Monday, July 31, 2017
Facial Recognition ID Begins to Spread from Planes to Trains
The march continues to accelerate toward a future of biometric ID for all travel.
Regular readers might know that over the past several months I’ve been covering some disturbing developments at airports in the U.S. and internationally that seem to show an acceleration of the plan to use biometric identification in a variety of ways.
On May 19th I reported on a new program initiated by Delta Airlines at Minneapolis-St. Paul airport to have automated baggage kiosks for “priority customers” that will first scan a traveler’s passport, then their face in order to match identity to checked luggage. It was promoted as a “pilot program” that Delta launched to seek customer feedback in the hope that it could be rolled out more widely in the future. That program has now entered phase 2 at Reagan National Airport with biometric boarding passes for rewards members.
JetBlue stated they will “test facial- and fingerprint-recognition technology at two U.S. airports to replace boarding passes, building on industry efforts to increase security and ease passage through airports.”
These stories were smaller pieces to a larger puzzle that U.S. Customs and Border Protection is attempting to solve per federal mandate. CBP announced on June 15th that they would integrate government databases with a private company to speed up biometric processing.
Moreover, the Department of Homeland Security has made it clear that biometric ID will eventually be mandatory for foreign travel, saying that “the only way for an individual to ensure he or she is not subject to collection of biometric information when traveling internationally is to refrain from traveling.” That’s right, no opt-out, just stay home.
OK, so no worries – airline travel sucks these days anyway, right? And most people probably can’t even afford it. Well, like every method of incremental control, it doesn’t stop where it begins; it just keeps gaining speed as it heads down the proverbial slippery slope.
So here we go – the BBC is reporting on “How facial recognition could replace train tickets.”
A facial recognition system designed to replace the need for tickets on trains is being tested in the UK.
An early version that uses two near-infrared lights to help a single camera determine texture and orientation of each pixel it captures was shown to BBC Click.
The system, being developed by the Bristol Robotics Lab, is being partly funded by government and the private sector.
Researchers told the programme that they believe it will successfully identify passengers without the need for them to stop walking and could replace ticket gates.
The video below covers additional details of the plan which could be implemented across the UK as soon as 2020.
Clearly airports were never meant to be the final destination. Facial recognition technology already has spread out into public spaces for data collection, primarily for targeted advertising, but also for determining political views. Russia has a pilot program underway in Moscow where their 150,000 CCTV cameras are being retrofitted with new facial recognition technology that can even read emotions in an effort to establish a pre-crime policing system.
Step by step, people are being transformed into digital organisms made easier for scanning and processing. The political will is there, the databases exist, and the technology is clearly being rolled out across every meaningful area of human activity.
Nicholas West writes for ActivistPost.com. He also writes for Counter Markets agorist newsletter. Follow us at Twitter and Steemit.
This article may be freely republished in part or in full with author attribution and source link.
U.S. slaps sanctions on Venezuelan president Maduro
The move comes a day after Maduro declared a sweeping victory in a vote that will allow him to further consolidate his power over the crisis torn nation. Much of the world -- and many of Venezuela"s own citizens -- have called the vote an assault on democracy.
"Yesterday"s illegitimate elections confirm that Maduro is a dictator who disregards the will of the Venezuelan people," said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in a statement announcing the latest sanctions on the Latin American country.
Beginning on Monday, all of the Venezuelan"s president"s assets that are subject to U.S. jurisdiction will be frozen. All U.S. citizens are also barred from dealing with him, according to Treasury.
Google’s new program to track shoppers sparks a federal privacy complaint
A prominent privacy rights watchdog is asking the Federal Trade Commission to investigate a new Google advertising program that ties consumers’ online behavior to their purchases in brick-and-mortar stores.
The legal complaint from the Electronic Privacy Information Center, to be filed with the FTC on Monday, alleges that Google is newly gaining access to a trove of highly sensitive information — the credit and debit card purchase records of the majority of U.S. consumers — without revealing how they got the information or giving consumers meaningful ways to opt out. Moreover, the group claims that the search giant is relying on a secretive technical method to protect the data — a method that should be audited by outsiders and is likely vulnerable to hacks or other data breaches.
“Google is seeking to extend its dominance from the online world to the real, offline world, and the FTC really needs to look at that,” said Marc Rotenberg, the organization’s executive director.
Google called its advertising approach “common” and said it had “invested in building a new, custom encryption technology that ensures users’ data remains private, secure and anonymous.”
Read more
Psychologists say more and more young people are entitled
Research has discovered that large amounts of young people are developing an entitlement complex.
The psychological trend comes from the belief that you are superior to others and are more deserving of certain things.
This form of narcissism has some significant consequences such as disappointment and a tendency to lash out.
Pschology Today reports that some examples of entitlement range from the disregard of rules, freeloading, causing inconveniences and like to assume the role of leader when working in groups.
So called Millennials, who were born roughly between 1988 and 1994, tend to have this characteristic as a 2016 study found.
Read more
Anthony Scaramucci out as White House communications director
It"s the latest high-profile departure from the Trump White House. Chief of Staff Reince Priebus resigned at the end of last week, replaced by John Kelly, whose first day is Monday.
"Anthony Scaramucci will be leaving his role as White House Communications Director," White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement Monday afternoon. "Mr. Scaramucci felt it was best to give chief of staff John Kelly a clean slate and the ability to build his own team. We wish him all the best."
A White House official said Kelly wanted Scaramucci removed from his new role as the communications director because he did not think he was disciplined and had burned his credibility.
It’s Here – Geoengineering Now Normalized as Scientists Spray Chemicals to Dim the Sun, Soak Up CO2
Undeterred by steep cost and the interminable controversy on the very concept of global warming, scientists will again experiment with geoengineering — as a means to bolster the effect of cloud cover by seeding the atmosphere with chemicals meant to dim the light of the sun — in a concerted effort to cool the planet.
While the project will undoubtedly stir distrust among those already doubtful pumping the air full of chemicals could ever end well, ‘chemtrail’ theories have seemingly been proven recently, particularly as a growing number of projects aim to align with strictures from the laden Paris Climate Accord.
Unsurprisingly — considering the arrogance of meddling with nature — praise of its methods and even of its goal has been anything but unanimous.
Swiss company Climeworks coughed up $23 million and constructed a facility to begin collecting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from the air in May using sizable fans and filters — billing itself the planet’s first “commercial carbon dioxide capture plant.”
Reuters reports,
“Climeworks reckons it now costs about $600 to extract a tonne of carbon dioxide from the air and the plant’s full capacity due by the end of 2017 is only 900 tonnes a year. That’s equivalent to the annual emissions of only 45 Americans.”
Another, “Carbon Engineering, set up in 2009 with support from Gates and Murray Edwards, chairman of oil and gas group Canadian Natural Resources Ltd, has raised about $40 million and extracts about a tonne of carbon dioxide a day with turbines and filters.”
Image: Reuters.Several additional companies have similar projects underway in the United States, Canada, and the Netherlands — but nascent technology and lack of cost-benefit efficacy mean carbon scrubbing, alone, won’t be sufficient.
Obviously, even that effort sees the world falling behind in guidelines agreed upon by major world powers in Paris in April 2016 — a grave concern for scientist-adherents who laud the cooperative attempt to stave off what many believe will be untenably hot conditions (a global average rise from the birth of industry of over 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit or 2 degree Celsius), should dense gases and particulates, like methane and carbon, continue filling the atmosphere, unhindered.
Considering renewable energy has only recently begun dethroning fossil fuels as the go-to source for power generation, emissions from manufacturing, vehicle exhaust, and innumerable other polluters should be expected to continue for decades — a dire concern, according to U.N. data — meaning additional solutions may have to take up the slack to make the goals of the Paris accord attainable, particularly now that President Trump announced the U.S.’ withdrawal.
“We’re in trouble,” Janos Pasztor, head of newly-created Carnegie Climate Geoengineering Governance Project, told Reuters of Earth’s putatively perilous warming. “The question is not whether or not there will be an overshoot [of the post-industrial maximum tenable temperature rise] but by how many degrees and for how many decades.”
“If you want to be confident to get to 1.5 degrees you need to have solar geo-engineering,” David Keith, of Harvard University, explained, referencing the preferred maximum 1.5-degree Fahrenheit rise in temperature, compared to what is considered the 2-degree point of no return.
Harvard will conduct a geoengineering experiment of its own in Arizona next year, for which private donors have already contributed some $7.5 million, as Reuters adds,
“Keith’s team aims to release about 1 kilo (2.2 lbs) of sun dimming material, perhaps calcium carbonate, from a high-altitude balloon above Arizona next year in a tiny experiment to see how it affects the microphysics of the stratosphere.”
Perhaps in response to popular but unproven allegations aircraft have been spraying the atmosphere with chemicals for years — a burgeoning theory called “chemtrails,” whose adherents believe aerosols are being sprayed from planes to fend off global warming (or for more nefarious purposes) — Keith asserted,
“I don’t think it’s science fiction … to me it’s normal atmospheric science.”
In this race to ostensibly undo damage inflicted upon the planet by human activity, some scientists would rather slam on the brakes. How the manipulation of weather and dimming of the sun’s rays at surface level will affect intricately-related planetary weather patterns — for example, monsoons — remains the subject of, pun intended, heated dispute.
Critics peg carbon scrubbing and other geoengineering tactics as only slightly palliative smokescreens masking the monumental task of actually cutting industrial and personal greenhouse emissions — and generally ending reliance and fealty to fossil fuels and polluting power-generation methods.
Instead of foisting tens or hundreds of millions on projects to compensate for greenhouse gas pollution stemming from dirtier energy, detractors imagine the money put to better use improving and implementing wind, solar, and other green energy sources. Curbing the amount of contaminants spewed into the atmosphere — rather than removing them after the mess has been made — seems infinitely more prudent and cost effective.
Even pro-geoengineering scientists haven’t aligned entirely behind a method to cool the earth — while some believe reflectant chemical additives may be necessary for adequate dimming effect, others admonish against the use of anything other than water vapor.
Whether geoengineering in any form — from simple cloud seeding to capturing, filtering, and using carbon from the air for other uses — will ultimately have any measurable effect on the Earth’s temperatures and climate is a question long from an answer.
Considering the topic of global warming has been itself fraught with unending contention, any plans to manipulate nature further as compensation for the stunning failures in foresight humankind has displayed over the decades since the birth of industry won’t necessarily find welcoming ears in the public.
After all, the same governments sanctimoniously warning of grievous consequences from carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases reach deep into their coffers to subsidize the exact oil and gas industry — as well as other notorious environmental villains — largely responsible for the presence of such pollutants in the first place.
China’s Mystery Man Dumps $18 Billion Into N.Y. “Charity”
The stakes just got much higher in Communist China’s investment strategy to penetrate and control key areas of the U.S. economy and the U.S. political landscape. This past week, Guan Jun, the largest shareholder in HNA Group Co., the global Chinese conglomerate, reportedly donated $18 billion to a recently formed Hainan Cihang Charity Foundation Inc. in New York City. That’s $18 billion, making the bequest one of the largest ever, and putting Guan Jun, as the New York Times noted on July 26, “in the same league as donors like Bill Gates and Warren E. Buffet and almost matched the combined giving of all American corporations in 2016.”
So, who is this generous “donor,” Guan Jun? That’s the question everyone is asking. Like many other news groups and financial analysts, Bloomberg News referred to this magnanimous benefactor as the “HNA Mystery Man.” As the Times story noted, “it has not been disclosed how that man, Guan Jun, who is in his 30s, came to own such a large piece of one of China’s biggest conglomerates. His registered address in Beijing is a modest apartment at the end of a dingy hallway littered with discarded furniture and bags of trash.”
The obvious answer, which the establishment media and investment analysts seem to be taking extraordinary pains to ignore, is that Guan Jun is merely a front man for HNA, just as HNA is a front group for the Chinese government and the Communist Party of China (CPC). Guan Jun assists the fiction that HNA Group is a legitimate business enterprise, and HNA Group assists the fiction that the criminal regime in Beijing operates a legitimate market-oriented economy.
Contrary to decades of propaganda, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has never “gone capitalist.” The “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” launched by Paramount Leader Deng Xiaoping in 1978 is “state capitalism,” in which the communist state owns most major businesses (State-Owned Enterprises, SOEs) and rigidly controls those that it doesn’t own outright. And, since China’s “private” companies operate under very opaque conditions, it is really impossible for western banks and companies that partner with these Chinese companies to know who the actual owners are. As we have explained in previous articles, Deng Xiaoping was a Marxist Leninist, and his “market socialism” hearkened back to Vladimir Lenin’s New Economic Policy (NEP) in Soviet Russia, which Lenin admitted was a ploy to get capital, technology, and other aid from the West to prop up his totalitarian state.
Now, after decades of prospering from this Western aid and trade, China is using its weaponized global investment strategy to penetrate key sectors of the American economy (see here, here, here, and here). HNA Group has played a major role in that strategy, taking on, according to Bloomberg, $73 billion in debt to finance a worldwide buying binge. Some of its most high-profile purchases have been big stakes in Hilton Hotels, Red Lion Hotels, Uber (the new global transportation phenomenon), and Deutsche Bank, the German banking behemoth. Most of this debt comes in the form of loans from China’s state banks, which indicates strategic support from the Chinese Communist Party that runs the Beijing regime. The sprawling HNA empire now encompasses marquis hotels, airlines, luggage handling services, prime real estate, high-tech manufacturing, banking and financial services, and much more.
We noted in March of this year that real estate purchases in the United States by HNA and other Chinese corporations are already posing serious security problems. “A recent report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) warned that the federal General Services Administration (GSA) is leasing ‘high security’ office space in the United States for the FBI, Secret Service, DEA, Social Security, IRS, and other agencies from foreign-owned companies based in China,” we reported. “The risks of national security compromise — not to mention personal privacy and security compromise dangers to ordinary citizens — from exposing U.S. agencies and data bases to espionage in Chinese-owned properties would seem to be so self-evident as to require neither special comment nor official cautionary policies. However, the Obama administration, apparently, saw no problem with the practice. And these security risks will certainly escalate, if the PRC is allowed to continue its buying splurge of American properties.”
Scaramucci, Goldman Sachs, Soros, Beijing
Interestingly, the Red Chinese conglomerate has longstanding, close ties to globalist left-wing financier George Soros. “HNA’s chairman, billionaire Chen Feng, got his start in 1995 with an investment of $25 million from Soros, with whom he has maintained relations,” we reported earlier this year.
HNA Group also has indirect ties to the Trump administration, in the form of Anthony Scaramucci, as well as Goldman Sachs and the Blackstone Group, the Wall Street investment titans. On July 21, Scaramucci, a member of the globalist Council on Foreign Relations, was named to serve as President Trump’s White House communication director, replacing Sean Spicer. We reported on the concerns over Scaramucci’s sale of his hedge fund, SkyBridge Capital, to HNA Group this past January, along with other troubling ties to China by top Team Trump personnel, including son-in-law Jared Kushner and Blackstone Group chairman Stephen Schwarzman. The Scaramucci-Beijing connection dropped out of the equation when Trump announced on July 31 that Scaramucci was out as Communications Director, ten days after his initial appointment. That does not, however, resolve the problematic ties by other Trump insiders to China.
Will those connections inhibit a vigorous investigation of the huge new donation by the HNA Mystery Man to the mysterious Chinese “charity” in New York City? Considering the direct efforts by the PRC to place its agents into top political posts in the Big Apple, (see here, here, here, and here), the massive bequest by the PRC’s HNA Group to the Hainan Cihang Charity Foundation should cause red flags to go up everywhere, and should spur immediate investigations by city, state, and federal authorities, including the appropriate committees of Congress.
Related articles:
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More Dangerous China Trade? Globalist Push vs. Trump Promise
“Organic” Foods From China? Buyer Beware!
In Davos, Globalists Hail Leadership of Communist Chinese Tyrant
Obama, Clinton, China, & Wall Street: The "Silk Road" Trade Scheme
China’s Communist Billionaires: Darlings of Harvard, Wall Street, CFR
China Cash and Movie Moguls — The Disturbing New Hollywood-Beijing Axis
Has China Really Gone Capitalist?
Russia & China to Ink More Deals at Moscow Octoberfest
Russia-China $400 Billion Energy Deal Highlights Continued Cold War
China’s Communist Party Reaffirms Marxism, Maoism, Atheism
BPA Continues To Pervade Food Supply
BPA, or bisphenol-A, is an endocrine disruptor you’ve likely heard about a few times on this blog. It’s been shown to mimic hormones in the body–namely estrogen–and contribute to hormone imbalance. According to a new survey of over 250 brands of canned food, nearly 50% of respondents reported using BPA in their products. [1] Around 109 of those surveyed did not respond, so the percentage of those who use the chemical compound may be even higher.
The Troubling Facts about BPA
Because of its numerous uses in products like food packaging, dental sealants, and even paper receipts, BPA is ubiquitous in the environment. Virtually everyone on the planet has trace amounts of BPA in their body at any given time. Research into BPA has found that the chemical compound has links to cardiovascular disease, cancer, and even obesity. [2] Could BPA, along with diet and other factors, be a contributor to these disease epidemics?
Food manufacturers are not required to disclose that they use BPA in the lining of their canned foods, so it can be challenging at times to discern between brands that do contain the compound versus those that don’t. Generally, BPA-free labels will give it away, but be aware that the substitutes used to replace BPA may be just as bad. BPS, or bisphenol-S, is a common replacement that has been shown to promote similar health effects.
What Can I Do?
In order to reduce your BPA and BPS consumption, the best thing would be to eat more whole foods and become less reliant on processed or packaged foods. Make your meals from recipes that only use fresh, whole, living foods, and ditch foods that come in boxes, cans, and jars. If you are going to use a processed food that has the BPA-free label, contact the company to make sure they’re using safer substitutes for BPA. Also, a 9-step body cleanse may be helpful for reducing toxic compounds like BPA.
Were you aware of BPA and its pervasiveness in our world? What do you do to avoid it? Let us hear your thoughts in the comments below!
References:
- Brian Bienkowski. Survey of canned-good brands finds hormone-mimicking compound still widely used. Environmental Health News.
- Vom Saal FS, Nagel SC, Coe BL, Angle BM, Taylor JA. The estrogenic endocrine disrupting chemical bisphenol A (BPA) and obesity. Mol Cell Endocrinol. 2012 May 6;354(1-2):74-84. doi: 10.1016/j.mce.2012.01.001.
Watch: Venezuelan Police Engulfed In Flames After IED Explodes in Caracas
Venezuela was once again rocked with violence last weekend, after the Maduro regime won an election that essentially gave the ruling party unlimited power. The election established a parallel legislative body that was staffed entirely by Maduro supporters, thus allowing the socialist government to rewrite the constitution with little opposition. Venezuela has officially abandoned the remaining vestiges of democracy that had endured since Hugo Chavez came to power in 1999.
However, the election was widely regarded as a sham that most Venezuelans refused to participate in. Only 18.5% of registered voters showed up on election day. Despite that fact, the Maduro government is treating the election as a great success.
As of press time Sunday night, the state-run Venezuelan network VTV’s top story on its website declared that the election for the “constituents’ assembly,” a fabricated lawmaking body meant to usurp the power of the democratically-elected National Assembly, a success.
The election process, it claimed – citing a military official – “went about in complete normalcy” and peace. The head of the nation’s electoral council, Tibisay Lucena, told media outlets that there were limited violent incidents and high turnout among voters. The opposition, she claimed “are a small part of the country, a few small circles,” and the rest “are calmly voting since the early hours – 99 percent and more have come out to vote.”
In reality, Venezuela was anything but peaceful or normal last weekend. At least 13 protesters were killed, 3 of whom died at the ends of pro government paramilitary gangs. Also included in the death toll, were several teenagers, a 39-year-old political candidate who was shot to death in his home by unknown assailants, and a 30-year old leader of a regional youth opposition party.
However, the forces opposed to the Maduro regime weren’t the only ones to incur casualties. Seven police officers were injured when an IED, presumably set by opposition forces, exploded in Caracas.
If Venezuela isn’t in a state of civil war yet, it sure is close.
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Author: Daniel Lang
Views: Read by 2 people
Date: July 31st, 2017
Website: http://www.SHTFplan.com
Copyright Information: This content has been contributed to SHTFplan by a third-party or has been republished with permission from the author. Please contact the author directly for republishing information.
Alien Deported 20 Times Charged With Sexually Assaulting Women in Portland — a “Sanctuary City”
A Mexican national who has been deported by immigration authorities at least 20 times was arrested in Portland, Oregon, on July 24 and charged with robbery, kidnapping, burglary, and sexual assault against two victims, one a 65-year-old woman.
In March, Portland declared itself a “sanctuary city” for illegal aliens, meaning local law enforcement does not hold people in city or county jails on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainers or cooperate with ICE in enforcing any immigration enforcement actions.
Fox News reported that the illegal alien, Sergio Jose Martinez, who was armed with a knife, allegedly assaulted a woman in the basement of a parking garage, police said. The woman kicked him in the stomach and pressed the panic button in her car, and Martinez fled when authorities arrived.
Police detectives also connected Martinez to another assault just blocks away from the garage, reported KPTV, Fox 21 News in Portland. The station’s report cited court documents stating that Martinez allegedly entered the other woman’s home through an open window, used scarves and socks to blindfold her, then tied her up, gagged her, and sexually assaulted her — slamming her head into the wood floor.
The victim told police Martinez left with her keys, phone, and credit cards, and drove away in her car. She went to a neighbor’s house and called 911.
KPTV also cited court documents stating that Martinez’ criminal history includes at least one felony conviction, along with six misdemeanor convictions and multiple parole violations.
Additionally, court documents connected with an arrest in March for failure to appear on a trespassing charge and possession of meth stated that Martinez “has entry/removal from United States to/from Mexico 20 times with at least 5 probation violations from re-entry.”
Martinez was most recently removed from the United States in November 2016, however, it is not known when or where he re-entered the United States after being deported.
The logical question to ask is why a man with such an extensive criminal background and who has been deported so many times is allowed to freely move about and present a threat to innocent victims. As we noted earlier, the problem stems from Portland’s status as a “sanctuary city.”
Fox News noted that Martinez has been a transient in the Portland area for more than a year and has five probation violations for re-entering the United States.
ICE lodged an immigration detainer against Martinez in December 2016, asking local authorities to notify them before releasing Martinez. However, Portland authorities ignored the request and released him without notifying ICE.
It is, in fact, illegal for cities in Oregon to use their resources to help enforce federal immigration laws, reported Fox. In March, Portland declared itself a “sanctuary city” for what they term “undocumented immigrants" — illegal aliens.
Multnomah County (of which Portland is the county seat) officials and Sheriff Mike Reese wrote a letter to the community earlier this year saying, “The sheriff’s office does not hold people in county jails on ICE detainers or conduct any immigration enforcement actions,” reported KGW, the local NBC-affiliated television station.
During his remarks on July 12 in Las Vegas, to federal, state, and local law-enforcement members about sanctuary cities and efforts to combat violent crime, Attorney General Jeff Session talked about how sanctuary cities encourage criminals. He stated, in part:
Unfortunately, this cooperation [in enforcing immigration law] has been impeded by the policies of some cities and states. Some 300 jurisdictions in this country refuse to cooperate with federal immigration authorities regarding illegal aliens who commit crimes — even MS-13 gang members. These jurisdictions are protecting criminals rather than their law-abiding residents.
Now I want to be clear about this: local police are not the problem. I know that you want to help. The problem is that politicians have forbidden you to help. That makes all of us — and especially police officers on the front lines — less safe.
When cities like Philadelphia, Boston, or San Francisco advertise that they have these policies, the criminals take notice.
According to a recent study from the University of California Riverside, cities with these policies have more violent crime on average than those that don’t.
An article posted by The New American on July 26 said that President Trump and Sessions were increasing pressure on sanctuary cities by declaring that any state not complying with ICE requests concerning illegal immigrants held in local jails will lose federal grant money.
After the Massachusetts Supreme Court declared on July 24 that the federal government couldn’t order the state to hold suspects in jail after they had served their sentences for the crime they had committed — stating that “detainers are not criminal detainers or criminal arrest warrants” — Sessions changed his request. While it did not ask local authorities to hold the person named in the detainers, it asked local authorities tell ICE 48 hours in advance of a suspect’s release so their agents can come to the jail to interview him.
In addition to asking local authorities to notify ICE 48 hours prior to release of a suspect, the federal government wants to be able to send DHS agents into the local jails to interview suspects prior to their release in order to determine their immigration status.
If Portland officials had complied with this request, it is likely that ICE agents would have identified Martinez as someone who had been deported more than 20 times and taken him into custody to process him for deportation once more.
This would have spared Martinez’s victims from being brutally assaulted.
Image of Sergio Jose Martinez: Screenshot of video by KOIN Channel 6
Related articles:
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Obama Administration Releases 68,000 Illegal Immigrant Criminals
Mexican Cartels Moving Terrorists Across Southern U.S. Border
Smuggling Network Brings Aliens With Terrorist Ties Across U.S. Border
Murder Spree: Victims of Obama’s Illegal Alien Catch-&-Release Policies Multiply
Law Enforcement and Illegal Aliens Both Anxious About Status of Trump Deportation Actions
Number of Former Sanctuary Cities Reversing Policy
Trump Signs Executive Orders to Build Border Wall and Strengthen Immigration Enforcement
California Advances Bills to Become Sanctuary State
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Illegal Alien Sues San Francisco for Violating Sanctuary City Law
“Sanctuary Cities” Make a Mockery of Our Laws
Federal Indian Policy: “Mom Always Liked YOU best!”
It’s 83 years late in coming, but at long last the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 (IRA) is finally getting its first-ever review, and hopefully serious reform. IRA (48 stat. 984) forms the backbone of federal Indian policy across the country and has been extended, expanded, and abused far beyond the original intent of Congress.
In order to understand IRA and its major impacts on America, let me share an analogy. Imagine an American household with a single mom and a couple of sons, Johnny and Jimmy. One day Mom calls the family together to make an announcement. “Johnny, you were here first; Jimmy you were here second. Therefore, Johnny, you are more valuable and important than your brother. And Jimmy, you have intruded upon Johnny’s room, his life and his world, so a big chunk of everything you earn from now on and forever will be given to me, Mom, and I will redirect your earnings to Johnny. You really don’t belong here, Jimmy, because you were here second.”
This is exactly what has been happening in our country for 83 years. Since the Tribes (Johnny) tell the government (Mom) that they were here first, the non-tribal inhabitants (Jimmy) have become second-class citizens.
The mantra foisted upon Americans for decades is, “We were here first; you stole our land.” Neither is true. But even if it were true, the response as of 1789 should have been, “So what?” That was the way of the world in the 1600s under the Doctrine of Discovery. Life changed on this continent in September 1789.
One could hardly call the poor souls arriving on the Mayflower and other ships to establish a new life on this continent, conquerors. They had fled religious oppression under a tyrannical king, and were seeking liberty, religious and individual freedom. These were the seeds that became the Great American Experiment. But for that “transgression,” apparently, Americans are to be forever damned.
In my analogy, Mom is our Mother Country. Imagine that Mom’s folks come to visit their grandsons and discover the new household rules. Mom’s folks, representing our Founders, would be astonished. The seeds planted in the early 1600s by arrivals from Europe gave birth to the Framers of our Constitution and our republican form of government. Regardless of historical decisions, some right, some wrong, the reality is that the United States of America, as of September 1789, is our government, inclusive of the now 50 separate and sovereign states. Revisionist history has been common practice for far too long, but the actual reversal of history occurring today is the slumbering thunder creeping across this country.
There is no tribal sovereignty recognized in the U.S. Constitution, but such sovereignty (just like Jimmy paying perpetual debt to Johnny) has acquired a power beyond the Constitution’s declared sovereign authority of individual citizens and states. States such as Washington, Montana, Idaho, and some Midwestern states have continually relinquished their state authority in deference to all tribal whims. Many states have created de facto “trust” relationships with tribes where none existed; only the federal government has a court ordered (but not constitutional) “trust” relationship with their “dependent wards — Indian tribes.”
Johnny’s governments (tribes) may directly finance political parties, incumbents, or candidate election officials. Jimmy’s government may not. Johnny’s businesses are all tax-exempt and growing enormously. Jimmy’s businesses are taxed to the max. Johnny’s government members can hold elected office anywhere across the country, passing land use and taxation laws upon Jimmy that do not apply to Johnny. Johnny has priority over most of the river and water systems throughout the Western states because Johnny was here first, and Jimmy’s needs don’t matter — he shouldn’t exist.
There is a wondrous Statue of Liberty in New York harbor that welcomes all to come, as the early Jamestown settlers, legally to the United States. We are a country forged and thriving by “intruders” from all over the world. Our republican form of government does not classify those who were here first as superior, nor does it distinguish a priority between the person naturalized yesterday as a full American citizen and the child born here five minutes ago. But federal Indian policy requires perpetual debt and shame for all who came second.
And now we take a deeper look at the Indian Reorganization Act and its impact on the lives of American citizens. In 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Carcieri v Salazar that IRA was intended to reorganize only those tribes on existing reservations and “now under federal jurisdiction” in June 1934. There were only some 65-70 actual Indian reservations in the United States in 1934. Therefore, the IRA was to reorganize only those 65-70 tribes, and no more. The Carcieri ruling was a political earthquake.
The Department of Interior and Bureau of Indian Affairs have not just reorganized reservations in existence in 1934; they have federally recognized a current total of 567 tribal governments, each acquiring and expanding their reservations, each receiving tax exemptions, and each receiving money from Jimmy (“second-class” citizens).
The response to Carcieri under the Obama administration was to utterly ignore it, along with other Supreme Court rulings where the High Court rolled back tribal governing authority, replacing state sovereign authority.
The good news is that on June 22, 2017, the Department of Interior published a “Notice of Regulatory Reform” with an open public comment period on the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) and four other major federal statutes. The Notice reads: “This document also provides an overview of Interior’s approach for implementing the regulatory reform initiative to alleviate unnecessary burdens placed on the American people.”
No doubt Johnny’s 567 tribal governments and the entire Indian industry will be weighing in with their comments to legitimize and further expand decades of IRA unauthorized overreach.
This is our very first opportunity to truly confront the erroneous and detrimental policies that one ethnicity that was here “first” is superior to all others in this country because all other ethnicities are intruders on this continent, and that communalism, socialism, and tribalism is preferable to individual liberty.
It is imperative that states, counties, towns, and Jimmy — who lives within an Indian reservation — describe their “burden” at this time. If Jimmy stays silent, Jimmy’s wallet will continue to be annually poached for the expansion of tribalism as a governing system, replacing our constitutional republic form of government.
Please get your comments on the record to the Department of Interior in one of two ways:
1) Submit comments to the federal “eRulemaking Portal,” www.regulations.gov. In the Search box, enter the appropriate document number (DOI-2017-0003-0002). Or,
2) Mail a hard-copy of your comments to: Office of the Executive Secretariat, ATTN: Reg. Reform; U.S. Department of Interior; 1859 C Street NW. MailStop 7328; Washington, DC 20240.
All other Americans are up against 567 tribal governments with 400 more waiting in the wings for their recognition (not “reorganization”). How long must Jimmy owe his older brother who was here “first” and who seldom says “thank you,” and never says “enough”?
I am not a secondary American citizen. Are you?
Image: screenshots of advertisements at indiangaming.com
Related videos and articles:
Warpath: Obama’s Indian Policy Threatens All Americans, Both Tribal and Non-tribal Citizens
Oops! SPLC Exposes “Anti-Indian Movement” — Led by Indian
VIDEO: U.S. Indian Policy Used to Assault Freedom, Expert Says
VIDEO: Full Interview with Author Elaine Willman
American Natives Ask UN to End U.S. “Occupation”
Ex-sheriff Joe Arpaio found guilty of criminal contempt
Former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio was found guilty on Monday of criminal contempt for defying a judge"s court order to stop traffic patrols that targeted immigrants.
Arpaio, 85, was charged with misdemeanor contempt of court, declaring that he willfully defied a judge"s order in 2011 and prolonged his patrols for another 17 months, Fox 10 Phoenix reported.
He is expected to be sentenced on Oct. 5 and faces up to six months in jail if convicted, though some attorneys doubt Arpaio will face any jail time.
Arpaio"s lawyers argued that the former sheriff did not intend to break the law. The ex-lawman admitted to prolonging his patrols, but then blamed one of his former attorneys for not fully explaining the court order.
However, prosecutors insisted that Arpaio ignored the judge"s orders because the former sheriff was attempting to boost his 2012 campaign.
Read More...
The Amazon Effect: Retail Bankruptcies Surge 110% In First Half Of The Year
As Amazon flirts with a $500 billion market cap, letting Jeff Bezos try on the title of world"s richest man on for size if only for a few hours, for Amazon"s competitors it"s "everything must go" day everyday, as the bad news in the retail sector continue to pile up with the latest Fitch report that the default rate for distressed retailers spiked again in July.
According to the rating agency, the trailing 12-month high-yield default rate among U.S. retailers rose to 2.9% in mid-July from 1.8% at the end of June, after J. Crew completed a $566 million distressed-debt exchange. Meanwhile, with the shale sector flooded with Wall Street"s easy money, the overall high-yield default rate tumbled to 1.9% in the same period from 2.2% at the end of June as $4.7 billion of defaulted debt - mostly in the energy sector - rolled out of the default universe.
In a note, Fitch levfin sr. director Eric Rosenthal, said that “even with energy prices languishing in the mid $40s, a likely iHeart bankruptcy and retail remaining the sector of concern, the broader default environment remains benign."
He"s right: after the energy sector dominated bankruptcies in the first half of 2016, accounting for 21% of Chapter 11 cases, in H1 2017 the worst two sectors for bankruptcies are financials and consumer discretionary.
And if recent trends are an indication, the latter will only get worse as Fitch expects Claire’s, Sears Holdings and Nine West all to default by the end of the year, pushing the default rate to 9%. "The timing on Sears and Claire’s is more uncertain, and our retail forecast would end the year at 5% absent these filings," Rosenthal wrote.
Putting the retail sector woes in context, Reorg First Day has calculated that retail bankruptcies soared 110% in the first half from the year-earlier period, accounting for $6 billion in debt.
The list includes name brands such as Gymboree, Payless, rue 21 and the Limited, all of which cited the Amazon affect as a contributor to their downfall.
“Many retailers have echoed the familiar cries of those that filed before them—the proliferation of online shopping, rapidly deteriorating brick-and-mortar retail, the rise of fast fashion, hefty lease obligations and shifting consumer preferences,” Reorg First Day said in a midyear review.
While it is far from empirically, and certainly scientifically established, every incremental retail bankruptcy should add approximately $5-10 billion to AMZN"s market cap, further cementing Jeff Bezos as the world"s richest monopolist man.
Your Banker Is Always In: Sweden Rolls Out the Robots
Aida is the perfect employee: always courteous, always learning and, as she says, “always at work, 24/7, 365 days a year.”
Aida, of course, is not a person but a virtual customer-service representative that SEB AB, one of Sweden’s biggest banks, is rolling out. The goal is to give the actual humans more time to engage in more complex tasks.
After blazing a trail in online and digital banking, Sweden’s financial industry is now emerging as a pioneer in the use of artificial intelligence. Besides Aida at SEB, there’s Nova, which is a chatbot Nordea Bank AB is introducing at its life and pensions unit in Norway. Swedbank AB is adding to the skills of its virtual assistant, Nina. All three are designed to sound like women, based on research suggesting customers feel more comfortable with female voices.
“There are some frequent, simple tasks that we need to deal with manually today, and in that effort we’re looking into AI to see how we can deploy it, and Aida is one,” Johan Torgeby, the chief executive officer of SEB, said in an interview.
Chatbots have access to vast amounts of individual client data, meaning they can quickly handle straightforward customer requests. That in turn frees up human employees to deal with more complex services, like coming up with the best mortgage plan to suit a specific customer.
Read More...
Pentagon Reportedly Devises Plan to Arm Ukraine With Antitank Missiles
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — The arms, which are characterized as defensive, are apparently meant to deter aggressive actions by Russia in the country, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing American military officials and diplomats.
US Defense Secretary James Mattis supports the plan, the paper reported, citing US officials.
A senior White House official told the newspaper that a decision has not yet been made on the arms proposal.
A violent military conflict in Ukraine started in 2014 after the residents of the eastern Donbas region refused to recognize the new Ukrainian government that came to power in what they perceived to be a coup.
In February 2015, the parties to the Ukrainian conflict signed the Minsk peace accords to end the fighting in the crisis-torn region.
Wikileaks Dumps 72,000 Hacked Macron Emails
In a move that is certain to prompt more allegations that Wikileaks is part of a counter-establishment push, one ostensibly supported by Russia, on Monday morning Wikileaks dumped more than 21,000 "verified" emails associated with the French presidential campaign of Emmanuel Macron. Julian Assange"s organisation claims the batch of 21,075 emails, dating from March 2009 to April 2017, have been uniquely verified through its DKIM system.
As a reminder, in the days before the May 7 French presidential election, Macron’s campaign confirmed it was hit with a "massive, coordinated" hack which released 9 gigabytes of personal documents.
The French electoral commission immediately prohibited the French media from publishing the contents of the leak, and while speculation quickly emerged that Russia was involved in this hacking, France later confirmed there were "no traces of Russian hackers in the Macron cyber attack." The head of the French government’s cyber security agency, Guillaume Poupard, told AP the hack was “so generic and simple that it could have been practically anyone.”
Ironically, less than two months later, with Macron"s approval rating suddenly in freefall, the Russian hacking story re-emrged, when Reuters reported that Russia tried to use an "elaborate Facebook hacking scheme" on the French presidential campaign. It is unclear if the French population will shift their anger away from Macron and to the default scapefoat Russia, helping Macron"s sudden slide in popularity.
To be sure, the Macron hacking story is about to get its second wind when according to Wikileaks statement, there is now a full archive of 71,848 emails with 26,506 attachments from 4,493 unique senders is provided for context. Wikileaks stated that while only the 21,075 emails marked with its green "DKIM verified" banner are certified by WikiLeaks as genuine, it believes “based on statistical sampling” that the “overwhelming majority” of the remainder are also authentic.
RELEASE: 21,075 verified searchable emails from the campaign of President Macron #MacronEmails #MacronLeaks https://t.co/9LlW785eYu pic.twitter.com/HIq6nTcdwq
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) July 31, 2017
“As the emails are often in chains and include portions of each other, it is usually possible to confirm the integrity [of] other emails in the chain as a result of the DKIM verified emails within it,” the statement reads.
RELEASE: 25,439 email attachments associated with #Macron"s presidential campaign https://t.co/HRFLKoWft4 pic.twitter.com/S56PpeTghg
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) July 31, 2017
Curiously, unlike in the US, the initial May hack did not have an adverse impact on Macron"s presidential chances - unlike in the US, where Hillary Clinton has repeatedly blamed "Russian interference" as the main reason for her loss - when the youngest ever French president defeated his opponent Marine Le Pen in a landslide. Should he have lost, the outcome would likely have been different.
Facebook Lobbies to Prevent State Limits on Facial Recognition
Via: The Center for Public Integrity:
When Chicago resident Carlo Licata joined Facebook in 2009, he did what the 390 million other users of the world’s largest social network had already done: He posted photos of himself and friends, tagging the images with names.
But what Licata, now 34, didn’t know was that every time he was tagged, Facebook stored his digitized face in its growing database.
Angered this was done without his knowledge, Licata sued Facebook in 2015 as part of a class action lawsuit filed in Illinois state court accusing the company of violating a one-of-a-kind Illinois law that prohibits collection of biometric data without permission. The suit is ongoing.
Facebook denied the charges, arguing the law doesn’t apply to them. But behind the scenes, the social network giant is working feverishly to prevent other states from enacting a law like the one in Illinois.
Since the suit was filed, Facebook has stepped up its state lobbying, according to records and interviews with lawmakers. But rather than wading into policy fights itself, Facebook has turned to lower-profile trade groups such as the Internet Association, based in Washington, D.C., and the Illinois-based trade association CompTIA to head off bills that would give users more control over how their likenesses are used or whom they can be sold to.
That effort is part of a wider agenda. Tech companies, whose business model is based on collecting data about its users and using it to sell ads, frequently oppose consumer privacy legislation. But privacy advocates say Facebook is uniquely aggressive in opposing all forms of regulation on its technology.
Scarmucci did well during his 10-day tenure as W.H. communications director, stirred hornets’ nest
New York financier Anthony Scaramucci (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)(INTELLIHUB) — President Donald Trump abruptly removed White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci from his post on Monday after Scarmucci repeatedly verbally lashed out towards other staffers on multiple occasions over the past week.
Although Scarmucci’s tenure as communications director was short-lived and only lasted 10-days — you have to give the man credit for stirring up the hornets’ nest. After all, he wanted to “kill leakers.”
The brash New Yorker was the reason that Sean Spicer resigned. He even called Reince Priebus a “fu*king paranoid schizophrenic” and slammed Bannon as a “co*ksucker.”
The man was on fire! How else were leakers to be flushed out and dealt with?
So who’s decision was it to get rid of Scaramucci?
According to the New York Times: “The decision to remove Mr. Scaramucci, who had boasted about reporting directly to the president, not the chief of staff, John F. Kelly, came at Mr. Kelly’s request, the people said. Mr. Kelly made clear to members of the White House staff at a meeting Monday morning that he is in charge.”
©2017. INTELLIHUB.COM. All Rights Reserved.
Kiss The Mooch Goodbye
(ZHE) — That didn’t take long: just ten days after Anthony Scaramucci was appointed as the new White House communications director, the NYT reports that Trump has removed Scaramucci from the role of Communications Director, as requested by the new chief of staff, John Kelly.
According to the NYT, Scaramucci’s abrupt removal came just 10 days after the wealthy New York financier was brought on to the West Wing staff, a move that convulsed an already chaotic White House and led to the departures of Sean Spicer, the former press secretary, and Reince Priebus, the president’s first chief of staff.
The decision to remove Mr. Scaramucci, who had boasted about reporting directly to the president not the chief of staff, John F. Kelly, came at Mr. Kelly’s request, the people said. Mr. Kelly made clear to members of the White House staff at a meeting Monday morning that he is in charge.
It was not clear whether Mr. Scaramucci will remain employed at the White House in another position or will leave altogether.
ABC adds that Scaramucci offered his resignation to Gen. Kelly this morning, with a request to be moved to the Ex-Im bank.
WH sources tell ABC that @Scaramucci offered his resignation this morning to Gen. Kelly w/ request to move to Ex-Im bank.
— Katherine Faulders (@KFaulders) July 31, 2017
Or, as Trump would say, no chaos at all, just look at the stock market.
Highest Stock Market EVER, best economic numbers in years, unemployment lowest in 17 years, wages raising, border secure, S.C.: No WH chaos!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 31, 2017
By Tyler Durden / Republished with permission / Zero Hedge / Report a typo
This article was chosen for republication based on the interest of our readers. Anti-Media republishes stories from a number of other independent news sources. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect Anti-Media editorial policy.
Trump: “We’ll Handle North Korea. It Will Be Handled. We Handle Everything”
This report was originally filed by Tyler Durden at ZeroHedge.com
With Gen. John Kelly set to be sworn in as Trump’s new Chief of Staff, just days after the latest and most advanced North Korean ICBM test yet, one which can reportedly reach as much as half the major metro areas on the continental US, President Trump on Monday pledged to “handle” North Korea’s provocative belligerence, without specifying exactly how he would do so as he faces rising tensions and limited options.
“We’ll handle North Korea. We’re going to be able to handle North Korea. It will be handled. We handle everything,” Trump told reporters at the start of Monday’s first Cabinet meeting with his new Chief of Staff, flanked by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary James Mattis.
Pres. Trump at Cabinet meeting: “We’ll handle North Korea…it will be handled. We handle everything.” https://t.co/t3q481atrR pic.twitter.com/R5OjZDTBmi
— Evan McMurry (@evanmcmurry) July 31, 2017
The comments follow “guidance” from the US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, who on Sunday told CNN that the “time for talk” is over. As CNN noted, “it was a seemingly stark admission – the US ambassador to the UN suggesting the North Korean crisis couldn’t be solved through diplomatic channels in the Security Council.”
On Firday, the Pentagon confirmed that North Korea fired an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States. The missile, fired from north central North Korea, traveled 600 miles before it fell into the Sea of Japan. Following the missile test, Trump said Saturday on Twitter that he was “very disappointed” in China for not doing more to curb North Korea’s missile program.
“I am very disappointed in China,” Trump tweeted. “Our foolish past leaders have allowed them to make hundreds of billions of dollars a year in trade, yet they do NOTHING for us with North Korea, just talk.”
Trump has repeatedly pressed China, North Korea’s only major ally, to put more economic pressure on Pyongyang, lamenting that he has few other options left to try to check North Korea. Trump did not hint at what actions he could take on Monday, but recent comments suggest he could take more steps to try to get China to act.
On Monday, Reuters reported that a “frustrated” China hit back over Trump’s weekend tweets, with the state-run nationalistic Chinese tabloid Global Times saying that “Pyongyang is determined to develop its nuclear and missile program and does not care about military threats from the U.S. and South Korea” adding “how could Chinese sanctions change the situation?”
China wants both balanced trade with the United States and lasting peace on the Korean peninsula, its official Xinhua news agency added in a commentary. “However, to realize these goals, Beijing needs a more cooperative partner in the White House, not one who piles blame on China for the United States’ failures,” it added.
Also over the weekend, the United States flew two supersonic B-1B bombers over the Korean peninsula in a show of “lethal, overwhelming force” on Sunday in response to the missile test and the July 3 launch of the “Hwasong-14” rocket, the Pentagon said. The bombers took off from a U.S. air base in Guam and were joined by Japanese and South Korean fighter jets during the exercise.
“North Korea remains the most urgent threat to regional stability,” Pacific Air Forces commander General Terrence J. O’Shaughnessy said in a statement. “If called upon, we are ready to respond with rapid, lethal, and overwhelming force at a time and place of our choosing.”
As reported earlier, South Korea’s Kospi stock index, oblivious of the constant threat of military action in its northern neighbor, closed 0.07% in the green, just shy of all time highs.
This report was originally filed by Tyler Durden at ZeroHedge.com
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Author: Tyler Durden
Views: Read by 208 people
Date: July 31st, 2017
Website: http://www.zerohedge.com
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Preparing to Barter and Trade With Precious Metals Is NOT a Loony Idea
Let’s start with this fact; fiat (paper) currencies die – often spectacularly. That is why precious metals may someday be needed for barter and trade. Anyone who thinks it is silly to worry about such a thing is putting blind faith in Federal Reserve Notes.
The U.S. dollar is having a great run, no question. It will soon be 50 years since Nixon closed the gold window, thereby converting the dollar to a purely fiat currency. Five decades is longer than most purely fiat currencies survive.
Humans carry a normalcy bias. That helps explain why so many assume the unbacked Federal Reserve Note, which has served so long as our currency, will continue to serve in the future.
If you test that assumption, it quickly gets hard to defend.
Point to the exponential growth in U.S. debt, the unrestrained government spending throughout both Republican and Democratic administrations, and the extraordinary monetary policies of the Fed (particularly in the past decade) and reasonable people should acknowledge that the reign of “king dollar” is unlikely to last forever.
Most people don’t know the first thing about the dark history of fiat currencies around the world. Governments use them to borrow and print without limits. Suffer no delusions – fiat currencies were invented for precisely that purpose. The gold in the treasury has never been sufficient for the wars, social programs, and graft which are the hallmarks of a growing government.
America is no exception. Nixon slammed the gold window shut because nations – France in particular – saw the U.S. spending beyond its means and devaluing the dollar. So our trading partners began swapping dollars for bullion. In order to stop the hemorrhaging of U.S. gold reserves, Nixon reneged on the commitment to redeem Federal Reserve Notes in gold.
Honest money in the form of gold, or currency redeemable in gold, imposes restraints that no expansionist government can abide – ours included.
The chart showing the growth of our national debt since Nixon broke the last remaining tie between the dollar and gold is hard to refute.
Whether or not the federal government can be trusted to make good on its commitments over time is a serious question.
It would be silly not to prepare for a collapse in confidence, and, by extension, a collapse in the dollar. And nobody should wait. Currency crises through history catch most people by surprise, then it is too late to prepare.
Governments are like the Ernest Hemingway character:
“How did you go bankrupt?”
“Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”
History is full of nations and currencies rolling slowly downhill for awhile, then plummeting over the cliff.
You can show naysayers a picture of the recent hyperinflation in Venezuela:
Venezuelans who entered 2016 with all of their savings in bolivars probably didn’t know it, but they were in serious trouble. Within weeks they would be searching for scarce food with nothing to exchange but devalued banknotes – slips of paper which merchants suddenly loathed.
The above chart is based on “official” data from the Venezuelan central bank. The reality is even worse.
Grocers can’t keep enough food on the shelves because suppliers don’t want bolivars. Instead, much of the food is bought and sold in black and grey markets where people offer something more compelling in exchange.
Once lost, it is extraordinarily hard to restore confidence.
The Venezuelan government, and their bolivar, are struggling to maintain any sort of legitimacy. Total collapse is all but assured.
Granted, the USA is not Venezuela. Our dollar is the world’s reserve currency and the U.S. is much larger and wealthier than that South American nation. But much of the difference boils down to scale and timing. Venezuela is simply ahead of the U.S. on the same road to national bankruptcy.
Absent a course correction, there is little reason to think we won’t arrive at the same destination – hyperinflation and disorder.
It is possible America can make reforms before it is too late. But even those who are optimistic about President Trump enacting change for the better, must admit it is very unlikely that he will ever get Congress to cooperate. And it is that august body which is responsible for spending and debt.
Federal debt and entitlement obligations have kept growing, regardless of which party is in control.
If the U.S. returns to honest money and limited government BEFORE a crisis, it may be the first nation in history to do so. Anybody who doesn’t like those odds would be wise to hold some gold and silver for a handful of good reasons. Having something to barter with is certainly one of them.
Clint Siegner is a Director at Money Metals Exchange, the national precious metals company named 2015 “Dealer of the Year” in the United States by an independent global ratings group. A graduate of Linfield College in Oregon, Siegner puts his experience in business management along with his passion for personal liberty, limited government, and honest money into the development of Money Metals’ brand and reach. This includes writing extensively on the bullion markets and their intersection with policy and world affairs.
The Nature Of American Denial
At the core of self delusion is the inability and/or the unwillingness of facing reality. While psychological disorders can often explain abnormal behavior in individuals, the exegesis for deviant social attitudes and accompanying conduct is reserved for society. Or so we are told! But does this make sense to you? As long as you accept that reality does exist and that it can be understood, it follows that we have the right, the ability and the obligation to comprehend it and adjust our actions accordingly.
Most Americans view, of their own personal identity, is inculcated by the political culture. Delmar England, in his provocative work – Mind and Matters, The World in a Mirror – offers this valuable insights into our mutual and shared condition: “In human affairs, as surely as effect is preceded by action, action is preceded by belief, and belief is preceded by thought and conclusions.”
Applying this standard to politics Mr England depicts government is this fashion:
“For all the sidestepping, dance arounds, word games, and confused rhetoric, the term government is easily defined; not by subjective agreement, but by reference to objective reality and the actual entities involved. First, we know that there is no such thing as an infinite entity and that the term, government, necessarily denotes a relationship. The actual entities involved are human individuals. The base options of relationships between individuals are non-initiation of force and non-coercion, or initiation of force and coercion. It makes no difference how many different subjective labels are put upon the situation, the objective fact remains that at the root of it all, these are the only two options. The former is in recognition of the individual as a self-owned entity. The latter is based on the idea of an individual being the property of an “infinite entity”; which is the “justification” for rule by the individuals who hide behind the abstracts and exercise their will to dominate and control all others.”
“The subjective and arbitrary labels arbitrarily associated with government such as democracy, socialism, communism, etc. are purely for the purpose of self-delusion. Although form of implementation may vary and some versions start closer to ultimate self-destruction than other versions, the common and identifying objective content of each and every one is initiation of force and coercion. Millions may volunteer for such an anti-social system and play self-deluding word games for the sake of preferred self-image, but all the pretense in the world and “definitions by agreement” will not erase the truth about government, nor prevent the certain violent consequences of initiation of force and coercion.”
No doubt, this is a correct assessment. Virtually every society and country operates with the implied and universal acceptance that government is natural and ordained. The individual accepts force and coercion as a substitute for avoiding the risk and responsibility of personal Freedom. MindMatters concludes with this point:
“Rather than freedom being the highest value sought by most, it is their deepest and most abiding fear. So much so that they can’t even envision it.”
American denial has caused an epidemic dysfunctional confusion. The delusion that our own self identify is equivalent with the “collective will” of society; which, in turn is synonymous with the government and its policies, is a sociopathic sickness. The antisocial behavior of the STATE demonstrates all the characteristics of a profile of a sociopath. Apply the top five to the demeanor of government: Glibness/Superficial Charm – Manipulative and Conning – Grandiose Sense of Self – Pathological Lying – Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt. We are all taught what we should believe about government; but only the fool, the liar or the delusional accepts that our – self-owned entity – benefits from the force and coercion that the State demands upon us.
Robert L. Kocher has compiled a body of works far too numerous, on this topic to cite sufficiently. We urge you to review and absorb the wisdom in his insights. Most of the lessons detail the last administration, but are completely relevant to the current regime. One essay, especially compliments the Delmar England conclusion. Mr Kocher writes in American Mental Health and Politics:
“If some of us are appalled, frightened, and even driven half crazy by the maddeningly and complacently silly or psychotic levels of denial, by the superficiality, by the abysmal immaturity, by the primitive level of personality structure, by the too-easily employed distorted rationalizations, by the lack of contact with basic reality that we deal with in our daily lives, hear in our college faculties, and see on TV and in high political office, we can nevertheless know that the reality of our perceptions is validated by mental health figures as well as those patients being seen in therapist’s offices.”
Currently, the national mood is absorbed in the illusion that Americans are at risk and that they are in danger from terrorists abroad. While reality demonstrates that enemies of America are plentiful, the disconnect that their veridical hatred is focused upon the U.S. Government and its policies, is concealed. Vast numbers of Americans feed their denial that they are the target of madmen; while they seek comfort in the fallacy that support for the WAR Party will make them safe. The force and coercion that the government imposes upon you, under the pretext that it is necessary and protective, diminishes your safety as it destroys your Liberty. The utter fraud of national security policy, seeks only to preserve the government, no matter how much harm it inflictes upon citizens.
So why do so many misguided flag-waving zealots rally to a jingoistic cause? Kocher provides the answer: “We now live in a society where many people no longer want or value freedom. Personal freedom and the responsibility that goes with it are abrasive intrusions or demands upon a crippled self-absorbed internal state.”
“American Denial” prevents the admission that U.S. policies only benefit the government. Their own personal delusional perceptions are interchangeable with a phony litmus test, judged by their support for State illusions. The thought of exercising the Freedom to think, criticize, condemn and resist is far too disconcerting to the sheeple. They view their own self worth as an adjunct of an abstract deception; while, the true motives of the government are to control society and all individuals, using force and coercion. Both England and Kocher have it right. The association between an individual and an infinite entitydenotes a relationship; and the reluctance or unwillingness to exercise freedom and responsibility, allows the government to implement force and coercion.
“Eternal Vigilance” is no longer enough to preserve Liberty. Sound mental health, appreciation for your own self worth, trust in the integrity of reality and the courage to do battle with the forces that seek to delude your own dignity are all necessary to win this struggle. America is NOT the Government. When policies are dishonest they must be opposed. When officials are depraved they need to be removed. And when your neighbor demands your allegiance to a corrupt government, it is your duty to confront his delusion.
We can no longer afford to be silent in the face of “American Denial”.
“And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie.” (II Thessalonians 2:11)
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