We the Toxic Assets?

The "middle class" is an historical anomaly and in my humble opinion, was artificially created to build the wealth of the ownership class until it was no longer needed. Well, this class is no longer needed, hence its current decline.

Today, as J.A. Myerson point out in the video below, "the middle class is the working class plus debt." We're now in the process of returning to the natural harmonious capitalist order which does not include a "middle class". Home ownership, college, medical insurance, etc. is a privilege of wealth

“In the digital age where American workers have increased their productivity hugely with no real increase to their wages, the middle class has only been able to keep up the incredible consumption schedule it is used to by taking on a ton of debt. We go into debt to buy the home, the health care, the education, the automobile, that working class people aren’t traditionally entitled."

Links:

Who's Profiting From $1.2 Trillion of Federal Student Loans?

No FAFSA, No Diploma in Louisiana

After Math Error, Fitch Doubles Student-Debt Downgrade Estimate

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Demographic Warfare: Weaponizing Immigration

At the end of 2014, the number of people, worldwide, forced to flee their homes rose to a staggering 59.5 million compared to 51.2 million a year earlier and 37.5 million a decade ago. displaced from their homes.

“The increase represents the biggest leap ever seen in a single year. Moreover, the report said the situation was likely to worsen still further.

Globally, one in every 122 humans is now either a refugee, internally displaced, or seeking asylum. If this were the population of a country, it would be the world's 24th biggest.

Refugees boat sinking at Christmas Island

Most of us believe that immigration occurs naturally, that the hordes of immigrants we see today, fleeing unbearable circumstances is the direct result of unfortunate circumstances that haphazardly plague nations around the world.  We conveniently forget the centuries of ravishing and plundering of  these unfortunate nations--rich in natural resources and brimming with economic potential--by colonizing and neo-colonizing powers. 

Australian treatment of refugees

No, not too many of us consider the possibility that the natural flow of immigration has been co-opted by global elites who deliberately create the abominable conditions that force desperate millions (pawns) to cut and run.  Yet despite our nation's wealth created through the plundering of these war-torn nations,  we allow the corporate owned mass media foster and fan the flames of racism and anti-immigrant sentiment without question. 

Refugees on journey to Australia

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Is Africa Facing a Bigger Threat Than Colonialism?

The impact of the G8 New Alliance For Food Security and Nutrition (New Alliance) does everything but accomplish what its title suggests. If anything, its false, repressive, spurious existence is a threat to food sovereignty and agro-ecology in Africa and elsewhere.  In other words, predatory capitalism under the pretense of  reducing poverty.

Oxfam found that "both the New Alliance and related policy reforms actually risk marginalizing small-scale agriculture, undermining land tenure security, and endangering the right to food of the most vulnerable people."

Simply put, New Alliance's agenda is the corporate takeover of Africa's food. African governments are reforming laws to benefit multinational corporations like Monsanto in return for western aid and investment. Farmers would be restricted from saving and swapping seeds, and many who buy them would end up in debt. Meanwhile, traditional seed varieties could be lost forever. The law actually says "farmers that use seed varieties claimed under new intellectual property rights by individuals and companies anywhere in the world risk hefty fines or even imprisonment."



According to Lauren McCauley,

“Under the specious claim of delivering "aid to Africa," western governments are backing an initiative—described by some as another form of "colonialism"—that is effectively enabling the corporate takeover of African nations by some of the world’s biggest food and agriculture companies."

Why do we allow the parasitic wealthy and powerful--those who live off the blood, sweat and tears of others, who talk openly about the horrors of third world overpopulation--free reign to decide what's in the best interest of third world people? They have clearly stated that we must reduce that population.  It's insane! Or, perhaps, most of us agree with these predators...as long as it's not us. 

“What small scale farmers need is investment in infrastructure that links them more locally and regionally...Where control and ownership over the means of farming, buying and selling food and the culture of food is held by farmers (and people)—not outside elites." -- Dan Iles, food sovereignty campaigner with Global Justice Now

Links:

Mycotoxins: The Cost of Achieving Food Security and Food Quality

Mycotoxin contamination of foods in Africa: Antinutritional factors

G8 New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition Not Supportive of Small-Scale Food Producers

Corporate influence through the G8 New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition in Africa

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The Top Ten America's Greediest of 2013

America’s Greediest: The 2013 Top Ten By Sam Pizzigati

“Butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers. You won’t find any of them on our annual Too Much list of America’s most avaricious. You will find wheelers and dealers and a candy store heiress.

The impact on America’s super rich — and super-rich wannabees? Not much. They haven’t even deigned to slow their grabbing...

10/ Angela Spaccia: Pint-Sized Pilfering

We start this year’s top ten with garden-variety greed, the sort that inevitably grows in the shadows of escalating grand fortunes. In that shade, people in positions of modest power and authority regularly — and clumsily — try to emulate the avaricious high and mighty they see all around them.

In Bell, a small Los Angeles County working class community, that modest power and authority once belonged to Angela Spaccia. As Bell’s assistant city manager for a seven-year span that ended in 2010, Spaccia helped stuff hundreds of thousands of dollars into the pockets of the city’s top officials, including herself. Spaccia in one year alone took in $564,000.

Prosecutors eventually caught up with Spaccia and her pals. Her boss, the Bell city manager, cut a plea deal in October to 69 corruption charges. He pulled in $1.18 million in his most lucrative year. Spaccia chose to go to trial instead, claiming she did nothing illegal.

“Everyone’s greedy,” her defense attorney argued  in November. “There’s no crime in taking too much money.”

Jurors disagreed. Last week, they found Spaccia guilty on multiple counts of criminal behavior, including one misappropriation of public funds designed to pump $15.5 million in pension checks to Spaccia and her boss.

9/ Dylan Lauren: Sweet Squeezer

They don’t come more suave and sophisticated than Dylan Lauren, the only child of billionaire designer Ralph Lauren. Or more ambitious either.

Not for Dylan the empty heiress life. Over a decade ago, she opened up her own business, a luxury candy emporium on Manhattan’s Upper East Side where moldings atop display cabinets mimic dripping chocolate and a cocktail bar offers Gummy Bear martinis.

“Dylan’s Candy Bar” would go on to become wildly successful, expanding into Miami Beach, Los Angeles, and the Hamptons, all the prime watering holes for America’s super rich.

Things today could hardly be peachier for the young Lauren. She has by her side a totally smitten hedge fund manager husband. Maybe even better, the 39-year-old has realized the life’s dream she’s had ever since she first saw Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory at the ripe old age of six.

“I just wanted,” as Dylan gushed recently, “to live in a world full of candy.”

Dylan’s employees, meanwhile, would be satisfied with a world where they could just make ends meet. Workers at her Manhattan flagship store have been protesting  their meager $8.50 hourly compensation and management policies that make sure employees never work enough hours to qualify for overtime pay.

The New York workers are seeking full-time weekly set schedules and a hourly wage at $13.99, the price of a Dylan’s Candy Bar pound of candy.

Earlier this month, in a pouring rain, the workers demonstrated to make their case, carrying lollipops that read, “Dylan, we’re not suckers.” Their chant: “Dylan, Dylan, Candy Queen, you’re filthy rich, so share your green!”

8/ Michael Duke: Low Wages All the Time

This may well be Walmart CEO Michel Duke’s last hurrah in America’s most greedy. He’ll be stepping down as CEO early in 2014, after an embarrassing final year at Walmart’s summit.

The crowning embarrassment? At the company’s 2013 annual meeting, a glitzy affair that management packs with “loyal” employees, one Walmart worker actually won cheers when she denounced Duke’s $20.7 million 2012 paycheck.

Researchers have calculated that Duke is essentially making $6,898 an hour, 779 times the $8.86 average Walmart wage.

In the nation’s capital this fall, city council members tried to up that worker average. They passed a bill that would have required Walmart stores in D.C. to pay at least $12.50 an hour. Duke reacted swiftly. He had his company threaten to pull up stakes if the bill became law.

Washington’s mayor promptly panicked and vetoed the measure.

Duke took a PR pounding for that threat and still another pounding when the Demos think tank in New York revealed  that the $7.6 billion Duke had Walmart spend last year buying back company shares, if redirected to worker compensation, could have raised Walmart’s lowest wages by $5.83 an hour — and ensured all the company’s workers at least $25,000 for full-time work.

Poor Michael Duke won’t have to face any more pounding come his retirement this February. He won’t face any financial worries either. Duke is sitting on $113.2 million in retirement assets, thanks to a tax loophole that lets corporate execs annually set aside unlimited sums, tax-free, into their retirement accounts.

Duke’s retirement stash, notes the Institute for Policy Studies, “could yield him a monthly retirement check of $669,169.” The average Walmart worker 401(k), by contrast, will generate a monthly retirement check of $89.

7/ Art Pope: A Backroom Bully Goes Public

In North Carolina these days, few people think Francis first when they hear “Pope.” A different Pope has been dominating headlines here, an exceedingly deep pocket who owes his fortune to a discount store chain his daddy built.

In the run-up to the 2012 elections, this Art Pope invested over $40 million of his personal wealth to gerrymander how North Carolinians cast their votes.

The gerrymandering worked. This year opened with the state sporting — for the first time ever — a conservative GOP governor, Supreme Court majority, and legislature all at the same time. The state budget director? Pope himself.

Pope’s budget priorities would soon start wreaking havoc with the lives of North Carolina’s most vulnerable. In a state with America’s fifth-highest jobless rate, lawmakers indebted to Pope and his millions slashed top weekly jobless benefits and denied 170,000 long-term jobless special federal aid.

North Carolina’s conservatives didn’t stop there. They put in place, notes one Duke University analyst, an agenda that cuts education and social programs, shifts the tax burden “toward the less affluent,” and restricts voting rights.

North Carolinians have responded to this rich people-friendly legislative onslaught with spirited demonstrations. The latest protest: an “educational picket campaign” outside the discount stores the Pope family owns.

Art Pope, notes state NAACP president William Barber, has brought a “cynical and sinister form of wealth and power manipulation” to North Carolina.

Pope has put his stores “deliberately and publicly in communities of low wealth,” exploited people in these communities with low wages, and then employed his resulting wealth “to push and promote policies,” sums up Reverend Barber, that undercut the quality of average people’s lives.

6/ Tim Cook: Lost Even with a Compass

The $100 million club, researchers from the corporate watchdog GMI Ratings revealed  this past October, has become a bit less exclusive. Last year, for the first time, America’s ten highest-paid CEOs all realized over $100 million in compensation. High on that list, at $143.8 million: Apple CEO Tim Cook.

Cook’s good fortune came as no surprise to computer industry observers. Apple retail stores, notes  Forbes, “take in more money per square foot than any other United States retailer.”

Yet Apple store employees only average $25,000, and Apple can’t seem to afford to compensate its 42,000 retail workers for the time they spend every day waiting to get searched — for stolen goods — before they can leave the store premises. Two former Apple employees have filed  a class-action lawsuit to recoup those unpaid wages, estimated at about $1,500 per year.

But give Apple credit. The company remains an equal-opportunity exploiter. The company mistreats workers both at home and abroad. Workers at Apple’s offshore suppliers continue to work in factories that, says  the Economic Policy Institute, “reflect some of the worst practices of the industrial era.”

Apple, details EPI analyst Isaac Shapiro, “has not met commitments to ensure that workers in its supply chain receive retroactive compensation for working unpaid overtime” or “ensured promised wage increases.”

Apple CEO Cook’s response to critiques like this?

“Apple,” he told reporters before U.S. Senate testimony this past spring, “has a very strong moral compass.”

5/ Ron Packard: The ABCs of Avarice

Some of us look at school buildings and see students learning. Ron Packard looks at schools and sees himself becoming fabulously richer — if he could only empty the buildings.

Packard runs K12 Inc., a for-profit company that specializes in “virtual” education. K12 Inc. operates online “schools” that supply lessons to kids sitting in front of computers, a business endeavor that Packard pronounces a noble step toward “educational liberty.”

“Kids have been shackled to their brick-and-mortar school down the block for too long,” he has declared.

An army of corporate lobbyists has been spreading this message over the past five years, backed by the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council, and more than three dozen states have now enacted legislation that lets companies like K12 Inc. grab students — and tax dollars.

K12 Inc. currently has nearly 130,000 students in its “virtual learning” empire, with only one problem. Compared to their traditional school peers, K12 Inc. students are not doing much learning. Critics are, understandably, blasting the K12 Inc. business model as a giant scam.

In that model, heavy K12 Inc. advertising on kid-centric media like Nickelodeon gets kids enrolled for the company’s offerings. State government education officials, after their annual student “head count,” then pay K12 Inc. for each kid signed up. But after the head count, many of the “virtual” students drop out. K12 Inc. doesn’t mind. The company gets to keep the money.

Lots of it, enough to reward Packard over $19 million in personal compensation the last five years. Not bad, notes the Center for Media and Democracy, for a former Goldman Sachs executive “who started K12 Inc. with a $10 million investment from convicted junk-bond king Michael Milken.”

4/ Lloyd Blankfein: An Appetite for Aluminum

Five years ago, Wall Street’s Goldman Sachs tottered near disaster, as did every other major U.S. bank.

America’s taxpayers came to the rescue. Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein soon had at his disposal $814 billion in near zero interest loans from the Federal Reserve and $10 billion from the Treasury Department.

Blankfein has made the most of this generous support. Forbes calculates his total compensation for the last five years at $159.5 million. Blankfein currently holds over a quarter-billion dollars worth of Goldman shares in his personal portfolio.

How have Blankfein and Goldman Sachs done so nicely the past five years? We learned a good bit about that in 2013. The juiciest revelations came over the summer when the New York Times exposed a commodity speculation scheme that Goldman “intentionally created” to drive up the global price of aluminum.

This scheming, the Times estimates, has cost consumers $5 billion since 2010.

Blankfein has shared, at tax time, precious little of the profits from Goldman’s speculative ventures, thanks in large part to Goldman’s dozens of offshore tax havens. In 2010, these tax havens cut Goldman’s tax bill by $3.32 billion.

Blankfein is putting his share of those tax savings to something less than productive social use. News reports have him down as an advance buyer in the new $1 billion Faena Miami Beach, an 18-story oceanfront luxury tower set to open next year. The tower’s 47 residences are going for up to $50 million each.

3/ Jim McNerney: Middle Class Manslaughter

The U.S. manufacturing giant Boeing, analyst Harold Meyerson observed last week, has only one global rival in the large-scale passenger-plane market, the European conglomerate Airbus.

Workers at these two aerospace giants turn out to make about the same compensation. But executives at Boeing make more.

Question: Given these realities, what should Boeing do to compete more effectively? The answer from Boeing CEO Jim McNerney: Cut Boeing worker wages, benefits, and pensions!

Earlier this fall, McNerney gave his Seattle area workers an ultimatum: Either accept a contract “extension” that would leave them paying more for health care and getting less in retirement — and force new hires to work 10 extra years at substandard wages — or Boeing would go elsewhere to manufacture its new 777x passenger jetliner.

Boeing gave Washington State’s political leaders a similar ultimatum: Either fork over new subsidies and tax breaks or see your state lose jobs by the thousands. Washington lawmakers caved almost instantly. They voted Boeing the largest subsidy deal in U.S. history, over half a billion annually for the next 16 years, over double  the state’s annual funding for the University of Washington.

Boeing’s workers didn’t cave. They rejected the Boeing ultimatum, and McNerney, who pulled in [39] $27.5 million in take-home last year after $23 million the year before, is now parsing subsidy offers from half a dozen other states.

How does this story end? Maybe with the “Walmartization of aerospace.”

“This,” as Seattle author Timothy Egan puts it, “is how the middle class dies.”

2/ David Novak: Fast-Food Glutton

At first glance, corporate CEO David Novak doesn’t need a subsidy from anybody. The fast-food empire Novak oversees, Yum! Brands, amassed $1.59 billion in profits last year.

And Yum — think Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and KFC — is doing pretty well by Novak, too. He pocketed $94 million worth of “performance pay,” notes an Institute for Policy Studies analysis, in just 2011 and 2012 alone.

But Novak and Yum are collecting subsidies anyway — and plenty of them. One comes directly from the U.S. tax code. Current tax law lets corporations deduct executive “performance” pay off their taxable income. This sweet subsidy saved Yum $33 million the last two years on Novak’s ample compensation.

Average Americans are actually subsidizing Novak and Yum at much higher levels than this single tax break suggests. In fact, taxpayers are subsidizing Yum’s entire fast-food business.

Workers at fast food giants like Yum simply don’t make enough to make ends meet for their families. So how do these workers get by? They depend on taxpayer-financed social safety net programs, from food stamps to Medicaid.

Overall, researchers noted  in 2013, American taxpayers “are spending nearly $7 billion a year to supplement the wages of fast-food workers.”

And how are fast-food executives like David Novak spending the profits this generous taxpayer support makes possible? They’re having their companies, for starters, buy back shares of company stock off the open market, a strategy designed solely to bump up their share prices.

Higher share prices, in the meantime, produce higher “performance pay” awards for execs like Novak.

If Novak had plowed the vast millions that Yum spent last year on share buybacks into worker pay, estimate researchers from Demos, worker wages at Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and KFC would have jumped by as much as $3 per hour.

1/ Larry Ellison: An Awesome Arrogance

Drum roll, please. Our 2013 greediest of them all: Larry Ellison, the longtime chief exec at business software kingpin Oracle.

Ellison currently owns a quarter of Oracle, a chunk that makes the 69-year-old the ninth richest individual in the world. His total net worth sat last week at $38.6 billion.

Enough? Not for Ellison. Last year, the software kingpin had Oracle award him $96.2 million in compensation. Unhappy shareholders considered those millions a tad excessive. In a nonbinding 2012 say-on-pay vote, an Oracle shareholder majority turned thumbs-down on Ellison’s pay package.

Ellison, of course, gave none of that $96.2 million back. This year, he had Oracle hand him another $76.9 million. Unhappy shareholders again expressed their displeasure, making Oracle just the 12th company  in U.S. corporate history to have its shareholders go on record against their CEO’s pay in consecutive years.

No frustrated shareholder better try getting any of Ellison’s latest paycheck back. Oracle spends $1.5 million a year on security personnel to protect him. And why not? Ellison, as Oracle general counsel Dorian Daley gushes, rates as Oracle’s “most critical strategic visionary.”

Sign up for To Much Ellison pays dearly to surround himself with such fawning adulation. His two top executive underlings collected $43.6 million each in compensation in Oracle’s fiscal 2013.

Ellison’s billions, to be sure, buy him more than office sycophants. This past year Ellison hosted global yachting’s premiere race, the America’s Cup, in San Francisco Bay. Each race’s host sets the race’s rules. Ellison’s rules limited the field to ultra-expensive — and ultra-dangerous — catamarans.

One sailor died in training runs for the race.

Whose yacht eventually won? Guess.

Links:

Super Sizing Public Costs How Low Wages at Top Fast-Food Chains Leave Taxpayers Footing the Bill

“The Fast Food industry is marked by two extremes: on the one hand, the leading companies in the industry earn billions in profits each year, award chief executives generous compensation packages, and regularly distribute substantial amounts of money in the form of dividends and share buybacks.

At the same time, the overwhelming share of jobs in the fast-food industry pay low wages that force millions of workers to rely on public assistance in order to afford health care, food, and other basic necessities. This report focuses on the 10 largest fast-food companies in the united States and estimates the substantial costs that these highly profitable companies’ low-wage, no-benefits business model imposes on taxpayers.
our findings include the following:

• Low wages and lack of benefits at the 10 largest fast-food companies in the united States cost tax-payers an estimated $3.8 billion per year. Mcdonald’s alone costs taxpayers an estimated$1.2 billion each year.
• While low wages and lack of benefits cost taxpayers billions of dollars each year, the seven publicly-traded corporations on this list remain in strong financial condition today. Last year, these companies collectively:

• Earned $7.44 billion in profits;
• Paid $52.7 million to their highest-paid executives;
• Distributed $7.7 billion in dividends and buybacks

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The Pathology of the Rich

On The Real News Network. with Paul Jay, Chris Hedges discusses the decadence of the ruling elite, the psychology of the super rich; their sense of entitlement, the dehumanization of workers, and mistaken belief that their wealth will insulate them from the coming storms. "Après moi, le déluge"

Hedges asserts that the intellectual class serves the system--that allows those at the top to plunder the wealth from the rest of the population-- don't have a job.

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The Precedent is Set for the Cutting of Public Employee Pensions Across the Nation.

Is "Bankrupt" Detroit, in which "a judge [U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes] in Michigan ruled that the bankrupt city of Detroit can impose cuts to its municipal pension plans" the new paradigm for dealing with "municipal bankruptcy" for the rest of the US? Now remember the "fictional municipal corporation government called the “City of Detroit” bankruptcy is a huge lie! Of course there is no mention of what Clint Richardson  refers to as "the legal crime operating behind these horrific scenes and reported in the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR)."

“In case you haven’t heard, municipal bankruptcy is now all the rage. When smaller municipal corporations (only corporations can declare bankruptcy) had little resistance as test cases for these outrageous claims of fraudulent bankruptcy and default, the larger municipalities gained the confidence that the financially illiterate cesspool of people as citizens don’t know there heads from a hole in the wall when it comes to the financial reporting apparatus of government. The people were determined to be sufficiently ignorant of even the basic checking account balance of the general fund in their local governments and school districts, let alone the massive collective government investment scam robbing them of the entirety of their wealth, making it reasonable to assume that these municipal corporation’s financial position would likely never be challenged by that clueless mass of the indentured. And so the latest trend of conspiracy and fraud against those debt-slaves continues… this time in the not so great City of Detroit.

In other words, Detroit is a test case for the rest of the nation in the ongoing agenda of the predatory class to steal our wealth.

San Bernardino,, California, you're next.

“The ruling comes as a bankrupt California city, San Bernardino, edges closer to a possible legal showdown with CalPERS over the sanctity of public employee pensions. Although the decision in Detroit doesn’t directly affect what happens in San Bernardino, legal experts said it will strengthen the California city’s hand as it tries to reduce its multimillion-dollar pension obligations.

However, as Clint Richardson states:

“In short, the Governor of the great corporate State of California is lying to his taxpayers through the act of omission of these CAFR facts, by only referring to a hand selected portion of that CAFR, which is called the State’s annual budget report. While this should be tried as perjury, the laws of the State/Federal government protect him from this ever happening.

To help in your understanding, let’s say that you were to have a checking account with $1,000 and a savings account with $10,000 in two different banks, and that you only reported to the government that you had $1,000 dollars as your net worth because you don’t want to use your savings account to pay bills (taxpayer obligations) to government. You’d be audited and put in a federal debtor’s prison. But for government, the simple designation of “non-governmental” or “non-taxpayer” income and investment returns allows them to hide all of this wealth from the people and the “Budget Report”, while never mentioning the funds and wealth in the CAFR report. The only difference is that government does this legally – because government makes its own laws!

Why do they do this?

The answer is simple, really… TO JUSTIFY THE CONTINUATION OF, THE RAISING OF, AND CREATION OF NEW TAXES!!!

Public Employees’ Retirement Fund (CalPERS) – $241,761,791,000

Public Employees’ Health Benefits Fund (CalPERS) – $1,866,877,000

State Teachers’ Retirement Fund (CalSTRS) – $155,345,815,000

Teachers’ Health Benefits Fund (CalSTRS) – $598,000

Deferred Compensation Fund – $9,365,582,000

Judges’ Retirement Fund (CalPERS) – $54,146,000

Judges’ Retirement Fund II (CalPERS) – $575,833,000

Legislators’ Retirement Fund (CalPERS) – $123,476,000

State Peace Officers’ and Firefighters’ Defined Contribution Plan Fund (CalPERS) - $499,873,000

Supplemental Contributions Program Fund (CalPERS) – $19,658,000

Other pension and other employee benefit trust funds – $10,117,000

————————————————————————————-

TOTAL IN PENSION/EMPLOYEE BENEFIT FUNDS = $409,623,766,000

“...for this is the lie that is propagated to the public about the nature of pension funds. I would suggest you watch my documentary, The Great Pension Fund Hoax for a detailed look at pension funds.

In reality, the 270 billion dollars that is invested in CalPERS and the 200 billion that is in CalSTRS pension funds has nothing to do with paying for benefits, which total about 9 billion each year.

Calpers made a 27 billion gain in its investment pool after all benefits were paid to employees and retirees. So do you still think that these assets as investment funds (pension funds) are “liabilities:? How can they be liabilities if they are making massive profits after all liabilities are paid???

The truth is that pension funds grab TAXPAYER money out of the taxpayer base in order to “match” or pay for pension obligations – laws created to steal money and put it in the pension system. For every employee of the State, more money gets exacted from the public to pay into the pension system.

But here is the kicker… the employee has no equity in that money! While he or she can quit or get fired and take back what he contributed to the fund, the entire taxpayer contribution stays in the fund, and the employee cannot touch it. millions and millions of federal and state employees, each one supported by taxpayer money, and some pension funds do not require employee contributions, only government (the people) fund them with taxmoney. Ive seen the ration of contribution from 100% matching of employee funds to 45oo% of matched employee funds from the tax base. The employer is government and government is funded by taxmoney.

Now, with that said, it is your perception that is the problem. You perceive the good intentions of the pension system, and don’t comprehend the true corporate nature of it. You find justification for the above to support “retirement”, even though the purpose of pension funds was to extract taxmoney and invest it worldwide to build up the entire global economy for which pension funds are the largest holder of stock. And you, who may or may not receive a pension, believe that I (who does not recieve a pension) should pay for those employees who do. Why should I pay tax money to support a pension system that does not benefit me in any way, shape, or form, and in fact harms me by consolidating power and wealth into government hands?

Finally, you should know that if (or when) States begin to declare bankruptcy, which in my opinion is part of the master plan to rape the people once again, the pension system for that State will be taken, and no employees will see any of that money for retirement. Remember, a “contribution” is literally the act of giving away your money voluntarily. You do not own the money you have contributed, and can only get it back if you live long enough (which the fund hopes you don’t) and if the corporation doesn’t go bankrupt.

Again, the pension fund balances are not liabilities. The fund does what is called projections to guess what future liabilities will be. But as of today, any funds within the pension fund are profit.

I hope this helps…

-Clint-

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Are the Beltway Elites Intentionally Throwing the U.S. Under the Bus?

Or just us Americans?  Between the on-going disaster of the incredibly complex Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, roll-out, which Nancy Pelosi famously said they have to pass to find out what it is;  the partial government shut-down spearheaded by a man married to a VP at Goldman Sachs; the threat of the first default in American history, which it appears will be ongoing (see quote below); the firing of top military leaders for what seem like trivial matters, not to mention, S&P rating downgrade of U.S. debt;  the fiscal cliff episode; sequestration, Wall Street provoked financial collapse in 2008, etc., the U.S. is a buffoon on the befuddled world stage right now, a continuous unfolding spectacle, and no one in power seems to give a damn. If anything, they're promoting that image for all it's worth. 

“Like the House GOP bill, the emerging Senate measure -- though not finalized -- would reopen the government through Jan. 15 and permit the Treasury to borrow normally until early to mid-February, easing dual crises that have sapped confidence in the economy and taken a sledgehammer to the GOP's poll numbers.

At the same time, beltway politicians have no problem allocating billions, if not trillions of dollars to fight unwanted, undeclared wars that extend  to nearly every corner of the globe; to supposedly "aid" other countries;  to prop up/bail out Wall Street; to fund the Department of Homeland Security, the NSA, the TSA, fusion centers, unconstitutional spying programs, etc,  yet we can't pay our own workers, feed our own people, or pay our troops?

From Asia Times:

“Instead of honoring its duties as a responsible leading power, a self-serving Washington has abused its superpower status and introduced even more chaos into the world by shifting financial risks overseas, instigating regional tensions amid territorial disputes, and fighting unwarranted wars under the cover of outright lies.

This is a nation that claims the moral high ground? American Exceptionalism? Hardly. Murder has become routine as civilians are slayed all over the world via remote-control drone attacks. Torturing prisoners of war is seen as par for the course. Covertly, or not so covertly, spying on American citizens is becoming normalized and a giant casino is what stands in as thee economy of choice. 

It seems the motive here is to pave the way for endless future extortion, plunder, fear-mongering, and the continuous subversion of the middle-class.

In Ted Cruz's own words:

“Everyone agrees that the debt ceiling is going to be raised,” Cruz told CNBC’s Larry Kudlow in an interview tonight.

“The question,” he continued, “is whether Harry Reid and the president will maintain the same negotiating position they have on the continuing resolution, which is we will bargain for nothing, give us 100 percent of what we want or we will threaten a default.” 

So, in my humble opinion, there is no question that the powers that be are throwing we, the Americans under the bus, but what about America, the nation?  What could possibly motivate the ruling class to do such a thing?  Well, in a nutshell, globalization.  Our privileged leaders are no longer loyal to our nation, only to the wealthy and powerful corporate elite, which has, "in effect, seceded". These magnates, capitalists, moguls, and banksters are global in every sense of the word, their only loyalty is to their ever-growing immense wealth, as they seek out the most beneficial havens with no regard for national boundaries. The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a transnational agreement brokered by corporations and negotiated largely in secret, that President Obama is pushing, is very good evidence that this is indeed, true.

I think the following, by bullingdonmorons sums it up much better than I ever could:

“ALL our politicians know exactly what they are doing.

Our politicians are simply service managers for the banks and corporations who now rule the world. We have been shafted. We were never given any choice, no-one ever put it in any manifesto, we never voted for it, but we got it all the same. The bankrupt ideology of Neo-Liberalism, with its dogma of economic liberalization, free trade, privatization and deregulation, and its mantra that all human activity is a market from which a profit can be made.

The ruling elite now own our land, gas, electricity, railways, water and media. They have corrupted our politicians and our police. They are now coming for our pensions, our NHS, our roads, our schools and our green spaces. They have systematically destroyed the unions, dismantled our protections, created mass unemployment and are dismembering the welfare state, They caused an economic crash which bankrupted our economy and yet they walked away with their wealth intact.

And what do we get in return? Austerity, recessions, huge debts and deficits. A government conducting a systematic assault upon the sick, the poor and the disabled, slashing welfare budgets and forcing people off benefits. 500,000 of us now use food banks. They make it easier to sack us, make us work longer hours for less pay, force our kids to work for nothing, raise the retirement age whilst cutting our pensions and weaken our health and safety laws. And all just so a handful of people can be immensely rich. Frankly, it's sickening.

But by far the worst damage they have inflicted upon us is that they have destroyed our children's futures.

My generation grew up under governments that believed in full employment and a welfare state. We benefited from decades of struggle, hard won rights that enabled us to have a decent standard of living, own our homes and be cared for when we got old or sick.

However, for 30 years, we have let them slowly dismantle everything my parents and grandparents had fought for. For the millions born since 1980, the only assets they will own will be the ones passed on by their parents. They live in rented accommodation, or negative equity or have interest only mortgages. Their pensions are worthless. They spend every penny they earn, have no savings and buy everything with credit.

But it's even worse for our grandchildren. 50% of them are now loaded with debt before they even leave education. If they are lucky enough to have a job, it's on minimum wage, on zero hour contracts, or part time work, or stacking shelves for nothing. They have no protections, no rights. Pensions are just a pipe-dream. None of them have any hope of getting a mortgage. This is the true cost of the last 30 years. In our lifetime, they have managed to strip away everything our forefathers built for our kids, reducing them to the level of medieval serfs, possessing NOTHING. It's heartbreaking.

So, It's time to get angry, and we need someone to express that anger, because none of our politicians are going to do it. Someone to speak for the millions of hard working people who only want a decent life for themselves and for their kids to have a decent future. Someone that speaks up for all of us, not just a privileged few. Someone that tells us that our worth is not measured by our wealth, but our value as human beings. Someone that tells us that compassion and empathy are not bullshit. Someone that tells us that ordinary people can expect to have a decent job, a decent house and decent healthcare. Someone that tells us our elderly can live out their final years in a degree of comfort. Someone that tells us our sick and disabled should be allowed to exist with a shred of dignity. Someone that tells us that the most disadvantaged will not be looked down upon as scum.

Someone that tells us that our kids can still have hopes and dreams.

We should all be born equal, with an equal chance to develop, to achieve, to succeed. But far too many are now condemned to a life of struggle by a system that creates so many losers for the benefit of so few winners. It is not only unfair and unjust, it is unsustainable.

And it's time we all stood up and said, enough is enough.

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The Genocidal Results of the War on Drugs for Unimaginable Profits.

Many people think that genocide means the complete extermination of a race or people. The Genocide Convention, however, adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 9, 1948, defines genocide as not only “killing members of the group,” but also, “causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group.” Hence, from the results we've seen--only the tip of the iceberg--it can be ascertained that the "War on Drugs" is an international effort to destroy what the global power elites deem as "undesirable" elements.  If the poor person--usually of color--is not murdered, he's sent to prison on possession charges, therefore, ruined...his ability to make a living from that point on  rendered practically impossible.

The American War on Drugs, as well as the Mexican War on Drugs, and all other wars-on-drugs have been waged almost exclusively in poor communities of color--according to the justice department, white people are 5 times more likely to be found with drugs but black are 10 times more likely to go to jail-- even though people of all colors and economic status use and sell illegal drugs. Rather than eradicating drugs, the narco-economy has grown so powerful that human lives are often considered the price of doing business.

Nevertheless, we're led to believe that the evils that haunt the oppressed in America, and everywhere else, are the fault of the oppressed. Nothing can be further from the truth. If you dig deep enough--beyond the commercial media--you will find hard evidence that shows the governments of the U.S. and Europe, through various agencies, like that of intelligence agencies, no doubt, provide direct and indirect support for the drug cartels, not to mention other oppressive mechanisms (prison industrial complex). 

But the government(s) certainly put on a good show in an effort to act as if they're not part of this huge criminal enterprise. For instance, today, the US is supposedly outraged over the release, "from prison of Mexican drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero and vowed to continue efforts to bring to justice the man who ordered the killing of a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent." However, the US government’s complicity in Caro Quintero’s narco-trafficking business, and, even in the Camarena’s gruesome murder, is ignored.

In 1985, Mexico’s intelligence service, the Federal Security Directorate, or DFS in its Spanish initials and the CIA were not only working in unison according to Charles Bowden who wrote the book, Down by the River: Drugs, Money, Murder, and Family , but were in league with Mexico’s narco-traffickers. The DFS was disbanded in 1985, and integrated into Mexico’s version of the CIA, called CISEN (Spanish initials). CISEN still works in unison with US agencies and officials, including the CIA.

“Camarena brushes off Jordan’s alarm by noting that DFS is trained by the CIA and is functionally a unit in their mysterious work. And he says they are also functionally “the eyes and ears of the cartels.”

See 1991 letter from Gary Hart to U.S. Sen. John Kerry.

“In March of 1983, Plumlee contacted my Denver Senate Office and met with Mr. Bill Holen of my Senate Staff. During the initial meeting, Mr. Plumlee raised certain allegations concerning U.S. foreign and military policy toward Nicaragua and the use of covert activities by U.S. Intelligence agencies.

… Mr. Plumlee also stated that Mexico, Costa Rica, Guatemala and El Salvador were providing U.S. military personnel access to secret landing field and various staging areas scattered throughout Central America.

He specifically cited the Mexican government’s direct knowledge of illegal arms shipments and narcotic smuggling activities that were taking place out of a civilian ranch in the Veracruz area which were under the control and sponsorship of Rafael Caro-Quintero and the Luis Jorge Ochoa branch of the Medellin Escobar Cartel.

… Mr. Plumlee raised several issues including that covert U.S. intelligence agencies were directly involved in the smuggling and distribution of drugs to raise funds for covert military operations against the government of Nicaragua. …

More recently, just last year HSBC Bank was caught red-handed laundering billions of dollars for multiple Mexican drug cartels. What happened? Eric Holder declined to prosecute. In fact, HSBC was let off the hook entirely until someone in the media caught wind of the story. In the end, HSBC settled for what amounted to a minor fine. Wachovia Bank, now Wells Fargo, is another recent example of an institution caught red handed laundering untold millions of drug profits. Once again, the tip of the iceberg because most of these illustrious institutions do not get caught.

“Wachovia’s blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations,” as tens of thousands of Mexicans were killed in an exponentially violent drug war.

In a nutshell, no jail time for these organized criminals at the top of the food chain who brought down the world economy, only, secret bailouts, which Wells Fargo received, $159 Billion, in 2010, revealed when the Fed was partially audited and that was one of the smaller bailouts. If that doesn't tell you whose side the government's on, nothing will.

Visit the narcosphere. It reports real information about the drug wars.



Links:

Civil Rights Congress, We Charge Genocide:  The Historic Petition to the United Nations for Relief From a Crime of The United States Government Against the Negro People (New York: Civil Rights Congress, 1951), pp xi-xiii, 3-10.

More Fast and Furious Guns Surface at Crimes in Mexico

Ex-Border Patrol Agents Warn: Politicians Helping Cartels in U.S.

“Transnational criminal enterprises have annually invested millions of dollars to create and staff international drug and human smuggling networks inside the United States; thus it is no surprise that they continue to accelerate their efforts to get trusted representatives in place as a means to guarantee continued success,” the Border Patrol agents wrote.

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Why Do We Love Psychopaths and Sociopaths?

“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root. -- Henry David Thoreau

Let's face it. One of our biggest obstacles to success and/or "happiness" is that all consuming inner sense of what is right and wrong, that complex of ethical and moral principles called the conscience. Imagine what you could accomplish without that burdensome guilt-inducing awareness. Well, there are people who are not burdened and/or handicapped by this faculty of mind, and they very often rise to the top, attaining positions of great power. And who puts them there? We do. Why? Because when we hear the word psychopath, we immediately think of the Hollywood definition: the crazed violent, sadistic, human flesh-eating, serial killers like the fictitious Hannibal Lector, and/or the less fictitious Jeffrey Dahmer, Gary Heidnick, amongst many others. However, the truth is that only a very very small percentage of psychopaths are this violent, and if they are, they are not only psychopaths but sociopaths as well. Yes, there is a difference.

One can be a sociopath without being a psychopath and vice versa, as well as being both at the same time. According to Dr. Robert Hare, leading expert on psychopathy, psychopaths--and sociopaths-- are not psychotic. They are not mentally, psychiatrically or legally insane...‘‘mania sans de´lire’’(‘‘madness without delirium’’). They wear the "mask of sanity."  So on that note, they're the same.

Psychopaths, however, are people who, at their very core, lack the capacity to make an emotional connection with others, who lack the capacity to empathize, but who have not broken with reality. They are very aware of the consequences of their actions, they just don't care about the consequences of their actions on others, only about the consequences to themselves. Their emotional life is shallow and superficial. They are usually dominant individuals who use deceit, manipulation and charm to intimidate and control others. They have an enormous sense of entitlement, tend to be impulsive, irresponsible, and have an unusual need for excitement. They have no problem violating the legal, social and moral code, but that certainly doesn't mean that all psychopaths end up in jail, in fact, most sail through life without ever facing prison time. Why? Mostly because psychopaths, smart ones, anyway, rise to the top where they can influence or even make the rules.

Sociopaths, on the other hand, are hard core criminals, who may or may not be psychopaths. The difference lies in their capacity to feel remorse or guilt. It is a fact that most criminals are not psychopaths. One could say a psychopath is born (or hard-wired); a sociopath, the result of circumstances, therefore, redeemable. Or, the term psychopath defines who a person is, whereas sociopath defines what a person does (criminal and socially deviant behavior). In other words, the distinction between sociopath and psychopath is that sociopaths learn to repress or suppress their sympathy/empathy/compassion and psychopaths are genetically incapable of sympathy/empathy/compassion. It must be noted that there is no evidence that proves psychopaths are biologically/genetically pre- dispositioned to become psychopaths, however, there is some evidence to support the biological basis of psychopathy. In other words, "causal conclusions" cannot be made.

“The biological basis of psychopathy has not yet been fully elucidated. Few studies deal with structural neuroimaging in psychopaths. The aim of this article is to review these studies in order to contribute to our understanding of the biological basis of psychopathy. Data in the literature report a reduction in prefrontal gray matter volume, gray matter loss in the right superior temporal gyrus, amygdala volume loss, a decrease in posterior hippocampal volume, an exaggerated structural hippocampal asymmetry, and an increase in callosal white matter volume in psychopathic individuals. These findings suggest that psychopathy is associated with brain abnormalities in a prefrontal–temporo-limbic circuit—i.e. regions that are involved, among others, in emotional and learning processes. Additionally, data indicate that psychopathic individuals cannot be seen as a homogeneous group.

For instance, throughout history, there have been cases where murderers, hit-men, snipers, etc, truly repent and transform themselves. The most famous case of all, the Saul to Paul transformation in the New Testament. Moreover, we are all psychologically conditioned to accept rape, plunder, murder, etc. when the pathocracy claims so-called conditions call for it, and sends our brainwashed-to-kill young men into battle under the guise of fighting for the "greater good," that is, to line the pockets of the already lined pockets of our psychopathic global elite.

Most of us can't get past the exhibition of love and family values that many of these Orwellian corporate, political and religious leaders and celebrities display. Most of us do not like to explore deeply uncomfortable topics so we accept the sound bytes and their superficial public displays of compassion, empathy and sympathy at face value, never taking the time to peek or pull back the curtain. To be fair, most of us do not have the time and/or energy to search out the truth due to just trying to keep our heads above water.

In addition to our lack of time/energy, we're conditioned to accept the official word of  official personalities, and even to "love" them to one degree or another. Consider the mourning that takes place on a national or even global level when one of these personalities die.

But, in our ever increasing disconnected, or pseudo-connected world, we're surrounded by these mainstream personalities in positions of elitist power, ruling every facet of our lives behind the curtains. We see and hear about them more than we see our loved ones.  Unfortunately, most of those we call the powers that be or were, the new world order, the ruling class, etc, fit the profile of a psychopath, yet we continue to admire, emulate, worship and vote them in. Why?

Through TV, movies, 24/7 cable "news", violent video games, constant glitzy and glamorous advertising, and the empty rhetoric of politicians, we've become indoctrinated to accept the predatory class's psychopathic agenda, and have become completely anesthetized to its horrible consequences.  Never forget, the psychopath is a predatory individual who pretends to be someone they are not, gaining our trust in order to exploit us in some way. Anything reflected in the corporate controlled media covertly reflects the psychopathic agenda.

“Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves." George Orwell's 1984

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Getting the Consent of the Ruled: Engineering an Individual's Choices Away From His Needs.

Are our lives being scripted by the ruling class? Are our minds filled with useless ideas, pedaled by the media and public indoctrination education system, thus, obscuring useful facts?  What happened to critical thinking?

Mind control:

“Since the dawn of time, small groups of human beings have instilled artificial circular limitations on the minds of their subjects through the procession of history. Traditionally, the limitations are imprinted on the servile population through a cunning use of language, instruction and media for the purposes of conquest, social cohesion, and authoritative order by harnessing the human resources of the broad population

Hegelian dialectic:

“To meet an agenda in conflict with the needs of individuals, the ruling class creates an artificial crisis [problem]-- to which the public reacts by begging for the ruling class to intervene [reaction]. The ruling class then enjoys the plunder made possible by removing the self-reliance from individuals [solution].

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2045 and the Global Future Agenda to Counterfeit Humanity.

So, is the end of human civilization as we know it going to be extinct in less than 32 years? Most of us will still be alive, hopefully, in 2045; therefore, this transformation,  known as the Singularity--the moment when technological change becomes so rapid and profound, it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history, a post-human existence, if you will--should concern the general public about what it implies about our human future while we still have brains in our heads.

The idea that you can upload yourself, your brain, into a computer and become digitally immortal sounds a little batshit, right?  But Ray Kurzweil, director of engineering at Google, stated that's what's going to happen during his conference speech at the Global Futures 2045 International Congress recently. He also claims that the biological parts of our body will be replaced with mechanical parts and this could happen as early as 2100. I guess the idea is to kill oneself the moment our brain uploads.  Heaven's Gate, anyone? 

That's right. The director of engineering at Google is planning to put all of our brains into robot avatars and all of his pals--most of the global elite--think that's the best idea since sliced bread.  Of course, they do. Think of all the money they'll save when  corporations can replace human beings with robot avatars (see video below).  What they don't understand--or maybe they do, they just hope that we don't--is they can't transfer our souls into these robots.

We are certainly being conditioned to this Orwellian end. I know I spend far too much time on the Internet, in this virtual world that often displaces the real one.  The illusion of freedom lures me in and makes me feel I can go anywhere I want, explore anything I want.   I'm sorry but, often times, the real world kind of pales in comparison. The sad thing is, I'm aware of this dangerous illusion, yet I still capitulate, whereas children raised in the virtual world--television, video games, iPhones, Internet, etc--since birth will embrace this Orwellian technology without question, and with open arms as adults. They will know nothing else.

So yes, I'm fully aware that I'm using a Google platform to bash Google, that I'm using the technology that's enslaving us to preach about our technological enslavement, that everything I post can be traced back to me. I feel like one of those self-righteous evangelicals who preach on the evils of sex, drugs and rock 'n roll, at the same time they're banging the drugged out rock 'n roller down the hall. However, I justify it by telling myself I'm taking advantage of this technology while I still can, before they either shut if off or make it so the only thing that's accessible is intelligence collecting social network sites. I tell myself that this is where I discovered I was not educated, but indoctrinated, rationalizing that I'd rather use their technology to educate myself and the occasional other who might accidentally land here.  That's what I tell myself.

Back to the Singularity.  It is being sold as this ulta-cool utopia, as part of our inevitable evolutionary path that will one day make gods out of men. What they don't tell you is that this only applies to the technocratic elite. They don't tell you that the world will be divided between the super-human "gods" and the poor pitiful slaves who can't afford to transform themselves into Nietzsche's Übermensch (overman).  They conveniently leave that part out.

Without question, we've been heading in the direction of the soul-killing commoditization of human-beings for a very long time as we've been led to embrace scientism through materialistic reductionism as the only avenue to truth.  It's just now that we have the technology to make this Orwellian agenda real.  Sold as "cool", but in reality, creepy, here are a few tidbits that will no doubt effect our future as human beings: Biometrics at a distance (sense your heartbeat through a wall); algorithms that predict your next move;  brain-link, controlling your brain through the Internet; autonomous humanoid robots, and/or, robots with real brains;  Pentagon's Project Avatar, robotic soldiers; Narrative Networks, high-tech, chemically enhanced propaganda; the embryonic LifeLog program; and electronic tattoos and ingested pills that make you a walking password.

Former DARPA (gave birth to the Internet) head, Regina Dugan, now the leader for special projects for Motorola, a Google subsidiary, came out with her electronic tattoo, an RFID bar code,  that can be used to authenticate oneself, not to mention a pill that can be ingested and then battery-powered by digestive acids to make one's whole body a password.  As she said, “your entire body becomes your authentication token.” Mark of the beast, anyone?

And let's not forget smart dust and/or neural dust. These nano-particles embed themselves in your brain, functioning as an MRI inside your brain. In other words, "tiny implantable sensors could function like an MRI inside the brain, recording data on nearby neurons and transmitting it back out." Tinfoil hats, anyone?

Will we willfully choose such an evolutionary direction? Will self-aware machines evolve before humans become self-aware?  Oh, we are already self-aware?  Sorry, my bad.



Links:

Intelligent neural dust embedded in the brain could be the ultimate brain-computer interface

IARPA (Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity)   , a little-known U.S. government organization, is developing analytic programs for the National Security Agency that could make recent revelations about the NSA’s activities look antiquated by comparison. Rather than reviewing archival data, it may use current data to predict the future.

We'll be uploading our entire MINDS to computers by 2045 and our bodies will be replaced by machines within 90 years, Google expert claims

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Universal Human Control System: Defining Us Against Them.

In the battle of  Us against Them, we are led to believe "Us" is the United States, while "Them" is any country who "hates us for our freedom". Nothing could be further from the truth. The  NSA snooping scandal , the tip of a very dark and very large iceberg, makes that very clear. 

The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA),   Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), and Ministry of State Security of the People's Republic of China (MSS), amongst many other global powers, have spent decades working together to spy on the whole world and they don't give a damn about you or your right to privacy. So who is "Them"? They, the fraction of a percent of international rulers working together to spy on us, the 99.9%, and that's the way it's always been. The only difference is now, they are allowing us in on the big secret. Why? Because it's too late to do anything about it. The grid designed to control and incarcerate Us is already in place, its tentacles deeply embedded. There is no place left to hide.

Now, the ACLU filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the NSA phone spying program, but that's like applying a band-aid to a sliced jugular vein. It will only attack one tentacle of this giant octopus. Aside from the NSA, who has over 50 unaccountable subcontractors that do most of the dirty work, the NSA being only a small part of the huge intelligence apparatus.  The DIA has a budget ten times the size of the budgets of the CIA and FBI combined and has 100 times the employees of the CIA and FBI combined. There are 13 intelligence agencies in the community and all but two or three are military intelligence. Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine, National Reconnaissance Organization--in charge of designing, building, launching, and maintaining America’s intelligence satellite--the National Security Agency (NSA), Defense Industrial Securities Command, the largest internal police force in the US, started to guard the Manhattan Project.

And let's not forget about L.U.C.I.D. (Langton Ultimate Cosmic ray Intensity Detector), or as Dr. Jean-Paul Creusat, L.U.C.I.D.'s designer said, Logical Universal Communication Interactive Databank. an advanced computer technology, global control system. It will be ready for launch " in the Autumn of 2013," according to Langston Star Centre.

Why are they creating this huge Big Brother monster?  Well, to make us happy, of course.

“To make the people happy, their ideas must be reconstructed, laws must be changed, morals must be changed, men must be changed, things must be changed, yes everything must be destroyed, since everything must be remade." -- Frenchman Rabaud de Saint Etienne, a French revolutionary.

Remade into what? A system of universal slavery? An electronic prison camp or electronic internment camps to incarcerate us all as human resources for the state?  

In other words, it's us, the global 99%, against them, the mostly unelected international ruling .01%.

“In the booming surveillance industry they spy on whom they wish, when they wish, protected by barriers of secrecy, fortified by billions of pounds worth of high, high technology. Duncan Campbell reports from the United States on the secret Anglo-American plan for a global electronic spy system for the 21st century capable of listening in to most of us most of the time

Links:

Attacks from America: NSA Spied on European Union Offices

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This is a Test of the National Elite Big Brother Association!

Terrorism is not defined by its intentions to kill a few people, or even more than a few people; it is to bring about mass terror...to paralyze a people in fear, and to dent the public purse of their target. The Boston Marathon was a relatively small event, in comparison to let's say a nuclear attack on one or more of our cities. Yet, despite this, our government launched full scale--extraordinarily expensive-- martial law, which, incited much more fear than the attack itself. House to house paramilitary searches of homes, making innocent American citizens blatantly submit to the state is about as un-American as it gets.

What happened to, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Meanwhile, those in authority treat the public as if they're in Kindergarten: "Stop asking questions," and "Wait for further instructions."

Not to say that there is a lot of subtle disinformation out there regarding the Boston Marathon bombing. You have to really pay attention to catch it, otherwise, it appears legitimate. However, there are more than enough signs that this event is much bigger than the two boys accused.

One, being the the questions that the authorities refuse to take seriously.

Two, the lack of tangible quality evidence--video, images, etc.-- presented to the public.

Three, the lack of due process afforded to the accused.

Fourth, the media frenzy that surrounded this event. Always a red flag!

Lastly, but perhaps, most importantly, the unbelievable and unprecedented scale and nature of the response from the American government to supposedly, catch a teenage "terrorist". Even if he was a terrorist, shutting down an entire city, and overrunning its streets with paramilitary-cops, in humvees with manned machine gun turrets on top, barking orders in residential neighborhoods, while snipers aim at innocent families, with orders that people come out of their homes, and then the invading and searching--without legal basis-- of those homes, is that the kind of nation we want to live in?

They claim it wasn't martial law, that it was a "Stay-In-Place" order, and that compliance was somehow, voluntary. Really? When dozens of cops dressed in SWAT gear--armed with fully automatic rifles--trained snipers positioned on neighboring rooftops, and tanks parked outside your house, what kind of choice is that? I don't care how many guns you own, you're outgunned. To protest would be suicide. I think the message is clear, "cooperate, or else". You and your family have no choice. Not to mention, it gives the police ample opportunity to plant evidence. However, there was a choice made to cheer the tyrannical oppressors after all was said and done. What's funny if there is anything funny in a situation like this, is that the seige everyone cheered for did not find the suspect.

So, what now?

Will cities, states, perhaps, even our entire nation go into "lock down" mode every time a serial killer's on the loose? Every time an "underwear bomber" gets loose? Every time a bomb goes off?

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