ORIGINAL LINK
(CD) — A new peer-reviewed study shows that eating a completely organic diet—even for just one week—can dramatically reduce the presence of pesticide levels in people, a finding that was characterized as “groundbreaking” by critics of an industrial food system that relies heavily on synthetic toxins and chemicals to grow crops and raise livestock. Published in the Environmental Research, the study—titled Organic […]
via IFTTT
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
Tuesday, February 12, 2019
Today Is The 20 Year Anniversary Of The Bank Of Japan Cutting Rates To 0%
ORIGINAL LINK
via IFTTT
In the annals of modern central (bank) planning, today is a tragic day, or as DB's Jim Reid puts it, "it is a bit of a landmark anniversary of sorts for financial markets" - it’s the 20-year anniversary of the Bank of Japan cutting rates to 0% and the start of two decades of extreme monetary policy which neither Japan, nor any other country, has ever been able to escape from.
As Reid notes, this is a "sobering template for Europe to worry about" and adds that Japan also kick started what became a more mainstream form of monetary policy post the GFC around the world.
For economic historians Japan is really a fascinating case. If you took a snapshot of the nation’s finances and demographics today with no previous knowledge of the country’s journey over the last 30 years since its asset bubble burst, you would wonder how the country isn’t in a constant crisis. Debt to GDP is the highest in the developed world at 236%. The BoJ holds around 43% of all JGBs.
Core prices in Japan are also virtually identical to where they were 20 years ago and 10yr JGBs have fallen from 2.21% to -0.03% over this period. Nevertheless,
Japan is an example of how long a crisis can be averted for under extreme measures. It also highlights how perceptions can be turned on their heads.
Yesterday we found this quote from The Economist 20-years ago: "Without fiscal discipline, say Bank of Japan officials, the government risks losing control of public spending, inviting hyperinflation in the world's second-biggest economy."
Reid's conclusion: "an unhappy anniversary today in many respects but it’s also noticeable that after 20 years of high fiscal spending the Japanese don’t have populism. Maybe that’s a message for Europe."
via IFTTT
"A Coup Is A Coup" - Why Venezuela's Guaido Doesn't Have A Constitutional Leg To Stand On
ORIGINAL LINK
via IFTTT
Authored by Roger Harris via Counterpunch.org,
Donald Trump imagines Juan Guaidó is the rightful president of Venezuela. Mr. Guaidó, a man of impeccable illegitimacy, was exposed by Cohen and Blumenthal as “a product of a decade-long project overseen by Washington’s elite regime change trainers.”
Argentinian sociologist Marco Teruggi described Guaidó in the same article as “a character that has been created for this circumstance” of regime change.
Here, his constitutional credentials to be interim president of Venezuela are deconstructed.
Educated at George Washington University in DC, Guaidó was virtually unknown in his native Venezuela before being thrust on to the world stage in a rapidly unfolding series of events. In a poll conducted a little more than a week before Guaidó appointed himself president of the country, 81% of Venezuelans had never even heard of the 35-year-old.
To make a short story shorter, US Vice President Pence phoned Guaidó on the evening of January 22rd and presumably asked him how’d he like to be made president of Venezuela. The next day, Guaidó announced that he considered himself president of Venezuela, followed within minutes by US President Trump confirming the self-appointment.
A few weeks before on January 5, Guaidó had been installed as president of Venezuela’s National Assembly, their unicameral legislature. He had been elected to the assembly from a coastal district with 26% of the vote. It was his party’s turn for the presidency of the body, and he was hand-picked for the position. Guaidó, even within his own party, was not in the top leadership.
Guaidó’s party, Popular Will, is a far-right marginal group whose most enthusiastic boosters are John Bolton, Elliott Abrams, and Mike Pompeo. Popular Will had adopted a strategy of regime change by extra-parliamentary means rather than engage in the democratic electoral process and had not participated in recent Venezuelan elections.
Although anointed by Trump and company, Guaidó’s Popular Will Party is not representative of the “Venezuelan opposition,” which is a fractious bunch whose hatred of Maduro is only matched by their abhorrence of each other. Leading opposition candidate Henri Falcón, who ran against Maduro in 2018 on a neoliberal austerity platform, had been vehemently opposed by Popular Will who demanded that he join their US-backed boycott of the election.
The Venezuelan news outlet, Ultimas Noticias, reported that prominent opposition politician Henrique Capriles, who had run against Maduro in 2013, “affirmed during an interview that the majority of opposition parties did not agree with the self-swearing in of Juan Guaidó as interim president of the country.” Claudio Fermin, president of the party Solutions for Venezuela, wrote “we believe in the vote, in dialogue, we believe in coming to an understanding, we believe Venezuelans need to part ways with the extremist sectors that only offer hatred, revenge, lynching.” Key opposition governor of the State of Táchira, Laidy Gómez, has rejected Guaidó’s support of intervention by the US, warning that it “would generate death of Venezuelans.”
The Guaidó/Trump cabal does not reflect the democratic consensus in Venezuela, where polls consistently show super majorities oppose outside intervention. Popular opinion in Venezuela supports negotiations between the government and the opposition as proposed by Mexico, Uruguay, and the Vatican. The Maduro administration has embraced the negotiations as a peaceful solution to the crisis facing Venezuela.
The US government rejects a negotiated solution, in the words of Vice President Pence: “This is no time for dialogue; this is time for action.” This intransigent position is faithfully echoed by Guaidó. So while most Venezuelans want peace, the self-appointed president, backed by the full force of US military power, wrote in a New York Times op-ed that it was possible to “end the Maduro regime with a minimum of bloodshed.”
The Guaidó/Trump cabal’s fig leaf for legitimacy is based on the bogus argument that Article 233 of the Venezuelan constitution gives the National Assembly the power to declare a national president’s “abandonment” of the office. In which case, the president of the National Assembly can serve as an interim national president, until presidential elections are held. The inconvenient truth is that Maduro has shown no inclination to abandon his post, and the constitution says no such thing.
In fact, the grounds for replacing a president are very clearly laid out in the first paragraph of Article 233 of the Venezuelan constitution and do not include fraudulent or illegitimate election, which is what the cabal has been claiming. In the convoluted logic of the US government and its epigones, if the people elect someone the cabal doesn’t like, the election is by definition fraudulent and the democratically elected winner is ipso facto a dictator.
The function of adjudicating the validity of an election, as in any country, is to be dealt with through court challenges, not by turning to Donald Trump for his approval.
And certainly not by anointing an individual from a party that could have run in the 2018 election but decided to boycott.
The Supreme Tribunal of Justice (TSJ), which is the separate supreme court branch of the Venezuelan government has certified Maduro’s reelection, as have independent international observers. Further, no appeal was filed by any of the boycotting parties, while all participating parties – including opposition ones – signed off on the validity of the election after the polls closed.
The far-right opposition has boycotted the high court as well as the electoral process. They contest the legitimacy of the TSJ because some members of the TSJ were appointed by a lame duck National Assembly favorable to Maduro, after a new National Assembly with a majority in opposition had been elected in December 2015 but not yet seated.
Even if President Maduro were somehow deemed to have experienced what is termed a falta absoluta (i.e., some sort of void in the presidency due to death, insanity, absence, etc.), the National Assembly president is only authorized to take over if the falta absoluta occurs before the lawful president “takes possession.” However, Maduro was already “in possession” before the January 10, 2019 presidential inauguration and even before the May 10, 2018 presidential election. Maduro had won the presidency in the 2013 election and ran and won reelection last May.
If the falta absoluta is deemed to have occurred during the first four years of the presidential term, the vice president takes over. Then the constitution decrees that a snap election for the presidency must be held within 30 days. This is what happened when President Hugo Chávez died while in office in 2013. Then Vice President Nicolás Maduro succeeded to the presidency, called for new elections, and was elected by the people of Venezuela.
If it is deemed that the falta absoluta occurred during the last two years of the six-year presidential term, the vice president serves until the end of the term, according to the Venezuelan constitution. And if the time of the alleged falta absoluta is unclear – when Maduro presided over “illegitimate” elections in 2018, as is claimed by the far-right opposition – it is up to the TSJ to decide, not the head of the National Assembly or even such an august authority as US Senator Marco Rubio. Or the craven US press (too numerous to cite), which without bothering to read the plain language of the Bolivarian Constitution, repeatedly refers to Guaidó as the “constitutionally authorized” or “legitimate” president.
As Alfred de Zayas, United Nations independent expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order, tweeted: “Article 233 of the Venezuelan constitution is inapplicable and cannot be twisted into legitimizing Guaidó’s self-proclamation as interim President. A coup is a coup.”
via IFTTT
Insect Apocalypse: The Global Food Chain Is Experiencing A Major Extinction Event And Scientists Don’t Know Why
ORIGINAL LINK
via IFTTT
Scientists are telling us that we have entered “the sixth major extinction” in the history of our planet. A brand new survey of 73 scientific reports that was just released has come to the conclusion that the total number of insects on the globe is falling by 2.5 percent per year. If we stay on this current pace, the survey warns that there might not be “any insects at all” by the year 2119. And since insects are absolutely critical to the worldwide food chain, that has extremely ominous implications for all of us.
I write a lot about the inevitable collapse of our economic systems, but it could definitely be argued that our environment is already in a very advanced stage of “collapse”. According to this new research, insects are going extinct at a rate that is “eight times faster than that of mammals, birds and reptiles”…
The world’s insects are hurtling down the path to extinction, threatening a “catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems”, according to the first global scientific review.
More than 40% of insect species are declining and a third are endangered, the analysis found. The rate of extinction is eight times faster than that of mammals, birds and reptiles. The total mass of insects is falling by a precipitous 2.5% a year, according to the best data available, suggesting they could vanish within a century.
Perhaps the entire world will come together and will stop destroying the planet and we can reverse this trend before it is too late.
Unfortunately, you and I both know that this is extremely unlikely to happen.
And if it doesn’t happen, the researchers that conducted this scientific review insist that the consequences will be “catastrophic to say the least”…
The researchers set out their conclusions in unusually forceful terms for a peer-reviewed scientific paper: “The [insect] trends confirm that the sixth major extinction event is profoundly impacting [on] life forms on our planet.
“Unless we change our ways of producing food, insects as a whole will go down the path of extinction in a few decades,” they write. “The repercussions this will have for the planet’s ecosystems are catastrophic to say the least.”
The clock is ticking, and time is running out for our planet.
Assuming that we could somehow keep the global insect decline from accelerating even more, we probably only have about 100 years before they are all gone…
Chillingly, the total mass of insects is falling by 2.5 percent annually, the review’s authors said. If the decline continues at this rate, insects could be wiped off the face of the Earth within a century.
“It is very rapid. In 10 years you will have a quarter less, in 50 years only half left and in 100 years you will have none,” study co-author Francisco Sánchez-Bayo, an environmental biologist at the University of Sydney, Australia, told The Guardian.
So what would a planet without insects look like?
Well, according to Francisco Sánchez-Bayo of the University of Sydney, millions upon millions of birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish would “starve to death”…
One of the biggest impacts of insect loss is on the many birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish that eat insects. “If this food source is taken away, all these animals starve to death,” he said. Such cascading effects have already been seen in Puerto Rico, where a recent study revealed a 98% fall in ground insects over 35 years.
And without bees and other pollinators, humans would be in a world of hurt. You may have heard that Albert Einstein once said the following…
“If the bee disappeared off the face of the Earth, man would only have four years left to live.”
With that statement in mind, I would like for you to consider what this new study discovered about the decline of bee colonies in the United States…
The study suggested that bee species in the UK, Denmark, and North America have taken major hits — bumblebees, honey bees, and wild bee species are all declining. In the US, the number of honey-bee colonies dropped from 6 million in 1947 to 2.5 million just six decades later.
We aren’t there yet, but a food chain cataclysm is literally right around the corner.
So why is all of this happening?
Modern methods of agriculture, urbanization and pesticides are some of the factors being blamed, but the truth is that scientists don’t actually know exactly why insects are dying off so quickly.
And none of those factors directly impact our oceans, and yet scientists have discovered that phytoplankton is declining at an exponential rate. As a result of that decline, seabird populations have been plummeting at a pace that is extremely alarming. The following comes from Chris Martenson…
Fewer phytoplankton means less thiamine being produced. That means less thiamine is available to pass up the food chain. Next thing you know, there’s a 70% decline in seabird populations.
This is something I’ve noticed directly and commented on during my annual pilgrimages to the northern Maine coast over the past 30 years, where seagulls used to be extremely common and are now practically gone. Seagulls!
Next thing you know, some other major food chain will be wiped out and we’ll get oceans full of jellyfish instead of actual fish.
A global collapse is not something that is coming in the distant future.
A global collapse is here, and it is happening right in front of our eyes.
Our environment is literally dying all around us, and without our environment we cannot survive.
If humanity cannot solve this crisis, and we all know that they cannot, then an extremely apocalyptic future awaits for all of us.
The post Insect Apocalypse: The Global Food Chain Is Experiencing A Major Extinction Event And Scientists Don’t Know Why appeared first on The Most Important News.
via IFTTT
Monday, February 11, 2019
Making Globalism Great Again - Did Trump Fold To The Deep State?
ORIGINAL LINK
via IFTTT
Authored by CJ Hopkins via The Unz Review,
Maybe Donald Trump isn’t as stupid as I thought. I’d hate to have to admit that publicly, but it does kind of seem like he has put one over on the liberal corporate media this time. Scanning the recent Trump-related news, I couldn’t help but notice a significant decline in the number of references to Weimar, Germany, Adolf Hitler, and “the brink of fascism” that America has supposedly been teetering on since Hillary Clinton lost the election. I googled around pretty well, I think, but I couldn’t find a single editorial warning that Trump is about to summarily cancel the U.S. Constitution, dissolve Congress, and proclaim himself Führer. Nor did I see any mention of Auschwitz, or any other Nazi stuff … which is weird, considering that the Hitler hysteria has been a standard feature of the official narrative we’ve been subjected to for the last two years.
So how did Trump finally get the liberal corporate media to stop calling him a fascist? He did that by acting like a fascist (i.e., like a “normal” president). Which is to say he did the bidding of the deep state goons and corporate mandarins that manage the global capitalist empire … the smiley, happy, democracy-spreading, post-fascist version of fascism we live under.
I’m referring, of course, to Venezuela, which is one of a handful of uncooperative countries that are not playing ball with global capitalism and which haven’t been “regime changed” yet. Trump green-lit the attempted coup purportedly being staged by the Venezuelan “opposition,” but which is obviously a U.S. operation, or, rather, a global capitalist operation. As soon as he did, the corporate media immediately suspended calling him a fascist, and comparing him to Adolf Hitler, and so on, and started spewing out blatant propaganda supporting his effort to overthrow the elected government of a sovereign country.
Overthrowing the governments of sovereign countries, destroying their economies, stealing their gold, and otherwise bringing them into the fold of the global capitalist “international community” is not exactly what most folks thought Trump meant by “Make America Great Again.” Many Americans have never been to Venezuela, or Syria, or anywhere else the global capitalist empire has been ruthlessly restructuring since shortly after the end of the Cold War. They have not been lying awake at night worrying about Venezuelan democracy, or Syrian democracy, or Ukrainian democracy.
This is not because Americans are a heartless people, or an ignorant or a selfish people. It is because, well, it is because they are Americans (or, rather, because they believe they are Americans), and thus are more interested in the problems of Americans than in the problems of people in faraway lands that have nothing whatsoever to do with America. Notwithstanding what the corporate media will tell you, Americans elected Donald Trump, a preposterous, self-aggrandizing ass clown, not because they were latent Nazis, or because they were brainwashed by Russian hackers, but, primarily, because they wanted to believe that he sincerely cared about America, and was going to try to “make it great again” (whatever that was supposed to mean, exactly).
Unfortunately, there is no America. There is nothing to make great again. “America” is a fiction, a fantasy, a nostalgia that hucksters like Donald Trump (and other, marginally less buffoonish hucksters) use to sell whatever they are selling … themselves, wars, cars, whatever. What there is, in reality, instead of America, is a supranational global capitalist empire, a decentralized, interdependent network of global corporations, financial institutions, national governments, intelligence agencies, supranational governmental entities, military forces, media, and so on. If that sounds far-fetched or conspiratorial, look at what is going on in Venezuela.
The entire global capitalist empire is working in concert to force the elected president of the country out of office. The US, the UK, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, Austria, Denmark, Poland, the Netherlands, Israel, Brazil, Peru, Chile, and Argentina have officially recognized Juan Guaido as the legitimate president of Venezuela, in spite of the fact that no one elected him. Only the empire’s official evil enemies (i.e., Russia, China, Iran, Syria, Cuba, and other uncooperative countries) are objecting to this “democratic” coup. The global financial system (i.e., banks) has frozen (i.e., stolen) Venezuela’s assets, and is attempting to transfer them to Guaido so he can buy the Venezuelan military. The corporate media are hammering out the official narrative like a Goebbelsian piano in an effort to convince the general public that all this has something to do with democracy. You would have to be a total moron or hopelessly brainwashed not to recognize what is happening.
What is happening has nothing to do with America … the “America” that Americans believe they live in and that many of them want to “make great again.” What is happening is exactly what has been happening around the world since the end of the Cold War, albeit most dramatically in the Middle East. The de facto global capitalist empire is restructuring the planet with virtual impunity. It is methodically eliminating any and all impediments to the hegemony of global capitalism, and the privatization and commodification of everything.
Venezuela is one of these impediments. Overthrowing its government has nothing to do with America, or the lives of actual Americans. “America” is not to going conquer Venezuela and plant an American flag on its soil. “America” is not going to steal its oil, ship it “home,” and parcel it out to “Americans” in their pickups in the parking lot of Walmart.
What what about those American oil corporations? They want that Venezuelan oil, don’t they? Well, sure they do, but here’s the thing … there are no “American” oil corporations. Corporations, especially multi-billion dollar transnational corporations (e.g., Chevron, ExxonMobil, et al.) have no nationalities, nor any real allegiances, other than to their major shareholders. Chevron, for example, whose major shareholders are asset management and mutual fund companies like Black Rock, The Vanguard Group, SSgA Funds Management, Geode Capital Management, Wellington Management, and other transnational, multi-trillion dollar outfits. Do you really believe that being nominally headquartered in Boston or New York makes these companies “American,” or that Deutsche Bank is a “German” bank, or that BP is a “British” company?
And Venezuela is just the most recent blatant example of the empire in action. Ask yourself, honestly, what have the “American” regime change ops throughout the Greater Middle East done for any actual Americans, other than get a lot of them killed? Oh, and how about those bailouts for all those transnational “American” investment banks? Or the billions “America” provides to Israel? Someone please explain how enriching the shareholders of transnational corporations like Raytheon, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin by selling billions in weapons to Saudi Arabian Islamists is benefiting “the American people.” How much of that Saudi money are you seeing? And, wait, I’ve got another one for you. Call up your friendly 401K manager, ask how your Pfizer shares are doing, then compare that to what you’re paying some “American” insurance corporation to not really cover you.
For the last two-hundred years or so, we have been conditioned to think of ourselves as the citizens of a collection of sovereign nation states, as “Americans,” “Germans,” “Greeks,” and so on. There are no more sovereign nation states. Global capitalism has done away with them. Which is why we are experiencing a “neo-nationalist” backlash. Trump, Brexit, the so-called “new populism” … these are the death throes of national sovereignty, like the thrashing of a suffocating fish before you whack it and drop it in the cooler. The battle is over, but the fish doesn’t know that. It didn’t even realize there was a battle until it suddenly got jerked up out of the water.
In any event, here we are, at the advent of the global capitalist empire. We are not going back to the 19th Century, nor even to the early 20th Century. Neither Donald Trump nor anyone else is going to “Make America Great Again.” Global capitalism will continue to remake the world into one gigantic marketplace where we work ourselves to death at bullshit jobs in order to buy things we don’t need, accumulating debts we can never pay back, the interest on which will further enrich the global capitalist ruling classes, who, as you may have noticed, are preparing for the future by purchasing luxury underground bunkers and post-apocalyptic compounds in New Zealand. That, and militarizing the police, who they will need to maintain “public order” … you know, like they are doing in France at the moment, by beating, blinding, and hideously maiming those Gilets Jaunes (i.e., Yellow Vest) protesters that the corporate media are doing their best to demonize and/or render invisible.
Or, who knows, Americans (and other Western consumers) might take a page from those Yellow Vests, set aside their political differences (or at least ignore their hatred of each other long enough to actually try to achieve something), and focus their anger at the politicians and corporations that actually run the empire, as opposed to, you know, illegal immigrants and imaginary legions of Nazis and Russians. In the immortal words of General Buck Turgidson, “I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed,” but, heck, it might be worth a try, especially since, the way things are going, we are probably going end up out there anyway.
via IFTTT
Ian56 retweeted: On @DemocracyNow, here was my answer about the bizarre spectacle of watching the bipartisan political & media class - including @SpeakerPelosi - unite behind Trump, John Bolton, Marco Rubio and Elliott Abrams as they try to engineer regime change in Venezuela https://t.co/HENOqEqGeg
ORIGINAL LINK
via IFTTT
 |
Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald |
Ian56 retweeted:
On @DemocracyNow, here was my answer about the bizarre spectacle of watching the bipartisan political & media class - including @SpeakerPelosi - unite behind Trump, John Bolton, Marco Rubio and Elliott Abrams as they try to engineer regime change in Venezuela https://t.co/HENOqEqGeg
via IFTTT
Pro-Israel Lobby Caught on Tape Boasting That Its Money Influences Washington
ORIGINAL LINK
via IFTTT
A debate about the power in Washington of the pro-Israel lobby is underway, after Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., responded sharply to reports that Republican leader Kevin McCarthy was targeting both Omar and fellow Muslim Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat from Michigan.
Omar quoted rap lyrics — “It’s all about the Benjamins baby” — to suggest McCarthy’s move was driven by the lobby’s prolific spending. Asked specifically who she was referring to, Omar responded, “AIPAC!”
The debate over the influence of pro-Israel groups could be informed by an investigation by Al Jazeera, in which an undercover reporter infiltrated The Israel Project, a Washington-based group, and secretly recorded conversations about political strategy and influence over a six-month period in 2016. That investigation, however, was never aired by the network — suppressed by pressure from the pro-Israel lobby.
In November, Electronic Intifada obtained and published the four-part series, but it did so during the week of the midterm elections, and the documentary did not get a lot of attention then.
In it, leaders of the pro-Israel lobby speak openly about how they use money to influence the political process, in ways so blunt that if the comments were made by critics, they’d be charged with anti-Semitism.
“Congressmen and senators don’t do anything unless you pressure them.”
David Ochs, founder of HaLev, which helps send young people to AIPAC’s annual conference, described for the reporter how AIPAC and its donors organize fundraisers outside the official umbrella of the organization, so that the money doesn’t show up on disclosures as coming specifically from AIPAC. He describes one group that organizes fundraisers in both Washington and New York. “This is the biggest ad hoc political group, definitely the wealthiest, in D.C.,” Ochs says, adding that it has no official name, but is clearly tied to AIPAC. “It’s the AIPAC group. It makes a difference, it really, really does. It’s the best bang for your buck and the networking is phenomenal.” (Ochs and AIPAC did not immediately return The Intercept’s requests for comment.)
Without spending money, Ochs argues, the pro-Israel lobby isn’t able to enact its agenda. “Congressmen and senators don’t do anything unless you pressure them. They kick the can down the road, unless you pressure them, and the only way to do that is with money,” he explains.
He describes a fundraiser for Anthony Brown, a Democrat running for Congress in Maryland, as typical. “So we want the Jewish community to go face to face in this small environment, 50, 30, 40 people, and say this is what’s important to us. We want to make sure that if we give you money that you’re going to enforce the Iran deal. That way, when they need something from him or her, like the Iran deal, they can quickly mobilize and say look we’ll give you 30 grand. They actually impact,” Ochs tells the reporter.
Such a claim is not so different from what Omar was describing, and for which she was roundly condemned. In the wake of Omar’s tweets, the Washington Post, for instance, reported: “The American Jewish Committee demanded an apology, calling her suggestion that AIPAC is paying American politicians for their support ‘demonstrably false and stunningly anti-Semitic.’” (On Monday, Omar apologized for her tweets but insisted that AIPAC and other lobbyist groups are harmful to U.S. politics.)
In the censored documentary, Ochs went on to describe a fundraiser hosted by Jeff Talpins, a hedge fund giant, as similar, as well. “In New York, with Jeff Talpins, we don’t ask a goddamn thing about the fucking Palestinians. You know why? Cuz it’s a tiny issue. It’s a small, insignificant issue. The big issue is Iran. We want everything focused on Iran,” Ochs says. “What happens is Jeff meets with the congressman in the back room, tells them exactly what his goals are — and by the way, Jeff Talpins is worth $250 million — basically they hand him an envelope with 20 credit cards, and say, You can swipe each of these credit cards for a thousand dollars each.”
Ochs explains that the club in New York required a minimum pledge of $10,000 to join and participate in such events. “It’s a minimum commitment. Some people give a lot more than that.”
AIPAC, on its own website, recruits members to join its “Congressional Club,” and commit to give at least $5,000 per election cycle.
Eric Gallagher, a top official at AIPAC from 2010 to 2015, tells the Al Jazeera reporter that AIPAC gets results. “Getting $38 billion in security aid to Israel matters, which is what AIPAC just did,” he notes at one secretly recorded lunch. “Everything AIPAC does is focused on influencing Congress.”
The film, called “The Lobby,” was produced by Al Jazeera’s investigative unit, and features hidden-camera footage obtained by the reporter, who posed as a Jewish pro-Israel activist from Britain who wanted to volunteer with The Israel Project.
Outfitted with a luxury apartment in Dupont Circle, the reporter hosted multiple gatherings and otherwise socialized broadly within the pro-Israel community, winning the confidence of senior officials, who divulged insider details, many of which have been leaked and created international news.
A companion version of the film, which looked at the Israel lobby’s influence in the United Kingdom, did make it to air and was the subject of intense controversy. It exposed a plot by an Israeli embassy official in the UK to “take down” pro-Palestinian Members of Parliament, leading to his resignation.
That film, however, included a snippet of footage from the United States. Officials here quickly realized that they, too, had been infiltrated. In the UK, the Israel lobby lodged an official complaint claiming the series was anti-Semitic, but the UK’s communications agency rejected the claim, finding that “the allegations in the programme were not made on the grounds that any of the particular individuals concerned were Jewish and noted that no claims were made relating to their faith.”
Pro-Israel officials in the United States, rather than file an official complaint, exerted political pressure. A bipartisan group of 19 lawmakers wrote to the Justice Department requesting an investigation into “the full range of activities undertaken by Al Jazeera in the United States,” and suggesting that the organization be made to register as a foreign agent. Ultimately, Qatar bent to the pressure, and killed the documentary.
The post Pro-Israel Lobby Caught on Tape Boasting That Its Money Influences Washington appeared first on The Intercept.
via IFTTT
Solomon: Evidence Mounts Of Democrats' Collusion With Russia
ORIGINAL LINK
via IFTTT
After Congressional investigations in both the House and Senate have failed to produce evidence that Donald Trump and his campaign colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 US election from Hillary Clinton, The Hill's John Solomon points out the deafening silence over clear links between the Kremlin and the woman who would have been President had Donald Trump lost.
Aside from the fact that the Clinton-funded Steele Dossier heavily relied on a Russian source. And the fact that John Podesta (who would have likely become Secretary of State) sat on the board of an energy company with a Kremlin official and a Russian oligarch - tangible evidence of Russian collusion exists. Once again, Solomon digs deeper into the upside-down to reveal Russian ties that would see Donald Trump jailed for treason by the left's standards.
Congressional investigators have painstakingly pieced together evidence that shows the Clinton research project had extensive contact with Russians.
...
Steele’s main source of uncorroborated allegations against Trump came from an ex-Russian intelligence officer. “Much of the collection about the Trump campaign ties to Russia comes from a former Russian intelligence officer (? not entirely clear) who lives in the U.S.,” Ohr scribbled. -The Hill
In today's episode of the Twilight Zone, Solomon spotlights Hillary Clinton's close relationship with Russian leaders which raised concerns over a wholesale technology transfer to the Kremlin, right around the time of the Uranium One deal and Bill Clinton's now-infamous trip to Russia (where he hung out at Putin's house) and picked up a $500,000 check for one speech.
As secretary of State, Hillary Clinton worked with Russian leaders, including Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and then-President Dmitri Medvedev, to create U.S. technology partnerships with Moscow’s version of Silicon Valley, a sprawling high-tech campus known as Skolkovo.
Clinton’s handprint was everywhere on the 2009-2010 project, the tip of a diplomatic spear to reboot U.S.-Russian relations after years of hostility prompted by Vladimir Putin’s military action against the former Soviet republic and now U.S. ally Georgia.
A donor to the Clinton Foundation, Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg, led the Russian side of the effort, and several American donors to the Clinton charity got involved. Clinton’s State Department facilitated U.S. companies working with the Russian project, and she personally invited Medvedev to visit Silicon Valley.
The collaboration occurred at the exact same time Bill Clinton made his now infamous trip to Russia to pick up a jaw-dropping $500,000 check for a single speech. -The Hill
The Clinton State Department ignored a 2013 warning from the US military's leading European intelligence think tank over the Skolkovo project - which suggested that it could be a front for economic and military espionage.
"Skolkovo is an ambitious enterprise, aiming to promote technology transfer generally, by inbound direct investment, and occasionally, through selected acquisitions. As such, Skolkovo is arguably an overt alternative to clandestine industrial espionage — with the additional distinction that it can achieve such a transfer on a much larger scale and more efficiently," reads a 2013 EUCOM intelligence bulletin.
"Implicit in Russia’s development of Skolkovo is a critical question — a question that Russia may be asking itself — why bother spying on foreign companies and government laboratories if they will voluntarily hand over all the expertise Russia seeks?"
The FBI followed EUCOM's warning the following year with letters outlining the dangers of US tech companies falling prey to Russian espionage through the Skolkovo project. A Boston FBI agent in particular wrote an "extraordinary op-ed to publicize the alarm," writes Solomon.
The Skolkovo project "may be a means for the Russian government to access our nation’s sensitive or classified research development facilities and dual-use technologies with military and commercial application," wrote Assistant Special Agent Lucia Ziobro in the Boston Business Journal.
The FBI also sounded the alarm about the Uranium One deal - after an informant named William D. Campbell infiltrated the Russian state-owned energy giant Rosatom and gathered evidence of a racketeering scheme which included bribery, kickbacks and extortion.
Campbell also obtained written evidence that Putin wanted to buy Uranium One as part of a strategy to obtain monopolistic domination of the global uranium markets, including leverage over the U.S.
Campbell also warned that a major in-kind donor to the Clinton Global Initiative was simultaneously working for Rosatom while the decision for U.S. approval was pending before Hillary Clinton’s department. Ultimately, her department and the Obama administration approved the transaction.
The evidence shows the Clintons financially benefited from Russia — personally and inside their charity — at the same time they were involved in U.S. government actions that rewarded Moscow and increased U.S. security risks. -The Hill
Beyond the Steele Dossier
While it is now publicly known (and below the investigatory double-standards of the DOJ to pursue) that the Steele dossier was a clear case of Russian collusion against then-candidate Donald Trump, there lies a lesser-known link between the Steele Dossier and a Belarus-born Russian businessman, Sergei Milian.
What's more, "Steele and Simpson had Russian-tied business connections, too, while they formulated the dossier," writes Solomon.
Steele worked for the lawyers for Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and tried to leverage those connections to help the FBI get evidence from the Russian aluminum magnate against Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
The effort resulted in FBI agents visiting Deripaska in fall 2016. Deripaska told the agents that no collusion existed.
Likewise, Simpson worked in 2016 for the Russian company Prevezon — which was trying to escape U.S. government penalties — and one of its Russian lawyers, Natalia Veselnitskaya. In sworn testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Simpson admitted he dined with Veselnitskaya both the night before and the night after her infamous meeting with Donald Trump Jr. at Trump Tower in June 2016. -The Hill
And yet, nobody bats an eye.
via IFTTT
The Great Discontent
ORIGINAL LINK
via IFTTT
Johannes Vermeer Woman holding a balance 1662-63 The problem is, of course, that not only is economics bankrupt but it has always been nothing more than politics in disguise. -Hazel Henderson It’s often hard to understand how people can be aware of something but then fail to link it to a perfectly logical
The post The Great Discontent appeared first on The Automatic Earth.
via IFTTT
Sunday, February 10, 2019
In the Age of Information, You Get What You Create
ORIGINAL LINK
via IFTTT
We have never had such a grand opportunity to be healthy, happy and free in our so-called civilised history, especially in the western world. Whilst ideological and debt enslavement are very real types of modern slavery, the information that we can access from the hand-sized library that exists in our pockets or bags can help to emancipate us from our suffering, if we so choose.
And given the marvellous innovation of the internet and the information it stores, the extreme levels of sickness, sadness and stress are a very disturbing reflection of our modern age.
Tribal cultures in many cases lived more wholesomely than the majority of people today. Granted, because they didn’t have access to modern surgery and other technologies the original people’s didn’t live as long, but more often than not they were philosophically and practically wise well beyond our current collective consciousness.
They had a quality of life that is completely unmatched by the current standard, even if they didn’t have the same quantity of life.
And who wants to live longer if they’re constantly suffering anyway. That suffering isn’t just limited to the many socioeconomic issues in less financially wealthy areas on our planet, but also the physical, psychological, emotional, philosophical and spiritual sicknesses in the more rich regions, especially the western world.
So make no mistake: we are collectively sick. We are divided and fighting each other. We are toxic in mind, body and spirit. We are plagued with disease. We are philosophically incoherent. We are sad and stressed. And we are lost little children forgetting to play in this magically, mad playground.
Sure, the design of the system does generate this. Corporate media creates an uniformed populace. Curriculums indoctrinate children into the status quo instead of teaching self-discovery and health and life skills. People in government allow corporations and the ultra-rich to control macro policy. Pharmaceutical monopolies suppress natural cures and tout toxic alternatives. Mainstream food and water supplies are poisonous. The profits of money creation by central and commercial banks go to private stakeholders instead of funding public infrastructure and social programs.
The list goes on.
It’s called structural sickness. With a system constructed like this, huge numbers of people are going to be dis-eased and in despair. Yet putting the blame on the politicians, the financial elite, the corporations or just the system itself is just another form of sickness because it’s We, the People, who allow it to be this way.
If we banded together to change it, it would. Instantly.
So until we do this, we need to take immense care of ourselves. It’s way more challenging than what it should be, but it has to be done to restore and protect our health. After all, every individual always has the ultimate responsibility and authority over themselves, even if they were born into an inherently ill society.
Now of course you might contract an illness outside of your control. It could be energetic, genetic, epigenetic or born from the pollutants in the air, earth, food or water. However, there is an empowered response you can have. For example, a friend of mine was recently diagnosed with advanced cancer. I called her to express my empathy and her response was:
‘It was the wakeup call I needed. I had let myself get too stressed, but it’s all good because I’ve fucking got this.”
She’s doing all types of treatments in response, including mainstream and alternative ones. She’s not letting the sick medical system dictate how she will treat herself, instead she’s intelligently responding with agency.
It’s a story that so many people could learn from.
Yet, regardless of whatever ways you’re personally struggling, there are actions you can take. For example:
- Re-educate yourself: Indoctrination and propaganda are very real, and we’ve all fallen subject to it to varying degrees. Therefore, question all your beliefs. Research beyond the mainstream narratives and dogmas. Redesign your mind and heart in ways which are healthy for both you, and those around you.
- Detoxify your body: Take specific minerals to cleanse yourself. Eat a toxin-free, plant-dominant diet. Eat free-range, organic meat (if you’re an omnivore). Stretch and exercise. Drink clean water.
- If you don’t like your job, change it: Many people hate the work they do, but don’t do anything about it. You might not be able to change it overnight, but you can study to lead you on a new path. And in the meantime, have a less stressed response to it. After all, stress kills, so your health will benefit and therefore thank you with a happier mind and body.
- Spend money on your health: Healthy forms of recreation are a good way to balance out the stressors of the rat race, however you need to invest some of your money in your own health. Buy better food and eat less. Drink less alcohol and get out in nature more. Buy cheap minerals like Iodine to cleanse the toxins from your body. Invest your time and money in a service from a mental or physical health clinician, to invest in your wellbeing.
- Redesign your body-brain: The neurology that runs through our entire body, including in the second brain (located in the digestive system), can be rewired in healthier and happier ways. Clinical research has conclusively proven that meditation and hypnotherapy (or other mindfulness practices) can quickly and easily break poor patterns and habits, cure mental and physical illness and create a new, more improved you. Think about it like eating, drinking and sleeping: it’s a necessary self-service. Do it.
Ultimately, health is much, much more than just physical and mental health. Subcategories you should consider when assessing and expanding your own levels of self-mastery include physical, psychological, emotional, intellectual, philosophical, sexual, spiritual, behavioural, creational, relational and recreational wellbeing.
So to reiterate, in the age of information we can cleanse our mind and body from the toxins we’ve accumulated and take a preventative approach for our future. That’s our choice. We can also live a life of suffering, if we choose too. Regardless of which choice you make, just remember that it is your choice.
And we all reap what we sow.
About the Author
Phillip J. Watt is a hypno-psychotherapist, author and public speaker who lives on the Mid North Coast of NSW Australia. His first book, ‘The Simulation‘, is a daring exposé of the human experience in the 21st Century. His written and film work has reached into the millions of people and deals with topics from ideology to society, as well as self-development. Follow him on Facebook, listen to his ‘Mad Magic’ Podcast on SoundCloud or Itunes, watch his video interviews at his YouTube Channel and visit his writing website Pushing the Tipping Point, or his health website Heal by Hypnosis to book a hypnotherapy session.
The post In the Age of Information, You Get What You Create appeared first on The Mind Unleashed.
via IFTTT
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)