Tag: Politics

Reposted from February 23, 2018

There has been a long-term agenda to change these United States from the conception birthed by our Founding Fathers to something where the power elite control the “Great Unwashed” through the cooperation and demands of the rank and file sheep of the flock. Some parts of the agenda span only a few years while others take over a century to unfold. You might call it a “ten-point program”, a “new world order” or “hope and change”. Over the next two weeks the plan will be presented in no particular order.

WARNING! This will be a long and difficult read but if you make it successfully to the end and understand what you’ve read you MIGHT be able to avoid being a debt slave.

Finalize the decline and abandonment6 of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency:  Create a new international reserve currency disconnected from the United States.

“Gold is the money of kings, silver is the money of gentlemen, barter is the money of peasants – but debt is the money of slaves.”
— Norm Franz

 

It may come as a surprise to many that money and wealth are not the same thing.  The dictionary gives a number of definitions for wealth, one of which is:
Wealth: “Having a large amount of money or possessions”.

That is the definition that most people think of. However, I will give you another definition which is much, much more important to know:
Wealth: “The ability to survive a certain number of days forward”.

How long could you survive if your income/job ended today?

What is a Reserve Currency?

A reserve currency is a currency held in significant quantities by many governments and institutions as a means of international payment. While this used to consist of mostly gold and silver, 1944’s Bretton Woods system expanded acceptable reserves to include the U.S. dollar and other currencies. Since 1973, no major currencies can be officially converted into gold.

The U.S. dollar replaced the British pound sterling as the world’s premier reserve currency circa 1945 in accordance with the Bretton Woods agreements. At the time, the U.S. dollar was the currency with the greatest purchasing power and the only currency backed by gold (although this backing was eliminated in 1973 in a controversial decision), while the U.S. had become a leading world power.

The Constitution does not directly mention paper money, a staple of today’s economy. It does give the Congress the power to “coin money,” however. The Constitution does prohibit states from issuing “bills of credit,” but no such prohibition is in place for the federal government. What does this mean? Is paper money unconstitutional, but coins are okay?

An original draft of the Constitution expressly permitted the government not only to borrow money, as Article 1, Section 8, Clause 2 notes, but also to “emit bills.” In Madison’s Notes from August 16, 1787, the subject of paper money was debated at some length. Gouverneur Morris warned that if paper money was allowed, “The Monied interest will oppose the plan of Government.

In Knox v Lee, 79 U.S. 457 (1871), the Court ruled that paper money was not unconstitutional: “The Constitution nowhere declares that nothing shall be money unless made of metal.” The Court argued that the Congress can manipulate the value of precious metals to the point where it can be rendered as inherently worthless as paper (the Congress could enact a law that says that 10-dollar silver coins weigh 400 grains in one year and 500 grains the next, effectively devaluing the silver). The Court even noted the arguments of the Framers against “emitting bills,” but wrote that the Framers, one, could not anticipate all governmental needs, and, two, allowed the Congress to do what was necessary and proper to carry out its powers. In this case, that includes printing paper money. Proving that Judicial overreach is not a modern phenomenon.

Still, at that time, the control of the US money supply was firmly in the hands of the US Congress and therefore, at least on it’s face, answerable to the people. In a short time, however, this was to drastically change.

A secret meeting took place in 1910 on Jekyll Island, a stretch of white-sand beaches and beautiful landscape off the coast of Georgia. It was an exclusive boys-club gathering of American financiers and politicians. While meeting under the ruse of a duck-shooting excursion, the financial experts were in reality hunting for a way to restructure America’s banking system.

The 1910 “duck hunt” on Jekyll Island included Senator Nelson Aldrich, his personal secretary Arthur Shelton, former Harvard University professor of economics Dr. A. Piatt Andrew, J.P. Morgan & Co. partner Henry P. Davison, National City Bank president Frank A. Vanderlip and Kuhn, Loeb, and Co. partner Paul M. Warburg. From the start the group proceeded covertly. They began by shunning the use of their last names and met quietly at Aldrich’s private railway car in New Jersey. In 1916, B. C. Forbes discussed the Jekyll conference in his book Men Who Are Making America and illuminates, “To this day these financiers are Frank and Harry and Paul [and Piatt] to one another and the late Senator remained ‘Nelson’ to them until his death. Later [, following the Jekyll conference,] Benjamin Strong, Jr., was called into frequent consultation and he joined the ‘First-Name Club’ as ‘Ben.’”

Although Congress did not pass the reform bill submitted by Senator Aldrich, it did approve a similar proposal in 1913 called the Federal Reserve Act. The Federal Reserve System of today mirrors in essence the plan developed on Jekyll Island in 1910.

“Some people think that the Federal Reserve Banks are United States Government institutions. They are private monopolies which prey upon the people of these United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers; foreign and domestic speculators and swindlers; and rich and predatory money lenders.”
– The Honorable Louis McFadden, Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee in the 1930s

If the Fed’s money comes ultimately from the taxpayers, that means we the taxpayers are paying interest to the banks on the banks’ own reserves – reserves maintained for their own private profit. These increasingly controversial encroachments on the public purse warrant a closer look at the central banking scheme itself. Who owns the Federal Reserve, who actually controls it, where does it get its money, and whose interests is it serving?

1. The Fed is privately owned.

Its shareholders are private banks. In fact, 100% of its shareholders are private banks. None of its stock is owned by the government.

2. The fact that the Fed does not get “appropriations” from Congress basically means that it gets its money from Congress without congressional approval, by engaging in “open market operations.”

Here is how it works: When the government is short of funds, the Treasury issues bonds and delivers them to bond dealers, which auction them off. When the Fed wants to “expand the money supply” (create money), it steps in and buys bonds from these dealers with newly-issued dollars acquired by the Fed for the cost of writing them into an account on a computer screen. These maneuvers are called “open market operations” because the Fed buys the bonds on the “open market” from the bond dealers. The bonds then become the “reserves” that the banking establishment uses to back its loans. In another bit of sleight of hand known as “fractional reserve” lending, the same reserves are lent many times over, further expanding the money supply, generating interest for the banks with each loan. It was this money-creating process that prompted Wright Patman, Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee in the 1960s, to call the Federal Reserve “a total money-making machine.” He wrote:

“When the Federal Reserve writes a check for a government bond it does exactly what any bank does, it creates money, it created money purely and simply by writing a check.”

3. The Fed generates profits for its shareholders.

The interest on bonds acquired with its newly-issued Federal Reserve Notes pays the Fed’s operating expenses plus a guaranteed 6% return to its banker shareholders. A mere 6% a year may not be considered a profit in the world of Wall Street high finance, but most businesses that manage to cover all their expenses and give their shareholders a guaranteed 6% return are considered “for profit” corporations.

In addition to this guaranteed 6%, the banks will now be getting interest from the taxpayers on their “reserves.” The basic reserve requirement set by the Federal Reserve is 10%. The website of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York explains that as money is redeposited and relent throughout the banking system, this 10% held in “reserve” can be fanned into ten times that sum in loans; that is, $10,000 in reserves becomes $100,000 in loans. Federal Reserve Statistical Release H.8 puts the total “loans and leases in bank credit” as of September 24, 2008 at $7,049 billion. Ten percent of that is $700 billion. That means we the taxpayers will be paying interest to the banks on at least $700 billion annually – this so that the banks can retain the reserves to accumulate interest on ten times that sum in loans.

The banks earn these returns from the taxpayers for the privilege of having the banks’ interests protected by an all-powerful independent private central bank, even when those interests may be opposed to the taxpayers’ — for example, when the banks use their special status as private money creators to fund speculative derivative schemes that threaten to collapse the U.S. economy. Among other special benefits, banks and other financial institutions (but not other corporations) can borrow at the low Fed funds rate of about 2%. They can then turn around and put this money into 30-year Treasury bonds at 4.5%, earning an immediate 2.5% from the taxpayers, just by virtue of their position as favored banks. A long list of banks (but not other corporations) is also now protected from the short selling that can crash the price of other stocks.

The US Federal Reserve is based on the 1694-created Bank of England because this model allows government finance with debt that is never meant to be repaid. It is an “investment” model that pays interest guaranteed through tax collection. Its invention was to finance England’s government and military in a history of continuous centuries of war.

It’s cleverness allowed British finance to fund a short-term empire over rival European powers.

Although we can appreciate this historical manipulation, this is a Ponzi scheme because the system collapses without new “investors” of government debt securities.

This Ponzi scheme model is our US Federal Reserve System today:

• not “US Federal” but  admitted privately-owned,
• without “Reserve” other than creating what is used for money out of nothing,
• not a “System” but literal criminal fraud because it doesn’t create its claimed “monetary supply,” but the Orwellian opposite of a “debt supply” that is adding negative numbers forever.

The elites are beginning to realize that the peasants are waking up to this fraud and so, to protect THEIR wealth, some new system needs to be implemented. A recent attempt are the “Block-chain currencies” which, along with the Yuan are being floated as a replacement for the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

Will it succeed? That’s hard to say, but there is a twist on an old proverb that goes: “The race is not always to the swift, but it’s folly to bet against them.”

This page and its links contain opinion. As with all opinion, it should not be relied upon without independent verification. Think for yourself. Fair Use is relied upon for all content. For educational purposes only. No claims are made to the properties of third parties.

(c) 2018 Uriel Press

Reposted from February 26, 2018

There has been a long-term agenda to change these United States from the conception birthed by our Founding Fathers to something where the power elite control the “Great Unwashed” through the cooperation and demands of the rank and file sheep of the flock. Some parts of the agenda span only a few years while others take over a century to unfold. You might call it a “ten-point program”, a “new world order” or “hope and change”. Over the next two weeks the plan will be presented in no particular order.

The Agenda — Part Nine: Synchronize and fully integrate local law enforcement with state Federal and private contract military forces. Prepare collection/relocation/internment contingencies, systems & personnel.

There is a long-standing tradition in the United States of separating police and military powers. This practice stems in part from Reconstruction (1865-77), the bitter post-Civil War experience of martial law when victorious Northern troops occupied the South.

After Reconstruction, Congress passed the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. While the roots of this federal law are controversial, the law is generally recognized as limiting the power of the U.S. military to interfere with civilian law enforcement.

The use of military forces under Posse Comitatus remained relatively static until the events of September 11, 2001 after which U.S. military surplus equipment was given to civilian law enforcement agencies under the Department of Defense (DoD) 1033 Program.

Some dispersals of equipment seem to reflect poor decision making. For example:

• The Winthrop Harbor, Illinois, Police Department, policing a village of approximately 6,700 residents, has received 10 helicopters, a mine-resistant armored vehicle and two Humvees, as well as other equipment.

• The Oxford, Alabama, Police Department, policing 22,000 residents, has received nine Humvees, two armored vehicles, a general purpose truck and other equipment.

The primary argument in favor of police militarization is that law enforcement agencies face increasingly sophisticated threats from criminal gangs and terrorists.

Arguments against police militarization center on the marginalization of the Posse Comitatus Act and the appearance of police as members of the military. Unlike military forces that exist to defeat the enemies of the United States in combat, the role of the police in America is to protect and serve their communities.

Having police in military camouflage, carrying heavy military weapons and patrolling in armored or other military vehicles gives  the appearance of an armed police confrontation. That public image belies the traditional image of police as servants of the community.

Civilian police referring to their fellow citizens as “civilians” is an example of how police militarization has crept into our society. For police officers to refer to their fellow community members as civilians promotes a “we – they” type of relationship in which the police are separate from the community.

Look at it for a moment from the cops’ point of view.

When someone calls 911 for police service, there is a tacit admission by the caller that the situation at hand has deteriorated beyond his or her control, and police are needed in order to bring the situation back under control. There is the unstated assumption that the officer has going into each situation — not that a social equilibrium needs to be maintained, but that a situation needs to be quickly and efficiently brought back under control.

Further than this, when he gets to the scene of many to most of these 911 calls, he encounters people who seek to frustrate his endeavors. He talks to witnesses who lie in circles about not seeing anything. He talks to suspects who lie about where they’d just been or what they were just doing. He talks to drunk people who can’t coordinate themselves and won’t remember what was said in ten minutes’ time. He talks to addicts who try to conceal the fact that they’re high even though involuntary tics have consumed their body. He talks to grade school kids and teenagers who have been conditioned to mistrust or despise police. He talks to people who lie about their identity because they have warrants or because they just want to frustrate him. He talks to people who act nervous and take too long to answer simple questions, raising his suspicions. He talks to people who have drugs, guns, knives, and any manner of other contraband hidden in their residence, in their vehicle, or on their person.

Now consider that the officer is doing this many times per shift — 10, 20, maybe more — encounters every day. He will quickly learn that, in order to get anything accomplished with these liars and obstructionists, he is going to have to employ tactics that in any other field would be unacceptable. He is going to have to be blunt, brusque and curt. He’s going to have to call bluffs and smokescreens and BS. He’s going to have to interrupt rambling, circular explanations. He’s going to have to look people in the eye and say, “We both know that you’re lying to me right now.”

Combine a siege police mentality with the transformation of  police from “Peace officers” to “Law Enforcement” officers add military weapons and tactics into the mix and you have a volatile and explosive situation. Enter “Special Weapons and Tactics, S.W.A.T.

Initially S.W.A.T. was an elite force reserved for uniquely dangerous incidents, such as active shooters, hostage situations, or large-scale disturbances.

While SWAT isn’t the only indicator that the militarization of American policing is increasing, it is the most recognizable. The proliferation of SWAT teams across the country and their paramilitary tactics have spread a violent form of policing designed for the extraordinary but in these years made ordinary.

As the number of SWAT teams has grown nationwide, so have the raids. Every year now, there are approximately 50,000 SWAT raids in the United States. In other words, roughly 137 times a day a SWAT team assaults a home and plunges its inhabitants and the surrounding community into terror.

Nearly 80 percent of all SWAT raids reviewed between 2011 and 2012 were deployed to execute a search warrant.

Pause here and consider that these violent home invasions are routinely used against people who are only suspected of a crime. Up-armored paramilitary teams now regularly bash down doors in search of evidence of a possible crime. In other words, police departments increasingly choose a tactic that often results in injury and property damage as its first option, not the one of last resort. In more than 60 percent of the raids  investigated, SWAT members rammed down doors in search of possible drugs, not to save a hostage, respond to a barricade situation, or neutralize an active shooter.

The military mentality and equipment associated with SWAT operations are no longer confined to those elite units. Increasingly, they’re permeating all forms of policing. Recruit training favors a stress-based regimen that’s modeled on military boot camp rather than on the more relaxed academic  police departments previously employed. The result is young officers who believe policing is about kicking ass rather than working with the community to make neighborhoods safer.

This authoritarian streak runs counter to the core philosophy used to dominate American thinking: community policing, and its emphasis is on a mission of “keeping the peace” by creating and maintaining partnerships of trust with and in the communities served.

Police across America are being trained in a way that emphasizes force and aggression.

The more militaristic look of the BDUs, (Battle Dress Uniforms),much like what is seen in news stories of our military in war zones, gives rise to the notion of our police being an occupying force in some neighborhoods, instead of trusted community protectors.

Why is this dangerous to our Constitutional freedoms?

The Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) may be an obscure agency within the Department of Defense, but through the 1033 program, which it oversees, it’s one of the core enablers of American policing’s excessive militarization. Beginning in 1990, Congress authorized the Pentagon to transfer its surplus property free of charge to federal, state, and local police departments to wage the war on drugs. In 1997, Congress expanded the purpose of the program to include counterterrorism in section 1033 of the defense authorization bill. In one single page of a 450-page law, Congress helped sow the seeds of today’s warrior cops.

Astoundingly, one-third of all war materiel parceled out to state, local, and tribal police agencies is brand new. This raises further disconcerting questions: Is the Pentagon simply wasteful when it purchases military weapons and equipment with taxpayer dollars? Or could this be another downstream, subsidized market for defense contractors?

Whatever the answer, the Pentagon is actively distributing weaponry and equipment made for U.S. counterinsurgency campaigns abroad to police who patrol American streets and this is considered sound policy in Washington. The message seems striking enough: what is necessary for Kabul is also be necessary for DeKalb County.

In other words, the 21st-century war on terror has melded thoroughly with the 20th-century war on drugs, and the result couldn’t be anymore disturbing: police forces that increasingly look and act like occupying armies.

Evidence is mounting that America’s militarized police are a threat to public safety.

In a country where the cops increasingly look upon themselves as soldiers doing battle day in, day out, there’s no need for public accountability or even an apology when things go grievously wrong.

If community policing rests on mutual trust between the police and the people, militarized policing operates on the assumption of “officer safety” at all costs and contempt for anyone who sees things differently. The result is an “us versus them” mentality… and that is a dangerous mindset both for police officers and for those they “serve and protect”.

 

This page and its links contain opinion. As with all opinion, it should not be relied upon without independent verification. Think for yourself. Fair Use is relied upon for all content. For educational purposes only. No claims are made to the properties of third parties.

(c) 2018 Uriel Press