things that are uncontrollable. Ensuring the masses feel helpless and in need of the government’s protection is priority number one for the ruling class. Talking heads and hedge fund managers will be eternally optimistic on the outlook for the future, even as the collapse becomes undeniably obvious. Problems for the European Union will continue to build, and the risk of the disease spreading to other economies increases by the day. Unfortunately, this Ponzi scheme system we built our societies on has left us vulnerable to any well-timed black swan event.
This article (The Looming Financial Crisis Nobody Is Talking About, but Should Be) by Shaun Bradley is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Shaun Bradley and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article to edits@theantimedia.org.
Submitted by Mac Slavo via SHTFPlan.com,
Officials have said that at least four people in Florida have contracted the Zika virus and warn that the virus now appears to be spreading domestically either through contact with mosquitoes or direct human-to-human transmission. Until recently, the virus only appeared in individuals infected outside of the United States, primarily in South America.
In an alarming development, according to CNN, federal, state and local officials have been deployed to canvas neighborhoods in Florida. The stated purpose is to ask questions, request urine samples and determine the spread of the virus.
Officials believe the local transmission is confined to a small area north of downtown Miami within a single ZIP code. However, local, state and federal health officials are continuing their investigation, which includes going door-to-door to ask residents for urine samples and other information in an effort to determine how many people may be infected. Additional cases are anticipated.
As noted by Erin Elizabeth of HealthNutNews.com it is not clear whether officials are asking or “demanding” these samples.
Folks, you read this correctly. The feds and other local authorities are going DOOR TO DOOR to private residences asking (demanding?) urine samples.
What if a resident does not comply? What else are they testing for? Would you comply?
I can tell you right now I am not giving any local or federal agent my urine. If arrest were the alternative then let them arrest me. I have nothing to hide, but no way would I submit to such a test if the feds showed up at my door. Some experts I’m speaking with are saying they’re asking for urine under the guise of “Zika virus” when it is, in fact, for something much more sinister. This is very disturbing to me.
While many Americans may consider the actions of officials as looking out for the interests of the public, this is the first time in recent memory that the government has deployed teams of officers and agents to personal residences following a contagion concern. Perhaps the most recent example of a similar response by the federal government was when they declared a de facto state of martial law after the Boston Marathon bombing.
Given that Zika is not necessarily life threatening, and no actual captured mosquitoes in Florida have been shown to be carrying the virus, it is unclear why officials found it necessary to deploy teams to personal residences.
Perhaps they are doing it out of an abundance of caution, though for the reasons cited above that makes little sense.
One possible reason behind the moves is that, per President Obama’s Executive Order #13707 entitled Using Behavioral Science Insights to Better Serve the American People, the government is using this crisis as an opportunity to collect behavioral data on how residents respond to government officials knocking on their doors.
The ultimate goal of such studies and procedural exercises could have something to do with another EO signed by Obama and dubbed the Executive Doomsday Order. Under that order, the President merely needs to declare an emergency in order to implement a variety of responses including the allocation of health resources, the manpower to support health initiatives, detention of individuals considered to be posing a threat to the public, forced health testing, and the security to ensure the Secretary of Health and Human Services can implement its plans once ordered to do so.
Zika does not appear to be the kind of virus or deadly threat that would require door-to-door visits from government officials.
Thus, one can, arguably, conclude that, as Erin Elizabeth noted, there is something much more sinister at play.
Anytime the government starts knocking on doors their actions should be immediately suspect. In the words of President Ronald Reagan:
The nine most terrifying words in the English language are “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”
