Is The Safety Of The State Really Worth More Than The Truth?

Guest Post By Brandon Smith

It's a strange and terrible tragedy when a culture forgets its own history and identity. It is even more tragic when that culture becomes deluded enough to think it can replace its heritage from scratch; that it can conjure political and social reformations out of thin air, and abandon the centuries upon centuries of accomplishment and failures of generations past. To think that one can live without the lessons and principles of one's ancestors is a disease – a mental disorder of the highest caliber. It is an insanity that leads to terrifying catastrophe.
There is no such thing as “starting over” or “rising anew”. There is no such thing as pure and unadulterated “change”. All shifts in human civilization are a product of that which has come before, and therefore each of these shifts retains the ideas, accomplishments, and dreams of our forefathers. No matter how ingenious we think we are today, most grand schemes and wondrous plans for the world have already been discovered, rediscovered, and applied over and over again by industrious men, great men, and even nefarious men century after century.


Unique ideas are very rare. The American Republic, as a sociopolitical structure, is such an idea.
The concept of citizen self governance is extremely uncommon in the annals of humanity, namely because there has always been an establishment of elitists within any given epoch that have sought to destroy it. There have always been organizations of the power hungry who make it their mission to suppress free thought, and free peoples, and these organizations certainly exist today.


Though we have been given an astonishing guide-map in the form of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the establishment attempts to sell us on a very different value system. In their world, true self governance is impossible, because only the elect will ever receive the political and monetary support needed just to join the ranks of those who MIGHT be elected. The common man has no place within the halls of the federal oligarchy and the elite like it that way.
In their world, leaders do not owe allegiance to the citizenry. They do not answer to the public. They do as they wish, whenever they wish, and as long as they can wrap their tyranny in the costumes of so-called patriotism, justice, or safety of the masses, they can continue uninterrupted. The system is THIER playground, not ours.


Those people allowed to operate as government employees are treated as indentured servants of the state. Their first loyalties, the government claims, are not to Americans, but to the corporate apparatus that America has become. That is to say, they are supposed to protect the integrity of the system, before they protect the lives and liberties of the people.
Barack Obama's new CIA director John Brennan's “Honor the Oath” campaign makes this position clear. In Brennan's words, the oath government employees take is not to the Constitution, but to the “corporate culture of secrecy”:

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/cia-cracks-down-its-own-stop-leaks


Sen. Dianne Feinstein's response to the Snowden leaks on NSA mass surveillance are also rather revealing in regard to how the establishment views the exposure of truths, especially when those truths involve the governments systematic targeting of innocent Americans. Feinstein stated:

“I don’t look at this as being a whistleblower. I think it’s an act of treason,” the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee told reporters.
The California lawmaker went on to say that Snowden had violated his oath to defend the Constitution.
“He violated the oath, he violated the law. It’s treason.”

http://thehill.com/blogs/defcon-hill/policy-and-strategy/304573-sen-feinstein-snowdens-leaks-are-treason


I would also point out that this same twisted viewpoint has been expressed by politicians on both sides of the aisle. Top Democrats and top Republicans want Snowden's head on a platter.
Now I can see a certain (but very selective) logic to the belief that defending the government structure from attack is the same as defending the American public from attack. Undoubtedly, an outside force seeking to undermine our safety and our freedoms should be stopped, and some out there believe we need watchmen to ensure this is done. However, what happens when the greatest threat to our way of life is coming from the watchmen themselves?

The federal government was created by the Founding Fathers, begrudgingly, to serve one primary purpose: The defense of individual liberty. But what happens when the federal government no longer pursues this function? What happens when the government becomes the very enemy it was designed to defend us against? Has it not then violated the charter that made it legal in the first place? And if so, should it not then be exposed and disbanded as a broken tool, a useless piece of hardware that no longer does any good for the people overall?

The problem is that the “watchmen” were institutionalized and bureaucratized. We were supposed to be the watchers and defenders, each and every one of us, but we handed over that power to elitist interests and secretive entities. We have handed over our eyes and our hands to men who care only for their own private societies, and not American society. We have fallen asleep on the job and dark minded doppelgangers have taken our place.


Even so, this does not mean our responsibilities have disappeared. As the actions of a handful of government whistleblowers including Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning have shown, the requirements of honor and conscience are not void simply because you now receive a government paycheck. In fact, for any government employee that considers themselves honest and principled, whistleblowing is not “treason”, as the White House would have us believe. Rather, it is a duty.


There are two kinds of law. The first is Natural Law, or laws that follow the dictates of our hearts and our inborn moral compass. The Constitution that our nation was built upon is a perfect written representation of natural law. The second is self-serving law, or the laws that one group of people in power use to control another group of people without power. Most legal structures that exist in writing today are sadly a product of self-serving law.


Legitimate treason is essentially the abandonment of the true well being of one's culture in order to gain something for one's self. Maybe the enticement is monetary, or maybe the enticement is to aid a foreign interest. Or, maybe it is to satisfy a dangerously selfish ideological ego. In any case, the end result is severe harm to one's homeland.


The question is, is it “treason” to tell the truth to the American people? Is the truth harmful to our culture, or is it just harmful to the establishment? Is the survival of the establishment irreconcilably intertwined with the survival of our society, or, is that only what they want us to think? If the establishment dies because it is revealed as corrupt, do we all die with it, or, could we carry on without it?


As I pointed out before, without our heritage and our history, America fails to be. Without the lessons of the past, we are nothing. Our federal government today has separated itself from the people and elevated itself to a godlike position in our personal lives, as many despotic governments throughout history have done. Our leadership has formed alliances with private elitist interests and forsaken their responsibilities in an effort to cement their political dominance rather than protect the common good; the kind of action which has invariably led to the totalitarian monstrosities of the past. And, our government has deemed that which is moral “unimportant” or “dangerous”, and that which is immoral a matter of national security, and thus sacrosanct. We are now expected to maintain “faith” in the benevolence and good graces of government, and damn to hell the very voice within our souls. We are expected to pray for the continued longevity of the machine, and rage against anyone who might enlighten us to the evil within it.


Many people who now work for the machine are not necessarily like the machine. They are not bent on the destruction of free civilization. They are not the enemy of life or the deeper good of man. But under the long cast shadow of tyranny, the path they have chosen eventually ends, and it will end with an incalculably difficult decision – to do what is right, or to do what is safe. To remember what it is our government is supposed to stand for, or forget all that came before.


Loyalty is not and never has been unconditional - loyalty to government most of all. Loyalty to the system is dependent upon the nature of the system and the people who sit at its apex. The system must reflect the higher aspirations of the society it seeks to manage or protect. It must be held to the highest possible standard and be totally transparent in its nature. It is the job of government whistleblowers to make this possible. If they do not, then criminality will remain painfully felt but officially unconfirmed. Our country will continue to crumble into fascist oblivion, and all that will be left for the citizenry is revolution.
We must remember what we believe in, and allow that to be enough. Our fears, our biases, our superficial desires; all are irrelevant. In the end, the only thing that matters is what we leave behind. For those within government today, this could mean a legacy of desperation and sadness, or a legacy of strength, truth, and enduring peace. Time is running out.

You can contact Brandon Smith at:  brandon@alt-market.com
Alt-Market is an organization designed to help you find like-minded activists and preppers in your local area so that you can network and construct communities for mutual aid and defense.  Join Alt-Market.com today and learn what it means to step away from the system and build something better.
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10 Reasons Why Sharknado Is Coming To The Global Economy

Guest Post by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog,

 
Have you ever seen a disaster movie that is so bad that it is actually good?  Well, that is exactly what Syfy's new television movie entitled "Sharknado" is.  In the movie, wild weather patterns actually cause man-eating sharks to come flying out of the sky.  It sounds absolutely ridiculous, and it is.  You can view the trailer for the movie right here. 


Unfortunately, we are witnessing something just as ridiculous in the real world right now. 
In the United States, the mainstream media is breathlessly proclaiming that the U.S. economy is in great shape because job growth is "accelerating" (even though we actually lost 240,000 full-time jobs last month) and because the U.S. stock market set new all-time highs this week.  The mainstream media seems to be absolutely oblivious to all of the financial storm clouds that are gathering on the horizon. 


The conditions for a "perfect storm" are rapidly developing, and by the time this is all over we may be wishing that flying sharks were all that we had to deal with.  
The following are 10 reasons why the global economy is about to experience its own version of "Sharknado"...
#1 The financial situation in Portugal continues to deteriorate thanks to an emerging political crisis.  It all began last week when Portuguese finance minister Vitor Gaspar resigned...

"Mr. Gaspar's resignation on July 1 has opened a Pandora's box," says Nicholas Spiro, managing director of Spiro Sovereign Strategy. "Portuguese politicians from the President down are treating the exit of Mr. Gaspar, the architect of the fiscal and structural reforms demanded by the troika, as a green light for a public debate about the bail-out programme. Yet the manner in which this debate is taking place, with the President undermining the prime minister and the opposition leader seeking to renegotiate the terms of the programme, is spooking markets."

The general population is becoming increasingly restless as the nation plunges down the exact same path that Greece has gone.  Nobody seems to have any solutions as the economic problems continue to escalate.  According to Reuters, the president of Portugal has added fuel to the fire by calling for early elections next year...

Portugal's president threw the bailed-out euro zone country into disarray on Thursday after rejecting a plan to heal a government rift, igniting what critics called a "time bomb" by calling for early elections next year.

Due to all of this instability in Portugal, the yield on Portuguese bonds shot up to 7.51% this week.  That is a very bad sign.
#2 The economic depression in Greece continues to deepen, and it is being reported that Greece will not even come close to hitting the austerity targets that it was supposed to hit this year...

A leaked report from the European Commission confirms that Greece will miss its austerity targets yet again by a wide margin. It alleges that Greece lacks the “willingness and capacity” to collect taxes. In fact, Athens is missing targets because the economy is still in freefall and that is because of austerity overkill. The Greek think-tank IOBE expects GDP to fall 5pc this year. It has told journalists privately that the final figure may be -7pc.

Another 7 percent contraction for the Greek economy?
It has already been contracting steadily for years.
At this point, it would be hard to overstate how bad economic conditions inside Greece are.  The following is from a recent article by Simon Black...

My friend Illias took a drag of his cigarette as he contemplated my question.

"Our government tells us that this will be a better year. No one really believes them. But all we can do is be optimistic. Too many people are committing suicide."

His statement probably best sums up the situation in Greece right now. It's as if the hopelessness has gone stale, and the only thing they have to replace it with is desperate, misguided, faux-optimism. And anger.

There are roughly 11 million people in this country. 3.4 million of them are employed, of which roughly one third work for the government.

1.34 million people are 'officially' unemployed. To put this in context, it would be as if there were 36 million officially unemployed in the US.

More startling, if you add the number of 'inactive' workers (i.e. those who gave up looking), the total number of unemployed is roughly 57% of the entire Greek work force.

#3 The economic crisis in the third largest country in the eurozone, Italy, has taken another turn for the worse.  The unemployment rate in Italy is up to 12.2 percent, which is the highest in 35 years.  An average of 134 retail outlets are shutting down in Italy every single day, and the debt of the country has been downgraded again to just above junk status...

Italy’s slow crisis is again flaring up. Its debt trajectory has punched through the danger line over the past two years. The country’s €2.1 trillion (£1.8 trillion) debt – 129pc of GDP – may already be beyond the point of no return for a country without its own currency.

Standard & Poor’s did not say this outright when it downgraded the country to near-junk BBB on Tuesday. But if you read between the lines, it is close to saying the game is up for Italy.

#4 There are rumors that some of the biggest banks in the world are in very serious trouble.  For example, Jim Willie (a financial writer who usually puts out really solid information) is insisting that Deutsche Bank is on the verge of collapse...

The best information coming to my desk indicates that three major Western banks are under constant threat of failure overnight, every night, forcing extraordinary measures to avoid failure.

They are Deutsche Bank in Germany, Barclays in London, and Citibank in New York. Judging from the ongoing defense from prosecution and cooperation (flipped) with Interpol and distraction of resources, the most likely bank to die next is Deutsche Bank. They are caught with accounting fraud and outright financial fraud over collateral shell games, pertaining to USTreasury Bonds, other sovereign bonds in Southern Europe, and OTC derivatives linked to FOREX currency contracts. D-Bank is a dead man walking.

Time will tell if he is right.  But without a doubt the global financial system is extremely vulnerable right now.
Most Americans assume that the problems that caused the financial crash of 2008 were fixed, but that is most definitely NOT the case.  In fact, our financial system is far more shaky today than it was just before the last financial crisis.  When one major bank goes down, we could start to see others fall like dominoes.
#5 Just before the financial crisis of 2008, the price of oil spiked dramatically.  Well, it is starting to happen again.  The price of oil hit $106 a barrel on Friday.  If the price of oil continues to rise at this pace, it is going to mean big trouble for economies all over the planet.
And as I wrote about recently, every time the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States has risen above $3.80 during the past three years, a stock market decline has always followed.
The average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States reached $3.55 on Friday.  This is a number to keep a close eye on.
#6 Mortgage rates are absolutely skyrocketing right now...

The average U.S. rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage rose this week to 4.51%, a two-year high. Rates have been rising on expectations that the Federal Reserve will slow its bond purchases this year.

Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday that the average on the 30-year loan jumped from 4.29% the previous week. Just two months ago, it was 3.35% — barely above the record low of 3.31%.

This threatens to throw the U.S. real estate market into a slowdown worse than anything we have seen since the last recession.
#7 This upcoming corporate earnings season is shaping up to be an extremely disappointing one.  In fact, the percentage of companies issuing negative earnings guidance for this quarter is at a level that we have never seen before.
So is this a sign that economic activity is starting to slow down significantly?
#8 U.S. stocks are massively overextended right now.  In fact, according to Graham Summers, this is the most overextended stocks have been in the past 20 years...

Today, the S&P 500 is sitting a full 30% above its 200-weekly moving average. We have NEVER been this overextended above this line at any point in the last 20 years.

#9 Rapidly rising interest rates are causing the bond market to begin to come apart at the seams.  There is concern that the 30 year bull market for bonds is now over and investors are starting to pull their money out of the market at a staggering rate.  In fact, 80 billion dollars was pulled out of bond funds during June alone.
#10 Rapidly rising interest rates could cause an implosion of the derivatives market at any moment.  As I am so fond of reminding everyone, there are approximately 441 trillion dollars worth of interest rate derivatives out there.
If interest rates continue to soar, we could potentially see a financial disaster that is absolutely unprecedented, and the too big to fail banks would be the most vulnerable.
As USA Today recently reported, there are just five major banks that absolutely dominate derivatives trading in the United States...

Five of the biggest U.S. banks — JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc. and Morgan Stanley — account for more than 90% of derivatives contracts. Regulators estimate that nearly half of derivatives are traded outside the United States.

Could you imagine the financial devastation that we would see if several of those banks started to collapse at the same time?
When you hear the mainstream media begin to talk about a "derivatives crisis" involving major banks, that will be a sign that disaster is upon us.
Most Americans don't realize that Wall Street has been transformed into the largest casino in the history of the world.  Most Americans don't realize that the major banks are literally walking a financial tightrope each and every day.
All it is going to take is one false step and we will be looking at a financial crisis even worse than what happened back in 2008.
So enjoy this little bubble of false prosperity while you can.
It is not going to last for too much longer.

Get Ready For The Next Great Stock Market Exodus

Guest Post By Brandon Smith

In the years 2006 and 2007, the underlying stability of the global economy and the U.S. credit base in particular was experiencing intense scrutiny by alternative economic analysts. The mortgage-driven Xanadu that was the late 1990s and early 2000s seemed just too good to be true. Many of us pointed out that such a system, based on dubious debt instruments animated by the central banking voodoo of arbitrary fractional reserve lending and fiat cash creation, could not possibly survive for very long. A crash was coming, it was coming soon, and most of our society was either too stupid to recognize the problem or too frightened to accept the reality they knew was just over the horizon.

The Federal Reserve had cheated America out of an economic reset that was desperately needed. The 1980s had brought us utter destruction disguised as “globalization.” Our industrial center, the very heart of the American middle class that generated enormous wealth and decades of opportunity, had been dismantled and shipped overseas to the lowest bidder. It was then that the U.S. economy actually died; we just couldn’t see it. From that point forward, Americans were fully dependent on the charity of central bank money creation and international bank lending standards. The collapse that should have occurred in the 80s was delayed and thus made more volatile as the Fed artificially lowered interest rates and allowed trillions upon trillions of dollars in dubious loans to be generated. Free money abounded, and average citizens were suckered royally. Their greed was used against them, as they collateralized homes they could not afford to buy more crap they didn’t need. Of course, you know the rest of the story...

Today, credit markets remain frozen. Lending is nowhere near the levels reached in 2006. The housing market is showing signs of life; but that’s only because most home purchases are being made by banks, not regular people, for pennies on the dollar, as bankrupt properties are then reissued on the market for rent rather than for sale. If you are lucky, maybe one day you’ll get to borrow the keys to the house you used to own. And, millions of higher-paying full-time jobs have been lost and then replaced with lower-paying part-time-wage slavery positions. The image of American prosperity carries on, but it is nothing but  a cruel farce; and anyone with any sense should question how long this false image can be given life before the truth dawns.

The novice will question why it is necessary to re-examine all of this information. Is it not widely known? Am I not simply preaching to the choir a message heard over and over again since the crash of 2008? Maybe - or maybe it is time for us to finally apply some foresight given our knowledge of the recent past.

Why did 2008 creep up on so many people? Weren’t there plenty of economists out there “preaching to the choir” at that time? Weren’t there plenty of signals? Weren’t there plenty of practical conclusions being made about the future? And yet, the world was left stunned.

The truth is, human beings have a nasty habit of ignoring the cold hard facts of the present in the hopes of using apathy as a magical elixir for future prosperity. They want to believe that disaster is a mindset, that it is a boogeyman under their bed that can be defeated through blind optimism. They refuse to accept that disaster is a tangible inevitability of life that pays no heed to our naïve, happy-go-lucky attitudes. The American people allowed themselves to be caught off guard in 2008, just as they are setting themselves up to be caught off guard again today.

Again, the reality is clear; the Federal Reserve has propped up equities and bonds using money created out of thin air — so much so that both markets have become totally reliant and disturbingly addicted to fiat injections. The distribution of this fiat threatens the continued dominance of the dollar as the world reserve currency and will invariably lead to currency collapse and hyperstagflation. This process is much more likely to climax in the near term given the accelerated rate of quantitiative easing within our system to date and the accelerated rate at which our primary lenders (namely China) are dumping the dollar in bilateral trade with each other. The endgame is obvious, but I still fear millions of people within this country and around the world will be shell-shocked once again by a renewed crash.

The argument is always the same: “Yeah, things might get dicey, but it won’t be as bad as all the doom-mongers claim, and probably not for many years.”

Similar statements were made by naysayers before the Great Depression and before the 2008 crash. So why are the skeptics wrong again this time around?
The Stimulus Fantasy

Let’s put this in the simplest terms possible: Stimulus is now the lifeblood of our economy. There is nothing else sustaining our nation. Period. Stimulus in the form of bailouts and QE are keeping the stock market and bonds afloat.  This means that the continued existence of equities, and the continued existence of healthy treasuries, and thus the foundation of our currency, our general economy, and a functioning (or barely functioning) government, is completely dependent on the Fed continuing to print.

In recent weeks, the Fed hinted at possible intentions reduce or remove stimulus measures, which would effectively shut down the life-support machine and let the patient drown in his own fluids.
http://money.cnn.com/2013/06/19/news/economy/federal-reserve-stimulus/index.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/14/usa-imf-lagarde-idUSL2N0EQ0QI20130614?feedType=RSS&feedName=marketsNews&rpc=43

Day traders and common investors are not very bright, but they do understand well that no stimulus means no stock market and no bond market. In response, indexes have become erratic, shifting on the slightest rumor that the central bank might continue QE for a little longer. Pathetically, the Dow Jones now rallies upward whenever bad financial news hits the wire, as insane investment groups pour in money in the hopes that dismal economic developments might cause the Fed to extend the bailout bonanza.
In our modern nightmare era of hyper-centralized economy, one word or rumor from Ben Bernanke now determines whether stocks dramatically rise or fall.  This is NOT the behavior of a healthy and vibrant fiscal system.

The anatomy of American finance and trade has been horribly mutilated; and clearly, such a monstrous creation cannot last. Stocks are supposed to perform based on the true profitability of individual businesses as well as the political and social health of the overall culture. The wild printing of paper money by private banking magnates is not a catalyst for a successful economy. Whether the Fed actually ends QE is ultimately irrelevant. No fiscal structure can survive when it abandons fundamentals for fantasy. Either QE continues, becoming less and less effective in staving off negative results in equities, inspiring a flight from the dollar leading to a crash, or QE ends, exposing the inevitability of negative results in equities, leading to a crash.  If the Fed ends stimulus, the process of collapse will merely take place slightly faster than if stimulus remains.

But every historic economic crisis has a defining moment, a moment in which the tide turned overwhelmingly sour for a majority of the public. The question now becomes what, exactly, will trigger the avalanche?
Precious Metals Signal Secret Shift To Asia
As I have discussed in numerous articles over the years, China's shift away from the U.S. consumer and the U.S. dollar is well under way.  Over half of the world's major economies now have bilateral trade agreements in place which remove the dollar as the world reserve currency in trade with China and the ASEAN economic bloc.  China is issuing trillions in Yuan and Yuan denominated bonds around the globe, setting the stage for a higher Yuan valuation and allowing Chinese consumer markets to replace American consumer markets as the number one driver of manufacturing in export countries.  At the same time, China has increased its purchases of precious metals exponentially to the point that the nation is now set to become the largest holder of gold and silver in the world in the next two years.  This is clearly in preparation for a currency crisis event...
The buying spree in Asia seems to directly contradict the "paper market" value of metals in recent weeks.  Demand for gold and silver has only increased throughout most of the world, even in light of Federal Reserve suggestions that QE might end.  Manipulations within metals markets by the CME and JP Morgan explain half the story, but there may be another issue at work.
It is very possible that the COMEX is now essentially broken, and that gold and silver ETF's (paper gold and silver) are decoupling from the street value of physical metals during the last gasp of a failing system.  In the near term, I believe that premiums on physical coins and bars will skyrocket, even as the official market prices of those metals is held down.  At the same time, China, Russia, and other countries heavily invested in gold may break from Western COMEX valuations completely using their own metals markets to establish their own prices.
As the dollar loses its world reserve status, the countries holding the most physical gold in their coffers stand to weather the storm most effectively, and because U.S. gold stores have never been officially audited, we have no idea if America has any reserve whatsoever.
Crushing Energy Prices Coming Soon?

While China continues a careful strategy of decoupling from the dollar and the U.S. consumer through bilateral agreements and trading blocks, another issue is arising: the issue of energy. I would like to note that despite globally diminishing oil demand caused by the 2008 credit collapse, gas prices have experienced little to no deflation.  I would also like to note that after the Federal Reserve hinted at shutting down QE, oil was one of the few commodities that continued to rise.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-18/u-s-oil-demand-falls-to-16-year-low-api-reports.html

This has not been caused by a lack of supply, as many American-based companies ramp up production. (I am aware of all the arguments behind peak oil. As soon as a peak oil proponent can show me an example of oil demand not being met because of a legitimate lack of supply, then I’ll be happy to consider that peak oil is the main cause of price increases.)
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanantonio/blog/morning-edition/2013/06/us-oil-production-up-as-global.html

The fact is current regressive global demand and ample supply should have led to lower gas prices, not higher. If speculation was the cause, then price shifts within the oil market should have been far more volatile, with increases lasting weeks or perhaps months, but certainly not years.  The only plausible explanation for this kind of commodity activity is a weakening of the currency it is directly tied to.  The petrodollar is slowly but surely coming to an end.
I believe the next market exodus may be triggered by the weakening effects of stimulus (or the removal of stimulus altogether) along with extreme energy prices cause by steady inflation and a global political crisis in the near future.
China, being strangely and consistently prophetic when it comes to economic calamity, has recently established an astonishing oil trade deal with Russia, which plans to supply China with an alternative petroleum source for the next 25 years. (This news went almost completely unnoticed by the mainstream media.)
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2013/06/22/russia-inks-big-china-oil-deal/?partner=yahootix
Now, keep in mind that in 2010, China and Russia signed an agreement completely removing the U.S. dollar in bilateral trade. The dollar has been the world reserve and the only currency used to purchase petroleum for decades. The Russia/China oil deal changes everything. It sets a trend toward the removal of the petrodollar function of the Greenback which ultimately destroys any credibility the currency has left. This news flies in the face of dollar proponents who consistently claim that the dollar's ties to oil make it invincible. Apparently, there are some weaknesses in the armor.
Ongoing social unrest in Egypt has also made oil markets jumpy, being that the Suez Canal oversees the transfer of a significant portion of the world’s oil shipping.  Clearly, there are two opposing factions within the country vying for power, and regardless of who is best suited to U.S. interests, the Egyptian people overall have no love for the West.  There is a distinct chance of a shooting war, similar to Syria, in the coming months in Egypt.
Meanwhile, the engineered conflict in Syria continues to go exactly as I predicted in my article 'The Terrible Future Of The Syrian War'.
http://www.alt-market.com/articles/1535-the-terrible-future-of-the-syrian-war
Syria remains an explosive trigger point for regional war which will, in the end, draw in Iran and result in the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which annually handles the shipping of about 20 percent of the world’s oil. All trends point toward higher gas prices over the horizon, and the U.S. economy is barely able to survive on the cost of energy we have today.
So Close They Can’t See It
Reduced stimulus combined with adversely high oils prices may very well be the tumbling boulders that bring down the mountain. We are close now. Beyond the undeniable economic factors, the very fabric of American government is crumbling. Corruption is openly rampant. Scandals are exposed daily. The establishment leadership is unapologetic and grows even more despotic with each truth that escapes into the open air. They are becoming MORE bold, not less bold, and those of us who seek transparency in all things, from politics, to economics, to surveillance, are being attacked as the source of the problem rather than the solution.
Collapse, from a historical perspective, seems to occur when the searchlights of the individual mind are dimmest, when the threat is the greatest, and when we are most comfortable in our ignorance. In 2008, the U.S. public was mostly oblivious to the danger, and they were painfully stung. Today, I hope that the liberty movement, the alternative media, and alternative economic analysts have created a window of opportunity by which millions of people can this time see the writing on the wall and prepare accordingly. At this point, there is no question that Americans have been warned. Whether or not they pay heed, is out of our hands.




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Alt-Market is an organization designed to help you find like-minded activists and preppers in your local area so that you can network and construct communities for mutual aid and defense.  Join Alt-Market.com today and learn what it means to step away from the system and build something better.
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New studies: ‘Conspiracy theorists’ sane; government dupes crazy, hostile

 

Recent studies by psychologists and social scientists in the US and UK suggest that contrary to mainstream media stereotypes, those labeled “conspiracy theorists” appear to be saner than those who accept the official versions of contested events.

 

 

The most recent study was published on July 8th by psychologists Michael J. Wood and Karen M. Douglas of the University of Kent (UK). Entitled “What about Building 7? A social psychological study of online discussion of 9/11 conspiracy theories,” the study compared “conspiracist” (pro-conspiracy theory) and “conventionalist” (anti-conspiracy) comments at news websites.


The authors were surprised to discover that it is now more conventional to leave so-called conspiracist comments than conventionalist ones: “Of the 2174 comments collected, 1459 were coded as conspiracist and 715 as conventionalist.” In other words, among people who comment on news articles, those who disbelieve government accounts of such events as 9/11 and the JFK assassination outnumber believers by more than two to one. That means it is the pro-conspiracy commenters who are expressing what is now the conventional wisdom, while the anti-conspiracy commenters are becoming a small, beleaguered minority.

Perhaps because their supposedly mainstream views no longer represent the majority, the anti-conspiracy commenters often displayed anger and hostility: “The research… showed that people who favoured the official account of 9/11 were generally more hostile when trying to persuade their rivals.”


Additionally, it turned out that the anti-conspiracy people were not only hostile, but fanatically attached to their own conspiracy theories as well. According to them, their own theory of 9/11 – a conspiracy theory holding that 19 Arabs, none of whom could fly planes with any proficiency, pulled off the crime of the century under the direction of a guy on dialysis in a cave in Afghanistan – was indisputably true. The so-called conspiracists, on the other hand, did not pretend to have a theory that completely explained the events of 9/11: “For people who think 9/11 was a government conspiracy, the focus is not on promoting a specific rival theory, but in trying to debunk the official account.”


In short, the new study by Wood and Douglas suggests that the negative stereotype of the conspiracy theorist – a hostile fanatic wedded to the truth of his own fringe theory – accurately describes the people who defend the official account of 9/11, not those who dispute it.


Additionally, the study found that so-called conspiracists discuss historical context (such as viewing the JFK assassination as a precedent for 9/11) more than anti-conspiracists. It also found that the so-called conspiracists to not like to be called “conspiracists” or “conspiracy theorists.”

Both of these findings are amplified in the new book Conspiracy Theory in America by political scientist Lance deHaven-Smith, published earlier this year by the University of Texas Press. Professor deHaven-Smith explains why people don’t like being called “conspiracy theorists”: The term was invented and put into wide circulation by the CIA to smear and defame people questioning the JFK assassination! “The CIA’s campaign to popularize the term ‘conspiracy theory’ and make conspiracy belief a target of ridicule and hostility must be credited, unfortunately, with being one of the most successful propaganda initiatives of all time.”


In other words, people who use the terms “conspiracy theory” and “conspiracy theorist” as an insult are doing so as the result of a well-documented, undisputed, historically-real conspiracy by the CIA to cover up the JFK assassination. That campaign, by the way, was completely illegal, and the CIA officers involved were criminals; the CIA is barred from all domestic activities, yet routinely breaks the law to conduct domestic operations ranging from propaganda to assassinations.


DeHaven-Smith also explains why those who doubt official explanations of high crimes are eager to discuss historical context. He points out that a very large number of conspiracy claims have turned out to be true, and that there appear to be strong relationships between many as-yet-unsolved “state crimes against democracy.” An obvious example is the link between the JFK and RFK assassinations, which both paved the way for presidencies that continued the Vietnam War. According to DeHaven-Smith, we should always discuss the “Kennedy assassinations” in the plural, because the two killings appear to have been aspects of the same larger crime.


Psychologist Laurie Manwell of the University of Guelph agrees that the CIA-designed “conspiracy theory” label impedes cognitive function. She points out, in an article published in American Behavioral Scientist (2010), that anti-conspiracy people are unable to think clearly about such apparent state crimes against democracy as 9/11 due to their inability to process information that conflicts with pre-existing belief.
In the same issue of ABS, University of Buffalo professor Steven Hoffman adds that anti-conspiracy people are typically prey to strong “confirmation bias” – that is, they seek out information that confirms their pre-existing beliefs, while using irrational mechanisms (such as the “conspiracy theory” label) to avoid conflicting information.


The extreme irrationality of those who attack “conspiracy theories” has been ably exposed by Communications professors Ginna Husting and Martin Orr of Boise State University. In a 2007 peer-reviewed article entitled“Dangerous Machinery: ‘Conspiracy Theorist’ as a Transpersonal Strategy of Exclusion,” they wrote:

“If I call you a conspiracy theorist, it matters little whether you have actually claimed that a conspiracy exists or whether you have simply raised an issue that I would rather avoid… By labeling you, I strategically exclude you from the sphere where public speech, debate, and conflict occur.”

But now, thanks to the internet, people who doubt official stories are no longer excluded from public conversation; the CIA’s 44-year-old campaign to stifle debate using the “conspiracy theory” smear is nearly worn-out. In academic studies, as in comments on news articles, pro-conspiracy voices are now more numerous – and more rational – than anti-conspiracy ones.
No wonder the anti-conspiracy people are sounding more and more like a bunch of hostile, paranoid cranks.

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How to Survive the Empire

Guest post By Gabriel Roberts

It takes very little today to get many of us into froth over global injustice, the rape of the earth, the bombing of children, the mistreatment of captives; the list goes on and on.  It is as if we are in some kind of violent squeeze, penance for past sins, or just wicked men behaving wickedly. 

Regardless of whom or what is behind the endless cavalcade of charred carcasses, those of us who look on in horror feel a sense of grief; inability to change as if we were in the middle of a living, breathing night terror from which we cannot awake.  But how do we fight this beast of a million heads that mines our hearts for the last drop of fear and anxiety it can draw until we collapse, punctured and poisoned by its necrotizing fangs?

If ever there was a growing sense that we are still under the rule of a malevolent empire, that time is now.

Phillip K. Dick wrote a manic and brilliant exegesis; his very own cosmology.  And whether we choose to look at it as total insanity, or a divine inspiration, there are a few points that struck me deeply as I read them:

41. The Empire is the institution, the codification, of derangement; it is insane and imposes its insanity on us by violence, since its nature is a violent one.
 42. To fight the Empire is to be infected by its derangement. This is a paradox: whoever defeats a segment of the Empire becomes the Empire; it proliferates like a virus, imposing its form on its enemies. Thereby it becomes its enemies.

 These two points beg the question, ‘How do we fight something that through fighting will turn us into the very thing we oppose?’  This the riddle of every peace activist out there, how to stand against something so vile as to never lash out and fight fire with fire.  How can we Obi Wan Kenobi-ify ourselves to become unstoppable against this empire?
It would seem that we mustn’t approach this beast on it’s own terms, but must change the way we see the world and therefore become transfigured into something that the beast cannot reach.   But we cannot do this until we understand the nature of the reality in which we live and therefore look for the hacks and loopholes that will allow us to not be vandalized as others might be:

48. ON OUR NATURE. It is proper to say: we appear to be memory coils (DNA carriers capable of experience) in a computer-like thinking system which, although we have correctly recorded and stored thousands of years of experiental information, and each of us possesses somewhat different deposits from all the other life forms, there is a malfunction — a failure – of memory retrieval . There lies the trouble in our particular subcircuit. ‘Salvation’ through gnosis — more properly anamnesis (the loss of amnesia) — although it has individual significance for each of us — a quantum leap in perception, identity, cognition, understanding, world- and self-experience, including immortality — it has greater and further importance for the system as a whole, inasmuch as these memories are data needed by it and valuable to it, to its overall functioning.

 So if we are (in theory) indeed part of a simulated reality, then we must consider what it all really means.  Are the bad guys in your video game coming to murder you in your sleep?  When you die in the video game, does it trouble you in your ‘real life’?

We can call this reality many things:  A holograph  (Stanislav Grof), a video game (Tom Campbell, The Edge Bros), A ride (Bill Hicks), Maya or Doxa (Eastern and Greek thought respectively), but no matter how we see it, there seems to be a consensus that it isn’t really REAL; we are here doing something for some purpose (which is up for discussion what that is) and yet our hearts and minds tell us it’s not everything that there is to experience.  Our psychedelic experiences show us something different, our spiritual leaders tell us something different and yet we cling so hard to this illusion that we can’t sleep at night.
What to do, what to do?

Realize to the core of your being that this life is yours; you can do amazing things.  You can do impossible things, you can change the world, but it all begins with yourself.  Of course many of you know this and will scoff that I might be preaching to the choir (Disinfonauts are known to be really clever!), but I know that if I might need this frequent reminder, than many others might as well.

My dear readers, all the craziness you see and hear takes your breath away and breaks your heart, but it is all a strange necessity. It’s like the the squeeze of birth pains, a constriction and a purge.  I don’t know what tomorrow brings, but as long as good people like us are here to bring light to the dark, we are still the winners. In fact, we win, no matter what; whether battered and bruised or somehow unscathed. We win. Love wins, truth wins. Freedom wins. Remember your own power and use it to change our reality.

Ammo shortage inspires new DIY hobby: 'reloading'

The latest DIY craft trend is being led by Jason Welsh, a knowledgeable young man in Houston, Texas at Houston Processed Brass . It's the hot new thing amongst gun owners, who have taken to making their own bullets due to a nationwide shortage. Jason understands reloading and it's merits from every angle.

With gun control featuring heavily in current political discourse, Americans are stock-piling their ammo. Prices have gone up and supplies have gone down. So more shooters are getting into the hobby known as "reloading," NPR reports. In order to increase deliveries of its most popular types of ammunition and bullets, the Hornady company announced that it will temporarily suspend production of 150 bullet types and 150 ammo types.

"The cost of ammo off the shelf is outrageous right now," says one reloading enthusiast. "So if I can reload my own ammo, it's gonna cut costs and make shooting a little more cheaper."

Based in Houston Texas. Years ago, Jason Welsh wanted to learn reloading and when he got into it, other people he knew did too. Problem was, that most of them didn't have the time to do all of the case preparation, or did not want to spend the money needed to get all the equipment needed to do so. So they came to Jason and he reconditioned their brass. One of his friends eventually suggested that he do this for others to supplement his income. So he invested in some Commercial grade reconditioning equipment and deiced to start his business. Now that ammunition is hard to find at affordable prices, more and more people are turning to reloading. This is a great time to get into reloading. Who knows how long this ammo shortage is going to last.

For all your reloading questions Call Jason Welsh at  832-208-2204 or
email him at HoustonProcessedBrass@gmail.com
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Police Gone Wild and Terrorizing America

Guest Post By Mike Adams of NaturalNews.com

America is rapidly devolving into the oppressive police state we've been warning readers about. Right now, cops are exhibiting thuggish, out-of-control "mafia" behavior as they run loose across America, terrorizing innocent citizens, shooting up the vehicles of people who are merely driving cars on public roadways, taking warrantless blood draws from drivers, shooting pet dogs of people who are merely filming police, raiding farmers at gunpoint over raw milk and terrorizing young women for buying bottled water and cookie dough.

All of these are real and happening right now in America. The cause behind them? Police are being "militarized" through federal training while being given weapons of war through federal grants. Police departments across the country are now being handed armored assault vehicles, surveillance drones and full-auto assault rifles. Along with this equipment comes a training and engagement posture that is increasingly aggressive and militaristic, subjecting more and more Americans to the kind of "theater of war" engagement tactics that the U.S. military would typically use at a roadblock in Afghanistan, for example. (See latest example, below.)

Military tactics and equipment now used by your local police

 "In recent years, police departments have widely adopted military tactics, military equipment (armored personnel carriers, flash-bang grenades) -- and, sometimes, the mindset of military conquerors rather than domestic peacekeepers," writes TimesDispatch.com.

President Obama famously said, during the gun control debate of 2012, that, "AK-47s belong in the hands of soldiers, not on the streets of America." Yet it is his administration that's putting weapons of war on the streets of America via local police departments. By arming police and training police in the hardware and tactics of military warfare, the Obama administrations is doing an end-run around Posse Comitatus and effectively putting wartime troops on the streets of America.

As part of all this, federal law enforcement have been training with so-called "no hesitation targets" that train them to instinctively shoot pregnant women, children, young moms and old men. These targets -- whose existence was first denied, and then downplayed when the denials didn't work -- offer irrefutable proof that the corrupt, criminal government currently running the USA is actively planning to engage women, children and senior citizens with weapons of war.

This is, of course, on top of the long-confirmed two billion rounds of ammunition the Department of Homeland Security has ordered (and partially acquired) in an attempt to stockpile enough ammunition for a twenty-year war with the American people. Once again, this stockpiling of hollow-point ammo by DHS was first denied, then downplayed, and now has been called a "conspiracy theory" even thought it is confirmed by the federal government iself which says it needs the ammo for "training purposes."

The IRS is now being trained with AR-15 rifles, and DHS has also purchased thousands of armored assault vehicles that are mine resistant and bulletproof.

Meanwhile, the Boston marathon bombing proved that local police will now act completely outside of law and initiate Martial Law in a manhunt for a teenager. It wasn't declared Martial Law, of course... it was called "shelter in place," meaning you could not leave your homes. Once the lockdown was in place, Boston police went door to door, yanking citizens out of their homes at gunpoint, screaming at them to put their hands up or be shot on sight. This was all done completely without any warrant or any suspicion of wrongdoing on the part of homeowners.

It later turned out that the entire Boston marathon bombing was meticulously planned in advanced by the Boston police and was run as a "terror drill" to terrorize Boston and give the police some much-needed practice in running a police state oppression scenario. This is all 100% confirmed and openly admitted. Even the Boston Globe reported, on June 8th:

The scenario had been carefully planned: A terrorist group prepared to hurt vast numbers of people around Boston would leave backpacks filled with explosives at Faneuil Hall, the Seaport District, and in other towns, spreading waves of panic and fear. Detectives would have to catch the culprits. ... But two months before the training exercise was to take place, the city was hit with a real terrorist attack executed in a frighteningly similar fashion.

Now, apparently, local law enforcement can simply utter the word "manhunt!" and completely ignore all citizens' rights, the Bill of Rights, due process and state and federal law. Police have become rogue gangs with complete immunity from all crimes even while they are the ones committing crimes on a massive scale. They can pull you over for no crime whatsoever, stick their fingers inside your anus and call it a "roadside search" while using the same glove on you that they just used on somebody else's anus. (True story. Click here for source.)


Police terrorize 20-year-old girl for buying bottled water and cookie dough

 The latest example of the terror being dished out by local police operations is found in the story of Ann Downey, a young girl whose vehicle was assaulted by plain clothed "undercover" police who she thought were trying to carjack her.

It is very important to listen to the audio of Ann's 911 call begging for help as she and her friend were rushed by six men with guns:





It turns out Ann Downey was being terrorized by members of Virginia's Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC), which apparently consists of trigger-happy police who are so bored out of their minds that they can think of nothing more useful to do than terrorize young women for buying cookie dough.

Imagine the scene: You're getting into your car after buying some cookie dough, then suddenly six non-uniformed men rush your car and start screaming at you while wielding guns. At least one of the undercover officers drew his weapon, according to media reports.

Am I the only one here who might have pulled out my own gun and started shooting in self defense, believing my life to be in extreme danger by a rogue gang of armed criminals who were aggressively rushing my vehicle?

As far as I'm concerned, these ABC goons are lucky they didn't get shot, and if they had been shot, it would be hard to argue that the woman wasn't exercising her right to self defense in shooting them.

It's important to note here that the driver of the vehicle, named Elizabeth Daly, was charged with three felonies. In a statement posted online, Daly said:

"This has been an extremely trying experience and one that has called into question what I value most: my integrity, honor and character. ...Cookie dough and ice cream for a fundraiser should not put you through an extremely degrading night and afternoon in jail, appearing in court, posting bond, having to pay an attorney ...not allowed to leave the state, causing you endless nights of no sleep, [a]ffecting your school work and final exams, wondering if you would be dismissed from school, wondering how this would damage your reputation and ability to get a job, all while waiting on pins and needles to see what the Commonwealth is going to offer you."

See the interactive map of paramilitary police raids taking place across America

Here's a map showing just some of the paramilitary police raids and attacks on American citizens:



To see the full map with interactive pop-ups, visit:

http://www.cato.org/raidmap

As you view the map above, keep in mind how widespread these events really are. Just last week in Nevada, a couple filed suit against local police there, claiming they were raided and shot with "pepperball rounds" by police that wanted to use their home as a stakeout location. For refusing this demand, the couple were shot at and then arrested for "obstructing justice."

As the lawsuit reads:

[Police officers] conspired among themselves to force Anthony Mitchell out of his residence and to occupy his home for their own use. It was determined to move to [the home address] and attempt to contact Mitchell. If Mitchell answered the door he would be asked to leave. If he refused to leave he would be arrested for Obstructing a Police Officer. If Mitchell refused to answer the door, force entry would be made and Mitchell would be arrested.

Seconds later, officers, including Officer Rockwell, smashed open plaintiff Anthony Mitchell's front door with a metal ram as plaintiff stood in his living room. As plaintiff Anthony Mitchell stood in shock, the officers aimed their weapons at Anthony Mitchell and shouted obscenities at him and ordered him to lie down on the floor. Officers, including Officer David Cawthorn, then fired multiple pepperball rounds at plaintiff as he lay defenseless on the floor of his living room. Anthony Mitchell was struck at least three times by shots fired from close range, injuring him and causing him severe pain. Officers then arrested him for obstructing a police officer, searched the house and moved furniture without his permission and set up a place in his home for a lookout.

This is America? Think again...

When do Americans stand up and say, "Enough!"

So here's the question: At what point will Americans realize their country has become a Stasi-inspired police state tyranny? When will they march on their state capitols and demand to be treated with dignity and respect rather than being beaten, shot, arrested, intimidated and censored by police?

And I ask this question as a supporter of local law enforcement. I've worked with police, trained with police and volunteered with police. I know that most police officers across the country are honorable men and women who are trying their best to keep the peace. But the number of "good" police seems to be shrinking while the number of "rogue" cops is on the rise.

This highly disturbing trend is an intentional one put in place by the Obama administration that's trying to militarize police all across the nation in a run-up to something very, very big: an event that is expected to cause nationwide rioting and social unrest.

Why else would DHS buy 2+ billion rounds of ammunition, bulletproof roadside checkpoint booths, armored assault vehicles and full-auto assault rifles? Why else would police be trained to shoot pregnant women, children and senior citizens on sight? Why else would the government be spying on every phone call, email and text of every U.S. citizen right now?

We are living under a nightmare Big Brother police state right now, and it's not an accident. This has all been brought in for a specific purpose: to first acclimate the public to a police state presence (hence the TSA security pat-downs), and then to activate that police infrastructure to engage in the mass-arrest or mass-murder of Americans.

The American people are asleep at the wheel while tyranny encircles them


This will happen as long as Americans allow it to happen. Every day that the American people spend distracted by gay marriage, sports celebrities, TV programs and the Kardashians is another day that the criminal elite running this country build up their infrastructure of terror and oppression against the People.

While Americans are hypnotized into a state of delusional denial by CNN and the New York Times, the Obama administration is strangling freedom to death with a determined rollout of total surveillance, actual death squads that target journalists, the criminalization of whistleblowing, the targeting of reporters in the mainstream media, the intimidation of patriot groups by the IRS and a hundred other forms of oppression, intimidation and blackmail.

What we are witnessing here is a government gone completely criminal. This is a government that now openly kidnapped the President of Bolivia on the off chance that his airplane might have been carrying Ed Snowden. This is the government that openly admits to the existence of secret kill lists that target American citizens for assassination. This is the government that runs the world's largest surveillance spy program which even spies on ally nations like Germany and France.

Trickle-down tyranny
 
The U.S. government abides by no law and respects no limits whatsoever to its power. It is a rogue, out-of-control criminal mafia that has taken over positions of government in order to grant itself the appearance of authority.

It is this mafia mentality that's trickling down to local police departments in the form of aggressive tactical training, armored assault vehicles and even police uniforms which now look like something torn right out of a dystopian, Orwellian sci-fi flick depicting a dark future.

I coined the term "Trickle-Down Tyranny" in 2011. The phrase was later picked up by Michael Savage and became the title of his book by the same name.

Since 2011, Savage himself has become increasingly outspoken about the rise of tyrannical government, the oppression of freedom in America, and the dangerous tactics of intimidation and oppression being practiced by police nationwide.

Everyone can see what's happening: America is turning into an occupied police state. Individual freedoms are bring crushed. All the rights guaranteed under the Bill of Rights are being systematically destroyed by design. The Obama administration is rapidly becoming the Orwellian dictator we all feared might one day rise up in America, yet half of America remains too far gone to open their eyes and realize what's happening.

And so the injustices are allowed to accelerate to the point where innocent Americans are being routinely terrorized by law enforcement. While the guilty run free, the innocent are targeted for shakedowns, arrest or beatings.

This is the death of freedom in America. You are watching the destruction of the Land of the Free and the rise of Obama's tyrannical regime.

If you and millions of others do not rise up against this, you may one day find yourself collapsed on your knees, looking over a large ditch of fresh bodies while a "police officer" holds a pistol to the back of your head and pulls the trigger.

You, like hundreds of millions before you, are about to become another statistical victim of government gone bad. Throughout history, rogue governments have murdered at least 260 million people. And it all began with precisely the same process we are seeing unfold in America today.

Rise up or be exterminated.


About the author: Mike Adams is an award-winning journalist and holistic nutritionist with a passion for sharing empowering information to help improve personal and planetary health He has authored more than 1,800 articles and dozens of reports, guides and interviews on natural health topics, and he has published numerous courses on preparedness and survival, including financial preparedness, emergency food supplies, urban survival and tactical self-defense. Adams is a trusted, independent journalist who receives no money or promotional fees whatsoever to write about other companies' products. In 2010, Adams created TV.NaturalNews.com, a natural living video sharing site featuring thousands of user videos on foods, fitness, green living and more. He also launched an online retailer of environmentally-friendly products (BetterLifeGoods.com) and uses a portion of its profits to help fund non-profit endeavors. He's also the founder of a well known HTML email software company whose 'Email Marketing Director' software currently runs the NaturalNews subscription database. Adams volunteers his time to serve as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, and regularly pursues cycling, nature photography, Capoeira and Pilates. Known by his callsign, the 'Health Ranger,' Adams posts his missions statements, health statistics and health photos at www.HealthRanger.org

Seventy-two killed resisting gun confiscation in Boston!

Boston – National Guard units seeking to confiscate a cache of recently banned assault weapons were ambushed by elements of a Para-military extremist faction.

Military and law enforcement sources estimate that 72 were killed and more than 200 injured before government forces were compelled to withdraw.


Speaking after the clash, Massachusetts Governor Thomas Gage declared that the extremist faction, which was made up of local citizens, has links to the radical right-wing tax protest movement.

Gage blamed the extremists for recent incidents of vandalism directed against internal revenue offices. The governor, who described the group’s organizers as “criminals,” issued an executive order authorizing the summary arrest of any individual who has interfered with the government’s efforts to secure law and order.
The military raid on the extremist arsenal followed wide-spread refusal by the local citizenry to turn over recently outlawed assault weapons.

Gage issued a ban on military-style assault weapons and ammunition earlier in the week. This decision followed a meeting in early this month between government and military leaders at which the governor authorized the forcible confiscation of illegal arms.

One government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, pointed out that “none of these people would have been killed had the extremists obeyed the law and turned over their weapons voluntarily.”
Government troops initially succeeded in confiscating a large supply of outlawed weapons and ammunition. However, troops attempting to seize arms and ammunition in Lexington met with resistance from heavily-armed extremists who had been tipped off regarding the government’s plans.

During a tense standoff in the Lexington town park, National Guard Colonel Francis Smith, commander of the government operation, ordered the armed group to surrender and return to their homes. The impasse was broken by a single shot, which was reportedly fired by one of the right-wing extremists.
Eight civilians were killed in the ensuing exchange.

Ironically, the local citizenry blamed government forces rather than the extremists for the civilian deaths. Before order could be restored, armed citizens from surrounding areas had descended upon the guard units. Colonel Smith, finding his forces over matched by the armed mob, ordered a retreat.
Governor Gage has called upon citizens to support the state/national joint task force in its effort to restore law and order. The governor also demanded the surrender of those responsible for planning and leading the attack against the government troops.

Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, and John Hancock, who have been identified as “ringleaders” of the extremist faction, remain at large.

And this fellow Americans, is how the American Revolution began, April 20, 1775.

On July 4th, 1776 these same extremists signed the Declaration of Independence, pledging to each other and their countrymen their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor. Many of them lost everything, including their families and their lives over the course of the next few years.
Lest we forget…

Original post

Who Were the Patriots and Traitors in Nazi Germany?

Guest Post By Jacob G. Hornberger

Ever since I was a kid, I have heard Americans ask, “How could the German people have allowed the Nazi regime to commit its evil acts?”
Well, here’s the answer to that question: The German people had the same warped and distorted concept of patriotism that American statists have today.

The overwhelming majority of German citizens believed that it was their moral duty to come to the unconditional support of their government in time of crisis, especially when the nation went to war. The good citizen didn’t question whether his government was right or wrong. The good citizen placed his trust in the judgment and decisions of his government officials, especially during crisis and war.

That’s what patriotism meant to the German people during the 1930s and 1940s. The good citizen — the one who deferred to authority — was considered the patriot.

What about German citizens who refused to defer to authority, those who had an independent mindset — those who would examine government policies with a critical eye — those who would question, challenge, and object to wrongful government policies? They were considered bad citizens — traitors.

The best example of this phenomenon involves the story of the White Rose, an organization composed predominantly of German college students. If you haven’t seen the movie Sophie Scholl: The Final Days, I highly recommend it. Sophie Scholl, along with her brother Hans, were members of the White Rose.
If you do see the movie, pay particular attention to the trial scene in which the presiding judge, Roland Freisler, comes down hard on the defendants Hans and Sophie Scholl. You’ll notice something apropos to today: Freisler’s mindset is the same as that of American statists today who are condemning Edward Snowden. In Freisler’s mind, the Scholl siblings were bad Germans. They were traitors. Their parents had raised them to be despicable creatures.

What had the Scholl siblings done? What was their “crime”? They had taken a critical look at their own government in the midst of World War II. They had concluded that their own government was in the wrong — that it was engaged in wrongful conduct. Knowing that they were risking their lives or liberty, they violated the law by secretly publishing and distributing a set of pamphlets called “The White Rose,” in which they exhorted the German people to rise up, stop the wrongdoing, and set Germany on a correct path.
They were caught, primarily owing to the Nazi regime’s extensive surveillance system over the German people. A college janitor saw them tossing White Rose pamphlets into the school courtyard and, being the good, little citizen he was, locked the doors and called the Gestapo. Hitler and his cohorts considered him a patriot.

Not surprisingly, Hans and Sophie Scholl were quickly convicted and executed at the guillotine for treason. After all, the law is the law and citizens are expected to obey the law, as American statists never cease to remind us in the case of Edward Snowden.

By the way, I would be remiss if I failed to mention that the Scholl trial did not take place in the regular German courts. After the terrorist attack on the Reichstag, and after some of the accused in that terrorism case had been acquitted, Hitler established a special tribunal called “The People’s Court” to try terrorism cases and treason cases. Its purpose? To ensure that no more accused terrorists and traitors got acquitted.
Another interesting World War II movie is Downfall, which is about Hitler’s last days in his Berlin bunker. The movie revolves around his young secretary Traudl Junge. At the end of the movie, the real Traudl Junge is shown making a statement. She points out that when she accepted the job as Hitler’s secretary, the last thing on her mind was that she was doing anything wrong.

After all, Junge embraced the same concept of patriotism that most other Germans embraced — the same type that American statists today embrace. Her job, as a good German citizen, was to come to the support of her government, especially during crises and war.

But Junge pointed out in Downfall that when she learned about the Scholl siblings after the war, she realized that she should have been asking the same types of questions that Hans and Sophie Scholl had asked. When she learned about Hans and Sophie Scholl, her concept of patriotism changed.

Today, American statists are condemning Edward Snowden for breaking the law and violating his oath as a government subcontractor to keep secret from the American people the massive surveillance scheme that the national-security state has secretly imposed on Americans and on much of the rest of the world. Statists are saying that Snowden is a bad citizen and a bad person. They’re calling him a traitor. They saying that he needs to be put on trial, perhaps even before the national-security state’s special tribunal system at Guantanamo Bay.

Where does conscience play into the American statist’s concept of patriotism and treason? For the statist, conscience must be subordinated to the needs of the national-security state. All that matters to the statist is the undying loyalty that national-security state employees, contractors, and subcontractors (and American citizens) owe to the national-security state apparatus and to their oath to protect its secrets.
For the statist, the national-security state is everything. It is god. It is daddy. It is big brother. Everything else, including conscience, must be subordinated to “national security” and to the national-security state’s oaths, laws, rules, and regulations.

The battle lines are forming in the case of Edward Snowden.

On the one side are the statists, for whom patriotism means an unconditional pledge of allegiance to the national-security state and its deep and dark nefarious secrets involving grave infringements on liberty and privacy.

On the other side are the libertarians and a few liberals and conservatives, for whom conscience and freedom reign supreme.

Time will tell which side wins out. Time will tell which direction America heads in.


 Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. He has advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the country as well as on Fox News’ Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows and he appeared as a regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s show Freedom Watch. View these interviews at LewRockwell.com and from Full Context. Send him email.