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Obama’s Attack on "Fake News" (Videos)

https://youtu.be/wMomFFqt4iY



NB Commentary: This guy! We are being hoodwinked again with this proposition that we need “Big Brother” to censor “Fake News”!
No, we don’t need discernment.
We don’t need our own ability to sort through and sift through the BS.
No we are not mature enough or able to critically think for ourselves.
We need to have it done for us.
So, under the guise of protecting Democracy, whose greatest tenet is freedom of speech, let’s start sorting through the “Fake News”, shut them down, censor them on social media and decide for the ignorant masses what they need to or don’t need to know, read or discern.
Facebook, you fail at doing this for the masses.
Twitter, you are so awful we need to tell you what to keep out of your feeds.
Oh, we won’t look at the color revolutions that took place because of social media. In fact, when they happened we were cheering and jumping up and down about how wonderful it was that we were able to use social media to get the word out in a moments notice. People on the streets in mass, like never before.
And when we were able to get the word out on social media about the never ending threats posed by ISIS and their (fake) beheadings, we were very confident that the viewing public would be certain that what they were seeing was true. Without a doubt.

Let’s go all the way back to the Bin Laden videos while we are at it. Or how about 9/11 CGI.  That news was so real we were able to go to war on it and kill millions of people.
I am not talking about the “news” that accused Assad of gassing his own people and the picture of the dead bodies that turned out to be “fake” news. 
No, it doesn’t apply when the government is behind the propaganda. It is just when the alt-right and alt-left do not parrot the party line, that’s when we need to determine which one of those characters are faking it till they make it.
Hillary started this ball rolling when she spoke out against Info-Wars and Brietbart.
The major networks did their stories so well that when the Donald won, they were shocked!!! So who faked those polls? Certainly not alternative media. In fact it was there that folks could get the real news.

These people are always coming up with some way to counter a movement when it is not in their favor, but will surely feel really happy about a movement that is in their favor.

The majority of folks, especially here in America, barely read any other news except what comes from mainstream. They believe the lies the MSM tells them that is blasted at them thru their televisions. If you mention to them something that was not on Television, a counter perspective or simply a different one, they look at you like you have 2 heads, they dismiss you as a kook or a conspiracy theorist.

So this is an attack on Democracy! This is censorship! This is a big fat lie, to say freedom of speech needs to be monitored and by whom may I ask. Will the government get a think tank together to determine who’s fake and who’s not? According to what criteria??
The more things change, the more they stay the same.

What’s going on? Both Internet companies claim they’re changing their advertising policy to counter misinformation, indicating they’ll monitor content to assure it. Is censorship intended instead? Will reliable information sources challenging the official narrative be targeted? Will other similar online companies operate the same way? 

Is net neutrality threatened? Is online freedom and openness at risk – content available without restrictions, limitations, or discrimination, a level playing field for everyone, the essence of democratic free expression?

A pre-election article discussed covert Google support for Hillary – its searches rigged for her, a way to sway undecided voters to choose her over Trump, while suppressing negative search terms about her.

Media scoundrels, Google, Facebook, and similar online operations and powerful tools for what power brokers want disseminated, restricting or blocking content they want suppressed.

Speech, press and academic freedoms are vital elements of free societies. Without them all other rights are endangered.

We the poor sheeple, who read newspapers, watch television and get our news from social media, may be in peril when it comes to being able to determine what is really going on in our world. I guess they see how easily we can be lead astray, in fact, haven’t they done it more times than we can count.

The history of this country is over populated with propaganda to support an agenda. Let’s just start with the profusion of false flags for starters. However, what they did not expect was that outlets like Facebook and Twitter, which they thought they could manage by infiltrating them with CIA agents, has gotten off the ground running faster than the speed of light, and too fast for them to keep up with, so now we need to crack down on them more and more, because Democracy is now in peril, as if this was ever a Democracy anyway.

How many times have folks been censored or demonized because they offered an alternative perspective to what the MSM has given us? How often has policies, laws and codes been instituted based on what was given to us in the MSM? How many times did they “Wag the Dog” to make a  point and affect public sentiment? Not the so called “fake news” outlets but the so called “Real News”, the mainstream Media.

Now, social media, has become a runaway locomotive and it is not doing what they initially thought it would do. It is allowing folks to fact check, to research, to look deeper into the narrative that is being given by the MSM and now it’s a threat.
Ironically, these outlets have been censoring content since before he felt threatened by it. They have also been moving content around so that it could be viewed under circumstances that would get the most traction. People have resorted to the Blogosphere in order to get the news out due to the already entrench censorship.

So what are we looking at here?
YouTube, creating a rewards program to encourage folks to become “flaggers” of content.
Facebook dropping folks into the Facebook jail and giving police access to the ability to shut down your live stream.
And Twitter, stopping content from being in their streams.
Is he just parroting what is already taking place. Or does his words sanction it?
Forget the BS around Democracy or fake news threatening. Has fake news become the new ISIS?
I really hadn’t intended on ranting on this one, but hypocrisy really gets me hyped!!

“In an age where there’s so much active misinformation ― and it’s packaged very well, and it looks the same when you see it on a Facebook page or you turn on your television ― where some overzealousness on the part of, you know, a U.S. official is equated with constant and severe repression elsewhere, if everything seems to be the same, and no distinctions are made, then we won’t know what to protect,” Obama said.

“We won’t know what to fight for, and we can lose so much of what we’ve gained in terms of the kind of democratic freedoms and market-based economies and prosperity that we’ve come to take for granted,” he added.

Marina Fang  Associate Politics Editor, The Huffington Post

President Barack Obama on Thursday pointed to the profusion of fake news on social media as a sign that people should not take democracy for granted.
In a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Obama warned that the ease with which people can promulgate fraudulent news stories threatens basic democratic principles.
“In an age where there’s so much active misinformation ― and it’s packaged very well, and it looks the same when you see it on a Facebook page or you turn on your television ― where some overzealousness on the part of, you know, a U.S. official is equated with constant and severe repression elsewhere, if everything seems to be the same, and no distinctions are made, then we won’t know what to protect,” Obama said.
“We won’t know what to fight for, and we can lose so much of what we’ve gained in terms of the kind of democratic freedoms and market-based economies and prosperity that we’ve come to take for granted,” he added.
Facebook in particular has come under fire for not distinguishing between credible and false news sources, helping to fuel misinformation on political issues and candidates. The site’s algorithm doesn’t filter out articles from websites presenting slanted or blatantly false coverage ― instead, when users post those links, they look as if they were from reliable news outlets. The company announced on Monday that it would take steps to address the problem.
If we can’t discriminate between serious arguments and propaganda, then we have problems.President Barack Obama
In a veiled criticism of President-elect Donald Trump, Obama spoke more broadly on the state of democracies around the world, cautioning both Americans and Europeans to “not take for granted our systems of government and our way of life,” advising that “democracy is hard work.” 
He also urged a greater emphasis on facts and reason.
“If we are not serious about facts and what’s true and what’s not, and particularly in an age of social media, where so many people are getting their information in sound bites and snippets off their phones, if we can’t discriminate between serious arguments and propaganda, then we have problems,” Obama said.
“If people, whether they are conservative or liberal, left or right, are unwilling to compromise and engage in the democratic process and are taking absolutist views and demonizing opponents, then democracy will break down,” he added. “And so I think my most important advice is to understand, what are the foundations of a healthy democracy and how we have to engage in citizenship continuously, not just when something upsets us, not just when there’s an election or when an issue pops up for a few weeks. It’s hard work.”

Fake news threatens democracy, Obama says
Obama, With Angela Merkel in Berlin, Assails Spread of Fake News
Barack Obama on fake news: ‘We have problems’ if we can’t tell the difference
Facebook staff mount secret push to tackle fake news, reports say
Facebook’s failure: did fake news and polarized politics get Trump elected?
Rather than connecting people – as Facebook’s euphoric mission statement claims – the bitter polarization of the social network over the last eighteen months suggests Facebook is actually doing more to divide the world.
In the memo, staffers weighed the pros and cons of accepting an invitation to the G20, if it were extended. On one hand, the meeting just 11 days after the election would “afford you an early and efficient opportunity to evaluate the positions of leaders from other economically important countries,” they wrote.
The report is a work of fiction published by a fake-news website that calls itself Fox News the FB Page. In fact, the parody website has no connection to Fox News whatsoever.  Nor is it a Facebook Page. Nothing published on the site should be taken seriously.
The result of the popular vote is, I’m sure you know, immaterial to the result of the Presidential election – but it carries a undeniable moral weight. Equally obviously, the claim is simply untrue. Clinton will ultimately win between one and two million more votes than Trump.

Category:

abc news, alternative media, bloggers, Brietbart, CNN, Facebook, Fake news, Huffington Post, MSM, msnbc, Reddit, Stumble Upon, twitter

Memorial Day was started by former slaves on May 1, 1865 in Charleston, SC

May 26, 2013
KNOW YOUR HISTORY: Memorial Day was started by former slaves on May, 1, 1865 in Charleston, SC to honor 257 dead Union Soldiers who had been buried in a mass grave in a Confederate prison camp. They dug up the bodies and worked for 2 weeks to give them a proper burial as gratitude for fighting for their freedom. They then held a parade of 10,000 people led by 2,800 Black children where they marched, sang and celebrated.Thanks to Abstrakt Goldsmith for this nugget of history that most of us never learned in school.

To this, I say, why do we fight?? What is it about human nature that makes them believe that they must kill other human beings for their freedom?

The Glory of war is not glorious. Ask those who do fight. The first casualty of war is “Truth”. People are trained, brainwashed and distorted to believe that their leaders who do this to them would not lie to them, would not line their pockets with blood money and would care for them upon their return from the Battlefield.

All to often we see our fellow human beings become inhuman in their acts of warring against other human beings. And then they return home and are given ribbons, ribbons that honor how heroically they “killed” another human being for our “freedom”? The depth of the absurdity and cognitive dissonance is overwhelming. How does creating a war culture, a militarized environment, a police state, a surveillance state a cult of oppression of other human beings, give us freedom?

Our troops have their humanity removed from them as they are trained to believe that killing for freedom is tantamount to Patriotism. Patriotism is tantamount to all previously perceived values and standards. To be Patriotic means to stand by your government, even if it is found to be lying and creating scenarios in which you must risk your life and kill others, conquer others and invade others to maintain your freedom at home. The stalk reality that this aggression breeds more aggression and diminishes humanity to a banal state to me is the result of mass graves and disregard of the humanity of others.

This is not a political, racial, ethnic, national problem, it is a human problem, and it is the human being who continually takes the freedom and sovereignty of other humans in their so-called quest for “freedom” at home. An aerial view of this idiocy could cause humanity to stop and think, what is the purpose of this? Who profits? And more importantly, what is this doing to our basic humanity?  Is it really about defense or is it really about DOMINANCE?

Links and Commentary:There appears to be many variations on this theme and a bit of a debate as to who started what and when. The links below will show the differences in the history and opinions on this.  I think that this story shows the true horrors of war, something that would have been denied or ignored not because the Freedmen acknowledged the fallen soldiers but because of the way those fallen soldiers were treated on American soil.

From Dalp Pearson
Here is a tid-bit of back story on this photograph — Union Cemetery

During the closing days of the Civil War, the area was used as a prisoner-of-war camp. More than two hundred Union soldiers died in the camp and were buried in a mass grave at the site.

Union soldiers were buried behind the old racetrack’s stands near the present intersection of Tenth Ave. and Mary Murray Drive.
In an article titled “The First Decoration Day”, David W. Blight of Yale has written:[3]

“The city was largely abandoned by white residents by late February. Among the first troops to enter and march up Meeting Street singing liberation songs was the 21st U. S. Colored Infantry; their commander accepted the formal surrender of the city.

“Thousands of black Charlestonians, most former slaves, remained in the city and conducted a series of commemorations to declare their sense of the meaning of the war. The largest of these events, and unknown until some extraordinary luck in my recent research, took place on May 1, 1865. During the final year of the war, the Confederates had converted the planters’ horse track, the Washington Race Course and Jockey Club, into an outdoor prison. Union soldiers were kept in horrible conditions in the interior of the track; at least 257 died of exposure and disease and were hastily buried in a mass grave behind the grandstand. Some twenty-eight black workmen went to the site, re-buried the Union dead properly, and built a high fence around the cemetery. They whitewashed the fence and built an archway over an entrance on which they inscribed the words, ‘Martyrs of the Race Course’.

“Then, black Charlestonians in cooperation with white missionaries and teachers, staged an unforgettable parade of 10,000 people on the slaveholders’ race course. The symbolic power of the low-country planter aristocracy’s horse track (where they had displayed their wealth, leisure, and influence) was not lost on the freedpeople. A New York Tribune correspondent witnessed the event, describing ‘a procession of friends and mourners as South Carolina and the United States never saw before.’

“At 9 am on May 1, the procession stepped off led by three thousand black schoolchildren carrying arm loads of roses and singing ‘John Brown’s Body.’ The children were followed by several hundred black women with baskets of flowers, wreaths and crosses. Then came black men marching in cadence, followed by contingents of Union infantry and other black and white citizens. As many as possible gathering in the cemetery enclosure; a childrens’ choir sang ‘We’ll Rally around the Flag,’ the ‘Star-Spangled Banner,’ and several spirituals before several black ministers read from scripture. No record survives of which biblical passages rung out in the warm spring air, but the spirit of Leviticus 25 was surely present at those burial rites: ‘for it is the jubilee; it shall be holy unto you … in the year of this jubilee he shall return every man unto his own possession.’

“Following the solemn dedication the crowd dispersed into the infield and did what many of us do on Memorial Day: they enjoyed picnics, listened to speeches, and watched soldiers drill. Among the full brigade of Union infantry participating was the famous 54th Massachusetts and the 34th and 104th U.S. Colored Troops, who performed a special double-columned march around the gravesite. The war was over, and Decoration Day had been founded by African Americans in a ritual of remembrance and consecration. The war, they had boldly announced, had been all about the triumph of their emancipation over a slaveholders’ republic, and not about state rights, defense of home, nor merely soldiers’ valor and sacrifice.”

By late April 1865, a white picket fence on which was written “The Martyrs of the Race Course” had been erected.[4] On May 1, 1865, thousands of people, mainly newly freed blacks, processed to the site, and members of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry marched around the site. The graves were decorated, speeches were offered, and celebrants enjoyed picnics in the area.[5] This has been cited as the first Memorial Day celebration. By 1871, the cemetery was suffering neglect, and the soldiers were reinterred at the Beaufort[3] and Florence National Cemeteries.

http://m.video.pbs.org/video/2318014363/

Watch Memorial Day on PBS. See more from American Experience.

   
” In the May 1865, the newspaper covered what Blight argues should be credited as the nation’s first memorial day observance, held on May 1, 1865. At that time, Charleston was largely in ruins and families were eager to rebuild their lives and their city. The photos on this page are Library of Congress images from the era. Two simply show scenes of wartime devastation in the city. But the photo at right here appears to show the land where the former Confederate prison camp stood (also the site of a pre-Civil War Race Course). The photo appears to show work beginning on raising the remains in April 1865 in preparation for the new cemetery that eventually would include a wall, an archway entrance and properly buried remains.
    The Daily Courier coverage of that first memorial day, May 1, 1865, was headlined …

The Martyrs of the Race Course”




http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mobileweb/jim-downs/who-invented-memorial-day_b_3340146.html
http://www.usmemorialday.org/backgrnd.html
http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20090524/PC1602/305249938
http://www.waterloony.com/mdayhistory.html
http://video.pbs.org/video/2318014363/
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/28/opinion/28mon4.html?_r=1&
http://jobs.blacknews.com/content/232372/blog.cgi?cid&reading=1

http://www.usmemorialday.org/backgrnd.html
http://www.va.gov/opa/speceven/memday/history.asp
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1900454,00.html
http://www.blackbluedog.com/2013/05/news/did-you-know-memorial-day-was-started-by-ex-slaves/
http://blackhistory.com/content/232359/the-first-memorial-day-10-000-march-in-charleston-many-former-slaves-to-celebrate-freedom

From: Navneet Gupta
“The greatest purveyor of violence in the world is my own government, I cannot be silent”

“A nation that year after year continues to spend more money on military defense than on social uplift is approaching spiritual death”

“We have guided missiles, yet misguided men.”

– Martin Luther King, Jr.(1929 – 1968)

Militarism is glorified in the west. We are asked to “remember” the fallen, yet keep fighting in these same unjust conflicts at the same time (many of which we are responsible for starting). It makes no sense?

The U.S. is one of only two countries which has not ratified the convention regarding the use of child soldiers. They are also the largest arms dealers in the world (here is our WMD).

War is all about greed, power, and exploiting the powerless. War has nothing to do with freedom, loving your country, or being a hero. War is about killing innocent people, stealing what they have and keeping power over them through violence & propaganda.

A FRACTION of the money spent on the military industrial complex could eradicate hunger (Food, Not Bombs!), and all other social and ecological problems humanity faces (saving lives instead of taking them).

‘Developed’ nations along with their corporate raiders prop up a corrupt elite at the top of poor nations through the selling of arms, funding, ‘development’, loans, etc. This has allowed for the extraction of indigenous wealth from the southern hemisphere to the northern hemisphere (Often referred to as ‘Neocolonialism’)

Was gonna share this video on Facebook, but I think not. How is it that “Sept. 11, 2001 Osama bin Laden used expert CIA training to murder 3000 people?” Has this been proven? Last on this, those so-called terrorist couldn’t fly a plane straight, much less maneuver 1 into the towers 2x’s& avoid detection as it careened into the Pentagon. Michael Moore at best gives facts & at worst, throws a dis-info tidbit just to see if you are paying attention. Not cool, so what part do you believe? Dis-info discredits.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbjr_cPS9_A

Category:

compassion, global research, Huffington Post, hypocrisy, interests groups, MoveOn.org, politics, state terrorism, super power, tyranny, UN, veterans today, war, Winter Soldier

Celebrities, the Modern Day Gods

Humanity in the modern age, treat celebrities like their predecessors of the old days treated their gods. It seems that human beings have to have something to idolize, look up to, admire, wish to be like or live their lives for.
 Celebrities are the new age obsession of modern man, who once built altars and brought offerings to their gods, the modern day devotee (fan) now does the same, purchasing their pictures, videos, music in a frenzied state of wanting to be next to them, if only through a conduit.
The Modern day Priest is the peddler of these New Age Celebrities Gods. They pose as media moguls, press agents, producers and distributors of the mania that consumes the fans. These modern day idolaters scream, dance, sweat and cry over the “gods” they chose and keep their gods amply supplied with all the modern conveniences, and sometimes so modern, their “gods” can live in full furnished multimillion dollar homes.
Like any religion, the worshippers keep the Gods and their Mediators in power as the devotee depletes his resources just for one more favor or act of kindness towards them. These acts of kindness maybe inclusive of but not exclusive of, autographs, pictures, handshakes, special tokens and VIP seating at a gala affair.
When the devotee sees, reads or experiences the lives of their gods, they are energized living through their imagine world, or lack there of. They are excited by the challenges, the scandals, the lies, the deceit that shrouds their gods, because in order for their god to exist in the world of Celebrities they must face these and many other obstacles of success and/or failure. The Modern day devotee(fan) takes the life of the Celebrity in full scale of it’s own life, moving and progressing along as the God would demand of them. Dare they fall in the disfavor of their Gods or other devotees find them trifling.
Some devotees become so obsessed they will kill for their god, or kill their god itself, destroying its life, history and perchance its effect on any other devotee other than they.
Perhaps this is a displace madness, an obsession generated by the total lack of self ownership and self power. Perhaps the Celebrities while only temporary give the devotee the moment in time where they can feel overwhelmingly powerful and completely divorced from their miserable lives or completely disconnected from the miserable lives their very Gods live.
It is part of the social construct. Children see parents as gods, infallible and invincible, and as adults this lifelike onus is given to the Celebrity of their own choosing. In the realm of Celebrity worship, there are no boundaries as anything that would prove disconcerting to another can be hidden in the privacy of the devotees home, away from the scrutiny of any onlooker.
Devotees can get into fierce verbal battles with other devotees of other Gods, and like the Gladiators of old, can fight to the teeth about their particular god and its “well deserved” greatness and power.
Like any usurpation of power handed over freely or forcefully taken, the taker is as much a victim as the giver. The co-dependency of this relationship between the Devotee and the God, keep them inexorably bound to each other creating a life long dance of fierce passion and need to give the each other validation. The concert hall, theater, stadium or fan club is the Church of the Celebrities. The devotees attend these churches religiously and participate in the ritual celebration of their Gods.
The question to me becomes, what is missing from the human psyche that such props are needed? How has humanity come to this? And what is missing inside of the human being that this type of attribution of power is needed to be given to an “Idol” or object of their devotion. How is it that the social construct supports and promotes this type of mania?

Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith divorce: Lawyer Laura Wasser reportedly retained by Jada

by | January 9, 2012 at 6:06 PM

From Huffington Post: Despite denying divorce rumors back in August, it appears that Will and Jada Pinkett Smith may be finally going their separate ways — at least according to In Touch Weekly.
The magazine is reporting that Jada Smith recently met with celebrity divorce lawyer Laura Wasser, who has represented the likes of Britney Spears, Maria Shriver, and Kim Kardashian.
A source tells In Touch that Smith has “finally begun to take steps to dissolve their marriage,” even reportedly turning down a role in Keanu Reeves directorial debut to spend time with her kids during this “difficult time.”

Read More Here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/04/will-smith-jada-pinkett-s_n_1183990.html?ref=black-voices&ir=Black%20Voices

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Category:

abc news, American Exceptionalism, ancient history, cult of personality, devotees, Huffington Post, international, jada smith, photo opt

10 Signs We Live In a False Economy

10 Signs We Live In a False Economy

Tuesday, December 11th, 2012

 (Activist Post)
It’s time to admit that we live in a false economy. Smoke and mirrors are used to make us believe the economy is real, but it’s all an elaborate illusion.

Out of one side of the establishment’s mouth we hear excitement about “green shoots”, and out of the other side comes breathless warnings of fiscal cliffs and the urgent need for unlimited bailouts by the Fed.  We hear the people begging for jobs and the politicians promising them, but politicians can’t create jobs. We see people camped out to buy stuff on Black Friday indicating the consumer economy is seemingly thriving, only to find out everything was bought on credit.

The corporate media does their best to distract us from seeing anything real. We see the media glorify Kim Kardashian who got rich by being famous, and became famous merely by being rich. She got front page coverage on Huffington Post this week because her cat died.  Enough said.

Meanwhile the financial media makes the economy seem complicated and they ban anyone who speaks truthfully about the economy from their airwaves.

Is it any wonder why people are angry and confused about the economy?  Well, hopefully these signs that we live in a false economy will help clear up some of that confusion.

1. Fake Jobs: It’s not just that the “official” unemployment numbers are a fraud, the actual jobs are fake as well. Ask yourself how many professions actually produce something of value? 80% of jobs could disappear tomorrow and it wouldn’t affect basic human survival or happiness in the least. Yes, in our society we need money to survive – and jobs equal money – but that doesn’t mean a “job” has any actual benefit to society.  More on this in the next point…

2. Problems Create Jobs, Not Solutions: We can’t fix real problems, because it would destroy more fake jobs. We can’t end the wars and bring all of the personnel home when the jobless rate is already suffering. We can’t end the War on Drugs because where would the DEA agents, prison guards, the court system, parole officers, and the rest of their support staff work. We can’t simplify the tax code because the bookkeepers, CPAs, accounting professors, and tax attorneys would be unemployed. We cannot reduce the bureaucracy of government or streamline healthcare because paper pushers have few other notable skills. We can’t stop spying on Americans because it now employs millions of people. We can’t restrict the Wall Street casino, or hardly anyone will be left with a job. Finally, what will happen to university jobs when people either realize their product is not worth the cost or they discover they can get the same education online for nearly free? In other words, we need these manufactured problems to create phony employment.

3. Money Has No Value:  Money is the biggest illusion of all. Our money is loaned into existence with arbitrary interest rates by a private monopoly. It is an IOU. It only has value because a law says it has value, and that value fluctuates based on how much supply is in the economy which, again, is controlled by a for-profit monopoly. It’s actual value is zero since it is just a piece of paper with fancy ink on it. The only things with real value to humans are skills (labor), tools and materials, food and water, and energy.

4. The Fed Now Buys 90% of the Nation’s Debt: Speaking of money, the Federal Reserve loans money to the US government who issues bonds to cover their spending. Those bonds are sold on the open market through auctions to investors who believe in the ability of the United States to make good on those bonds. Apparently, the US has no more investors because the Fed is now buying 90% of new Treasury bonds. This is called monetizing debt, or, essentially, monetizing money. That’s what a Ponzi scheme does. This acts to keep interest rates artificially low because they’d have to raise them to attract outside “investors”.  In layman terms, our whole monetary system is a paper tiger, a house of cards, or whatever metaphor you want to use for fake.

5. What is the Value of Anything?  The price discovery mechanism, or the process to determine the value of an asset in the marketplace, has become so convoluted that determining the genuine value of anything has become nearly impossible. Between government subsidizes for things like food, fuel, education, housing, insurance and even cars; taxes, regulations and laws; the manipulation of the value of money and interest rates; Wall Street gambling on commodities; what is the real value of something? For example, why does an ounce of marijuana (a weed that can grow anywhere) cost up to $500?  Is that the real value based on labor and materials, and supply and demand? Of course not. Its value is inflated mainly due to laws and regulations.

6. Failure is Rewarded:  You know we live in a false economy when failure is rewarded and success is penalized. Citizens everywhere are being told they need to tighten their belts, work harder so we can bailout the failed government, banks, insurance companies and even car companies. And when we work harder and achieve some success, they tax it heavily to indefinitely pay for these fraudulent institutions. Yet this infinite money creation and taxation is light years from solving the root cause of the problem. The reality is that the banks’ solutions are the problem, enriching the investor class at the expense of the middle class. Global bankers are playing with taxpayer money – and the money of many future generations – in a global casino royale that is destined to fail so they can take the people’s assets. They are all-in; but their money is fake, and our assets put at risk are real.

7. Corporate entities have the same rights as humans, but not the same punishments:  When the Supreme Court ruled that corporations have free-speech rights of people, it was one of the final nails in the coffin of the republic. Monied interests can now openly finance elections and buy the legislation they need to operate with impunity. Corporations may be comprised of humans, but they are not subjected to the same standard of humanity. It was profoundly argued in the article What if BP Were a Human Being? that judged by common standards of morality, decency, and previously agreed-upon definitions of criminality, BP would be judged a psychopathic killer … and immortal. Ditto for the rest leading the predatory corporate pack; the most obvious being defense contractors.  And since these corporations are now joined at the hip with government itself, what does that make government? By changing definitions, they are attempting to change reality. But that still doesn’t make it the truth.

8. People buy things they don’t need with money they don’t have: In a type of trickle-down debt whirlpool, the government’s rampant spending without sufficient assets to back it up is mirrored in the behavior of the American consumer. Despite inflation, rising unemployment, and a continued collapse in real estate, it hasn’t stopped credit spending. The Associated Press just reported that for the month of October:
Americans swiped their credit cards more often in October and borrowed more to attend school and buy cars. The increases drove U.S. consumer debt to an all-time high.

The Federal Reserve said Friday that consumers increased their borrowing by $14.2 billion in October from September. Total borrowing rose to a record $2.75 trillion.

Borrowing in the category that covers autos and student loans increased by $10.8 billion. Borrowing on credit cards rose by $3.4 billion, only the second monthly increase in the past five months. (Source)
Most troubling is the type of borrowing highlighted. The worst possible borrowing would be these negative-return investments such as student loans, credit cards, and cars. It is magical thinking taken to the highest degree.

9. Entrepreneurs are punished: It has become nearly impossible to make a simple living on your own. America has become a land filled with bureaucratic red tape that actively thwarts small business creation and criminalizes independence. There is perhaps no better example of this than the attacks waged against the ultimate entrepreneurial endeavor of self-reliance: the family farm. Through collectivist models such as Agenda 21, long-running family farms are being shut down and supplanted with “protected zones.” In the most recent case, a family oyster farm was shut down based on provably false scientific data that aimed to demonstrate negative environmental and economic impacts. It was completely fake, ending an 80-year local business that generated 50,000 tourists per year and employed 30 full-time local residents. In many of these cases the federally stolen property winds up in the hands of developers who have no interest in a true local economy. It is an inherent part of any false economy to create dependence where none should exist at all. A five-minute video that can be seen here sums up the American economy of illusions and the death of the American Dream.

10. Engineered Slavery: Do you think slavery died in the 1800s?  Think again. Economic hitmen (lenders) have successfully enslaved-by-debt everything from nations, entire industries, state and local governments and nearly every person on the planet. And they bought your servitude with money they never had, they simply created it out of thin air. Even if an individual doesn’t have any bank financing or credit cards, they still pay the private Federal Reserve through inflation and income taxes. As author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins, would say: the time has come for the banks to collect their “pound of flesh” from average citizens by way of higher taxes, less social services, and taking your pensions — “austerity.” For an enlightening explanation of how economic hitmen work their dark magic please watch this video.  If you’re still confused, see these 10 signs you might be a slave.  Another, more obvious, form of engineered slavery is prison labor. Laws and regulations are specifically created to add to the prison population which enriches the corporations that own them, while local communities actually become poorer and more dangerous (source).

As George Carlin said, “It’s called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.” It would be bad enough if it were contained to only one country, but we are now experiencing a global collective dreaming that fantasizes about a government figuring things out just in the nick of time. However, in the real world, the collapse has begun in earnest. Until we are committed to counter the 10 points above, we will remain in the grip of an hallucination. However, there are encouraging signs through protests worldwide, alternative currency movements, and myriad creative solutions in the most affected countries like Iceland, Greece, and Spain that people are beginning to shake off their sleep, look in the mirror and realize that the dream economy they have been sold was designed to make them seek solutions in entirely the wrong direction.

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