lack of reaction--by the GOP's Presidential candidates is a perfect example of how it will not matter to a Tinker's Dam which Republican candidate wins the nomination
RON PAUL IS THE ONLY PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE WHO GETS IT
By Chuck Baldwin
December 29, 2011
NewsWithViews.com
The recent passage of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and the reaction--or better, lack of reaction--by the GOP's Presidential candidates is a perfect example of how it will not matter to a Tinker's Dam which Republican candidate wins the nomination, unless that candidate is Congressman Ron Paul. This is what so many people within the so-called Religious Right and establishment GOP just do not understand: they do not understand the fact that America is in the throes of a burgeoning police state. They have buried their heads in the sand for so long that they wouldn't know what tyranny looked like if it came up and bit them on their blessed assurance! They have totally drunk the propaganda Kool Aid that purports that the biggest threat to our liberties comes from the Sand People. Our Founding Fathers were a much wiser lot, of course. They understood perfectly that the biggest threat to our liberties comes from Washington, D.C., not Baghdad, or Tehran, or any other foreign entity.
Listen to Daniel Webster: "There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our overthrow. Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence. I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men and become the instruments of their own undoing."
Yet, except for Ron Paul, not a single Republican Presidential candidate has issued the slightest warning regarding the draconian components of the NDAA that literally turns America's homeland into a war zone and, with the stroke of a pen, effectively eviscerates the Bill of Rights. Why is that? Because, except for Ron Paul, none of them get it. Bachman, Gingrich, Perry, Romney, Santorum. None of them!
The day after Christmas, TheHill.com posted this report quoting Dr. Paul. "GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul warned that the National Defense Authorization Act, which was passed by Congress this month, will accelerate the country's 'slip into tyranny' and virtually assures 'our descent into totalitarianism.'
"'The founders wanted to set a high bar for the government to overcome in order to deprive an individual of life or liberty,' Paul, the libertarian congressman from Texas, said Monday in a weekly phone message to supporters. 'To lower that bar is to endanger everyone. When the bar is low enough to include political enemies, our descent into totalitarianism is virtually assured. The Patriot Act, as bad as its violations against the Fourth Amendment was, was just one step down the slippery slope. The recently passed National Defense Authorization Act continues that slip into tyranny, and in fact, accelerates it significantly.'"
The Hill report continued quoting Dr. Paul, "'The Fifth Amendment is about much more than the right to remain silent in the face of government questioning,' Paul continued. 'It contains very basic and very critical stipulations about the due process of law. The government cannot imprison a person for no reason and with no evidence presented and without access to legal council. The danger of the NDAA is its alarmingly vague, undefined criteria for who can be indefinitely detained by the U.S. government without trial.'"
The report also quoted Congressman Paul as saying, "'The president's widely expanded view of his own authority to detain Americans indefinitely even on American soil is for the first time in this legislation codified in law,' Paul said. 'That should chill all of us to our cores.'
"'The Bill of Rights has no exceptions for really bad people or terrorists or even non-citizens. It is a key check on government power against any person. That is not a weakness in our legal system, it is the very strength of our legal system. The NDAA attempts to justify abridging the Bill of Rights on the theory that rights are suspended in a time of war, and the entire United States is a battlefield in the war on terror. This is a very dangerous development, indeed. Beware.'"
Then again, not only are these pathetic Presidential pretenders not aware of this fast erosion of our liberties being orchestrated by these miserable miscreants inside the Beltway, how many of you folks who go to church every Sunday hear your pastor say a peep about the totalitarian elements contained within the NDAA? Yep! That's what I thought! They don't get it, either!
For that matter, where is the first State Governor, Lieutenant Governor, or Attorney General to say, "Not in my State!"? Where are the county sheriffs to say, "Not in my county!"? (I can promise you this, if Bob Fanning and Chuck Baldwin are elected Montana Governor and Lieutenant Governor in 2012, we will say it! And we will say it loudly enough that everyone in Washington D.C., will be able to hear it!)
And speaking of Montana, it is extremely encouraging to learn that my friend and Oathkeepers founder, attorney Stewart Rhodes, is leading a recall petition against the two US senators from Montana who both supported NDAA. Salem-News.com has the story: "Moving quickly on Christmas Day after the US Senate voted 86-14 to pass the National Defense Authorization Act of 2011 (NDAA) which allows for the indefinite military detention of American citizens without charge or trial, Montanans have announced the launch of recall campaigns against Senators Max Baucus and Jonathan Tester, who voted for the bill.
"Montana is one of nine states with provisions that say that the right of recall extends to recalling members of its federal congressional delegation, pursuant to Montana Code 2-16-603, on the grounds of physical or mental lack of fitness, incompetence, violation of oath of office, official misconduct, or conviction of certain felony offenses."
The Salem-News report continued saying, "Montana law requires grounds for recall to be stated which show conformity to the allowed grounds for recall. The draft language of the Montana petitions, 'reason for recall' reads:
"The Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees all U.S. citizens:
"'a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed...'
"[NDAA] permanently abolishes the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial, 'for the duration of hostilities' in the War on Terror, which was defined by President George W. Bush as 'task which does not end' to a joint session of Congress on September 20, 2011.
"Those who voted Aye on December 15, 2011, Bill of Rights Day, for NDAA 2011 have attempted to grant powers which cannot be granted, which violate both the spirit and the letter of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
"The Montana Recall Act stipulates that officials including US senators can only be recalled for physical or mental lack of fitness, incompetence, violation of the oath of office, official misconduct, or conviction of a felony offense. We the undersigned call for a recall election to be held for Senator Max S. Baucus [and Senator Jonathan Tester] and charge that he has violated his oath of office, to protect and defend the United States Constitution."
The report goes on to quote Rhodes (a Yale Law School graduate) as saying, "These politicians from both parties betrayed our trust, and violated the oath they took to defend the Constitution. It's not about the left or the right, it's about our Bill of Rights. Without the Bill of Rights, there is no America. It is the Crown Jewel of our Constitution, and the high-water mark of Western Civilization." Amen, Stewart! Amen!
NDAA should be to Americans in 2011 what the Boston Massacre was to the colonists in 1770, because this Act literally massacres the Bill of Rights. (And risking the charge that I'm tooting my own horn, when Montanans elect Bob Fanning Governor and Chuck Baldwin Lieutenant Governor in 2012, it will be the second "shot heard 'round the world.") And of all the Presidential hopefuls, Ron Paul is only one who gets it!
Full article and links:
http://www.newswithviews.com/baldwin/baldwin681.htm
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Human zoos: When real people were exhibits
What is missing from this article is the fact that it was Darwinistic Evolution that drove the concept of "race" and the belief that the "savages" were not fully human, but were examples of unevolved sub-human species and "throwbacks". Interestingly, "Christian Evangelism" is subtly slipped in as the cause instead.
Human zoos: When real people were exhibits
By Hugh Schofield BBC News, Paris
Curator Nanette Snoep gives a tour of the Savages exhibition
An exhibition in Paris looks at the history of so-called human zoos, that put inhabitants from foreign lands, mostly African countries, on display as article of curiosity.
Over four centuries from the first voyages of discovery, European societies developed an appetite for exhibiting exotic human "specimens" shipped back to Paris, London or Berlin for the interest and delectation of the crowd.
What started as wide-eyed curiosity on the part of observers turned into ghoulish pseudo-science in the mid-1800s, as researchers sought out physical evidence for their theory of races.
Finally, in high colonial times, hundreds of thousands of people visited "human zoos" created as part of the great international trade fairs.
Here they could watch whole villages of Kanaks or Senegalese, with real-life inhabitants paid to act out war dances or religious rituals before their colonial masters.
The story is told at the Quai Branly museum in Paris until June 2012, mainly through the display of paintings, old photographs, archive film, posters and postcards.
The aim of the exhibition is explicit - to teach how Western societies created a sense of "the other" in regard to foreign peoples, thus legitimizing their eventual domination.
The information [that] allows people to understand why there are still faultlines in society based on the colour of our skins."”
Ex-footballer Liliane Thuram
"What we tried to do is conduct a kind of archaeology of the stereotype," says curator Nanette Snoep.
The display, entitled "Inventing the Savage", was the inspiration of the Caribbean-born former international footballer Liliane Thuram, who today heads his own anti-racism foundation.
"I have long been interested in slavery because of the way my own family was affected by it," says Thuram.
"It became clear to me that racism was above all an intellectual construction. And as such, it was also susceptible to de-construction.
"That's what we are trying to do with the exhibition: putting on display the information that allows people to understand why there are still faultlines in society based on the colour of our skins."
At the start, all was relatively innocent. One of the first paintings is of four Greenlanders brought to the Danish court in 1664 by a Dutch sailor. They stare out with a look as bewildered as those that must have been on the faces of their captors.
"What is fascinating is that on top of the painting are written their names. In other words, at this early stage they are seen as individuals. Exotic yes, but people," says Snoep. "It is later when the names disappear that the relationship deteriorates."
Another early portrait is of the Tahitian man called Omai, who was brought to the court of King George III in London by the explorer Joseph Banks.
In his book The Age of Wonder, Richard Holmes describes Omai as "quick-witted, charming and astute. His exotic good looks… were much admired in society, especially among the more racy of the aristocratic ladies."
But describing this same portrait, Holmes adds: "It is not clear if [Omai] is Banks's companion or his trophy."
Guest or specimen? If there was room for ambiguity in the early days - when explorers and explored often found each other mutually intriguing - this disappeared with the new certainties of the colonial epoch.
The saddest emblem of the coming era was the South African Saartjie Baartman, later to be known as the Hottentot Venus. Born around 1780, she was brought to London in 1810 and put on display.
She had the genetic characteristic known as steatopygia - extremely protuberant buttocks and elongated labia - which evidently delighted the cabaret-goers of the British capital.
Later she came to Paris, and was analysed by the budding racial anthropologists. According to the exhibition catalogue, one scientist described her as having the "buttocks of a mandrill".
When she died in poverty, her skeleton was put on display. It remained on show in the Museum of Mankind in Paris until 1974. In 2002, her remains were repatriated and buried in South Africa.
"Baartman marks the start of the period of description, measurement and classification, which soon leads us to hierarchisation - the idea that there are lesser and greater races," says Snoep.
The climax of the story comes with the imperialist high noon of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.
A European public fed on notions of Christian evangelism and cultural superiority was titillated by re-enactments of life in the colonies which became a regular part of international trade fairs.
Entrepreneurs put on travelling stage shows featuring Hindu rope-dancers, Arabian camel-herders, Zulu warriors or hunters from New Caledonia. Whole African villages were recreated to allow Europeans a glimpse of "primitive" living.
The most famous impresario was "Buffalo Bill" Cody whose Wild West shows - according to the exhibition organisers - were another example of racial stereotyping.
The story helps explain how millions of westerners were manipulated into a belief in the inequality of races”
Some 35,000 people are reckoned to have taken part in the displays. Most were paid.
"They were shows. Public entertainment. The villagers from Africa or India were acting out a role. Significantly there were barriers between the public and the performers, to reinforce the notion of separateness," says Snoep.
These ethnographic displays died out after World War II. Oddly it was Hitler who first banned them. The last was in Belgium in 1958.
The organisers of Inventing the Savage claim that these "human zoos" were seen by 1.4 billion people overall - and that they therefore played an important, and so far unacknowledged, part in the development of modern racism.
"What is left of this incredible story today?" intones the voice-over on a film which is part of the exhibition.
"A view of Africa and its people that is still contemptuous. A certain way in the West of believing oneself superior. Above all the story helps explain how millions of westerners were manipulated into a belief in the inequality of races."
Inventing the Savage provides plenty of food for thought, and there is no-one alive today who would for a minute defend the practice of human ethnographic exhibitions.
The show has been well-received but has come into some criticism for what some see as its heavy-handed didacticisim - as well as a kind of historical cherry-picking that leaves out what does not fit the message.
There is no mention for example of what the human "exhibits" themselves thought when brought to Europe. They are presented as victims, nothing more. Nor are the reactions of the audience explored. Maybe these were more complex than mere colonial self-satisfaction.
Writing in the left-wing newspaper Libération, columnist Marcela Iacub detects in the show "the frankly conservative role… of militant anti-racists and the consensus that they seek to create."
The spirit of the exhibition, she says, is a kind of "censorship, accompanied by the promotion of pedagogical, uplifting messages that will eradicate in us all those dangerous ideas that survive."
Iacub says it is ironic that it was just that kind of misguided moral superiority - the need to improve the unenlightened - that led to Europeans colonising Africa in the first place.
"In the eyes of the militant anti-racist, we are all violent, easily manipulated, barbarous, bloodthirsty, and incapable of thinking without the aid of people to teach us. In fact just like the 'savage' of old!"
Full article and links:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16295827
Human zoos: When real people were exhibits
By Hugh Schofield BBC News, Paris
Curator Nanette Snoep gives a tour of the Savages exhibition
An exhibition in Paris looks at the history of so-called human zoos, that put inhabitants from foreign lands, mostly African countries, on display as article of curiosity.
Over four centuries from the first voyages of discovery, European societies developed an appetite for exhibiting exotic human "specimens" shipped back to Paris, London or Berlin for the interest and delectation of the crowd.
What started as wide-eyed curiosity on the part of observers turned into ghoulish pseudo-science in the mid-1800s, as researchers sought out physical evidence for their theory of races.
Finally, in high colonial times, hundreds of thousands of people visited "human zoos" created as part of the great international trade fairs.
Here they could watch whole villages of Kanaks or Senegalese, with real-life inhabitants paid to act out war dances or religious rituals before their colonial masters.
The story is told at the Quai Branly museum in Paris until June 2012, mainly through the display of paintings, old photographs, archive film, posters and postcards.
The aim of the exhibition is explicit - to teach how Western societies created a sense of "the other" in regard to foreign peoples, thus legitimizing their eventual domination.
The information [that] allows people to understand why there are still faultlines in society based on the colour of our skins."”
Ex-footballer Liliane Thuram
"What we tried to do is conduct a kind of archaeology of the stereotype," says curator Nanette Snoep.
The display, entitled "Inventing the Savage", was the inspiration of the Caribbean-born former international footballer Liliane Thuram, who today heads his own anti-racism foundation.
"I have long been interested in slavery because of the way my own family was affected by it," says Thuram.
"It became clear to me that racism was above all an intellectual construction. And as such, it was also susceptible to de-construction.
"That's what we are trying to do with the exhibition: putting on display the information that allows people to understand why there are still faultlines in society based on the colour of our skins."
At the start, all was relatively innocent. One of the first paintings is of four Greenlanders brought to the Danish court in 1664 by a Dutch sailor. They stare out with a look as bewildered as those that must have been on the faces of their captors.
"What is fascinating is that on top of the painting are written their names. In other words, at this early stage they are seen as individuals. Exotic yes, but people," says Snoep. "It is later when the names disappear that the relationship deteriorates."
Another early portrait is of the Tahitian man called Omai, who was brought to the court of King George III in London by the explorer Joseph Banks.
In his book The Age of Wonder, Richard Holmes describes Omai as "quick-witted, charming and astute. His exotic good looks… were much admired in society, especially among the more racy of the aristocratic ladies."
But describing this same portrait, Holmes adds: "It is not clear if [Omai] is Banks's companion or his trophy."
Guest or specimen? If there was room for ambiguity in the early days - when explorers and explored often found each other mutually intriguing - this disappeared with the new certainties of the colonial epoch.
The saddest emblem of the coming era was the South African Saartjie Baartman, later to be known as the Hottentot Venus. Born around 1780, she was brought to London in 1810 and put on display.
She had the genetic characteristic known as steatopygia - extremely protuberant buttocks and elongated labia - which evidently delighted the cabaret-goers of the British capital.
Later she came to Paris, and was analysed by the budding racial anthropologists. According to the exhibition catalogue, one scientist described her as having the "buttocks of a mandrill".
When she died in poverty, her skeleton was put on display. It remained on show in the Museum of Mankind in Paris until 1974. In 2002, her remains were repatriated and buried in South Africa.
"Baartman marks the start of the period of description, measurement and classification, which soon leads us to hierarchisation - the idea that there are lesser and greater races," says Snoep.
The climax of the story comes with the imperialist high noon of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.
A European public fed on notions of Christian evangelism and cultural superiority was titillated by re-enactments of life in the colonies which became a regular part of international trade fairs.
Entrepreneurs put on travelling stage shows featuring Hindu rope-dancers, Arabian camel-herders, Zulu warriors or hunters from New Caledonia. Whole African villages were recreated to allow Europeans a glimpse of "primitive" living.
The most famous impresario was "Buffalo Bill" Cody whose Wild West shows - according to the exhibition organisers - were another example of racial stereotyping.
The story helps explain how millions of westerners were manipulated into a belief in the inequality of races”
Some 35,000 people are reckoned to have taken part in the displays. Most were paid.
"They were shows. Public entertainment. The villagers from Africa or India were acting out a role. Significantly there were barriers between the public and the performers, to reinforce the notion of separateness," says Snoep.
These ethnographic displays died out after World War II. Oddly it was Hitler who first banned them. The last was in Belgium in 1958.
The organisers of Inventing the Savage claim that these "human zoos" were seen by 1.4 billion people overall - and that they therefore played an important, and so far unacknowledged, part in the development of modern racism.
"What is left of this incredible story today?" intones the voice-over on a film which is part of the exhibition.
"A view of Africa and its people that is still contemptuous. A certain way in the West of believing oneself superior. Above all the story helps explain how millions of westerners were manipulated into a belief in the inequality of races."
Inventing the Savage provides plenty of food for thought, and there is no-one alive today who would for a minute defend the practice of human ethnographic exhibitions.
The show has been well-received but has come into some criticism for what some see as its heavy-handed didacticisim - as well as a kind of historical cherry-picking that leaves out what does not fit the message.
There is no mention for example of what the human "exhibits" themselves thought when brought to Europe. They are presented as victims, nothing more. Nor are the reactions of the audience explored. Maybe these were more complex than mere colonial self-satisfaction.
Writing in the left-wing newspaper Libération, columnist Marcela Iacub detects in the show "the frankly conservative role… of militant anti-racists and the consensus that they seek to create."
The spirit of the exhibition, she says, is a kind of "censorship, accompanied by the promotion of pedagogical, uplifting messages that will eradicate in us all those dangerous ideas that survive."
Iacub says it is ironic that it was just that kind of misguided moral superiority - the need to improve the unenlightened - that led to Europeans colonising Africa in the first place.
"In the eyes of the militant anti-racist, we are all violent, easily manipulated, barbarous, bloodthirsty, and incapable of thinking without the aid of people to teach us. In fact just like the 'savage' of old!"
Full article and links:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16295827
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Old Testament prophecy fulfilled before our eyes?
Americans scrambling to Bible to see previously untold parallels with today
Posted: December 21, 2011
7:40 pm Eastern
By Joe Kovacs
WND
What do sycamore and cedar trees have to do with biblical prophecy, the tragic events of 9/11 and the imminent future of the United States?
The roots of a sycamore tree at Ground Zero felled on Sept. 11, 2001, have been preserved as a memorial to the event in New York City. A local messianic rabbi believes it's a visible fulfillment of an Old Testament prophecy about God's current judgment on America.
Everything, according to a new book which says an obscure text from the Old Testament prophet Isaiah is an urgent wake-up call for all Americans in light of what happened on that fateful day in 2001.
"The Harbinger" by Jonathan Cahn, a messianic rabbi from the Jerusalem Center-Beth Israel Congregation in Wayne, N.J., deciphers stunning connections between what some may think is a cryptic biblical prophecy to the news events happening right now, in our current time.
Read "The Harbinger: The Ancient Mystery That Holds the Secret of America's Future" for yourself!
The key verse in question is Isaiah 9:10, which states: "The bricks are fallen down, but we will build with hewn stones: the sycomores are cut down, but we will change them into cedars." (King James Version)
These words were first uttered by leaders in ancient Israel and in response to a limited strike by Assyria on the lands of Zebulun and Naphtali – an attack the prophet makes clear is actually part of a limited judgment by God against apostasy. It wasn't meant to destroy the nation, but to awaken it, according to most commentaries.
Historically speaking, the northern kingdom of Israel did not repent of its rebellion against God's commandments, and were eventually conquered and deported from their property by the ancient Assyrians. Eventually, the southern kingdom of Judah was also overcome by the Babylonians after the Jews refused to repent as well.
But in "The Harbinger," Cahn shows uncanny similarities between what's stated in Isaiah 9:10 to the 21st century events of 9/11 and the years afterward, suggesting America is currently under a time of focused judgment by Almighty God.
Cahn claims the part of the prophecy noting "The bricks are fallen down" refers directly to the crumbling of the World Trade Center in New York City, with the verse connoting on an attitude of defiance, a desire to rebuild with stronger materials instead of acknowledging the hand of God and moving toward national repentance.
The verse mentions sycamore and cedar trees, and it's here that things start to get eerie with the terrorist attack involving planes that smashed into the Twin Towers, leading to their eventual crumbling.
"After the cloud of dust began to clear, police officers, rescue workers and onlookers gazed at the little plot of land at the edge of Ground Zero," Cahn writes in "The Harbinger."
"There in the middle of the ash and debris that covered the ground was a fallen tree. It would soon become a symbol of 9/11 and of Ground Zero. And it was a symbol ... but one much more ancient than anyone there could have realized, and one carrying a message no one could have fathomed."
"The tree at Ground Zero that was struck down on September 11 was a sycamore tree."
Cahn notes that in Old Testament times, the Assyrians who attacked the ancient Israelites intended to cut down the sycamore trees belonging to God's people. But the intention was not present with the hijackers of 2001.
"The terrorists had no idea of Isaiah 9:10, no idea of the Harbingers, no idea of the sycamore tree growing at the corner of Ground Zero, and no idea that their attack would cause it to fall or that its fall was connected to an ancient prophecy. They had no idea ... but it still happened."
Not only was a sycamore tree struck on 9/11, but it was replaced in the exact same location by another tree of the type mentioned in the original Hebrew, an "erez" tree, which is the same genus as the cedar.
The uprooted sycamore tree from Ground Zero was replaced by the "Tree of Hope," a conifer tree which Rabbi Jonathan Cahn says fulfills the prophecy of Isaiah 9:10.
"The most natural thing to have done would have been to replace one sycamore with another," Cahn writes. "But the prophecy required that the fallen sycamore be replaced with a tree of an entirely different nature. So the tree that replaced the sycamore of Ground Zero was likewise not a sycamore. According to the prophecy, the sycamore must be replaced by the biblical erez. So it must be replaced by a conifer tree."
And that's what took place in 2003, as a conifer tree, the "Tree of Hope" as it was called, was planted in the spot where the sycamore was slammed on 9/11.
"Think about it," says Cahn. "Who could have put it all together? The tower fell because of the terrorists. It happened to fall exactly as it did in order to strike down that one particular tree. The tree just happened to be a sycamore, which just happened to be growing at the corner of Ground Zero.
"The tree that would replace it just happened to be given as a gift from outsiders who had nothing to do with anything else, but who just happened to feel led to give it. Their gift just happened to be the fulfillment of the biblical Erez Tree, which just happened to be the same tree spoken of in the ancient vow – the tree that must replace the Sycamore.
"They just happened to lower it into the same soil in that the fallen Sycamore had once stood – exactly as in the Hebrew of the ancient vow. And the man who led the ceremony around the tree just happened to bring it all together without knowing that he was bringing anything together. No one knew what they were doing. It wasn't a matter of intent. It was a manifestation of the Harbingers."
"The parallels are truly stunning," says Joseph Farah, founder of WND, who is producing a video documentary about Cahn's findings. "They are too numerous and too powerful to relate in news story form. In fact, they are overwhelming in their number and their exactitude. I am persuaded God is trying to tell America something and Rabbi Cahn has found the key to unlocking the message."
As WND previously reported, two major American political figures actually voiced the Isaiah 9:10 prophecy in public in the immediate wake of the 9/11 onslaught.
"In the aftermath of the attack, the nation was stunned," said Cahn, "Everyone was trying to make sense of what had happened – this unprecedented attack on America. The very next day, September 12, then Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle presented America's response to the world. And what did he say?"
Daschle said: "America will emerge from this tragedy as we have emerged from all adversity – united and strong. Nothing … nothing can replace the losses of those who have suffered. I know there is only the smallest measure of inspiration that can be taken from this devastation. But there is a passage in the Bible from Isaiah that speaks to all of us at times like this."
He then went on to read Isaiah 9:10:
"Daschle has no idea what he is doing here," explains Cahn. "He thinks he's offering comforting words to a grief-stricken people, but he is actually embracing the spiritually defiant and arrogant words of the children of Israel, proclaiming the ancient and ominous vow of the leaders of that nation. He doesn't realize it, but he is actually inviting more judgment on the nation."
It might be of some significance that Daschle, one of the most powerful men in the nation when he spoke those words, later fell into disgrace – to the point where he couldn't even serve in Barack Obama's Cabinet.
That might have been the end of the story – if no other top leader in the nation uttered those strange and obscure words after 9/11. But that's not the case.
On the third anniversary of the attack, Sept. 11, 2004, another powerful U.S. senator running for vice president that year and who would famously run for the presidency four years later, gave a speech to the Congressional Black Caucus.
This time, John Edwards' entire speech was built on a foundation of Isaiah 9:10: "Today, on this day of remembrance and mourning, we have the Lord's Word to get us through," he said. He then read Isaiah 9:10. He went on to talk about how America was doing just that – rebuilding with hewn stone and planting cedars:
"Like Daschle, Edwards thinks he's invoking inspirational and comforting words from the Bible, but he's actually inviting judgment on America," says Cahn. "He's repeating the vow that provoked God to bring calamity on ancient Israel."
Get Rabbi Jonathan Cahn's "The Harbinger: The Ancient Mystery That Holds the Secret of America's Future."
Full article:
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.printable&pageId=379829
Posted: December 21, 2011
7:40 pm Eastern
By Joe Kovacs
WND
What do sycamore and cedar trees have to do with biblical prophecy, the tragic events of 9/11 and the imminent future of the United States?
The roots of a sycamore tree at Ground Zero felled on Sept. 11, 2001, have been preserved as a memorial to the event in New York City. A local messianic rabbi believes it's a visible fulfillment of an Old Testament prophecy about God's current judgment on America.
Everything, according to a new book which says an obscure text from the Old Testament prophet Isaiah is an urgent wake-up call for all Americans in light of what happened on that fateful day in 2001.
"The Harbinger" by Jonathan Cahn, a messianic rabbi from the Jerusalem Center-Beth Israel Congregation in Wayne, N.J., deciphers stunning connections between what some may think is a cryptic biblical prophecy to the news events happening right now, in our current time.
Read "The Harbinger: The Ancient Mystery That Holds the Secret of America's Future" for yourself!
The key verse in question is Isaiah 9:10, which states: "The bricks are fallen down, but we will build with hewn stones: the sycomores are cut down, but we will change them into cedars." (King James Version)
These words were first uttered by leaders in ancient Israel and in response to a limited strike by Assyria on the lands of Zebulun and Naphtali – an attack the prophet makes clear is actually part of a limited judgment by God against apostasy. It wasn't meant to destroy the nation, but to awaken it, according to most commentaries.
Historically speaking, the northern kingdom of Israel did not repent of its rebellion against God's commandments, and were eventually conquered and deported from their property by the ancient Assyrians. Eventually, the southern kingdom of Judah was also overcome by the Babylonians after the Jews refused to repent as well.
But in "The Harbinger," Cahn shows uncanny similarities between what's stated in Isaiah 9:10 to the 21st century events of 9/11 and the years afterward, suggesting America is currently under a time of focused judgment by Almighty God.
Cahn claims the part of the prophecy noting "The bricks are fallen down" refers directly to the crumbling of the World Trade Center in New York City, with the verse connoting on an attitude of defiance, a desire to rebuild with stronger materials instead of acknowledging the hand of God and moving toward national repentance.
The verse mentions sycamore and cedar trees, and it's here that things start to get eerie with the terrorist attack involving planes that smashed into the Twin Towers, leading to their eventual crumbling.
"After the cloud of dust began to clear, police officers, rescue workers and onlookers gazed at the little plot of land at the edge of Ground Zero," Cahn writes in "The Harbinger."
"There in the middle of the ash and debris that covered the ground was a fallen tree. It would soon become a symbol of 9/11 and of Ground Zero. And it was a symbol ... but one much more ancient than anyone there could have realized, and one carrying a message no one could have fathomed."
"The tree at Ground Zero that was struck down on September 11 was a sycamore tree."
Cahn notes that in Old Testament times, the Assyrians who attacked the ancient Israelites intended to cut down the sycamore trees belonging to God's people. But the intention was not present with the hijackers of 2001.
"The terrorists had no idea of Isaiah 9:10, no idea of the Harbingers, no idea of the sycamore tree growing at the corner of Ground Zero, and no idea that their attack would cause it to fall or that its fall was connected to an ancient prophecy. They had no idea ... but it still happened."
Not only was a sycamore tree struck on 9/11, but it was replaced in the exact same location by another tree of the type mentioned in the original Hebrew, an "erez" tree, which is the same genus as the cedar.
The uprooted sycamore tree from Ground Zero was replaced by the "Tree of Hope," a conifer tree which Rabbi Jonathan Cahn says fulfills the prophecy of Isaiah 9:10.
"The most natural thing to have done would have been to replace one sycamore with another," Cahn writes. "But the prophecy required that the fallen sycamore be replaced with a tree of an entirely different nature. So the tree that replaced the sycamore of Ground Zero was likewise not a sycamore. According to the prophecy, the sycamore must be replaced by the biblical erez. So it must be replaced by a conifer tree."
And that's what took place in 2003, as a conifer tree, the "Tree of Hope" as it was called, was planted in the spot where the sycamore was slammed on 9/11.
"Think about it," says Cahn. "Who could have put it all together? The tower fell because of the terrorists. It happened to fall exactly as it did in order to strike down that one particular tree. The tree just happened to be a sycamore, which just happened to be growing at the corner of Ground Zero.
"The tree that would replace it just happened to be given as a gift from outsiders who had nothing to do with anything else, but who just happened to feel led to give it. Their gift just happened to be the fulfillment of the biblical Erez Tree, which just happened to be the same tree spoken of in the ancient vow – the tree that must replace the Sycamore.
"They just happened to lower it into the same soil in that the fallen Sycamore had once stood – exactly as in the Hebrew of the ancient vow. And the man who led the ceremony around the tree just happened to bring it all together without knowing that he was bringing anything together. No one knew what they were doing. It wasn't a matter of intent. It was a manifestation of the Harbingers."
"The parallels are truly stunning," says Joseph Farah, founder of WND, who is producing a video documentary about Cahn's findings. "They are too numerous and too powerful to relate in news story form. In fact, they are overwhelming in their number and their exactitude. I am persuaded God is trying to tell America something and Rabbi Cahn has found the key to unlocking the message."
As WND previously reported, two major American political figures actually voiced the Isaiah 9:10 prophecy in public in the immediate wake of the 9/11 onslaught.
"In the aftermath of the attack, the nation was stunned," said Cahn, "Everyone was trying to make sense of what had happened – this unprecedented attack on America. The very next day, September 12, then Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle presented America's response to the world. And what did he say?"
Daschle said: "America will emerge from this tragedy as we have emerged from all adversity – united and strong. Nothing … nothing can replace the losses of those who have suffered. I know there is only the smallest measure of inspiration that can be taken from this devastation. But there is a passage in the Bible from Isaiah that speaks to all of us at times like this."
He then went on to read Isaiah 9:10:
"Daschle has no idea what he is doing here," explains Cahn. "He thinks he's offering comforting words to a grief-stricken people, but he is actually embracing the spiritually defiant and arrogant words of the children of Israel, proclaiming the ancient and ominous vow of the leaders of that nation. He doesn't realize it, but he is actually inviting more judgment on the nation."
It might be of some significance that Daschle, one of the most powerful men in the nation when he spoke those words, later fell into disgrace – to the point where he couldn't even serve in Barack Obama's Cabinet.
That might have been the end of the story – if no other top leader in the nation uttered those strange and obscure words after 9/11. But that's not the case.
On the third anniversary of the attack, Sept. 11, 2004, another powerful U.S. senator running for vice president that year and who would famously run for the presidency four years later, gave a speech to the Congressional Black Caucus.
This time, John Edwards' entire speech was built on a foundation of Isaiah 9:10: "Today, on this day of remembrance and mourning, we have the Lord's Word to get us through," he said. He then read Isaiah 9:10. He went on to talk about how America was doing just that – rebuilding with hewn stone and planting cedars:
"Like Daschle, Edwards thinks he's invoking inspirational and comforting words from the Bible, but he's actually inviting judgment on America," says Cahn. "He's repeating the vow that provoked God to bring calamity on ancient Israel."
Get Rabbi Jonathan Cahn's "The Harbinger: The Ancient Mystery That Holds the Secret of America's Future."
Full article:
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.printable&pageId=379829
Friday, December 02, 2011
Conspiracy theory confirmed: bankers do want to rule the world
Conspiracy theory confirmed: bankers do want to rule the world
By Kenneth Schortgen Jr, Finance Examiner
www.examiner.com
One of the longest running conspiracy theories in the global mindset is that the banking cartels would like nothing more than to control the economic and social domains of nations through a centralized authority, which would then be run by a select few.
On November 24th, this theory may have finally come out of the darkness and into the light as an executive member of the European Central Bank (ECB) called for nations in the Euro Zone to be willing to give up economic sovereignty to the EMU over fiscal, structural, and economic polices.
…from the just delivered speech by ECB executive board member José Manuel González-Páramo is the following: "We cannot completely delegate governance to financial markets. The euro area is the world’s second largest monetary area. It cannot depend solely on the opinions of ratings agencies and markets. It needs economic governance arrangements that are preventive and linear. This underscores my central point that a much more comprehensive approach to economic governance is now the priority for the euro area. And this means more economic and financial integration for the euro area, with a significant transfer of sovereignty to the EMU level over fiscal, structural and financial policies." - Zerohedge
For a course of action to be considered a conspiracy, it requires plans to be agreed upon, and taken up by more than one person or coalition. Several key indicators and actions that have occurred recently fulfill this requirement of a focused drive towards a centralized banking authority that supersedes the sovereignty of nations.
First, the removal of leadership in both Greece and Italy has led to members of the banking establishment to be placed in power, and in those positions. In Greece, newly appointed Prime Minister Lucas Papademos is a former head of the Central Bank of Greece, and in Italy, Mario Monti, who was the head of the international division of Goldman Sachs and key member of the tri-lateral commission and Bilderberg group, has replaced former Prime Minister Silvio Burlusconi.
Secondly, a recent document has came out of the Vatican and Catholic Church calling for a global public authority, and central banking establishment for the greater good of the world in this continuing economic crisis.
While nations such as the United States, and governing bodies such as the European Union, downplay the consequences of massive indebtedness, the old axiom of a borrower being slave to the lender has, and always will be true. With Americans now in bondage for over $15 trillion in debt liabilities to banks and other sovereign nations, and the EU moving headlong into a liquidity crisis and economic meltdown under the weight of $30 trillion in overall debts, the time may be right for the banking cartels to get their wish, and move out of the shadows to seize control of the overall economic system, even at the loss of power to sovereign states.
Continue reading on Examiner.com Conspiracy theory confirmed: bankers do want to rule the world - National Finance Examiner | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/finance-examiner-in-national/conspiracy-theory-confirmed-bankers-do-want-to-rule-the-world#ixzz1fOINjd00
By Kenneth Schortgen Jr, Finance Examiner
www.examiner.com
One of the longest running conspiracy theories in the global mindset is that the banking cartels would like nothing more than to control the economic and social domains of nations through a centralized authority, which would then be run by a select few.
On November 24th, this theory may have finally come out of the darkness and into the light as an executive member of the European Central Bank (ECB) called for nations in the Euro Zone to be willing to give up economic sovereignty to the EMU over fiscal, structural, and economic polices.
…from the just delivered speech by ECB executive board member José Manuel González-Páramo is the following: "We cannot completely delegate governance to financial markets. The euro area is the world’s second largest monetary area. It cannot depend solely on the opinions of ratings agencies and markets. It needs economic governance arrangements that are preventive and linear. This underscores my central point that a much more comprehensive approach to economic governance is now the priority for the euro area. And this means more economic and financial integration for the euro area, with a significant transfer of sovereignty to the EMU level over fiscal, structural and financial policies." - Zerohedge
For a course of action to be considered a conspiracy, it requires plans to be agreed upon, and taken up by more than one person or coalition. Several key indicators and actions that have occurred recently fulfill this requirement of a focused drive towards a centralized banking authority that supersedes the sovereignty of nations.
First, the removal of leadership in both Greece and Italy has led to members of the banking establishment to be placed in power, and in those positions. In Greece, newly appointed Prime Minister Lucas Papademos is a former head of the Central Bank of Greece, and in Italy, Mario Monti, who was the head of the international division of Goldman Sachs and key member of the tri-lateral commission and Bilderberg group, has replaced former Prime Minister Silvio Burlusconi.
Secondly, a recent document has came out of the Vatican and Catholic Church calling for a global public authority, and central banking establishment for the greater good of the world in this continuing economic crisis.
While nations such as the United States, and governing bodies such as the European Union, downplay the consequences of massive indebtedness, the old axiom of a borrower being slave to the lender has, and always will be true. With Americans now in bondage for over $15 trillion in debt liabilities to banks and other sovereign nations, and the EU moving headlong into a liquidity crisis and economic meltdown under the weight of $30 trillion in overall debts, the time may be right for the banking cartels to get their wish, and move out of the shadows to seize control of the overall economic system, even at the loss of power to sovereign states.
Continue reading on Examiner.com Conspiracy theory confirmed: bankers do want to rule the world - National Finance Examiner | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/finance-examiner-in-national/conspiracy-theory-confirmed-bankers-do-want-to-rule-the-world#ixzz1fOINjd00
U.S. Says Americans Are MILITARY Targets in the War on Terror … And that the Prez Alone Can Decide Who Is a Target
U.S. Says Americans Are MILITARY Targets in the War on Terror … And that the Prez Alone Can Decide Who Is a Target
Submitted by George Washington on 12/01/2011 20:13 -0500
www.zerohedge.com
As everyone realizes by now, Congress' push for indefinite detention includes American citizens on American soil. As Huffington post notes:
The debate also has left many Americans scratching their heads as to whether Congress is actually attempting to authorize the indefinite detention of Americans by the military without charges. But proponents -- led by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) and Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee -- say that is exactly what the war on terror requires. They argued that the bill simply codifies precedents set by the Supreme Court and removes uncertainty, which they said would better protect the country.
(As Emptywheel and Gleen Greenwald note, the White House has believed for many years that it possessed the power to indefinitely detain Americans. See this, this, this and this.)
But that's not all.
The government can also kill American citizens. For more than a year and a half, the Obama administration has said it could target American citizens for assassination without any trial or due process.
But now, as shown by the debates surrounding indefinite detention, the government is saying that America itself is a battlefield.
AP notes today:
U.S. citizens are legitimate military targets when they take up arms with al-Qaida, top national security lawyers in the Obama administration said Thursday.
***
The government lawyers, CIA counsel Stephen Preston and Pentagon counsel Jeh Johnson ... said U.S. citizens do not have immunity when they are at war with the United States.
Johnson said only the executive branch, not the courts, is equipped to make military battlefield targeting decisions about who qualifies as an enemy.
The courts in habeas cases, such as those involving whether a detainee should be released from the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba, make the determination of who can be considered an enemy combatant.
You might assume - in a vacuum - that this might be okay (even though it trashes the Constitution, the separation of military and police actions, and the division between internal and external affairs).
But it is dangerous in a climate where you can be labeled as or suspected of being a terrorist simply for questioning war, protesting anything, asking questions about pollution or about Wall Street shenanigans, supporting Ron Paul, being a libertarian, holding gold, or stocking up on more than 7 days of food. And see this.
And it is problematic in a period in which FBI agents and CIA intelligence officials, constitutional law expert professor Jonathan Turley, Time Magazine, Keith Olbermann and the Washington Post have all said that U.S. government officials “were trying to create an atmosphere of fear in which the American people would give them more power”, and even former Secretary of Homeland Security – Tom Ridge – admitst hat he was pressured to raise terror alerts to help Bush win reelection.
And it is counter-productive in an age when the government - instead of doing the things which could actually make us safer - are doing things which increase the risk of terrorism.
And it is insane in a time of perpetual war. See this, this, this and this.
And when the "War on Terror" in the Middle East and North Africa which is being used to justify the attack on Americans was planned long before 9/11.
And when Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser told the Senate in 2007 that the war on terror is “a mythical historical narrative”. And 9/11 was entirely foreseeable, but wasn't stopped. Indeed, no one in Washington even wants to hear how 9/11 happened, even though that is necessary to stop future terrorist attacks. And the military has bombed a bunch of oil-rich countries when it could have instead taken out Bin Laden years ago.
As I noted in March:
The government’s indefinite detention policy – stripped of it’s spin – is literally insane, and based on circular reasoning. Stripped of p.r., this is the actual policy:
If you are an enemy combatant or a threat to national security, we will detain you indefinitely until the war is over
It is a perpetual war, which will never be over
Neither you or your lawyers have a right to see the evidence against you, nor to face your accusers
But trust us, we know you are an enemy combatant and a threat to national security
We may torture you (and try to cover up the fact that you were tortured), because you are an enemy combatant, and so basic rights of a prisoner guaranteed by the Geneva Convention don’t apply to you
Since you admitted that you’re a bad guy (while trying to tell us whatever you think we want to hear to make the torture stop), it proves that we should hold you in indefinite detention
See how that works?
Full article and links:
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/%3F-older-posts-us-says-americans-are-military-targets-war-terror-%E2%80%A6-and-prez-alone-can-dec?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zerohedge%2Ffeed+%28zero+hedge+-+on+a+long+enough+timeline%2
Submitted by George Washington on 12/01/2011 20:13 -0500
www.zerohedge.com
As everyone realizes by now, Congress' push for indefinite detention includes American citizens on American soil. As Huffington post notes:
The debate also has left many Americans scratching their heads as to whether Congress is actually attempting to authorize the indefinite detention of Americans by the military without charges. But proponents -- led by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) and Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee -- say that is exactly what the war on terror requires. They argued that the bill simply codifies precedents set by the Supreme Court and removes uncertainty, which they said would better protect the country.
(As Emptywheel and Gleen Greenwald note, the White House has believed for many years that it possessed the power to indefinitely detain Americans. See this, this, this and this.)
But that's not all.
The government can also kill American citizens. For more than a year and a half, the Obama administration has said it could target American citizens for assassination without any trial or due process.
But now, as shown by the debates surrounding indefinite detention, the government is saying that America itself is a battlefield.
AP notes today:
U.S. citizens are legitimate military targets when they take up arms with al-Qaida, top national security lawyers in the Obama administration said Thursday.
***
The government lawyers, CIA counsel Stephen Preston and Pentagon counsel Jeh Johnson ... said U.S. citizens do not have immunity when they are at war with the United States.
Johnson said only the executive branch, not the courts, is equipped to make military battlefield targeting decisions about who qualifies as an enemy.
The courts in habeas cases, such as those involving whether a detainee should be released from the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba, make the determination of who can be considered an enemy combatant.
You might assume - in a vacuum - that this might be okay (even though it trashes the Constitution, the separation of military and police actions, and the division between internal and external affairs).
But it is dangerous in a climate where you can be labeled as or suspected of being a terrorist simply for questioning war, protesting anything, asking questions about pollution or about Wall Street shenanigans, supporting Ron Paul, being a libertarian, holding gold, or stocking up on more than 7 days of food. And see this.
And it is problematic in a period in which FBI agents and CIA intelligence officials, constitutional law expert professor Jonathan Turley, Time Magazine, Keith Olbermann and the Washington Post have all said that U.S. government officials “were trying to create an atmosphere of fear in which the American people would give them more power”, and even former Secretary of Homeland Security – Tom Ridge – admitst hat he was pressured to raise terror alerts to help Bush win reelection.
And it is counter-productive in an age when the government - instead of doing the things which could actually make us safer - are doing things which increase the risk of terrorism.
And it is insane in a time of perpetual war. See this, this, this and this.
And when the "War on Terror" in the Middle East and North Africa which is being used to justify the attack on Americans was planned long before 9/11.
And when Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser told the Senate in 2007 that the war on terror is “a mythical historical narrative”. And 9/11 was entirely foreseeable, but wasn't stopped. Indeed, no one in Washington even wants to hear how 9/11 happened, even though that is necessary to stop future terrorist attacks. And the military has bombed a bunch of oil-rich countries when it could have instead taken out Bin Laden years ago.
As I noted in March:
The government’s indefinite detention policy – stripped of it’s spin – is literally insane, and based on circular reasoning. Stripped of p.r., this is the actual policy:
If you are an enemy combatant or a threat to national security, we will detain you indefinitely until the war is over
It is a perpetual war, which will never be over
Neither you or your lawyers have a right to see the evidence against you, nor to face your accusers
But trust us, we know you are an enemy combatant and a threat to national security
We may torture you (and try to cover up the fact that you were tortured), because you are an enemy combatant, and so basic rights of a prisoner guaranteed by the Geneva Convention don’t apply to you
Since you admitted that you’re a bad guy (while trying to tell us whatever you think we want to hear to make the torture stop), it proves that we should hold you in indefinite detention
See how that works?
Full article and links:
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/%3F-older-posts-us-says-americans-are-military-targets-war-terror-%E2%80%A6-and-prez-alone-can-dec?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zerohedge%2Ffeed+%28zero+hedge+-+on+a+long+enough+timeline%2
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Indoctrination: How ‘Useful Idiots’ Are Using Our Schools to Subvert American Exceptionalism
-By Larry Sand
To a large extent, the progressives have taken over American education, are transforming it and are doing it in plain sight
Indoctrination: How ‘Useful Idiots’ Are Using Our Schools to Subvert American Exceptionalism is an invaluable book written by Kyle Olson, founder and CEO of the Education Action Group, an organization that is on the frontline of education reform and a champion of school choice.
In this brief and very readable book, Olson describes the ways that the progressives in our society have taken over K-12 education. They have been running most of our elite colleges and schools of education for years now and this step is in keeping with their plan to transform America.
As a public school teacher whose career spanned four decades, I have seen the long march first hand. Perverting the traditional purpose of American education (which has been to make better and more educated citizens), progressives have been inspired by the theories of Paolo Freire, a Brazilian socialist who saw everything through a Marxist class warfare lens.
Carrying Freire’s mantle, current gurus like revolutionary terrorist Bill Ayers and the recently deceased Communist Howard Zinn have been behind the effort to destroy America as we know it. They claim that basically the U.S. and its capitalist system are the root of all evil. Unfortunately, their love-the-world/hate-America attitude has gained an incredible amount of currency in our public schools in a relatively short time. Ayers, Zinn and their ilk have essentially managed to convince much of the education establishment to abandon every teaching technique and curriculum that benefited prior generations. For example, “drill and kill” has been thrown on the refuse heap; we are now supposed to let our students “discover” learning. The “sage on the stage” has been replaced by the “guide on the side.” The only problem with these techniques is that they haven’t worked, but they do sound good (at least to the progressives.) As such, we are now raising a nation of dunces.
On the 2010 NAEP history test, we learned that only 12 percent of high school seniors have a firm grip on American history. Yes, we are educating students to the point that almost half the nation thinks that the cornerstone of Communism, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,” is in the U.S. Constitution. Only 2 percent of high school seniors know the significance of Brown vs. the Board of Education and only 4 percent of 8th graders could explain why urban populations rose and rural populations shrank over time.
So just what are we teaching them?
This is where Olson’s book shines. In chapter after chapter, he meticulously details lessons being foisted on students that are being taught for one purpose only – to advance the progressive agenda. A few examples:
- An examination of the nature and extent of police brutality, which is being promoted in middle schools by none other than Van Jones, conspiracy enthusiast extraordinaire.
- A clever lesson using poker chips, the aim of which is to convince students that unequal distribution of wealth has to do with the fact that the U.S. has more than its share of resources, not that we have a wealth-promoting capitalist system.
- “I Pledge Allegiance to the Earth.” Yup, no more of this silly patriotic stuff. Children, you are denizens of the earth! (I wonder what our political enemies think of this rubbish… when they stop laughing, that is.)
Rightfully, Olson reserves a special section for the unions whose far left agenda has been well documented, and who have gone to great lengths to make this country over in their own image. Their attempts to indoctrinate kids and glorify the union movement are staggering. For example,
- “Trouble in the Henhouse: A Puppet Show.” In this charming bit of propaganda put out by the California Federation of Teachers aimed at kindergartners, we find an oppressive farmer whose hens unionize and convince the heartless farmer that he’d better respect them or else.
- The “Yummy Pizza Company” is another lesson from CFT — actually ten, which delve into the process of organizing a union local. They include instructions on how to collectively bargain as well as a sanitized look at prominent labor leaders.
- Click Clack Moo, a popular book promoted by the AFL-CIO, tells second graders about unhappy cows that refuse to work until the mean farmer is forced to meet their demands.
And while we are teaching our children the joys of class warfare, earth worship and the importance of union membership, other countries that are more serious about educating their young are cleaning our clocks in every international comparison available.
Actually, it is even worse than Olson suggests. There is one aspect of the progressive takeover that he gave short shrift to. Except for SB 48, an obscene bit of legislation in California which will bring the contributions of homosexuals and transgenders into the K-12 curriculum, there is little mention of the progressives’ ongoing effort to sexualize children. From Gay-Straight clubs in middle school (where parents do not have to be notified of their child’s involvement) to attempts to teach orgasm to eleven year olds, the radicals led by the National Education Association have been making alarming progress.
Another example of the progressives’ sexual agenda is which holidays are deemed important. Few people are aware of what holiday is celebrated on November 20th. But every student at the middle school where I worked till my retirement in 2009 knows, because the school spent more time acknowledging that day — “Transgender Day of Remembrance” — than Veteran’s Day, November 11th. TDR was considered more worthy of the students’ time at my school than a holiday which acknowledges the contributions of American soldiers. (Maybe this shouldn’t be surprising. At the same school, posters of Che Guevara adorned the walls of no less than five classrooms, including an American history class that had no pictures of Washington or Lincoln. Che was considered a hero by these teachers who passed this admiration on to their impressionable students. Of course the real life Che was a sadistic mass murderer, but being a progressive means never having to sweat minor details like the truth.)
Clearly Indoctrination is a book that could leave citizens in a state of great despair. But fortunately, in the last chapter, Olson lists several important ways that parents and the general public can fight back. And if this country isn’t to become permanently transformed — fight back we must. None of our international enemies are as powerful, organized and, thus far, as successful as our home grown progressives who are bent on destroying public education as we know it in America. It is imperative that we all become more knowledgeable about what is going on in our schools and take action. Kyle Olson’s Indoctrination is an excellent place to start that process.
To a large extent, the progressives have taken over American education, are transforming it and are doing it in plain sight
Indoctrination: How ‘Useful Idiots’ Are Using Our Schools to Subvert American Exceptionalism is an invaluable book written by Kyle Olson, founder and CEO of the Education Action Group, an organization that is on the frontline of education reform and a champion of school choice.
In this brief and very readable book, Olson describes the ways that the progressives in our society have taken over K-12 education. They have been running most of our elite colleges and schools of education for years now and this step is in keeping with their plan to transform America.
As a public school teacher whose career spanned four decades, I have seen the long march first hand. Perverting the traditional purpose of American education (which has been to make better and more educated citizens), progressives have been inspired by the theories of Paolo Freire, a Brazilian socialist who saw everything through a Marxist class warfare lens.
Carrying Freire’s mantle, current gurus like revolutionary terrorist Bill Ayers and the recently deceased Communist Howard Zinn have been behind the effort to destroy America as we know it. They claim that basically the U.S. and its capitalist system are the root of all evil. Unfortunately, their love-the-world/hate-America attitude has gained an incredible amount of currency in our public schools in a relatively short time. Ayers, Zinn and their ilk have essentially managed to convince much of the education establishment to abandon every teaching technique and curriculum that benefited prior generations. For example, “drill and kill” has been thrown on the refuse heap; we are now supposed to let our students “discover” learning. The “sage on the stage” has been replaced by the “guide on the side.” The only problem with these techniques is that they haven’t worked, but they do sound good (at least to the progressives.) As such, we are now raising a nation of dunces.
On the 2010 NAEP history test, we learned that only 12 percent of high school seniors have a firm grip on American history. Yes, we are educating students to the point that almost half the nation thinks that the cornerstone of Communism, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,” is in the U.S. Constitution. Only 2 percent of high school seniors know the significance of Brown vs. the Board of Education and only 4 percent of 8th graders could explain why urban populations rose and rural populations shrank over time.
So just what are we teaching them?
This is where Olson’s book shines. In chapter after chapter, he meticulously details lessons being foisted on students that are being taught for one purpose only – to advance the progressive agenda. A few examples:
- An examination of the nature and extent of police brutality, which is being promoted in middle schools by none other than Van Jones, conspiracy enthusiast extraordinaire.
- A clever lesson using poker chips, the aim of which is to convince students that unequal distribution of wealth has to do with the fact that the U.S. has more than its share of resources, not that we have a wealth-promoting capitalist system.
- “I Pledge Allegiance to the Earth.” Yup, no more of this silly patriotic stuff. Children, you are denizens of the earth! (I wonder what our political enemies think of this rubbish… when they stop laughing, that is.)
Rightfully, Olson reserves a special section for the unions whose far left agenda has been well documented, and who have gone to great lengths to make this country over in their own image. Their attempts to indoctrinate kids and glorify the union movement are staggering. For example,
- “Trouble in the Henhouse: A Puppet Show.” In this charming bit of propaganda put out by the California Federation of Teachers aimed at kindergartners, we find an oppressive farmer whose hens unionize and convince the heartless farmer that he’d better respect them or else.
- The “Yummy Pizza Company” is another lesson from CFT — actually ten, which delve into the process of organizing a union local. They include instructions on how to collectively bargain as well as a sanitized look at prominent labor leaders.
- Click Clack Moo, a popular book promoted by the AFL-CIO, tells second graders about unhappy cows that refuse to work until the mean farmer is forced to meet their demands.
And while we are teaching our children the joys of class warfare, earth worship and the importance of union membership, other countries that are more serious about educating their young are cleaning our clocks in every international comparison available.
Actually, it is even worse than Olson suggests. There is one aspect of the progressive takeover that he gave short shrift to. Except for SB 48, an obscene bit of legislation in California which will bring the contributions of homosexuals and transgenders into the K-12 curriculum, there is little mention of the progressives’ ongoing effort to sexualize children. From Gay-Straight clubs in middle school (where parents do not have to be notified of their child’s involvement) to attempts to teach orgasm to eleven year olds, the radicals led by the National Education Association have been making alarming progress.
Another example of the progressives’ sexual agenda is which holidays are deemed important. Few people are aware of what holiday is celebrated on November 20th. But every student at the middle school where I worked till my retirement in 2009 knows, because the school spent more time acknowledging that day — “Transgender Day of Remembrance” — than Veteran’s Day, November 11th. TDR was considered more worthy of the students’ time at my school than a holiday which acknowledges the contributions of American soldiers. (Maybe this shouldn’t be surprising. At the same school, posters of Che Guevara adorned the walls of no less than five classrooms, including an American history class that had no pictures of Washington or Lincoln. Che was considered a hero by these teachers who passed this admiration on to their impressionable students. Of course the real life Che was a sadistic mass murderer, but being a progressive means never having to sweat minor details like the truth.)
Clearly Indoctrination is a book that could leave citizens in a state of great despair. But fortunately, in the last chapter, Olson lists several important ways that parents and the general public can fight back. And if this country isn’t to become permanently transformed — fight back we must. None of our international enemies are as powerful, organized and, thus far, as successful as our home grown progressives who are bent on destroying public education as we know it in America. It is imperative that we all become more knowledgeable about what is going on in our schools and take action. Kyle Olson’s Indoctrination is an excellent place to start that process.
Thursday, November 24, 2011
www.OverruledMovie.com
A definite must see!
Overruled The Movie
http://www.OverruledMovie.com/
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Overruled The Movie
http://www.OverruledMovie.com/
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
10 Certainties
November 21, 2011 by Bob Livingston
www.personalliberty.com
We live in strange times. Millions of Americans are out of work. Millions more live in fear that their job could go away at any time. The food stamp rolls are larger than they've ever been.
An untold number are homeless, not because they choose to be or because they suffer from some mental disease or defect, but because they have lost everything in the second Great Depression. And many more are one missed paycheck or one delinquent mortgage payment away from finding themselves on the street.
A growing number of young adults are now living with their parents or other relatives. Unable to find a decent job despite possessing a college diploma, tens of thousands leave college mired under an irrepressible and unmanageable debt burden.
Protests that began in the Middle East earlier this year over rising food prices and food shortages evolved and spread throughout the region and now find themselves smack in the middle of America in the form of the Occupy movement.
Our country suffers from an amoral rot. Secular humanism, nontheism, atheism and other humanist philosophies are attempting to elevate the creature above the Creator. As such, a belief that the end justifies the means is consuming society. It's become, "Anything goes."
Where America is headed is anybody's guess. I think we are in store for a complete collapse of the system, because there are 10 things that are certain.
We should never underestimate the ignorance of the American voter.
After all, they elected Barack Hussein Obama, a man who openly campaigned on an anti-American socialist philosophy and had the least experience, fewest qualifications, thinnest resume and shadiest past of any serious Presidential candidate in United States history.
Of course, the alternative was really no alternative. That's the way the elites wanted it. And now the global elites and their corporate media propaganda machine are deciding again who will be elected - and the American voter, with nary a whimper, follows blindly along, accepting that a two-horse race between Mitt Romney and some neocon anti-Romney are the only choices we have.
The trouble has been in selecting the anti-Romney. So far, Michele Bachmann's star fizzled like a New Year's sparkler, Rick Perry fell off his horse after he insulted most Republicans over illegal immigration in one debate and stepped on his tongue in two others, Herman Cain's stock has begun dropping faster than Sharon Bialek's perky mood in the back of a limo - as much because of Cain's incoherent answers to tough questions as over the dubious sexual harassment claims - and now Newt Gingrich is the rising neocon star.
The same Newt Gingrich who twice (at least) cheated on his wives (he's had three) while they suffered from serious illnesses. The same globalist, Council on Foreign Relations member, pagan ritual Bohemian Grove attendee Newt Gingrich who sat on a couch with Nancy Pelosi in an advertisement hawking the threat of man-caused global warming, who has a penchant for cozying up with people like race huckster Al Sharpton when it's politically expedient and then denouncing them later, who devised the original government-growing Contract with America, who endorsed RINO (later to turn Democrat) Dede Scozzafava over a Tea Party candidate, who called Congressman Paul Ryan's deficit reduction plan right-wing social engineering, who said the Tea Party will be the "militant wing" of the GOP, and who we now know looted American taxpayers of between $1.6 million and $1.8 million as a "historian" for the Freddie Mac corporatist slush fund (although Gingrich remembers only about $300,000 of it).
And this is the same Newt Gingrich who once called for a Federal mandate to purchase health insurance, endorsed "cap-and-trade" legislation, said he would have voted for TARP and promoted Bush's prescription drug bill. He also continues to support ethanol subsidies and is pro-amnesty for illegals.
That Gingrich, with all his baggage and pompousness, can be an attractive candidate to people who call themselves conservatives, tells you all you need to know of the ignorance of the average voter. And this ignorance continues because…
There is a concerted effort by the establishment to defeat Ron Paul.
It's gotten so overt that even the corporatist media propaganda machine is chastising its own members over their treatment of Paul. It all seemed to come to a head after the Nov. 12 CBS News debate in which Paul got 89 seconds to speak during the only televised hour of the debate.
In addition to the snubs, which have left Paul with the least speaking time in all the debates - even much less than Jon Huntsman and Rick Santorum, who are barely registering in the polls - networks have a habit of taking down or dismissing as irrelevant any polls that show Paul doing well. Despite it all, Paul is in a virtual tie for first in Iowa and is a strong second in New Hampshire, a State that Romney will probably carry hands-down. And Paul is polling the best of all Republican candidates against Obama with independent voters.
The media and political elites fear Paul because he has not been corrupted and will expose that…
Government is a criminal enterprise.
News this week that members of Congress have been involved in unethical, if not illegal, insider trading based on information they possess before anyone else or on laws they know are about to be considered is just one more straw to put in the camel's pack. How many more can that poor camel hold before the American people really wake up?
We have long told you here about the crony capitalism and fascism that infest the capital. And while Congress, former Congressional staffers and big businesses dip into the money-printing till and pass dollars around like the Monopoly® money it is, bureaucrats, paper pushers, statist judges, on-the-take regulators, Department of Justice thugs, Congress and an increasingly-militarized Federal government create dozens of new statutes and regulations because…
The Federal Government wants to make everyone a criminal.
Just last week, it was announced that the Department of Justice wanted to criminalize lying to a website. So, if you violate the "Terms of Use" policy by fibbing on online dating sites, social networks, etc., you could become a felon. The government wants to treat those terms as contracts.
In his book, Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent, Harvey A. Silverglate writes that "federal prosecutors are abusing their power by using the criminal law to prosecute law abiding citizens…" They are seizing illegal power by twisting marginal and highly questionable interpretations of criminal law.
We are in danger of becoming a society in which prosecutors alone become judges, juries and executioners because the threat of high sentences makes it too costly for even innocent people to resist the prosecutorial pressure. The pattern is to intimidate all criminally charged defendants into pleading guilty to "reduced" charges rather than risk going to trial with the threat of draconian sentences in the implied event of conviction. And remember, government prosecutors have unlimited funds to use to pay an unlimited number of lawyers and investigators to spend an unlimited number of hours to snoop, dig and scratch around in every aspect of a citizen's business, thanks to the USA Patriot Act.
No trial? This means that the Federal prosecuting attorney is the judge and the jury.
We now have a huge volume of Federal criminal laws which are broad and impossibly vague, and Silverglate believes it's possible the average citizen unknowingly violates at least three of them every day. They have become dangerously disconnected from English common law tradition. And since most Federal judges are selected from a pool of former Federal prosecutors, it's rare if ever that a judge rules against the government's case.
Liberty-loving Americans are now considered the enemy of the State. The Department of Homeland Security and other government agencies have issued memos and directives describing who they see as potential "domestic" terrorists. They include military veterans - both retired and those returning from overseas engagements - Tea Party supporters, Ron Paul supporters, 2nd Amendment supporters, 10th Amendment supporters, people who display American flags, people with Gadsden Flag bumper stickers, anti-Obamacare protesters and anyone who advocates for smaller government.
But this is only part of our government's war on us because…
Government creates crises and uses them to steal liberty and transfer wealth.
In the days following the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush and Congress acted quickly to pass overarching laws that allowed increased surveillance of Americans. The meme was that law enforcement agencies needed increased "power" to snoop, spy, eavesdrop and invade in order to identify terrorists. With the passage of the law, government has almost carte blanch to go anywhere, look at anything and listen to whatever it wants on any and all conversations, transactions and correspondence Americans have. And Americans can no longer travel without subjecting themselves to radiation-emitting scans or humiliating searches.
Meanwhile, the FBI infiltrates mosques, Muslim communities, militias and other "subversive" groups looking for ignorant patsies they can turn into potential terrorists. They then provide them with dummy bombs or weapons and ridiculously ineffective plans for terror plots and wait for them to try to pull them off.
These "terror plots" give the government more excuses to intrude on civil liberties.
With the bursting of the housing bubble (created by former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan's easy-money policies), Bush, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke went on television claiming the sky was falling and predicted the end of the world if "government" didn't bail out Goldman Sachs, AIG and their other corporatist buddies in the financial sector. We got the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), and Bush claimed he had "abandoned free-market principals to save the free-market system."
What really happened is that trillions of dollars were transferred from hard-working Americans to the coffers of big business and big finance, both in the United States and abroad. Of course, there is nothing new about this. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt used the Great Depression to reward his labor friends and grow government's power under the interstate commerce clause. And while Americans starved, thousands of farmers were forced by the government to destroy crops and livestock.
After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, Roosevelt began issuing executive orders by the handfuls, locking up Americans without cause and stealing liberty, wealth and prosperity from citizens in the process.
But this is not the history that people are taught. And schoolchildren certainly never hear in school that…
The Federal Reserve is looting your bank account right out from under your nose.
Few people have a real understanding of just how insidious the Federal Reserve and inflation are. But no matter where you hide your money, through its money-printing, the Federal Reserve steals a portion every day.
That's because every dollar printed reduces the value of those you hold. Think of it like pouring water into a glass of milk. The more water that is poured in, the less milk remains. Pretty soon, there is no milk left.
Right now the official rate of inflation is about 3.5 percent. It is, in fact, much higher. But the highest-paying interest rate on a certificate of deposit is about 1.1 percent. You do the math.
Face it. The system is stacked against you because…
Financial interests control the world.
Of course, that has long been the ultimate goal of the elites. They have been, throughout history, ruthless and unwavering in their efforts. They are the true 1 percent.
I and others have long warned about the growing power of the financial elites. We write often about their growing power and the increased fascism of the system. Now a group of researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology have uncovered the 147 "super-entities" that control the world's wealth, according to an article in New Scientist.
Here's a list of the Top 25. See any familiar names?
"From Orbis 2007, a database listing 37 million companies and investors worldwide, they pulled out all 43,060 TNCs (transnational corporations) and the share ownerships linking them. Then they constructed a model of which companies controlled others through shareholding networks, coupled with each company's operating revenues, to map the structure of economic power," according to the report.
"When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a 'super-entity' of 147 even more tightly knit companies-all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity-that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. 'In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network,' says [researcher James] Glattfelder."
Now you see why the buddy system operated so well when the Fed began bailing out the "too big to fails." And the big corporations got there with the help of their corporatist partners in crime in Congress.
The truth of the matter is…
We are no longer operating under Constitutional government, but people are completely unaware.
The government-controlled non-education system, corporate-controlled media and government propaganda machine have succeeded in producing an uneducated generation that is so ignorant it doesn't even know it's ignorant and, therefore, can't do anything about it.
Rather than teach history, government indoctrination centers focus on less-significant, politically correct characters - in order to prop up the self-esteem of the "underpriviledged" and "underrepresented" - and singular, historically insignificant events. One specific example I know of is of a middle-school child whose teacher spent three class days on the U.S. Olympic hockey team's upset of the Soviets in 1980, and about 15 minutes of class time on World War II.
Of course, a discussion of the founding of our country, the conditions that sparked the revolution, the Federalist Papers, the Constitution that resulted from their discussions, or the greatness of the Founding Fathers received little or no attention in that class. I'm afraid it's the rule rather than the exception.
Ask someone on the street about the Constitution and you'll probably get some lame answer about "separation of church and state" or "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," like Herman Cain gave in one of his speeches.
And rather than work to gain knowledge of the country and its politics, most would rather devote their time to voting for the next "Idol" and debating who should get voted off the island and whether college football should have a playoff. These and other unimportant events completely consume the general public.
So when government does pass new unConstitutional laws, no one is the wiser. Most people are concerned about - if they think about it all - "what's in it for me?" and "how much 'free' money do I get?" Many are still waiting for the "free money" from "Obama's stash." Unfortunately, because they weren't large corporate donors, they got nothing but disdain from the teleprompter in chief.
Congress, aided by a willing Judiciary and President, long ago left any pretense of governing according to the Constitution. When they're sworn in, they pledge their fealty to it, then put it away never to be read again.
Meanwhile, the two-party system of governance entraps people who do pay a modicum of attention into a false left/right paradigm and the corporate-controlled government propaganda machine pushes the false notion that there is a difference between the parties. But Democrat or Republican is irrelevant. It's all class warfare, dissembling Kabuki Theater.
To demonstrate how far we've traversed from the Constitution, the government can now prevent you from drinking raw milk, can force you to have your children vaccinated for non-existent maladies, can search you without cause, can arrest you for videotaping in public, can murder American citizens at will and can twist and turn obscure statutes and use them to incarcerate and fine you.
The Federal agencies designed to protect us from bad foods and bad drugs instead promote bad foods and bad drugs and make natural foods and supplements illegal or difficult to obtain. That keeps Americans fat and happy and stupid.
In addition to loving the increased power they get by ignoring the Constitution, it's a fact that…
Politicians love war and an attack on Iran is inevitable.
War is yet another way for government to steal the liberty of the American people, and war with Iran is inevitable, Obama's Nobel Peace Prize notwithstanding. The drumbeats for war are reaching a crescendo, and the same rhetoric used in the run-up to the Iraq war is being replayed in the run-up to Iran.
The frightening thing is that the anti-war Democrats have gone silent. Some protested loud and long over Bush's wars, but Obama has been given a pass - by Congress and the American people - to invade any country he chooses over the most dubious of reasons. And it seems from the cheering the neocon warmongers get during the Republican debates, Americans have grown to love war as much as the politicians.
Sources tell me U.S. Marines will be on the ground in Libya in January, news reports indicate a Marine contingent will soon land in Australia, and Obama recently sent "military advisers" to Central Africa. The French just recalled their diplomat from Syria, an indication a Libya-style attack is in the offing. This is all proof that…
The American government is seeking world conquest.
The globalists and One World Government crowd will not rest until all the world is in subjection. Moammar Gadhafi was taken down because he wouldn't play in the OWG pool, and Syria and Iran are next. The Marines going to Australia will be a foil to China. Then, who knows?
http://www.personalliberty.com/conservative-politics/10-certainties/?eiid=&rmid=2011_11_21_PLA_[P11842499]&rrid=306924170
www.personalliberty.com
We live in strange times. Millions of Americans are out of work. Millions more live in fear that their job could go away at any time. The food stamp rolls are larger than they've ever been.
An untold number are homeless, not because they choose to be or because they suffer from some mental disease or defect, but because they have lost everything in the second Great Depression. And many more are one missed paycheck or one delinquent mortgage payment away from finding themselves on the street.
A growing number of young adults are now living with their parents or other relatives. Unable to find a decent job despite possessing a college diploma, tens of thousands leave college mired under an irrepressible and unmanageable debt burden.
Protests that began in the Middle East earlier this year over rising food prices and food shortages evolved and spread throughout the region and now find themselves smack in the middle of America in the form of the Occupy movement.
Our country suffers from an amoral rot. Secular humanism, nontheism, atheism and other humanist philosophies are attempting to elevate the creature above the Creator. As such, a belief that the end justifies the means is consuming society. It's become, "Anything goes."
Where America is headed is anybody's guess. I think we are in store for a complete collapse of the system, because there are 10 things that are certain.
We should never underestimate the ignorance of the American voter.
After all, they elected Barack Hussein Obama, a man who openly campaigned on an anti-American socialist philosophy and had the least experience, fewest qualifications, thinnest resume and shadiest past of any serious Presidential candidate in United States history.
Of course, the alternative was really no alternative. That's the way the elites wanted it. And now the global elites and their corporate media propaganda machine are deciding again who will be elected - and the American voter, with nary a whimper, follows blindly along, accepting that a two-horse race between Mitt Romney and some neocon anti-Romney are the only choices we have.
The trouble has been in selecting the anti-Romney. So far, Michele Bachmann's star fizzled like a New Year's sparkler, Rick Perry fell off his horse after he insulted most Republicans over illegal immigration in one debate and stepped on his tongue in two others, Herman Cain's stock has begun dropping faster than Sharon Bialek's perky mood in the back of a limo - as much because of Cain's incoherent answers to tough questions as over the dubious sexual harassment claims - and now Newt Gingrich is the rising neocon star.
The same Newt Gingrich who twice (at least) cheated on his wives (he's had three) while they suffered from serious illnesses. The same globalist, Council on Foreign Relations member, pagan ritual Bohemian Grove attendee Newt Gingrich who sat on a couch with Nancy Pelosi in an advertisement hawking the threat of man-caused global warming, who has a penchant for cozying up with people like race huckster Al Sharpton when it's politically expedient and then denouncing them later, who devised the original government-growing Contract with America, who endorsed RINO (later to turn Democrat) Dede Scozzafava over a Tea Party candidate, who called Congressman Paul Ryan's deficit reduction plan right-wing social engineering, who said the Tea Party will be the "militant wing" of the GOP, and who we now know looted American taxpayers of between $1.6 million and $1.8 million as a "historian" for the Freddie Mac corporatist slush fund (although Gingrich remembers only about $300,000 of it).
And this is the same Newt Gingrich who once called for a Federal mandate to purchase health insurance, endorsed "cap-and-trade" legislation, said he would have voted for TARP and promoted Bush's prescription drug bill. He also continues to support ethanol subsidies and is pro-amnesty for illegals.
That Gingrich, with all his baggage and pompousness, can be an attractive candidate to people who call themselves conservatives, tells you all you need to know of the ignorance of the average voter. And this ignorance continues because…
There is a concerted effort by the establishment to defeat Ron Paul.
It's gotten so overt that even the corporatist media propaganda machine is chastising its own members over their treatment of Paul. It all seemed to come to a head after the Nov. 12 CBS News debate in which Paul got 89 seconds to speak during the only televised hour of the debate.
In addition to the snubs, which have left Paul with the least speaking time in all the debates - even much less than Jon Huntsman and Rick Santorum, who are barely registering in the polls - networks have a habit of taking down or dismissing as irrelevant any polls that show Paul doing well. Despite it all, Paul is in a virtual tie for first in Iowa and is a strong second in New Hampshire, a State that Romney will probably carry hands-down. And Paul is polling the best of all Republican candidates against Obama with independent voters.
The media and political elites fear Paul because he has not been corrupted and will expose that…
Government is a criminal enterprise.
News this week that members of Congress have been involved in unethical, if not illegal, insider trading based on information they possess before anyone else or on laws they know are about to be considered is just one more straw to put in the camel's pack. How many more can that poor camel hold before the American people really wake up?
We have long told you here about the crony capitalism and fascism that infest the capital. And while Congress, former Congressional staffers and big businesses dip into the money-printing till and pass dollars around like the Monopoly® money it is, bureaucrats, paper pushers, statist judges, on-the-take regulators, Department of Justice thugs, Congress and an increasingly-militarized Federal government create dozens of new statutes and regulations because…
The Federal Government wants to make everyone a criminal.
Just last week, it was announced that the Department of Justice wanted to criminalize lying to a website. So, if you violate the "Terms of Use" policy by fibbing on online dating sites, social networks, etc., you could become a felon. The government wants to treat those terms as contracts.
In his book, Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent, Harvey A. Silverglate writes that "federal prosecutors are abusing their power by using the criminal law to prosecute law abiding citizens…" They are seizing illegal power by twisting marginal and highly questionable interpretations of criminal law.
We are in danger of becoming a society in which prosecutors alone become judges, juries and executioners because the threat of high sentences makes it too costly for even innocent people to resist the prosecutorial pressure. The pattern is to intimidate all criminally charged defendants into pleading guilty to "reduced" charges rather than risk going to trial with the threat of draconian sentences in the implied event of conviction. And remember, government prosecutors have unlimited funds to use to pay an unlimited number of lawyers and investigators to spend an unlimited number of hours to snoop, dig and scratch around in every aspect of a citizen's business, thanks to the USA Patriot Act.
No trial? This means that the Federal prosecuting attorney is the judge and the jury.
We now have a huge volume of Federal criminal laws which are broad and impossibly vague, and Silverglate believes it's possible the average citizen unknowingly violates at least three of them every day. They have become dangerously disconnected from English common law tradition. And since most Federal judges are selected from a pool of former Federal prosecutors, it's rare if ever that a judge rules against the government's case.
Liberty-loving Americans are now considered the enemy of the State. The Department of Homeland Security and other government agencies have issued memos and directives describing who they see as potential "domestic" terrorists. They include military veterans - both retired and those returning from overseas engagements - Tea Party supporters, Ron Paul supporters, 2nd Amendment supporters, 10th Amendment supporters, people who display American flags, people with Gadsden Flag bumper stickers, anti-Obamacare protesters and anyone who advocates for smaller government.
But this is only part of our government's war on us because…
Government creates crises and uses them to steal liberty and transfer wealth.
In the days following the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush and Congress acted quickly to pass overarching laws that allowed increased surveillance of Americans. The meme was that law enforcement agencies needed increased "power" to snoop, spy, eavesdrop and invade in order to identify terrorists. With the passage of the law, government has almost carte blanch to go anywhere, look at anything and listen to whatever it wants on any and all conversations, transactions and correspondence Americans have. And Americans can no longer travel without subjecting themselves to radiation-emitting scans or humiliating searches.
Meanwhile, the FBI infiltrates mosques, Muslim communities, militias and other "subversive" groups looking for ignorant patsies they can turn into potential terrorists. They then provide them with dummy bombs or weapons and ridiculously ineffective plans for terror plots and wait for them to try to pull them off.
These "terror plots" give the government more excuses to intrude on civil liberties.
With the bursting of the housing bubble (created by former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan's easy-money policies), Bush, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke went on television claiming the sky was falling and predicted the end of the world if "government" didn't bail out Goldman Sachs, AIG and their other corporatist buddies in the financial sector. We got the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), and Bush claimed he had "abandoned free-market principals to save the free-market system."
What really happened is that trillions of dollars were transferred from hard-working Americans to the coffers of big business and big finance, both in the United States and abroad. Of course, there is nothing new about this. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt used the Great Depression to reward his labor friends and grow government's power under the interstate commerce clause. And while Americans starved, thousands of farmers were forced by the government to destroy crops and livestock.
After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, Roosevelt began issuing executive orders by the handfuls, locking up Americans without cause and stealing liberty, wealth and prosperity from citizens in the process.
But this is not the history that people are taught. And schoolchildren certainly never hear in school that…
The Federal Reserve is looting your bank account right out from under your nose.
Few people have a real understanding of just how insidious the Federal Reserve and inflation are. But no matter where you hide your money, through its money-printing, the Federal Reserve steals a portion every day.
That's because every dollar printed reduces the value of those you hold. Think of it like pouring water into a glass of milk. The more water that is poured in, the less milk remains. Pretty soon, there is no milk left.
Right now the official rate of inflation is about 3.5 percent. It is, in fact, much higher. But the highest-paying interest rate on a certificate of deposit is about 1.1 percent. You do the math.
Face it. The system is stacked against you because…
Financial interests control the world.
Of course, that has long been the ultimate goal of the elites. They have been, throughout history, ruthless and unwavering in their efforts. They are the true 1 percent.
I and others have long warned about the growing power of the financial elites. We write often about their growing power and the increased fascism of the system. Now a group of researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology have uncovered the 147 "super-entities" that control the world's wealth, according to an article in New Scientist.
Here's a list of the Top 25. See any familiar names?
- Barclays PLC
- Capital Group Companies Inc.
- FMR Corp.
- AXA
- State Street Corporation
- JP Morgan Chase & Co.
- Legal & General Group PLC
- Vanguard Group Inc.
- UBS AG
- Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc.
- Wellington Management Company LLP
- Deutsche Bank AG
- Franklin Resources Inc.
- Credit Suisse Group
- Walton Enterprises LLC
- The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation
- Natixis
- Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
- T. Rowe Price Group Inc.
- Legg Mason Inc.
- Morgan Stanley
- Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc.
- Northern Trust Corporation
- Société Générale
- Bank of America Corporation
"From Orbis 2007, a database listing 37 million companies and investors worldwide, they pulled out all 43,060 TNCs (transnational corporations) and the share ownerships linking them. Then they constructed a model of which companies controlled others through shareholding networks, coupled with each company's operating revenues, to map the structure of economic power," according to the report.
"When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a 'super-entity' of 147 even more tightly knit companies-all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity-that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. 'In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network,' says [researcher James] Glattfelder."
Now you see why the buddy system operated so well when the Fed began bailing out the "too big to fails." And the big corporations got there with the help of their corporatist partners in crime in Congress.
The truth of the matter is…
We are no longer operating under Constitutional government, but people are completely unaware.
The government-controlled non-education system, corporate-controlled media and government propaganda machine have succeeded in producing an uneducated generation that is so ignorant it doesn't even know it's ignorant and, therefore, can't do anything about it.
Rather than teach history, government indoctrination centers focus on less-significant, politically correct characters - in order to prop up the self-esteem of the "underpriviledged" and "underrepresented" - and singular, historically insignificant events. One specific example I know of is of a middle-school child whose teacher spent three class days on the U.S. Olympic hockey team's upset of the Soviets in 1980, and about 15 minutes of class time on World War II.
Of course, a discussion of the founding of our country, the conditions that sparked the revolution, the Federalist Papers, the Constitution that resulted from their discussions, or the greatness of the Founding Fathers received little or no attention in that class. I'm afraid it's the rule rather than the exception.
Ask someone on the street about the Constitution and you'll probably get some lame answer about "separation of church and state" or "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," like Herman Cain gave in one of his speeches.
And rather than work to gain knowledge of the country and its politics, most would rather devote their time to voting for the next "Idol" and debating who should get voted off the island and whether college football should have a playoff. These and other unimportant events completely consume the general public.
So when government does pass new unConstitutional laws, no one is the wiser. Most people are concerned about - if they think about it all - "what's in it for me?" and "how much 'free' money do I get?" Many are still waiting for the "free money" from "Obama's stash." Unfortunately, because they weren't large corporate donors, they got nothing but disdain from the teleprompter in chief.
Congress, aided by a willing Judiciary and President, long ago left any pretense of governing according to the Constitution. When they're sworn in, they pledge their fealty to it, then put it away never to be read again.
Meanwhile, the two-party system of governance entraps people who do pay a modicum of attention into a false left/right paradigm and the corporate-controlled government propaganda machine pushes the false notion that there is a difference between the parties. But Democrat or Republican is irrelevant. It's all class warfare, dissembling Kabuki Theater.
To demonstrate how far we've traversed from the Constitution, the government can now prevent you from drinking raw milk, can force you to have your children vaccinated for non-existent maladies, can search you without cause, can arrest you for videotaping in public, can murder American citizens at will and can twist and turn obscure statutes and use them to incarcerate and fine you.
The Federal agencies designed to protect us from bad foods and bad drugs instead promote bad foods and bad drugs and make natural foods and supplements illegal or difficult to obtain. That keeps Americans fat and happy and stupid.
In addition to loving the increased power they get by ignoring the Constitution, it's a fact that…
Politicians love war and an attack on Iran is inevitable.
War is yet another way for government to steal the liberty of the American people, and war with Iran is inevitable, Obama's Nobel Peace Prize notwithstanding. The drumbeats for war are reaching a crescendo, and the same rhetoric used in the run-up to the Iraq war is being replayed in the run-up to Iran.
The frightening thing is that the anti-war Democrats have gone silent. Some protested loud and long over Bush's wars, but Obama has been given a pass - by Congress and the American people - to invade any country he chooses over the most dubious of reasons. And it seems from the cheering the neocon warmongers get during the Republican debates, Americans have grown to love war as much as the politicians.
Sources tell me U.S. Marines will be on the ground in Libya in January, news reports indicate a Marine contingent will soon land in Australia, and Obama recently sent "military advisers" to Central Africa. The French just recalled their diplomat from Syria, an indication a Libya-style attack is in the offing. This is all proof that…
The American government is seeking world conquest.
The globalists and One World Government crowd will not rest until all the world is in subjection. Moammar Gadhafi was taken down because he wouldn't play in the OWG pool, and Syria and Iran are next. The Marines going to Australia will be a foil to China. Then, who knows?
http://www.personalliberty.com/conservative-politics/10-certainties/?eiid=&rmid=2011_11_21_PLA_[P11842499]&rrid=306924170
Friday, November 18, 2011
German memo shows secret slide towards a super-state
The six-page memo, by the German foreign office, argues that Europe’s economic powerhouses should be able to intervene in how beleaguered eurozone countries are run. The confidential blueprint sets out Germany’s plan to tackle the eurozone debt crisis by creating a “stability union” that will be “immediately followed by moves “on the way towards a political union”.
Full article at www.telegraph.co.uk
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/8898213/German-memo-shows-secret-slide-towards-a-super-state.html
Full article at www.telegraph.co.uk
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/8898213/German-memo-shows-secret-slide-towards-a-super-state.html
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Glee Throws High School Students under the Bus
From: Bill Johnson
To: Friends
Date: November 10, 2011
Re: Glee Throws High School Students under the Bus
Tuesday night FOX TV aired the much-hyped episode of Glee, entitled “The First Time.” As we reported last week, this episode centered on a high school girl losing her virginity with her boyfriend as well as two high school homosexual boys also having sex for the first time.
Some reviewers lauded this episode glorifying teenage sex for its “tasteful” depiction. Such as this writer from tvfanatic.com: “…if you tune in to be taken deeper into the teenager world, to watch a show that sometimes tries to deliver a message more than a joke, to have a serious experience... then you probably have a satisfied smile on your face right about now. …
If Glee is going to tackle the issue of losing one's virginity straight (or gay!) on, this is how it should be done.”
And then there were other TV reviewers who actually seemed to be disappointed because the sex wasn’t graphic enough!
However, the issue isn’t how explicit the sex scenes were - as the gushing reviewer writes above – it’s the message delivered to millions of teen and pre-teen viewers. And the message perpetuated by Glee is that teens who wait to have sex (let alone until marriage) are freaks and weird oddities of nature.
In this episode one student, shocked to find out two of his classmates are still virgins, convinces them that losing their virginity will make them better performers in the school musical, stating: “How do you expect to convey the human experience to an audience when you haven’t even opened yourself up to (the) most basic and primal one?”
The girl who ultimately loses her virginity seeks advice from other girls beforehand. Yet, even though statistics show in the “real” world that at least half of teens are abstinent, this one lone girl is the only one in the group who hadn’t yet engaged in promiscuous sex. As one of these girls tells her: “Losing my virginity was a great experience for me …”
Contrary to the fictional accounts in the show, the "first" experience for most girls is very much a disappointment and source of shame and guilt.
What irresponsible message is this conveying to vulnerable young people tuning in to Glee, a show with a fan base of millions? Instead of using their influence to at least portray abstinence as a positive choice in a culture rampant with teenage pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases and the negative and harmful consequences that often result, Glee and other teen-based shows throw their young audience under the proverbial bus, profiting from them while they contribute to their downfall and abasement.
One of the greatest dangers of Glee is the fact that the seductive messages of the show are mixed in with the entertaining song and dance performances, numbing viewers – especially young, impressionable ones – to the often subtle, indoctrinating ideas they’re absorbing.
While teens are not even considered mature enough to make a decision to legally get tattoos or piercings without parental permission, Glee mocks the idea that kids may not have the wisdom needed for such a monumental, irreversible step. Instead of supporting the fact that it is in the best interest of teens to practice abstinence, Glee creators are telling kids that their sexuality has no more consequence or significance than beasts in heat.
And then there’s the whole issue of the promotion and legitimization of homosexuality among teens on Glee - not only giving viewers messages in “acceptance” of any and all lifestyles, but also depicting several male on male kissing scenes, discussions of sex, as well as showing the two boys in bed together.
These types of themes on Glee shouldn’t come as a surprise since Glee’s creator, Ryan Murphy, has made clear his agenda to push illicit sexuality on our youth and erode television standards even further, having stated:
“It is tough to get that sexual point of view across on television. Hopefully I have made it possible for somebody on broadcast television to do a rear-entry scene in three years. Maybe that will be my legacy.”
And by choosing to align with Glee with their advertising dollars, the corporations sponsoring Glee empower these ideas and themes.
Take Action! Contact the sponsors of Glee by clicking on the link below.
http://americandecency.org/take_action_form.php?message=130
To: Friends
Date: November 10, 2011
Re: Glee Throws High School Students under the Bus
Tuesday night FOX TV aired the much-hyped episode of Glee, entitled “The First Time.” As we reported last week, this episode centered on a high school girl losing her virginity with her boyfriend as well as two high school homosexual boys also having sex for the first time.
Some reviewers lauded this episode glorifying teenage sex for its “tasteful” depiction. Such as this writer from tvfanatic.com: “…if you tune in to be taken deeper into the teenager world, to watch a show that sometimes tries to deliver a message more than a joke, to have a serious experience... then you probably have a satisfied smile on your face right about now. …
If Glee is going to tackle the issue of losing one's virginity straight (or gay!) on, this is how it should be done.”
And then there were other TV reviewers who actually seemed to be disappointed because the sex wasn’t graphic enough!
However, the issue isn’t how explicit the sex scenes were - as the gushing reviewer writes above – it’s the message delivered to millions of teen and pre-teen viewers. And the message perpetuated by Glee is that teens who wait to have sex (let alone until marriage) are freaks and weird oddities of nature.
In this episode one student, shocked to find out two of his classmates are still virgins, convinces them that losing their virginity will make them better performers in the school musical, stating: “How do you expect to convey the human experience to an audience when you haven’t even opened yourself up to (the) most basic and primal one?”
The girl who ultimately loses her virginity seeks advice from other girls beforehand. Yet, even though statistics show in the “real” world that at least half of teens are abstinent, this one lone girl is the only one in the group who hadn’t yet engaged in promiscuous sex. As one of these girls tells her: “Losing my virginity was a great experience for me …”
Contrary to the fictional accounts in the show, the "first" experience for most girls is very much a disappointment and source of shame and guilt.
What irresponsible message is this conveying to vulnerable young people tuning in to Glee, a show with a fan base of millions? Instead of using their influence to at least portray abstinence as a positive choice in a culture rampant with teenage pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases and the negative and harmful consequences that often result, Glee and other teen-based shows throw their young audience under the proverbial bus, profiting from them while they contribute to their downfall and abasement.
One of the greatest dangers of Glee is the fact that the seductive messages of the show are mixed in with the entertaining song and dance performances, numbing viewers – especially young, impressionable ones – to the often subtle, indoctrinating ideas they’re absorbing.
While teens are not even considered mature enough to make a decision to legally get tattoos or piercings without parental permission, Glee mocks the idea that kids may not have the wisdom needed for such a monumental, irreversible step. Instead of supporting the fact that it is in the best interest of teens to practice abstinence, Glee creators are telling kids that their sexuality has no more consequence or significance than beasts in heat.
And then there’s the whole issue of the promotion and legitimization of homosexuality among teens on Glee - not only giving viewers messages in “acceptance” of any and all lifestyles, but also depicting several male on male kissing scenes, discussions of sex, as well as showing the two boys in bed together.
These types of themes on Glee shouldn’t come as a surprise since Glee’s creator, Ryan Murphy, has made clear his agenda to push illicit sexuality on our youth and erode television standards even further, having stated:
“It is tough to get that sexual point of view across on television. Hopefully I have made it possible for somebody on broadcast television to do a rear-entry scene in three years. Maybe that will be my legacy.”
And by choosing to align with Glee with their advertising dollars, the corporations sponsoring Glee empower these ideas and themes.
Take Action! Contact the sponsors of Glee by clicking on the link below.
http://americandecency.org/take_action_form.php?message=130
Tuesday, November 01, 2011
Calvinism On The Move
by Brenda Nickel
Saturday, 29 October 2011 09:17
www.carylmatrisciana.com
Calvinism is definitely on the rise within unlikely sectors of Evangelicalism. We expect to see increasing numbers of Calvinists in Reformed denominations, but to see Calvinism on the move in more fundamental branches of Christendom is surprising. Such was the focus of a recent newsletter article sent to Caryl Productions and titled, "Calvinism on the March" posted here by David Cloud of Way of Life Literature. The upswing in devotion to Calvinism can be traced to specific tactics that should be brought to the light of Truth so its deeds may be seen for what they are, deceptive. Otherwise, Christians will not be prepared to meet the challenges that lay ahead as loyalty to Calvinism's "sovereign purposes of God" advance nearly unabated. Do we care that biblical Christianity is being redefined from the inside out right before our very eyes?
Full article:
http://www.carylmatrisciana.com/site/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=277:calvinism-on-the-move&catid=39:calvinism&Itemid=58
Additional Info:
Calvinism on the March
http://www.wayoflife.org/files/169aa1723c4aa2b62518aea3937a55eb-185.html
Saturday, 29 October 2011 09:17
www.carylmatrisciana.com
Calvinism is definitely on the rise within unlikely sectors of Evangelicalism. We expect to see increasing numbers of Calvinists in Reformed denominations, but to see Calvinism on the move in more fundamental branches of Christendom is surprising. Such was the focus of a recent newsletter article sent to Caryl Productions and titled, "Calvinism on the March" posted here by David Cloud of Way of Life Literature. The upswing in devotion to Calvinism can be traced to specific tactics that should be brought to the light of Truth so its deeds may be seen for what they are, deceptive. Otherwise, Christians will not be prepared to meet the challenges that lay ahead as loyalty to Calvinism's "sovereign purposes of God" advance nearly unabated. Do we care that biblical Christianity is being redefined from the inside out right before our very eyes?
Full article:
http://www.carylmatrisciana.com/site/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=277:calvinism-on-the-move&catid=39:calvinism&Itemid=58
Additional Info:
Calvinism on the March
http://www.wayoflife.org/files/169aa1723c4aa2b62518aea3937a55eb-185.html
Monday, October 31, 2011
Dr. Joseph Mercola on Health, Wellness
Dr. Joseph Mercola on Health, Wellness and the 'Inevitability' of Attacks Against Him by the FDA & Medical Community
Sunday, October 30, 2011
by Anthony Wile
www.thedailybell.com
The Daily Bell is pleased to present an interview with Dr. Joseph Mercola.
Introduction: Dr. Joseph Mercola is an osteopathic physician, also known as a DO. DOs are licensed physicians who bring something extra to the practice of medicine. Osteopathic physicians practice a "whole person" approach, treating the entire person rather than just symptoms. Focusing on preventive health care, DOs help patients develop attitudes and lifestyles that don't just fight illness, but help prevent it, too. Dr. Mercola is also board-certified in family medicine and served as the chairman of the family medicine department at St. Alexius Medical Center for five years. He runs one of the most popular medical/wellness websites in the world.
Daily Bell: Thank you for sitting down with us. Your website is the gold standard for holistic wellness and scientifically-oriented alternative medical advice. Give us some background on yourself. Where did you grow up and how did you get interested in medicine and nutrition and preventative health care?
Dr. Mercola: I am the oldest of five children, born to parents who never graduated from high school. When I was growing up in Chicago, my parents were well intentioned but I was a sugar junkie. By the time I was in college I had a mouthful of mercury fillings from all my cavities and severe cystic acne.
My love of reading eventually led me to health books. One book in particular, by Dr. Ken Cooper – who was in charge of training astronauts – inspired me to get fit, so I started running and have now been regularly exercising for the past 45 years.
For all of high school and a good part of college, I worked as a pharmacy apprentice in a medical clinic, where I developed the erroneous belief that drugs were the solution for any disease. I started medical school in 1978 and did a three-year family medicine residency from 1982-85. Unfortunately, like most medical students I was brainwashed into becoming a drug-prescribing physician as I bought their philosophy hook, line and sinker.
My transition to natural health began several years after I finished my residency, when I discovered the damaging effects of sugar consumption and its connection to cancer and nearly all chronic disease. I then started attending seminars and educating myself on natural health. I started my website, Mercola.com, in 1997 to help educate others about what I'd learned. My book, Take Control of Your Health, explains this journey in more detail.
Daily Bell: What is your opinion of medicine and healthcare in the West today?
Dr. Mercola: Unfortunately, there is an aberrant collusion between many drug and food industry multinational corporations that has the government endorsing strategies that benefit industry and not the people.
For nearly all chronic disease, which comprises the bulk of health challenges, the entire system is carefully orchestrated to deceive and manipulate people into making choices that merely serve to perpetuate their problems rather than treat the cause. This results in enormous profits for the industry.
This is facilitated through massive conflicts of interests and revolving doors between industry and government.
Most physicians have little training or interest in applying lifestyle changes that can eradicate the bulk of chronic degenerative diseases that plague our society. This is a result of a variety of factors that are primarily related to lack of financial incentives to industry that heavily promote the drug model.
Daily Bell: What is your opinion of the FDA? What does it do?
Dr. Mercola: The FDA's self-described mission is to protect and promote the public health. But the reality is it primarily protects major pharmaceutical industries and their bottom lines, tragically causing more death and disease across the world, rather than helping prevent it. I think the Vioxx scandal is a perfect example of this.
In my opinion, the FDA has gotten so out of control and corrupt that it has totally lost its focus on what exactly it should be doing for public health. The FDA even admitted in a massive self-analysis in 2007 that it lacks the competency and capacity to keep up with scientific advances. Former FDA managers like Dr. David Graham, who revealed on a PBS special that his supervisors had chastised him for even thinking the FDA served the public, have reiterated this.
More proof of this is the transcript of a history of FDA laws and regulations that is on file at Harvard Law School, which explains how years ago an FDA task force established a policy of ensuring that the presence of dietary supplements on the market doesn't act as a disincentive to drug development – something I believe is in direct conflict with what the FDA should be doing for public health.
There are massive conflicts of interests. One reason it's come to this is because the FDA is so financially dependent on the industry it's regulating, through the user fees it gets from these companies.
It's also literally taking away our rights to choose what foods we want to eat, including regulating HOW we consume them. For example, it's seeking to take away our right to consume raw, unpasteurized milk under the guise that raw milk – something that just a few decades ago people drank all the time, straight from the cow, with no one questioning it – might harm us. Yet, at the same time, it allows us (as adults) to walk in a store and purchase cigarettes, a known carcinogen.
Now the FDA is trying to take away our rights to choose to take vitamins and supplements, under Senate Bill 1310, the Dietary Supplement Labeling Act of 2011. They're saying the bill is to improve the safety of dietary supplements, but all it really does is make it financially impossible for vitamin and supplement companies to stay in business.
You simply cannot trust the FDA to make your health decisions for you.
Daily Bell: Should the FDA be abolished?
Dr. Mercola: That is something that obviously does not happen overnight, but I believe in personal responsibility and informed consent over federal mandates and collusion. Any practitioner or business is responsible for their products or services, responsible to inform the benefits and risks and accountable to the judicial system for harm.
Daily Bell: Who is behind the FDA and the attack on traditional (non pharmaceutical) medicine and healing? Is it corporations? A deeper and more powerful entity?
Dr. Mercola: I believe it is a variety of multinational corporations primarily focused in the drug and food industries.
Daily Bell: Who owns and controls the pharmaceutical companies? Is it the same small, powerful group of families that control central banking?
Dr. Mercola: I don't know, as this is something I have not studied.
Daily Bell: What do the controllers of the pharmaceutical companies seek? Are they trying to poison people in some sense? And why?
Dr. Mercola: I don't know. This is something I have not studied.
Daily Bell: The elites who run the world (whoever they are) are said to want to reduce the population of the world drastically. Agree? Disagree?
Dr. Mercola: I don't know. I have not studied that.
Daily Bell: Is there any truth to the idea that vaccines may not be good for you?
Dr. Mercola: People need to know and understand that they do have choices when it comes to vaccines. That includes opting out of vaccine mandates that states make regarding their children. For more information on what your rights are, I refer people to the National Vaccine Information Center's website, where you can learn more about how you can opt out of a vaccine, if that is your choice.
There is no question that there are potential dangers to any vaccine – that's why drug companies put warnings and lists of possible side effects to their vaccines in the package inserts. More specifically, there are 60 studies that now confirm a cancer link to the polio vaccine you had as a child. With the HPV vaccine, which Michelle Bachmann put in the news again, there were 20,915 adverse events reported to the VAERS database, as of December 2010. There also were 89 deaths connected with this vaccine, including a young boy who died eight days after he was vaccinated with Gardasil.
And the VAERS database is believed to represent ONLY ten percent of all the events that occur because only a small number of people even realize it is available to report their reactions on.
Another point that's not widely publicized by vaccine proponents is that sometimes the vaccines cause the very disease they're meant to prevent. We have vaccine-derived polio in Africa as an example of this.
These aren't the only vaccines that can cause serious problems for some people – the chicken pox vaccine, for example, has been associated with a surge in shingles, even in the young children who've received the vaccine. I've addressed these issues and many, many more vaccine-related topics in my newsletters. I think the most important message is to research each vaccine before it's administered, read the package inserts and weigh the risks and benefits before you vaccinate.
When it comes to vaccines, there are three primary questions that need to be considered:
• Is the vaccine in question safe?
• Does it effectively prevent disease?
• And which vaccines, if any, can safely and effectively be given together or in close succession?
A great way to get started at this is to simply use the Search Feature at the top of each of my Web pages and search my site, as it contains a litany of research on vaccine safety, and the lack thereof, or go straight to http://vaccines.mercola.com. The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) also provides well-referenced information on vaccines and diseases, such as HPV, rotavirus and polio.
Daily Bell: Do you believe vaccines cause autism, as Dr.Wakefield believes?
Dr. Mercola: I have met and interviewed Dr. Wakefield at length about his work and his personal and professional insights into a number of topics, from the gut-brain connection so often seen in autistic children to the safety of a number of childhood vaccines. For more information on Dr. Wakefield, I urge you to listen to his interview and read my commentary, which is available on my site.
As far as vaccines CAUSING autism goes, the evidence seems very compelling that they play a role. They certainly are not the cause for all cases but they seem to play an important factor for most. The newest information is on the gut-brain connection; those who are born to mothers who have been on antibiotics or eat loads of sugar or take birth control pills tend to pass on unhealthy gut bacteria that, unless improved, can radically increase the child's risk of injury once they are given a vaccine.
Dr. Natasha Campbell McBride, a Russian neurologist who has a child with autism, has done some important work in this area and I have an interview with her on this topic on my site.
Daily Bell: There are many additives in foods today. Are they causing cancer, diabetes, etc.? If so, why isn't this better known?
Dr. Mercola: There are many food additives with known links to chronic diseases and ill health. For example, MSG, high fructose corn syrup and aspartame are three of the most dangerous additives in foods today. There are many other hidden additives I've written about, such as food dyes, but these three are at the top. The truth about these additives isn't hidden but for some reason the mainstream media has chosen not to question industry and the FDA on the safety issues associated with these popular, commonly used additives.
Daily Bell: What do you think of the pharmaceutical model of health care that provides you with "cures" for a variety of conditions that may or may not be related to specific diseases?
Dr. Mercola: As I've said before, the pharmaceutical model and focus is to sell treatments that rarely, if ever, address the underlying cause of the disease and tend to perpetuate the long-term sale of their solutions. Their goal is to make money, not to make you well.
Daily Bell: What do you think of Codex Alimentarius?
Dr. Mercola: Codex Alimentarius is a World Trade Organization, global health plan that is a looming threat to your health freedoms. It was created in 1962 through a series of relationships between The World Health Organization (WHO), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the American FDA and USDA. The "Codex Alimentarius" itself is a compilation of food standards, codes of practice and guidelines that specify all requirements related to foods, whether processed, semi-processed, genetically engineered, or raw. Their stated purpose is to 'protect consumers' health, ensure fair business practices within the food trade and eliminate international food trade barriers by standardizing food quality.'
But the plan's goals are to designate rules that regulate trade and food standards all over the world, including what you eat, how it's grown or obtained, and even in what form you consume it – for example, raw vs. pasteurized milk. It's formed partnerships with major pharmaceutical companies, and if this plan comes to completion it could force you to buy synthetic versions of the natural vitamins and supplements you take today – at huge costs. This has already happened in Europe, and a current US Senate bill, if passed, paves the way for your supplements to basically be taken from you. It's something that I've been urging my readers to fight for quite a while.
There are many problems with Codex, many of which are not immediately recognizable unless you have the proper perspective. But one of the most bizarre and potentially dangerous issues is their Vitamin and Mineral Guideline, finalized on July 4, 2005, which classifies nutrients as toxins.
Daily Bell: Why have traditional forms of medicine come under such heavy attack?
Dr. Mercola: I believe natural health care is a threat to the conventional medical model. Once you understand that most chronic disease can be prevented, that cancer is largely a man-made disease, than you begin to appreciate that authentic, inexpensive solutions that work are indeed a very serious threat to their profits.
Daily Bell: Will the attackers win?
Dr. Mercola: I don't believe so. I suspect they let the genie out of the bottle with the Internet, which allows information to be rapidly shared with many on a global scale. Ultimately, social networks will allow the truth to prevail.
Daily Bell: What do you think about naturopathy, the idea that the body itself must be kept in balance and that once in balance, you ought not to affect it with medicine of any sort but simply allow the body to heal on its own.
Dr. Mercola: I firmly believe in many of the principles of naturopathy, the primary one being that your body is designed to be healthy if you give it the appropriate foods, sleep and exercise, and are able to avoid toxins and traumas from emotional stressors. This is the fundamental solution for nearly every chronic illness. I am always amazed how the same principles are able to work so well for so many different diseases when applied.
Daily Bell: Is good nutrition the most important thing in the world?
Dr. Mercola: This is probably the single most important physical contributor to health and ideally is the foundation for all health approaches. The challenge, of course, is that there is wide controversy in this area even among most of the natural health experts. Ultimately, if you listen to your body and try a number of different sound strategies you will learn what is best for your body to allow it to thrive, blossom into health and avoid just about all diseases.
Daily Bell: Should people take vitamin supplements?
Dr. Mercola: Supplements are just that, a supplement to a healthy diet, not a replacement for it. However, with our modern society I do believe there are a number of crucial supplements that most people need to seriously consider including
• vitamin D,
• Ubiquinol,
• Astaxanthin,
• a high quality probiotic and
• high quality animal-based omega-3 fats like krill oil.
Daily Bell: Are the regulators winning? Are people being deprived of health care choices?
Dr. Mercola: The federal regulators have complete authority but there is quite a bit of resistance out there. People are seeing firsthand the harm our conventional medical industry is causing, assisted and protected by federal regulators, medical associations and insurance companies. This is all about money, and people are looking for better alternatives. Unfortunately for many, they are trapped in the system and financially, they can't afford to get out of it and they suffer for it.
Daily Bell: What is your opinion of AIDS? Are people being deliberately misinformed? Why?
Dr. Mercola: I was very involved in this topic in the late '80s and even testified before a presidential committee on this topic in Washington, DC. However it is very complex and I haven't studied it enough to have a definitive answer at this time.
Daily Bell: Is medicine and health care in the US and the West anything like you believed it was when you were younger and more idealistic? Have you been shocked at what you have found?
Dr. Mercola: The influence of the drug companies has become far more pervasive. When I first started to practice there were 16 vaccines given before age five and it cost under $100. Now there are 49 and it costs over $2,200. Prior to 1995 drugs were illegal to advertise on TV; now they are pervasive.
At the same time that the increase in drug company influence has occurred we have the Internet, which is a powerful countermeasure to their deceptive influence.
Daily Bell: Why don't more professional medical people stand with you publicly? Are they afraid?
Dr. Mercola: First of all, many do. But I suspect there are many factors that prevent others, as they have not yet been able to break the brainwashing of the current model. I believe the bulk of physicians sincerely seek to do the best they can for their patients and believe that is what they are doing. But once they have learned the truth there is a fear of ostracism with their professional colleagues.
Daily Bell: Are you afraid that your business and your family might come under attack for your views and success?
Dr. Mercola: It seems fairly inevitable.
Daily Bell: Tell us about your business today and how it's going.
Dr. Mercola: We have a solid team of highly committed staff that helps us put together our content and provide resources to help people better take control of their health.
Daily Bell: Are you expanding? What do you plan next?
Dr. Mercola: Our newest initiative is Health Liberty, which is designed to address four of the largest threats to the future of the human race. They are
• GMOs
• Vaccines
• Fluoride
• Mercury in dentistry
Daily Bell: Any other points you want to make?
Dr. Mercola: That covers it.
Daily Bell: Any reading or information you want to refer people to?
Dr. Mercola: I would STRONGLY recommend subscribing to my free daily newsletter to keep current on what is happening in the world of health. We screen hundreds of articles EVERY day and provide the best of the best so you don't have to scour the literature to find out what is going on in the health field.
Daily Bell: Thanks for the insights. Stay well!
We were very happy to interview Dr. Mercola because we admire what he does day in and day out to inform people about the reality of modern Western medicine.
We used to believe that that the ill health provoked by Western governmental policies was purely a mercenary activity but now, sadly, we do not. As the Internet continues to inform of us of the reality of this melancholy world, we've come to believe that the ill health being forced on the world's population is something beyond a bottom-line phenomenon.
To many, fortunately, Dr. Mercola is a wakeup call. He is a beacon of truth, pointing out the barrage of increasingly malicious treatments and policies aimed at every good practice that the human race has been able to acquire over the past several thousand years. Everything from acupuncture to vitamins is under attack these days.
Children are being forced to take vaccine cocktails that give them asthma, maybe autism, or even worse. Vitamins are rapidly being forced into a medical posture thanks to Codex Alimentarius. Soon you may need a prescription to purchase Vitamin C. And then there are sugar substitutes like aspartame and high fructose corn syrup. And as technology advances, there will doubtless be more and more genetically modified food as well.
In the 21st century, good health is not doctors' business; it is not an "expert's" business – these individuals unfortunately must almost certainly be co-opted by the larger medical-industrial complex. Good health is up to YOU. We're glad Dr. Mercola has offered himself up as a guide. He's trusted by many who visit his website, and, given his compassion and conviction, we understand why.
Full article and additional info:
http://www.thedailybell.com/3161/Anthony-Wile-Dr-Joseph-Mercola-on-Health-Wellness-and-the-Inevitability-of-Attacks-Against-Him-by-the-FDA-Medical-Community
Sunday, October 30, 2011
by Anthony Wile
www.thedailybell.com
The Daily Bell is pleased to present an interview with Dr. Joseph Mercola.
Introduction: Dr. Joseph Mercola is an osteopathic physician, also known as a DO. DOs are licensed physicians who bring something extra to the practice of medicine. Osteopathic physicians practice a "whole person" approach, treating the entire person rather than just symptoms. Focusing on preventive health care, DOs help patients develop attitudes and lifestyles that don't just fight illness, but help prevent it, too. Dr. Mercola is also board-certified in family medicine and served as the chairman of the family medicine department at St. Alexius Medical Center for five years. He runs one of the most popular medical/wellness websites in the world.
Daily Bell: Thank you for sitting down with us. Your website is the gold standard for holistic wellness and scientifically-oriented alternative medical advice. Give us some background on yourself. Where did you grow up and how did you get interested in medicine and nutrition and preventative health care?
Dr. Mercola: I am the oldest of five children, born to parents who never graduated from high school. When I was growing up in Chicago, my parents were well intentioned but I was a sugar junkie. By the time I was in college I had a mouthful of mercury fillings from all my cavities and severe cystic acne.
My love of reading eventually led me to health books. One book in particular, by Dr. Ken Cooper – who was in charge of training astronauts – inspired me to get fit, so I started running and have now been regularly exercising for the past 45 years.
For all of high school and a good part of college, I worked as a pharmacy apprentice in a medical clinic, where I developed the erroneous belief that drugs were the solution for any disease. I started medical school in 1978 and did a three-year family medicine residency from 1982-85. Unfortunately, like most medical students I was brainwashed into becoming a drug-prescribing physician as I bought their philosophy hook, line and sinker.
My transition to natural health began several years after I finished my residency, when I discovered the damaging effects of sugar consumption and its connection to cancer and nearly all chronic disease. I then started attending seminars and educating myself on natural health. I started my website, Mercola.com, in 1997 to help educate others about what I'd learned. My book, Take Control of Your Health, explains this journey in more detail.
Daily Bell: What is your opinion of medicine and healthcare in the West today?
Dr. Mercola: Unfortunately, there is an aberrant collusion between many drug and food industry multinational corporations that has the government endorsing strategies that benefit industry and not the people.
For nearly all chronic disease, which comprises the bulk of health challenges, the entire system is carefully orchestrated to deceive and manipulate people into making choices that merely serve to perpetuate their problems rather than treat the cause. This results in enormous profits for the industry.
This is facilitated through massive conflicts of interests and revolving doors between industry and government.
Most physicians have little training or interest in applying lifestyle changes that can eradicate the bulk of chronic degenerative diseases that plague our society. This is a result of a variety of factors that are primarily related to lack of financial incentives to industry that heavily promote the drug model.
Daily Bell: What is your opinion of the FDA? What does it do?
Dr. Mercola: The FDA's self-described mission is to protect and promote the public health. But the reality is it primarily protects major pharmaceutical industries and their bottom lines, tragically causing more death and disease across the world, rather than helping prevent it. I think the Vioxx scandal is a perfect example of this.
In my opinion, the FDA has gotten so out of control and corrupt that it has totally lost its focus on what exactly it should be doing for public health. The FDA even admitted in a massive self-analysis in 2007 that it lacks the competency and capacity to keep up with scientific advances. Former FDA managers like Dr. David Graham, who revealed on a PBS special that his supervisors had chastised him for even thinking the FDA served the public, have reiterated this.
More proof of this is the transcript of a history of FDA laws and regulations that is on file at Harvard Law School, which explains how years ago an FDA task force established a policy of ensuring that the presence of dietary supplements on the market doesn't act as a disincentive to drug development – something I believe is in direct conflict with what the FDA should be doing for public health.
There are massive conflicts of interests. One reason it's come to this is because the FDA is so financially dependent on the industry it's regulating, through the user fees it gets from these companies.
It's also literally taking away our rights to choose what foods we want to eat, including regulating HOW we consume them. For example, it's seeking to take away our right to consume raw, unpasteurized milk under the guise that raw milk – something that just a few decades ago people drank all the time, straight from the cow, with no one questioning it – might harm us. Yet, at the same time, it allows us (as adults) to walk in a store and purchase cigarettes, a known carcinogen.
Now the FDA is trying to take away our rights to choose to take vitamins and supplements, under Senate Bill 1310, the Dietary Supplement Labeling Act of 2011. They're saying the bill is to improve the safety of dietary supplements, but all it really does is make it financially impossible for vitamin and supplement companies to stay in business.
You simply cannot trust the FDA to make your health decisions for you.
Daily Bell: Should the FDA be abolished?
Dr. Mercola: That is something that obviously does not happen overnight, but I believe in personal responsibility and informed consent over federal mandates and collusion. Any practitioner or business is responsible for their products or services, responsible to inform the benefits and risks and accountable to the judicial system for harm.
Daily Bell: Who is behind the FDA and the attack on traditional (non pharmaceutical) medicine and healing? Is it corporations? A deeper and more powerful entity?
Dr. Mercola: I believe it is a variety of multinational corporations primarily focused in the drug and food industries.
Daily Bell: Who owns and controls the pharmaceutical companies? Is it the same small, powerful group of families that control central banking?
Dr. Mercola: I don't know, as this is something I have not studied.
Daily Bell: What do the controllers of the pharmaceutical companies seek? Are they trying to poison people in some sense? And why?
Dr. Mercola: I don't know. This is something I have not studied.
Daily Bell: The elites who run the world (whoever they are) are said to want to reduce the population of the world drastically. Agree? Disagree?
Dr. Mercola: I don't know. I have not studied that.
Daily Bell: Is there any truth to the idea that vaccines may not be good for you?
Dr. Mercola: People need to know and understand that they do have choices when it comes to vaccines. That includes opting out of vaccine mandates that states make regarding their children. For more information on what your rights are, I refer people to the National Vaccine Information Center's website, where you can learn more about how you can opt out of a vaccine, if that is your choice.
There is no question that there are potential dangers to any vaccine – that's why drug companies put warnings and lists of possible side effects to their vaccines in the package inserts. More specifically, there are 60 studies that now confirm a cancer link to the polio vaccine you had as a child. With the HPV vaccine, which Michelle Bachmann put in the news again, there were 20,915 adverse events reported to the VAERS database, as of December 2010. There also were 89 deaths connected with this vaccine, including a young boy who died eight days after he was vaccinated with Gardasil.
And the VAERS database is believed to represent ONLY ten percent of all the events that occur because only a small number of people even realize it is available to report their reactions on.
Another point that's not widely publicized by vaccine proponents is that sometimes the vaccines cause the very disease they're meant to prevent. We have vaccine-derived polio in Africa as an example of this.
These aren't the only vaccines that can cause serious problems for some people – the chicken pox vaccine, for example, has been associated with a surge in shingles, even in the young children who've received the vaccine. I've addressed these issues and many, many more vaccine-related topics in my newsletters. I think the most important message is to research each vaccine before it's administered, read the package inserts and weigh the risks and benefits before you vaccinate.
When it comes to vaccines, there are three primary questions that need to be considered:
• Is the vaccine in question safe?
• Does it effectively prevent disease?
• And which vaccines, if any, can safely and effectively be given together or in close succession?
A great way to get started at this is to simply use the Search Feature at the top of each of my Web pages and search my site, as it contains a litany of research on vaccine safety, and the lack thereof, or go straight to http://vaccines.mercola.com. The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) also provides well-referenced information on vaccines and diseases, such as HPV, rotavirus and polio.
Daily Bell: Do you believe vaccines cause autism, as Dr.Wakefield believes?
Dr. Mercola: I have met and interviewed Dr. Wakefield at length about his work and his personal and professional insights into a number of topics, from the gut-brain connection so often seen in autistic children to the safety of a number of childhood vaccines. For more information on Dr. Wakefield, I urge you to listen to his interview and read my commentary, which is available on my site.
As far as vaccines CAUSING autism goes, the evidence seems very compelling that they play a role. They certainly are not the cause for all cases but they seem to play an important factor for most. The newest information is on the gut-brain connection; those who are born to mothers who have been on antibiotics or eat loads of sugar or take birth control pills tend to pass on unhealthy gut bacteria that, unless improved, can radically increase the child's risk of injury once they are given a vaccine.
Dr. Natasha Campbell McBride, a Russian neurologist who has a child with autism, has done some important work in this area and I have an interview with her on this topic on my site.
Daily Bell: There are many additives in foods today. Are they causing cancer, diabetes, etc.? If so, why isn't this better known?
Dr. Mercola: There are many food additives with known links to chronic diseases and ill health. For example, MSG, high fructose corn syrup and aspartame are three of the most dangerous additives in foods today. There are many other hidden additives I've written about, such as food dyes, but these three are at the top. The truth about these additives isn't hidden but for some reason the mainstream media has chosen not to question industry and the FDA on the safety issues associated with these popular, commonly used additives.
Daily Bell: What do you think of the pharmaceutical model of health care that provides you with "cures" for a variety of conditions that may or may not be related to specific diseases?
Dr. Mercola: As I've said before, the pharmaceutical model and focus is to sell treatments that rarely, if ever, address the underlying cause of the disease and tend to perpetuate the long-term sale of their solutions. Their goal is to make money, not to make you well.
Daily Bell: What do you think of Codex Alimentarius?
Dr. Mercola: Codex Alimentarius is a World Trade Organization, global health plan that is a looming threat to your health freedoms. It was created in 1962 through a series of relationships between The World Health Organization (WHO), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the American FDA and USDA. The "Codex Alimentarius" itself is a compilation of food standards, codes of practice and guidelines that specify all requirements related to foods, whether processed, semi-processed, genetically engineered, or raw. Their stated purpose is to 'protect consumers' health, ensure fair business practices within the food trade and eliminate international food trade barriers by standardizing food quality.'
But the plan's goals are to designate rules that regulate trade and food standards all over the world, including what you eat, how it's grown or obtained, and even in what form you consume it – for example, raw vs. pasteurized milk. It's formed partnerships with major pharmaceutical companies, and if this plan comes to completion it could force you to buy synthetic versions of the natural vitamins and supplements you take today – at huge costs. This has already happened in Europe, and a current US Senate bill, if passed, paves the way for your supplements to basically be taken from you. It's something that I've been urging my readers to fight for quite a while.
There are many problems with Codex, many of which are not immediately recognizable unless you have the proper perspective. But one of the most bizarre and potentially dangerous issues is their Vitamin and Mineral Guideline, finalized on July 4, 2005, which classifies nutrients as toxins.
Daily Bell: Why have traditional forms of medicine come under such heavy attack?
Dr. Mercola: I believe natural health care is a threat to the conventional medical model. Once you understand that most chronic disease can be prevented, that cancer is largely a man-made disease, than you begin to appreciate that authentic, inexpensive solutions that work are indeed a very serious threat to their profits.
Daily Bell: Will the attackers win?
Dr. Mercola: I don't believe so. I suspect they let the genie out of the bottle with the Internet, which allows information to be rapidly shared with many on a global scale. Ultimately, social networks will allow the truth to prevail.
Daily Bell: What do you think about naturopathy, the idea that the body itself must be kept in balance and that once in balance, you ought not to affect it with medicine of any sort but simply allow the body to heal on its own.
Dr. Mercola: I firmly believe in many of the principles of naturopathy, the primary one being that your body is designed to be healthy if you give it the appropriate foods, sleep and exercise, and are able to avoid toxins and traumas from emotional stressors. This is the fundamental solution for nearly every chronic illness. I am always amazed how the same principles are able to work so well for so many different diseases when applied.
Daily Bell: Is good nutrition the most important thing in the world?
Dr. Mercola: This is probably the single most important physical contributor to health and ideally is the foundation for all health approaches. The challenge, of course, is that there is wide controversy in this area even among most of the natural health experts. Ultimately, if you listen to your body and try a number of different sound strategies you will learn what is best for your body to allow it to thrive, blossom into health and avoid just about all diseases.
Daily Bell: Should people take vitamin supplements?
Dr. Mercola: Supplements are just that, a supplement to a healthy diet, not a replacement for it. However, with our modern society I do believe there are a number of crucial supplements that most people need to seriously consider including
• vitamin D,
• Ubiquinol,
• Astaxanthin,
• a high quality probiotic and
• high quality animal-based omega-3 fats like krill oil.
Daily Bell: Are the regulators winning? Are people being deprived of health care choices?
Dr. Mercola: The federal regulators have complete authority but there is quite a bit of resistance out there. People are seeing firsthand the harm our conventional medical industry is causing, assisted and protected by federal regulators, medical associations and insurance companies. This is all about money, and people are looking for better alternatives. Unfortunately for many, they are trapped in the system and financially, they can't afford to get out of it and they suffer for it.
Daily Bell: What is your opinion of AIDS? Are people being deliberately misinformed? Why?
Dr. Mercola: I was very involved in this topic in the late '80s and even testified before a presidential committee on this topic in Washington, DC. However it is very complex and I haven't studied it enough to have a definitive answer at this time.
Daily Bell: Is medicine and health care in the US and the West anything like you believed it was when you were younger and more idealistic? Have you been shocked at what you have found?
Dr. Mercola: The influence of the drug companies has become far more pervasive. When I first started to practice there were 16 vaccines given before age five and it cost under $100. Now there are 49 and it costs over $2,200. Prior to 1995 drugs were illegal to advertise on TV; now they are pervasive.
At the same time that the increase in drug company influence has occurred we have the Internet, which is a powerful countermeasure to their deceptive influence.
Daily Bell: Why don't more professional medical people stand with you publicly? Are they afraid?
Dr. Mercola: First of all, many do. But I suspect there are many factors that prevent others, as they have not yet been able to break the brainwashing of the current model. I believe the bulk of physicians sincerely seek to do the best they can for their patients and believe that is what they are doing. But once they have learned the truth there is a fear of ostracism with their professional colleagues.
Daily Bell: Are you afraid that your business and your family might come under attack for your views and success?
Dr. Mercola: It seems fairly inevitable.
Daily Bell: Tell us about your business today and how it's going.
Dr. Mercola: We have a solid team of highly committed staff that helps us put together our content and provide resources to help people better take control of their health.
Daily Bell: Are you expanding? What do you plan next?
Dr. Mercola: Our newest initiative is Health Liberty, which is designed to address four of the largest threats to the future of the human race. They are
• GMOs
• Vaccines
• Fluoride
• Mercury in dentistry
Daily Bell: Any other points you want to make?
Dr. Mercola: That covers it.
Daily Bell: Any reading or information you want to refer people to?
Dr. Mercola: I would STRONGLY recommend subscribing to my free daily newsletter to keep current on what is happening in the world of health. We screen hundreds of articles EVERY day and provide the best of the best so you don't have to scour the literature to find out what is going on in the health field.
Daily Bell: Thanks for the insights. Stay well!
We were very happy to interview Dr. Mercola because we admire what he does day in and day out to inform people about the reality of modern Western medicine.
We used to believe that that the ill health provoked by Western governmental policies was purely a mercenary activity but now, sadly, we do not. As the Internet continues to inform of us of the reality of this melancholy world, we've come to believe that the ill health being forced on the world's population is something beyond a bottom-line phenomenon.
To many, fortunately, Dr. Mercola is a wakeup call. He is a beacon of truth, pointing out the barrage of increasingly malicious treatments and policies aimed at every good practice that the human race has been able to acquire over the past several thousand years. Everything from acupuncture to vitamins is under attack these days.
Children are being forced to take vaccine cocktails that give them asthma, maybe autism, or even worse. Vitamins are rapidly being forced into a medical posture thanks to Codex Alimentarius. Soon you may need a prescription to purchase Vitamin C. And then there are sugar substitutes like aspartame and high fructose corn syrup. And as technology advances, there will doubtless be more and more genetically modified food as well.
In the 21st century, good health is not doctors' business; it is not an "expert's" business – these individuals unfortunately must almost certainly be co-opted by the larger medical-industrial complex. Good health is up to YOU. We're glad Dr. Mercola has offered himself up as a guide. He's trusted by many who visit his website, and, given his compassion and conviction, we understand why.
Full article and additional info:
http://www.thedailybell.com/3161/Anthony-Wile-Dr-Joseph-Mercola-on-Health-Wellness-and-the-Inevitability-of-Attacks-Against-Him-by-the-FDA-Medical-Community
Friday, October 28, 2011
Ex-ACORN operatives playing role in 'Occupy Wall Street' movement
NY Post
Last Updated: 4:29 PM, October 26, 2011
The former New York office for ACORN, the disbanded community activist group, is playing a key role in the self-proclaimed "leaderless" "Occupy Wall Street" movement, organizing "guerrilla" protest events and hiring door-to-door canvassers to collect money under the banner of various causes while spending it on protest-related activities.
Sources told FOXNews.com that the former director of New York ACORN, Jon Kest, and his top aides are now busy working at protest events for New York Communities for Change (NYCC). That organization was created in late 2009 when some ACORN offices disbanded and reorganized under new names after undercover video exposes prompted Congress to cut off federal funds.
NYCC's connection to ACORN is not a tenuous one. It works from the former ACORN offices in Brooklyn, uses old ACORN office stationery, employs much of the old ACORN staff and, according to several sources, engages in some of the old organization's controversial techniques to raise money, interest and awareness for the protests.
Sources said NYCC has hired about 100 former ACORN-affiliated staff members from other cities -- paying some of them $100 a day -- to attend and support "Occupy Wall Street." Dozens of New York homeless people recruited from shelters are also being paid to support the protests, at the rate of $10 an hour, the sources said.
Sources said cash donations collected by NYCC on behalf of some unions and various causes are being pooled and spent on "Occupy Wall Street." The money is used to buy supplies, pay staff and cover travel expenses for the ex-ACORN members brought to New York for the protests.
In one such case, sources said, NYCC staff members collected cash donations for what they were told was a United Federation of Teachers fundraising drive, but the money was diverted to the protests.
Sources who participated in the teachers union campaign said NYCC supervisors gave them the addresses of union members and told them to go knock on their doors and ask for contributions -- and did not mention that the money would go toward "Occupy Wall Street" expenses. One source said the campaign raked in about $5,000.
Current staff members at NYCC said the union fundraising drive was called off abruptly last week, and they were told NYCC should not have been raising money for the union at all.
Sources said staff members also collected door-to-door for NYCC's PCB campaign, which aims to test schools for deadly toxins, but then pooled that money together with cash raised for the teachers union and other campaigns to fund "Occupy Wall Street."
Neither NYCC executive director Kest nor his communications director returned repeated email and telephone requests for comment, nor did his communications director.
In a phone interview Tuesday, Harrison Schultz, an "Occupy Wall Street" spokesman, said he knew nothing about NYCC's involvement in the "Occupy" movement.
"Haven't seen them, couldn't tell you," he said.
Read more:
NY Post
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/ex_acorn_operatives_playing_role_s3zSPpX4NnFRoMpEGIxUBK#ixzz1c5SbRfIC
Fox News
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/10/26/exclusive-acorn-playing-behind-scenes-role-in-occupy-movement/
Last Updated: 4:29 PM, October 26, 2011
The former New York office for ACORN, the disbanded community activist group, is playing a key role in the self-proclaimed "leaderless" "Occupy Wall Street" movement, organizing "guerrilla" protest events and hiring door-to-door canvassers to collect money under the banner of various causes while spending it on protest-related activities.
Sources told FOXNews.com that the former director of New York ACORN, Jon Kest, and his top aides are now busy working at protest events for New York Communities for Change (NYCC). That organization was created in late 2009 when some ACORN offices disbanded and reorganized under new names after undercover video exposes prompted Congress to cut off federal funds.
NYCC's connection to ACORN is not a tenuous one. It works from the former ACORN offices in Brooklyn, uses old ACORN office stationery, employs much of the old ACORN staff and, according to several sources, engages in some of the old organization's controversial techniques to raise money, interest and awareness for the protests.
Sources said NYCC has hired about 100 former ACORN-affiliated staff members from other cities -- paying some of them $100 a day -- to attend and support "Occupy Wall Street." Dozens of New York homeless people recruited from shelters are also being paid to support the protests, at the rate of $10 an hour, the sources said.
Sources said cash donations collected by NYCC on behalf of some unions and various causes are being pooled and spent on "Occupy Wall Street." The money is used to buy supplies, pay staff and cover travel expenses for the ex-ACORN members brought to New York for the protests.
In one such case, sources said, NYCC staff members collected cash donations for what they were told was a United Federation of Teachers fundraising drive, but the money was diverted to the protests.
Sources who participated in the teachers union campaign said NYCC supervisors gave them the addresses of union members and told them to go knock on their doors and ask for contributions -- and did not mention that the money would go toward "Occupy Wall Street" expenses. One source said the campaign raked in about $5,000.
Current staff members at NYCC said the union fundraising drive was called off abruptly last week, and they were told NYCC should not have been raising money for the union at all.
Sources said staff members also collected door-to-door for NYCC's PCB campaign, which aims to test schools for deadly toxins, but then pooled that money together with cash raised for the teachers union and other campaigns to fund "Occupy Wall Street."
Neither NYCC executive director Kest nor his communications director returned repeated email and telephone requests for comment, nor did his communications director.
In a phone interview Tuesday, Harrison Schultz, an "Occupy Wall Street" spokesman, said he knew nothing about NYCC's involvement in the "Occupy" movement.
"Haven't seen them, couldn't tell you," he said.
Read more:
NY Post
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/ex_acorn_operatives_playing_role_s3zSPpX4NnFRoMpEGIxUBK#ixzz1c5SbRfIC
Fox News
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/10/26/exclusive-acorn-playing-behind-scenes-role-in-occupy-movement/
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Kundalini Warning
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
When opposing homosexuality threatens your job
FIRST-PERSON: When opposing homosexuality threatens your job
Byron Babione
Posted on Oct 24, 2011
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (BP) -- In New Jersey, the Township of Union Public School District has suspended a special education teacher named Viki Knox because she sat in her own home, on her own computer, and expressed her Christian faith on her personal Facebook page.
After seeing a quasi-shrine that had been erected at her school, honoring Harvey Milk, Neil Patrick Harris, and Virginia Woolf for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History month, Knox expressed disapproval of "homosexuality based on her Christian faith."
Just think of it -- although the Bible unequivocally denounces practicing homosexual behavior, groups like Garden State Equality have come out against Knox as if she invented Christianity's teaching on homosexual practices, and they're actually calling for her to lose her job.
Said Garden State Equality chair Steven Goldstein: "I find what she wrote on Facebook endangers the learning atmosphere for students beyond repair and violates the school district's own policy of a safe and comfortable environment for all. She's no longer in a position to teach in the classroom because she will make many students fearful of her hatred."
Ever notice how some like to argue for everyone to have an opinion and the freedom to express it until a person has and expresses an opinion that runs counter to theirs? Once that point is reached, the individual is accused of espousing "hatred," even if what she expressed on her Facebook page was: "The display should not be in the high school. [The school] is not the setting to promote, encourage, support, and foster homosexuality."
This point is made even more poignant when one considers the fact that Knox went out of her way to say that she prays for those who are persecuting her and tells them that God loves them (which is now apparently the same thing as expressing "hatred").
In responding to some of the hateful comments that were made about her, Knox wrote that she doesn't "even use the word hate" unless she's expressing how much she hates being lied about. Rather, she said she has "used words such as unnatural, ungodly, and immoral" to describe the practice of homosexual behavior.
Ironically the Apostle Paul used very similar wording when he warned mankind that individuals practicing homosexual behavior were rushing headlong toward God's judgment:
"Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God" (1 Corinthians 6:9-11).
Knox was very clear in her Facebook entries about the fact that she has family and friends who "practice alternative lifestyles" that she does "not condone or support." Yet she does not force them from her life or withhold her love from them. Rather, she wrote that "Christ draws us all through a love so vast and encompassing that our human minds continue to fail to comprehend ... it."
It appears that the minds at Garden State Equality only hear "hate" when Knox says "love," and only see aggression when Knox extends compassion. But that's not Knox's fault, and she shouldn't be penalized for expressing her faith or her opinion, even if Garden State Equality is of the opinion that she should.
Full article and links:
http://www.bpnews.net/BPFirstPerson.asp?ID=36409
Byron Babione
Posted on Oct 24, 2011
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (BP) -- In New Jersey, the Township of Union Public School District has suspended a special education teacher named Viki Knox because she sat in her own home, on her own computer, and expressed her Christian faith on her personal Facebook page.
After seeing a quasi-shrine that had been erected at her school, honoring Harvey Milk, Neil Patrick Harris, and Virginia Woolf for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History month, Knox expressed disapproval of "homosexuality based on her Christian faith."
Just think of it -- although the Bible unequivocally denounces practicing homosexual behavior, groups like Garden State Equality have come out against Knox as if she invented Christianity's teaching on homosexual practices, and they're actually calling for her to lose her job.
Said Garden State Equality chair Steven Goldstein: "I find what she wrote on Facebook endangers the learning atmosphere for students beyond repair and violates the school district's own policy of a safe and comfortable environment for all. She's no longer in a position to teach in the classroom because she will make many students fearful of her hatred."
Ever notice how some like to argue for everyone to have an opinion and the freedom to express it until a person has and expresses an opinion that runs counter to theirs? Once that point is reached, the individual is accused of espousing "hatred," even if what she expressed on her Facebook page was: "The display should not be in the high school. [The school] is not the setting to promote, encourage, support, and foster homosexuality."
This point is made even more poignant when one considers the fact that Knox went out of her way to say that she prays for those who are persecuting her and tells them that God loves them (which is now apparently the same thing as expressing "hatred").
In responding to some of the hateful comments that were made about her, Knox wrote that she doesn't "even use the word hate" unless she's expressing how much she hates being lied about. Rather, she said she has "used words such as unnatural, ungodly, and immoral" to describe the practice of homosexual behavior.
Ironically the Apostle Paul used very similar wording when he warned mankind that individuals practicing homosexual behavior were rushing headlong toward God's judgment:
"Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God" (1 Corinthians 6:9-11).
Knox was very clear in her Facebook entries about the fact that she has family and friends who "practice alternative lifestyles" that she does "not condone or support." Yet she does not force them from her life or withhold her love from them. Rather, she wrote that "Christ draws us all through a love so vast and encompassing that our human minds continue to fail to comprehend ... it."
It appears that the minds at Garden State Equality only hear "hate" when Knox says "love," and only see aggression when Knox extends compassion. But that's not Knox's fault, and she shouldn't be penalized for expressing her faith or her opinion, even if Garden State Equality is of the opinion that she should.
Full article and links:
http://www.bpnews.net/BPFirstPerson.asp?ID=36409
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)