Friday, April 17, 2009
Alex Jones kicking some ass on FOX
Ok..Ok.. It's only an online news program, but it's still a huge step in the right direction. Someone commented this on youtube:
"Why doesn't fox put this guy on the actual television instead of keeping it only on the internet. FOX news no doubt wants to cater to what it feels are the nutjobs of the world. They are merely tapping what they consider nutjob market, as they see a market in it. Obviously restricting it to the internet will not anger our owners.
This show needs to be aired on TV."
So true...so true...The problem is most reporters in mainstream media report the majority of important news straight from the mouths of politicians, they should be doing their own research like Alex Jones and report honest news. The mighty hands of the corporations however, do not allow that. Long live the internet!
Until next time...
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
9/11 again?? You serious??....you betcha!
Crazy conspiracy theorists vs naive, gullible, government propaganda spoon-fed, naysayers.
Who is right?
This has been a very popular debate, especially since the events of 9/11.
I'm sure many of you have seen Zeitgeist (over 100 million views, making it one of the most popular online movies of all time...if you haven't seen it, watch it now: zeitgeistmovie.com) or Loose Change, Freedom to Fascism or one of the many other so called "conspiracy movies". These theories (do your own research and you find the opposite to be true) are nothing new, but more and more factual information gets released every day which gives enormous strength to them and in turn makes them facts. Including the new ones below, which really put the nail in the coffin. It's too bad you'll never hear about it on the mainstream media...although, occasionally Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck will throw you a bone. 9/11 is a very sensitive topic for us Americans and it's sad to see that a bunch of us have our heads in the sand about what really happened. It took us a few years to find out the real story behind Pearl Harbor, just like the other previous wars before it and this False Flag of terror is no different. It's impossible to debunk or deny cold hard facts..it's even harder to accept the truth once you realize it.
Does this cover-up piss anyone else off?
Danish Scientist on TV: Nano-thermite Behind Collapse of WTC Buildings on 9/11, Not Planes
On the morning of April the 6th, Professor Niels Harrit of Copenhagen University in Denmark, who is an expert in nano-chemistry, was interviewed for an entire 10 minutes during a news program on the topic of the nano-thermite found in the dust from the World Trade Centre, (WTC).
During this news report, Harrit, who is one of the nine scientists primarily responsible for the pivotal paper entitled: ‘Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe’, talks about how their research, which was conducted over 18 months, led to the conclusion that planes did not cause the collapse of the three buildings at the WTC on 9/11.
He says that they found such large quantities of nano-thermite in the dust from the WTC, that he believes that this compound, which has the ability to melt metal, must have been brought into the WTC site in tonnes, on pallets. Consequently, he suggests that we need to address this matter with those who were in charge of the security at the World Trade Centre on 9/11. Bush's brother, look it up... http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0204-06.htm
Harrit, like Dr Steven Jones who also played a major role in this ground-breaking research, refers to their findings as “the loaded gun” and suggests that military personnel might be able to enlighten us more on the little-known topic of nano-thermite, which differs from regular thermite in a number of significant ways, including that its ignition temperature is far lower than that of the conventional kind.
http://www.infowars.com/danish-scientist-on-tv-nano-thermite-behind-collapse-of-wtc-buildings-on-911-not-planes/
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9/11 Commission Counsel: Government Agreed to Lie About 9/11
The senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission - John Farmer - says that the government agreed not to tell the truth about 9/11, echoing the assertions of fellow 9/11 Commission members who concluded that the Pentagon were engaged in deliberate deception about their response to the attack.
Farmer served as Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission (officially known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States), and is also a former New Jersey Attorney General.
featured stories 9/11 Commission Counsel: Government Agreed to Lie About 9/11
Farmer’s book about his experiences working for the Commission is entitled The Ground Truth: The Story Behind America’s Defense on 9/11, and is set to be released tomorrow.
The book unveils how “the public had been seriously misled about what occurred during the morning of the attacks,” and Farmer himself states that “at some level of the government, at some point in time…there was an agreement not to tell the truth about what happened.”
Only the very naive would dispute that an agreement not to tell the truth is an agreement to lie. Farmer’s contention is that the government agreed to create a phony official version of events to cover-up the real story behind 9/11.
The publisher of the book, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, states that, “Farmer builds the inescapably convincing case that the official version not only is almost entirely untrue but serves to create a false impression of order and security.”
In August 2006, the Washington Post reported, “Some staff members and commissioners of the Sept. 11 panel concluded that the Pentagon’s initial story of how it reacted to the 2001 terrorist attacks may have been part of a deliberate effort to mislead the commission and the public rather than a reflection of the fog of events on that day, according to sources involved in the debate.”
The report revealed how the 10-member commission deeply suspected deception to the point where they considered referring the matter to the Justice Department for criminal investigation.
“We to this day don’t know why NORAD [the North American Aerospace Command] told us what they told us,” said Thomas H. Kean, the former New Jersey Republican governor who led the commission. “It was just so far from the truth. . . . It’s one of those loose ends that never got tied.”
Farmer himself is quoted in the Post article, stating, “I was shocked at how different the truth was from the way it was described …. The [Norad air defense] tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public for two years…. This is not spin. This is not true.”
As we also reported in August 2006, released portions of NORAD tapes from 9/11, which were featured in a Vanity Fair article, do little to answer skeptic’s questions about the impotence of U.S. air defenses on 9/11 and if anything only increase focus on the incompatibility of the official version of events with what is actually known to have taken place on that day.
Make no mistake, Farmer is not saying that 9/11 was an inside job, however, Farmer’s testimony, along with that of his fellow 9/11 Commission members, conclusively demonstrates that, whatever really happened on 9/11, the official story as told to the public on the day and that which remains the authorities’ version of events today, is a lie - according to the very people who were tasked by the government to investigate it. This is a fact that no debunker or government apologist can ever legitimately deny.
http://www.infowars.com/911-commission-counsel-government-agreed-to-lie-about-911/
Friday, April 10, 2009
Bill Hicks: "I'M SO GLAD WE ARE FREE"
In the spirit of great stand up comics, here is another clip from one of our greats. Mr. Bill Hicks Ladies and Gentleman...
Alex Jones Stand Up Comedy
I thought about writing something serious this time around, but then I said fuck it! Let's keep this stand up thing going. We need some more humor in our lives damn it. I've never heard Alex Jones do a comedy routine before and I thought it was pretty funny. Enjoy my babies!
Thursday, April 9, 2009
"It's Called the American Dream Because You Have To Be Asleep to Believe It"
You gotta love this man...he tells it like it is!
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/61955/
By the way, Alternet is pretty much one of the only site where you can find this clip anymore...
"The real owners are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they're an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehouses, the city halls. They've got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies, so that they control just about all of the news and information you hear. They've got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying  lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else."
"But I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interests. They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago.
"You know what they want? Obedient workers  people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork but just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And, now, they're coming for your Social Security. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back, so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They'll get it. They'll get it all, sooner or later, because they own this fucking place. It's a big club, and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club."
"This country is finished."
George Carlin- "Owners Of This Country"
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/61955/
By the way, Alternet is pretty much one of the only site where you can find this clip anymore...
"The real owners are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they're an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehouses, the city halls. They've got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies, so that they control just about all of the news and information you hear. They've got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying  lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else."
"But I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interests. They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago.
"You know what they want? Obedient workers  people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork but just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And, now, they're coming for your Social Security. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back, so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They'll get it. They'll get it all, sooner or later, because they own this fucking place. It's a big club, and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club."
"This country is finished."
George Carlin- "Owners Of This Country"
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
In dedication to Z...
In dedication to our new poster, last but not least: Z
(for those who can appreciate literary ingenuity and creativeness...)
To pragmatists, the letter Z is nothing more than a phonetically symbolic glyph, a minor sign easily learned, readily assimilated, and occasionally deployed in the course of a literate life. to cynics, Z is just an S with a stick up its butt.
Well, true enough, any word worth repeating is greater than the sum of its parts; and the particular word-part Z - angular, whereas S is curvaceous - can from a certain perspective, appear anally wired (although Z is far too sophisticated to throw up its arms like Y and act as if it had just been goosed).
On those of us neither prosaic nor jaded, however, those whom the Fates to monitor such things, Z has had an impact above and beyond its signifying function. A presence in its own right, it's the most distant and elusive of our twenty-six linguistic atoms; a mysterious, dark figure in an otherwise fairly innocuous lineup, and the sleekest little swimmer ever to take laps in a bowl of alphabet soup.
Scarcely a day of my life has gone by when I've not stirred the alphabetical ant nest, yet every time I type or pen the letter Z, I still feel a secret tingle, a tiny thrill. This is particularly due to Z's relative rarity: my dictionary devotes 99 pages to A words, 138 to P, but only 5 pages to words beginning with Z. Then there's Z's exoticness, for, though its a component of the English language, it gives the impression of having zipped out of Africa or the ancient Nebuchadnezzar. Ultimately, perhaps, whats most fascinating about Z is its dual projection of subtle menace and aesthetic grace. Z's are not verbal ants; they are bees. Stylish bees. Killer bees. They buzz; they sting.
Z is a whip crack of a letter, a striking viper of a letter, an open jacknife ever ready to cut the chords of convention or peel the peach of lust.
A Z is slick, quick (it's no accident that automakers call their fastest models Z cars), arcane, eccentric, and always faintly sinister - although its very elegance seperates it from the brutish X, that character traditionally associated with all forms of extinction. If X wields a tire iron, Z packs a laser gun. Zap! If X is Mike Hammer, Z is James Bond. (For reasons known only to the British, a Z 007 would pronounce its name "zed.") If X marks the spot, Z avoids the spot, being too fluid, too cosmopolitan, to remain in one place.
In contrast to that prim, trim, self-absorbed supermodel, I or to O, the voluptuous, orgasmic, bighearted slut, where Z a woman, she would be femme fatale, the consonant we love to fear and fear to love.
The celebrities of the alphabet are M and Z, the letters for whom famous movies have been named. Of course, V had its novel, but I can assure you from personal experience, in today's culture a novel lacks a movie's sizzle, not to mention pizzazz. Is it not testimony to Z's star power that it is invariably selected to come on last - and this despite the fact that the F word gets all the press?
Take a letter? You bet. I'll take Z. My favorite country, at least on paper, is Zanzibar; my favorite body of water, the Zuider Zee. ZZ Top is my favorite band, zymology my favorite branch of science (dealing, as it does, with the fermentation of beverages).
Had ZsaZsa Gabor married Frank Zappa, she would have had the coolest name in the world - except, maybe, if ZaSu Pitts had wed Tristan Tzara. As for me, my given name, Thomas, is a modern, anglicized version of the old prebiblical moniker Tammuz. Originally, Tammuz was a mythological hero who served the Godess simultaneously as lover, husband, brother, and son. Give me my Z back, and there's not telling where might go from there.
Before I go anywhere, however, let me lift a zarf of zinfandel to the former ruling family of Russia. To the tzar, the tzarina, and the little tzardines! And as for those who would complain that I'm taking this business too far, I say: better a zedophile than a pedophile.
- Tom Robbins
His answer to the request: "Write about one of your favorite things"
Esquire, 1996
(for those who can appreciate literary ingenuity and creativeness...)
To pragmatists, the letter Z is nothing more than a phonetically symbolic glyph, a minor sign easily learned, readily assimilated, and occasionally deployed in the course of a literate life. to cynics, Z is just an S with a stick up its butt.
Well, true enough, any word worth repeating is greater than the sum of its parts; and the particular word-part Z - angular, whereas S is curvaceous - can from a certain perspective, appear anally wired (although Z is far too sophisticated to throw up its arms like Y and act as if it had just been goosed).
On those of us neither prosaic nor jaded, however, those whom the Fates to monitor such things, Z has had an impact above and beyond its signifying function. A presence in its own right, it's the most distant and elusive of our twenty-six linguistic atoms; a mysterious, dark figure in an otherwise fairly innocuous lineup, and the sleekest little swimmer ever to take laps in a bowl of alphabet soup.
Scarcely a day of my life has gone by when I've not stirred the alphabetical ant nest, yet every time I type or pen the letter Z, I still feel a secret tingle, a tiny thrill. This is particularly due to Z's relative rarity: my dictionary devotes 99 pages to A words, 138 to P, but only 5 pages to words beginning with Z. Then there's Z's exoticness, for, though its a component of the English language, it gives the impression of having zipped out of Africa or the ancient Nebuchadnezzar. Ultimately, perhaps, whats most fascinating about Z is its dual projection of subtle menace and aesthetic grace. Z's are not verbal ants; they are bees. Stylish bees. Killer bees. They buzz; they sting.
Z is a whip crack of a letter, a striking viper of a letter, an open jacknife ever ready to cut the chords of convention or peel the peach of lust.
A Z is slick, quick (it's no accident that automakers call their fastest models Z cars), arcane, eccentric, and always faintly sinister - although its very elegance seperates it from the brutish X, that character traditionally associated with all forms of extinction. If X wields a tire iron, Z packs a laser gun. Zap! If X is Mike Hammer, Z is James Bond. (For reasons known only to the British, a Z 007 would pronounce its name "zed.") If X marks the spot, Z avoids the spot, being too fluid, too cosmopolitan, to remain in one place.
In contrast to that prim, trim, self-absorbed supermodel, I or to O, the voluptuous, orgasmic, bighearted slut, where Z a woman, she would be femme fatale, the consonant we love to fear and fear to love.
The celebrities of the alphabet are M and Z, the letters for whom famous movies have been named. Of course, V had its novel, but I can assure you from personal experience, in today's culture a novel lacks a movie's sizzle, not to mention pizzazz. Is it not testimony to Z's star power that it is invariably selected to come on last - and this despite the fact that the F word gets all the press?
Take a letter? You bet. I'll take Z. My favorite country, at least on paper, is Zanzibar; my favorite body of water, the Zuider Zee. ZZ Top is my favorite band, zymology my favorite branch of science (dealing, as it does, with the fermentation of beverages).
Had ZsaZsa Gabor married Frank Zappa, she would have had the coolest name in the world - except, maybe, if ZaSu Pitts had wed Tristan Tzara. As for me, my given name, Thomas, is a modern, anglicized version of the old prebiblical moniker Tammuz. Originally, Tammuz was a mythological hero who served the Godess simultaneously as lover, husband, brother, and son. Give me my Z back, and there's not telling where might go from there.
Before I go anywhere, however, let me lift a zarf of zinfandel to the former ruling family of Russia. To the tzar, the tzarina, and the little tzardines! And as for those who would complain that I'm taking this business too far, I say: better a zedophile than a pedophile.
- Tom Robbins
His answer to the request: "Write about one of your favorite things"
Esquire, 1996
The Knights Templars-Freemasonry-Jesuit-Vatican-CIA-Knights of Malta connection. Or it's lack there of...
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=The+Knights+Templars+and+Freemasonry+by+Harun+Yahya+&aq=f
I just watched this movie about the Knights and Mason. Besides some important things left out, it's a pretty well made and informative short movie.
The movie claims the Knights were rounded up because of their homosexuality and use of black arts, when in the book "Rule by Secrecy" by exemplary writer and researcher Jim Marrs, he writes that paid witnesses were called to say that after their capture. They were captured because France's King Philip was in debt to them and he got turned down as a member of the order. So he supported the election of archbishop Clement to the vacant papal throne in return for a secret commitment to crush the Knights after he became Pope. Plus in the movie they skip the whole part about the Knights finding the Arch of the Covenant and Holy Grail, Dead Sea Scrolls, their intention to rebuild Solomons Castle....and supposedly they uncovered the true identity of Christ.
Also, at the end of the movie when they finish up with masonry, they cover the granddaddy P2 masonic lodge but they fail to mention that the lodge is the connecting point between the Vatican and the CIA, who is still being represented by Kissinger.
Another example of the Vatican being left out, although it's relevance is key to connecting the dots. Much like Alex Jones who's obviously religious after his famous Peter Joseph interview where he totally showed his short sightedness and ignorance, the director of this movie Harun Yahya boasts his creationism and death to Darwinism on his website. Only the most hardcore researchers dare cover the Vatican, regardless of their religious views.I gotta give Jones some credit though....besides his poor debating skills and obvious fear mongering, he has a lot of balls coming out the way he does. He's obviously the loudest voice of our movement and he seems spot on the major current globalist conspiracy topics, but he fails to address other key topics. Those concerning the whole Jesuit-Vatican-Knights of Malta connection, which is appears to be at the top of this whole conspiracy pyramid according to Eric Phelps.... I dunno...maybe?
Some Alex Jones bashing for a change
3 10min parts
Eric Jon Phelps exposes Jesuit-CIA Alex Jones
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDUMp0OniVI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-cWKsgIcGU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW8W1pV9pes&feature=related
The "Black" Pope - The most powerfull man in the world?
http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/blackpope.htm
Saturday, April 4, 2009
New World Order: Still A Conspiracy Theory?
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown himself yesterday announced that the G20 heralded the creation of a “new world order” which would involve increased global regulation of economic markets.
Despite the fact that world leaders have been talking about a “new world order” for decades, in the context of the political agenda to diminish the power of sovereign states in favor of a move towards global governance, it was still regarded as a delusion of paranoid conspiracy theorists by the establishment media until relatively recently.
Despite the fact that world leaders have been talking about a “new world order” for decades, in the context of the political agenda to diminish the power of sovereign states in favor of a move towards global governance, it was still regarded as a delusion of paranoid conspiracy theorists by the establishment media until relatively recently.
Friday, April 3, 2009
The Sheep Conspiracy
Whatever the outcome of the G20, however strict or lax the new regulation will become, whatever new powers are given to international institutions, one thing remains clear: we are headed towards a one world government, and the bankers will continue to be in charge.
Conspiracy theorists have been pounding on the doors of those who will listen for years, only to be labeled as paranoid lunatics, anarchists, or even terrorists. They have been trying to slap us awake to the fact that the banks have been pulling the strings of government, dictating policy, essentially controlling our fates throughout time.
We are the sheep, the flock, the brainless gullible masses that need direction. Without us the Shepard has no income and the the sheepdog no purpose.
The Geithner plan for economic recovery will rob US taxpayers as the gains will continue to be privatized while the losses are socialized. The SDR plan as a new international currency, will create a defacto world currency, outside the control of any sovereign body. Further regulations will serve to curtail national sovereignty and slowly cede powers to international institutions run by the financial elite.
Conspiracy? This is happening in open view, reported in the newspapers, lamented on TV. This is a conspiracy in the same sense as that between a Shepard and his dog, working to fool the sheep.
Conspiracy theorists have been pounding on the doors of those who will listen for years, only to be labeled as paranoid lunatics, anarchists, or even terrorists. They have been trying to slap us awake to the fact that the banks have been pulling the strings of government, dictating policy, essentially controlling our fates throughout time.
We are the sheep, the flock, the brainless gullible masses that need direction. Without us the Shepard has no income and the the sheepdog no purpose.
The Geithner plan for economic recovery will rob US taxpayers as the gains will continue to be privatized while the losses are socialized. The SDR plan as a new international currency, will create a defacto world currency, outside the control of any sovereign body. Further regulations will serve to curtail national sovereignty and slowly cede powers to international institutions run by the financial elite.
Conspiracy? This is happening in open view, reported in the newspapers, lamented on TV. This is a conspiracy in the same sense as that between a Shepard and his dog, working to fool the sheep.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Which countries drink the most alcohol??
Some of us drink to quench our sadness, others to water our happiness. The same can be said of countries...
The latest figures from the World Health Organization show a new list of big drinkers based on pure alcohol bought and drank in 2007. Our number one contender, Luxembourg, I will disqualify for cheating. Their low taxes mean all neighboring countries just cross the border to stock up...
Lets se if we can explain the rest.
Ireland is depressing and Hungarians are just plain depressed... Not sure which one is the cause and which one the effect. Most likely a self-reinforcing viscous cycle providing a continuous excuse to indulge. Moldova is the poorest country in Europe with obvious needs for a reality-bender, and as far as I know, the Czechs are still the largest beer consumers in the world.
For the rest... your guess is as good as mine...
1) Luxembourg (15.6 litres per capita)
2) Ireland (13.7 litres)
3) Hungary (13.6 litres)
4) Moldova (13.2 litres)
5) Czech Republic (13.0 litres)
6) Croatia (12.3 litres)
7) Germany (12.0 litres)
8) Scotland (11.8 litres)
9) Spain (11.7 litres)
10) France (11.4 litres)
Some other intresting facts are Russia (10.3 litres), Lithuania (9.9 litres), England & Wales (9.9 litres), Australia (9.0 litres), United States (8.6 litres), Italy (8.0 litres),Canada (7.8 litres), Japan (7.6 litres), Sweden (6.0 litres), Norway (5.5 litres) China (5.2 litres).
The latest figures from the World Health Organization show a new list of big drinkers based on pure alcohol bought and drank in 2007. Our number one contender, Luxembourg, I will disqualify for cheating. Their low taxes mean all neighboring countries just cross the border to stock up...
Lets se if we can explain the rest.
Ireland is depressing and Hungarians are just plain depressed... Not sure which one is the cause and which one the effect. Most likely a self-reinforcing viscous cycle providing a continuous excuse to indulge. Moldova is the poorest country in Europe with obvious needs for a reality-bender, and as far as I know, the Czechs are still the largest beer consumers in the world.
For the rest... your guess is as good as mine...
1) Luxembourg (15.6 litres per capita)
2) Ireland (13.7 litres)
3) Hungary (13.6 litres)
4) Moldova (13.2 litres)
5) Czech Republic (13.0 litres)
6) Croatia (12.3 litres)
7) Germany (12.0 litres)
8) Scotland (11.8 litres)
9) Spain (11.7 litres)
10) France (11.4 litres)
Some other intresting facts are Russia (10.3 litres), Lithuania (9.9 litres), England & Wales (9.9 litres), Australia (9.0 litres), United States (8.6 litres), Italy (8.0 litres),Canada (7.8 litres), Japan (7.6 litres), Sweden (6.0 litres), Norway (5.5 litres) China (5.2 litres).
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Practical wisdom
An idea worth spreading: Barry Schwartz’ passionate plea for practical wisdom, a standing ovation talk fresh from TED2009.
Source: http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_our_loss_of_wisdom.html
In his inaugural address, Barack Obama appealed to each of us to give our best, as we try to extricate ourselves form the current financial crisis. But what did he appeal to? He did not, happily, follow in the footsteps of his predecessor and tell us to just go shopping. Nor did he tell us , “Trust us, trust your country. Invest. Invest. Invest.”
Instead, what he told us, was, to put aside the childish things. And he appealed to virtue. Virtue is an old-fashioned word. It seems a little out of place, in a cutting edge environment like this one. And besides, some of you might be wondering, what the hell does it mean?
Let me begin with an example. This is the job description of a hospital janitor that is scrolling up on the screen. [a list with the mundane chores of a janitor scrolls up the screen] And all of the items on it are unremarkable. They are the things you would expect: mob the floor, sweep them, empty the trash, restock the cabinets.
It may be a little surprising how many things there are, but it is not surprising what they are. But the one thing I want you to notice about them is this: even though this is a very long list, there isn’t a single thing on it that involves other human beings. Not one.
The janitor’s job could just as well be done in a mortuary as in a hospital. And yet, when some psychologists interviewed hospital janitors, to get a sense of what they thought their jobs are like, they encountered Mike, who told them about how he stopped mobbing the floor, because mr. Jones was out of his bed, getting a little exercise, trying to build up his strength, walking slowly up and down the hall.
And Charlene, told them about how she ignored her supervisor’s admonition, and didn’t vacuum the visitor’s lounge because there were some family members, who were there all day, every day, who at this moment happened to be taking a nap.
And then there was Luke, who washed the floor in a comatose young man’s room twice, because the man’s father who had been keeping him vigil, didn’t see Luke doing it the first time, and his father was angry.
And behavior like this, form janitors, from technicians, from nurses, and, if we are lucky so now and then, from doctors, doesn’t just make people feel a little better, it actually improves the quality of patient care and enables hospitals to run well.
Now, not all janitors are like this, of course. But the ones who are think that these sorts of human interactions, involving kindness, care and empathy, are an essential part of the job. And yet, their job description contains not a one word about other human beings. These janitors have the moral will to do right by other people, and beyond this, they have the moral skill to figure out what doing means.
Practical wisdom. Aristotle told us, is the combination of moral will and moral skill.
A wise person knows when and how to make “the exception to every rule”, as the janitors knew when to ignore their job duties in service of other objectives.
A wise person knows how to improvise, as Luke did when he rewashed the floor. Real world problems are often ambiguous and ill-defined, and the context is always changing.
A wise person is like a jazz musician, using the notes on the page, but dancing around them, inventing combinations that are appropriate for the situation and the people at hand. [Fellow jazz players cover up for each other's mistakes, always in harmony]
A wise person knows how to use these moral skills in the service of the right aims, to serve other people, not to manipulate other people.
And finally, perhaps most important, a wise person is made and not born.
Wisdom depends on experience, and not just any experience. You need the time to get to know the people that you are serving. You need permission to be allowed to improvise. To try new things. Occasionally to fail and to learn from your failures. And you need to be mentored by wise teachers.
When you ask your janitor to behave like the ones I described, how hard it is to learn to do their jobs, they tell you that it takes lots of experience. And they don’t mean it takes lots of experience to learn how to mob floors and empty trash cans. It takes lots of experience to learn how to care for people.
At TED, brillance is rampant. It’s scary. The good news is that you don’t need to be brilliant to be wise. The bad news is that without wisdom, brilliance isn’t enough. It is as likely to get you and other people in trouble as anything else. [applause]
Now, I hope that we all know this. There is a sense in which it is obvious, and yet, let me tell you a little story. It is a story about lemonade.
A dad and his eleven year old son were watching a Detroit Tigers game at the ball park. His son asked him for some lemonade and dad went to the concession stand to buy it. All they had was Mike’s Hard lemonade which was five percent alcohol.
Dad, being an academic had no idea that Mike’s Hard lemonade contained alcohol. [laughter] So, he brought it back and the kid was drinking it and the security guard spotted it and called the police who called an ambulance that rushed to the ball park, whizzed the kid to the hospital.
The emergency room ascertained that the kid had no alcohol in his blood. Pfew. And they were ready to let the kid go. But not so fast. The Wayne County Child Welfare Protection Agency said: No! And the child was sent to a foster home for three days.
At that point, can the child go home? And the judge said, Yes, but… Only if the dad leaves the house and checks into a motel. After two weeks, I am happy to report, the family was reunited, but the welfare workers and the ambulance people and the judge all said the same thing: “We hate to do it, but we have to follow procedure.”
How do things like this happen?
Scott Simon, who told the story on MPR, said: “Rules and procedures may be dumb, but they spare you from thinking. And to be fair, and to be fair, rules are imposed because previous officials have been lacks and they let a child go back to an abusive household. Fair enough. When things go wrong, as of course they do, we reach for two tools to try to fix them. One tool we reach for is rules, better ones, more of them. The second tool we reach for is incentives. Better ones, more of them. What else, after all, is there?
We can certainly see this in response to the current financial crisis. Regulate. Regulate. Regulate. Fix the incentives. Fix the incentives. Fix the incentives. The truth is that neither rules, nor incentives are enough to do the job. How could you even write a rule that got the janitors to do what they did? And would you pay them a bonus for being empathic?
It is preposterous on its face. And what happens, as we turn increasing the rules. Rules and incentives may change it for the better in the short run, but they create a downwards spiral that makes them worse in the long run. Moral skill is chipped away by an over reliance on rules that deprives us of the opportunity to improvise and learn from our improvisations. And moral will is undermined by an incessant appeal to incentives that destroy and our desire to do the right thing. And, without intending it, by appealing to rules and incentives, we are engaging in a wor on wisdom.
Let me give you just a few examples first of “Rules and the War on Moral Skill”. The “Lemonade” story is one. Second, no doubt familiar to you, is the nature of modern American education—scripted, lock-stepped curricula. Here is an example from Chicago kindergarten.
Script for day 53.
Title: Reading and enjoying literature/words with “b”.
Text: “The Bath”
Lecture: Assemble students on the rug or reading area… Give students a warning about the dangers of hot water… Say, “Listen very quietly as I read the story.”… Say, “Think of other pictures that make the same sound as the sound bath begins with.”…
Say 75 items in this script to teach a 25 page picture book all over Chicago in every kindergarten class in the city. Every teacher the same, the same words in the same way on the same day.
We know why these scripts are there—we don’t trust the judgment of teachers to let them loose on their own. Scripts like these are insurance policies against disaster. And the prevent disaster. But what they assure in its place is mediocricy. [applause and cheering]
Don’t get me wrong! We need rules! Jazz musicians need some notes on the page. We need rules for the bankers, God knows. But too many rules prevent accomplished jazz musicians from improvising and as a result they lose their gifts, or worse, they stop playing altogether.
Now, how about incentives? They seem clear and clever. If you have one reason for doing something, and I give you a second reason for doing the same thing, it seems only logical that two reasons are better than one, and you are more likely to do it. Right? Well, not always.
Sometimes, two reasons to do the same thing seem to compete with one another instead of complementing, and they make people less likely to do it. I’ll just give you one example because time is racing.
In Switzerland, back about 15 years ago, they were trying to decide where to site nuclear waste dumps. There was a national referendum and some psychologists went around and polled citizens who were very well informed. And they said, “Would you be willing to have a nuclear waste dump in your community?” Astonishingly, 50% of the citizens said “Yes.” They knew, or thought, it was dangerous, they thought it would reduce their property values, but, it had to go somewhere, and they had responsibilities as citizens.
The psychologists asked other people a slightly different question. They said, “If we paid you six weeks salary, every year, would you have a nuclear waste dump in your community?” Two reasons: it is my responsibility and I am getting paid. Instead of 50% saying yes, 25% said yes.
What happens is that the introduction of the incentive gets us to instead of asking, “What is my responsibility?” all we ask is “What serves my interest?” When incentives don’t work, when CEOs ignore the long term health of their companies in pursuit of short term gains that will lead to massive bonuses, the response is always the same: get smarter incentives.
The truth is, that there are no incentives you can devise that are ever are going to be smart enough. Any incentive system can be subverted by bad will. We need incentives, people have to make a living, but excessive reliance on incentives demoralizes professional activity in two sense of that word.
It causes people who engage in activity to lose moral, and it causes the activity itself to lose morality.
Barack Obama said before he was inaugurated, “We must ask, not just is it profitable, but is it right.” [applause] And when professions are demoralized, everyone in there becomes dependent on and addicted to incentives, and they stop asking, “Is it right?”
We see this in medicine. “Although it’s nothing serious, let’s keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn’t turn into a major lawsuit.” And we certainly see it in the world of business, “In order to remain competitive in today’s marketplace Bentham, I’m afraid we’re going to have to replace you with a sleazeball.” “I sold my soul for about a tenth of what the damn things are going for now.”
It is obvious this is not the way that people want to do their work. So what can we do? A few sources of hope. We ought to try to re moralize work. One way not to do it: teach more ethics courses. [laughter and applause] There is no better way to show people that you are not serious than to tie up everything you have to say about ethics into a little package with a bow and consign it to the margins as an ethics course. What to do instead?
One, celebrate moral exemplars. Acknowledge when you go to law school that little voice that is whispering in your ear about Atticus Finch. No ten year old goes to law school to do mergers and acquisitions. People are inspired by moral heroes. But we learn that with sophistication comes the understanding that you can’t acknowledge that you have moral heroes. Well, acknowledge them, be proud that you have them, celebrate them and demand that the people that teach you acknowledge and celebrate them too. That is one thing we can do.
I don’t know how many of you remember this, another moral hero, 15 years ago, Aaron Feuerstein who was the head of Malden Mils at Massachusets. They make Polartech, burned down, 3,000 employees, he kept everyone of them on the payroll. Why? Because it would been a disaster for them and for the community of he had let them go.
Maybe on paper our company is worth less to Wall Street, but I can tell you it is worth more. We are doing fine. Just at this TED, we heard talks from several moral heroes too, two particularly inspiring to me. One was Ray Anderson [cheering and applause] who turned a part of the evil empire into a zero footprint, or almost a zero footprint business. Why?! Because it was the right thing to do. And the bonus he is discovering is that he is discovering even more money. His employees are inspired by the effort. Why? Because they’d be happy to doing things that are the right thing to do.
Yesterday we heard Willy Smits about reforesting in Indonesia, [applause] and in many ways this is the perfect example, because it took the will to do the right thing. And God knows it took a huge amount of technical skill. I boggled at how much he needed to know, and his associates, in order to ply this out.
Most important to make it work, and he emphasized this, is that it took knowing the people in the communities. Unless the people you are working with are behind you, this will fail. And there isn’t a formula to tell you how to get the people behind you because different people in different communities organize their lives in different ways.
So there is a lot here at TED and other places that celebrate, and you don’t have to be a mega hero. There are ordinary heroes. Ordinary heroes like the janitors who are worth celebrating to. As practitioners, each and everyone of us thrive to be ordinary, if not extraordinary, heroes. As heads of organizations, we should strive to create environments that create and nurture, both moral skill and moral will. Even the wisest and most well-meaning people will give up, if they have to swim against the current in the organizations in which they work.
If you run an organization, you should be sure that non of the jobs, none of the jobs, have job descriptions like the job descriptions of the janitor. Because the truth is, that any work you do that involves interaction with other people, is moral work, and any moral work depends upon practical wisdom.
And perhaps, most important, as teachers we should strive to be the ordinary heroes, the moral exemplars to the people we mentor. And there are few things that we have to remember as teachers. One is that we are always teaching. Someone is always watching. The camera is always on. Bill Gates talked about the importance of education, in particular the model that Kipp was providing. Knowledge is power. And he talked about a lot of the wonderful things that Kipp is doing to take inner city kids and turn them into the direction of college.
I want to focus on one particular thing that Kipp is doing that Bill did not mention, and that is, they have come to the realization that the single most important thing kids need to learn is character. They need to learn to respect themselves. They need to learn to respect their schoolmates. They need to learn to respect their teachers. And, most important, they need to learn to respect learning.
That is the principle objective, if you do that, the rest is just pretty much a coast down hill. And the teachers, the way you teach these things to kids, is by having the teachers and all the other stuff and embody it, every minute of every day.
Obama appealed to virtue, and I think he was right. And the virtue that we need above all others, I think, is practical wisdom, because it is what allows others: honesty, kindness, courage, and so on, to be displayed at the right time, and in the right way.
He also appealed to hope. Right again. I think there is reason for hope. I think people want to be allowed to be virtuous. In many ways, it is what TED is all about—wanting to do the right thing in the right way for the right reasons. This kind of wisdom is within the grasp of each and everyone of us, if only we start paying attention. Paying attention to what we do, to how we do it, and, perhaps most importantly, to the structure of the organizations within which we work, so as to make sure that it enables us and other people to develop wisdom rather than having it suppressed.
Thank you very much.
[standing ovation]
Source: http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_our_loss_of_wisdom.html
In his inaugural address, Barack Obama appealed to each of us to give our best, as we try to extricate ourselves form the current financial crisis. But what did he appeal to? He did not, happily, follow in the footsteps of his predecessor and tell us to just go shopping. Nor did he tell us , “Trust us, trust your country. Invest. Invest. Invest.”
Instead, what he told us, was, to put aside the childish things. And he appealed to virtue. Virtue is an old-fashioned word. It seems a little out of place, in a cutting edge environment like this one. And besides, some of you might be wondering, what the hell does it mean?
Let me begin with an example. This is the job description of a hospital janitor that is scrolling up on the screen. [a list with the mundane chores of a janitor scrolls up the screen] And all of the items on it are unremarkable. They are the things you would expect: mob the floor, sweep them, empty the trash, restock the cabinets.
It may be a little surprising how many things there are, but it is not surprising what they are. But the one thing I want you to notice about them is this: even though this is a very long list, there isn’t a single thing on it that involves other human beings. Not one.
The janitor’s job could just as well be done in a mortuary as in a hospital. And yet, when some psychologists interviewed hospital janitors, to get a sense of what they thought their jobs are like, they encountered Mike, who told them about how he stopped mobbing the floor, because mr. Jones was out of his bed, getting a little exercise, trying to build up his strength, walking slowly up and down the hall.
And Charlene, told them about how she ignored her supervisor’s admonition, and didn’t vacuum the visitor’s lounge because there were some family members, who were there all day, every day, who at this moment happened to be taking a nap.
And then there was Luke, who washed the floor in a comatose young man’s room twice, because the man’s father who had been keeping him vigil, didn’t see Luke doing it the first time, and his father was angry.
And behavior like this, form janitors, from technicians, from nurses, and, if we are lucky so now and then, from doctors, doesn’t just make people feel a little better, it actually improves the quality of patient care and enables hospitals to run well.
Now, not all janitors are like this, of course. But the ones who are think that these sorts of human interactions, involving kindness, care and empathy, are an essential part of the job. And yet, their job description contains not a one word about other human beings. These janitors have the moral will to do right by other people, and beyond this, they have the moral skill to figure out what doing means.
Practical wisdom. Aristotle told us, is the combination of moral will and moral skill.
A wise person knows when and how to make “the exception to every rule”, as the janitors knew when to ignore their job duties in service of other objectives.
A wise person knows how to improvise, as Luke did when he rewashed the floor. Real world problems are often ambiguous and ill-defined, and the context is always changing.
A wise person is like a jazz musician, using the notes on the page, but dancing around them, inventing combinations that are appropriate for the situation and the people at hand. [Fellow jazz players cover up for each other's mistakes, always in harmony]
A wise person knows how to use these moral skills in the service of the right aims, to serve other people, not to manipulate other people.
And finally, perhaps most important, a wise person is made and not born.
Wisdom depends on experience, and not just any experience. You need the time to get to know the people that you are serving. You need permission to be allowed to improvise. To try new things. Occasionally to fail and to learn from your failures. And you need to be mentored by wise teachers.
When you ask your janitor to behave like the ones I described, how hard it is to learn to do their jobs, they tell you that it takes lots of experience. And they don’t mean it takes lots of experience to learn how to mob floors and empty trash cans. It takes lots of experience to learn how to care for people.
At TED, brillance is rampant. It’s scary. The good news is that you don’t need to be brilliant to be wise. The bad news is that without wisdom, brilliance isn’t enough. It is as likely to get you and other people in trouble as anything else. [applause]
Now, I hope that we all know this. There is a sense in which it is obvious, and yet, let me tell you a little story. It is a story about lemonade.
A dad and his eleven year old son were watching a Detroit Tigers game at the ball park. His son asked him for some lemonade and dad went to the concession stand to buy it. All they had was Mike’s Hard lemonade which was five percent alcohol.
Dad, being an academic had no idea that Mike’s Hard lemonade contained alcohol. [laughter] So, he brought it back and the kid was drinking it and the security guard spotted it and called the police who called an ambulance that rushed to the ball park, whizzed the kid to the hospital.
The emergency room ascertained that the kid had no alcohol in his blood. Pfew. And they were ready to let the kid go. But not so fast. The Wayne County Child Welfare Protection Agency said: No! And the child was sent to a foster home for three days.
At that point, can the child go home? And the judge said, Yes, but… Only if the dad leaves the house and checks into a motel. After two weeks, I am happy to report, the family was reunited, but the welfare workers and the ambulance people and the judge all said the same thing: “We hate to do it, but we have to follow procedure.”
How do things like this happen?
Scott Simon, who told the story on MPR, said: “Rules and procedures may be dumb, but they spare you from thinking. And to be fair, and to be fair, rules are imposed because previous officials have been lacks and they let a child go back to an abusive household. Fair enough. When things go wrong, as of course they do, we reach for two tools to try to fix them. One tool we reach for is rules, better ones, more of them. The second tool we reach for is incentives. Better ones, more of them. What else, after all, is there?
We can certainly see this in response to the current financial crisis. Regulate. Regulate. Regulate. Fix the incentives. Fix the incentives. Fix the incentives. The truth is that neither rules, nor incentives are enough to do the job. How could you even write a rule that got the janitors to do what they did? And would you pay them a bonus for being empathic?
It is preposterous on its face. And what happens, as we turn increasing the rules. Rules and incentives may change it for the better in the short run, but they create a downwards spiral that makes them worse in the long run. Moral skill is chipped away by an over reliance on rules that deprives us of the opportunity to improvise and learn from our improvisations. And moral will is undermined by an incessant appeal to incentives that destroy and our desire to do the right thing. And, without intending it, by appealing to rules and incentives, we are engaging in a wor on wisdom.
Let me give you just a few examples first of “Rules and the War on Moral Skill”. The “Lemonade” story is one. Second, no doubt familiar to you, is the nature of modern American education—scripted, lock-stepped curricula. Here is an example from Chicago kindergarten.
Script for day 53.
Title: Reading and enjoying literature/words with “b”.
Text: “The Bath”
Lecture: Assemble students on the rug or reading area… Give students a warning about the dangers of hot water… Say, “Listen very quietly as I read the story.”… Say, “Think of other pictures that make the same sound as the sound bath begins with.”…
Say 75 items in this script to teach a 25 page picture book all over Chicago in every kindergarten class in the city. Every teacher the same, the same words in the same way on the same day.
We know why these scripts are there—we don’t trust the judgment of teachers to let them loose on their own. Scripts like these are insurance policies against disaster. And the prevent disaster. But what they assure in its place is mediocricy. [applause and cheering]
Don’t get me wrong! We need rules! Jazz musicians need some notes on the page. We need rules for the bankers, God knows. But too many rules prevent accomplished jazz musicians from improvising and as a result they lose their gifts, or worse, they stop playing altogether.
Now, how about incentives? They seem clear and clever. If you have one reason for doing something, and I give you a second reason for doing the same thing, it seems only logical that two reasons are better than one, and you are more likely to do it. Right? Well, not always.
Sometimes, two reasons to do the same thing seem to compete with one another instead of complementing, and they make people less likely to do it. I’ll just give you one example because time is racing.
In Switzerland, back about 15 years ago, they were trying to decide where to site nuclear waste dumps. There was a national referendum and some psychologists went around and polled citizens who were very well informed. And they said, “Would you be willing to have a nuclear waste dump in your community?” Astonishingly, 50% of the citizens said “Yes.” They knew, or thought, it was dangerous, they thought it would reduce their property values, but, it had to go somewhere, and they had responsibilities as citizens.
The psychologists asked other people a slightly different question. They said, “If we paid you six weeks salary, every year, would you have a nuclear waste dump in your community?” Two reasons: it is my responsibility and I am getting paid. Instead of 50% saying yes, 25% said yes.
What happens is that the introduction of the incentive gets us to instead of asking, “What is my responsibility?” all we ask is “What serves my interest?” When incentives don’t work, when CEOs ignore the long term health of their companies in pursuit of short term gains that will lead to massive bonuses, the response is always the same: get smarter incentives.
The truth is, that there are no incentives you can devise that are ever are going to be smart enough. Any incentive system can be subverted by bad will. We need incentives, people have to make a living, but excessive reliance on incentives demoralizes professional activity in two sense of that word.
It causes people who engage in activity to lose moral, and it causes the activity itself to lose morality.
Barack Obama said before he was inaugurated, “We must ask, not just is it profitable, but is it right.” [applause] And when professions are demoralized, everyone in there becomes dependent on and addicted to incentives, and they stop asking, “Is it right?”
We see this in medicine. “Although it’s nothing serious, let’s keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn’t turn into a major lawsuit.” And we certainly see it in the world of business, “In order to remain competitive in today’s marketplace Bentham, I’m afraid we’re going to have to replace you with a sleazeball.” “I sold my soul for about a tenth of what the damn things are going for now.”
It is obvious this is not the way that people want to do their work. So what can we do? A few sources of hope. We ought to try to re moralize work. One way not to do it: teach more ethics courses. [laughter and applause] There is no better way to show people that you are not serious than to tie up everything you have to say about ethics into a little package with a bow and consign it to the margins as an ethics course. What to do instead?
One, celebrate moral exemplars. Acknowledge when you go to law school that little voice that is whispering in your ear about Atticus Finch. No ten year old goes to law school to do mergers and acquisitions. People are inspired by moral heroes. But we learn that with sophistication comes the understanding that you can’t acknowledge that you have moral heroes. Well, acknowledge them, be proud that you have them, celebrate them and demand that the people that teach you acknowledge and celebrate them too. That is one thing we can do.
I don’t know how many of you remember this, another moral hero, 15 years ago, Aaron Feuerstein who was the head of Malden Mils at Massachusets. They make Polartech, burned down, 3,000 employees, he kept everyone of them on the payroll. Why? Because it would been a disaster for them and for the community of he had let them go.
Maybe on paper our company is worth less to Wall Street, but I can tell you it is worth more. We are doing fine. Just at this TED, we heard talks from several moral heroes too, two particularly inspiring to me. One was Ray Anderson [cheering and applause] who turned a part of the evil empire into a zero footprint, or almost a zero footprint business. Why?! Because it was the right thing to do. And the bonus he is discovering is that he is discovering even more money. His employees are inspired by the effort. Why? Because they’d be happy to doing things that are the right thing to do.
Yesterday we heard Willy Smits about reforesting in Indonesia, [applause] and in many ways this is the perfect example, because it took the will to do the right thing. And God knows it took a huge amount of technical skill. I boggled at how much he needed to know, and his associates, in order to ply this out.
Most important to make it work, and he emphasized this, is that it took knowing the people in the communities. Unless the people you are working with are behind you, this will fail. And there isn’t a formula to tell you how to get the people behind you because different people in different communities organize their lives in different ways.
So there is a lot here at TED and other places that celebrate, and you don’t have to be a mega hero. There are ordinary heroes. Ordinary heroes like the janitors who are worth celebrating to. As practitioners, each and everyone of us thrive to be ordinary, if not extraordinary, heroes. As heads of organizations, we should strive to create environments that create and nurture, both moral skill and moral will. Even the wisest and most well-meaning people will give up, if they have to swim against the current in the organizations in which they work.
If you run an organization, you should be sure that non of the jobs, none of the jobs, have job descriptions like the job descriptions of the janitor. Because the truth is, that any work you do that involves interaction with other people, is moral work, and any moral work depends upon practical wisdom.
And perhaps, most important, as teachers we should strive to be the ordinary heroes, the moral exemplars to the people we mentor. And there are few things that we have to remember as teachers. One is that we are always teaching. Someone is always watching. The camera is always on. Bill Gates talked about the importance of education, in particular the model that Kipp was providing. Knowledge is power. And he talked about a lot of the wonderful things that Kipp is doing to take inner city kids and turn them into the direction of college.
I want to focus on one particular thing that Kipp is doing that Bill did not mention, and that is, they have come to the realization that the single most important thing kids need to learn is character. They need to learn to respect themselves. They need to learn to respect their schoolmates. They need to learn to respect their teachers. And, most important, they need to learn to respect learning.
That is the principle objective, if you do that, the rest is just pretty much a coast down hill. And the teachers, the way you teach these things to kids, is by having the teachers and all the other stuff and embody it, every minute of every day.
Obama appealed to virtue, and I think he was right. And the virtue that we need above all others, I think, is practical wisdom, because it is what allows others: honesty, kindness, courage, and so on, to be displayed at the right time, and in the right way.
He also appealed to hope. Right again. I think there is reason for hope. I think people want to be allowed to be virtuous. In many ways, it is what TED is all about—wanting to do the right thing in the right way for the right reasons. This kind of wisdom is within the grasp of each and everyone of us, if only we start paying attention. Paying attention to what we do, to how we do it, and, perhaps most importantly, to the structure of the organizations within which we work, so as to make sure that it enables us and other people to develop wisdom rather than having it suppressed.
Thank you very much.
[standing ovation]
Friday, February 6, 2009
Tweak Your Brain With Colors
Who needs caffeine? if this is true, get me color changing walls instead!
"
For an all-natural brain boost, skip the pills and hit the colors.
In the latest and most authoritative study on color's cognitive effects, test subjects given attention-demanding tasks did best when primed with the color red. Asked to be creative, they responded best to blue.
"Color enhances performance," said study co-author Juliet Zhu, a University of British Columbia psychologist.
Previous research on red's effects on the brain have found that it attracts people to food and can enhance sexual arousal. But research on the color's cognitive effects have been mixed: Studies have linked red to cognitive impairment on IQ tests, telemarketing pitches and analytical problem-solving, but also to improvements on low-demand tasks and clerical work. The latest findings tip the balance toward the red-as-brain-booster results and fits with work that showed a link between the color and arousal of neurobiological awareness and vigilance.
"Think about red, and what comes to mind: stop lights, stop signs, danger, ambulances," said Zhu. "People want to avoid those things, and that's why they do better on detail-oriented tasks."
While earlier studies tended not to test creativity, Zhu's findings provide a plausible explanation for blue's apparent role.
"Blue is the color of the sky, the ocean, safety," she said. "When their environment is safe, people are more explorative."
Zhu's study, published Thursday in Science, started with tests designed to measure avoidance and attraction. Students vigilantly avoided red and were strongly attracted to blue.
Blue linked to higher scores on subsequent tests of creativity, and red with better performance on memory tests.
State University of New York at Albany psychologist Ronald Friedman, co-author of a study that found red-linked drops on IQ tests, called the findings "quite remarkable." Stony Brook University psychologist Markus Meier, also a co-author on Friedman's study, called Zhu's study "a great paper," one that underscores the unappreciated importance of color.
"Colors are everywhere in our lives," said Meier. "We should use them more carefully in all settings."
To test alternative explanations for the findings, Zhu's team showed that neither red nor blue influenced mood. Test subjects also spent the same amount of time on their tasks, suggesting that neither color affected their motivation.
The colors appeared to enhance performance, but not to impair it. Red- and white-primed students had similar creativity scores, while blue- and white-primed students were equal on attention tasks.
Asked about the implications, Zhu suggested that people engaged in creative tasks surround themselves with blue, and with red when trying to focus.
"In our university, some professors use different color sheets for different groups during exams," said Meier. "Using them in an unthinking way could produce bad results for some students, and good for others."
Zhu is now studying the effects of red on other types of tasks.
It's possible, given the other effects provoked by red — interest in food and sex — that it will have different effects in other contexts.
"The science has been focused on the cognitive domain," she said. "But maybe in the physical domain, like sports, red can be associated with a different meanings, like power or enthusiasm. That's what we're doing now."
Citation: "Blue or Red? Exploring the Effect of Color on Cognitive Task Performances." By Ravi Mehta and Juliet Zhu. Science, Vol. 324, Issue 5915, Feb. 5, 2009."
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Let banks fail, says Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz
My sentiments exactly...
Professor Stiglitz, the former chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, told The Daily Telegraph that Britain should let the banks default on their vast foreign operations and start afresh with new set of healthy banks.
"The UK has been hit hard because the banks took on enormously large liabilities in foreign currencies. Should the British taxpayers have to lower their standard of living for 20 years to pay off mistakes that benefited a small elite?" he said.
"There is an argument for letting the banks go bust. It may cause turmoil but it will be a cheaper way to deal with this in the end. The British Parliament never offered a blanket guarantee for all liabilities and derivative positions of these banks," he said.
Mr Stiglitz said the Government should underwrite all deposits to protect the UK's domestic credit system and safeguard money markets that lubricate lending. It should use the skeletons of the old banks to build a healthier structure.
"The new banks will be more credible once they no longer have these liabilities on their back."
Mr Stiglitz said the City of London would survive the shock of such a default because it would uphold the principle of free market responsibility. "Counter-parties entered into voluntary agreements with the banks and they must accept the consequences," he said.
Such a drastic course of action would be fraught with difficulties and risks, however. It would leave healthy banks in an untenable position since they would have to compete for funds in the markets with state-run entities.
Mr Stiglitz's radical proposal is a "Chapter 11" scheme for households to allow them to bring their debts under control without having to go into bankruptcy. "Families matter just as much as firms. The US government can borrow at 1pc so why can't it lend directly to poor people for mortgages at 4pc. ," he said.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/4424418/Let-banks-fail-says-Nobel-economist-Joseph-Stiglitz.html
Professor Stiglitz, the former chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, told The Daily Telegraph that Britain should let the banks default on their vast foreign operations and start afresh with new set of healthy banks.
"The UK has been hit hard because the banks took on enormously large liabilities in foreign currencies. Should the British taxpayers have to lower their standard of living for 20 years to pay off mistakes that benefited a small elite?" he said.
"There is an argument for letting the banks go bust. It may cause turmoil but it will be a cheaper way to deal with this in the end. The British Parliament never offered a blanket guarantee for all liabilities and derivative positions of these banks," he said.
Mr Stiglitz said the Government should underwrite all deposits to protect the UK's domestic credit system and safeguard money markets that lubricate lending. It should use the skeletons of the old banks to build a healthier structure.
"The new banks will be more credible once they no longer have these liabilities on their back."
Mr Stiglitz said the City of London would survive the shock of such a default because it would uphold the principle of free market responsibility. "Counter-parties entered into voluntary agreements with the banks and they must accept the consequences," he said.
Such a drastic course of action would be fraught with difficulties and risks, however. It would leave healthy banks in an untenable position since they would have to compete for funds in the markets with state-run entities.
Mr Stiglitz's radical proposal is a "Chapter 11" scheme for households to allow them to bring their debts under control without having to go into bankruptcy. "Families matter just as much as firms. The US government can borrow at 1pc so why can't it lend directly to poor people for mortgages at 4pc. ," he said.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/4424418/Let-banks-fail-says-Nobel-economist-Joseph-Stiglitz.html
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
NEW WORLD ORDER as Global Money Matrix Self Destructs
Now that the genie is out of the bottle, worldwide economic, financial and political events will proceed with the inexorable force of destiny. The forthcoming changes, shifts and breaks with the past that are delineated below do concern the unsavory business of WHAT, positively, will not be brought into the future. This is of critical importance. Why? Because those who do not know, and understand, and heed history, are always, always forced to repeat it.
I. As we all sat back and waited for last year’s October Surprise, please know that it came a little bit early this year on September 15th which will forever be known as PITCH BLACK MONDAY. Actually, the entire month of October was set up to be a series of Black Monday’s, as well as every other day of the week shaped up to be. It’s really a good time to brace your self since this year’s election cycle, and beyond, will bring with it a whole new season of surprises. Things like the beginning of the end of FIAT money – the real root cause of all our financial problems and economic ills. This foundational flaw, together with all of the multi-layered financial/economic/accounting mechanisms and schemes that have insidiously crept into the system, are the ‘not talked about’ institutionalized culprits and structural deformities that really need to go. Without them, the perps wouldn’t be so tempted to stack the deck against us all the time.
The only legitimate currency is that which is backed by GOLD, or some other precious commodity that is universally valued, and issued directly by the US Government, not a privately owned, organized crime syndicate like the FED. Debt driven, fractional-reserve banking – the real bane of global finance – will then be banished from the planet forever, along with the overlords of disaster capitalism, institutionalized usury & loan-sharking (e.g. World Bank & International Monetary Fund), as well as their economic hitmen. Finally, the central organizing principle of modern society, and especially Western Civilization, will no longer be: maximizing shareholders’ wealth.
The writing is on the wall: THE FED IS DEAD. And so is the Fed’s collection agency – the IRS. The FED has obviously been on extreme life support since September ’08, and the only compassionate response is to let it go peacefully into the sunset. Perhaps we should organize a simple taxpayers’ revolt, not too unlike those that occurred prior to the American Revolution, to bury this beast forever. When the people do wake up, and realize that the Federal Reserve Note that they carry in their pocket is exactly that – a note (i.e. debt, obligation, debit, commitment, instrument of indebtedness), things will start to get REEEEAL interesting !
II. Another little surprise will come in the form of an announcement that goes something like this: The USA was conceived to be a CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC, not a democracy by plutocracy. Or corpocacy, or oligarchy/synarchy, or crony capitalism or any other ism/cracy/archy they have tried to foist upon US. The founding fathers would be absolutely horrified to see the “mob rule by the privileged elites” into which this once great nation has degenerated. Every political philosopher knows that democracy, when sufficiently dumbed down and unduly influenced by the moneyed ruling class, will always devolve into a despotic tyranny. Therefore, the wholesale exportation of our fraudulent notion of democracy, and its supposed freedoms (to buy, buy, buy after watching the boob tube hucksters), by the political and corporate classes must be reconsidered. And it will be soon, on a new channel during this “Fall” season’s new lineup! Stay tuned ---
The recent presidential election, incidentally, is perhaps the most flagrant example of how the US constitutional republic has been suspended (at the very least, once every 4 years, right?). Just as much as the voting populace has been suspended in the state of perpetual ignorance is bliss for generations. Can you imagine – the winner having raised close to $700 MILLION in campaign contributions – just how many debts the president-select* has incurred?! How, pray tell, do you think these debts will be paid back in light of the trillions that are already owed across the world by the US Treasury, US corporations, US citizens, etc. They won’t be paid, because they can’t be paid. The US Corporation is, and has been, bankrupt for quite some time now. It’s stone cold broke and plum busted. And We The People should be thoroughly disgusted. Therefore, this fraudulent corporate entity – US Inc. – can now be trotted off the global stage, so that the REAL Constitutional Republic can be resurrected to its proper place in the nation’s governmental and political life.
*Demoplican or Republocrat – either way, they are still two sides of the exact same coin. The coin of the realm that excludes We The People.
III. Another announcement will be made, in the not too distant future, about the business entity commonly known as the CORPORATION – the main huckster of this ‘brand’ of faux democracy. Surely, if the devil were to ever choose the perfect form in which to enter in order to carry out his nefarious designs, Inc. is it. Is there any other entity on earth – person or party, organization or association, government or institution, jurisdiction or bureaucracy, club or group, fraternity or sorority, etc. that can function with such impunity, as it hides behind the shield of LIMITED LIABILITY. Those two words have given complete cover for the flagrant and wanton destruction of planet Earth.
You name it – oil slicked coastlines, razed rainforests, beaches strewn with dead dolphins and whales. Not to mention the complete erosion of human, civil and national rights, wherever INC decides to set up shop.
Let’s pick a country. Let’s go to India and visit Bhopal of Union Carbide fame. Close to 8000 people died within two weeks of that December day in 1984 in what is known as the worst industrial disaster of the last century. Now that Dow Chemical owns Union Carbide, you can only imagine the veritable phalanx of attorneys who are paid unconscionable fees to ensure proper responsibility and accountability will never be assumed by their master.
Or let’s visit the Punjab and talk to the thousands of widows of farmers who committed suicide because of Monsanto’s “seedless seeds”. Or go to just about anywhere on that subcontinent where a Walmart is being protested for land theft, encroachment and despoilation. Let’s not forget about all the Coca Cola bottling plants that have become notorious for stealing the most precious commodity that every Indian cherishes and covets – WATER. Well, that takes care of land, water, air … and blood. What else in heaven’s name do these stakeholders want?!
We all know the deal. It’s the one where the individual, and his/her environment, is always trampled in favor of the corporate interest. Isn’t it time to really take stock of what our current predicament has left us with? Perhaps it’s also time to seriously think about actually re-ordering the ORDER, instead of once again rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic. Like we’ve said, “optimizing stockholder profit” will soon be history, as the cease and desist orders are not far from being issued to Corporate America. Might as well get a head start on dissolving (or re-chartering) that corporation.
IV. Termination of Globalization: The dominating and predatory form, that is. No other global initiative has been more unsuccessful at creating a framework for a more efficient transfer of goods and services around the planet. Truly, every aspect of this corporate inspired policy has failed miserably. Wherever it promoters trumpet its stated intention to make markets more streamlined, effective and resilient, it has done quite the opposite.
One only needs to look at the current debacle within the European Union concerning the banking, credit, and stock market breakdowns. Never has a response from the appropriate governing bodies been more disorganized, full of mixed messages and working at cross purposes with the member states. It was like watching The Three Stooges (France, Germany & Italy) play musical chairs blindfolded with no clothes on. What an unprecedented spectacle, and in plain view for the entire world to watch! This will undoubtedly put the brakes on the concretizing of a North American Union and their planned currency – the Amero. Praise the Lord!
As a matter of fact, all of the financial unions and economic superstates (e.g. European Union; Southeast Asian Association for Regional Cooperation; Union of South American Nations) that have been created over the past many years will, by sheer necessity and desperation, be forced to re–organize themselves in the coming months and years. Even South America, which has two distinct camps that are constantly gummin’ up the works for each other, will abandon their current emerging model in favor of one that enjoys complete freedom from its North American taskmaster. To their credit, they have set the bar higher than it has ever been set concerning their strongly stated desire to be free of IMF and World Bank control. Only Russia has exceeded their standards, as they had already been fleeced by the Oligarchs in what may very well be the grandest larceny of national wealth/resources in history. This, of course, was preceded by a 75 year scourge of incessant rape, pillaging and plundering by the Bolsheviks and their Western financiers & handlers. Clearly Mr. Putin will not allow a repeat of any such conduct within his borders, and the international persecution that he has suffered certainly reflects their displeasure and frustration with him. No wonder Vladimir Putin is now considered a “reincarnation” of Peter the Great by his own people.
The ruinous influence of these two globalization thugs (IMF & WB) can be instantly assessed by looking at the economic calamities they caused in Argentina (1999-2002), as well as in Thailand, South Korea & Indonesia during the 1997 Asian currency crisis. Likewise, every nation in Africa that has chosen to take on their monetary yoke has only misery and war and financial oppression to show for it. Wherever these 2 scrooges show their faces, it’s quite like Ebenezer himself showing up to make a house call. You know the patient will soon find himself in a pine box after all the gold fillings and rings have been removed.
We have seen this globalization scam unfold in country after country, as a ruse to steal a nation’s resources, always taking from those who have, and giving to those who want it. In fact, an objective assessment of all the world’s current conflicts would reveal that the vast majority are directly the result of this geo-political/commercial dynamic. The privatization of water sources/bodies/supplies/rights is perhaps the most provocative and glaring, and can be found at the root of a number of these resource wars.
Clearly the verdict has been delivered: Economies are much less vulnerable, the more locally they are positioned and the less centralized their decision-making process. This arrangement affords much greater resiliency when dealing with the vicissitudes of the marketplace. And it takes the power away from those who are insulated in ivory towers, and far from the plight of the common man. It is time for everyone on the planet to “think globally; act locally”.
V. Stock market will become extinct. There is no greater tool at the disposal of those who can, and do, manipulate the various markets than the charade of “setting up” a formal system of trading, buying and selling of anything, as exemplified by the NYSE. This is where it all happens. From devastating whole national (and regional) economies, to toppling uncooperative corporate execs, to bringing 150 year old multi-billion $$ companies to their knees within a week’s time. From triggering stockholder revolts, to propping up corporate raiders, to extorting billions from national and/or corporate treasuries. They can, and do, do it all right there on the floor.
Really, the very best example of what occurs in these speculative market exchanges is the gambling casino. In Vegas, everyone knows that the house ALWAYS wins. It never loses. Even when there is the appearance of losing, it still wins. Go figure, but it’s true. Your stockbroker is not too unlike the blackjack dealer. And your financial planner is often a croupier in disguise. So, the question remains, do you honestly know what your hard earned retirement money is invested in? If not, this is a very good time to find out!!!
For those of us who have been there, we know that whether you call it an oil bourse, a commodity exchange, or a bond market, you’re still playing in a game that can go against you at any time. Wipe out your earnings in a heartbeat; devour your principal in a flash. It’s often been said that when he comes, “he comes like a thief in the night”. Do you still feel you know where your entire life savings is currently residing?
The derivatives market represents the single greatest threat to worldwide economic stability and financial security. It poses such great potential for financial abuse and economic devastation that the current institutional arrangements of this commercial realm have become completely unacceptable. The alarming proliferation of hedge funds, as well as the growing number and variety of derivative instruments, has reached a critical mass that is incompatible with living a financially sound life on planet Earth. Simply put, some of these instruments are so far from the street – economic reality – that they put into jeopardy all the hard work, which appears in the form of real goods and services, that is produced by any economy at any given time. This predicament signifies a CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER to us all.
Remember – DERIVATIVES are the real megilla. Derivatives, by their very nature, can be highly radioactive, and can go nuclear any time circumstances conspire in just the right, or wrong, way. Those who control their destiny can, likewise, utilize their inherent threat as a means of conducting financial and economic terrorism anytime, anywhere completely under the radar screen. It’s time for them to go. And we trust it’s just a matter of execution at this point.
VI. Mass Consumerism & Perpetual Economic Growth – the Fric & Frac of our Age – are history. One need not look any further than the inside of one’s own home to see the ravages of these adopted twins. They own the bedroom, the living room, the family room and all the closets. They’ve taken over the kitchen, the den and the garage, as well. Since their middle names are Amass and Accumulate, we can only imagine what might lay hidden in the attic, the basement and the shed.
Ever since they became the twin pillars of Kali Yuga’s overarching philosophy of life, things started to really go to hell in a handbasket … or rather gilded cage. How so? What else could one expect from a political economy that demands growth, necessitates growth and extols the virtues of growth at every turn (and on every other commercial and newscast). Growth, at the expense of WHAT!! We’ll tell you what – Life!
One of the most tragic parts of this ever-unfolding tragedy has been the dramatic change in the spirit of the people with whom these twins associate. The very society loses its refinement, as the culture becomes debased. Aren’t so many things associated with Americana experienced as coarse, and crude, and crass? Likewise, the nation, which was once known as the “land of the free; home of the brave”, morphs into a country reviled for its unkindness, lack of compassion and cruelty. Before anyone realizes, the citizenry is easily being herded, and then stampeded, into wars and conflict of every sort and kind.
What else could be expected when the meme of consumerism is subliminally implanted at such a young and tender age, and relentlessly reinforced from cradle to grave? And, what does it really say about a society when all who belong to it are known as consumers. Kind of like little pac-men (and pac-women) gobbling up everything in sight. Starts out with BIG Macs and 24 oz cokes, then super-sized HUMMERS, then oil fields and gold mines and precious rainforests, and then whole countries.
Likewise, in the corporate realm, any board director, company officer, division president, regional director, department manager, production supervisor, etc. will candidly speak to the greatest pressure in their lives. More income, more sales, more profit, more production, more revenue – anything that will show an increase in year over year growth. Always gotta GROW, even though yuv been out of puberty for 20 or 30 years!?
Well, you can imagine that this state of affairs can only go on for so long. As a matter of fact, this party’s now over. And the hangover is about to begin. Perhaps it’s time to send these twins on a permanent vacation to the waterless region.
VII. War, as a means of wealth creation, is now bankrupt. War, as a means of conflict resolution, is over. As a means to any end whatsoever, war is finished. You get the picture, don’t you? War has outlived its usefulness, and has become as obsolete as the derivatives hawker. There is simply no more place for it in civil society. It’s time for the curtain to fall on this show for the last time, and for all of its bad actors to hit the stage exit.
It never was a legitimate policy for conflict resolution, as we know. Virtually all conflicts and wars were manufactured in the boardrooms of the world. And impeccably stage managed by the directors of the war studios. Isn’t the Iraq war a perfect example of this kind of terrible and awful-to-watch “B” movie?
Any deliberate, probing and unprejudiced analysis of all the major wars going back to the French Revolution will reveal an extraordinary degree of carefully calculated and coordinated events leading up to the actual conflagrations we call war. Just read the actual history that is only now beginning to surface, and you will reach this very same conclusion.
War has consistently served its masters in three ways which no longer have relevance in an enlightened civilization: (i) population control (ii) artificial creation of wealth for the plutocracy (iii) imposition of a tyrannical order in the wake of the chaos that always results from war. Population control in this context has different meanings. The number of people who are systematically genocided, wantonly annihilated and deliberately infected with disease agents serve the purpose of population reduction. Then there is the sheer terror of war and its effects on whole populations (see how easily controlled both the Germans and Japanese were after WWII). “Order out of chaos” is made easy when all concerned parties have been faced with the extraordinary distraction, mayhem and pandemonium that war always brings.
There are, of course, many other declared wars whose battlegrounds are far from the traditional battlefields of armed conflict. The WAR on Drugs. The WAR on Poverty. The WAR on Crime. The WAR on AIDS. Just like the WAR on TERROR, all of these so-called wars are entirely bogus and fabricated, as they all have consistently produced outcomes that are completely contrary to their stated purposes. How so? Because each of them has been designed, and engineered, to perpetuate and expand the status quo. The War on Drugs, for instance, was designed in part to ensure that the opium (and all of its profitable derivatives) flows freely and efficiently from the poppy fields of Afghanistan to the targeted markets in America and elsewhere. In this way, all clandestine US and foreign intelligence agencies/secrets services are able to fund their innumerable black operations without any congressional oversight or public scrutiny from the massive revenues generated that this perfectly controlled black market provides. Oh, yes, did we forget to mention that most of these black ops are actually wars as well. What a Racket?! As Major General Smedley Butler once proclaimed to the world in his book: “WAR IS A RACKET.”
May the shadow governments of the warmongering and real “Axis of Evil” – the USA, the UK and Israel – truly imbibe the message contained in this ongoing proclamation: WAR is no longer an option. For each of these nations is facing an economic armegeddon of staggering and unprecedented proportions. When confronted with such an incapacitating monetary meltdown, the impulse and subsequent orchestrated plan, historically, has been to provoke wars through false flag attacks/operations. This knee-jerk, yet carefully calculated, reaction will no longer work. The consequential global financial apocalypse, this time around, will simply be too demanding and debilitating, especially for those who would attempt to plunge the planet into a WWIII scenario. Why? The global money matrix, that supports and keeps their war machine well-oiled, has been in a slow motion collapse for many years, and is now in an epoch crashing free-fall. It’s disintegrating before our eyes, and will soon be unable to fund not so much as a dustup in the neighborhood sandlot.
The 4th Reich has completely run its course. This last covert phase of the “Holy Roman Empire” is finally over. And it’s now imperative that the maestro, and his orchestra, in ‘Rome’ get over it. Let us once again proclaim, here and now, that: WAR HAS COME TO AN END.
VIII. There is a very profound and significant connection between the US Government sponsored and staged terrorist attacks of 9/11/01 and the PRE-PLANNED Financial & Economic 9/11 of 2008 that may be difficult for many to fully embrace. But here it goes:
The OMEN that 911 truly was, looks a little bit like THE LORD OF THE RINGS.
Remember the Twin Towers? When they came down in NYC, it was a message to humankind that the reign of the Almighty Dollar was coming to an end. As a nation’s currency goes, so goes its destiny. Her financial strength and economic prowess were on the wane, and soon to be greatly diminished. Just as the WTC (financial capital of the world) was pulverized into dust, the US Dollar would be swept into the ash heap of history. Just as we see it collapsing all around us, exactly 7 years after the original 911 apocalyptic events.
When the Ring of Power was finally destroyed, like the Pentagon (ring-shaped command center of the military-industrial complex) was mortally wounded and damaged, the message was equally clear. Her military might and superior force would be reduced to rubble in the twinkling of an eye. She would, likewise, soon see the demise of Her all-pervasive state sponsored terrorism. This, because She had lost all moral ascendancy. Besides, the empire could no longer be sustained politically, financially, practically or ethically, as the seeds of its own destruction had fully sprouted. The most fatal seed grew into that extremely corrupt and predatory form of corporate, crony capitalism which was so socially unconscious, and so environmentally unaware, it was quite doomed from the very beginning.
The GOOD NEWS is that the nation – its people – will now be compelled to beat their “swords into plowshares” and their “spears into pruning hooks”.
Just as the Phoenix rose from its ashes, so too will America ascend to even greater heights. As long as She ascends with the guidance of the highest of ideals, loftiest of principles and noblest of intentions. And She reforms, and transforms Herself, in good faith, in earnest and with haste.
As a modern day prophet said in the days immediately following September 11, 2001:
“America, Wake up ! ! ! Seize this God-given opportunity. There is no more time to dally in fear and ignorance and greed. For yours is a destiny that must serve as a beacon of Light and Hope and Peace to the world. Make haste, the time is drawing nigh!”
T. Anthony Michael
11/22/08
Publication, posting and printing of this article is expressly authorized.
http://www.nowpublic.com/world/new-world-order-global-money-matrix-self-destructs
Special Message to the Market Oracles and Money Masters of the Universe
Our “PRE-PLANNED FIN/ECO 911 of ’08” scenario in no way ignores the true state of the national economy, international finance or global economic picture. In fact we are, and have been, fully cognizant of the fact that the true state of every market – real estate, equity, bond, commodities, currency, derivative, etc. has been in shambles for many years, just waiting for the Perfect Storm to come around and blow it all away.
It has been obvious to many of us that each of these markets have operated according to the whim of a very few individuals with extremely concentrated power to manipulate. Therefore, all markets can be artificially inflated, as we have seen time and time again. Likewise, they can be artificially deflated, sometimes rather quickly for effect, as we have seen. “The Invisible Hand” of the market is just that – a very carefully hidden(1) hand that makes a complete and total mockery of every economic and financial theory ever advanced. Time for a lot of us to accept this fact of modern economic life.
Perhaps we should now take off our blinders and admit that while, yes, all of the indicators are, and have been, there for a catastrophic economic meltdown & financial cataclysm, these events are still completely controllable. All of us have seen bubble after bubble grow and balloon, and merge and overlap, and inextricably interpenetrate each other, until all we have is one massive bubble ready to pop. But, when will it pop?! It will pop when the confidence level is sufficiently undermined by the very same MEDIA that controls the flow of the relevant information. And who, pray tell, controls the media, if not The Invisible Hand? Clearly, the real Market Oracles are not a part of that MSM juggernaut. Therefore, it is incumbent upon each oracle to get it right, since they are the very best sources of pertinent financial and economic data/information available.
The inevitability of self destructive capitalism does not preclude the process of controlled destruction. As the system eats itself, there are those who are eaten, and those who eat. We are witnessing this devolution in living color, as we both write and read these words. The “strong” at the top of the pyramid have always done the eating, as the “weak” at the bottom provide the bone for the stew. The only major difference at this particular, and final, feast is that the internet has allowed for an unprecedented explosion of true and accurate information in real time. Therefore, the playing field has been leveled like never before. The little guy or gal, for the first time ever, has the opportunity to take back a little, or a lot, of his/her power (WEALTH), should he/she so choose.
Even as the Wall Street gangs team up with the opportunistic political class, as well as the numerous corporate/legal jackals and lobby parasites, to effectuate the most massive redistribution of wealth (aka in your face THEFT) in recorded history, something has profoundly and fundamentally changed. There is a dynamic at work which can alter the game just enough to potentially turn the pyramid upside down. This, however, requires a no nonsense, “look in the mirror with raw honesty” approach. Then we (the oracles) will not deign to render a judgment that is not fully baked. And the recommendations we make are more likely to be issued in the best interest of ALL, especially for those who are in a position of class disadvantage, financial ignorance or structured powerlessness.
So, we have made it clear that all the forces have been put into place for the upcoming monetary apocalypse. But even these forces are controlled, each and every one of them, all the way up to the top. It’s probably a very good time to contemplate just who it is that resides at the peak of the global financial decision-making process. And, their agenda?!?
I. As we all sat back and waited for last year’s October Surprise, please know that it came a little bit early this year on September 15th which will forever be known as PITCH BLACK MONDAY. Actually, the entire month of October was set up to be a series of Black Monday’s, as well as every other day of the week shaped up to be. It’s really a good time to brace your self since this year’s election cycle, and beyond, will bring with it a whole new season of surprises. Things like the beginning of the end of FIAT money – the real root cause of all our financial problems and economic ills. This foundational flaw, together with all of the multi-layered financial/economic/accounting mechanisms and schemes that have insidiously crept into the system, are the ‘not talked about’ institutionalized culprits and structural deformities that really need to go. Without them, the perps wouldn’t be so tempted to stack the deck against us all the time.
The only legitimate currency is that which is backed by GOLD, or some other precious commodity that is universally valued, and issued directly by the US Government, not a privately owned, organized crime syndicate like the FED. Debt driven, fractional-reserve banking – the real bane of global finance – will then be banished from the planet forever, along with the overlords of disaster capitalism, institutionalized usury & loan-sharking (e.g. World Bank & International Monetary Fund), as well as their economic hitmen. Finally, the central organizing principle of modern society, and especially Western Civilization, will no longer be: maximizing shareholders’ wealth.
The writing is on the wall: THE FED IS DEAD. And so is the Fed’s collection agency – the IRS. The FED has obviously been on extreme life support since September ’08, and the only compassionate response is to let it go peacefully into the sunset. Perhaps we should organize a simple taxpayers’ revolt, not too unlike those that occurred prior to the American Revolution, to bury this beast forever. When the people do wake up, and realize that the Federal Reserve Note that they carry in their pocket is exactly that – a note (i.e. debt, obligation, debit, commitment, instrument of indebtedness), things will start to get REEEEAL interesting !
II. Another little surprise will come in the form of an announcement that goes something like this: The USA was conceived to be a CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC, not a democracy by plutocracy. Or corpocacy, or oligarchy/synarchy, or crony capitalism or any other ism/cracy/archy they have tried to foist upon US. The founding fathers would be absolutely horrified to see the “mob rule by the privileged elites” into which this once great nation has degenerated. Every political philosopher knows that democracy, when sufficiently dumbed down and unduly influenced by the moneyed ruling class, will always devolve into a despotic tyranny. Therefore, the wholesale exportation of our fraudulent notion of democracy, and its supposed freedoms (to buy, buy, buy after watching the boob tube hucksters), by the political and corporate classes must be reconsidered. And it will be soon, on a new channel during this “Fall” season’s new lineup! Stay tuned ---
The recent presidential election, incidentally, is perhaps the most flagrant example of how the US constitutional republic has been suspended (at the very least, once every 4 years, right?). Just as much as the voting populace has been suspended in the state of perpetual ignorance is bliss for generations. Can you imagine – the winner having raised close to $700 MILLION in campaign contributions – just how many debts the president-select* has incurred?! How, pray tell, do you think these debts will be paid back in light of the trillions that are already owed across the world by the US Treasury, US corporations, US citizens, etc. They won’t be paid, because they can’t be paid. The US Corporation is, and has been, bankrupt for quite some time now. It’s stone cold broke and plum busted. And We The People should be thoroughly disgusted. Therefore, this fraudulent corporate entity – US Inc. – can now be trotted off the global stage, so that the REAL Constitutional Republic can be resurrected to its proper place in the nation’s governmental and political life.
*Demoplican or Republocrat – either way, they are still two sides of the exact same coin. The coin of the realm that excludes We The People.
III. Another announcement will be made, in the not too distant future, about the business entity commonly known as the CORPORATION – the main huckster of this ‘brand’ of faux democracy. Surely, if the devil were to ever choose the perfect form in which to enter in order to carry out his nefarious designs, Inc. is it. Is there any other entity on earth – person or party, organization or association, government or institution, jurisdiction or bureaucracy, club or group, fraternity or sorority, etc. that can function with such impunity, as it hides behind the shield of LIMITED LIABILITY. Those two words have given complete cover for the flagrant and wanton destruction of planet Earth.
You name it – oil slicked coastlines, razed rainforests, beaches strewn with dead dolphins and whales. Not to mention the complete erosion of human, civil and national rights, wherever INC decides to set up shop.
Let’s pick a country. Let’s go to India and visit Bhopal of Union Carbide fame. Close to 8000 people died within two weeks of that December day in 1984 in what is known as the worst industrial disaster of the last century. Now that Dow Chemical owns Union Carbide, you can only imagine the veritable phalanx of attorneys who are paid unconscionable fees to ensure proper responsibility and accountability will never be assumed by their master.
Or let’s visit the Punjab and talk to the thousands of widows of farmers who committed suicide because of Monsanto’s “seedless seeds”. Or go to just about anywhere on that subcontinent where a Walmart is being protested for land theft, encroachment and despoilation. Let’s not forget about all the Coca Cola bottling plants that have become notorious for stealing the most precious commodity that every Indian cherishes and covets – WATER. Well, that takes care of land, water, air … and blood. What else in heaven’s name do these stakeholders want?!
We all know the deal. It’s the one where the individual, and his/her environment, is always trampled in favor of the corporate interest. Isn’t it time to really take stock of what our current predicament has left us with? Perhaps it’s also time to seriously think about actually re-ordering the ORDER, instead of once again rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic. Like we’ve said, “optimizing stockholder profit” will soon be history, as the cease and desist orders are not far from being issued to Corporate America. Might as well get a head start on dissolving (or re-chartering) that corporation.
IV. Termination of Globalization: The dominating and predatory form, that is. No other global initiative has been more unsuccessful at creating a framework for a more efficient transfer of goods and services around the planet. Truly, every aspect of this corporate inspired policy has failed miserably. Wherever it promoters trumpet its stated intention to make markets more streamlined, effective and resilient, it has done quite the opposite.
One only needs to look at the current debacle within the European Union concerning the banking, credit, and stock market breakdowns. Never has a response from the appropriate governing bodies been more disorganized, full of mixed messages and working at cross purposes with the member states. It was like watching The Three Stooges (France, Germany & Italy) play musical chairs blindfolded with no clothes on. What an unprecedented spectacle, and in plain view for the entire world to watch! This will undoubtedly put the brakes on the concretizing of a North American Union and their planned currency – the Amero. Praise the Lord!
As a matter of fact, all of the financial unions and economic superstates (e.g. European Union; Southeast Asian Association for Regional Cooperation; Union of South American Nations) that have been created over the past many years will, by sheer necessity and desperation, be forced to re–organize themselves in the coming months and years. Even South America, which has two distinct camps that are constantly gummin’ up the works for each other, will abandon their current emerging model in favor of one that enjoys complete freedom from its North American taskmaster. To their credit, they have set the bar higher than it has ever been set concerning their strongly stated desire to be free of IMF and World Bank control. Only Russia has exceeded their standards, as they had already been fleeced by the Oligarchs in what may very well be the grandest larceny of national wealth/resources in history. This, of course, was preceded by a 75 year scourge of incessant rape, pillaging and plundering by the Bolsheviks and their Western financiers & handlers. Clearly Mr. Putin will not allow a repeat of any such conduct within his borders, and the international persecution that he has suffered certainly reflects their displeasure and frustration with him. No wonder Vladimir Putin is now considered a “reincarnation” of Peter the Great by his own people.
The ruinous influence of these two globalization thugs (IMF & WB) can be instantly assessed by looking at the economic calamities they caused in Argentina (1999-2002), as well as in Thailand, South Korea & Indonesia during the 1997 Asian currency crisis. Likewise, every nation in Africa that has chosen to take on their monetary yoke has only misery and war and financial oppression to show for it. Wherever these 2 scrooges show their faces, it’s quite like Ebenezer himself showing up to make a house call. You know the patient will soon find himself in a pine box after all the gold fillings and rings have been removed.
We have seen this globalization scam unfold in country after country, as a ruse to steal a nation’s resources, always taking from those who have, and giving to those who want it. In fact, an objective assessment of all the world’s current conflicts would reveal that the vast majority are directly the result of this geo-political/commercial dynamic. The privatization of water sources/bodies/supplies/rights is perhaps the most provocative and glaring, and can be found at the root of a number of these resource wars.
Clearly the verdict has been delivered: Economies are much less vulnerable, the more locally they are positioned and the less centralized their decision-making process. This arrangement affords much greater resiliency when dealing with the vicissitudes of the marketplace. And it takes the power away from those who are insulated in ivory towers, and far from the plight of the common man. It is time for everyone on the planet to “think globally; act locally”.
V. Stock market will become extinct. There is no greater tool at the disposal of those who can, and do, manipulate the various markets than the charade of “setting up” a formal system of trading, buying and selling of anything, as exemplified by the NYSE. This is where it all happens. From devastating whole national (and regional) economies, to toppling uncooperative corporate execs, to bringing 150 year old multi-billion $$ companies to their knees within a week’s time. From triggering stockholder revolts, to propping up corporate raiders, to extorting billions from national and/or corporate treasuries. They can, and do, do it all right there on the floor.
Really, the very best example of what occurs in these speculative market exchanges is the gambling casino. In Vegas, everyone knows that the house ALWAYS wins. It never loses. Even when there is the appearance of losing, it still wins. Go figure, but it’s true. Your stockbroker is not too unlike the blackjack dealer. And your financial planner is often a croupier in disguise. So, the question remains, do you honestly know what your hard earned retirement money is invested in? If not, this is a very good time to find out!!!
For those of us who have been there, we know that whether you call it an oil bourse, a commodity exchange, or a bond market, you’re still playing in a game that can go against you at any time. Wipe out your earnings in a heartbeat; devour your principal in a flash. It’s often been said that when he comes, “he comes like a thief in the night”. Do you still feel you know where your entire life savings is currently residing?
The derivatives market represents the single greatest threat to worldwide economic stability and financial security. It poses such great potential for financial abuse and economic devastation that the current institutional arrangements of this commercial realm have become completely unacceptable. The alarming proliferation of hedge funds, as well as the growing number and variety of derivative instruments, has reached a critical mass that is incompatible with living a financially sound life on planet Earth. Simply put, some of these instruments are so far from the street – economic reality – that they put into jeopardy all the hard work, which appears in the form of real goods and services, that is produced by any economy at any given time. This predicament signifies a CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER to us all.
Remember – DERIVATIVES are the real megilla. Derivatives, by their very nature, can be highly radioactive, and can go nuclear any time circumstances conspire in just the right, or wrong, way. Those who control their destiny can, likewise, utilize their inherent threat as a means of conducting financial and economic terrorism anytime, anywhere completely under the radar screen. It’s time for them to go. And we trust it’s just a matter of execution at this point.
VI. Mass Consumerism & Perpetual Economic Growth – the Fric & Frac of our Age – are history. One need not look any further than the inside of one’s own home to see the ravages of these adopted twins. They own the bedroom, the living room, the family room and all the closets. They’ve taken over the kitchen, the den and the garage, as well. Since their middle names are Amass and Accumulate, we can only imagine what might lay hidden in the attic, the basement and the shed.
Ever since they became the twin pillars of Kali Yuga’s overarching philosophy of life, things started to really go to hell in a handbasket … or rather gilded cage. How so? What else could one expect from a political economy that demands growth, necessitates growth and extols the virtues of growth at every turn (and on every other commercial and newscast). Growth, at the expense of WHAT!! We’ll tell you what – Life!
One of the most tragic parts of this ever-unfolding tragedy has been the dramatic change in the spirit of the people with whom these twins associate. The very society loses its refinement, as the culture becomes debased. Aren’t so many things associated with Americana experienced as coarse, and crude, and crass? Likewise, the nation, which was once known as the “land of the free; home of the brave”, morphs into a country reviled for its unkindness, lack of compassion and cruelty. Before anyone realizes, the citizenry is easily being herded, and then stampeded, into wars and conflict of every sort and kind.
What else could be expected when the meme of consumerism is subliminally implanted at such a young and tender age, and relentlessly reinforced from cradle to grave? And, what does it really say about a society when all who belong to it are known as consumers. Kind of like little pac-men (and pac-women) gobbling up everything in sight. Starts out with BIG Macs and 24 oz cokes, then super-sized HUMMERS, then oil fields and gold mines and precious rainforests, and then whole countries.
Likewise, in the corporate realm, any board director, company officer, division president, regional director, department manager, production supervisor, etc. will candidly speak to the greatest pressure in their lives. More income, more sales, more profit, more production, more revenue – anything that will show an increase in year over year growth. Always gotta GROW, even though yuv been out of puberty for 20 or 30 years!?
Well, you can imagine that this state of affairs can only go on for so long. As a matter of fact, this party’s now over. And the hangover is about to begin. Perhaps it’s time to send these twins on a permanent vacation to the waterless region.
VII. War, as a means of wealth creation, is now bankrupt. War, as a means of conflict resolution, is over. As a means to any end whatsoever, war is finished. You get the picture, don’t you? War has outlived its usefulness, and has become as obsolete as the derivatives hawker. There is simply no more place for it in civil society. It’s time for the curtain to fall on this show for the last time, and for all of its bad actors to hit the stage exit.
It never was a legitimate policy for conflict resolution, as we know. Virtually all conflicts and wars were manufactured in the boardrooms of the world. And impeccably stage managed by the directors of the war studios. Isn’t the Iraq war a perfect example of this kind of terrible and awful-to-watch “B” movie?
Any deliberate, probing and unprejudiced analysis of all the major wars going back to the French Revolution will reveal an extraordinary degree of carefully calculated and coordinated events leading up to the actual conflagrations we call war. Just read the actual history that is only now beginning to surface, and you will reach this very same conclusion.
War has consistently served its masters in three ways which no longer have relevance in an enlightened civilization: (i) population control (ii) artificial creation of wealth for the plutocracy (iii) imposition of a tyrannical order in the wake of the chaos that always results from war. Population control in this context has different meanings. The number of people who are systematically genocided, wantonly annihilated and deliberately infected with disease agents serve the purpose of population reduction. Then there is the sheer terror of war and its effects on whole populations (see how easily controlled both the Germans and Japanese were after WWII). “Order out of chaos” is made easy when all concerned parties have been faced with the extraordinary distraction, mayhem and pandemonium that war always brings.
There are, of course, many other declared wars whose battlegrounds are far from the traditional battlefields of armed conflict. The WAR on Drugs. The WAR on Poverty. The WAR on Crime. The WAR on AIDS. Just like the WAR on TERROR, all of these so-called wars are entirely bogus and fabricated, as they all have consistently produced outcomes that are completely contrary to their stated purposes. How so? Because each of them has been designed, and engineered, to perpetuate and expand the status quo. The War on Drugs, for instance, was designed in part to ensure that the opium (and all of its profitable derivatives) flows freely and efficiently from the poppy fields of Afghanistan to the targeted markets in America and elsewhere. In this way, all clandestine US and foreign intelligence agencies/secrets services are able to fund their innumerable black operations without any congressional oversight or public scrutiny from the massive revenues generated that this perfectly controlled black market provides. Oh, yes, did we forget to mention that most of these black ops are actually wars as well. What a Racket?! As Major General Smedley Butler once proclaimed to the world in his book: “WAR IS A RACKET.”
May the shadow governments of the warmongering and real “Axis of Evil” – the USA, the UK and Israel – truly imbibe the message contained in this ongoing proclamation: WAR is no longer an option. For each of these nations is facing an economic armegeddon of staggering and unprecedented proportions. When confronted with such an incapacitating monetary meltdown, the impulse and subsequent orchestrated plan, historically, has been to provoke wars through false flag attacks/operations. This knee-jerk, yet carefully calculated, reaction will no longer work. The consequential global financial apocalypse, this time around, will simply be too demanding and debilitating, especially for those who would attempt to plunge the planet into a WWIII scenario. Why? The global money matrix, that supports and keeps their war machine well-oiled, has been in a slow motion collapse for many years, and is now in an epoch crashing free-fall. It’s disintegrating before our eyes, and will soon be unable to fund not so much as a dustup in the neighborhood sandlot.
The 4th Reich has completely run its course. This last covert phase of the “Holy Roman Empire” is finally over. And it’s now imperative that the maestro, and his orchestra, in ‘Rome’ get over it. Let us once again proclaim, here and now, that: WAR HAS COME TO AN END.
VIII. There is a very profound and significant connection between the US Government sponsored and staged terrorist attacks of 9/11/01 and the PRE-PLANNED Financial & Economic 9/11 of 2008 that may be difficult for many to fully embrace. But here it goes:
The OMEN that 911 truly was, looks a little bit like THE LORD OF THE RINGS.
Remember the Twin Towers? When they came down in NYC, it was a message to humankind that the reign of the Almighty Dollar was coming to an end. As a nation’s currency goes, so goes its destiny. Her financial strength and economic prowess were on the wane, and soon to be greatly diminished. Just as the WTC (financial capital of the world) was pulverized into dust, the US Dollar would be swept into the ash heap of history. Just as we see it collapsing all around us, exactly 7 years after the original 911 apocalyptic events.
When the Ring of Power was finally destroyed, like the Pentagon (ring-shaped command center of the military-industrial complex) was mortally wounded and damaged, the message was equally clear. Her military might and superior force would be reduced to rubble in the twinkling of an eye. She would, likewise, soon see the demise of Her all-pervasive state sponsored terrorism. This, because She had lost all moral ascendancy. Besides, the empire could no longer be sustained politically, financially, practically or ethically, as the seeds of its own destruction had fully sprouted. The most fatal seed grew into that extremely corrupt and predatory form of corporate, crony capitalism which was so socially unconscious, and so environmentally unaware, it was quite doomed from the very beginning.
The GOOD NEWS is that the nation – its people – will now be compelled to beat their “swords into plowshares” and their “spears into pruning hooks”.
Just as the Phoenix rose from its ashes, so too will America ascend to even greater heights. As long as She ascends with the guidance of the highest of ideals, loftiest of principles and noblest of intentions. And She reforms, and transforms Herself, in good faith, in earnest and with haste.
As a modern day prophet said in the days immediately following September 11, 2001:
“America, Wake up ! ! ! Seize this God-given opportunity. There is no more time to dally in fear and ignorance and greed. For yours is a destiny that must serve as a beacon of Light and Hope and Peace to the world. Make haste, the time is drawing nigh!”
T. Anthony Michael
11/22/08
Publication, posting and printing of this article is expressly authorized.
http://www.nowpublic.com/world/new-world-order-global-money-matrix-self-destructs
Special Message to the Market Oracles and Money Masters of the Universe
Our “PRE-PLANNED FIN/ECO 911 of ’08” scenario in no way ignores the true state of the national economy, international finance or global economic picture. In fact we are, and have been, fully cognizant of the fact that the true state of every market – real estate, equity, bond, commodities, currency, derivative, etc. has been in shambles for many years, just waiting for the Perfect Storm to come around and blow it all away.
It has been obvious to many of us that each of these markets have operated according to the whim of a very few individuals with extremely concentrated power to manipulate. Therefore, all markets can be artificially inflated, as we have seen time and time again. Likewise, they can be artificially deflated, sometimes rather quickly for effect, as we have seen. “The Invisible Hand” of the market is just that – a very carefully hidden(1) hand that makes a complete and total mockery of every economic and financial theory ever advanced. Time for a lot of us to accept this fact of modern economic life.
Perhaps we should now take off our blinders and admit that while, yes, all of the indicators are, and have been, there for a catastrophic economic meltdown & financial cataclysm, these events are still completely controllable. All of us have seen bubble after bubble grow and balloon, and merge and overlap, and inextricably interpenetrate each other, until all we have is one massive bubble ready to pop. But, when will it pop?! It will pop when the confidence level is sufficiently undermined by the very same MEDIA that controls the flow of the relevant information. And who, pray tell, controls the media, if not The Invisible Hand? Clearly, the real Market Oracles are not a part of that MSM juggernaut. Therefore, it is incumbent upon each oracle to get it right, since they are the very best sources of pertinent financial and economic data/information available.
The inevitability of self destructive capitalism does not preclude the process of controlled destruction. As the system eats itself, there are those who are eaten, and those who eat. We are witnessing this devolution in living color, as we both write and read these words. The “strong” at the top of the pyramid have always done the eating, as the “weak” at the bottom provide the bone for the stew. The only major difference at this particular, and final, feast is that the internet has allowed for an unprecedented explosion of true and accurate information in real time. Therefore, the playing field has been leveled like never before. The little guy or gal, for the first time ever, has the opportunity to take back a little, or a lot, of his/her power (WEALTH), should he/she so choose.
Even as the Wall Street gangs team up with the opportunistic political class, as well as the numerous corporate/legal jackals and lobby parasites, to effectuate the most massive redistribution of wealth (aka in your face THEFT) in recorded history, something has profoundly and fundamentally changed. There is a dynamic at work which can alter the game just enough to potentially turn the pyramid upside down. This, however, requires a no nonsense, “look in the mirror with raw honesty” approach. Then we (the oracles) will not deign to render a judgment that is not fully baked. And the recommendations we make are more likely to be issued in the best interest of ALL, especially for those who are in a position of class disadvantage, financial ignorance or structured powerlessness.
So, we have made it clear that all the forces have been put into place for the upcoming monetary apocalypse. But even these forces are controlled, each and every one of them, all the way up to the top. It’s probably a very good time to contemplate just who it is that resides at the peak of the global financial decision-making process. And, their agenda?!?
Friday, January 23, 2009
Vat's going on here?? part 2
In my previous post I highlighted the cabinet members part of the Obama administration that happen to be Jewish. Yesterday, I've received an article (posted below)describing them and others also appointed to serve under Obama who happen to be members of the CFR, Trilateral Commission or Bilderberg groups.
Now its easy to see why some claim there is an international Jewish conspiracy or an international elite conspiracy run by Jews if info such as this is taken at face value. And yes, even by me laying out the facts on such a sensitive topic, only forcing people to draw their own conclusions, I will be a bright red target for all sort of anti-Semitic rants.
But here it is folks!
Draw your own conclusions!
...but with care, and make sure you do proper research first because its not quite what it seems. The only conclusion I choose to draw from this now is that the same people are running the show as did under Bush and under Clinton and under Bush Sr. and under Reagan and... I can keep on going.
All we have now is a new face of hope, a face that has garnered an 81% approval rating for the new government. I believe this is the highest ever? Either way, faith has been restored, a clean slate has been provided, a mandate has been granted.
Show us the way oh wise one!
Demonstrate the change you preach about!
How you can bring about radical change with a posse such as yours will remain to be seen. But maybe they have been preparing for change all along. ...and you are their chosen one to lead them through it.
Either way, some interesting times ahead.
Obama's Cabinet Full Of CFR, Trilateral Commission And Bilderberg Members
Tuesday, December 16, 2008 by Shattered Paradigm ·
Just like President George W. Bush's cabinet, Barack Obama's cabinet is going to be brimming with politicians affiliated with the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg group.
AmericanFreePress is reporting on the extraordinary ties that members of his new cabinet have to these elitist globalist organizations that have dominated American politics for generations now.
The reality is that no President in the past 30 years has picked a cabinet that was not completely dominated by members of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg group.
Of Barack Obama's 14 top cabinet selections, 9 of them are affiliated with the Bilderberg group, 10 of them are affiliated with the Council on Foreign Relations and 5 of them are affiliated with the Trilateral Commission according to AmericanFreePress.
But the reality is that the majority of the American people do not even know that these globalist organizations exist, or that they work to actively promote the interests of the international bankers who own the privately controlled Federal Reserve.
The American people voted for change, but the incoming government is going to be from the same organizations that the Bush government was from, and the policies that the Obama administration will be implementing will look very much like the policies that were implemented under Bush.
If the American people wanted change then they will be extremely disappointed by the next 4 years.
When will the American people finally wake up?
FOR TWO YEARS, Americans have heard an unrelenting mantra of change emanating from the campaign trail. But now that President-elect Barack Obama has begun forming his cabinet, we're seeing a cadre of more deeply entrenched insiders than any administration that has preceded it.
In regard to key foreign policy advisors, all three of Obama's selections either initially supported the Iraq war, or still do. On the economic front, each appointee maintains a close relationship with the Jewish triad of Ben Bernanke, Robert Rubin and Alan Greenspan—as well as bailout engineer Henry Paulson. Barack Obama himself is a Council on Foreign Relations member, has strong ties to Zbigniew Brzezinski, and participated in a clandestine meeting with Hillary Clinton at Bilderberg member Diane Feinstein's house at the time when 2008 Bilderberg members were congregating only a few miles away.
Below is an overview of Obama's top 14 selections to date. When considering their collective histories, a trend becomes clear, proving that the more things change under Obama, the more they stay the same
1. TIMOTHY GEITHNER – TREASURY SECRETARY
Bilderberg, Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, president and CEO of Federal Reserve Bank of New York, director of policy development for IMF, member Group of Thirty (G30), employed at Kissinger & Associates, architect of the recent 2008 financial bailouts, mentored by Lawrence Summers and Robert Rubin.
2. PAUL VOLCKER – ECONOMIC RECOVERY ADVISORY BOARD
Bilderberg, Council on Foreign Relations, North American chairman of Trilateral Commission, Federal Reserve chairman during Carter and Reagan administrations, president of Federal Reserve Bank of New York, G30 member, chairman Rothschild Wolfensohn Company, key figure in the collapse of the gold standard during the Nixon administration, longtime associate of the Rockefeller family.
3. RAHM EMANUEL – CHIEF OF STAFF
Member of Israeli Defense Force, staunch Zionist, congressman, Board of Directors for Freddie Mac, member of Bill Clinton's finance campaign committee, made $16.2 million during 2.5 years as an investment banker for Wasserstein Perella. His father was a member of the Israeli Irgun terrorist group.
4. LAWRENCE SUMMERS – NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL
Bilderberg, Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, treasury secretary during Clinton administration, chief economist at World Bank, former president of Harvard University, Brookings Institute board member, huge proponent of globalization while working for the IMF, prot�g� of David Rockefeller, mentored by Robert Rubin.
5. DAVID AXELROD – SENIOR ADVISOR
Political consultant whose past clients include Sens. Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Christopher Dodd; main Obama fixer in the William Ayers and Reverend Wright scandals.
6. HILLARY CLINTON – SECRETARY OF STATE
Bilderberg, Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, clandestine CIA asset used to infiltrate the anti-war movement at Yale University and the Watergate hearings, senior partner at the Rose Law Firm, key figure in the Mena drug trafficking affair, architect of the Waco disaster, implicated in the murder/ cover-up of Vince Foster, and many other deaths.
7. JOSEPH BIDEN – VICE PRESIDENT
Bilderberg, Council on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senator since 1972, member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, current chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, strong Zionist sympathizer who recently told Rabbi Mark S. Golub of Shalom TV, "I am a Zionist. You don't have to be a Jew to be a Zionist."
8. BILL RICHARDSON – COMMERCE SECRETARY
Bilderberg, Council on Foreign Relations, former U.S. congressman, chairman of the Democratic National Convention in 2004, employee of Kissinger Associates, UN ambassador, governor of New Mexico, energy secretary, major player in the Monica Lewinsky cover-up with Bilderberg luminary Vernon Jordan.
9. ROBERT GATES – DEFENSE SECRETARY
Bilderberg, Council on Foreign Relations, former CIA Director, defense secretary under President Bush, co-chaired CFR task force with Zbigniew Brzezinski, knee-deep in the Iran-Contra scandal, named in a 1999 class action lawsuit pertaining to the Mena drug trafficking affair.
10. TOM DASCHLE – HEALTH SECRETARY
Bilderberg, Council on Foreign Relations, former Senate majority leader, Citibank lackey, mentored by Robert Rubin.
11. ERIC HOLDER – ATTORNEY GENERAL
Key person in the pardon of racketeer Marc Rich, deputy attorney general under Janet Reno, facilitated the pardon of 16 Puerto Rican FALN terrorists under Bill Clinton.
12. JANET NAPOLITANO – HOMELAND SECURITY DIRECTOR
Council on Foreign Relations, Arizona governor, attorney for Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas hearings, U.S. attorney during the Clinton administration, instrumental in the OKC cover-up, where she declared, "We'll pursue every bit of evidence and every lead," described as another Janet Reno, soft on illegal immigration (i.e. pro-amnesty and drivers licenses to illegals).
13. GEN. JAMES L. JONES – NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR
Bilderberg, Trilateral Commission, European supreme allied commander, special envoy for Middle-East Security during Bush administration, board of directors for Chevron and Boeing, NATO commander, member of Brent Scowcroft's Institute for International Affairs along with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Bobby Ray Inman, Bilderberg luminary Henry Kissinger and former CIA Director John Deutch.
14. SUSAN RICE – U.N. AMBASSADOR
Council on Foreign Relations, Rhodes scholar, campaign foreign policy advisor to presidential candidates John Kerry and Michael Dukakis, member of Bill Clinton's National Security Council and assistant secretary of state for Africa, member of the Brookings Institute (funded by the Ford Foundation and the Rockefellers), and member of the Aspen Strategy Group (teeming with Bilderberg insiders such as Richard Armitage, Brent Scowcroft, and Madeleine Albright).
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Vat's goink on here?
Obama's White House Staff :
So far we have:
Rahm Emanuel - Chief of Staff - Jewish
David Axelrod - Senior Advisor to the President - Jewish
Ronald Klain - Chief of Staff to the Vice President of the United States - Jewish
Larry Summers - Economic Advisor to the President - Jewish
Paul Volcker - Economic Advisor to the President, Former Head of Federal Reserve - Jewish
Tim Geithner - Treasury Secetary - Jewish
Peter Orszag - Head of Budget - Jewish
Hillary Clinton - long-time friend of Jewish interests
I wouldn't call it a conspiracy theory as many do, since there's no conspiracy involved... its blatantly obvious. But if someone tries to convince me that Jews aren't in control of policy, is either a complete moron or just thinks I am.
In this video, Biden actually states, "you dont have to be Jewish to be a zionist, I am a zionist."
http://www.escapetheillusion.com/blog/2009/01/the-truth-about-the-2009-gaza-massacre/
Any fears Israel had that Obama wouldn't support them, have now turned into a smug self-assurance. So anyone can point to his name and call him a muslim terrorist in disguise, but his actions say anything but... Hence my skepticism about all his sweet sounding rhetric.
Wherever guilt should be placed in the conflict is not the issue that concerns me now. Both side have done their fair share of evil as far as I'm concerned. But now we need to think of solutions and not the end-game.
Will we be seeing any change in middle east foreign policy? Will Obama be able to conduct a balanced approach to the root conflict in the region? Will we be able to address the main grievance of our muslim "enemies", namely our hypocrisy and bias towards Israel? I think not.
Long live war and terrorism!!
So far we have:
Rahm Emanuel - Chief of Staff - Jewish
David Axelrod - Senior Advisor to the President - Jewish
Ronald Klain - Chief of Staff to the Vice President of the United States - Jewish
Larry Summers - Economic Advisor to the President - Jewish
Paul Volcker - Economic Advisor to the President, Former Head of Federal Reserve - Jewish
Tim Geithner - Treasury Secetary - Jewish
Peter Orszag - Head of Budget - Jewish
Hillary Clinton - long-time friend of Jewish interests
I wouldn't call it a conspiracy theory as many do, since there's no conspiracy involved... its blatantly obvious. But if someone tries to convince me that Jews aren't in control of policy, is either a complete moron or just thinks I am.
In this video, Biden actually states, "you dont have to be Jewish to be a zionist, I am a zionist."
http://www.escapetheillusion.com/blog/2009/01/the-truth-about-the-2009-gaza-massacre/
Any fears Israel had that Obama wouldn't support them, have now turned into a smug self-assurance. So anyone can point to his name and call him a muslim terrorist in disguise, but his actions say anything but... Hence my skepticism about all his sweet sounding rhetric.
Wherever guilt should be placed in the conflict is not the issue that concerns me now. Both side have done their fair share of evil as far as I'm concerned. But now we need to think of solutions and not the end-game.
Will we be seeing any change in middle east foreign policy? Will Obama be able to conduct a balanced approach to the root conflict in the region? Will we be able to address the main grievance of our muslim "enemies", namely our hypocrisy and bias towards Israel? I think not.
Long live war and terrorism!!
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Inauguration of the 44th president of the United States: Barack Obama
I feel insignificant, yet full of responsibility
Powerless, yet so full of purpose
Overwhelmed, yet granted understanding
I feel humbled
Humbled in the presence of great words
Words that empowered without focus,
Gave determination without direction,
Emboldened without substance
Mass confusion is now shattered with the immaculate clarity of hope,
and purpose, redefining our mystifying existence.
The lines have been drawn,
Our values are fixed,
Our vision cloudless,
Our hearts one
Now will someone tell me how I can find a damn job?
Powerless, yet so full of purpose
Overwhelmed, yet granted understanding
I feel humbled
Humbled in the presence of great words
Words that empowered without focus,
Gave determination without direction,
Emboldened without substance
Mass confusion is now shattered with the immaculate clarity of hope,
and purpose, redefining our mystifying existence.
The lines have been drawn,
Our values are fixed,
Our vision cloudless,
Our hearts one
Now will someone tell me how I can find a damn job?
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
some funny things happening in Illinois...
This is unbelievable. Maybe I am connecting the pieces wrong. Maybe the order of causation is not quite what it seems.
Monday night before I went to bed, the main sensationalist news headline was that Illinois Governer Rod Blagojevich suspends all state business with Bank of America. "Blagojevich contended that Bank Of America received a multi-billion dollar bailout from the government and should accordingly restore credit to the Republic Windows & Doors company in Chicago" - who recently laid of 350 Illinois workers without severance pay. Blagojevich contended that Bank of America is responsible for guaranteeing support to the bankrupt company so severance pay can be given to the laid-off employees. BofA refused, so the Governor decided to retaliate. The bank was set to lose out on hundreds of millions of dollars in fees and commission.
Details:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/08/illinois-governer-suspend_n_149272.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7772823.stm
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Ill._Governor_suspends_business_with_Bank_1208.html
In my mind the significance of this event is huge!! A whole state suspends business with the biggest bank in America. This is nothing less than a declaration of war on our financial elite! There were interviews of people saying he was a hero, a brave warrior who was willing to fight for the people.
The next morning, interested in how the situation was unfolding I was surprised to see there was not one mention of the event.
It was not on any cable news station. It was nowhere visible on any mainstream news website. I was baffled that such a significant event was not given more attention. Until this morning...
It seems now that Governor Blagojevich was taken into federal custody today for, among other things, trying to sell President-Elect Barack Obama's former Senate seat.
indictment here:
http://www.buckeyestateblog.com/illinois_governor_rod_blagojevich_indicted
details:
http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/blagojevich/1321300,rod-blagojevich-illinois-governor-custody-120908.article
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/12/us/politics/12illinois.html?_r=1
Doing a bit more research I have found that there have been federal indictments in 2006 against Blogojevich' staff, drawing accusation of political corruption closer to him...
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/12/us/politics/12illinois.html?_r=1
A few days ago Blagojevich also threatened to suspend money to the Chicago Tribune and fire its editorial staff. Essentially declaring war on the states main media outlet...
http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/blagojevich/1321365,Blagojevich-Chicago-Tribune-corruption-120908.article
The more I dig, the deeper the rabbit hole becomes. However valid the connections with the past corruption charges are, the fact that the indictments were just issued today, goes to show that if you declare war on the media and financial powers, you will be taken down. I would bet there won't be one mention in cable news anymore of the state's suspension in dealing with Bank of America, nor of the Blagojevich's dealing with the Chicago Times.
What would happen if some other Governor's got some bright ideas & decided to follow suit when even more companies go bankrupt in the coming financial storm?
Blagojevich will now be known as just another corrupt politician instead of the Robin Hood of Illinois...
Long live the banks!
Monday night before I went to bed, the main sensationalist news headline was that Illinois Governer Rod Blagojevich suspends all state business with Bank of America. "Blagojevich contended that Bank Of America received a multi-billion dollar bailout from the government and should accordingly restore credit to the Republic Windows & Doors company in Chicago" - who recently laid of 350 Illinois workers without severance pay. Blagojevich contended that Bank of America is responsible for guaranteeing support to the bankrupt company so severance pay can be given to the laid-off employees. BofA refused, so the Governor decided to retaliate. The bank was set to lose out on hundreds of millions of dollars in fees and commission.
Details:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/08/illinois-governer-suspend_n_149272.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7772823.stm
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Ill._Governor_suspends_business_with_Bank_1208.html
In my mind the significance of this event is huge!! A whole state suspends business with the biggest bank in America. This is nothing less than a declaration of war on our financial elite! There were interviews of people saying he was a hero, a brave warrior who was willing to fight for the people.
The next morning, interested in how the situation was unfolding I was surprised to see there was not one mention of the event.
It was not on any cable news station. It was nowhere visible on any mainstream news website. I was baffled that such a significant event was not given more attention. Until this morning...
It seems now that Governor Blagojevich was taken into federal custody today for, among other things, trying to sell President-Elect Barack Obama's former Senate seat.
indictment here:
http://www.buckeyestateblog.com/illinois_governor_rod_blagojevich_indicted
details:
http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/blagojevich/1321300,rod-blagojevich-illinois-governor-custody-120908.article
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/12/us/politics/12illinois.html?_r=1
Doing a bit more research I have found that there have been federal indictments in 2006 against Blogojevich' staff, drawing accusation of political corruption closer to him...
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/12/us/politics/12illinois.html?_r=1
A few days ago Blagojevich also threatened to suspend money to the Chicago Tribune and fire its editorial staff. Essentially declaring war on the states main media outlet...
http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/blagojevich/1321365,Blagojevich-Chicago-Tribune-corruption-120908.article
The more I dig, the deeper the rabbit hole becomes. However valid the connections with the past corruption charges are, the fact that the indictments were just issued today, goes to show that if you declare war on the media and financial powers, you will be taken down. I would bet there won't be one mention in cable news anymore of the state's suspension in dealing with Bank of America, nor of the Blagojevich's dealing with the Chicago Times.
What would happen if some other Governor's got some bright ideas & decided to follow suit when even more companies go bankrupt in the coming financial storm?
Blagojevich will now be known as just another corrupt politician instead of the Robin Hood of Illinois...
Long live the banks!
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