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Occupy Sandy: From protest group to storm recovery

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VIDEO: Occupy Sandy's social media mandate (Produced by the BBC's David Botti)

The group behind Occupy Wall Street is now turning its attention - and its assets - towards helping those hit by "Superstorm" Sandy.

The Episcopalian church at 520 Clinton Avenue in Brooklyn, New York, is packed - not with parishioners, but with supplies.

Boxes of nappies and baby wipes stand 10-boxes high, stacked underneath a stained-glass window depicting The Virgin Mary and the Christ Child. The transept is filled with empty plastic fuel canisters and industrial-sized mop buckets.

These items were all donated to Occupy Sandy, the latest iteration of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The group is also one of the leading providers of storm relief for beleaguered areas in New York and New Jersey still suffering the effects of Sandy, the weather system which came ashore in October.

When the storm hit, some members of the original Occupy protests who had kept in touch suggested organising a relief effort.

"Everyone seemed really interested, so we created a Facebook account, a Twitter account, a WePay account and it took off," says Bre Lembitz, who has been involved with Occupy Sandy from the beginning.

"Within 24 hours we had our first hub in Red Hook [Brooklyn] and a 40-person volunteer meeting, and after that it exploded exponentially."

Volunteers and supplies in the Occupy Sandy donation centreSupplies are delivered by mid-day, but new donations keep the church full

The group now has 50,000 volunteers on its mailing list and almost $500,000 in the bank.

Members participate in weekly conference calls with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) and other leading relief groups, and work with more established organisations to hone their skills.

The Church of St Luke and St Matthew in Clinton Hill and the warehouse in Red Hook serve as distribution centres for volunteers and donated supplies. Volunteers rely on reports from the individual communities to determine needs, then send out those requests on Twitter and Facebook - for instance, asking for gluten-free or diabetic food, or requesting volunteer services of mechanics, construction workers, or medical professionals.

Other groups are certainly involved in the relief effort, and are mobilising through social media and the web - among them Rockaway Relief, which describes its members as "local New Yorkers working in tech, design, fashion, restaurant, entertainment and hospitality".

But Occupy's re-emergence appears to be something of a triumphant second act for a group that seemed to have faded away.

This time last year police removed protesters from the Wall Street park where they had camped for almost two months, and cold winter temperatures drove the movement's other outposts indoors.

The movement didn't disappear, but it did dissipate.

"There were a lot of working groups that were pursuing their own projects. Some were more galvanising or visible than others but for the most part they had trouble sustaining the verve and the forward motion they established last fall," says Todd Gitlin, a professor of journalism at Columbia University and author of Occupy Nation: The Roots, the Spirit, and the Promise of Occupy Wall Street.

"They didn't spark into anything vivid until the storm. Then they rose to the occasion."

Getting the word out

How Occupy Sandy uses the web

  • Twitter: Via accounts like @OccupySandy, @520ClintonOS, and @InterOcc, tweeting out calls for donations and volunteers
  • Amazon Using the wedding registry feature, Occupy Sandy set up a shopping list for needed supplies
  • Instagram Photos tagged #OccupySandy attracted the attention of some who came to volunteer
  • Facebook Posts photos and updates on their public page
  • Websites: OccupySandy.com directs to InterOccupy.net, which aggregates the latest updates

Storm relief proved to be an ideal fit for the systems and values Occupy created in 2011. Though the original protests were directed at banks, they also celebrated the notion of the 99% - the idea that the majority of Americans were in it together, and that individuals could band together to help one another.

"Occupy was a movement to empower people against the oppressive force of Wall Street. In this case, it's a movement to empower the individuals who have been disempowered by the storm," says Lembitz.

"It's still about empowering individuals against an aggressor, it's just in this case the aggressor is easier to agree on."

Disaster relief was also was a good fit for the Occupy infrastructure.

"We've spent the past year painstakingly developing this network of people across the country who connect around issues they care about," says Michael Badger, who worked closely with the development of Interoccupy, which sought to connect the various "Occupy" protests around the world.

He says the web tools Occupy developed to facilitate conversation among the groups lent themselves to mobilisation after the hurricane.

"Right when Sandy hit, immediately it wasn't just the New York group that was activated. We have people in Amsterdam, in Los Angeles, in Kalamazoo working on this."

The Interoccupy.net website became a crucial aggregator and broadcasting system for the thousands of pleas for help on social media.

"The movement is extremely adept at using social media to mobilise activity. They've proven themselves with Occupy Wall Street, and it's something we've seen with being able to redirect volunteers in certain areas," says Tricia Wachtendorf, associate director of the Disaster Research Center at the University of Delaware.

Stained glass window and banners that say "Occupy Sandy: People Powered RecoveryOccupy Sandy's volunteer hub in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn

But she warns of a steep learning curve for emerging groups when it comes to disaster aid. For instance, more seasoned groups have learned that clothing donations are a big waste of time and resources after a disaster - the clothing is of disparate quality, it's difficult to store and organise, and it can attract mice and insects.

It is a lesson Occupy Sandy seems to have learned - the group's tweets repeatedly remind viewers that clothing donations are no longer accepted. But at the Clinton Street location, there are still piles of clothes that need sorting, and people who show up with bags full of old clothes.

Still, their model allows anyone who wants to help a chance to get their hands dirty.

The group has hung a banner in the balcony of the Clinton Hill church proclaiming: "Occupy Sandy: People Powered Recovery."

"To be quote honest I thought the Occupy Wall street movement were crazy hippies. Turns out they are phenomenal in transforming communities," says Roz Mays, a fitness instructor who came to volunteer at the church.

"This is a home-grown community based organisation of people who just want to help."

While it may be more efficient for volunteers to donate money over other supplies, or to bring in professionals to do recovery work, the Occupy philosophy prizes personal involvement.

And in return, the people are coming to embrace a movement they might have once written off.

Read more…

Facing a Greater Community of Life 

You live within a Greater Community of intelligent life in theuniverse. It is vast, encompassing the entire spectrum of evolution—the evolution of technology, the evolution of societies and the evolution of spiritual awareness and ethics. It is vast and incomprehensible. It is the greater environment into which humanity is now emerging. Humanity is emerging into this environment not from its brief forays into your local solar system, but from visitations that are occurring in the world now and which will increase in the future.

This greater environment into which you are emerging is a physical reality governed by physical laws, the laws of nature that you are aware of. Do not concern yourselves here with the possibilities of other dimensions, for that will not be your need and concern. It is this greater reality in which humanity has always lived and in which your world has always existed that must become your focal point now.

Many people have speculated on the possibilities for life in the Greater Community, what that might be like and how life would evolve into more sophisticated realms and societies. Today, as in the past, people project their hopes and their wishes upon the meaning of life beyond the world, hoping that other races will be more enlightened, more sophisticated and more elevated than the human family has been and is currently. And, of course, there are many fears projected into this larger arena of life—fears of terrible beasts, terrible invading nations, destruction, attack and so forth.

But, as always, reality is very different from expectation. The reality into which you will be emerging will be the focus of this series of teachings—a reality that you can understand from your own experience of living in the natural world and from your own experience of living within the evolution of human society.

The great difference, of course, is both the complexity and the vastness of this Greater Community and the fact that it is inhabited by races of beings that are very different from humanity, not only different in form and appearance, but different in intelligence and awareness and different in ethics and values.

This will be hard to deal with, and this is where your hopes and fears may arise. But you must recognize that humanity has now reached a point of world development and a threshold where it will be facing Great Waves of environmental change and difficulty in the world. Here your encounter with intelligent life from the Greater Community and the reality of the Greater Community itself will become ever more important and central to your well-being and to the kind of future you will be able to create.

There is a very great shift here, a very great shift from a human-centered world to a Greater Community reality. Because you have lived in isolation and have evolved in isolation for so very long with only very infrequent and largely unrecognized visitations to the world from various races in the past, you naturally project your values onto the prospect and the notion of intelligent life in the universe. As a result, some people feel or believe fervently that the universe is inhabited by human beings who have evolved beyond conflict and deception and that the values that you hold here or that you aspire to are universal in nature. The fact that this is not true and that it represents a dangerous set of assumptions and beliefs is something that you must face at the outset.

The other difficulty is that you are not preeminent within this Greater Community though you have established preeminence within your own world. Within the Greater Community, you are but a beginner. You are standing at the beginning of your development, unaware and possessing assumptions and beliefs that will not be true. You have great disadvantages and are vulnerable to persuasion and deception from various races,( DC,Archons,& the Visitors ) both in the future and from those who are indeed intervening in your world at this time. Your isolation has given you a naiveté and has not prepared you for the challenges and the opportunities that the Greater Community itself will present.

   There is no one in the world who could teach you about the reality and the spirituality of life in the universe. There is no one who has this awareness or who has this experience. As a result, the communication and education about this must come from God and, secondarily, from those very few races who are aware of your existence, who will support your emergence as a free and self-determined race and who will be called by God to assist you in this most fundamental and necessary education. You have allies in the universe though they are not visiting your world, for humanity is not ready to establish relations with other nations in the universe. Humanity does not have the maturity and is not united, strong enough or discreet enough to engage meaningfully and beneficially with any race in thee.

This is not a time where Contact is required. It is a time where preparation for Contact is required. And this Contact will take a great deal of time. It will take time because an education of this magnitude will not come quickly. Many people will resist it, deny it or avoid it. This education will not come quickly because humanity must now concern itself ever increasingly with the Great Waves of change that are coming to the world and that are here already—environmental degradation, the depletion of your fundamental resources, the loss of food production, the scarcity of water, the dramatic effects of a changing climate and a heating world and the ever-growing risk of competition, conflict and war between groups and nations over access to the remaining resources.

This will become a dominating focus and concern, both for average people in the world everywhere and for nations and governments as well. However, to meet these immense and unprecedented challenges, you will need Knowledge and wisdom from beyond the world. Here it is not technology you need as much as it is the will and the commitment to unite for the preservation of this world as a habitable environment for the human family and to cease your endless conflicts to prepare to engage with intelligent races in the universe, many of whom will not be here to support you. Meeting the Great Waves of change, establishing the necessary human cooperation and the cessation of human conflict along with the preparation for the Greater Community represent the great and fundamental needs of humanity. If these great needs are not sufficiently recognized and addressed, then everything else that you will attempt to create for your own benefit, either personally or for the benefit of humanity, will prove to be insufficient, and great travail will come to the world.

Your education about the Greater Community must come from God. It must come from God to be pure and to be wholly beneficial for you. And it must come from God because only God knows fully the nature, the reality and the purpose of the human family. No foreign powers  (DC,Visitors )or race could really know this, even if they studied your behavior and your transmissions. The communication must come from God, and that is exactly what is happening.

The teachings that you are about to read concerning the reality and the spirituality of the Greater Community come from God, for there is no one in the world who could know the things that will be presented here. And there is no foreign power in the universe who could communicate what humanity really needs with thoroughness and complete knowledge of human nature, purpose and reality.

Accept then that God has sent a New Message into the world to prepare humanity, both to face the Great Waves of change that are coming to the world and to prepare for the reality and spirituality of life in the universe and all of its difficulties and hidden opportunities. This is an education that you cannot give yourself. It is an education that you could not receive in any university or center of learning in the world. It is a communication that you must listen to with your heart as well as your mind. Your mind will be confused by many things that are presented here, and many of your ideas will be challenged and shown to be incorrect or inadequate. Your mind may reject this great teaching and preparation. It may object for reasons both rational and irrational because your mind does not know the mind of God. Your mind only has fixed notions about life in the universe. Yet it has not experienced life in the universe.

 That is why you must receive this teaching and education about the reality and the spirituality of the Greater Community with both your mind and your heart. Your mind will struggle with the ideas and perspective presented here, but your heart will know will know because it is God speaking to you, educating you and preparing you. Through this education and preparation, God is giving you greater strength, greater security and a greater protection that you will need in order to face the challenges within your own world and the challenges that surely exist beyond it.

Many people claim to have knowledge of the universe, but how can they know? They have been trapped on the surface of this one world—believing, hoping and speculating; trying to comprehend past revelations and prophecies or trying to project their understanding into realms far beyond their experience or awareness. Complex theories may be established. Prophecies from the past may be attempted to be fulfilled in current times. But these must all prove inadequate, for humanity is without education regarding the larger universe in which you exist and which you will have to face increasingly, both now and in the times to come.

It is wise then to accept your limitations. It is wise to put yourself in a position to be a student, to be a listener and a learner so that you may receive fully the revelations that will be presented here—the revelations born of a New Message for humanity, revelations that will provide for humanity a new way forward into a very difficult and uncertain future.

Those who will receive and accept this challenge of learning about Knowledge and wisdom in the Greater Community will be the great beneficiaries, not only for themselves personally, but for the entire human family. They will be the ones who will be in a position to educate and to prepare others. This will require vision, courage and great objectivity, for this education must speak through and beyond your hopes and your fears. For they can only cloud the vision that you must now have.

Accept that you do not know what life in the universe is like, how it exists, how it interacts with itself, what to expect regarding visitation to your world and what to understand about the visitation that has already occurred here ( Visitors & DC ). Accepting this limitation gives you the greatest opportunity and possibility to see beyond your current limits, to see beyond the confines of this world and to see beyond the confines of human interactions. For now you will be considering and facing interactions of a very different nature with intelligences that are very different, who think very differently and function from very different assumptions about life than you do or that humanity as a whole does.

This is a preparation that will make all the difference in determining whether humanity’s initial engagements with life in the universe will be beneficial or will be detrimental. Much wisdom must be brought to bear here, for you are the stewards of a beautiful planet that is greatly valued by others. But you are weak stewards, and you are conflicted amongst yourselves. And you are rapidly depleting the wealth of this world, a world that is so rare and valuable in a universe of barren planets.

You do not yet see your vulnerability here nor the importance of maintaining this world, maintaining your self-sufficiency, maintaining the world’s climate and maintaining its natural balances. Do not think that you can travel to other worlds and find places like this. They are very rare, and they are always occupied. This understanding will give you a greater sense of responsibility, for real education must always imbue you with a greater sense of responsibility— responsibility not only to learn, but to act and to serve.

Humanity now is on a reckless course. It is destroying its self-sufficiency in the world. It is endangering the natural balances that have given humanity such a beautiful and splendid world in which to evolve and to live. This is hazardous not only for your future in this world, but also hazardous regarding your relationships with other races in the universe. Through this series of teachings that you are about to experience, you will be able to learn about this, to see its implications and to understand this reality in order to have a real sense of it. This recognition of life in the universe is possible because you were born with a Greater Community awareness. This awareness gives you the ability to empathize and recognize certain realities about life from beyond this world. This is a recognition that exists far beyond your intellect, your thinking mind, which has been cultivated and established through cultural conditioning and your worldly education.

Recognizing that you have a connection to life in the universe is very important here and will be part of the exploration within these teachings. Without this deeper connection, the universe would be too awesome, too immense, too complicated, too difficult and too threatening. It would produce only insecurity and confusion for you. But speaking to the deeper part of you enables you to gain recognition and a sense of your destiny within the Greater Community itself. For regardless of the difficulties that you face in your own world and the difficulties in establishing proper and wise engagements with races from beyond your world, there is the fundamental reality that the human family has a destiny in space. You have a destiny to engage with other races, a destiny to grow and, with the proper education and understanding and with your own native wisdom, the possibility of being a free and self-determined race in a vast and difficult universe.

Accept this challenge, recognizing as you do that there is something within you that gives you the ability to respond to the revelations that will be given here. This ability exists beyond your intellect, beyond your ideas, beyond your fixed notions and beyond anything that you have yet learned in the world. It is mysterious because it is born of God. It is born of a Greater Reality of which you are a part.

Not everyone will be able to see this and know this. And it is important even at the outset that you accept that many people, even those you are very close to, may not be able to see, to know and to respond to this preparation for the Greater Community. But that is all right. It is given now for the first to respond. If you are amongst the first to respond and amongst the first to be genuinely educated about life in the universe, then you must accept this challenge—even if others do not respond, even if others are fearful or doubtful, even if others turn away. Not everyone is at the same point in their development, education and awareness.

Therefore, do not think of everyone responding. Instead, think of you responding and learning. Higher education is not for everyone at this moment, and this most certainly represents a higher education. Therefore, prepare yourself to receive. And if you hear things that you do not understand, then be patient, for in the course of these revelations We will repeat things many times and describe things in different ways to give you the greatest opportunity to see, to know and to recognize the immense environment of life that exists beyond your borders and of which you have always been a part.

Read more…

 

"Christ's 2nd coming", gives a Son of God this Gift; to hear the voice For God proclaim that what is False is False,& what is True has Never Changed. And this the judgement is in which perception ends. At first you see a world that has excepted this as True, projected from a now corrected mind. And with this holy site, perception gives a silent blessing and then disappears, its goal accomplished and its mission done.

Be not afraid of Love,Salvation asks you give it welcome. & the World Awaits your Glad Acceptance, which will set it Free. Awaken & Return to me.

Be not afraid of Love. For it alone can heal all sorrow, wipe away all tears, and gently waken from his dream of pain the Son whom God acknowledges as his,.

Be not afraid of this,  this holy truth; Gods judgement is the gift of Correction He bestowed on all your errors, freeing you from them, and all effects they ever seemed to have.

To fear Gods saving grace is but to Fear complete release from suffering, return to Peace, security and happiness, and union with your own Identity.

This is Gods final judgement; "You are still My Holy Son, forever innocent,  forever Loving and forever Loved, as limitless as your Creator, and completely changeless and forever pure. Therefore Awaken and return to Me. I am your Father and you are my son''.

JC,ACIM , Adonai Rev. Joshua

Who am I

Who am I, the inner feeling,

overflowing waves of healing.

Who am I, onward to our Ascension Quest,

Who am I, creating new challenges is what we do best.

Who am I, in pain that hides my sorrow,

Who am I, in my hope and trust for a better tomorrow.

Who am I, in my joy and bliss,

Who am I, in the peace that I miss.

Who am I, constantly on the move,

Who am I, somehow that must be proved.

Who am I, in the voice that speaks so softly,

Who am I, in the choices I make loosely.

Who am I, in the essence of my being,

Who am I, when listening and seeing.

Who am I, all caught up in anger,

Who am I, when I thirst and hunger.

Who am I, brought up in my fear,

Who am I, in the mood of good cheer.

Who am I, never finding what I lost,

Who am I, being what I am most.

Who am I, always on the go,

Who am I, when I say no.

Who am I, listening to the music sung,

Who am I, when I again have begun.

Who am I, in all the above,

Who am I, the answer is Love !!

Read more…

Global banking scandals: Who is under scrutiny?

Banks logos

31 October 2012 Last updated at 10:52 GM

A number of scandals have engulfed the global financial system, and several international banks are under investigation by regulators in several countries. They are alleged to have committed offences ranging from fixing interbank lending rates to complicity in money-laundering. In this guide, we explain who is accused of what by whom.

1. Libor manipulation

A set of dice spelling out the word LIBOR sat on top of a pile of coins.
  • Barclays has admitted it attempted to manipulate the London Interbank Offered Rate, or Libor - the interest rate at which banks lend money to each other
  • Six more banks are under suspicion of colluding in similar attempted manipulation
Investigations and reviewsProgress and banks implicatedPenalties

Attorney general of New York, US

Seven banks have been served subpoenas: HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan, UBS

Inquiry still in progress

Attorney general of Connecticut, US

Seven banks have been served subpoenas: HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan, UBS

Inquiry still in progress

Commodity Futures Trading Commission

Imposed a fine of $200m on Barclays

Barclays fined £128.5m ($200m)

Department of Justice, US

Assisted in the CFTC investigation focused onBarclays

Barclays fined £103m ($160m)

Serious Fraud Office, UK

Launched a criminal investigation into the wider Libor scandal

Inquiry still in progress

Financial Services Authority, UK

Tasked by the government with reviewing how Libor is set. Proposals include banks no longer submitting their own data on lending and making rate-fixing against market rules. The British Bankers' Association, the organisation which sets the Libor rate, has said it will accept losing its current role. The FSA is expected to publish its recommendations on Libor reform on Friday, 28 September.

Barclays fined £59.5m ($93m)

2. Sanction-breaking and other wongdoing

Maroun Petrochemical plant at the Imam Khomeini port, south-western Iran
  • The UK-founded Asia-focused bank, Standard Chartered, was fined by a New York regulator for illegally hiding transactions with Iran, allowing the country to sell its oil for dollars
  • The New York state Department of Financial Services (DFS) said the bank laundered $250bn over nearly a decade, breaking US sanctions
  • HSBC is also accused of breaking sanctions by the US Senate

New York Department of Financial Services, US

Ordered Standard Chartered to pay a multi-million dollar fine and pay for a DFS monitor to ensure compliance. Following the fine and HSBC's admission that it failed to block Mexican criminals' money laundering, the DFS said it had evidence of apparently similar schemes to conduct business with other countries under sanctions - Libya, Burma and Sudan

Standard Chartered fined £217m ($340m)

US Senate

HSBC is also accused, by the US Senate, of failing to prevent money laundering. Its US business said it carried out 28,000 "undisclosed sensitive transactions" between 2001 and 2007, most of which involved Iran. The Senate's report concluded that lax controls at HSBC left it vulnerable to being used to launder dirty money

HSBC has put aside £446m ($700m) to pay for potential fines

Financial Supervisory Service, South Korea

Prompted by the US investigation, the FSS is conducting checks on HSBC's Seoul branch and Standard Chartered operations in South Korea, to "look into their businesses related to money-laundering" to see if they reported suspicious transactions and if they "verified their customers before such transactions"

No details

Royal Bank of Scotland is understood to be facing investigations into possible violations of US sanctions on Iran

RBS is co-operating with US and UK authorities after going to them with information found in an internal review

Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), US

US media reports suggest that OFAC, along with the Federal Reserve, the Justice Department and the Manhattan district attorney's office, is investigating a total of four European banks for alleged violations of US sanctions on Iran. The inquiry is said to be confidential and its existence has not been officially confirmed

No details

Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission, US

US authorities are undertaking an investigation into whether Barclays' "relationships with third parties who assist Barclays to win or retain business" are compliant with the United States Foreign Corrupt Practices Act

Inquiry still in progress

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, US

Barclays is being investigated over power trading in the west of the US during late 2006 through to the end of 2008

Inquiry still in progress

3. Asian interbank rate manipulation

South Korean currency
  • Regulators in South Korea are investigating alleged interest rate-rigging by at least four banks through certificates of deposit (CD), whose prices are used to set interbank lending rates in a similar way to Libor
  • Regulators in Singapore and Japan are also making similar checks on their banks following the Libor scandal
Investigations and reviewsProgress and banks implicatedPenalties

Fair Trade Commission, South Korea

Inspecting nine banks within South Korea'sKookmin, Shinhan, Woori and Hana banking groups seeking evidence of collusion on CD rates and possible rate fixing

No conclusions or penalties made public

Japanese Bankers Association

Eighteen banks were asked to inspect their procedures for submitting Yen-denominated interbank rates, amid suggestions of possible collusion between banks

No improprieties in rate reporting found. The association plans to analyse the results further, to see if the method of calculating the rate needs to change

Singapore Monetary Authority

Investigating how unnamed banks set "key market interest rate benchmarks", according to Bloomberg

Who am I

Who am I, the inner feeling,

overflowing waves of healing.

Who am I, onward to our Ascension Quest,

Who am I, creating new challenges is what we do best.

Who am I, in pain that hides my sorrow,

Who am I, in my hope and trust for a better tomorrow.

Who am I, in my joy and bliss,

Who am I, in the peace that I miss.

Who am I, constantly on the move,

Who am I, somehow that must be proved.

Who am I, in the voice that speaks so softly,

Who am I, in the choices I make loosely.

Who am I, in the essence of my being,

Who am I, when listening and seeing.

Who am I, all caught up in anger,

Who am I, when I thirst and hunger.

Who am I, brought up in my fear,

Who am I, in the mood of good cheer.

Who am I, never finding what I lost,

Who am I, being what I am most.

Who am I, always on the go,

Who am I, when I say no.

Who am I, listening to the music sung,

Who am I, when I again have begun.

Who am I, in all the above,

Who am I, the answer is Love !!



Read more: 
No conclusions or penalties made public

Read more…

Marijuana legalization in the US: Five burning questions

A woman smokes marijuana in Seattle on Tuesday 6 NovemberSeattle residents celebrated election day with marijuana-fogged street parties

Related Stories

This month, two US states voted to legalize, regulate and tax marijuana. From advertising and marketing to drugged-driving enforcement, we ask what's ahead.

The 6 November votes in Colorado and Washington left a lot of marijuana users happy and a lot of police officers nervous. And they set the two states up for a confrontation with the federal government, as marijuana is still illegal under federal law.

Marijuana is the most widely used illicit drug in the US. Legalisation advocates say the recent votes mark the beginning of the end of the drug's prohibition.

"It's a tipping point for sure," says Sanho Tree, director of the drug policy project at the Institute for Policy Studies.

"If these two states go ahead and legalize recreational use and the sky hasn't fallen, that opens up more political space."

But authorities are wary.

"The Colorado chiefs of police are incredibly concerned with regard to public safety as a whole," says Chief John Jackson of the Greenwood Village police department, and legislative chair of the Colorado Association of Chief of Police.

Nearly 80 years after the US ended the prohibition of alcohol, we aim to answer just a few of the questions raised by the movement.

Marijuana in baggies in SeattleFancier packaging will help win new marijuana smokers, advertising experts say

How will retailers and growers market and advertise marijuana?

The laws forbid under-21s from possessing marijuana, and Washington bars marijuana adverts from within 1,000 ft (305m) of schools, playgrounds, parks and other places children gather.

To the uninitiated, different kinds of marijuana look and smell pretty much the same and when smoked, have more or less the same effect. Once it becomes a legal consumer product, how can Washington and Colorado companies in the marijuana business build brand identity and expand their market?

"Whether it's socks or weed the first thing you have to do is look at who's your target," says Rahul Panchal, an advertising creative director in New York.

Panchal says the core market is well established: "Mid-twenties stoner guys". Those people are already comfortable smoking marijuana and are happy to buy it with minimal packaging or advertising effort.

Successful marijuana entrepreneurs will try to expand that market, for example by tapping into existing subcultures or identity groups, for example outdoors enthusiasts, health-conscious suburbanites or stressed out professionals.

An enterprising grower or retailer could develop a premium marijuana brand using high-design packaging to project an aura of exclusivity.

"Gold leaf, black background," imagines Peter Corbett, chief executive officer of iStrategyLabs, a Washington digital marketing and advertising agency.

"The packaging has a matte finish, so it's tactile and feels expensive. It would never come in a plastic bag - it comes in a linen sack."

Entrepreneurs in search of big profits should look at the dairy industry, says Panchal.

"The lowest margin is to just sell milk," he says, while the real money is in processed products like cheese and yogurt.

"I would sell pot products: cookies, brownies and such. That's where the money's going to be."

Stock photo of a police officer performing a field sobriety testPolice do not need blood tests to catch stoned drivers, says a Colorado police chief

Can your boss still make you take a drug test?

An evening joint around a camp fire in Colorado, though perfectly legal in that state, could still threaten your job, because the new Colorado law specifically lets employers forbid marijuana use among workers.

"This isn't forcing any kind of change," says Mason Tvert, co-director of the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana like Alcohol, which advocated for the Colorado initiative.

Washington's law does not specify either way.

But workplace drug testing is already on the decline, says Lewis Maltby of the National Workrights Institute.

He and Tvert predict employers in Colorado and Washington will now be even less inclined to test employees or prospective hires.

Most drug testing, including pre-employment screening, is based on the perception that off-duty drug use among workers is bad for business, not on hard evidence, Maltby says.

Most people who fail workplace drug tests are what he calls "Saturday night pot smokers", not people who smoke before work and are simply unable to get the job done.

"Since it was fear that drove the testing in the first place, when marijuana becomes less scary a few less employers will test," he says.

How can police officers prevent drugged driving?

Both state referenda forbid driving while under the influence of marijuana.

But a driver can have marijuana in his blood and not necessarily be too stoned to drive, since marijuana remains detectable in the body days and even weeks after use.

The Washington law sets a threshold of five nanogrammes of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, per litre of blood, and Colorado's legislature is expected to enact a similar threshold.

Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich of Spokane County, Washington says officers who suspect a driver has smoked too much will have to summon a paramedic to draw blood for a test.

"How much of an added expense is that going to be to our agencies?" he asks.

Police have plenty of other ways to detect drug driving, says Chief Jackson: "I don't need a toxicology test on the side of the roadway."

If officers see motorists driving erratically, they can stop and interview them and ask them to perform field sobriety tests.

The encounter will likely be filmed from a dashboard camera. If the officer believes a driver is impaired, the officer will make an arrest and later testify in court, Chief Jackson says.

"You don't need breathalyser tests to convict drunk driving," he says. "People refuse to blow all the time but we still convict them in the state of Colorado."

Men pour liquor down a drain in 1920Alcohol use was widespread during US prohibition, even though authorities did their best to rid the country of it

The US once prohibited alcohol. Do these laws portend the nationwide end to marijuana prohibition?

Daniel Okrent, author of Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, sees two parallels between today's legal and cultural marijuana environment and the late 1920s and early '30s when the move to end America's experiment with prohibition of alcohol gained steam.

Prohibition of alcohol, which took effect nationwide in 1920 after the passage of a constitutional amendment, utterly failed to keep Americans from drinking alcohol. Instead, it enriched criminal "bootleggers" and starved the government of tax revenue.

Similarly, Americans have stubbornly resisted millions of dollars spent on anti-drug education. Despite decades of law enforcement efforts, marijuana remains widely available just about everywhere.

In 2002, 6.2% of Americans over the age of 11 reported using marijuana within the past month, according to a Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration study. By 2011 that figure had risen to 7%.

The public rhetoric in today's marijuana legalization movement takes the same tone as anti-temperance forces in the mid- to late-1920s, says Okrent.

"It's not 'we want to have fun and give us our freedom'," he says. "There's a sense it's not working, it's enriching criminal syndicates, it's establishing a hypocritical view of law enforcement and let's be honest with ourselves."

Today, as in the last years of prohibition, state, local and federal governments are desperate for tax revenue, he says.

One major difference between then and now: alcohol and drinking had long been ubiquitous in American life, from sacramental wine at mass, in Jewish rites, and at the dinner table, to beer at the pub and spirits made in backwoods distilleries.

Marijuana, meanwhile, is a relative newcomer to mass American culture and is not deeply ingrained. Many, if not most, Americans still frown on it.

Nevertheless, since election day, lawmakers in at least two more states - Maine and Rhode Island - have promised to introduce marijuana legalisation laws.

Will people stop distinguishing between "recreational use" and "medical use" of marijuana?

Neither the Washington nor the Colorado laws refer to recreation, but the media uses the term to distinguish the new movement from medical marijuana legal in at least 16 states. Yet no-one talks about "recreational use" of beer, wine and spirits.

Some people use marijuana aside from a desire to have a good time: to relax, in a religious rite, to spark creativity, to feed an addiction. Others insist it has medicinal benefits.

In some states medical marijuana is tightly controlled, but in California, it is widely viewed as a farce.

Just about anyone - even BBC correspondents - can get a marijuana prescription by paying a fee to a doctor and taking a minimal walk-in examination. In other states rules are stricter.

In the 1920s, during prohibition, Americans could pay a doctor to write a prescription for a weekly allotment of whisky, to be dispensed by a pharmacy, says Okrent, the prohibition scholar.

"It was an equally dishonest racket," he says. "There's a very clear parallel."!!

Who am I

Who am I, the inner feeling,

overflowing waves of healing.

Who am I, onward to our Ascension Quest,

Who am I, creating new challenges is what we do best.

Who am I, in pain that hides my sorrow,

Who am I, in my hope and trust for a better tomorrow.

Who am I, in my joy and bliss,

Who am I, in the peace that I miss.

Who am I, constantly on the move,

Who am I, somehow that must be proved.

Who am I, in the voice that speaks so softly,

Who am I, in the choices I make loosely.

Who am I, in the essence of my being,

Who am I, when listening and seeing.

Who am I, all caught up in anger,

Who am I, when I thirst and hunger.

Who am I, brought up in my fear,

Who am I, in the mood of good cheer.

Who am I, never finding what I lost,

Who am I, being what I am most.

Who am I, always on the go,

Who am I, when I say no.

Who am I, listening to the music sung,

Who am I, when I again have begun.

Who am I, in all the above,

Who am I, the answer is Love !!



Read more: http://www.ashtarcommandcrew.net/profiles/blogs/another-ascension-poem-who-am-i-by-rev-joshua-skirvin-11-18-12#ixzz2Cm0FgPtj

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US marijuana legalisation fuels Mexico drugs war debate

Marijuana packages and other drugs are piled up before being incinerated at the seventh Military Zone on the outskirts of Monterrey on 1 November 2012.

Earlier this month, two US states voted to legalise, regulate and tax marijuana. The BBC's Will Grant in Mexico City looks at what this shift in stance could mean for Mexico and its fight against the drug gangs.

On the day voters in Washington state chose to re-elect President Barack Obama, they also chose to legalise the recreational use of marijuana. Over the Rockies in Colorado, it was a similar story.

“Start Quote

What has happened in the US has moved things forward, because this debate is crucial”

Fernando BelauzaranMexican politician

"What happened in Colorado and Washington was truly revolutionary," says Beau Kilmer, the co-director of the Rand Drug Policy Research Centre in California. "No modern country has ever removed the prohibition on the production and distribution of marijuana for non-medical purposes."

When the measure comes into effect in Colorado in early December, it will be legal to possess 1oz (28g) of marijuana if you are over 21; it will be legal to grow up to six marijuana plants in your house; and it will be legal to give away up to 1oz.

There are still complex questions about creating a regulatory framework for the production and distribution of the drug, which may take at least another year.

Needless to say, such a move puts the two states on a legal collision course with the federal government and its drug enforcement policies. But Dr Kilmer believes it is a mistake to view the Obama administration as a single entity in this regard.

"At this point no-one knows how the federal government is going to respond to these two states. But it's important that we don't think of it as a homogenous actor."

_64103018_64103017.jpg

Marijuana is the main cash crop for Mexico's violent drug cartels

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the US Attorney-General's office and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) all have a degree of jurisdiction, and discretion, over these issues, Dr Kilmer points out.

Use of force

Meanwhile, thousands of kilometres away, in a "smoke shop" in Mexico City, the news of Colorado and Washington's decision has been warmly welcomed. Surrounded by glass cabinets full of expensive-looking vaporiser, the proprietor tells me that many of his customers are hoping for a similar law in Mexico.

"People don't want to contribute to the drug cartels' profits any more and I've sold a lot of copies of this recently," he says, holding up a book called The Ecological Cultivation of Cannabis.

“Start Quote

Continent-wide, there are obviously many discussions still to be had”

The man in Mexico currently leading the charge to change the law is left-wing politician Fernando Belauzaran. He has introduced a bill in Congress along similar lines to the one in Colorado, which would bring marijuana under the same regulation as alcohol.

"What has happened in the US has moved things forward, because this debate is crucial," Mr Belauzaran told the BBC on the day he formally presented the proposal.

"We need to ask if it makes sense to carry on with this full-frontal military campaign which has generated so much destruction and death in our country in order to impede the entrance into the United States of a substance which is now permitted and regulated."

Mr Belauzaran does not necessarily expect his measure to pass in this legislative session. But what is important, he says, is the new discourse on the issue.

Medical marijuana is packaged for sale at the Northwest Patient Resource Center medical marijuana dispensary in Seattle.The US states are likely to fall foul of federal drug policies

In some parts of the US and Mexican media, the decision in Washington state and Colorado has been called a "game-changer" in the bilateral relationship between Mexico and the United States on the war on drugs.

Both the outgoing administration and the incoming one in Mexico have indicated that they expect things to develop with respect to marijuana during President Obama's second term.

Hosting several central American leaders recently, Mexican President Felipe Calderon said the decision in the US was a "change in paradigm" on drug consumption. He called for the United Nations and the Organisation of American States to help clarify the situation.

The new government went even further.

"Obviously, we can't handle a product that is illegal in Mexico, trying to stop its transfer to the United States, when in the United States - at least in part of the United States - it now has a different status," Luis Videgaray, President-elect Enrique Pena Nieto's top adviser, told journalists.

But it is not just in Mexico that the debate on marijuana is shifting. Uruguay too, under left-wing President Jose Mujica, is moving to put the state in charge of regulating the cultivation and consumption of legal cannabis.

Continent-wide, there are obviously many discussions still to be had.

Advocates and opponents disagree about the extent to which legalisation of marijuana would hurt the drug cartels' profits - some quoting figures in the billions, others in the mere tens of millions. And there is still a long way to go before President Obama formulates a coherent response to the voters' decision in the two states.

But amid the smoke and mirrors, one thing seems clear: when it comes to marijuana in the Americas, the seeds of change have been sown.

Who am I

Who am I, the inner feeling,

overflowing waves of healing.

Who am I, onward to our Ascension Quest,

Who am I, creating new challenges is what we do best.

Who am I, in pain that hides my sorrow,

Who am I, in my hope and trust for a better tomorrow.

Who am I, in my joy and bliss,

Who am I, in the peace that I miss.

Who am I, constantly on the move,

Who am I, somehow that must be proved.

Who am I, in the voice that speaks so softly,

Who am I, in the choices I make loosely.

Who am I, in the essence of my being,

Who am I, when listening and seeing.

Who am I, all caught up in anger,

Who am I, when I thirst and hunger.

Who am I, brought up in my fear,

Who am I, in the mood of good cheer.

Who am I, never finding what I lost,

Who am I, being what I am most.

Who am I, always on the go,

Who am I, when I say no.

Who am I, listening to the music sung,

Who am I, when I again have begun.

Who am I, in all the above,

Who am I, the answer is Love !!



Read more: 

Read more…

Sixth Briefing   “Questions and Answers”

We feel that it is important, given the information that we have provided thus far, to respond to questions that must surely arise regarding our reality and the significance of the messages that we have come to give.

 

“Given the lack of hard evidence, why should people believe what you are telling them about the Intervention?”

First, there must be great evidence concerning the visitation to your world. We have been told that this is the case. Yet we have also been told by the Unseen Ones that people do not know how to understand the evidence and that they give it their own meaning—a meaning that they prefer to give it, a meaning that provides comfort and reassurance for the most part. We are certain that there is adequate evidence to verify that the Intervention is occurring in the world today if one takes the time to look and to investigate this matter. The fact that your governments or religious leaders do not reveal such things does not mean that such a great event is not occurring in your midst.

 

“How can people know that you are real?”

Regarding our reality, we cannot demonstrate our physical presence to you, and so you must discern the meaning and the import of our words. At this point, it is not merely a matter of belief. It requires a greater recognition, a Knowledge, a resonance. The words we speak we believe are true, but that does not assure that they can be received as such. We cannot control the response to our message. There are people who require more evidence than can possibly be given. For others, such evidence will not be necessary, for they will feel an inner confirmation.

In the meantime, perhaps we remain a controversy, and yet we hope and we trust that our words can be considered seriously and that the evidence that does exist, which is substantial, can be gathered and understood by those who are willing to give this their effort and their focus in life. >From our perspective, there is no greater problem, challenge and opportunity to receive your attention.

Therefore, you are at the beginning of a new understanding. This does require faith and self-reliance. Many will reject our words simply because they do not believe that we could possibly exist. Others perhaps will think that we are part of some manipulation that is being cast upon the world. We cannot control these responses. We can only reveal our message and our presence in your life, however removed that presence may be. It is not our presence here that is of paramount importance, but the message that we have come to reveal and the greater perspective and understanding that we can provide for you. Your education must begin somewhere. All education begins with the desire to know.

We hope that through our discourses we can gain at least part of your confidence in order to begin to reveal what we are here to offer.

 

“What do you have to say to those who view the Intervention as a positive thing?”

We understand, first of all, the expectation that all forces from the heavens are related to your spiritual understanding, traditions and fundamental beliefs. The idea that there is prosaic life in the universe is a challenge to these fundamental assumptions. From our perspective and given the experience of our own cultures, we understand these expectations. In the distant past, we maintained them ourselves. And yet we had to relinquish them in facing the realities of Greater Community life and the meaning of visitation.

You live in a great physical universe. It is full of life. This life represents countless manifestations and also represents the evolution of intelligence and spiritual awareness at every level. What this means is that what you will encounter in the Greater Community encompasses almost every possibility.

However, you are isolated and do not yet travel in space. And even if you had the capability to reach another world, the universe is vast, and no one has gained the ability to go from one end of the galaxy to the other with any kind of speed. Therefore, the physical universe remains enormous and incomprehensible. No one has mastered its laws. No one has conquered its territories. No one can claim complete dominance or control. Life has a great humbling effect in this way. Even far beyond your borders this is true.

          You should then come to expect that you will meet intelligences representing forces for good, forces for ignorance and those who are more neutral regarding you. However, in the realities of Greater Community travel and exploration, emerging races such as your own will, almost without exception, encounter resource explorers, collectives and those seeking advantage for themselves as their first contact with Greater Community life.

Regarding the positive interpretation of visitation, part of this is human expectation and the natural desire to welcome a good outcome and to seek help from the Greater Community for the problems that humanity has not been able to resolve on its own. It is normal to expect such things, particularly when you are considering that your visitors have greater capabilities than do you. However, a large part of the problem in interpreting the great visitation has to do with the will and the agenda of the visitors themselves. For they are encouraging people everywhere to view their presence here as wholly beneficial to humanity and to its needs.

 

“If this Intervention is so well underway, why didn’t you come sooner?”

At an earlier time, many years ago, several groups of your allies came to your world to visit in an attempt to give a message of hope, to prepare humanity. But alas their messages could not be understood and were misused by those few who could receive them. In the wake of their coming, the visitors from the collectives have amassed and gathered here. It has been known to us that this would happen, for your world is far too valuable to be overlooked, and, as we have said, it does not exist in a remote and distant part of the universe. Your world has been observed for a long time by those who would seek to use it for their own benefit.

“Why can’t our allies stop the Intervention?”

We are only here to observe and to advise. The great decisions facing humanity are in your hands. No one else can make these decisions for you. Even your great friends far beyond your world would not intervene, for if they did so, it would cause warfare, and your world would become a battleground between opposing forces. And should your friends be victorious, you would become wholly reliant upon them, unable to fend for yourself or to maintain your own security in the universe. We know of no benevolent race that would seek to bear this burden. And in truth, it would not serve you either. For you would become a client state to another power and would have to be governed from afar. This is not beneficial for you in any way, and it is for this reason that this is not occurring. Yet the visitors will cast themselves as saviors and rescuers of humanity. They will utilize your naiveté. They will capitalize on your expectations, and they will seek to wholly benefit from your trust.

   Therefore, it is our sincere desire that our words can serve as an antidote to their presence and to their manipulation and abuse. For your rights are being violated. Your territory is being infiltrated. Your governments are being persuaded. And your religious ideologies and impulses are being redirected.

There must be a voice of truth regarding this. And we can only trust that you can receive this voice of truth. We can only hope that the persuasion has not gone too far.

 

“What are realistic goals for us to set, and what is the bottom line with regard to saving humanity from losing its self-determination?”

The first step is awareness. Many people must become aware that the Earth is being visited and that foreign powers are here operating in a clandestine manner, seeking to hide their agenda and endeavors from human understanding. It must be very clear that their presence here is a great challenge to human freedom and self-determination. The agenda that they are furthering and the Pacification Program that they are sponsoring must be countered with sobriety and wisdom regarding their presence. This counteraction must occur. There are many people in the world today who are able to understand this. Therefore, the first step is awareness.

The next step is education. It is necessary for many people in different cultures and in different nations to learn about life in the Greater Community and to begin to comprehend what you will be dealing with and are dealing with even at this moment.

Therefore, realistic goals are awareness and education. This in itself would obstruct the visitors’ agenda in the world. They are operating now with very little resistance. They are encountering few obstacles. All those who seek to view them as “allies of humanity” must learn that this is not the case. Perhaps our words will not be enough, but they are a beginning.

 

“Where can we find this education?”

The education can be found in The Greater Community Way of Knowledge, which is being presented in the world at this time. Though it presents a new understanding about life and spirituality in the universe, it is connected to all of the genuine spiritual paths that already exist within your world—spiritual paths that value human freedom and the meaning of true spirituality and that value cooperation, peace and harmony within the human family. Therefore, the teaching in The Way of Knowledge calls forth all the great truths that already exist in your world and gives them a greater context and arena of expression. In this way, The Greater Community Way of Knowledge does not replace the world’s religions, but provides a larger context within which they can be truly meaningful and relevant to your times.

 

“How do we convey your message to others?”

The truth lives within each person at this moment. If you can speak to the truth in a person, it will become stronger and begin to resonate. Our great hope, the hope of the Unseen Ones, the spiritual forces who serve your world, and the hope of those who value human freedom and wish to see your emergence into the Greater Community successfully fulfilled, rely upon this truth that lives within each person. We cannot force this awareness upon you. We can only reveal it to you and trust in the greatness of Knowledge that the Creator has given you that can enable you and others to respond.

 

“Where do humanity’s strengths lie in opposing the Intervention?”

First, we understand from observing your world, and from what the Unseen Ones have told us regarding things that we cannot see, that though there are great problems within the world, there is sufficient human freedom to give you a foundation for opposing the Intervention. This is in contrast to many other worlds where individual freedom was never established to begin with. As these worlds encounter alien forces in their midst and the reality of Greater Community life, the possibility for them to establish freedom and independence is very limited.

Therefore, you have a great strength in that human freedom is known in your world and is practiced by many, though perhaps not all. You know you have something to lose. You value what you have already, to whatever extent it has been established. You do not want to be ruled by foreign powers. You do not even want to be ruled harshly by human authorities. Therefore, this is a beginning.

Next, because your world has rich spiritual traditions that have fostered Knowledge in the individual and fostered human cooperation and understanding, the reality of Knowledge has already been established. Again, in other worlds where Knowledge was never established, the possibility for establishing it at the turning point of emerging into the Greater Community shows little hope for success. Knowledge is strong enough in enough people here that they may be able to learn of the reality of life in the Greater Community and to comprehend what is occurring in their midst at this time. It is for this reason that we are hopeful, for we trust in human wisdom. We trust that people can rise above selfishness, self-preoccupation and self-protection to view life in a greater way and to feel a greater responsibility in service to their own kind.

Perhaps our faith is unfounded, but we are trusting that the Unseen Ones have counseled us wisely regarding this. As a result, we have placed ourselves at risk by being in the proximity of your world and witnessing events beyond your borders that have direct bearing on your future and destiny.

Humanity has great promise. You have a growing awareness of problems in the world—the lack of cooperation amongst nations, the degradation of your natural environment, your diminishing resources and so forth. If these problems were unknown to your people, if these realities had been kept hidden from your people, to the extent that people had no idea of the existence of these things, then we would not be as hopeful. However, the reality remains that humanity has the potential and the promise to counteract any intervention into the world.

 

“Is this Intervention going to become a military invasion?”

As we have said, your world is too valuable to incite a military invasion. No one who is visiting your world wants to destroy its infrastructure or its natural resources. That is why the visitors do not seek to destroy humanity, but instead to engage humanity in service to their collectives.

It is not military invasion that threatens you. It is the power of inducement and persuasion. This will be built upon your own weakness, upon your own selfishness, upon your ignorance of life in the Greater Community and upon your blind optimism regarding your future and the meaning of life beyond your borders.

To counteract this, we provide education and we speak of the means of preparation that are being sent into the world at this time. If you did not already know human freedom, if you were not already aware of the problems endemic to your world, then we could not entrust such a preparation to you. And we would not have confidence that our words would resonate with the truth of what you know.

 

“Can you influence people as powerfully as the visitors, but for the good?”

Our intention is not to influence individuals. Our intention is only to present the problem and the reality into which you are emerging. The Unseen Ones are providing the actual means of preparation, for that comes from God. In this, the Unseen Ones influence individuals for the good. But there are restraints. As we have said, it is your self-determination that must be strengthened. It is your power that must be increased. It is your cooperation amongst the human family that must be supported.

There are limits as to how much help we can provide. Our group is small. We are not walking amongst you. Therefore, the great understanding of your new reality must be shared from person to person. It cannot be forced upon you from a foreign power, even if it were for your own good. We would not, then, be supporting your freedom and self-determination if we sponsored such a program of persuasion. Here you cannot be like children. You must become mature and responsible. It is your freedom that is at stake. It is your world that is at stake. It is your cooperation with each other that is needed.

You now have a great cause to unite your race, for none of you will benefit without the other. No nation will benefit if any other nation falls under alien control. Human freedom must be complete. The cooperation must occur around your world. For everyone is in the same situation now. The visitors do not favor one group over another, one race over another, one nation over another. They only seek the avenue of least resistance to establish their presence and their domination of your world.

 

“How extensive is their infiltration of humanity?”

The visitors have a significant presence within the most advanced nations in your world, particularly the nations of Europe, Russia, Japan and America. These are viewed as the strongest nations, having the greatest power and influence. It is there that the visitors will concentrate. However, they are taking people from all over the world, and they are furthering their Pacification Program with all those that they capture, if those individuals can be responsive to their influence. Therefore, the visitors’ presence is worldwide, but they are concentrating on those whom they hope will become their allies. These are the nations and governments and religious leaders who hold the greatest power and sway over human thought and conviction.

 

“How much time do we have?

How much time do you have? You have some time, how much we cannot tell. But we come with an urgent message. This is not a problem that can simply be avoided or denied. From our perspective, it is the most important challenge facing humanity. It is of the greatest concern, the first priority. You are late in your preparation. This was caused by many factors beyond our control. But there is time, if you can respond. The outcome is uncertain and yet there is still hope for your success.

 

“How can we focus on this Intervention given the immensity of other global problems which are occurring right now?

First of all, we feel that there are no other problems in the world that are as important as this. From our perspective, whatever you can resolve on your own will have little meaning in the future if your freedom is lost. What could you hope to gain? What could you hope to achieve or secure if you are not free in the Greater Community? All of your accomplishments would be given to your new governors; all of your wealth would be bestowed upon them. And though your visitors are not cruel, they are completely committed to their agenda. You are valued only insofar as you can be useful to their cause. It is for this reason that we do not feel that there are any other problems facing humanity as important as this.

 

“Who is likely to respond to this situation?”

Regarding who can respond, there are many people in the world today who have an inherent knowledge of the Greater Community and who are sensitive to it. There are many others who have been taken by the visitors already but who have not yielded to them or to their persuasion. And there are many others who are concerned about the future of humanity and who are alerted to the dangers that humanity faces, even within your own world. People in all or any of these three categories may be amongst the first to respond to the Greater Community reality and to the preparation for the Greater Community. They may come from any walk of life, from any nation, from any religious background or from any economic group. They are literally all over the world. It is upon them and upon their response that the great Spiritual Powers that protect and oversee human welfare are depending.

 

“You mention that individuals are being taken all over the world. How can people protect themselves or others from being abducted?”

The more you can become strong with Knowledge and aware of the visitors’ presence, the less you become a desirable subject for their study and manipulation. The more you use your encounters with them to gain insight into them, the more of a hazard you become. As we have said, they seek the path of least resistance. They want individuals who are compliant and yielding. They want those who cause them few problems and little concern.

Yet as you become strong with Knowledge, you will be beyond their control because now they cannot capture your mind or your heart. And with time, you will have the power of perception to see into their minds, which they do not wish. You then become a danger to them, a challenge to them, and they will avoid you if they can.

The visitors do not seek to be revealed. They do not wish for conflict. They are overly confident that they can achieve their goals without serious resistance from the human family. But once such resistance is mounted, once the power of Knowledge awakens in the individual, then the visitors are facing a much more formidable obstacle. Their intervention here becomes thwarted and more difficult to achieve. And their persuasion of those in power becomes more difficult to accomplish. Therefore, it is the individual’s response and commitment to the truth that are essential here.

Become aware of the visitors’ presence. Do not yield to the persuasion that their presence here is of a spiritual nature or that it holds great benefit or salvation for humanity. Resist the persuasion. Regain your own inner authority, the great gift that the Creator has given to you. Become a force to be reckoned with regarding any who would trespass against or deny your fundamental rights.

This is Spiritual Power being expressed. It is the Will of the Creator that humanity should emerge into the Greater Community united within itself and free from foreign intervention and domination. It is the Creator’s Will that you should prepare for a future that will be unlike your past. We are here in service to the Creator, and thus our presence and our words serve this purpose.

 

“If the visitors encounter resistance in humanity or in certain individuals, will they come in greater numbers or will they leave?”

Their numbers are not great. Should they encounter considerable resistance, they would have to fall back and make new plans. They are wholly confident that their mission can be fulfilled without serious obstacles. Yet should serious obstacles arise, then their intervention and persuasion would be thwarted, and they would have to find other ways of gaining contact with humanity.

We trust that the human family can generate enough resistance and enough consensus in order to offset these influences. It is upon this that we are basing our hope and efforts.

 

“What are the most important questions that we must ask of ourselves and others with respect to this problem of alien infiltration?”

Perhaps the most critical questions to ask yourself are, “Are we humans alone within the universe or in our own world? Are we being visited at this time? Is this visitation beneficial to us? Do we need to prepare?”

These are very fundamental questions, but they must be asked. There are many questions, however, that cannot be answered, for you do not know enough about life in the Greater Community, and you are not yet confident that you have the ability to counteract these influences. There are many things lacking in human education, which is primarily focused upon the past. Humanity is emerging from a long state of relative isolation. Its education, its values and its institutions were all established within this state of isolation. Yet your isolation now is over, forever. It was always known that this would happen. It was inevitable that this would be the case. Therefore, your education and your values are entering into a new context, to which they must adapt. And the adaptation must happen quickly because of the nature of the Intervention in the world today.

There will be many questions that you cannot answer. You will have to live with them. Your education about the Greater Community is only at the very beginning. You must approach it with great sobriety and care. You must counteract your own tendencies to try and make the situation pleasant or reassuring. You must develop an objectivity about life, and you must look beyond your own personal sphere of interests in order to put yourself in a position to respond to the greater forces and events that are shaping your world and your future.

 

“What if enough people cannot respond?”

We are confident that enough people can respond and begin their great education about life in the Greater Community in order to give promise and hope to the human family. If this cannot be achieved, then those who value their freedom and who have this education will have to retreat. They will have to keep Knowledge alive in the world as the world falls under complete control. This is a very grave alternative, and yet it has occurred in other worlds. The journey back to freedom from such a position is quite difficult. We hope that this will not be your fate, and that is why we are here giving you this information. As we have said, there are enough people in the world who can respond to offset the intentions of the visitors and to thwart their influence on human affairs and human values.

 

“You speak of other worlds emerging into the Greater Community. Can you speak of successes and failures which might have bearing on our situation?”

There have been successes or we would not be here. In my case, as the speaker for our group, our world had already been greatly infiltrated before we realized the situation at hand. Our education was prompted by the arrival of a group such as ourselves, providing insight and information about our situation. We had alien resource traders in our world interacting with our government. Those who were in power at that time were persuaded that trade and commerce would be beneficial to us, for we were beginning to experience resource depletion. Though our race was united, unlike your own, we began to be wholly dependent upon the new technology and opportunities that were being presented to us. And yet as this occurred, there was a shift in the center of power. We were becoming the clients. The visitors were becoming the providers. As time went on, terms and restrictions were placed upon us, subtly at first.

Our religious focus and beliefs were also influenced by the visitors, who showed interest in our spiritual values but who wished to give us a new understanding, an understanding based upon the collective, based upon the cooperation of minds thinking alike in unison with each other. This was presented to our race as an expression of spirituality and achievement. Some were persuaded, and yet because we were well advised from our allies beyond our world, allies such as ourselves, we began to mount a resistance movement and over time were able to force the visitors to leave our world.

           Since that time, we have learned a great deal about the Greater Community. The trade that we maintain is very selective, with only a few other nations. We have been able to avoid the collectives, and that has preserved our freedom. And yet our success was difficult to achieve, for there were many of us who had to die in the face of this conflict. Ours is a story of success, but not without cost. There are others in our group who have experienced similar difficulties in their interaction with intervening powers in the Greater Community. And yet because we eventually learned to travel beyond our borders, we gained alliance with one another. We were able to learn what spirituality means in the Greater Community. And the Unseen Ones, who serve our world as well, helped us in this regard to make the great transition from isolation to Greater Community awareness.

Yet there have been many failures that we are aware of. Cultures where the indigenous peoples had not established personal freedom or had not tasted the fruits of cooperation, even though they were advancing technologically, did not have a foundation to establish their own independence in the universe. Their ability to resist the collectives was very limited. Induced by promises of greater power, greater technology and greater wealth, and induced by the seeming benefits of trade in the Greater Community, their center of power left their world. In the end, they became wholly dependent upon those who supplied them and who gained control of their resources and their infrastructures.

         Surely you can imagine how this could be the case. Even within your own world according to your history, you have seen smaller nations fall under the domination of greater ones. You can see this even today. Therefore, these ideas are not wholly foreign to you. In the Greater Community, as in your world, the strong will dominate the weak, if they can. This is a reality of life everywhere. And it is for this reason that we are encouraging your awareness and your preparation, in order that you may become strong and your self-determination may grow.

It may be a grave disappointment to many to understand and to learn that freedom is rare in the universe. As nations become stronger and more technological, they require greater and greater uniformity and compliance amongst their peoples. As they bridge out into the Greater Community and become involved in Greater Community affairs, the tolerance for individual expression diminishes to the point where large nations that have wealth and power are governed with a strictness and an exacting attitude that you would find abhorrent.

Here you must learn that technological advancement and spiritual advancement are not the same, a lesson that humanity has yet to learn and which you must learn if you are to exercise your natural wisdom in these matters.

Your world is greatly valued. It is rich biologically. You are sitting on a prize that you must protect if you are to be its stewards and its beneficiaries. Consider the peoples in your world who have lost their freedom because they lived in a place considered valuable by others. It is now the whole human family that is so imperiled.

 

“Because the visitors are so skilled in projecting thoughts and influencing people’s Mental Environment, how do we ensure ourselves that what we are seeing is real?”

The only basis for wise perception is the cultivation of Knowledge. If you believe only what you see, then you will believe only what is shown to you. There are many, we are told, that have this perspective. Yet we have learned that the Wise everywhere must gain a greater vision and a greater discernment. It is true that your visitors can project images of your saints and of your religious figures. Though this is not practiced often, it certainly can be used in order to evoke commitment and dedication amongst those who are already given to such beliefs. Here your spirituality becomes an area of vulnerability where Wisdom must be used.

Yet the Creator has given you Knowledge as a foundation for true discernment. You can know what you are seeing if you ask yourself if it is real. Yet to do this, you must have this foundation, and that is why the teaching in The Way of Knowledge is so fundamental to learning Greater Community Spirituality. Without this, people will believe what they want to believe, and they will rely upon what they see and what they are shown. And their potential for freedom will have been lost already, for it was never allowed to flourish in the first place.

 

“You speak about keeping Knowledge alive. How many will it take to keep Knowledge alive in the world?”

We cannot give you a number, but it must be strong enough to generate a voice within your own cultures. If this message can only be received by a few, they will not have this voice or this strength. Here they must share their wisdom. It cannot be purely for their own edification. Many more must learn of this message, many more than can receive it today.

 

“Is there a danger in presenting this message?”

There is always a danger in presenting the truth, not only in your world, but elsewhere. People gain advantage from the circumstances as they currently exist. The visitors will offer advantage to those in power who can receive them and who are not strong in Knowledge. People become accustomed to these advantages and build their lives upon them. This makes them resistant or even hostile to the presentation of truth, which calls for their responsibility in service to others and which may threaten the basis of their wealth and achievements.

This is why we are hidden and do not walk in your world. Certainly the visitors would destroy us if they could find us. But humanity may seek to destroy us as well because of what we represent, because of the challenge and the new reality that we demonstrate. Not everyone is ready to receive the truth even though it is greatly needed.

 

“Can individuals who are strong with Knowledge influence the visitors?”

The chance of success here is very limited. You are dealing with a collective of beings who have been bred to be compliant, whose whole life and experience have been encompassed and engendered by a collective mentality. They do not think for themselves. For this reason, we do not feel that you can influence them. There are few amongst the human family who have the strength to do this, and even here the possibility for success would be very limited. So the answer must be “No.” For all practical purposes, you cannot win them over.

 

“How are collectives different from a united humanity?”

Collectives are made up of different races and of those who are bred to serve those races. Many of the beings that are being encountered in the world are bred by collectives to be servants. Their genetic heritage has long been lost to them. They are bred to serve, as you breed animals to serve you. The human cooperation that we are promoting is a cooperation that preserves the self-determination of individuals and provides a position of strength from which humanity can interact, not only with the collectives but with others who will visit your shores in the future.

A collective is based upon one belief, one set of principles and one authority. Its emphasis is complete allegiance to an idea or an ideal. Not only is this engendered in the education of your visitors, but in their genetic code as well. That is why they behave in the ways that they do. This is both their strength and their weakness. They have great strength in the Mental Environment because their minds are united. But they are weak because they cannot think for themselves. They cannot deal with complexities or adversity very successfully. A man or woman of Knowledge would be incomprehensible to them.

Humanity must unite to preserve its freedom, but this is a very different establishment from the creation of a collective. We call them “collectives” because they are collectives of different races and nationalities. Collectives are not one race. Though there are many races in the Greater Community that are ruled by a dominant authority, a collective is an organization that spans beyond the allegiance of one race to its own world.

Collectives can have great power. Yet because there are many collectives, they tend to compete with one another, which prevents any one of them from becoming dominant. Also, various nations in the Greater Community have long-standing disputes with one another, which are difficult to bridge. Perhaps they have competed for a long time for the same resources. Perhaps they compete with one another to sell the resources that they have. Yet a collective is a different matter. As we are saying here, it is not based upon one race and one world. They are the result of conquest and domination. That is why your visitors are comprised of different races of beings at different levels of authority and command.

 

“In other worlds that have successfully unified, did they maintain their individual freedom of thought?”

To varying degrees. Some to a very high degree, others less so, depending upon their history, their psychological make-up and the needs of their own survival. Your life in the world has been relatively easy compared to where other races have developed. Most places where intelligent life exists have been colonized, for there are not many terrestrial planets such as your own that provide such a wealth of biological resources. Their freedom, in large part, depended upon the wealth of their environments. But they have all been successful in thwarting alien infiltration and have established their own lines of trade, commerce and communication based upon their own self-determination. This is a rare accomplishment and must be earned and protected.

 

“What will it take to achieve human unity?”

Humanity is very vulnerable in the Greater Community. This vulnerability, in time, can foster a fundamental cooperation amongst the human family, for you must join and unite in order to survive and to advance. This is part of having a Greater Community awareness. If this is based upon the principles of human contribution, freedom and self-expression, then your self-sufficiency can become very strong and very rich. But there must be greater cooperation in the world. People cannot live for themselves alone or put their own personal goals above and beyond the needs of everyone else. Some may view this as a loss of freedom. We see it as a guarantee for future freedom. For given the current attitudes prevalent in the world today, your future freedom would be very difficult to secure or maintain. Take heed. Those who are driven by their own selfishness are the perfect candidates for foreign influence and manipulation. If they are in positions of power, they will give over their nation’s wealth, their nation’s freedom and their nation’s resources in order to gain advantage for themselves.

Therefore, greater cooperation is required. Surely you can see this. Surely this is apparent even within your own world. But this is very different from the life of the collective, where races have been dominated and controlled, where those who are compliant are brought into the collectives and those who are not are alienated or destroyed. Surely such an establishment, though it may have considerable influence, cannot be beneficial for its members. And yet this is the path that many in the Greater Community have taken. We do not wish to see humanity fall into such an organization. That would be a great tragedy and a loss.

 

“How is the human perspective different from yours?”

One of the differences is that we have developed a Greater Community perspective, which is a less self-centered way of looking at the world. It is a point of view that gives great clarity and can provide great certainty regarding the smaller problems that you face in your daily affairs. If you can solve a great problem, you can solve lesser ones. You have a great problem. Every human being in the world faces this great problem. It can unite you and enable you to overcome your long-standing differences and conflicts. It is that great and that powerful. This is why we say there is a possibility for redemption within the very circumstances that threaten your well-being and your future.

We know that the power of Knowledge within the individual can restore that individual and all of their relationships to a higher degree of accomplishment, recognition and ability. You must discover this for yourself.

Our lives are very different. One of the differences is that our lives are given to service, a service that we have chosen. We have the freedom to choose and thus our choice is real and meaningful and is based upon our own understanding. Amongst our group are representatives from several different worlds. We have come together in service to humanity. We represent a greater alliance that is more spiritual in nature.

 

“This message is coming through one man. Why aren’t you contacting everybody if this is so important?”

It is merely a matter of efficiency. We do not control who is selected to receive us. That is a matter for the Unseen Ones, those whom you could rightly call “Angels.” We think of them in this way. They have selected this person, a person who has no position in the world, who is not recognized in the world, an individual who has been chosen because of his qualities and because of his heritage in the Greater Community. We are glad to have one through whom we can speak. If we spoke through more, they perhaps would disagree with one another, and the message would become confused and lost.

We understand, from our own studenthood, that the transmission of spiritual wisdom is generally given through one, with the support of others. This individual must bear the weight and the burden and the risk of being so chosen. We respect him for doing this, and we understand what a burden it can be. This will be misconstrued, perhaps, and that is why the Wise must remain hidden. We must remain hidden. He must remain hidden. In this way, the message can be given, and the messenger can be preserved. For there will be hostility towards this message. The visitors will oppose it and are opposing it already. Their opposition can be significant but will primarily be aimed at the messenger himself. It is for this reason that the messenger must be protected.

We know that the answers to these questions will generate more questions. And many of these cannot be answered, perhaps even for a long time. The Wise anywhere must live with questions that they cannot yet answer. It is through their patience and their perseverance that real answers emerge and that they are able to experience them and embody them.

 

*These questions were sent to the New Knowledge Library by many of the first readers of the Allies Material.

 

Final Words

 

Humanity is at a new beginning. It is faced with a grave situation. The need for a new education and understanding is paramount. We are here to serve this need at the request of the Unseen Ones. They are relying upon us to share our wisdom, for we live in the physical universe, as do you. We are not angelic beings. We are not perfect. We have not achieved great heights of spiritual awareness and accomplishment. And therefore our message to you about the Greater Community, we trust, will be more relevant and more easily received. The Unseen Ones know far more than we about life in the universe and about the levels of advancement and accomplishment that are available and that are practiced in many places. Yet they have asked us to speak regarding the reality of physical life because we are fully engaged there. And we have learned through our own trials and errors the importance and the meaning of what we are sharing with you.

Thus, we come as the Allies of Humanity, for such we are. Be thankful that you have allies that can help you and that can educate you and that can support your strength, your freedom and your accomplishment. For without this assistance, the prospect of your surviving the kind of alien infiltration that you are experiencing now would be very limited. Yes, there would be a few individuals who would come to realize the situation as it actually exists, but their numbers would not be great enough, and their voices would go unheard.

In this, we can only ask for your trust. We hope that through the wisdom of our words and through the opportunities you have to learn their meaning and relevance, that we can gain this trust over time, for you have allies in the Greater Community. You have great friends beyond this world who have suffered the challenges that you are facing now and have achieved success. Because we were assisted, we must now assist others. That is our sacred covenant. It is to this that we are firmly committed.

Read more…

Who am I

Who am I, the inner feeling,

overflowing waves of healing.

Who am I, onward to our Ascension Quest,

Who am I, creating new challenges is what we do best.

Who am I, in pain that hides my sorrow,

Who am I, in my hope and trust for a better tomorrow.

Who am I, in my joy and bliss,

Who am I, in the peace that I miss.

Who am I, constantly on the move,

Who am I, somehow that must be proved.

Who am I, in the voice that speaks so softly,

Who am I, in the choices I make loosely.

Who am I, in the essence of my being,

Who am I, when listening and seeing.

Who am I, all caught up in anger,

Who am I, when I thirst and hunger.

Who am I, brought up in my fear,

Who am I, in the mood of good cheer.

Who am I, never finding what I lost,

Who am I, being what I am most.

Who am I, always on the go,

Who am I, when I say no.

Who am I, listening to the music sung,

Who am I, when I again have begun.

Who am I, in all the above,

Who am I, the answer is Love !!

Read more…

32 Questions That All Americans Must Answer

 TRUTHER NOVEMBER 17, 2012 AP

Ron Paul, in his historic farewell speech to Congress this week, asked 32 thought-provoking questions addressed to his fellow Americans.

It’s very clear upon examination of these questions that something is very wrong with our government.  Below are his questions:

  1. Why are sick people who use medical marijuana put in prison?
  2. Why does the federal government restrict the drinking of raw milk?
  3. Why can’t Americans manufacturer rope and other products from hemp?
  4. Why are Americans not allowed to use gold and silver as legal tender as mandated by the Constitution?
  5. Why is Germany concerned enough to consider repatriating their gold held by the FED for her in New York? Is it that the trust in the U.S. and dollar supremacy beginning to wane?
  6. Why do our political leaders believe it’s unnecessary to thoroughly audit our own gold?
  7. Why can’t Americans decide which type of light bulbs they can buy?
  8. Why is the TSA permitted to abuse the rights of any American traveling by air?
  9. Why should there be mandatory sentences – even up to life for crimes without victims – as our drug laws require?
  10. Why have we allowed the federal government to regulate commodes in our homes?
  11. Why is it political suicide for anyone to criticize AIPAC ?
  12. Why haven’t we given up on the drug war since it’s an obvious failure and violates the people’s rights? Has nobody noticed that the authorities can’t even keep drugs out of the prisons? How can making our entire society a prison solve the problem?
  13. Why do we sacrifice so much getting needlessly involved in border disputes and civil strife around the world and ignore the root cause of the most deadly border in the world-the one between Mexico and the US?
  14. Why does Congress willingly give up its prerogatives to the Executive Branch?
  15. Why does changing the party in power never change policy? Could it be that the views of both parties are essentially the same?
  16. Why did the big banks, the large corporations, and foreign banks and foreign central banks get bailed out in 2008 and the middle class lost their jobs and their homes?
  17. Why do so many in the government and the federal officials believe that creating money out of thin air creates wealth?
  18. Why do so many accept the deeply flawed principle that government bureaucrats and politicians can protect us from ourselves without totally destroying the principle of liberty?
  19. Why can’t people understand that war always destroys wealth and liberty?
  20. Why is there so little concern for the Executive Order that gives the President authority to establish a “kill list,” including American citizens, of those targeted for assassination?
  21. Why is patriotism thought to be blind loyalty to the government and the politicians who run it, rather than loyalty to the principles of liberty and support for the people? Real patriotism is a willingness to challenge the government when it’s wrong.
  22. Why is it claimed that if people won’t or can’t take care of their own needs, that people in government can do it for them?
  23. Why did we ever give the government a safe haven for initiating violence against the people?
  24. Why do some members defend free markets, but not civil liberties?
  25. Why do some members defend civil liberties but not free markets? Aren’t they the same?
  26. Why don’t more defend both economic liberty and personal liberty?
  27. Why are there not more individuals who seek to intellectually influence others to bring about positive changes than those who seek power to force others to obey their commands?
  28. Why does the use of religion to support a social gospel and preemptive wars, both of which requires authoritarians to use violence, or the threat of violence, go unchallenged? Aggression and forced redistribution of wealth has nothing to do with the teachings of the world great religions.
  29. Why do we allow the government and the Federal Reserve to disseminate false information dealing with both economic and foreign policy?
  30. Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority?
  31. Why should anyone be surprised that Congress has no credibility, since there’s such a disconnect between what politicians say and what they do?
  32. Is there any explanation for all the deception, the unhappiness, the fear of the future, the loss of confidence in our leaders, the distrust, the anger and frustration?

Yes there is, and there’s a way to reverse these attitudes. The negative perceptions are logical and a consequence of bad policies bringing about our problems. Identification of the problems and recognizing the cause allow the proper changes to come easy. (you must want the change and make it happen)

Read more…
Declaration of Independence

The Declaration of Independence: A Transcription


IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. 
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. 
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent: 
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. 
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands. 
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.


The 56 signatures on the Declaration appear in the positions indicated:

Column 1
Georgia:
   Button Gwinnett
   Lyman Hall
   George Walton

Column 2
North Carolina:
   William Hooper
   Joseph Hewes
   John Penn
South Carolina:
   Edward Rutledge
   Thomas Heyward, Jr.
   Thomas Lynch, Jr.
   Arthur Middleton

Column 3
Massachusetts:
John Hancock
Maryland:
Samuel Chase
William Paca
Thomas Stone
Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia:
George Wythe
Richard Henry Lee
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Harrison
Thomas Nelson, Jr.
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Carter Braxton

Column 4
Pennsylvania:
   Robert Morris
   Benjamin Rush
   Benjamin Franklin
   John Morton
   George Clymer
   James Smith
   George Taylor
   James Wilson
   George Ross
Delaware:
   Caesar Rodney
   George Read
   Thomas McKean

Column 5
New York:
   William Floyd
   Philip Livingston
   Francis Lewis
   Lewis Morris
New Jersey:
   Richard Stockton
   John Witherspoon
   Francis Hopkinson
   John Hart
   Abraham Clark

Column 6
New Hampshire:
   Josiah Bartlett
   William Whipple
Massachusetts:
   Samuel Adams
   John Adams
   Robert Treat Paine
   Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island:
   Stephen Hopkins
   William Ellery
Connecticut:
   Roger Sherman
   Samuel Huntington
   William Williams
   Oliver Wolcott
New Hampshire:
   Matthew Thornton

Read more…
Sign outside JPMorgan offices
 
The banks did not admit or deny the charges

Related Stories

JP Morgan Chase and Credit Suisse will together pay $417m (£263m) to settle charges that they misled investors in residential mortgage-backed securities offerings, US regulators have said.

JP Morgan has agreed to pay $296.9m to settle the charges while Credit Suisse will pay $120m, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said.

Both banks agreed to settle without admitting or denying the charges.

The SEC said it plans to distribute the money to harmed investors.

The SEC said that JP Morgan received fees of more than $2.7m, and investors sustained losses of at least $37m on these undisclosed bad loans.

The bank was also charged for the failure of an investment bank it bought, Bear Stearns, to disclose its practice of obtaining and keeping cash settlements from mortgage loan originators on problem loans that Bear Stearns had sold on.

JP Morgan said it was pleased to have reached an agreement with the SEC to put these matters concerning mortgage-backed securities behind it.

Credit Suisse was accused of similar practices.

'Ground zero'

"In many ways, mortgage products such as RMBS (residential mortgage-backed securities) were ground zero in the financial crisis," Robert Khuzami, director of the SEC's division of enforcement, said in a statement.

"Misrepresentations in connection with the creation and sale of mortgage securities contributed greatly to the tremendous losses suffered by investors once the US housing market collapsed.

"Today's actions involving RMBS securities are a continuation of the SEC's strong efforts to pursue wrongdoing committed in connection with the financial crisis."

Last month, the New York Attorney General sued JP Morgan for allegedly defrauding investors who lost more than $20bn on mortgage-backed securities sold by Bear Stearns.

JP Morgan bought Bear Stearns in March 2008.

US mortgage-backed securities were the investment products that sparked the global financial crisis in 2008.

In essence, each security or bond was linked to pools of US mortgage loans, many of which were classified as sub-prime - mortgages awarded to high-risk and low-wage homeowners.

When many of those homebuyers defaulted on their mortgages as the US property bubble burst, it turned the linked securities into bad debt.

This caused losses worth billions of dollars at banks, who were forced to write down the value of their investments.

Banks around the world were affected, not just those in the US, because the securities were resold globally.

Read more…

GOP Governors Distance Themselves From Secession Movement

GOP Governors Distance Themselves From Secession Movement

Thursday, 15 November 2012 14:57

Written by  Joe Wolverton, II, J.D

Ron Paul “feels the same now” about the right of secession as he did when he addressed the issue in a video message posted to YouTube in 2009. That’s the comment made by Rachel Mills, a spokeswoman for the retiring congressman as quoted in U.S. News.

The number of petitions for secession uploaded to the White House’s “We, the People” websitecontinues to increase, as do the signatures on those already posted.

The “We, the People” program includes a “create a petition” tab on the White House website. The explanation of the site claims that "if a petition gets enough support," — more than 25,000 signatures within 30 days — the "White House staff will review it, ensure it's sent to the appropriate policy experts, and issue an official response." 

As we reported earlier in the week, citizens of dozens of states submitted petitions to leave the United States, citing the “long train of abuses” committed by the federal government and the right to “dissolve the political bands that have connected” them to the union as set out in the Declaration of Independence.

At the time of publication of this article, a petition on behalf of each of the 50 states has been added to the website, several of which have exceeded the 25,000 threshold that the White House claims will trigger an official response.

The White House has not commented on the petitions.

Although he argued that such was a possibility in 2009, Texas Governor Rick Perry has since renounced secession, announcing through a spokeswoman that he favors keeping the union intact. 

In a statement released to the Dallas Morning News, spokeswoman Catherine Frazier wrote:

Gov. Perry believes in the greatness of our Union and nothing should be done to change it. But he also shares the frustrations many Americans have with our federal government. Now more than ever our country needs strong leadership from states like Texas, that are making tough decisions to live within their means, keep taxes low and provide opportunities to job creators so their citizens can provide for their families and prosper. We cannot allow Washington’s tax and spend, one-size-fits-all mindset to jeopardize our children’s future, undermine our personal liberties and drive our nation down a dangerous path to greater dependence of government.

Other Republican governors have followed Perry’s anti-secessionist suit. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal called the petition filed by citizens of the Bayou State “silly.”

As reported by BayouBuzz, Jindal dismissed the petition, telling NOLA.com, “We are proud to be part of the greatest country in the history of the world. Whatever our political differences, we are American first."

Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam, also a Republican, commented Tuesday about the secession petition submitted by Tennesseans, saying, "I don’t think that’s a valid option for Tennessee. I don’t think we’ll be seceding."

Then, fresh off an announcement that his state would not be participating in the state healthcare exchanges required by ObamaCare, Alabama Governor Robert Bentley came out on Tuesday and said through a spokesman, “Governor Bentley believes in one nation under God. While there is frustration with the federal government, Governor Bentley believes that states can be great laboratories of change.”

Finally, the online Huffington Post quotes Nikki Haley, the Republican Governor of South Carolina saying, “Didn’t we try that once before? I love this country. I’m going to fight for this country. I’m going to do everything I can for this country, and this country is going to be great.”

South Carolina did try seceding once before. On Christmas Eve, 1860, the people and the legislature of the Palmetto State adopted a resolution filed eight years earlier approving the state’s separation from the union. 

In that document, South Carolina pointed to the “frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States” as justification for its departure. Then, citing the Declaration of Independence (as do the recent petitions), the document declares, “Whenever any ‘form of government becomes destructive of the ends for which it was established, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government.’”

The declaration then goes on to rehearse the history of the formation of the union in 1787, arguing that South Carolina retained her sovereign right of self-defense should the federal government ever violate the compact entered into in Philadelphia in 1787. It argued:

In 1787, Deputies were appointed by the States to revise the Articles of Confederation, and on 17th September, 1787, these Deputies recommended for the adoption of the States, the Articles of Union, known as the Constitution of the United States.

The parties to whom this Constitution was submitted, were the several sovereign States; they were to agree or disagree, and when nine of them agreed the compact was to take effect among those concurring; and the General Government, as the common agent, was then invested with their authority.

If only nine of the thirteen States had concurred, the other four would have remained as they then were-- separate, sovereign States, independent of any of the provisions of the Constitution. In fact, two of the States did not accede to the Constitution until long after it had gone into operation among the other eleven; and during that interval, they each exercised the functions of an independent nation.

By this Constitution, certain duties were imposed upon the several States, and the exercise of certain of their powers was restrained, which necessarily implied their continued existence as sovereign States. But to remove all doubt, an amendment was added, which declared that the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States, respectively, or to the people. On the 23d May , 1788, South Carolina, by a Convention of her People, passed an Ordinance assenting to this Constitution, and afterwards altered her own Constitution, to conform herself to the obligations she had undertaken.

Thus was established, by compact between the States, a Government with definite objects and powers, limited to the express words of the grant. This limitation left the whole remaining mass of power subject to the clause reserving it to the States or to the people, and rendered unnecessary any specification of reserved rights.

Constitutionally speaking, secession is an allowable response to federal overreaching. There is, however, a simpler, less drastic remedy. Nullification.

Simply stated, nullification is a concept of legal statutory construction that endows each state with the right to nullify, or invalidate, any federal measure that a state deems unconstitutional. Nullification is founded on the assertion that the sovereign states formed the union, and as creators of the compact, they hold ultimate authority as to the limits of the power of the central government to enact laws that are applicable to the states and the citizens thereof.

If the people will not allow deviance from the terms of the compact, then legislators at last will be disabused of their commonly perceived illusion that the people can be easily lulled into a lethargic stupor rendering them unwilling and eventually unable to withstand the steady herding of our nation into the corrals of despotism.

Finally, of all the legal verities and moral virtues of nullification, there is one that sits at the pinnacle of them all. Nullification, as defined by Jefferson and Madison and as being proposed and practiced by contemporary Americans, is a fail-safe protection of popular sovereignty and limited government. This is so because the keys to these restraints are held by the people.

A growing number of concerned citizens of this Republic are no longer willing to recur to Congress to repeal unconstitutional laws or to file legal complaints in the hope that the courts will strike down offensive measures. They understand that while perhaps commendable, these tactics are futile and offer no guarantee of the restoration of constitutionally ensured freedom. They refuse to wait on this or that president, this or that congressman, or this or that political party to acknowledge their pleas for relief from federal oppression. Instead, they unashamedly will assume their right and their duty to derail the “long train of abuses and usurpations” and “provide new Guards for their future security” — the states and themselves.

Photo of reenactment of Louisiana secession: AP Images

Joe A. Wolverton, II, J.D. is an attorney and correspondent for The New American. He travels frequently nationwide speaking on topics of nullification, the NDAA, and the surveillance state. He can be reached at jwolverton@thenewamerican.com.

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The Globalist Federal Government Seceded From America

Saman Mohammadi

Prisonplanet.com
Nov 16, 2012

“Our country has already been taken over. I want to secede back to the Republic, back to our nation. The new world order has taken over. We’re not fighting just some corrupt politicians and it’s a little political issue. We have serious, hardcore authoritarians, Ron Paul called them yesterday authoritarian psychopaths, in control. We know what tyranny is historically. This is the worst case of it I’ve ever seen. And it’s growing and coming to fruition very, very quickly.” – Alex Jones, “Talk Show Host Calls For Second American Revolution!” November 15, 2012.

“As over a million Americans express their disenfranchisement with the federal government by supporting a secessionist movement that has spread like wildfire, it is time to call for a new declaration of independence and a new commitment to restore the Republic in the face of an enemy that has subverted America from within.” – Paul Joseph Watson, “Ron Paul: The Founders Believed in Secession,” November 15, 2012.

“We are going to force the issue with the globalists, because here’s the key. We’re not seceding from the federal government. We are recognizing and declaring what is self-evident that the federal government has been hijacked by foreign banking cartels.” – Alex Jones, “TRANSCRIPT: Alex Jones – Secede from the New World Order,” November 15, 2012.

Since when did self-determination become a dirty word? Isn’t this the slogan that America fights for abroad? Why, then, does the U.S. government deny this principle at home? Why is the federal government more interested in the self-determination of Iraqis, Afghans, and Syrians than of Americans?

A government that denies its own basic principles and laws does not deserve to be listened to and followed. Secession from such a poisonous government is a moral and spiritual duty.

Alex Jones is on the right side of history by calling for secession from the bankster-hijacked federal government. He is standing up for America and for freedom-loving people worldwide.

The current oligarchical owners of the U.S. government forfeited their claim to rule the American people when they murdered three thousand innocent Americans on September 11, 2001, and then proceeded to destroy the laws and freedoms of the United States by hyping the fake terrorist threat. They seceded from America on that day. The rightful response is to secede from these savages, counterfeiters, aggressors, and liars.

Secession is not an act of treason, it is one of many peaceful political solutions to problems that have been long in the making. The states can rebuilt the American economy by seceding from the corrupt federal reserve system that stole the federal government from the American people in 1913. They should create their own currencies and issue their own credit to their citizens and businesses since the federal reserve and federal government aren’t doing it.

The federal government can honestly fix economic injustices by either abolishing the corrupt federal reserve system or nationalizing it and reclaiming the right to issue money from the transnational private banking cartel. If this does not happen, then the states have a right and a responsibility to their citizens to secede from a collapsing and morally bankrupt banking system.

The Dollar is dead. The era of private central banking is finished. Public banking is the future. Gold and silver is the future. Honest money is the future. If the federal government will not get on the right side of history then the states must.

If the question is asked, why secede? Give this answer: why obey? The hijacked federal government is proposing austerity and war. It is intellectually, morally, financially, spiritually, and politically bankrupt. Here is an excerpt from the Infowars article, “Why The States Must Secede To Save America”:

“While Americans are being told to brace for tax hikes, spending cuts and a myriad of other austerity measures, the Federal Reserve has been sending trillions of dollars to foreign banks.

The federal government is supposed to represent the states, but it doesn’t, it represents the interests of the political and banking elite who themselves have no allegiance whatsoever to America.”

The age of treason is not over, but there is a new age of global political awakening in which corrupt political leaders and international financial fraudsters are getting the biggest wake up call in history. Humanity wants to be free. The sick perverts who rule England, America, and other nations must step down from office and face the legal consequences of their actions.

The transition to a new age of freedom won’t be easy. But liberty must be fought for in every generation. In our time, the greatest freedom to be won is the freedom of the mind. Totalitarian ideologies such as political Islamism, Zionism, and Counter-Terrorism have deprived nations in the East and the West of this sacred freedom which is the source of all others.

As socially conscious and politically aware global citizens, it is our duty to destroy these totalitarian ideologies and liberate the individual from the prison of systematic government brainwashing. Our demand is clear: The brainwashing of all humans by all governments must end.

We are not mental subjects of governments, but creative children of God, and God has no official state ideology. Governments of the world must recognize this divine demand and stop using the media as a tool to instill propaganda into the minds of their citizens. That is the way of the past. It is a dead way. We live in a different time now, a time of spiritual evolution.

There are creative and peaceful remedies to government brainwashing and mass mind control. The global alternative media is the key to saving liberty because the free access to information is critical if we want to form our own opinions.

In his farewell speech in Congress, Dr. Ron Paul said, “The internet will provide the alternative to the government/media complex that controls the news and most political propaganda.” He also said that the growth in popularity of homeschooling will lead to new thinking, new ideas, and new reforms. Here is an excerpt from his speech:

It is self-evident that our freedoms have been severely limited and the apparent prosperity we still have, is nothing more than leftover wealth from a previous time.  This fictitious wealth based on debt and benefits from a false trust in our currency and credit, will play havoc with our society when the bills come due.  This means that the full consequence of our lost liberties is yet to be felt.

But that illusion is now ending.  Reversing a downward spiral depends on accepting a new approach.

Expect the rapidly expanding homeschooling movement to play a significant role in the revolutionary reforms needed to build a free society with Constitutional protections. We cannot expect a Federal government controlled school system to provide the intellectual ammunition to combat the dangerous growth of government that threatens our liberties.

Government schools are about indoctrination, and “sheep-herding,” as the genius and poet Ezra Pound described it.

Totalitarian governments treat the mass of people as sheep to be brainwashed, robbed, and slaughtered.

The history of the totalitarian states in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union proved that totalitarianism is the death of the soul and the annihilation of the individual.

Individuals in America have a moral and spiritual duty to mentally secede from a war-possessed totalitarian government that is only interested in enslaving, killing, robbing, lying, spying, and cheating. It is the right and honourable course. I stand with them, and with all humans who want to mentally and spiritually secede from oppressive governments.

“Reboot the Republic. . .Reinstall the Declaration of Independence.” – Alex Jones.

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Dr. Ron Paul's farewell speech to congress is a reminder of all the things we are fighting against and points a very direct finger to some of the greatest issues that currently face America.  I think that many years from now, Ron Paul will be quoted as often as America's Founding Fathers 
On the topic of Dr Paul, I think his comments with regards to the petitions in the Whitehouse site for the Secession of the States- now all 50 are represented in petition form- need to be heard.  The ignorant masses are rumbling, ranting & raving that anyone signing one of these petitions should have their American citizenship taken away, be tried for treason, tarred and feathered, drawn and quartered, and any number of other ridiculous punishments exercised upon them for exercising their right to free speech. Ron's words remind America that the original 13 colonies SECEDED from the controlling British Empire!  He reminds the public that Americans cheered when various nation states SECEDED from the USSR and then the Russian federation.  

Will the individual states leave Corporate USA?  I don't know, and to be frank, the need for them to leave should be taken care of very soon.  BUT, what we are witnessing is the greatest movement of patriotism and constitutionalism the American public has ever witnessed.  At this moment hundreds of thousands of Americans are voicing their anger and distrust and frustration with the Federal Government.  The main stream media is following the growth of these petitions all over the world and even US media outlets are commenting on it!!  This is HUGE!


We the People are finally standing up and making a statement.


Last night the totals of the signatures on all the petitions were at 749,459.  At 10pm est last night they were averaging 1000 signatures a MINUTE.  If the rate of addition of signatures had stayed the same, we would see 1,440,000 signatures every 24 hours.  Unfortunately at this point the totals are no longer available- whether it is through tampering or just logistics, we don't know- but you can follow these petitions HERE.


It is time for ALL PEOPLE world wide to stand up and demand that their voice be heard.  


Congressman Ron Paul's Farewell Speech to Congress

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Full Transcript:

This may well be the last time I speak on the House Floor. At the end of the year I’ll leave Congress after 23 years in office over a 36 year period. My goals in 1976 were the same as they are today: promote peace and prosperity by a strict adherence to the principles of individual liberty.

It was my opinion, that the course the U.S. embarked on in the latter part of the 20th Century would bring us a major financial crisis and engulf us in a foreign policy that would overextend us and undermine our national security.

To achieve the goals I sought, government would have had to shrink in size and scope, reduce spending, change the monetary system, and reject the unsustainable costs of policing the world and expanding the American Empire.

The problems seemed to be overwhelming and impossible to solve, yet from my view point, just following the constraints placed on the federal government by the Constitution would have been a good place to start.

 How Much Did I Accomplish?

In many ways, according to conventional wisdom, my off-and-on career in Congress, from 1976 to 2012, accomplished very little. No named legislation, no named federal buildings or highways—thank goodness. In spite of my efforts, the government has grown exponentially, taxes remain excessive, and the prolific increase of incomprehensible regulations continues. Wars are constant and pursued without Congressional declaration, deficits rise to the sky, poverty is rampant and dependency on the federal government is now worse than any time in our history.

All this with minimal concerns for the deficits and unfunded liabilities that common sense tells us cannot go on much longer. A grand, but never mentioned, bipartisan agreement allows for the well-kept secret that keeps the spending going. One side doesn’t give up one penny on military spending, the other side doesn’t give up one penny on welfare spending, while both sides support the bailouts and subsidies for the banking and corporate elite. And the spending continues as the economy weakens and the downward spiral continues. As the government continues fiddling around, our liberties and our wealth burn in the flames of a foreign policy that makes us less safe.

The major stumbling block to real change in Washington is the total resistance to admitting that the country is broke. This has made compromising, just to agree to increase spending, inevitable since neither side has any intention of cutting spending.

The country and the Congress will remain divisive since there’s no “loot left to divvy up.”

Without this recognition the spenders in Washington will continue the march toward a fiscal cliff much bigger than the one anticipated this coming January.

I have thought a lot about why those of us who believe in liberty, as a solution, have done so poorly in convincing others of its benefits. If liberty is what we claim it is- the principle that protects all personal, social and economic decisions necessary for maximum prosperity and the best chance for peace- it should be an easy sell. Yet, history has shown that the masses have been quite receptive to the promises of authoritarians which are rarely if ever fulfilled.

Authoritarianism vs. Liberty

If authoritarianism leads to poverty and war and less freedom for all individuals and is controlled by rich special interests, the people should be begging for liberty. There certainly was a strong enough sentiment for more freedom at the time of our founding that motivated those who were willing to fight in the revolution against the powerful British government.

During my time in Congress the appetite for liberty has been quite weak; the understanding of its significance negligible. Yet the good news is that compared to 1976 when I first came to Congress, the desire for more freedom and less government in 2012 is much greater and growing, especially in grassroots America. Tens of thousands of teenagers and college age students are, with great enthusiasm, welcoming the message of liberty.

I have a few thoughts as to why the people of a country like ours, once the freest and most prosperous, allowed the conditions to deteriorate to the degree that they have.

Freedom, private property, and enforceable voluntary contracts, generate wealth. In our early history we were very much aware of this. But in the early part of the 20th century our politicians promoted the notion that the tax and monetary systems had to change if we were to involve ourselves in excessive domestic and military spending. That is why Congress gave us the Federal Reserve and the income tax. The majority of Americans and many government officials agreed that sacrificing some liberty was necessary to carry out what some claimed to be “progressive” ideas. Pure democracy became acceptable.

They failed to recognized that what they were doing was exactly opposite of what the colonists were seeking when they broke away from the British.

Some complain that my arguments makes no sense, since great wealth and the standard of living improved for many Americans over the last 100 years, even with these new policies.

But the damage to the market economy, and the currency, has been insidious and steady. It took a long time to consume our wealth, destroy the currency and undermine productivity and get our financial obligations to a point of no return. Confidence sometimes lasts longer than deserved. Most of our wealth today depends on debt.

The wealth that we enjoyed and seemed to be endless, allowed concern for the principle of a free society to be neglected. As long as most people believed the material abundance would last forever, worrying about protecting a competitive productive economy and individual liberty seemed unnecessary.

 The Age of Redistribution

This neglect ushered in an age of redistribution of wealth by government kowtowing to any and all special interests, except for those who just wanted to left alone. That is why today money in politics far surpasses money currently going into research and development and productive entrepreneurial efforts.

The material benefits became more important than the understanding and promoting the principles of liberty and a free market. It is good that material abundance is a result of liberty but if materialism is all that we care about, problems are guaranteed.

The crisis arrived because the illusion that wealth and prosperity would last forever has ended. Since it was based on debt and a pretense that debt can be papered over by an out-of-control fiat monetary system, it was doomed to fail. We have ended up with a system that doesn’t produce enough even to finance the debt and no fundamental understanding of why a free society is crucial to reversing these trends.

If this is not recognized, the recovery will linger for a long time. Bigger government, more spending, more debt, more poverty for the middle class, and a more intense scramble by the elite special interests will continue.

 We Need an Intellectual Awakening

Without an intellectual awakening, the turning point will be driven by economic law. A dollar crisis will bring the current out-of-control system to its knees.

If it’s not accepted that big government, fiat money, ignoring liberty, central economic planning, welfarism, and warfarism caused our crisis we can expect a continuous and dangerous march toward corporatism and even fascism with even more loss of our liberties. Prosperity for a large middle class though will become an abstract dream.

This continuous move is no different than what we have seen in how our financial crisis of 2008 was handled. Congress first directed, with bipartisan support, bailouts for the wealthy. Then it was the Federal Reserve with its endless quantitative easing. If at first it doesn’t succeed try again; QE1, QE2, and QE3 and with no results we try QE indefinitely—that is until it too fails. There’s a cost to all of this and let me assure you delaying the payment is no longer an option. The rules of the market will extract its pound of flesh and it won’t be pretty.

The current crisis elicits a lot of pessimism. And the pessimism adds to less confidence in the future. The two feed on themselves, making our situation worse.

If the underlying cause of the crisis is not understood we cannot solve our problems. The issues of warfare, welfare, deficits, inflationism, corporatism, bailouts and authoritarianism cannot be ignored. By only expanding these policies we cannot expect good results.

Everyone claims support for freedom. But too often it’s for one’s own freedom and not for others. Too many believe that there must be limits on freedom. They argue that freedom must be directed and managed to achieve fairness and equality thus making it acceptable to curtail, through force, certain liberties.

Some decide what and whose freedoms are to be limited. These are the politicians whose goal in life is power. Their success depends on gaining support from special interests.

 No More ‘isms’

The great news is the answer is not to be found in more “isms.” The answers are to be found in more liberty which cost so much less. Under these circumstances spending goes down, wealth production goes up, and the quality of life improves.

Just this recognition—especially if we move in this direction—increases optimism which in itself is beneficial. The follow through with sound policies are required which must be understood and supported by the people.

But there is good evidence that the generation coming of age at the present time is supportive of moving in the direction of more liberty and self-reliance. The more this change in direction and the solutions become known, the quicker will be the return of optimism.

Our job, for those of us who believe that a different system than the one that we have had for the last 100 years, has driven us to this unsustainable crisis, is to be more convincing that there is a wonderful, uncomplicated, and moral system that provides the answers. We had a taste of it in our early history. We need not give up on the notion of advancing this cause.

It worked, but we allowed our leaders to concentrate on the material abundance that freedom generates, while ignoring freedom itself. Now we have neither, but the door is open, out of necessity, for an answer. The answer available is based on the Constitution, individual liberty and prohibiting the use of government force to provide privileges and benefits to all special interests.

After over 100 years we face a society quite different from the one that was intended by the Founders. In many ways their efforts to protect future generations with the Constitution from this danger has failed. Skeptics, at the time the Constitution was written in 1787, warned us of today’s possible outcome. The insidious nature of the erosion of our liberties and the reassurance our great abundance gave us, allowed the process to evolve into the dangerous period in which we now live.

 Dependency on Government Largesse

Today we face a dependency on government largesse for almost every need. Our liberties are restricted and government operates outside the rule of law, protecting and rewarding those who buy or coerce government into satisfying their demands. Here are a few examples:

  • Undeclared wars are commonplace.
  • Welfare for the rich and poor is considered an entitlement.
  • The economy is overregulated, overtaxed and grossly distorted by a deeply flawed monetary system.
  • Debt is growing exponentially.
  • The Patriot Act and FISA legislation passed without much debate have resulted in a steady erosion of our 4th Amendment rights.
  • Tragically our government engages in preemptive war, otherwise known as aggression, with no complaints from the American people.
  • The drone warfare we are pursuing worldwide is destined to end badly for us as the hatred builds for innocent lives lost and the international laws flaunted. Once we are financially weakened and militarily challenged, there will be a lot resentment thrown our way.
  • It’s now the law of the land that the military can arrest American citizens, hold them indefinitely, without charges or a trial.
  • Rampant hostility toward free trade is supported by a large number in Washington.
  • Supporters of sanctions, currency manipulation and WTO trade retaliation, call the true free traders “isolationists.”
  • Sanctions are used to punish countries that don’t follow our orders.
  • Bailouts and guarantees for all kinds of misbehavior are routine.
  • Central economic planning through monetary policy, regulations and legislative mandates has been an acceptable policy.


Questions

Excessive government has created such a mess it prompts many questions:

  • Why are sick people who use medical marijuana put in prison?
  • Why does the federal government restrict the drinking of raw milk?
  • Why can’t Americans manufacturer rope and other products from hemp?
  • Why are Americans not allowed to use gold and silver as legal tender as mandated by the Constitution?
  • Why is Germany concerned enough to consider repatriating their gold held by the FED for her in New York? Is it that the trust in the U.S. and dollar supremacy beginning to wane?
  • Why do our political leaders believe it’s unnecessary to thoroughly audit our own gold?
  • Why can’t Americans decide which type of light bulbs they can buy?
  • Why is the TSA permitted to abuse the rights of any American traveling by air?
  • Why should there be mandatory sentences—even up to life for crimes without victims—as our drug laws require?
  • Why have we allowed the federal government to regulate commodes in our homes?
  • Why is it political suicide for anyone to criticize AIPAC ?
  • Why haven’t we given up on the drug war since it’s an obvious failure and violates the people’s rights? Has nobody noticed that the authorities can’t even keep drugs out of the prisons? How can making our entire society a prison solve the problem?
  • Why do we sacrifice so much getting needlessly involved in border disputes and civil strife around the world and ignore the root cause of the most deadly border in the world-the one between Mexico and the US?
  • Why does Congress willingly give up its prerogatives to the Executive Branch?
  • Why does changing the party in power never change policy? Could it be that the views of both parties are essentially the same?
  • Why did the big banks, the large corporations, and foreign banks and foreign central banks get bailed out in 2008 and the middle class lost their jobs and their homes?
  • Why do so many in the government and the federal officials believe that creating money out of thin air creates wealth?
  • Why do so many accept the deeply flawed principle that government bureaucrats and politicians can protect us from ourselves without totally destroying the principle of liberty?
  • Why can’t people understand that war always destroys wealth and liberty?
  • Why is there so little concern for the Executive Order that gives the President authority to establish a “kill list,” including American citizens, of those targeted for assassination?
  • Why is patriotism thought to be blind loyalty to the government and the politicians who run it, rather than loyalty to the principles of liberty and support for the people? Real patriotism is a willingness to challenge the government when it’s wrong.
  • Why is it is claimed that if people won’t or can’t take care of their own needs, that people in government can do it for them?
  • Why did we ever give the government a safe haven for initiating violence against the people?
  • Why do some members defend free markets, but not civil liberties?
  • Why do some members defend civil liberties but not free markets? Aren’t they the same?
  • Why don’t more defend both economic liberty and personal liberty?
  • Why are there not more individuals who seek to intellectually influence others to bring about positive changes than those who seek power to force others to obey their commands?
  • Why does the use of religion to support a social gospel and preemptive wars, both of which requires authoritarians to use violence, or the threat of violence, go unchallenged? Aggression and forced redistribution of wealth has nothing to do with the teachings of the world great religions.
  • Why do we allow the government and the Federal Reserve to disseminate false information dealing with both economic and foreign policy?
  • Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority?
  • Why should anyone be surprised that Congress has no credibility, since there’s such a disconnect between what politicians say and what they do?
  • Is there any explanation for all the deception, the unhappiness, the fear of the future, the loss of confidence in our leaders, the distrust, the anger and frustration? Yes there is, and there’s a way to reverse these attitudes. The negative perceptions are logical and a consequence of bad policies bringing about our problems. Identification of the problems and recognizing the cause allow the proper changes to come easy.


Trust Yourself, Not the Government

Too many people have for too long placed too much confidence and trust in government and not enough in themselves. Fortunately, many are now becoming aware of the seriousness of the gross mistakes of the past several decades. The blame is shared by both political parties. Many Americans now are demanding to hear the plain truth of things and want the demagoguing to stop. Without this first step, solutions are impossible.

Seeking the truth and finding the answers in liberty and self-reliance promotes the optimism necessary for restoring prosperity. The task is not that difficult if politics doesn’t get in the way.

We have allowed ourselves to get into such a mess for various reasons.

Politicians deceive themselves as to how wealth is produced. Excessive confidence is placed in the judgment of politicians and bureaucrats. This replaces the confidence in a free society. Too many in high places of authority became convinced that only they, armed with arbitrary government power, can bring about fairness, while facilitating wealth production. This always proves to be a utopian dream and destroys wealth and liberty. It impoverishes the people and rewards the special interests who end up controlling both political parties.

It’s no surprise then that much of what goes on in Washington is driven by aggressive partisanship and power seeking, with philosophic differences being minor.

 Economic Ignorance

Economic ignorance is commonplace. Keynesianism continues to thrive, although today it is facing healthy and enthusiastic rebuttals. Believers in military Keynesianism and domestic Keynesianism continue to desperately promote their failed policies, as the economy languishes in a deep slumber.

Supporters of all government edicts use humanitarian arguments to justify them.

Humanitarian arguments are always used to justify government mandates related to the economy, monetary policy, foreign policy, and personal liberty. This is on purpose to make it more difficult to challenge. But, initiating violence for humanitarian reasons is still violence. Good intentions are no excuse and are just as harmful as when people use force with bad intentions. The results are always negative.

The immoral use of force is the source of man’s political problems. Sadly, many religious groups, secular organizations, and psychopathic authoritarians endorse government initiated force to change the world. Even when the desired goals are well-intentioned—or especially when well-intentioned—the results are dismal. The good results sought never materialize. The new problems created require even more government force as a solution. The net result is institutionalizing government initiated violence and morally justifying it on humanitarian grounds.

This is the same fundamental reason our government uses force for invading other countries at will, central economic planning at home, and the regulation of personal liberty and habits of our citizens.

It is rather strange, that unless one has a criminal mind and no respect for other people and their property, no one claims it’s permissible to go into one’s neighbor’s house and tell them how to behave, what they can eat, smoke and drink or how to spend their money.

Yet, rarely is it asked why it is morally acceptable that a stranger with a badge and a gun can do the same thing in the name of law and order. Any resistance is met with brute force, fines, taxes, arrests, and even imprisonment. This is done more frequently every day without a proper search warrant.

 No Government Monopoly over Initiating Violence

Restraining aggressive behavior is one thing, but legalizing a government monopoly for initiating aggression can only lead to exhausting liberty associated with chaos, anger and the breakdown of civil society. Permitting such authority and expecting saintly behavior from the bureaucrats and the politicians is a pipe dream. We now have a standing army of armed bureaucrats in the TSA, CIA, FBI, Fish and Wildlife, FEMA, IRS, Corp of Engineers, etc. numbering over 100,000. Citizens are guilty until proven innocent in the unconstitutional administrative courts.

Government in a free society should have no authority to meddle in social activities or the economic transactions of individuals. Nor should government meddle in the affairs of other nations. All things peaceful, even when controversial, should be permitted.

We must reject the notion of prior restraint in economic activity just we do in the area of free speech and religious liberty. But even in these areas government is starting to use a backdoor approach of political correctness to regulate speech-a dangerous trend. Since 9/11 monitoring speech on the internet is now a problem since warrants are no longer required.

 The Proliferation of Federal Crimes

The Constitution established four federal crimes. Today the experts can’t even agree on how many federal crimes are now on the books—they number into the thousands. No one person can comprehend the enormity of the legal system—especially the tax code. Due to the ill-advised drug war and the endless federal expansion of the criminal code we have over 6 million people under correctional suspension, more than the Soviets ever had, and more than any other nation today, including China. I don’t understand the complacency of the Congress and the willingness to continue their obsession with passing more Federal laws. Mandatory sentencing laws associated with drug laws have compounded our prison problems.

The federal register is now 75,000 pages long and the tax code has 72,000 pages, and expands every year. When will the people start shouting, “enough is enough,” and demand Congress cease and desist.

Achieving Liberty

Liberty can only be achieved when government is denied the aggressive use of force. If one seeks liberty, a precise type of government is needed. To achieve it, more than lip service is required.

Two choices are available.

  1. A government designed to protect liberty—a natural right—as its sole objective. The people are expected to care for themselves and reject the use of any force for interfering with another person’s liberty. Government is given a strictly limited authority to enforce contracts, property ownership, settle disputes, and defend against foreign aggression.
  2. A government that pretends to protect liberty but is granted power to arbitrarily use force over the people and foreign nations. Though the grant of power many times is meant to be small and limited, it inevitably metastasizes into an omnipotent political cancer. This is the problem for which the world has suffered throughout the ages. Though meant to be limited it nevertheless is a 100% sacrifice of a principle that would-be-tyrants find irresistible. It is used vigorously—though incrementally and insidiously. Granting power to government officials always proves the adage that: “power corrupts.”
Once government gets a limited concession for the use of force to mold people habits and plan the economy, it causes a steady move toward tyrannical government. Only a revolutionary spirit can reverse the process and deny to the government this arbitrary use of aggression. There’s no in-between. Sacrificing a little liberty for imaginary safety always ends badly.

Today’s mess is a result of Americans accepting option #2, even though the Founders attempted to give us Option #1.

The results are not good. As our liberties have been eroded our wealth has been consumed. The wealth we see today is based on debt and a foolish willingness on the part of foreigners to take our dollars for goods and services. They then loan them back to us to perpetuate our debt system. It’s amazing that it has worked for this long but the impasse in Washington, in solving our problems indicate that many are starting to understand the seriousness of the world -wide debt crisis and the dangers we face. The longer this process continues the harsher the outcome will be.

 The Financial Crisis Is a Moral Crisis

Many are now acknowledging that a financial crisis looms but few understand it’s, in reality, a moral crisis. It’s the moral crisis that has allowed our liberties to be undermined and permits the exponential growth of illegal government power. Without a clear understanding of the nature of the crisis it will be difficult to prevent a steady march toward tyranny and the poverty that will accompany it.

Ultimately, the people have to decide which form of government they want; option #1 or option #2. There is no other choice. Claiming there is a choice of a “little” tyranny is like describing pregnancy as a “touch of pregnancy.” It is a myth to believe that a mixture of free markets and government central economic planning is a worthy compromise. What we see today is a result of that type of thinking. And the results speak for themselves.
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Bilderberg Group Quietly Meets in Italy

TRUTHER NOVEMBER 16, 2012 0

Brandon Turbeville

AP

While the attention of most Americans was focused on whatever trivia dished out from the mainstream media such as the current hot celebrity or the David Petraeus incident, it appears that the Bilderberg Group has arranged what some have described as an impromptu meeting in Rome, Italy.

 

    Yet, although much of the European press is dark on the issue, which is unfortunately characteristic of the mainstream media in any nation, some Italian newspapers are reporting the information regarding the meeting.

According to 21stCenturyWire, the agenda apparently centered around the fate of EU countries such as Italy, Spain, and Greece, three nations that have been hit hard with the worldwide derivatives crisis and the subsequent imposition of austerity.

Various newspapers from all across Italy are reporting that around 80 members of the Bilderberg Group, particularly the Bilderberg Steering Committee, have been called to Rome for a semi-secret meeting to discuss the unfolding events of the engineered crisis.

In contradiction to the traditional methods of secrecy used by the Bilderberg Group such as renting entire hotels for days on end and dispensing with the guests and even some of the workers during the conference, this Italian Bilderberg meeting is taking place at the same time as another popular event, the Rome Film Festival.

Thus, instead of meeting in total secret, it appears the Bilderberg Group is attempting to hide its treachery in plain sight while blending in with the rest of the crowd of actors, actresses, directors, and general celebrities.

In this instance, one might suspect that the strategy of the group was to use the Film Festival as a cover for the attendees. If any were sighted at the Hotel de Russie, the sight of both the festival and the meeting, they could always claim they had only come to attend the film festival, do a short interview on the importance of film in Italian life and their favorite movie, and remain largely ignored in favor of the real celebrities walking about.

In a cruel twist of irony and outright disdain for the “little people,” and as J.G. Vibes of the Intel Hub writes, Italian newspapers estimate the cost of the Rome meeting to be around 100,000 euros for 80 people in attendance.

According to Italian website, DagoSpia.com, the attendees list appears as follows:

Enrico Letta, Enrico Bondi, Mario Monti, Marlieke de Vogel, Corradino Passera, Education Minister Francesco Profumo, Paola Severino, Elsa Fornero, Guiliano Amato, Governor of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi, Lilli Gruber, Chicco Mentana, “Bebe Bernabe”, Flebuccio de Bortoli, Vendeline von Bredow, Mauro Moretti of CGIL, Alberto Nagel the CEO of Mediobanca, Angelo Gimbals the Chairman of Agcom, Federico Ghizzoni of Unicredito, Enrico Teaspoons of Intesa, Fulvio Conti of Enel, Anna Marion Tarantola who is the President of Rai, Rodolfo De Benedetti the President of the CIR, and Ignazio Vis the Governor of the Bank of Italy.

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What Does It Mean that Residents in All 50 States Have Filed Petitions to Secede?

What Does It Mean that Residents in All 50 States Have Filed Petitions to Secede? Map

WashingtonsBlog

November 15, 2012

Secession:  Exploding Movement, Tempest In a Teapot … Or Something Else?

A lot of attention is being given to the fact that residents in all 50 states have filed petitions to secedefrom the United States.

Daily Caller reports:

By 6:00 a.m. EST Wednesday, more than 675,000 digital signatures appeared on 69 separate secession petitions covering all 50 states, according to a Daily Caller analysis of requests lodged with the White House’s “We the People” online petition system.

***

Petitions from AlabamaFloridaGeorgiaLouisianaNorth CarolinaTennessee andTexas residents have accrued at least 25,000 signatures, the number the Obama administration says it will reward with a staff review of online proposals. (RELATEDWill Texas secede? Petition triggers White House review)

The Texas petition leads all others by a wide margin.

***

States whose active petitions have not yet reached the 25,000 signature threshold include AlaskaArkansasArizonaCaliforniaColoradoConnecticutDelawareHawaii,IdahoIllinoisIndianaIowaKansasKentuckyMaineMarylandMassachusetts,MichiganMinnesotaMississippiMissouriMontanaNebraskaNevadaNew HampshireNew JerseyNew MexicoNew YorkNorth DakotaOhioOklahoma,OregonPennsylvaniaRhode IslandSouth CarolinaSouth DakotaUtahVermont,VirginiaWashingtonWest VirginiaWisconsin and Wyoming.

***

Fourteen states are represented by at least two competing petitions. The extra efforts from two states — Missouri and South Carolina — would add enough petitions to warrant reviews by the Obama administration if they were combined into petitions launched earlier.

Other states with multiple efforts include AlaskaCaliforniaGeorgiaIllinoisKansas,New YorkOhioOklahomaPennsylvaniaUtahVirginia and Wisconsin.

As Google notes, web searches for the term “secession” are being run in a number of states:

Conservatives – such as Judge Napolitano and Ron Paul -  say that the states have the right to secede.  And Texas governor Rick Perry said that Texas has a right to secede (although he counsels against it at the current time).

On the other hand, most liberals say that the Civil War ended the state’s right to secede.    Huffington Post is covering the wave of secession petitions … to ridicule them.

Daily Kos suggests that “secessionists can secede by renouncing their citizenship“.

As the Daily Caller notes, liberals have launched their own counter-petitions:

In a … nose-thumbing aimed at Texas’ conservative majority, progressives from the liberal state capital of Austin responded Monday with a petition to secede from their state if Texas as a whole should decide to leave the Union.

Late Tuesday a second group of Texans, this one from Houston, lodged their own White House petition. Secession-minded Texans, they wrote, “are mentally deficient and [we] do not want them representing us. We would like more education in our state to eradicate their disease.”

***

A group from El Paso, too, wants no part of an independent Texas. “Allow the city of El Paso to secede from the state of Texas,” their petition reads. “El Paso is tired of being a second class city within Texas.”

Yahoo News argues that the petitions are meaningless:

The petitions are little more than symbolic—and nothing new. Similar petitions were filed after the 2004 and 2008 elections.

Libertarian website Lew Rockwell argues in a piece by Ryan McMaken that nothing will come of the current secession attempts, but that the principle is important:

I have no illusions about this latest secession petition phenomenon. Nothing will directly come of this, and the people who are behind it are mostly people who would be singing “God Bless America” at the tops of their lungs had Mitt Romney been elected. On the other hand, it sure has a lot of people talking about secession, which shows that the idea of it remains an important part of the American political consciousness.

***

The Declaration makes a simple argument:

  1. Humans have rights from the Creator.
  2. Governments exist to secure those rights (a debatable assertion but we’ll roll with it).
  3. When the government fails to secure those rights, we can ditch it and start our own government.

That’s pretty much all it says. If you thought that was true in 1776, when tax rates were 1% and there was no such thing as a the EPA or the FBI or the IRS, why is it not true now? Because we’re so much more free now? And, no, the Declaration did not say that the government is free to violate rights as long as people get to vote on it.

The Declaration establishes that there’s no such thing as treason, and a free government requires the assumption of just secession. Lysander Spooner explains[:]

Thus the whole Revolution [of 1775–1783] turned upon, asserted, and, in theory, established, the right of each and every man, at his discretion, to release himself from the support of the government under which he had lived. And this principle was asserted, not as a right peculiar to themselves, or to that time, or as applicable only to the government then existing; but as a universal right of all men, at all times, and under all circumstances.

Ron Paul says that states have the right so secede … and predicts they will do so when the dollar collapses:

 

My take has been the same for many years … I believe that America – like the Soviet Union – may break up when corruption and tyranny lead to the break down of basic systems.

And see this and this.

 

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Why The States Must Secede To Save America

Why The States Must Secede To Save America

Declaration of Independence 2.0: Restoring the Republic

Prison Planet.com

November 15, 2012

Radio host Alex Jones today called for a second American Revolution led by states who would secede from the federal government and reconstitute the Republic under the terms of the Declaration of Independence, bill of rights and constitution.

The call for Americans to rally behind a restoration of the Republic and the bill of rights comes on the back of a burgeoning secessionist movement that has swept the country with residents from all 50 states submitting petitions to the White House calling for states to withdraw from the union and form their own independent governments. The petitions have received a combined number of signatures totaling over a million.

During his nationwide broadcast today, Jones laid out the battle plan for secession, emphasizing that states must first secede from the federal government, which has gone rogue, and then use the terms of the Declaration of Independence to restore the Republic, not create a new country.

Jones stressed that he was calling for a cultural restoration in the spirit of the bill of rights – a newly unified America under the Constitution – and not a violent overthrow, noting that it was the states that created the Constitution and the federal government in the first place.

Jones noted that the only course to restoring liberty was clear – “To follow the founding document of the Republic, the Declaration of Independence, wherein it is clearly stated that it is the right and the duty of the American people, when their government becomes destructive and tyrannical, to abolish and reconstitute it in a form that protects our liberties.”

 

“We are not calling for secession to form new separate countries, we are calling for secession because the states created the Constitution, bill of rights and federal government, and the federal government itself has been hijacked by foreign special interests – mainly banking cartels,” said Jones.

“I am calling for people to be educated about how we can secede to restore the Republic,” said Jones, warning that the media was attempting to characterize the entire movement as a plot to bring down America when in fact America has already been captured and taken over by the political and financial elite.

“This is the states putting their foot down and saying we are going to reconstitute the federal government under the bill of rights and constitution, we’re going to kick out the bureaucrats, the lobbyists, the foreign criminals, and the Federal Reserve who have taken over,” explained Jones.

The radio host also put the call out for Congressman Ron Paul to head up such a movement and utilize his vast network of grass roots liberty-loving activists to lead the charge, as well as using his contacts in each state to begin the process of secession in the legislature.

Harvard constitutional law scholar and adviser to Ron Paul, Edwin Viera appeared on the syndicated radio broadcast and agreed with Alex Jones’ constitutional battle plan, with the declaration of independence as the centerpiece of legal authority.

Ron Paul’s former congressional chief of staff and founder of the Von Mises institute, Lew Rockwell also appeared on the special broadcast and concurred with Jones’ strategy that now is the time to launch our offensive and restore the republic.

The right of the people to reconstitute their government if it becomes oppressive and onerous is clearly outlined in the Declaration of Independence.

“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Preamble, Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776.

In the aftermath of petitions from all 50 states to secede being posted on the White House website and signed by over a million Americans, the secessionist movement has been portrayed as anti-American, unpatriotic and even treasonous. In reality, as Ron Paul has emphasized, it is as American as apple pie and George Washington.

The most popular petition out of all 50 that have been posted on the White House website applies to Texas and reads as follows;

“The US continues to suffer economic difficulties stemming from the federal government’s neglect to reform domestic and foreign spending. The citizens of the US suffer from blatant abuses of their rights such as the NDAA, the TSA, etc. Given that the state of Texas maintains a balanced budget and is the 15th largest economy in the world, it is practically feasible for Texas to withdraw from the union, and to do so would protect it’s citizens’ standard of living and re-secure their rights and liberties in accordance with the original ideas and beliefs of our founding fathers which are no longer being reflected by the federal government.”

The call for states to secede from the union, one now backed by over a million Americans, is part of a wider disenfranchisement with how the country has been infested and hijacked by a crony political elite and the principles of the founders decimated.

As over a million Americans express their disenfranchisement with the federal government by supporting a secessionist movement that has spread like wildfire, it is time to call for a new declaration of independence and a new commitment to restore the Republic in the face of an enemy that has subverted America from within.

The United States government has been seized by domestic and foreign banking cartels. This fact is so transparently obvious that talking heads on CNBC now laugh about it.

While Americans are being told to brace for tax hikes, spending cuts and a myriad of other austerity measures, the Federal Reserve has been sending trillions of dollars to foreign banks.

The federal government is supposed to represent the states, but it doesn’t, it represents the interests of the political and banking elite who themselves have no allegiance whatsoever to America.

Infowars is calling on patriots to start a movement to draft Ron Paul as the head of a brand new effort to restore the Republic, restore the bill of rights and opt out of the counterfeit America the banking elite has subverted and fashioned to serve their own interests.

The establishment media is already demonizing the secessionist movement as a rag-tag group of fringe kooks and paranoid racists, when in reality as the Daily Caller uncovered, it is comprised of former Marines, parents, business owners and ordinary mechanics.

Meanwhile, Obama supporters and other statists have called on the government to punish those putting their signatures to the secession petitions by having them stripped of their citizenship, deported and exiled.

It’s time to re-assert the narrative on secession and put it in its proper context, which is not an infantile reaction to the fact that Barack Obama won the election, but an expression of extreme uneasiness at the direction in which the country is heading, a widespread discontent that has been ongoing for long before Obama even took office, and a new commitment calling on states to nullify unconstitutional laws and regulations and secede from the increasingly tyrannical federal government.

Watch Ron Paul’s farewell speech below in which he skewers authoritarianism in all its forms and captures the true spirit of liberty which should drive the movement to secede from the federal government and reconstitute America under the Declaration of Independence.

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ARCTURIANS-OPENING DOORS-WE ARE FAMILY

arcturian8.jpg
As channeled through Karen Doonan
www.crystalline-sanctuary.com
www.thegalacticportal.com
www.labrynthschooloflight.com



Greetings beloved ones we are the Arcturians and we are here to help support and to further free the human heart from the deeply held emotions that you as a human being have been taught to store and to prevent you from expansion. It is the wrapping of grief around the human heart that has contained and suppressed the human race and it is this grief that is now pouring out across and within the human race at this time.

We are here to guide further on this process and help you gain clarity of inner vision in relation to this deeply held grief. As a race you have been taught by those who trained you to keep SELF in a lower vibration, that grief is inevitable and that you will be numbed by the grief that you carry for eternity. This is NOT TRUTH and we are here to help you dissolve this teaching so that you may reveal the TRUTH hidden in plain view. For you came to this planet to live life as a human being in order to experience all emotions available to you as a member of the human race.

The teachings taught to this race over and over have created patterns of grief and hatred that have chained the SOUL to the human vehicle in a way that is akin to pouring concrete into your boots and asking you to walk miles. It is extremely difficult to experience life on planet earth when it is filtered so heavily and so densely. We are here to help you unlock the heart for the heart is the key to the universe. LOVE is the answer, no matter the question dear ones and we are here to help you move through this process with ease.

Many of you may now be in the deep throes of grief, this grief re-activated by memories of those lost in wars that have taken place upon and within plant earth and we guide that this grief must now heal. For in the healing is the release that your SOUL craves and that your human vehicle now struggles with. For the grief is not only stored within the heart of the human vehicle it is stored within the very cells of the human vehicle. It is then transferred down through the generations of human vehicles that are born onto the planet. ALL holding the cellular memories of grief and hatred and all becoming harder and harder to function within.

YOU ARE NOT your human vehicle, the human vehicle akin to a car which is able to transport you across the planet yet many are shielded from this TRUTH and now are experiencing the rapid break downs of their human vehicles. The denser, lower energies beginning to break down the cellular structure of the human vehicle in the form of illness and disease.

This can be reversed but the process entails allowing the deeply held emotions a release and a healing and we guide we are here to help ALL with this process. The new energies are supportive and this is being shown across the planet as human being reaches out to human being and as the hearts of many now open fully. The outpouring of grief should be seen as the start of the healing process that it is in TRUTH and not something that you have been taught, for you have been taught to protect the grief at all costs. You have been taught to keep holding onto the grief and to use it for fuel for the human vehicle. The tears that are cleansing have been taught to be withheld, further patterning the cells of the human vehicle for destruction. For the human body was designed to be fueled with the LOVE that IS. This is the very fabric of the universe and this is the fuel for the human vehicle.

Akin to putting diesel in a petrol car you have been taught to apply the wrong nourishment to your human form and this has resulted in patterns of disease and illness manifesting within the human vehicle and within families who work to keep hold of the deeply taught teachings at any cost.

Now as the new earth energies begin to unlock the heart and the emotions begin to spill out we ask that you hold SELF in the LOVE that IS, that you allow the LOVE that IS to pour around you and through you for it is re-energising you from cellular level outwards. The process may appear to be challenging at first but as the LOVE that IS takes hold and begins to repair your cells and to support your energies then this will be shown clearly. For your inner vision will start to clear, you will start to remember who YOU ARE in TRUTH and YOU will begin once more to FEEL the family that has been denied to you for aeons.

We are part of that family and we hold you now dearest beloved ones in a warm embrace. May our LOVE for you begin to dissolve the deeply held patterns of containment, may our LOVE for you begin to clear and hone your inner vision and may you realise that YOU ARE LOVED beyond measure, for ALL ARE ONE. We are your brothers and sisters from Arcturus and WE ARE YOU.

copyright Karen Doonan, all rights reserved
Article may be reproduced in full if authors website and links are clearly stated.
www.crystalline-sanctuary.com
www.thegalacticportal.com
www.labrynthschooloflight.com

pi
pi



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organic

The big sellout -- Majority of organic companies owned by mega corporations

Thursday, November 15, 2012 by: Carolanne Wright

 

One of the most beneficial aspects of the Yes on 37 campaign is the transparency it created regarding seemingly ‘natural’ and organic brands. Mega conglomerates like Dean Foods, Coca Cola, Hain, Kraft, PepsiCo and Heinz have gobbled up most of the organic food industry, leaving little to spare — spawning the term ‘Big Organic.’ These very same companies have a track record of destroying healthy food through industrial, genetically modified and conventional farming practices. The bottom line for these corporations — profit, plain and simple. While they take their share of the $30 billion-a-year organic food industry, small and true organics are laid to waste.

Insatiable appetite for profit driven organics

Over the last decade, the natural and organic food industry has become very lucrative for big business. A form of greenwashing, corporations such as Hain Celestial buy up small organic companies, then hide behind bucolic-sounding labels like Health Valley and Walnut Acres. Or worse, conglomerates like Dean Foods snapping up the Silk brand in 2002 and immediately reducing sustainable ingredients. This behemoth also bought Horizon Organic in 2004 and soon after began purchasing dairy from suppliers operating factory farms. The demand for organics has apparently compromised the entire industry by attracting profit hungry corporations. See the infographic here for a list of all the organic and ‘natural’ companies that have been swallowed up by conglomerates.

 

     To make matters more appalling, the National Organic Standards Board is controlled by members from big business who do not necessarily hold the consumers best interests at heart. Keep in mind this is the board that wields considerable power over the organic industry — choosing whether an ingredient can be included in certified organic products or not. The board is supposed to represent the “diversity of the American public and of organic agriculture,” according to the National Organic Program. Unfortunately, this is far from the case. The standards board is filled with members who strive to represent their specific interest groups and vote with bias. Consider Katrina Heinze, an executive at General Mills who was selected to serve as consumer representative in 2005. General Mills is famous for promoting nanotechnology and genetic engineering — not exactly a stunning organic model. Or take Ms. Beck, who is the national organic program manager at Driscoll’s and has a board seat as a ‘farmer.’ The problem is, Beck is not a farmer. But she does have special interests. Evidently, this is all that is needed to gain board influence.

 

The last holdouts

Sadly, only a few truly independent organic companies remain. Examples include: Eden, Nature’s Path, Cedarlane and Organic Valley. For a full list, click here.

With the failure of Prop. 37, American consumers cannot rely on the government for food transparency or safety. It is up to us. By purchasing produce from local organic farms, supporting independent organic companies and boycotting ‘Big Organic,’ we can make a difference by casting votes with our dollars and our forks.

 

Sources for this article include:

“Has ‘Organic’ Been Oversized?” Stephanie Strom, New York Times, July 7, 2012. Retrieved on November 13, 2012 from: http://www.nytimes.com

“The Defeat of Prop 37 Means Go Back To Voting With Your Fork” Sayer Ji, Wake-Up World, November 9, 2012. Retrieve on November 13, 2012 from: http://wakeup-world.com

“Big Food Behemoths Embarrass Their Organic Offshoots” Jim Hightower, Truth-Out, October 10, 2012. Retrieved on November 13, 2012 from: http://truth-out.org

“Big Organic Joins Monsanto in Fighting Prop 37″ Corey Hill, East Bay Express, September 12, 2012. Retrieved on November 13, 2012 from: http://www.eastbayexpress.com

“Organic Food Industry Bought Up by Corporations Like Coca-Cola” Anthony Gucciardi, Natural Society, April 3, 2012. Retrieved on November 13, 2012 from: http://naturalsociety.com

“Who Owns Organic?” Cornucopia Institute. Retrieved on November 13, 2012 from: http://www.cornucopia.org/who-owns-organic/

“The Stories (And Money) Behind 10 of Your Favorite Organic and Natural Brands” Vanessa Barrington, EcoSalon, October 28, 2009. Retrieved on November 13, 2012 from: http://ecosalon.com

About the author:
Carolanne enthusiastically believes if we want to see change in the world, we need to be the change. As a nutritionist, natural foods chef and wellness coach, Carolanne has encouraged others to embrace a healthy lifestyle of organic living, gratefulness and joyful orientation for over 13 years. Through her website www.Thrive-Living.net she looks forward to connecting with other like-minded people from around the world who share a similar vision.

Follow on Twitter at: www.twitter.com/Thrive_Living

 

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I Give Respect

I give respect to mother earth in all her splendor and beauty,

I give respect to father sky in his changing seasons and bounty.

 

I give respect to the creator in wonderment to his creations,

I give respect to the animals roaming and their relations.

 

I give respect to the mineral kingdom in all their splendor,

I give respect to all living things upon this earth, surrender.

 

I give respect to my real mother and father above,

for creating me and teaching me to learn to love.

 

I give respect to all the birds that fly, from the eagle in the sky,

I give respect to my brothers and sisters whenever they ask why.

 

I give respect to my neighbors both far and so close to me,

I give respect to my extended family,where ever they be.

 

I give respect to the trees standing tall and strong,

I give respect to my enemies, there in my heart they belong.

 

I give respect to all those believers,who love God’s creation

I give respect to all who hear these words, we are one in realization

 

By Rev.Joshua Skirvin  11/14/12

 

Inner Light

You must Turn on your inner light,

When you are in the darkness of the night.

Love as we know it, is like a blooming flower,

The more light you give it

the more it opens up to reveal its inner power

 

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